Are we going to see sub $20 silver again this year?

Discussing the price of silver without being able to discuss politics reminds me of that old Howard Jones song "No One is to Blame":

 

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Only for the conspiracists, for the more conventional thinkers, not all that much to talk about. As far as "no one to blame", a couple points. First one is, as far as most of us can tell, silver is trading near fair value so why would you want to blame someone when things seem to be in line? So I don't think there is anyone to blame.

Now as far as the people who DO assign blame and think the whole game is rigged and is crooked, I could never understand why anyone would would even play if that is what they felt. I mean when I sit down at a poker table and I think the game is crooked I walk away. Who wouldn't. If you are at the track and you know the race is fixed for the # 4 horse, do you bet the # 8 horse?

Now Blaubart, this really isn't meant for you since I always considered you as one of the most rational of the stackers, but if someone needs to assign blame, before they buy even a single ounce of silver, they need to "invest" in a mirror. The person in the mirror is the only person you should even consider blaming. If anyone bought silver at $45 and is unhappy that POS is now $21, it is their own fault, make no mistake about it. If silver was overpriced, they are to blame, if the game is rigged, they should have known it. If they are overweighted and took a whoopin', they are to blame. Until folks understand that, they are doomed to ranks of being a poor investor.

In my very early days of investing, I lost my life savings twice. Never did I blame anyone, it was my fault and I learned. So to all the folks that feel someone is to blame for their poor investment choice, like I said please buy a mirror, it will be the best investment you could possibly make.

 

My problem with the "vast conspiracy" theory is those who hold to this view basically wish to profit from it. Think about it, if there has been some kind of conspiracy against PM, they wish to have it end ONLY because they wish to profit by what they already own. Previous generations didn't benefit, future generations would not benefit, only those people who own pm TODAY would ever benefit from such "conspiracy reversal".

Also, using a conspiracy is simply a convenient way for PM prognosticators to have an excuse why they were wrong. Ask them why all of their predictions have been wrong, why there is not $5000 gold today, and they will all say "conspiracy". I believe using "conspiracy" as a crutch allows investors to not learn from their mistakes. Its easy to "blame the man" why you haven't made any money, right? Whole classes of people do it every day, they do not try because of "the man". Its simply sad to have PM buyers to fall into the same self destructive delusion.

Edit: Btw, this was not intended to be a slam on anyone, just a warning. If anytime you are wrong but can turn around and "blame it on the boogeyman" its very easy to simply neve learn. If your world view is simply "if pm goes up it means I was right and if it goes down its due to a vast international conspiracy", then I simply believe you are unwilling to ever admit you have made a mistake. Gold/Silver has had a catastrophic year, no other way around it. Look at all of the excuses being made in the alst couple months like, "but, but the Comex is running out, "the man" will soon have to let the market go back up". How is that working out today? Where are those stories at today? In the meantime gold/silver is still down.

Honestly, you know DARN WELL if stocks were performing as poorly as PM has this year, all of the pm media would be screaming how its "proof" the financial markets are coming to an end, and only pm can save you. Everyone on this board knows darn well that is a true statement. Make it PM having a catastrophic year, though, and they take it in stride because, "its the man manipulating it against us".

Investing money but being unwilling to admit you could possibly be wrong I simply believe is a very, very, dangerous habit.

 

That is an awesome point Chris and answers my question of why folks want to play the crooked game. They WANT to get in at the crooked price and then blow the lid off the conspiracy which would take advantage of all the unsuspecting Joe's on the street who sold their silver at the crooked (artificially low) price. Not very nice to say to the least. My mind just doesn't work like that, and they think I am the butthead

Oh well, What goes around comes around.

 

I know my expenses have been going up much more than 2% a year and there is little reason for me to think its a local phenomenon.

 

Wow - I didn't even think of the whole "blame" game when I posted that. I was referring to the lyrics where you can do one thing but not another that usually goes along with the first.

In this case, politics has a lot to do with fluctuations in bullion prices, so it's difficult to discuss bullion prices without mentioning politics.

 

Anyone who is not an insider would benefit from an ending of the Federal Reserve and the unlimited power of the mega-banks.

All markets are manipulated, the only question is how much and for what purpose.

 

Inflation does not hit everyone equally. For the most part, I do believe inflation is around 2%. Do you rent? If you do, you have probably seen some increases that a homeowner would not. Not everyone is hit the same. Energy prices are down TTM so you gas bill should be lower, as is heating and air conditioning. How about your cell phone. If you have the coolest device available, that has become more expensive in both the device itself and the cost of the plan. If you have the most basic phone, prices are down. Food is up a bit, that hits a family of six much harder than a single person as the food bill took up a bigger percent of the pay check to begin with. Did you buy a new car? New car prices have been stable, if you are fixing up an older car, you may have seen a bit of an increse in labor.

What are the exact costs you feel you are paying more for and by how much have they inflated?

 

Yeah I know, you never struck me as some one who plays the blame game, but it did strike a chord and other do profusely, and that is just such a losers game

 

Fuel- A gallon of gas costs about double what it did 5 years ago. EDIT: sorry that's incorrect, more like 10 years for a double
Food- I feel like food is probably up nearly 50% over the last 5 years.
Housing- Stable
Phone-No increase for me, but I don't have a smartphone


Overall I believe inflation is at least 5%.

If you calculated the inflation the same way the government did in 1990, then last years inflation was about 5%. If you use calculate it the same way the government did in 1980 then you'd have about 8% inflation.

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

 

http://qz.com/126823/wednesdays-fede...arket-analyst/

On Sept. 18, gold futures surged nearly $20 in the 30 seconds after the US Federal Reserve released the news that it would not “taper” the monetary stimulus it’s feeding the economy. Someone made a lot of money off of that—potentially by dubious means.

According to research from Nanex LLC, a Chicago-based research firm that monitors trading activity, a mountain of orders placed at exactly 2:00:00 PM ET—and the activity following those orders—indicate that someone almost definitely had bets in early. Eric Hunsader, Nanex’s founder, calls the evidence “overwhelming.”

News from the Federal Reserve is released from a lock-up room in Washington, DC, so that reporters can write stories ahead of the actual release. Special “black boxes” prevent reporters from transmitting the news until the exact millisecond the data are officially public. After that, information takes 2 milliseconds to travel from DC to New York City (really, computers in New Jersey), where stocks trade, and 7 milliseconds to travel to Chicago, where futures trade.

But Nanex finds that a large pile of trades—both in a gold ETF (GLD) traded in New York and in gold futures traded in Chicago—happened exactly at 2:00 PM ET, but not a thousandth of a second later. The news simply wouldn’t have had the chance to travel this distance in that time.

Could it just have been dumb luck? Probably not. Based on the data, Hunsader believes that the bet came from a single actor who would have had to “commit well over a billion dollars,” meaning it was too large a gamble to take lightly or blindly. Hunsader believes someone had the information early.

Could a reporter have leaked it? As we’ve previously written, the lock-ups haven’t always been as secure as they should be. But given recent publicity about leaks, Hunsader thinks that’s unlikely.

Could a news organization have sent the data in advance to its own servers in both New York and Chicago and programmed them to release it at the exact same moment? They are allowed to do that with certain kinds of data, Hunsader writes, but in the case of last week’s Fed announcement that shouldn’t have been possible. And even if they had, such releases typically happen up to 15 milliseconds too early or too late because the servers’ clocks aren’t precisely set. In this case the spike in trades began on the very millisecond of 2pm.

“This is not a bad technology case. This is a somebody’s-hand-is-in-the-cookie-jar case,” Hunsader told Quartz.

“The Fed news was leaked to, or known by, a large Wall Street Firm who made the decision to pre-program their trading machines in both New York and Chicago and wait until precisely 2 PM when they would buy everything available,” he writes. ”It is somewhat fascinating that they tried to be ‘honest’ by waiting until 2pm, but not a thousandth of a second longer.”

 

To a perma-bull, it's always time to buy.

This line of argument seems like cherry picking statistics to fit preconceived notions. Have you considered that perhaps the way inflation was calculated in the past was flawed? Technology and methodology tend to improve over time.

 

Average cost per gallon of reg gas on 9/24/2009 was $3.70 gallon. Today it is $3.49. Obvious it did not double. In addition the car manufactueres have made great strides in MPG in the last five years so as long as you are driving a car that is comparable in weight and HP, that should have freed up a bunch of sheckels also.

For food, yes that is up considerbly last 5 years, but Food is pulled out of the numbers for a reason. It is volitile, so while it is certainly up and we feel it, but you forget to count how it went down like 30% the preceding years. Food needs to be averaged long term because of the volitility. I just picked an item out of thin air and used milk because that seems like a standard. Price of milk in 1990 was $2.15. In 2013 it is $3.49. I did the math and it worked out to 2.1 % inflation over 23 years.

For other things, home appliances, consumer electronics, they seem stable or have gone down. For services, I have seen that tick up, but not drastically

Now of course you can cherry pick the product or cherry pick the time frame, which is usually what the charlatans do and come up with any numbers you like, but that is not what I did. I used your time frame for gas, picked milk out of thin air and just chose a big time frame. I telling you flat up, eveyone needs to think more on their own, do their own research, and stop listening to the scheisters. they just want to fill your head with garbage and separate you from your dollars.

 

http://www.caseyresearch.com/gsd/edi...r-fed-surprise

 

What is your point? Some people cheat? Stop the presses on that one. Interesting you want to keep calling the cheaters out, since as Chris has correctly pointed out. If you truley believe you are buying silver at an artifically suppressed level with the intent to profit, you are cheating also. The correct ethical thing to do is sell your silver now at he artificially suppressed levels, and them if you wish, buy it back at fair value when the coruption ends, otherwise you are a cheater also. That is not an opinion, that is a fact. That is how the law is written. How do you justify that one, It is OK for you to cheat, but not others, or is it, I don't pay no attention the the laws of the land, they don't apply to me.

 

Cool new round that Provident recently released:



I like the design, I may get a few at some point.

 

What is the meaning of the design? It looks interesting.

 

"Come and take"

Though severely outnumbered during the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, King Leonidas I led the Spartans in a clash against Xerxes I and the Persian Army.
The Spartans fought for three days and, though ultimately defeated, they did not go down without a fight. The Spartans caused extensive damage to the Persian forces, delaying progress to Athens — giving citizens time to escape.
Prior to battle, Xerxes’ demanded that King Leonidas and his Spartan army lay down their weapons. The King bravely responded in his Greek tongue: “Molon labe!”
“Come and take.”
http://www.providentmetals.com/molon-labe-1-oz-silver-rounds.html

 

Cool. Or you could just buy a coin of Xerxes himself like I have.

 

Here's a handy explanation of why that chart is irrelevant: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/08/03/the_monetary_base_is_irrelevant.html