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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Rono, post: 2662853, member: 6492&quot;]Howdy folks,</p><p><br /></p><p>A couple of observations about the gold and silver markets and manipulation.&nbsp; Anyone and everyone that has any sort of major position in the market is going to attempt to move it in a direction that will benefit themselves.&nbsp; This is not a conspiracy - it&#039;s called normal human behavior.&nbsp;&nbsp; It&#039;s why markets work.&nbsp; Econ 101 - pig principle and self-interest.&nbsp;&nbsp; Think of it as the house advantage and live with it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Are folks that amass pm&#039;s investors or speculators?&nbsp; feh.&nbsp; They&#039;re both.&nbsp; Some modicum of pm holdings - say 3-10% of your wealth - I consider an investment in peace of mind.&nbsp; My grandkids have their bed buddies.&nbsp;&nbsp; My stash is mine.&nbsp; It&#039;s a protection against WTF happens.&nbsp; More than this is getting into speculation.&nbsp; The main difference, other than percentage of wealth, is that with speculation, you&#039;re betting the price will rise in order to make money.&nbsp; With your investment portion, you are not planning on any appreciation - just safety.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for deficit spending and Lord Keynes, when once asked about &#039;the future&#039; if we indeed chose to run up deficits, he responded, &#039;in the future, we&#039;ll all be dead&#039;.</p><p><br /></p><p>Does it work?&nbsp; Yes.&nbsp; Can it be abused?&nbsp; Of course.&nbsp; What the Fed and most of the worlds gov&#039;ts are betting on is that folks continue to see value in the fiat currency.</p><p><br /></p><p>The problem they&#039;ve had in recent years is the unfunded liability debt of over $100 trillion dollars.&nbsp; This is the aggregate of all the promises made - social security, pensions, various and sundry trust funds, interest on the national debt.&nbsp; Basically, there is no way they can pay this tab as it stands.&nbsp; That means they&#039;ve got to raise taxes where it&#039;s politically possible, break promises and reduce benefits where it&#039;s politically possible and to halve the value of the dollar by QE-nth.&nbsp; And the trick is to do this without destroying the value of the dollar in the process. </p><p><br /></p><p>For us, we have to assign probabilities to the possibility of their success - or failure resulting in some sort of economic meltdown.&nbsp; Next assign the consequences of each result.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>From my perspective, the chances of a financial meltdown are less than 20% but the consequences so dire, a prudent person must protect themselves.&nbsp;&nbsp; To this end, I have a stash of pm&#039;s and a very diversified portfolio.&nbsp; I read a quote by the elder Rothschild that to protect yourself from economic calamities, you should have 1/3 of your wealth in securities, 1/3 in real estate and 1/3 in rare art. </p><p><br /></p><p>Do yourself a favor and run your numbers.&nbsp; First time I did I blew chunks on my monitor.</p><p><br /></p><p>and so it goes,</p><p><br /></p><p>peace,</p><p><br /></p><p>rono[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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