With another syringe of quantitative easing being injected into the U.S. economy’s bloodstream, Ben Bernanke is giving the markets their liquidity fix. The Federal Reserve’s action reaffirmed my stance I’ve reiterated on several occasions that the governments across developed markets have no fiscal discipline, opting for ultra-easy monetary policies to stimulate growth instead.

The government’s liquidity shot promptly boosted gold and gold stocks, as investors sought the protection of the precious metal as a real store of value. You can see below the strong correlation between the rising U.S. monetary base and growing gold value. Since the beginning of 1984, as money supply has risen, so has the price of gold.

The dollar declined due to the Fed’s easing, which isn’t surprising, given the fact that gold and the greenback are often inversely correlated, and increasing money supply generally causes the currency to fall in value.

What’s interesting is that currency decline was what Richard Nixon sought to avoid when he ended the gold standard in 1971 and announced that the country would no longer redeem its currency in gold. During his televised speech to the American public, Nixon translated in simple terms the “bugaboo” of devaluation, saying, “if you are among the overwhelming majority of Americans who buy American-made products in America, your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today.”

As you can see below, more than 40 years later, a dollar is worth only 17 cents. This significant decline in purchasing power only strengthens the case of gold as a store of value, likely prompting Global Portfolio Strategist Don Coxe to propose making Nixon the “patron saint of gold investors,” during this year’s Denver Gold Forum.

As Milton Friedman once said, “Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.”

In its long-term asset return research charting economic history in comparison to current markets, Deutsche Bank illustrates multiple ways how “the world dramatically changed post-1971 relative to prior history.” While the research firm makes it clear that returning to the gold standard would be “disastrous,” DB finds that the “lethal cocktail of unparalleled levels of global debt and unparalleled global money printing” are relatively new governmental developments.

Prior to the last four decades, deficits only occurred in extreme situations of war or severe economic setbacks, such as the Great Depression. Balanced budgets were a “routine peace time phenomena in sound economies.” Since 1971, surpluses have been rare. The U.K. has had an annual budget deficit 51 out of the past 60 years and Spain has had 45 years of deficit spending over the past 49 years, according to DB.

Many developed countries are in a predicament, as fiscal austerity attempts have led to weaker-than-expected growth in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. DB asks, “Can we really be confident that the developed economies that we have created over the last 40 years have the ability to withstand the effects of austerity and cut backs? Do our modern day econometric models have the ability to understand the impacts of fiscal retrenchment after a financial crisis having been calibrated in a period of excessive leverage?”

Countless discussions over fiscal and monetary policies will carry on, but time will tell. Ian McAvity, editor of Deliberations on World Markets, says, “Excessive debt creates deflationary drag that they repeatedly fight by throwing fresh ‘liquidity’ or ‘stimulus’ at, to debauch the currency of that debt … For private investors, gold is the best medium for self-protection and preservation of purchasing power in my view.” I agree. Rising money supply, declining purchasing power and annual deficits are giving the all-clear to include gold in your portfolio.

Many others appear to agree with us, as sentiment has shifted in favor of the metal in recent days: According to Morgan Stanley’s survey of 140 institutional investors in the U.S., gold sentiment was at its highest bullish reading since July 2011 and the largest month-over-month increase during the survey’s three-year history!

So, gold investors, if you haven’t put in your orders, consider getting them in quickly, because the bulls are buying. Credit Suisse saw “massive inflows” into gold exchange-traded products in August after experiencing significant outflows compared to crude oil and the broader market in March, April, May and July. August shows a clear preference toward gold.

We generated lots of interest when we showed our standard deviation chart a few weeks ago, so I updated it through September 13. Although gold has been on a tear recently, breaking through the stumbling block of $1,600 and climbing to $1,770 by Friday, bullion still looks attractive, with a low sigma reading of -1.7.

A look at a histogram shows how many times gold bullion historically fell in this sigma range. Today’s sigma of -1.7 has occurred only about 2 percent of the time. Bernanke and Draghi only made the decision more obvious for gold and gold stock buyers.

The Fed and ECB also make my job presenting at the Hard Assets conference in Chicago very exciting. Don’t miss my presentation on September 21. I invite you to be there in person if you live in close proximity to Chicago, or you can download a pdf at www.usfunds.com following the meeting.

You might also learn something you didn’t know with our newest interactive slideshow, the 10 Surprising Uses of Commodities. Check it out and share with a friend.
Related: When You Should Stop Buying Gold

All opinions expressed and data provided are subject to change without notice. Some of these opinions may not be appropriate to every investor. By clicking the link above, you will be directed to a third-party website. U.S. Global Investors does not endorse all information supplied by this website and is not responsible for its content. Standard deviation is a measure of the dispersion of a set of data from its mean. The more spread apart the data, the higher the deviation. Standard deviation is also known as historical volatility.

Economists and politicians have debated the merits of gold for decades. In the last 10 years, the discussion has been even more hotly contested, as the price of the yellow metal has skyrocketed. Ron Rimbus, CFA, in a blog for the CFA Institute, is the latest person to take on the subject.

Rimbus argues that the intrinsic value of gold is intricately linked to what’s going on in the financial system, even after the end of the gold standard in 1971. He writes,

“Just because the world switched to a fiat money system, does not mean that the virtues of gold have changed at all in the past 40 years. Quite the contrary, the virtues of gold have remained the same. It is the political climate that has changed. The hardest thing for an investor to wrap his mind around is that the intrinsic value of gold is not a singular price per se. Rather, gold derives its value as a put on government finances. The more egregious the fiscal and monetary policy, the most valuable gold becomes.”

A “circular loop of debt and easy money,” as Rimbus puts it—skyrocketing debt burdens held by the largest economies along with the fact that these nations seem to lack the courage for fiscal discipline—should make gold all the more valuable to investors.

He concludes by saying, “When the world appears ready to give up on debt and easy money, then you should give up on gold … but not a moment sooner.”

Read Ron’s post to find out when you should stop buying gold.

All opinions expressed and data provided are subject to change without notice. Some of these opinions may not be appropriate to every investor. By clicking the link above, you will be directed to a third-party website. U.S. Global Investors does not endorse all information supplied by this website and is not responsible for its content.

In the Investor Alert, our investment team shares charts and data that we believe provide readers with a first mover advantage. While markets don’t always move like we anticipate, recognizing historical trends can provide an edge if you act quickly.

This week, gold bugs were rewarded with the long-awaited positive momentum in the yellow metal, and on Friday, bullion rose to about $1,670. After falling below the 200-day moving average, gold had been stuck in quicksand for several months. With the jumps in the price this week, bullion swiftly rose above this critically important long-term moving average.

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that gold investors were the “most bullish in nine months” as its survey of 29 of 35 analysts indicated that they expected prices to rise—only three were bearish toward the metal.

One chart that might turn those three bears to gold bulls was featured in last week’s Investor Alert. I noted that gold’s 12-month rolling return in standard deviation terms triggered an extremely low sigma event, dipping below a reading of -2. To our investment team, this signal means that investors should expect gold to experience a significant price reversal.

Price reversals, of course, work both ways—the oscillator above also tells you whether gold has climbed too quickly and should be expected to fall. If you take a look at the previous “peak,” when gold rose above 2 sigma, the chart sent out a chilling warning signal that gold was due for an eventual correction.

Last August, when the price of gold was reaching all-time highs, I reminded investors that it would be a non-event to see gold decrease by 10 percent. In fact, I felt that this correction would be a healthy development for markets, because it would act to remove the short-term speculators while the long-term story remained on solid ground.

Gold still hasn’t made it back to its all-time high, but Stifel Nicolaus’ gold-to-crude oil ratio suggests gold climbing to $1,900. According to Stifel’s research, the gold-to-oil ratio based on the price of Brent has historically “shown a tendency to run to around 16.5x.” In other words, the price of the yellow metal is usually about 16.5 times the price of a barrel of Brent oil. With Brent trading around $116 per barrel this week, the math tells us that gold could go to $1,900.

The long-term fundamentals for gold stand on solid ground. Way back in March, Ian McAvity stated that the “extreme behavior of major central bankers and the absurd ‘risk-on/risk-off’ surges of liquidity across all markets fueled by those liquidity injections sloshing around markets rather than reaching any economy is frightening, and the most bullish fuel they could throw at the gold market.” Liquidity keeps flowing today, as central banks have continued their massive global easing cycle throughout the summer. In McAvity’s opinion, “The gold price volatility is more a reflection on the U.S. dollar and euro paper and the madness of an asset bubble. Gold will be the last man standing on the other side of the valley.”

Even the Love Trade—gold buying out of China and India—isn’t over, despite rather tepid quarter-end results from the World Gold Council. In his latest Greed & Fear document, Christopher Wood from CLSA says that he believes the media overreacted to China’s gold demand. With gold demand totaling nearly 800 tons from June 2011 to June 2012, he points out that the country “is still buying a lot of gold.”

As for gold demand in India, his team hears that people are buying gold with cash to avoid the higher duties. “As a result, these cash purchases will not be recorded in the official data,” says Wood.

In addition to these factors, there’s a new growing demand coming from central banks. Wood sums it up for investors: “The conclusion for investors is stupefyingly simple. Stay long gold.”

All opinions expressed and data provided are subject to change without notice. Some of these opinions may not be appropriate to every investor. Standard deviation is a measure of the dispersion of a set of data from its mean. The more spread apart the data, the higher the deviation. Standard deviation is also known as historical volatility.