In a remarkably candid interview, the President and Executive Chairman of CME Group Inc, Terrence Duffy,  told Bloomberg TV that today gold buyers "don’t want certificates ... They want the real product". When asked by Cristina Alecci at the Milken Institute 2013 Global Conference in Los Angeles on Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart."about gold, Duffy says "What’s interesting about... read more

A great deal of ink has been spilled recently about the economic meltdown in Cyprus. The latest domino in the slow collapse of the European monetary union, Cyprus introduced radical solutions to meet the demands of the EU (European Union) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Now, Cypriot bank depositors have lost chunks of their savings, the Cyprus government has imposed currency controls, an... read more

We could see some real fireworks in the markets in the next few weeks.  This past week saw a run on bullion, particularly silver.  We also found out that inventories of gold and silver are dropping precipitously at the well-known bullion repositories, particularly Western central banks and commodity exchanges.   Refiners are severely backlogged, inventories of popular products hav... read more

Year-to-date, the U.S. dollar is up; does that mean we are in a rising dollar environment? Or is it an opportunity to diversify out of the greenback?   Last year, with all the turmoil in the Eurozone, the euro was up 1.79% versus the dollar; that appeared to be the best the U.S. dollar could do in times of turmoil. Of the major currencies only the Japanese yen was down versus the U.S... read more

The United States might run into trouble accessing debt markets if it defaulted on any of its financial obligations, even if it were able to keep up payments on government bonds, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Congress. Lew was responding to questions about a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would prioritize payments on government bonds and Social Security if the United State... read more

I wrote last week that there was a scramble going on globally by entities seeking to take physical possession of the gold on which they have a legal claim, most of which is sitting either in alleged "allocated" big bank bullion vaults or in alleged "allocated" accounts in Comex custodial warehouse vaults. I also demonstrated mathematically, using the reported numbers on the CME website for pre... read more

On April 25, 2013, Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio introduced a bill in the House of Representatives which seeks to immediately alter the metallic composition of the one-cent, five cent, ten-cent, and twenty-five cent coins. The legislation would require all four coins to be minted in American steel, with the cent coated in copper to preserve the current appearance. The bill H.R. 1719 has two cos... read more

The hyperinflation of a currency is typically described as an event, as if one day everything is normal and then the next day hyperinflation is manifest throughout the economy. This description explains, for example, how the hyperinflations that destroyed the currencies in Germany in the 1920s, Serbia in the 1990s and Zimbabwe more recently are generally viewed. Hyperinflations, however, are... read more

Perth Mint, which refines nearly all of the nation’s bullion, said that demand has jumped to the highest level in five years after prices plunged, with the factory kept open through the weekend to meet orders. There’s been strong interest, including from the U.S., with buyers speculating that the metal will rebound from the decline, Ron Currie, sales and marketing director, said in a pho... read more

The... read more