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Gold hits all-time high
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mises



Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

recessiontime wrote:
Where is a good place in Canada to buy real physical gold you can keep in your own house?


http://www.scotiamocatta.com/

Let them know you want to take delivery.

Or:

http://www.sprottphysicalgoldtrust.com/
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El Exigente



Joined: 10 Sep 2010

PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mises wrote:
recessiontime wrote:
Where is a good place in Canada to buy real physical gold you can keep in your own house?


http://www.scotiamocatta.com/

Let them know you want to take delivery.

Ditto for www.kitco.com.
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mises



Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8026324/Gold-is-the-final-refuge-against-universal-currency-debasement.html

Quote:
Gold is the final refuge against universal currency debasement

�We live in an amazing world. Everybody has big budget deficits and big easy money but somehow the world as a whole cannot fully employ itself,� said former Fed chair Paul Volcker in Chris Whalen�s new book Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream.

�It is a serious question. We are no longer talking about a single country having a big depression but the entire world.�

The US and Britain are debasing coinage to alleviate the pain of debt-busts, and to revive their export industries: China is debasing to off-load its manufacturing overcapacity on to the rest of the world, though it has a trade surplus with the US of $20bn (�12.6bn) a month.

Premier Wen Jiabao confesses that China�s ability to maintain social order depends on a suppressed currency. A 20pc revaluation would be unbearable. �I can�t imagine how many Chinese factories will go bankrupt, how many Chinese workers will lose their jobs,� he said.

Plead he might, but tempers in Washington are rising. Congress will vote next week on the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act, intended to make it much harder for the Commerce Department to avoid imposing �remedial tariffs� on Chinese goods deemed to be receiving �benefit� from an unduly weak currency.

Japan has intervened to stop the strong yen tipping the country into a deflation death spiral, though it too has a trade surplus. There is suspicion in Tokyo that Beijing�s record purchase of Japanese debt in June, July, and August was not entirely friendly, intended to secure yuan-yen advantage and perhaps to damage Japan�s industry at a time of escalating strategic tensions in the Pacific region.

Brazil dived into the markets on Friday to weaken the real. The Swiss have been doing it for months, accumulating reserves equal to 40pc of GDP in a forlorn attempt to stem capital flight from Euroland. Like the Chinese and Japanese, they too are battling to stop the rest of the world taking away their structural surplus.

The exception is Germany, which protects its surplus ($179bn, or 5.2pc of GDP) by means of an undervalued exchange rate within EMU. The global game of pass the unemployment parcel has to end somewhere. It ends in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, parts of Eastern Europe, and will end in France and Italy too, at least until their democracies object.

It is no mystery why so many states around the world are trying to steal a march on others by debasement, or to stop debasers stealing a march on them. The three pillars of global demand at the height of the credit bubble in 2007 were � by deficits � the US ($793bn), Spain ($126bn), UK ($87bn). These have shrunk to $431bn, $75bn, and $33bn respectively as we sinners tighten our belts in the aftermath of debt bubbles.. The Brazils and Indias of the world are replacing some of this half trillion lost juice, but not all.

East Asia�s surplus states seem structurally incapable of compensating for austerity in the West, whether because of the Confucian saving ethic, or the habits of mercantilist practice, or in China�s case by the lack of a welfare net. Their export models rely on the willingness of Anglo-PIGS to bankrupt themselves.

So we have an early 1930s world where surplus states are hoarding money, instead of recycling it.

...

The latest Fed minutes are remarkable. They add a new doctrine, that a fresh monetary blitz � or QE2 � will be used to stop inflation falling much below 1.5pc. Surely the Fed has not become so reckless that it really aims to use emergency measures to create inflation, rather preventing deflation? This must be a cover-story. Ben Bernanke�s real purpose � as he aired in his November 2002 speech on deflation � is to weaken the dollar.


If so, he has succeeded. The Swiss franc smashed through parity last week as investors digested the message. But the swissie is an over-rated refuge. The franc cannot go much further without destabilizing Switzerland itself.

Gold has no such limits. It hit $1300 an ounce last week, still well shy of the $2,200-2,400 range reached in the late Medieval era of the 14th and 15th Centuries.

This is not to say that gold has any particular "intrinsic value"�. It is subject to supply and demand like everything else. It crashed after the gold discoveries of Spain�s Conquistadores in the New World, and slid further after finds in Australia and South Africa. It ultimately lost 90pc of its value � hitting rock-bottom a decade ago when central banks succumbed to fiat hubris and began to sell their bullion. Gold hit a millennium-low on the day that Gordon Brown auctioned the first tranche of Britain�s gold. It has risen five-fold since then.

We have a new world order where China and India are buying gold on every dip, where the West faces an ageing crisis, and where the sovereign states of the US, Japan, and most of Western Europe have public debt trajectories near or beyond the point of no return.

The managers of all four reserve currencies are playing fast and loose: the Fed is clipping the dollar; the Bank of England is clipping sterling; the European Central Bank is buying the bonds of EMU debtors to stave off insolvency, something it vowed never to do just months ago; and the Bank of Japan has just carried out two trillion yen of �unsterilized� intervention.

Of course, gold can go higher.


Everybody wants a cheap currency. How's that going to work?
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recessiontime



Joined: 21 Jun 2010
Location: Got avatar privileges nyahahaha

PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 9:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It seems like to me fiat currency is basically backed by whatever the beholder wants. Debt, force, nukes, human ingeniuity, etc. It's still strange for me to see people exchange paper for goods in services. I can understand it if the paper is a receipt for something tangible (like gold), but it clearly isn't....and nobody dares question it.

When the USD fails, they will probably introduce another fiat currency to replace it, and people will dumb enough to accept it. History keep repeating itself.
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Cici88



Joined: 18 Sep 2010

PostPosted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 2:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

recessiontime wrote:
It seems like to me fiat currency is basically backed by whatever the beholder wants. Debt, force, nukes, human ingeniuity, etc. It's still strange for me to see people exchange paper for goods in services. I can understand it if the paper is a receipt for something tangible (like gold), but it clearly isn't....and nobody dares question it.

When the USD fails, they will probably introduce another fiat currency to replace it, and people will dumb enough to accept it. History keep repeating itself.


Gold hits another all time high tonight touching $1315 an ounce in overnight European trading. The rising won seems to have subsided as I suspect that the BOK has been intervening to stem the rising won. Country after country is devaluing their currency through massive quantitative easing in an attempt to make their exports more attractive because - via foreign exchange - their currency is worth less than other countries as those countries devalue. It's becoming a vicious cycle.
Add to that another round of QE by the FED and gold keeps rocking.
The next crisis to hit the US will the bankruptcies at the state level.
Precious metals is the only place to be in my opinion.
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Fox



Joined: 04 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 3:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

recessiontime wrote:
It's still strange for me to see people exchange paper for goods in services.


Why? I think legal tender laws explain said behavior very well.
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bucheon bum



Joined: 16 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 5:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cici88 wrote:

The next crisis to hit the US will the bankruptcies at the state level.
Precious metals is the only place to be in my opinion.


Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I'm pretty certain states can't declare bankruptcy.
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chellovek



Joined: 29 Feb 2008

PostPosted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 5:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fox wrote:
recessiontime wrote:
It's still strange for me to see people exchange paper for goods in services.


Why? I think legal tender laws explain said behavior very well.


Quite agree, I believe there have been instances of playing cards being used as currency before now, in addition to various other non-precious items. This notion that only gold or some precious metal can be a currency is pure pessimist-masturbatory nonesense.
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TheUrbanMyth



Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired

PostPosted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 6:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

chellovek wrote:
Fox wrote:
recessiontime wrote:
It's still strange for me to see people exchange paper for goods in services.


Why? I think legal tender laws explain said behavior very well.


Quite agree, I believe there have been instances of playing cards being used as currency before now, in addition to various other non-precious items. This notion that only gold or some precious metal can be a currency is pure pessimist-masturbatory nonesense.



Agreed.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/04/the_gold_bug_va.html
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visitorq



Joined: 11 Jan 2008

PostPosted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 6:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

chellovek wrote:
Fox wrote:
recessiontime wrote:
It's still strange for me to see people exchange paper for goods in services.


Why? I think legal tender laws explain said behavior very well.


Quite agree, I believe there have been instances of playing cards being used as currency before now, in addition to various other non-precious items. This notion that only gold or some precious metal can be a currency is pure pessimist-masturbatory nonesense.

Anything with perceived value (and sufficient scarcity) can be used as currency. The underlying thing that gives fiat currency its value however is the threat of physical violence from the state. Above all, the fact that taxes must be paid in fiat money (or else an IRS swat team is liable to show up at your home or business), is the chief reason everyone thinks fiat money has value. It is similar to tally sticks used in England hundreds of years ago.

If government coercion were removed and currencies were allowed to compete freely, those backed by gold and silver would be stable, those backed by nothing but fiat would become debased and collapse (as is happening now). Only the threat of physical force/violence (ex. confiscating gold, as they did under FDR) can force people to accept a debased currency.
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chellovek



Joined: 29 Feb 2008

PostPosted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 6:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

visitorq wrote:
chellovek wrote:
Fox wrote:
recessiontime wrote:
It's still strange for me to see people exchange paper for goods in services.


Why? I think legal tender laws explain said behavior very well.


Quite agree, I believe there have been instances of playing cards being used as currency before now, in addition to various other non-precious items. This notion that only gold or some precious metal can be a currency is pure pessimist-masturbatory nonesense.

Anything with perceived value (and sufficient scarcity) can be used as currency. The underlying thing that gives fiat currency its value however is the threat of physical violence from the state. Above all, the fact that taxes must be paid in fiat money (or else an IRS swat team is liable to show up at your home or business), is the chief reason everyone thinks fiat money has value. It is similar to tally sticks used in England hundreds of years ago.

If government coercion were removed and currencies were allowed to compete freely, those backed by gold and silver would be stable, those backed by nothing but fiat would become debased and collapse (as is happening now). Only the threat of physical force/violence (ex. confiscating gold, as they did under FDR) can force people to accept a debased currency.


Yes, if state coercion were removed. Also agree, the paper we shuffle around the economy only has value because it is perceived to have it. Gold is also perceived to have value, even though it isn't in itself that useful.

What is this worldview that things were ever based on anything other than the threat of physical force? Yes, the current way of things is ultimately based on the threat of physical force. The way of things past were based on such threats, and so will be the way of things to come. It is the organising principle of society I think (not to say I like that principle though). Ye olde Thomas Hobbes had a few things to say about it.
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visitorq



Joined: 11 Jan 2008

PostPosted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 7:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

chellovek wrote:
visitorq wrote:
chellovek wrote:
Fox wrote:
recessiontime wrote:
It's still strange for me to see people exchange paper for goods in services.


Why? I think legal tender laws explain said behavior very well.


Quite agree, I believe there have been instances of playing cards being used as currency before now, in addition to various other non-precious items. This notion that only gold or some precious metal can be a currency is pure pessimist-masturbatory nonesense.

Anything with perceived value (and sufficient scarcity) can be used as currency. The underlying thing that gives fiat currency its value however is the threat of physical violence from the state. Above all, the fact that taxes must be paid in fiat money (or else an IRS swat team is liable to show up at your home or business), is the chief reason everyone thinks fiat money has value. It is similar to tally sticks used in England hundreds of years ago.

If government coercion were removed and currencies were allowed to compete freely, those backed by gold and silver would be stable, those backed by nothing but fiat would become debased and collapse (as is happening now). Only the threat of physical force/violence (ex. confiscating gold, as they did under FDR) can force people to accept a debased currency.


Yes, if state coercion were removed. Also agree, the paper we shuffle around the economy only has value because it is perceived to have it. Gold is also perceived to have value, even though it isn't in itself that useful.

The difference is you can't print gold. If the Fed were replaced by a totally impartial computer that kept the money supply perfectly stable, and redistributed all interest incurred back to the public, then it could work from a moral perspective. In reality, however, the Fed is a cartel owned by the commercial banking sector and keeps the interest tacked onto all new money it creates out of thin air to itself. Plus the government has a neat arrangement where it can borrow unlimited amounts, which is to say it spends as much money as it wants (on wars etc.) and forces the public to pay through inflation, which is a hidden tax. It is a totally immoral system, as well as being economically untenable in the long run. Debased currencies always collapse, the US Federal Reserve currency will be no different. We are already seeing it unravel as we speak.

Quote:
What is this worldview that things were ever based on anything other than the threat of physical force? Yes, the current way of things is ultimately based on the threat of physical force. The way of things past were based on such threats, and so will be the way of things to come. It is the organising principle of society I think (not to say I like that principle though). Ye olde Thomas Hobbes had a few things to say about it.

Well at least you're being open about it... Of course I totally disagree. There is nothing inevitable about tyranny. The alternative to having government forcing us to accept its debased currency is to have currencies competing in a free market. The ideal role of government is to simply upholds the rule of law (to stop, rather than enable and legalize counterfeiting). Rule of law in a free society is not coercion. One is free to do as he/she pleases, so long as they don't infringe on the rights of others. This is why can't go club your neighbor over the head and steal his property. Might does not equal right. The government should not be exempt from this principle.
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chellovek



Joined: 29 Feb 2008

PostPosted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 8:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

visitorq wrote:
chellovek wrote:
visitorq wrote:
chellovek wrote:
Fox wrote:
recessiontime wrote:
It's still strange for me to see people exchange paper for goods in services.


Why? I think legal tender laws explain said behavior very well.


Quite agree, I believe there have been instances of playing cards being used as currency before now, in addition to various other non-precious items. This notion that only gold or some precious metal can be a currency is pure pessimist-masturbatory nonesense.

Anything with perceived value (and sufficient scarcity) can be used as currency. The underlying thing that gives fiat currency its value however is the threat of physical violence from the state. Above all, the fact that taxes must be paid in fiat money (or else an IRS swat team is liable to show up at your home or business), is the chief reason everyone thinks fiat money has value. It is similar to tally sticks used in England hundreds of years ago.

If government coercion were removed and currencies were allowed to compete freely, those backed by gold and silver would be stable, those backed by nothing but fiat would become debased and collapse (as is happening now). Only the threat of physical force/violence (ex. confiscating gold, as they did under FDR) can force people to accept a debased currency.


Yes, if state coercion were removed. Also agree, the paper we shuffle around the economy only has value because it is perceived to have it. Gold is also perceived to have value, even though it isn't in itself that useful.

The difference is you can't print gold. If the Fed were replaced by a totally impartial computer that kept the money supply perfectly stable, and redistributed all interest incurred back to the public, then it could work from a moral perspective. In reality, however, the Fed is a cartel owned by the commercial banking sector and keeps the interest tacked onto all new money it creates out of thin air to itself. Plus the government has a neat arrangement where it can borrow unlimited amounts, which is to say it spends as much money as it wants (on wars etc.) and forces the public to pay through inflation, which is a hidden tax. It is a totally immoral system, as well as being economically untenable in the long run. Debased currencies always collapse, the US Federal Reserve currency will be no different. We are already seeing it unravel as we speak.

Quote:
What is this worldview that things were ever based on anything other than the threat of physical force? Yes, the current way of things is ultimately based on the threat of physical force. The way of things past were based on such threats, and so will be the way of things to come. It is the organising principle of society I think (not to say I like that principle though). Ye olde Thomas Hobbes had a few things to say about it.

Well at least you're being open about it... Of course I totally disagree. There is nothing inevitable about tyranny. The alternative to having government forcing us to accept its debased currency is to have currencies competing in a free market. The ideal role of government is to simply upholds the rule of law (to stop, rather than enable and legalize counterfeiting). Rule of law in a free society is not coercion. One is free to do as he/she pleases, so long as they don't infringe on the rights of others. This is why can't go club your neighbor over the head and steal his property. Might does not equal right. The government should not be exempt from this principle.


I can see we're going to have to agree to disagree Laughing

Hmm, true gold can't be printed, but nor can any other metal you choose to name.

I think tyranny in a greater or lesser form is part of the human condition whether it is perpetrated by the state or not. As such that's why I'm not convinced by libertarianism and the free-est of markets, it's another utopian vision to me. I'm also not necessarily convinced that libertarianism is compatible with the high degree of regimentation and organisation required in complex industrial socieites. Organisation is necessarily a form of control, so some people will be free whilst others are not. Libs always strike me as having their views culturally rooted in the early American frontier spirit of rugged individualism, but those days are long gone and I don't think they will come back. I also think that is why most libertarians seem to be American.
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chellovek



Joined: 29 Feb 2008

PostPosted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 8:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

visitorq wrote:
chellovek wrote:
visitorq wrote:
chellovek wrote:
Fox wrote:
recessiontime wrote:
It's still strange for me to see people exchange paper for goods in services.


Why? I think legal tender laws explain said behavior very well.


Quite agree, I believe there have been instances of playing cards being used as currency before now, in addition to various other non-precious items. This notion that only gold or some precious metal can be a currency is pure pessimist-masturbatory nonesense.

Anything with perceived value (and sufficient scarcity) can be used as currency. The underlying thing that gives fiat currency its value however is the threat of physical violence from the state. Above all, the fact that taxes must be paid in fiat money (or else an IRS swat team is liable to show up at your home or business), is the chief reason everyone thinks fiat money has value. It is similar to tally sticks used in England hundreds of years ago.

If government coercion were removed and currencies were allowed to compete freely, those backed by gold and silver would be stable, those backed by nothing but fiat would become debased and collapse (as is happening now). Only the threat of physical force/violence (ex. confiscating gold, as they did under FDR) can force people to accept a debased currency.


Yes, if state coercion were removed. Also agree, the paper we shuffle around the economy only has value because it is perceived to have it. Gold is also perceived to have value, even though it isn't in itself that useful.

The difference is you can't print gold. If the Fed were replaced by a totally impartial computer that kept the money supply perfectly stable, and redistributed all interest incurred back to the public, then it could work from a moral perspective. In reality, however, the Fed is a cartel owned by the commercial banking sector and keeps the interest tacked onto all new money it creates out of thin air to itself. Plus the government has a neat arrangement where it can borrow unlimited amounts, which is to say it spends as much money as it wants (on wars etc.) and forces the public to pay through inflation, which is a hidden tax. It is a totally immoral system, as well as being economically untenable in the long run. Debased currencies always collapse, the US Federal Reserve currency will be no different. We are already seeing it unravel as we speak.

Quote:
What is this worldview that things were ever based on anything other than the threat of physical force? Yes, the current way of things is ultimately based on the threat of physical force. The way of things past were based on such threats, and so will be the way of things to come. It is the organising principle of society I think (not to say I like that principle though). Ye olde Thomas Hobbes had a few things to say about it.

Well at least you're being open about it... Of course I totally disagree. There is nothing inevitable about tyranny. The alternative to having government forcing us to accept its debased currency is to have currencies competing in a free market. The ideal role of government is to simply upholds the rule of law (to stop, rather than enable and legalize counterfeiting). Rule of law in a free society is not coercion. One is free to do as he/she pleases, so long as they don't infringe on the rights of others. This is why can't go club your neighbor over the head and steal his property. Might does not equal right. The government should not be exempt from this principle.


I can see we're going to have to agree to disagree Laughing

Hmm, true gold can't be printed, but nor can any other metal you choose to name.

I think tyranny in a greater or lesser form is part of the human condition whether it is perpetrated by the state or not. As such that's why I'm not convinced by libertarianism and the free-est of markets, it's another utopian vision to me. I'm also not necessarily convinced that libertarianism is compatible with the high degree of regimentation and organisation required in complex industrial socieites. Organisation is necessarily a form of control, so some people will be free whilst others are not. Libs always strike me as having their views culturally rooted in the early American frontier spirit of rugged individualism, but those days are long gone and I don't think they will come back. I also think that is why most libertarians seem to be American.
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visitorq



Joined: 11 Jan 2008

PostPosted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 10:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

chellovek wrote:
I can see we're going to have to agree to disagree Laughing

Hmm, true gold can't be printed, but nor can any other metal you choose to name.

I think tyranny in a greater or lesser form is part of the human condition whether it is perpetrated by the state or not. As such that's why I'm not convinced by libertarianism and the free-est of markets, it's another utopian vision to me. I'm also not necessarily convinced that libertarianism is compatible with the high degree of regimentation and organisation required in complex industrial socieites. Organisation is necessarily a form of control, so some people will be free whilst others are not.

Actually you make a valid point - lesser forms of tyranny will most certainly always be around in one form or another, it's up to individuals and communities to work to limit the scope of it (part of why we have the 2nd Amendment). But I would counter that only a centralized government is capable of enforcing tyranny over society as a whole.

In regards to money, centralized governments enable and are funded by central banks. Hence the need to end the Fed.

Quote:
Libs always strike me as having their views culturally rooted in the early American frontier spirit of rugged individualism, but those days are long gone and I don't think they will come back. I also think that is why most libertarians seem to be American.

This is also what made America the most enterprising and prosperous nation in history. The bigger our government's grown of the years, the more our country has gone downhill.
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