Tuesday, April 19, 2011

One of the World's biggest pension funds buys physical gold

From Gold Core:

Gold is increasingly being seen as the superior currency in a world of trillion dollar and euro deficits and bailouts. Indeed, the printing and electronic creation of billion and trillions of the major paper currencies is increasingly making gold and silver the currencies of last resort.

Governments and central banks are debasing currencies through bailouts, deficit spending and quantitative easing which is leading to a massive increase in the supply of fiat currencies. Precious metals are rare and finite and this is why major currencies are falling in value versus gold and silver.

One of the largest pension funds in the world, the University of Texas Investment Management Co (which manages the endowment for the Texas teachers pension fund), has realized this and has put 5% of the pension fund into gold bullion (see news).

Unusually, but likely to be seen more frequently in the coming weeks and months, the pension fund has opted to own physical bars worth nearly $1 billion dollars in allocated accounts.

The fund has previously expressed concerns about the counter party risk in ETFs. However, the reason given for opting for taking delivery of 100 oz gold bars in a warehouse was that if the holders of just 5 percent of COMEX futures contracts opted to take delivery of the metal, there wouldn’t be enough to cover the demand leading to a COMEX default.

The risk of a COMEX default increases by the day and appears to be moving from the realms of the “conspiracy theory” to that of “of course we knew it would happen, it stands to reason and was inevitable”.

A COMEX default would have serious ramifications for the dollar and all fiat currencies as it would further erode trust in central banks, fiat currencies and today’s monetary system.

No comments:

Post a Comment