Free Republic

You are embarking on your investment journey in a very wise way by seeking the counsel of others before proceeding. Good for you.

Gold is in a competitive matrix with our investments and its relative attractiveness varies over time. It would be misguided to think of investing in gold as an “either/or” type of choice.

Gold’s place in the investment universe is as an alternative to National paper currencies (U.S. Dollar, Japanese Yen, etc.). For U.S. based investors investing in Gold has been, at different times, a bad investment and at different times a good investment.

Gold, unlike many other competing investments, does not earn interest while it is being held (unless you are a huge buyer who is then in a position to lend Gold for interest). In times of a soundly managed U.S. dollar Gold is an inferior investment to interest bearing alternatives. In times of poorly managed U.S. dollar such as the 1973 - 1981 period Gold outperforms most conventional investment products.

We are in a special situation now with respect to the U.S. Dollar. We are in the middle of an epic crackup of the Dollar-based montetary system that has been in place since the end of World War II. The outlook is murky but higher inflation and general turmoil seem to be a certainty. In this climate moving the percentage of one’s portfolio in gold from 5% to 35%/40% would look to provide strong capital gains over the next several years.

I am putting the rest of my portfolio into beaten down energy shares and Triple-A corporate bonds which I feel will weather the coming storm. While I like to the currency insulation provided by Gold I do not want to completely lose interest and dividend income.

Since you are a fan of Schiff it was gutsy of you to post this counter-analysis.

Shedlock’s analysis of Schiff’s past predictions is a devastating deconstruction of Schiff’s ideologically-driven analysis. I felt sorry for Schiff after reading this.

The lesson to be drawn from this is identify and use a data-driven rather than ideology-driven analyst with a documented track record.

Everyone should try to remember the previously discredited “perma-bears” Robert Prechter and Ravi Batra before jumping on the bandwagon with a new guru.

“Seems like it is just the liberal rags that are in trouble.....”

This is exactly correct. The “newspapers in turmoil” story line always fails to distinguish between dominantly left-slanted media outlets and those with a more balanced editorial policy.

The Wall Street Journal is gaining circulation and is profitable as are other Murdoch owned media properties. Fox News and the other Murdoch properties are bucking the trend because of a rightward editorial policy.

The headline should really read “left-leaning media outlets face a financial crisis because they have systematically alienated 35-40% of their audience”.

An interesting post.

The other unheralded triumph of the Bush Administration has been the revival of the Nuclear Power Industry have been on its deathbed just a few years earlier.

It appears at this point that it will be very difficult both economically and politically for Obama to put the Nuclear genie back into the bottle.

This single initiative by President Bush promises to have a more profound effect on the National Economy and National Security than anything done Clinton or likely to be done by Obama.

“Those fellows are about getting and staying rich.....”

I should not be a crime in this country to make money so that argument is vacuous. Do you work for free?

If you are unable to rationally distinguish the editorial content of Fox News versus the NY Times I truly feel sorry for you. During the election Fox News was the only MSM outlet that gave substantial coverage to the Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers scandals. The NYT, by contrast, acted as a de facto propaganda organ of the Obama campaign.

This conspiratorial mindset that has infected some parts of Conservative movement will consign Conservatives to the political wilderness for many years to come. When managing a political coalition the single mandate is to reward your friends and punish your enemies. Preeminent to the successful implementation of this mandate is the ability to recognize who your friends are.

A NYT under Murdoch’s management would be a great improvement but for the mere fact of no longer having to contend with magnification of every Conservative scandal and misstep. As much as Conservatives rightfully deprecate the NYT it is very important media outlet. The NYT sets the editorial tone for about 80% of the MSM. To move such an important outlet to a position of mere political neutrality would be a huge step forward.

You are right.

Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and Rahm Emmanuel are all in a room plotting how to stick it to the Conservative Movement.

Please.

Don’t forget your tin foil hat.

Murdoch has always been somewhat cynical in his political support. I don’t like or support Hillary but the Republican challenger was so weak he had almost no chance of winning. While Murdoch’s behavior was not admirable in this case it is least understandable. The Federal Government has so much power over the media business through the FCC it would be imprudent for someone like Murdoch who has so many media properties not to have access to policy makers.

The big picture is that the media landscape in the U.S. would be altered in a massive and a good way if Murdoch took over the NYT. Thousands of newspapers and electronic media outlets take their editorial cue from the NYT. A profound rightward shift in the editorial policy of the NYT would effect in a good way the entire national media fabric.

The NYT leaked several national security-related new stories that have greatly impeded the the War on Terror. The NYT should have been prosecuted by the DOJ for high treason.

Murdoch ownership of the NYT would be the equivalent of an earthquake in the media world. The caterwauling of the NYT Editorial Board would be heard all the way to New Jersey if it were to happen.

I don’t know about Murdoch’s support of Hillary but I do know that every time that Murdoch has taken over a major paper he has steered in the direction of a Center-Right editorial policy.

When Murdoch took over the NY Post he transformed it from populist, left-wing rag that was bleeding circulation into the only conservative voice in the N.Y. media market (R.I.P. the sorely missed NY Sun). The same pattern was seen in acquisitions made in the UK and Australia.

Murdoch would undoubtedly see the lopsided editorial drift at the NYT as a huge business opportunity and he would orchestrate a hard right turn for the “paper of record”.

A shutdown of the NYT is unlikely.

A more probable scenario is a managed bankruptcy if they are unable to renegotiate the terms of their debt.

The more exciting possibility is that Murdoch will be able buy the NYT at a fire sale price by making an attractive offer to the do-nothing heirs of the Sulzberger family.

Part of the problem with the NYT’s finances involves the outrageously high payments made to these heirs by the legendarily incompetent “Pinch” Sulberger.

“Pinch” has been able to retain control of the NYT by making ridiculously high payouts to the Sulzberger hiers. Murdoch has the assets available to overturn the two-tier share structure of the NYT by bypassing management and amking an offer directly to the Sulzberger heirs.

Mr. Chopra gratuitously invoked the name of President Eisenhower in a very intellectually dishonest way.

To set the historical record straight it is now known that President Eisenhower had to twice threaten nuclear strikes against China in order to eventually enforce a hard won peace on the Korean peninsula.

The historical lesson to be drawn from the Eisenhower era is that diplomacy is only effective when backed by the credible use of force. The Clinton Administration illustrated the futility of diplomatic posturing which lacked the credible use of military power.

I meant to reply to the original poster.

My bad.

“My advice to you is to change your assets from being based on the U.S. dollar to another government’s currency.....”

Yeah, okay, that is a really easy thing for the average American to do.

Thanks for that advice. Saying that is about as useful as telling a would be stock market investor to “buy low, sell high”. As vacuous as it is vague.

There is virtually no risk of a sovereign debt default by the U.S. Government. The real risk is the Fed will monetize a large portion of the debt leading to much higher inflation.

For that risk buying physical gold is the best hedging vehicle for the avergae American.

Neither proposal was given sufficient attention. I don’t know much about the Gary proposal but it was undoubtedly doomed from the start because it would not generate jobs and patronage in Cook County.

The Peotone airport proposal in Will County was particularly attractive because the plan called fro leveraging the intermodal transportation opportunities available near the site (truck and rail terminals). This airport would have handled freight traffic only rather than passenger traffic.

It was an excellent idea but politics killed it.

The Ohare expansion project is buying land in Elmhurst and Bensenville in order to complete the build out. This land is among the most expensive in the Chicago suburbs.

By contrast, the alternative proposal for a second airport in Will County, would have used land that cost a tenth of cost of what is available in Cook County.

The alternative proposal was killed by William Daley, Mayor Daley’s brother. The “fix” was in so now Illinois and Federal taxpayers have the privilege of paying 10 times what the cost should have been in order to grease the wheels of the Cook County Machine.

The plot thickens.

If Blago spilled the beans to avoid a long prison sentence along with Tony Rezko we may be in for some very interesting times here in Chitown.

The possible involvement of Jesse Jackson jr. in the “pay for play” Senate seat auction is explosive. I did not realize how carefully parsed Mr. Jackson’s statement was until I read the Jon Kass article. Mr. Jackson did not explicitly deny that one of his underlings may have conveyed the offer to Blago.

The corruption hairball in Chicago is being unwound. I can’t wait.

Kass’ point about Ohare Airport is vary much on point. There was a proposal to build a second airport in the Chicago area rather than expand at Ohare that was killed by Mayor Daley and his brother who was Clinton’s Commerce Secretary. They are now moving graveyards at astronomical prices in Elmhurst rather than building a second airport with cheap land in Will County. Such is the price of corruption to the public.

This post made my day.

Thank you.

“a really awesomely stupid blabbermouth......”

I would add to your fine description “breathtakingly arrogant”.

It is obvious that Blago should have clammed up and locked things down after the Rezko indictment but he was too stupidly arrogant to do so. Stupidity, arrogance and a big mouth are a bad combination for any politician but it should have penetrated Blago’s obtuseness that with an honest U.S. Attorney (Fitzgerald) in town it was a new ballgame.

You are absolutely correct about Daley and Obama. They will be much tougher nuts to crack because they are smarter than Blago and more ruthless.

“Senator says he’s still willing to help Blagojevich despite - hiring concerns...”

I am profoundly glad that our “toy” Governor has been indicted but everyone needs to take a deep breath and calm down about this cesspool of corruption reaching up to taint the President-elect.

President-elect Obama was working a different taproot of corruption in Illinois politics than Governor Blagojevich. Obama had a corrupt relationship with a bevy of politically connected real estate developers including Tony Rezko. The Illinois cityscape is blighted with hundreds of abandoned projects erected by these developers. Obama acted as the chief fundraiser in Springfield for these “developers’ many of whom had never had put a single structure in the entire lives until hooking up with Obama. Unfortunately, under Illinois law, none of this blatantly corrupt back scratching is illegal.

At this moment of Governor Blagojevich’ s indictment I am undergoing a profound sense of nostalgia for the administration of Jim Edgar. His demeanor was that of a pasty white door-to-door Amway salesman but he balanced the budget and ran a squeaky clean administration. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson that, in terms of Illinois politics, is “as good as it gets”.

“Nope. Thompson and Edgar never went to jail”

The definition of genius in Illinois politics running a balanced budget on the state level and not getting indicted.

By that standard, both Thompson and Edgar were geniuses of Illinois politics.