Ex house-hunter

So trying to educate the deluded is a waste, but giving them cheaper accomodation is not? Think about it a bit longer term!

My opinion is you have little chance of selling your business for a shedload. I detest the BTL brigade and their clutching mentality too but your plan sounds commercially vindictive and sad for someone who's "not really into money". If you want to be Robin Hood, there might be better ways than destroying the BTL market - why not open a funded institution that teaches people something useful or offers other services for free. That's more altruistic and if the things you offer help people to learn something useful you will have made a constructive contribution. If you come back with a few million in a few years and need ideas, I can help you put something decent together... in the meantime stop being as miserable and mean as the BTL crowd

Many of the more popular coins are in fact 22 carat - Britannias, Eagles, and Krugerrands. It's Philharmonikers, Maples, and Pandas that are 24 carats. 24 carat means a .999 purity as compared to the .917 typically used in 22 carat. It makes no odds though, as both types of 1 ounce coin contain the same amount of gold - one troy ounce. To 'compensate' for this, the 22 carat is heavier (typically contains a copper alloy base metal). The best way to visualise this is that a 22 carat coin is just a 24 carat one with a bit of extra metal thrown in to give it durability. The only difference is the one you said - the appearance - with 24 carats gleaming more than some of the alloyed 22 carat coins.

I haven't read him, but as he has spoken in favour of gold, I can only assume the numbers above are because he has become a 'deflationist'?

Good answers from Thod. Without wanting to confuse, I wanted to share some musings about Bullionvault . First of all, I'm a very small customer of theirs but a 'holder' rather than a 'trader', and I'm not one a big-shot investor. I set up earlier this year, but the more I think about it, there are holes with what they do. I don't distrust the people who set up BV, rather the environment they and we all operate in. - If we got to a tragic scenario where the UK government did freeze gold assets in this country, of course they couldn't touch the Swiss vault, but I wonder what their powers would be to freeze ViaMat's activity and even force them to liquidate the UK stock. Okay, we said that it appears easy to avert that by storing in Zurich, but is that a safe assumption I ask myself sometimes. The thing is, BV are a UK-based company so I wonder if extraordinary powers can be invoked to force them to repatriate the stock here for sale. - The other thing is that to sell your gold, you need to (even temporarily) have your money pass through their Lloyds bank account. Now this bank is surely one of the most reliable, but what if (like in Argentina) the worse happened and the government tells the banks to shut up shop, disabling any electronic/physical movement of cash. These thoughts may be extreme but we are on the cusp of a new phenomenon and there really is no saying what strange reactions we will see from the PTB. One thing is for sure though - the ruling/banking class are the thieves who steered us here and they will take no prisoners. Although my thoughts are paranoid, nobody can deny there are precedents to justify this.

Seller: We put my house up at £110k but I've not even had one viewing! You're meant to help me sell it, what shall we do? EA: Let's mark it up further and when someone comes in with another stupid offer 33% below asking price, we can accept it! Seller: Sounds risky, but I'll give it a try. Anything else you can do? EA: Yep, I'll get my cigar-chomping EA friends in Bournemouth to mark up more houses so it looks like the areas is on the up again. Then we can laugh ourselves silly as the viewings are bound to come in thick and fast. Hell, I'll even log onto HPC and wind those losers up!

That's a good question and although I'm still learning I can see a couple of basic errors in your reasoning there. Firstly we have to know that Fractional Reserve banking means that a bank can loan out 1,000+ times what it has in reserve. Let's say the bank deposits a 'houseworth' of gold at the Central Bank. this means it can end up printing 1000 houses-worth of banknotes. Let's say it does that in the form of 1000 mortgages. The mortgage repayment over the term is twice the principal, and apart from paying back the principal, there is the same amount in interest to be paid, which the customer has to somehow generate from real sweat (working as a bus-driver, teacher, architect etc) or real produce (selling chairs or vegetables that he produces). The problems with this scenario (at least the ones I can see) are: 1 - Why does a bank have power to print money it doesn't have, when money rules our life, and they are after all a commercial enterprise. It's like privatising the system that was created to enable us to trade, but we put it in the hands of a greedy monster. Sorry if its simplistic, but it's true. 2 - Why does a bank get to charge interest on what it DOES NOT own? Think about this - they charge interest on paper they print. It's the mother of all swindles! You ask why cant they charge for this 'service' - well what exactly is the service? Is it managing computer systems, administering paperwork etc? Well why shouldn't we have a central bank that does it for almost free? Why does a private enterprise get permission from the government to do this? It's not possible to correlate the obscene interest charges with anything we could even say is in the realm of the reasonable. If they made a small one-off admin fee or a tiny service charge, then your point might have merit, but in fact they are ripping people off with legal consent. 3 - A bank lending itself the money??!! You mean printing more of it and putting it in the safe? Maybe what you mean is what is presently the Interbank Lending system, where they lend each other money (again that's another one to stop and think about - what's all this about lending each other money - it sounds like some sort of secret casino in the sky to my simple mind). Anyway the Interbank lending system is the one that first showed the symptoms of the credut crunch as it went up when the banks all realised they had bought and sold toxic products to each other (including Liar Loans!! haha). Banks woudl still have to pay interest on money they borrow so they avoid it unless they can make serious profits (ie opportunities to bleed someone dry). I agree that we have to take personal responsibility, and it's crazy that we swallow hook, line, and sinker, all the crap and lies they peddle through the media - we all know the stuff: buy now if you wnt ot get on the ladder, prices are going up you know and you'll get left behind; just frig the numbers on your application a bit, you will never lose out on a house in the long-term; you simply must have this 60" plasma with a diamond bezel for true high definition viewing and to be the envy of your friends etc etc. By far the biggest crime though is committed by those that propagate this and tell us how to live, then make it nigh on impossible for us to live otherwise. I dont know what commeuppance you are talkign about for the banks - did you know that in the US they have approved massive aid packages to help the little man (and woman) pay his bills? That'll be the tax dollar going to the banks whetehr it's directly or through high inflation. The banks dont take hits, they only dish them out for now. I think it's too easy for you to dismiss the 'money isn't real brigade' in the way you have. There might (or might not) be something in that argument. Really I think it's wiser to put the banks under more scrutiny than we reserve for fellow posters... unless of course you want to believe blindly and not even question the possibility that there might be something more than meets the eye out there, in which case that's a choice too. Injin's slight abrasiveness aside, who do you think is the foremost culprit in you 'Liar Loans'. I mean we all know it's been going on, but since it's your key message, what do you think Liar Loans say about the people and institutions involved and even society at large?

I don't wnat to engage about it right now, but the ethics/morals of what your buyers did is another whole story in itself and probably the banks/powers that be, are instrumental in creating these behaviours, which many right-minded people say are dodgy. But honestly, do you think those people are responsible for this global financial mess!?!? To say that the banks have been shafted by this behaviour is like saying that Godzilla (whilst busy destroying downtown) is a victim because a rat had a wee on his foot! We can question people's behaviour but MUST start with the big boys who call the shots and control our lives. They are the ones that need to answer questions.

Since we are invited into this discussion, I'd like to say that the two 'political' views that Eric and Injin don't seem entirely incompatible imho. It seems (superficially) to me that much of Injin's perceived 'annoyance' is just because Eric has a mantra that he admittedly posts everywhere he goes on this board. Back on the subject though some general points: 1)Present day money is an obscene fraud, created and run by those who want to enslave and own everyone and everything. It doesn't take much research to find facts and ask yourself questions about some of the basics around money. It's good to try and do this in a level-headed and critical way, without swallowing anyone's word for gospel. I am fairly intelligent but I struggle enormously to comprehend even some of the basic mechanisms of how the money system works. Many of us tend to laziness when faced with something that is hard to understand, and that, plus the fact that we are not taught much about this stuff at school is what helps to keep us enslaved. If anybody things a bank is benign and/or respectable business, they are with respect either intentionally or naively stupid/uneducated/ill-informed. 2) LIAR LOANS as Eric promotes is what I understand as people frigging the numbers on their mortgage applications to get the load they want. They might well be Liar Loans, but these are a direct product of the monstrous money-system. Banks are at fault first and foremost and the naive/stupid person taking the loan is secondary. The banks have at their disposal all the power/media/institutions they need to pull as many tricks as they can to keep the machine going. Their monster is a money system based on eternal debt, and if it doesn't carry on growing it collapses. This is probably why in the end fiat currency will die, but in the meantime they are doing everything to keep it going from starting wars to encouraging Liar Loans. Still, the 'little man' is a victim in all of this. This is why (unless I'm missing something) I don't see your two views as incompatible.

They want to be able to do it covertly to avoid another Northern Rock!! Hopefully if any bank is going to fail, it does so this year before the law is passed. What a fantastic triple-whammy for the taxpayer - they want to stop them going to the wall, and: - It's done in secret so the poor bank does not die a death because of its recklessness/greed - We're supposed to pay - through the public purse or inflated money supply - We get to bail out the scum that caused the problem in the first place, so that they can do it again at some point This is the fantastic state of our free market economy. :angry:

Are you that attached to it you dont want to let it out of your sight? Or were you planning on trading it for cash along the way?

You're partly incorrect - it's not if people hadn't been dumb, but also if they hadn't been cheated. I agree that people should be wiser when it comes to multiples, but when the damn goalposts keep getting changed according to the whims of the banks and VIs, they open the door for trouble. Okay so nobody forces you to walk through that door, but it makes no odds - we should FIRSTLY and repeatedly kick the rule-makers instead of the hapless/stupid/powerless victim, otherwise what you are saying is that it's okay for the powerful to set traps and it's just up to us not to walk through them. I have zero sympathy for those - like BTLs - who lose out because of greedy and speculative behaviour, but there is so much to blame the powers that be for, before we even start on the normal person. I think it's intolerant to just dismiss everyone stupid (like the lady quoted by the OP) - she is surely more victim than idiot. To be fair though, I think maybe I can relate to the frustration. When I was looking 2 years ago I remember one specific case where a lady was bidding desperately to get a house I also wanted, but she bid right up to a very high asking price which I didn't. I remember seeing her at a shared viewing and remember the way she spoke somewhat aggressively about how she had to have the house. She ended up getting the house alright, but it was silly money and she may well be paying the consequences for it now. At that moment I was quite bitter about her behaviour, though I did ask myself how we ever get to a situation where normal people are forced to act in this way. True for the present 'free' market economies.

A desperately miserable question. If you haven't already gone and invested it in a BTL, give it to a charity then when the bank calls tell them you thought it was a windfall and you have a receipt from the charity you gave it to, so they will have to chase the charity for it. If the tight-asses see past your good-natured attempt and still force you to pay up, do it, but at least you will sleep happy in the knowledge you've done one half-decent thing - given the cash to a good cause.

Is the white arch to the right of the rocket the Gold cartel's evil eye? The 200-day MA is steady support though... hard to see the price ever going below $850 again.

I dont think we should socialise problems like this, but neither should we demonise well-meaning people. I totally agree with personal responsibility, and I don't doubt that this lady is assuming hers as it's staring her in the face, and even driving her to ask the seller for advice!! She is stuck with this problem... unlike those SOB's who create the conditions for this to happen - I doubt whether her bank, the chancellor, property VIs, the BBC, Kirstie Allsop etc will be footing problems anywhere near as bad as hers. If you think that we have such a thing as a free market you are sadly mistaken - we have an interventionist, manipulated, fraudulent and speculative one.