The Gold Report: Paul, your speech at the Hard Assets Conference in San Francisco was titled "Rational Expectations." You spoke about monitoring the real rate of monetary inflation based on the total money supply.
You take into account everything in your indicator that acts as money, creating a money aggregate that links the value of gold and the dollar. You conclude that quantitative easing (QE) is not resulting in hyperinflation and is not acting as a driver for the continuing rise in the gold price. What then is pushing gold to $1,700/ounce (oz)?
Paul van Eeden: Expectations and fear. It's very hard to know what gold is worth in dollars if you don't also know what the dollar is doing. When we analyze the gold price in U.S. dollars, we're analyzing two things simultaneouslygold and dollars. You cannot do one without the other. The problem with analyzing the dollar is that the market doesn't have a good measure by which to recognize the effects of quantitative easing.
Since approximately the 1950s, economists have used monetary aggregates called M1, M2 and M3 (no longer being published) to describe the U.S. money supply. But M1, M2 and M3 are fatally flawed as monetary aggregates for very simple reasons. M1 only counts cash and demand deposits such as checking accounts. M1 assumes that any money that you have, say, in a savings account isn't money. Well, that's a bit absurd.
TGR: What comprises M2? Continue reading "Paul van Eeden on Why Gold is Overvalued"
