A couple of notes:
Gold and Silver, at least here in Canada, is getting harder and harder to purchase anonymously as the government increasingly turns its eyes towards local dealers, proclaiming that terrorists/criminals are laundering money through dealers. I can buy it from one of our regulated banks, but the reporting requirements are unacceptable (i.e. drivers license/address) etc etc.
Digital gold currency sites are not acceptable as (a) you really don't know if your gold is there, and (b) it is a centralized system. This makes it a target for the bad guys as they will prosecute the owners, seize the servers and records, and waterboard the participants. In fact, the owners of e-gold just pleaded to a Fed charge of "money laundering" which sends out a disturbing message: a business is responsible for what its Customers do. I wrote a
blog entry on FINTRAC, which ias Canada's "financial intelligence" federal department.
They are using that old stand-by of invoking the terrorist/criminal bogeyman and applying to participants in the digitical gold (and silver) currency sites. This is pure BS. What people have discovered is a mechanism where they can network and trade with each other
outside the taxation and inflation system the State enforces upon us. That is what really has them concerned.
Of course they don't mention that the "red market" is where the greatest money laundering scam in the world takes place, namely via the central and private banks and legalized by the State.
Anyway, they are pushing for the local gold and silver dealers to be "regulated". Since they have a number of privacy seeking customers, the dealers know the writing is on the wall: as the "regulation" takes place, their Customers will dry up, thus they will be forced to either exit the business or go bankrupt.
My point is, if your regulation is anything like Canada's, you'll want to start your hard money purchases sooner rather than later. You will want to procure it anonymously - don't let the government know where it is, as they will want to pull you back into their taxation/inflation system.
As Alan Greenspan said (yes,
that Alan Greenspan:
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
Secondly, you will want to set up a trading network with each other, using sound money. That way,
- When (anyone believe if?) the collapse comes, you will have an established network of trading partners already set up.
- If the collapse does NOT come, hey, guess what? You just set up a network where you can buy each others services/products without having to report it for taxation, regulation, and/or confiscation. Imagine your productivity gains trading part time without having 50% of it stolen via taxes and X% due to inflation. Just be sure not to centralize your network. P2P encrypted networking works best.
My debased two cents.....
