[Revi]

Silver seems to be holding over $20, and that's dragging oil up today as well.

I wonder if this is the beginning of a little bout of inflation, or if it's just another aspect of the double dip recession.

[Revi]

Here's an article about what's happening lately:

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Turk/turk_sep202010.html

It's written by a goldbug, but it certainly makes some good points about what's happening lately to commodities in general.

[efarmer]

I know some goldbugs and I have seen two flavors. One has the ultimate concentrated wealth so they can weather great upheavals in an intact but squeezed economic system, the other has the ultimate concentrated wealth so they can operate in post apocalyptic chaos.

For the life of me, I don't see how the ultimate concentrated form of wealth does not drive and deliver the personal version of the ultimate unwanted attention for the bearer in both cases. Every transaction with someone who has what you want for your gold makes another guy a target, potentially where they want anything other than diamonds or gold or "death wampum".

When life gets cheap, gold stays expensive.

I think I would rather have something humbler in value, and lots of it in little caches all over the place.

How long do Rice Krispy treats keep?

[Roccland]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Expatriot', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Roccland', 'J')ust keep'n it real...

How ya'll doin'?

[Revi]

I think something happened around 1:00, because silver jumped also.

Maybe the Fed's announcement?

[Expatriot]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I') think something happened around 1:00, because silver jumped also.

Maybe the Fed's announcement?

[Revi]

All this inflation in pm's presages a jump in consumer prices.

I think it will happen before the end of the year.

Buying pm's is just a hedge against the money we'll all be paying for cornflakes by next year.

It's going to get crazy now if the price of things goes up even though the economy hasn't recovered.

We could have people homeless and starving soon.

Oh, wait... it's already happening...

[roccman]

3 hours till market opens...

any ideas on what gold and silver do?

[careinke]

My guess is it is going up.

http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

[pedalling_faster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', '3') hours till market opens...

any ideas on what gold and silver do?

[Pretorian]

100-fold.. people have lost their minds. Gold is a useless metal, when compared to other commodities. Only 12% is used in a non-bullion , non jewelry market.

[roccman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', ' ')Gold is a useless metal, when compared to other commodities. Only 12% is used in a non-bullion , non jewelry market.

[Revi]

I think you will be able to barter with it. People will recognize the value of a silver dollar and give you an equivalent value in food, for example. I have already tried it and it works.

[patience]

Manipulation of siver prices has been going on forever, and J P Morgan and HSBC are now in court being sued for it, so this is NOT tinfoil info. It is real.

This article I found on Silverbearcafe, explains what happened to cause the precipitous drop in silver prices last week. Gold followed suit, but as a tagalong. Silver had been being manipulated by the major banks, in cahoots with the govt and Federal Reserve, to suppress the price because climbing prices of PM's made their fiat dollar look increasingly BAD. To hold down the price of silver, the banks sold massive silver short contracts on the COMEX, knowing they would be backstopped by the Fed.gov if it went wrong. Then, it went wrong. Demand rose grandly, as the dollar was sinking, Asian countries aggressively added to their stockpiles to back their economies, China put ads on TV to get their people to buy silver, and even J6P in the US was getting in on the act.

Abruptly, the COMEX raised margin requirements of short contracts (the "down payment") to 30% and lots of poorly funded silver traders had to dump their contracts for what they could get in a selling free for all. Silver prices dropped like a stone for a couple days. This pulled the big banks chestnuts out of the fire and all was well. For the moment. But demand has NOT gone away, and silver has firmed up around $26, still double the price of 2 years ago.

My concern is this. What happens when the Fed.gov needs to again suppress the prices of PM's? Looks to me like they will do whatever they need to do and make that happen. I wouldn't put anything past them. Whatever they do, it won't be good for us small fry. At this time, I'll wait a few days and see if it starts up again, trying to catch a couple more bucks in gains, then I'm going to dump what little I have.

I expect PM's to shoot the moon, as the dollar goes in the crapper, so I will miss that once in a lifetime massive gain. That's okay, because I also expect a desperate Fed.gov to step in as PM's go parabolic and do something dastardly, like lock down the market, tax the heck out of gains, confiscate it to back the dollar--who knows--but I wouldn't like it. I'd rather have taken what I could get and run with the money to some less risky investment.

Here's the article: http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/11.10/naked.html

I have to have an exit strategy, meaning something sensible to do with the proceeds of selling out of the silver. I'm thinking that should be hard goods, at this point. I am probably early on this call. I usually am way early. Maybe a year or more in this case. Better a year early than ten minutes late, IMHO. Besides, wife and I both need new glasses, need to pay the property tax, pay the internet bill and the insurance for another year, etc.. JMHO, so do your own due diligence.

[mattduke]

You know patience, when they created Fannie and Freddie to make housing more affordable, they ended up making it more expensive. Now they are trying to make housing more expensive, but it keeps getting more affordable. The government is a player in the market, but the market is more powerful than the government. The price of precious metals will continue to rise despite government attempts to keep it from doing so.

[Revi]

I don't think I am doing anything. The price goes up and down. I am not buying, but I'm not selling either. I had a bunch of dimes, quarters and half dollars for sale and I had to keep marking them up. The melt price almost caught up with them anyway, and most of them sold. I think that there will be no problem getting rid of silver coins when the time comes to do that.

Here's what Ferfal has to say about it in Argentina:

http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2010/01/goldsilver.html

[copious.abundance]

Is that a left shoulder and a head I see forming in the price of gold?

Click on the 3-month or 6-month view and it starts to look a bit, well, "Hmmmm."
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fu ... re-us-gold

[Revi]

It could be a left shoulder forming.

I think that pm's should be seen as a form of hedging. Just in case...

They aren't like other assets. When they are doing well the rest of the economy is tanking. It just means you'll be paying more for everything else when they are going up.

They have never dropped to no value. We just went through a period during which they were undervalued, so they might not go up too much more, or they might...

http://johngaltfla.com/blog3/2010/11/15 ... ng-crisis/

[copious.abundance]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', 'I')s that a left shoulder and a head I see forming in the price of gold?

Click on the 3-month or 6-month view and it starts to look a bit, well, "Hmmmm."
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fu ... re-us-gold

[Revi]

I got some war nickels yesterday, but I am scared of the price nowadays for buying coins. The melt value of a half dollar is almost 10 bucks now. It seems like that will provoke some inflation soon.

I think I will switch to that other precious metal favorite of mine, cast iron.

I am still buying Griswold and Wagner. You can't go wrong with them. Even if the world goes crackerdog you can still use a cast iron pan to cook up a squirrel stew.

That's my new plan.