Issue link: http://resourceworld.uberflip.com/i/102869
ment, mining companies around the world will be forced either to concede to higher wages or close mines – another impetus for across-the-board price increases for precious metals. These macro-economic shifts involving gold have not escaped the profit-seeking eyes of influential billionaire investors or respected market analysts. All-star hedge fund managers, Kyle Bass, Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn and Third Point LLC's Daniel Loeb, are all on record as favouring ownership of actual physical gold bullion bars – in allocated storage in a secure vault. Meanwhile, John Paulson told his clients at Paulson & Co. in February that gold is his best long-term bet, serving as protection against currency debasement, rising inflation and a possible breakup of the euro. In the conservative realm of technical analysts, Louise Yamada, who primarily sells her advice to institutional investors, 14 www.resourceworld.com stated on CNBC's Power Lunch that she sees gold approaching her next target of US $2,000 an ounce, and then went on to make an uncharacteristically aggressive call for US $5,200 gold by 2018. Richard Russell, the longest-serving market letter writer in history, has an even more aggressive target than Yamada's, telling his subscribers in December that, as recommended by WGC for the Eurozone, "the US will, in due time, start backing its currency with part-gold and the dollar will be convertible into gold at around US $10,000 an ounce." Top analyst, Pimco's Bill Gross, has more than $1.8 trillion of assets under management for some of the world's largest institutional investors. Gross, previously known as "The Bond King", has become gold's new best friend. In a post-QE3 interview with Bloomberg TV's Lunch Money, Gross declared the era of stock and bond investments at an end, stating, "You know, I am not a gold bug. I am just suggesting that gold is a real asset and will be advantaged if the Federal Reserve or the ECB central banks start to write checks in the trillions. So what my objective is, I am not sure. I just think it will be higher than it is today and certainly a better investment than a bond or stock, which will probably return only 3% to 4% over the next five to 10 years." Before I state my own long-term price objective for gold, I want to point out a counter-intuitive trend that speaks to the price of gold, but also to the principles of uncompromised ownership of physical bullion as practiced at my company. As bullion's popularity rises, there is evidence of more schemes, frauds and leveraged investment products designed to part investors from what could be their real money. At the core of all of those schemes, often buried in the fine print, is a shaky or non-existent bullion ownership structure. For any bullion product, be it a fund or NOVEMBER 2012