Marc Faber: Euro to Strengthen, Dollar to Weaken, Gold & Emerging Markets to Outperform
Channel: Gold BD TV
Date: 2017-04-25

Coming up the one and only Marc Faber joins me for an amazing conversation on the state of the U.S. economy, where he sees value, where he sees problems and gives advice to those considering gold as a safe haven investment. Don’t miss an interview with Marc Faber of The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, coming up after this week’s market update.

A busy news week in Washington and an aggressive new U.S. push for regime change in Syria left markets little affected through Thursday. Both the U.S. stock market and gold finished little changed on the week before U.S. air strikes in Syria commenced.

Gold began rising in after hours trading Thursday night. As of this Friday recording, gold prices come in at $1,266 an ounce and are registering a weekly gain of 1.2% with most all of that coming here on the final trading day of the week. Silver is now in positive territory for the week and is up 0.2% since last Friday’s close to trade at $18.40. Meanwhile both platinum and palladium are putting in slight weekly gains, with platinum now trading at $969 an ounce and palladium at $810.

The U.S. dollar advanced against foreign currencies mid week as the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its latest meeting. Fed officials expressed some concern over lofty valuations in equity markets. But they didn’t come out and admit their role in inflating the latest asset bubbles.

They did indicate they intend to pursue additional rate increases and eventually shrink their $4.5 trillion balance sheet. If the Fed moved to unload bonds, mortgage-backed securities, and other assets it holds back into the market, it would be playing with fire.

The Fed’s hawkish tone caused the stock market to give back most of their earlier gains.

Speaking of hawks, President Donald Trump’s foreign policy advisors convinced him to order Tomahawk missile strikes on Syrian air fields. The strikes began Thursday night.

The interventionist wing of the Republican Party has been pushing hard for military action in Syria and Iran. Trump had always positioned himself in opposition to these war hawks.

However, earlier this week, President Trump did a massive flip flop. After campaigning against the expensive regime changing, nation building, and global policing policies of Presidents Obama and Bush, Trump said he changed his mind – at least on the issue of letting Assad stay in power.

To voters who thought they were electing a different kind of Republican, Trump’s hasty retreat of non-interventionism is a big letdown. His apparent embrace of neo-conservative Middle East crusades couched in humanitarian rhetoric means that military and foreign aid spending will probably accelerate during his term.

That will put upward pressure on the budget deficit and put any potential tax cuts in jeopardy. And if Trump and Congressional Republicans can’t find a way to deliver on their promise of repealing and replacing Obamacare, they will have completely betrayed the voters who put them into office.