Fiat Money

Gold At $2000+. So Why The Fuss?

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Goldmoney

There appears to be no way out for the bullion banks deteriorating $53bn short gold futures positions ($38bn net) on Comex. An earlier attempt between January and March to regain control over paper gold markets has backfired on the bullion banks.

Unallocated gold account holders with LBMA member banks will shortly discover that that market is trading on vapour. According to the Bank for International Settlements, at the end of last year LBMA gold positions, the vast majority being unallocated, totalled $512bn — the London Mythical Bullion Market is a more appropriate description for the surprise to come.

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The New Deal Is A Bad Old Deal

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

So far, the current economic situation, together with the response by major governments, compares with the run-in to the depression of the 1930s. Yet to come in the repetitious credit cycle is the collapse in financial asset values and a banking crisis.

When the scale of the banking crisis is known the scale of monetary inflation involved will become more obvious. But in the politics of it, Trump is being set up as the equivalent of Herbert Hoover, and presumably Joe Biden, if he is well advised, will soon campaign as a latter-day Roosevelt. In Britain, Boris Johnson has already called for a modern “new deal”, and in his “Hundred Days” his Chancellor is delivering it.

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Gold and COVID-19

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[Here’s a post from a guy I read occasionally. His style (to say the least) is quite over-the-top. Believe what you choose and discard the rest.  –Bob]

By Jim Willie – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

The entire global financial structure is in the process of faltering, breaking, and crumbling. It is better described as sabotage by the Globalist cabal in league with their fascist partners. As the entire economy fractures, as all debt faces failure, as most assets break down, as countless households struggle, the King Dollar faces a certain sunset, true safe haven will be uniformly sought. Correspondingly, the Gold price is ready to launch onward and upward. It will light the fuse on the Silver price in sequence. Demand will skyrocket, while supply has been limited. Behold the greatest fraud and hoax in the history of mankind behind the corona virus. It is named after the Queen of England, a primary funding partner. She filed a corona virus patent in December 2018, from engineered creation. The COVID-19 entity is far more a fascist project to force political change than actually a virus at all. The disease is a mirage, and exaggerated agent of deep fear and fright. Let it be known that not 5% of the population know what a virus is, how it works, the method to identify, or the best prevention. Ignorance is a great ally to the global cabal.

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Orphaned Silver Is Finding Its Parent

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

Introduction

So far this year, the story in precious metals markets has been all about gold. Speculators have this idea that gold is a hedge against inflation. They don’t question it, don’t theorise; they just assume. And when every central bank issuing a respectable currency says they will print like billy-ho, the punters buy gold derivatives.

These normally tameable punters are now breaking the establishment’s control system. On Comex, the bullion establishment does not regard gold and silver as money, just an idea to suck in the punters. The punters are no longer the suckers. With their newly promised infinite monetary expansion, central banks are confirming their inflationary fears.

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Time To Learn About Money

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

An unexpected destruction of fiat currency has been advanced by the monetary and fiscal response to the coronavirus. Financial markets have yet to discount the possibility of such an outcome, but in the coming months they are likely to awaken to this danger.

The question arises as to what will replace fiat currencies. In the past the answer has always been gold but today there are cryptocurrencies as well, whose enthusiasts are more aware than most of fiat money’s failings.

This article describes the basics about money, what it is and the role it plays in order to understand what will be required by the eventual replacement for fiat. It concludes that gold will return as the world’s medium of exchange, and secure cryptocurrencies, unable to provide the scalability and stability of value required of a medium of exchange will be priced in gold after the demise of fiat. But then the rationale for them will be gone, and with it their function as a store of value.

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What’s Next, Trillion-Dollar Coins?

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By Stefan Gleason – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

The massive set of stimulus measures rolled out last month by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve has left many Americans wanting more… and politicians scheming for new ways to dole out additional trillions in cash.

Most taxpayers have already received their $1,200 “stimulus” payments. However, that one-time payment will do little to repair the long-term financial health of the 26 million (and rising) who are newly unemployed.

And it surely won’t bail out all the small business owners who were callously deemed “non-essential” and forced to shut down during this pandemic.

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The Economic Road Ahead

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By GE Christenson – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Rules help guide us through uncertainty.

THOSE WHO MAKE THE RULES

For perspective on Washington D.C. and Wall Street, we listen to wisdom and wit from Bill Bonner:

“We look at the passing parade in Washington through a cynical lens…

No situation is so hopeless… so absurd… or so disastrous that the feds can’t make it worse. No policy is too stupid… too counterproductive… or too corrupt that it can’t become the law of the land.

And no man is too craven… too degenerate… or too much of an imbecile to be disqualified from public office.”

The public officials described above make the rules.

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A Reverse Bucket List

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By Gary Christenson – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman starred in the 2007 movie, “The Bucket List.” A “bucket list” defines things we want to do before we die, before we “kick the bucket.”

A reverse bucket list—as used here—is a list of things already occurred, but we wish had not happened.

The Reverse Bucket List:

  • The Federal Reserve Act authorized the central bank of the United States. That act allowed a privately owned bank—The Federal Reserve—which is neither federal nor a reserve—to control the nation’s money supply. Politicians and bankers are pleased The Fed exists because it enhances their power and wealth. However, the Fed devalues the dollar and creates price inflation for consumers and stocks. This weakens the economy and transfers wealth to the political and financial elite.

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Apocalypse, Or Not?

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

Members of the American libertarian movement, particularly extremist preppers, are often associated with a belief that a complete breakdown in society is the only outcome from government economic policies and will lead to complete social disintegration. At the centre of their concerns is monetary destruction, with other issues, such as the erosion of personal freedom and the right to bear arms, important but peripheral. They cite history, particularly the hyperinflationary collapses, from Rome to Zimbabwe, and now Venezuela. They draw on Austrian economic theory, which fans their dislike of government and their expectation of total chaos.

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John Law – 300 years On

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Most people are aware that historically there have been speculative bubbles. Some of them can even name a few – the South Sea bubble, tulips, and more recently dot-coms. Some historians can go even further, quoting the famous account by Charles Mackay of the South Sea bubble, the tulip mania and the Mississippi bubble, published in the mid-nineteenth century.

The most valuable bubble empirically for the purpose of our elucidation has to be the Mississippi bubble, whose central figure was John Law. Law, a Scotsman whose father’s profession was as a goldsmith and banker in Edinburgh, set up an inflation scheme in 1716 to rescue France’s finances. He proposed to the Regent for the infant Louis XIV a scheme that would be based on a new paper currency.

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The Relevance Of Hayek’s Triangle Today

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Money

Most of us are aware of the inflationary pressures in the major economies, which so far are proving somewhat latent in the non-financial sector. But some central banks are on the alert as well, notably the Federal Reserve Board, which has taken the lead in trying to normalise interest rates. Others, such as the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England are yet to be convinced that price inflation is a potential problem.

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“Price inflation” Is Not The Biggest Problem

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By Steve Saville – Re-Blogged From The Speculative Investor

All else remaining equal, an increase in the supply of money will lead to a decrease in the purchasing-power (price) of money. Furthermore, this is the only effect of monetary inflation that the average economist or central banker cares about. Increases in the money supply are therefore generally considered to be harmless or even beneficial as long as the purchasing-power of money is perceived to be fairly stable*. However, reduced purchasing-power for money is not the most important adverse effect of monetary inflation.

If an increase in the supply of money led to a proportional shift in prices throughout the economy, then its consequences would be both easy to see and not particularly troublesome. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it happens. What actually happens is that monetary inflation causes changes in relative prices, with the spending of the first recipients of the newly-created money determining the prices that rise the first and the most.

Changes in relative prices generate signals that direct investment. The further these signals are from reality, that is, the more these signals are distorted by the creation of new money, the more investing errors there will be and the less productive the economy will become.

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Andrew Jackson vs Harriet Tubman vs Mickey Mouse

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By Guy Christopher – Re-Blogged From Money Metals Exchange

This year marks the 101st anniversary of Andrew Jackson rolling over and over in his grave.

Back in 1915, the brand new Federal Reserve pasted the 7th President’s likeness on its first $10 debt note – a sharp slap to the President who fought and won his famously bitter battle to destroy the “corrupting monster” of central banking.

Old Hickory’s 1836 victory held steady until 1913, when the bankers gathered in secret at Jekyll Island, Georgia to plot the greatest bank robbery in history.

Andrew Jackson

President Jackson railed against central banks and paper money.

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The Fed’s In A Bind

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From http://www.Silver-Phoenix500.com

One can understand the Fed’s frustration over the failure of its interest rate policy…and its desire to escape the zero bound. However, since the FOMC has all but said it will increase rates at its December meeting, events have turned against this course of action. The other major central banks are in easing mode, and the slowdown in China has further undermined both world trade flows and commodity prices. The result has been a strong dollar, which has effectively eliminated any perceived need for higher dollar interest rates. Meanwhile, the US’s non-financial economy remains subdued.

Last August, a similar situation existed, when the FOMC signalled that a rise in the Fed Funds Rate might be announced at its September meeting. Ahead of it, China revalued the dollar by announcing a small devaluation of its own currency, taking the wind out of the Fed’s sails. While the talking heads saw this as a failure of Chinese financial policy, it was nothing of the sort. Given the US was dragging its feet over the yuan’s inclusion in the SDR, it was a salvo in the financial war between the two states, and the Fed found itself in the firing line.

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The Twilight of Cash?

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By Andy Sutton – Re-Blogged From http://www.Silver-Phoenix500.com

Many decades ago you could walk into almost any bank with a bundle of cash and exchange it for a predetermined amount of gold and/or silver. Cash was used because of its portability, light weight, and the confidence of the citizenry that it was as good as gold. I’m sure you already know where this is going. Fast forward to present day and look around you at the plight of cash. It is now redeemable for nothing, is essentially worth nothing, has zero intrinsic value, and despite ludicrous measures, is rather easily counterfeited. So the question I’m going to pose is this: Why oh why would banks, the USGovt, and the global establishment want to outlaw and abolish something that is already a proxy for slavery and servitude? The dollar (and all paper currency for that matter) has already fulfilled its predestined purpose. A dollar buys a nickel’s worth – quite literally – and still people will break their backs, sacrifice their families, and even take the life of another all in the pursuit of pieces of paper. Why is the establishment so against cash?

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The Gold Standard For Skeptics

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By Keith Weiner – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com

A skeptic said to me recently, “The dollar is money and gold isn’t.”

I asked, “OK, how do you define money?”

He responded, “You use dollars to buy groceries, not gold.”

He defines money as the accepted medium of exchange. Let’s drill deeper into that.

The government forces gold out of circulation. Taxation is one way (there are others). If the price of gold rises, it’s taxed as a capital gain. The result is that gold cannot circulate, because no one wants the possibility of a tax bill on every transaction.

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What Comes After Paper Money, Part 1: Fiat’s Obvious Failure

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Guest Post By John Rubino

Business Insider just posted a Deutsche Bank chart that illustrates the difference between life under the Classical Gold Standard and today’s “modern” forms of money. It’s for the UK only but is a pretty good representation of the world in general:

UK inflation 1500 to 2010

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