I do not say this lightly or mean to trivialize it BUT, $84 billion is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. Thes USA was happily "printing" billions a month. This brings me to my not so eloquent point. The Indian government and all other government for that matter DO NOT NEED THESE RESOURCES to help their economy. I believe they only WANT these resource so that the common man can NOT. I am doing a terrible job of explaining this. Lets say my little brother has a chocolate bar, and i do not eat chocolate. I take the bar from him cause i want it and then leave it in my draw to rot. Is this not exactly what these governments are trying to do?
I'd believe you. If you strip people of their independence, then they have to buy into "your" reality, no matter how fanciful it is.
Problem is, your brother does want to eat the chocolate bar, or he might want to give it to someone of his choosing. It's HIS chocolate, he may do with it as HE likes. These temples feed scores of poor people each day. If you ever go over there, check out the size of the lentil pots they use...over 1.5 metres high, and twice that in diameter....and there may be 5 or 6 of them on the go at any one time. The folks that donate their gifts understand it will go to securing the running of the temple... and it's future too. The temples are prudent with their funds.... the Govt. has not... that's why people give their charity and faith in the temples and not the Govt. EDIT TO ADD; as just 1 example, this one temple routinely feeds 100,000 people per day http://zesterdaily.com/world/golden-temple-sikhs-put-faith-in-community-kitchens/
This subject leads me to an important question: In Switzerland, owners of precious metals are required to declare the amount of it they possess to the tax authorities in the form of its currency value. In other words, the authorities become aware of everyone who posesses precious metals due to the fact that declaring it is required in the tax forms, and amounts that value over 50,000 swiss francs are subject to a small property tax. Now my question is, if you owned precious metals (gold or silver) privately in a country where its declaration is required by law, would you indeed declare it in the tax forms, or not declare it and instead hide it where you think nobody could find it? Or simply not declare it and keep your mouth shut about it to everyone? In my case, deciding over this is already too late because I already have abided by the laws and declared my precious metals. And I'm not worried about the Swiss authorities ever confiscating it, because Switzerland is a direct democracy and any decision made by the Swiss parliament or heads of state would first require a popular vote of a majority of Swiss people to change the respective law, and I'm absolutely sure that even if some crazy person decided to launch an initiative to allow confiscation of privately owned precious metals, the motion would be completely destroyed in a vote. Yet I would like to hear people's opinions here on this subject, especially in light of the information in this thread.
Would depend on the quantity for me: - large quantity, declare. - transportable quantity (e.g. Can be carried to Singapore or Dubai as personal baggage even over multiple flights), hide. On the other hand, if I had large quantity most probably I would store part of it abroad, already.... So on a second thought, I would hide it anyway.
Absolutely NO DECLARATION!!! One of the points to holding metals is they are under the radar. Law of not i would not divulge my holdings to anyone or any government.
Even large quantities of Gold can be transported quite easily, by large I mean 2 - 3 kg (which already has a pretty high currency value, as we all know). Well as I said, I already declared it so I can't change that back... well maybe next year I can do it if I simply claim that I lost and/or spent all of it... that might be an idea. Then at least I wouldn't have to pay the silly property tax again. Then again, if I was living in a country like the US or India, or any country that does NOT have direct democracy (and by that I mean a real democracy, not a Republic of any kind that pretends to represent the people), I would have hidden it right from the start. From all the news I've read about USA and many other countries, I would never trust their governments as much as I trust the Swiss one. I only trust the Swiss Government because the Swiss people are capable of butting into the affairs of the Government any time they don't like something that's going on there, and because there is no single head of state in Switzerland (there are 7 ministers each responsible for a department, such as department of justice, finance, traffic and so on, and a role of President which is passed on from one of the 7 ministers to the next every year is only for diplomatic purposes and gives them no extra powers).
It's not only about government confiscation, we all know that's extremely unlikely in Switzerland. But there may be other legal procedures, like in case of bankruptcy or divorce, in which your declared PM could be attached.
Yeah, these countries are hoarding tons of gold. Then there is propaganda about gold becoming worthless. Please, give me a break. Maybe selling at $5,000/oz will be a mistake. Who knows in these crazy times! lol
