Quote from: miscreanity on April 06, 2012, 04:41:05 AM

Quote from: tvbcof on April 05, 2012, 08:15:16 PM

The spread is a cost of doing business when it comes to physical. In my case it is close to negligible and tax issues are a much bigger factor. If one plans to flip PMs there is little reason to be dealing with physical and a lot of reasons not to be (imho.) If one is worried about being MF-Global'd playing with ETFs or something like that, one can still hold a core position in physical. Unless they don't desire a core position I suppose.

It's funny you mention taxes - that's effectively a premium paid to government (funding your own oppression?). If you have to pay a 28% tax on an inert chunk of metal that doesn't produce anything, it suggests that the price according to gov't is at least a third higher than official valuation. Of course, that might only be the tax rate necessary to keep the oil bill current. Have you noticed the scramble to close tax haven loopholes in recent years? Watch for governments to bring precious metal into the fold with incentives like they're doing with corporate profits held overseas, then raise taxes...

Taxes don't bother me as much as they seem to bother a lot of people. I guess it's in part 'cuz I'm a lib. If I made some bucks on PMs, I did so in a society which facilitated it so I'm happy enough to support that society.

It bothers me that my tax dollars are going toward killing innocent people in other countries. It bothers me that corporations buy politicians so that a) they can shirk their own responsibility for taxes and b) they can use _my_ tax dollars to fund illegal wars which benefit them much more than they benefit me. But, at the end of the day, not paying my taxes is a counterproductive way to 'change the system' and is likely to bring me trouble which I don't need.

Quote from: miscreanity on April 06, 2012, 04:41:05 AM

Quote from: silverbox on April 05, 2012, 08:23:46 PM

Thats what I do, bout half physical and half miner stock/etf (in my online brokerage IRA)

Smart. Good to keep some gold outside of your home country as well - just in case.

I also have interest in keeping some of my PMs off-shore. The difficulties I perceive here are that I have little confidence that a financial institution in a foreign country would put my interests first in the event of a crisis or catastrophe. I could easily see them drilling all foreign owned safe deposit boxes, for instance. Particularly if that country happened to end up allied with the US and the US issued instructions to do so. I am not blessed with any trustworthy private partners to operate on my behalf in a foreign land. A secondary issues is that I doubt it would be practical to travel freely in a situation that I am trying to protect against. So, my stash might be in Switzerland, but my ass cannot get beyond TSA to go get it.

I'll note again that one of the HUGE draws of Bitcoin, to me, was that it would allow a transfer of PMs between two mutually interested but non-trusting parties in different parts of the world. That is, a transfer of, say, KRs could be ratcheted in using Bitcoin while keeping the transfer safe from a high percentage loss and relatively private from prying eyes.

Probably the way to pull it off would be for the principles to travel to the respective foreign counties while leaving their stashes in the care of a local trusted individual. The transfer then gets ratcheted in, and the principles drifts off to do whatever they are going to do with their newly transferred loot.