Gold gleams as world’s
largest reinsurer “hits the mattresses” against
NIRP by Blanchard Coins
| March 16, 2016
Gold’s allure keeps rising
thanks to the growing preponderance of negative interest
rates worldwide.
Morgan Stanley, which just declared that
global recession odds have risen to 30%, has now raised
its average gold-price target for the year, by 8% to $1,173,
below current spot levels but nevertheless an acknowledgment
that the metal’s run higher this year looks like the real
deal.
And now the world’s largest reinsurer is
turning to physical assets to shelter itself from the scourge
of negative rates, in which central banks charge other institutions
storage fees, which are then often passed on to everyday
bank depositors.
Munich Re of Germany has announced that
it’s “going to the mattresses,” so to speak, increasing
its gold and cash reserves in the wake of steeper negative
rates from the European Central Bank.
“Munich Re has held gold in its coffers
for some time and recently added a cash sum in the two-digit
million euros,” Reuters reported, citing CEO Nikolaus von
Bomhard.
“We are just trying it out, but you can
see how serious the situation is,” von Bomhard said.
A separate Bloomberg story on the situation
specified those cash levels at “at least 10 million euros
($11 million) in two currencies.”
This is huge news for gold because although
its presence has been increasing in central-bank vaults
in recent years, it remains vastly underrepresented in the
asset allocations of other large-scale investors such as
insurers and pension funds, some of which are now being
forced to consider the yellow metal thanks to the destructiveness
of NIRP, or negative-interest-rate policies. Munich Re’s
latest plunge into self-storing cash and gold could mark
a sea change for the precious metal’s prospects.