by
Adam Taggart
Premium Archives
by
Chris Martenson
Executive Summary
- The U.S. may have a lot less gold than widely believed
- Replacing these missing reserves would be extremely costly and disruptive
- Understanding this, the recent market manipulation begins to make sense (in a tradable way)
- Why physical ownership is of paramount importance now as supply is increasingly tenuous
If you have not yet read Part I: Unintended Consequences Are Increasing World Demand for Gold, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
Exactly How Much Gold Do We Have?
There's growing concern that a lot of official gold has been leased out into the market and that sooner or later, as happened back in the late 1990s, one or more parties, perhaps bullion banks or a metals exchange, would run into difficulty trying to meet a physical gold delivery commitment.
For a short video on the mechanics of gold leasing, click here.
If a lot of gold has been leased out, someday it will have to be rebought, and difficulties may emerge if the gold cannot be rebought in sufficient quantities without creating mayhem within the financial system by causing a very large hike in the price of gold.
Important: The amounts of gold leased by central banks is a very closely guarded secret, and we do not have direct information on them, which means we have to try and back-calculate these amounts by other means.
A recent and thought-provoking study regarding gold leasing was done by Sprott Asset Management in March. After accounting for all known flows of gold into and out of the U.S. over the past 22 years, the Sprott team arrived at a figure of nearly 4,500 tonnes of gold that cannot be accounted for.
Here's the summary flow chart…
Why There May Be a Lot Less Gold Than We Realize
PREVIEW by Chris MartensonExecutive Summary
- The U.S. may have a lot less gold than widely believed
- Replacing these missing reserves would be extremely costly and disruptive
- Understanding this, the recent market manipulation begins to make sense (in a tradable way)
- Why physical ownership is of paramount importance now as supply is increasingly tenuous
If you have not yet read Part I: Unintended Consequences Are Increasing World Demand for Gold, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
Exactly How Much Gold Do We Have?
There's growing concern that a lot of official gold has been leased out into the market and that sooner or later, as happened back in the late 1990s, one or more parties, perhaps bullion banks or a metals exchange, would run into difficulty trying to meet a physical gold delivery commitment.
For a short video on the mechanics of gold leasing, click here.
If a lot of gold has been leased out, someday it will have to be rebought, and difficulties may emerge if the gold cannot be rebought in sufficient quantities without creating mayhem within the financial system by causing a very large hike in the price of gold.
Important: The amounts of gold leased by central banks is a very closely guarded secret, and we do not have direct information on them, which means we have to try and back-calculate these amounts by other means.
A recent and thought-provoking study regarding gold leasing was done by Sprott Asset Management in March. After accounting for all known flows of gold into and out of the U.S. over the past 22 years, the Sprott team arrived at a figure of nearly 4,500 tonnes of gold that cannot be accounted for.
Here's the summary flow chart…
by
charleshughsmith
Executive Summary
- The importance of "ownership" of specialized & skills
- Why decentralization of work (vs the traditional hierarchical organization) is the future
- Why disruption and fluidity will be the norm for most sectors of the economy
- Why flexibility, innovation and self-reliance will be the hallmarks of the successful post-capitlaist worker
If you have not yet read Part I: We're Living Through a Rare Economic Transformation, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
In Part I, we reviewed the basic structure of what author Peter Drucker termed the post-capitalist society, a knowledge economy based on a model of decentralized, perpetually innovating organizations.
In Part II, we ask: How do we turn these structural insights to our own advantage?
Structural Inequality
I want to start with the social-political-economic divide that is endemic to the knowledge economy: the widening gap between the class of knowledge workers, which Drucker understood would be the smaller of the two classes, and service workers.
In broad brush, those workers and enterprises engaged in sectors that generate most of the wealth creation will do much better financially than those engaged in low-margin sectors. In the knowledge economy, those with high-level, specialized skills will create more value and thus be better compensated than those with generalized knowledge and/or lower-level skills.
A fast-food worker, for example, is the modern-day assembly-line worker. The entire process of assembling and serving fast food is highly organized for speed and efficiency. But since the product is not high-value, the workers cannot be highly compensated for this work.
As Drucker recognized, all work requires management, and all organizations need to learn to innovate. This creates opportunities for highly trained, specialized workers and managers, but it doesn’t do away with service jobs, which will remain more numerous than knowledge-intensive jobs.
This leads to a sobering conclusion: Just producing more highly educated workers does not create a demand for those workers’ skills…
Positioning Yourself to Prosper in the Post-Capitalist Economy
PREVIEW by charleshughsmithExecutive Summary
- The importance of "ownership" of specialized & skills
- Why decentralization of work (vs the traditional hierarchical organization) is the future
- Why disruption and fluidity will be the norm for most sectors of the economy
- Why flexibility, innovation and self-reliance will be the hallmarks of the successful post-capitlaist worker
If you have not yet read Part I: We're Living Through a Rare Economic Transformation, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
In Part I, we reviewed the basic structure of what author Peter Drucker termed the post-capitalist society, a knowledge economy based on a model of decentralized, perpetually innovating organizations.
In Part II, we ask: How do we turn these structural insights to our own advantage?
Structural Inequality
I want to start with the social-political-economic divide that is endemic to the knowledge economy: the widening gap between the class of knowledge workers, which Drucker understood would be the smaller of the two classes, and service workers.
In broad brush, those workers and enterprises engaged in sectors that generate most of the wealth creation will do much better financially than those engaged in low-margin sectors. In the knowledge economy, those with high-level, specialized skills will create more value and thus be better compensated than those with generalized knowledge and/or lower-level skills.
A fast-food worker, for example, is the modern-day assembly-line worker. The entire process of assembling and serving fast food is highly organized for speed and efficiency. But since the product is not high-value, the workers cannot be highly compensated for this work.
As Drucker recognized, all work requires management, and all organizations need to learn to innovate. This creates opportunities for highly trained, specialized workers and managers, but it doesn’t do away with service jobs, which will remain more numerous than knowledge-intensive jobs.
This leads to a sobering conclusion: Just producing more highly educated workers does not create a demand for those workers’ skills…
by
John Michael Greer
Executive Summary
- B1
- B2
- B3
- B4
If you have not yet read Part I: Precious Metals: The Unseen Risks, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
As I discussed in last month’s subscribers-only article, “Face First into the Limits to Growth,” the crisis faced by the global economy in the years immediately ahead of us is not primarily economic in nature. The explosive economic growth that reshaped the world over the last three centuries or so was made possible by the discovery of a few simple gateway technologies that gave humanity access to vast amounts of cheap, highly concentrated energy in the form of fossil fuels.
Precious Metals: The Calculated Gamble
PREVIEW by John Michael GreerExecutive Summary
- B1
- B2
- B3
- B4
If you have not yet read Part I: Precious Metals: The Unseen Risks, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
As I discussed in last month’s subscribers-only article, “Face First into the Limits to Growth,” the crisis faced by the global economy in the years immediately ahead of us is not primarily economic in nature. The explosive economic growth that reshaped the world over the last three centuries or so was made possible by the discovery of a few simple gateway technologies that gave humanity access to vast amounts of cheap, highly concentrated energy in the form of fossil fuels.
by
Chris Martenson
Executive Summary
- The three main signs presaging a bond-bubble collapse are now evident
- Why the Fed will fail to get new credit debt growth at the rate it needs
- The return of CDOs and other risky tactics that show market participants have returned to reckless thinking
- How a bond market collapse will play out
- How to product yourself and your wealth during the extreme pain of a bond market collapse
If you have not yet read Part I: Investors Beware: Market Risks Today Are Higher Than Ever, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
The dangers growing in the bond market are, of course, all the result of the Fed, et al., cramming the real rate of interest on Treasury bonds into negative territory, starving investors for income, and forcing them to chase yield whenever and wherever it can be found. Given a long enough time without a serious disruption in the markets, you eventually find yourself exactly where we are, with everyone chasing yield because they have to. Hey, everybody else is, and nothing bad has happened yet, right?
Of course, the odds of this ending well are practically zero.
How ridiculous has it become? How about a company currently in bankruptcy proceedings able to sell bonds at investment-grade yields?
AMR Bankruptcy Yields Record-Low Bond Coupon
Mar 13, 2013
American Airlines is selling investment-grade debt even as it spends a 15th month in bankruptcy while bond buyers look ahead to the merger with US Airways Group Inc. (LCC) that will create the world’s largest carrier.
The AMR Corp. (AAMRQ) unit issued $663 million of so-called enhanced equipment trust certificates yesterday that included a portion paying 4 percent, matching the record low coupon for similar airline debt, which was first awarded to United Continental Holdings Inc. in September, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. American is also seeking to refinance about $1.3 billion of bonds backed by aircraft after receiving court approval to do so in January.
By the time you have 'investors' offering money to a perpetual basket-case like AMR – a company that also happens to be in bankruptcy proceedings at present – at investment-grade 4% yields, you know you are in the midst of a crazy bubble. Consider this anecdote to be the bond market equivalent of a hairdresser from Las Vegas buying her 19th house…
How to Survive the Mother of All Bubble Burstings: A Collapse of the Bond Market
PREVIEW by Chris MartensonExecutive Summary
- The three main signs presaging a bond-bubble collapse are now evident
- Why the Fed will fail to get new credit debt growth at the rate it needs
- The return of CDOs and other risky tactics that show market participants have returned to reckless thinking
- How a bond market collapse will play out
- How to product yourself and your wealth during the extreme pain of a bond market collapse
If you have not yet read Part I: Investors Beware: Market Risks Today Are Higher Than Ever, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
The dangers growing in the bond market are, of course, all the result of the Fed, et al., cramming the real rate of interest on Treasury bonds into negative territory, starving investors for income, and forcing them to chase yield whenever and wherever it can be found. Given a long enough time without a serious disruption in the markets, you eventually find yourself exactly where we are, with everyone chasing yield because they have to. Hey, everybody else is, and nothing bad has happened yet, right?
Of course, the odds of this ending well are practically zero.
How ridiculous has it become? How about a company currently in bankruptcy proceedings able to sell bonds at investment-grade yields?
AMR Bankruptcy Yields Record-Low Bond Coupon
Mar 13, 2013
American Airlines is selling investment-grade debt even as it spends a 15th month in bankruptcy while bond buyers look ahead to the merger with US Airways Group Inc. (LCC) that will create the world’s largest carrier.
The AMR Corp. (AAMRQ) unit issued $663 million of so-called enhanced equipment trust certificates yesterday that included a portion paying 4 percent, matching the record low coupon for similar airline debt, which was first awarded to United Continental Holdings Inc. in September, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. American is also seeking to refinance about $1.3 billion of bonds backed by aircraft after receiving court approval to do so in January.
By the time you have 'investors' offering money to a perpetual basket-case like AMR – a company that also happens to be in bankruptcy proceedings at present – at investment-grade 4% yields, you know you are in the midst of a crazy bubble. Consider this anecdote to be the bond market equivalent of a hairdresser from Las Vegas buying her 19th house…
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