[blackaddr]

from this -> http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_05 ... 41305.html

i've read that the US is already hyper-inflating its money suply they have just learnt to conceal it really well.....

you also have to know that the http://www.gata.org/ are sueing for damages because they believe gold prices are being "artifically" kept low by the main banks so that they can hide the "true" price of gold and can therefore hide how much inflation there really is out there at the moment....

some people believe its being done for silver as well-> http://www.petitiononline.com/comex/

I dont know if its all true, i dont like conspiricy theories myself, but its certainly interesting.

I think silver is a better investment than gold. If PO comes, then you have money that will keep its value and can be a good exchange medium. If it doesnt happen any time soon, then yourll still make money on silver, because demand should outstrip supply this or next year.

btw. I agree that no investment is as good as that of investing in your own skill-set tho. I say do both.

[tpm]

Can anyone confirm that recently a section of the U.S. Patriot Act was invoked and no longer may a U.S. citizen establish a foreign bank account?

[Cool Hand Linc]

The value of anything you stash is all reliant on the value of commodities. Food is the most important of all. The ability to produce your own food is most important.

If TSHTF I figure 2 pounds of green beans could sell for 1 oz. of gold. If you look really hungry and have children 2 oz. per pounds. (I am being attempting to show the reality of the need of food here) Then I can be charitable and give and extra pound of green beans.

When stashing money in gold or silver it is possible that I would not accept gold or silver because they are heavy and don’t have many uses when it comes to production of food or keeping a family alive.

In five years or 15 years gold and silver may still have value but as food production in the world does finally hit in the decline. Food as a commodity will have real value. Items needed to produce food will have real value. Availability of fresh water?

Gold and silver are good for you now but what of your children? Their children?

Land that is paid for and the ability to grow food have long term value.

My grand parents lived in the depression. My grandparents lived in a canvas tent on the North Canadian river in western Oklahoma when my uncle and father were born. Nine years difference in ages between them. Another child was born and died.

Granddad cut wood and traded for flour and other staples required. For him and Grandma gold was of no value at all. None! Food was of the only value. Then a tent. Then stuff to get more food or cook or shelter.

My father told stories of getting a whippin when he shot a bullet and missed because they didn’t get to eat.

When preparing for the future, I think in the short term gold and silver are great. Land is better if paid for. Land and water and work equal food. Land will be for your children.

[Leanan]

The problem with land, of course, is that it's not portable.

Once TSHTF, it may be hard to keep your land. The government will likely raise taxes, trying to keep itself solvent. With a bad economy and/or high fuel prices, it may be hard to earn enough money to pay property taxes. Climate change is already becoming a problem, and will likely accelerate as the world turns to coal to replace scarce oil. Your fertile farm may end up under water, or a desert that will not support crops. If not, the goverment or a local militia may seize it. During the Civil War, when the Union troops came marching through the south, people buried their silver in the orchard. But the Yankees weren't all that interested in silver. They were more interested in food. Many a Southern family had hams taken from them at gunpoint.

According to Tainter, both the Romans and the Maya clustered close to the cities as collapse approached. The Romans, because the government gave food handouts to the poor. The Maya, because isolated villages were vulnerable to raids.

Not saying you shouldn't invest in land. Just that it's probably not a good idea to put it all in real estate.

[Devilboy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cool Hand Linc', 'G')randdad cut wood and traded for flour and other staples required. For him and Grandma gold was of no value at all. None! Food was of the only value. Then a tent. Then stuff to get more food or cook or shelter.

[Cool Hand Linc]

I understand what your saying.

If my grandfather could barter for food or gold. He would barter for food everytime.

If they had been wealthy and already had wealth then food would have had value. My Gradparents lived on the river in tents long enough for 2 boys born 9 years apart to be born and food was what was important. Gold really didn't have value to them.

So my statement was true. Gold did not have value to THEM. Your saying that gold did have value at that time and that was true as well.

My point was when a person begins living day to day meal to meal then gold loses much of its value. Yes a starving person would accept gold but the only goal is food. The golds only value is the apparent amount of food that it will purchase.

Food has value and golds only value is the current apparent value of commondites it will purchase.

[Devilboy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cool Hand Linc', 'I')f my grandfather could barter for food or gold. He would barter for food everytime.

[Cool Hand Linc]

OK, buy all the gold you can!

I will not attempt to tell you are full of shit or that your opinion is bullshit.

You are entitled to your opinion and I to mine. You don't seem to respect my right to my ideas. I still respect yours.

I will simply say I disagree.

We are talking about now and then the future (10 years your words) when the Really Great Depression is occurring. WHAT TO DO NOW TO PREPARE FOR THE INEVITABLE DECLINE.

I believe gold will have value to a certain point. Then it becomes an expensive rock.

IF and I say IF things get real bad. I want paid for land, shelter from the elements, a supply of fresh water, and the ability to grow food and the knowledge of how to keep growing it year after year.

You want gold. Go for it.

As far as my Grand parents, my Grandma took me to the river where they lived in their 2 tents. Ironic that my mothers Aunt owned it at the time but this is true, we walked out into a grove of trees. They lived in that grove of trees.

I was the only grandchild who kept asking questions. This is why she took me to see the grove. I asked so many questions because my father once told me that grandpa gave him 1 22cal bullet. Dad was pretty young and missed. Grandpa beat his but because he missed and they didn’t have any meat to eat that evening. I could not believe this and so began asking questions.

If she needed flour to cook with, she wanted flour. Not gold. Yes, she could barter using gold but she wanted food not gold. She didn’t want gold.

If you think that when times get really tough you can dig up gold and by a big mac. It depends on how tough time get. Is the world population correcting itself to a carrying capacity that is much lower than current populations? Are the pessimists correct and the carrying capacity is adjusting itself for post oil age? If so times will be much worse than anything we can imagine.

The only value gold had was the ability to by food that they needed now. Not tomorrow but today. I didn’t contradict myself. You didn’t understand.

Food has value; gold has only the value of what can be purchased with it at that moment is that time in the past, current, or the future. Inflation changes the value of gold. The value of a meal doesn’t change. Ask a starving man how much a meal is worth for his starving wife and starving children.

If a 4 families work together and grow all they can and have just enough food for them. They figure what they canned and dried will just be enough to last until next season. A starving man with his starving wife and starving children approaches and says, “I will give you one gold coin for a meal for my family.” The elders discuss the offer and decide this will mean somebody will not eat a meal. They decline the offer. The starving man offers 2 gold coins. Again he is refused. He asks how many gold coins for a meal for my family. Surely you will not deny my family a meal. They elders call for an audit of their stores. They have just enough food if they cut back the last month before harvest. So they tell him they have no food to spare. He should take his gold else where.

If the elders do not give him food, He will die and they can collect the gold anyway!

I reconsider. Buy gold and jewels too. They are truly a good investment. Someday you can come to my place and buy a meal! Really! After all am I not contradicting myself. Gold is truly worth more than the ability to feed yourself.

[Devilboy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cool Hand Linc', '
')If a 4 families work together and grow all they can and have just enough food for them. They figure what they canned and dried will just be enough to last until next season. A starving man with his starving wife and starving children approaches and says, “I will give you one gold coin for a meal for my family.” The elders discuss the offer and decide this will mean somebody will not eat a meal. They decline the offer. The starving man offers 2 gold coins. Again he is refused. He asks how many gold coins for a meal for my family. Surely you will not deny my family a meal. They elders call for an audit of their stores. They have just enough food if they cut back the last month before harvest. So they tell him they have no food to spare. He should take his gold else where.

If the elders do not give him food, He will die and they can collect the gold anyway!

[Cool Hand Linc]

That wasn't sarcasm.

Inflation?

Its Deflation that is in the future. During a depression you have deflation. The end of the oil age is expected to create a world wide depression unlike what has ever been seen. Large enough for a die off. None of the experts out there really agree on what to do as a hedge against deflation.

Long term deflation is something the world has never experienced before. So nobody is really sure what to do. You, me or financial experts. So Make your best judgement and go for it. Myself, I see a link between food and life.

If gold has enough value to buy a weeks accomidation in the local town. Then why did a starving man and his starving family not stop in the town and eat to begin with?

My senerio assumes an economic crash, not a depression. We are looking a different things, you and I. I am thinking of food lines where the food to give out runs out and these people are without. It just depends if the dieoff really occurs and if it does how far into the dieoff the world is.

Yes, buy lots and lots of gold and jewels.

[Devilboy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cool Hand Linc', 'Y')es, buy lots and lots of gold and jewels.

[chargrove]

I'm with Cool Hand on this one. After TSHTF economically, there will be a short time when gold will still have value (and probably some significant value at that). But that time will be short, delimited entirely by the point when people realize that the economic situation isn't temporary and isn't going to get better.

Let's use something current as an example: the housing bubble. Right now most of us PO'ers in the U.S. can see the housing bubble for what it is, and can see that it's ripe for popping, just like the dot-bomb popped the stock bubble a few years ago. Now by comparison, economically less-informed people may not be aware that the housing situation is a precarious bubble and may be getting themselves into a "you can't lose!" mess right as the bottom is about to drop out from under them.

What this results in is a game of economic hot-potato, or musical chairs, or russian roulette (choose the game that works best for you; all are fine analogies due to their progressing cascade of losers). Every round you survive you win a prize, but every round increases your chances of dying. Buying a house and turning it over quickly is just passing the potato; at some point though the round ends, and whoever holds the potato (or the dynamite) is out and suffers major consequences. In the end, very few people win this kind of game. All economic bubbles work this way.

My strong belief is that gold will be the same way in the long run. The gold will have value as long as people believe that is has value, but in a world of perpetual collapse, that's not going to last forever. Eventually seeds of doubt will be sown, and people will wonder, "if I accept this lump of gold as payment for my hard-earned food, will I be guaranteed to find someone else who will also accept the gold in exchange for something I want?". From that point, every day that goes by, this doubt will increase, and that's when the gold bubble will pop. Gold, like housing and like stock, only has the value that the consensus agrees upon. When the consensus has doubts, that value drops, and "good faith and credit" in the value of that asset no longer has any bearing, because the faith no longer exists.

The question isn't whether or not the gold bubble will pop and whether or not gold will become quite worthless. This will happen, for the simple reason that we are in population overshoot (something never before experienced by humanity so you can't compare with previous eras), and in an overshoot only survival-related resources (like food and water) will be retained. The question then is when exactly the gold bubble will pop, and that's hard to discern, although as soon as any massive die-off begins that wouldn't take long to happen; the pop cascade would then happen from the lower classes working upward (the poor and impoverished would stop accepting gold first, gradually working up to the hyper-rich who would give in last since they would have nobody below them to redeem the gold to).

Gold is a good medium-term investment, but treat it solely as an intermediate step to get yourself to your long-term destination, whatever that may be. And that long-term destination should have an implicit assumption that money of any kind should no longer be trusted (at least until local societies crop up again that may have something sustainable to trade with).

[Devilboy]

You guys sure are pessimistic! Peak oil is not the end of the world. Economy (and gold trade) existed long before oil or coal or nuclear or anything else, and it will exist long after all the oil and coal and uranium is used up.

Unless you believe in the Easter Island scenario - something that simply cannot happen in our lifetimes.

I'm still waiting for some expert references on gold losing all value in our lifetimes. On a long enough timescale (thousands? millions of years?) the survival rate of everything drops to zero. So my argument is about our lifetimes.

My basic argument:
- In the next 50 or so years (the important ones for us) the chances of gold becoming useless is so small it's not even worth considering
- If gold remains a monetary asset it's worth having
- If not even gold is an asset anymore anything else you may have will be taken from you by force and thus will also be useless.

[Leanan]

Why is the Easter Island scenario impossible? I think it's all too possible. Too many people, a plundered environment...the results are very predictable.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '-') In the next 50 or so years (the important ones for us) the chances of gold becoming useless is so small it's not even worth considering

[Devilboy]

I'm still waiting for some references! I just spent 2 hours researching the probable effects of peak oil on the value of gold. So far nothing nearly as gloomy as you guys imagine. Not in the next 50 years.

References please!

[Leanan]

Keep in mind that most of the Web pages out there about gold and peak oil are in fact trying to sell you gold.

[Devilboy]

That's true only for some of them. It still does not explain why I couldn't find a single doom/gloom worthless gold site.

References please!

[Cool Hand Linc]

Devil boy, I agree with you to a limited degree. Gold is good at maintaining value in most situations.

You think me pessimistic. I believe I am a realist. Best case and worst case need to be considered. So yes the worst case is the same as a pessimist's view.

The problem with supplying links for you to view is that sense the dollar stopped being backed by gold. We haven't had a real depression and not one that lasted. Recessions are all we have experienced. So it will be difficult to give an example from real life recent history. So proving with good examples that you are right or I am right isn't really possible. Also, if the pessimistic future plays out the world will have never seen such a great decline of such a large amount of humanity and in such a short time.

Gold has traditionally been the old stand by for hard times. So gold does make sense and is a reasonable based on historic ideals. Gold’s value has been as a precious metal. So if the pessimistic scenario does NOT occur. Gold is good I think.

My concern is that I think the first places to run out of oil will be where the first die offs occur. The importance of fuels for mobility are critical in keeping the infrastructure working. The other energies we have available (solar, hydro, nuclear, wind) need the mobile infrastructure to be maintained. example: When a critical part needed must be shipped across country. Next day air and over night will become terribly expensive. As costs rise the infrastructure spirals down. Compounding or falling in on itself as it goes.

The value of any object is based in the others desire for it. If I don't want gold it has no value. If you want it then the value to you is higher. The idea is kind of like the concept of a buyers market and a sellers market.

Leanan wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')

Devil boy Quote:
- In the next 50 or so years (the important ones for us) the chances of gold becoming useless is so small it's not even worth considering


I disagree with that. We just don't know.

[Devilboy]

Still no references? I didn't think so.

[Cool Hand Linc]

lol

References to an unprecedented time in our history?

I am really not concerned about convincing you, Devilboy. This is my personal opinion. I never claimed references.

For me personally, I want to ensure I can eat under any circumstances to the best of my abilities. This is my method I feel is best for me and mine. Yours is gold for you and yours.

So the answer for Planner Bee is yes and yes.

In the depression bank runs occurred. Some people were unable to get their money out. This would be similar to the original question asked. It has occurred in the past and can in the future. Recently in formally Russian territories they had money available but it took a stack several inches tall to buy food for a meal at the local store. This was in the news to we who paid attention. People standing in lines to exchange their handfuls of money for 1 or 2 meals worth of food. Amounts per person limited. It was a depression for sure. This senerio has been repeated at various times in history as well.

I have reread all the posts. Personally, I find merit in what just about everybody has said. In a givin time and a givin circumstance many different situations can occur.

For myself, I want to try to ensure food, water and shelter. I do not want debt at all what so ever. After these are taken care of to a large degree. I can look at possibly some gold and/or silver and possibly some cash reserves.

I feel that if TSHTF or a slow decline occurs. Having the ability to eat, shelter and water are important under any circumstance or senerio. Thus Water, food, and shelter in that order.

If TSHTF the water food shelter is what I intend to rely on.

If the decline is slow and never has the dramatic crash. I need to ensure I don’t have debt. If I lose work and can’t pay. Somebody will likely want to take what I have away. So having no debt is next for me. I do still owe from my last marriage some debt but I developed a plan and am working toward eliminating this.

Now after I believe the previous is taken care of. I would likely have a mix of gold, silver, jewels. Gold does seem to be the best choice of these 3 in some ways because it has traditionally throughout history been presious so even if for a time the purchasing power of gold deminisious. It will likely return.

When Roosevelt confiscated gold and silver in 1933. Everybody who had put money into them lost it all. Something to think about Devilboy.
Executive order: By virtue of the
authority vested in me by Section 5(B) of
The Act of Oct. 6,
1917, as amended by section 2 of
the Act of March 9, 1933, in which
Congress declared that
a serious emergency exists, I as
President, do declare that the national
emergency still exists;
That the continued private hoarding
of gold and silver by subjects of the United
States poses a
grave threat to the peace, equal
justice, and well-being of the United
States; and that appropriate
measures must be taken immediately
to protect the interests of our people.
"Therefore, pursuant to the above
authority, I herby proclaim that such gold
and silver holdings
are prohibited, and that all such
coin, bullion or other possessions of gold
and silver be tendered within fourteen days
to agents of the Government of the United
States for compensation at the
official price, in the legal tender of
the Government. All safe deposit boxes in
banks or financial
institutions have been sealed,
pending action in the due course of the
law. All sales or purchases
or movements of such gold and
silver within the borders of the United
States and its territories,
and all foreign exchange
transactions or movements of such metals
across the border are herby prohibited.
"Your possession of these
proscribed metals and/or your maintenance
of a safe-deposit box to
store them is known to the
Government from bank and insurance
records. Therefore, be advised
that your vault box must remain
sealed, and may only be opened in the
presence of an agent of
The Internal Revenue Service.

By lawful Order given this day,
the President of the United States."


This is actually still on the books. All that is required is for a President to say, We need this again. Draft a new presidential order reinstating this past order and making it active again.

With this I think I should start a thread showing little known Presidential orders.