Growing US Debts & Liabilities Lead to a Bad State of Affairs | Professor Steve Hanke
SilverDoctors.com
December 15, 2018
We welcome Professor Steve Hanke to the show. Hanke has first hand experience both in intervening and quelling currency crisis throughout his career…
Professor Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) interviewed by James Anderson for SD Bullion
Silver and gold prices were flat to slightly down for the week.
The silver spot price is closing the week down a few cents at around $14.64 oz while the gold spot price is ending at $1,240 US dollars per troy ounce. Ten dollars less per ounce than last week’s closing price.
Concerning some recent discussions on our show, the palladium spot price is closing this week higher than gold’s spot price at $1,251 per troy ounce.
The last time in palladium price history, Pd prices were higher than gold was from the year 2000 to the year 2002, during the Russian palladium supply, short squeeze. That episode saw the then palladium price high reach 4Xs the then spot price of gold.
Is something similar to that about repeat?
Russian palladium supplies currently represent about 40% of newly mined palladium globally (see page 113 for that data).
And given some of the points we discuss with our guest this week regarding increased US protectionist trade policies and US treasury sanctions… current and future palladium supply disruptions are not out of the realm of possibility.
As it stands right now, the palladium market is currently in backwardation.
Basically backwardation in precious metal trading is just a sophisticated industry term for instances when NYMEX futures contract prices are lower than the over the counter spot price.
Palladium lease rates have also been recently escalating, hitting near 30% interest rates on 1 month physical palladium lending.
Palladium, like platinum, is also considered a precious metal of both US National and Economic Security.
We’ll keep an eye on palladium spot price movements to come.
As for this week, we have a new guest on the show who has first hand experience both in intervening and quelling currency crisis throughout his career.
