ZenOps

Exactly. What stock analysts tend to omit, is that the Hunt brothers were basically shut down by the government because they changed the rules. If the government had not stepped in an put a stop to it - than the Hunt brothers would have cornered the market and none of us small investors today would probably own physical silver (as little of it as there is left) So Ironic. That two men - nearly cornered the entire global silver market 30 years ago definitely does underline exactly how little silver there is out there. This time around, it is much scarcer than it was back in 1980, thirty years of unrecoverable industrial demand and waste. Silver is also spread around much more evenly. As few as silver investors are - they are still more spread out around the globe than the Hunt brothers. If you try to buy a Silver Maple Leaf today, you will have to wait weeks to get a 2011, all of the bullion of previous years is gone (Remember, coins have been minted for thousands of years) Gold maple leaf? No problem... Lots on the shelf, heh. Some are predicting at least a 16:1, 10:1 or even better than 1:1 ratio to gold before it settles back at its market value. And I have to say: That if the government does step in and hammer Silver back down - it would be irresponsible. Keeping such a scarce resource artificially low at this point in time would discourage silver mining and exploration (Silver being far far far more important than oil IMO) and recycling. And a word of warning to the paper Silver players: A pre-1964 US Government certified "Silver Certificate" is worth a little less than $2.

Hedge? Physical has no hedge. If you want to sell a small portion of your silver holdings to buy something else that is fine, but there is no "hedge". Which makes it far superior to the paper market as they charge fees for all sorts of things like puts and calls and options. It also IS money - meaning that if a particular currency starts collapsing, you can convert it to any paper dollar you want to (if you wish to re-enter the paper game) So you can buy a US eagle, and if the US dollar starts collapsing, simply sell it in Euros... Remember: It is money, the ultimate currency (along with gold) paper is the fools game. Do you really want to be the Zimbabwean bread boy? http://www.gonogonow.com/?p=953 Its much easier to just sell 3/100ths of a physical silver holding than hedge on a paper market and *always* lose the money to fees. < The case for Silver being more expensive than gold.I do agree with most of that video... All except the part that we have about as much refined Silver as the 1300's, I'm pretty sure its much closer to 900AD. Put it like this: Centuries of silver mining has been consumed in the last decade and thrown into landfills (unrecoverable silver, such as bandages, water filters, electronics) If you want reality: Try to go out tomorrow and buy a silver coin from probably one or two mint dealers in your city. You might be shocked. http://www.mint.ca/store/mint/customer-service/dealer-locator-1400026 The only thing I fear is that it might go so high - that the government will step in and confiscate and/or make it illegal to own.

Rumor has it that Apmex is buying back silver eagles at $3 over spot. Nowadays I don't think any premium coin (especially the .9999 maple) can be bought for anything less than $4 over spot. It never ceases to amaze me that people would pay 3% comission to buy paper silver on the market, but wouldn't pay a couple bucks (maybe a little more than the paper comission) for the real thing. Why wouldn't you want the physical if you could get your hands on it? Maples are shiny

Yeah, amazingly no tax on bullion in Canada. It is *the* place to buy Precious Physical. In Europe they have to pay up to 20% VAT tax on bullion. Which is brutal, on top of already paying much more than North America in general above spot before tax, but its not really an issue anymore because they can't buy because they ran out of premium bullion (bars and coins) a year or so ago. This may be the last chance to get physical.

Got my last maple leaves this morning, assuming Bernanke was going to drop a bombshell, and lo and behold... Already covered what I paid above spot to get maples by the end of the day. This is the last buy for me, and to be contrarian to most analysts out there - I say we are going to bust right through $50 and never look back.

$47. Now up 165% in one year, and over 1100% in eight years when priced in US dollars. The scariest thing I've ever seen to be honest. There are all sorts of different paper dollars floating around the world, but Silver IS money. The more that it goes up, the more that I'm thinking I should never sell back into a US dollar. I think I might take the opportunity to diversify into some other nations currencies or tangible assets. Convert to Rubles and buy up some abandoned mining towns? It would be a lot less of a risk than converting to US dollars and buying up abandoned Detroits autoindustry.

Good catch, meant to say raising the debt ceiling, which they will have to do soon. We are closing in on the $50 1980 high (not inflation adjusted even) Mind you, it is very unfair to all commodities to compare to the US dollar now that the US completely threw the monetary base out the window in 2008. It feels a lot like Mexico when they dropped three zeroes off their currency - more than a Zimbabwe type money printing.

QE3 is pretty much inevitable, and within the next month no less. The US has to print money or default on some loans. If the US defaults on some loans, then the entire trust of the system is gone. It would be equivalent to not making a minimum payment on a credit card. In which case, all the creditors to the US would have grounds to completely pull out of the US regardless of any "side agreements" Collapse within a day probably. Since the US does have power over its own printing presses, they can print as much as they want. They will be scorned and derided, just like the first two times - but its the much easier path of the two scenarios. Which means all commodities will skyrocket with each QE. Corn? I'm hoping it won't get so high to the point where people are starving, but I'm not *that* hopeful.

Yeah, it has yet to reach that peak. Mind you, 30 years ago, you could go to the movies for a buck, now its closer to $15. If you go by that rationale - this peak could hit $750 an ounce before it drops.

$40 US that is, it has yet to break that in Canadian dollars (never thought I'd say that) Seems to be a little bit of panic buying in the last few months. US dollar monetary base diluted to about 1/3rd its potentcy since late 2008 probably has a lot to do with it. http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/03/chart-of-the-us-money-supply-1917-2009/ It could also be the idea that Utah govt now takes gold and silver as acceptable currency alongside the US dollar, a dozen states are set to follow. Side note: Corn will probably hit the $8 per bushel mark soon (up from $2 a bushel back in 2005) and I would not be suprised at all to see $10 per bushel before summer is up.

Meh. It all pales in comparison to silver. Back in 2005, they made it legal to put Silver or Gold bullion into an RRSP. If you had bought and stored 500 ounces of Silver in 2005 (approximately $5,000 at the time) it would be worth about $19,000 today in 2011. Which at 2 to 3% interest in a standard "tax-free" savings account - would take you over a hundred years to match. Silver baby!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Parliament Don't know how much stock anyone puts in Wiki, but I'm not going to wade through any Brit document to try and find it. Rarely has the Canadian federal parliament invoked its power to find an individual in contempt: There were "contempt citation" cases in 1913,[2] 1976,[2] 2003,[2] 2008[2] and 2011.[3] So, its a probably a comtempt "citation" that was never escalated to a criminal charge, because they dissolved on "no confidence" before it could escalate to that point. However, make no mistake - it is punishable as a criminal offense.

It is called the "Harper Government" now. If you want to change the official goverment letterhead on all documents, you should take the credit and the blame. Oda was originally in contempt, then it was passed to Harper, then to the PC party. If you believe that the leader is responsible for the actions of the men and women under his control then yes, he is in contempt of parliament. Which on an individual basis has always been a criminal offense under British law, and I'm not sure what as a government basis. I might ask the GG, although he is probably to new to enact something as severe as putting the PM behind bars, lol.

Personally I think Harper should not be televised because hes in Contempt of Parliament. He shouldn't even be allowed to be leader of a party for that. If a party cannot have a representative of at least 33% of Canada (100 representatives running for office) then I feel that that party has expressed no interest at a federal level of what is best for the entire of Canada. Therefore, May is valid, Duceppe should be the one kicked out. And Harper, technically he should be spending six months in the pokey for doing something that 54 commonwealth nations have never managed to disgrace themselves with.

Rude shrill and annoying - IS politics, haha. All the more reason. Bring US a Margaret Thatcher, and have her chew her way through the opposition! The one that is quiet, is the one that should not be a politican, they should be a mute Tibetan monk. Or Rob Anders, who only opens his mouth every two years - to verbally threaten people.

6.78% is still a considerable number of people, nearly a million. The Bloq supporters are only 1.38 million, and they have 49 seats. Especially considering support is waning for all other parties, and you have a US administration that is seriously talking about moving to solar power. It does not matter what your personal opinion of her is, a million votes definitely deserves a voice.

Major misstep. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election_2008 Green had 937,613 of the popular vote in 2008. The only party to have a 27% jump, all other parties lost general votes. If the Green can do similarily this time - they will without doubt have a candidate. If they can do it twice, they are well on their way to being an official opposition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Parliament Its definitely criminal in the British Commonwealth. But the penalties are different for individuals, and the actual members of parliament. Canada adheres to a strict version of parliament under British Commonwealth. The penalty should have been placed on Oda, but was then shifted to Harper. It then forced a non-confidence vote. Since this has never happened before in the Commonwealth (nevermind the history of just Canada) I do wonder if anyone truely knows what the penalties are. Bribery and accepting bribes as a MP or Prime Minister can be considered to be in contempt as well and criminally pursable. Lying is usually considered the weakest of crimes (Bev Odas "Not") but perjury is serious especially to other govt officials and the public. Imagine if the Finance minister lied and said we didn't make an extra $10Billion, but just pocketed it (it does happen in other countries)

Well it should carry a penalty, at the very least a five minute major penalty to Harper (for highsticking, haha) Because if this should happen again about two weeks after a minority government comes back together (with more than likely the same structure) does that mean that we will endlessly have $300 million elections every time they can't agree? This could be happening several times a year.

It doesn't really matter. Canada doesn't have an aircraft carrier so we have to rent out spots on the Enterprise. The US will have about 2 thousand F-35s and a handful of not for sale outside the US F-22s (superior to the F-35) So... Its not like we have any control over where we use these planes outside of Canada. The planes go - where the aircraft carrier goes, and that means wherever the US says for them to go. If Canada wanted to help defend Britian in a world war, but the Enterprise was in North Korea because the US said it was a higher priority, guess where our planes would be... They would be in North Korea.

Math doesn't have to add up, especially with taxes. Its like buying lottery tickets. $10 for 1, $50 for 6, or $100 for 15. To give an extra $500 incentive to complete 4 years sounds like a typical stay in school scheme. Sometimes high schoolers will take just one course or one year, get their tax break and student loan and then bail.

What I don't understand is why Harper is running again? Doesn't contempt of parliament carry a penalty? I'd have to ask the Queen I guess, but she should have the power to require Harper step down for a at least a term. Syria just kicked out their government, Portugal did a few days ago.

There is no trick to owning Crown land. Just squat it. Newfoundlanders did it (and still do it, which is probably why the land is worthless compared to say Manhattan) In Alberta, all you had to do was squat land. The four OH ranches were obtained that way. http://www.ohranch.com/oh-ranch-history.htm BTW: OH Longview has been up for sale for a considerable amount of time now. $49.2 million. Many square miles of land, that no one person can really use or afford or bring up to a level to actually make it of net worth. So it goes unused, unprofitable, unbuyable and unsellable. Just like it has for the last century+.

There is also cultural perception. "Government job" is not considered to be a very high profession in many cultures. Many cultures actually place the high paying job of "Lawyer" far below that of a real profession, haha. I know that I consider Rob Anders(MP) to be a drain on society, not exactly criminal - but definitely below that of say a breadbaker or carpenter. As always you have people who are good at their job and bad at their job too. Its that much worse when both are compounded, a bad lawyer or corrupt politician is worse than a noble theif in my book (although there is sometimes little difference)

I wouldn't blame Greenspan entirely for the sub prime mess. I'd tend to blame greedy mortgage lenders more. They lent out money knowing full well that many people would default. Thing is - it backfired on the banks when they lent out too much money when it came to pay the bills (so to speak) It would have been fine to lend to maybe 5-9% sub-prime knowing that they would default, but they got greedy and started hitting double digit percentages of defaults. Then they ended up with too many houses, and no liquid income to pay back lenders. This is why fiat money doesn't work, its not honest. Now assume that for every downpayment on a house, a person had to put 10 ounces of gold or equivalent silver. But in that case - you get people protesting that they cannot get a loan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX4b_rhT0nU I think that Greenspan did what he could. That the US population itself could not pay 2.whatever% interest on a regular basis as in real productive and tangible goods growth - is also partially a fault, of the people themselves. Many sub-prime borrowers went into a mortgage with the intention of defaulting (at least they get to live in a nice place for a while, even though they can't make the minimum payments, nevermind the full amount.)