Thursday, December 15, 2016

GOLD BUBBLE ("WHEN INTEREST RATES RISE, GOLD WILL CRASH") ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 2010

A friend of mine bought a home for $300,000 ten years ago. By 2007, the price of similar homes in their neighborhood had tripled in value.
During the period when the price of housing was rising so rapidly, banks were criticized for collecting deposits in one impoverished area of the country and lending it out in other more prosperous regions. The quality of the loans was not a factor, the equitable distribution of loans seemed more important. People all over the country were ecstatic over their increase of wealth through home ownership.
The government, in spite of everything, had created Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac and everything possible to increase home ownership. Practically no one was telling homeowners to liquidate their homes. Construction of homes was booming, millions of people were employed in the sector and no one dared to stop this lucrative bubble.
When the house I mentioned above was purchased in 1999, it would have taken approximately 1000 ounces of gold to pay for the home. Today, it would take only 250 ounces of gold to buy the same $300,000 house. Housing prices have “crashed” and gold has soared. In effect, gold has gone from $350 per ounce in 1999 to $1300 per ounce today.
Gold is basically a useless commodity. The price is a “bubble” that may sustain itself forever and ever, but it is a bubble. You can’t eat gold, it’s hard to carry, it earns you no money and its industrial uses are limited. Again, no one dares to tell people to sell their gold even though you can now buy it in vending machines. No one dares to tell the mining industry to stop the production of gold, for fear of destroying yet another industry that is responsible for the economic livelihood in many struggling countries.
Keynes said that in the end investing is nothing more than a game of musical chairs and that when the music stops; we don’t want to be the ones without a chair.  When interest rates rise, gold will crash.
 

Shepard Osherow. All Rights Reserved