Hi Michiel,

On 2019-08-10 13:36:15, you wrote to me:

 WV>> It depends largly on the kind of collapse. But untill such a thing
 WV>> happens, gold (and related products), is just another asset class you
 WV>> can invest in, with some unique properties, because it has little
 WV>> correlation to the value of other assets.

 MvdV> Which can work the othe way as well. It canb devaluate just like that.

That can happpen to all kinds of investments. Your point?

 MvdV>>> If society as we know it collapses and we are back to the dark
 MvdV>>> ages,

 WV>> Gold was valuable in the dark ages...

 MvdV> In the dark ages only those who had the means to protect it with right 
of
 MvdV> might had gold. If the dark ages return and I had gold, I would not have 
it
 MvdV> very long...

That was true for everything that was used to store value.

 WV>> How likely is a full collapse? If you think it isn't very likely,
 WV>> gold is a usefull investment.

 MvdV> Very few people that invest in gold actually have the metal in their
 MvdV> posession. Most of it is numbers in a "gold account" in a bank. 
Susceptible
 MvdV> to the same vulnerabilities as any other bank account.

I don't know how that is with regular banks where you can have a gold account, 
but that's not true for firms that specialise in precious metal accounts. They 
store and insure the gold that you are the owner of, and you pay them a fee to 
do so. When they go bankrupt it's still your gold and not part of the assets of 
that bank that needs to be devided between the creditors of that bank.

When you put money in a bank or savings account, you are no longer the owner of 
the money. When that bank goes bankrupt you only have a claim on a certain 
amount of money, but you are at the back of the queue of all others who have a 
claim on that banks remaining assets. There is the "Depositogarantiestelsel" 
where all the banks together guarantee the money of clients of banks that go 
bankrupt, up to a fixed limit. But when more than 1 bank or a really large bank 
goes bankrupt. That guarantee isn't worth much.

 WV>> These help to protect your other assets that will help you survive,
 WV>> or aquire them when you don't have them. But it's very hard (in
 WV>> Europe) to have these kind of weapons (== illegal).

 MvdV> If weapons were as easy to get as in the US, I still would not have a
 MvdV> chance. There is always someone faster...

It isn't all about being faster than the other. It's about skill to use the 
weapons, and being able seem like a threat to the other, so they go find an 
easier target. That isn't all about age...


Bye, Wilfred.

--- FMail-lnx64 2.1.0.18-B20170815