Political Metals

Permanent Gold Backwardation
By Keith Weiner

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The Root of the Problem Is Debt

Worldwide, an incredible tower of debt has been under construction since President Nixon’s 1971 default on the gold obligations of the US government. His decree severed the redeemability of the dollar for gold and thus eliminated the extinguisher of debt. Debt has been growing exponentially everywhere since then. Debt is backed with debt, based on debt, dependent on debt and leveraged with yet more debt. For example, today it is possible to buy a bond (i.e., lend money) on margin (i.e., with borrowed money).

The time is now fast approaching when all debt will be defaulted on. In our perverse monetary system, one party’s debt is another’s “money.” A debtor’s default will impact the creditor (who is usually also a debtor to yet other creditors), causing him to default, and so on. When this begins in earnest, it will wipe out the banking system and thus everyone’s “money.” The paper currencies will not survive this. We are seeing the early edges of it now in the euro, and it’s anyone’s guess when it will happen in Japan, though it seems long overdue already. Last of all, it will come to the USA.

The purpose of this article is to present the early-warning signal and explain the actual mechanism to these events. Contrary to popular belief, it will not happen because the central banks increase the quantity of money to infinity. The money supply may even be contracting (which is what I expect).

To understand the terminal stages of the monetary system’s fatal disease, we must understand gold.

Defining Backwardation

First, let me introduce a key concept. Most traders define “backwardation” for a commodity as when the price of a futures contract is lower than the price of the same good in the spot market.

In every market, there are always two prices for a good: the bid and the ask. To sell a good, one must take the bid. And likewise, to buy the good, one must pay the ask. In backwardation, one can sell a physical good for cash and simultaneously buy a futures contract, and make a profit on the arbitrage. Note that in doing this trade, one’s position does not change in the end. One begins with a certain amount of the good and ends (upon maturity of the contract) with that same amount of the good.

Backwardation is when the bid in the spot market is greater than the ask in the futures market.

Many commodities, like wheat, are produced seasonally. But consumption is much more evenly spread around the year. Immediately prior to the harvest, the spot price of wheat is normally at its highest in relation to wheat futures. This is because wheat inventories in the warehouses are very low. People will have to pay a higher price for immediate delivery. At the same time, everyone in the market knows that the harvest is coming in one month. So the price, if a buyer can wait one month for delivery, is lower. This is a case of backwardation.

Backwardation is typically a signal of a shortage in a commodity. Anyone holding the commodity could make a risk-free profit by delivering it and getting it back later. If others put on this trade, and others, and so on, this would push down the bid in the spot market and lift up the ask in the futures market until the backwardation disappeared. The process of profiting from arbitrage compresses the spread one is arbitraging.

Actionable backwardations typically do not last long enough for the small trader to even see on the screen, much less trade. This is another way of saying that markets do not normally offer risk-free profits. In the case of wheat backwardation, for example, the backwardation may persist for weeks or longer. But there is no opportunity to profit for anyone, because no one has any wheat to spare. There is a genuine shortage of wheat before the harvest.

Why Gold Backwardation Is Important

Could backwardation happen with gold? Gold is not in shortage. One just has to measure abundance using the right metric. If you look at the inventories divided by annual mine production, the World Gold Council estimates this number to be around 80 years.

In all other commodities (except silver), inventories represent a few months of production. Other commodities can even have “gluts,” which usually lead to a price collapse. As an aside, this fact makes gold good for money. The price of gold does not decline, no matter how much of the stuff is produced. Production will certainly not lead to a “glut” in the gold market pulling prices downward.

So, what would a lower price on gold for future delivery mean compared to a higher price of gold in the spot market? By definition, it means that gold delivered to the market is in short supply.

The meaning of gold backwardation is that trust in future delivery is scarce.

In an ordinary commodity, scarcity of the physical good available for delivery today is resolved by higher prices. At a high enough price, demand for wheat falls until existing stocks are sufficient to meet the reduced demand.

But how is scarcity of trust resolved?

Thus far, the answer has been: via higher prices. Higher prices do coax some gold out of various hoards, jewelry, etc. Gold went into backwardation for the first time in December 2008. One could have earned a 2.5% (annualized) profit by selling physical gold and simultaneously buying a February 2009 future. Gold was $750 on December 5, but it rocketed to $920 - a gain of 23% - by the end of January.

But when backwardation becomes permanent, then trust in the gold futures market will have collapsed. Unlike with wheat, millions of people and many institutions have plenty of gold they can sell in the physical market and buy back via futures contracts. When they choose not to, that is the beginning of the end of the current financial system.

Why?

Think about the similarities between the following three statements:

• “My paper gold future contract will be honored by delivery of gold.”
• “If I trade my gold for paper now, I will be able to get gold back in the future.”
• “I will be able to exchange paper money for gold in the future.”

The reason why there was a significant backwardation (smaller backwardations have occurred intermittently since then) is that people did not believe the first statement. They did not trust that the gold future would be honored in gold.

And if they don’t believe that paper futures will be honored in gold, then they have no reason to believe that they can get gold in the future at all.

If some gold owners still trust the system at that point, then they can sell their gold (at much higher prices, probably). But sooner or later, there will not be any sellers of gold in the physical market.

Higher Prices Can’t Cure Permanent Gold Backwardation

With an ordinary commodity, there is a limit to what buyers are willing to pay based on the need satisfied by that commodity, the availability of substitutes and the buyers’ other needs that also must be satisfied within the same budget. The higher the price, the more holders and producers are motivated to sell, and the less consumers are motivated (or able) to buy. The cure for high prices is high prices.

But gold is different. Unlike wheat, gold is not bought for consumption. While some people hold it to speculate on increases in its paper price, these speculators will be replaced by others who hold it because it is money.

Once the gold owners have lost confidence, no amount of price change will bring back trust in paper currencies. Gold will not have a “high enough” price that will discourage buying or encourage selling. Thus gold backwardation will not only recur, but at some point, it will stay in its backwardated state.

In looking at the bid and ask, one other observation is germane to this discussion. In times of crisis, it is always the bid that is withdrawn - there is never a lack of asks. Permanent gold backwardation can be seen as the withdrawal of bids denominated in gold for irredeemable government debt paper (e.g., dollar bills).

Backwardation should not be able to happen at all as gold is so abundant. However, the fact that it has happened and keeps happening means that it is inevitable and that, at some point, backwardation will become permanent. The erosion of faith in paper money is a one-way process (with some zigs and zags). But eventually, backwardation will become deeper and deeper (while the dollar price of gold is rising, probably exponentially).

The final step is when gold completely withdraws its bid on paper. At that point, paper’s bid on gold will be unlimited, and this is why paper will inevitably collapse without gold.

Conclusion

Permanent gold backwardation leading to the withdrawal of the gold bid on the dollar is the inevitable result of the debt collapse. Governments and other borrowers have long since passed the point where they can amortize their debts. Now they merely “roll” the debt and the interest as they come due. This leaves them vulnerable to the market demand for their bonds. When they have an auction that fails to attract bids, the game will be over. Whether they formally default or whether they just print the currency to pay, it won’t matter.

Gold owners, like everyone else, will watch this happen. If government bond holders sell their securities in response to this crisis, they will only receive paper backed by that same government and its bonds. But the gold owner has the power to withdraw his bid on paper altogether. When that happens, there will be an irreconcilable schism between gold and paper, with real goods and services taking the side of gold. And in a process that should play out within a few months once it gets started, paper money will no longer have any value.

Gold is not officially recognized as the foundation of the financial system. Yet it is still a necessary component. When it is withdrawn, the worldwide regime of irredeemable paper money will collapse.

For the benefit of readers who continue to do their accounting in units of fiat currencies, I’ve summarised the performance of gold and silver in several currencies through the charts below. Hope they help to put things into perspective.

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Gold & silver performance relative to various currencies in 2011

In 2011, gold appreciated by an average of 14.3% against all 75 fiat currencies tracked by goldsilver.com, while silver averaged a corresponding loss of 6.8%. Among the selected currencies of interest charted above, only the Indian Rupee recorded a loss against both gold and silver.

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Gold & silver performance over 12 years

Going back to the beginning of this secular bull market in PMs, both gold and silver charted impressive gains against all tracked currencies. If you’ve been earning or saving in Indian Rupees over the past 12 years, you’d have lost over 500% against both gold and silver. If you think the Indian Rupee had it bad, spare a thought for those who’ve saved in Iranian Rial or Argentinian Peso, which depreciated by 3,368% and 2,240% respectively against gold.

Gold & silver performance before April’s price take downs

Silver’s 2011 performance was extremely volatile peaking in late April.  Silver’s peak and subsequent drop in price mirrored what we witnessed in its 2008 price action when the silver spot price dropped 50% peak to trough intra-year. This chart shows how silver has been leading gold’s performance just before the April price take downs.

Be prepared!

If you’ve been following recent geo-political and macro-economics news, you’d be much better informed than me. Doing a quick review of what transpired during the period I left this blog idle, here’s what I consider noteworthy developments:

• The Fed’s announcement of its zero-rate policy through 2014, requiring it to print more money to buy US Treasuries.
• ECB engaging on its own campaign of printing money hoping to “solve” Euro zone’s deepening debt crisis.
• Start of a countdown to the war with Iran.
• MF Global’s $6.3 billion “repos” saga leading to its collapse and potentially bringing down the Futures/Options (and other derivatives) market along with it.

Bottom line is things are getting worse, not better (as the MSM would have you believe), especially for savers and retirees. 2012 and 2013 are setting themselves up to be potentially disruptive years. Be prepared!

Updates to static pages:

• GoldMoney Review: Discontinued services, Gold & Silver “Client holdings by vaults” charts as at 30 Dec 2011
• BullionVault Review: Gold & Silver  ”Client holdings by vaults” charts as at 30 Dec 2011
• Compare AFE, BullionVault, GoldMoney: Comparative gold & silver holding charts as at 30 Dec 2011 and Alexa comparative traffic rank chart as at 01 Feb 2012.
• Fees Comparison: Highlighting GoldMoney’s zero-spread trading advantage.
• Forecasts: All close ended PMs price action forecasts by industry leaders were off target! New ones are being tracked.

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On the lighter side…

Endemic to the Galápagos Islands, these bright golden land iguanas (Conolophus subcristatus) are incredible friendly and approachable. If not for the 2-meter rule, you could easily reach out to touch them!

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“When you own gold you’re fighting every central bank in the world”. Jim Rickards

To a great extend, that holds true for silver as well. This week, holders of Political Metals lost a battle, but certainly not the war. Measured against the USD, gold and silver are worth less compared to a week ago by 9.6% and 26.3% respectively.

It all started with Ben Bernanke’s statement, following the 2-day FOMC meeting, stating the obvious - that “there are significant downside risks to the economic outlook, including strains in global financial markets”. His antidote was a plan to purchase $400 billion of long-term Treasury bonds and to sell an equivalent amount of short-term debt. More commonly referred to as “Operation Twist 2″, this plan seeks to further reduce long term interest rates, after having pledged to hold short term rates practically at zero until 2013.

That announcement, made in the backdrop of the Eurozone debt crisis and news of slower growth in China, sent global stocks and commodity markets into a waterfall decline. This set up was ideal for the bullion banks who have massive gold and silver short positions. All they needed to do was to pull the trigger, and that’s exactly what they did on Thursday. Silver was pushed down sharply through its key 50 and 200 day moving averages, triggering an avalanche of tech funds selling the following day.

Going for the final kill of the week, news of yet another margin hike by CME (gold by 21%, silver by 16%) leaked into the market towards the end of Friday’s trading day. That further fuelled the selling, pushing silver briefly below $30 before closing at $31.08 - down 26.3% for the week.

In other markets this week, the Dow suffered its biggest loss since 2008. In four days U.S. stocks lost $1.1 trillion in value.  The MSCI all-country world share index (tracking thousands of stocks from developed and emerging countries) recorded its second worst quarter in 23 years and the 30-year bond rates dropped 55bps - the biggest move since the 1987 Black Monday.

So there you have it, Dr. Ben Bernanke, bullion banks & CME working together in perfect harmony. I don’t believe for a moment that the resulting market turmoil was any surprise to Bernanke. Despite saying that gold is not money, he’s smarter than most people made him out to be. After all, he achieved an SAT score of 1590 out of 1600, graduated from Harvard and has a PhD in economics from MIT. Contrary to its statutory mandate of foster maximum employment and price stability, this market turmoil I believe is a piece of precision engineering to achieve some larger agenda. This round is yours, congratulations Ben!

This engineered global markets take down could be part of the deflationary phase that Mike Maloney talked about, which is a prelude to the hyper-inflation phase. They have to assist the bullion banks cover their shorts and bring the Political Metals price down to a lower base before starting the next round of QE or equivalent. Marc Faber told ThomsonReuters that “if the S&P drops to around 900-950, we’ll get QE3 for sure”.

Four ways to view the developments over the past week

If you’re reading this blog, you’re not a professional or a day trader, possibly someone already invested in gold or silver, someone holding some Political Metals (I distinguish between investing & holding here) or someone in the process of researching the matter. As non professional traders, we have to look through and not at the turmoil unfolding before us. All of the bloody carnage above are on “paper” or bits on silicon - illusionary financial derivatives of something tangible (like gold and silver) or derivatives of something totally virtual and non-physical (like interest rates, bonds, debts, CDS, etc). Real or imaginary, they are all derivatives backed by nothing more than a promise or lies of a third party.

Unfortunately, in so far as gold & silver is concerned, the outcome of the imaginary paper price wars above gets applied to the physical world. Price discovery currently comes from the paper derivatives market. Banks and multi billion dollar hedge funds throwing thousands of futures contracts or bets at each other (most of which are done through computerised High Frequency Trading algorithms) determine the price of the coin or bar you pick up at your local bullion dealers. Until such time when this absurd situation of the tail wagging the dog changes, I suggest 4 possible ways for you to view the developments over the past week, using silver as an example.

There’s a big difference between Investing(1) & Holding(2). If you adopt approach (1), and are smart enough to handle scenario (3), congratulations! Trading this dip or swapping silver for gold just before the GSR shot over 56 would have reaped a handsome return. After years of following newsletter writers, both paid and free, I came to the conclusion that attempting to achieve (3) is at best illusionary, and at worst risky. This is particularly true in a manipulated market. Take a look at some of the forecasts by well respected industry players here. Either they missed this week’s price action or are not telling us something. Richard Russell puts it this way:

I look at gold and silver, not as a play for profits, but as an accumulation of hard assets, in a world that it drowning in fiat money, and a world that will probably print trillions more of irredeemable paper.

Finally, if you’ve been waiting patiently (4) or have spare dry powder, congratulations! While the paper price of gold & silver gets whacked, physical demand is very strong. KWN reported that Sprott Money temporarily runs out of physical silver. So, get ready to pick up your discount. Not necessarily immediately, but then again, picking the absolute bottom can also be illusionary. Best industry advise is cost averaging.

Updated:

• 28 Sep “On the basis of the hard information available early this week, it is highly likely that gold and silver prices were pushed down rather than fell as a result of free market trading.” Read Patrick A. Heller’s take on how the recent gold & silver market manipulation was orchestrated.
• 30 Sep “Engineered fall in gold and silver; Trying to scare people out of precious metals“ Gerald Celente

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