Rick Rule: Newmont & Barrick – This Merger Has To Happen

Into our third week of Palisade Radio's relaunch, we're bringing on none other than Rick Rule, CEO of Sprott US Holdings. Rick Rule is a well known speculator and investor in the natural resource sector, and as he himself puts it, he has dedicated his entire adult life to natural resource investing. We brought Rick on to discuss the current state of the natural resource sector, and how investors can reap extreme gains from it's cyclical upturn. Rick discusses the importance of the merger talks between the world's two largest gold companies and why it must happen!

John Embry- Something Seriously Wrong With Financial System

John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist at Sprott Asset Management, thinks gold price suppression is a key factor in global monetary policy. Embry contends, “If the gold price truly reflected what is really going on in monetary policy today, I think real interest rates would rise quite significantly. Given the amount of debt that is polluting the world banking system, to me, this is the end game, and that’s why it’s so vicious in terms of suppression right now. When this turns, it is going to change a lot of things. That’s why they are being so aggressive on maintaining pressure on the gold and silver prices. Silver is especially suppressed. I don’t think you can dig it out of the ground for less than $25 per ounce. It’s not like gold. There is not a huge above ground inventory.” Embry adds, “I have never seen it any more intense in terms of pressure in the paper market, which indicates we are near the end, and there is something seriously wrong with the system.”

Ask The Expert - Jeff Berwick Sprott Money News

Jeff Berwick is the founder of the Dollar Vigilante. He’s also the CEO of TDV Media & Services and host of the popular video podcast Anarchast. Jeff is known to be an anarchal capitalist activist and has written extensively about the impending collapse of the U.S. dollar-based financial system.

India and China Have Put a Floor in the Gold Price

We had four to six sigma events in the gold price last year, which are only supposed to happen once every 40,000 years. I have no doubt that, in my mind, there’s a distinct possibility that they acted in concert on that.

These thousand dollar price projections around, I think, the most famous one was from Goldman Sachs. I believe that this last week they raised their price to $1200, maybe on the way to much higher prices. It seems obvious to anyone involved that if the price got that low it would be the demand from India and China and many, many other countries would rise very dramatically here.

So I don’t think that’s a reasonable assumption. I think that the supply-demand data that we analyze all the time suggests there’s a shortage, and that the paper markets will be overrun here, and we have to see much higher prices.

- Eric Sprott via an Ask The Expert interview

The Miners and Future Gold Production

We have somebody like Barrick selling off all sorts of mines. We have lots of producers that have decided to high grade and try to become more efficient in their existing mines, which of course means you’re leaving behind some of the gold that you would otherwise produce in order to try to hold it together with this low price environment. And all of those factors, of course, will lead to lesser production in the future, because once you bypass some ore it’s very difficult to get back at it, because in the case of an underground mine you filled it in and you don’t have access to it any more.

So I think that we will see production going down here. We know that exploration expenditures have fallen dramatically. We know that developments have fallen dramatically. We’ve seen lots of big developments postponed.

So the outlook on the supply side is, you know, we have not increased supply in the last 14 years. It’s been about the same every year, 2700 tons of gold for 14 years. And I suspect that as we go into even the latter part of this year, into ’15, ’16, ’17, there’s no way that production can go up if prices stay at these levels.

I mean, some of them may go out of business as well. We’ve had lots of mines shut down, but I wouldn’t particularly say that the large guys will go out of business. I think at $1300 gold, most people can hold on here. But holding on is one thing, increasing production is another one. And to the question, I think, the real impact will be on future production.

- Eric Sprott via Ask The Expert

The Money Printing Will Show Up in Inflation

We saw in the first two months of this year a 40% rise in the gold stocks. It then retreated. We’ve seen about a 30% rise recently in the gold stocks. It just shows you how the market can react quickly. And this is with gold still trading $1300 to $1400. Imagine if it started going back up to $1400, $1500, $1600. It’s going to bring a world of investment into the market and, of course, people will buy those stocks.

And I would say conversely that people should realize that the general stock market, in my mind, is at great risk here, because it’s sort of followed along with the degree of money printing, and you just can’t keep doing this forever. The money printing will show up in inflation. We’re seeing higher inflation data now.

I think that the risk of owning stocks which have risen so dramatically since ’09, while basically GDP has done nothing, sales revenues have hardly done anything. Miraculously, earnings go up, but I can guarantee you that if your sales don’t go up you have a very difficult time having earnings go up, unless you’re causing your suppliers, most particularly labor, to take lower wages.

- Eric Sprott via Ask The Expert