Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor has put together a short video as to how best “fix” the U.S. economy. It’s worth a watch.

Reich focuses on 5 points:

1. Economy doubles since 1980, but wages flat

2. All gains from the economy go to the super rich

3. With money comes political power

4. Huge budget deficits

5. Middle class divided

And in doing so, completely ignores what may be the real cause of all of the above.

Consider the alternative (opined) version:

1. Economy (increased money supply) doubles since 1980 as a result of taking U.S. dollar off of the gold standard. Wages no longer can be equated with “real” wealth.

2. All gains from the “play money” go to the super rich.

3. Politicians have lost the ability to discern the difference between “real” money (commodity based) and “play money” (fiat).

4. Politicians keep spending play money like it is real money.

5. Middle class gets screwed because they were/are -mostly- apathetic.

Your thoughts?

And if you’re wondering…

“The United States Secretary of Labor is the head of the Department of Labor who exercises control over the department and enforces and suggests laws involving unions, the workplace, and all other issues involving any form of business-person controversies”. – Wikipedia

Robert Reich is also an author. He’s written quite a few books including “Supercapitalism” and most recently “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future”.

Hilda Solis is the current U.S. Secretary of Labor.

Pete Skenandore

Smithing

Fabrication and repair of metal objects by hot and cold forging with the use of an anvil or power hammer or by welding and other means. Blacksmiths traditionally worked with iron (anciently known as “black metal”), making agriculture and other tools, fashioning hardware items such as hooks, hinges, handles etc., for the farm, the home, and industry, and shoeing horses. The term smithing is also applied to working with precious metals (gold, silver) as well as other metals
-e.b.com

The Silversmith

A person who has attained a degree of expertise and proficiency in the art of working silver and complimentary metals into objects of utility or decoration.

Silversmithing

Traditionally silversmithing would be resigned to the craft and art of turning silver [and gold] sheet-metal into hollowware like dishes, bowls, cups, vases, etc. And also the fabrication of flatware such as forks, spoons and knives and other miscellaneous household items.
However, in contemporary times, the term “silversmithing” may be more commonly applied to all types of craft where silver is being formed into non household items such as jewelry, art, and sculpture.

Materials, Tools, and Techniques

anvils and hammers
torch, flux and solder
files
snips
jewelers saw
chasing, repousse,
engraving
buffing and polishing

Jewelers

Jewelers may also work in silver and gold, but typically are not classified as silversmiths, although a silversmith could be a jeweler and vice-versa. Jewelers use techniques such as chain-making and gem-setting that are more common practices not necessarily within the realm of silversmiths/silversmithing.

According to Pan American Silver CEO Geoff Burns, “…end users on the commodity side are having trouble locating silver…”

Burns continues to describe that from his perspective he sees pricing support that will in turn, uptick the flow of silver into the markets as investors come back into the market to capitalize on the high silver prices.

Deutsche Bank has forecast $50 silver in 2012. Investors are going to stay with silver because the value of the dollar is going down each day they wake up.

Burns has been focused on silver and is planning to expand silver operations over time.

-Pete Skenandore

Source:
King World News

Here at SilverCoinCommerce™ we pride ourselves on being open minded. After all, it will take motivated, open-minded people to revert back to the use of -real money- in the daily exchange of goods and services. And in light of this we’ll sometimes throw a twist at things, and today seems as good as any other to talk about colloidal silver.

So what is colloidal silver? Simply put, colloidal silver is a liquid suspension of microscopic silver particles. Typically, the silver brew is promoted as an alternative medicine cure-all. Considering silver’s anti-microbial properties it might make sense to go ahead and drink up a colloidal silver cocktail. However. Stop. Consider. Argyria. Never heard of it? Silver does this super cool thing (if you like the color blue). In animals and humans, silver can accumulate in the body and this results in an accumulation of silver or silver sulfide particles in the skin. Remember’s silver use in photography? Well silver/silver sulfide particles do the same thing in skin when exposed to light. Drink enough colloidal silver and you could potentially develop the condition of Argyria, or what we here at SCC refer to as smurfamorphamosis.

Drink up!

Pete Skenandore

Renminbi (RMB) is the official currency of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It is the legal tender issued by the People’s Bank of China in the mainland of China.

The yuan is the Chinese base unit of a number of modern Chinese currencies. It get’s confusing but the distinction between yuan and renminbi is that a yuan is the unit of account while renminbi is the actual currency.

Think of “yuan” as being similar to the word “dollar”. We might refer to a U.S. dollar, a Canadian dollar, an Australian dollar and such. Yuan would need similar distinction between Taiwanese yuan, and Chinese yuan.

Importantly, Russia and China announced that they would forgo using the U.S. dollar and would instead use their own national currencies for future bilateral trade. Maybe the U.S. Fed should stop making/lending/borrowing greenbacks? This move is a pretty strong vote of non-confidence in the U.S. dollar.

China also effectively turned off their silver export spigot in 2010. It is believed that they were shifting strategies into hard assets and that’s why they stopped shipping the shiny metals out of their country. Another component is that China’s middle class is growing at a meteoric rate. It is estimated that roughly half of China’s urban population will be middle class by 2025.

Now for the important bit. According to the China Statistical Yearbook Chinese citizens currently save a whopping 25% of their post-tax income. That’s 25% of a lot of people that want secure savings. Is there a huge potential to keep demand up for silver. Silver has a long history of being “every day Joe’s” money. Maybe it’s also going to be “the peoples republic” savings.

Pete Skenandore

Sources:
Seeking Alpha
Wikipedia
Wikinvest
fx-rate.net

…and why you should care.

In 1840 the Gold/Silver Ratio was 15.5, or 1:15.5. As an example:If one ounce of silver cost $1.29 and an ounce of gold would cost $20.00, you would need 15.5 ounces of silver to exchange for one ounce of gold. Or, conversely, one ounce of gold could be traded for 15.5 ounces of silver.

It is interesting to note that a few decades earlier in 1792 the gold/silver ratio was fixed by law in the U.S. at 1:15. And then in 1837 it was re-established by U.S. Congress at 1:16. However, in 1873 silver was demonetized leaving gold as the sole standard of the nation’s currency.

Other historical records:

323 B.C. – The ratio stood at 12.5 upon the death of Alexander the Great.
Roman Empire – Set the ratio at 12.
1980 – Previous surge in gold and silver prices had the ratio at 17.
1991 – Silver hits lows, ratio peaked at 100.
2007 – Average for the entire year was 51.

You can see from the above graphic that since silver was demonetized, the gold/silver ratio has had some pretty wild fluctuations. One thing that overwhelmingly draws your attention is that silver never again hits the 15/16 to one (for gold) range.

As of this writing: Silver is 28.69 and gold is 1370.80 which would mean that today, the ratio would be 1:47.77, or one ounce of gold equals 48-ish ounces of silver.

Getting back to why you should care, and maybe why you shouldn’t.

If you’re interested in amassing more metal then you might care, because you can watch the spikes and trade accordingly. These types of trades, however, may not procure more dollar-value profits as this is not a primary reason for engaging in the practice. Quantity, over quality, so to speak, the relative value of the metal is considered unimportant.

An example: A trader watches the ratio spike to 1:75, gold is sold and silver purchased at this ratio and then the trader waits until the ratio comes back down and reverses the process selling his silver to buy more gold than he had previously.

Not a bad way to go, but you will have to exercise patience.

In today’s world, and as we’ve highlighted in many of our articles here at Silver Coin Commerce™, silver’s industrial use is trending upward, but as this demand increases, so shall mining and refining. Will this stabilize prices? Will this stabilize the gold/silver ratio? As you can see from the above illustration the silver/gold ratio is all over the place in the larger timeline creating prime opportunities for speculative [and patient] investing.

Sources:
Wikipedia – image
Investopedia
GoldAlert – image

Pete Skenandore

Palladium is an element with the chemical symbol Pd. It is a rare silvery-white metal discovered by William Hyde Wollaston in 1983. William named palladium after the astroid Pallas.

Palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, osmium are a group of elements commonly referred to as the platinum group metals (PGMs).

One in four goods manufactured today either contain platinum group metals or has manufacturing processes facilitated by PGMs.

Over half the supply of palladium goes into catalytic converters. Other uses of palladium are computers, mobile phones, capacitors, component plating, televisions, dentistry, medicine, fuel cells, and jewelry.

The rarity of the platinum group metals means extraordinary prices.

-Now you know why that catalytic converter you had to replace cost so much.-

The Research

University professor Hiroshi Kitagawa and his team figured out a way to mix rhodium and silver to produce a new composite metal with similar properties to palladium.

The process nebulises the rhodium and silver by gradually mixing them with heated alcohol. This produced stable material at the atomic level.

DOING THE MATH:

As of this writing rhodium is $2380.00 per ounce, silver is at $30.90 per ounce and palladium is $800.00 per ounce. So, take one ounce of rhodium at $2380. and one ounce of silver at $30.90 and you might net two ounces of palladium-like material. For only $2410.90 + expenses. Or, for around the same cost, you could just buy 3 ounces of real palladium.

Keep working to keep the dream of alchemy alive boys.

Sources:
Kitco.com
Physorg.com
Wikipedia.com
Luxurypalladium.com -image-

Pete Skenandore

Are we past the tipping point on electric vehicle use? According to MSNBC.com, there will be 10 electric cars available for purchase in the U.S. in 2011.

Here’s the list:

• Nissan Leaf $32k
• Chevrolet Volt $41k
• Ford Focus Electric n/a
• Ford Transit Connect n/a
• Mitsubishi I-MiEV $30k
• Honda Fit EV n/a
• Tesla Roadster n/a
• Fisher Karma n/a
• Think n/a
• GEM $7.5k

So, there is a performance issue challenge that all electronic vehicles have in common:

Weight, size, and storage capacity of batteries. You cannot have an electronic vehicle without them. A major focus of manufacturers and scientists will be how to improve battery performance.

Hello Silver Polymer Batteries. Here’s an overview thanks to peswiki.com:
“The Silver Polymer Battery utilizes divalent silver oxide to achieve very high energy and power, yielding up to twice the energy and volume of current lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries.”
“The Silver Polymer Battery has the following advantages:

• Up to 10x the energe to weight ratio of current lead acid and up to 4x energy to weight ratio of NiMH.
• No memory and low self discharge
• Tunable price/performance from low cost to maximum performance preference.
• Dramatically safer than large lithium batteries which are now subject to severe transportation limitations.

I think if one simply does the math. 10 new battery dependent automobiles on the U.S. market. That’s a big deal. What’s around the corner? Are we at the tipping point to bring electronic vehicles into mainstream use? Maybe so… And if that’s the case, then it is safe to assume that we will want better [battery] performance. Silver Polymer Batteries may be the next step. If so, the near $30 per ounce price we’re seeing may just be the tipping point as well, or maybe the tip of the iceberg as far as what silver valuation is and could be in even a small scale conversion from petro burning vehicles.

Pete Skenandore

Silver has increased 74 percent in 2010. We’re near the end of the year and it looks like it will continue the upward march as we near $30 per ounce. This leads silver to the biggest annual increase since 1979.

This week alone the price of silver jumped 9.3 percent, the most since January of this year.

Something to think about: In today’s age almost all newly mined silver ore travels through the smelting and fabrication operations of China. China offers a better deal to mine owners with upfront cash for ore, and higher prices than other competitors around the world, some of which have had to close leaving China the only game in town for silver miners. Since most of our electronics are built there anyway… maybe this isn’t such a bad thing?

Pete Skenandore