Tag Archives: Real money

Gold As Cheap Today As In 1971 at $35, by Egon von Greyerz

Posted on May 19, 2022 | Leave a comment

Sooner or later people will turn to gold and silver as honest money to replace their rapidly depreciating fiat currencies. From Egon von Greyerz at goldswitzerland.com:

“Specie (gold and silver coin) is the most perfect medium because it will preserve its own level, because having intrinsic and universal value, it can never die in our hands, and it is the surest resource of reliance in time of war.”  – Thomas Jefferson

Since no current President or Prime Minister nor any Central Bank Chairman understands what money is or the relevance of gold, we turn above back to history and Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president for a proper definition.

Jefferson also understood that “Paper is Poverty, It is only the Ghost of Money, and not Money itself.”

As the world economy goes towards an inflationary depression exacerbated not only by epic debts and deficits but now also by war, the significance of gold takes on a whole different dimension.

So let’s dissect Jefferson’s statement:

“(GOLD) Will preserve its own level”

Gold is Constant Purchasing Power. As such, gold doesn’t go up in real terms. An ounce of gold today buys a good suit for a man just like it did in Roman times.

The graph below shows gold as constant purchasing power at the 100 line whilst all the currencies are crashing to the bottom.

All currencies are continuing to lose value against real money although it never takes place in a straight line. With higher interest rates & inflation, higher deficits & debts, poverty, cost of wars and increasing pressures in the financial system, the currency debasement will now accelerate.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Governments, History, Money

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Money As the Greater Depression Deepens, by Doug Casey

Posted on May 26, 2021 | Leave a comment

Own physical gold and silver not as a speculation against increasingly worthless currencies, but because they are real money. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

money

We talk a lot in these pages about what to do with one’s money, but I question whether most subscribers (forget about the public at large) have an adequate grasp of the basics. Without it, much of what we say may seem capricious or outlandish, crazy ideas readers tolerate only because we’ve been so right about the big trends. But the basics in speculating and investing are like the basics in martial arts: Just remembering them isn’t enough; they need to be second nature. That means reviewing and practicing over and over.

It’s not an accident that we usually make good investment calls; the selections arise from a constant awareness of the basics. So I want to briefly review those fundamentals. Let’s start with gold. We’re very gold-oriented around here.

You undoubtedly have a good position in gold. Many of your friends are aware that you’re a gold bug, and more than a few of them question your wisdom. Are you able to give them a succinct and cogent explanation not just for why gold is cyclically a good speculation, but why it’s money? I’ll wager the answer in many cases is, “No.”

I say that because when I give a speech, I often offer a prize to the audience member who can tell me the five classical reasons gold is the best money. Quickly now; what are they? Can’t recall them? Read on, and this time, burn them into your memory.

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Posted in Banking, Capitalism, Currencies, Debt, Governments, Money

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The Evolution of Fiat Money, Endless War, and the End of Citizenship, by ICE-9

Posted on August 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

This is a well-researched, thought-provoking, provocative, and all around excellent article. From ICE-9 at theburningplatform.com:

One topic missing from historians’ analysis of the West’s transition from a physical gold and silver based money system to a fiat money system is the defining events that facilitated and enabled this transition.  One can find no detailed and critical political / historical assessment of this transition, and it would be not for lack of effort.  The transition is always presented as if it is prima facie the refined and evolved state of things that warrants no investigation other than superficial praise followed with dogmatic platitudes.  But has this transition away from the “barbarous relic” money system actually made mankind more refined and evolved, or has it instead plunged mankind into an even more heightened and efficient state of barbarism?

One encounters additional blank pages when searching for any attempt at correlating the evolution and spread of fiat money to the prevalence and severity of war.  A collective learned silence descends when attempting to identify why it is, as money evolves, that war become more ideological, destructive, widespread, and prolonged.  We are all familiar with the endless adulations describing the global spread of “democracy”, but why is it so many are unwilling converts and it became imperative to spread “democracy” via war and regime change?  And closer to home, as our own nation “evolves” from a Constitutional Republic into pure “democracy”, how is it we as “citizens” feel more and more disenfranchised rather than empowered despite even greater doses of “democracy” at home?

This essay attempts to identify the defining events that facilitated and enabled the West’s transition to a fiat based money system, examines cause and effect between the evolution of money and the prevalence and severity of war, and binds together money evolution with the history of warfare by demonstrating cause and effect between money’s evolution, the rise and necessity of endless war, and the inevitable transition from “citizens” to subjects.

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Posted in Banking, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Governments, History, Military, War

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The journey to monetary gold and silver, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on March 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

The coronavirus and the current financial crisis may not be all bad. They’ll probably be the death of fiat money. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

Markets are just beginning to latch on to the economic consequences of the coronavirus. Central banks are slashing interest rates and beginning to throw new money into the mix and governments are increasing deficit spending.

Few analysts have yet to understand the enormous consequences of the coronavirus for missed payments and accumulating current debt, which is and will rapidly drain liquidity from wholesale money markets. It is increasingly certain that the eurozone’s banking system will require rescuing from insolvency with knock-on consequences for the global monetary system. Concern over the consequences for the $640 trillion OTC notional derivative market, particularly for $26 trillion of fx swaps, is so far absent.

Continuing on our theme that the fates of the dollar and US Treasury values are closely bound, the extraordinary overvaluation of the bond market will translate into a collapse for both. This article charts how the collapse of the dollar and financial asset values is likely to progress and concludes that we are witnessing the end of the neo-Keynesian fiat currency fantasy, which will be done and dusted with surprising rapidity.

Only then will sound money, after varying time periods for different nations, return.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Financial markets, Governments, Money

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The Yellow Vests Get it Right, by Robert Gore

Posted on January 13, 2019 | 39 comments

Financial nuclear warheads.

The mainstream media has degenerated irreparably. Here’s a reliable rule of thumb: if it’s important it’s not covered; if it’s covered it’s not important. Stories in the American mainstream press about Yellow Vest protests have been few. One aspect of the protests, transcendently important, has received scant coverage.

The Yellow Vest protestors have called for a coordinated run on French banks. Whether they realize it or not, they’re playing with nuclear warheads that could annihilate not just the French, but Europe’s and the entire world’s financial system. Because inextricably linked to the ends of contemporary governments―how much they can screw up the lives of those who must live under them—is the question of means―how do they fund their misrule? The short answer is taxes and debt.

Since 1971, when President Nixon 
“temporarily” suspended international convertibility of dollars for gold (it’s never been reinstated), the monetary basis of the global economy has been fiat debt. Neither government or central bank debt nor currencies are tethered to any real constraint, like precious metals (see “Real Money,” SLL). Thus, politicians and monetary officials can create as much debt as they want: debt by fiat.

Government and central bank debt is at the apex of the global debt pyramid. The next tier is commercial banks that have accounts at central banks. Those accounts are bank assets and central bank liabilities, or debts. Central banks expand their fiat liabilities to banks in exchange for banks’ fiat government debt, an exchange called debt monetization, which is a bit of a misnomer since no “Real Money” is involved. The “monetization” is the central bank’s fiat expansion of banks’ accounts with the central bank in exchange for fiat government debt, which expands banks’ assets available for loans to governments, businesses, and individuals.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Governments, History, Insurrection, Media, Money, Politics

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