VS GOLD
production in that time? It’s only doubled. But in Michael’s mind, gold’s not a scarcity – it’s a glorified commodity. As the price goes up, the supply is constant. And he claims that all commodity businesses need a cartel to be stable, rattling off the Rockefellers, OPEC, and De Beers as exemplars. He says as gold’s price rises, its miners increase output, which weakens the jewelry demand – then bankers sell short on gold derivatives while investors fund more mining expansion. Miners then sell more gold, and ultimately the price gets so high the government stops buying gold. Then the metal’s sold or shorted, and its price drops. “That’s the problemwith having 90 kilotons worth of gold as jewelry and so many tons of gold sitting in central banks. It’s a damping feature.” On the crypto side of supply-and-demand, Michael says investors and companies buy bitcoin, but banks and governments can’t short it – because they don’t have it . They then take eco-conscious shots at each other... Michael reminds us that gold mining requires $100 billion a year in fossil fuels, labor, chemicals, and environmental damage in the never-ending struggle to inflate the gold supply and undermine the price. But Frank fires back, noting that the energy consumption bitcoin mining saps up is the same as the entire population of Nigeria. It’s safe to say neither gold or bitcoin mining
is the best for the environment, which makes one wonder why humanity’s harnessing of wealth almost always comes at the expense of the Earth.
MARKET FORCES AND WHO OWNS WHAT?
When it comes to owning these assets, both men fired at each other with accusations of speculative behavior. Michael even quoted Frank to Frank, citing his foil’s following, “What I do best is create and build mining companies. 10% of your portfolio should be in gold. Gold won’t keep going up forever. And rotate out of gold following the panic buy.”
Damningly, Michael asserts that gold miners don't believe in gold.
He followed that quote with another Peter Schiff nugget... “I don’t own much gold. I own more gold stocks – and a lot of gold companies don’t even have gold.” Michael claims these gold-mining behemoths are expiration companies trying to find their speculations. With $11 billion in revenue, Newmont Mining has $5.5 billion in cash. EBITDA of $5.7 billion last year paid a massive dividend of $1.45 billion. Damningly, Michael asserts that gold miners don’t believe in gold .
American Consequences
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