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Originally posted by kosmicjack
reply to post by behindthescenes
Exactly. It's all just a big shell game or ponzi scheme. The banksters will do whatever it takes to prop it up and keep it going, but eventually the bill will come due. July...August...September, the point is the game is up.
Originally posted by jfj123
And don't forget something awful was supposed to happen on 08-08-08 and guess what? NOTHING....
This is a reminder that the paper gold market is significantly larger than the physical market. Just like a run on a bank in a fractional banking system, GREED & fear suspects it will be very hard to settle all the paper claims to gold physically in a real scramble for the metal. This is why in a parabolic spike physical gold is likely to trade at a significant premium to paper claims. On this point GREED & fear should make it clear that the 25% of the global portfolio for a US dollar-denominated pension fund allocated to gold bullion is in physical gold.
Critics of metal leasing say, because gold and silver leasing artificially increases the supply of the precious metals for industrial, commercial, and investment uses, thus holding down the prices of the commodities. Central banks and the bullion banks are insensitive to the price of gold or silver—profits are locked in and guaranteed—so this distorts the real supply and demand relationship between buyers and sellers.
A second type of gold swap involves only one central bank’s gold reserves, which are lent for currency to another central bank. The real problem with this tactic is the banks consider these swaps to be “collateralized loans,” and thus they don’t appear on their balance sheets. No one knows for sure just how much gold and silver the Fed and other central banks have lent to each other this way.
Originally posted by Rockpuck
My point over all (in this thread and the thread where you insulted me) is that Central Banks purposefully manipulate the markets through various leasing, swapping and any other shenanigans will result in the markets moving the way they want them to.
Originally posted by Rockpuck
Why was the price of silver so high in 1980?
In 1980 the price of silver was escalated due to the US Reserve issuing $2 billion ounces of silver as a loan (theoretically to banks or other nations)....
At the time the Government exhausted it's own reserves of metals by infusing them into the markets as loans this in effect actually doubled the existence of silver but meant only 50% of the silver in the market was "real". When people began buying Silver and never got a delivery there was a sudden panic resulting in a sort of "run on the bank" for all metals, including silver and gold.
Well, it turns out that the economics textbooks are not the only ones that apply; the geology textbooks are at least as important -- if not more so. The simple fact is that the world is running out of cheap, easily accessible oil. That is why oil companies have been going to the ends of the earth to find more of it. It is the reason why they have to drill in more than a mile of water or locate in more and more politically unstable parts of the world.
Oil is, after all, a non-renewable resource. Once you have drained the oil from a nice, safe, easily accessible place like West Texas, it is gone, and gone for good. Oil consumption and production fell in 2009 relative to 2008 in response to the worldwide economic downturn, and the increases in 2010 are due to the economic rebound around the world.
Energy efficiency: Given the lack of an obvious winner among competing transitional or alternative energy sources, one crucial approach to energy consumption in 2041 will surely be efficiency at levels unimaginable today: the ability to achieve maximum economic output for minimum energy input. The lead players three decades from now may be the countries and corporations that have mastered the art of producing the most with the least. Innovations in transportation, building and product design, heating and cooling, and production techniques will all play a role in creating an energy-efficient world.
If the biggest issue facing our economy is that we don't "produce" enough to create a sizable tax base for our expenditures, resulting in massive deficits.