{"id":37034,"date":"2013-03-23T08:56:05","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T12:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/?p=37034"},"modified":"2013-03-23T07:57:44","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T11:57:44","slug":"gold-the-worst-investment-of-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2013\/03\/23\/gold-the-worst-investment-of-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Gold: The Worst Investment of 2013?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Bill Bonner &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.billbonnersdiary.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">billbonnersdiary.<wbr \/>com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Will gold be the &#8220;worst investment of 2013&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>Has been so far&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 1em;\" align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/billbonnersdiary.com\/images\/20130321goldchart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/billbonnersdiary.com\/images\/032113-sm.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"321\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/billbonnersdiary.com\/images\/20130321goldchart.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">View Larger Chart<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Gold held above $1,600\/oz yesterday. You&#8217;d think it would do better. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.billbonnersdiary.com\/articles\/bonner-government-leadership.html\" target=\"_blank\">Ben Bernanke just pledged<\/a> to keep his printing presses whirring&#8230; even though some areas of the economy &#8212; such as housing &#8212; are improving.<\/p>\n<p>Won&#8217;t an improving economy bring more of this printing press money out in the open&#8230; where it will bid up prices?<\/p>\n<p>And if the economy doesn&#8217;t improve, won&#8217;t Ben Bernanke keep printing<br \/>\nmoney&#8230; even increasing the output of his dollar-printing machines&#8230;<br \/>\nuntil the old buck finally gives way?<\/p>\n<p>So, why is gold doing so badly? Is the bull market in gold, which began nearly 14 years ago, finally over?<\/p>\n<h3 align=\"center\">Buried Treasure<\/h3>\n<p>Those questions were put to a panel of which we were part, in<br \/>\nCafayate last weekend. The questioners were mostly &#8220;hard money&#8221; people.<br \/>\nThe questioned, including your editor, had a generally gold-buggish bias<br \/>\ntoo.<\/p>\n<p>So, what were the answers?<\/p>\n<p>We can only recall our own:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A couple years ago a cache of gold objects and coins was found in<br \/>\nYorkshire. These were items that had probably been buried to hide them<br \/>\nfrom the fighting that was going on in the area during the 8th century.<br \/>\nNo one knows what happened to the owners, but they never returned to dig<br \/>\nup the treasure. Instead, it was found by accident, 1,300 years later.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And yet the gold of which the objects were made is just as good as<br \/>\nit was then. And the value of it &#8212; compared to goods and services on<br \/>\noffer &#8212; is also about the same, at least inasmuch as we are able to<br \/>\npiece together prices from that era and compare them with prices today.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8230; and everything else we know about it&#8230; leads me to believe<br \/>\nthat gold in the future will be worth more or less what it is worth<br \/>\ntoday too. In our lifetimes, we&#8217;ve seen gold go up and go down. But it<br \/>\ndoesn&#8217;t go away. And if you had gone out to buy a new Buick in 1935 or<br \/>\nso&#8230; you would have paid for it with about 25 gold ounce coins. You can<br \/>\ndo that today, too.<\/p>\n<h3 align=\"center\">Thinking for the Long Run<\/h3>\n<p>&#8220;So, if you are thinking of the long run, you will definitely want to<br \/>\nhold gold rather than shares in today&#8217;s corporations&#8230; or today&#8217;s<br \/>\npaper dollars&#8230; or promises by government to repay you in its own IOU<br \/>\npaper currency.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Of course, I know that many of you are not concerned with the long<br \/>\nrun. In the long run we&#8217;re all dead. So what does matter? It&#8217;s the short<br \/>\nrun that matters. And in the short run what is gold likely to do?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Who knows? But it would be very strange for a 14-year bull market to<br \/>\nend with its subject still reasonably priced. Typically, they end with<br \/>\nunreasonable prices.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.billbonnersdiary.com\/articles\/bonner-central-planning-economy.html\" target=\"_blank\">Gold is not especially overpriced now<\/a>. There is no gold mania happening. The cover of <em>TIME<\/em><br \/>\nmagazine is not featuring a gold coin or predicting the end of paper<br \/>\nmoney. Adjusted for even the Bureau of Labor Statistic&#8217;s inflation rate,<br \/>\ngold still hasn&#8217;t come near its high set 32 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Most people in America have still never seen a gold coin. But they<br \/>\nwill. Unless this time really is different&#8230; unless this really is a<br \/>\nnew monetary era&#8230; you can presume that what happened in the past will<br \/>\nhappen again. And what happened in the past was that paper money systems<br \/>\nalways blew up and gold always becomes infinitely expensive in terms of<br \/>\nthe depreciating paper money.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t know when this will happen. But we don&#8217;t see any reason why<br \/>\nit shouldn&#8217;t. They keep telling us that the Fed is doing no harm by<br \/>\nprinting $85 billion more each month.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Official inflation rates are low&#8230; and falling, they say. But if<br \/>\nthey calculated the inflation rate the way they did when people were<br \/>\nwearing Whip Inflation Now buttons, back in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.billbonnersdiary.com\/articles\/bonner-leaders-europe.html\" target=\"_blank\">Carter years<\/a>, the CPI would be at 9.6%. And bond yields would be at 10% or 12%.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230; and people would be struggling to pay 13% mortgages&#8230; and the<br \/>\nfeds would be desperate to sell bonds with 15% coupons&#8230; and the dollar<br \/>\nwould be collapsing&#8230; and the entire system would have the shakes&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230; and we wouldn&#8217;t be having this discussion. We&#8217;d all be expecting<br \/>\ninflation to hit 20% and happily waiting for gold to reach $5,000 an<br \/>\nounce.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No one in this room or anywhere else knows where the price of gold<br \/>\nis going next year or the year after. All we know is that the risks of<br \/>\nowning it are fairly low&#8230; while the risks of not owning it are high.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Regards,<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Bill Bonner\" alt=\"Bill Bonner\" src=\"https:\/\/www.insidersstrategygroup.com\/images\/web\/bbonner-sig.gif\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Bill<\/p>\n<hr align=\"center\" width=\"450\" \/>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-align: left; font-size: 18px; color: #000000; font-family: Verdana;\">Load Your Portfolio with the World&#8217;s Strongest Investment<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have to tell you, stocks and bonds aren&#8217;t paying off for<br \/>\nanyone these days. Right now is the very best opportunity to get in on<br \/>\nanother market that should provide steady growth for years to come. I<br \/>\nwant to tell you all about this market and how to play it for maximum<br \/>\ngains today. It&#8217;s just one of nine &#8220;Off Wall Street&#8221; secrets I&#8217;ve<br \/>\ndeveloped for building incredible wealth.<\/p>\n<p>To find out all of my secrets&#8230; and to learn specific opportunities for profiting right away, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/pro1.insidersstrategygroup.com\/13612\/\" target=\"_blank\">click here&#8230;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Bill Bonner &#8211; billbonnersdiary.com Will gold be the &#8220;worst investment of 2013&#8221;? Has been so far&#8230; View Larger Chart Gold held above $1,600\/oz yesterday. You&#8217;d think it would do better. Ben Bernanke just pledged to keep his printing presses whirring&#8230; even though some areas of the economy &#8212; such as housing &#8212; are improving. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2013\/03\/23\/gold-the-worst-investment-of-2013\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Gold: The Worst Investment of 2013?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}