Denver Gold Forum 2012

Thomas P.M. Barnett has worked in US national security circles since the end of the Cold War, starting first with the Department of Navy’s premier think tank, the Center for Naval Analyses. From there he moved to serve as a senior researcher and professor at the Naval War College in Newport RI, where he became a top assistant to Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowksi – the father of “network-centric warfare.” After 9/11, Barnett served in Cebrowski’s Office of Force Transformation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as the Assistant for Strategic Futures. He developed a famous PowerPoint brief on the subject of globalization and international security, which later morphed into a New York Times-bestseling book, “The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century” (2004). Since leaving government service in 2005, Dr. Barnett has amassed a number of duties in the private sector:

• Running his own consultancy, Barnett Consulting LLP;
• Acting as chief analyst for the online strategic community & “massively multiplayer consultancy” Wikistrat Ltd.;
• Writing as contributing editor for Esquire magazine and posting to its The Politics Blog;
• Writing his own blog (“Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Globlogization”) and a weekly column for World Politics Review (“The New Rules”);
• Contributing to Time’s Battleland blog;
• Working as senior consultant to the political-risk firm Eurasia Group and as a part-time analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses; and
• Serving as Executive Vice President of the New York- and Beijing-based Center for America-China Partnership.

Barnett completed his “Pentagon’s New Map” trilogy with the volumes, “Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating” (2005), and “Great Powers: America and the World After Bush” (2009). Dr. Barnett holds a PhD in political science from Harvard University. He is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, and travels the world giving speeches and conducting his strategy work with both private- and public-sector enterprises.

It was the Best of Times,
It was the Worst of Times.
– Charles Dickens

In the last 10 years gold equities, as represented by the XAU, have gone up 250%. However gold bullion has outshined the equities being up over 500%.

Investors’ disappointment and downright disillusionment is seen in the lowest valuations ever for equities.

From the lack of meaningful discoveries, to low grading, to an ever lengthening schedule to production, to the increasing risks brought by resource nationalism, the challenges faced by the producers are not likely to go away soon.

On the other hand, the Demand side of Gold has never been more robust. China and India have over the last 10 years doubled their share of the gold market from 23% to 47%. Central banks have turned net buyers from a 20 year selling spree.  Investment gold stock is closing in on $2 tr of which gold ETFs represent 8% from nothing in 2004.

Are these trends sustainable or are we there yet?

Don Coxe has more than 39 years of institutional investment experience in Canada and the US. He is Strategy Advisor to BMO Financial Group. His investment journal, Basic Points, published since 1992, and his conference calls are distributed exclusively for their clients in North America, Europe and Asia.

From his office in Chicago, Mr. Coxe heads up the Global Commodity Strategy investment management team – a collaboration of Coxe Advisors and Harris Investments – to create and market commodity-oriented solutions for investors. He is advisor to the Coxe Commodity Strategy Fund and the Coxe Global Agribusiness Income Fund in Canada, and the Virtus Global Commodity Stock fund in the US.

Mr. Coxe has consistently been named as a top portfolio strategist by Brendan Wood International; in 2011, he was awarded a lifetime achievement award and he was ranked number one in the 2007, 2008 and 2009 surveys. Mr. Coxe maintains a highly visible presence in the business community as an advisor to Boards, and speaker for business conferences and industry events.

Mr. Coxe was appointed to the Board of Spanish Mountain Gold (TSX:SPA) in September 2011. He has been an Advisory Board member of Genagro Ltd. (a firm investing in farmland and farming-related businesses) since 2008.

Prior to entering the investment advisor business, Mr. Coxe served as associate editor of National Review magazine in New York; practiced law in Toronto; was general manager of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture; and served as General Counsel of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.

There have been few better performing investments in the past decade than gold, which as recently as the end of the 1990s was being dismissed as a historic relic by many experts. Despite its extraordinary performance, some critics still believe that taking an interest in gold is evidence of craziness or being very right wing, but in an entertaining and insightful talk Matthew Bishop explains that everyone should take gold seriously, because of what its price tells us about subjects such as the health of the economy, the outlook for inflation, the priorities and competence of government, and the prospects for paper currencies such as the dollar. Drawing on his book, “In Gold We Trust? The Future of Money In An Age of Uncertainty”, which is full of fascinating historical detail about gold and the evolution of today’s money, he explains what the current gold price reveals about the future of the economy, and what is likely to happen to gold and other investments in future.