"""
I just wish the whole thing was better understood by the general population.
"""

Ever wondered why they don't teach these things in school? Why are our kids not even taught how to fill out a tax return or even that they have to?

While everyone on this forum argues over spot fires (as in rehctub) the main front is about to wipe them out and if you try to tell them they attack you!

"The Matrix (Collaboration of governments, with business & banking interests) is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around - what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand - most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."

Never a truer word spoken!

I have a strange suspicion bitcoin is another scam, Arjay. Some things don't add up and too many of the peddlers are spreading false truths!

RM I tend to agree with you about BITCOIN.The founder has sold out already.Max Keiser has become a BITCOIN millionaire but he can afford such risks.

He who controls the internet unltimately controls BITCOIN.Having evidnece of BITCOIN transactions in an external hardrive will mean nothing to those who own and control the system.

Do your own homework and buy the precious metals since that is what the banksters who created this crisis are doing right now.

Here is the place and time I get to brand myself as a senile old fool.
My belief a financial breakdown will come is unshakable.
And that it is planed just as strong.
Not fear of paper money without true value as is arjays target.
Well not the whole, we may be lucky, most of us, if not all may not live long enough to see it.
But look just at our country,s housing market.
My home, transported from a Sydney near beach side suburb, rebuilt here cost less than $100.000 its value unchanged on its once block today?
Nothing less than$800.000.
It can not continue.
We are in a country so very proud of our classless life style are condemning some to never owning a home.
And playing monoply with investment property's that are overpriced.
The rug will be pulled from under us.
And with it new things maybe even one world government offered or forced as away out.

I know this will not get an answer, but I'll ask it anyway Arjay.

>>Do your own homework and buy the precious metals since that is what the banksters who created this crisis are doing right now<<

What will be the actual, tradeable value of those "precious metals" following the Mother of all Economic Collapses? Who will trade them, and what will they trade them for? If the price of gold, say, reaches $10,000 an ounce, what do you imagine will have happened to the price of a loaf of bread?

Imagine for a moment that you have invested $100,000 buying gold. In what form does it reach you? Can you touch it? If you can't, then the exercise is pointless, since you can simply be left holding a piece of paper. So you need to buy - what? Actual gold coins? Ok, let's assume you have bought gold in convenient coin form - say, in half-ounce denominations. What then? Try buying a loaf of bread with a coin with a face value of $800 - at today's value - and see what happens. As the price of gold increases, as you obviously hope that it will, the exercise becomes even more challenging.

Incidentally, you will have paid over the odds for the coin in the first place, since it has been manufactured.

Irrespective of what happens to the economy, investing today in precious metals is not going to help you much. If you genuinely hold the view that an economic apocalypse is at hand, your only responsible course of action is to buy a plot of land sufficient to sustain you and your family, and learn farming. Oh, and buy a gun.

Meanwhile - that is, until the Mother of all Economic Collapses comes about - I'll enjoy thinking about you out there in the bush, fighting for survival, as I order another coffee.

Which I pay for with a credit card that the proprietor is happy to accept.

Incidentally, on the topic of tradeable value...

>>I first mentioned BITCOIN 2 yrs ago on OLO and now it is taken off realising 1300% increase in value in just 12 months. BITCOIN is now a bank in France with over 100,000 participants.<<

As I suggested when you first raised the topic of Bitcoin, it is not the answer to any question that has yet been posed. The "1300% increase in value in just 12 months" is about as reliable an indicator of goodness as any other get-rich-quick scheme with the same magnitude of come-on growth numbers.

As Paul Krugman pointed out a couple of years ago:

"What we want from a monetary system isn’t to make people holding money rich; we want it to facilitate transactions and make the economy as a whole rich. And that’s not at all what is happening..."

Stick with the farm idea.