Recently Mike delivered a presentation to the New York Chapter of the SME which takes a renewed look at the inflation/deflation debate and its effects on natural resources. He tackles topics such as negative interest rates, "helicopter drops", Central Banker potential to reignite growth, currency implications, some preferred commodities, and most importantly the verdict which calls for deflationary forces to predominate before inflation, again, rears its ugly head.
In either event, gold and silver should benefit from the forthcoming extraordinary central banking programs to stimulate escape velocity growth and hit the Feds long sought inflation target. He argues that diversification into gold and silver exposure is an appropriate risk management investment policy.
Click here for a copy.
By Chris Berry (@cberry1)
For a PDF copy of this note, please click here.
It is widely acknowledged that credit is the lifeblood of an economy. It provides the leverage for growth. The interest rate assigned to a fixed income security can then be thought of as the “cost” or “price” of the credit.
This makes sense as lenders want to ensure their assets (cash, typically) earn a return above the risk free rate. To be clear, there is much more to determining an interest rate, but this is the basic premise.
What happens, though, when that rate goes negative?
This note is a primer on negative interest rates, a phenomenon not unheard of, but increasingly en vogue in the wake of the Bank of Japan’s surprising (or maybe not so surprising) announcement to set the interest rate they charge commercial banks to deposit money at the BoJ at -0.1%.
Mike recently presented the attached paper (here) at the Association of Quebec Mineral Exploration (AEMQ) Conference in Montreal. In it, he looks more closely at where we are in this bear market for resources and more importantly, why we're here. Finally, he looks at some possible solutions and time frames for recovery.
We are gearing up for two trips to Europe in November (Munich, Geneva, Zurich, and Frankfurt) and December (London) and will be back shortly with details.
By Mike Berry
For a PDF copy of this note, please click here.
Bob Farrell’s Rule #9: When all of the experts and forecasters agree – something else is going to happen.
I have been through two previous oil swoons. In March 1999 oil bottomed at $10 per barrel. I was invested - a money manager with Heartland Advisers at the time. The Economist magazine (March 6, 1999) forecast oil to move lower, perhaps $2. It was a painful experience but oil never went lower.
By Chris Berry
It’s interesting to note that on the same day the International Monetary Fund released their annual World Economic Outlook which lowered expectations for global growth (yet again), that several potentially large mining deals were either launched or mooted.
While the talk of the potential deal for a merger between Glencore (GLEN:LN) and Rio Tinto (RIO:LN, RIO:NYSE) dominated the headlines, two (relatively) smaller deals were also announced recently.
Anglo American (AAL:LN) will reportedly commence with a sale of up to $1 billion worth of copper assets in Chile including the Mantos Blancos and Mantoverde mines, along with AAL’s 50.1 percent stakes in the El Soldado mine and Chagres smelter according to Bloomberg. These assets are small relative to others in AAL’s portfolio, but a willingness to part with them says a great deal about the company’s thoughts on the need to generate returns in the current macroeconomic environment.
By Chris Berry
If you’ve been watching financial news at all over the past week or looked at your portfolio, you’ll know that something is amiss in the commodities world. By most accounts, commodity prices are at five year lows. Almost everything, from gold to silver to iron ore to wheat to corn is falling – hard.
In July 2008, then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson touched off the greatest banking crisis of our generation stretching back to the 1930’s. On Sunday, July 20th 2008 before the markets opened in Asia, the Treasury Secretary of the United States stepped in to guarantee the US bond portfolio owned by China. Earlier that same day he had commented on national TV,
“I think it's going to be months that we're working our way through this period, clearly months. Of course the list [of difficulties] is going to grow longer given the stresses we have in the marketplace, given the housing correction - but again, it's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.”
We have now spent 72 months - or 6 years - in the economic malaise that followed the US housing bubble’s implosion.
