Much Ado About Nothing
I hear a lot of noise coming from all sides about what is happening in our world, whose to blame and where to make the next speculative buck. I say noise because no matter how much chatter persists, or policy undertaken, the inevitable will still occur.
A lot of critics state that the USA has too much debt and is reliant on China, their largest creditor to provide endless loans to fuel an out of control budget. For starters I would like to state that by keeping the Yuan artificially low what did the Chinese government expect? Now they are buying gold, but refusing to let the Yuan float against the dollar. All this is doing is prolonging what needs to happen naturally. The debtor needs to go to work repaying the debt with exports, and the creditor should enjoy their rewards with a new influx of goods. I don't understand why they are so reluctant to do something that would benefit both sides. Instead they are opting for complex gold strategies that make absolutely no sense and undermine stability and productivity.
I would personally not bet on gold simply because to me it seems like placing a bet against the human race, In which case why invest in a man made concept like the stock market at all? Gold is not a productive investment and unless there is some productive property of gold that can be used in industry it should underperform industry accordingly.
As much as I wouldn't invest in gold myself I could see why people would be drawn to it. I think trust in the current hierarchy of our financial system is quite low. IMO the philosophic question that needs to be resolved in order for a healthy bull market to ensue is by what right do banks have authority to create money. The way it stands today, banks essentially have the ability to demand payment in exchange for offering you something they don't have in the first place. For those that haven't seen it, a good (not perfect) documentary on this is topic is "Money as Debt"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_doYllBk5No.
Furthermore, speculating on how high copper is going to go, or whether its better to be in aluminum than in silver, is again missing the point in my opinion. The point of investment is to realize the potential that it holds. A rock is just a rock, it is transformed by the human mind into shapes and forms that alleviate our problems and facilitate solutions. Minerals are just inputs, how can a rock be more valuable than what can be made out of it. Inevitably, the rocks value, due to scarcity and value, will go up in nominal value, and it might make you feel like you've made a brilliant investment. But should you look around you will see that the ones that made the most returns aren't the ones that speculated on how much speculative potential each element has, but the ones that spotted the best ideas for their use. Atleast I hope thats how the world works.
The junior mining market will always be filled with a majority of losers, a few lucky ones and a few companies who have the right vision and solutions to execute their ideas. In this regards I am happy being a BTC shareholder, and will continue to look for minds to invest in, not matter.