It’s possible that the government could lease huge sums then sell them when gold prices move up. In this fashion, they’d be burned holding on to the gold, but then again it might be like the President’s behind-the scenes Working Group on the Capital Markets, which has intervened in the markets. I know the Japanese gov’t also bought corporate shares—same concept.
Another option is to short the paper gold indexes with an inexhaustible supply of paper money. Buy enough shorts, backed by huge leases that can be sold at any given time, and a decrease in price would be inevitable. The effectiveness of this strategy is limited only by the government’s willingness to print and lose money.
Then of course there’s the oldest one: seize people’s gold. Problem with that is the fact your currency will lose all its credibility (a fixed/limited exchange rate on commodities would work in a similar fashion.) The act of limiting prices for metals broadcasts their inherent attractiveness, so I guess gov’t would rather take it all. The Romans got around this by making it punishable by death to hold onto older coinage with a higher silver content but we all know plenty of metal would go missing anyway.
Get your physical metal real, in physical form. Keep it somewhere safe. I’d recommend silver, but I don’t know how much price manipulation has been going on. A better approach might be to follow the prices charged for the actual physical metal, not just the Comex price, which is a lot more volatile and disconnected from physical supplies.
It’s possible that the government could lease huge sums then sell them when gold prices move up. In this fashion, they’d be burned holding on to the gold, but then again it might be like the President’s behind-the scenes Working Group on the Capital Markets, which has intervened in the markets. I know the Japanese gov’t also bought corporate shares—same concept.
Another option is to short the paper gold indexes with an inexhaustible supply of paper money. Buy enough shorts, backed by huge leases that can be sold at any given time, and a decrease in price would be inevitable. The effectiveness of this strategy is limited only by the government’s willingness to print and lose money.
Then of course there’s the oldest one: seize people’s gold. Problem with that is the fact your currency will lose all its credibility (a fixed/limited exchange rate on commodities would work in a similar fashion.) The act of limiting prices for metals broadcasts their inherent attractiveness, so I guess gov’t would rather take it all. The Romans got around this by making it punishable by death to hold onto older coinage with a higher silver content but we all know plenty of metal would go missing anyway.
Get your physical metal real, in physical form. Keep it somewhere safe. I’d recommend silver, but I don’t know how much price manipulation has been going on. A better approach might be to follow the prices charged for the actual physical metal, not just the Comex price, which is a lot more volatile and disconnected from physical supplies.