Saving for the collapse.

I am not sure we can insulate ourselves from such decisions, except to vote everyone out and practice austere financing for a while. The precious metal hoarders have no power due to hoarding; politicians can more easily justify making the possession of PM illegal, than to affect currency, and the populace will back them rather than the "hoarders". Be honest , what percentage do you believe have more than 10% of their wealth in PM compared to the % that have more than 10% of their wealth in currency, stocks, bonds, etc. No contest!


Some may really hate the Yankees and hope their XXXXXXXX( fill in the blanks) can rise from last place and beat them. Or maybe that the 16th seed can win the NCAA. Possible , but statistically unlikely. SO why fight the politicians and CEOs? Join them by buying stocks they are promoting, what ever the government. I have a small % in PM, but much more in the US Banks and GE, etc. Let the politicians and CEOs help you out. I am sure this might make many irritated, and I wished it wasn't true, but I feel it is at the moment. Yesterday, to celebrate St. Patrick day, I bought shares in an Irish bank, depressed because of Euro scares, but I can't see the Euro countries kicking them out, no matter how much Germany yells, I think they will continue to support Ireland and the banks there, so it should be good for an increase over a year or so. Maybe it is a mistake, I could have bought bullion, but I am depending on Politicians to continue their track record.


Jim

 

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For me owning a little gold and silver is an easy way to prepare for any personal collapse/Loss. Loss of job, death in family, flood, divorse, sickness etc. It is for an emergency within a functioning society. I don't care what I paid for it and what I could sell it for today. I buy it when things are good now, not what the hype tells me is good. I ask myself, is it enough to buy a car? Cross country with a family? Escape Detroit alive? Rent an apartment and get a new job? You will settle on a honest amount to own and the rest of the cash pay down personal debt. Interest is calculating faster that gold will ever hope to increase. In a total society collapse I'm with my .45 & 30.06.

 

I disagree on the power of the PM holder. PMs are currency without any government liabilities.

You just answered your own question without, I suppose, even realizing it. The government, in it's efforts to take wealth never go after the small percentages. In this case, as you admit, the small percentages are those who hold gold. It's not big enough for them to worry about.

Any recovery scheme is going to hit the mainstream very hard in the form of taxes and tax treatments on everything but cash. Cash of course can be continue to be devalued. The government, the US government at least, has done a pretty through job over the last century in establishing in the minds of most that gold and for that matter silver is irrelevant. In other words there are not enough gold holders in the USA for them to worry about. In the 1930s, when gold was seized, it served two purposes. The first was to force everyday transactions off gold based currency and the second was to provide the initial funding for the Federal Reserve to issue enough dollars to replace the gold. Neither reason exists now.

Now that most people no longer hold PMs, the government won't care about it in the future. If they went to all the efforts to seize private gold now, the end result would be like a fly on the elephant's behind in terms of the problems they have to solve. Much easier to do something such as federalizing all 401K accounts to be replaced by a government annuity after a certain age. It can be pulled off with reasonable acceptance vs sending troops into homes to search for gold. Of course anyone with a gold based account better settle it and get possession of the gold or they stand to lose out just like anyone else who holds wealth in the form of paper, or even worse, on a statement from a computer printout.

 

I heard about the North Korea situation, but did not study the details. It would be interesting to know whether the government also exchanged the small coinage, or didn't bother since it was a relatively small amount of money and a hassel to change. For example, if the US decided to perform a currency exchange, would they bother to also reissue cents, nickels, dimes and quarters? If not, there would be an opportunity, however impractical, to save most of your wealth in the form of small change if you had a sense that the exchange was coming.

Just a thought...

 

PM holders will be powerless if the holdings become illegal. What will you do with them? I suppose you can hide them for some future generation to use in the event the law changes. But if gold and silver are illegal to own, illegal to trade, illegal to sell and if a bounty is given to folks who turn in the hoarders, then PMs will not act as currency and will not represent wealth in any meaningful way.

 

I don't think they are going to do this because it would be practically impossible to enforce. The reason for this is two fold. First, gold is used in a huge number of industrial and practical applications. Because of this, there is a great deal of recycling taking place and treating it as a controlled substance would be folly at best. They have had a war on drugs for 40 years with no effect. Second, gold is not recognized now by the government as a means to conduct transactions so they don't have a way to control it from a financial standpoint.

Of course we are talking about hypotheticals such as the armageddon excuse against gold that I mentioned earlier. Assuming this isn't likely to happen, then as I said earlier there are very reasonable reasons to hold gold. The biggest is that all paper wealth is established by governmental law. It's too easy for them to make changes in the law to take people's wealth. They simply cant do this to gold without getting into much more severe Constitutional issues that would be unacceptable to people whereas most people don't pay too much mind to legal changes. If they did, the Federal Reserve would be for naught now.

 

I agree. I think the survivalists will be proven wrong, as they always are. But I also think that they place too much faith in gold as money. I view bullion as just another investment vehicle.

 

Cloud...please correct me if I'm wrong, but I "thought" gold ownership was outlawed in 1933 because the Dollar was backed by gold and the government wanted to inflate the Dollar by changing the gold "peg" from ~$20 to ~$35 per ounce. If we're not on a gold standard att...what purpose would the government have to restrict gold ownership?

 

I don't think there is much of a chance that gold ownership will be restricted for the reasons you cite. I was just responding to a hypothetical situation and the opinion that government restrictions would not harm gold's role as a store of value. Obviously it would, but I don't think it's going to happen.

 

Food, water, weapons, and tools.

Food and water are essentials.Weapons to keep what you have . Ammunition for you, not for barter. If you live way out then nature is you food supply and water supply.
The people who want what you have, are the big problem in a town or city environment. There is no where to go because the transportation to get to be, where you need to be will not exist.Stay where you are and get the essentials in quantities that you can afford and store. Neighbors can be OK if a plan has been established before hand. If not they will want what you have. They will take your life for it if necessary. The rationalization for what is done in extreme times can be mind boggling.
I spent some time with the Military in Cambodia doing work with FMF Recon. (Fleet Marine Force ).
What happened there is now mostly history. What went on was like a terror movie in real time 24/7 . It can happen.
During our Civil War there were many extreme cases of murder, torture and goods confiscation on a large scale.
Prisons that looked like the " Killing Fields".
Never say not here !

Pep

 

Just in case no one has noticed, the recent financial collape of many banks, car companies, houseing market, etc., is a small pre cursor to a larger event. The US is really flat broke at this point in time. Everything we say we have financially is nothing more than a lot of phoney paperwork and fuzzy math. Inflation, contrary to current thinking is waaaay up. not stagnant. If you do the grocery shopping, try to remember how large a size container of anything you purchased 3 years ago was and compare with today and current prices. Joblessness is at 16%, the hoseing market is nearly dead, 50 million people are w/o health insurance, natural disasters are the norm, not the exception, we are fighting 2 wars on credit with the Chinese government and on and on. The next big financial disaster is just over the horizon with credit card debt. We are right in the middle of a world wide financial collapse, we just all do not see it as it is so spread out and not all of us are directly affected at this point.

 

In the case you just decribe the best metal to have is filled with powder and has a bullet seated over it! Then i can keep whats mine and take what is yours,not that i personaly would do that?

 

I think what's really sick is that some ppl think we are closer to a financial collapse than we really are. I know things are a bit suckish right now but I still feel we have a few more hundred years to go before we need to be concerned about bullits flying.

Even if an atomic disaster happens in my area I think I can count of ppl to keep their cool.

 

Sorry, I was not trying to be a doomsayer. it's just that not enough people are doing their homework when it comes to watching the bigger global picture and not just what's happening in a local or regional way. I tend to read, read, read and become a little more knowledgeable and realistic and then put the bigger picture in perspective. If I have offended then I apologize.

 

You learn who your real friends are when you need help moving. I don't think you can depend on anybody during a disaster.

 

Disaster brings out the best & worest in ppl!

 

We have until December 21, 2012...if you watch the Discovey Channel.

 

Actually this isn't exactly right. Prior to the 1930s most day to day transactions in the USA's history and in the colonies before that, were handled by exchanging gold and silver. Once the USA was formed, the only currency issued by the USA was gold and silver coinage and it stayed this way for decades. However it didn't matter if people got paid by a gold coin from the USA vs one from Europe or for that matter a hunk of gold or silver. Hence there was no government control of commerce and taxation was extremely limited. People thought of money in terms of gold and silver and their relationship to each other. I might be off on this a bit, but the amount of silver in a silver dollar equalled about a day's worth of work, a gold coin was about a week's amount of work. This is why the dime, quarter and 1/2 dollar are directly proportional by weight to the silver dollar. It was the metal, not the denomination that people cared about.

By the 1930s however the government and bankers had created the fiat banking system via the Federal Reserve and took the opportunity of of dire times to force people to give up their gold and use FRNs in it's place. This is the beginning of the move to what we have today and the generational changes that led from currency based on assets to one based on debt. The next step was to remove silver from the coins in 1964, the breaking of the promise to redeem silver certificates dollars in 1968, the elimination of lawful money in 1971, and finally Nixon's breaking the promise to redeem $s in gold for international settlement.

The people living today for the most part don't understand this fundamental difference in the role of money in their lives. For most of history, it was nothing more than a mechanism for commerce and based on trading an asset. Now it is a method of control and taxation based on the exchange of banker created debt.

 

Again, I ask what condition would warrant the type of situation where bullets are the most needed commodity. Please, read this link. http://armageddononline.tripod.com/volcano.htm If this were to happen, who wants to survive that. If you came to shoot me for what I had, you'd just be doing me a favor.

 

...and now, the Congress (our elected representatives) no longer have to levy taxes (as designed by the Constitution)...the Fed merely increased the money supply, making our money less valuable...and that's a TAX! :hammer: