Washington Politicians Propose a Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin to Pay Down U.S. Debt!

Announcer:

Welcome to Money Metals Exchange's weekly market wrap podcast. Helping precious metals investors during these treacherous times. Now, here's this week's market wrap with commentary and analysis from the fastest growing precious metals dealer in America, Money Metals Exchange.

Mike Gleason:

Welcome to this week's market wrap podcast, I'm Mike Gleason.

Precious metals are relatively flat this week. As of this recording on Friday morning, gold trades at $1,661 per ounce, up a couple bucks from a week ago.

Meanwhile, silver has been stuck in a lateral range around the $30 level since December 20th. But the metal is poised to register its strongest weekly close in a month, despite a dip here in early Friday trading. At $30.36 per ounce currently, silver may be on the verge of breaking out of its recent trading range. We'll look for possible confirmation of a breakout next week.

This is the third consecutive week that the bears tried unsuccessfully to keep silver below $30 per ounce. Whenever prices hit or dipped slightly below that level, value investors have entered the market with a significant amount of buy orders. We certainly experience robust sales here at Money Metals Exchange whenever prices dip.

Investment demand for silver will be strong again in 2013, if sales of the recently released 2013 Silver Eagles are any indication. The U.S. Mint sold more than 3.9 million of the coins to authorized purchasers on the opening day of availability this week. This record-high sales figure easily exceeds the 3.2 million sold last year on the day of the release of the 2012 Eagles. As of today we are now shipping 2013 Silver Eagles to our customers.

Turning to one of the other white metals, platinum, it's been in the news recently for reasons that are...well, hard to fathom. Have a listen to this news report.

[AUDIO CLIP ABOUT $1 TRILLION PLATINUM COIN]

If nothing else, the fact that minting trillion-dollar coins is even being seriously proposed as some kind of solution to the government's deficit problem is further evidence that we can, and should, expect virtually anything to be done about the problem – except for a plan that actually solves it.

Of course a real solution would involve, and require, trillion-dollar spending cuts. In the absence of meaningful cuts, we can expect more borrowing, more debt monetization by the Federal Reserve, and more gimmicks to get around debt ceilings – basically anything and everything – other than a decision to force the federal government to actually live within its means.

U.S. government finances are becoming more of a laughingstock with each passing day, and policymakers seem intent on destroying what's left of the U.S. dollar's credibility with their dog and pony show antics. As much as we'd like to see precious metals play a role in restoring soundness to the dollar, slapping an arbitrary trillion-dollar face value on a platinum coin with the picture of President Obama on it – that only the government gets to spend – is just a weasely extension and abuse of the fiat system.

As for the actual market value of an ounce of platinum, it's about $1,630 at present. So far in 2013, platinum is outperforming gold, as was predicted by David Morgan during our exclusive interview with him in last week's podcast. As a side note, be sure to check that out if you haven't already heard David's wonderful insights, it's certainly well worth the listen.

Getting back to platinum we're looking for this outperformance to continue in the intermediate term. Platinum faces a 15% drop in production out of South Africa, which is by far the world's biggest source of platinum supply. Platinum is now nearing price parity with gold. And we agree with David Morgan's predictions that it won't be long until platinum trades at a premium to gold once again.

There are several ways for investors to own platinum. Money Metals Exchange offers one-ounce Platinum Canadian Maple Leaf and Australian Platypus coins. Platinum American Eagles, which are no longer minted, are occasionally available on the secondary market, mostly in fractional sizes, but again only on a limited basis.

And lastly, we touched on some real tightness in the pre-1965 90% silver coins recently, but we can report that things have loosened up a little bit in the last couple of days on that front. We just got in a large shipment of junk silver bags so availability, for the moment anyway, is better and premiums ticked down slightly from where they were earlier in the week. However, unless the price of silver spikes sometime soon to draw out more sellers, don't expect a deviation from what appears to be the new norm with this secondary market product, that being higher premiums and lead-times, despite the fact that we here at Money Metals Exchange have a little bit of a slack at the moment. And we don't expect that supply to last more than a few days.

Well that will do it for this week's market wrap podcast. This has been Mike Gleason reminding you that we remain fully committed to getting you the most value for your depreciating dollar...with speed, with privacy, and with top notch service.

Thanks for listening and have a great weekend everybody.

Announcer:

Thank you for joining us for this edition of the Money Metals Exchange Weekly Market Wrap. Be sure to come back next week, and don't forget to subscribe to our weekly podcast through iTunes. For answers to all of your questions, or to discretely and securely buy or sell gold or silver coins, bars, and rounds, call 1-800-800-1865. Our knowledgeable and no-pressure specialists are standing by between 7:00 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. mountain time, Monday through Friday. Visit us at www.MoneyMetals.com or call 1-800-800-1865.