I have wondered if the value of American money on a world scale could decrease dramatically.In the event of an apocalypse or thermo nuclear war,or collpase of the American and world economy,the value of paper money could become worthless.

Would have investing in an always valuable asset like gold bullion bars been a better collateral?The church could have bought $100 billion worth of gold bullion ,and stored it away safely for a rainy day.Its value would be worth the maximum at any time in history.

In the event of a global disaster, the value of gold would plummet too.

Gold is a metal with few significant industrial applications whose value is determined largely in financial markets. If those financial markets collapse, the gold will be worth very little more than you can trade it for with the farmer next door. In such a situation the farmer will soon have all the gold.

But you can’t make a golden calf without gold. At today’s price, they could buy 2700 tons of gold. They could have at least one solid gold calf for each temple.

I suspect the Q15 would not be interested in building a golden calf, for the last thing they want is people worshiping something other than themselves.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2019 04:12PM by Lot's Wife.

In the event of a GLOBAL disaster...

But what about a national or regional disaster, or a national financial/currency collapse? In that case, gold would be invaluable.

True, "the farmers will (eventually) have...the gold." But in the meantime, you'd have some provisions, perhaps enough to last until a stable government can provide a stable money supply.What if the international financial community actually did drop the US dollar as the world's primary reserve currency? Gold would get a new lease on monetary life.

Anyway all sorts of people have extolled their Doomsday scenaria and schedules. I thought I'd be fishing off my back yard dock by now, but no...

Not gonna work. There is no mechanism to distribute this wealth to the needy. It is controlled by those at the top. However, this would be a prime opportunity to convert all of mormonism to a Socialist Empire. It would be the ultimate MLM.

Are the appropriate standards the ones similar to those expected of major investment corporations....

....or are the appropriate standards similar to those expected of religious non-profits?

For starters, a "major investment corporation" must have public-accessible books.Not so, religious organizations and many non-profits.

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For starters, a "major investment corporation"
> must have public-accessible books.Not so,
> religious organizations and many non-profits.

I did not know this.

If so, then it seems to me that appropriate legislation ought to be soon under consideration, because the assets involved begin/began with non-taxed contributions.

Finance isn't my field, so if I have misstated, I would appreciate corrections.

Analyzing a ledger is not a skillset of mine. All my investments are mutual funds--I let the experts pick companies. What I do is consider what sectors I think may be strong for a half-year or so, and look for funds with good track records in them and without high administrative fees.

Christmas week finds me hovering over the screen with 10 or 15 tabs open as I research and compare funds. Sure wish I had HONEST advice from some of those Ensign Peak boys!

A couple of points.

Not all "major investment corporations" must have public-accessible books. That only applies to corporations that are listed on stock exchanges. Private investment groups of considerable size, like private industrial corporations, are allowed to keep much more of their data private.

Regarding the gold question, why would departure from the de facto dollar standard trigger a major appreciation of gold? Did that happen when the world went off sterling? These transitions happen every several decades. They can entail serious problems but at least as often they do not.

Point one-- yes, thanks for the correction. It's this which allows crooks like "Live Abundant" (cf the "Utah/Ponzi scheme" thread) and Bernie Madoff to get away with things as long as they do. Just print up a fictitious ledger with lots of assets, sure looks good, right? (Too good to be true...)

Speaking of which, as we castigate tCoJCoLdS for this $100B, how do we know for a fact that there IS $100B? What if this was (ahem!) a 2nd-hand whistleblower? What if they COLLECTED tens of billions, produced a ledger, but bad actors have siphoned it away?

Hmmm...Bad actors fleecing other bad actors. The ultimate long con! Mix in Jack Ryan, some Danites, a murder in the Cayman Islands, the Panama Papers...makings of quite a screenplay there!

Point two: Hopefully, this is purely hypothetical: currencies do collapse. Some slowly by erosion, others catastrophically. I see the dollar like the deBeers cartel: everybody knows that diamonds are extremely common, with fiat value that is maintained only by agreed-upon conventions and cultural groupthink.

I'm not in a position for a long discussion right now, but I refer you to an economic maxim: "That which can't go on forever...won't."

Yes, currencies do collapse. It happens all the time. But gold is a currency too, and its price has gone up and down with great volatility over decades and centuries. That's really the key: gold is a currency, worth nothing more than you can sell it for.

Will the world move off of the dollar? Absolutely. Mismanagement of the currency has accelerated that process by a couple of decades already--probably in favor of China. But such transitions need not occur in critical form.

As for what happens when a currency collapses, we have ample evidence on that score. Since the demise of the Bretton Woods system and its replacement by a de facto dollar standard in the early 1970s, the pattern has been clear: when a crisis occurs, money flows into the two currencies that are considered least risky: the dollar and the yen. That is paradoxically true even when the crisis is triggered in the United States, such as in the 2008 debacle. Because where else could you put your money--the poorly managed EU? China? There's no other market with the scale necessary to absorb such large sums.

Will the dollar collapse one day? Perhaps. But not anytime soon.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2019 03:14AM by Lot's Wife.

The church is a global enity. Whose to say there are not the equivalent to Ensign Peaks in Switzerland, England, Japan, Singapore, South Africa and/or Macao?

Lol! The "church" is a Utah entity with minor global branch offices. Not a one of the countries you listed has enough Mormons to field a decent sports team. They would never trust their money to be out of very tight local Utah control. Nor would they subject themselves to the corporate and tax laws of other countries any more than absolutely necessary.

They do own agricultural land around the world. As far as I know, all that land is owned by Farmland Reserve, a corporation under the Office of the Presiding Bishopric.

No.

I remember back in 1977 when there was high inflation after the Arab Oil Embargo. Gold spiked up to $800 an ounce. My HT was a serious gold bug, and said it was just going to get worse.

In reality it was over 30 years before gold went above $800 again, and that is in dollars not adjusted for inflation. Adjusting for inflation, $800 in 1977 is something above $3,000 today.

Gold has had a good run recently, and is $1,522 at the moment. That means it has lost half its value since the 1977 peak.

Before the 1977 run up, gold was about $400 an ounce. If you bought gold at that price, it would have come at least within shouting distance of keeping up with inflation, though the price is unnaturally high right now. $1,200 is probably more reasonable long term. At that price, even $400 gold would have lost a fair percentage of its value, inflation adjusted.

I had a friend who bought a bunch of gold and put it in his basement floor safe after the election of 2008 because inflation was going to go through the roof. Ok, then. It has been 11 years, and we're still waiting for that big spike in inflation. Meanwhile the Dow has gone from 7,000 to 28,000 in the same time period. True, 7,000 was a fire sale price, but still...

Ensign Peak has its money in securities, not gold, as far as I know. They have done very very well. Gold has short term spikes and dips. Long term, it is a commodity we dig out of the ground, and its long term price is a little above the cost of production, like all commodities.

> Gold . . . is a commodity we dig out of the ground, and its
> long term price is a little above the cost of
> production, like all commodities.

And the tax code. A friend of mine is a money manager for rich people. A couple of decades ago he took a big chunk of their money (14% if I recall correctly) and parked it in gold in Fort Knox because that qualified the fund as a "commodities fund" with a much lower capital gains rate.

Ultimately the law was changed to close that particular loophole, but the fact remains that other than the basic cost of production the other major factors in determining the metal's values are market distortions like tax laws and popular superstition among people who are at the bottom of the investor food chain.

I'm too lazy to go searching through archives, but I think that loophole was that commodities profits were taxed at long term cap gains rates rather than short term, regardless of how long the commoditiy contract was held.

Long term cap gain rates are already a screaming deal - $0 tax on the first $37,000 and 15% on the next $400,000 or so. Compare to regular income tax rates, not to mention SS and Medicare tax, not levied on capital gains. It is good to make money by owning stuff rather than doing stuff. The tax code is basically written of, for, and by people who own stuff.

> I'm too lazy to go searching through archives, but
> I think that loophole was that commodities profits
> were taxed at long term cap gains rates rather
> than short term, regardless of how long the
> commoditiy contract was held.

Yes, that sounds right. I had forgotten the details.


---------------------
> Long term cap gain rates are already a screaming
> deal - $0 tax on the first $37,000 and 15% on the
> next $400,000 or so. Compare to regular income
> tax rates, not to mention SS and Medicare tax, not
> levied on capital gains. It is good to make money
> by owning stuff rather than doing stuff. The tax
> code is basically written of, for, and by people
> who own stuff.

Absolutely correct. The working and middle classes pay a far higher percentage rate on their income than do the rich. The United States has a severely retrogressive tax code.

There's no economy, no production, no surplus of goods.
Of what use is a medium of exchange?

Gold is good for nuclear shielding though.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2019 08:57AM by anybody.

::snort::

1. It is much easier to trade in Federal notes currency and Euros than it is with Gold.

2. The 12 are not worried about Jesus money. That is a ruse. The 8 people who know the full picture of the church assets are concerned with a happy living getting everything paid for, 1st class, and all they got to do is smile, say jesus messages, act holy, get all the grandkids college paid and setup with mormon companies to build those temples and keep the cash coming.

I would say gold has it's risks, namely it's easy to steal. That's why I don't have any. But a large organization that has a good safe should be able to protect it. But I don't know, there still could be an inside job?

Gold is not easy to steal. The vast majority of gold sits in vaults like Fort Knox while traders buy and sell the certificates of ownership. The gold literally never moves.

A person can buy some coins on the Shopping Channel, or wherever, but the metal is far too heavy to use as a store of significant value or a medium of exchange.

There are probably 7 to 8 owners for every ounce of gold that has been sold on the market because of greed.

That's why it takes such a long time for the U.S. to respond when a country want its gold. They have sold the same gold bar multiple times and they have to run a shell game to figure out who can receive the gold and then procure or smelt gold and re-make it when another owner claims the same gold.

Do you have any evidence to support the statement that there are multiple owners for existing gold?

I had read about the issue many years ago.
Read up on Rehypothecation Of Gold


Bottom line is if you don't have posession of the gold then you only own paper gold or certified paper gold and nothing else.

So good luck on redemptions bc your gold may have been sold to others and your promised gold is likely to present itself by taking it from another promised buyer who isn't redeeming the gold at the same time you are.

Thanks. That's what I needed to hear to understand your argument.


--------------------
> I had read about the issue many years ago.
> Read up on Rehypothecation Of Gold

I understand "rehypothecation." It is not limited to gold and it happens every second of every day. In fact, if you own a single share of stock, or a single bond, your asset is almost certainly rehyopthecated.


-----------------------
> Bottom line is if you don't have posession of the
> gold then you only own paper gold or certified
> paper gold and nothing else.

That is true of all assets. When you own a share of stock, you don't "possess" a tiny piece of a company. You possess a piece of paper that represents that asset and is only enforceable if there are laws and governments to enforce your claim.

The same is true, of course, even if you physically possess the asset. For it is the power of the state that prevents others from taking what you have in your safe, or on your property, or even the property itself.


-------------------
> So good luck on redemptions bc your gold may have
> been sold to others and your promised gold is
> likely to present itself by taking it from another
> promised buyer who isn't redeeming the gold at the
> same time you are.

No. Rehypothecation is the practice of LENDING your gold to someone else just as your broker does with your shares and your bank does with your bank deposits. It is the essence of a fractional reserve system.

Your gold has NOT been sold to someone else.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2020 01:36PM by Lot's Wife.

A good example is when Germany wanted to see its gold. The New York refused. Germans got a chill in their spine and demanded all gold to be sent back. NY Fed said it will take 7 years.

There was a lot of drama that went back and forth. Germans took delivery of newly melted and casted gold a year later. Strange that the gold bars were dusted off and sent. Instead some new bars had to be made for updated specification purposes.

Turns out the gold only existed on paper and since the 1960s the bankers played a shell game and gold entries were only accounting paperwork. Whatever gold was sent over was sold off and melted long ago.

news.goldseek.com/GATA/1483370040.php

> A good example is when Germany wanted to see its
> gold. The New York refused.

Germany can see its gold anytime. Your article does not say Germany was denied permission to do so. What happened is that a fringe advocacy group--The German Precious Metal's [sic] Society--demanded to see the gold bullion and the US refused. I dare say if you or I demanded entry to the storage facilities at Fort Knox, we would be treated the same way.


------------------------
> Germans got a chill in
> their spine and demanded all gold to be sent back.

This is garbled. In the 1960s the US dollar was overvalued relative to the dollar. Recognizing that fact, some countries, most prominently France but to a lesser extent Germany, started exchanging their overvalued dollars for American gold. In the early 1970s the US broke the link between the dollar and gold, allowing the dollar to weaken.

Europe could still get its gold--and continued to do so--but at market rates and not at the artificially undervalued rate at which the world was draining the American reserves.


-------------------
> NY Fed said it will take 7 years.>
> There was a lot of drama that went back and forth.
> Germans took delivery of newly melted and casted
> gold a year later. Strange that the gold bars were
> dusted off and sent. Instead some new bars had to
> be made for updated specification purposes.

None of this is in the article to which you linked.


--------------------
> Turns out the gold only existed on paper and since
> the 1960s the bankers played a shell game and gold
> entries were only accounting paperwork. Whatever
> gold was sent over was sold off and melted long
> ago.

That is untrue and your article does not say it is. What it asserts is that "it is reasonable if we now consider nearly official what gold 'conspiracy theorists' have been assuming for decades. That is, the German gold reserves supposedly stored abroad and especially at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York most likely never existed in physical form since the 1960s. Rather the German gold supposedly stored abroad most likely has been only a matter of accounting book entries."

Your article continues: "if Germany's gold bars stored abroad were actually only paper gold claims and book entries, everything that has happened would make perfect sense."

In other words, the private society asked to see the gold, was denied permission to do so, and has on that basis has surmised that the gold "most likely never existed."


---------------
That source is promoting what it acknowledges is a "conspiracy theory" based on the fact that the US government and Federal Reserve don't let private social groups into Fort Knox. It would be like my saying "the US government refuses to take me to see the core of the earth and on that basis I don't believe it exists."

It's clear you don't understand the topic. Nor have you followed it. That's ok. No, my link isn't going to cover 6 years of gold news about German gold issues.

Google searching keywords isn't your thing. "2012 Germans want to see gold" is a starting point. Zerohedge, businessinsider and gold blogs have covered the issues with NY Fed and Bundesbank.

Bundesbank wanted to see the gold. So did that private society that encouraged German politicians to take more action with Germany's gold.


In English: "Germany's gold hoard grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s. Thanks to its export surplus, the Federal Republic amassed many dollars that could be exchanged at the U.S. central bank against gold claims."

The news brief's likely taken from Budesbank update term was "gold claims" -- not "physical gold bars," which both the Bundesbank and the U.S. Federal Reserve contend have constituted the German gold reserves held in the United States.

Gold claims is basically referring to certificates of gold ownership or in other words paper gold. Perhaps the real stuff was in Paris, France. Upon redemption of the gold claim the bank has to come up with the gold in response.

> It's clear you don't understand the topic.

Really? I think I do understand it. Conversely, I infer that you don't know much about central banking, hypothecation, fractional reserves, or the role of specie in international finance.


-----------------
> Google searching keywords isn't your thing. "2012
> Germans want to see gold" is a starting point.
> Zerohedge, businessinsider and gold blogs have
> covered the issues with NY Fed and Bundesbank.

You made a claim and provided a link. Now you say I shouldn't have relied on the information you provided. Isn't that an inadvertent admission that you are not a dependable source?

As for Zerohedge, that is as credible as your previously linked goldseek.com--which is to say it is useless. I mean, bloggers with names like "Knave Dave" and "ammodotcom?" So I think I'll stick with Business Insider, which is the only site you mentioned that is credible. There is a problem in the sense that BI only covered the story briefly, several years ago, and concluded that it wasn't substantial, but let's see where that gets us.


-------------------
> In English: "Germany's gold hoard grew rapidly in
> the 1950s and 1960s. Thanks to its export surplus,
> the Federal Republic amassed many dollars that
> could be exchanged at the U.S. central bank
> against gold claims."

True, but beside the point.


--------------
> The news brief's likely taken from Budesbank
> update term was "gold claims" -- not "physical
> gold bars," which both the Bundesbank and the U.S.
> Federal Reserve contend have constituted the
> German gold reserves held in the United States.

Uh, yeah. By "gold claim" you mean request for delivery. Germany's gold in the US is recorded on paper, or electronically, in the same way as your stock certificates, bonds, and mortgage; as is also the case also with the US Treasury's holdings and the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing portfolio. That makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, the Fed doesn't actually have 10% of General Electric Corporation chugging away in its vault.


----------------
> Gold claims is basically referring to certificates
> of gold ownership or in other words paper gold.
> Perhaps the real stuff was in Paris, France. Upon
> redemption of the gold claim the bank has to come
> up with the gold in response.

There's no "perhaps." The central banks all know exactly where their gold is. And no, the "real stuff" was in Germany and then secondarily in the US, with the UK and France holding much more modest stocks of German gold.

Now what do you mean by "redemption of a gold claim?" None of the currencies in question are backed by specie of any sort. That is the context in which the terms "claim" and "redemption" were used until the demise of the Bretton Woods agreement in December 1971, at which point the Smithsonian Agreement effectively put the world on a dollar standard. So you probably mean "demand for delivery."


---------------
> Bundesbank wanted to see the gold. So did that
> private society that encouraged German politicians
> to take more action with Germany's gold.

Yeah, this is where the voodoo comes in. Your assertion is that the Germans cannot see their gold in the US. That is true regarding individuals, advocacy groups, and random politicians, as is parenthetically also the case in France, Britain and Japan, and yes even Germany. But that didn't stop Berlin, according to Business Insider, from having 2/3 of its gold stock shipped back to Germany in the decade after the formation of the euro in 1999; a fact which should assuage your concern that that gold did not in fact exist.

In 2007 the Fed loosened its regulations to allow more German officials to see the remaining gold in NYC, and after the Euro crisis around 2011 Germany decided it wanted still more of its holdings shipped home. That was tough, however, because as Der Spiegel noted, "one cannot simply pack 1,500 tons of gold into an Airbus A380 super-jumbo jet and fly it back to Germany." So the Germans established a timetable for delivery, and the delivery process has moving apace--about three years ahead of schedule, to be precise.

So the bulk of German gold is now sitting in Germany, and it is the German government that is preventing people from taking selfies in front of it.

Thanks in advance!

Your responses are entertaining. Keep on pretending to be wise and point by point responding. I think you are one of few that keep doing that. Oh what joy.

Germans did received newly made gold bars. No good reason for that. Not the 50 plus year old bars that Germans people supposedly thought was sitting there all this time. It was paper gold. Shipping gold bars isn't a hard logistics problem. When you supposedly deposit gold bars you should get those exact gold bars back.

As in u.s treasury gold
For your amusement the U.S. Gov audits of Ft Knox, Denver mint and NYfed are screwed up too. Using unskilled high school students to assist with audits and not just pros who know how to audit gold, take measurements and proper samples. Continued seal breaking and not following procedures.
Contracting accounting firms that have to make their reports based on GAO treasurey IG reports and not independent audits.

It is a good read. https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/koos-jansen/audits-of-us-monetary-gold-severely-lack-credibility/

Compartment 11-up has never been audited. Loose foreign gold coins.

Conclusion
"As former US Mint Director Edmund C. Moy: there should be a new ‘FULL’ audit authorized by Congress to physically verify the metal.

The audits of the US monetary gold severely lack credibility. If we really want to know if there’s gold at US Mint depositories a new audit should be initialized by Congress and executed by a fully independent entity. Until then I remain skeptical about the gold claims by US Treasury"

> Your responses are entertaining. Keep on
> pretending to be wise and point by point
> responding. I think you are one of few that keep
> doing that. Oh what joy.

If you were confident your arguments were robust, you wouldn't mind their being examined.


------------------------
> Germans did received newly made gold bars. No good
> reason for that. Not the 50 plus year old bars
> that Germans people supposedly thought was sitting
> there all this time. It was paper gold.

Germany, and France, and every other country that wanted its gold back got exactly what it requested. They received gold, not paper.


----------------
> Shipping
> gold bars isn't a hard logistics problem.

There is generally no need for shipment at all. Like the Apple shares in your IRA and the dollar bills in your Wells Fargo account, the owners rarely want the physical object. And when governments do decide to have the gold delivered, they arrange for that and it is done.


------------------
> When you
> supposedly deposit gold bars you should get those
> exact gold bars back.

Nonsense. When you deposit cash in your bank, you do not expect the same bills back when you later withdraw it. Going out on a limb here I doubt you even write down the serial numbers of the bills when you deposit them, meaning that you couldn't possibly do what you are demanding that central banks do. Likewise, when you entrust a stock certificate to Charles Schwab, you do not demand the same numbered certificate back. In fact, you probably don't even see the certificate anymore since these transactions are normally conducted electronically.

Gold is a fungible commodity, like oil or pork bellies or wheat. When people buy such goods, they do not insist on delivery of the particular grains that they inspected on the farm--in fact, they almost certainly didn't visit the farm at all. If governments wanted their specific bars back, they would have demanded them. But they don't because the gold is a commodity. You might not approve of that fact, but assuming you use a credit card you are violating your own principles.


-----------
The rest of your post states that auditing procedures for gold should be reformed and tightened. That may be true. But it is irrelevant to whether Germany's gold actually exists in the Fed's vaults. The gold is real. Every government that has asked for its gold has received it.

So your claim that Germany's gold in the US does not actually exist boils down to what your first source admitted: a "conspiracy theory."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/2020 03:00PM by Lot's Wife.

I said Germany did get their gold returned. It wasn't the original gold bars. It was remelted gold coming from NY Fed supply made to a specific specification. An unnecessary step unless the gold was just not there before.

The german bank said it was gold claims.


Anyway, we may never know the real truth inless we are bankers or have informed financial folks that know the inside baseball. One day a podcast may come out about it.

That is not true. You are repeating disinformation spread by Russian agents through credulous Western cranks.

As CNBC wrote after the entire affair was over and in response to what it calls your "conspiracy theory,"

". . . there's the rumors coming from Russia. Sputnik News, which incidentally has strongly denied accusations from NATO that it's a Kremlin propaganda machine, reported that Germany had been given the wrong gold. Quoting Russian economist Vladimir Katasonov, the news site said the U.S. may have sold Germany's gold bars years ago and hurriedly bought some back as the Bundesbank came knocking. . . In 2015, [Germany] even released a 2,300-page list of its gold bars. The list contained the bar numbers, melt or inventory numbers, the gross and fine weight as well as the fineness of the gold. It appears it's a tough job placating the demands of the gold bugs."


https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/14/germany-has-got-its-gold-back--they-must-know-something-we-dont.html

I thought that you would want to know, Phazer, the ultimate source of your information.

There was always something curious in what you wrote, since your blog references were all dated within the last two or three years. For the disagreement between Germany and the US to which you refer was resolved in 2012 or 2013. Even your single credible source, Business Insider, acknowledges that the dispute ended back then. So why are your bloggers still transfixed by a horse that was beaten to death so many years ago?

The answer, it transpires, is that Russia is the ultimate source of the rumors--including your contention that the US sold Germany's gold and then frantically bought new gold to replace it when Berlin demanded. Why would Russia do that? Why would the Kremlin plant false stories whose effect is to drive wedges between the US and its Western European allies in the same period as its interference in the US and Brexit referenda?

To ask the question is to answer it. What is unfortunate is the willingness, the eagerness, of gullible bloggers to transmit Russia's disinformation without bothering to check the facts. But then again, why would anyone take such renowned financial analysts as Knave Dave, ammodotcom, Sprott Money, and derailedcapitalism seriously?




https://sputniknews.com/business/201702111050571970-us-germany-gold-repatriation/

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/14/germany-has-got-its-gold-back--they-must-know-something-we-dont.html



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2020 03:16AM by Lot's Wife.

thanks LW and Phazer - interesting case study of how hard it is to get to the historical truth on anything these days

It's no harder, oldpobot, than looking through the smoke and seeing the reality of anthropogenic climate change.

The appeal in conspiracy theories--twice in a week a poster here has linked to articles claiming that climate advocates are intentionally starting the fires in Australia to drive partisan political advantage--is psychologically impressive but that does not render them true.

If they are preparing for some kind of Mad Max apocalypse world, I'm guessing they would invest in massive stashes of weapons so they could defend or take whatever they need (in the name of God, of course).

The church already owns farms. Money won't help. Gold won't help. People know many Mormons hoard food in their basements and if desperate could use force to get it. That sort of makes Mormons targets.

I suppose if Mormons all march like zombies to Missouri at end times, they can't take all their food.

All that resource hoarding mentality does is make their members a little paranoid. They seem to believe God will provide -- if you can pay for it.

“Everything I’m stashing away is going to belong to the biggest guy on my block who will then lose it to the biggest gang in the area!”

—-Anybody grounded in reality

Luke...

16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”


This money should be used to help people on Earth today, not to make slave laborers out of widows. Floors me all this was building up while they were cutting and cutting the share of tithing remaining at the Ward level.

Why doesn't LDS, Inc do things like small business investment in impoverished areas? They could be helping supply vaccines and food to desperate people --- and, no, the level of spending in that area has not at all been impressive compared to the level of salting away money in Real Estate, stocks and bonds - 100x different. That will all be worthless if there is an apocalyptic disaster. Only the agricultural land might be worthwhile.

The LDS Church is basically Smaug.

If the any of the 70 or 12 had any foresight, they would have invested $1 billion in bitcoins in 2011, when they were worth $0.30.

Now they are worth $7,350 (US).

If my math is right, that $1 billion would now be worth about $24 trillion dollars.

OTOH, in 2018 bitcoins were worth $16,000 momentarily, and are now worth $7,350.

It is always easy to make trillions of dollars in hindsight. Prophesying the past is far more effective than prophesying the future. :)

in order to make alternative electronic currencies so that they and their friends could get in on the ground floor of those. Those have probably failed even worse than Bitcoin, haven't followed them, though. When something gets frothy in Utah - good time to think about selling!!

Endless supply of SPAM for the journey to Independence in the end days.

And what makes you think they didn't? Bwah-hah-hah-hah!

I miss Scrapple. Ten times tastier than SPAM.

They don't do it because when it came time to move the Gold it could only be done on a Saturday Morning when the Elders Quorum volunteers show up.