Pkg Man, that's hilarious. It would be like a game to try to get him to crack, and he would just sit there sphinx-like refusing to speculate or make any comment about the future of any asset. They could introduce the segment by saying "Folks, you're about to meet a man who has never made an ina...

There is an enormous amount of wealth from all over the world stored in vaults in Austria and Switzerland.  The world does need to end for these places to be good places to store wealth. I'm not a big fan myself of holding any asset offshore anywhere, but a whole lot of people from all over the wor...

There is an enormous amount of wealth from all over the world stored in vaults in Austria and Switzerland.  The world does not need to end for these places to be good places to store wealth. I'm not a big fan myself of holding any asset offshore anywhere, but a whole lot of people from all over the ...

I'm curious if anyone works in finance and can comment on what it would take to create an honest, 4 x 25 permanent portfolio fund with low ER.  Seems to me it could be a set-it-and-forget-it fund with an autopilot re-balance. Obviously, an investor can do a 4 x 25 themselves quite easily.  However,...

Exactly.  One of the key design elements was the limited powers delegated to the Federal Government versus the State Governments.  Perhaps our greatest failure has been the abrogation of the power of individual States. The US is simply too large and diverse to concentrate power in one place.  By re...

A smart person once told me that the main problem with government gets to be scale.  I think that's really the key.  It's not that there aren't legitimate functions of government (police and firefighters come to mind), it's the tendency that governments have to only expand in size and scope, regard...

When the Euro came out I didn't think it would last 20 years. The idea of taking all these different countries, cultures, languages and political systems and putting them under one bureaucracy and currency is a dead end. I'm by no means an expert on Europe other than being there many times. But the...

Has anyone done a thorough analysis comparing The Permanent Portfolio mutual fund with Harry Brown's version of the permanent portfolio? The short answer is that PRPFX has exhibited greater volatility while providing similar returns to the HB PP, though there have been significant periods during wh...

I was surprised at the gold move today.  I guess that's what happens when capital in Europe hits the exit at the same time.

It makes perfect sense, but it was still surprising to see such a muscular move.

The PP grinds higher.

EDV offers 1.5 times the volatility of TLT. I wouldn't commit the entire LT treasury piece of the PP to EDV (that might produce TOO much volatility relative to the other PP assets), but I own some and I like the protection it offers when everything else goes haywire. MediumTex, could you elaborate ...

EDV offers 1.5 times the volatility of TLT. I wouldn't commit the entire LT treasury piece of the PP to EDV (that might produce TOO much volatility relative to the other PP assets), but I own some and I like the protection it offers when everything else goes haywire. So maybe half VUSTX and half ED...

EDV offers 1.5 times the volatility of TLT.

I wouldn't commit the entire LT treasury piece of the PP to EDV (that might produce TOO much volatility relative to the other PP assets), but I own some and I like the protection it offers when everything else goes haywire.

I would hang on to the bonds. 

Hanging on to things in life (other than worthless junk) is harder to do than it sounds.

EU to Set Up Fund to Prevent Spread of Greek Crisis http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a4jFzDH.E7uc&pos=1 (Monday they're supposed to announce everything they're going to do, before the markets open) They ought to find "Baghdad Bob" and hire him to be the EU spoke...

Here's something else: a great many of the people I talk to who tend to be of a certain political party affiliation believe the government invests our Social Security payroll taxes, producing profits which pay for the benefits. As Ross Perot would say: "Now that's just sad." I suppose, th...

Here is a telling quote from FDR: "Those [payroll taxes] were never a problem of economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those payroll taxes there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With...

pplooker, my point is simply that we are dealing with a gigantic number of variables which could play out in an almost infinite number of ways.  Even things we are certain will happen may happen years or decades later (or earlier) than we predict. I simply suggest that the PP covers you no matter wh...

Here are a few different perspectives: It's true, the world's always been screwed up. But here's the other side of my pessimism about how I might fare in the future: I am actually oddly optimistic that it's all going to pan out and here's how. First, remember I am terrible at international sociogeop...

Heads will roll for sure if it was. Scary how a trader error could cause that to happen though. Wish I was logged into my broker to buy in with some play money. A lot of people today made some easy money. Think of all the stops that were triggered. That's going to be a bunch of VERY unhappy people.

Word is a trader error.

Pretty wild.

What are your thoughts about a spread of foreign currencies for the cash component for non-US PP'ers compared to that of perhaps holding of all of CASH in USD Tex? To me having perhaps 2.5% of total funds in each of 10 different currencies seems more comfortable than having 25% in USD. If I were a ...

Just to vent: I'm 29.  I am substantially less likely to: A.) Become as wealthy as I could be otherwise B.) See a leisurely retirement in my lifetime Due to the fact that a large block of "Boomers" which has superior numbers, capital, and political influence is continually pissing selling...

Clive, Sorry, I thought we were talking about a currency basket as an alternative to gold, not as an alternative to the cash portion of the PP. If we are talking about a currency basket as an alternative to local currency in the cash piece of the PP I would say that it depends on where you live.  If...

It looks like treasurys are turning into a Cinderella story. 

At midnight it may all disappear, but I don't have a clue what time it is right now.

Where are all of these bond bears now?  It always surprises me how quickly a market narrative disappears when sentiment shifts.

This issue really goes to the heart of the fundamental matter of how society is going to be structured.  I think that right now we are at the stage of industrial capitalism where a lot of delusional notions have yet to be purged from the system, simply because this modern system of rapid economic ex...