Piggybank

This is frustrating to read (because it is SO true). Jizzy ©️#nt and Ratty Sundick in todays budget will gleefully say "we told you we would get inflation down" when really it's reduced to (still terrible) level naturally - purely because people are skint.
And don't get me started on if the snowflake left take power (they probably will at next election). It would come crashing down even faster. Both sides (left and right) are trash and designed purely to make us believe we have a side to be on (distracting each side to dislike each other) so that we think there actually democracy - but really we are being controlled and manipulated.

If anything, the government will probably do what it always does.
It'll negate its own role in causing all of this chaos and absolve itself of any responsibility to solve it using its own means.
It'll 'acquire' the wealth of the thoughtful and most resourceful citizens who have tried to plan for their own futures. It'll then use their wealth to settle the debt burdens, the politicians will take a cut for themselves and then claim all the credit for being a benevolent and helpful government.

Considering that this banking collapse is engineered: During the scamdemic/plandemic the reserve requirement has been lowered to 0%! US banks are now under water by at least $2 trillion if they had to sell assets due to the interest rate rise [source Best Evidence]. Add to that another $2 trillion RePo. 
In the past the FED would always inject liquidity into banks when raising rates rapidly but not so this time. 
 
Either Greg is right and it is big banks eating the little ones or this will become the incident to justify CBDC because only Central Banks have ‘unlimited’ reserves and cannot become insolvent. SWIFT was testing out its preparedness for implementation of digital currency this Monday…

Three years ago, 'covid' entered our lives and I wasn't too bothered, i'd been through other scares and had the same attitude as you...bring it on!
The trouble was, the virus wasn't the problem, I had no bother fighting that, the problem was the government and their reaction to it.
A thread was dedicated to it by @augur and later revived by  @sixgun
'Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) information; no need to be panicked by the virus – but be by your police state! (Part 2)'
Would you consider the crash, or the government's response to the crash, the real issue here?
😊

I wouldn't mind so much if we were importing tax payers. That would be fine. My fear is though that many of those imported (lost papers on a dinghy) are not going to volunteer to pay their share of tax. It's the already existing tax payers who'll be paying not only to prop up a Ponzi pension system, as well as the NHS but also funding these immigrants too.
It's just not a fair system to those who play by the rules, dot all the i's and cross all the t's - we get shafted as usual. This injustice is what's starting to make people angry.

China, Iran and the Saudis is interesting as is the US bank but the majority don’t see this as affecting their everyday life. 
The every day British person (whether born here or legally entering and getting Naturalised and a Passport after paying £7,500 in Visas and doing the process right) doesn’t want to hear Lin going on about Britain being compared to Nazi era Germany. 
The every day Brit is worried about where their kids will live one day and why they can’t buy a house or even get a hotel room in another town.
We need immigration and I agree with it, after all the old age pension is a Ponzi scheme and we need fresh meat at the bottom of the pyramid. I’m not a balding, middle aged racist but I am bald and middle aged.
My wife is a non European immigrant and is enraged 😡 with it all and can’t believe what a soft touch the UK is. She was asking what is wrong with France and every other country and I had to explain that English is most countries 2nd language including hers, so where would she want to go if she had to risk her life? 🇬🇧 of course! USA is too far away and Australia 😂 (that’s my retirement destination - maybe if they’d take me 😂). I don’t blame people wanting to leave these countries but don’t use safety as a cover.
The lefties have a lovely rose tinted outlook on life but when reality kicks in (and the Celebrity lefties and ex-footballers with Millions in their bank and houses in 5 countries can just up sticks and leave 🇬🇧 with 24 hours notice), they might have wished they thought about it first 🤔 Most Brits will have to live here until death, it’s going to become a hell hole within 20 years. Try doubling the UK population in 20 years. It will happen unless they get a lid on illegal entry. 🤦‍♂️ We are an island nation!
Where do we put unlimited immigrants? Who feeds them? Who wants their tax to go up to pay for it? How do we create enough jobs to stop us being taxed more? Who thinks we are a horrible racist country after helping Hong Kongers and Ukrainians (legally) plus many others?
I think Rishi Sunak will make this the main political point over the next 2 years to win over Labour. I’m expecting lots of news about immigration murders and the Terrorism will be coming back but worse than before. Remember the Manchester Arena 💣 wait until something like this hits London and the voters get scared! Labour has no answer for immigration, just say they’d be better at dealing with it 😂 How???
Rant over.
PS - not ranting at you @BigMac at all. Just got me thinking about the MSM and why this Lin story got so much attention. If it’s in the news it will help a Govt hard on illegal immigration look better to most voters than a soft Leftie govt. Maybe I’m wrong 🤷‍♂️ 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-10/silicon-valley-bank-the-investor-lender-networker-of-startups?leadSource=uverify wall
What was Silicon Valley Bank to the world of startups and venture capital? Practically everything. 
Conceived over a poker game between two of its founders nearly 40 years ago, the firm grew into the single most critical financial institution for the nascent tech scene, serving half of all venture-backed companies in the US and 44% of the venture-backed technology and health-care companies that went public last year. And its offerings were vast — ranging from standard checking accounts, to VC investment, to loans, to currency risk management. 
🤔

It's getting more about control now I feel sorry for the younger generation . 
" Poor people in debt are easy to control " 

#53

Thanks for the shout out Katy.  It was a pleasure to do this for you. 🙏
 

I enquired with @SilverAngel if they could make me a personalised bar in memory of losing my dog a few weeks ago. They kindly obliged.
I was expecting a simple dog design, but instead I was asked for a picture of my dog. I soon received back a few designs to choose from (they all looked just like him! But I opted for this design as the angel wings and the fact you can still tell it's a chihuahua stood out to me). 
I've just received images of the final product (attached with permission) that will be arriving tomorrow. I originally asked for a 2oz bar, then decided I'd prefer 100g which was no problem. The price was also incredible - especially when you consider the time and skill involved. I just had to make this post and send some kudos their way.
I'm blown away with how lovely it is, thank you @SilverAngel 🤗

Big brother is watching us you only have to talk about a subject and the next thing your bombarded with adverts for that very thing. I have taped the microphone up on my phone stop the buggars listening in. Be safe wear your hat with pride

Play it safe

You can read and not post... this site needs some balance too much nonsense tin hat stuff goes on. its not a forum about PM. Its forum for the Paranoid 

I could understand "Card payments preferred" during the Covid pandemic, but I dislike "Card payments only".
I have much empathy with "cash only", for whatever reason.
It has become harder to pay only in cash, particularly with the huge rise in online shopping. It it very difficult to book a flight, hotel, car hire using cash, as most of it is done online.
Whenever business is done face to face, its strikes me as unfriendly to demand card payment only. It is almost certainly done because it saves costs for the business, but **** the customer. Great attitude!
Remaining flexible, and accepting multiple payment methods makes the most sense to me.
Before anyone else points this out, we at Chards have discouraged or refused credit card payments for many years now, partly because they used to be such a rip-off for merchants (think commission rates up to 7+%).
When the EU trumpeted about capping credit card charges, they conveniently forgot to mention that at the same time, they allowed banks to increase their debit card charges. These used to be as low as 10p per transaction, and now cost upwards of 0.3%, which makes little difference on small transactions, but punches a huge hole in gross profit margins on transactions such as investment gold. A £100,000 transaction (not uncommon) now costs over £300 in card fees. If the dealer is making a 2% margin, that works out at over 15% of the profit. Working on a 1% GP, it would cost over 30% of the profit.
The customer / buyer does not see this, and paying by card can be quick and convenient, but any dealer who accepts DC payments for large amounts has to factor in this extra cost, and usually just increases his prices, so it is ulltimately the consumer who pays it, even though they hardly ever realise.
Whenever we implement any policy, such as preferred payment methods, there is always a valid reason, and we are always happy to share the reasons with our customers.
😎

Silver for me. The demand in the industries on the next years will be huge, not so much for gold (to expensive).
or
I also have around 12000 orders selling Lego
The average life span for a Lego set is 2 years, during this time you can buy them at discount, promotion...
After 2 years the set will retire (not all) and the price will slowly goes up. You can double your money in this way if you have the space to store.
Of course this is not apply for all sets, usually the one's with unique minifig are doing better.
This is not a financial advice, is a proven method tested by me during last 7 years.
The idea is, everything is make sense with Lego, the demand, the novelties, the rare or expensive sets, the price growth after not selling anymore in stores, but nothing of this is apply to PM market, nothing at all.
 
 
Just in case someone's thinks I'm talking bollocks

 

 

Sadly none of us can predict the future prices of PMs.
Silver seems to lag and remain too low and I don't understand the reasons other than to speculate that the market is rigged by the big players.
We stackers don't really count in making a difference as we are not buying in the thousands of tonnes per order.
Platinum used to cost more than gold and I find it hard to understand why a once more expensive, possibly more useful and certainly rarer PM than gold is relatively inexpensive to gold. My mathematical genie points to gold being over-priced so do you buy gold, wait for the fall / realignment or miss the boat ?

Predicting gold price is about as scientific as predicting winning lottery numbers and it is always easy to pick a global event and link it back to a price change.
Gold went up because the USA downed a foreign spy balloon, no it is something Putin said, no it went down after the earthquake, it will rise because of the friction between China and Taiwan, it will rise as the coffee harvests failed, price of orange juice, missiles landing in Israel, sun spot activity .... take your pick and match it after the event - easy and mostly BS !! The computer algorithms of the big players buying and selling contracts according to the third derivative of spot triggers speculation. I think this also happens with crypto and as soon as something is seen to be rising, money and contracts pile in and for no other reason than greed then at some stage the bubble bursts. The conservation of money means for every winner there is a loser so do you bet red or black on the roulette table ?

Time for another update. The first batch of units has been dispatched from America estimated delivery is apprently Thursday. Will start contacting people in the middle of next week regarding payment and delivery etc. Second batch is going to be dispatched around the end of the month so should be here at the start of March. Appolgise for the delay this is how Sigma describe themselves
"
Sigma Metalytics is a family owned and operated business based in Chico, California, founded in 2013. We take pride in the fact that our components are sourced from the U.S.A. and each of our units is hand-built to order right here in our Chico factory.
We’re not a big tech company that can always overnight your order, but our engineers take the time to build, calibrate, and test each Precious Metal Verifier by hand to ensure they are the finest quality and have the highest accuracy.  "

This company cancelled their Official Sponsorship and advertising on TSF around the same time that another member which I will not name asked for their account and all information about them to be deleted when I called them out for directly trying to damage TSF and actively suggesting to members via PM to cancel their membership and go to his FB group instead, all while TSF was sponsoring their YT channel. 
I had felt that CC had used TSF to get awareness of their auctions and then cancelled their paid membership once enough TSF members were aware of them and also were possibly persuaded by the aforementioned member, I was aware that they had a business relationship. The reason they gave was that not enough members of TSF are interested in Gold. However, I had put up a public statement at the time (which has since been removed) and a member private messaged me at the time and said that the commission on his item alone would have been enough to cover several years of their membership fee. And of course, as many of you are aware there are many members of TSF who purchase gold and some exclusively gold.
Recently they actually emailed trying to buy TSF or offer me a job. Of course TSF is not for sale nor do I wish to work for them. 
Unfortunately @Silverman2U I am unable to help but as I was tagged in this post I just wanted to make my relationship with this company clear, and that TSF has no business relationship with CC. Hopefully if you reach out again via email they are able to help. 

The thing with using a card all the time is that the money is constantly depreciating. If you buy something for £20 and pay cash, that £20 note is still £20. If you paid by card, the shop or ‘seller’ is likely paying something around 2% ish in fees. So if at 2% fees, that £20 you’ve just spent by card has just become £19.96. This is just an example of course.
The banks and card payment processing companies are the ones really benefiting.

Just off to get a sovereign. I'm still buying at £400

I won't use self service checkouts either, last time I did I make a right fuss and insisted I needed help. In the end they had to do it for me! 😁
I'm sure I could have worked it out, if I'd really wanted to. But as you say, if we accept them, then it's putting people out of work.

January not quite over yet and so far I've walked out of 2 shops and taken my trade else where and made one cashier take cash, Having refused to pay with a card.
The first shop was the local co-op. Not that busy a morning I grabbed a jug of milk, got to the till. only the new self-service tills operating. On my way back to the chiller to replace the milk The only member of staff asked if I was ok. Perfectly, I said. I'm just putting this milk back. With a puzzled look she asked why. I don't use the self-service tills. Oh she said, they are very easy to use. do you need me to show you. No thanks, I'll get it from the Spar across the road. Still with a puzzled look she asked me why. So I said. Two weeks ago when these were being fitted. Every one was told they were to help out at peak times. Today, your here on your own. Unable to man the tills. Its quite early and nowhere near a peak time. So there are reducing hours now for the staff here. Not only that but dear Mrs Jones that lives on her own can't have a chat now whilst being served. It may have been the only person she got to speak to today. Also I prefer to use cash. The Spar are quite happy to keep two members of staff on at all times and they don't continue to thrust the card machine in my face. I think I'll support them from now on.
Use cash at every opportunity you can and expect to be served. Use it or loose it.

With the general herd mentality of the masses doing their usual thing with these influencer driven PRIME drinks launching in the UK this past month, what you mentioned above has gone through my head.
Just think of Elon Musk tweeting something very controversial like " Dump $$$'s - Buy Gold "
or KSI Logan Paul doing a viral 100million vid on YouTube video related Gold 
or MrBeast giving 1oz gold coins to x1000 different random folk 
 
It may be some strange random catalyst event that sends gold back in to mainstream masses consciousness again 
None of this is anything modern or new it was written about in the 1840s "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Charles Mackay 
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/1420961012/

You know this type of post is the reason I like this forum. It seems people here are realistic about gold and what it can achieve, see it as a hedge/savings account and a bit of fun to collect. It's such a pleasant contrast to the crypto landscape which is just so grasping, desperate and convinced everything will go 100x and replace fiat.