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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: louel who wrote (140254)	3/26/2018 10:01:49 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Respond to of 217735

Most wealthy people tend to continue getting wealthier as they spend only a tiny percentage of their income. Even "luxury goods" don't cost that much.

To: louel who wrote (140254)	3/27/2018 12:01:11 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Respond to of 217735

Swiss banks have never paid anything remotely like 5% interest. Mortgage rates there have always been below 4.5% - and certainly nobody sensible poured money into Switzerland in 2008. We'd closed our Swiss accounts in 2005 or so, after George Bush made moves to essentially criminalize overseas bank accounts. UBS, Credit Suisse and other Swiss banks were whiffy in 2005 and in horribly bad shape by 2008 needing urgent capital infusions from new share sales - and the interest rates were abusively low, especially for non-Swiss citizens featuring negative interest rates. I had a Swiss bank account in Lausanne with UBS for 20 years or so. The current rates in Switzerland is 0.01% on a savings account. For a brief period of time in 2008 UBS interest rates on long term CD accounts rose as high as 2.5% until mostly Middle East investors bought a big chunk of new shares to stabilize the bank. God knows our money was spread out among a large number of US banks under the FDIC limit before bad real estate loans blew up the banking system. That was not particularly difficult to spot in advance. The post-9/11 real estate bubble was more like watching a car crash in slow motion. New condos costing $1.2 million or $5,500 a month were for sale next to similar apartments renting for $2,000 a month. The only thing which made that insanity possible was loans requiring no income or asset verification - coupled with bullshit like "option pay" loans which allowed buyers to skip any 36 monthly payments - predictably usually the first 36 payments. Only a loon was buying or holding residential real estate then. Now we had money in Australian bank accounts earning 6% back then because Australian banks were and are extremely well-capitalized, and we captured a 40% appreciation on the Australian Dollar. I still have ten cents there because Citibank Australia didn't look up that day's interest when they wired back the last of the money into US Dollars. In 2006 Citibank Australia offered us an odd product I passed on. It was a 5 year CD paying 9.25% so long as Australian mortgage rates were between a fairly large bracket. During any quarter the mortgage rates were above or below that bracket, the CD would pay nothing. In retrospect it would have paid close to 9% over the 5 years - but that was too odd for my taste. People who had money in real estate, shares or gold - now much of that money vaporized into non-existence until prices recovered. But an insane period like that are what banks and Treasury Bills are for.