Most Popular
1. Banking Crisis is Stocks Bull Market Buying Opportunity - Nadeem_Walayat
2.The Crypto Signal for the Precious Metals Market - P_Radomski_CFA
3. One Possible Outcome to a New World Order - Raymond_Matison
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
5. Apple AAPL Stock Trend and Earnings Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
6.AI, Stocks, and Gold Stocks – Connected After All - P_Radomski_CFA
7.Stock Market CHEAT SHEET - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.US Debt Ceiling Crisis Smoke and Mirrors Circus - Nadeem_Walayat
9.Silver Price May Explode - Avi_Gilburt
10.More US Banks Could Collapse -- A Lot More- EWI
Last 7 days
Stock Market Volatility (VIX) - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Investor Sentiment - 25th Mar 24
The Federal Reserve Didn't Do Anything But It Had Plenty to Say - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Breadth - 24th Mar 24
Stock Market Margin Debt Indicator - 24th Mar 24
It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - 24th Mar 24
Stocks: What to Make of All This Insider Selling- 24th Mar 24
Money Supply Continues To Fall, Economy Worsens – Investors Don’t Care - 24th Mar 24
Get an Edge in the Crypto Market with Order Flow - 24th Mar 24
US Presidential Election Cycle and Recessions - 18th Mar 24
US Recession Already Happened in 2022! - 18th Mar 24
AI can now remember everything you say - 18th Mar 24
Bitcoin Crypto Mania 2024 - MicroStrategy MSTR Blow off Top! - 14th Mar 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - 11th Mar 24
Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle - 11th Mar 24
Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - 11th Mar 24
Two Reasons The Fed Manipulates Interest Rates - 11th Mar 24
US Dollar Trend 2024 - 9th Mar 2024
The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - 9th Mar 2024
Investors Don’t Believe the Gold Rally, Still Prefer General Stocks - 9th Mar 2024
Paper Gold Vs. Real Gold: It's Important to Know the Difference - 9th Mar 2024
Stocks: What This "Record Extreme" Indicator May Be Signaling - 9th Mar 2024
My 3 Favorite Trade Setups - Elliott Wave Course - 9th Mar 2024
Bitcoin Crypto Bubble Mania! - 4th Mar 2024
US Interest Rates - When WIll the Fed Pivot - 1st Mar 2024
S&P Stock Market Real Earnings Yield - 29th Feb 2024
US Unemployment is a Fake Statistic - 29th Feb 2024
U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - 29th Feb 2024
What a Breakdown in Silver Mining Stocks! What an Opportunity! - 29th Feb 2024
Why AI will Soon become SA - Synthetic Intelligence - The Machine Learning Megatrend - 29th Feb 2024
Keep Calm and Carry on Buying Quantum AI Tech Stocks - 19th Feb 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

The Phony Wealth Effect and Gold

Commodities / Gold & Silver 2019 Jul 10, 2019 - 07:07 AM GMT

By: The_Gold_Report

Commodities

Rudi Fronk and Jim Anthony, cofounders of Seabridge Gold, discuss what real wealth is and if financial assets should be considered real wealth. Our contention is that gold is real wealth. Gold is its own final settlement and no one else's liability. What this means is simply that gold stands for itself, it does not depend upon the faith and good credit of any other person or thing...it is universally accepted as final settlement. It has been so for thousands of years.

And in these days of radical central bank policies, gold has no central bank to control its issuance or its value. Its value is determined by those who wish to exchange it for other valuable things. Its issuance is established by the fact that it is rare and difficult to extract.


The question is this: Are financial assets...securities such as stocks and bonds...real wealth? Our answer is that they are if a dollar's worth of securities can be exchanged for a dollar's worth of goods and services. Unlike gold, financial assets are claims on something else. For example, a common share is a claim on a proportionate share of future earnings from the sale of goods and services by an enterprise for which the common share represents part ownership. Gold backs itself. Securities need the backing of the entity which issued them; the claims issued must be money good for the securities to represent wealth.

So, it stands to reason that securities must ultimately be backed by an equivalent value of goods and services in the real economy.

What, then, are we to make of the fact that the U.S. economy has credit market debt of $70 trillion as claims against a $22 trillion economy as measured by real GDP (which, by the way, includes a lot of less than real items such as government spending)? The $70 trillion (of which about $40 trillion is in domestically issued bonds) is someone's liability but it is also someone's asset, including pension funds and other savings vehicles meant to defer spending into the future where it is depended upon to fund consumption.

To debt claims we must add about $34 trillion in equity claims, the estimated current value of the U.S. stock market. This tally does not include private company ownership, privately generated debt, real estate and cash balances which are also stores of value and potential claims against the real economy.

The global picture is no better. Total stock market valuations are about $78 trillion while the global bond market is estimated at around $110 trillion against world real GDP of about $75 trillion.

Meanwhile, the current dollar value of the world's above ground gold supply is about $8 trillion, more than half of which is probably not immediately tradable since it is in the form of jewelry and artifacts.

Clearly, from these numbers, there are far more players of the musical chairs game than there are chairs. Claims against the real economy have grown exponentially faster than the economy that must meet those claims. Either real GDP must rise at an unprecedented pace or the value of financial assets must fall precipitously. We have a huge phony wealth problem which is unsustainable and it cannot be fixed by monetary policy that has as it method the printing of more claims.

What is the resolution of this mismatch of real vs. financial assets? Investors will begin to flee to reliable value that protects their wealth and purchasing power. We think that inevitably means fleeing to the backing of gold.

This article is the collaboration of Rudi Fronk and Jim Anthony, cofounders of Seabridge Gold, and reflects the thinking that has helped make them successful gold investors. Rudi is the current Chairman and CEO of Seabridge and Jim is one of its largest shareholders. Disclaimer: The authors are not registered or accredited as investment advisors. Information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed reliable but is not necessarily complete and accuracy is not guaranteed. Any securities mentioned on this site are not to be construed as investment or trading recommendations specifically for you. You must consult your own advisor for investment or trading advice. This article is for informational purposes only.

Disclosures: 1) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of Rudi Fronk and Jim Anthony and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The authors are wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. Streetwise Reports was not involved in any aspect of the content preparation. The authors were not paid by Streetwise Reports for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the authors to publish or syndicate this article. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports requires contributing authors to disclose any shareholdings in, or economic relationships with, companies that they write about. Streetwise Reports relies upon the authors to accurately provide this information and Streetwise Reports has no means of verifying its accuracy. 2) Rudi Fronk and Jim Anthony: we, or members of our immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: Seabridge Gold. We personally are, or members of our immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: Seabridge Gold. 3) Seabridge Gold is a billboard sponsor of Streetwise Reports. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. 4) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports. 5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article until three business days after the publication of the interview or article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases.


© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in