Bolonguer "Gold is a "Crisis Hedge" not an  Inflation hedge" Isn't gold price a mix of various themes. I read that emerging market local currency goverment bonds as an asset class show a close correlation to gold (as measured in USD or GBP terms) most of the time even though that...

I was very struck by Clive's demonstration that for a Japanese PP backtest;  LTT would not have helped much beyond just having 50% STT. I just did some googling and 20year JGB have been available since the 1980's (40year JGB have only been available much more recently). The 20year JGB yield was 7% i...

Is a key reason why Clive's Japanese PP backtest is no better than the Japanese 1to5 year treasury ladder tweeked version precisely because real long term bonds are not available in Japan. If Japan had had 50year bonds as in the UK and the Japanese PP had used those rather than 10year bonds, then bu...

The Fed can only influence rates. They don't control them. If the markets think there is too much money causing inflation the rates are going to go way up whether the Fed wants it or not. Is that really true? Couldn't the Fed (and other sovereign central banks) in theory buy all of the bonds and ha...

Medium Tex, what I was really asking was given that we "must" have two separate portfolios the much larger of which has 100% cash, is it still wise to add 25% cash in the stand alone LTT,stocks,gold portfolio so as to make it a genuine PP? I like you, am convinced about the PP being prefer...

[quote="MediumTex"] [quote="doodle"] Just remember what Harry Browne said--"when you break the package you lose the safety." I'm in the  position that my better half only really trusts cash so we have currently an 82% cash weighting (was 100%) with allocation to non-cas...

Medium Tex, I've never been to Australia but I had heard that it was one of the few developed countries with above inflation short term rates. I did some googling and their consumer price inflation is currently 3% with short term rates of 5%. My impression of economic softness extending to Australia...

I think that Volcker raising rates in the face of a very weak economy is something we are unlikely to see again. People just don't do things like that anymore. I thought that Australia was undergoing such "treatment" right now. They have a mining boom at the mines but for most of the coun...

Clive, is it high real, inflation adjusted rates that hit gold rather than nominal rates? Didn't the 1970s often have high nominal rates that were actually negative in real terms?

Clive, was your scenario the central bank trying but failing to halt a slide in the value of the currency and so gold still doing better than cash? I suppose the hypothetical future currency tussle that would be like that would have to be versus some emergent new contender as a reserve currency????

Clive, wouldn't cranking short term rates to high levels be purely a central bank mediated chosen decision (as by Volcker in the early 1980s) done specifically to strengthen the currency especially relative to gold. Back then it hit gold hardest so wouldn't it do the same now? I thought the cash por...