Gold

martinman3

StevieJ wrote: »

Certainly not the UK, we don't have any left.

Not true, as Gordon Brown only sold about half of our gold reserves.

Masomnia

StevieJ wrote: »

Certainly not the UK, we don't have any left.

We have 310 tonnes.

tradetime

rl290 wrote: »

In the short term... in the longer term, I doubt that the US government's bail-out plan won't lead to increasing inflation and dollar devaluation.

It's really hard to say as there are little in the way of models to compare the current situation to imho, we are making the model It is hard to imagine there will not be an inflation price down the road. The printing presses are no doubt running at full speed around the world since it is not just the US pumping liquidity into the system, yet at the same time it disappears elsewhere, globally $6 trillion dollars were wiped off equity markets this week alone.
I'd definitely agree on the dollar longer term though, a lot of the dollar rally will have been short covering, the US deficit, which was already massive is now ballooning out of all proportions. Should investors ever come to question their confidence in US debt the unwinding would be catastrophic on the dollar, as it is I would imagine the dollar current upward move will reverse in due course.

wombat42_2

Check out Jim Sinclair
http://www.jsmineset.com/

JohnnyJet

Maybe a stupid question but how does the man on the street go about buy into gold?

wombat42_2

There are few places in London you can buy it over the counter. Also you can buy physical gold or paper gold as an ETF in a similar way as you would buy shares.

Jett

heard a guy from https://www.bullionvault.com on the radio (radio2 or five live) a couple of weeks ago explaining the process they offer for buying and selling gold. I beleive they were offering 1 gram of gold just for opening an account with apparently no strings attached. Though I haven't explored this myself.

jon3001

Masomnia wrote: »

We have 310 tonnes.

Quite low compared to similar sized West-European nations:

Germany 3417 tonnes
France 2562 tonnes
Italy 2452 tonnes

Tiny Switzerland has 1100 tonnes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_gold_reserves

trenchwars

jackdoor wrote: »

Assuming you want the physical stuff, coins are best for the little guy. Just contact your local coin dealer and ask him if he has anything, 1oz Krugerrands are the most popular. Have a look on Ebay also, but I think they go for slightly over the odds with people turning cyber money into something physical & safe they don't have to bank etc. (fill in the gaps yourself!).

It seems that virtually every buillion dealer in the country has sold out of 1 oz gold coins at the moment.

There doesn't seem to be any shortage of higher-value bars that are out of the price range of small investors.

Masomnia

jon3001 wrote: »

Quite low compared to similar sized West-European nations:

Germany 3417 tonnes
France 2562 tonnes
Italy 2452 tonnes

Tiny Switzerland has 1100 tonnes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_gold_reserves

True, and the USA has more than any of them, and has hardly averted financial crisis recently. My point is that you can criticize Brown all you want for selling gold, but ultimately it makes little difference. People just shout "Brown sold all our gold!" as an all purpose attack, which means nothing and isn't even true.