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19.01.03, 23:31
Felix Zulauf on gold
The following exchange is from today's Barrons. Zulauf is a Swiss manager and
was the best performer in last year's Roundtable.
"But if you want to be a long-term investor, that's probably one of the best
areas in which to put your money. But the one really
long-term theme I'm recommending is gold. Historically, it's been a hedge
against inflation and fiat currencies.
Q: Mostly, it's been a hedge against capital gains.
Zulauf: That's been true in the past 20 years, but it's changing. The price
of gold moves in steps. From 1971 to 1980, the price went
from $35 an ounce to $850. From '80 until the past few years, it fell from
$850 to $250. Having put in a bottom around $250 an
ounce, it's now trading $100 higher. We all know the history. Now the central
banks in the U.S., Japan and, later, in Europe are
trying to solve our economic problems by throwing money at the system. The
end result will be more and more new money, without
a counterbalance in the real economy. They created money out of thin air,
which means the value of paper currencies goes down.
That's the history of fiat currencies.
The whole process has been accelerated by the problems in the U.S. Personal
consumption has been going up over the past 20
years. Instead of solving the problems of underinvestment and rebalancing the
economy, which would be painful for a while, the
central bank just throws money at the system and entices consumers to take on
more debt. At best, the U.S. is in for a long period
of stagflation, very low growth or worse. At some point, the world will begin
to understand that the U.S. economy is fundamentally
much weaker than generally believed.
Q: Then what?
Zulauf: The U.S. is the largest debtor nation. About $3 trillion are held by
foreigners, if calculated at the purchase price, and
foreigners are still buying U.S. assets. Last year they bought about $45
billion of U.S. equities, but that will change at some point.
When people realize there are fundamental problems in the U.S. economy, the
dollar will begin to decline in a major way. The
process actually started in 2001. Other central banks will at some point then
try to support the dollar, because if it declines too
much, it hurts their exports. They will be forced to adopt the same policy as
the U.S. central bank, and you will have the whole world
creating more fiat currencies. That's when gold will really run.
I use a timing model
