Once a nation decides that it is both moral and ethical to steal one man's property to give it to another, it has crossed the Rubicon. History is replete with examples which show that once men know that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury, costs spiral upward and the snouts in the trough multiply until the tax takers outnumber the tax payers. It is why such governments cannot exist without debt, because if they had to finance their extravagances with taxes, it would lead quickly to revolt and, in response, to tyranny. The foundations of the West have been destroyed, it now floats on a sea of debt. When the debt scam ends so does the West.
We are seeing the wages of socialism. Socialism destroys the very wealth needed to support itself). It is a downward spiral that, once begun, is very hard (maybe impossible) to stop. Socialism also attracts those who are inherently violent and more than ready to adopt any excuse for stealing the fruits of others' labors either through the ballot box or the smashed store window. But as Alasdair has pointed out, promising to cut social benefits is a losing proposition at the ballot box. An alternative plan is to slash and burn not property but government regulations at all levels. Make it more enticing and easier to work. The model, of course, is Hong Kong under the gentle ten year guidance of Sir John Cowperthwaite.
Meanwhile, Gold is down 1.65% today basically tracking the NASDAQ which is also down 1.6%. Back on it's way to testing 4000 again. 4000 holds and holds and holds - What will this be the 3, 4th or 5th test ?
The narrative story is that Gold is dumb money. That being the narrative, the market seems intent on creating that reality. Why ? Because, as it has been for some time, the Narrative is the reality. The Narrative can and does trump everyones prognostications about it's falsity. All the predictions of impossibility are defied by the markets behavior which flows from the narrative which the big trading shops all share.
For now, safety is USD cash, not Gold. Tomorrow the story may be different, but tomorrow could be months or years or decades into the future.
If the UK blows up as Alasdairs article suggests, USD will strengthen and Gold will go down.
Same thing for France or a failure of the EU. USD up, interest rates down, gold down.
As currency after currency is smashed, the Alasdair gold story is that between Gold and USD, gold will be left standing.
It's always important to keep an open mind about the stories we commit ourselves to.
"Betting against gold is the same as betting on governments. He who bets on governments and government money bets against 6,000 years of recorded human history." ~ Charles de Gaulle
Gold ( & Silver ) will be the last men standing when the USD finally gets sucked down the ' Gurgler ' - as has been the case with every reserve currency before it - throughout history .
No Chancellor can fix the economy which is struggling because of decades of deindustrialisation brought about by the flood of easy money made available to the City of London by offshore jurisdictions as collateral to issue virtually unlimited credit on demand.
Once the City became the place where the world's offshore balances serve as collateral for virtually unlimited credit on demand, finance became Britain's highest-yield activity by an enormous margin. Why build a factory in the Midlands when credit emission in the Square Mile returns more, faster, with no physical risk? Capital, talent and policy all drained into the credit machine; manufacturing was priced out — by a sterling perpetually bid up by financial inflows, by credit cheap for assets and dear for plant. It is the resource curse in financial dress: the Eurodollar market was Britain's oil field, and sixty years of pumping it hollowed out everything else. Deindustrialisation wasn't a policy error; it was the City's business model applied to the host country.
Which is also why the host can't simply expel the parasite. Shutting down the City's function is the one fix that would work — and it is impossible, because that function is now what finances the external accounts of the shell. Britain can't kill the machine and can't live with it. Only the conversion resolves the contradiction — and for Britain, reversion to the physical base is the cruelest version of it, because the physical base is what was spent. Expect the stick to grow faster (on the back of shrinking carrot) here than almost anywhere: a country with little shelf left must administer more and earlier. The budget's £4.3bn raid on savers is not the disease and not even the treatment — it's the conversion to fully managed economy doing its quiet work, one register at a time.
Only problem here is that it was actually the Queen and the King who were at the business end of the Guillotine at the hands of the ' Great Un-Washed ' - but they surely had it coming .
If you sell something that you haven’t got or owned isn’t that illegal? Isn’t it fraud?
Surely if you contract to sell something at some future date you have to prove that you have it to sell in the first place.
All this business of promising to sell nothing at $4000 an ounce ( non sequitur! Nothing weighs nothing!) to someone who wants to buy nothing for $4000 an ounce just seems totally phony and corrupt!
Why isn’t there a law which says that if you want to sell something you have to prove that you have it to sell in the first place?
China’s massive trade balance is directly linked to her productivity which is directly linked to her tax policies, that is the core of the problem in Western economies
What ever did you expect from this bunch of clowns & chancers ....something sensible and given due consideration .....?? - FAT CHANCE . In fact , were this crowd to have come up with anything vaguely competent & responsible - then I'd take bets on the fact that you'd be out sparko on your driveway with a couple of paramedic's pumping 10,000 volts into your chest to try and get you up & running again from the severe shock of the budget you'd just had to sit through ....?? .
And anyway - " Where is dear old Dennis " when you need him the most ....I'd even have more faith in him to do the right thing than his witless namesake , a man who is singularly ill-equipped to take 10 x bob down to the Post Office and pay it in safely on your behalf - leave alone to hold sway over the finance's of a country like this which is circling the drain ever faster at the hands of the children of ' New Labour ' .
Yes it seems the UK government is boxed into an economic contraction. Reducing the government spending is a painful endeavour and it never seems to be popular at the ballot box. Alasdair you make some very interesting points about the saving rate in the UK. A higher savings rate and less consumption among a population can improve the its economy drastically. It could also reduce the inflation spiral where higher prices leads to higher wages and so forth. This seems to be a big problem in the UK.
Print...Print....Print .....- then Print some more 24 - 7 out to infinity ....end even then this would be insufficient to right this sinking ship from plunging into the depth's .
Once a nation decides that it is both moral and ethical to steal one man's property to give it to another, it has crossed the Rubicon. History is replete with examples which show that once men know that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury, costs spiral upward and the snouts in the trough multiply until the tax takers outnumber the tax payers. It is why such governments cannot exist without debt, because if they had to finance their extravagances with taxes, it would lead quickly to revolt and, in response, to tyranny. The foundations of the West have been destroyed, it now floats on a sea of debt. When the debt scam ends so does the West.
Spot On yet again - Jack .....keep them coming .
We are seeing the wages of socialism. Socialism destroys the very wealth needed to support itself). It is a downward spiral that, once begun, is very hard (maybe impossible) to stop. Socialism also attracts those who are inherently violent and more than ready to adopt any excuse for stealing the fruits of others' labors either through the ballot box or the smashed store window. But as Alasdair has pointed out, promising to cut social benefits is a losing proposition at the ballot box. An alternative plan is to slash and burn not property but government regulations at all levels. Make it more enticing and easier to work. The model, of course, is Hong Kong under the gentle ten year guidance of Sir John Cowperthwaite.
Exactly
''Metaphorically, we are about to move from the torture chamber to the scaffold. Get it over with, and we can more on.''
That sounds absolutely delightful (and true) but we will heading for being hung, drawn and quartered rather than a simple beheading!
Sadly - Don't think you're wrong on anything here....standard modus-operandi ...etc
Meanwhile, Gold is down 1.65% today basically tracking the NASDAQ which is also down 1.6%. Back on it's way to testing 4000 again. 4000 holds and holds and holds - What will this be the 3, 4th or 5th test ?
The narrative story is that Gold is dumb money. That being the narrative, the market seems intent on creating that reality. Why ? Because, as it has been for some time, the Narrative is the reality. The Narrative can and does trump everyones prognostications about it's falsity. All the predictions of impossibility are defied by the markets behavior which flows from the narrative which the big trading shops all share.
For now, safety is USD cash, not Gold. Tomorrow the story may be different, but tomorrow could be months or years or decades into the future.
If the UK blows up as Alasdairs article suggests, USD will strengthen and Gold will go down.
Same thing for France or a failure of the EU. USD up, interest rates down, gold down.
As currency after currency is smashed, the Alasdair gold story is that between Gold and USD, gold will be left standing.
It's always important to keep an open mind about the stories we commit ourselves to.
"Betting against gold is the same as betting on governments. He who bets on governments and government money bets against 6,000 years of recorded human history." ~ Charles de Gaulle
Succinct and oh so accurate yet again - Jack.
Gold ( & Silver ) will be the last men standing when the USD finally gets sucked down the ' Gurgler ' - as has been the case with every reserve currency before it - throughout history .
No Chancellor can fix the economy which is struggling because of decades of deindustrialisation brought about by the flood of easy money made available to the City of London by offshore jurisdictions as collateral to issue virtually unlimited credit on demand.
Once the City became the place where the world's offshore balances serve as collateral for virtually unlimited credit on demand, finance became Britain's highest-yield activity by an enormous margin. Why build a factory in the Midlands when credit emission in the Square Mile returns more, faster, with no physical risk? Capital, talent and policy all drained into the credit machine; manufacturing was priced out — by a sterling perpetually bid up by financial inflows, by credit cheap for assets and dear for plant. It is the resource curse in financial dress: the Eurodollar market was Britain's oil field, and sixty years of pumping it hollowed out everything else. Deindustrialisation wasn't a policy error; it was the City's business model applied to the host country.
Which is also why the host can't simply expel the parasite. Shutting down the City's function is the one fix that would work — and it is impossible, because that function is now what finances the external accounts of the shell. Britain can't kill the machine and can't live with it. Only the conversion resolves the contradiction — and for Britain, reversion to the physical base is the cruelest version of it, because the physical base is what was spent. Expect the stick to grow faster (on the back of shrinking carrot) here than almost anywhere: a country with little shelf left must administer more and earlier. The budget's £4.3bn raid on savers is not the disease and not even the treatment — it's the conversion to fully managed economy doing its quiet work, one register at a time.
Exactly .
The scaffold? What's wrong with the guillotene? Off with their heads said the queen.
Only problem here is that it was actually the Queen and the King who were at the business end of the Guillotine at the hands of the ' Great Un-Washed ' - but they surely had it coming .
I was venturing down the Alice in wonderland rabbit hole. Off with their heads said the Queen of Hearts.
Out of the torture chamber and onto the scaffold? I'd better look out my old belt with my spanners and bubble then.
Go to it Mitch .....!!
Naked short selling of gold/ silver etc
If you sell something that you haven’t got or owned isn’t that illegal? Isn’t it fraud?
Surely if you contract to sell something at some future date you have to prove that you have it to sell in the first place.
All this business of promising to sell nothing at $4000 an ounce ( non sequitur! Nothing weighs nothing!) to someone who wants to buy nothing for $4000 an ounce just seems totally phony and corrupt!
Why isn’t there a law which says that if you want to sell something you have to prove that you have it to sell in the first place?
China’s massive trade balance is directly linked to her productivity which is directly linked to her tax policies, that is the core of the problem in Western economies
What ever did you expect from this bunch of clowns & chancers ....something sensible and given due consideration .....?? - FAT CHANCE . In fact , were this crowd to have come up with anything vaguely competent & responsible - then I'd take bets on the fact that you'd be out sparko on your driveway with a couple of paramedic's pumping 10,000 volts into your chest to try and get you up & running again from the severe shock of the budget you'd just had to sit through ....?? .
And anyway - " Where is dear old Dennis " when you need him the most ....I'd even have more faith in him to do the right thing than his witless namesake , a man who is singularly ill-equipped to take 10 x bob down to the Post Office and pay it in safely on your behalf - leave alone to hold sway over the finance's of a country like this which is circling the drain ever faster at the hands of the children of ' New Labour ' .
Yes it seems the UK government is boxed into an economic contraction. Reducing the government spending is a painful endeavour and it never seems to be popular at the ballot box. Alasdair you make some very interesting points about the saving rate in the UK. A higher savings rate and less consumption among a population can improve the its economy drastically. It could also reduce the inflation spiral where higher prices leads to higher wages and so forth. This seems to be a big problem in the UK.
Print...Print....Print .....- then Print some more 24 - 7 out to infinity ....end even then this would be insufficient to right this sinking ship from plunging into the depth's .