According to various sources we're about to see a potential bank-run in big French banks.

The well known company Siemens is reported to have withdrawn 500 Million Euros from a big French bank to their own private bank outside of France, in order to save their money.

Various serious media report that China stopped the trade with EU banks, mainly French banks because of their potential collapse.

If this is true and the French banks should collapse via bank-run, then the entire Euro would collapse within a few days too, because compared to France the other already bankrupt EU nations like Greece, Italy, Ireland would be "peanuts" and no more socialist "bail-out" would be possible.

This is very serious now.

Since the Dollar and Euro are connected this would have an impact on the Dollar, too.


P.S. It's said that Obama ordered several big Euro players (like Federal Republic of Germany's Merkel) to stay in the Euro, despite their wish as stronger Euro countries to leave the bankrupt fiat money named Euro and returned to their old currencies.
But this is "just" the governments Obama can order. If the more decentralised and so called "big capital" (industry, banks, richer people, etc) decide to do a flight of capital, the Euro will fall whatever Obama ordered.


P.P.S. In the Great Monarch visions thread I already mentioned the Bavarian foreseer Alois Irlmaier (1894 - 1959), because he's one of the best known and most seriously examined catholic visionaries of the newer time in the German-speaking areas. His visions are still "hot" so to say. Please let me repeat his timetable from the 1950's, which doesn't list dates but events and so actually is more handy :

1. First there's a economic vitality like never before.
2. A lapse of faith follows, like never before.
3. Then a corruption of morals, like never before.
4. A huge number of strangers flood the country.
5. It comes a big inflation. Paper money looses its value more and more.
6. Soon follows the revolution.
7. Then suddenly and overnight the Russians raid the West. ( → World War III & Three Dark Days, but not the end of time!)

I think we're in the middle of stage 5.
However, an Euro (and Dollar) collapse would soon bring us to step 6. I'm not sure if the time is already ripe. Some serious observers think spring 2012 would be the "ideal" time for the revolutions. But that too is only a few months away...

gunfighter,

Agreed.

I guess true wealth is in :

1. The soul and state of grace

2. Having food, food making products/supplies/tools/etc

3. All the other stuff that gets used like clothes, shoes, toiletries

Great point PIO! I never thought about it but it makes perfect sense. Even if you have all the gold in the world, whats the point if no one will sell things to you (for gold) since it  has no practical use?!

Having said that, I say you should invest in things that are going to help insure that you are going to be around/alive to enjoy your gold once everything blows over, such as non-electric tools, heirloom seeds, various skills,  etc.

My guess is that they will crash precious metals at the same time.

Since precious metals have their value inside and not printed on a paper sheet named fiat money, they're always, well, precious metals. A short, even a very short look at man's history shows this, and it won't change.

Do you know one single gold/silver based currency which ever crashed? There's none. I've got a Maria Theresia thaler which was the silver coin based currency a long time ago in the Austrian Empire. It's no surprise it rougly has got the same value today. And this applies to any gold and silver based currency. Take a Krugerrand and try it.

Of course you can't eat silver or gold coins. But as long as there's an existing trade in a society, precious metal will always be a compact medium of exchange.

Gold and silver have held value for MILLENIA.

You have never seen gold & silver scattered in the street, having become worthless.

This has happened to stocks and paper money countless times.

Gladius is correct -- it's likely that the price of gold is way undervalued, because right now several people can own the same ounce -- what happens when the music stops and everyone runs to the nearest chair (musical chairs)? Gold goes from $1650 to $5000, $7000 -- who knows how high.

Everyone will want physical, because a paper promise to deliver an ounce is just that -- a promise.

P.S. Mammon worshiper and broker Alessio Rastani telling in a BBC interview frankly that (the Jєωιѕн) Goldman Sachs rules the world, not the governments.
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