Strengths

• The best performing precious metal for the week was platinum, up 0.74 percent.  Silver also clocked a positive gain of 0.28 percent.  Economic growth in the U.S. slowed more than forecast last quarter on the biggest trade drag in six years, reports Bloomberg. Net exports subtracted 1.7 percentage points from expansion in the October – December period, as dollar strength likely was a drag on growth.  Should the new Trump administration push for a weaker dollar, this could lend support to gold.
• China purchased a net 47 tons of bullion in November, according to data from the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department and compiled by Bloomberg.  Additionally, shipments of gold from Switzerland to China surged more than fivefold to 158 tons in December, Bloomberg continues, the highest since at least January 2014. Appetite for gold is soaring ahead of the Lunar New Year.
• According to Bloomberg, the four ETFs backed by gold that have attracted the most money this year are all based in Western Europe. Xetra-Gold, listed in Frankfurt, tops the list by bringing in around $544 million last week. Europeans are turning to the gold on fears that Trump’s “America first” rhetoric will impede global economic growth.

Weaknesses

• The worst performing precious metal for the week was palladium, down 6.65 percent. The metal is headed for its worst weekly drop in more than a year. CPM Group reported they see palladium and platinum in surplus for the next few years and estimated there are 25 million ounces of palladium in stockpiles, most held by investors.
• Physical gold demand fell in 2016 to its lowest level since 2009, reports Reuters, as increased prices weighed on appetite for the metal. GFMS, a research unit of Thomson Reuters, also notes that gold jewelry demand is at a 28-year low. Jewelry consumption is down 9.7 percent year-over-year at 551 metric tons in the fourth quarter.
• As U.S. equities looked to extend a rally on Friday, gold retreated for what might be a fourth-straight day of losses.  However, real rates dropped a bit before the market open and gold eventually crawled into positive territory.  “Gold was due for a short-term pullback, after rallying almost non-stop since late December,” Jordan Eliseo of Australian Bullion Co. said. “Strength in equity markets, with the Dow topping 20,000 points, soft physical markets and a greater focus on rate hikes from the Fed has seen the metal sell off.”

Opportunities

• UBS says the dollar has peaked and is likely to decline this year under President Trump, reports Bloomberg. The wealth management unit at UBS expects the currency’s future weakness to boost the price of base and precious metals. “We hold that view because we see real interest rates going deeper into negative territory.” Earlier in the week Steve Mnuchin also commented on the dollar, defying two decades of convention at the office of the U.S. Treasury Secretary by stating, “From time to time, an excessively strong dollar may have negative short-term implications on the economy.” In a similar note, Brown Brothers Harriman noted a recent St. Louis Fed study which showed how a strong dollar from 2014 to 2016 was associated with a drag on growth from net exporters.

•  According to BlackRock, inflation is rising faster than many investors may realize, citing examples such as rising housing prices, uncontained medical inflation, rising wages and more. So what does this mean for investors? BlackRock says, “Should inflation expectations rise faster than nominal rates, gold is likely to continue to merit a place in most portfolios.”
• The World Gold Council believes the Indian government should lower the taxes on gold, currently at 13 percent, to help curb smuggling and promote transparency in local gold trade, reports Bloomberg. With a high customs duty, gold is being imported through the unofficial channel, the article continues. If India wants to eliminate corruption, a high tariff only encourages smuggling.

Threats

• BNP Paribas SA, the top gold and precious metals forecaster in the fourth quarter according to Bloomberg, expects the Federal Reserve to go “rapid-fire” on interest rates, boosting them every quarter in 2018. This tightening will strengthen the U.S. dollar and push gold down toward $1,000 an ounce, reports Bloomberg.
• The forecasted gold demand recovery from a seven-year low in India has been delayed, according to the World Gold Council. The WGC says gold consumption in the country will not return to normal levels until 2018, as a liquidity squeeze tightens spending this year, reports Bloomberg. In a report published Tuesday, the group estimates India’s usage between 850 metric tons to 950 tonnes by 2020 versus demand of 650 to 750 tonnes in 2016.
• Two of the biggest gold producers in South Africa, Sibanye Gold and AngloGold Ashanti, have been accused of putting workers’ lives at risk, reports Bloomberg. The Department of Mineral Resources argues that the companies are unwilling to follow the laws, while the two miners have criticized government inspectors for being too heavy-handed in temporarily closing mines for safety breaches, the article continues. AngloGold won a court ruling in October that blocked one such closure and Sibanye is suing Minister Mosebenzi Zwane and other officials for compensation after its Kroondal platinum mine was closed. Over the past decade AngloGold has reduced operating fatalities by more than 80 percent.

http://usfunds.com/

….also: Looking for Yield, Ozzie’s Got Some Ideas

The rally in bitcoin has come out of China, which has accounted for 98% of bitcoin trading in the past six months. China is also home to about two-thirds of the world’s bitcoin mining power. The Phase Transition spike in bitcoin is very alarming, for it flies right in the face of government attempts to eliminate currency. The Chinese have been buying bitcoin onshore, selling it offshore for another currency, and then moving the money to a bank account. This is how the Chinese individuals can take cash out of the country, circumventing all regulation.

The Chinese government has been strengthening requirements for citizens by converting their yuan. With Trump coming into office, China fears that lower values for the yuan will become a trade war even if the government is not actively trying to depreciate the yuan for trade. Conversions of yuan are already subject to a quota or currency controls in an effort to curb capital outflows.

Bitcoin has been the escape method for capital fleeing China. With the looming trade war on the horizon, the Chinese government will have absolutely NO CHOICE but to come in and regulate bitcoin as its citizens now account for 98% of all trading. From a regulatory perspective, the days of passive treatment of bitcoin may come to an end. Bitcoin has soared only because it has been the mechanism to obtain foreign exchange and take capital out of China. This could easily be considered an illegal operation, such as money laundering, to justify closing that window.

Of course, you have the zealots who preach bitcoin as the alternative to the dollar that they cannot shut down. All they need to do is declare bitcoins illegal and the PRESUMPTION of being in bitcoin is a PRESUMPTION of being a criminal. They are already using terms like “CASH IS FOR CRIMINALS” and if you have a few thousand in cash, they just confiscate it presuming you are criminal under Civil Asset Forfeiture without having to prove you committed a crime or charging you.

Keep in mind we are dancing with the devil. There are no rules — just ruthless self-interest. They will do whatever it takes to survive. They will not relinquish power willingly.

Prices in the US are picking up strongly and support the Fed’s arguments for raising interest rates further. The rate of inflation rose by 2.1% in December, according to the Ministry of Labor. This is the highest increase since two and a half years. Some are suggesting this is due to higher gasoline prices and rents in particular caused the buoyancy. After all, the November rate was still 1.7%. The Fed has been targeting two percent. The Fed raised the key interest rate in December to 0.5 to 0.75%, and took three further steps upward for 2017.

With With consumer confidence at record highs, that means....continue reading HERE

…also from Martin:

Trump Brings Consumer Confidence to 13 Year High

“The problem with police officers and firefighters isn’t a public-sector problem; it isn’t a problem with government; it’s a problem with the entire society. It’s what happened on Wall Street in the run-up to the subprime crisis. It’s a problem of people taking what they can, just because they can, without regard to the larger social consequences. It’s not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans. Alone in a dark room with a pile of money, Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom. They’d been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences.”
― Michael Lewis, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

Though it may not be instantly clear, in the above quote Michael Lewis is talking about public sector pensions and how over the course of several decades, mayors and governors across the US have colluded with police, firefighter and teachers unions to promise outrageously-generous benefits and then failed to put aside enough money to pay for them.

As a consequence two things are happening. In dozens if not hundreds of cities and towns, services are being cut to the bone to pay for ballooning pension benefits, and – when even these cuts prove inadequate – pensions are being drastically reduced.

Which in turn means two other things. First, life isn’t nearly as easy or pleasant as it used to be in a lot of places, as library hours are cut, trash piles up and police response times lengthen. And second, hundreds of thousands of public sector workers who expected to retire comfortably are staring at major lifestyle shrinkage.

To which a reasonable person might yawn and say, sure the numbers look grim. But they’ve looked that way for a long time and outside of Chicago, American life is still pretty good by Greek, Venezuelan or Russian standards. So go away until something tangible actually happens.

Point taken. But this might be that time. Beginning with Dallas, where the city is actually taking money back from plan recipients…

Dallas Police and Fire pension members may have to pay back funds

The city has agreed to put in an additional billion dollars over 30 years, but they’re proposing a series of bitter pills to make up the rest of the nearly $4 billion shortfall.

The bitterest pill: A proposal to take back all of the interest police and firefighters earned on Deferred Option Retirement accounts, or DROP. That would amount to an additional billion dollars saved. The city is calling it an “equity adjustment.” Retirees call it an illegal “claw back.”

The city is also seeking to “equity adjustment” on cost of living increases. The city says that pension checks are about 20 percent higher than they would have been if increases had been tied to inflation.

The city’s proposing to freeze cost of living increases until it catches up to the inflation index.

…and moving on to Kentucky, where if a funding level of 16% for the state employees fund isn’t an imminent crisis, then nothing is:

Things are if anything even bleaker in the private sector:

Multiemployer Pension Plans In Crisis: Troubled Plans Need Public Resources To Survive

(Forbes) – There is an emerging financial crisis among multiemployer pension plans in America. These plans are a subset of private sector defined benefit pensions covering 10 million workers and retirees. Most critical are the projected bankruptcies of the Teamsters Central States and the United Mineworkers of America plans, making front page news for the last several months.

Multiemployer plans are insured by the US Federal Government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). But PBGC is itself in danger of going broke. Set up in 1974 to “encourage the continuation and maintenance of voluntary private defined benefit pension plans [and] provide timely and uninterrupted payment of pension benefits,” the plan uses the ultimate backstop to provide those guarantees: the U.S. taxpayer.

In the fiscal year 2015, PBGC paid out nearly $6 billion in benefits to participants of failed pension plans, increasing the agency’s deficit to $76 billion. The PBGC now has $164 billion in obligations and just $88 billion in assets.

When this was reported to Congress, it passed the Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014, allowing pension plans to ask permission to cut benefits to its plan participants. Prior to 2014 those plans weren’t allowed to do so. But actuaries looking into the PBGC reported that unless something was done, the PBFC itself would be broke in less than a decade.

The door is now open for other pension plans facing similar shortfalls to apply for permission to cut benefits to their participants. The ripple effect could be enormous: PBGC is the ultimate backstop for some 22,000 single-employer pension plans and another 1,400 multi-employer pension plans covering 40 million participants.

Some other relevant headlines:

CalPERS Cuts Pension Benefits For First Time

Ohio workers face precedent-setting pension and retiree health cuts

Teamsters’ Pension Plans Seek Massive Cuts to Retirees to Stay Solvent

Chicago’s massive unfunded pension deficit could swallow the city

And this, remember, is happening at the tail end of a 30-year bull market in bonds and a 7-year bull market in stocks, which took the main asset classes held by pension funds to record valuation levels. So the rubber truly meets the road during the next recession when stocks will, if history is a reliable guide, drop by 20% or more. The current gaps in thousands of pension funds will become gaping holes, and the experience of Teamsters and Dallas cops will be replicated across the country.

Click here for the previous posts in this series

Summary