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All these people talk about preparation and buying gold and silver, what's the verdict? The international monetary fund has a hoard of gold, it's a bank, by the way, although it officially declared gold dead back on the 70s. The Federal reserve Bank has more gold than the IMF. India recently bought a huge amount of gold from the IMF. The emerging economies are India and China. I bought some silver and the business card had some Jesus gibberish on it. So, are gold and silver worthless? If so, why do the banks hoard gold?

Beach_slim 7 Mar 20
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The United States has by far the largest gold reserve. The Chase Manhattan protects the gold reserves of many nations in its underground vault. These gold reserves are cared for and adjusted per the orders from each nation, mostly to adapt to trade balances. The how and why of gold reserves is a complicated formula and reasoning since no nation bases its currency on precious metals. All currencies values are based on their nations estimated wealth and their relationship to the US dollar.

Wealth is determined by GNP, assets such as natural resources and credit. There is no "set" rules to determine these things. Much if it is determined by exchange rate of their currency vs the dollar. For instance, Iran's currency was worthless on the world market for years, not because they had no rescources but because they were not allowed to trade with other nations that had sanctioned them and could not convert their currency into dollars. If it seems kinda ethereal you are right, but it works for the most part as long as everyone agrees to play along. Using precious metals as a currency base would be chaos, Russia, South Africa and Peru are some of the largest miners of precious metals. Not sure I would like them screwing with the commodities market and our currency.

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They want to pack it in their coffins with them. A gold bar is not going to feed them or keep them warm. The emotionall burdden of possesions people carry around with them from the past is mind blowing.

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A lot of people lost a lot of money in silver over the past generation. My late 2nd wife's uncle had invested most of her father's estate in silver and it went down, down, down until it was worthless. The more it went down the more the uncle wouldn't budge and sell. Then it stayed in the toilet forever. In the end the estate was liquidated to pay administrative costs (the uncle, you know, was the executor, and had to make sure HE was taken care of).

I didn't follow the situation closely but the explanation I've heard for what happened with silver was that the limited supply was being manipulated by wealthy speculators. They owned the mines and flooded the market to drive down prices, or so I am given to understand. This disconnected the price of the silver from the other market influences. Supposedly.

So I don't see ANY investment as a guaranteed hedge. If we were in a truly dystopian situation I don't know that digging up gold or silver you had buried in the back yard would represent a recognized medium of exchange. In extremis, it's just a function of who can take stuff from who, and how ruthlessly. Things like nuclear winter or total economic collapse or some sort of super-plague are bigger than me, and what will be will be. I have the means for example to install power generators and the like and make my home an island of functioning tech even if the grid goes down. But if that truly happened ... and my neighbors saw the warm glow of electric lights peeking out at night ... and noticed I wasn't getting skinny and was staying warm in winter ... how long would that last, really?

@Beach_slim Yes well before, I think they bought in the 80s and cashed out in the late 90s but I'm a little fuzzy on exact dates.

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I bought troy ounce silver coins in the 90s when the economy was good for 4.00 each. In 2008 after the crash it went up to 50.00 each. Gold and silver are great assets in lean times.

I sold them for full price on Ebay.

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