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Transcript
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Greetings and thank you for joining me at FutureMoneyTrends.com. I am here with Andy Hoffman, director of marketing for Miles Franklin. He is a chartered financial analyst and somebody with a long history of experience in the financial markets. Andy, thank you so much for joining us
Andy Hoffman: Always a pleasure to be here, Daniel.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Andy, before I started our interview I just wanted to let our members know, and anyone who’s listening to this interview, you are offering for right now, for anybody listening to this, a $1000 purchase or more free shipping on Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium. Is that correct?
Andy Hoffman: Absolutely, any order above $1000FutureMoneyTrends.com: Awesome, thank you so much. Alright, well Andy let’s start off with Janet Yellen. She’s going to be our new Federal Reserve Chairman. I have seen in the media, the initial reports, when they first started talking about her, that she was almost like this reluctant Federal Reserve economist who was worried about the housing sector. And then in ’09 she wanted to go even more heavy with the Q.E. And they’re almost kind of making it sound like she almost forecast the housing boom. I know you’ve probably looked in to her a lot more. What are we to make of this person, Janette Yellen, first as an individual and then kind of compared to what we’ve seen with Bernanke?
Andy Hoffman: Well if anyone has any questions about what she’s done in the past, just go to Peter Shift’s recent video. He actually did two videos debunking all the BS about her being a hawk. I mean, she was clueless from the beginning and she’s voted for every money printing plan that’s been proposed for her entire time. She’s been with the Fed for two decades now and she’s not notable for anything except for voting yes on everything. In fact, the only thing I can recall her doing that was notable was last year she actually said “You know, we have this dual mandate of inflation control and maximum unemployment,” which of course are paradoxical to each other, “But I would ignore the inflation part if it meant getting employment higher.” So basically, to me she’s there because she’s the ultimate party line person. She’s there to print money just as Bernanke did and what she said in her statement last week on the hill as basically quote “The only way to get to more normal policy in the future is to support the recovery now,” which means more QE in. I assure you, if anything it’s only going to get larger.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: You know Andy, the QE isn’t getting any results. Do you think Janet Yellen and these people actually, do you think they really believe that we just need more QE? Or do they know that this is just helping the banks unload bad debt.
Andy Hoffman: Well that’s always the question. You know, when you think of Atlas Shrugged, about a world where people have been brainwashed to the point where they don’t know reality anymore. You know, to the supposedly smartest people, she went to Harvard, she’s been a professor and a banker all these years. Is she really that dumb? To realise that what they’ve done has made things much worse? All we’ve seen is inflation and debt and weak economic results. And the highest and the lowest layer of participation rates since the 70s, and real wages haven’t changed since the 70s? I mean does she not see that? It’s hard to tell, but part of me really thinks they have been brainwashed to the point where they truly believe what they say.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Andy, with DOW 1600 and Bitcoin 900 or 600 where it is today, a lot of investors, they’re making a lot of money in other things. How is demand for Gold right now, with the physical price and the paper price, both down pretty significantly from the high?
Andy Hoffman: Yeah, I mean Silver’s down 60% from its highs and Gold is down close to 40% But what has happened since those times? I mean, you’re talking about since 2011, we’ve added three trillion in overt debt. The labor participation rate has plummeted. Worldwide we’ve seen the GDP plummeting. If we use real numbers, our numbers which are already the second worst decade for GDP growth ever. If we used real numbers like they use in Japan and Europe it would be even worse. So clearly it’s a manipulation to keep the price down as they keep printing money. But what have we seen in the physical world? I mean it’s a tale of two cities. If you talk about the West versus the East, in the West business has been down this year, there’s no doubt. The interesting thing is that U.S. Mint sales of Silver Eagles have already surpassed 2011 highs and we’re already in November, which should show you clearly someone is buying. I suspect it’s the Chinese and the Easterners who are buying. If you look in the Easter hemisphere, if we were working there right now business would be booming. I mean Chinese demand, just the import side, it has been double last year’s record level. And notwithstanding the attempts to keep the price of buying down in India, we’re going to see record Silver imports and very high Gold imports. So its a tale of two cities and right now people aren’t focused on Gold and Silver in America because they’ve been hit so hard. But the reasons to own them have never been stronger, and of course now that both are trading well below, not below but well below the cost of production, we’re going to see massive production cuts. And remember if you ask, what’s the demand been like? Well if you look at the comment, where they’ve lost 80% of their registered inventory since prices started getting smashed in April, and both Gold and Silver have less than a billion dollars of registered inventory, clearly someone is buying the real thing.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: What is the state of the mining sector? You brought up that they’re both below the cost of production, what is the all-in cost right now? And then are we seeing any mines shut down? ‘Cause I know that obviously the exploration has almost come to a halt for most companies.
Andy Hoffman: Well yeah, well capital expenditures, I mean all you have to do is look at the major miners to see that they are massively cutting, I’m talking about Anglo Gold, Barick just had to raisee $3 billion at discount prices just to survive and I predicted for some time that they were on the verge of bankruptcy. And if it weren’t for that deal they probably would be headed that way right now. Either way they’ve lost all their major growth projects, like Pascua-Lama, et cetera so there’s no growth there at all. Are we at the point where mines are being shut down by the majors? I haven’t seen that yet, but as you said there’s been no exploration. The junior sector hasn’t found anything in years, let alone anything that’s been moved closer to the production phase meaningfully. So I believe that we’re going to see significant production declines in the coming years.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: you know, with Europe in recession the U.S is in this depression that could have another leg down very soon. A normal business cycle or cycle would show that we would go in to another recession soon. And China is somewhat slowing down. My question is, on silver, if we see an official recession acknowledged by everyone in the U.S and then Europe, you’ve got China slowing down, is silver going to be able to hold at twenty or are we looking at a lot lower of a silver price just because of the industry demand, would fall?
Andy Hoffman: Well industry demand is, first of all, most of it is indispensable. It’s small amounts of it type of thing that people don’t stop buying. But I think, yes industry demand does take up a significant amount of production. But the fact is the industrial demand is not what has moved the price over the past decade. And keep in mind five or six years ago the biggest use of silver was the photography industry and there is no such thing as photography anymore. The fact is it’s all been on the investment side and that’s just been a good source of propaganda over the years. You know that silver should go down when the economy goes down. Well, if it should go down when it goes down, the economy is so rosy right now, the DOW is at 1600, then why wouldn’t it be going up? The fact is it’s at basically correlation to gold and silver for years, and monetary demand is what drives, and the gold price is what moves it directionally. So, if we had, if the government actually, things were actually so bad that even their rigged numbers, they couldn’t get to be positive, I would guess that we would be well in to QE 5 at the point. And at some point when you’re trading below the cost of production, the physical demand worldwide, specifically in the eastern hemisphere is surging, I mean something has to give. Especially when you have very little inventory sitting on the comet.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Ya, so which that leads me to the cartel. You’ve stated in the previous interviews that they’re kind of on their last leg gasping for air. Have you seen any signs that you can update us on that possibly they might be in a position where they might lose all out control.
Andy Hoffman: Well, I mean look. You can never see what’s going on behind the scenes and a lot of what they publish, such as the C.O.T’s are a lie. I mean there’s now a disclaimer in the C.O.T’s that’s been there since June that says “we can’t guarantee that that’s true.” And by the way, a major plunge in that inventory after that disclaimer came out. The only thing that I can point to is things like that. The fact that the price of G.L.D has fallen and the inventory of G.L.D has fallen even more. The fact that the price of gold has fallen in the inventory of the Comex registered inventory has gone to almost zero. I mean, people are buying left and right and I mean all you have to do is look at those Chinese imports to know where the gold is going. Look at the missing gold in London, look at the massive imports from London to Switzerland, and then on to Hong Kong. I mean it’s pretty obvious where the gold is going. And then of course you have, you know earlier this year the Germans said they want their gold. It’ll take seven years to get 300 tonnes. It’s clearly not there, the physical that’s needed to keep this game going on much longer. But how much longer? I don’t know, a year, a month, two weeks? I don’t know. I mean, but the point is, when you see the physical drain and the premiums. I mean look at India, the premiums their paying 22% over spot rate now. So the signs are there but there’s no way of knowing how far this will go.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Um, I recently saw something that MOSCA was going to come out with some type of physical exchange. Are you aware of anything like that?Andy Hoffman: Ya I mean, there’s these things that come out all the time like that. I mean Shanghai is a major exchange, Russia is going to do the same thing. The fact is though that we still see the pricing of gold, even all the buying is in the East. The pricing, the paper market occurs here. And I point to, I mentioned years ago, 2:15AM, that’s the opening of the London pre-market. That’s the equivalent of the 7AM here in New York for the New York pre-market. We’ve now had on 90% of the trading days for the past six months, gold just got attacked there after rising in Asia all night. So still they are able to control the price in this paper market. And, but how much longer when there’s so little physical there, that’s supporting that trading.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Ya, Andy. Since our last interview Bitcoin’s gone wild, and I want to know, you know you’ve been a chartered financial analyst, and somebody with so much experience. And obviously you’re well in to the honest money camp. You got any updated views for us on Bitcoin or anybody that you’ve talked with?Andy Hoffman: Well I don’t think the fiat helped me too much with Bitcoin. It wasn’t around when I got it in the 90s. But look, I remember the interview we had. It was around April 6th or 7th, and what I said at the time was I’m not judging it, I’m saying it appears to me more and more of an investment than money. It doesn’t have the definition of money and, at the time by the way, I said it looks to me like the internet stocks. Because I’m getting e-mails constantly and sure enough six hours later it had it’s big crash. Now this time around I wrote two weeks ago, when it was about 270, I said “it doesn’t feel like the internet, because no one is e-mailing me about it,” and sure enough it took off. But the fact is, Bitcoin, no matter how you slice it, no matter how much people want to tell you the world is changing and you need to change with it, it’s still just a fiat currency that’s based on nothing. And for anyone to believe that 5000 years of human history in which gold and silver have been the only substances that have had the definitional properties, and I’m not just saying “well, people owned gold then so they should own it now.” I’m saying by definition they’re a stored value, they’re scarce, they’re fungible, they’re universally understood. I mean, that’s why they’re money. Bitcoin is a technology. And you know, you need the internet to stay up and you need governments like China or the United States to not make bans on them or hack them or all kinds of things. And the fact is again that yes there is a small cost of production if you have to get some computers, but it’s not like the cost of production of gold. I assure you its not $900 and up for a coin. The fact that the price of a Bitcoin a couple of days ago was almost worth an ounce of gold shows you how silly this paper world has gotten, where so much money is printed that it’s just flowing in to everything financial. And of course, if gold and silver weren’t being stepped on the neck 24 hours a day right now they’d be doing the exact same thing. But again, for people who own it, you have to realize that one, if you own the physical stuff, you still have your ounces, they aren’t going anywhere. And B, the more that they keep the prices down, the less supply that there will be down here.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Yeah, it is interesting what you were saying about the silver eagles. And now, can you still buy physical silver eagles right now?Andy Hoffman: Yes, you can. I mean they’ll have their annual shut down at the U.S mint for maintenance and getting ready for the next year, but you can still buy them at reasonable premiums. But the fact is, if someone comes to you, if someone went to you and you know what, the price of silver went to fifty bucks in 2011 under inflationary, it was inflation that was… the debt ceiling and all that kind of stuff, there was a crisis. And here we are two years later, where the global economies are much worse. Unemployment is worse, inflation is worse, I mean all these things are much worse and demand for silver eagles is at an all-time, even higher than 2011, and even silver in India, the largest consumer, is higher than 2011, would you believe that the price would be down 30%? of course not. The point is that they are being held down in a manner which even I after eleven and a half years of watching every day am in awe watching, it’s gotten so blatant.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: You know, Andy, are you seeing any signs of a bottom, as far as our, you’ve got people calling you or e-mailing you to throw in the towel? One of the signs that I always like, you know very disappointed to see, but I was like maybe this means the bottom, I’ve recently seen several YouTube videos of gold bugs attacking each other. Where you know major people in the precious metals industry turning on each other. And it’s a very sad thing to see, but I was like well maybe this is the bottom. Maybe this is the bottom when the gold gurus start to attack each other. Are you seeing the same thing?Andy Hoffman: Well I work in the physical world. I mean, our blog, the Miles Franklin blog, I mean it’s growing in popularity every day which should tell you something. I mean, I get pretty much zero negative e-mail or comments, and when I put videos up it’s pretty much all positive comments, because I’m not telling people the price is going to do x tomorrow. And you know that’s different when you’re losing money than when you’re having coins just sitting there. So I don’t see it in the physical world, that’s for sure, and I certainly I don’t see phone calls to me indicating either way. It’s not like people, look people don’t throw in the towel on coin. They throw in the towel when they’re losing money like if the own G.L.D. And even if they’re doing that it doesn’t mean anything to me, because if the cartel is going to keep attacking the prices. Look, I mean Goldman Sachs said it’s a slam dunk to 1050 once the government resolves it’s budget issues and debt ceiling issues. Well, they didn’t resolve anything. They literally differed the debt ceilings February 7th and gave Obama the power to veto any legislation that tries to cap on that ceiling, which now has to be overturned, and you need a 2/3rds vote in both the house and the Senate. So as far as the debt ceiling, as far as I’m concerned, we’ve gotten rid of it entirely. As far as the budget problems, they didn’t do anything. They said we should have a budget by December 13th. Well here we are November 20th and they still haven’t even had a single meeting on it. It was the same thing in 2011, remember they had the super committee which was supposed to make budget cuts and they didn’t make any. So then they forced the sequester cuts, or as they call it the fiscal cliff. And just at the last second they had an emergency meeting to cut the physical cliff sequester cuts in half. And then they cut them even more because God forbid we shouldn’t have as many air traffic controllers. And here we are again, we need a budget, we’re not going to have one. We haven’t had one for five years. You know the point is, they can say that all they want about the slam dunk but the fact is nothing’s being fixed. Nothing’s changed. Nothing is even being addressed.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Yeah, just that right there is reason enough to own some gold and silver. Andy Hoffman of MilesFranklin.com. Miles Franklin is offering us a free shipping package on any gold or silver or platinum or palladium purchase order of over $1000, which isn’t much. That’s one ounce of gold will get you free shipping or roughly 45 ounces of silver. Andy, thank you so much for being on the show with us today.
Andy Hoffman: Always a pleasure, David.
FutureMoneyTrends.com: Alright Andy, you have a great day sire.
Andy Hoffman: Alright, thanks.
