Islamic Institutions, which follow guidelines issued by a Bahrain based group, now have a new sharia standard for gold-based products so as to incorporate bullion into Islamic finance.

Gold has long been seen as currency in Islamic finance. Investors, however, have yet to speculate on its future value since no clear policy on how to trade gold. Read More

Adolf Hitler’s lost gold has been found, according to a British diver in the  Baltic sea. The ocean explorer’s claims he found gold the Nazi’s stole as they ransacked Europe during World War II horrors.

The discovery is reported to approximate £100 million, has been sought by treasure seekers time-and-time again never to be found…until now. Read More

A weak Australian Dollar has led gold miners there to dig deep, according to quarterly production figures.

In the third quarter, the second largest gold miner after China, Australian output increased 3 percent or 2 tonnes (64,301 troy ounces) to 75 tonnes over the same period from the year prior. This despite heavy rainfall which flooded some pits and derailed operations, according to Melbourne-based Surbiton Associates. Read More

Capital controls often lead people to alternative assets, and it seems India’s decision to phase out 500 notes and 1000 notes is doing just that as India’s jewelry stores were left with empty shelves as gold demand spikes in the region.

Many people came in and cleaned up the shelves with the big notes, but by Tuesday they had disappeared and now a thaw has taken hold over the gold market. There’s panic in India.

People must endure long bank lines to exchange or deposit old currency notes after the government’s demonetization plan to undermine countefeiters and Indians with undeclared income stashed away. 1/4 of India’s economy is on the black market, according to the Finance Ministry, and not many Indians pay income taxes.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to end corruption. He says the move is a fight for the “honest” citizens against those with “cash lying under the mattresses and in the sacks of the corrupt.” He wants to steer the country, which is historically cash centric, towards bank accounts and digital payments.

“The people who have their vaults can shake governments. They are very powerful people. Should I be scared of such people?” Modi said at a rally Monday in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

“No!” the crowd roared back.

“I have your blessings. That is why I have taken on such a big fight,” Modi said.

Half of the citizens in India are said to use cash, and the decision has caused great concern for these individuals. ATMs are short on cash and who knows how long until they can be reconfigured.

“Parents cracked open their piggy banks, the sick deferred medical procedures, and others struggled to find ways to pay tea sellers, auto rickshaw driver and vegetable merchants who take cash only,” according to the Washington Post. “Civic offices, hospitals and gas stations were instructed to accept the old currency but this edict has not always been followed, resulting in some panic, fistfights and even sporadic reports of looting.”

Thus, few are buying gold. Some jewelers were raided. They were suspected of accepting the old currency and issuing forged receipts. Some shops didn’t open, fearing raids.

Jewelers believe in a few months, sales will continue once more. Gold imports will likely have fallen on the year after posting more than 900 tons last year.

The government added new excise duty on gold in recent years, and last spring a 42-day jewelers’ strike added to the issues in the gold market.

Markets did not know what to do after election results poured in, although many markets had been pricing in a possible Trump victory for about one month prior to the election, as polls were too close to call and also the accuracy of many mainstream polls were thrown into question.

Gold futures fell precipitously Friday, their lowest finish since June, thanks to strength in the U.S. dollars and equities. The Federal Reserve, according to many analysts, might increase interest rates next month. The main reason for precious metals decline is similar to why global currencies have fallen: the strength of the dollar. Read More

Can computers be made of cells? That’s what scientists in Germany (Bezu Teschome and Artur Erbe of Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf) look to discover with work published in the journal Langmuir.

Gold prices increased 5% as election results rolled in and declared Donald Trump the U.S. presidential elect, and on November 9th skyrocketed to $1,330 before a hard correction to pre-election levels. The yellow metal currently sits at $1251.30 heading into Friday morning eastern standard time in the US.
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Make money today, sell gold. You can set up affiliate links on your gold related website – or any website – and possibly start earning today but probably not. Read More

Check out Representative Brad Sherman (Democrat, California) make some religious-based assertions about when the Federal Reserve and Janet Yellen should raise interest rates. In a way, Representative Sherman makes some good points. Everything he says is true. Insert “nature” everywhere he says “God” – if you’re secular – and see the point he is making perhaps a bit more clearly. Now, learn about “interest rate” “Federal Reserve” and “Sherman” and things become a bit more mysterious.

GoldSilverBitcoin – People’s Bank of China will release on October 28, 2015 the 2016 Panda coin set.

The coin’s pattern will show the Beijing Temple of Heaven, and feature the country name, reign. The reverse patterns will show a panda climbing a tree, published denomination, weight and fineness. This is different from the 2015 version, which left out weight and fineness, and troubled many precious metals dealers due to this lack of detail.

“I won’t sell it,” one wholesaler told me, who chose to remain anonymous. “Without the date, fineness, and all the details you normally get on not only a government issued coin, but also a private coin, I wouldn’t trust it.” Chinese Pandas are already known as one of the more counterfeited coins on the market. Read More

GoldSilverBitcoin – In many shipwrecks, gold is among the items found on-board a fallen vessel. For goldbugs, that is what makes a recent shipwreck discovery in Greece so intriguing.

A joint Greek-American archaeological expedition in the small Fourni archipelago, an area of merely 17 square miles, has turned up one of the great archaeological finds of 2015, according to Discovery. Read More

GoldSilverBitcoin – Entering into the gold business and starting your own gold dealing site is easier than ever. As goldbugs and silverbugs might notice, there is quite a bit of turnover in the online bullion retail scene. Moreover, the general websites that are highlighted are not the only ones. There are many, many online gold dealers who have carved out their own niche. The industry itself has gone through a lot of flux lately. We highlight in this article how you – Yes, YOU – can enter into the gold selling space. While we can’t go into certain technical details, this guide will make you aware of the tools you need. Here’s how.

There are numerous products precious metals oriented online retailers focus on, such as bullion gold, silver, platinum and palladium coins and bars, semi-numismatic gold and silver coins such as Morgan Dollars and Saint Gaudens (Pre-1993 gold coins), tube holders and survival gear. One thing many people, in my opinion, do not consider while opening a precious metals shop is jewelry. While precious metal coins oft carry small premiums – save for the Pre-1933 gold coins – jewelry has higher margins.

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At the third GOP presidential debate Wednesday night, moderator Becky Quick asked Ted Cruz how we could “try and help” working women in the US who “still earn just 77 percent of what men earn.” In a stumbling manner, Cruz ultimately landed on the gold standard to help women.  In a disjointed tirade Cruz began:

“Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and all the Democrats talking about wanting to address the plight of working women, not a one of them mentioned the fact that under Barack Obama, 3.7 million women have entered poverty. Not a one of them mentioned the fact that under Barack Obama and the big government economy, the median wage for women has dropped $733. The truth of the matter is, big government benefits the wealthy, it benefits the lobbyists, it benefits the giant corporations. And the people who are getting hammered are small businesses, it’s single moms, it’s Hispanics.”

Cruz later tied “loose money” to the plight of women. “I think the Fed should get out of the business of trying to juice our economy and simply be focused on sound money and monetary stability, ideally tied to gold,” Cruz said.

Cruz is not the only Presidential candidate to support the gold standard. Rand Paul has called for similar. “We need to think about our currency that once upon a time had a link to a commodity, and I think we should study it,” he once said.

Of course, in the end, it doesn’t seem like Cruz answered the question at hand.

People have bought domains since the advent of the Internet for business, projects and investment purposes. This trend continues to this day and there are implications for the precious metals space. Consider the recent story of the record sale of gold.co.uk. It comes on the heels of a major purchase of another precious metals domain: silver.com. 

British entrepreneur Rob Halliday-Stein paid a record £600,000 for “gold.co.uk“,  the highest price ever paid for a .co.uk domain name. It took him seven years to acquire it. Halliday-Stein trades gold and silver bars and coins. The previous record for a .co.uk domain name was £560,000 for “cruise.co.uk” in 2008.

“Whilst this is a significant amount to pay I strongly believe the domain will prove to be great value over the long term,” Halliday-Stein said of the purchases. In 2012, JM Bullion acquired Silver.com for $875,000.

“We decided we needed a domain name that would help us become the largest online precious metal retailers in the world and believe we have found that with Silver.com,” said Kendall Saville, an investor in Silver.com. This domain purchase was the largest of 2012.

The British billionaire has been in the gold business since 2008. He merely wanted to purchase a small amount himself. He became disillusioned with the poor customer service in the industry, and entered into the space.

“Given what I knew about online marketing, ecommerce, and customer services, I thought that this [bullion trade in the UK] could be done better. So I contacted someone who ran the UK branch of a big European refinery, who offered to do the gold side of the business while I took care of the marketing and customer services,” Halliday-Stein told Vice.

“My intention was to be the UK’s number one online bullion dealer,” said Halliday-Stein, who foresaw the profitability of selling bullion via e-commerce. For a domain he settled on “gold.co.uk.”

In 2008, the domain name belonged to Jack Gold, who requested £50,000 for it. Halliday-Stein opened a lease on the domain. Vice explains what happened next:

But disaster soon struck. Gold separated from his wife, reneged on Halliday-Stein’s agreement, and sold the website to someone else for a quick cash fix.

Halliday-Stein ultimately purchased “bullionbypost.co.uk” instead.  Today, his business does £100 million a year.

“Someone found me out for the purchase of the domain because we were now the biggest gold dealer. They offered a significantly increased price, but to be honest, I wanted the domain—there was a bit of ego at play,” he said.

“It’s a strong brand and it gives us significant SEO benefits of around £100k a year as well,” told Vice. “The thing about the ‘bullion by post’ brand was that it wasn’t right for higher net-worth individuals. It was always aimed at smaller to medium investors. Now our average order on gold is already about three times what our ‘bullion by post’ order is.”

A group of eight central banks in the US and Europe, the London Gold Pool controlled the price of gold for six years until the Pool collapsed leading into a more than decade long bull run. Gold reached nearly $1,000 per ounce, silver nearly $50. The central banks had pegged the price too low causing runs on gold, the British pound and US dollar. France boisterously left the pool and repatriated gold reserves, like many nations today are wont to do. In March 1968, the London Gold Pool collapsed amidst chaos in the market.

A two-tier system of official exchange and transactions was implemented after the London Gold Pool controls failed in order to suppress the gold price. The gold window closed altogether in 1971 during the Nixon Shock. Gold rose in price to $850. Western nations had to sit out the bull run as eastern markets remained open in the days following the Pool’s collapse.

In 1960, gold buying sent the price to more than $40 per oz. The US Federal Reserve and Bank of England allocated for the sale of BoE gold supplies in order to keep the price down. Banks worked feverishly to maintain the $35/oz gold price despite the free market dictating appreciation. The banks began “targeted selling and buying of gold” in order to achieve the price controls. They ultimately failed.

Poor economic conditions amid Vietnam War protests created instability in the US and thus the London Gold Pool. Inflation became an issue for the US. It would not exchange foreign-held dollars into gold and France left the Pool in June 1967. The nation moved large amounts of gold across the Atlantic from New York to Paris.  In 1967, Britain devalued its currency causing panic and a gold run.

By spring 1968, according to the Federal Reserve, “the international financial system was moving toward a crisis more dangerous than any since 1931.”

The British government devalued the pound on November 18, 1967 by 14.3%. The US adopted measures to slow down the gold run. London sold 100 tons of gold at market price on March 8th, a major increase in a typical sale for the bank. The pool released a statement:  “the London Gold Pool re-affirm their determination to support the pool at a fixed price of $35 per oz”.

On March 14, 1968 the US government and the British government agreed to close the London gold markets the following day. The British government declared March 15 a bank holiday.

The London gold market remained closed for two weeks. Around the world, gold trading continued amid rising prices. Switzerland founded the Zürich Gold Pool, helping to establish Zürich as a gold trading center of the world. The Federal Reserve funds rate had increased from 2% on October 25, 1967 to 5.13% on the day the Pool collapsed. The fed fund rate appreciated to 10.5% during the summer of 1969.

The two-tiered system stipulated $35 gold. Gold pool members did not trade gold with regular people. The US government suspended gold sales to governments trading in private market.

Although the gold pool members refused to trade gold with private persons, and the United States pledged to suspend gold sales to governments that traded in the private markets inflation ravaged the US. West Germany abandoned the Bretton Woods System in May 1971. The dollar declined. Switzerland purchased $50 million worth of gold in August. France purchased $191 million in gold. By then, US gold reserves had reached their thinnest levels in nearly fifty years.

President Richard Nixon unilaterally ended dollar convertibility to gold in what’s called “The Nixon Shock.” This effectively ended Bretton Woods. The Federal Reserve wanted the US, BoE, West Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to begin selling gold so that gold would not appreciate.

According to Fed chairman William McChesney-Martin, the US would protect the $35 gold price  “down to the last ingot”. The London Gold Pool airlifted emergency shipments of gold from the US to London due to high demand. Demand for gold was overwhelming. The Fed failed.

So what can we expect from a Comex default?

Market manipulation and price controls do not work. Free markets manage supply-and-demand better than central planners. When central planners scheme to control the price of goods, services, etc. it is only a matter of time before their cartel begins to fade. They generally try harder to manipulate the market, but always the free market dictates.

The London Gold Pool collapse and the COMEX default could come amid a similar situation: the world reserve currency is at risk. However no amount of government authority, command-and-control economics (Communism) can drown out the reason of the free market over the long-haul.

The end of the London Gold Pool cost the member banks (and so therefore the countries) billions of dollars. The same would happen with a COMEX default. The gold price appreciated 2300% between 1968 and the 1980 peak. This time around, the silver price would skyrocket in a similar manner.