by The Mogambo Guru
Tampa Bay, Florida

MoneyNews.Newsmax.com had the interesting headline “Mints Rush to Meet
Gold Coin Demand.” It starts off with a blockbuster statement, namely
that the world is in “crisis mode”. In fact, a report by The
Independent in the United Kingdom notes, “With the world economy now in
crisis mode, gold coin production is rising” all over the place, with
the result that, “As investor appetite for gold increases worldwide,
nations which mint coins of the precious metal have hiked production to
satisfy the growing demand.”

In fact, demand for gold is so high that “Sales in the United States of
the one-ounce gold American Eagle coin, minted from gold bullion,
soared more than 400 percent in 2008 over previous sales to 710,000
ounces” which seems like a lot until you remember that the gold mines
of the world produce about 80 million ounces of new gold per year, and
so 710,000 ounces ain’t really squat, in the Big Scheme Of Things
(BSOT).

Even so, a spokesperson for the U.S. Mint said, “Demand for gold and
silver has been unprecedented”, although you would hardly know it from
my field research, where I randomly accost people on the street and ask
them, “Hey! You! Are you buying and/or holding large quantities of gold
as a defense against the ruinous inflation in prices that your own
stupid government is causing by deficit-spending almost $2 trillion
this year alone, when the GDP of the Whole Freaking Country (WFC) is
only about $14 trillion, or are you some kind of moron that can’t even
answer a simple question?”

The results of my research are pretty dismal, which explains why there
are over 300 million people in the USA and, although demand for gold is
up 400 percent in the last year to 710,000 ounces, this is still only
accumulating 0.00237 ounces each! A fifth of one percent of an ounce of
gold per capita! Hahaha!

An interesting sidelight is that when people write and ask me, “Dear
Mogambo, Probably because I am gullible and I take a lot of
medications, I believe you when you say that I should buy gold in some
kind of tangible form that I can hold in my hand, instead of being
suckered into that whole ‘paper gold’ scam, but tell me; which specific
gold should I buy? (signed) Listening in New York”.

My impulse is to reply “Dear Listening in New York, Why in the hell are
you asking me? How the hell should I know? By actually doing some more
work and finding out? Ha! Don’t make me laugh! I work plenty hard
around here already, regardless of what a bunch of backstabbing
coworkers say behind my back and write on the wall in the bathroom! And
anyway, 24 karat gold is 24 karat gold, you moron! (signed) Mogambo.”

Now, instead, I can quote this newsmax.com article, and save a lot of
time by just telling them that the best-selling gold coin in the world
is the Austrian Philharmonic (which is named after the Vienna
Philharmonic Orchestra) 24K coin.

And in fact, sales of “the world’s best-selling gold coin, climbed 544
percent this year to the end of February” which means that its sales
growth is higher than the American Eagle!

And speaking of gold, Bill Bonner here at The Daily Reckoning quotes
Stewart Dougherty, of “Theft of a Nation”, as saying, “The United
States of America, or, more precisely, the American people, are said to
own 261 million ounces of gold, supposedly stored in the same Fort Knox
vault that Goldfinger found so appealing. At $1,000 per ounce, the
people’s gold has a value of $261 billion dollars. TARP 1 alone has
cost 270% of the entire value of that singular, tangible American
asset. The total $13 trillion bailout cost thus far is 4,980% of the
value of America’s gold asset. Fort Knox has been robbed.”

Bill Bonner himself does some quick figuring and finds that, put
another way, “They’re squandering $13 trillion…or nearly 49 times the
U.S. gold supply”! Astonishing!

Until next time,

The Mogambo Guru
for The Daily Reckoning

P.S. This is where I stand up, look around, and make crude and rude
gastronomic sounds to express my complete disbelief that people are not
buying gold, silver and oil against this kind of monstrous expansion of
the money supply; a behavior which I have promised to no longer do at
the dinner table, either at home or someplace else, ever again.

But the good news is that you can buy gold, silver and oil and save
yourself that kind of embarrassment!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 8:41 pm and is filed under 1 - Gold. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.