Metals Report and China…Should YOU buy???

Greetings from David’s desk….

An unexpected bill popped up today and I needed extra cash.  A quick call to our local wholesaler and he stopped by, picked up 20 Gold Buffalos and a Silver Mint Box and left behind a check for $34,000.  From my phone call to the time I had the check in my hands less than 30 minutes had passed.  Now that’s what I call liquidity.  Try that with your stock or bond certificate.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is it kills me to sell my metals!  I know, I know, that’s what they’re for but you work so hard to build UP your pile that it is not easy to shrink it.  I look at it this way – I just spent some of my kid’s inheritance.

Today was not one of my better ones.  My daughter and a close friend both insinuated that I was too negative.  I spent too much time defending my view that the mosque should be built anywhere BUT near the 9-11 site and that the economy is heading South by the end of the year.  As Sergeant Joe Friday says, “nothin’ but the facts mam.”  And the facts are clearly laid out in the Chris Wood article, later in this blog, titled Caveat ECRI.  Read it and see if you canlogically find a reason to expect the economy to be robust by year’s end. Remember, the ECRI index is a “leading indicator,” and predicts the way the economy will perform six months out.

I feel a kinship with Richard Russell.  His logic and way of seeing things dovetails perfectly with my perception of things.  In his remarks, today, he mentions that he too is feeling negative.  He says, “As my readers know from earlier reports, it would be difficult to find anyone more negative than I am– but perhaps Marc Faber was when he wrote “I truly think we are all toast.”From the August report by Marc Faber, editor of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Reports.

I think Marc really means what he says. Marc is no late-coming dummy. He’s been around a long time, and he’s on the Barron’sprestigious Round Table. But are we all really “toast?”

I can’t help but believe that the best approach is to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.  But with our industrial base gutted out, our banks loaded down with toxic investments that they refuse to mark-to-market, our real estate markets in shambles, our country fractured – conservative vs. liberal, Democrat vs. Republican, pro-Obama vs. anti-Obama- and with the US bogged down in two wars and a third looming on the horizon in the Middle East, what’s to be optimistic about?

I’ll look at the bright side.  I have a fabulous wife, two great kids, five wonderful grandchildren, a secure and flourishing job and my health.  It could be worse.

Try and read the Embry article and the articles by Clark and Wood.  Good stuff!