Confiscation(The good news about silver, and gold!)Silver Stock Reportby Jason Hommel, May 14th, 2010More of my readers ask me about confiscation than any other issue. I continue to refer people to my article from 2008, but it's time for an update. I stand by what I wrote in the past, but there is more to say. First of all, gold in the hands of the American public has never been confiscated, never can be, and never will be. confiscate The only gold that has ever been confiscated was gold held by banks for their customers ! Let the buyer beware who owns ETF's, certificates, bullion accounts, or those holding gold in some storage program; again, beware! The government has never, and will never, send agents house to house, asking you for your gold, at the threat of gun point. And even if they did, it would be so easy to evade that kind of inquiry, by merely saying, "My gold, I sold that years ago!" Think about it, they don't even do that to fight the drug war!! Furthermore, in a nation of gun owners, government agents would likely terminate the program after about the 100th house they searched, due to the people fighting back. If the government can't win the war on drugs, against laid-back lazy pot heads, do you think they could win a confiscation war against vigilant, anxious, sober, gun wielding 50-60 year olds, many of whom are decorated veterans of the special forces? In fact, for those people who know of Bible Prophecy, and even for the atheists and agnostics among us, gold ownership should be the key factor keeping people alive through the coming 7 year tribulation predicted in the Bible in Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation. There will be people who will not ever take the mark of the beast required to buy and sell, and it is those people who will likely have silver and gold who will survive to populate the earth after the tribulation and during the millennium, whether believers, atheists, or agnostics alike! Not even drug sniffing dogs can be trained to sniff out gold, because SILVER AND GOLD DO NOT HAVE ANY ODOR! But let's think about this a bit. Why is confiscation even an issue? Why are gold buyers being trained to ask me about it? I believe it's because there are numismatic dealers who make more money, and spend more money advertising, make this an issue to be able to sell overpriced gold. Let me explain more clearly, by way of statistics. The honest gold bullion market is about a $2 billion market in the USA, with margins of about 1%, on average. I estimate that, because gold eagle sales are about 1 million oz/year (record production), and assuming that those represent half of gold purchased in the USA (given my experience as a dealer.) Thus, honest gold dealers have a gold profit of about $20 million, total, among all gold dealers in the USA, and out of that, will come ad dollars to be spent on things like this email letter that you are reading now to inform you about the truth of the product that we sell. Why do I go through all that? Because I read that the numismatic market in gold is about a $10 billion market. It is not only 5 times as large, but the profits are much larger, too, with margins of about 50 to 100% or more, and thus, the numismatic market earns perhaps from $2 to 5 billion per year, from which they get to spend on advertising. So, the numismatic dealers might have an ad budget about 100 to 200 times as large as honest gold dealers. Think about what that means for the education of the average gold buyer. We sell double eagles, old gold coins around 100 years old, when we get them, for about 10 to 15% over the price of gold. Yet those same coins are often sold to the unsuspecting public for up to 100% over the price of gold, to naive clients who are trying to buy "non confiscable" gold. And thus, by buying the wrong kind of gold, from liars, they end up not only having half of their wealth immediately confiscated, due to their own foolishness and irrational fears, but they end up funding the businesses, and ads, of the liars who continue to spread their lies about non confiscable gold. This issue really bugs me, as you can tell. I don't cover this often, because there is the other side of it, of course. If wealthy buyers wish to buy overpriced gold, or bid high insane prices for rare coins, that's entirely their own business, and there's nothing wrong with that, it's their money, and they can spend it as foolishly as they wish, and there should never be any laws passed to prevent them from doing what they want with their own money. Furthermore, why should I expose a $10 billion fraud, when the fraud of selling phantom silver is a $200 billion fraud, and much, much, much worse? To be rational, I should write about 20 articles on the paper silver fraud for every article I write about overpriced numismatics, and so I do. Now, my comments do not exactly address the issue of the 1933 gold recall, or some say, "confiscation", where collector coins were theoretically exempt. Collector coins were also undefined. Some say there might be a new law passed where if you pay 15% over spot, then it could be defined as a collector coin, and so, some more honest numismatic dealers will hype up unwanted gold that would otherwise go to the smelter, and sell it at 15% over spot, to satisfy the overly paranoid buyers, rather than sell it at outrageous 100% premiums. Now, I'm sure I'm going to be slandered by the $10 billion numismatic industry, and forgive me if I don't care to respond for another two years from now. But let me put it another way. New and popular old Eagles represent about 1/2 of the gold we sell. All other forms of gold are the other half, and so, each of the other forms represent a tiny portion of the other half of gold sales. This would include bars, Krugerrands, Maples, foreign gold, fractional gold, and old US gold coins. There's another form of gold, the new "collector" gold that consists of two toned or reverse toned proof strike gold Eagles. I could mint something similar for the cost of about $600 in new dies, but why bother. If collectors want to pay outrageous premiums for shiny new two toned gold, let them, but I'm not joining that party. Likewise, when it's my money, I don't have to buy old comic books at outrageous prices, I don't have to buy old stamps at outrageous prices, I don't have to buy antiques at outrageous prices, and I don't have to buy old or new gold at outrageous prices either. And I won't. This works to the advantage of people who think they know the collector coin, rare coin, or numismatic trades, who can find "real bargains" at real bullion shops, where things are not marked up to outrageous prices. The real confiscation is inflation. At a 20% inflation rate, that's worse than the government stealing everything in every 5th home in America, including the home and all the investments. I'll say it's worse because that kind of inflation creates economic distortions that create bad investment decisions by the remainder of the population. But think about this! Government is not likely to confiscate silver and gold, when the government is making and selling silver and gold Eagles coins! The US government makes 30-40 million silver Eagles per year now, and 1 million gold Eagles. At $20/oz., that's about $800 million in silver, and $1200 million in gold. Government is not likely to confiscate silver and gold for the budget when the budget deficit is in the trillions, which is over $1,000,000 million, or a million million. The value of silver and the gold is simply not even remotely close to being enough to help. Silver and gold prices would have to be about 100 to 1000 times higher for confiscation to even begin to help plug the current government deficit, let alone pay the entire budget. The US annual budget is $3 trillion, and all the gold in all the world is barely $6 trillion. The government would have to confiscate every single gram, ounce, and kilo of gold in the entire world, and it would barely fund the US government for two years, and then the government would be bankrupt all over again! This is why gold cannot help our government, not at today's low gold prices and not at today's huge government size. Are "collector" coins not confiscable? It's a common question. In reality, everything is confiscable, and nothing is confiscable. Let me explain. In the legal sense of today's insane world, the US government has executive orders ready to be put into effect, that in the case of a national emergency, say they can confiscate your home, your car, your investments, and even your body to be put into government work camps. Do you think that if you had collector coins, that you would be exempt from the work camps when the time comes? The only thing standing in the way of that is the second amendment, and the fact that too many of us own guns, and would never go for it. So, in that sense, even your lawn chair and your bed sheets are confiscable, but not really, since they can try to take them, but won't get very far! On the other hand, in the Godly legal sense, nothing you own is confiscable, because your things belong to you, and nobody else. It's absurd beyond reason that some government thugs, if they ever could get their hands on your gold, which they cannot, would go through it piece by piece, sorting out what they can take and cannot take. Absurd beyond reason. So, to sum up. If you don't want the government to steal your wealth, get bullion gold close to the spot price. |