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India's love affair with gold is well-understood in Asia but completely misunderstood in the West — a phenomenon we have always found fascinating — but recently, as Grant Williams exclaims, it has become abundantly clear that this disconnect is widening almost daily as the Western fixation with 'The Gold Price' and the Eastern obsession with 'The Price of Gold' take ever more divergent paths…

After the recent frenzied activity at the Reserve Bank of India (which, if it had taken place in the USA, would absolutely have been labeled "The War on Gold" by CNN) as they tried every means possible to stop Indian citizens from buying gold (something I documented in "Never The Twain", TTMYGH August 27 2013), I set about thinking why it is that attitudes in the opposing hemispheres are so different regarding the yellow metal.

As I ruminated, a good friend of mine, who has forgotten more about gold than most will ever know, pointed me towards the Hindu Business Line; and there I stumbled upon a couple of pieces by S. Gurumurthy which, rather conveniently, do a lot of the heavy lifting for me.

In the first piece, entitled "Gold: Villain or Saviour?", S. tackles the stark disparity between economists' views of the "barbaric [sic] relic" and the views of the ordinary Indian citizen. And he does so beautifully:

(Hindu Business Line): Modern economists and the Indian people seem to operate on two different paradigms with regard to gold. In the modern West, gold is more a state asset than a private possession. Gold constitutes just three per cent of family wealth there, but a third in India. Western states, socialist or capitalist, expropriated all private gold during the last century. Even the liberal US outlawed private gold in 1936 and built official gold reserves of over 20,000 tonnes by 1950.

 

Modern economics views gold as an uneconomic, wasteful, private investment. But traditionally, in India, gold has been the preferred asset of the rural masses who hold 70 per cent of the nation's stocks. Indian gold habits clearly mock at modern economic theories.

So far, so good. Now at this point S. begins laying down a few facts and figures, and as he does so, the clouds surrounding the question of how important gold is to the average Indian quickly start to evaporate:

Market Oracle, a UK-based market analysis and forecasting online publication, captures the relation between India and gold thus: Indians own 20,000 tonnes of gold worth $1 trillion — almost half of India's GDP. For Indians, gold is not just money or asset; it ensures the financial security and stability of families. It has religious overtones. More than a commodity or money, it is integral to the warp and weft of family life. Investments in gold and jewelry are indistinguishable. Jewelry is the working capital of families; families collateralize it for commercial borrowing.

 

Some 13 per cent of Indian families, more from rural areas, borrow against gold as collateral; while rural India borrows from the unorganized financial sector, urbanites access bank loans.

 

The authors of Market Oracle seem to understand India's family-gold nexus better than Indian policymakers. Yet, despite such a paradigmatic difference, economic laws on gold based on the Western experience are continuously being tried out in India. Result: the establishment hates what the people love.

Do Indian policy makers not understand "India's family-gold nexus"? Of COURSE they do — but gold is the only refuge from inflation for the Indian population; something that just isn't acceptable to "The Establishment", because India's national debt has been run up by politicians amidst a corrupt and totally inefficient bureaucracy, whilst Indian citizens have patiently and painstakingly accumulated real wealth a gram at a time over many centuries. They are not about to give that up.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) set up a working group to investigate what every one of its members already knew instinctively (yet more taxpayer money being put to good use), and the conclusion they reached after a year's expensive extensive study was this:

(Reserve Bank of India): Demand for gold appears to be autonomous and a function of several influences and factors in India and may not be strictly amenable to policy changes. Supply of gold, through organised channels can be constricted, but buyers may take recourse to unauthorised channels to buy gold. The share of banks in importing gold has already been on decline over the years. Since it is difficult to vary the demand for gold the policy focus will have to be directed to (i) design and offer gold investors, alternative instruments that may fetch positive returns with a flexibility of liquidity; and (ii) increased unlocking of the hidden value locked in idle gold stocks through increased monetisation of gold. In this context encouraging gold jewellery loans from Banks and NBFCs, ensuring customer protection of borrowers and changes in the practices of NBFCs is desirable.

Brilliant! Welcome back, Captain Obvious!

Seriously, though, this is perhaps the most ludicrous government-funded study since US$3 million was spent on helping the National Science Foundation study shrimp running on a treadmill (no, really).

…

Westerners aren't used to the kind of inflation levels, government confiscation, and currency volatility so common in places like India; and so the need to own gold as protection isn't fully appreciated in the West.

Westerners pay lip service to gold's being "an inflation hedge" or "a currency" or "a safe asset", but these terms are used in an extremely abstract way by the vast majority of the investing public, who see gold as mostly just another trading vehicle. Yes, there are Western investors who have a deeper understanding of the reasons for owning physical gold, but they are a tiny minority.

In short, Asians like their gold to be heavy, shiny, and made of … well, gold.

This massive disparity in appetite for "placeholder gold" is just one side of the coin, however; and India is just one of the Eastern countries that has been soaking up copious amounts of physical gold in recent months.

…

That is a twelve-fold increase in bullion traffic between the primary vault in London and the major refineries in Switzerland.

Extraordinary.

Now, we don't know with absolute certainty where that gold is ultimately bound — but we know it isn't Switzerland. If we throw into the mix the widely covered movement of gold into China through HK, a picture begins to emerge of an incredible wave of physical metal heading from West to East, even as the price continues to languish.

One of the primary sources of supply in this steady transfer of physical bullion has been the GLD warehouse. I've touched on the subject of the incredible vanishing ETF gold holdings before, but it's worth revisiting the phenomenon and reminding readers of a chart I included in the July 16th edition of Things That Make You Go Hmmm…, entitled "What If?":

The gold in London is heading somewhere — and it's heading there via Switzerland, by the looks of it.

…

The chart below shows seasonal gold price performance since 1969. (Although the data stops at 2010, so that there are a couple of down years missing, the pattern is the important thing here.) I have laid the chart out from September to August to better illustrate the phase we are moving into.

October has traditionally been the weakest month of the year, while November through January has been the strongest period:

So, how does this all play out?

Well, I've been watching this situation unfold through most of this past year with an increasingly bemused look on my face, because the numbers just don't add up. But so far, despite clear evidence of massive demand for physical gold, "The Gold Price" has continued to trade poorly. However, the longer this situation persists, the more definitely it will resolve itself; and it's very hard to see how that resolution ends in anything but higher prices.

Demand levels from Asia continue to soar while production increases just a couple of percent each year; and leaving aside Indian festivals and increasing central bank purchases, the fiat alternative to gold bullion — the US dollar — is coming under renewed pressure in the wake of the Taper That Never Was and the appointment of Janet Yellen as Ben Bernanke's successor.

…

But, like the infatuation America had with the Monkees in 1967, this fascination with the fiat dollar will prove to be nothing more than a passing fad; and one day — perhaps soon — the citizens of the West will, like their cousins in Asia and the Indian subcontinent, realize that there really is no alternative to sound money.

The only problem is, when the realization finally dawns, where will all the gold be?

 

Full Grant Williams letter below:

TTMYGH – Let It Be Fiat Monkees & Golden Beatles.pdf

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/QaSa0Mi1L2w/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by James E. Miller of The Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada,

“If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

These words, spoken by U.S. President Barack Obama in various forms and iterations, have become a running joke amidst the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. All across the country, hundreds of thousands of citizens are receiving cancellation notices in the mail. The stringent requirements for insurance plans under the new edict are curtailing many individual policies. A simpleton can grasp the economics: you prohibit something, it goes away. And yet, for years prior, the White House ignored the oncoming train and is now slowly inching away from the wreckage.

This was not the unforeseen consequence of good-intentioned legislation. According to an investigative report from NBC, the Obama Administration was fully aware of the result its health care bill would have on the marketplace for insurance. A provision written in the original version of the law would have allowed for the grandfathering of existing plans that did not meet the new standards. However, the Department of Health and Human Services rewrote the stipulation to radically narrow the rule, so that an estimated “40 to 67 percent of customers will not be able to keep their policy.” Not one to be a wet blanket, President Obama continued to assuage the public and reassure everyone that their preferred insurance policy would not being going away.

This was a lie. And not one kept close-to-the-chest by a few high-level officials. House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer admitted that many in his party knew “there would be some policies that would not qualify and therefore people would be required to get more extensive coverage.” A presidential election and a litany of Senate seats were won based on the falsehood that America’s health insurance market would not be totally disturbed.

The admission of guilt may have ramifications for supporters of big government. In the short term, it undermines the President and the promises he makes going into the future. But voters are fickle and have a memory prone to lapses. When the subsidies start flowing, they will begin to smile again. The balancing act will be whether the boost in tax benefits outweighs being forced to pay a higher cost for what was once a cheaper product. Those who are net beneficiaries will be content while the losers may sulk but will ultimately accept the “new normal.”

The deceit behind ObamaCare is nothing new in the practice of governing. The state’s monopoly power makes it a natural target of suspicion. Even the most ardent worshiper of socialism is still wary that his nation’s controllers will turn on him. He keeps an ear out for fiction spun by his rulers but will not question larger injustice as long as he is fed well enough. Even with the preponderance of lies, there is still the naive hope “good folks” will soon come along who have a deep aversion to dishonesty. The white knight never arrives, but optimism prevails.

The happy voter is the one who refuses to grasp the obvious point that government serves as a vehicle for the worst in society to play out their violent fantasies. As Hayek put it, “the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful” in operating the machinery of total intimidation. It is always from the throne of authority that the worst deeds are accomplished. This includes mass aggression against property as well as the truth. The productive capacity of society is decimated enough by government’s necessarily parasitical operation; the public’s concept of verity is challenged by the various ministries of agitprop that disguise their actions as beneficial rather than schemes of plunder.

The false characterization needed to sustain Obama’s signature piece of legislation was another variation of Plato’s noble lie. In his widely heralded Republic, the classical philosopher wrote on the necessity of the few lording over the many to achieve harmonious social relationships. These “philosopher-kings” could govern best by spreading falsities that would have the “good effect” of making the underlings “more inclined to care for the state and one another.” One could call this a textbook lesson in the art of ruling over a dim and detached populace.

Perhaps the best exponent of the noble lie was the late, neoconservative king Irving Kristol, who held political theorist Leo Strauss as a strong intellectual influence. Kristol affirmed what many thinkers before him found when it comes to truth:

“There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.”

In many ways, this statement is completely accurate. In a democracy, the people must be corralled. They must get behind measures that ordinarily wouldn’t receive a lick of support outside of a few special interests. The naked, unvarnished truth is a dangerous weapon against tyranny. So it must be distorted to fit the agenda of collectivists, statists, dictators, and despots. Anything will do to assure for maximum support with minimum resistance.

Had President Obama been upfront about the full ramifications of his health care edict, the public may have turned. It’s one thing to apply for and receive a subsidy. It’s another to disrupt lives and force people to take action they otherwise wouldn’t. Outside disturbances are a nuisance to common folks trying to make the best go at their lives. Like a dog with its tail between its legs, the Administration is now backtracking on its own selling point. In a recent press hearing, White House spokesman Jay Carney, the quivering apparatchik of social democracy, was quick to ignore past statements and highlight the benefits of the health care bill. He told Fox News correspondent Ed Henry,

Well, let’s just be clear, what the President said and what everybody said all along was that there were going to be changes under brought about by the Affordable Care Act that create minimum standards of coverage — minimum services that every insurance plan has to provide.

So goes the guarantee of “if you like it, you can keep it.” As progressive columnist Clarence Page admitted to radio host Hugh Hewitt, it was “one of those political lies, you know.” The promise will eventually find itself lodged somewhere in the memory hole along with the guarantee of liberty in a security state. The state itself is a great lie. It purports to be the great savior of mankind. The political class likens itself to the great deliverance from struggle and despair. The reality ends up not as rosy.

Kristol was right on one thing: not everyone accepts the truth. They will self-deceive to feel comfortable in their own skin. It is this weakness the politician will manipulate for his own aggrandizement. Honesty and truth are always a virtue. And that’s why they are wholly absent from the halls of power.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/5wJeBBuacIw/story01.htm Tyler Durden