By Money Metals News Service
Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.
Coming up we’ll continue our recent tribute to Guy Christopher, one of our most popular columnists at MoneyMetals.com who recently passed away. Throughout his time with us here at Money Metals, Guy would often enlighten us as only he could, sharing his insights through his wonderful articles on our website, and we often had the privilege of discussing some of those stories with him here during our weekly podcasts.
Today we’ll replay an interview with Guy on the topic of personal responsibility, estate planning, and making sure you don’t leave your loved ones with a financial nightmare and an unwelcome scavenger hunt. Some timeless wisdom from the late Guy Christopher, coming up after this week’s market update.
Precious metals markets attracted some buying interest in this first week of July following an ugly month of June. Gold prices fell 4.2% in June, their worst monthly showing since Donald Trump’s election.
The gold market bounced off deeply oversold levels on Tuesday. Spot gold prices currently come in at $1,256 an ounce, up a very slight 0.2% on the week.
Free Reports:
The more speculative gold mining sector continues to show relative strength. The GDX gold miners ETF traded up near a 2-month high on Thursday. Mining stock investors seem to be anticipating a recovery in metals prices.
Turning to silver, the white metal is off 0.7% this week to trade at $16.02 aso. The red metal, meanwhile, has fallen off a cliff over the past month. Copper prices plunged 5% this week to 11-month lows on escalating trade wars between the United States and Canada, the European Union, and China. As an economically sensitive industrial metal, copper is responding to the potential for tariffs to crimp global demand.
The Trump administration’s $34 billion in tariffs on imported Chinese goods take effect this Friday. China is retaliating by slapping new 25% tariffs on U.S. goods. These tit for tat taxes on trade threaten to throw entire industries into turmoil as new sets of winners and losers emerge.
CBS News Anchor: The World Trade Organization says uncertainty about a possible trade war is already dragging down the world economy. The WTO issued that warning just before new U.S. tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports go into effect.
CNBC Anchor: So what we see now is rhetoric turning to reality on these Chinese tariffs. What is going to happen when they do take effect?
Steve Okun (Sr Advisor, McClarty Assoc): Well, let’s remember we are already in a trade war. Donald Trump has been waging a trade war against the global trading system from the day he came into office.
If Trump’s trade wars backfire on the U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve could be forced to rethink its planned rate hikes. The recent strength in the U.S. dollar is also in jeopardy.
President Trump is playing a high stakes game with global trading partners. Perceived U.S. hostility could ultimately test the U.S. dollar’s status as world reserve currency.
China’s financial nuclear option in these trade wars would be to dump its $1.2 trillion in U.S. Treasury reserves. Other countries that are unhappy with U.S. tariffs and/or economic sanctions may increasingly replace their dollar reserves with gold.
Russia has bought heavily into gold in recent years. The Kremlin is now also slashing its holdings of U.S. bonds – from a high of $109 billion in 2017 to below $50 billion today. Russia is attempting to forge regional trading alliances that bypass the dollar.
For many others reasons, the U.S. dollar is slowly losing its privileged status in international trade. No other single national currency seems capable of replacing it at this time. As trade wars escalate, gold may increasingly come to be seen as the ultimate form of settlement.
Gold had played that role in the world economy explicitly until President Richard Nixon revoked the Bretton Woods system in 1971. Under that post-World War II agreement, foreign governments could convert their accumulated dollars into gold.
While not a true sound money system, it did link international trade to the discipline and stability of gold. Under Bretton Woods, the U.S. current account balance was positive. It has turned sharply negative in the years since, as deficits have exploded.
Gold serves as a check on politicians and international bankers who are keen on running up debts. Under a gold standard, a trade deficit country such as the United States would owe gold to trade surplus countries. Gold flows would be the balancing mechanism for accounts between countries.
Under our current fiat order, the terms of trade are all made arbitrarily on the fly by politicians and central bankers. The World Trade Organization and various trade agreements such as NAFTA aim to bind nations into the world order.
President Trump is serving as a great disruptor. He’s disrupting decades of arrangements put in place by globalists who clearly don’t have America’s interests at heart. The risk is that the rest of world refuses to accept Trump’s terms, shuns the U.S. in international trade, and dumps U.S. dollars. The opportunity is that as these trade wars escalate, they could spark a flight into gold as the ultimate form of money.
We all took time to honor America this week as we celebrated our nation’s birthday this past Wednesday. And now, we’ll pay tribute to an American treasure, our late friend Guy Christopher, who during his time with us here on earth lived quite a life. He was a member of the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War and later worked as a stock broker, investigative journalist, and published author. All of this real-world experience combined with his communication skills helped him provide our readers and customers with some really great insights over the years.
Thousands of readers enjoyed and often commented on his writings at MoneyMetals.com. Today we’ll replay a conversation I had with Guy on a very important topic. The interview begins with a question about an article he wrote several years ago titled You Worked to Have It… Now Work to Keep It, a piece about how many Americans, who may have been thoughtful and diligent when it comes to accumulating some wealth, are often totally neglectful when it comes to protecting it. As we start out this interview, I asked Guy to address the question about why so many people regularly overlook having this important conversation.
Guy Christopher: Well, I think folks don’t like to talk about, or think about, dying and so they don’t pay a whole lot of attention to it. We have research from some pretty high powered research firms that show more than half of the United States citizens have no will or no legal trust, and really haven’t made a great many plans for taking care of their estates. Which can be complicated as gold and silver. That’s very often left at the bottom of the ladder when it comes time to explain things to family. You and I both know that very often family members don’t have any idea what your interests in gold and silver really are. They don’t understand it and that’s too bad, but that’s the way it is. When you’re trying to pass on gold and silver inheritances to family members, or to friends, they may be sitting there staring at a great deal of wealth, and they’re not sure how to handle it. I think it’s one of those things that we all have to face, some of us do a little better job of it than others. I think it starts with going to an attorney, and sitting down and saying, “What do I need to protect my estate for my children or my … and my family?”
Mike Gleason: Talking about precious metals specifically there. I can tell you from experience we often hear from heirs who just had a loved one pass, and they immediately just want to get rid of the gold and silver that grandpa, or grandma had there. They say, “What the heck are we going to do with this? Yeah, let’s just get rid of it right away.” So those conversations are often not happening between individuals and their heirs, and they don’t even understand the importance of owning gold and silver, and they want to get rid of it like a hot potato. I’m sure you’ve seen that sort of thing.
Guy Christopher: I have seen it, Mike. The example you just provided is excellent. When folks, first of all, families very often don’t agree with how to divvy up the remains of an estate unless there’s a will, and unless there are written instructions and legal instructions. I have personally seen families who have had great difficulties individually with each other, trying to decide what to do with this valuable, or that asset, or that keep sake. Certainly something, which is unfortunately as mysterious as gold and silver can be to some people. Unfortunately, those things are often left with estate matters, and like you said, folks call and say, “Hey, what’s this dollar amount?” They really don’t know what they have in their hands, and they just want to turn it into cash and move on.
So that’s unfortunate. I think that if you are a gold and silver owner, if you believe that you’re acquiring real wealth through gold and silver, and that it is a great way to save, and a great insurance policy, then I think it’s necessary, its incumbent upon you to try to explain to close family members, to close friends, what this is and why you have it, and what they should be thinking of doing with it. You don’t want to put your business on the streets too much, we’ve written articles about that. You can do these instructions legally, in a will, or you can do them in a letter to your family… just explaining, “Look, I believe in this stuff, and I want you to believe in it too”. I think that it’s just as necessary to have written instructions for gold and silver as it is to have for a real estate, or any other valuables you may own.
The reason you’ve got to that is because nobody else is going to do it for you. You and I both know there are a lot of folks out there who will take advantage of people who are suddenly given a handful of gold, or a bag full of silver. There are folks out there who can easily take advantage of your heirs, your grandchildren, your children, your wife, your husband, who don’t really understand what it is you have and why you have it. So I think that just leaving some written instructions … You’re not really spreading your business around on the street that way. You’re leaving written instructions with trusted people to say, “This is why I have this and this is why you should value it.” I think folks really appreciate that. Losing a loved one, we’ve all been there. Losing a loved one is a terrible thing to go through. You have enough on your mind, really, between funeral arrangements and just the grieving process. You have enough on your mind without also worrying about, “Hey, what’s this stuff worth in dollars?” First things first, you have your grieving to do, and then you also have business to take care of, and that’s always the case. I think it’s just helpful for your heirs, for your children, to have something that says, “This is why I had that and this why you should value it.”
Mike Gleason: Now, I know many precious metals investors are hiding them somewhere in their home, which is a great idea as it may deter theft if you’re unfortunate enough to have a break in. But it could also be problematic for your heirs after you pass. What advice to you have for people there? That’s something else you do have to keep in mind.
Guy Christopher: Absolutely, it’s a great idea to have your metals put away privately and secretly, but not so secretly that no one will ever find them. In the article we just published, we talk about the true story of a fellow. I knew the fellow, or know him, he’s still living, who was very secretive about his belongings. He lived in a very big house, many, many rooms, long hallways. His two daughters were grown. His two daughters visited once in a while, but they didn’t really hang out and explore the house that they grew up in. It was months and months and months before those children of his were able to come to grips with the fact that they didn’t know where anything was. There may be a great deal of wealth on that property, that may never be found. It may not be found for 200 years. We just don’t know, because there were no written instructions.
Those kinds of stories are repeated over, and over, and over. They’re unfortunate. They are preventable, but still in all when folks don’t take the time to think ahead, then they are really doing their loved ones a big disservice, because they haven’t taken the time to say to themselves, “I need to write down some things,” like the combination to the safe. I can’t imagine a worse situation than knowing your dad, or your mom, or someone has a safe, and you have to go find a safe hacker to get it open because there’s no combination written down anywhere, and nobody knows how to get into it. That’s a problem that a grieving family shouldn’t have to have. It’s just one example of the kinds of things you can do now to ensure that you can take care of yourself, and if you’re not around, you can take care of your family.
Mike Gleason: I know in the case of your acquaintance there, I’m sure there’s probably some real piling up medical bills, based on his condition. So having access to those precious metals that his daughters can’t find, I’m sure would be very helpful in covering some of those costs. Yeah, it’s very important, of course, to leave instructions.
Now, we’re are talking about people here that have already bought some precious metals. Those that haven’t yet, what would you say to the person who is still hesitating to make his, or her, first purchase of precious metals? Prices are down, it seems like a good time to act, but some may be afraid prices will go even lower. What do you have to say to that person?
Guy Christopher: That’s so true. I’ve noticed prices dropping, and I’ve also noticed the folks I know who are buying are the old timers who are committed to gold and silver, who believe in gold and silver, who understand gold and silver. Not so much the newcomers, the newbies, the folks who are just now looking around and saying, “What’s that gold and silver stuff all about?” The buying has been primarily, at least as far as I know, by those folks who are already acquainted with it. The problem we have, and we’ve written about this before, and it’s been written many times at Money Metals, not just by me. The problem we have is a matter of media and education. The government doesn’t like you owning gold and silver. The government would prefer you have either cash or digital money, that gets us down the road into the weeds and war on cash, but it’s very real.
The government would prefer that you just forget all about gold and silver, and they have been very masterful at brainwashing Americans into believing that gold and silver are not real money. You and I know that gold and silver are currencies. We know that they are representations of wealth. The government knows they are real money, and the government knows they are representations of real wealth, but the government would prefer you not know that. The government would prefer you have debt as your money, which is exactly what the treasury bond, exactly what a U.S … one dollar, ten dollar, five dollar, fifty dollar bill is. It’s a note, it’s debt. It’s not real wealth, it’s just a representation of debt. And people have used this debt, they use these I.O.U’s as real money. They begin to think of these I.O.U’s as real wealth, and you and I know they’re not.
So the real problem we have here is that the government has been quite successful, over the past seven or eight decades, ever since FDR’s gold grab in the 1930’s, the government has been very successful in drumming gold and silver out of the American psyche. The last phase of that was probably 1965, when the government stopped putting silver in American coins, and gave us the mystery metal that we use today. I don’t know what’s in a 25 cent piece, I think there’s some copper, and some tin and maybe some zinc, I don’t know. Then, in 1982 they stopped putting copper in pennies. The government has tried to get away from precious metals as wealth. They’ve done that so that the rest of us will think of debt as money, as wealth, as currency.
The reason that it’s so hard to get new people involved is because they are, I hate to say the word again, but they are largely brainwashed into believing that real money is a digital message on a smart phone. That real money is an account statement from your bank. When, in fact, that’s not real money, that’s just a representation of debt. It’s too bad that more people don’t have the educated instincts to begin looking hard at what’s going on. If you look around the world, last few days we’ve had China jump in with both feet in what Jim Rickards calls, the currency wars. We’ve had stock markets up and down 200, 300, points per day, up 300, 200, points per day down. A lot of turmoil there. We’ve had trade wars, which we hear about in the news all the time. Different nations are trying to get a hand up, a leg up, on other nations in trade wars. There is every evidence that the economic system around the world is unraveling. And as it unravels, debt is going to be exposed as a serious, serious flaw in global economic matters. And the antidote to that flaw is, of course, precious metals.
Mike Gleason: Yeah, you certainly can’t be on an upward trajectory endlessly towards more and more debt without there being some sort of coming moment when it all comes crashing down. It’s just inevitable. It’s really just physics when you get down to it.
All of this does get back to education, as you hit on a moment ago, and it’s definitely one of our missions here, which of course you play a big role in. In one of those topics we’ve covered extensively this year, you alluded to it earlier, is the war on cash. We’ve talk about it many times here on the podcast, and in a lot of our articles, which many of them you’ve been responsible for, of course. Now, you wrote a great piece a few months back and I wanted to have you comment on that a bit. In your article titled FDIC Plots a Bank Heist Involving Your Account you wrote:
Court cases have upheld for decades that putting your money in savings, a C.D, or other bank products, means you’ve become an unsecured creditor. Your deposit is actually an unsecured loan to the bank, with all the problems of counterparty risk. Instead of being presented with collateral, you get an I.O.U, that pays a penitence in interest, or in many cases, nothing.
A busted bank doesn’t have to return your principle deposits, unlike when YOU are the borrower and THE BANK is the lender. The bank didn’t tender you a lawyer-ed up promissory note, or offer you a lean on its assets. Legally speaking, you may as well have handed your money to a stranger in the alley.
Unsecured creditor, means just what it says. No security.
Talk about this, because many people may not even be aware that this is how it works.
Guy Christopher: Mike, again, that’s just part in parcel of the lack of education and the extreme success the government, aided by its lapdog media, the government and the media have successfully erased the notion that we have to actually protect and fight for what we believe is right. Yes, when you put your money in the bank … and I didn’t know this when I was a young man, it took me a while to discover it. Most people don’t know that when you put your money in the bank, it’s the banks money at that point. Your money is listed as a debt from the bank to you. If the bank can’t pay you back, then you lose, which is why we have FDIC insurance, for what it’s worth. FDIC insurance came along because banks were going busted in the 1930’s, thanks to the Great Depression.
As those banks went out of business, farms failed, businesses failed, families failed. The government said, “Well, let’s throw some insurance on there.” Well, that FDIC insurance is largely worthless for two reasons. Number one, there’s not enough to pay for the trillions of dollars that are in banking accounts, savings, C.D’s, and what have you. And the other problem is that the FDIC can change the rules anytime it wants, as we wrote in that article. The FDIC can change, and probably will change, the rules anytime it wants to lower insurance rates or insurance limits, which are now supposedly $250,000 per account. They can change those rules anytime they want to make your deposits largely un-insurable, or worthless.
In Greece, we have some rumblings of capital controls, a war on cash. Banks closing, ATM’s giving out just sixty euros per day, because the banks were going bust. Billions of euros were leaving Greece as the latest Greek bailout came through. And the opposite of the bailout is the bail in. The bail in is simply, if your money’s in the bank, that’s the money we’ll take to save the bank. The thing to remember about bail ins, they are not designed to save you, your family, your way of life. They are designed to save the bank. The banks are what’s important to governments, not you, not your life, not your way of life.
Mike Gleason: Well, it’s all very troubling and sobering to think about some of that stuff, but that’s where gold and silver can provide an alternative. We’ve said it before, but it really is true, it’s a different form of cash. It’s one that you hold in your hands. It’s one that’s free from counterparty risk, and it’s definitely something that more and more people need to be thinking about as we get more and more uncertain here with the global economic environment and landscape. And also, of course, the geopolitical issues and currency wars that we’re going to be facing here over the next decade. It’s a dangerous world and we’re glad that we have somebody like you on our team to help explain it all. It’s great stuff, and I always appreciate your insights. I know our audience does as well, and I enjoy your writings, and look forward to speaking with you again down the road. Thanks very much Guy for your time.
Guy Christopher: Mike, I appreciate that, and let me say that I’m very proud of Money Metals for the educational efforts that you folks do. You folks have poured a lot of time, energy, and money into education, and I just wish more people would take advantage of it.
Mike Gleason: Well, you’re certainly a big part of that, so thanks for your efforts and the role you play in that department.
Guy Christopher: Thank you, Mike. It’s been a pleasure talking with you.
Well, I hope you enjoyed the replay of that interview with Guy Christopher as much as I did. It was always a real joy to speak with Guy and he will truly be missed. After his passing a couple months back, we announced we are naming an academic scholarship award annually in memory of our late friend. The Guy Christopher People’s Choice award will be given to the student whose essay on sound money is the most popular of all our entries each year – a fitting tribute to Guy Christopher, who connected with our readers and customers in a remarkable way.
Well that will do it for this week. Please check back next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. Until then this has been Mike Gleason with Money Metals Exchange, thanks for listening, and have a great weekend everyone.