RE: World economy
February 25, 2016 at 6:52 am
(This post was last modified: February 25, 2016 at 6:53 am by I_am_not_mafia.)
(February 23, 2016 at 10:06 pm)scoobysnack Wrote: What do you think about owning gold or silver?
It depends upon the level of collapse.
First thing you do is pay off debt. Savings can be lost but the debt can't. Gold is the first thing that people rush to and the price can bubble up, and consequently collapse. I would personally own silver but make sure to buy very low. This isn't too hard because the price is historically extremely volatile. It also has many, many more industrial uses than gold, many of which mean that the silver can never be reclaimed.
If your society really does collapse, say as happened with Argentina, then when you come to sell your gold then you will only be given the price of junk gold. This is because people have no way of telling the difference. But in that situation, you would probably do better owning far more useful items or assets. You can't eat gold. There is a long account somewhere on the net of what living in Argentina during a financial collapse really is like. It's very interesting and makes you realise what you really need to survive. It's never you alone in a bunker with bad guys coming over the horizon that you can shoot at a distance. It's people hanging around out of view by your front door so they can rob you, bull bars for your car so you can move other cars out of the way without stopping and without having to stop etc.
Read about the financial collapse of Germany during the hyper inflation of the Weimar republic. The ones who owned farms ended up with barns full of grand pianos and other luxury items.
My personal fall back is a house in a hill region in rural Germany where we have all our belongings, which has a live fire, a small community and where we could collect enough water. Shame my German isn't particularly good.
It's not particularly hard to see a financial downturn coming several months or years in advance. But most people don't keep an ear open or are in denial. This is one seems different though in that it's hit the mainstream press far more quickly than I would have expected. I'm assuming because it's not too long after the previous one and central banks have been spending the last few years trying to reinflate a burst balloon.
