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Post by Entendance on Jan 4, 2017 18:58:12 GMT -5
Bullion Star today has posted an interesting "infographic" about exchange-traded gold funds and its main point seems to be to remind investors that when they buy shares in gold ETFs, they are facilitating the fractional-reserve gold banking system -- that is, facilitating the artificial inflation of the gold supply, making gold seem more plentiful than it is and thus undermining the gold price.
Gold-backed Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) have grown strongly in scale and popularity over the last decade and their combined gold holdings now surpass all but the largest central bank gold reserve holdings. However, its important to understand the mechanics of these gold-backed ETF investment vehicles and to appreciate what they can and can't provide to gold investors.
This infographic takes you on a tour of gold-backed ETFs and illustrates insights into how these products really work, including the following: ◾The contemporary gold holdings of the world's largest gold-backed ETF platforms ◾Why holders of gold ETFs are holders of units / shares, not gold holders ◾The characteristics and common objectives of gold-backed ETFs ◾How the world's largest gold ETFs support and perpetuate the opaque practices of the London Gold Market ◾The secretive vault network within which many large gold-backed ETFs allocate and store their gold in ◾How the amount of gold represented by an ETF unit erodes over time ◾The summary mechanics and infrastructure of many of these gold ETF vehicles
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Post by Entendance on Mar 6, 2017 12:05:25 GMT -5
"The system is rigged against each of us. If you are not a member of the “big club” then you, like myself, have to live with the fact that we are nothing more than an ATM for the uber-wealthy. We supply all their toys, entertainment and wealth. The sad part is, we do it willingly.
Here’s how bad it is. You wanna know how bad this is? They don’t even care about optics any more. JP Morgan yesterday announced for the last four years they have only experienced two days of trading loses. There’s about 200 trading days a year. So, out of 800 days only 2 days were loses, but 2016 that number was zero. No day loses and their average take, “from trading the markets” was $80 MILLION a day. Chris Martenson, The Daily Coin
On Thursday March 2 silver was monkey-hammered to the tune of more than a 4% drop in under an hour. There was more than $2 BILLION of digital contracts dropped on the “market” during this time to achieve this massive drop. Gold was, to a degree, spared and only suffered about a 2% drop. Silver was the focus of the bullion banking cartel.
Here’s the thing. These criminal banksters do NOTHING to produce wealth. Their job is stealing. If you or I were to commit a crime, like market rigging, we would be in federal prison on several felony charges, including conspiracy, and would be treated like the criminal we are. The banksters, on the other hand, are treated like royalty for committing the same crime on a global scale. Their crimes should actually be considered crimes against humanity as these crimes impact millions upon millions of people.
We have to work for our money, but JP Morgan “making” $80 MILLION A DAY, they don’t do anything for that. They don’t produce a single thing. They don’t build a single house; not one good gets produced or shipped. Not one service gets performed. It’s just a skimming operation; that honestly doesn’t even involve people anymore, it’s just computers. Chris Martenson, The Daily Coin
Can a person even wrap their mind around $80 MILLION a day? Seriously? At the end of 2016 JP Morgan stole in excess of $20,800,000,000 from this fraudulent scheme. Would you like to know where this $20 BILLION profit came from? You and me. That’s right. Our labor, which produces an income, was transferred from our account to JP Morgan’s and the other too big to jail mafia enterprises.
While most people that are vested in the stock market are ecstatic over the “new all time high” and their 401k or IRA or whatever “investment” vehicle they are using, has risen to the occasion. The fact of the matter is this – we all still lost. The banksters were the only winners. They stole all our gains through fees, taxes and other forms of wealth transfer that most people never think about. The $5 charge here, the $100 charge there. It all goes into the same pile – and it’s not our pile. Crimes of this nature used to be preformed under the cover of darkness. That is no longer necessary since the people are all too happy to hand over their hard earned wealth and allow these banksters to simply steal at their leisure. If you don’t believe me, every time you deposit funds into your 401k, IRA or pension State Street Bank or Bank New York Mellon is stealing approximately 0.03%. Every day your retirement account has funds, one of these mafia organizations is repeating this crime – Every. Single. Day.
The above is a dose of reality and we should all heed the warning. Wait until you hear what else Chris has to say. I must have caught Chris on a good day as he is fired up and in turn I became all fired up as well. This is a rare treat and well worth every minute." -Chris Martenson: The Mother of All Bubbles - Rory Hall
2017: The Year of Reckoning
More here & here
More here & here
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Post by Entendance on Mar 21, 2017 5:54:43 GMT -5
Is Demand For Physical Gold Really Collapsing? To claim that the global demand for physical gold is collapsing is seeded in either ignorance or mal-intent. But either way, the assertion is outright idiotic when the facts are examined, which we do in today’s episode of the Shadow of Truth here
"I serve on the Board of Directors of a large Singapore-based company that’s in the gold and silver business. And, last night during our quarterly conference call, the management team gave me a lot of intriguing information. Sales of physical gold and silver are collapsing across the entire industry. At the US Mint, for example, sales of US Eagle gold coins fell by 67% between February 2016 versus February 2017. And sales of US Eagle silver coins are down 75% over the same period. The World Gold Council’s data also shows a substantial decline in physical precious metal demand in 2016, particularly with bars, coins, and jewelry. Suppliers and refiners in the precious metals business are echoing these numbers, lamenting that sales are extremely slow and margins are falling. For our Singapore company, this decline is irrelevant. They have their own proprietary, state-of-the-art storage facility and a number of cutting-edge service like bullion-backed peer-to-peer loans, so business is great. But I would expect that a number of other bullion dealers will probably go bust if this downturn lasts much longer. The one conundrum is that this trend does NOT correlate with the price of gold. In US dollar terms, the gold price is up 16% since the beginning of 2016. So it would be reasonable to conclude that sales of physical bars and coins are up as well. But they’re not. The reason is because there’s a HUGE difference between physical gold and “paper” gold. When people talk about the gold price, they’re really quoting the price of gold contracts at exchanges around the world in London, Shanghai, Chicago, etc. Traders aren’t actually buying and selling physical gold. These gold contracts are merely paper financial instruments, like stocks and bonds, that traders use for speculation. When some conflict breaks out in Africa, the knee-jerk reaction is for traders to buy gold contracts. And when central bankers announce that the economy is totally awesome, traders dutifully dump their gold contracts. But they’re really just buying and selling highly leveraged paper assets. Nothing physical changes hands. It’s the same with gold ETFs; these are merely financial instruments to gamble on the paper price of gold. Investors who truly understand the benefits of owning gold, and don’t simply want to speculate on the price, buy physical bars and coins from a dealer. And quite often there’s a massive difference in fundamentals between the demand for physical coins and the paper price. During the 2008 financial meltdown, the paper price of gold and silver plunged. Speculators and traders were hit by margin calls and forced to sell their contracts. But demand for physical coins was incredibly strong; savvy investors were looking for a safe haven. There was a total disconnect between the paper price and physical demand. That’s now happening again, but in reverse. The paper price is rising, but physical demand is falling. Management told me last night that they’ve been invited to speak at several investment conferences attended by family offices and high net worth individuals. But they told me that there’s very little interest in owning physical precious metals among these wealthy investors. Everyone seems to want to dump all of their money in US stocks or real estate, expecting that they’ll easily make 20% despite both markets being at all-time highs. This strikes me as total madness. Few people ever prospered buying what was popular and expensive. There seems to be no fear in the market… no regard for sense or safety. And my contrarian instincts tell me that this complacency is a great reason to own physical gold and silver right now. Remember that gold is primarily a form of savings. You could hold your savings in a bank account, denominated in paper currency like dollars or euros or renminbi. Or you could hold savings in physical cash. You could even own government bonds. Each of these is a form of savings. But so is gold and silver. (And cryptocurrency, for that matter.) The difference is that gold and silver cannot be conjured out of thin air by a central bank. And unlike cash, or money in a bank, precious metals actually keep pace with inflation over time. I remember having a conversation once with a famous investor who told me that he didn’t know what was going to happen in the future… … and THAT’S why he owned gold– for the “I don’t knows.” Will there be a trade war with China in the next few years? A shooting war? A major debt crisis? Another terrorist attack? “I don’t know.” Gold and silver are fantastic insurance policies against the “I don’t knows” due to the metals’ 5,000 year history of value and marketability. There’s no need to go overboard and keep 100% of your net worth in precious metals. But given the obvious risks on the horizon that we discuss regularly, and these bizarre demand trends, it’s a great time to consider adding to your physical precious metals savings." -Simon Black
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Post by Entendance on Mar 21, 2017 8:51:15 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on Mar 24, 2017 4:47:18 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on Apr 19, 2017 5:36:05 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on May 25, 2017 2:42:31 GMT -5
Central Banks Produce Dire Consequences for the Free Market
Todd “Bubba” Horwitz has recently produced a podcast with Claudio Grass of Global Gold, which we can be called up further below. Claudio strongly believes in gold and its monetary role and is firmly opposed to the fiat currency model.
Gold’s Advantages Over Fiat Currency***An Interview with Claudio Grass ***
GOLD. A GLOBAL CURRENCY.
All About Your Allocated Gold & Silver
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Post by Entendance on Jun 9, 2017 4:18:15 GMT -5
"Don’t simply assume that your bank is in good condition. Examine their financial statements and find out for sure." Rome, Italy June 8, 2017 "Here’s the perfect example of how insane our financial system has become. It was announced yesterday that, after a 24-hour white-knuckled ride, Spanish banking giant Banco Popular had been sold to Banco Santander for the price of just 1 euro. Note- that’s 1 euro in TOTAL. Not 1 euro per share. Banco Popular had once been one of Spain’s largest banks. But just as certain banks tend to do from time to time, Popular sacrificed responsibility and good conduct for quick profits. They spent years gambling their depositors’ savings away on idiotic, dangerous, pitiful loans. And those bad loans eventually came back to bite them. The modern business of banking is all about pooling customer deposits together and making various loans and investments with those funds. Safe, responsible banks make sensible investments. They maintain extremely high loan standards. And they keep a SUBSTANTIAL rainy day fund set aside in case those loans and investments go bad. Banco Popular did none of those things. Back in 2006 during the height of the real estate bubble, for example, Popular maintained a liquidity ratio of less than 2% according to its annual report that year. This means that over 98% of its customers’ savings had been gambled away on bad loans and bad speculations. Eventually those risky loans started failing, and the bank started losing money. Last year alone Popular lost 3.5 billion euros, which is about as much as they earned in all of the bubble years combined. Fearing for the banks ability to continue servicing its customers, European regulators stepped in on Tuesday and forced a fire sale. Banco Santander “won” that auction, again, paying a symbolic price of just 1 euro. This means that Banco Santander will now inherit all the toxic loans (and consequent losses) that Popular had on its books. The insanity here is that Santander had almost no time to conduct its due diligence, i.e. research the business to understand what they were buying. Banco Popular had a balance sheet worth over $150 billion with hundreds of thousands of different loans. It would take months to even begin scratching the surface of such a massive balance sheet. By comparison, the last time I bought a business I paid $6 million and spent more than a year conducting due diligence.
Santander bought a $150 billion business and spent less than 24 hours trying to understand what they were buying. This is nuts. And ENORMOUSLY risky for Santander. But perhaps even more insane is that this deal is now being hailed by European governments and financial media as a wonderful solution to the looming problem of bank insolvency. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that this problem wasn’t really solved. It was just transferred from one bank to another. The assets are still toxic. They just happen to be owned by Santander now.
Most importantly, Banco Popular is FAR from alone. Here in Italy, in fact, a number of smaller banks are teetering on insolvency. And regulators have been scrambling trying to find potential suitors to copy this shotgun wedding ‘solution’.
But so far, no success. Not a single bank in Italy has sufficient capital to absorb the toxic debts of another. Plus the government itself is totally bankrupt. So basically an insolvent government and insolvent large banks are trying to figure out how to bail out insolvent smaller banks. It’s total madness. And this is the important lesson: eventually they run out of options. There’s no one left to bail out a bad bank… no taxpayers, no white knight, no bondholders, no shareholders. Nobody. Except for depositors. This is when a “bail out” becomes a “bail in”, and the depositors get stuck with the bill. Bottom line: This matters. It’s your money at stake. Don’t simply assume that your bank is in good condition. Examine their financial statements and find out for sure. Don’t keep 100% of your life’s savings at a single institution. Make sure you diversify. If a bail-in ever occurs, it will be the largest depositors who get hit first. And definitely consider diversifying geographically. Avoid keeping everything in the same country, especially if that country is bankrupt– the bail-in risk is much higher. The world is a big place and there’s a ton of opportunity out there, including plenty of responsible, conservative places to bank. And it’s hard to imagine you’ll be worse off because a portion of your savings is in a safe, well-capitalized bank." -Simon Black
In gold We Trust HERE
"The general public doesn’t like hearing what some of us who are Cassandras have to say. Because our message is does not fit in with the choir of propaganda and lies. We are predicting a future for the world which is unpleasant for most people and therefore few believe our predictions. It is part of human nature to believe that the current state of affairs will go on forever. And that is the case whether times are good or bad. In bad times, everyone believes that it will never end..." June 9, 2017 ***CASSANDRA, CENTRAL BANKS and GOLD
***Cognitive Dissonance, Economics & Politics
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Post by Entendance on Aug 1, 2017 13:17:01 GMT -5
"...All of this is proof of the fact that we are at the end of a major financial era that started either with the Renaissance which came after the Dark Ages or since the end of the South Sea Bubble in the early-mid 1700s. I doubt that the cycle is of a smaller degree like just 100 years since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Only future historians will tell us the magnitude of the current cycle. What is certain is that we are now in the final stages of a major era. It has been clear to me for quite some time that this will sadly end badly. The inevitable implosion of the asset and debt bubbles that the world is now experiencing is guaranteed. But governments and central banks have for some time been able to fool most of the people by telling them that the emperor is wearing a suit of gold whilst he is actually naked..." More here
Concerned about the return of money, than the return on money? Then store Gold/Silver outside the banking system
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Post by Entendance on Aug 3, 2017 12:05:48 GMT -5
***WannaCry-Linked Bitcoin Wallets Have Been Emptied, Analysts Say cry now or cry later? how do you ever feel safe in this stuff? H/T Tom from Florida
***Cryptocurrencies
"...Wannacry is a sign of things to come Wannacry is a warning shot over the bow. A much more extensive viral infection could shut down the world in one day tomorrow or next week if it exploits parts of Microsoft’s OS that Microsoft hasn’t yet patched, and if the back door is that allows the virus to be shut down is not as obvious as this one was or if it has now back door that is intended as a kill switch. Financial systems (both stock markets and banks) could be wiped out in a day, triggering the need for an immediate global financial reset.
Imagine if your bank got locked out by ransomware from all of your financial data, so they couldn’t even tell you are their customer and couldn’t even access their backup data. The bank would have no record of how much money you have in the bank. Then imagine no one really intended to collect any ransom at all — so there was no opportunity to retrieve the data. Instead, the virus simply destroyed it to wreak havoc in the world or to destroy the world’s superpower.
This is where you might want some of you money to be held in physical gold. I don’t sell gold, but I do have a link in the left sidebar to a company that can help you reset your retirement funds to hold physical gold and other physical assets if you are so inclined." ***If Wannacry cyber attack didn’t make you wannacry, the next one will! ***
(May 14, 2017 at 3:28pm ***Worried About ‘Wannacry’? You Should Have Listened To Julian Assange )
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Post by Entendance on Aug 15, 2017 7:54:00 GMT -5
"Every further new high in the price of Bitcoin brings ever more claims that it is destined to become the preeminent safe haven investment of the modern age — the new gold. But there’s no getting around the fact that Bitcoin is essentially a speculative investment in a new technology, specifically the blockchain. Think of the blockchain, very basically, as layers of independent electronic security that encapsulate a cryptocurrency and keep it frozen in time and space — like layers of amber around a fly. This is what makes a cryptocurrency “crypto.”
That’s not to say that the price of Bitcoin cannot make further (and further…) new highs. After all, that is what speculative bubbles do (until they don’t). Bitcoin and each new initial coin offering (ICO) should be thought of as software infrastructure innovation tools, not competing currencies. It’s the amber that determines their value, not the flies. Cryptocurrencies are a very significant value-added technological innovation that calls directly into question the government monopoly over money. This insurrection against government-manipulated fiat money will only grow more pronounced as cryptocurrencies catch on as transactional fiduciary media; at that point, who will need government money? The blockchain, though still in its infancy, is a really big deal. While governments can’t control cryptocurrencies directly, why shouldn’t we expect cryptocurrencies to face the same fate as what started happening to numbered Swiss bank accounts (whose secrecy remain legally enforced by Swiss law)? All local governments had to do was make it illegal to hide, and thus force law-abiding citizens to become criminals if they fail to disclose such accounts. We should expect similar anti-money laundering hygiene and taxation among the cryptocurrencies. The more electronic security layers inherent in a cryptocurrency’s perceived value, the more vulnerable its price is to such an eventual decree.
Bitcoins should be regarded as assets, or really equities, not as currencies. They are each little business plans — each perceived to create future value. They are not stores-of-value, but rather volatile expectations on the future success of these business plans. But most ICOs probably don’t have viable business plans; they are truly castles in the sky, relying only on momentum effects among the growing herd of crypto-investors. (The Securities and Exchange Commission is correct in looking at them as equities.) Thus, we should expect their current value to be derived by the same razor-thin equity risk premiums and bubbly growth expectations that we see throughout markets today. And we should expect that value to suffer the same fate as occurs at the end of every speculative bubble. If you wanted to create your own private country with your own currency, no matter how safe you were from outside invaders, you’d be wise to start with some pre-existing store-of-value, such as a foreign currency, gold, or land. Otherwise, why would anyone trade for your new currency? Arbitrarily assigning a store-of-value component to a cryptocurrency, no matter how secure it is, is trying to do the same thing (except much easier than starting a new country). And somehow it’s been working.
Moreover, as competing cryptocurrencies are created, whether for specific applications (such as automating contracts, for instance), these ICOs seem to have the effect of driving up all cryptocurrencies. Clearly, there is the potential for additional cryptocurrencies to bolster the transactional value of each other—perhaps even adding to the fungibility of all cryptocurrencies. But as various cryptocurrencies start competing with each other, they will not be additive in value. The technology, like new innovations, can, in fact, create some value from thin air. But not so any underlying store-of-value component in the cryptocurrencies. As a new cryptocurrency is assigned units of a store-of-value, those units must, by necessity, leave other stores-of-value, whether gold or another cryptocurrency. New depositories of value must siphon off the existing depositories of value. On a global scale, it is very much a zero sum game. Or, as we might say, we can improve the layers of amber, but we can’t create more flies. This competition, both in the technology and the underlying store-of-value, must, by definition, constrain each specific cryptocurrency’s price appreciation. Put simply, cryptocurrencies have an enormous scarcity problem. The constraints on any one cryptocurrency’s supply are an enormous improvement over the lack of any constraint whatsoever on governments when it comes to printing currencies. However, unlike physical assets such as gold and silver that have unique physical attributes endowing them with monetary importance for millennia, the problem is that there is no barrier to entry for cryptocurrencies; as each new competing cryptocurrency finds success, it dilutes or inflates the universe of the others. The store-of-value component of cryptocurrencies — which is, at a bare-minimum, a fundamental requirement for safe haven status — is a minuscule part of its value and appreciation. After all, stores of value are just that: stable and reliable holding places of value. They do not create new value, but are finite in supply and are merely intended to hold value that has already been created through savings and productive investment. To miss this point is to perpetuate the very same fallacy that global central banks blindly follow today. You simply cannot create money, or capital, from thin air (whether it be credit or a new cool cryptocurrency). Rather, it represents resources that have been created and saved for future consumption. There is simply no way around this fundamental truth.
Viewing cryptocurrencies as having safe haven status opens investors to layering more risk on their portfolios. Holding Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies likely constitutes a bigger bet on the same central bank-driven bubble that some hope to protect themselves against. The great irony is that both the libertarian supporters of cryptocurrencies and the interventionist supporters of central bank-manipulated fiat money both fall for this very same fallacy. Cryptocurrencies are a very important development, and an enormous step in the direction toward the decentralization of monetary power. This has enormously positive potential, and I am a big cheerleader for their success. But caveat emptor—thinking that we are magically creating new stores-of-value and thus a new safe haven is a profound mistake." ***Why Cryptocurrencies Will Never Be Safe Havens
Fred & E. Beach:***All you need to know about Bitcoin & Cryptocurrencies
Sollte dir dieser Strand gefallen, dann kannst du deinen Freunden behilflich sein, indem du sie über Fred & EntendanceInvestors Beach informierst. Lasst uns gemeinsam diesen Ort zu einen blühenden Club für Vortrefflichkeit, Bildung und Information machen!
If you like this beach, then you can help your friends locate it by letting them know about Fred & EntendanceInvestors Beach. Let's all make this place a thriving sheltered Club for excellence, education and information!
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Post by Entendance on Aug 19, 2017 1:05:39 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on Oct 26, 2017 8:16:07 GMT -5
"...Investors should protect themselves from these risks by diversifying their savings and owning physical gold -not paper or digital gold. This reduces the level of counterparty risk your savings are exposed to and ensures some level of sovereignty and financial safety and freedom when it comes to your wealth. These financial risks including Bail-ins are a threat to all savers in the western world. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail..."
***Gold Will Be Safe Haven Again In Looming EU Crisis
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Post by Entendance on Apr 24, 2018 3:02:04 GMT -5
In defence of having reserves and hoarding gold PDF here
This is a speech from 2009. Amazing how little has changed. Well, actually, no, it's much worse...
More here
Sound and Honest Money: ***Fred & Entendance Gold & Silver Beach
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Post by Entendance on May 5, 2018 12:48:24 GMT -5
"...Morgan’s observation that “Money is gold, and nothing else,” was right in two respects. The first and most obvious is that gold is a form of money. The second and more subtle point, revealed in the phrase, “and nothing else,” was that other instruments purporting to be money were really forms of credit unless they were redeemable into physical gold..." ***Money Is Gold — and Nothing Else
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Post by Entendance on May 18, 2018 2:40:45 GMT -5
"...The story of each individual precious metal is quite unique: Gold Investors and people buy gold bullion or jewelry as a store of value, and the gold price is sensitive to events in financial markets. Its main use is investment, and supply is diversified and global. Silver Silver is unique “hybrid” metal that is simultaneously driven by its investment and industrial uses. Its main uses are investment and industrial, and supply is diversified and global. Platinum Used in catalytic converters and for other industrial uses. Platinum demand also comes from jewelry and investment sectors. Platinum supply only comes from South Africa, Russia and Zimbabwe, giving it a unique set of supply characteristics. Palladium Palladium is a purer industrial metal than platinum, with 80% of demand coming from catalytic converters. It has similar supply issues to platinum.
Because each metal is different, when one increases in price, the others may or may not follow suit. This creates a problem and an opportunity for investors..." More here
The Only Honest & Sound Money Left: ***Physical Gold & Silver
***Fred & Entendance Gold & Silver Beach
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Post by Entendance on Jul 28, 2018 5:36:39 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on Aug 7, 2018 14:01:04 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on Aug 20, 2018 14:26:22 GMT -5
***Amazon Isn’t Paying Its Electric Bills. You Might Be (H/T Tom from Florida "And then all the geniuses wonder where the calls for socialism come from? You'll need a reign of terror just to get everyone's heads back on straight this time...that's how F'ed up this garbage has become...this from a close to trillion dollar market cap company. Let it reign") This is a porn economy. E.
Bridging the 'fourth turning' with gold (USAGOLD – Monday, August 20, 2018) – The Fourth Turning – the influential work by William Strauss and Neil Howe published in 1997 – uncannily predicted much of what has happened in America over the past twenty years. "The next Fourth Turning," the authors predicted, "is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire."
Howe designates 2008 as the start date for the current fourth turning. Since turnings typically last 20-23 years, it will end sometime between 2028 and 2031. That puts us about midway through the cycle. At the moment, if the politicians, Wall Street and press accounts on the status of the economy are to be believed, the good times have arrived. For many Americans, though, that arrival has some pretty dark clouds hanging over it – the deep political divisions, the escalating trade wars, the emerging nation debt and currency crisis, the overvalued stock market, the threat of rising interest rates – and that is just a sampling of fourth-turning strata that worries global investors. The nation despite the rosy outlook is a bit unnerved by it all. For his part, Howe, who saw it coming, believes things could get much worse before before they get better.
"The fourth turning," he said in a MacroVoices interview last August, "is the final season of history, if you will, the final generation. And that is the period of crisis. That is the period when we tear down institutions that we’ve built, everything that’s dysfunctional. And we sort of rebuild things from scratch again. And it usually follows a period where—it’s bound up in a period – where there’s complete disgust, complete distrust with what we have.”
There is a certain amount of inevitability interlaced throughout Howe's analysis and a good many will have a hard time accepting it for that reason – especially those who believe that somehow this period in economic history is going to be different from others. Howe though sees strong similarities to the period just before and after World War II, the last fourth turning.
Once again his viewpoint, expressed almost a year ago, is uncanny: "And then the crisis," he says, "when all of these problems begin to coalesce into one huge problem. It’s when the Great Depression met all of these—the rise of fascism both in Asia and in Europe, and everything came together, currency wars, everything became part of a huge problem. Which, by the resolution, you see—and this is what happens at every fourth turning. All the little problems come together into a giant problem. And then the giant problem gets completely resolved."
Is that not where we find ourselves today – in the current fourth turning?
". . .I would say these are strong parallels that we see between the decade we’ve been living through and the 1930s," he says. "Because it isn’t just what happens to/in the economy. I mean, you consider so many ways in which this last decade has recapitulated the 1930s, starting off with a financial crisis, worries about deflation, worries about declining fertility rates, and currency wars, and beggar thy neighbor policies, and radical attempts by monetary and ultimately fiscal policy to remedy the situation."
Howe has something of a philosophical partner in the great Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy who examined the role of fate in human affairs in his masterpiece novel, War and Peace. I am among the group that believes we are carried on great waves of history whether we like or not – what Tolstoy referred to as an historic "fatalism" to which we are all subject: *We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us. Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance. There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him. Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every action. 'The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord.' A king is history's slave." – Leo Tolstory, War and Peace
Like Howe, I too believe that the "giant problem" will somehow find resolution, but my concern is getting across the bridge between the "final season of history" and its ultimate resolution – whatever fate might dictate. That is why I own gold personally and why I think every thinking investor should own it as well. The name of the game is to protect wealth and not leave the results of your life work on the table as the fourth turning moves into its final phases.
A diversification of about 10%-30%, in my view, will get the job done as it did in the first phases of the crisis from 2008-2009.* How high you go within that range depends upon on how strongly you feel about the dangers that lie ahead. –– Michael J. Kosares, USAGOLD
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Post by Entendance on Sept 22, 2018 0:27:09 GMT -5
...But as a matter of fact, economic growth in the emerging markets was quite impressive over the last decade. True, but US stocks did way better than emerging market equities over that time. It’s ironic that today, basically the exact same story is being pitched to investors again. But now, the US is the safe place and has decoupled from the rest of the world. So, there is safety in these FAANG stocks, the story goes. But that’s complete garbage. All these ETFs are a bit like shadow banks. They are like the CDOs on the eve of the financial crisis. There are so many people in them that there is not going to be enough liquidity when things turn bad. We saw this when Facebook dropped $122 billion in one day. That has never happened before. How bad is it going to get? We are going to see this across all the FAANG stocks. It’s going to get really ugly and it’s probably going to happen in the next six to nine months. It’s going to be close to a 20% drawdown for the entire US stock market. But the FAANGs, these crowded stocks, are going to drop 30 to 40%. How come? Over the last hundred years inside financial markets, we’ve found in each crisis there’s a metamorphosis, a transformation into another serpent, a far different beast. In the 1970’s it was runaway commodity prices, a real energy crisis. In the 1980’s, it was Savings and Loans. The 1990’s brought us sovereign credit defaults and the dot-com blow up. By 2008, a full-blown subprime mortgage crisis was upon us. At that time, the small banks were fine, but the big banks got into trouble. So, each financial crisis is followed by a metamorphosis into another beast and the next crisis is going to look much more like the one in 1998. It’s not going to look like anything like 2008. What could this mean for a global financial hub like Switzerland? Right now, the most leveraged organization on earth might be the Swiss National Bank. They own all these FAANG stocks and it’s really concerning because the people of Switzerland are going to lose a lot of money when this crowded trade blows up. Just look at how much of that central bank’s money is in equities. It’s obscene. They don’t understand. In the last five years, $2 trillion has gone into passive asset management. A lot of that money has to go into the FAANGs. So, the Swiss National Bank has made a lot of money because of this passive revolution. They probably think they’re really smart. But they’re just benefiting from this move here in the United States where so much money has gone into passive strategies. Now, the Swiss National Bank is sitting on all these profits and they are going to look like complete imbeciles when the FAANGs are going to blow up... It’s going to get really ugly
"So why gold? People buy gold to protect their savings not because it is rare, yellow or shiny, but because of what it isn't. Gold isn't debt, equity or any other financial promise. It doesn't rely on anyone else's survival to exist. It can't be destroyed any more than it can be created at will. Call it the "gut level case for gold" – an urgent, all-consuming need to buy a dumb lump of metal which does so little, it doesn't even rust, but which people in all ages and all cultures have used to store value." – Adrian Ash, Bullion Vault
Gold is important to me because...click here
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Post by Entendance on Nov 2, 2018 4:02:24 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on Jan 11, 2019 11:36:57 GMT -5
January 11, 2019 "...DON’T TRUST THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Any money in the bank anywhere in the world will either be lost through insolvency, bail-ins, or total debasement of the currency. Many of the other assets held in a bank could face a similar fate. Cassandras are never liked, neither before the event they predict nor after it has happened. I have often stated that I hope that my forecasts are wrong because if they come true it will be devastating for the world. Most people will only be wise after the event. What is clear is that the risks are massive and wealth protection means taking steps before the event and that time is now. The most important asset human beings have been gifted with is their brain and their genes, including their health. Anything material we can lose, however well we protect it. But survival depends mostly on how you use your brain, as long as you are healthy of course. Even the best plans can go wrong. Remember “The times they are a-changing” and unforeseen events will happen out of the blue. Thus we must be prepared for the unexpected and react as necessary. It will not be a static and easily predictable course of events. There will be panic moments and there will be seemingly quiet times. But the trend will be very clear which means strongly down of the world economy and financial markets. It might take ten years or longer. Nobody knows. What is important is to surround yourself with a supportive group of friends, family as well as other people who will be useful like trusted financial experts, doctors, farmers, tradesmen etc. And remember that: THIS TOO SHALL PASS" TIMES A-CHANGIN’ – BUT GOLD PERMANENT
2019: the State of Government Debt Around the World
The great Russian opera singer, Feodor Chaliapin Sr., lost his entire fortune–then worth more than a million pounds–in the Russian revolution. This disaster seared him. He left Russia after the Revolution and went to live in France where in 1931 he bought gold bars and put them in a safe in his cellar in Paris. He was interviewed by the British Sunday Express newspaper on the 5th of May 1935, when he said, ‘People in Britain think governments cannot collapse. They think banknotes are money; banks are impregnable. But I have had everything I made in 25 years stripped from me. I was reduced to singing for tea in which there was sawdust, and bread in which there was wood. With my bar of gold and a pen knife I shall never go hungry.’ — Anecdote told by Haruko Fukuda, World Gold Council chair, in 2000 to the Business Club Zurich
Starving Billionaires
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Post by Entendance on Feb 22, 2019 7:42:11 GMT -5
Downside momentum happens slowly but resets happen faster. Cascading downside moves are the norm, and orderly declines are anomalies.
Sweeter is the fruit obtained after many dangers
"HISTORY’S BIGGEST BEAR MARKET IN FIAT MONEY AND BULL MARKET IN ETERNAL MONEY OR GOLD IS ABOUT TO START. YOU WILL IGNORE IT AT YOUR PERIL..." February 22, 2019 A DISORDERLY RESET NEXT
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Post by Entendance on Apr 16, 2019 0:49:20 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on Apr 26, 2019 4:22:25 GMT -5
BREAK-IN AT BANK IN BASEL – BANK NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR LOSSES Many people believe that bank safe deposit boxes are safe. In our view this is not the case. Firstly there are regular break-ins. Last year, it happened to a major Swiss Bank, Raiffeisen in Basel. Burglars broke into the vault and opened 20 boxes without leaving a trace. Gold, coins, jewellery and cash were taken. The bank’s policy in these cases is very clear. They are not responsible for the contents of the box. Very often the contents is not declared for Swiss wealth tax purposes. Therefore, there is no inventory. Also, the contents is almost never insured. Insurance companies normally don’t insure the contents of a safe since it can’t be verified. The Bank would only pay out against a receipt of the content which nobody had. Bank Raiffeisen’s official line is: ”The insurance of the safe content is the responsibility of the customer. This is industry standard”. So there we have it. If you keep valuables in a bank safe deposit box, it is at your own risk!
KEEP PRECIOUS METALS IN PRIVATE VAULT WITH INSURANCE
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Post by Entendance on May 16, 2019 3:13:58 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on Jun 4, 2019 17:16:37 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on Jun 14, 2019 12:17:13 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on Jun 23, 2019 1:11:59 GMT -5
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Post by Entendance on Sept 12, 2019 1:39:31 GMT -5
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