alexreeve

Really because it looks horrendous: http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Can the US government keep refinancing their debt, and finance their deficit with interest rates at 5%? What about 10%? What about 20%? What is the point at which elevated interest rates become politically unacceptable? What happens to the Fed's balance sheet if the US government defaults on its debt obligations? I don't know the answer to these questions. I think you have rather misunderstood the primary obligation of the central bank if you think they can completely ignore government funding needs to deal with inflation.

It's a fair point. I certainly thought the banking crisis would eviscerate both USD and GBP in short order. What I failed to appreciate was the ubiquitous nature of the problem. It did not occur to me that every significant central bank in the world could/would co-ordinate so effectively to prevent catastrophic exchange rate fluctuations. However I still don't see any liquidation of the bad debt (and corresponding credit) that cannot be repaid. I do not see any progress towards a resolution to the financial crisis, just still growing imbalances. Do you feel that the financial crisis is over, and we are seeing the green shoots of healthy recovery?

First bitcoins then gold coins. It's like someone is playing whackamole.

I genuinely suspect we are in for a long period of extraordinary wealth disparity. However, oligarchs don't generally buy at the top of the market, do they? I can't help thinking there'll be a wash out first.

I was speaking to someone recently who has been looking to buy a family home in London. She earns £200,000+pa, and her husband maybe £50,000. Having eventually come to the conclusion that they could barely afford a slum-clearance terraced house of yesteryear, in a second rate location, they have elected to sell their small flat and rent for a couple of years to "see what happens". They are not big believers in an inevitable HPC or anything, they just acknowledge that they are priced out of anything they would want to own and are just hoping circumstances change, maybe get posted elsewhere or something. I don't see how property continues to go up from here, even in London.

A chance to do it all again today.

Perhaps. I think Bubb is technically correct to point out that it nets down to a relatively small (but still very large) number. So 100s of billions, rather than the supposed quadrillions. While that is many orders of magnitude less, I'm just not sure it makes that much difference when it unravels, assuming the banks/pension funds/insurance giants have many orders of magnitude less again set aside to cover losses.

You are talking like the Lehmans filing and AIG bailout were two separate things but the chronology seriously suggests otherwise. It was Lehmans filing that screwed AIGs derivative book, and the belief at the time was that it would cause a cascade failure of the entire banking system. The policy response to prevent this financial armageddon was beyond anything previously imagined. Even if you would argue this was simply a bankster scam, it was not allowed to play out without intervention, and thus provides no evidence to suport the notion that a counterparty failure nets out to insignificance. This is not a good example of how derivatives are actually pretty stable and not that big of a risk: Lehmans filed on 15 Sept 2008 AIG bailed out by the Fed to the tune of $85 billion on 16 Sept 2008 Ben Bernanke asked Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson join him, to call on members of Congress, to describe the need for a congressionally authorized bailout of the nation's banking system ($700 billion) 17 September 2008

Proud in the context of that axiom just means sticking out enough to snag things moving past, not as in prideful. I'm not a fan of JS messianic imagery and rather culty language like CIGA. Still it is obviously popular with plenty of people. However he is just one of many gold based websites/newsletters that have a similar MO.

Quite nice - http://www.heureka.clara.net/surrey-hants/gu-ford.htm

This one, which I thought your comment referred to:

According to the graph in the link the detached properties have gone from over £800,000 to under £500,000. Far, far more of a drop than I have observed living pretty close to Guidford.

This is shaping up nicely, and profitably (so far).

So is giving your money to a pension fund to invest in mortgage debt and government debt etc No. For one thing, I don't think pension funds will be paying out money (sufficient that you can live on), in 10-20 years time. Not that I think buy to let is a slum dunk, but anything that allows you to retain control is better than easily broken promises for the future.