bank interest, page-12

I suspect only a minority of posters here have personal experience which they can clearly remember of living through a period of high inflation like in the 1970s.

During this period of high inflation the gold price went up many hundreds of per cent. Property prices also soared. I have seen plenty of comments telling us that gold will not rise during an inflationary period but will rise in anticipation of inflation. Those comments reflect a lack of knowledge of the 1970s which clearly refutes them.

As I've stressed on numerous occasions you cannot print paper and more paper and more paper and more paper and more paper without consequences - serious consequences.

Even the establishment financial organisation the IMF recently suggested that "central banks could raise their inflation targets to as high as 4%, to allow for greater interest rate cuts in times of crisis." I just did a search to back this up. This will do: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2010/02/16/1247f23d55f2

That's a dead give away imo. The IMF knows inflation is coming down the track and a 2% inflation target is ludicrous.

By offering 8% fixed over what was it - 5 years? - Westpac in my opinion is anticipating an outbreak of seriously high inflation - and trying now imo to get cash on what could turn out to be extremely generous terms for them in a few years.

The last thing I'd be doing is tying up any of my spare cash for an extended period of time at a fixed rate of interest.

Gold and quality gold equities until the bubble phase - when anything with the name "gold" in it will soar - should offer protection against the coming inflation.

$US$1123 gold as I post is NOWHERE NEAR a bubble. That's equivalent to about just US$160 gold in 1980 correctly adjusted for inflation - the loss of US dollar purchasing power - since then. Gold spiked at US$850 in 1980.