Our first observation is that trends in the USD tend to last for some time, so if this rally follows the pattern of previous rallies, it’s unlikely to have run its course in one year.

Secondly, previous rallies paused for a multi-month consolidation period before launching upward for the second leg of the long-term rally.

Thirdly, the USD rose sharply to previous peaks and then round-tripped back to the 80 level.

This raises the question: How high could the dollar rise in this rally?

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Chapter 25 of the Crash Course is now publicly available and ready for watching below.

Here at the penultimate chapter of The Crash Course, everything we've learned comes together into a single narrow range of time we'll call the twenty-teens. 

What this chapter offers is a comprehensive view of how all of our problems are actually interrelated and need to be viewed as such, or solutions will continue to elude us.

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This report lays out the investment thesis for gold. Silver is mentioned only where necessary, as a separate report of equal scope will be forthcoming on that topic. Various factors lead me to conclude that gold is one investment that you can park for the next ten or twenty years, confident that it will perform well. Timing and logic for both entering and finally exiting gold as an investment are laid out in the full report.

The punch line is this: Gold (and silver) is not in bubble territory, and its largest gains remain yet to be realized; especially if current monetary, fiscal, and fundamental supply-and-demand trends remain in play.

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Executive Summary

• France:  Bet on a bankruptcy of the French government
• Italy:  Will not be able to fund its debt obligations without external help
• Spain:  The best outcome at this point is years of grinding financial repression
• UK:  At growing risk of a big upward spike in price inflation, leading to a currency crisis

If you have not yet read Part I, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

Individual States

France

Perhaps the cameo event that best describes French attitudes was the recent correspondence between Maurice Taylor Jnr, head of Titan International, the tire manufacturer, and Arnaud Montebourg, France’s Minister for Industrial Renewal. While it was good theatre, the serious points were that on average a French worker at an industrial plant works for three hours a day, and that the Minister resorted to threats that any Titan products imported into France would be “inspected by the relevant authorities with extra zeal.” That is the way things are done in France: Upset the Minister or a government functionary and none of your product gets to market, as Mr Taylor will shortly find out.

France has an official unemployment rate of about 10.5%, which would be somewhat higher if it were not for three-hour days in many of the factories. Taxes on employers are among the highest in Europe, and employment legislation is so onerous that employing an extra hand is the last option for all private sector employers.

Large companies, such as Peugeot-Citroen, generally tolerate poor labour productivity and sub-standard quality products – partly because the unions are strong, and partly because senior managers look to government to “help” by providing subsidies and by other means. Consequently, private-sector manufacturing is not competitive, and sales in the troubled Eurozone are collapsing. Peugeot’s share price says it all.

Decades of government protection have left France’s industrial sector in the weakest position of the larger Eurozone economies. Smaller businesses, outside the major cities, are heavily reliant on agricultural produce and hospitality, much of which is undeclared, untaxed, and untaxable. Furthermore, France’s farmers have long been beneficiaries of the EU’s agricultural subsidies, and have never had to be efficient.

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This week, Chris talks with Jeff Clark, Senior Precious Metals Analyst at Casey Research, where he serves as editor of their Big Gold newsletter.

They tackle head-on many of the questions weary precious metals investors are wondering after enduing the volatile yet range-bound price action of gold and silver over the past year:

• Have the fundamentals for owning gold & silver changed over the past year? No
• What are they? currency devaluation/crisis, supply-chain risk, ore grade depletion
• How should retail investors own gold? Mostly physical metal, some quality mining majors (avoid the indices), and ETFs only for trading
• Is gold in a bubble? No
• Could gold get re-monetized? Quite possibly
• Where is gold flowing? From the West to the East. At some point, capital controls will be put in place

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One of the conclusions that I try to coax, lead, and/or nudge people towards is acceptance of the fact that the economy can’t be fixed.  By this I mean that the old regime of general economic stability and rising standards of living fueled by excessive credit are a thing of the past.  At least they are for the debt-encrusted developed nations over the short haul — and, over the long haul, across the entire soon-to-be energy-starved globe.

The sooner we can accept that idea and make other plans the better.  To paraphrase a famous saying, Anything that can’t be fixed, won’t. 

The basis for this view stems from understanding that debt-based money systems operate best when they can grow exponentially forever. Of course, nothing can, which means that even without natural limits, such systems are prone to increasingly chaotic behavior, until the money that undergirds them collapses into utter worthlessness, allowing the cycle to begin anew.

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The end of the second round of quantitative easing (QE II) is going to be a complete disaster for the paper markets — specifically commodities, stocks, and then finally bonds, in that order, with losses of 20% to 50% by the end of October. The only thing that will arrest the plunge will be QE III, although we should remain alert to the likelihood that it will be named something else in an attempt to obscure what it really is. Perhaps it will be known as the “Muni Asset Trust Term Liquidity Facility” or the “American Prime Purchase Program,” but whatever it is called, it will involve hundreds of billions of thin-air dollars being printed and dumped into the financial system.  

A Premature Victory Lap

Bernanke recently stood at a lectern and announced to the assembled audience that the Fed’s recent policies could be credited with elevated stock prices and an improved employment statistic while somehow keeping inflation low. 

It was his own version of a ‘mission accomplished’ speech, just like the one G. W. Bush gave. Similarly, it does not mark the end of significant difficulties, but the probable beginning of a very long period of treacherous economic and financial disruption.

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