Jim’s Quote of the Day:

via SurvivalBlog.com by James Wesley, Rawles on 12/14/11

*** begin quote ***

“Anything that is on paper anything that involves a promise or a commitment is no longer valid because as we said there isn’t a rule of law anymore. People can steal from you. Your money can be confiscated. And think how easy now it is to confiscate people’s wealth. Most of our wealth in this society exists as zeroes and ones on a computer server. It takes no effort whatsoever to steal zeros and ones on a computer server. So what I have been telling people is you need to get into physical commodities. And the rule of thumb is if you can stand in front of it with an assault rifle and physically protect it, then it’s real—it’s a real commodity. That includes food, that includes water, that includes long guns and ammunition. That includes fuel. That includes precious metals—gold and silver coinage. Most especially silver coinage because silver is the metal of barter and transaction and currency.” – Ann Barnhardt, former head of Barnhardt Capital Management. (She ran the firm before she went Galt.)

*** end quote ***

When I was on Wall Street, it was called “counterparty risk”. And, everyone was very very worried about it.

So when MF GLOBAL goes broke, all the “counterparties” are <synonym for the past tense of the procreation act>!

That’s why you see all the screaming to Congress and the “regulators” cause they were robbed.

When you have your bullion coins (e.g., platinum, gold, palladium, silver, nickels <yeah the 5¢ coins>, pennies) in you hand or buried in your backyard, there’s no counterparty risk. There are other risks, but not from Corzine and his ilk.

When you have something that’s paper, you’ve got “counterparty risk”. Even if that paper is a faith-based curency like a “dollar” (whatever that is) aka Firbie (i.e., federal reserve banknote).

Toilet paper is more intrinsically valuable.

# – # – # – # – #