The National Party

There is no tangible threat from the NP, or any other far right party in ireland, thankfully.

I would be more concerned by FG moving back toward the centre right/right, when LV is eventually replaced by a new leader & if that new leader was a little more right wing focused.

I still dont see this as a likley threat, but its a heck of a lot more likley than a far right fringe party developing large scale support.

I'd say CAB might be interested to know how such a small outfit was able to acquire 400k worth of gold.

Did Justin Barrett "win it on the horses" ? That must be how his party paid for the gold.

The "thief" Reynolds does in fact have a good amount of personal wealth from land and farming. If I was to put money on it, I'd say that Baby Boy Barrett has somehow conflated "our wealth" and "OUR wealth".

One of the reasons given for the party holding funds in the form of precious metals was that they don't trust fiat currency.

Typical trait of the far/alt-right loon. Probably the type that believes in crypto-crap as well. The revenue commissioners should be auditing these sorts to determine the source of every single euro they own and how they spend every penny. Make life unbearable for them to remain here.

That's always been the way I remember years ago when I agreed to vote for someone when I wasn't even registered to vote and had no idea who they were just to get them out of my way because I was running late and was surrounded by their team.

That's like what they would say. Cop on to yourself.

Gold only appears to hold its value well because its price is quoted in US dollars, a currency which it itself subject to inflation, and so is not a good long-term measure of value.

The actual truth is that in real terms the price of gold, like the price of all traded commodities, goes up and down, and currencies backed by gold experience bouts of both inflation and deflation. Sometimes the bouts of deflation are prolonged — for example, in real terms the price of gold declined steadily from 1934 to 1970, losing about 65% of its value. It suffered did even worse between 1979 and 2000, losing more than 75% of its value.

What characterises gold is that its value rises dramatically in real terms during times of economic turbulence; the prolonged deflation of 1934 to 1970 was bookended by periods of rapid rise of the price of gold during the Great Depression and the first Oil Crisis.

So, far from being a good store of value, in real terms gold is in fact highly volatile. If you can predict periods of economic turbulence and move into gold just before them, you'll do very well, benefitting from the price rise. And if you move out of gold just before the economic turbulence stabilises, you'll miss the price fall. But that requires a degree of consistently reliable foresight most of us do not possess.

You'll do much less well if your strategy is to hold gold constantly — if you invested in gold in 1900 and held it for a century, you'd be better off in 2000 than if you'd kept your money in a shoebox under the bed, but you'd be much worse off than if you had put the same money into land, or into a diversified portfolio of equities.

They'll be looking at the provenance of the gold. There's no offence here unless the gold does in fact belong to someone other than the lads that took it.

And this could be embarassing for the National Party, since any evidence that proves the gold belongs to them may also prove that they have breached various provisions of the Standards in Public Office legislation.

Not just reserves, Anna, but Reserves. You mustn't forget the capital letter.

But, honestly, I think you're attaching rather more weight to their terminology than it can bear. Remember, they also claim that their "Reserve" was kept in a "safe vault". I suspect that by "Reserve funds" they mean "funds", and by "safe vault" they mean "safe" (or possibly "lockable filing cabinet").

So it's OK for them to be using all sorts of potentially corrupt practice?

Them lads in the caps are vital. Over time walking round with them will make the wee fellah in the middle feel like a big boy.

I'm certainly no fan of Leo V or his merry band, but why is FG moving back towards the centre right/right a bad thing exactly?

Contrary to idiocy on the likes of Twitter, there's nothing at all to feel "threatened" about by a right-leaning party unless you're part of the group that thinks everything should be paid for by "someone else", or that the criminals and wasters really are poor neglected and misunderstood folks just needing a hug, or that hurt feelings really should be illegal! Plus there's a huge difference between centre-right and far right - the latter of which is a tiny fringe element that will never see any kind of power in this State.

Besides, the current "left" agenda certainly isn't working out very well for the country as the news headlines or many of the topics discussed in this very forum will show. A more "right" leaning Government would seem to be exactly what we need!

I suspect it is remember when "Republicans" use to engage in all kinds of criminal activity in order to raise "funds" for "the cause" ?