My name is Shawn Ozbun, and our goal is to keep you up to date with what’s going on in the world of Gold and Silver by providing you with current news and precious metals pricing.
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Hello and welcome back to the SilverTowne Vault Cast. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. Today we are going to cover an article titled 75 economic numbers from 2012 too crazy to believe, and another article that ask the question; why young people are not interested in coins.
Before we get into all that, I want to remind you that you can find our show on iTunes and on YouTube. Please take a few minutes and leave us some feedback. You can also email me your feedback at vaultcast@silvertowne.com.
Now lets get into today's precious metals pricing!
Gold - $1654.58 down $4.98
Silver - $29.79 down $0.22
Platinum - $1533 down $0.00
Palladium - $690.00 Up $2.60
Financial News:
75 Economic numbers from 2012 that are almost too crazy to believe
It is imperative that we educate the American people about the true condition of our economy and about why all of this is happening. If nothing is done, our debt problems will continue to get worse, millions of jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be suffocated, the middle class will continue to collapse, and poverty in the United States will continue to explode. Just "tweaking" things slightly is not going to fix our economy. We need a fundamental change in direction. Right now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic "adjustment" that America has ever gone through. We need to be able to explain to our fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be done. Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.
The end of the year is a time when people tend to gather with family and friends more than they do during the rest of the year. Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help start some conversations about the coming economic collapse with your loved ones. Sadly, most Americans still tend to doubt that we are heading into economic oblivion. So if you have someone among your family and friends that believes that everything is going to be "just fine", just show them these numbers. They are a good summary of the problems that the U.S. economy is currently facing.
The following are 50 economic numbers from 2012 that are almost too crazy to believe...
#1 In December 2008, 31.6 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, a new all-time record of 47.7 million Americans are on food stamps. That number has increased by more than 50 percent over the past four years, and yet the mainstream media still has the gall to insist that "things are getting better".
#2 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.
#3 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of "Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming."
#4 According to one recent survey, 55 percent of all Americans have received money from a safety net program run by the federal government at some point in their lives.
#5 For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.
#6 Median household income in the U.S. has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.
#7 Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
#8 The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been under 59 percent for 39 months in a row.
#9 In September 2009, during the depths of the last economic crisis, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In November 2012, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. It is more then 3 years later, and we are in the exact same place.
#10 When you total up all working age Americans that do not have a job in America today, it comes to more than 100 million.
Read More...
Why Young People Are Not Interested in Coins
An Old English proverb goes “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” The same may be true for numismatics, but we’ll get back to that later.
Last year, as a freshman in high school, I decided to proudly display my love of numismatics by wearing a Peace Dollar pendant to school. The first person to comment on it was an acquaintance who could be considered a friend. As soon as she saw the silver dollar around my neck, she said “what is that?” to which I replied it was a silver dollar. She said “Oh, I thought it was a giant nickel.” As I went through the day I received other theories as to what the chunk of silver around my neck might be, ranging from a foreign coin to a replica. Each time, I would matter-of-factly explain that it was a United States Peace Dollar minted in 1923. Every single person I told this to did not even know the United States had ever made silver dollars.
I wondered why not a single person I came across seemed to be interested or knowledgeable in coins. I came up with a few theories. The first theory was that since there has been no major (obverse and reverse) design changes on circulating silver coins in our lifetime no one wanted to collect coins in which there was only one for every denomination. My second theory was that kids are just too lazy to gain the required amount of knowledge for collecting coins. The third theory was that young people did not know how many different coins exist.
What I found was the real cause is a combination of my first and third theories. Young people do not know that our coins ever looked any different or were made out of different metals. This being true, how could someone want to collect or study something that they didn’t know existed?
Now we are getting back to the quote from above. “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”. However, this would only be true in numismatics if young people were being introduced to different coins. Some young people are introduced to coins, either from relatives or educators and they are uninterested. Personally, my dad introduced me to coins but did not force them on me; it was a personal decision to start collecting. However, if my dad had not introduced me to coins I probably would not have found my passion in them. This seems to be the problem as to why young people have no interest in coins, no one has ‘led them to water’ so to speak. Read More...
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[Disclaimer] Shawn Ozbun is not a licensed financial adviser, there is risk associated with all investment including gold and silver. You should seek advise from a licensed financial expert before making a purchase.
