Investment, politics and non-Mainstream Media

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Thelliand

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Just some of my favorite investment and politics commentators, websites, forums, blogs and stuff.

Green Energy Investors forums, energy, property, mining, precious metals, hyperinflation discussion and more
www.greenenergyinvestors.com

Martin Armstrong, genius flawed trader who was held for contempt of court without trial in US max security jail for over decade with long-term view of financial history:
http://armstrongeconomics.com/martin_armstrong_writings/

Jim Sinclair, guru precious metals investment:
http://www.jsmineset.com/

Max Keiser, silver pusher and amusing banker-basher:
http://maxkeiser.com/

Jim Rogers, commodities trader extraordinaire:
http://jimrogers-investments.blogspot.com/

Peter Schiff, predicted 2008 meltdown perfectly and how it would unfold:
http://www.europac.net/about

Chris Martenson, economy energy environment, scientist:
http://www.chrismartenson.com/
 
So thell, opinion on currency appreciation and depreciation and how screwed China is if the US does default on its credit and consequences for feeder countries, kgo.
 
The US won't default, it's got a printing press and hides its use behind terms like Quantitative Easing. It rolls over debt then prints up more dollars.

Problem is it's a race to the bottom for all currencies, all trying to devalue against each other to make their economies more competitive. So you don't see weakening of the US dollar that fast (say compared to Euro), just very significant inflation (which again is hidden behind so many fake government statistics when you know you're spending more than 10% of what you were the previous year). Devaluation of silver coins by dilution of silver content was the forerunner of the collapse of the Roman empire as well, and so many empires over history.

China is buying gold when it's only got gold reserves eight times less than USA (and less than 2% of its forex reserves compared to most Western countries 60-80%). China doesn't want a stronger currency either as its export market will go out of business - at least until China becomes rich enough to replace USA/Europe as the consumer. I think that's going to happen astonishingly fast in next few years. China already dominates the luxury market for everything from superyachts to Ferraris, Rolls Royces and Vacheron Constantin watches.

I guess I'm just saying be careful of that paper in your pocket, I wouldn't be surprised if it's worth little more than the paper it's printed on at some time in the future.
 
so... you two are smart

we go to thailand on the 28th

we've slowly been buying US currency for AUD (work for a bank, get nice rates with no fees)

got about 8000 now... have been getting it anywhere from 1.06 to 1.09 per aud

so i'm obviously hoping the USD drops quickly now .... so that when we exchange it for Thai baht , we get more for our USD than we would for our AUD....

thoughts?
 
Absolutely no idea short-term - currencies very unpredictable short-term.
 
Wait til I get home in 30 mins and I'll work it out. As for thell, my primary concern with us debt is China and Japan hold most of US debt, an asset write off for China at any level would be a disaster given your previously mentioned lack of reserves in many other assets and with over 1/3 of the republican majority in the US congress being tea party nutjobs in the line of Tony Abbott here there is every chance of a default purely on congress not extending US credit past 14 trillion.

The obvious flow on would be a disaster here given the US would tighten it's belt in that circumstance due to a rapid contraction in it's economy resulting in less materials demand as China would not be manufacturing as many goods and then hammering demand for European goods brought in large numbers primarily in the Asia/Pacific region which may just be enough to knock Spain off given it's high levels of debt and given Spain is too big for the European central bank to bail out, then it's all bets off.
 
But why would the government default (and be unable to meet anything the US taxpayer wants as they can't sell any more treasuries) when the Federal Reserve can just print up the money to pay the interest?

Even a republican government wouldn't be able to fund its military without selling more debt. I don't think even the Tea Party would be happy with stopping soldiers' salaries in Afghanistan by outright defaulting.

I think it will be default by stealth - by inflation. Fed Reserve keeps printing electronically ("Quantitative Easing") to kick the can down the road. US dollar gets devalued more and more, only held up to an extent by its tie to the RMB.

The US suburbs will suffer as oil prices become too high to sustain their 1 hour drive commutes and cannot heat/aircondition their 6 bedroom McMansions in middle of nowhere. Walkable high-density communities will be the only livable communities as Peak Oil hits and US loses all its spending power.

Australia will probably be OK if China sustaining commodities demand with a billion new consumers. But if recession hits in China as well which is likely, I think we'll have a depression like no-one's ever seen before. Which leads to extreme politics, and last time that sort of thing happened it led to Second World War coming out of the 30s depression.
 
1 AUD = 32.29 Thai Baht
1 USD = 30.23 Thai Baht
1 USD = 0.93 AUD
1 AUD = 1.06 USD

So given those rates if you did a straight conversion of your USD you'd have 241,840 Thai Baht (30.23*8000)
If you converted those USD to AUD and then to Thai Baht you'd have 240,237.6 Thai Baht ((8000*0.93)*32.29)

Given that, your plan to buy USD would be favorable at this time but barely enough to make it worthwhile at this time given the difference of 1602.4 Baht is a little less than $50 AUD which is more than any exchange company outside of your work would charge for the conversion.

The simplest way to explain how this works is as such:

If the stated rate is 1.50 Currency A to Currency B, this means that you just multiply the number of Currency B you want to convert to Currency A by 1.5. If you want to convert Currency A to Currency B, divide the number of Currency A you want to convert by 1.5.

Mathematically:

Exchange rate: X = A1.50 / B1.00 = 1.5 A/B
Amount of Currency A to convert = C
Number of Currency B desired = D

This gives:
D = C / X

or
C = D * X
 
Ok Thelliand.

So then the main question is.... when would this scenario possibly happen? 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? I'm very keen for this happening as it would mean another crazy low/crazy high cycle.

I know its not possible to give an accurate timing but ballpark figures? Would be nice to know so I can get all of my $$$$ out of whatever I'm putting them in.

:D

P.S. My estimates put it at ard 3-4 years time. Definitely dun see it happening within this year thats for sure. Could possibly start deteoriating/trending downwards slightly next year.
 
I'm kind of interested in things over decades for the bigger changes, timing's unpredictable.

That said, you can probably be pretty confident a US dollar (and also most other currencies) will buy you a lot less in 3 years than it does now.

Stock markets and property things like that less predictable - you've got a potent mixture of weak economic environment in West with high unemployment for forseeable future, huge spending power from Asia, possible bubbles in Asian property pushed by artificially low interest rates for currencies linked to US dollar - very high volatility is probably all you can be confident in predicting.
 
and silver went boom, lol hsbc ... prolly be a good time to get in if you're looking long terms
 
My silver counter tanked already :-(

Think I'll just stick to playing the AH
 
Silver's not for the faint-hearted, but it's still doubled over last 12 months even after the correction. Volatile as hell.
 
This week's going to be interesting.... anyone who got into physical silver on Notus's post 25th May would be up 15% now and lets see how that changes over next few days...

Central banks buying heavily into gold ... is it priced in already, going to the moon, or going to collapse with stocks like 2008?
 
Thelliand said:
This week's going to be interesting.... anyone who got into physical silver on Notus's post 25th May would be up 15% now and lets see how that changes over next few days...

Central banks buying heavily into gold ... is it priced in already, going to the moon, or going to collapse with stocks like 2008?
Click to expand...

well it's pretty simple, china has a boatload of cash, europe is a joke, the us is a joke and there just isn't enough elsewhere to take all of that, suddenly gold looks like a good investment and combined with india's habit of rushing to gold as soon as things get rough it could spike hard. Precious metals reserves could be on the way in again.
 
Online shopping is certainly going to grow (particularly in China).

If the interest is China itself there are so many political risks though. I just learnt my lesson with some major losses in Chinese gold mining stocks despite a soaring gold price. Appears China itself sets their price for the gold and says if you don't like it we'll take away the mining license. Similar to hedgefund manager Jon Paulson's massive losses on Chinese timber companies.

I imagine they'd work out a way to do something similar to their successful internet-based companies even.

I've stepped away now and sold everything China-related, business is all so opaque in China and it will be the biggest bubble the world has ever seen (whenever it does eventually burst).
 
Thelliand said:
Online shopping is certainly going to grow (particularly in China).

If the interest is China itself there are so many political risks though. I just learnt my lesson with some major losses in Chinese gold mining stocks despite a soaring gold price. Appears China itself sets their price for the gold and says if you don't like it we'll take away the mining license. Similar to hedgefund manager Jon Paulson's massive losses on Chinese timber companies.

I imagine they'd work out a way to do something similar to their successful internet-based companies even.

I've stepped away now and sold everything China-related, business is all so opaque in China and it will be the biggest bubble the world has ever seen (whenever it does eventually burst).
Click to expand...

I agree on the political issues, it's all way too tied up in red tape to deal internally in China, however as a giant factory to tie into a distro chain it's close to perfect.
 
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