With the gold and silver prices having so recently ascended to new highs, last week's Cheviot Sound Money Conference at The Guildhall was extremely well timed to capitalise on investor interest in the sector. We gold bugs live in a lonely minority so being surrounded by 300 like-minded prophets of monetary doom was a bizarre, exhilarating experience. The universal view was that western government’s debasement of their fiat currencies, in progress since the demise of the Gold Standard, was in its final stages. Gold's continued rise against the US dollar must be seen as inevitable.
Ned Naylor Leyland, partner of Cheviot Asset Management and Chief Investment Advisor to the precious metals fund Abydos Holdings, opened the extremely well attended day in impressive surroundings before introducing a formidable line up of excellent speakers including James Turk of GoldMoney.com, Dominic Frisby of MoneyWeek& Frisby’s Bulls and Bears,, Hugo Salinas-Price, David Morgan of Silver-Investor.com and Chris Powell of the Gold Anti-Trust Association (GATA). Here follow a summary of some of the key themes and ideas from the conference. All speaker notes are available at the conference website.
Should Gold and Silver be re-monetised?
Hugo Salinas-Price (President of the Mexican Civic Association of Silver) www.plata.com.mx argued that the logical consequence of the collapse of money is the return of gold and silver as money. He has long advocated re-introducing the Mexican silver peso. He was surprisingly confident that his labours would shortly be rewarded.
“In 1910 the UK sovereign was worth £1, today it’s worth £240.” (Hugo Salinas-Price)
The silver sixpence was only withdrawn in 1946. Is reintroducing silver money therefore such a leap of faith? What better country to monetise silver than Mexico, the largest silver producer? Which country would most benefit from “re-inventing” such a sizeable new use? Wouldn’t a 2 oz silver Libertad worth say $75 be very popular, not least to 350 million Americans across the border?
James Turk, www.goldmoney.com , gave a convincing and thought provoking justification of why gold and silver were such long-enduring stores of value. He backed his case with an erudite historical analysis of gold’s place in banking and the gold standard from the founding of The Bank of England in 1694.
Although a strong bull for the gold price in the medium term James Turk felt that after an unbroken…
