Pms Opening Strong This Week Heading Toward Black Friday...

"I don't care what it does right now as long as there's a post-Christmas plummet so I can use my wife's bonus and buy a stack of stuff..."

And she's OK with that? Man, you are one heckuva salesman!

WHAM!! 10am=$33.49 & 1pm=$34.09 --- a 1.8% increase in 3hrs flat. This is my first year following PM prices & I'm impressed!

1. Is this a typical Black Friday thing?
2. Is there also usually a post-Xmas plummet?

Every time I look at the EU situation, it makes me wonder not whether there will be a solution to all this but whether one is even possible.

Anyone ever make a "fish trap"? It's basically just a loosely woven basket that allows a fish to swim into it but has some prongs that catches on their gills and does not allow the fish to back up to get out of it. The EU countries seem like fish in a fish trap to me. They have gotten themselves into a nice comfy hiding place that they now cannot escape.

The Euro moved from 1.275 to almost 1.30 earlier this week. That kind of a move will always make commodities move higher. As the dollar drops Gold/Silver will shine.

Yep, just like here in the US, where there are all manner of shenanigans designed to support the dollar via manipulating PM prices lower and discouraging people from buying them and holding dollars.



Dare we say "vertical"?



That's a fact, Hock. All these EU problems look a bit like a new carpet that has just been laid only to have a BIG bump in the middle of the floor and all the installers are walking around it, shrugging, and saying "what bump?!"

Getting 17 separate countries to agree on much of anything is a tremendous task. I wish them well with this but wonder if it is simply beyond human capability. They say that "politics is the art of the possible", but this problem may well be impossible.



I have no idea, either, because a CDS is basically an insurance instrument that guarantees the payment on time and in full of another financial instrument, such as a bond. If the sovereign bonds / debt are "forgiven" then it is pretty clear that the CDS owners will demand that they get paid by the CDS seller. If the CDS seller is a weak EU bank, they may not have the financial resources necessary to repay the CDS's they have sold. I don't know how they could work this other than to print the money, give it to the bank, and have them pay off the CDS's that they have sold and that are now due because of "forgiveness" of debt; which looks VERY much like a dead bond that isn't going to pay the interest or return the principal to the people who own it. There are so many layers of this stuff and it covers the globe in multiple ways. Unwinding these is going to make undoing the Gordian Knot look simple by comparison.

There may well come a time when there is a real global currency but that time is not yet here. Any EU country can stop a financial rule from being created or changed, as they all seem to have veto power. They have a monetary union but not a fiscal one and that is not a combo that can work. The USA has a single currency for our 50 states and it works well because the states cannot tell the federal government how to implement monetary policy. One voice governs such decisions, not many.



LOL! Does ANY government have that problem? Not that I have noticed. Yes, some politicians pretend that taxing us is a bad thing but they keep right on doing it anyway... probably protesting just for show and re-election commercials.



Perhaps they will soon discover that lots of businesses can operate anywhere and do not need to be run in France. Might also discover that entrepreneurs do not have roots on their feet and can go just about anywhere on Earth where they can find better financial treatment. When taxes become repressive, creative people and companies will always find ways to reduce them to more manageable levels.



History shows that those pushing "the greater good" theory are responsible for far more than their share of atrocities in this world of ours. That is the beauty of the American Republic... it specifically rejects the greater good theory and defends the rights of the individual... most of the time, anyway.