Sweden, nation that pioneered living without cash, warns: Hoard your banknotes

Boboclown · May 15, 2019

Steel, wood, aluminum, polymer, lead, brass, and copper is what retains the most value. Typically in the form of a gun and/or ammo.

CHLChris · May 15, 2019

Boboclown said:
Steel, wood, aluminum, polymer, lead, brass, and copper is what retains the most value. Typically in the form of a gun and/or ammo.

And those precious metals actually go UP in value in a time of collapse.

Just don't arm the folks who will return and steal your food!

NW Backpacker · May 16, 2019

This video is not recent - it says 2016, but I think I saw it around 10 years ago.

Gold for bread

GWS · May 16, 2019

Great video
Zimbabwe is a great example of a failed state. When I was there in 2009, they'd accept any currency but their own. Or gold or silver. I gave the cabbie a $5 tip and he acted like I had fed his family for a week. Turned out I damn near did!
Anyway, as I said before, Somebody will always want gold. The people don't like the exchange rate but they pay it because that's what they want for bread.
Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa till Mugabe took over. He chased the white farmers of the land and gave the farms to the people. None of whom had any knowledge of how to run a farm. I fear the same fate is coming for South Africa. DeBeers will blow up every diamond mine there rather than let them get taken over and every heavy industry will collapse if the trends continue.

gmerkt · May 17, 2019

Devaluing the USD started before Nixon. FDR started it in 1933 when he took US citizens off the gold standard. Overnight, the official price of gold went from $20.67 per oz. to $35. The effect of which was to inflate the currency by 57% (if my arithmetic is right). But this also goes to the issue of governmental price control, which always results in artificial pricing. President Ford signed a bill into law in 1974 allowing US citizens to own private gold again. Between 1933 and 1974, there was an unofficial, black market price for gold in the US (and the world) which was significantly higher than $35. In economics, reality will always eventually triumph.

In the bigger picture, Nixon's "closing the window" for international redemptions of US currency in gold had more far-reaching effect. It was at that point that the US government no longer had to pay serious attention to budget and deficit. Because as you say, they could create lots of new money without danger of foreign holders of USD redeeming them in gold. And wiping out the US supply of "real" money. This continues to this day but I wonder what politicians of 1971 would think of how the snow-ball has grown into mammoth proportions since then. It's way out of control, there is no practical way that US government debt might ever be repaid in real terms. And this is why the US government likes inflation; it allows them to repay more valuable dollars borrowed with less valuable ones later. Our society's appetite for living beyond it's means has grown strong and would be nigh impossible to reverse with the painful measures that would right the ship.

Heavy foreign investors in US debt instruments (China, Japan) have throttled back on their purchases. They see and know what's going on, that they are getting slowly swindled. What if they suddenly decided to redeem all their US Treasury instruments and get back what money they could? Won't happen, they know that it would bankrupt the US and they would get mostly nothing. So they ride along with the system, raking in interest payments.

GWS · May 17, 2019

gmerkt said:
Heavy foreign investors in US debt instruments (China, Japan) have throttled back on their purchases. They see and know what's going on, that they are getting slowly swindled. What if they suddenly decided to redeem all their US Treasury instruments and get back what money they could? Won't happen, they know that it would bankrupt the US and they would get mostly nothing. So they ride along with the system, raking in interest payments.

This is why I believe they are buying up real estate in California as well as other places.
My old neighborhood there was pretty much whitebread till about 5 years ago when people started retiring and moving out.
Every house bought, including my own was bought by Chinese, with a smattering of Indian families. Cash on the barrel head.
$30K tract homes going for in excess of a million dollars. Why are they buying it up? Because land is real. Ownership and residence gets them access to some of the finest universities in the world and they are not coming to get degrees in Ethnic or Women's studies but in hard sciences engineering, chemistry and biology/medical. They get access to our technology by working in our hi-tech industries.
They know thatour cash is increasingly worthless so they are using to buy America.