Small Time Blog

Base Metals Price Rebound on Horizon?

by Bradley Voight on 07/29/12

U.S. stock markets increased by over 2.5% in two days to end last week and gold rose from $1570 to $1625 per ounce, a 3.5% move. Both events came on the heels of European Central Bank officials announcing that they stand ready to provide financial support to ailing eurozone member economies. This news coupled with the Fed hinting at another round of 'easing' could mean that sagging base metals prices could be in for a lift also.

In plain english, the central banks of two of the largest economies have promised to expand the money supply. The more dollars in circulation the less each one is worth, which hurts the spending power of each dollar, but it also allows asset prices to increase. Real assets such as metals, grains, oil, and industrial materials will increase in price. The bad news is these are the raw materials of everything you and I need, so the cost for us to live will increase.

In the case of the Federal Reserve, we say they 'print' money. Actually they just type the number of new dollars they want up on the screen and there it is. They then use this 'new' money to loan to national banks. In order to keep the interest rate low on these loans, the Fed creates more money and uses it to buy U.S. treasury bonds. This is done because the 10 year treasury bond is where interest rates on mortgages and other consumer non-consumer borrowing activity come from.

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Roger

by Bradley Voight on 07/24/12

Hope you are enjoying Roger on our picture crawler. He is just there while we get things together for that part of our site. He also has and will be making some guest appearances on our videos.

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Great Depression II Ready or Not

by Bradley Voight on 07/23/12

We are entering the second great depression. The last four years were just the tune up. There are about to be 5000 small towns and cities go bankrupt maybe more. We have reached a cyclical downturn because America has nearly consumed all it can on credit. In fact the entire world is in a credit crunch. All of the developed nations have run deficits effectively since the US left the gold standard in 1972. All the borrowing from central banks, whom which are about to foreclose on governments world wide, will finally have to be dealt with. Our friend Ben Bernanke, a man who has never been hungry, or wanted for anything has the fate of 7 billion+ at his whim. All he has to do to bankrupt the wealthiest nation in human history, and in turn sink the world economy, is raise interest rates. You see the Federal Reserve Bank is the largest buyer of US treasury notes of all time periods (2, 5, 10, and 30 year notes) so when interest rates rise the Fed will collect on their investments by printing more money thus diluting every dollar out there. When you have millions and billions, why do you care if each dollar or euro has 10 % of its original worth. That means the prices that have already increased 400% in 11 years will increase another 400% and possibly even hyper inflate. America is under fiscal attack and it is so subtle that after 11 years of it people are just now noticing that something is wrong. Our nation is $14 TRILLION in debt. This figure cannot possibly be paid unless the government seizes all private retirement plans, which it will do and annuitize them so that you will get a monthly check just like social security, which will also be slashed.

This whole economic crisis is brought on by loose credit by banks who happen to own or hold liens on over 80% of the real estate in the world. Banking consolidation is the name of the game. The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill made a bunch of tough new regulations for smaller banks to adhere to and when they fail due to these new un-workable regulations, a big bank is right there to scoop up all the assets. The number of banks is decreasing and the size of the surviving banks is growing.

The bottom line is that banks control every aspect of our lives and they still want more control and they are coming to get it ready or not! I sure hope I am wrong.

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Scrap Yard Results

by Bradley Voight on 07/17/12

I was shooting for $200 and I got $146.88. I had two aluminum rims that I left the valve stems and lead wheel weights on which took $20 away but now I know to remove them next time. Prices were down more like 12% from my last trip. I was hoping to post an itemized list to show on the video, but Omnisource's computers were down which made for a 2 1/2 hour stay at the yard and a handwritten check. I had approximately 70# aluminum cans, 6# No. 1 copper, 6# No.2 copper, 25# cast aluminum, 155# sheet iron and 2 aluminum rims. Time to start mini treasure hunting again! Our next trip to the yard will be fully documented on video.

Year to date I have made $485 from pallets, cans, and scrap metal. Remember, I have NOT gone out of my way to find any of this stuff.

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Trip to the Scrap Yard

by Bradley Voight on 07/16/12

Tomorrow I will post a video of my trip to Omnisource. Metals prices have slipped by about 8% since my last trip but all my bins are full and it is time to go. I have been collecting my current lot of metals for just over two months and I have not gone out of my way to pick any of it up, so I have exerted little effort and I hope to get at least $200 for it, even with the recent metals price drop. I'm not getting rich, but I am making some much needed extra cash. I also pick up pallets but I try to stick to the most popular size. I just took in 12 grade A pallets and got $42 for them.

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