J Y's Contributions

Got farmland and a community who knows and (even if grudgingly) respects you? Knowledge of the land and how to cultivate it? Willingness and ability to get hands dirty, and to remain determined enough to weather what storms may come?

Frivolous thought experiment on the predictive value of GOFO, and the former 'king' of European banking takes a thunderous fall amid macabre circumstances. Questions to ponder and specious conclusions to demolish for the weekend.

There's been a lot of talk, maybe too much talk... :-) about which precious metal is best to own, why, when, in what ratio (if any, for some). Not a trivial question to ask if one is just beginning to stack -- and not one to ignore if one had at one point tragically lost a sizeable stack in choppy waters on a midnight fishing expedition.

There are economic, monetary, industrial, geopolitical, social and in ALL cases personal considerations -- I cannot hope to cover them all: but I would like to try to start a conversation about them, and eventually dig up more details in future posts. We are all our own 'financial advisers', to a greater or lesser extent we are trying to act as such for our family and friends. It's important to have a solid, well-founded understanding of at least the pillars influencing the decision which metal to choose and in what ratio. And whether and when this decision should be revisited.

Speaking of hoarding precious metals...

A few months ago, fellow Turdite Byzantium brought up a question that I have been trying to answer off and on ever since – what's going on with UK and silver? As it stands today, the UK seems to have imported and kept a silver hoard comparable to the cumulative US silver production since 1998 (the date from which trade balance data is available). Let's take a closer look.

This is not intended to be a shocking expose, and I have no grand or explosive claims to make. All questions, few answers from me --- hopefully you, dear reader will have some ideas.

I was going to try to write a slightly funny, moderately informative post for today. Not another dark, downer of a diatribe. Perhaps something about why the UK seems to be amassing a silver hoard that is twice the size of all silver held in the SLV trust, or coping mechanisms of societies in other parts of the world before and during times of economic hardship. Then I came across a story about backpacks and quinoa, and had a flashback of sorts.

The day I finally realized that any hope of a just, representative, honest society was gone happened on a bright, sunny July morning a few years ago. I was (ironically enough) on my way to an appointment at a fearsome and powerful governmental bureaucracy, around 7 AM.

Opening the local or national newspaper (whether in old-school broadsheet shedding that familiar-smelling black ink, or on a tablet or computer) with a morning cup of coffee or tea – a quintessential part of many people’s lives, a way to start the day, get those neurons firing, learn about our world and gain some global perspective. Let's take a look at what's INSIDE that paper, shall we?