You could be running out of time to buy gold

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

By David Galland in Casey's Daily Dispatch:

While I remain highly suspicious of the wildly gyrating stock market, it is increasingly clear that we are witnessing the honest-to-goodness gold rush we have been forecasting since 2000 (and before. Though nothing goes straight up, and it wouldn't surprise me to see gold retest the $1,000 mark - it increasingly appears that that is the new floor for gold. Personally, the next level I’m looking to is $1,250 as that is roughly equivalent to where the gold stocks went hyperbolic in the gold bull market of the 1970s.

Regardless, with Obama's Reign of Error in full sway, a healthy measure of gold clearly belongs in every portfolio. On that topic, even the New York Times is now getting into the picture, with an article on Friday titled "Inside the Global Gold Frenzy." 

While the article provides a lot of supporting commentary about why big and small investors are rushing into gold, a couple of paragraphs struck a cautionary note for me. I think you'll understand why when you read them…

In addition to high anxiety about the future, recent political trends may also be playing a part in the global gold fever. With a crackdown on tax havens worldwide and Swiss bankers handing over the names of wealthy American clients to authorities, some experts say rich people now prefer an investment that can easily be hidden from the prying eyes of tax collectors.

"In Europe, people want physical gold to store themselves, with no documents," said Bernhard Schnellmann, director for precious-metal services at Argor-Heraeus. Often, the company doesn’t know the ultimate destination of the bars it makes, only the identity of the bank in Zurich or London that is handling the order.

As you don't need me to tell you, this is exactly the kind of red meat that politicians like to sink their teeth in when it comes to drafting new regulations designed to corral the income-earning. You can almost hear the brain cells of some bright young congressional aide as he concocts a new bit of legislation to pass across to the boss over a long lunch down at the Grill. At the least, he will propose, gold purchasers/owners should be made to reveal themselves. But maybe they can also be made to pay a special tax of some sort? And if down the road, push comes to shove, a database of who owns the stuff could be very useful in making them hand the stuff over - "in the national interest"?

To which the congressman would lay a fatherly hand on the bright young aide's shoulder and murmur, "Good idea. Why don’t you draft it up?" before giving the waiter the familiar signal for another round to celebrate the moment.

Keep your ear to the ground, as will we.