Gold just made another all time closing high at $2625 spot. This is still without much public participation. How can we know? Simple: check inflows into the ETF'S like GLD, which are anemic to non existant (The stock rises because of derivative exposure not people buying gold) - and check both availablity and the premium over spot on the big bullion sites like APMEX. Everything is available in quantity and the premiums are historically tiny.
It's still the Central Banks that are gobbling up gold. Because the central banks know that the dollar is being destroyed by Deficit Spending and Money Printing. And they are preparing the ultimate de-dollarization play: the launching of a competing settlement currency.
So Gold is not a meme stock. It is not Gamestop. It is not Invidia which has real earnings and sales but it sells a product for which there is little real productive value at this point. It is not Bitcoin which has no use but soars or falls purely on investor sentiment. It is not Apple which has wonderful products though each year it comes out with the exact same product with a few pointless bells and whistles and expect to sell it all over again to the same people who bought it last year.
No - gold is the anti-meme stock - It is a reserve currency used by central banks to secure the liquidity of their central economy. It is the currency of last resort. When there are no more lenders, when the printing press (electronic though it may be) stops printing money that people want to use - the Central Authority still possesses a currency that anyone anywhere will accept in return for real goods. Simply because they have done so for thousands and thousands of years. It provides the ultimate fiancial stability.
Gold is the anti meme stock. It has only use value.
But then gold can have what Karl Marx would have called fetish value. That is to say what we call Meme value or what used to be called vogue, trend, craze, rage, mania or fad value. At times of stress in the system investors and traders do flock to gold. It just hasn't happened here in the US yet. Because here in the US we have been feasting for so long on the value that has accrued to us through the use of the world's reserve currency that we can not recognize this moment of stress that almost everyone else in the world can see.
Our government was nearly overthrown in violent revolution just a few years ago and we've totally whiteswashed the memory. Two hot wars are raging in oil and grain producing areas that could metatstasize at any moment yet they have already moved out of the news cycle, as everything does after a few weeks of coverage. Then it gets boring and old - to US viewers. Becuase we're special. Nothing touches US because we have the worlds reserve currency.
But as the world dedollarizes (while we sleep) eventually we wake up one day and realize the dollar is losing value at an alarming rate. And it makes no difference who is in the whitehouse or who is at the Fed or what the next transformative technology is changing the world. Because there are just too many dollars being printed and distributed to too many people for it to retain any real value over time.
And then things which are just annoyingly expensive now will be prohibitvely expensive. LIke houses, and education and food. We're close. But we have no attention span. Anyone who promises to fix the problem will be believed because we want to believe.
But what is the solution to a debt based currency when we are drowning in debt and when any slowing of the debt produces a recession - that can only be cured by more debt?
When the average Amercian understands that this is the problem and not immigrants or blacks or jews or muslims or women with no children or strangers eating our pets then they will realize that there are only two solutions: Change the economic system which will require years of difficult adjustment or protect yourself with your personal reserve currency of last resort.
And then Americans will buy gold. And the price will shoot ever higher. But then the availability of REAL GOLD BULLION will disappear and the premium over spot will shoot up to 10,20, 50, 100 percent and more.
Then Gold will become a meme stock. Everything has its moment.
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