http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31089 There is a very curious new development with respect to gold. In many countries in Europe nobody can buy retail gold coins for bullion any more. Shops will buy, but nobody is selling. Banks who use to offer gold to the public have also shut down in Spain. If you leave Spain and have a lot of jewelry, they pull you over and want to weight it be it chains or whatever including watches. Little by little, this hunt for money by desperate government is turning toward gold. Shutting down retail sales is quite alarming for what typically follows is some decree that you must turn over bullion by a certain date or thereafter it can be confiscated and illegal to even own. Meanwhile, April saw the biggest decline in gold shipment to China that traditionally go through Switzerland. They fell 67% in April. As the economy has been turning down in Asia, the demand for gold has fallen by about 36%. With demand dropping, government cutting off the ability to even buy gold in Europe, mixed with a rising dollar, all warns that the final low for gold may yet be on the horizon.
Definite and noticeable moves to regulate gold in multiple jurisdictions that I have seen but I have to say - ineffective and blundering. far from illegal though. Moving more than 10,000 euros worth of gold through airports without declaring it is asking for it. At that point I would move by private courier anyway like DHL etc It is a mix of capital control style mechanisms and tax evasion and laundering moves. I think in the case of France there appears to be a definite move to make all serious non jewellery buys and sells auditable. I did not know the controls on moving more than 10,000 euros in gold by air without declaring had come in in Spain though. Can you clarify on the Spanish customs action OP? You can always trust governments to be ineffective and incompetent thank goodness. I do think that in several high tax jurisdictions the aim was to prevent deposit tax avoidance and a rapid flight to gold in the event of a Eurozone crisis. A second wave of legislation was targeted at 'money laundering' in reality I think more tax avoidance. Each national government has subtly enacted legislation to put barriers in place regarding the free movement of gold in particular leaving their jurisdictions. Again you can drive a bus though this quite legally if you want to as it is spotty, uncoordinated and idiotic.. I have a feeling that there is actually a subtle promotion of private gold ownership as long as it stays in national territory by the smarter governments. Completely contrary to the EU notion of the free movement of goods, of course. Of course a definite push to direct money towards gold and away from silver with the notable exception of Germany and Estonia.
Shops buy, but nobody is selling? That's prone to different interpretations, it could be read like none of the shops finds customers for the gold stock they bought. Rather a lack of demand than a lack of supply. There is certainly gold for sale, just check dealer sites. I just did at the closest one to me, added 60 1 oz gold Krugerrands 2015 to basket, all are in stock. They mention that they have different years. Same for Maples, Philharmonikers, Eagles and other regular ones. Only some older year Lunars are not flagged with "in stock".
What this does not tell us is which nations had the highest private domestic private gold ownership to begin with. My hunch is the game is to gradually stop it leaving national jurisdictions and moving internationally and to attack the link between cash and gold. Like all pseudo capital and price controls it will ultimately fail.
From what I know, in some European countries you have to declare any gold that's more than a certain "smaller amount" like jewelry, watches etc. or 10-20 grams of pure gold. I think the minimum limit varies from country to country. Some may require you to declare all your gold. Normally, even if you have EXACTLY 10,000 EUR cash on you, you have to declare it.
There are two ways to punish something illegal. 1) a fine 2) increase its price The latter is less recognized as tax than the former and the former still less than tax named as such.
HMRC targets Etsy, eBay and Gumtree sellers but when is your hobby taxable? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...e-sellers-but-when-is-your-hobby-taxable.html All about this ^^ Tax.
Gold isn't becoming illegal, it is becoming extinct as a form of currency. When is the last time you purchased a product or service with gold? I have never used gold to pay for anything in my entire life. Most people have never used gold to pay for anything, and that's the problem with gold. Nobody uses it anymore as money. It's jewelry at best, not money. Gold is beyond being old school, it is on the verge of extinction in the modern day digital capital world. Gold is physical and severely limited. Digital money is not physical, and it is literally unlimited. The Free Market has decided that gold is a product that the consumer does not want to use anymore as a form of doing business.
The Dollar is a currency product as well. People use US Dollars a lot more than they use gold coins, mainly due to the fact that the Dollar is now digital. It's the world's first digital currency, and for good reason. Money should be unlimited, not tied to a finite resource. The ability for human production is unlimited so long as the means of production are not taken over.... We were designed to build things. Humans will always produce. If human production is unlimited, people need an unlimited supply of money to live. 1st of the month of June and I just paid my mortgage, car payment, insurance, cellphone, cable/internet, and all of my credit card bills without touching a single paper dollar. That is the future. It's already here. There's no going back to gold.
People also need gold to live, go back over your list of where your putting your money into. Your car contains gold in it's electronics, your cellphone has gold, your modem has gold, your credit cards may even have gold. without gold you would be still riding a horse and sending smoke signals, you can print all the money you want but without gold you got nothing to spend it on.
Wasn't that in Romania where few years ago they had to take the last 4 zeros from the local currency because of the high inflation, so 5,000,000 lei local paper currencies become 500 lei? Guess what? One kilo gold bought 10 years ago is still 1000grams not 1 gram. Love the cheap beer there though.
Also, we should let old white guys dictate how much of it gets created. If you can't trust old white guys, who can you trust?
Except the planet we live on contains finite resources. So an unlimited model cannot and will not work. Slam
Human ingenuity is boundless though. That is an infinite resource and the one responsible or booms around aviation and information technology......sadly for the collectivist eco-socialist the theory is utterly invalid for that reason. Electronic 'money' is so easily devalued and stolen it is worthless for anything other than day to day payments medium of exchange. It is useless as a store of wealth. Vulnerable to deposit tax, banking system support charges and fess, negative interest and bail ins. It is entirely worthless as a store of wealth long term as it is transparent to taxation, state sanctioned banking system theft and obscured supply increase dilution . Real estate suffers from many of the same pitfalls but is more costly for states to penalise or confiscate via tax compared to a database number. crypto blockchains and their transaction history are a statist wet dream and in no way replace physical gold and never will. Gold saw a huge number of currencies and mediums of exchange come and go in the 20th century long after it was used as currency. They are all gone. Gold is still here and will continue to be. That is why every major power in the world governmental or financial continues to hold tons of the stuff in physical form.The popularisation of crypto currency is the biggest threat to individual freedom since mass surveillance and not a 'competitor' with gold but its diametrical opposite, like a banknote that records who and when had it for its entire lifespan. Gold is the only full zero counterparty store of wealth that matters when it comes to government. That is exactly why governments hold it even though they hate it - as a hedge against other governments.
Many countries have signed up to the Basel Accords which set out to regulate the money supply in the post 2008 world. The basis of the agreement is that national and private banking institutions maintain a higher level of reserves than previously, to act as a buffer should another monetary crisis develop. The increased assets required may be in many forms, of which gold is but one. However it is a key player. In my opinion this is why we have seen countries repatriating their gold onshore, and scrambling to buy additional gold. I have lifted the quote below from http://searchcompliance.techtarget.com/FAQ-What-is-the-Basel-III-accord-and-what-does-it-require. What is the Basel III accord, and what does it require? Basel III is a set of standards and practices developed for internationally active banks to ensure that they maintain adequate capital to sustain themselves during periods of economic strain. The rules strengthen previous minimum capital and liquidity requirements (Basel II) in light of the recent global financial crisis. The Basel III accord more than triples the amount of capital banks must keep on hand to absorb losses in tough times. The Basel accords are voluntary agreements among national banking authorities. The countries signing on to the accords agree to implement the standards through national laws or regulations, and have considerable discretion in how they go about it. The standards have also been implemented by countries that are not parties to the accord.
