As the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, so too did demand for newly minted platinum, gold, and silver bullion coins from the United States Mint.

Like clockwork, in times of crisis and doubt, investors head to the hills, fleeing to safe haven assets. The demand is so great it’s currently outstripping supply. And if history is any indicator, it won’t ebb any time soon.

Sales of the American Eagle Platinum, America’s official bullion coin, were the highest since the launch of the program in 1997, jumping from 9,300 ounces in February to 31,200 ounces in March. To date, 2020 sales have now exceeded annual sales going back to 1999.

Gold sales are also robust. American Eagle Gold (22ct) and American Buffalo gold (24ct) shot up from 7,000 ounces and 1,000 ounces in February to 151,500 ounces and 47,500 ounces in March respectively. After a steady decline from the peak of the financial crisis to pre-financial crisis levels, both gold bullion coins had their third best month in a decade.

And American Eagle silver sales kept pace with its platinum and gold cousins. Sales leapt from 650,000 ounces in February to 5,482,500 ounces in March. They are the seventh highest in the history of the program, which began in 1986.

Most interestingly, many of these investors are individuals seeking a hedge to manage risk. They are not institutions; they typically don’t have sophisticated financial instruments like derivatives at their disposal. But they do have access to precious metal bullion coins.

Speculators are getting into the act too. Gold prices went from $1,471 in March to $1,726 in April. Silver prices went from $12.11 to $15.70 and platinum from $588 to $784 over the same period.

And so eagerly are they all buying that the existing supply of these bullion coins is not enough to meet demand. So the United States Mint has to mint new ones to fill orders from distributors who have no inventory left yet still have customers clamoring for more. As a result, the Mint is making bullion coins at a pace not seen since the Financial Crisis and the Great Recession.

Making matters more complicated, the Mint’s facility in West Point, NY is currently idled due to a COVID-19 cases in the surrounding area. It makes the majority of precious metal bullion coins.

The pressure for increased production won’t likely let up any time soon: Expect demand to continue at least until we reach something resembling normal. When we had the last economic crisis, namely the Financial Crisis and Great Recession, it took 11 years until precious metal bullion sales finally settled back to their pre-crisis levels.

Given that both fiscal and monetary stimulus already exceeds the last crisis in a fraction of the same time, precious metal bullion coins are likely to remain in investors’ portfolios for a long time to come.

Ed Moy served as the 38th Director of the United States Mint from 2006-2011.

Originally posted on Newsmax.com

We thought it was the perfect match; a mate we could build a bright future with. And for decades we cultivated this relationship with that hope in mind. This, it turns out, was a fantasy. In the harsh light of the morning after it’s clear we were seduced by a selfish and manipulative gold-digger.

It’s time to end the delusion and start a healthier and mutual relationship with someone else.

The “we” is of course America. And the unscrupulous opportunist, China. The new flame, India. Stated in less romantic terms, when the global economic reset begins after the coronavirus pandemic, the United States should make a pivot from the former to the latter.

Nothing can be clearer now than China’s disregard, not just for the U.S., but for the entire international community. From the murky origins of the coronavirus, to denying its human-to-human transmission, to restricting travel within China but not throughout the rest of the world, China’s Communist government is ground zero for this global mess.

But even before this crisis, the U.S. policy of increased economic cooperation with China was benefiting China more than the U.S. or the rest of the world.

It began as an opportunity for U.S. companies to reach a new market of 1.3 billion people and for the U.S. government to help shape, democratize and partner with an emerging first world power. Instead it has been mostly a one way street heading in an easterly direction.

China, for example, has limited opening its markets while simultaneously getting much greater access to the America’s. The flow of intellectual property favors China through their rules of engagement. And what IP they do not get legally, they get illegally from widely known theft – one in five American companies reported having their IP stolen by China in 2018.

And while the long term impact of trade and engagement has yet to be seen, in the short term, China has had a greater success pushing their world view on the United States than the United States have had on China. Just for example, LeBron James and the National Basketball Association’s brass sided with the authoritarian regime against Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protestors last year. Both the Association and its star have deep financial ties to China, especially via contracts with Nike.

The question currently asked is what can be done to change China’s behavior and motives. Is it a combination of carrots and sticks? Renegotiation of trade to equalize its benefits? The answer is yes and yes. But even if these make headway, unless its authoritarian communist government changes, there is only so much the U.S. can do.

However, there is another complimentary strategy: develop stronger ties with democratic India.

In some ways, India offers much of what China does. Its population of 1.3 billion is second only to China’s 1.4 billion for now but is expected to surpass China in this decade. It has a large and cheap labor force, with a robust technology sector. It is an emerging first world leader and a ripe market for American manufacturing and agriculture.

And in important ways, it offers advantages that China does not.

It is the most populous democracy in the world. That means it understands the free market. That means it also understands the private ownership of property and the rule of law, both which are necessary to make markets just and efficient. And it recognizes freedom of the press, human rights, and the importance of government chosen by and accountable to the people. And while it wants to lift up its citizens’ standard of living and international prestige, India has no designs on dominating and conquering the world.

Of course there are many ways that India falls short of its democratic ideals. And we as well. But the DNA of their form of government means that however imperfectly, they strive to better realize them, much like the U.S. has done for over two centuries. That same cannot be said of Communist China.

Indeed, the U.S. India relationship is already robust and growing: the U.S. recently overtook China as India’s top trading partner, accounting for nearly $88 billion. And India’s new tilt in economic policy, mandating that neighboring nations receive government approval prior to investing domestically, is largely viewed as a maneuver to decrease Chinese investment and increase American investment.

Sometimes it takes a terrible shock to force the reassessment of an unhealthy relationship. Or a global pandemic. Either way, though China will continue to be part of our lives, it is time the U.S. found another international object for its affections.

Ed Moy served as the 38th Director of the United States Mint from 2006-2011.

Originally posted on Newsmax.com

Supplies of physical silver, as well as gold, “remain well below extremely strong demand,” said Dana Samuelson, president of precious-metals dealer American Gold Exchange, Inc. “The fall in the underlying gold and silver prices, coupled with the potential recession due to the sharp economic downturn the coronavirus is causing has spurred the public to buy physical precious metals at the fastest pace in 10 years.”

Silver prices have seen sharp declines as “institutions have dumped silver for cash to pay for margin calls and other obligation, as well as hoarding cash,” said Edmund Moy, who was director of the U.S. Mint from 2006 to 2011.

He told MarketWatch that the rise in silver bullion demand is “just the beginning,” and is “primarily driven by individual investors who see silver as an affordable safen have and because of the lower prices, a buying opportunity.”

“Affordability is a major factor…silver appeals broadly to a less wealthy investors but a small change in prices is a larger percentage change for silver—and that upside attracts additional investors,” said Moy.

“Eventually, low silver prices will catch up to limited physical supply and increased physical demand,” he said. “And once the global economy begins to recover from this pandemic, silver demand from industry will recover too.”

But it’s silver’s industrial aspect that makes some analysts a bit more cautious.

Right now, silver futures look “ready to at least bounce in a significant way,” said Spina. However, “if there is another global market selloff, silver futures could get one more historic dump to [the] $10 area.”

“Much of the industrial demand news is not going to be good or great for silver for the coming weeks or months, so we need to get through this biggest contribution factor to silver,” he said. “Until then, investment demand is returning and if it keeps like this for several months and industrial [demand catches up]…it could really squeeze the price right back up and quickly!”

Originally Posted on Market Watch

Originally Posted on Jargal Defacto

Last year the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) extended its regulatory reach towards cryptocurrency tokens. Complete with a newly-minted cyber unit, the federal agency issued subpoenas, charged and fined numerous companies and established first-time guidelines for the exchange of cryptocurrencies.

Meanwhile, Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) failed at a staggering rate. Some, such as Pincoin and OneCoin, were outright scams. Others failed to bring a product or service to market, while others brought a product or service to market that no one wanted or had a flawed business model that caused them to go out of business. Still others were hacked. Total market cap of all crytpocurrencies crashed from $796 billion in January to $129 billion in December as thousands of crypto projects crashed and burned.

Even the granddaddy of all cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, suffered in 2018. Opening the year at $14,207, it soared to a high of $16,832, before plunging to $3,764 at the end of the year.

In sum: speculators were driven from the market, scams were discovered, and bad ideas, unsustainable platforms and not ready for prime time management went belly up. Meanwhile regulators got serious about cleaning up the cryptocurrency market, otherwise known as the “wild, wild west.”

But this bloodbath was a blessing in disguise. Considering it a chaffing of the wheat, clearing the way for sustainable cryptocurrency applications that solve real world problems. In this, it’s not unlike the .com bubble bursting almost 20 years ago.

A natural reaction to the massacre of 2018 will be the success of companies helmed by experienced management teams, dedicated to regulatory compliance, and operating with viable business models.

In fact, the cryptocurrency outlook is getting brighter each day. Particularly promising are big brands developing their own cryptocurrencies like what Facebook is exploring for WhatsApp users or Kodak’s KODAKCoin for use on its KODAKOne image rights management platform.  Central banks are also exploring coopting cryptocurrency characteristics into their fiat currency. Also gaining momentum are blockchain applications that help improve payment systems, supply chain management, digital identification, and registries for assets like land titles or cars.

The bear market for crypto last year does not mean an end to this promising technology. Rather, it represents a series of important growing pains that any emerging industry goes through on the way to mainstream adoption.

Originally posted on NewsMax.com

My premiums, since joining Obamacare in 2015, however, have skyrocketed. And of course I’m not the only one: the cost of coverage on the exchanges has risen in most markets, including double digit and even triple jumps in states such as Oklahoma and Arizona, while the number of available plans has shrunken dramatically.

I joined Obamacare out of necessity: it was my only option when I left my employer to become self-employed. And it’s been a costly one.

Initially I enrolled in a top of the line family plan for $1,100 per month. When the premiums for that plan jumped to $1,800 at the renewal, the Moys moved to the medium benefit family plan. This cost $1,400 in 2016 but climbed to $1,800 the following year, and leaped to $2,600 in 2018. Unable to afford this, we switched to the lowest benefit family plan, priced at $2,100. And then on cue, it shot up to $2,800 in 2018. Reviewing our options, there was only one plan priced lower, at $2,400. And if we stayed in the original top of the line plan, we would be paying $6,500 per month. That’s $78,000 a year just for health insurance.

This is simply unaffordable for our family and most others as well. Defenders of the ACA will point to steadying prices: Silver plans are set to decrease by a few dollars in the New Year but those covered will still pay more than $100 a month than last year. This is a far cry from President Obama’s promise that the Affordable Care Act would cut premiums up to $400 per month for the average American.

There are many reasons why the promised reduction in costs have never happened. First and foremost, the entire foundation of the ACA was built on the premise that the individual mandate and its accompanying fine would compel the young and healthy part of the population to buy health insurance on the exchanges. This, along with taxpayer support, would subsidize insurance for their sicker and higher risk, and consequently costlier to insure, counterparts.

But with lax enforcement, many of the subsidizers opted not to participate, while the subsidized signed up in droves. The result was that individual premiums like mine skyrocketed, health insurers lost money on the new enrollees and left Obamacare, and many of the exchanges went out of business. Families like mine were left with higher premiums and fewer choices, and taxpayers were left with a big bill.

The arrival of 2019 brings the mere formality of striking the individual mandate from law. The Congressional Budget Office predicted that this would mean three million less young and healthy Americans acquiring insurance through the exchanges. It remains to be seen if this number will materialize, but a very possible scenario is bigger health insurance premium increases, fewer insurers participating, more failed exchanges, resulting in the total collapse of what remains of the individual health insurance market.

Proponents of the ACA have said in the past that it’s not a left or right, Democrat or Republican issue. In many ways they are right: the failure of the law to achieve its goal of reducing health care costs is impacting all Americans. President Donald Trump and the incoming Congress should make fixing this mess their top New Year’s resolution.

Originally posted on NewsMax.com

Moy, known for favoring cryptocurrencies, “sound money” principles and free market economic policies via his Twitter account, was the U.S. Mint’s 38th director from 2006-11. The Mint is responsible for producing coinage for the U.S. and controlling the movement of bullion.

He told the story of how he became interested in bitcoin after his staff told him to read Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper, buying his first bitcoin in 2014.

His first impression was of being fascinated by the concept of transferring money over the internet without passing through proprietary third-party systems. Such a system would have the same impact on banks that email had on the post office, he said. Its peer-to-peer nature would also render it less vulnerable to theft — unlike credit cards, there was no centralized database for any hacker to gain access to.

Bitcoin also impressed him with its philosophy that money could come from a source other than government-sanctioned ones, thus breaking government’s monopoly on money supply and control over how it flowed.

That would make it useful in countries with strict capital controls like China and Venezuela, Moy said, also predicting that cryptocurrency use would grow faster in places where local fiat currencies were weak or untrusted.

Money Came First, Governments Came Later

That government should produce and control money was a relatively recent concept anyway, he said. Humans made the first coins from the gold-silver alloy electrum and then each metal separately, with governments only taking control later by stamping rulers’ faces on the coins and defining their authenticity.

Moy warned of two “disturbing trends” in modern economic policy beyond bad fiat currency management — the move towards cashless societies in Western countries, and experiments with negative interest rates. The former enables the latter by creating money that cannot be removed from centralized bank accounts, allowing governments to remove funds from the public’s savings at will.

A policy that took money from customers’ account to prop up the banking system in Cyprus was the catalyst for mainstream bitcoin awareness, Moy said. The 2013 financial crisis in that country marked the first well-publicized spike in BTC price (to just under $300 USD), setting the scene for future bull runs to ever-higher values.

“Cryptocurrency gives freedom back to the people again,” he said. He said the number of cryptocurrencies available would grow and would compete with the world’s fiat currencies, as well as offering other functions like investment (ICOs) and securities.

The Government Side: ‘We Discuss This Issue Day and Night’

Also speaking at the J-CPAC* blockchain session were member of Japan’s House of Representatives and the government’s virtual currency subcommittee Naokazu Takemoto, and Gen Matsuda, CEO of OKWAVE, one of Japan’s largest Q&A social communities and blockchain services firm.

The subcommittee, which now has over 70 members…

Read the full article at bitsonline.com

“The sellout of Silver Eagles implies that demand for physical [silver] has recently been increasing,” says Chris Gaffney, president of World Markets at TIAA Bank. “With Silver Eagles being the most popular bullion coin available, this is a good indicator of physical demand,” he adds, and higher demand “makes sense,” given that prices are nearing multiyear lows again.

Front-month September silver futures SIU8, -0.19%  settled at $14.042 an ounce on the Comex Friday, the lowest level since Jan. 15, 2016. The most-active December contract SIZ8, -0.37%  settled at $14.142 Friday, with the contract down about 19% year to date.

The mint announced on Sept. 6 that it is producing additional coins to restock its depleted inventory. “The U.S. Mint and the authorized dealer network were caught off guard as bargain-hunting physical buyers returned to the market ahead of $14” an ounce, says Peter Grant, vice president of Chicago-based Zaner Metals. He sees that as a “glimmer of stronger investment demand, but not a big deal in the overall context of the dominant downtrend.”

Through August, this year’s sales of Silver Eagles totaled 10.275 million ounces, the mint reports. The full-year figure is likely to come in well below 2017’s 18.065 million.

Edmund Moy, director of the U.S. Mint from 2006 to 2011, says the recent sellout of the 2018 coins from strong growth in demand was unusual. He adds that sellouts happened much more frequently during the financial crisis of 2007-2009 and the Great Recession, which began in late 2009. Back then, the mint had a hard time meeting surging demand, as some worried investors sought refuge in precious metals.

Moy notes that sales peaked at 47 million ounces in 2015, but that this year’s are still running above the 10 million-ounce annual totals seen before the financial crisis and Great Recession. He expects sales to end the year at 11 million or 12 million ounces.

Overall physical demand for silver—including metal used in jewelry and other commercial items and processes, as well as coins—slid to 1.018 billion ounces in 2017 from 2016’s 1.041 billion. Nonetheless, there was still was a supply deficit of 26 million ounces last year, the fifth straight annual shortfall, according to the Silver Institute.

The U.S. Mint says that increased demand was behind the Silver Eagle sellout. Moy says the “surge was likely caused by silver speculators spurred by the gold/silver ratio,” which currently stands at around 1 to 85, based on Tuesday’s settlements. That means it took about 85 ounces of silver at $14.15 to buy one ounce of gold at just over $1,202. The historical norm is 1 to 50, “which means gold is overpriced or silver is underpriced,” Moy observes. “Speculators are betting that silver is underpriced.”

Analysts attribute the weakness in silver prices to several factors.

“A continued strong dollar trend, record-high equity markets, and a rising-rate environment here in the U.S. have combined to keep precious-metals prices in check this year,” says Gaffney. “Aggressive short selling in paper markets [such as futures], due to a higher dollar, added to the drop in prices.”

Global trade tensions probably will have a big influence on silver, as the “general viewpoint is that the proposal of increased tariffs against Chinese imports will be worse for China than the U.S.,” he says. This should aid “the dollar and will put additional pressure on the metal.”

In any case, at about $14 an ounce, silver was bound to attract more buyers. It’s “now very undervalued, relative to stocks, bonds, and, indeed, gold,” maintains Mark O’Byrne, research director at precious metals brokerage GoldCore in Dublin, which has seen the amount of the metal clients have stored grow 24% this year.

“We believe that we are on the verge of another financial crisis, likely due to contagion among European banks, which will impact risk assets,” he warns, adding that this should lead to “significant hedging and investment demand for both gold and silver.”

Originally posted at MarketWatch.com

“It’s gold for nerds.” —Stephen Colbert, Comedian

“Bitcoin will do to banks what email did to the postal industry.” —Rick Falkvinge, Founder of the Swedish pirate party

“Bitcoin is a technological tour de force.” —Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, investor, and philanthropist

“Every informed person needs to know about Bitcoin because it might be one of the world’s most important developments.” —Leon Luow, Nobel Peace Prize nominee

“Bitcoin is the most important invention in the history of the world since the Internet.”—Roger Ver, Bitcoin angel investor, and evangelist

“Bitcoin, and the ideas behind it, will be a disrupter to the traditional notions of currency. In the end, currency will be better for it.”—Edmund Moy, 38th Director of the United States Mint

“Stay away from it. It’s a mirage, basically. In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say almost with certainty that they will come to a bad ending.”—Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

Read more great quotes and the full article at Forbes.com

With midterm congressional elections approaching, it’s worth asking candidate Ronald Reagan’s famous question of incumbent President Jimmy Carter, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

For many Americans in 1980, the answer was no. Under the Carter administration, inflation worsened to 14.76% and unemployment hit 6.3%. The government failed to revive an ailing economy, impacting citizens where it hurt the most: their wallets. The Republican challenger crushed the Democratic incumbent on November 4^th.

Several decades later in the weeks leading up to the 2014 midterm, President Barack Obama cribbed his predecessor’s question, asking if voters were better off than they were before he took office. The economy was much improved – for Wall Street rather than Main Street. Voters answered no, handing control of Congress over to the GOP.

Now, four years later, on the eve of another midterm, are Americans better off now, in 2018, than they were in 2016? Nearly every indicator, economic and otherwise, points to yes. But good luck hearing that on the news.

America’s economy has added 3.2 million jobs since January 2017. Unemployment sunk from 4.8% at the end of Obama’s second term to an 18 year low of 3.8%. But wait, there’s more. Unemployment for African, Asian, and Hispanic and female Americans is at record or decade-long lows. A record 155 million Americans are now working, after dropping out of the workforce in droves during the Obama years.

Today, there are 6.7 million new job openings, exceeding the number of job seekers for the first time. Wages, declining during the Obama presidency, are once again growing. Though the pace could be even faster, wages grew last month by 1.6 percent, the biggest increase so far this year. And with the recent tax reform, taxpaying Americans are keeping more of their paychecks.

In 2018’s second quarter, economic growth is chugging along at nearly 4 percent GDP growth, according to JPMorgan. That’s a quicker clip than the 1.6 percent growth that closed out 2016 and the new normal of 2% that Obama claimed Americans should accept.

This is emboldening consumers: retail sales are up nearly 6.6 percent from the summer of 2017. Consumer sentiment, surging since Trump took office, has taken a hit due to potential trade wars brought on by tariffs. Still, even at 97 percent, it’s outpacing the 87.20 of October 2016, though it’s a drop from the high of 101.40 from March of this year.

A happy result of this economic news: the number of Americans seeking assistance through the Social Security Administration is now less than 1.5 million. This trend — the number is the lowest since 2002 — is helping the program avoid insolvency for the moment, with Washington predicting it will run out of money in 2032 rather than the previously estimated 2023.

Meanwhile, the amount of Americans reliant on food stamps via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, fell to an eight year low earlier this spring, with 40,083,954 enrollees.

True, there have been distractions and dramas, but when it comes the things that impact most Americans, like jobs, a growing economy, and even national security, (ISIS, after all, has been decimated by a newly empowered American military) – Donald Trump has delivered.

Less than two years into his presidency, what was a slow and halting recovery under Obama, has transformed into a robust economy. Based on all of this, yes, Americans are better off now than they were two years ago. Even if reporters won’t report it, Americans don’t need the news to tell them what they experience every day.

And in response to those reporters, one can only paraphrase another Reagan line from his debate with Jimmy Carter. There they go again.

Originally Posted on NewsMax.com