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"I Am A Hard-Working Taxpayer Who Is Getting Pretty Fed Up..."
Submitted by Tim Price via Sovereign Man blog,
So the Swiss have decided not to force their central bank into underpinning its reserves with harder assets than increasingly worthless euros.
At least they had the chance to vote.
But in the bigger picture, the rejection of the “Save Our Swiss Gold” initiative flies in the face of a broader trend towards repatriation and consolidation of sovereign bullion holdings – following on the heels of similar attempts by the Bundesbank, the Dutch central bank, for example, recently announced that it had moved a fifth of its total gold reserves from New York to Amsterdam.
And the physical metal continues its inexorable exodus eastwards, into stronger hands that are unlikely to relinquish it any time soon.
* * *
The Swiss vote was preceded by some fairly extraordinary black propaganda, most notoriously by Willem Buiter of the banking organisation that now styles itself ‘Citi’.
Once again we were treated to the intriguing claim that gold is nothing more than “a six thousand year-old bubble”, and a “fiat commodity currency” (whatever that might mean) that has “insignificant intrinsic value”.
Izabella Kaminska for the FT’s Alphaville republished much of Buiter’s ‘research’; the resultant to-and-fro between FT readers on the paper’s website makes for a fascinating scrap between goldbugs and paperbugs.
Among the highlights was Vlady, who wrote:
“When a social construct (gold as money) survives for 6,000 years I would expect curious people to inquire as to whether it is tied to some immutable underlying law, or otherwise investigate if there is something more here than meets the eye. Not so curiously inclined, our court economists prefer to write this off as a 6,000 year old delusion. That says a lot about the sorry state of the economics discipline today.”
Another was the artfully named ‘Financially Repressed by Central Banks’, who wrote:
“I am not a gold bug, but I am a hard working taxpayer who is getting pretty fed up with having my savings earning no interest and possibly being devalued (see Japan) and of not being able to find any sensible place to invest my hard earned due to central bank policies making it impossible to make any return anywhere without taking crazy risks.”
The financial markets feel increasingly unhinged. All-time low bond yields co-exist with all-time high stock markets.
Oil has collapsed along with much of the commodities complex. Emerging market currencies have been hit for six. China threatens the West with another strong deflationary impulse.
Gold is difficult to value at the best of times, in large part because it’s not a productive asset, and partly because it’s conventionally priced in a currency (the dollar) that, like all others, is destined to lose its purchasing power over time.
Viewed purely through the prism of price, gold increasingly feels like something close to a ‘value’ investment, given that ‘value’ investing is essentially about picking up dollar bills for something closer to fifty cents.
We’re currently reading Christopher Risso-Gill’s biography of the legendary ‘value’ investor Peter Cundill, and some of Cundill’s diary entries seem to be peculiarly relevant to this strange, dysfunctional environment in which we are all trapped.
One in particular stands out, which Cundill himself wrote in upper case to make his point:
“THE MOST IMPORTANT ATTRIBUTE FOR SUCCESS IN VALUE INVESTING IS PATIENCE, PATIENCE, AND MORE PATIENCE. THE MAJORITY OF INVESTORS DO NOT POSSESS THIS CHARACTERISTIC.”
* * *
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FEMA FUTURE
your arrest in your new HOME
http://tersee.com/#!q=fema&t=text
and spanked like a Baby!
Obama to taxpayers:
You didn't earn that.
And if you complain:
We killed some folks.
Whites are sheep anymore. They watch TV and Zollywood like sheep. Cheer NFL, NBA and NCCA games filled with their idols who are Trayvons and Michael Browns. If you engage in this hero thug worship then don't complain. White males cheering this shit are like little girl cheerleaders.
Some folks are FED up. Intentional play on words?
Yes, just like the intentional use of the number 6000.
OOOOOOhhhh 6000 years...as old as the earth itself...to inbred evangelists and orthodoxies in Russia that love to post on this site.
Different day same shit from Freddie....TV...Blacks...BlahBlahblahbittyblah...
Be honest....You lost a girlfriend to a black guy right?
Everyone must pay taxes. Unless your name is Sharpton, Rangel, Buffet, Timmy etc..
There is a savings glut. It effects all investors. It is not the Fed's fault. If you think the Fed is wrong bet against them and get rich.
In the meantime - the complainers above should buy land, gold or preference shares.
You're an idiot, and probably a criminal.
ZIRP has destroyed price discovery, so how would anyone know which land to buy?
Preference shares? That's funny. Let's stick with idiot.
How did anyone know which land to buy before ZIRP? If it was so easy before ZIRP, why isn't everyone over 40 fucking rich? Your argument is trash.
And what the fuck? If someone disagrees with your ideas of economic policy, they're probably a criminal?
@ absalon
re: Not the Fed's fault
Luke 16:10
You don't have to be a Bible thumper to appreciate some of its wisdom.
Interest rates are at rock bottom levels around the world. Canadian, English, Danish, Swiss, German, French, and Japanese interest rates are all very low even though most of those countries (all except Germany and France) have their own currencies and their own central banks. The current interest rates are basically being set by the market.
Low interest rates are not an American phenomenon.
What a fucking moron! You must be stoogin' for Krugman.
Interest rates are at rock-bottom levels for who? Savers and buyers of products the banksters want to move, that's who.
For anyone who needs cash to build a business or consolidate existing debt, rates are near all-time highs.
You think that's a function of free markets? Nah, you know better, you're trying to sell a lie.
I for one, ain't buyin'.
Absalon said, "The current interest rates are basically being set by the market."
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/behold-feds-takeover-bond-market
Absalon has his head between his glutes. I suggest he keep it there.
Judge them by their deeds and not their words. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/images/2011/May/purchasepower.jpg
I'll go for the six thousand year-old bubble. At least it's less likely to pop in the weeks, months or years just ahead of us. But for someone like Buiter to make such a stupid remark... I admit I didn't see that one coming.
That's the point of such a remark, it needs the surprise element (a/k/a baffle them with bullshit)
Gold (GLD, also what physical follows, price-wise) down 3 1/2 percent Friday, up 4 percent today.
Silver down 6 1/2 percent Friday, up 6 1/2 percent today.
Mind bogglingly large swings.
My stack didn't move an inch.
Strange...mine got seven Libertads higher over the weekend.
Serfs up!
"I am not a gold bug, but..." is about as lame as you can get. apply the same cliche to stocks, cash, bonds, real estate, etc. and see how stupid it sounds. it's a valid asset category, your vapidness.
You fucked up, you trusted the system and had things like ethics...
/s
... and you assumed others had and lived according to such ethics too!
Reposted from another thread.
Based on the "refuse to serve" principle spoused by de la Boettie, my personal strategy is as follows:
1) Cut down on discretionary spending; (less tax revenue)
2) Reduce my consumption to essentials (90% done), still working on stop drinking (less tax revenue)
3) Rent (no loans, no tax revenue)
4) Transition to part-time work (don't need the high income anymore) (less tax)
5) Disposable income goes towards tax-free purchases (gold, second hand tools and books).
6) Use the free time and clear mind achieved by step 4 to learn new skills and network, as well as producing part of your food.
The above is a virtuous cycle, which increses one self-esteem and provides time to dedicate to pursue something one feels passionate about
"Who is number one?"
"YOU ARE, number six."
If you watched the ending,know that we are all number one, and that the system only exists due to our participation.
in other words "I am not a number, I am a FREE MAN!!"
" still working on stop drinking"
You've got to be kidding. Drinking is the only thing that wards off madness.
Meditation works for that.
I drink cause I enjoy a good single malt.
Stop drinking? Before you do something drastic consider making your own beer and wine.
some people would say wine can be turned into brandy. and...beer....kind of...can be turned into whiskey.
You're worried that your savings earn no interest or could be devalued? No problem - the government and banks will use their 'bail-on' powers and you won't have to worry about your savings after that!
Understand the gist behind the closing quote . . . but, playing Devil's advocate (or Lucifer himself), one could rewrite it as (changes in lowercase): “THE MOST IMPORTANT ATTRIBUTE FOR SUCCESS IN short-term trading IS decisiveness, timeliness AND MORE decisiveness. THE MAJORITY OF value INVESTORS DO NOT POSSESSES THIS CHARACTERISTIC.”
Also, Nietzsche’s Joyful Wisdom contained many seminal aphorisms, but I don’t recall any being presented in UPPERCASE. They didn’t need it.
Complete bullshit. Gold is the most productive asset you can possibly have. With it, you can do anything. That's productive.
Gold is money. It is a store of value, by agreement but also by its nature as a commodity which takes a lot of work to produce and which is mostly not consumed. A productive asset is a claim on some of the value produced by other people's work. Gold is not that.
Our economists, who mostly believe there is no such thing as value, can't see this. Those who understood were drummed out of the academies 60 years ago.
"... due to central bank policiesmaking it impossible to make any return anywhere without taking crazy risks.”
Did central bank policies cause that? Or are they desperately trying to save a doomed system with policies that can only gain a temporary reprieve?
The system was starting into a deflationary spiral in 1974, when they cut the dollar loose. Some of us were watching it happen. They bought 40 more years for amassing their obscene unearned fortunes. The landing will be much, much harder because of that, but during those 40 years the American people seem to have lost the knowledge, integrety, strength and will to fight.
Can we get it back?
You make it sound like central bankers are economic heroes trying to save the system. "Did central banks cause that?" Fuck yeah, they did. They are vicious criminals! Just because they have degrees and use abstruse concepts to baffle the masses, doesn't make them anything other than vicious criminals who should be executed for crimes against humanity.
They're not *my* heroes ... they were always criminals, but they were good at it. It remains to be seen whether the human race can survive the damage they did in the 40 more years they bought themselves.
I rather see the way things have worked out as somehow inevitable. (Apart from the dumb luck that they haven't stumbled into a nuclear holocaust yet.) That our rulers would dispense with the rules they set for themselves when those rules no longer supported their interests was a foregone conclusion. Much as we might like think they were sacred rules discovered by Adam Smith and enshrined by the divinely touched authors of our Constitution, they were always *their* rules, for us to follow and them to break when enough of them agreed on it.
"...our court economists prefer to write this off as a 6,000 year old delusion. That says a lot about the sorry state of the economics discipline today.”
South Seas Company and Black Tulips!
Roll up!
Roll up!
Place your bets.
on my right, a yelow metal - money for 6,000 years.
on my left, pieces of paper with fancy printing on them - average life expectancy, as money, 40 years.
Hmmm, tough choice.
I'm afraid we are well past a good rate of return on fixed income helping us. We're screwed. When house of cards does collapse there will be few survivors. Unfortunately, those who have profited from the corrupt fed insanity probably have the best chance. That said, a little gold couldn't hurt I guess.
Fuck em. I hope they crash the dollar and all the rest of the fiat currencies.
I'm all in with my modest savings. All I have is cash, gold and silver.
hairball
You pay taxes? How "barbaric".
Well, we have another made in CHina string of Christmas light that does not work. What could have happend over the spring, summer and fall that could have made it go bad? Sitting on a shelf in a dry closet ruined it?
Oh, no one told you? Ya, they're single use.
Christmas????
What is this corporate bullshit of which you speak?
It's the new ... china syndrome ..., and within a statistically calculated duration, it affects everything.
Heaven forbid we return to constitutional money as pre 1964 silver coins. Sure it constrains the banksters with a gold standard to print currency unto our current debt gone wild wealth illusion. Debt is not wealth and gold and silver coinage is real money to hold power in the peoples hands with the monetary leverage. Today the power is with the banksters, government, and every other parasitical crook, which crawls out from under a rock to feed off the host of we the people. Yup! Monetary life sucked out of us and the banksters and criminal pretending representative gov goon platoon has robbed the treasury. All gold reserve gone. I'm with others to have all politicians alive passed & present expose their swiss gold accounts jammed with stolen US gold and plenty from other nations. Confiscate it. Bring it back to we the people and then open up a can of whoopass on the perpetrators; traitors!
Lol. You know that won't happen so why would a gold standard be any different as the richest have all the gold? If you have access to an abundance of gold why would it not be comprimised by the elect few that had the most fiat dollars?
Returning to a gold standard sounds warm and cushy, just like the roarin' 20's but in modern reality it is a luducrous Libertarian smokescreen.Why wasn't Ron Paul assasinated? Now you know.
The reality is that we need to get a real fungible currency that has NO interest/usery fully tradable for the talents that individuals possess. The interest on our money supply is what is killing the US since 1913..not the debt. Debt is natural, interest is anathama to a civilized society.
Gold is never going to lose value. It's rare, and as long as some gigantic gold mine has not been discovered and alchemists still can't make any out of lead, it'll carry on being rare, and therefore the most stable asset of all, with land, silver and all the rare precious metals.
A 6000 years bubble? These guys don't know what to say to keep their schemes going, so the arguments get more and more absurd. What about arbitrarily assigning value to bits of printed paper?
The "gold is money" perception is the Great Wall of China. The fiat gang has been chipping away at that wall with 3 ounce hammers for quite some time now. They've gained traction and brought on board a bunch of others to help them hammer away at the wall.
What they don't know is that even if they succeed in tearing a hole straight through the wall and claim victory, the wall will quickly rebuild behind them and seal them away for good.
Keep beating away at that wall - KNOW that your claims of victory will be short-lived as you're gutted by the immutable forces of economics. The key is accountability - gold provides that...faith does not.
Transient victory is not victory at all. I somewhat pity them...but only somewhat.
Expanding Black Friday is kicking Edward Bernays in the nuts. Expanding free money is going to collapse on Central Marxist Planning bullshit. Tell you a secret maybe tonight or tomorrow.
The Federal Reserve will not stop devaluing the currency.
So, prepare for what may come.
What that is exactly is anyone's guess.
I don't care about not being able to make a "return" (free money for doing nothing). What I dislike is that the government steals any money I try to save via inflation and there's no way to stop it.
You forgot to mention Protection Money.... sorry, I mean tax.
Demanding money with an implied threat is illegal, isn't it?
Unless government does it
What if I told you that the government doesn't create inflation, we do. We are guided by the Fed, and the government to create the excess money that is needed to create inflation. We are forced to stay in the inflation creating game until it all falls apart. Why do you think interest rates are so low? Why does the government tax interest income at a rate that is 50% higher than income derived from the gains from inflation increased prices. What if there was a way to help stop the madness. Please let me explain! wp.me/p42WQA-1E
Reductio ad absurdum:
a statement (gold is not a bubble) is true by showing that a false, untenable, or absurd result (*) follows from its denial (gold is a bubble)
*gold is a bubble -> it will pop eventually -> it cannot be sustained through 6000 years
Then you are behind the times. The markets have been entirely unhinged for several years now.
What's with the bullshit subscription link at the end of the article? ZH usually doesn't pull shit like that.
http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Business/ID/2623085441/
The Exchange with Amanda Lang | Dec 1, 2014 | 7:30
Crude and currency
Economist Jim Rickards weighs in on the impact of low oil prices on currencies
For 6000 years savings earned no interest. Savings started earning interest only in the last 200 or so years. Investments earned income but they always carried risks. Not sure why anyone feels they are "entitled" to their savings earning interest (risk-free return) and get "fed up" when they don't do so.
No return on savings would be fine if our 'money' didn't go down in value every single day since 1913.
If you don't earn interest you get fucked by inflation.
Basically we're all getting fucked by the deficit spending, QE, ZIRP, et al. And by we, I mean people who actually work for a living. Rather than print money or skim printed money.
The gold pumpers lost
game over...
Maybe you could start pumping porkbellies or something..
You fucking bastards wiped 20% of the population with your gold and silver pump and you aren't in jail.
You are no better than the bankers...
While they claim otherwise, in many ways Bernanke and the Fed have put America on a path that mirrors the same unsuccessful path taken by Japan. A path that avoids real reform and bails out the very people that caused many of our problems. Bernanke has upped the ante by setting the bailout and money printing machines on high and flooding America and the world with QE.
Yellen has continued on this path. By selling other central bankers on this solution the Fed has taken the lead in an experiment that is losing traction across the world Real momentum seems to ebb shortly after each new wave of stimulus and another fix seems to constantly be needed. More on how this policy is doomed to fail in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/11/we-are-on-path-to-lost-decades.html
all the baby boomers that are just now 65 and about to get wiped the fuck out.... grab your ankles grandma and grandpa... you know all that shit you were promised for being a good obidient American citizen all these years... well... SURPRISE! SURPRISE! SURPRISE!