In numerous TSI commentaries over the years I’ve written about the confusion in the minds of many analysts regarding what constitutes gold supply and the relationship between supply, demand and price in the gold market. I’ve also covered the issue several times at the TSI Blog, most recently on 24th June in the post titled “More confusion about gold demand“. I’m not going to delve into this subject matter again today other than to use the example of last Monday’s trading in GDX (Gold Miners ETF) shares to further explain a point made in the past.

On Monday 20th July the GDX price fell by about 10% on record volume of 170M shares. Since every transaction involves both a purchase and a sale, more GDX shares were bought last Monday than on any other single day in this ETF’s history. And yet, this massive increase in buying occurred in parallel with a large price decline. How could this be?

Obviously, the large price decline CAUSED the massive increase in buying. Many holders of GDX shares were eager to get out and the price had to fall as far as it did to attract sufficient new buying to restore the supply-demand balance.

It’s normal for large and fast price declines in the major financial markets to be accompanied by unusually-high trading volumes, meaning that it’s normal for large and fast price declines in the major financial markets to be accompanied by increased BUYING. Most people understand this. So why is it held up as evidence that something nefarious is happening whenever an increase in gold buying accompanies a large decline in the gold price?

I can only come up with two plausible explanations. One is that many analysts and commentators switch off their brains before pontificating about gold. The other is that the relationship between gold supply, demand and price is deliberately presented in a misleading way to promote an agenda. I suspect that the former explanation applies in most cases, meaning that in most cases there’s probably more ignorance than malice involved.

Here are links to the two best articles I’ve read about the Iran nuclear treaty. The first is by David Stockman, an author, a blogger, a Wall Street veteran, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. The second is by Uri Avnery, a writer, the founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement, and a former member of Israel’s parliament. Although they tackle the issue from different perspectives, both articles are rich in historical information and insightful analysis. One thing Stockman and Avnery — and, as far as I can tell, everyone who is objective and well-informed on the subject — agree on is that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program and probably had no intention of starting such a program.

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/all-praise-to-barrack-obama-hes-giving-peace-a-chance/

http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2015/07/17/uri-avnery-the-treaty/

Every attempt to come up with a single number (a price index) that reflects the change in the purchasing power (PP) of money is bound to fail. The main reason is that disparate items cannot be added together and/or averaged to arrive at a sensible result. However, some price indices are less realistic than others. In particular, some well-meaning private-sector efforts to come up with a consumer price index (CPI) that does a better job than the official CPI have generated some of the least-plausible numbers.

One of the most popular alternatives to the official US CPI is the CPI calculated by Shadowstats.com. As I noted in a previous post, it always seemed to me that the Shadowstats number was derived by adding an approximately constant fudge-factor to the official (bogus) CPI to essentially arrive at another bogus number that, regardless of the message being sent by real-world experience, was always much larger than the official number. As I also noted at that time, economist Ed Dolan did some detective work to determine the cause of the strangely-large and fairly-constant difference between the Shadowstats number and the official number. It turned out that Shadowstats had made a basic calculation error that caused its version of the CPI to consistently be at least 4.5%/year too high even assuming the correctness of its own methodology.

Another alternative CPI is called the Chapwood Index. The components of this index were selected based on a survey of what Ed Butowsky’s friends and associates spend their money on (Ed Butowsky is the index’s creator). The prices of the 500 most commonly purchased items were then added together to generate the index. Not surprisingly, considering the methodology, the result is not a realistic measure of the change in the dollar’s PP or the cost of living. As evidence I point out that if the roughly 10%/year average increase in the general price level estimated by the Chapwood Index during 2011-2014 is correct, then the US economy’s real GDP must have been about 25% smaller at the end of 2014 than it was at the end of 2010*. In other words, if the Chapwood Index is an accurate reflection of PP loss then the US economy now produces about 25% less goods/services than it did four years ago. This is not remotely close to the truth.

When assessing the validity of economic statistics it’s important to use commonsense. A statistic isn’t valid just because it happens to be consistent with a narrative that you wholeheartedly believe.

*I arrive at this figure by approximately adjusting nominal GDP by the Chapwood Index, that is, by using the Chapwood Index as the GDP deflator.

A popular view these days is that the euro is a failed experiment because economically and/or politically disparate countries cannot share a currency without eventually bringing on a major crisis. Another way of expressing this conventional wisdom is: a monetary union (a common currency) cannot work without a fiscal union (a common government). This is unadulterated hogwash. Many different countries in completely different parts of the world were able to successfully share the same money for centuries. The money was called gold.

The fact that a bunch of totally disparate countries in Europe have a common currency is not the problem. The problem is the central planning agency known as the European Central Bank (ECB), which tries to impose a common interest rate across these diverse countries/economies. This leads to even more distortions than arise when such agencies operate within a single country (the Fed in the US, for example), which is really saying something considering the distortions caused by the Fed and other single-country central banks.

I’m reticent to pick on John Hussman, because his analysis is usually on the mark. However, his recent comments on the Greek crisis and its supposed relationship to a common currency make for an excellent example of the popular view that I’m taking issue with in this post. Here is the relevant excerpt from the Hussman commentary, with my retorts interspersed in brackets and bold text:

“The prerequisite for a common currency is that countries share a wide range of common economic features. [No, it isn't! Money isn't supposed to be a tool that is used to manipulate the economy, it is supposed to be a medium of exchange.] A single currency doesn’t just remove exchange rate flexibility. It also removes the ability to finance deficits through money creation, independent of other countries. [Removing the ability to finance deficits through money creation is a benefit, not a drawback.] Moreover, because capital flows often respond more to short-term interest rate differences (“carry trade” spreads) than to long-term credit conditions, the common currency of the euro has removed a great deal of interest rate variation between countries. [No, the ECB has done that. In the absence of the ECB, interest rates in the euro-zone would have correctly reflected economic reality all along.] It may seem like a good thing that countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and others have been able to borrow at interest rates close to those of Germany for nearly two decades. But that has also enabled them to run far larger and more persistent fiscal deficits than would have been possible if they had individually floating currencies. [This is completely true, but it is the consequence of a common central bank, not a common currency.]

The euro is essentially a monetary arrangement that encourages and enables wide differences in economic fundamentals between countries to be glossed over and kicked down the road through increasing indebtedness of the weaker countries in the union to the stronger members. [The ECB, not the common currency, encourages this.] This produces recurring crises when the debt burdens become so intolerable that even short-run refinancing can’t be achieved without bailouts.

Greece isn’t uniquely to blame. It’s unfortunately just the first country to arrive at that particular finish line. Greece is simply demonstrating that a common currency between economically disparate countries can’t be sustained without continuing subsidies from the more prosperous countries in the system to less prosperous ones. [If this is true, how did economically disparate countries around the world use gold as a common currency for so long without the more prosperous ones having to subsidise the less prosperous ones?]“

Money is supposed to be neutral — a medium of exchange and a yardstick. It is inherently no more problematic for totally disparate countries to use a common currency than it is for totally disparate countries to use common measures of length or weight. On the contrary, there are advantages to the use of a common currency in that trading and investing are made more efficient.

In conclusion, the problem is the central planning of money and interest rates, not the fact that different countries use the same money. It’s a problem that exists everywhere; it’s just that it is presently more obvious in the euro-zone.