Dear JP, Well, you dig this big hole in the ground in a country I know in East Africa, and you fill it with gold bars backing your DGC.
And, if the security around the mountain, provided by a million or so heavily-armed qat-chewing enthusiasts of private property aren't able to keep the USA/UN out of the mountain, and if the vault doors set in granite don't deter them, then before they can get through the last line of defense (about which I won't say much), a few thermite charges go off under each stack of bars of different metal, and the metal is melted and piped away through a slant-drilled hole in granite some hundreds of yards, after which the vault they came from detonates on entry...killing everyone who tried to break in. And they report that after they dug into the rubble, there was no gold there, after all. Your DGC, meanwhile, has recovered the gold and spirited it away to yet another place in the planet's crust. If your DGC isn't thinking about this issue, mebbe they should be. > Let's say Japan follows Argentina the way of > the Dodo, Can you say, "The Euro is trash?" A great many French people can, and they say it in French. "Euro est merde." > Doom! Excellent game! Though, for my taste, Castle Wolfenstein was the best-in-genre. > Where the hell do we put out wealth? Like that's going to be our biggest worry. <grin> > Nobody's gonna trust DGCs (governments will just > steal the 400 oz bars from the vaults). Yeah, pesky, that, having all these heavily armed men rushing the secure facility in Dubai.... > You can have actually gold bars in your house -- great. When it works, it works. > I think real estate, held clear of all mortgages, > would be good to hold. This depends dramatically on what real estate, and what happens. For example, in 1936, holding real estate in downtown Hiroshima seemed like a pretty good bet. In 1946, it seemed like a less good bet. Lysander Spooner, though, agreed with you. Around 1870, if I recall correctly, he designed a land bank that had a currency based on the unimproved value of land on deposit with the bank. If you like, I could search the [EMAIL PROTECTED] archive and find where the pages describing the bank are archived. > Real Estate actually has value, Yeah, and real estate in Tokyo can only go up in value. <grin> > and assuming your local government does not simply > steal it from you (quite likely) it is > something of real, tangible value. Local, regional, and national governments steal land a lot more often than they break into vaults in London, Idaho, and Dubai to clean out DGCs, I think. See the case of Donald Scott at: http://www.ezez.com/free/deaths.html (find "Donald Scott" within the page) As I understand it, his survivors are fighting off the land grab which is now being handled by the IRS. > so let's set them aside... What, land doesn't end up with a buy/sell spread? It is hugely illiquid. And not everyone is going to want land in downtown Houston if it ends up under a mushroom cloud. Or a bio-war cloud. > What about the good old Swiss Franc? An excellent store of value. I have an agent who travels to Switzerland quite often for several clients. > What about shares in major companies (MSFT, GM, etc)? Yeah, what could possibly happen to Microsoft or GM? <grin> > What about the Euro? Oh. Yeah. What was that you were saying, JP? <grin> > What about "bonds" and the like? Bonds can be good. Depends on the bond maker. > Who can answer the question? "Futureman!" He knows the future with blinding arrogance. Trust in Futureman! He can guess not wrong! <smile> > If the USD starts to collapse on Monday, where's the > best place to hold wealth? GoldMoney.com and 3PGold.com both seem to have sensible ideas about how and where to store gold, how and where to operate offshore servers, how and where to domicile their businesses. It may be, and I am willing to risk it, that there is nothing safe anywhere in the universe. What is a truly, perfectly, convincingly *secure* store of value? Nothing. Look at your secure transactions. The best you can hope for is that a security failure means that no transaction occurs. Security means the system fails to safe. Nothing happens, which is best, because it includes nothing bad happens. Where can you go to be safe? Really, truly, perfectly safe, against whatever the powerful people who live on this planet might wish to do to you? Nowhere. You aren't safe. The best you can hope for is that you don't fall afoul of the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times and come to the attention of powerful persons." Security is an illusion, and financial security doubly so. ("Time is an illusion, and lunch time doubly so," per Douglas Adams.) What is security, really? It is an illusion that you, as a property owner, wish to create in the minds of thieves and bureau-rats that suggests that your private property is secure and remote and safe and guarded by killer dogs, razor wire, heavy vault doors, and a whole bunch of guys with guns. But, even if you have all those things, you aren't really safe. And, indeed, if the illusion of security is one that takes place in your mind, then you are in really big trouble. Because, the fact that you think you are safe causes you not to be on guard, and if you drop your guard, you are vulnerable. So, sure, lock your car doors when you leave your car parked on the street. But don't imagine that a determined thief can't or won't slim-jim the door or break a window or tow the car off. Use a car alarm, but don't imagine it cannot be defeated. It is far cheaper to drive a less stylish car and leave it knowing that it won't be that hard to replace if it gets stolen. Or drive a big motorcycle, because people for some reason don't mess with motorcycles as much. Sure, carry concealed and, if you think it helps, get a license to do so. But, you get almost as much protection living where concealed carry is legal as you do from actually carrying. If you live where concealed carry is illegal, you should not assume that your prospective assailant thinks you are armed, and you should act accordingly. But, heck, JP, this one is getting off topic, and I don't want to vex Jim Ray more than three times a week. <grin> I can see where e-gold has a few deficits as a store of value, which is why I've tied up some of my e-gold in a 1mdc Term Lodgement. (You rock, JP!) But, have you considered what one atmospheric burst of nuke-fire over the USA's Eastern Seaboard would do to the root name servers in Fairfax, Virginia? Even if they are deep, have remote backups, and such, the power grid is going down for a while. Admittedly, the Internet remains designed to survive loss of nodes. But, it isn't going to be pretty. There is no security. The best you can hope for is eternal vigilance. If you are very lucky, you, a few close friends, and some dogs can spell each other on watch. Get some sleep. There's no use worrying about the fact that you really aren't safe. Old New Yorker cartoon shows a king on his throne, palm in hand, elbow on throne, with the thought balloon, "I'm paranoid. I know I'm paranoid. But... am I paranoid enough?" Regards, Jim http://www.two-cents-worth.com/?101468?EG --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
