Ret45

Just been looking at Bloomberg - DOW down 180 pips, oil down 4 USD. Gold was fluctuating but now firmly up. I think this is a pattern we are going to see into the summer. load up on gold now!

I agree. Your posts have great conviction. I hope your plays on oil work out great for you.

Interesting Bubb, I'd love to get your take on the Irish property market. We had 14 years of rapidly rising property prices from 1994 - 2008, and we have had nearly four years of even bigger falls from 2008 to now. House prices have dropped between 40-50 percent since 2006 and are now back to 2001 levels. It has been argued that the falls have been so big because Irish banks are trying to reduce the size of their loan book and are not lending for property. The level of mortgage lending in Ireland fell from EUR 40 billion in 2006 to just EUR 2 billion in 2010 - that's a 95% drop in lending! So virtually the only buyers out there are the cash buyers who are bottom feeding. How much further do you think prices can fall?

True. And no one really has to own more than one pair of shoes. No one really has to go on holiday. No one really has to go to a football game, attend a concert, go to the pub or the cinema. And yet they do. Predicating your argument only on what people have to do is to ignore human nature. No one has to own a house. But I know many 30 something couples with young kids who want to. They want to put down roots and create a long term home that their kids will grow up in, and not have to leave at the whim of a landlord. They want to choose a location that is close to schools and know they can stay there for as long as their kids are in school. They want to pay down a mortgage and to own their home outright before they retire so they don't have to rely on investments to pay the rent in their old age. They want to pass on an asset to their children. These desires are perfectly legitimate, even if you do not share them. The simple solution is to create a legal and tax climate where people no longer want to buy a house because their needs are met through renting - long term security of tenure with built in ceilings on rental increases and with the balanace of power firmly tipped towards the renter. A tax environment that makes home ownership a very expensive luxury and which will reward investment in small and medium sized businesses. This is exactly the situation that exists in Switzerland - the population there invest their money in thriving Swiss businesses and rent throughout their lives. The government actively discourages home ownership through taxation. The only people I knew who owned their own homes in Switzerland were foreign tax exiles. Its also interesting to note the shift in attitude in Ireland (which has the highest levels or home ownership in the world) - where mortgaged property has gone from being considered an "asset" to rightly being seen as a liability. It would be very easy to change the attitude of the population from pro home ownership to pro renting with a few straightfoward changes to the tax code and pension arrangements. Just think of all the billions currently being "invested" into unproductive property that could be use to finance businesses that actually create and produce things...

Don't know about the rest of you guys but I am loving this opportunity to stock up on EUR 24 per OZ silver. This time next year you'll be kicking yourself that you didn't!

gold holding up quite well so far. If there is a bigger fall in the markets expect some deleveraging and falling prices in all assets, including Gold. that would be a good time to stock up.

Not like Turk to make short term predictions like that. He will lose some credibility if nothng comes of it next month.

Don't know about the rest of you, but this correction in price of gold and silver is manna from heaven to me. I remember a few months ago wondering would a dip in price ever come. I built up cash in my BV account and sold about 10% of my gold when it hit $1400 and now I am buying all the way back down, and my strong euro is a bonus. I am buying with a three to four year time frame in mind. Think we could get back into the low $1200s but only briefly.

I'm sensing growing nervousness about a pull back on this thread. Time to bail?

What's with the gold price - always up up up. Always new highs. Always new floors. Don't they understand i have more gold to buy?

Martin Armstrong is becoming increasingly unhinged

When, roughly, will this happen. This year, 2011, 2012?