Insurance Company Buys $400 Million in Gold
According to a recent report from Bloomberg, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., the third-largest U.S. life insurer, has been buying gold. This is the first time in its 152-year history that Northwestern has purchased gold.
According to Northwestern CEO Edward Zore, “Gold just seems to make sense; it’s a store of value. In the Depression, gold did very, very well.”
According to Bloomberg, Northwestern has accumulated about $400 million in gold. CEO Zore believes that the price of gold could double “or even rise fivefold” if the economy continues to weaken. “The downside risk is limited, but the upside is large,” Zore said. “We have stocks in our portfolio that lost 95%.” But gold “is not going down to $90.”
Despite the rise in “cash for gold” TV ads and billboards, people are still generally skeptical about buying gold as an investment or hedge against inflation. As I’ve said before, I think gold will be the next bubble as people eventually lose confidence in the dollar and US governments ability to repay its debt.
Check out the increase in the money supply over the past year.
A lot of you will protest that it hasn’t really increased and that the banks that got the money from the Fed have just given back to the Fed to shore up their reserves. True, and the Fed is paying the banks interest on this money too. But as some point the Fed is going to stop paying interest, and the greedy bankers are going to start lending this money out. The Fed hopes that this money will work its way into the economy in a slow and orderly fashion, so it takes maybe 5-10 years to enter the system and not rush in all of a sudden, because if it did the result would be similar a massive drug overdose. But in smaller amounts, its more palatable with contained inflation. But it will result in inflation nonetheless. And when it does, gold prices are likely to keep on rising.
If you interested in buying gold coins check out my previous posts on gold/silver and coins, as well as my personal list of favorite gold coins.
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June 14th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
I just can’t let this one pass without a challenge. Sure, money supply has exploded at the Federal level. But it has done so by deliberate effort to replace the value of assets destroyed by the financial crisis and real estate panic. I think a healthy way to look at this is as a transfer of the financial bubble from weak hands to strong hands that can absorb and dissipate the bubble. By the way, this is the same financial bubble that has been traveling through the American economy since the early 1980s, if not before. The private sector seems to be unable to deal with the hot potatoe, so it had to end up in public hands at this point. But as you say, the wealth will gradually be transferred back to the private sector over the next 5-10 years.
Once money is created, it cannot be destroyed. It is similar to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and the Conservation of Energy. That theory everyone knows as E=M*C squared. Mass can be transmuted to energy, but it always will exist in a different form. Money is not only preserved over all of time, but can be created by the productive enterprise of humans. Once created, it can be transferred and transmuted into different forms of assets, but it cannot be destroyed (call this “Brian’s Theory of Monetary Conservancy”). Even World Wars have proven unable to destroy wealth, as inconceivable as this seems.
I wrote about this idea on my blog back on May 4th. http://wealth-ed.com/2009/05/04/gmo-and-the-persistence-of-stock-market-returns/
I quoted one of the true financial experts of our time, Jeremy Grantham regarding the phenomenon of indestructible wealth:
“The Great Depression is far and away the most striking period on the chart (see article for link to charts). Real GDP fell by 25% from 1929 to 1933, in what was easily the worst economic event to hit the U.S. since the Civil War. But that fall, as extraordinary as it was, was a fall in demand relative to potential GDP, not a fall in the economy’s productive capacity, and so the economy eventually (by 1945) got back onto its previous growth trend as if the Depression had never happened.”
So, while it is very interesting that a life insurance company has decided to buy some gold to diversify its assets (I am sure a very small percent of its total managed assets), there is nothing about this that should indicate anything significant about gold for the future. Gold is just another class of asset. That is all. It has no special place as compared to other real assets, and it may be less important or significant than assets which have some productive use, like copper or oil.
I also refute the assertion that gold has any use as an asset offering protection when an economy is “weakening”. Gold has some short term panic value, as it did last fall. But if it didn’t shoot to $2500 an ounce during the worst financial crisis since 1930, then it probably is not even good as an insurance policy during a crisis.
The statement: “CEO Zore believes that the price of gold could double “or even rise fivefold” if the economy continues to weaken.”, just tells me that Mr. Zore should not be running a major insurance company. That statement is shear stupidity and shows a lack of financial understanding. Gold might increase by five-fold if the dollar weakens to 20% of its current value. But that is the only way this scenario will play out. For the dollar to weaken in that way, the economy would have to be going strong. We just saw that the dollar STRENGTHENS as a safety trade when the economy tanks.
Yes, gold will appreciate while the dollar depreciates. That is a given. But while people have been watching gold trade between $900 and $1000 the past 3 months, oil has gone from $30 to $70. So which asset has more potential to protect against inflation?
June 15th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
[...] Insurance Company Buys $400 Million in Gold [...]
June 19th, 2009 at 4:40 am
Brian said- “I just can’t let this one pass without a challenge. Sure, money supply has exploded at the Federal level. But it has done so by deliberate effort to replace the value of assets destroyed by the financial crisis and real estate panic.”
All the while adding to our absolutely out of control national debt. Is there really any other even remotely likely outcome other than the Fed and our government monetizing the debt?
June 21st, 2009 at 2:35 am
[...] Living Off Dividends & Passive Income presented Insurance Company Buys $400 Million in Gold [...]
June 24th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I agree that inflation is coming. The severity of it just has not hit us yet… but definitely it is coming. So recently I’ve been trying to diversify myself out of US dollars… whether it’s through real estate or foreign stocks. The stock market jumping up and down like crazy really makes it hard though. Gold? I’m still iffy on it, I like something I can use practically like real estate.