Last month, ISIS, the Sunni armed group that controls large areas of Iraq and Syria, announced the establishment of a new Islamic state, a caliphate, straddling the two countries. And soon after, passenger jet Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board and escalating a major political crisis, pitting the United States and Europe against Russia.
The United States and the EU had already enacted sanctions against viagra online Russia and last week both announced new sanctions to ratchet up economic pharmacy Kamagra pressure on the Russians. And what if Putin decides to retaliate accordingly by shutting off gas supplies to Europe? At the same time, there’s the mushrooming conflict in Gaza, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
On top of this, Argentina is about to default, its second default in 13 years, and
Iran is building a nuclear weapon, as talks about a peaceful nuclear program are further postponed.
It’s hard to find a time in recent history when so many crises and events of historic consequence have
happened all at once. At least not since before 1989 in Eastern Europe.
Given the recent events, not to mention that Russia has been buying a lot of gold in recent months (18.6 tons in June alone, as insurance against financial pressure from the West), it’s difficult to understand why gold prices haven’t jumped significantly, since they are usually stimulated by important geopolitical conflicts.
Gold, the most widely recognized safe-haven investment, had wide swings in its price in the past two weeks. First it fell from a high of $1350 on July 11 to $ 1297 plavix dosage by July 15 as the Federal Reserve hinted that it will raise interest rates. Then came the Malaysian jet crash in Ukraine and the Israeli offensive against Hamas, and the price of gold and gold futures started rising; gold reached $1,311 by the end of the week and futures went up 1.3%, to $1,316.90 an viagraonline-rxpharmacy ounce.
Conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine helped gold beat other commodities, even U.S. Treasuries. Sanctions on Russia also had a positive effect – gold shot up to $1,304.90 up from $1290.80 which was caused by news about declining demand for gold in China.
Sure, higher interest rates would encourage investors to paper investments that pay interest. There’s also the strengthening dollar and improving buy viagra online economic data in the United States, both of which normally move in the opposite direction of gold. But the multiple geopolitical crises and major conflicts around the world give us a strong reason to believe that a possible big gold price escalation is looming, and so it’s perhaps a good idea to hedge one’s bets and hold some gold.
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