What Obama’s Presidency Could Do for Gold

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What Obama’s Presidency Could Do for Gold

By Gold World Staff | Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

 

Democrat Barack Hussein Obama II has been elected to become the forty-fourth President of the United States of America.

And some gold bugs couldn’t be happier.

Why?

Because the biggest gold bull market in modern history peaked amid a political landscape that is now similar to today’s.

Gold and Politics

The political balance of power in the United States has regularly tilted back-and-forth since the country was first founded 232 years ago. This state of constant change can not be said about! gold prices.

Between 1792 and 1971, gold prices were set in the U.S. by the federal government at a fixed price. This fixed priced was changed three only times in the 179-year history of federal gold price fixing.

On August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon unilaterally canceled the Bretton Woods system and stopped the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold. As a result, the U.S. dollar was decoupled from gold, and gold prices could fluctuate like any other commodity.

 

So the data is very limited when comparing the performance of gold prices as they relate to the political affiliation of the President of the United States. However, there are some striking similarities between the performance of gold prices during the great gold bull market of the 1970s and today’s gold bull market and how the Presidential political affiliation was and is tilted.

Take a look at the chart below. It shows the inflation-adjusted average annual price of gold as they relate to presidential political affiliations.

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Republicans Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford controlled the US Presidential office during the first half of the great gold bull market of the 1970s. During this time gold prices increased a modest 217% as the value of the US dollar dropped and gold’s investment appeal heightened under their administrations.

During the first half of today’s gold bull market, Republican President George Bush has controlled the Oval Office. During this time gold prices have increased approximately 204% (to date) for the exact same reasons.

The similarities here are extraordinary to say the least.

The Final Peak of the Great Gold Bull Market of the 1970s

In the 1976 presidential election, Democratic Governor Jimmy Carter defeated Republican incumbent Gerald Ford with a campaign promising comprehensive government reorganization.

During Carter’s tenure as President, the great gold bull market of the 1970s peaked. Gold prices climbed as much as 526% in Carter’s first three years in office.

So, with a new democratic President will today’s gold bull market peak while Obama is in office?

Unfortunately, there’s no surefire way to tell. But if prices were to increase as much as they did while Carter was in office, gold could almost reach a whopping $5,000 an ounce.

Good Investing,

Gold World Staff

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Gold and The Lessons of History

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Gold and The Lessons of History

Today’s comment is by John Pugsley, Chairman and Co-Founder of The Sovereign Society

“Lenin said the day would come when gold would serve to coat the walls and floors of public toilets.” -Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev

Ancient, mysterious gold is being pushed to the forefront of investors’ minds these days, as the inflationary policies of the worlds’ central banks meet uneasily with the deflationary pressures of the housing industry’s collapse. Most expected this year’s air of uncertainty to push gold prices into the stratosphere, and all seem to be relatively shocked by the yellow metal’s lackluster performance thus far.

But for me it’s all just déjà vu…perhaps for you too. We’ve been here before. Not just during the great gold bull market of the 1970s, but way back in the 1920s, and the 1860s, and the…well, let’s not go back to Ancient Rome.

Since gold and freedom have had a long, torrid, and often clandestine affair, the market’s current attraction to the yellow metal makes it apropos that gold looms large in our discussions here at The Sovereign Society.

We hear predictions of US$1,000 or even US$2,000 an ounce. Well…before you or I are swept along in the excitement, let us analyze this euphoria through the lens of economic principles, and ponder the lessons of history.

You may have profited, as I did, in the tumultuous gold bull market of the 1970s. It was heralded in advance by my late friend Harry Browne, who saw it coming and showed investors how to get rich in his prophetic best-seller, How to Profit From the Coming Devaluation. I, too, joined the ranks of “gold-bugs,” writing enthusiastically about the metal’s glory…along with Jim Dines, Doug Casey, Howard Ruff, and many others.

With hindsight, and with gold prices currently stagnating, can we learn anything from history? Tracking the ‘real’ price of gold offers some clues.

In 1915, the dollar was defined as one-twentieth of an ounce of gold. Paper currency consisted of gold certificates that could be exchanged for gold on demand. The ‘double eagle,’ the US$20 gold piece, was one ounce of gold.

In 1915, US$20 would buy a lot. Wages were 35 to 75 cents an hour, or US$500 to US$1,000 per year. A man’s tailor-made suit cost US$25-$30 (with two pairs of trousers), while a Sears & Roebuck ready-made, but stylish pure-wool worsted suit sold for US$16.50. A movie ticket cost 15 cents (10 cents for kids).

Adjusted by the CPI, what cost US$20 in 1915 would hypothetically cost over US$450 today. Meanwhile, an ounce of gold that equaled US$20 in 1915 would cost US$726 as of this writing.

What happened? It’s known as fiat money creation.

What Happens When Paper IOUs Replace Solid Metal Currency

The prices of goods and gold diverged because the newly created Federal Reserve gave banks free reign to expand loans, massively inflating the quantities of gold certificates in circulation, with no increase in the banks’ gold reserves. As the gold IOUs flowed into the economy, boom times arrived. Prices rose and stocks and real estate soared.

Sadly, as the masses discovered, the “roaring twenties” were fueled by paper promises. In 1929, the stock market crashed, unemployment rose, people became fearful of banks, and the public began turning in their bank notes for the gold they had deposited. Of course, most banks didn’t have enough gold to cover the outstanding notes, one by one they failed, and the economy plunged into the Great Depression.

The bankers and politicians were quick to blame the free market, greed, and gold itself. Roosevelt, elected in 1933, closed the banks to stem a rising wave of bank failures, abruptly revalued gold to US$35 ounce (depreciating everyone’s dollars by 75%), and outlawed ownership of gold by U.S. citizens.

It was easy to rob American citizens at gunpoint by confiscating their gold, but what about foreigners? They could still choose between U.S. dollars and gold. The answer was to play the same game the Fed had played 30 years earlier: promise to redeem dollars in gold. In 1944, at the historic United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, every participating country pledged to keep its currency within a percentage point or two of an agreed dollar value providing the U.S. indemnified foreign central banks against a depreciating U.S. dollar by backing the dollar with Treasury gold. The dollar became the world’s reserve currency.

Credit Swells and Gold Freezes

The credit expansion began again, and the price of gold remained frozen at US$35 an ounce for another 27 years. Again, as happened in the 1920s, consumer prices began to rise. But just as worried Americans had begun to run to the banks in the 1930s, the rest of the world began a run on U.S. Treasury gold. In 1971, with Treasury holdings perilously low, Nixon abrogated the Bretton Woods agreement and gold, free of government chains at last, soared to US$800 an ounce in 1980.

At that price, it was wildly above its historic exchange value with other goods, so it was inevitable that the lines would converge again, and they did.

Politicians depend on fiat currency to fund wars and giveaway programs, and therefore always disparage gold. In 1924, in the euphoria of the Federal Reserve money bubble, John Maynard Keyes denigrated sound-money advocates by calling the gold standard a “barbaric relic.” Even after a half century of turmoil caused by fiat money, in 1975, Secretary of the Treasury William Simon continued to argue against gold due to its “destabilizing effects” on the world monetary system. The IMF formally sought ways to “insure that the role of gold in the international monetary system is gradually reduced.” Gold sales by both the IMF and the Treasury were undertaken to suppress the price and discourage investors.

Gold is a commodity…a tangible, useful mineral extracted from ore and refined for use. The very fact of its unique properties (divisibility, durability, scarcity, and its recognizable luster) make it an unmatched medium of exchange, and also a safe haven for citizens. Thus, it will always be a threat to the creators of fiat money.

What’s Next for Gold?

History teaches that gold will hold its value relative to other goods. In terms of inflating currencies, all goods, including gold, will hold their relative value to each other, and rise relative to currency. Right now, for the last 6 years the price of gold has risen more rapidly than other prices, and is now higher than the norm.

Since 1980, consumer prices have risen by almost 150%. Many analysts today assume that gold will repeat the price pattern that occurred in the decade of the 1970s, and argue that gold could go as high as US$2,000…or higher.

Warren Buffett once said that what we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history. Thus, it’s probable that the current bull market in gold is not over in spite of the fact that gold’s dollar price relative to goods is higher than the historical norm. The public has yet to discover just how much world currencies, and particularly the U.S. dollar, have been inflated in recent months and years. As this becomes apparent, dollar holders will, as they did in the 1930s, and again in the 1970s, try to redeem those dollars for tangible goods. Price inflation will return with a vengeance, and probably soon.

What are the best ways to own gold?

For myself, owning physical gold in the form of coins and bullion for conservation of purchasing power, and seeking out the shares of undervalued and overlooked gold mining companies for investment and speculative growth are the best choices.

In addition, to promote a return to sound money and to enjoy its benefits to every extent possible in the meanwhile, you should begin using “electronic” gold. The most reliable and safest purveyor of this new technology is Goldmoney. Check them out at www.goldmoney.com/?gmrefcode=sovsoc.

I opened this essay with a quote by Lenin, who argued that gold should be assigned to the toilet. Not only was Lenin an economic ignoramus, he was the ultimate enemy of individual sovereignty. Ancient, mysterious gold is the ultimate antidote to fiat money, and we can be certain that mankind’s love affair with this lustrous commodity will never end.

JOHN PUGSLEY,
Chairman of The Sovereign Society

The Perversion of American Capitalism

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The Perversion of American Capitalism

By: Naufal Sanaullah of Dorm Room Derivatives

The United States does not rely on industry for growth. Its economic backbone is money. America finances the globe’s corporations and emerging markets, its dollar is the world’s preeminent reserve currency, and its citizens’ puchasing power allows for the monstrous consumption that accounts for over 60% of the world’s largest GDP.

It is sad, then, that this nation faces a liquidity crisis out of all possible economic scenarios. The United States economy is based on international reliance for its financing, and a global credit crunch greatly diminishes that leverage.

Since the 1970s, America has gradually shifted from being an industrial production superpower to a consumption-based financial center, concurrently going from a significant creditor nation to debtor nation. It was able to do this because of the leverage it had on the rest of the world’s economies. Trade deficits were allowed and even encouraged because of the supreme strength of the US Dollar, being the world’s most important reserve currency. Newly capitalist post-Cold War economies stemming from the Soviet Union’s collapse offered huge new markets that America financed and invested in, again providing leverage for debt. The United States was the safest investment in the world, with its strong currency, economy, and liquidity.

Then came Greenspan.

As Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan manufactured a credit bubble in the 1990s through a series of interest rate cuts. Because of an extremely inaccurate new methodology of inflation calculation introduced by Bill Clinton, interest rates were manipulated to aritifically ease credit, which grossly misdirected capital and created a series of bubbles, in information technology, dot-coms, equity markets, real estate, and credit in general. The 90s were a period of ridiculous economic growth in America, but it was substantially artificial, as overconsumption pervaded the perceived growth. This overconsumption was financed by borrowing using artificially free credit. True purchasing power was significantly below perceived wealth, and thus asset values shot up and, now, are shooting back down twice as hard and twice as quick.

Now that the credit market has collapsed (as well as credit-dependent markets, namely housing and automobile), purchasing power is going to begin a quick descent to real terms. Americans are going to lose wealth quickly, especially through their invested capital in mutual funds and pensions funds, as well as their homes. To ease the flow of credit to get Americans borrowing again and consequently consuming, propping back up the American economy, the Fed has been lowering interest rates again, but this time there is an added problem– inflation.

The recalculation of inflation is now manifesting itself in a weakening dollar, and eventually valuations will finally come to represent true inflationary levels, most likely around 8% already. The problem is the American government is trying to stimulate consumption once more by re-liquifying banks by buying out bad mortgage-related assets, especially derivatives. Consumption does not drive economic growth on the long term, capital investment does. Capital spurs technology, adds liquidity, and increases output, something America has not experienced since its back on industry. America has enjoyed strong inflows of foreign capital because of its equity markets and strong currency, but neither of those are incentives for investment any longer. The government’s plan to buy defaulted credit assets to bailout big banks is in fact worse for its long-run economic growth, because it weakens the dollar even further. The US dollar is now essentially backed by bad mortgage debt, and the only thing propping it up right now is temporary relative strength as the rest of the world experiences its own credit crises and the dollar remains the fundamental reserve currency. But for how long?

American national debt is the last bubble to collapse, and in fact it is still inflating and will continue to until a weakened global economy will force nations to call in their debts outstanding from the United States. This will be the coming of age for the next wave of economic titans: Singapore, Hong Kong, India, China, Australia, and Russia. This will be the downfall of the American Dollar and its replacement as the world’s pervasive reserve currency. This will be the true liquidity crisis, as the United States will essentially be forced into bankruptcy with no surplus to pay off debts and no way of financing through an illiquid banking structure.

This will be the end of capitalism in America. Socialist programs of the ’60s and ’70s foreshadowed the economic collapse, Alan Greenspan ushered it in, George Bush and his debt-financed wars worsened it, and Barack Obama and his socialist taxpayer-funded big government programs and bailouts will make it a perfect storm. I see in the future the possibility of an economy characterized by free credit but no demand and no purchasing power based on ridiculous inflation. Sounds eerily similar to 1930s Germany. Who will be America’s demagogue?

Buy precious metals now to save yourself. Venture capitalists are gone, there are no new IPOs, there is no industry, the currency is going to be worthless, hyperinflation may kick in, and there is no demand curve growth in sight. Buy precious metals.

America’s only hope? After four years of Obama, Barry Goldwater is resurrected from the dead to preach Austrian School capitalism and libertarian social policy.

Long recommendations: GLD, SDS, SKF, QID

Author’s Disclosure: I am long none of these ETFs, but will be after the current countertrend bear rally finishes (expecting around February-March).

Gold Report: Brien Lundin: Is Gold Holding a Wild Card?

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Brien Lundin: Is Gold Holding a Wild Card?
Source: The Gold Report  11/04/2008

As difficult as it may be for precious metals investors to sit on their hands, that may be the best “action” for surviving this hazardous transition from deflationary to inflationary times. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Gold Newsletter Editor Brien Lundin explains why it is absolutely inevitable that inflation will trigger a rise in gold and hints that a December “surprise” could end the waiting game. While his advice is to let this round of deleveraging and deflation end before making any serious plays, he names a few bargains that stand out even in a downturn.

The Gold Report: Gold and the Dow are both going down. Shouldn’t they be decoupling and if they do, what would it take to make that happen?

Brien Lundin: There’s a fancy word out there – deleveraging – that’s being bandied about almost as much as the word depression. All the pundits and the analysts are talking about deleveraging. What that really means is that market participants are selling hand over fist because they have to. The prices we’re seeing for assets now, whether it’s stocks, commodities, or gold, do not reflect the underlying value of those assets. People are selling them simply because they have to—whether because of margin calls or redemptions from hedge funds or what have you, the assets have to be sold. That’s why anything with a bid, anything that can be sold in volume is being sold. Underlying trends have nothing to do with it.

I do think we’ll see stocks and gold decoupling. We’ll see all of these asset classes start to establish their own trends based on economic fundamentals, once some stability returns to the market. First we have to get past these great down drafts driven by the need for liquidity.

TGR: When do you see that happening?

BL: That’s a difficult call. Some predict the bailout plan will have an impact soon—over the coming few weeks. I think that enough damage has been done to last for the rest of this year. Simply having gotten through October will bring a big psychological boost. It was such a hazardous month and had earned such a well-deserved reputation for being treacherous for equity investors.

At this point, everyone who doesn’t have to sell, who isn’t on margin, or doesn’t need the liquidity, should just sit back, keep their heads low and wait until the New Year.

TGR: But when do you expect some stability?

BL: It’s hard to say how much more selling will occur. A lot of money has certainly flown out of the commodities sector and the stock market. We’ve lost $3 trillion in wealth in the stock market alone since the bailout. And yet, while there’s already been a tremendous amount of selling, there is still some money on the sidelines. It’s just impossible to predict when stable markets, much less an uptrend, will come.

TGR: What do you think of the fact that the value of the U.S. dollar has increased against most other currencies? What’s causing that given all this financial turmoil?

BL: A couple of things. First off, assets are being sold to raise dollars to meet margin calls and redemptions. Until the margin clerks and fund investors start accepting gold in payment, then we’re not going to see gold rising in such an environment.

Secondly, the dollar has been in a bit of a short squeeze. A number of European banks have had to buy dollars to fund redemptions from clients with accounts based in U.S. dollars. The pressure resulting from redemptions and withdrawals forced them to buy dollars at virtually any cost to redeem these calls. That short squeeze has elevated the relative value of the dollar over the near term. This situation won’t last. But typically, when a rebound from a short squeeze occurs, there will be a dramatic move in the opposite direction.

TGR: By dramatic, do you mean fast?

BL: A lower dollar, a weaker dollar. And yes, in fairly quick fashion.

TGR: A weaker dollar would push up the value of physical gold.

BL: Absolutely. And over the longer term, that will happen eventually. Trillions of dollars of are being created to bail out financial institutions and local economies. This will have a dramatic effect on inflation. But for now, this deleveraging process is highly deflationary. We’re getting a stronger dollar and relatively lower values for anything the dollar will buy. But ultimately, all these newly created dollars and all of this new fiat currency worldwide will result in much higher inflation.

TGR: You are predicting we are headed for an inflationary environment?

BL: Oh, absolutely. Even if the currency that has been created or promised thus far proves insufficient to engender an inflationary environment, the financial authorities will create whatever amount it takes to bring about inflation. That’s only way to stop deflation. They cannot transition gradually from a deflationary environment to one with low inflation. The pendulum will have to swing hard in the other direction.

TGR: Will the pendulum swinging bring the end of deleveraging? You said earlier that as the deleveraging process completes itself, that the asset classes will now reestablish themselves on their own merits.

BL: Yes.

TGR: Once this deleveraging ends, inflation begins?

BL: Yes, but once we pass through a difficult transition period from a deflationary environment into an inflationary one. We’re probably living through it right now. There’s no telling when the pendulum has reached bottom, and when it’s going to start swinging the other way. Every time we think we’ve hit a bottom in the stock market, we test a new one. Every time we think the last shoe has dropped, another one falls. This uncertainty and fear of what lies ahead really bothers the market.

For so long we didn’t realize that the market was barreling along with blindfolds on. Suddenly these obstacles are hitting us with great force and we don’t know what or where the next stumbling block will be. And that’s scary.

TGR: But in that uncertainty lies opportunity.

BL: Absolutely, but it takes more than insight to see opportunity. It also takes guts to act on it. We all recognize that this is opportunity, but it’s the proverbial falling knife syndrome. When do you step in? I’ve pecked away at a few irresistible bargains myself and in some cases those irresistible bargains are now trading for half of what I paid for them.

So it’s hard to find the bottom, but there is value here. I’m advising my readers not to over-extend themselves. Wait for a trend to establish itself, give up some of these early gains before you jump in wholeheartedly. With that said, it’s not a bad time to peck away at some bargains here and there.

TGR: Do you have some bargains you can share with us?

BL: Yes, I do. All are extremely undervalued and selling for small fractions of their peak prices. The key is to find companies with real assets and the financial wherewithal to survive this down market.

NovaGold Resources (NG:AMEX)(NG:TSX), at these levels, is a tremendous bargain. There’s been a lot of concern about NovaGold and what’s going to happen at Galore Creek, but I think that’s going to end up being a bigger, more profitable project than anyone is currently imagining. Inter-Citic Minerals (ICI.TO) is another great company with a tremendous gold project in China. It’s trading for around 30 cents—a fraction of what this project is worth even at today’s prices. It’s a multi-million ounce project with considerable growth potential. Keegan Resources Inc. (AMEX.KGN) is another one. I think they’ll end up with close to 3 million ounces in their West African projects. Keegan sells for 75 cents with about a $22 million market cap.

On the uranium front, I like Hathor Exploration (HAT: TSX.V). This company is one of the only bright spots in today’s junior stock market. They have a tremendous high-grade uranium discovery in the Athabasca Basin and have only explored about a third of the structure that hosts the uranium mineralization. Roughly outlined, they’ve probably got close to 40 million pounds—once that’s drilled out to a compliant resource, it’s probably worth about $300 million even in today’s market. But Hathor’s trading for well under half that value right now, and the deposit should grow much larger. So I really like Hathor as a stock that almost assuredly will trade for considerably higher prices down the road.

TGR: You follow uranium quite closely. Can you just give us an overview? What’s the outlook for uranium juniors?

BL: Uranium is a great long-term story, but when prices reached $110 to $120 a pound, it did get very much ahead of itself. Since then, we’ve come back to earth, and hard. A lot of that drop in price can be attributed to the diminishing outlook for the global economy. But a significant part of the decline has to do with the fact that hedge funds were speculating in uranium on the long side and they have obviously deleveraged. Some of them no longer exist.

The bottom line is that a lot of the uranium positions—not just the companies, but actually the metal itself—have been sold down. Uranium’s long-term story remains bullish, but it’s not going to develop as quickly as everyone had hoped during the ‘urani-mania’ a couple of years ago. We’re going to have to see China grow considerably, for example. A lot of the uranium forecasts were based on the number of nuclear reactors that China was going to build as well as the rest of the world. But it takes a long time to build a nuclear power plant, even in China. The long-term trend is up, but along the way there will be bumps and corrections like those we’re experiencing right now.

TGR: So even a recommendation like Hathor, which has been pounded down by the market in general along with the drop in the price of uranium, would take awhile to bounce up?

BL: Hathor is such an exciting, high-grade story that its prices are being driven by its exploration success, making it largely independent of the short-term uranium price. Granted, some analysts have made rough calculations of its net asset value and then, rather than assign a price target that’s a multiple of its NAV, end up with a target that’s just half of its NAV. Unfortunately, that’s a function of today’s uranium market. But Hathor will be driven by drill results over the next three to six months, while the rest of the sector will remain pretty moribund. Most uranium explorers need a price over $80, because a lot of uranium in the ground becomes economic around that level. And we’ll need sustained prices around $100 before lower-grade uranium projects become viable and lead the representative stocks to rise.

TGR: At what point will existing nuclear facilities begin to consume enough to push the price up?

BL: When uranium was trading for over $100, everyone agreed that was the time. Now that uranium is in the mid-$40s, I just don’t think that anyone can predict when we’re going to sustain those higher prices again. The decline in the broader commodities market and the corresponding strength in the dollar are having an effect here. Again, I think we need to get through this temporary deflationary phase and the stronger dollar. A weakening dollar will start to bring up commodity prices. That’s when uranium will creep back. But it could be late 2009 before we can see that happen.

TGR: Do you cover any of the rare minerals in the Gold Newsletter?

BL: Not too closely. It’s difficult for those rare mineral projects to get much attention in this market. Gold is what really drives a bullish environment for resource stocks. You really need a very broad commodity bull market before those more obscure metals and elements get noticed. One exception is Rare Element Resources Ltd. (RES:TSX.V). It’s the best of the rare earth plays, ironically, because of its gold project, Sundance, joint ventured with Newmont. Sundance will drive RES, while the rare earth component is more of a backdrop to the gold story.

TGR: Interesting. So even though there’s demand for rare earth minerals from many different areas, that won’t be enough to move Rare Element Resources forward?

BL: No, I don’t think so. I think that’s a gold story.

TGR: You have a conference coming up in New Orleans, from November 13-17. How would investors interested precious metals and/or uranium benefit from your conference?

BL: Investors will get the latest thinking from leading experts in mining and resource stocks—from some of the very people who predicted this downturn. I am referring to Rick Rule, Dave Coffin, Lawrence Roulston, Brent Cook, Greg McCoach and others, who do very well finding the bargains that will survive. Investors will also hear from some of the biggest names and the most respected experts in geopolitics and economics. We take great pride in presenting the most celebrated leaders in the world, who not only take a look at the big picture but also drill down to the details.

TGR: Steve Forbes will be there.

BL: Yes, and Fred Thompson will give us look at the geopolitical angle. Our conference takes place right after the U.S. presidential and congressional elections, and investors need to gain a clear understanding of how the elections will impact the economy, investments and tax strategy. So in addition to Thompson and Forbes, we’ll also hear from Stephen Moore, a noted economist affiliated with the Cato Institute and the Wall Street Journal. James Carville, a well known political operative, will tell us what the fallout of this election will be for the American investor.

And Doug Casey, representing libertarians, will have his annual debate with a conservative and a liberal, i.e., with Thompson and Carville. That’s a real crowd pleaser with a lot of fireworks.

TGR: That’s got to be lively.

BL: People always pack the halls for that one.

TGR: Any last thoughts on where gold will be by the end of the year?

BL: I think I will beg off on that one. Frankly, I don’t want to jinx it, but I think we could see a December surprise. One of the potential wild cards is the emergence of an effort to get people take delivery on December gold and silver contracts, which may or may not end up depleting the warehouse stocks to any significant degree. Just the possibility of that happening could be enough to trigger some short-term upward movement in the gold and silver price.

Brien Lundin, with over 20 years of experience in investment analysis and publishing, serves as president of Jefferson Financial and editor of Gold Newsletter . In Gold Newsletter, he covers not only resource stocks, but also the world of investing, from small-caps of every type to macroeconomics and geopolitical issues.

My Note: This article is good enough for a repeat especially now that Barak Obama is our newly elected President. – jschulmansr