[quote=CONCHO]I love the whole “we’ll use gold to buy necessities when the Mad Max scenario hits” idea. Let’s see how this works:
1) Walk to the store with some of your gold coins and buy food.
2) Your starving neighbors notice the one guy on the street carrying food back to his house and surmise that he must have some gold.
3) Your starving neighbors storm your house and steal all of your food and gold. You shoot a couple of them before they overrun and kill you.
There is also the alternate scenario in which private ownership of gold is again outlawed by the federal government as happened under FDR. In that scenario the story goes like this:
1) Walk to the store with some of your gold coins and try to buy food.
2) The clerk freaks out when he sees gold coins instead of the federally-issued emergency ration coupons and presses the button under his cash register.
3) Blackwater goons attached to the store (to prevent rioting) grab you, throw a hood over your head and load you into a truck to be taken to a FEMA camp for some extreme sports activities like waterboarding.
Maybe you think you can escape the Mad Max world of Southern California and carry your gold coins off to someplace safer like Costa Rica or Australia? That scenario is quite entertaining as well:
1) Walk through a federal checkpoint X-Ray machine in an airport or at a border (could even be state or city borders if the SRHTF) on your way out of town.
2) Ding ding ding goes the metal detector.
3) The TSA gangstaz confiscate all of your gold coins which they then melt down to make new grillz for their teeth. Just for fun they take your shoes too.
Sorry I just ain’t buying it — now having a garden and some chickens and goats I can see. Having stores of food and water, I see that. Having a gun and some bullets and basically laying low for a while, I see that too. Walking down the street with gold doubloons in your pocket? Not so much but hey if you think it’ll work more power to you.[/quote]
Concho, you may be right. We’ll just have to see how this all unfolds. But I think you are assuming that we are going to morph from a credit based society to the “Mad Max” scenario in about three (3) weeks time. Does that seem realistic to you? I am simply advocating that a prudent person should have *assets* in his/her stockpile for a variety of different situations that may unfold and so that one can be prepared to transition through these periods as they unfold.
I have HUGE quantities of food, water and just about every toiletry, first aid or other basic household supply that you could imagine, and I do have a garden. So I’m with you in that respect.
Just to be clear: I am not advocating that anyone should hold gold when and if we hit “Max Mad” territory. But I expect that we have at least a few years before that happens, and i expect gold to rise dramatically in that time. And until we are all reduced to playing bloodsports in the Thunderdome, until the ration coupons are distributed, and while I can still go into a store without Black Ops hustling me into a dark van with government plates (as played out in your fantasy above), I think gold is a smart play.
And only a fool would walk down the street with bullion or even large amounts of the soon-to-be-worthless cash in their pockets.
If gold goes to $2000 in the next 12 months, and if your “Mad Max” scenario hasn’t come to pass,and if there is still food or any other hard assets left to buy, then I intend to cash in on my profits and buy them. I guess you will just be living off of whatever you have already bought and stocked, since your dollars won’t be able to buy anything else. If you’re comfortable with that strategy, more power to you.
