The News

If you watch the news closely, you’ll understand why you need to own gold.

A week ago, we came within a hair’s breadth of a world-changing military encounter in the Middle East. 

The attack on Saudi’s oil refining operation could have metastasized into something out of control.  

And it still may.  How fast would it spread?  And where?    

The Strait of Hormuz is always vulnerable in the event of a military engagement with Iran  (read our April briefing, “Temperature Rising in the Persian Gulf”).

As we wrote last year, “If things get hot over the Strait of Hormuz, it will realign the major powers of the world, creating explicit new alliances and sorely test America’s geopolitical dominance.  It will change the dollar’s role in international trade and send energy prices to crippling highs.”

And it will send gold prices to uncharted new highs.

That’s because gold is the world’s currency of choice in times of crisis.

Our point is simply that you can’t know exactly when someone will launch a deadly attack and start a war.  

 Or decide to close the world’s shipping lanes.

Last year, there was a close encounter between the US and China when a Chinese ship came within 150 feet of a US destroyer in the South China Sea.  Such events are becoming uncomfortably common.  Last week, China mobilized forces after it accused a US destroyer of penetrating its territorial waters in around the disputed Paracel Islands.

Shipping in the South China Sea has grown increasingly crowded, an unavoidable result of China’s economic rise.  The area is also crowded with conflicting territorial claims that a Solomon could not fairly sort out.     

The point is that you cannot know when an accident or other incident will escalate and draw in the US. 

Speaking of China, you cannot know when China will dump a trillion dollars of US Treasury notes and tank the dollar.  But we know that weaponizing its dollar portfolio remains an ever-present trade war option in the eyes of China’s officialdom.     

If you watch the news closely, you’ll understand why you need to own gold, the world’s currency of choice, in a crisis.  

Rather than simply watching events begin to spin out of control, we urge you to take steps to protect yourself and your family now.

RME gold professionals are always only a phone call away.