Tuesday 6 September 2011

Swiss cheese

When you want to signal to the world that using your currency as the go-to "safe haven" is simply no longer cool with you because it's killing your economy ...

"If you want a haven, go away and buy gold instead!"

27 comments:

DP said...

No more! It's just not cricket!

DP said...

As I write the gold price in CHF is up about 8.8%, while the SMI is up about 3.6%. Go stocks!

If you happen to be Swiss, less than half the CHF devalution today was recovered if you happened to be heavily invested in Swiss stocks. :-\

Choose your primary store of value play wisely for today's reality...

DP said...

SNB vow to, essentially, peg themselves to the euro. A welcome change from people pegging to the dollar.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/franc-plunges-as-swiss-set-euro-franc-floor-2011-09-06

Max Deniro said...

DP,

I agree with what you say. I said 'GBI does not concern me personally' - I meant in a very micro way as you intimated. Of course it is interesting as a development in the market - but we will end up at the same place with or without it. I see it as more entertainment! As we go further down the rabbit hole and the $IMFS continues to crack, more and bigger box office hits will be served up, so go long popcorn.

As you say, it would take outright lies in its prospectus for it to be fraud. This is quite different to GLD, for instance, which is quite clear about the fact that you don't own any metal if you buy GLD shares.

I accept that it is unlikely that such an explicit fraud would take place, but this has happened before - look at the mortgage mess in the US or Enron.

As ponzi schemes or other fraudulent activities near their end, the scale of fraud tends to escalate. We certainly seem to be nearing the end of the clandestine fractional gold market, so it isn't entirely impossible that such a fraud could be underway.

There has been a lot of noise made recently about ETF investigations and the need to hold phyiscal rather than paper. It is not impossible that this could a way of drawing the attention of a perceived avalanche of public money coming into physical. If it is legit (which, on balance, is likely), then combined with PAGE, we have quite a storm approaching the gold market.

I would be interested to know how they do their pricing. How long would they stick to the COMEX price if there was any divergence at all from the PAGE price?

Max Deniro said...

I tried a few more times and one of them seems to have stuck!

DP said...

That's a great question, which I don't know the answer to already (since GBI is not directly relevant to me so I haven't studied the details of their model). We should find out though, because clearly it would be interesting...

You are 'new in town', unless my memory is simply failing me in my advanced years, but I feel like I know you already! :-) Not that it matters though because everyone's my friend around here ... even if they just don't realise it yet. If you've been in the comments at FOFOA for a while you'll prolly know I just love to make new friends.

DP said...

BTW, your comment has made it to FOFOA's comments (several times) because I can see it in my Gmail. Sometimes Blogger takes exception to comments and marks them up as SPAM for the blog owner to accept/reject, at some point of their choosing. The blog owner is not notified a comment is blocked in SPAM, so if it's an important comment and you happen to have access to the email of the blog owner, it's better to mail them than keep posting more copies. ;-)

Gotta love Blogger! (naht)

Max Deniro said...

Oh I'm very pleased to be your friend, DP, as I have been reading the FOFOA comments for a while now. Who knows, maybe you do know me already?! ;)

Max Deniro said...

Trichet is having a very interesting rant at the moment!

DP said...

Come now. Surely you have a link to share which substantiates such a bold claim?

Max Deniro said...

http://www.ecb.int/press/tvservices/webcast/html/webcast_110908.en.html

It's the ECB rate decision conference. His rant is over now. It was a fairly animated defence of the ECB mandate to provide *currency stability* and currency stability alone, regardless of the wants and needs of individual governments. He almost looked angry!

DP said...

:-) Sorry to have missed that.

Out of interest, did anyone interrupt to ask him what he meant, exactly, by "currency stability"? A pretty fundamental question, I'm sure you'll agree. But I bet you not one person asked him to clarify what he meant, and I bet you almost nobody present or tuned in understood it to mean what he understood it to mean.

Max Deniro said...

No, not a whimper from the journos. I've never heard a journalist ask a question that might signal a Freegold perspective, whether it be an outright question or a sneaky one that would only be clocked by those in the know.

He was mainly talking about the ECB record, defending it over he last 12 years. He did specifically refer to the posted inflation rates and I couldn't really detect any Freegold undertones unfortunately, and believe me, I was listening for them intently.

Max Deniro said...

He does talk a lot about being totally open and transparent with regard to their monetary policy decisions, which to a FOFOAite, sounds like a hat tip to the confinstat.

DP said...

For posterity, the answer to that great question (among other things!) is in a comment over at FOFOA's place.

Max Deniro said...

Just watching the crowd file out of the room after the conference; I really need to get in on the ECB scene - lots of hot little chickadees in there!

DP said...

Not only the confinstat, but also all operations and their nature are listed on the website (and as we can see, even made conveniently available for direct processing however one sees fit, via RSS) too, among other things.

The ECB are "open book" (transparent) to the Max (and everyone else too!).

DP said...

Many chickadees (but perhaps not the sort you would ideally choose to be by your side) have always gravitated to the men with the money. It seems logical some of them would find their way to the source, the men who print the money and can never run out! :-D

These same men that can never run out of cash are also going to find the world's gold gravitating towards them later too. (Silver, or any other commodity, need not apply.)

Max Deniro said...

ZeroHedge seem to have made the same observation as I had, but done a sterling job of entirely missing the point.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/watch-jean-claude-trichets-air-meltdown

Max Deniro said...

PS, it looks as thought they've added the video clip

DP said...

"Think the ECB is unable to maintain the illusion that central planning works?"

Again the lack of realisation that the ECB are doing the polar opposite of central planning. They watch the market prices of commodites, and market liquidity, reacting as appropriate. :-\

The joy of a single, semi-automatic mandate. It must be relatively easy to sleep at night if you're Trichet. I wouldn't want to be The Bernank, or even Merv.

DP said...

Sadly, I couldn't watch the video when I tried a few times.

Bygones...

Max Deniro said...

If you could have been in that conference, what two questions would you ask Trichet?

He was asked at one point to give a kind of fairwell summation of his time at the ECB, given that this was his last public appearance. It turns out that this isn't his last public appearance and there will be another and that he will give these thoughts there. He declined the offer to be like a "hollywood star" repeatedly saying goodbye for 'the last time'.

I am looking forward to his final speach, it should be very interesting for readers of FOFOA.

DP said...

OK, what do you think of these, O public committee of question-setting?

1) Please explain what you and the ECB mean, exactly, by the term "price stability"? Perhaps also expanding on this to encompass some of the things you do not mean, but you believe many people think it does mean.

2) Can you summarise briefly and in layman's terms for the people of Europe, what exactly is the ECB's expectation of how the Eurozone sovereign debt problems will be ultimately be resolved?

Further suggestions welcomed, prior to opening the voting booths.

DP said...

After he's given me the answers and my turn at the mic is just about over, I would play him a song to show him my appreciation.

(Yes, I would have come dressed in hobnail boots, a raincoat and shorts too.)

Max Deniro said...

Nice.
A bit too subtle for me, I'd go more for something like 'Please could you comment on the significance, or lack thereof, of the ECB marking its gold to market, compared with the Fed's model?'. Then, 'Is this treatment of gold in any way part of the establishment now, or in the future, of the stability of the euro?'

PS, in my spare time I like to don my bovine fancy dress and turn my local china shop into a mosh pit.

DP said...

Thanks again for the steer to the video via ZH, which I have now been able to watch. Stimulating indeed! :>

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