Quote of the day—Egon von Greyerz

In the coming bear market for currencies and bull market for precious metals, gold and silver will not just maintain purchasing power but massively outperform and become the must have investment.

But above all, do not buy gold and silver for speculative purposes. Gold and silver is your insurance against the coming end of a monetary era when all currencies and bubble assets will implode.

Egon von Greyerz
March 24, 2021
WHY BUY GOLD WHEN THERE IS BITCOIN & TESLA
[I’ve been hearing hints of the coming collapse for 20 years now. And “it has to happen soon” since 2008.

And, of course, if you dig just the tiniest bit most people, including this guy, advocating precious metals just so happen to have some precious metals they would love to sell to you.

They may still be right. But I’m very skeptical of those who have some direct gain from people taking their advice.

And everyone who claims gold will “preserve your wealth” seem to gloss over, at best, that Roosevelt banned the private ownership of gold by executive order and got away with it. So, what’s the path to wealth preservation when your wealth is tied up in contraband?—Joe]

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24 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Egon von Greyerz

  1. If our society comes to the end of a ‘monetary era’ it would signify that a complete breakdown of commerce and trade systems will have occurred. I have the opinion that this is a possible outcome of our current situation both nationally and world wide. My concern is that while you can gather gold and silver, you cannot eat it; you cannot hunt game or sow and reap crops with it and you will find few people who will barter for gold and silver when food, bullets, seeds and medicine are going to be the real currency of a societal breakdown.

    • I recommend the writings of Ludwig von Mises for background. “Human Action” is particularly excellent.

      It depends on how far back you go. Barter is the most primitive, and the most limited; it only works between parties when each has something the other is interested in, and at that point in time. The point of “money” is that it’s an intermediary when direct barter isn’t available or not convenient. It depends on a society consensus to accept a certain thing for that purpose. Gold has served for a very long time, as have certain other things. If enough of society is left intact that we’re beyond just barter, then we’ll need a “medium of exchange”. And while that can be any number of things, it needs to satisfy a number of requirements that gold satisfies really well (silver similarly, very few other things nearly as well).

  2. And right on Que. This from Vox Day; Global banks bracing for losses after US hedge fund collapse. Ta-Da! Right on time for the new Brenton woods agreement.
    Where everyone hates America inflating their currency away. And decides on a new global currency. And Not-president Biden will give it to them for an extra portion of pudding. Then we get to feel the full weight of, stimulus.
    That’s all speculation on my part. I have been wrong before. To me hedges/investments are about what one thinks others might need in the future.
    Now if I had only bought an !0 ounces of silver and a couple cases of Spam and PMC ammo every month for the last 20 years!

  3. We’ve seen this over the years of one doomsday prediction after another. The shuckers and snake oil salesmen come out of the woodwork to hock their wares whether it be gold, silver, bitcoin, emergency food buckets, and yes, even guns and bullets.

    Last spring at the start of the Covid pandemic, I thought that we should plant a large garden and raise some chickens. I quickly found out that both seeds and chickens were in tight supply so I opened one of my emergency seed cans that I had bought a decade ago. However, I need not bothered because the germination rate was marginal to zero. In addition, the seeds were heirloom and subject to disease. So the net effect was mostly a wasted effort.

    As for the chickens, we did finally find some rare birds which were not only expensive but they did not fare well either. Half died within two weeks and the predators got most of the others.

    And in case you are wondering, yes, we have successfully raised a garden and chickens before, but when ‘crunch’ time came we failed. Fortunately, shortages did not develop, but if they had we would not have been much better off than our neighbors except for our freezer and stored emergency food.

    So, I can only conclude that prepping is a hit or miss proposition with a large dose of luck.

    • I think it takes an ongoing effort. And as with backups of your computer files, it requires testing that the backups work.

      As I understand it, observant Mormons are used to doing this thing, and there are some nice Mormon prepping reference manuals online. But it’s clear that these things are not trivial and need ongoing attention.

      • If you are saying that prepping needs to be a way of living then I agree. It’s not something that you can just buy and pull off the shelf when you need it except perhaps for a few emergency supplies and even then your mileage will vary.

  4. “…everyone who claims gold will “preserve your wealth” seem to gloss over, at best, that Roosevelt banned the private ownership of gold”
    No one is “glossing over” anything.
    When Roosevelt banned gold ownership, gold was money. He was trying to force everyone to turn over their money to him (the gov’t) and not hoard it. Gold is no longer money. Thus it serves no purpose to outlaw its possession. The gov’t has no use for it. Nobody (intelligent) would listen anyway.

  5. Right; if these “advisors” truly believed their own “advice” they’d not be interested in selling precious metals to you. They’d be keeping as much of it as possible for themselves. Like as not they’re trying to instill more volume buying so as to increase the value of their own.

    Anyway; the powers busy overthrowing our system aren’t interested in pushing us into this or that particular investment. They don’t care. They’re interested in creating widespread and general chaos (including but not limited to financial chaos) with the end goal of herding us into a new global system. Whatever assets you may have at the end of it will be a) diminished as much as possible, and in ways we can’t yet fully imagine, according to their plans, and b) of no real consequence to the powers-that-be. With your family still in food production you do have a leg up on many. For now.

    It would seem that real estate, at least here in the inland Northwest U.S., is currently a great investment, or rather it would have been but three or four years ago. Prices have skyrocketed. But if gold ownership can be “banned” with the stroke of a pen, then the ownership of literally anything else, including your land and buildings, can be treated likewise.

    And if Woodrow Wilson’s and FDR’s shenanigans didn’t spark a counter revolution, then no one’s will. By that evidence alone one might well conclude that it’s game over, and has been since before you or I were born. If some charismatic leader rises up and starts calling for this or that counter-revolutionary action (and isn’t immediately ended mysteriously), then, whether he knows it or not, he’s certainly part of the strategy to end us as a nation.

    Frankly I believe it’s far too late to start worrying about it now. That job would have fallen to our grandfathers (the generation born circa the 1890s to 1910s), had they been in possession of the necessary degree of discernment, or to our great grandfathers who would have been born circa the time of the American Civil War. One might even well go farther back in time to describe the final downfall of the U.S., or of Western, or Judaeo/Christian, Civilization as a whole (i.e. the “free world”).

    So what could it possibly matter, whether or not you have a pile of gold or a thousand acres of prime land during your convalescent years? You’re certainly not taking any of it with you.

  6. I have a fair amount of silver and a little gold. I like collecting coins. Note I said “collect” not invest. It’s not something I plan on selling until I am much older or something of value my children can fight over if I don’t sell them or give them away. And yes they will gladly sell you silver for your supposedly worthless dollars.

    However I still have more money invested in all the guns and ammo I currently have.

  7. “So, what’s the path to wealth preservation when your wealth is tied up in contraband?”

    That is a very interesting question. Specifically, a question owners of certain types of firearms and ammunition might want to reflect on. In my opinion, of course.

    • Thank you for noticing that!

      I thought perhaps I was being too subtle with that particular angle.

  8. Questionable that a modern day FDR would be successful in confiscating gold. People more or less complied then. Not clear that would happen today. It’s more likely that a substantial black market would develop.

    • If you make something illegal to own, then it also usually becomes illegal to buy or sell. In the case of Roosevelt’s gold confiscation, I suspect many people complied simply because if they didn’t they’d have no good way to eventually convert the gold to cash … “good” in this case encompassing safe, fair and convenient.

      Just because you make someone a felon overnight by decree, does not mean they automagically acquire the skills, contacts and attitude to be a successful black marketeer.

  9. On a forum I frequent, there was a man who lived in Argentina during the collapse of the economy there about 15 – 20 years ago. He told about his experiences in that time. He found pistols to be more useful for home and self defense than long guns. He somehow was able to recharge batteries for radios, CD and DVD players. I do not recall exactly how this was accomplished. Most relevant to this discussion, he said that jewelry was the best form of gold to buy, particularly neckchains and such, so when you go to sell it, it will look like you are liquidating your wife’s jewelry rather than your gold coin stash. Fernando “Ferfal” Aguirre. He has written three books that seem to be a summary of what he said when he was active on the forum.

    • IIRC, it was still legal to own gold after FDR’s edict, if it was in the form of jewelry or artwork of some sort.

      • FDR (Felonious Democratic Robber) also outlawed the gold clauses in contracts that were popular before he became president. This was in direct contravention of a clause in the constitution I cannot find now, to my embarrassment prohibiting the interference with contract.

  10. How do you buy a sack of rice with a gold coin worth 500 sacks of rice?

    • This is why I have been wanting to buy what is known as “Junk Silver”. Pre 1964 silver coins with no numismatic value (collector value to ordinary people). They originally came in bags of $1,000 face value, which, when I last checked about two years ago cost around $10,000. A dime is a good fraction of that value and solves the problem nicely.

  11. One of the problems with gold coins is that the Chinese have figured out a way to steal some of the gold in a one ounce coin. They cut it open and insert a tungsten object to make it weigh correctly after scooping out some of the gold. I’m unclear whether they start with a real coin, or copy one with that insert from the start. Either way is possible, I expect.

    Even easier to do this with a gold bar of any size.

    • Sure, but there are ways to detect that. And of course the same sort of trick works with silver, where it’s easier because there are more metals with density similar to that of silver than there are for the case of gold.

    • Platinum would be an option, though osmium is not as expensive as platinum right now and denser so it too could be used for this fraud.

      • Platinum runs near the price of gold, sometimes even higher. Not nearly enough difference in value to make it worth the effort.

        It takes equipment to test for this sort of fraud. Not something you can carry in your pocket, so transferring gold coins and larger now requires a business location to support that sort of test equipment.

  12. When an economy is healthy and running properly putting your wealth into
    nontangible assets can bring a good return if you know what your doing.
    In a SICK economy run by greedy incompetents anything you can’t physically
    HOLD is subject to loss, theft or confiscation. And that includes digital currency
    such as BitCoin. The Fed Gov could decree it illegal and worthless at any time
    rendering any investment you have in it GONE. The same is true for stocks, bonds, savings and bank accounts….even CASH can be declared worthless.
    The Fed Gov could decide to deflate currency values by declaring “greenbacks”
    invalid and forcing you to exchange them for the NEW “redbacks” just printed….
    At an exchange rate that THEY choose. You could easily have your $10K in OLD dollars become only $1K in NEW dollars….overnight. Even gold/silver
    isn’t immune from being screwed with by the Fed Gov. Commie FDR declared
    private ownership of Gold Coins ILLEGAL in the 30’s. The same thing could happen today…..though you COULD hide your gold and silver until the total collapse of the government….it would still be valuable. The ugly reality is
    that the Fed Gov has become so pervasive and powerful there is quite literally
    NOTHINIG of value that you have that they can’t degrade, depreciate, steal or destroy….including your life.

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