Gold. Is it any use?

[Me_Again]

Some of the scenarios look at total collapse and others at partial or temporary collapse of 'law and order'.
Some have looked at causes from plagues through to the financial system falling down around our ears.

Almost universally 'we' all think that there's a planet full of sheep out there ignoring the slow slide of the 'turd' of humanity towards the big drop into the pan.

One of the scenarios about financial market collapse is that people who are owed money, in the shape of bonds, ask those who owe them money, for it to be paid back and they don't. On the smaller nation scale -Greece for example- such a situation is unlikely to tip over the other dominoes. It might knock a few out but they too will be small. But all the big players have been pulling out of Greece desperately, for the last 5 years now. Most of the private bondholders left are the ones holding ten year bonds, along with a limited number of banks they would suffer. But that isn't going to collapse the whole damp pile of cards that is the EU or the world financial markets.
There are signs out there that the 3% who own the planet are -independently- re-positioning for a big change. Basically globalism is a self destructive system, a veritable strip mining of each country's assets which leaves it weak and bare afterwards, then they move on and sod those left to pick the pieces up.
I picked this up yesterday:-
"The man who predicted nearly every major economic trend over the past 30 years… including the 1991 recession, Japan’s lost decade, the 2001 tech crash, the bull market and housing boom of the last decade and, most recently, the credit and housing bubble now predicts the DOW is going to crash down to 6000."
A lot of folks who are canny have been saying for quite a while that 'there's something wrong with the fundamentals'. This current climb to new heights is a truly colossal bubble built on 'quantitive easing', government borrowing and little else. The imaginary printing presses have been going full speed around the world. Short of some cash? No problem we'll make some more for you -if you are a bank.

So what would nearly halving the DOW do? Well for a start every other bourse in the world would start to tumble, literally a domino effect. It could start here and go across the Atlantic but most bet on the crash starting in the good ol' US of A.

There could and probably would come a moment when the first seller says, 'yeah I'm ok with that deal but I want payment in the yellow stuff'.
When traders of any kind, bankers or street sellers, no longer trust the currency then that's when the dominoes start to fall big style. It could be a nation that says that or a private person.

Everyone has heard the stories of the Weimar republic in Germany, where a wheelbarrow full of Deutschmarks wouldn't get you a whole loaf of bread. So what did people use? Well many starved for a start. Others turned to extreme politics like national socialism or communism -because they got fed -sounds like Greece today. But what about buying things?

Well if you look at what happened when the stock market went down, gold went up. One big difference is that back then they didn't have 'paper gold' [now you can invest in gold but never possess the yellow stuff, it's just held centrally somewhere] so the price of gold then could not be fixed by rogue trading or government intervention. Now it can.

The advent of 'paper gold' means that the price of gold, instead of being linked to its scarcity and demand, is now linked to what those who trade volumes we can't imagine, do.
Right now it's the lowest its been for 3 years or so. The price has been coming down in fits and starts this year, it's 30% down on last year. Why? Is there a sudden glut of gold on the market? Like the day Greedy Gordon the Moron sold most of the UK's gold reserves? No. There haven't been any major events like that. Have there been new discoveries and mines brought on line? No, nothing major in that line of thought. So why if the world is a fragile place and sensible people think lots of things are overpriced, is gold so low?
Who's buying Gold? That should surely be the way that the price is decided, people start to buy more and the price goes up, that's the way of the free market supposedly. Well China and India have been buying tons of the stuff, I mean literally tons, hundreds of tons of the real thing for several years now. It is thought that China now has as much as Fort Knox 'is supposed to have'. So does fort Knox still have 8000 tons of the yellow stuff? Dunno is my answer. But if the Chinese and Indians are buying like its going out of fashion then the price should be sky-rocketing. But it isn't.

Who benefits from low Gold price at the moment? Obviously China and India, they expect the value [not price] will go up or why buy it? In a quirky but logical way it benefits the US too - in the short term and they only think short term. The US benefits whilst people are still pushing the stock market as the source of wealth. They are in a dreadful debt hole that they can't get out of easily. So Asian nations buy it cheap and the US keep everyone focussed on the stock market by KEEPING gold down in price through the use of 'paper gold' SELL SELL SELL and the price goes down BUY BUY BUY and the price should come up, but it doesn't.
When the time comes, the stock markets will just fall over big style, it will make the Wall street crash seem like Northern Rock, just a small event.

Then the brakes will come off Gold and it will go vertical almost overnight.
Suddenly China and India are mega rich. Their asset value has zoomed overnight. BUT so has America's. Quietly on the QT America has been buying gold too. Suddenly with the stroke of a pen, America's debt halves and becomes manageable. Last year I think it was, Germany asked America for the 150 tons that it stores in Fort Knox. The Americans said NO! They said something like, you can only have so much a year. I don't know why Germany has some gold in Knox but something isn't quite right there. I know also that traders who have been asking for sizeable quantities of the yellow stuff have been told they'll have to wait, that there isn't the yellow stuff on the shelf to give them. Go figure?
Gold is a currency now. You buy gold now and you don't pay VAT on it, buy silver you do.

So is it worth having a few ounces to trade for something? Food? Ammunition? A weapon? A place on the last boat out of the new Islamic republic of Britain? There are so many ways it could be beneficial if you had a few ounces to trade. One thing for sure, if you buy now the price will go up at some point and surpass its previous record highs, so in the worst case you can pass a real legacy to your children/grandchildren. You can even buy it various denominations. Have a think. What does the forum think about having some of that 'yellow stuff' tucked away as a get out of jail free card?

I'd be interested to hear. Of course if the whole thing goes down the pan completely,then it won't really be worth anything except as a sock filler for hitting someone.