4 huge reasons to own gold, from Pento Portfolio Strategies - Wealth Managers

Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies and author of the new book, The Coming Bond Market Collapse: How to Survive the Demise of the U.S. Debt Market, has been invested in gold since 2001 and is certain that it's only going higher from here.

"Gold is real and honest money," he tells The Daily Ticker, noting it will hold value even while currencies fluctuate against each other. 

Pento says there are several primary reasons to own gold:

* The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio continues to grow.
* The level of U.S. debt has remained near $1 trillion annually for the past four years.
* Real interest rates are negative.
* The Fed continues its quantitative easing policy.

"What piece of economic data can you point to that would make Bernanke slam on the economic brakes?" asks Pento.
Pento claims that as long as the Fed maintains its aggressive easing policy and government debt continues to increase, inflation will rise and the dollar will lose value.

"The balance sheet of the Fed will be $4 trillion by the end of this year," he says. "Who can tell me that a balance of that size can be unwound successfully?"

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

"Gold above $10,000" is coming, SocGen analyst says - Wealth Managers

Gold prices will top $10,000 per ounce, the stock market will tank and Treasuries will yield less than 1 percent, Societe Generale's Albert Edwards forecast in a trademark bearish report on Thursday. 

"My working experience of the last 30 years has convinced me that policymakers' efforts to manage the economic cycle have actually made things far more volatile. ... The current round of quantitative easing will be no different," said Edwards in a weekly strategy report. ...

"Gold corrected 47 percent from 1974-1976, before rising more than eight times to $887 per ounce in 1980. A steep correction is normal before the parabolic move. ... Holding gold is a bet against central banks competency and given their track record that is certainly a bet I'd be happy to still take," he said. ...

"In that vein, we repeat our key forecasts of the S&P Composite to bottom around 450, accompanied by sub-1 percent U.S. 10-year yields and gold above $10,000."

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

"The fiscal and monetary crisis is ongoing and underscores the necessity of owning gold assets" - Wealth Managers

First off, my belief in gold as a monetary asset has not wavered. Japan basically admitted that it is bankrupt with its intention to aggressively debase its currency. Normally such actions would invoke, and may still, a race to the bottom as each country engages in economic warfare to deal with its debt issues. At this juncture the fear of global deflation among the G7 crowd remains its worst nightmare, especially as additional stimulus by the Federal Reserve is showing diminishing returns. With high debt levels in both the private and public sectors around the world, stimulating economic growth is proving elusive. These alarming events are setting the stage for the next leg up in the dollar gold price, in my opinion. The fiscal and monetary crisis is ongoing and underscores the necessity of owning gold assets. 

Though agonizing, the past 18 months have been nothing more than a consolidation for gold from the September 2011 highs of $1,900/ounce ($1,900/oz). The recent decline in gold prices below $1,500/oz is not the end of the bull market in gold, despite the barrage of negative commentary by those wanting to dance on gold's grave. The destruction of currencies is in full bloom, but it is not a straight line. The problem for many gold investors is that they can see the endgame. Gold prices rise in a straight line at the end of a monetary system, but we are not there yet. It takes some patience to hold the course while the establishment fights tooth and nail to keep the dollar system from failing. ...

The rationale for owning gold assets remains simple: global deterioration of sovereign credit and a growing need to debase currencies in order to meet future obligations, whether it's here in the U.S., Europe or Japan. The policy of socializing risk with monetary and fiscal policy has destroyed the balance sheets of the Western world. We are in a phase of experimental central banking, which I believe is going to end badly due to the dislocations of capital it has caused through prolonged periods of negative rates.

In the event economic growth were to take hold, an unleashing of built up reserves in the system would set off inflation with a corresponding rise in rates. Just imagine the effect of a change in the direction of interest rates and the collateral damage that will create in the bond markets and the interest rate derivative markets after all of these years of managing a zero interest rate policy. The cost of funding the U.S. deficit will rise exponentially. More quantitative easing begets more quantitative easing. Investors need to have some type of asset to balance their portfolios. Policymakers who got us into this mess are unlikely to navigate us out of it. History tells us that only gold is a good place to be.

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Bill Fleckenstein: Gold's "going to go a lot higher" - Wealth Managers

 Bill Fleckenstein of Fleckenstein Capital has a difficult time seeing other assets to own besides the precious metals. There are confidence bubbles in stocks, bonds and the fiat currencies that will break -- not may, but will -- and when they do, he sees no safe harbor for investment capital save gold:

If you saw the stock bubble coming in the late 1990s, why did you see that? Because you could see what the Fed was doing and the response people were having and the misallocation of capital and all the problems that that was going to lead to. If you saw that coming, you could not buy stocks. Your only real choice was to do nothing or short stocks. Shorting stocks is tricky, but those were the responses.

Fast forward to 2008; if you saw an even worse and more problematic real estate bubble, again, you could buy stocks or you could short them. You could not buy real estate if it was difficult to short list it. What were the proper responses?

Well, in the interim of those two, you also could have the response to buy gold, because we knew what the central banks' response was going to be.

Now here we are today. If you understood those problems, you cannot buy stocks, because they are only up because of money printing. You cannot really short them, because it is so hard to fight that money printing. ...

Now the gold market has been under pressure for like 18 months, and we had a huge break off the top in September of 2011 when Bernanke did not do QE2 when they thought he would. Now we just had an immense crack after having had, for a year and a half, central banks go hog wild. I cannot believe that there is not going to be an enormous rally, prospectively, in the gold market, once it stabilizes and starts flying higher. It is going to go one hell of a lot higher, I think.

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Gold investor: "This is a perfect time to buy as prices will only go up from here" - Wealth Managers

Gold buyers in India, the world's biggest consumer, are flocking to stores to buy jewelry and coins, betting a selloff that plunged bullion to a two-year low may be overdone. 

"My daughter is just six months old, but I think it is never too early to buy gold," said Sharmila Shirodkar, a 28-year-old housewife, while displaying a new pair of earrings she bought from a store in Mumbai's Zaveri Bazaar. "I had been asking my husband every day if prices will go down more. I couldn't wait anymore." ...

"This is a perfect time to buy as prices will only go up from here," said Vishal Mehta, a 33-year-old garment dealer, while ordering coins from Choksi V. Naginchand & Co. in Zaveri Bazaar. "I usually buy one gold coin a month, but this time I am buying two." ...

"It has been very hectic in the last two days," said Deepak Tulsiani, owner of Dwarkadas Chandumal Jewellers in Mumbai as he surveyed his 11 employees, who were busy with customers. "There has been a rush to buy gold because now people are getting jewelry 15 percent cheaper than before. It's value for their money."

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Gold bullion sales "boiling over" in Australia - Wealth Managers

Sales of gold bullion and gold chains are boiling over as Sydney buyers rush to buy at bargain prices of around $1332 an ounce, about $200 cheaper than four days ago and $400 cheaper than when the price peaked two years ago.

Not since the global financial crisis have the phones rung so hot from gold buyers, said Jordan Eliseo, chief economist of the Australian Bullion Company on Pitt Street.

Sales had been so strong the company's phone system nearly crashed. The company had to hire temps to deal with customers phoning and waiting in queues of up to 60 to 80 to get into the company's already crowded salesrooms.

The company's chief executive, Janie Simpson, only had time to email, ''OMG, it is bedlam -- has been like that for 3 days!!!!''
Mr Eliseo said more than 95 per cent of the company's business right now was selling gold.

''Everyone who wants physical gold is seeing it [the drop in the gold price] as an incredible buying opportunity instead of seeing it as the end of the gold market,'' he said.

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Top reason to own gold: Wealth Managers

The reason for why I own gold and why I recommended it as an essential self-defense asset is not the chart pattern of the gold price, the opinion of Goldman Sachs, or the Indian wedding season but the diagnosis that the global fiat money economy has checkmated itself. 

After 40-years of relentless paper money expansion and in particular after 25 years of Fed-led global bubble finance, the dislocations in the global financial system are so massive that nobody in power dares to turn off the monetary spigot and allow market forces to do their work, that is to price credit and to price risk according to the available pool of real savings and the potential for real income generation rather than according to the wishes of our master monetary central planners.

The reason why for almost half a decade now all the major central banks around the world keep rates at zero and print vast amounts of bank reserves is that the system is massively dislocated and nobody wants the market to have a go at correcting this.

There are two potential outcomes (as I explain in my book): 1) This policy is maintained and even intensified, which will ultimately lead to higher inflation and paper money collapse. 2) This policy is abandoned and the liquidation of imbalances through market forces is allowed to unfold.

Gold is mainly a hedge against scenario 1) but it won't go to zero in scenario 2) either. So far, I see little indication that central bankers are about to switch from 1) to 2) but we always have to consider the fact that the market is smarter than us and has its ears closer to the ground. What is the evidence?

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

History says Gold Bullion is going to $5,000, McEwen Mining exec forecasts - Wealth Managers

 "In the last cycle, from 1970 to 1980, gold went from $40 to $800, so -- twenty-fold increase," McEwen Mining Chairman Rob McEwen tells Fox Business in an April 4 interview. 

"Apply that to the 20-year low we had in 2001 of $250 an ounce, you're at $5,000. Second reason: Massive quantitative easing and huge levels of debt being incurred by the government. In history, that's always meant that currencies are being debased, and you should seek to diversify your portfolio. ... The amount of debt that's being piled up right now is unprecedented. And all you have to do is look back in economic history -- this leads to a debasement of one's currency. ... The dollar is a safe haven relative to the euro and how investors have been very concerned about what's been going on in Cyprus and saying that could spread through the rest of Europe. So, let's got to the dollar, but once I look at the dollar, there's some problems with it as well. ... Bullion is off its high from $1,900, but it has strong undertones and there are more people looking at it saying, 'Look, it's dropped quite a it right now; maybe it's time to start entering this market and taking a position.'"

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Gold move "like in 2007 would take prices to about $1,970" - Wealth Managers

Gold has been going through consolidation pattern since October of last year when it traded around $1,800 an ounce. The phase is similar to the kind of move the metal made in 2006-2007 according to Diane Alter at Money Morning.

Gold prices hit $725 an ounce in May 2006, and then fell back to around $600 an ounce by September. After trading between $600 and $675 an ounce through September 2007, gold prices jumped to $833.75 by the end of the year -- a 24% jump in three months. 

The same scenario is emerging.

After hitting $1,900 an ounce in September 2011, gold prices slipped back to around $1,600 by the end of the year. Gold's been trading between $1,550 an ounce and $1,800 an ounce for about a year. 

Another jump like in 2007 would take prices to about $1,970 an ounce in the coming months. And when the latest round of selling is done, this price climb could start.

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Italians favor using gold reserves to ease debt burden, poll finds - Wealth Managers

 Italian business leaders (91%) and citizens (85%) overwhelmingly agree that the nation's gold reserves have an important and positive role to play in the country's economic recovery, according to the first independent, nationwide poll of its kind since the recent Italian election in February. 

The study carried out by Ipsos MORI, the independent research firm and commissioned by the World Gold Council (WGC), incorporates the views of a representative sample of 1,009 Italian citizens aged 16-70, plus a separate study of 300 business leaders in the country. ... 

88% of citizens and 87% of business leaders would back plans to make better use of national assets, to ease the nation's debt burden and spur economic growth and employment, with 52% and 61% respectively supporting the use of national gold reserves to reduce the country's debt costs. Just 4% would explicitly back any plans to sell the nation's gold reserves.

"This survey confirms that there is significant support among the wider population and business community for a renewed focus on growth. In rejecting austerity, the survey sends a clear message to the next government," said Natalie Dempster, director of government affairs, World Gold Council said.

"Italy holds more than 2,000 tonnes of gold in its national reserves, but selling it is not the answer and the Italian people recognise that. The proceeds would have limited impact on the overall public debt position. A higher value option is to use gold as collateral and effectively produce five times its value, without selling it. The World Gold Council calculations show that by deploying the gold as security for sovereign bonds Italy could raise over 20% of its total two-year borrowing requirements," Natalie Dempster added.

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com