Expect Precious Metals Shortages During The Next Crisis

Fear mongering is the stock in trade of most gold commentators/spin merchants it seems, so here is my modest contribution in this interview with Kerry Lutz :)

Seriously, the industry's limited (in the face of mass market demand) production capacity is just a fact, and one I've covered many times before on this blog (see the Shortage label).

I got a lot of grief in this forum discussion about why the Perth Mint wasn't massively expanding capacity for the obvious demand surge that would happen in the future. I covered that briefly in the interview - shock - minting is not that profitable compared to other investment opportunities. The result is no entrepreneurial money goes into building mints.

As an example, look at where the entrepreneurial effort has gone in precious metals - distribution, eg GoldMoney & BullionVault. These are low cost software based businesses which haven't even bothered to build and run their own vaults. That's not a criticism, it is smart business. Who wants to spend $100m+ builidng a start of the art high volume precious metal mint to earn revenue of 4.5% on a 1oz coin? Note, 4.5% is gross revenue, not profit. There ain't much left after operational costs, depreciation, tax etc.

As I say in the interview, it may only be increasing premiums which will draw investment into the industry. However, that will take time to translate into extra capacity. The end result I see is sustained high premiums, which will make pooled metal "products" like Perth Mint Depository, GoldMoney, & BullionVault and, unfortunately, ETFs, a lot more attractive to the mass market coming into precious metals for the first time.