patrick.net

Misc says

Gas station attendants wouldn't know gold from tungsten. Neither would the clerk at the supermarket.

Having physical gold would just get you robbed.

So since the dawn of time, economies have only existed for smart people? No shepherds, no stable boys, no ship hands?

The belief that fiat currency is all that works is the height of arrogance and central banker brain-washing. A hundred years standing against thousands where gold and silver were the only recognized medium of exchange.

EBGuy says

Gold to silver ratio has been at 93 the past couple of days. Finally fell a tiny bit to ~91 today -- on the strength of silver. One thing we know is that a ratio that extreme WILL NOT LAST LONG.

I've seen it go to 120:1.

Buy then, but you will need to purchase on an index fund. There will be a huge divergence between physical and the index, that will not last forever. When the divergence calms down, if you really want the physical, purchase it then.

stereotomy says

After the Mongols conquered China, they became quite enamored of the Chinese invention of paper money. They used and abused it throughout their empire. Once the Mongol empire fell, the Chinese stuck to silver for the next 800 years. OTOH, the insistence of China on hard money led to the Opium wars and eventual collapse of Imperial China (thanks you limey mfs).

I believe it was a Chinese emperor who issued money made of wood. As with all bad money, there were laws and thugs forcing it's use.

Onvacation says

I suspect metal coins will still be in service after the fiat paper currency has inflated itself away.

Many civilizations thought the same thing. A huge problem with currency is there is a set amount in circulation, not at anytime but period. That's IT! There isn't any more available.
So when you get your sack of freshly minted coinage for your stipend for helping the Roman legion beat back the Anglos in the Isle of the Saxons, and you bury your loot and riches on a road to Damascus. While on a journey to help Emperor what's his face, beat back the Persians, then you die in battle. All of that coinage is forever taken out of circulation and will plunge the world into the dark ages.
I don't know why Archeologists are so dumbfounded on the Dark Ages, by time they came about. Most any metallic object that was worth anything, that could be collected or melted down and converted into the conquerors currency was stripped from the Civilized cities. They simply ran out of money to pay people to stay in the City and provide safety in numbers. So they all set out to the country side to fend for themselves. Where commerce and records weren't important.

This is one of the biggest lies ;perpetrated by central banking. That you need zillions of pieces of paper/number in a computer in circulation in order to flourish. Our most prosperous time ever as a country was the early 1800's after we dumped fiat paper and went back to real money.

The value of good changes very little over time, as the amount of work, as a measurement of time, changes very little. Gold and silver lend themselves to incredibly precise measurements. So stop thinking liking a central thief, and start thinking like a free man. Gum for a penny, and bread for five cents, this is the normal we need to return to.

If gold and or silver prices look like they are going to skyrocket because the major banks are short a few tens of thousands of tons, the government will simply outlaw the commoners from owning the physical commodity.

They have done it before. I will bet they will do it again.

stereotomy says

Man, that was an epic trade out of silver in 2010ish. iTulip (RIP) to the rescue on that one.

Here's the chart for the silver run up back then. Still in awe of Ducky as he traded physical...

Misc says

If gold and or silver prices look like they are going to skyrocket because the major banks are short a few tens of thousands of tons, the government will simply outlaw the commoners from owning the physical commodity.

They have done it before. I will bet they will do it again.

If this happens, I'll be visiting the Marina Trench.

This isn't 1933 anymore. NOBODY that has any precious metals trusts the fucking government now. They don't confuse patriotism with obedience to the government.

Want to bring down the government? Just get everybody in the US to buy 2 ounces of silver per year. That's the world's supply. Technically, under $70 but it will become unobtainable. If people band together, it's easy to drag the assholes to their knees.

I think people are starting to very slowly realize their power. There's a bunch of executive assholes, but if their underlings rebel, they're fucked. We saw it in Canada, and some poor woman is in prison to be made an example of. This is desperation.

The Fed keeps $juicing gold with their hand-wringing. Kissing $1780 as I post.

Yes, PM's are a rigged market. It's more about when they can't focus their attention on the rigging, because there's much bigger SHTF brewing. Gold is one of the singing canaries in the coal mine.

EBGuy says

stereotomy says

Man, that was an epic trade out of silver in 2010ish. iTulip (RIP) to the rescue on that one.

Here's the chart for the silver run up back then. Still in awe of Ducky as he traded physical...

That was an epic trade.

Gold holding strong, kissing $1800 briefly earlier today. Where are those multiple 75 bps hikes? I want gold at $2500 and mortgage rates at 10+%!

Misc says

They have done it before. I will bet they will do it again.

Like outlawing guns, and shutting down the Pirate Bay? Good fucking luck.

richwicks says

They were paying for storage, so yes.

You are saying that it makes sense that a commodity like oil can be valued at $50 one week and the next week its valued at $0 and the week after valued at $100. That seems kinda crazy to me. But i do agree that "paper oil" could be manipulated like that, just like all other paper commodities. I'd like to see if something like "lean hogs" could go down to $0.

stereotomy says

Here's the chart for the silver run up back then. Still in awe of Ducky as he traded physical...

You mean when he claimed to have bought at the bottom and sold at the peak a few days after it nosedived? Like the BTC players..

Gold/silver ratio at 96. Silver is at a 2-year low, but it’s not gold that will determine what happens next, this analyst says.

komputodo says

Like the BTC players..

For a while the "market cap" (calculated by multiplying the price of a stock by its total number of outstanding shares) of BTC was more than silver, and many major companies. The price of BTC crashed.

The spot price of silver is currently around $18 an ounce. If you actually wanted to buy an ounce of silver you would have to pay a premium. If you wanted to buy a Silver Eagle you would have to pay over $30 per Troy ounce. If you wanted to buy a thousand ounce bar (smallest premium) you would still have to pay a couple thousand over the spot price.

Dollars, Euros, crypto, and the paper metal market ounces can be created ad infinitum by fiat. I suspect the difference between the spot price of gold and silver and fiat will increase until paper and e-money become worthless.

This fiat system can't go on forever.

Channeling MEGA from iTulip here:

GOLD IS GETTING KILLED!

I guess now that the pound and the Euro are going tits-up, the USD is the last man standing. The fed funds rate increases play in nicely to dollar strength. It might end up just like the housing bubble implosion. Gold tanked initially-mostly because of liquidations to satisfy margin calls, then hit $1920.

I want to see mortgage rates top 8% - that represents a 40% decrease in housing prices based on 10% price reduction for every 1% 30 Year MTG rate increase.

stereotomy says

GOLD IS GETTING KILLED!

SPDR Gold Trust
peak in 2011: $183
current price: $151.45

It's kind of bizarre how the dollar is doing so well against everything as the world turns to shit.

Patrick says

It's kind of bizarre how the dollar is doing so well against everything as the world turns to shit.

Adjusted for inflation, the S&P 500 is only about 2.3% above its February 2020 level. So many stocks having taken a +50% beating reminiscent of the dot com bust.

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Patrick says

It's kind of bizarre how the dollar is doing so well against everything as the world turns to shit.

The reason is that most central banks have been printing far more money than the Fed, Japan, ECB etc. Everything is relative and while pretty much all currencies are being debased the Dollar may be stronger than most. Actually a little.bit of money printing is fine to make up for those notes that get destroyed/lost each year, but it's probably 0.0000001% of the Feds yearly printing.

mell says

Patrick says

It's kind of bizarre how the dollar is doing so well against everything as the world turns to shit.

The reason is that most central banks have been printing far more money than the Fed, Japan, ECB etc. Everything is relative and while pretty much all currencies are being debased the Dollar may be stronger than most. Actually a little.bit of money printing is fine to make up for those notes that get destroyed/lost each year, but it's probably 0.0000001% of the Feds yearly printing.

Inflation isn't directly linked to prices, it's directly linked to the money supply. If the Fed increases the money supply by 2%, that's the inflation rate, they are the same thing. Keynesian economics has perverted this definition.

The reason the target inflation is 2%, is that at the time the Fed was allowed to be created, that is how much more gold was added to the system at the time. The Fed just printed more dollars than they had gold, and they went bankrupt in 1933. Instead of beheading these assholes, or even just jailing them, or even firing them, the US government just debased the dollar and did nothing.

The criminals continued to act as criminals, and once again they defaulted in 1971.

And this is our final default coming up. This is why there's all this stupid talk about "the great reset".

I'm noticing lots of chatter on the itnterwebs about buying gold even from non-goldbugs lately.

Partly due to BRICS preparing a new gold backed currency but also due to a new bill (less than 2 weeks old) that was just submitted by a congress critter to put the $ back on the gold standard:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/9157?s=1&r=6

Trump had hoped to do this as well...

Patrick says

It's kind of bizarre how the dollar is doing so well against everything as the world turns to shit.

It's actually not. That's what raising interest rates does. But they won't go too far down that road as it wipes out the stock market.

I don't know, isn't the dollar basically gold anyway? We have the resources. We have the transportation (rail, road and waterway). We have the best military. We have mostly friendly neighbors. I get we're already in a recession basically, but could someone explain why someone wouldn't want a dollar?

Going to Mexico in a couple weeks. They will take my dollars and pay the exchange rate on the back end happily for tipping. Same with the Dominican. Same with Jamaica. Aruba. Cayman. Bahamas. Belize. The list goes on of places that I've gone that take a USD.

Mind you I'll bring Pesos from here because you'll get fleeced in MX exchanging $ to Peso. But that's for small vendors and excursions because they'll just make up the fucking exchange rate. Locals in these countries want USD. Why do you think we have a border crisis? They're not coming here for gold. They come here for the USD.

WookieMan says

but could someone explain why someone wouldn't want a dollar?

See the inflation rate, it's literally your time being taken from you, which is the ONLY thing of value in our system.

WookieMan says

The list goes on of places that I've gone that take a USD.

Yes, this is the way it works when your fiat is backing theirs.

WookieMan says

They come here for the USD.

They come here for free handouts, or because the CIA fucked up their country. People from outside the US know better than Americans how flimsy fiat is. That's why most of them don't open bank accounts, and many still use jewelry, coins, etc to store their wealth.

WookieMan says

I don't know, isn't the dollar ...(everything in between he wrote)... They come here for the USD.

Well said Wookie Man!

The Federal Reserve Note is not a dollar. A dollar is a specific weight of silver. It is a debt note, says it right on the paper. It's part of a system conceived to enslave us through inflation, leverage, lying and manipulation.

The Federal Reserve is a private central bank founded by the New York cartel in cooperation with foreign interests. A Federal Reserve Note isn't any more American than a Pound from the Bank of England, or a Ruble from the Bank of Russia. In fact, many of the same interests share ownership across all central banks.

But maybe I'm mis-understanding. You guys think illegals are really covering 40+ miles a day walking in sandals because they want to share in our debt? And because we have the reserve debt, nothing can possibly go wrong, so leverage away! Weimer, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Rome, those are just fantasies. Record homelessness, that's just a rumor. Record inflation and energy prices, just a mirage. It's Bush's fault, no it's Obama's, no it's Trump's, no it's Biden's. No common thread, no central bank printing us into the poor house. Just keep voting, things will change!

BTW, you need a second job. BTW, you can't afford meat. Eat ze bugs! Convert to CDBC's, they're so convenient you won't have to even decide what to buy, it's already decided for you! Take another booster, another germ warfare shot. Go die in Ukraine, in Afganistan, in Jordan, in Syria, in Yemen. Your kids are groomed to be sex slaves, your dreams are monitored, your brain is neuro-linked, you've joined the Borg. But hey, at least we had the FUCKING FEDERAL RESERVE DEBT NOTES! THAT FUCKING JUSTIFIES EVERYTHING!!!

Yes, I have a pre-FDR era $2 bill that says "Payable in Silver upon Demand"

Gold not getting killed, or at least the killing has paused for the time being.

Up above $1680, but still $350 below its pandemic peak. There was some wild spot price action around the latest Fed rate hike, but TBH I don't know if this latest increase is a general acknowledgement that inflation is here to stay, or "something else?"

"GOOD FOR THE GOOSE? The World Gold Council reported that in 2022’s third quarter central banks bought 399 tonnes of gold, almost double the previous record. Can somebody please explain to me — in the teeth of conventional financial advice — why buying gold is good for central banks but not for individuals? Or why they are buying so much right now? If gold is good for the Money Masters, wouldn’t it be good for me, too? You don’t reckon these experts would mislead us, do you?"

- Franklin Sanders

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iShares Silver Trust is up about 19% in last 3 weeks

When the dollar index (ticker: DXY) was bottoming in 2011 and 2021, silver and gold were peaking.

It will be interesting to see how silver and gold do when the Fed Funds rate peaks and the DXY steadies and drops slightly.

.

What drives the gold market?

interest rates? General fear of inflation?

Real, or paper? Paper is always driven by manipulation, because just like all fiat, you can leverage and print without having to actually do anything to earn more value. Real doesn't really change over time. The seeming fluctuation in value is due to fiat paper unwinding/collapsing, and economic instability. It is the traditional hedge against bad times, and that's never going to change.

Patrick says

What drives the gold market?

interest rates? General fear of inflation?

I would think it is investors thinking it's a safe haven against inflation (and/or a weakening dollar compared to other currencies). It is a very speculative asset so a lot of investing in gold may be emotional or fear based.

I don't think investors are buying up gold out of fear of societal collapse such as accumulating 1/10 or 1/4 ounce coins because it is expected to replace a failed fiat currency.

Tangible assets like bullets, land, water source, egg laying chickens, hundreds of pounds of corn feed, etc. are a lot more valuable. Also off-grid or homesteading skills are valuable.

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NuttBoxer says

"GOOD FOR THE GOOSE? The World Gold Council reported that in 2022’s third quarter central banks bought 399 tonnes of gold, almost double the previous record. Can somebody please explain to me — in the teeth of conventional financial advice — why buying gold is good for central banks but not for individuals? Or why they are buying so much right now? If gold is good for the Money Masters, wouldn’t it be good for me, too? You don’t reckon these experts would mislead us, do you?"

- Franklin Sanders

China is buying gold because the US has proven that it is totally unreliable. We blocked Russia's access to its Reserve Holdings and then went around confiscating Russian oligarchs' mansions and yachts. These foreigners incorrectly thought that the West was nations of laws. We proved to be every bit as lawless as a third world banana republic. China doesn't want its reserves to be under the same threat.

It makes sense for foreign central banks to buy gold given the lawlessness of the US. However, for US citizens it makes no sense as the government can and probably will outlaw ownership of gold and silver. The IRS will simply put out bounties for those who report the holders (felons).

Misc says

probably will outlaw ownership of gold and silver

That has to be when all hell breaks loose and the USA is a one party state and left wing authoritarian government.

I wonder if banning silver and gold would be a concern considering what else would take place :-/

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FDR stole peoples' gold back in the 30s. Nothing ever came of it.

Private ownership of gold was illegal until 1974 when Ford reinstated the "right" for private citizens to own it legally.

I'll just leave this here. Not as high as early in the plandemic, but certainly better than bitcoin:

My friend in Santa Cruz has thousands of dollars worth of silver coins he paid $45/ounce he would like to sell to you.