The hard stuff

Richard Greene in Financial Sense on Wednesday paints a very worrying, but credible picture of accelerating financial instability and official attempts to disguise the crisis. He looks at the worst case, and says that nothing beats holding the bullion yourself:

In this scenario you don’t accept futures, you don’t accept ETFs, you don’t accept any paper promises; you only accept the real physical gold and silver in your possession. It may take more time for this to occur in the US, but overseas this IS occurring right now, particularly in the Far East and the Middle East. This is exactly what has been necessary to break the fraud and suppression of the gold and silver price that has kept them from reaching a fair free market value. It is happening as we speak...

...if defaults and bankruptcies became prevalent the banks could easily cancel your credit cards, not have any of your cash on hand, and deny you access to your own assets. We don’t expect this worst case scenario to play out soon but then again we find it incredible how few are prepared; and it is a substantial risk. So again to play it safe: have some of that green funny money on hand, definitely have some gold and silver, and have a nice stockpile of canned foods on hand to deal with unexpected emergencies. Do it now! If these things come to pass don’t be surprised to see gold moving up hundreds of dollars per day.

The red highlight is mine - I've suspected for some time that the gold price is being held down by undisclosed releases of bullion onto the market, by central banks.

Meanwhile, I'm interested to test sentiment about the markets - please see the poll on the sidebar and have a go.

Inflation, here we come

Jordan Roy-Byrne's article featured in Financial Sense last week examines various types of inflation and gives graphs, facts and his thoughts on future trends. He concludes:

It is my belief that the Fed's recent cut is the wake up call that will finally stimulate rising inflation expectations. Moreover, the public awakening towards inflation is coming at a time when monetary inflation, commodity inflation, currency inflation and wage inflation, already at significant highs, are set to rise even further.

He predicts a sharp acceleration when gold breaches $1,020 per ounce - itself a price level about 38% higher than today.

Although his remarks have most relevance for an American audience, it is worth remembering the recent Telegraph article (5th October) that forecast sterling dropping even faster than the dollar. Our determination to be as financially reckless as our Transatlantic cousins may result in our facing similar problems.

The good news? Our enormous holding of US Treasury stock may turn out to have been a reasonable investment, in sterling terms. The bad news? Perhaps we should have put that money into bonds denominated in a stronger currency. The Euro, maybe?

UK Inheritance Tax threshold unchanged

The Inheritance Tax announcement yesterday by "Chancellor" Darling is misleading. It has the flavour of a Gordon Brown dodge - hence my inverted commas.

The threshold per person remains at £300,000, as this article by Labour Home itself explains. What has changed is that the allowance is transferable on death, if you are married or in a civil partnership.

A similar effect would previously have been achieved by any competent solicitor, will writer or estate planner, by including a Nil Rate Band Will Trust in your Will. Similar, but not quite the same: the Nil Rate Band trust means giving assets away to a third party (not to one's partner) after the first death. Making the allowance transferable lets the surviving partner enjoy the use of assets worth up to £600,000, without the threat of estate tax afterwards.

This will reduce the amount of tax raised from IHT, since it helps those who a) haven't written the right kind of will/trust arrangement or b) couldn't do so because of the continuing needs of the surviving partner (who might, for example, be disabled or in a privately-paid nursing home).

But it's certainly not what it sounded like, which was an IHT allowance of £600,000 per person, or £1.2 million altogether.

Thanks to Dizzy Thinks and The Spectator Coffee House blog for the alerts.

Which will fall faster: the pound or the dollar?

An article in the Telegraph (referred to by today's Daily Reckoning) says that the pound sterling could drop about 14% against the dollar by 2009.

Which one is the basket case economy?

Nothin can go mwrong

A Krazy Kat cartoon, by George Herriman

A propos Britain's new electronic surveillance laws...

"How much money do we need?" revisited

The Daily Reckoning supports the drift of my question:

Our old pen-pal Jack Lessinger has a new book out: “Change.”

...His book outlines the development of the US property market over the past two centuries in terms of what he calls “paradigmatic economic changes.” He notes that the shrewd investor always had to stay ahead of the trend. That meant, looking beyond what the then-current paradigm to what people were likely to want in the future. Instead of investing in the old colonial regions along the East Coast, for example, an investor in the early 19 th century should have looked to the frontier. There, he would have found cheap land…and could have watched it soar for the next 50 years. He should have seen the huge development that would take place in Chicago and St. Louis, for example.

Later, after WWI, the landscape changed dramatically. New technology had created a new idea about how people should live – in the suburbs. For the next 50 years, fortunes could have been made simply by anticipating the growth of the suburbs – further and further out from the urban centres.

Our consumer economy did not exist before 1900, says Lessinger. Since then, it has grown and grown – “Sexy young women, smiling from the billboards , urging strait-laced and penny-pinching citizens to save less and spend more. Buy, buy , buy screamed the advertisers. Buy Coca Cola and be happy. Buy Dentine gum and be kissable. Buy Camels and be manly. The consumer economy blossomed. Houses grew bigger and more lavish, cars roomier, faster and more comfortable. What a great time to be alive!”

But buy, buy, buy is going bye-bye, says Jack. The consumer economy is unsustainable. People don’t have the money for it. It is based on cheap energy and cheap credit, both of which are running out. He thinks it will disappear by 2020.

“Get ready for an existential leap…” he warns.

The next Big Thing in American society will be a huge interest in downscaling, downshifting, and simplifying. When the baby boomers realise that their houses won’t allow them to Live Large, says another friend, they’ll begin to appreciate Living Small.

Jack comes at the subject from a different direction than we would, but his book made us think. You can find out more at jacklessinger.com.

I've been thinking how to "get out from under" for a long time. Maybe I'd better act before it becomes the fashion. Jim Puplava thinks the Fed has just bought us another two years, at a cost - to those who stay on too long.

Besides, I like beer and darts.

Secret taxation

This is a payslip for a supply teacher, showing income and deductions. On an emergency tax coding, tax is levied at basic rate (22%) on all earnings after pension contributions have been made. National Insurance is paid at the reduced rate of 9.4%, because the teacher is in his/her occupational pension. Total tax and NI: £399.61 / £1,472.20 gross pay = 27.14%.

Oh no, it isn't.

The tax that dare not speak its name is employer's National Insurance, which would be around £93.37. It's an extra cost that the employee never sees, but it's money that could be paid in wages if it were not deducted at source. Therefore, the gross (pre all stoppages) pay is higher than shown, and so are the deductions.

So why don't we see payslips that tell the whole story, say something like this? ...

The reason is obvious, isn't it? Especially when you show the appropriate marginal rate.

And if this was a payslip for someone not in an occupational pension, the marginal rate of N.I. would be 11% for the employee, and 12.8% for the employer. In other words, £100 extra payslip-declared salary would actually cost the employer a total of £112.80, with marginal-rate deductions of £22 in income tax and £23.80 in N.I. ! In that case, the real effective marginal rate of revenue-raising would be 45.80/112.80, or 40.6%.

The average wage earner is, in fact, a 40% taxpayer, without knowing it.

Is it illegal to show the truth on your employees' wage slips? Don't you think it would make the ordinary person start to take the taxation issue seriously?