Well here goes nothing.....

If George Soros (a Jewish survivor of Nazi-occupied Budapest, who started his career trading Gold/Pengo at Age 17!) is perfectly comfortable holding the GLD ETF in his portfolio(s) in 2012, we should be too.

Between Doomers and Paper-Bugs, I'm in the (awkward) middle. I'm sure PM ETFs are fine for now, perfectly acceptable trading vehicles and - since I foregot to mention it here - DO HOLD THOSE PM SHORT ETFs in a brokerage acct, to hedge your bullion holdings in any major declines.

(Also remember: to offset capital gains with any loss, DON'T re-buy same loser in a 12mo period; use ANOTHER stock!)

DGZ - short Gold ETF
ZSL - higher risk leveraged short Silver ETF
GLL - higher risk leveraged short Gold ETF
DZZ - higher risk leveraged short Gold ETF
DSLV - super high risk ultra leveraged (-3x) short Silver ETF
DGLD- super high risk ultra leveraged (-3x) short Gold ETF

What happens when the Paper Fails (in 2018 or 2022) is something else, a future event to plan for. But the Paper is NOT failing in 2013: you WILL have more opportunities to buy physical PMs cheaper between now and the inevitable Zero Hour. Incremental accumulation on PM dips is the most sensible strategy, still.

Best of luck!

 

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Ah, so there is no point in history where people lost their paper investments, currency in a country became worthless, and people that had investments in precious metals didn't retain any wealth. Or is it more along the lines of "This is the United States of America! Such things will never happen here! We are immune!"

It doesn't require any sort of "armegeddon". All it requires is for an economy/society to collapse to the point of lawlessness. Once that happens, do you really think the people that guard the stockpiles of precious metals in the SLV and GLD funds will be looking out for your best interests? How about the physical assets of the companies you own stock in? Did you pay attention to what happened to the financial sectors in any of the countries that have made the headlines for civil war/revolutions in the past decade or two?

Quite true, as evidenced by your own posts.

I think I'm done here...

 

George Soros, and others of his wealth level, can afford to make a full time job of managing their investments. They also probably have enough wealth that they can still live a life of luxory even if they lose 99% of their wealth.

I do not have that kind of wealth, and I assume that most of us here don't. So it does not make any sense to recommend that we follow the same investment strategies as George Soros, or Warren Buffet.

 

Yes, and you don't know your history and particularly fascinating for this subject on a coin forum as well. Everyone should know that during the depression dimes, quarters, halve dollars and dollar coins were all made of silver and used for daily commerce. Paper dollars issued by the US government were still silver certificates. Any of this coinage could be directly exchanged for a measure of silver grains. So yes people were trading silver "trinkets" for food on the streets. They did not use gold because the government forbid them to do so.

On your second point, all the silver certificate dollars were made invalid for silver redemptions in 1968. So this is a case where the paper became worthless as it could no longer be redeemed for the asset it represented.

While PM currency may or may not be suitable for the 21st century (history isn't on your side BTW) the first requirement for being analytical and logical is to first understand the existing facts and data. This is something you have apparently not done. You mention "opinions" and I would suggest that calling people who disagree with your faulty analysis "fan boys" is the dismissal of fact with opinion. There isn't anything logical and analytical about that.

 

Agree 100%, the State of Washington will be affected just like any other State. Ask Boeing. Ask the middle class, where households with incomes from $85K to $150K will pay as much as $2200 more in income taxes, money they WON'T spend as consumers. Ask the state bureaucrats who oversee highways, bridges, dams, airports, and schools.

 

The "Fiscal Cliff" will NOT herald Armageddon, folks. Sure, it may well precipitate a -20% decline in stocks (and likewise, a-15% in PMs) but that's nothing to panic over. This kind of correction or retrace is NOT a 'Bear Mkt' NOR a 'Crash' - it's just the 'New Normal' for Paper investment and asset-class volatility.

You all remember how GLD retraced -25% from 7/11/08-10/31/08? Check the charts: SPY (US eqty) fell -22% in that period. But SLV tanked -50!!!!
Approx rule of thumb: in shart declines, Ag is twice as volatile as Au, and alot scarier than stocks! Anyone 'freaking out of stocks in 2012' really ought to know this already. More risk lies ahead!

Because asset classes are STILL highly correlated, don't buy into the 'de-coupling myth' ... just yet. The bullionist discipline will pay off - but much, much later.

 

Give me one example of a modern-times disaster (i.e., in the past 30 years) where in a time of complete upheaval and distress persons were running around the streets happily trading silver and gold trinkets for the necessities of life. Oh that's right, there are no examples.

History serves a purpose for helping us to never repeat our mistakes, but history based on out-dated logic will serve no such purpose. Once you have stopped pontificating about happenings in the irrelevantly distant past, you will realize it's not a matter of thinking that "this will never happen in the USA". It is the simple fact that having shiny metal in the time which you are all so afraid of will not save you from financial ruin.

As I said before -- fill your basements with silver and gold, if it helps you sleep at night. I used the term "fan-boys" because the mass hoarding of PMs for some people seems to be at an irrational and almost cult-status level. I am finished with this thread, as logic can simply not convince some. Cheerio.

 

I would partially agree with this. What's happened in the past decade has decreasing relevance to what's coming. We are now in uncharted territory -- we have never had multi-trillion deficits, coupled with a housing crisis, coupled with interest rates artificially held near zero, coupled with Fed purchases (with nothing more than a bookkeeping entry) of the major portion of our Treasuries. This is all new, and each year, the "new normal" gets scarier and scarier. It is now mathematically IMPOSSIBLE to pay off the national debt, and near-impossible to even reduce it. The actions of our President and our Congress are not sustainable. Does someone want to argue that point? Save your breath.

So the "new normal" is evolving, in a very disastrous direction. ONE thing has not changed, gold and silver are MONEY, money you don't have to apologize for (ask George Soros), money that will preserve your purchasing power when dollars hyper-inflate, when all the QE bookkeeping "money" explodes out of the banks.

This country's supply of food, housing, medicine, and ammo will not disappear overnight. It will all be available for a price, by sellers who anticipate a new PM-backed currency sooner rather than later. This is particularly true of housing. I am undecided what will happen to stocks, but bonds will be toast, especially when interest rates soar to make up for a rapidly-depreciating dollar.

In times to come, hard assets like housing and farms and factories will retain their utilitarian value, but in what currency I don't know. Paper assets = "your cash ain't nothin' but trash!"

 

brg5658-
My friend lived through hyperinflation in Brazil in the early 1990s. He's only about 30 years old - very clear memory of "paper failing." Disaster? Yes, of course.
MANY of my friends in Russia witnessed hyperinflation in Moscow in 1991: you might read this carefully http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/61 Disaster? Certainly.
I am sure my friends in Yugoslavia could tell similar stories from 1989-93. Disaster? War & hunger & then some.

Can't you understand why ALL of these people would have been 'better off' holding/trading PM "trinkets"? When I asked them, every single one replied YES.
Don't take my word for it, ask some recent US immigrants (from any of a dozen or so other places too : Go find a ZIMBABWEAN lol!) yourself, what these kinds of experiences feel/felt like.

Really. Seeing how complacent you've become, US Paper has obviously made a very nice cushion for your fanny. The Dollah might do double duty there yet.

 

"...It is the simple fact that having shiny metal in the time which you are all so afraid of will not save you from financial ruin."

So, umm, in those times of upheaval (yet to come), what WILL function as money? Tell us. A little barter might work, sporadically, in rural areas, but for corporate commerce and the entire retail sector, WHAT?

Do you think big corporations will accept old dollars for trainloads of goods?

From the upheaval, a few people will emerge with vastly more wealth (in terms of purchasing power, regardless of its form) -- a lot of people will end up with greatly-reduced wealth; and now, they are all the more fragile for having already lost a quarter of their net worth in the housing crisis. What will be the mode of payment be for, say, food-sellers? Like the fishmongers' axiom, sell it or smell it...


​

 

I agree - when the Biggest Bubble in History (US T-Bonds) pops, it takes Uncle Buck with it. That's the Great Reset were waiting for.

But when push comes to shove, Fed banksters will bail out the CORPORATIONS (stock value) not the bond mkt. They'll be quite happy to burn the debt - and save their most privileged equity shareholders instead (bleating "corporations are people too!")

Preferred shares for PM depositors, LOL That'll be the trade. "Got Gold?"

 

If your only definition of "worth" is "redeemable for the asset it represented, through official government agencies", then this statement is true, but circular at best.

After 1968, a silver certificate was still worth its nominal face value, and could still be used to buy silver. It could buy less silver, but not that much less -- even at the peak of the 1980 silver cornering attempt, it still "held several percent of its original value" (thinking in terms of silver equivalency), it regained nearly all of its losses in the few years following, and it retained a relatively stable silver-referenced value all through the 1990's.

Paper dollars did not "become worthless" in 1968. They still haven't.

 

"We will never follow the path of Zimbabwe..."

 

Let me say that I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with you. But I would suggest that folks might want to study the currency crisis in Argentina in preparing for a currency collapse in the US -- whether or not that is likely is another matter. What Argentine will show is that many of the things people are doing here probably won't work, and that there are some things that should be done that many people don't think about. Anyway, Argentina is my first choice as an example of what such an event would be like.

 

Instead of convincing logic, you have committed a logical fallacy by taking the talking points expressed here, extended them to unrealistic proportions, then criticizing the result. Furthermore your logic fails to take into account that the current fiat currency system used by most of the world has only existed for 41 years and thus ignores anything prior to this. Therefore, you have committed the very mistake you advise against, being illogical about history. In this case you are cherry picking which history you choose to believe. (especially since your first choice was proven wrong)

The logical person would choose to stay and discuss this if they really wanted to learn something.

 

You don't understand what a $ silver certificate represented. You didn't have to "buy" silver with it if you wanted silver. It was for a measured amount of grains of silver. You could go to the US Treasury office, hand in your dollar bill and they would hand you a plastic capsule assayed to have the amount of silver in it. There are some pictures floating around here of these capsules. This restriction prevented the government from only issuing silver certificates limited by the silver on hand.

The logic is not circular. You could no longer redeem the dollar for this physical asset. It's no different than having a deed to a piece of property and then being told that you can no longer take possession of said property, but that your deed is still worth something. If you are wishing to attribute "circular reasoning" then chew on that a bit.

They had to eliminate redemptions of silver certificates because they could be exchanged one for one with FRNs and it was the excessive FRN redemptions that was putting the USA in a bad position with the metal.

 

After talking to friends who lived through the Cuban Special Period, I really don't want to learn this firsthand. Can you imagine what a condom-pizza (faux-cheese) tastes like? Or Kitty-burger?

 

So you are saying that you equate bullion investing to condom-pizza, kitty-burgers and the Cuban Special Period? I suppose this might explain some of your posts.

 

This is not the primary purpose of having physical possession of precious metals, at least not for me.

Anything seems silly when you take it to the extreme. That's why its usually frowned upon in intelligent discussions/debates.

 

I implied nothing of the sort, that's a red herring.
I equate bullion investing to diversification away from All-Paper Risk. Otherwise, it makes more sense for "investors" to hold the Gold ETF, GLD.
A $9 trade (x2) is ALOT cheaper than the bullion premium anyone here pays in/out for PM exposure.

Anyone buying & selling metal absorbs additional costs and probably loses more, to be sure. Someone "gambling" with a large bullion purchase and "panic" sale learns this the hard way, certainly. Again: keep it relevant to the OP's predicament, as stated.

"Here goes EVERYTHING" it seems.