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PeakOil is You

PeakOil is You

THE Silver & Gold Thread (merged)

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Re: Cash, Gold, Silver, Motorhome?

Unread postby mistel » Sat 29 Mar 2008, 11:15:21

I have several diesels that I run on WVO. I have been doing this for years and have lots of experiance doing it. Realistically, it is hard to do on the road. If TSHTF, there will be no WVO available. It already is hard to get unless you have a relationship with a restaurant. If TSHTF and you start going around stealing WVO from restaurant dumpsters (assuming there will be operating restaurants) you are only adding to the chaos. An option would be to collect and store WVO pre-crash, but that presents problems as well, WVO will spoil. You must also rememeber that virtually every vehicle avaiable today in America is very thirsty and will use a lot of WVO. I think people would understand better how much gas/diesel they use if they had to carry all of it!

Anyways, I don`t want to rain on your parade, WVO could be usefull if you keep a supply on hand, like enough to get to where ever you plan to go, and diesel is not available. It could be a lifesaver. Remember also, if you just need 20 gallons or so to get out of town, you can always buy VO in a store and just dump it in your tank. I keep a gallon in my car if I run out of fuel.

Let me know how you propose to use WVO and I can give you some real world advice.

Good luck
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CFTC considers limiting amount of gold/silver you can own

Unread postby mattduke » Tue 23 Feb 2010, 23:48:43

The "position limits" are for longs, not shorts like JPM which is short a years worth of global silver production.

http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStock ... 5220100223
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Re: CFTC considers limiting amount of gold/silver you can own

Unread postby lowem » Wed 24 Feb 2010, 04:28:37

They can't take on the global markets all by themselves.

In the blink of an eye capital can be re-allocated and trading could continue on the Shanghai gold exchange in Chinese yuan. Or, Singapore could open one quickly and we'll welcome folks to trade in Singapore dollars, any other incoming currency could be exchanged at competitive rates :)
Live quotes - oil/gold/silver
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Manipulating Gold and Silver

Unread postby timmac » Fri 16 Apr 2010, 18:51:38

Manipulating Gold (GLD) and Silver (SLV): A Criminal Naked Short Position that Could Wreck the Economy

http://www.marketrap.com/article/view_a ... -criminal-

What Christian was saying is that every ounce of gold or silver is being sold 100 times. This would not be problematic if we were speaking of some dusty market in Central Asia with rows of traders’ stalls wherein some commodity (such as gold, silver, radios or Kalashnikovs) were being sold and resold in rapid-fire succession: there, our sensibilities about scarcity, value, and price discovery would actually grip reality. Here, however, we are talking of markets where the distinction between reality and representation has become as blurry as the last round of a game of musical chairs, enabling some sellers to offload paper IOUs promising eventual delivery of silver and gold – promises that would be impossible to keep if some small segment of the buyers were to demand delivery of the real thing.

This is quite similar to the naked short selling of stocks, where traders sell stock that does not exist, but enter IOUs in their computers, and then “fail to deliver” what they have promised. It is hard to distinguish this from fraud (notwithstanding the Efficient Market Hypothesis of financial theory, which maintains, essentially, that it shouldn’t matter). Christian, the fellow who inadvertently revealed the massive naked short positions in gold and silver, said that he didn’t see this as a problem because “there are any number of mechanisms for cash settlement,” and “almost all of these short positions are in fact hedges…”

This is slightly absurd. Later in his testimony, Christian himself said that it was “exactly right” to say that the hedges are nothing more than hedges of “paper on paper” – a particular sort of merry-go-around where one IOU is settled by another IOU, with these IOUs outnumbering real gold and silver by multiples of a hundred times.


Ezekiel 7:19
They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will be an unclean thing. Their silver and gold will not be able to save them in the day of the Lord's wrath. They will not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it, for it has made them stumble into sin.

I have always wondered about this verse, gold and silver has always had worth for thousands of years but in the last days it becomes worthless, now it's starting to make sense..
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Re: Manipulating Gold and Silver

Unread postby pedalling_faster » Sat 17 Apr 2010, 08:38:41

these are the URL's i've accumulated for this (for me) very interesting news about fraud in the metals markets.

since the news was first revealed in about the last week of March, gold climbed steadily from 1090 to about 1160. Silver from $17 to $18.50.

this last week PM prices declined on Tuesday & Friday.

a few of the interviews describe London Metals Trader Andrew Maguire's decriptions & predictions of market manipulation in early February. which was quite memorable because we watched silver downtick to $16 and then $15.

the MO of the PM market manipulators ( i will add that just part of the market, London Bullion, trades $5.4 Trillion annually ... it's not a small market) is they will wait for some small piece of bad news and then institute a massive naked short position, resulting in quite un-natural 3% price movement on gold and 5% price movement on silver.


interview with Andrew Maguire, metals trader & whistleblower

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/ ... 3A2010.mp3

right click, "save as" or "save target as", to save the *.mp3.

\/ more on the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) Hearings last week.
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/ ... 3A2010.mp3


Commentary @ Zero-hedge
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/former ... gold-ponzi

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/whistl ... ion-scheme


More interview, with GATA Founder Bill Murphy
http://www.iamthewitness.com/audio/Bill ... 4-2010.mp3


follow-up interviews

Harvey & Lenny Organ & Adrian Douglas
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/ ... 3A2010.mp3

John Williams on Unemployment & Inflation
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/ ... 3A2010.mp3


article, "Hong Kong Pulls All Gold Reserves From Depositories In London"
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldn ... liver.html

customers sue Morgan Stanley for charging storage fees for Paper Gold
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldn ... ansal.html


Financial Sense article on Tungsten Gold
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/edito ... /1118.html
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Re: Manipulating Gold and Silver

Unread postby timmac » Sat 17 Apr 2010, 16:59:18

Great vids PF, if anyone had lots of dollars invested in Gold or Silver they may want to take a close look at this Huge Fraud, this could possibly bring down all markets around the world, would it not..
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Re: Manipulating Gold and Silver

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Sun 18 Apr 2010, 12:05:40

Big picture, there is a larger percentage of people, especially in the first world, who apparently think it is fine to commit some kind of fraud if it gets them ahead.

To me, PM's are a hedge against chaos. They are a long term hedge. I don't worry about short term prices. If stuff like this causes a temporary panic, and prices go WAY down, then I'd probably use it as an opportunity to dollar-cost average into more PM's.

There are a huge number of people all around the world, including MANY in Chinda who have a cultural belief in buying gold as an investment.

I very much doubt stuff like this will change any of the above, over time, even if it may make the price of the PM's somewhat more volatile.

In fact, to me, general issues WAY outweigh this in the case for a PORTION of portfolios having PM's as a currency hedge. Examples:

1). With banksters playing games like the CDS fiasco and having to count on (ahem) congress to "regulate" to supposedly fix it. With having to rely on corrupt and grossly incompetent organizations like the SEC to enforce any regulations. With companies able to contribute unlimited funds to get bribable elected officials into office - the big banks alone are a huge destabilizing risk.

2). With the Fed running the currency, and congress steadily trying to lower the power of the fed -- now THERE'S an ugly trend.

3). With a whiny constituent-led increasing wave of spending and anti-budget sanity spreading -- there's an exponentially ugly trend.

4). With outfits like Greece out there, and even if they COULD be fixed financially, with a culture HEAVILY imbedded with corruption and bribery -- yeah THAT has to be "good" for currencies -- sure...


Sorry, but no amount of short term games is going to scare me out of my core PHYSICAL PM (i.e the metal in a lock box, etc) holdings. (Now -- it might make me ponder how large my stock holdings via resource funds in PM mines should get, especially if those holdings aren't for the very long term...)
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Re: Manipulating Gold and Silver

Unread postby pedalling_faster » Sun 18 Apr 2010, 16:24:33

Outcast_Searcher wrote:Big picture, there is a larger percentage of people, especially in the first world, who apparently think it is fine to commit some kind of fraud if it gets them ahead.


yes. i noticed.

that was part of the core of my experience in corporate America - witnessing fraud and, then later on realizing that what I witnessed was not an exception - but the rule.
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Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be useless

Unread postby Sixstrings » Sat 09 Oct 2010, 22:27:01

Still, the reason why The Automatic Earth doesn't focus on gold or its price is very simple: it's not the right conversation to have at this point in time.

When we're done, as a society, as a national and global economy, with this round of real life Jeopardy behind us, 90-something percent of those who today see themselves as investors will no longer be that, and will have had to sell their gold and silver and most of their other possessions just to keep their families clothed, warm and fed. Unfortunately, that realization hasn't seeped through at all. First off, we're not smart enough to do the math, and second, we wish to wish it all away.

When our financial systems began to shake in 2007 and large chunks started to fall off in Jericho fashion in 2008, we were not witnessing yet another cyclical economic move, not another run of the mill thirteen in a dozen recession. We were watching the end of the financial system as we had come to know it.

And we still are. We're watching Wile E. Coyote on a broken reel.

(snip)

It's time to stop fooling yourselves. For the US economy, housing market and labor market, like for Wile E., there’s only one way to go from here, and that is down. It's not going to come back for a very long time, if ever. And that, if nothing else, means our decisions, as a society and as individuals, will have to be radically different from what they would be if there were a chance of a recovery.

(snip)

This will lead to an explosion in unemployment, since ever fewer people will have any discretionary income needed to keep stores and factories open, which will then hammer home prices even more. Consequently, tax revenues at all levels will scrape the gutters, forcing governments at all levels to lay off more workers, and so on: you can by now finish the story pourself and color the pictures. It's called debt deflation, people, and once you’re in debt way over your head as a society or as an individual there's nothing you can do but to lay low and let it run its course.

(snip)

If you can accept that 90-odd% of US banks are zombie banks (toxic assets!), that nothing has changed despite the money that was transferred from you to them, that their losses on toxic paper are far worse than anything you could ever afford, then you will have tp accept that you are zombies too, zombies, not investors, and that it's immaterial whether you make a nickel or two on gold purchases, that those matter only in Wile E. Coyote's suspended cartoon reality, not in yours.
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2010/10/october-8-2010-wile-es-suspended.html


Some hardcore doom there from The Automatic Earth.

So, anyone agree? After it all collapses, if a dollar is worthless and a bit of food is beyond priceless, how ultimately useful is a stash of shiny metal?

The question is, what will you do AFTER you've bought that last bit of food with your last silver coin? Or, what will you do if the person who has that food looks at your shiny metal and says "I don't need that. The food is worth more."
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Re: Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be usele

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Sun 10 Oct 2010, 01:22:51

The Automatic Earth has a very good track record, although there is never a shortage of bears even at the best of times, and bears often they have absolute worst ROI.

However, AE has been very good about warning people to not get pulled into sucker rallies, and they have been pretty close to the mark.

Still, at the end of the day and the end of the dollar, we might all be hunkered down for a while while there is a new Bretton Woods. But keep in mind the Euro is not strong enough to be a reserve currency, and I've always said let the Chinese give it a spin and they'll implode in 90 days.

In the mean time, if the shit hits the fan, paying the mortgage would take a low priority, as the whole whole country can't get thrown into the street Grapes of Wrath style, especially when the banks don't want those assets on their books. And they won't take gold for that anyway.

People's belief in gold and silver has some factual basis, but that gold has to be in your hand, not a gold certificate, and if you have gold in hand, then you are a prime target for theft. And maybe you'd have been better off investing that cash in a reliable vehicle, bicycle, varmint gun, and rainwater system.

Nationally, gold never prevented a financial crisis.
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Re: Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be usele

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Sun 10 Oct 2010, 01:46:58

The other thing to remember is that in the Depression many successful people lost everything in precious metals scams that were just Ponzi schemes. This was apparently quite common.

Also having stuff to barter like fruit is quite useful. Are you better off with one gram of gold, or the pear tree it could have bought?
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Re: Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be usele

Unread postby EnergyUnlimited » Sun 10 Oct 2010, 04:32:07

Sixstrings wrote:So, anyone agree? After it all collapses, if a dollar is worthless and a bit of food is beyond priceless, how ultimately useful is a stash of shiny metal?

They claim that you will trade it for food and clothes.
So certainly it will have some value.
Perhaps enough to pull you through a transition period, if you accumulated enough.
The question is, what will you do AFTER you've bought that last bit of food with your last silver coin?

After that you will either become a zombie and start to still and rape or alternatively you will make final, good use of your gun, if you still have one together with a bullet.
Or, what will you do if the person who has that food looks at your shiny metal and says "I don't need that. The food is worth more."

That is unlikely to happen. They will just demand more metal.
If Ukrainian Great Hunger is to be any indication, then if worst come to worst your golden wedding ring will still buy you a loaf of bred.

PrestonSturges wrote:People's belief in gold and silver has some factual basis, but that gold has to be in your hand, not a gold certificate, and if you have gold in hand, then you are a prime target for theft.

Those who are hoarding gold and silver don't tend to be vocal with it.
And those who hoarded enough and gone vocal will also have their private armies in new brave feudal world.
These PM will still be traded for some rubbish paper currency which is losing half of the value per month.
Only the latter would be used for daily purchases.
Also having stuff to barter like fruit is quite useful. Are you better off with one gram of gold, or the pear tree it could have bought?

What do you think is easier to hide from hungry zombies:
1. Golden coin?
2. A pear tree?

Zombie problem has no acceptable solution by current ethical standards.

Zombies will consist of substantial groups of disfranchised who have really nothing to lose.
Actually "zombies" are no one else than poor, helpless and disadvantaged, eg 30% of general population by now and maybe 70-80% after collapse.

If left unchallenged, they will spread around and destroy anything what is still viable in catabolic collapse process (farms, forests, and permaculture nerds will all be digested and redistributed to feed zombies).

The only possible challenge to zombies would either take a form of mass enslavement with iron fist or alternatively by organized outright extermination.
Under first scenario they would not enjoy more rights than farm animals do.
Under second scenario they would either be dealt with directly in Third Reich style or alternatively contained on barren lands until they digest excess by their own means.

There is really no other alternative.
So Progressivism and Liberalism is in dead end.
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Re: Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be usele

Unread postby Rod_Cloutier » Sun 10 Oct 2010, 10:02:22

We could, of course, have attemps at large scale land expropriations by the government to set up giant corporate farms everywhere, completely replacing 'family farms'. out of necessity. They would institute marshal law based on agricultural imperatives, and strictly ration food supplies.

I saw a program on TV where wealthy people in Thailand were all sent out to live with Buddhist monks for a month. After an initial transition, they all saw how little food it requires for basic sustenance; everything else is surplus.

This is likely what will happen to the wealthy democracies. A transition to doing without large houses and cars, planned rationed government controlled agriculture everywhere. The quality of life reverting to say what existed in 1860, where earning enough for food was 80% of the average wage, and then the 20% you had left for everything else.

Chaos and collapse in all the 2nd and 3rd world countries; where the 'zombie hoard' nightmare is already real. Just look to modern day Sub Saharan Africa to see what it will look like. Where everyday people break the law to hunt and kill endangered animals to fuel the black market for food meat. Where 70% of the middle aged population has died or is dying of pandemic disease. Where orphan kids are raising and supporting themselves on whatever they can find. Where the enviroment is pushed past all breaking points, and the consequences of perpetual warfare is present everywhere.

(I hope I'm wrong)
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Re: Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be usele

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Sun 10 Oct 2010, 11:20:34

I think if there was a catastrophic economic collapse, the Dems would send the National Guard to the farms to plant and harvest by hand so everyone could get 1200 calories a day. The GOP would send the National Guard into the streets to randomly shoot starving "looters."
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Re: Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be usele

Unread postby Ludi » Sun 10 Oct 2010, 11:24:50

PrestonSturges wrote:I think if there was a catastrophic economic collapse, the Dems would send the National Guard to the farms to plant and harvest by hand so everyone could get 1200 calories a day.


Seems like a nonsensical scenario to me. There would certainly be enough fuel to plant and harvest, if there were enough fuel to send in the National Guard and then distribute the 1200 calories.

I do agree it seems plausible that a Democrat-controlled government would distribute food, but a Republican-controlled government would shoot "looters." 8O
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Re: Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be usele

Unread postby gollum » Sun 10 Oct 2010, 11:54:17

PrestonSturges wrote:I think if there was a catastrophic economic collapse, the Dems would send the National Guard to the farms to plant and harvest by hand so everyone could get 1200 calories a day. The GOP would send the National Guard into the streets to randomly shoot starving "looters."



I agree, I think the republicans would be as happy as not to dispose of the bottom 80% of people in this country.
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Re: Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be usele

Unread postby Pops » Mon 11 Oct 2010, 09:13:24

Probably the worst thing that could happen is what's happening right now - just like what happened in Japan - pretending things are getting better while changing nothing. I don't know whether to hope the props will fall out and things do a major reset or that we'll continue to do the Zombie shuffle.

So the economy collapses, so what do you do the next day? You go out and make a deal with the neighbor to patch his leaky roof in return for some pears - voila! New Economy.

As far as PMs, right now I have 40-something calves anywhere from 75 - 750# and lets say you want to buy one. How am I suppose to know:
A, the purity of your gold?
B, the fair price of your gold?
C, that I'll be able to use your gold myself?

I'm not sure the clerk at the Quick Sak is going to be able to do any better. Your friendly local jeweler/pawn shop/We Buy Gold store will certainly be more than happy to take it off your hands - in return for ???

OTOH if you have tools, food I don't have, fuel, skills, labor etc, we can easily calculate what is a fair trade.

If you have all your basics covered and can feed and house yourself and still have lots of wealth left over, by all means go buy gold - you can stand the loss!
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-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
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Re: Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be usele

Unread postby Ludi » Mon 11 Oct 2010, 10:17:10

Pops wrote:OTOH if you have tools, food I don't have, fuel, skills, labor etc, we can easily calculate what is a fair trade.



Or if we know each other well enough, we might not worry much about what is "fair trade." We might see the exchange as part of our larger mutual Sharing and/or Gift Economy experience and not keep any kind of running tally, simply knowing we will be there for each other if the need arises. :)
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Re: Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be usele

Unread postby Cloud9 » Mon 11 Oct 2010, 10:43:13

Zombies were taken care of by the vagrancy laws of the 1930s. If you don’t have any visible means of support and no address off to the county work farm with you. Idle hands are the devil’s work shop.

As for gold and silver, someone will have a hoard of gas or beans or bullets or something and he will be will to part with what he thinks is a surplus in exchange for what he needs. Gold and silver are non perishable stores of wealth. Two fellows walk up to you after the collapse. One has a wad of paper in his hand; the other has ten silver eagles. Which one are you going to be interested in talking to? The answer depends on which one you can more readily exchange. That depends on what happens to the paper.
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Re: Automatic Earth: all your gold and silver will be usele

Unread postby EnergyUnlimited » Mon 11 Oct 2010, 11:40:00

Cloud9 wrote:Zombies were taken care of by the vagrancy laws of the 1930s. If you don’t have any visible means of support and no address off to the county work farm with you. Idle hands are the devil’s work shop.

It seems that you are tending to agree with me that enslavement could become to be a form of solution.

At the beginning it would be a state run enslavement (county work farm), but I doubt that such facilities could provide enough work in crumbling economy.

So excess of zombies for whom state can find no use would be redistributed to private owners willing to accept slaves (that with timid TPTB), or alternatively exterminated in death camps (with more decisive, solution seeking TPTB).

So you have really 2 choices:

1. Return to pre-Lincoln time.
2. Repetition of Third Reich

Bleak future by any counts, but sadly we may have to face it.
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