There's a real market for gold based on production supply and demand from people who use it in manufacturing etc. This market has valued it at roughly $300-$400/oz for the last 10 years. (Obviously there's always been speculators and investors as well but they haven't affected the price to the extent they are now). The demand for gold that has pushed the price so high has been people buying gold for gold's sake, for whatever reason - hedging against inflation or whatever. But, there's going to come a point where people no longer want their money tied up in an investment that generates no earnings and doesn't pay any interest. The moment there's a better place for investors to deploy their capital, gold is going to get dumped.
It's not going to happen anytime soon, but 12 to 18 months from now I predict gold is going to start quickly dropping back to its historical average price just like housing did in the US.
And my response:
We'll see I guess, but I suspect you're wrong.
Gold is money; it has been used as such since the dawn of time. The development of what people use as a currency goes right back to the barter economy. A person would swap 3 chickens for a sheep, etc. Eventually, there comes a time when a particular commodity which has a demand/market in its own right (which is also its scarce, durable, divisible, etc) is used by people not only to trade for other goods, but used in anticipation of being able to be used for future transactions. I could sell you 3 chicken for a gold coin even though I don't personally want the gold coin for any manufacturing or aesthetic purpose, but because gold coins are demanded by lots of other people who I may want to buy thing off in the future. Eventually you get to a critical mass and that commodity becomes the means of exchange throughout an economy. Money is born...
Its for this reason that nearly all currencies started off as measures of weight, not as an intrinsic measure of value in their own right. Pounds Sterling was literally one pound of sterling silver. "Franc", "dollar" and "mark" all have similar origins. Interestingly, as of today, the current value of a British Pound is about 1/228th of a pound of sterling silver, which merely goes to show the effects of hundreds of years of continual debasement.
Anyway, people eventually realised that paper or coins that were controlled by a central bank that represented a value of precious metal would be much easier to use rather than lugging around the precious metals themselves. And so it was for an extended period of time. Then, some governments decided to create completely fiat money, money that had no intrinsic base to it and was merely printed by the government (this was usually used as a way of deliberating inflating their way out of debt such as in the Weimar republic in Germany).
Fiat money is in an of itself only valuable because society as a whole accepts it as a means of exchange. Unfortunately, giving government the power to print its own money to pay for whatever it wants creates a huge incentive for abuse. Inevitably, governments use the money supply as a way of taxing individuals through inflation. The productive capacity of an economy is (over the very short-run) fixed, but by printing more money, the government is able to buy more of that output as a greater share of the total money supply would be under its control. Obviously, more money chasing the same level of goods creates inflation, which in turn reduces the value of the money held by all individuals (hence the "inflation tax").
Anyway, in the early 1970's, after the collapse of the Breton Woods system, the US government got rid of the gold standard and introduced completely fiat money. This is fine, so long as they don't abuse the immense power at their hands. But alas, that brings us to the current day. Politicians are able to create huge liabilities either through outright borrowing or by creating entitlement programs that agree to pay people large pensions or other benefits in the future. Obviously, the politicians who create these liabilities in order to get voted in are long gone by the time that the liabilities themselves fall due. The current US government debt is close to 100% of GDP, but including the present value of future unfunded social security, Medicare and Obamacare liabilities, the number is many, many times higher than this. There is no way that the US government can possibly ever repay this money. Ever. The interest payments on the debt alone are projected to be more than 20% of GDP within several decades.
There are three options available to them:
i) Renege on the entitlement promises
ii) Default on your debt
iii) Inflate your way out of debt by printing more money
Now ii) is unlikely, and there is a chance that there will be some movements on i), but ultimately, the US government will resort to iii). And it already is. That's what is politely referred to as "Quantitative Easing". The US government is engaging in hundreds of billions of dollars worth of quantitative easing, and has been for over a year.This is happening at precisely the same time that it is racking up debt at ever increasing levels (the current budget deficit alone is more than 10% of GDP). And this is going on well before the real debt of the unfunded pension liabilities starts to hit.
The US government will debase their currency into oblivion over the next few decades. But they can't debase gold. Gold is money, it has always been used as such. It is an alternative currency. And that's why the gold price is hitting a new record high every other day. Whilst is has some purposes in manufacturing, etc, it is not an investment, per se, it is money itself. And it is the only way that people can protect themselves from the coming hyper-inflation in the US.
That's why I think you'll see it hit US$1500 /oz by 2012 and US$3000 / oz this decade. That's also why you'll see the US$ continue to collapse.18 months later, and I could agree with myself more. Now the AUD/USD is over 1.07 and gold is over US$1500 / oz. I have been long gold since it was US$600 / oz.
