halfnine wrote: ↑Fri Jul 30, 2021 4:35 pm
nigel_ht wrote: ↑Fri Jul 30, 2021 10:54 am
"“More than half our clients want to pay in gold,” said one estate agent in Puerto Ordaz, who described a recent nerve-racking drive through the increasingly lawless city to broker a deal, following buyers carrying an apartment’s worth of precious metal.
“The client said ‘come in our car’, but I said: ‘No, we are traveling behind you.’ With the insecurity you don’t know who knows you have gold,” added the agent, who is still struggling with the new norms of doing business, and asked not to be named for her safety.
Even the universities have been swept up in the gold rush. “In November, one of the girls who is studying here told me: ‘A degree is not expensive, because its only 2.5g of gold [for a semester],’” said Arturo Peraza, rector of the city’s influential Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. “It was the first time I learned the value of a university education in grams of gold. I could not have imagined it.”"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... rmed-gangs
Yes, if you have a lot of gold and no guards then gangs will come and take it. If you only have a little bit then it has just replaced cash in the local economy. It's certainly not a good place to be but you can't argue that:
a) Gold doesn't get used when money stops working due to hyperinflation. It is happening in Venezuela.
or
b) Gangs will come steal the small pittance that you have any different then they would have done when money had value and you had cash. If this constantly happened then a gold driven local economy seen Puerto Ordaz wouldn't work.
…
These aren't grandparent success stories. Many of the Vietnamese refugees (boat people) are my age or younger. While I could be a grandparent by now these stories aren't from some ancient time in the past but experienced by contemporaries.
Are they biased? Around 1.3M left Vietnam. The ones that made it here to the US do represent survivorship bias but the outcome was much better than if they had stayed. About 10% died along the way...although some estimates are as high as 300K. 424K made it to the US.
Is it a good reason to hold gold for US citizens? I guess that depends on a lot of factors. Some economic and some personal.
You have selectively edited my posts,which changes the content.
There is a back link for the full text.
However, you are not going to be trading significant amounts of gold (particularly gold coins) without undue notice and risk.
People are buying condos with it sooo…yes there is risk but it’s happening.
There are plenty of crisis currently happening and that have happened all all over the world in the past 20-30 years. You are welcome to post all the examples where there is/was a gold driven local economy.
Well dollars and euros work too…if holding them isn’t risky because it’s linked to the west. Gold is more awkward but it’s untraceable once melted.
In the case of US citizens needing gold the assumption is that dollars aren’t worth much anymore.
As to Vietnam that happened 45 years ago.
That’s not that long ago really.
As I indicated in my original post (which has again been edited out) the world has changed a lot since then. In the current era one doesn't need gold to migrate as there are plenty of ways for you or I to hold other currencies or foreign assets.
Do you? I don’t. I would guess more folks hold gold than foreign currency or other foreign assets.
Obviously, and as I mentioned in my post, if you are facing extermination then of course you will leave. But, otherwise, you are likely much better off staying where you are. And if it gets to the point where either you or I need gold for any chance of getting out of the country, we already blew it.
Your bolded comment is why most folks “blow it” and don’t leave in time. The assumption that if they keep their heads down maybe things won’t be so bad. That they can hide their past or they aren’t important enough to persecute or hey, they’re on the winning side…but the wrong part of the winning side.
/shrug
If your family has experienced this in the last generation or so then you get it.
If your family hasn’t then you don’t. It can’t happen here or if it does you’ll leave in time or it’s not survivable so no need to prepare. That’s essentially your argument and 99% of the time you’re right.
It’s insanely hard to uproot yourself and go somewhere else where you are severely disadvantaged from not knowing the language, have no family or friends, with little or no assets and whatever education you have worthless. To go from educated white collar elite to working as housekeeping in a hotel.
No, it’s rare for folks, even those with means, to leave in time.
I probably wouldn’t so the tiny bit of gold I hold is my Hail Mary plan.