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We all know the problem with fiat currency: the temptation to print more currency is irresistible, but ultimately destructive.

Money in all its forms attracts quasi-religious beliefs and convictions. This makes it difficult to discuss with anything resembling objectivity. But given the centrality of money (and its sibling, greed) in human affairs, let’s press on and ask: would returning to the Gold Standard (i.e. gold as money / gold-backed currency) resolve our most pressing monetary problems?

The conviction that the answer is “yes” is widespread. In this view, President Nixon “closing the gold window,” in 1971, i.e. ending the convertibility of the US dollar to gold in international foreign exchange (FX) markets, is the Original Sin that doomed us to the inflationary Hell of fiat currency, i.e. currency unbacked by anything tangible such as gold or silver.

In this view, the only way to avoid the consequences of this Original Sin–the eventual reduction of fiat currency to zero value via hyper-inflation as the currency is “printed” without restraint–is to return to the gold standard.

So far, so good, but from here on in it gets tricky. We have a long history of precious metals being the only form of money in various economies, and an almost as long history of paper money augmenting precious-metal “real money” (in China, for example) and the issuance of copper coinage to grease small transactions.

Gold-backed currency rolls off the tongue rather easily, but what exactly does this mean? In theory, it means every unit of paper / digital currency in circulation can be converted on demand to a physical quantity of gold or silver at an exchange rate either set by the nation-state’s government or by the market.

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Dutch Central Bank Admits It Has Prepared for a New Gold Standard

November 20, 2023

Dutch Central Bank Admits It Has Prepared for a New Gold Standard

In a recent interview the Dutch central bank (DNB) shares it has equalized its gold reserves, relative to GDP, to other countries in the eurozone and outside of Europe. This has been a political decision. If there is a financial crisis the gold price will skyrocket, and official gold reserves can be used to underpin a new gold standard, according to DNB. These statements confirm what I have been writing for the past years about central banks having prepared for a new international gold standard.

Wouldn’t a central bank that has one primary objective—maintaining price stability—serve its mandate best by communicating the currency it issues can be relied upon in all circumstances? By saying gold will be the safe haven of choice during a financial collapse, DNB confesses its own currency (the euro) does not weather all storms. Indirectly, DNB encourages people to own gold to be protected from financial shocks, making the transition towards a gold based monetary system more likely.

photograph of gold bars on pallets at gold vault of Dutch National Bank

Old gold vault of DNB in Amsterdam.

How to Prepare for a Gold Standard

In my latest article on this subject—“Europe Has Been Preparing a Global Gold Standard Since the 1970s. Part 2”—I have demonstrated that central banks of medium and large economies in the eurozone have balanced their official gold reserves, proportionally to GDP, to prepare for a gold standard (/gold price targeting system). My analysis was pieced together by scarce quotes from central banks and data of European gold and foreign exchange holdings. My conclusion was that several medium-size economies in Europe (the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, and Portugal) sold large amounts of gold from the early 1990s to 2008 to come on par with France, Germany, and Italy. I wrote:

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The “Barbarous Relic” Helped Enable a World More Civilized than Today’s

December 12, 2022

The “Barbarous Relic” Helped Enable a World More Civilized than Today’s

One of history’s greatest ironies is that gold detractors refer to the metal as the barbarous relic. In fact, the abandonment of gold has put civilization as we know it at risk of extinction.

The gold coin standard that had served Western economies so brilliantly throughout most of the nineteenth century hit a brick wall in 1914 and was never able to recover, or so the story goes. As the Great War began, Europe turned from prosperity to destruction, or more precisely, toward prosperity for some and destruction for the rest. The gold coin standard had to be ditched for such a prodigious undertaking.

If gold was money, and wars cost money, how was this even possible?

First, people were already in the habit of using money substitutes instead of money itself—banknotes instead of the gold coins they represented. People found it more convenient to carry paper around in their pockets than gold coins. Over time the paper itself came to be regarded as money, while gold became a clunky inconvenience from the old days.

Second, banks had been in the habit of issuing more bank-notes and deposits than the value of the gold in their vaults. On occasion, this practice would arouse public suspicion that the notes were promises the banks could not keep. The courts sided with the banks and allowed them to suspend note redemption while staying in business, thus strengthening the government-bank alliance. Since the courts ruled that deposits belonged to the banks, bankers could not be accused of embezzlement. The occasional bank runs that erupted were interpreted as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people lined up to withdraw their money because they believed their bank was insolvent, the bank soon would be…

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The Inflation Crisis Is Worse Than Admitted – Will Interest Rates Go To Record Highs?

June 11, 2022

The Inflation Crisis Is Worse Than Admitted – Will Interest Rates Go To Record Highs?

Inflation is not a new problem in the US; there has been a steady expansion of price inflation and a devaluation of the dollar ever since the Federal Reserve was officially made operational in 1916. This inflation is easily observed by comparing the prices of commodities and necessities from a few decades ago to today.

The median cost of a home in 1960 was around $11,900, which is the equivalent of $98,000 today. In the year 2000, the median home price rose to $170,000. Today, the average sale price for a home is over $400,000 dollars. Inflation apologists will argue that wages are keeping up with prices; this is simply not true and has not been true for a long time.

In today’s terms, a certain measure of home price increases involve artificial demand created by massive conglomerates like Blackstone buying up distressed properties. We can also place some blame on the huge migration of Americans out of blue states like New York and California during the pandemic lockdowns. However, prices were rising exponentially in many markets well before covid.

Americans have been dealing with higher prices and stagnant wages for some time now. This is often hidden or obscured by creative government accounting and the way inflation is communicated to the public through CPI numbers. This is especially true after the inflationary crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s under the Carter Administration and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.

It’s important to understand that CPI today is NOT an accurate reflection of true inflation overall, and this is because the methods used by the Fed and other institutions to calculate inflation changed after the 1970s event. Not surprisingly, CPI was adjusted to show a diminished inflation threat. If you can’t hide the price increases, you can at least lie about the gravity of those increases.

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After the Gold Standard, Government Grew While the Dollar Shrank

August 25, 2021

After the Gold Standard, Government Grew While the Dollar Shrank

Public-domain image via Picryl.com

Why ending the gold standard led to a bigger government and a smaller dollar

As The Hill’s Robert P. Murphy notes, most Americans associate the end of the gold standard and the ensuing dollar erosion with Nixon and his 1971 decision to “close the gold window.” In truth, however, the U.S. dollar was weakening long before that, something that can be explained by evaluating the length of the tether between gold and the dollar.

Between our nation’s founding and the Civil War, there was practically no difference between gold and currency. U.S. coins were minted with face values based on the quantity and price of gold or silver they contained. This kind of policy minimized the government’s role in monetary issues. Instead of being stored in vaults, the nation’s precious metals circulated. This decision essentially allowed the public to dictate monetary policy based on natural supply of the metals: individuals presented gold or silver to the U.S. Mint to be manufactured into into coins.

The Civil War saw the first shift away from this approach, when paper notes not immediately redeemable in gold and silver coins were issued by both the Union and the Confederate states (primarily to pay for war efforts). Both sides engaged in inflation, an obvious temptation when no other controls exist on money issue.

Between 1879 and 1914, the government did away with silver monetization, but restored convertibility between the dollar and gold with a roughly $20.67 an ounce ratio. By this time, however, the view of paper as money had already established itself. So long as a $5 bill and a $5 gold coin are fungible (interchangeable, with no loss of value between them), carrying $100 in paper money is just more convenient than carrying $100 in coins.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The dollar’s debt trap

August 22, 2021

The dollar’s debt trap

On the fiftieth anniversary of the Nixon Shock, this article explains why fiat currencies have become joined at the hip to financial asset values. And why with increasing inevitability they are about to descend into the next financial crisis together.

I start by defining the currencies we use as money and how they originate. I show why they are no more than the counterpart of assets on central bank and commercial bank balance sheets. Including bonds and other financial issues emanating from the US Government, the individual states, with the private sector and with broad money supply, dollar debt totals roughly $100 trillion, to which we can add shadow banking liabilities realistically estimated at a further $30 trillion.

This gives us an idea of the scale of the threat to asset values and banking posed by higher interest rates, which are now all but certain. The prospect of contracting financial asset values is potentially far worse than in any post-war financial crisis, because the valuation base for them starts at zero and even negative interest rates in the case of Europe and Japan.

I focus on the dollar because it is everyone’s reserve currency and I show why a significant bear market in financial asset values is likely to take down the dollar with it, and therefore, in that event, threatens the survival of all other fiat currencies.

Introduction

Dickensian attitudes to debt (Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, misery) reflected the discipline of sound money and the threat of the workhouse. It was an attitude to debt that carried on even to the 1960s. But the financial world changed forever in 1971 when post-war monetary stability ended with the Nixon shock, exactly fifty years ago.
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Do Not Trust Governments With the Control of Money

November 19, 2020

DO NOT TRUST GOVERNMENTS WITH THE CONTROL OF MONEY

If there one thing that is fairly certain in this life – besides the seeming inescapability of death and taxes – is that once someone is appointed to almost any position in the political and bureaucratic structures of a government they soon discover how important and essential is the organization of which they are a part for the well-being of the nation. The country could not exist without it, along with its increasing budget and expanded authority. This applies to the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, no less than other parts of government.

The news media has reported that the apparently unlikely appointment of Dr. Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors probably will be successfully maneuvered through the full Senate confirmation process. Shelton would then sit on the Federal Reserve Board for a 14-year term. Hers has been one of the more controversial nominations to the Fed in recent years, with critics fervently expressing their negative views of her.

For instance, Tony Fratto, a former Treasury official and deputy press secretary under George W. Bush, was recently quoted as saying that Shelton’s appointment would be “a discredit to the Senate and the Fed. It screams. Nothing at all is serious. Not us. Not you. Not them.”

Mainstream Economists Against Anyone for Gold

Back in August of this year, over one hundred academic and business economists issued an open letter to members of the U.S. Senate calling for rejection of her nomination to the Fed. Among those who signed were some economics Nobel Laureates, including Robert Lucas and Joseph Stiglitz. They insisted on her unfitness for such an appointment. Why? They said: “She has advocated a return to the gold standard; she has questioned the need for federal deposit insurance; she has even questioned the need for a central bank at all.”

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Is High Inflation Now A Bigger Danger Than A Deflationary Crash?

August 27, 2020

Is High Inflation Now A Bigger Danger Than A Deflationary Crash?

What’s the more likely event at this point: a deflationary crash or runaway inflation?

For a long time, Peak Prosperity co-founder Adam Taggart and I have hewed to the “Ka-POOM!” theory, which states that a major deflation will scare the central banks so badly that they overreact and pour too much liquidity into the system, thereby destroying it.

To visualize how this will play out, think of what happened in Beirut this week. Customs officials there stored thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer at their seaport, for years. The pile just sat there doing absolutely nothing.

After years of inaction, the port authorities became lulled into the erroneous conclusion that nothing would ever happen.

But then one day a spark came to life, starting a fire, and then all at once — POOM! — the entire thing blew up with devastating effect.

This analogy works pretty well here as we approach the Keynesian endgame facing the global economy. The pile of $trillions in bad debts issued over the past decades has been the fertilizer. Covid-19 was the spark. And now we’re simply waiting for the entire economic and financial system to explode.

The same process began in the US and has been unfolding across the world ever since after the gold standard was abandoned in 1971. Untethered from any restraint, all that was left to staunch the flow of red ink was self-restraint and a concern for the future, both of which were in short supply.

Not only has debt been growing far faster than income (GDP) at the national level, but debts have been growing exponentially (i.e., ‘compounding’) ever since 1971:

That debt growth is a nearly perfect exponential curve upon which the entire systems of politics, banking and the economy have come to rely.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe Has Been Preparing a Global Gold Standard Since the 1970s

July 20, 2020

Europe Has Been Preparing a Global Gold Standard Since the 1970s

Research reveals that European central banks have prepared a new international gold standard. Since the 1970s, policies that paved the way for an equitable and durable monetary system have gradually been implemented.

In my view, the current fiat international monetary system is ending—unconventional monetary policy has entered a dead end street and can’t reverse. I have written about this before, and will not repeat this message in today’s article. Instead, we will discuss a topic that deserves more attention, namely that European central banks saw this coming decades ago when the world shifted to a pure paper money standard. Accordingly, European central banks have carefully prepared a new monetary system based on gold.

When the last vestige of the gold standard was terminated by the U.S. in 1971, circumstances forced European central banks go along with the dollar hegemony, for the time being. Sentiment in Europe, however, was to counter dollar dominance and slowly prepare a new arrangement. Currently, central banks in Europe are signaling that a new system that incorporates gold is approaching.

If you want to read a summary of this article you can skip to the conclusion.

Contents:

The Rise and Fall of Bretton Woods
Europe Equalizes Gold Reserves Internationally
Private Gold Ownership Distribution
Setting the Stage for a Gold Standard
Conclusion
Sources

The Rise and Fall of Bretton Woods

At the end of the Second World War, a new international monetary system called Bretton Woods was ratified. Under Bretton Woods, the U.S. dollar was officially the world reserve currency, backed by gold at a parity of $35 per ounce. The United States owned 60% of all monetary gold—more than 18,000 tonnes—and promised the dollar to be “as good as gold.” All other participating countries committed to peg their currencies to the dollar. Bretton Woods was a typical gold exchange standard.

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The Great Government Gold Heist of 1933

April 6, 2020

The Great Government Gold Heist of 1933

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the great government gold heist of 1933 ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On April 5, 1933, the president signed Executive Order 6102. It was touted as a measure to stop gold hoarding, but it was in reality, a massive gold confiscation scheme. The order required private citizens, partnerships, associations and corporations to turn in all but small amounts of gold to the Federal Reserve in exchange for $20.67 per ounce.

The executive order was one of several steps Roosevelt took toward ending the gold standard in the US.

With the dollar tied to gold, the Federal Reserve found it difficult to increase the money supply during the Great Depression. It couldn’t simply fire up the printing press as it can today. The Federal Reserve Act required all notes have 40% gold backing. But the Fed was low on gold and up against the limit. By stealing gold from the public, the Fed was able to boost its gold holdings.

EO 6102 followed on the heels of an order Roosevelt issued just weeks before prohibiting banks from paying out or exporting gold. Just two months after the enactment of EO 6102, the US effectively went off the gold standard when Congress enacted a joint resolution erasing the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. Then, in 1934, the government’s fixed price for gold was increased to $35 per ounce. This effectively increased the value of gold on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet by 69%. By increasing its gold stores through the confiscation of private gold holdings, and declaring a higher exchange rate, the Fed could circulate more notes. In effect, the hoarding of gold by the government allowed it to inflate the money supply.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Red Gold: China’s Stealth Plan to Use Gold for World Domination

February 25, 2020

Red Gold: China’s Stealth Plan to Use Gold for World Domination

Gold used to be important.

During and after World War II, every major developed country amassed as much physical gold as they could. It stabilized currencies and signaled independence.

But with the end of the gold standard in 1971, most countries began to sell off their reserves.

So much so that in 1999, an agreement was formed to limit the amount of gold that central banks could sell. Fast forward to today, and Canada’s central bank owns ZERO gold.

Despite the agreement, most countries continued to shed their gold reserves as fast as possible.

That is until a few years ago, when a handful of countries reversed course. Central Banks started buying gold with fury, and they haven’t let up since.

In the final quarter of 2018, central banks purchased more gold than in any other quarter on record.

By the end of the year, central banks collectively held around 1.064 billion ounces of gold (equivalent to 33,200 tons).

That’s about one-fifth of all the gold ever mined.

In the first half of 2019, central banks purchased 11.97 million ounces of gold (374 tons). Once again, that was far more than ever before. And it’s equivalent to one-sixth of total gold demand in that period.

And total central bank gold purchases for 2019 were the second highest they’ve been in the last 50 years (2018 being the first).

The Unusual Suspects in Central Bank Gold Purchases

And the Keyser Söze of gold is Vladimir Putin.

I’ve been very quiet about Russia and Putin the last few years as I’ve been swamped with media requests following the success of my NY Times Bestseller The Colder War.

Don’t underestimate what the Russians are doing, as others are starting to follow…

While the world focuses on China, Russia has positioned itself at the center of the global political chessboard.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Ethics of a Gold Standard

December 30, 2019

The Ethics of a Gold Standard

The efficacy of a metallic monetary system is beyond dispute at least among real economists which eliminates just about 95% of whom are now engaged in the “profession.” Money, which gold is, allows for specialization, the division of labor, and provides the means for mankind to escape from barter and, thus, a primitive existence. Like free trade, money naturally integrates mankind both among and between peoples.

A system of central banking with an unbacked paper currency is the antithesis of a gold standard. Manipulation of currencies by central banks, mostly through debasement, hinders trade, creates distortions, and ultimately leads to the dreaded business cycle. Murray Rothbard aptly describes the baneful results of state intervention in the monetary system:

. . . government meddling with money has
not only brought untold tyranny into the world;
it has also brought chaos and not order. It has
fragmented the peaceful, productive world
market and shattered it into a thousand pieces,
with trade and investment hobbled and hampered
by myriad restrictions, controls, artificial rates,
currency breakdowns, etc. It has helped bring
about wars by transforming a world of peaceful
intercourse into a jungle of warring currency blocs.*

While the economic efficiency of a gold standard is important, the ethical case for it is more compelling and was the reason why gold, as money, lasted as a medium of exchange for so long. Gold/money has to be created through honest-to-goodness production and exchange. The often dangerous mining of gold takes labor, capital goods, and land. Turning raw gold into coinage is another process which requires a high level of specialization and production techniques. Both are honest and morally sound activities which make for the betterment of life all around.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gold’s long-term gains have even outperformed Warren Buffett…

October 8, 2019

Gold’s long-term gains have even outperformed Warren Buffett…

Warren Buffett, despite his extraordinary investment success, has a rather famous and long-standing love/hate relationship with precious metals.

Maybe it started with his dad– Congressman Howard Buffett of Nebraska– who, as a staunch advocate for the gold standard, argued to his colleagues on Capitol Hill that “paper money systems have always wound up with collapse and economic chaos.”

Warren himself acquired a record-setting 128 million ounces of silver back in the late 1990s… which he later sold at a profit in the early 2000s.

But to listen to him talk about precious metals these days, he’s always negative.

Buffett often quips that if you took the world’s entire supply of gold and melted it together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet (~21 meters) per side and be worth around $9 trillion.

With that same $9 trillion, you could buy every share of Apple, Disney, Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Exxon Mobil, all the farmland in the United States, all the developable land in Manhattan, and still have more than a trillion dollars left over.

This is Buffett’s central argument: gold doesn’t produce anything. So it’s much better to invest in a productive asset like a business, farmland, etc.

Sure, I’d rather own a profitable, productive asset than a pile of metal.

But Buffett is completely wrong to compare gold to productive assets… they’re apples and oranges.

Gold isn’t an ‘investment’. It’s an insurance policy against paper currencies will lose value over time. So a MUCH better comparison for gold is CASH.

Using Buffett’s same thought experiment, would an investor with $9 trillion rather have all that money sitting in a bank earning 0%? Or buy all the productive assets I mentioned above?

Clearly it’s more attractive to own productive assets than cash sitting in a bank.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Could The U.S Be Gearing Up To a Return to the Gold Standard?

August 5, 2019

Could The U.S Be Gearing Up To a Return to the Gold Standard?

There may be readers who weren’t even born when the U.S. still had a gold-backed dollar. Since the gold standard was abolished in 1971, the value of the dollar has decreased annually by 3.96 percent. You would need over $600 today to purchase the same goods you purchased for $100 in 1973. Still, a dollar is a dollar, right? No, it is not. It is just a piece of paper.

Is there a chance the U.S. could return to the gold standard and provide real value to the U.S. currency? Judy Shelton and Christopher Waller are President Trump’s pick for Federal Reserve governors. As it happens, Ms. Shelton is a believer in the gold standard and a critic of current Federal Reserve policies. She believes that the Fed has become unnecessarily involved in trade policies instead of adhering to its function of regulating the monetary system. Returning to the gold standard is not a popular idea these days when economists support the limitless printing for currency, high debt, and inflation.

Ms. Shelton would have been considered mainstream 35 years ago. Today, she is thought of as unorthodox. In 2018, she wrote in an article published by the conservative thinktank, Cato Institute, “If the appeal of cryptocurrencies is their capacity to provide a common currency, and to maintain a uniform value for every issued unit, we need only consult historical experience to ascertain that these same qualities were achieved through the classical international gold standard.”

She also authored a book, Fixing the Dollar Now. In it, she advocates for linking the dollar to a benchmark of value, preferably gold. More than four decades ago, the currency of all major countries, such a Britain, Japan, France, Russia, and others were linked to gold. In 1933, the dollar was linked to $35 worth of gold. In 2019, the value of the dollar is less than one-thirtieth of that.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The return to a gold exchange standard

February 22, 2019

The return to a gold exchange standard

This article makes the obvious point that a return to a gold standard is the only way nations can contain the interest cost of servicing debt, given the alternative is inflationist policies that can only lead to far higher interest rates and currency destruction. The topic is timely, given the self-harm of American economic and geopolitical policies, which are already leading America into a cyclical slump. Meanwhile, American fears of Asian domination of global economic, monetary and political outcomes have come true. The upcoming credit crisis is likely to kill off the welfare state model in the West by destroying their unbacked paper currencies, while China, Russia and their Asian allies have the means to prosper.

The fragility of state finances

In my last Goldmoney article I explained why the monetary policies of inflationist economists and policy makers would end up destroying fiat currencies. The destruction will come from ordinary people, who are forced by law to use the state’s money for settling their day-to-day transactions. Ordinary people, each one a trinity of production, consumption and saving, will eventually wake up to the fraud of monetary inflation and discard their government’s medium of exchange as intrinsically worthless.

They always have, eventually. This has been proved by experience and should be uncontroversial. For the issuer of a currency, the risk of this happening heightens when credit markets become destabilised and confidence in the full faith and credit, which is the only backing a fiat currency has, begins to be questioned either by its users or foreigners or both. And when it does, a currency starts to rapidly lose purchasing power and the whole interest rate structure moves higher.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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