Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs has recently reiterated its negative view on gold, which it has held for the past year. However, it is now doubling down on this view and advising clients to actually go short the metal. Jeff Currie, head of commodity research at Goldman noted “Our target is really driven by the view that we think that the Fed will ultimately be the dominate force here and put more downward pressure [on prices]”.
While I am in agreement with Goldman that the Fed will be the dominant force behind the price of gold, I believe the central bank will soon be back into the QE business, rather than raising interest rates and crushing the dollar price of gold.
Here’s why:Â
Since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, gold has made an impressive move upward from its fixed price of $32 an ounce, to where it sits now around $1,250. But few seem to grasp what actually causes gold to move higher. An increase in the gold prices occurs when the market becomes convinced that a currency will lose its purchasing power due to central bank-induced money supply growth and real interest rates that have been forced into negative territory. And nothing convinces a market more of a rising gold price than when debt and deficits explode.
But while the parabolic move higher in gold from 2009 to 2011 did contain a period of low nominal interest rates, real rates did not fall. And, the surging gold price was not accompanied by a growing money supply either. In fact, the growth rate of M3 plummeted during 2009 thru 2010—it wasn’t until 2011 that the money supply rebounded. So what would explain the steady move in gold from $800 to $1,900 per ounce during that time period? The gold price simply got ahead of itself because the market feared that out of control deficits would force the Federal Reserve into an unending cycle of debt monetization, which would engender a protracted period of negative real interest rates, booming money supply growth and inflation.Â
