Does the US Mint Know Where Gold Prices Are Headed?

Two years ago, the US Mint announced that it would discontinue production Gold Eagle coins. Perhaps this was due to waning demand, as gold was approaching $1000/ounce.

On the other hand, it's not as if enthusiasm for gold was in decline.

Finally, the Mint is able to adjust production relative to demand. Thus, we ask why was production of these coins halted?

If you ask gold bugs, they're sure to tell you that the Mint simply ran out of gold. In fact, the Mint even pointed to supply issues as the reason for halting production back in late 2008. Of course, this complete hogwash.

So then, why did the Mint stop producing Gold Eagle coins? 

If we examine a chart of the iShares gold ETF, you can see that ever since the Mint stopped producing Gold Eagles, gold has nearly doubled in a span of right around two years.

This raises the question...

Did the US Mint have good reason to believe the price of gold would trend upward for at least a year?

While some might feel that the Mint has no concern whether or not they expect gold to rise or fall when making decisions whether to make gold coins, the fact is that the Mint is run like a business, with certain sales and profit hurdles. If you don't believe that, just add yourself to their email notification list.

[Before you add your email to their list, I want to caution you that once you add your email to their list, you are not likely to be able to remove it later because apparently, their email system doesn't work so great.]

Perhaps the decision to cease production of Gold Eagles had nothing to do with expectations for gold prices. However, today the US Mint sent to email notifications that it was bringing back Gold Eagles.  This raises the question...

Does the US Mint have some type of insider information (say from the Federal Reserve) that indicates gold is headed for a long downward trend? 

Other than the top officials at the Mint and the Federal Reserve (as well as their close associates) no one is likely to know the answer to this question. However, it is certainly something to think about.

One thing is for certain. If in fact the Mint has some type of information pertaining to future gold price trends, you can bet it would factor in to the decision of whether to produce Gold Eagles, or halt production.