Commentary for Monday, Oct 13, 2014 (www.golddealer.com) – Gold closed up $8.30 at $1229.30 which is the highest point in almost a month helped again by a weaker dollar.
Comments over the weekend by Federal Reserve Governor Fischer indicates once again the Fed will delay interest rate hikes as a result of a weaker global economy.Weaker equities also provided traction for the price of gold today.
The possibility of a delayed interest rate hike has pushed the Dollar Index lower and supported gold in the process. The Dollar Index has seen a 52 week low of 78.91 and a 52 week high of 86.75. As of this writing we are looking at 85.53 and this number has been within 0.50 points either side of 85.00 for the past week. So it’s not like the dollar is getting considerably weaker but the possibility of continued near zero interest rates has muted its consistent strength.
And there is another reason gold news from India may be improving – jewelers expect as much as a 15% growth in demand which is simply the result of lower prices.
And at the GoldDealer.com house a few larger gold bullion buyers appeared today. Much of the action of late has been silver related so this might indicate gold is cheap enough that some “big boys” might want to at least test the physical waters.
A note to forget – we thought the COMEX would close on Columbus Day and as you can see its still there and operating nicely – sorry for the mistake.
Silver closed up $0.04 today at $17.29 in quiet trading.
Platinum closed down $1.00 at $1260.00 and palladium closed unchanged at $785.00. Rhodium was also unchanged at $1230.00.
It’s time for my weekly wake up call relative to reality of inflation – this from David Stockman (Contra Corner) –The Fed’s 2% Inflation Target: The Ultimate Keynesian Con Job – The old adage that if something is repeated often enough it is soon assumed to be true couldn’t be more apt with respect to the Fed’s 2% inflation target. Today Bloomberg has a piece that does exactly that, describing how “Federal Reserve officials are hunting for new tactics to raise price increases to their target” because “inflation is descending toward the danger zone”.
In fact, the September meeting notes cited several officials who worried that “inflation might persist below” the committees target for “quite some time.” Accordingly, the Bloomberg author, Craig Torres, pulled out his editorial pen and offered his opinion as if it were objectively obvious:
The Fed needs a clear strategy for getting the inflation rate higher after falling short of its 2 percent target for 28 consecutive months.
Well, now. Twenty-eight straight months of misses. Let’s see, even using the Fed’s systematically understated measure of inflation, the PCE deflator ex-food and energy, consumers’ savings and paychecks have lost 3.3% of their purchasing power during the last 28 months.
Apparently, had they instead suffered a 4.7% loss of purchasing power (2% inflation for 2.33 years) everything would be copasetic. Instead of remaining in a funk, as has been evident since it unexpectedly snowed last winter, they would have been spending up a storm. Presumably the US economy would have long ago hurtled through that pesky “escape velocity” barrier.
Isn’t it amazing that over the relatively brief period in question that shrinking the purchasing power of the dollar by 4.7%% versus 3.3% could make such a profound difference. Or maybe not.
But don’t expect the “journalists” at Bloomberg to even ask. Like their “competitors” at the WSJ and Reuters, they are about as mainstream, lazy and intellectually sloppy as they come. In this case, it is not likely that a writer who cites two ex-central bank true believers as his main source—-former Fed governor and macro-model peddler, Larry Myers, and former Bank of England policy committee member and current Keynesian snake oil salesman, Adam Posner—-would trouble himself with proof that a 2% annual gain on the CPI is a proven economic elixir.
No, the 2% inflation mantra has been repeated so early and often by Fed speakers, their court economists and the Wall Street stock peddlers known as “strategists” that it appears to amount to the monetary equivalent of the Pythagorean theorem. Even then, the literalist presentation of the matter in the attached story sets a new standard for credulity.
Supposedly, if inflation is a tad on the weak side, or even remotely veers off in the direction of the dreaded “deflation” zone, consumers will sit on their wallets waiting for prices to fall further. Soon you are sliding down the slippery slope into the maws of a deflationary malaise, and then Great Depression 2.0. So Bloomberg even found a consumer to illustrate this point.
It was a rather prosperously proportioned lady in an appliance store who would apparently be put out of a buying mood if prices were not increasing with sufficient vigor. And Bloomberg even included that proposition in the caption, lest any reader miss the point:
Consumers anticipating falling prices may postpone discretionary purchases. This can combine to create a vicious circle of less spending and further downward pressure on prices.
So it must be true. It’s right there in the (online) papers.
For the life of me, therefore, I can’t figure out how the Apple shoppers pictured below are still even functioning. Prices of their favorite i-Gadgets have been falling for years—but here they are lined up an Apple Store as far as the eye can see fixing to spend up a storm.
Ok, digital age products are different. I get that. Not only do their prices drop consistently, and sometimes even plunge precipitously, but they also give you huge increases in function and quality. So what’s involved, apparently, is some kind of consumer addiction to getting more bang for the buck in this allegedly idiosyncratic corner of the marketplace.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t explain the graph below which is distinctly not new age, but the BLS wholesale price index for all finished consumer goods less food. Year-in-and-year-out since Alan Greenspan’s arrival at the Fed in August 1987, it has risen at relatively consistent annual rate – averaging 2.4% over the 27 year period as a whole. The occasional minor dips in the rate of increase have absolutely no correlation with consumer spending rates over the period.
The only serious dip is during 2008-2009 when the oil price plunged from $150 per barrel to less than $40, and took the whole index with it. But consumer spending skidded during that period due to the fact that jobs and incomes were plunging owing to the Great Recession—- not because oil prices were crashing from speculative peaks that were undone by the laws of supply and demand.
What is embodied in the above chart is actually the “stuff” sold at Wal-Mart outside of the food department—where presumably people need to eat whether prices are rising or falling.
As it happened, Wal-Mart’s slogan was not “everyday rising prices” but “everyday low prices”. During the 27 years pictured above, it is absolutely certain that Wal-Mart’s average prices did not grow anything close to the 2.4% CAGR embedded in the BLS index. Yet its domestic sales nevertheless soared by orders of magnitude more than the growth of consumer spending during the same period.
In fact, nominal PCE grew at an annual rate of 5% during the period or by only two-fifths of Wal-Mart’s 12+% CAGR. That is, as a result of scouring the earth for the lowest prices available, its market share of the American consumer’s wallet rose dramatically. Low and often falling prices did not drive consumers away; it attracted them in droves.
The Wal-Mart saga alone knocks the 2% inflation story into a cocked hat. The latter is a complete myth made of whole cloth.
Indeed, the very idea that the hard-pressed main street consumers of America—-most of whom have virtually no discretionary income to spend after the basics anyway— will go on a buyer’s strike if they don’t get enough inflation is just plain ludicrous.
That Keynesian central bankers peddle this nostrum with a straight face is amazing in itself, but it is at least understandable because it gives them a reason to keep the printing presses humming. That journalists like Mr. Torres at Bloomberg repeat it with no questions asked is even more remarkable. It proves that the impending replacement of financial journalists with robo-writers may not be so bad after all. It won’t make any real difference.
The walk-cash trade was about average and so were the phones. No one seems to be in a big hurry so I would take this as meaning the public generally likes higher prices but they are ready to wait a bit longer to see if a significant follow through is in the cards.
The GoldDealer.com Unscientific Activity Scale is a “4” for Monday. The CNI Activity Scale takes into consideration volume and the hedge book: (last Tuesday – 8) (last Wednesday – 6) (last Thursday – 6) (last Frdiay – 4). The scale (1 through 10) is a reliable way to understand our volume numbers. The Activity Scale is weighted and is not necessarily real time – meaning we could be very busy and see a low number – or be very slow and see a high number. This is true because of the way our computer runs what we call the “book”. Our “activity” is better understood from a wider point of view – perhaps a week or two. If the numbers are generally increasing – it would indicate things are busier – decreasing numbers over a longer period would indicate volume is moving lower.
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Our four flat screens downstairs with live independent pricing (BullionDesk.com) are a big hit with the cash trade. Live pricing moves all the buy/sell product prices on a real time basis. Yes – you can visit the store with cash and walk away with your product. Or you can bring product to the store and walk away with cash. When buying from us remember if you exceed $10,000 in cash (the real green kind) a Federal Form is necessary.
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