While the US$3000 figure is wildly above most forecasts, which are mostly flat at the current level, UBS global commodity analyst Tom Price said these flat forecasts are based less on informed analysis than on the fact that "people just don't know what's going on."

It seems that the past few years of falling interest rates have lulled a big part of the global economy into financing with variable-rate debt...[As such,] when interest rates go up (as they did last week), there’s a world-wide reset in interest costs that, best case, amounts to a tax increase on individuals and businesses and, worst-case, threatens to blow up the whole system.

A more aggressive devaluation of paper currencies is on the horizon thus the whole PM Complex is completely underpriced. Averaging in from this point on seems warranted. Below is a full explanation as to why that is the case.

Unsustainable trends can survive much longer than most people anticipate, but they do end when their “time is up” – at the culmination of their time cycles...In an effort to bring clarity in how and when these trends could change direction we analyzed more than 20 different cycles. They almost unanimously point to tectonic shifts in the months and years ahead … starting now. We have been warned. At this point, we have enough confirmation to accept that the gold and silver crash – starting in April of 2013 – was the first shot across the board of what is to come. Read on!

The return of the U.S. dollar - and the secular outperformance of the U.S. dollar vs. the rest of the world - is a HUGE, huge trend. HUGE.

Stocks are up. Bonds are expensive. Dollar cash is unlikely to preserve purchasing power in an environment of negative real rates. Diversifying to a basket of hard currencies might help to mitigate some of the risks out there. It clearly adds currency risk but in an environment where there may not be such a thing as a risk free asset, it might be a risk worth pursuing...

What would happen to the market/spot price of gold if central banks around the world diverted their foreign currency reserves – almost $11 trillion's worth – into gold. Using James Turk's Gold Money Index the "fair" gold price would be $10,783/ozt.

Gold and Historical Average measured against John Williams’ shadow CPI statistics (shows that the 1980 peak of $850 equals $9,000+ today, and clearly demonstrates gold is far away from making new ‘real’ highs).

It would appear that the price of gold has fallen enough to qualify as a "bear market," and we've begun hearing about what a terrible investment gold is now… and throughout recorded history. Below are the 12 most commonly-spread myths about gold as an investment.

Don't be fooled [by] the majority of investors getting caught up in this manipulated panic selling [of] their gold and silver mining shares for pennies on the dollar to chase the overbought equities. [You] could be capitulating at exactly the wrong time as this panic cannot continue for much longer.