Oil & gold records + inflation 4%/month. 2008-02-28

Friday 29th February 2008 10.07 p.m.

What a week! What a day. New records for oil and gold (all-time highs). West Texas Intermediate (Light Sweet Crude Oil) at $103.05 and gold at $976.90 on the spot market (right now at $971.50) and $978.50 on the NYMEX futures, closing at $975.

The $1000 label is now on all the gold charts, just waiting for the line to cross it. Silver futures hit $20; the spot price maxed at $19.98 and is now at $19.81. Platinum is holding on at $2161, Palladium at $567 (up 200% in just 3 years!) and Rhodium is hovering just under $9000 at $8940 (it had a high of $9040 on 20th February).

Gold has crossed some significant round figure sums recently as it approaches the key round figure of US$1000. For example, gold has broken above 1,000 Australian Dollars, 1,000 Swiss Francs, 10,000 Mexican Persos and 100,000 Japanese Yen only in the last week or so. It is not so far from £500 Sterling. These figures are shown near to the bottom of the Kitco front page but for more details, see this very useful page on their site. There you can see that the 1000 Indian Rupees per gram level in India has been left behind in the dust (since last October). It's now 1250.22 per gram! Hard luck if you didn't buy and instead waited for a chance to get it at below 1000! It hasnt't come. Of course, it might but it's looking a bit doubtful!

This is not just a dollar phenomenon. Here on Kitco you can see gold in various currencies. Try clicking on the "hard" currencies and select a period of 1 year. "Hard" currencies? Don't make me laugh! Gold up over 20% against all of them, +47.91% against the British pound, +51% against the US dollar. They are the worst performing currencies! Does this say something about the future for Anglo-American hegemony in the financial and military field? The "Other Currencies" tab has gains for gold between 24.90% in Aussie dollars to $54.89% in South African Rand (only just worse than the USD)! The Aussie $ fares the best, followed by the Canadian $ where gold is up 'only' 25.56% in the past year. AUD and CAD have both been slightly stronger than the Swiss Franc, in which unit gold has risen by 30.77%. The 'most stable currency in the world' has therefore lost 23.5% against gold 100x(1-1/1.3077) in the last 12 months. That's about 2% a month depreciation! Try pasting 100*(1-1/1.3077)= into Windows calculator.

Try looking at the 6 month charts and the figures are nearly the same. Nearly all of this move is in the last 6 months. So the best currencies in the world are actually right now depreciating at 4% a month against gold. That's some inflation!