Sprott Describes The Greatest Trade Of All Time
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I <3 u eric
Ron Pauls Birthday Money Bomb!!
https://secure.ronpaul2012.com/?sr=dp1
Oh no! A factual article where government made a great descision. What will the children (like Ron Paul) think?
How very straussian of you to say that defrauding and robbing millions of people is a "good decision." Shame sir
What has to be recognized is that the US has provided in return (to other commodity importing countries such as China) is the intangible security of a relatively smoothly functioning commodity flow from commodity surplus countries thereby avoiding blood and treasure for all commodity importing countries (who would otherwise have had to fight to secure those supplies). This has to be properly valued (manifests itself in the value of the USD) to get a complete understanding of the trade equation.
The benefit to the US as enforcer of this system is the previlege to consume energy way beyond it's means. Yes, the system is not fair to everyone but it is what it is -- the reality is that just because there is valuable commodities in a country, does not automatically ensure benefits to that country (that country has to be able to defend it). Very brutal reality.
in 2012 democrats will run on "Driving the Economy Straight Into Hell". It was reckless for democrats to downgrade US to AA+
It's good to be the king!
Yes it is.
Until your head drops into a basket.
What if it's a basket of currencies?
relatively smoothly functioning commodity flow from commodity surplus countries thereby avoiding blood and treasure for all commodity importing countries (who would otherwise have had to fight to secure those supplies).
Sorry. Aren't we, and more importantly, haven't we, been doing this......for quite some time now? We just call it something different (it ends with all sorts of -isms)
The US makes the investment in blood and treasure... read endless wars in Middle East to keep the oil flowing. This is the price of our levels of current gluttony.
Actually, two myths are at work in this article. First, the myth that paper currencies are ever actually worth anything. If they were truly backed up by goods, services, labor output or anything like that you could not print and creat them/money at will as banks and the Federal Reserve do. They are not worth anything but it is a game of trust that always winds down to the true value of zero. It's a game of "We will take your fiats if you take ours and we promise not to print more than you do...unless it suits our goals". So trading more of our fiat for real stuff is a winner every time. We can also leverage the stupid countries that use fixed exchange rates to get more of their stuff and export our inflation to them.
Second, one of the biggest myths and misconceptions in the general public is the trade deficit. They don't exist, ever. What the trade deficit measures is only one thing, currency flows. That has some value because currencies must be exchanged and they can build up. However, if a farmer in India decides to buy a half million dollars worth of farm equipment from John Deere, JD and the US receive $500k in currency but the farmer has the equipment. The trade is always exactly even. Now the farmer produces twice as many crops, charges 2/3 the price and is way more productive and profitable. Yet, the squawking heads in print and TV might scream about an Indian trade deficit. Didn't happen.
Put is another way, you run a trade deficit with Walmart, Home Depot, Kroger's, your hair salon, etc. Yet, you still prosper. How is that possible? The reason is you get goods and services equal in value to what you spend. Other people run deficits with your company but it all evens out in the end. The only thing you need worry about is getting good value for your money.
We have an entire world driven by phony numbers like trade deficits, GDP's which include government spending and so on. It leads to more bad decisions, pain and misallocation of resources than anything else in this world.
I wish I could print money. I'd run a trade deficit with Ferrari, Bentley, Lamborghini and everyone else, giving them more and more less valuable IOU's. Brilliant!
Good post, Magic. But that doesn't justify privatizing the profits and socializing the losses of a few privileged players. That is simply dirty corruption, which should be routed out by the world's "police force". It has essentially turned a valuable enforcer into a gangster which everyone will oppose.
Ah, I see your objection is to the uneven distribution of the loot and not to the actual looting! It appears many on this forum feel likewise -- it is the issue of honor among thieves.
we've also traded our entire manufacturing base for the goods that we used to manufacture. And the execs of those corporations got filthy rich
That was part of the arrangement -- the third world gets the jobs but meanwhile we get to overconsume valuable commodities, that would grow increasingly scarce by the time the third world gets ready to upgrade their lifestyle and increase consumption -- brain child of very strategic thinkers like Henry Kissinger.
Duplicate
In other realities that is often called a 'protection racket'.
Another fantastic piece of work from eric sprott. Keep it up.
http://ericsprott.blogspot.com/
He just had a great interview by King World News, available today. Also, he sat down with James Turk during the GATA convention last week, available at GoldMoney's video's page.
http://sprott.com/Docs/MarketsataGlance/2011/0811%20The%20Greatest%20Tra...
Link that works.
Frightening statisics. I look at my federal reserve notes and am depressed. But then I pull out my token one oz. gold maple, and it makes me feel better. Much, much better. Au - investment of the millenium.
You Amerikans had it too good!
you never know what you got 'til it's gone...
All your reserve currency are belong to us, bitchez!
And you can paper your bathroom with it.
And the softer it gets, the nicer it becomes for wiping your ass.
What we have all witnessed is the con of the century or actually the millenia. These psychopaths need to be gathered up and dealt with. No fiat currency will be spared and gold/silver need to be purchased for protection.
The gold trade is good until a new arrangement is agreed to by G20 -- the appreciation of precious metals is indicative of level of distrust among countries -- but the alternative to coming up with a new arrangement (not necessarily reflecting fairness but what countries are willing to live with) is disasterous wars. Let us hope we can agree to workable arrangement rather than more destructive settlements.
maybe the century but not any larger than the Sterling Bill, which was the lynchpin upon which the entire Imperial power of the British rested.
You are right about that.
Most Americans don't realize our wealth is from our WRC status. However they also don't realize that our loss of jobss and industry is also from that status.
The future we will have the worst of both worlds. No industry and no WRC.
Very unlike Hannah Montana which has the best of both worlds ;- )
I can't click on it to expand it, and the PDF file "cannot be found". So, I can't read it.
Click on the box to the right of "Scribd" at the bottom of the document (view in fullscreen).
However , Jim Rogers thinks the greatest of trade of all time is farmland. Here is what he said recently,
I have frequently told people that one of the best investments in the world will be farmland.
You've got to buy in a place where it rains, and you have to have a farmer who knows what he's doing. If you can do that, you will make a double whammy because the crops are becoming more valuable. - in nzherald.co.nz
I respect Jim rogers opinion.BUT....
I agree with him in general, but with due respect, it has always been more profitable to trade the commodity rather than produce it.
That is unless you can control
1. Commodity prices.
2. Rainfall (amount AND timing)
3. Government interference (Rates, Land TAx, Environmental regulation, animal welfare issues)
4. Price and availability of input costs (including fuel, water, and labour)
5 Foreign competition (including changes to import export rules subsidies protectionism etc:)
But apart from that go for it.
Spoken from experience, with a hat tip for the man on the land.
"more profitable to trade the commodity rather than produce it."
Yes and no. In a world of shortage of supplies, producers can have a upper hand. Take a trip down to Brazil, you will have a front seat to witness multinationals from US, Japan, China and India trying to overbid each other to get delivery contracts signed by soybean farmers even before seeds are sowed.
I know plenty of farmers who have gone into debt deeply to plant large crops for contacts that weren't worth shit. When the multinational decided that it had fulfilled its downstream production capacity.
If they need 200 tonnes for a processing plant do you think they will contract for that exact amount?
How about contracts for 300 tonnes just to make sure we have enough for the factory?
Read the fine print and learn.
It is always the little guy that gets screwed.
SAD...
You're right. But it can happen under a lot simpler than circumstances than a supply chain rip off, what is farmland worth if you have a drought and heat wave like do in Texas right now?
You can do everything exactly as it should be done for ten straight years, but if the seasons and markets are against you....
What is there to show for it?
Just more debt....
http://www.news.com.au/business/cattle-industry-reeling-over-live-export...
In Brazil, multinationals actually provide funding with ultralow interest trying to overbid each other.
Great a new form of debt slave is born.
The Chinese have been offering 0% interest to get their contracts signed.
That might work well for the Chinese if they revalue their currency between planting and harvest while paying in local currency.
But seriously there is just way too many variables that the average investor cannot control.
Just saying.
China will pay Brazilian farmers with worthless USD.
Brazilian farmers should demand only gold&silver as payment.
Recycled fiats running on ethanol, Italiana cars, chinese entrepreneurs and US oligarchs burning inflated money to feed favella slaves. Nice scenario of next round of "global" trade to hit Sud Amerrika as Norte is fukufukked with fallout, black urban mobs and broken down infrastructure; with muni buro structures that look like Bengladeshi led functionaries.
Too bad Brazillians live like kings with US Fiat.
1% of brazilians might live like kings.
The rest live in favelas.
no, they don't. I can see you've never been to Brasil
I can see you've never been to a favela.
Don't worry. The favela will come to you.
yeah actually I have...and you have still never been to brazil if you believe that 99% of the population lives in favelas
Agreed. In addition, subsidies must also be considered in the equation. Ethanol for instance.
It all depends if you're going to use farmland as business or as the ultimate hedge of a total collapse.
If Jim means farming for business, it is tough indeed, just like any other business of perishable goods, especially if you pre-sign contracts.
Farmland in S. America with a farmhouse can be obtained inexpensively and the locals will be more than happy to farm it for absentee owners, in exchange of food, shelter and a few other living necesities. You visit in the summer when fruit are in season, in the fall when the wine is ready and in the spring when the suckling piglets and baby lambs on the spit are available.
During S. American winter, it's summer in Europe. Time to sip capucchino in Marbella/Puerto Banus in June, dock your sailboat in Fiscardo Cephalonia in July and back to Portillo Chile for skiing in August. (It's just too hot everywhere else.)
Do you have a spare place on your boat?
Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it's mistakes.
Farmland will be worthless.
Remember Rome.
Farmers were severely taxed for their produce. They started to grow only what they would consume themselves. The politicos then decided to tax them on what they SHOULD produce based on acreage. What did the farmers do? They abandoned their land and moved to the cities where they became thieves/beggars.
Dear Sir,
You seem to be wrong at least about ancient Rome:
" In the countryside people attached themselves to the estates of the wealthy to gain some protection from state officials and tax collectors. These estates, the beginning of feudalism, mostly operated as closed systems, providing for all their own needs and not engaging in trade at all."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire#Michael_Rostovtzeff.2C_Ludwig_von_Mises.2C_and_Bruce_Bartlett
Kind Regards,
Kreso
I have made reference to this phenomenon previously...and what better statement of how big gov socialism leads inevitably to concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. As night follows day.
Those who could not pay the taxes to support the dole and empire ended up having to sell to stronger and stronger hands. These people became noble families some of which still exist to this day.
wikipedia should not be taken as the absolute reference.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cjv14n2-7.html
I am a top hand at swabbing the deck. Too old to climb the rigging tho. Can be counted on to repel boarders.
Raw land (enough for farm rate taxes) with no buildings and rent out to cover taxes plus a little is a good investment/ hedge. Locate in a way that it will take 20-30 years for developement to reach. Locate in a country where it will not be taken if there is a coup (are there any left?).
I am certain that I have never read a more pretentious post.
Gonzalo Lira hits this one out of the park. Farm land is just another "anything but gold" investment.
http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2011/05/spg-supplement-is-farmland-smart...
Thanks for the hat tip.
Left an office in a large metro area in '06 for 200+ aces and a vegetable operation. We own all all aspects from production to retail, debt free. There is no future in wholesale for the small grower, huge corporations have taken over all of that. The weather and environment is always a factor but we can make a living while supporting the ultimate shtf preparedness. The only way one can do it IMO is with no debt and good marketing, As I said.....left an office. But it can be done and although I was bitched out just yesterday by a ZH,er I respect"....... No amount of gold or silver can buy the piece of mind I have.
Nice to finally have a topic I can post about with experience.
Full disclosure: I grow vegetables, not commodities. I receive no subsidies and expect none in a fare market. I grow food and sell it directly to the consumer.
+1
Damned radical terrorist. How do you expect the continuation of Fractional Reserve Lending and perpetual growth to continue with that attitude.
PS. Are you hiring?
+1, it takes courage to do what you are doing.
Sounds like he has less to fear now. Sitting on his own land, reading ZH, producing enough food to barter with others, trading extra for metals, this guy has it about as good as it gets, IMO
Until some tough guy decides to take it away... Just saying...
And a tool steel spine with a hinge in the middle
Jim Rogers is cluless on this. Maybe if he spent a little less time dog f*cking , he could go visit some farms. Farmers have had a party bidding up land with these low rates just like everyone else.
Here is a nice little 5 acre farm in Canada for $1,799,000
http://www.equineacres.ca/abbotsford.html/details-20243453#viewtop
here is a 66 acre farm in Canada for $4,800,000 $72,000 an acre
http://www.bcfarmandranch.com/index.cfm?method=property.propertydrilldow...
if you think a horse farm in BC is expensive stay out of Wellington FL or Potomac Maryland! LOL!!
I agree. Speculating in farmland is a very bad idea. However, buying some for a survival location when SHTF is a whole different story. If ownership rights for mortgages are lost in 'good' times, can you imagine what will happen to farmland in the very worst of times? Basically, whoever can defend the land will own it. Not some former paper billionaire 2000 miles away hiding in his bunker.
Exactly! That's why I have a mortgage on Ag land that I'm living on. Got low interest rates and currently have a reasonable mortgage payment after parting with fiat dollars. Meanwhile I sit on my PM hedge, which, with every passing day, is getting closer to being able to cover the balance on my mortgage; however, I am patient, and should it happen in the future that there's no one around to collect my mortgage payments then I won't be making them and I'll still have my PM. It's the best, and most honest (still honoring my contracts) hedge that I, of my modest means, have figured.
very cool. my situation is identical. gold at $2300 and i can sell my stack and pay off all mortgage. not sure i will sell ag to pay mortgage all at once though.
My mother in law owned a 250 acre farm near Severna Park, Md. The farm had been in the family for may years and was breaking even or making a little money.
The State of Md, along with Anne Arundel County, confiscated the farm through emminent domain and built a community college.
Black Swans can pop up anywhere.
So if you bought farm land 5 or 10 years ago when Rogers first recommended buying farms you would be laughing all the way to the bank.
If you got into gold and silver when he first recommended them you would be doing OK, likewise commodities .
Don't blame him because his tips are no longer fresh, 5 to 10 years later.
Rogers is very very good for macro long term stuff, He is early when early is the right time to be. He is not a nimble short term trader and he always says that. The average person would be tremendously better off if they took his advice on long term trends.
I think not.
We've had agriculture for thousands of years- it's the first step to a society, not the savior of a modern world. While it is absolutely critical that land continue to be cultivated, there are many millions, if not billions, of people who are able to cultivate arible land effectively.
What makes that land capable of supporting the world's population is not the ability to grow some crops- it is the power that grants the ability to a small handful of people to manage that capacity.
Look at it this way- if you own a farm, you need to be able to defend it. How much land can you hold in the face of desperate masses? No more than is allowed by your line of sight, and the effective range of your ammunition. Anything more is subject to destruction by the starving. A person whose children are nothing but spindly limbs on distended stomachs is not going to listen to reason, and wait until the crops are ready for harvest- they will strip the land and chew on the shoots.
So how do you trade that?
I think there is a way, though we have neither compass nor crystal ball for these times. Energy. Black, pumping, pulsating energy that can run tractors and electrify fences. Energy for security lights and irrigation. We can no longer feed the Earth with teams of oxen and plows- and any attempt will mean death on a scale none of us can really comprehend.
Game it a different way. What if you had an oil well? A hyrdoelectric dam? A coal mine? How many farmers with small stakes could you support? How many homes could you heat? What is that worth? Even if money no longer existed, I would imagine you could get every farmer to give thier first born sons as soldiers to protect your investment, if you could keep their lights on and the engines of their tractors running.
Farming is important, yes- but the trade of all time it is not. That trade belongs to cheap, plentiful energy and the knowledge needed to harness it. It is so valuable that there need be no losers in the trade. If you consider gasoline, you have the whole story in a nutshell- yes, we wail and moan when a gallon of gas goes up $.50, but that does not change the fact that for virtually nothing, there are men who provide the blood that was able to change the world. There has to be another source, and even if there is not, controlling the sources that already are is priceless.
If you want the trade of all time, find a replacement for oil. Anything else is just the rights to a diminished feudal lordship, and I'd rather be a modern American slave than a king from a thousand years ago.
I respectively disagree with you. Although I agree that this is the case with many farms and much arable land, there are some of us who have chosen/created environs to withstand the onslaught of the horde. Time will tell. With or without oil we won't be hungry.......You?
If that post is addressed to my preceding post, I don't see the link. You've lost me on this.
It's good that you disagree with me- you'll note above that my idea of a good trade for these times is predicated on folks like you doing just what you are doing, namely operating and protecting working farms. It's a symbiotic relationship that is good for everyone.
As far as my personal hunger goes, no worries. We have low enough population in relation to wildlife and enough arable land in my area that my family, barring a complete ecological collapse where all bets are off, will be fine. I've got a year's worth of food stored, and ten years worth of hunting rounds, along with supplies to reload for a long time after that. Survival strategy can be hunter-gatherer rather than agrarian if you are in a woodland area, without too much trouble- without buying anything, there are acres upon acres of berries for picking, acorns as grain, fiddleheads for greens, deer, bear, rabbits, squirrel, fish, game fowl, and any other number of things made out of meat within easy reach for a guy with a shotgun or a snare, and few around to enforce hunting regulations (though as long as the licenses remain within reach, I'm not inclined to poach.) Given that, a half-acre garden is adequate for filling in the blanks. This was fur-trapping country for a long time, and many men made it in these parts with only what they could carry on their backs for decades.
But that is neither here nor there. Assuming that you have any excess production at all, what would you trade for it? Sure, there are things like cloth and salt that would be obvious moves, but if you have access to stored energy like natural gas or even trailers full of charged deep-cycle batteries, I think it would be an obvious boon to any farm. How much is it worth to be able to move your hay with an electric forklift, rather than feeding an extra half-dozen mouths attached to strong backs? Personally, I'm not counting on oil- it's an undeniably excellent fuel, but even if it never runs out, distribution could break down, and we have no refineries in my neck of the woods.
My favorite two, based on my location, are nat gas and hydroelectric power. Either one will be incredibly useful to any farmer (or other human being) especially when the winters touch -30F, as they are known to do here. I'd prefer nuclear batteries, but there's about zero chance of that happening, so I don't think about it much. I don't think the debate is so much about the relative value of the tactics planet-wide so much as they are location specific- much as water would be a better trade to control if you lived in a drought-prone area.
Necessity and riches is motivation enough for future chemists and scientists to find oil replacements. Two things come to mind:
They also must donate the pattent to the world. Goldman Sacks should not have access to that one and governments should not be able to tax it.
Someone has to take this challenge. And yes IT IS POSSIBLE.
Nice half-baked plans...let me tell you why they wouldn't work:
1) Water is an extremely scarce resource in much of the world. If people think using food for fuel is dumb (and it is), then using water for fuel is even dumber.
2) To recompose something you have to have the energy to break it up. The energy in would be greater than energy out....that's all fine and well if you have something awesome like fusion energy...but if not then you're just throwing away energy.
Water is NOT a scarce resource, POTABLE water is!
Currently there is much research for bringing down the cost of sea water desalination...But thermodynamics is what it is. Reverse osmosis and cogeneration at large scale to bring down unit costs and reduce energy consumption. Long way to go...
Personally I am not a great believer in using NUCLEAR to "boil water"...Einstein said that.
Donate it for "the common good"?
What if they don't want to "donate" their hard work? Will you force them to "donate the pattent", like Hank Rearden was forced to donate Rearden Steel?
What are you going to donate to the world? Your "farmland"? Your PMs?
Why should they donate their minds to the likes of you, who only demand of others according to their abilities, to satisty your needs?
ps. it's patent, not pattent. and it's quark, not quarq.
Go to Asia and ask either the Chinese or Indians whether Water is NOT a scarce resource. Their answer might surprise you becaue they're gonna fight each other for access to water in the next 20 years.
"The energy in would be greater than energy out"
Again, we see the old maxima, speaking without understanding. This is ONLY true in a CLOSED systems. Please whenever you read, quote, and repeat something make sure that you understand it before repeating it.
A simple question: What is a perpetual motion machine, you probably have the answer in your mind, so I will save you that.
Now think that an electron is, beside of being a nice concept for explaining a physical phenomena, according to our understanding and theories it fits the IDEA of the perpetual motion machine. Well it has been orbiting the atom for about 14 billion years or so. This at least makes sense if you subscribe for the standard view of the creation of the universe ( this one is a whole chapter of discussion by itself ).
The only reason it can do that if it take the energy ( to rotate ) from somewhere else, otherwise it will be ... well a perpetual motion machine. Where from ???? Well there is a lot of info on that matter, you just have to research it. Hint just do not look in the standard text books.
You clearly have never taken Quantum mechanics... electrons are not little balls orbiting a nucleus... Motion as classically defined means nothing in the quantum world...
Hell, if you would babbling shit about the Casimir Effect, I might give it second thought....