If It’s Mad Max then nothing we use to save with now will be worth much - gold, silver, currency, treasuries, etc
There is actually a (small) counterparty risk which is again government/central banks. They stole (sorry seized) gold from US citizens in the 1930’s:
I don’t see that there is such a risk now as the banking system really ownes the deposits that people entrust them with. Anyone who thinks that the money in their bank account belongs to them is wrong, it’s legally the bank’s. Depositors are unsecured creditors. This will be a far easier target for the banking/government cartel than gold.
A bail-in is the opposite of a bailout. Instead of relief funds coming from outside (taxpayers), the funds come from inside (shareholders and depositors). Although bail-in relief has been implemented in Europe, it has never been used in the U.S.
Few people realize that governments and banks no longer believe that your money belongs to you. The world is deep in debt and what money a person thinks they have could, at some point, simply be confiscated, the moment it goes into a bank account.
As always, I am guided by the wise words of sir Francis bacon:
This.
Cause “this” refers to the majority of people in a society being too broke for “need”.
It’s the reason societies around the world implement welfare, and/or SS, and/or Medicare.
Communism and socialism are direct attempts to address the problem of “inequality”.
The meme “large percentage of society is too poor for ” has been a constant… “OMG dog whistle” since forever.
Mostly true, but I remember that Germany is finally wanting to repatriate some/much of the gold they kept overseas (here) during the Cold War.
The goal was 700 tons from the US; they have already taken back delivery of 850 tons from the UK and France. Not a small job, moving tons of the stuff. Hard to spend it, too, if a bar or two happened to fall off the truck. You’d have to find a smelter, and a customer who wouldn’t ask too many questions, and …
Gold is slowly slowly slowly becoming obsolete as a form of money or useful store of value. It is heavy and hard to move, either legally or illegally. Digital “money” is now becoming shinier than gold as part of a generational shift?
I can certainly see that happening, but has it yet? Over the past few years BTC has not been shown to be a flight-to-safey asset, it has been a risk-on asset. I’ll admit that surprised me.
I can also see BTC being used in countries with unstable national currencies or as a means of wiring money across borders more effectively, faster, cheaper, etc.
There may be a terminology issue here. For example, I very rarely use cash, whether paper, coins, or gold ingots, at all anymore. Virtually all of my monetary transactions are digital money - from paycheck dump to transfers among accounts (stock, retirement, checking, savings) to credit card transactions. Just about everything is digital, as in ones and zeros, v. hard currency and, btw, also v. bitcoin.
That what the robber barons at the banks want you to believe. While at the same time:
Something amazing is happening in the gold market, but it’s largely going unnoticed: central banks are buying gold at a record pace. This could be a big catalyst that sends gold prices toward $3,000 per ounce much sooner than previously expected.
Bankers are just shysters in smart suits, believe them at your peril. I’m surprised that they have been getting away with it for so long, especially when they don’t hide what they are doing. From 1694 when the Bank of England was formed:
“The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.” – William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England (1694)
You have been warned many times:
Jefferson warned, “If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied … I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.”
Har, har. Jefferson also thought the country would be a pastoral farm environment, with slaves running around picking fruits and vegetables and little need for factories or other messy things. He also decried the over-powered Presidency until he had the chance to buy the Louisiana territories at which time he promptly forgot about Congress and did the deal. (He was also a big supporter of the Articles of Confederation, which had a weak central government.) So I’m not too concerned with what Jefferson thought 200 years ago
To clarify, I do not like anything that is “shiny” (with a tip of my hat to Steve and vivid memories of having fool’s gold explained to me).
I admire the people here who invest in “instruments” using proven means over time over the entire spectrum from Wendy’s prudent bond ladders and bomb proof stocks through to the Captain’s adroit log dancing with puts and calls (yikes! but congrats). I did not do badly with tech stocks when i was more technically current, but for seven years now I have been primarily invested in land.
Despite Divitas’ charts and warnings and Leap’s ongoing interesting experiments and travails I think of gold and digital as wahoo stuff that is primarily emotional and/or unproven and unpredictably evolving (yes, gold is evolving, and I am old enough to have known people who actually had used it casually as money, and have met teenagers who are agog when I explain Ft Knox, looking at me like I was a phantom out of an Indiana Jones movie).
Did I tell you what happened to Ed Hall’s retirement savings? Talking of evolving.
Ed was brilliant beyond most could ever expect. In the late 70s he bought into a couple of wildcatters in Texas. In 1981 his retirement savings were gone. He was age 65.
He was okay. He moved out to CA to Stanford to study turning seaweed into electricity. He moved into bigger digs. He was one of the most connected engineers in the country.
Gold is ballast in the ship so to speak. The US has plenty of it. The bloggers claiming other wise are selling bull. The US audits its gold. The bloggers saying other wise are selling bull.
Gold is an asset with a value. The treasury holds a lot of it. That does not mean it needs to be a medium of exchange on a daily basis for small transactions.
Currencies in the west currently are appreciating. Buying gold helps in that. Higher interest rates help more to appreciate a currency. We want commodity prices to come down and economies of scale to be produced in our manufacturing base. That is why central banks are buying gold.
That is exactly the point…what will be here hundreds of years from now is the only thing that matters in that demonstration. Except the gold or art collector will be long gone. We be the biggest group at the top of the pyramid.
Another central bank loads up on it. Read the bank’s president, Glapiński, on why gold should be held - similar reasoning to mine in fact
The National Bank of Poland added nearly 15 tons of gold to its reserves in April, according to data published by the bank last week. It was the largest increase in the country’s reserves since June 2019 when the bank boosted reserves by almost 100 tons.
