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Volatile Markets: Precious metals are the safest place to be

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picture of coinsThey're calling it a volatile market. That's like referring to World War II as "that skirmish over in Europe." Come on people, I don't even do the investing game professionally, but I can sure read the writing on the wall. I've been telling you since around Christmas time of 2006 that we are setting up for a massive worldwide economic realignment. I can't predict exactly when the bottom will fall out, but it's coming. Oh yes, it's coming.

You probably don't want my advice but I'll give it to you anyway. Reduce your debt load immediately and cut your risk ventures to the bone. Precious metals might provide some protection, but I myself would remain cautious at this time. Although, generally speaking, precious metals provide relative safe haven in times when the stock markets show weakness, a strengthening dollar tends to dilute that, and the current international economic churning should actually brace up the dollar, aided by an upward swing in manufacturing output and a slight decline in the gap between import and export totals. Gold production and recovery efforts are running in high gear right now, and that increased output is crimping gold's usual hedge function from the supply side.

What does the description "global liquidity crisis" mean to you? To me it says simply that there's not enough loose cash to go around. There's not enough earning potential in the private sector worldwide to support the manufacturing interests in their pursuit of profit and the governments in their pursuits of taxes. Worse yet, it's gotten so bad that after a decade of explosive growth in China based on volume productivity with minimal margins, we have now reached the point that our communist "friends" are sending boat loads of their cheap plastic junk and poison toothpaste across the oceans at a loss, just to keep the ships and money moving. All the while they're chanting to their own people "invest in the markets" because they haven't the cash income to justify keeping their paltry sweatshops operating and if they try to raise prices, we'll jam it to them like they've done to us...

Even Jim Cramer is stuttering these days. No, not literally, but you can read between the lines. He's flitting around like a canary in a glass-bottomed cage above the cat room at the zoo. He's throwing darts at his racing form. He's running scared and he knows it. Where are the profits, Jim? What can you tell us that we don't already know? Here's my tip for Jim Cramer: Run from retail in all its shapes and forms. Run fast and run now. Do your own homework, bucko.

If I was forced at gunpoint to make a stock purchase right now, I'd still lean towards General Electric (NYSE: GE) but the position would provide little comfort. I don't like any of what I'm seeing as a global financial future, and throwing newly printed cash at it just isn't going to work. You've read the history books, right?

Liquidity crisis, debt support meltdown, net worth based on paper assets and pie in the sky projections, raw material shortages, energy shortages, these are the lies you've been sold in the face of corporate profiteering dominated by the greed of the few. Call me a pessimist. Call me what you will. In my opinion there's only one way to forestall a serious deflationary spiral.That involves placing more disposable income into the hands of consumers while freezing taxes -- like that's going to happen in a political climate controlled by democrats.

Buckle up your boots, button your coat and pull your hat down because it's soon that the storm will blow in. Worldwide economic realignment is coming and it's not going to be pretty. You can hold me to that prediction. To quote the singer: "Your cash ain't nothin' but trash."

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Last updated: July 09, 2009: 07:23 PM

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