Here we go!
“The first thing you learn at Wall Street: Never catch a falling knife.” Max Kaiser.
Well, you we can't say we weren't warned. This is exactly what Max and Stacy at Karmabanque have been warning us about all year. Their predictions of a complete economic collapse, runaway inflation, collapsing share prices and soaring interest rates are starting to show up on the mainstream news.
Their warning to buy as much gold as physically possible makes all the other investment tips look like handy hints for the arrangement of table flowers on the Hindenburg. Max has long been telling us that gold is the only currency not based entirely on corruption and lies. Stacy has been patiently pointing out that although house prices may have risen every month, the REAL value of properties (measured against the value of gold) has been falling consistently.
We have a GDP that's supported entirely by loans and credit, and a currency that's backed by nothing and insured only against itself. The whole thing is about to come falling round our ears and nobody is going to be left rich.
This is positively, absolutely, definitely your last chance to buy the ONE commodity that will actually be worth something in a year's time. Sell your house. Sell your car. For God's sake sell your shares. Buy gold. Buy Silver. Hide it under the mattress, then sit back and enjoy the show as America and the evil corporations lose their strangle hold on the world and plunge the polluters into third world obscurity
I know I'll end up with nothing too, but it will be worth it to see the SUV and Pimms crowd sleeping on the streets.
posted by David at 19:50
6 Comments:
Remind me never to offer you a Pimm's again :o) (I'd offer you an SUV but I know you wouldn't accept that either!)
10:44 pm
I am not understanding. The BBC doom'n'gloom article has gold suffering its "biggest drop in 25 years". How therefore is gold such a better bet than the other poorly performing investments listed on that page?
I am not really understanding Karmabanque either. From a quick reading of their site I get the impression that they are a species of anarchist? I have to admit I've never been comfortable with the morality of put options. And I couldn't find mention of gold and why it's so good there, do you have a direct link?
From my very simplistic understanding of economics I would have to disagree with your advice to sell your house; at least for residents of the UK (excluding certain areas of Burnley, which is a shameful tragedy). The UK is a small place, and land will always be in near-fixed supply. My simplistic reasoning says that this makes land/property a generally good long-term investement. That's so long as massive population drop doesn't occur due to avian flue and/or all the Daily Mail readers making good on their threats to emigrate because this country has gone to the dogs what with all the immigrants and all.
2:36 pm
Yeah, I felt the same way. However, in the last year we've seen gold and all precious metals rising through the roof. Since New year it's broken through $500 and $600 per ounce. There is a great worry in the White House that investors will start to realise the worthless nature of the dollar (which is now no longer secured against gold). You really need to listen to the podcast for a week or so to get a handle of how all this is working, but it's a scam. The price of gold is being attacked, specifically to try to scare investors away from it. The more people buy gold, the less value there is in the dollar. It's that simple.
It's no coincidence that gold made its biggest loss of the year on the exact day that the stock market made its first slip. It runs counter to any logic possible. When people take their money out of stocks, they automatically hedge towards precious metals. Therefore the price of gold would have HAD to rise yesterday were it not for one thing: The US government just off loaded their last stocks in a final desperate bid to try to keep investors wary of precious metals and keep their money invested in stocks.
Which is why I said that NOW is the absolute last chance to buy - while it's at an artificially low rate.
Gold is the only genuine currency on the planet. America has sixteen times more debt than gold. It can't pay its bills. It's going to implode and a new dollar will have to be introduced at a fraction of the value of the old one.
Recently the US government replaced its equivalent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer with the former head of Goldman Sachs bank. The same bank that was asked to for "New Bank". Which is being made ready to replace the Federal Reserve in the event of a complete economic melt down.
This was just the first slip. They were ready for it. They simply can't AFFORD to flood the market with gold next time. It only bought them a couple of months at the most.
Arm yourself. Get educated. And get entertained at the same time. if you have ANY free time and ANY free cash, I suggest you listen to Karmabanque. It's funny. It's scary, but they can explain this a hell of a lot better than I can.
It might just save your financial life!
3:22 pm
Best links I can think of so far... I'll try to look for more later.
http://www.financialsense.com/transcriptions/2006/0114blake.html
http://www.zapatageorge.com/
David Barltrop put me onto Karmabanque. I listen to it in the car on the way to work. Much funnier than Moyles
3:35 pm
Sorry, but after some thought and reading of the sites I'm quite sceptical about Karmabanque.
Reason one - it's too slick. What with its personality stock-brokers, its right-on attitude and its insider-speak terms, it's almost as if it has been cleverly designed to appeal. I smell something being marketed.
Secondly, I'm not convinced about the ethics. Short-selling and put options are, essentially, gambling on a business doing badly. To my (simplistic, maybe) way of thinking, that's not a nice type of investment. Karmabanque uses its slick and appealing methods to force certain businesses to do badly. When business do badly, people suffer. Jobs are lost, homes are lost, communities are blighted. It is not nice to profit from this sort of suffering; it is nice to profit from investment that creates jobs and improves communities. I am aware that the profits supposedly (see below) go to good/right-on causes. But I tend not to agree with the idea that the ends justifies the means. Karmabanque may be a Robin Hood, but in those stories I always felt sorry for the little guys who got the really shitty deal, namely the Sheriff of Nottingham's long-suffering and arrow-riddled foot-soldiers.
Third. I don't fully understand how the target businesses are selected. Presumably they are those companies that don't fit with the Karmabanque collective world-view. OK, some of these are obvious villains who could probably do with a knock to their PR. But come on, I see they are gunning for Mattel on the sole reason that "Barbie dolls are evil" and Harley-Davidson because "The brand is iconic Americana; worthy of a smack-down".
Fourth. It seems impossible to guarantee that all the ill-gotten gains go towards the "acceptable" good-causes that are listed on Karmabanque. Any hedge-fund manager (and seemingly at least one of the personality stock-brokers involved manages an "independent" hedge-fund) or any other investor, could place his or her bet on the target company doing badly (due to KB's efforts) and pocket the proceeds. From KBs own FAQ: "with the intention of giving most or all of any after-tax profit away" (my italics) and "The relationship between the hedge fund managers and the activist groups is symbiotic in that the activists help the hedge funds by creating good short sale opportunities with their boycotts. The hedge funds in return help the activists by funding their causes -- incentivizing them to continue launching boycotts. Everyone wins." And incidentally there's a blatant lie in there: Everyone doesn't win. The short-sold investors who stumped up on the (ethically quite acceptable) idea that they'd be helping to create some jobs don't win. The workforce and their families and communities who lose their livelihoods because of the hit the target companies take certainly aren't winning. The old folks with a suddenly under-performing pension fund don't win.
I've a sneaking suspicion that the KB agenda re gold is being run according to the same modus operandii: Have the kewl celebrity stock-brokers harp on about "dollar bad, gold good" enough, and people will start to believe. They'll act on their belief, purchase gold, and lo and behold: self-fulfilling prophecy.
One other thing. It's taken as a premise in the KB reasoning on gold that a gold-backed currency is a good thing, and a currency not backed by gold is "meaningless" or valueless. I don't necessarily accept this assertion: there is a currency market in operation, and the dealers involved certainly manage to put a relative value on the various currencies in which they trade. They must have some criteria for determining these values, albeit not gold. Currencies are presumably backed by something else, and are therefore not "meaningless".
Heretoforesaidnotwithstandingly, I fully agree that KB radio is indeed much better than Moyles. Anything is.
6:42 pm
Yes. I can agree with what you've said. I would be very happy if everything KBQ said turned out to be a big lie. And I can't expect a man who's invested his entire life's savings into gold to plug much else. However:
Don't waste your time feeling sorry for predatory monopolists. It won't cost jobs if you bring coca cola down. It will make them, as good capitalist companies will emerge to take advantage of the vacuum that the evil, feudal megaliths leave behind. These giants are bad for jobs because they're bad for competition. They also survive only due to slave wages. Oh, and they trade on their American Values. Rejecting them is rejecting the American GLobal Model. Do you need a better reason to help bring them down?
Just so that you know, KBQ targets businesses based on what Max considers non ethical policy. Quite what matches that criteria is anybody's guess.
I think you're wrong about the currencies not backed by gold being meaningless thing, though. If I remember correctly, the US debt would take eight Eiffel Towers worth of pure gold to pay off, while they have roughly enough gold to make half an Eiffel Tower.
I know it;s a crap anaolgy, but it stuck in my head.
Anyway, Mike. I'd love to debate you on this, but I'm just a listener. You're raising some quality arguments that are worth a fair hearing but they're simply beyond my ability to deal with, and to be fair I would like to know the answers too.
Please listen to a few of the podcasts. (You'll find them at streetiq.com, in the top 10) Get a feeling for what they;re saying, and then send them some emails taking them to task on what they've said. Failing that, you could always leave comments on their blog:
http://karmabanqueradio.blogspot.com/
7:42 pm
Post a Comment
<< Home