If you check a chart of gold or silver for the last 10 years it looks like this:
There's plenty of warning signals.
Parabolic price increase
Publicity - Glenn Beck style
Overspeculation
ETFs
increase in investment demand
Recent collapse of demand in India and China
Gold is 120% ahead of gold miners ETF for 5 years
Huge difference between cost of extraction and gold price
Emerging Markets faltering
Herd-like price targets($5,000, $10,000, $15,000, etc)
Gold way ahead of inflation-adjusted value
It's 'different this time'.
Antagonism to the opposing view
When gold goes up, confirmation all is well and gold's off to the moon
When gold goes down screams of 'manipulation', 'it's JPMorgan's' and the 'elite's' fault.
I'm not sure it's going to be the easy money you reckon.
Except that it's possible we're only at the 'media interest and enthusiasm' section of that standard depiction of a bubble.
As it will be driven by American policy, this interview is informative.
If we're at the media attention section, you're expecting a bubble so colossal it will make tulipmania and the NASDAQ 2000 bubble seem insignificant, an unsustainable historical impossibility.
Did you see what happened to oil last night? Oil and gold often move in tandem, the Saudis have offered to pump as much as required.
Another warning signal for gold?
Here's the 2000 - 2012 silver chart, looks exactly the same, up 1088% from 2000 to $49 in 2011.
If you check a chart of gold or silver for the last 10 years it looks like this:
There's plenty of warning signals.
Parabolic price increase
Publicity - Glenn Beck style
Overspeculation
ETFs
increase in investment demand
Recent collapse of demand in India and China
Gold is 120% ahead of gold miners ETF for 5 years
Huge difference between cost of extraction and gold price
Emerging Markets faltering
Herd-like price targets($5,000, $10,000, $15,000, etc)
Gold way ahead of inflation-adjusted value
It's 'different this time'.
Antagonism to the opposing view
When gold goes up, confirmation all is well and gold's off to the moon
When gold goes down screams of 'manipulation', 'it's JPMorgan's' and the 'elite's' fault.
I'm not sure it's going to be the easy money you reckon.
Easy money? Hell we're just trying to stop the rot.
Do you think gold is getting bought just because its pretty?
Have another look at the $US--US unemployment figures--hell,the whole us economy.and inflation.
When and if theres a change to these fundamental problems [or if it gets so bad deflation sets in]is when you will see this poster having no problem with the opposing view.
Its either the crash you have predicted[for 4 yrs]or a parabolic bubble--sounds to me like you want your cake and to eat it too.
I really dont see how anyone can talk about gold without talking about the way the us[and the world] economy is being run [inflation,unemployment etc]in the same sentence.
Goldbug gets his secret stash confiscated by the Official Assignee, paranoid goldbugs will be frantically searching for better hidey holes.
On the trail of bankrupt's treasure
By David Fisher
5:30 AM Sunday Oct 17, 2010
The house at the centre of the inquiries into Dr Alan Simpson. In total $2.3m of gold, silver and foreign currency has been recovered from the house.
Police have seized a fortune in gold and silver from secret compartments in the suburban home of a retired psychiatrist. Now, the case has pulled in one of the country's most successful and reclusive businessmen.
For a psychiatrist, Dr Alan Geraint Simpson had one of the best addresses in the world. In the medical world, Harley St in London has gold-plated credibility.
But Simpson has seen it all swept away. His professional practice, the prestige that went with it and a small fortune got caught in the greatest financial scandal of the 1990s.
The 68-year-old ended up half a world away in the Waikato - along with $2.3 million in hidden gold, silver and foreign currency.
On their first visit to Simpson's Hamilton home, a specialist police team found $1 million in gold, silver and foreign currency.
But soon, a builder led them to secret compartments he had constructed for the recently discharged English bankrupt. There, they found another $1 million in gold and silver.
Simpson had said he was preparing for the end of the world, police were told.
Eventually, Simpson surrendered another $300,000 in silver - but it is alleged another $1.8 million also exists.
The house was like a Chinese puzzle. And wrapped inside that puzzle is the mystery of Simpson's relationship to one of New Zealand's most successful businessmen, the reclusive Carrick John Clough.
The extraordinary story of the gold and silver is playing out in Hamilton's High Court. Simpson was bankrupted in England last year over a 12-year-old debt.
The lawyer attempting to recoup money for those owed by Simpson has drawn New Zealand authorities into a world-first - using new international agreements to get our authorities to seize property that could be subject to another country's bankruptcy order.
The case has yet to reach the stage of deciding who the gold and silver belongs to - and whether the court will order its confiscation to cover Simpson's debts.
The case has drawn in builder Mike Holloway, who told the Herald on Sunday he had been sworn to silence by New Zealand's bankruptcy administrator, the Official Assignee. But court papers show it was his evidence about work he did for Simpson in December last year that prompted the second police search.
Holloway told officials he was hired to replace flooring at the house Simpson was living in - and while there was asked to build new structures described in court as "bizarre".
Holloway's staff created a compartment under the dining room floor. Examination found that part of the floor could be lifted up if screws holding it in place were removed. Unlike the remainder of the floor, this section was not glued.
According to Holloway, Simpson had said he wanted the cavity because "the world was going to end".
A second compartment was created under the house in the basement furnace room. A concrete block was laid and surrounded by small concrete walls. It was here that searchers later found one of three safes.
Simpson had an explanation for each. He told Holloway the first was to store water and a survival kit. The second, beneath the house, was for suitcases.
Searchers also found bars of precious metal in the vanity unit in the bathroom. More was found in the home office, some under papers in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, some underneath that drawer.
The gold and silver seized by police are being held in a secure Westpac vault in Auckland.
The treasure trove stands in stark contrast to the financial information Simpson had supplied the court. He said he rented the $750,000 house in one of Hamilton's best areas for $186 a week with an income of $347 a week from NZ Superannuation and a UK pension. He had not worked for 12 years and his outgoings, he said, were $357 a week.
Simpson said he had three bank accounts - in Scotland, England and New Zealand - and each had meagre balances.
There was no mention of a property company he previously owned, Warkworth Land Ltd, which was wound up in 2005. The voluntary liquidation report stated that $670,000 was left with no debts paid and the proceeds returned to Simpson, the sole shareholder.
Justice Heath said "questions do arise as to the veracity" of information Simpson had supplied about his financial affairs.
It all started in England almost two decades ago with one of the biggest financial scandals of the 1990s. The prestigious insurer - Lloyd's of London - was landed with massive bills for settlements in US courts.
Lloyd's passed the cost to its so-called "names": underwriters including members of the Royal family, landed gentry, judges, politicians - and Alan Simpson.
In the years that have followed, the financial pressure has been blamed for suicides, divorce and sickness. In 1998, Simpson was ordered to pay $344,000. He did not. Instead, he and others pursued Lloyd's through the courts alleging fraud and a failure of duty. The cases all failed. The order to pay was enforced in 2005, when a judge told Simpson he was using "delaying tactics" and enforcement of the debt was "inevitable".
Last year Lloyd's bankrupted Simpson. The debt had grown with interest to $512,000. There are six other creditors, including New Zealand's Inland Revenue Department.
By this point Simpson had moved to New Zealand, where he already had links: he and businessman Carrick Clough had been directors in property development company Otaha Land Ltd, set up in 1988, and had established Warkworth Land Ltd in 1999.
Clough's lawyer David O'Neill said the pair had met in the 1980s but grew apart as his client worked out of Hong Kong while Simpson stayed in England.
In the 1990s, Simpson worked for a while at the University of Hong Kong, a city where Clough had formed successful IT business CSSL in 1983. CSSL now has over 380 staff in dozens of offices across the world, with a turnover in excess of $300 million.
Clough and Simpson were also associated through the Hamilton house's mortgage with Sennex Ltd, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. The mortgage documents carry Clough's signature. And Justice Paul Heath said there was evidence that Simpson had - through Sennex Ltd - done "significant" dealing in precious metals and foreign currency over the past summer - after he was made bankrupt.
The judge said the bullion deals through Sennex Ltd may have been undertaken by Simpson.
Clough was unavailable to be interviewed. His palatial Hamilton home - with fingerprint-coded security system - was empty last week and he was said to be in San Francisco.
His lawyer said: "John Clough is certainly not happy about what's been going on. He's certainly of the mind that he wants to distance himself from the matter. It's not something that involves him. He's an international businessman.
"He is no longer associated with Sennex Ltd and has not been for some time."
O'Neill said Clough was also preparing to exit the trust arrangement that connected him to the house in which Simpson lived, and had no knowledge of the secret compartments.
"It's all a bit Maxwell Smart."
THE HOARD
The Hamilton house has been visited on three occasions by police of staff from the Official Assignee.
Gold and silver has been found worth $2.3 million in three safes, a hidden compartment, a filing cabinet and a bathroom cabinet.
Office
* A safe in the study was found and opened revealing a stash of gold.
* Searchers found gold bars beneath papers in a compartment in the base of a filing cabinet.
Bathroom
* Gold bars were found in the bathroom vanity.
Dining Room
* A secret compartment beneath the floorboards was revealed. Although no gold was revealed, it was a factor in gaining a new search warrant to further examine the house.
Furnace Room
* A secret compartment accessed from the furnace room revealed a safe.
Stairwell
* A third safe was found hidden beneath the basement stairs.
Goldbug gets his secret stash confiscated by the Official Assignee, paranoid goldbugs will be frantically searching for better hidey holes.
I think it's more a lesson that when it comes time to pay taxes, or to pay for unexpected losses, it's best to front up. I'm sure Mr Simpson was happy enough to take profits from the LLoyds underwriting earlier on. He could have paid the $334,000, instead it cost him nearly $2mill, and a deposed life in Hamilton half a world away from Harley St (didn't look that flash a house anyway).
I think it's more a lesson that when it comes time to pay taxes, or to pay for unexpected losses, it's best to front up. I'm sure Mr Simpson was happy enough to take profits from the LLoyds underwriting earlier on. He could have paid the $334,000, instead it cost him nearly $2mill, and a deposed life in Hamilton half a world away from Harley St (didn't look that flash a house anyway).
There's that story, as well as the story of a fell found dead(of natural causes) in his own house.......and found over $7 million in legal precious metals.
The only heirs......a single distant cousin....and the US IRS of course, since gold receives a rather nasty tax treatment over there.
And the story of the Brisbane repository funny business.
The media loves stories that beat up gold.......it's good for financial media advertisors.
Those who advertise in financial media HATE gold, because they can't profit from churning 401K accounts when folks are shifting into gold.
I talked to an economist friend today who mentioned that QE3 was a ''game changer''
He was on his way out and didnt have time to elaborate--so I googled it.
I read 5 different articles and they all basically said the same thing--inflation and higher commodities DYOR
Sorry if this question has been asked before. I know this is the ASX section but I couldn't find a similar thread in the NZX section. Where is a good source for discussion of gold and gold-related investment in NZ? Thanks.
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Originally Posted by Skol
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