In this episode, Peter recounts silver’s notable rise above $30/oz and addresses the latest FOMC minutes that were released this week, in which the Fed signaled that rate cuts could be delayed even further. Peter also calls out the SchiffGold Silver Breakout Sale to celebrate the metal’s long-awaited breakout.
Silver’s rise to $32.50 on Monday has established a new support level at $30/oz:
“Silver is back down at $30.73. That’s a pretty substantial pullback—about $1.80 or so— from the $32.50 that it traded for on Monday. …That doesn’t mean Silver can’t go below $30, but I think $30 is to silver what $2,000 was to gold. Once we broke up $2,000, $2,000 became support, and yes, every once in a while we dip below $2,000, but we never stayed below it for long, and it quickly came back.”
While the Fed is uncertain about when rate cuts are likely, it’s still signaling a loosening of monetary policy later this year. The market mistakenly sold off gold and silver in response:
“The traders who are selling gold and silver still don’t understand why the prices are rising in the first place. It doesn’t matter when the Fed cuts rates. It doesn’t even matter if they do cut rates. They never have to cut rates. The Fed could leave rates right where they are, and gold and silver prices should skyrocket. Why is that? Because they’re too low. The Fed aborted the hiking campaign too soon, and so it doesn’t matter if they cut rates.”
The Fed pays lip service to raising rates if needed but fails to see that rate hikes are long overdue:
“They said that they were prepared to raise rates if the economic data supported that. But that’s not true either, because the economic data already supports that. They’re saying, ‘If the data changes, if something happens and we get new data that shows that higher rates would be appropriate, well, then we’ll raise rates.’ … The data that they’re looking at right now shows that interest rates need to go up. The fact that they’re ignoring that data— and they’re not only not hiking rates, but they’re still talking about when they’re going to cut rates— that proves that they’re never going to hike rates, because if they were going to hike rates, they would be hiking it right now.”
Fed officials think economic growth contributes to inflation, but this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how growth works:
“The faster an economy grows, the more prices go down. That’s what economic growth does. That’s why it’s a good thing. It lowers prices. Real economic growth means the economy is producing more stuff, right? That’s the economic growth: we get more goods and more services out of the economy because that’s what a growing economy is supposed to deliver— a higher standard of living. … How can economic growth make prices go up? How can a big increase in the supply of goods and services make those goods and services more expensive? It’s not. It’s going to make them less expensive!”
Peter closes by recounting the history of the U.S. government taking silver out of coins. In the 1960s, Uncle Sam went to a great deal of effort to hide the fact that he was ripping off American citizens:
“Why not just make dimes and quarters with these smooth edges just like pennies and nickels? Because they were counterfeiting the coins! You see, early on, they didn’t tell anybody that they took the silver out. They wanted people to think that the dimes and quarters that they were getting were still made out of silver. That’s why they put the nickel on the copper. That’s why they put mill marks on these copper-clad coins— because they wanted them to look like the coins they used to work with. That’s counterfeit. That is fraud! That is what went on in this country. The government defrauded American citizens out of their lawful silver money.”
In other news, the price of copper has exploded recently. Check out Peter’s Blog for an analysis of copper’s all-time high price.
