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People have been obsessed with gold since the beginning of civilization. Both the Egyptians and ancient Greeks valued the precious metal as a status symbol. The more gold you had, the higher you ranked in the natural order of things. In more recent times, gold rushes in Alaska and South Africa have caused major frenzies while changing lives.

People have a natural affinity for shiny things, which makes them desire gold and silver for its beauty. Especially gold, which is a simple, fairly boring metal that can be melted and formed into any desirable form. In many struggling countries, such as India, even the poorest citizens crave gold jewelry.

Prior to paper currency, the actual precious metal was used in trade. A certain amount of gold was assigned a certain value and used in exchange for some other commodity. Since gold and silver were easy to carry, the system worked well, involving the trade of equal commodities.

When governments began to mint currencies, gold and silver became natural choices. Their very rarity, especially gold, gave them an inherent value. People could trust the value of gold and silver. Slowly, however, beginning in the 1930s, world governments were no longer linking their currency to gold. The US dollar stopped being backed by gold in the 1970s. Instead of being backed by true value, word currencies became pieces of paper.

The role of gold changed from a trusted trading currency to a safe investment haven. Investors rely on the fact that while the value of paper currency will fluctuate, gold and silver will hold their value. Precious metals require no guarantees. As currencies lost their gold-backing, global central banks began purchasing and hoarding gold as a reserve currency whose value has been recognized throughout history.

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

A Sign of Things to Come: China Adds 1,853 Metric Tonnes to “Official” Gold Reserves

January 11, 2019

A Sign of Things to Come: China Adds 1,853 Metric Tonnes to “Official” Gold Reserves

While Western governments continue to ravage each other viciously, seemingly unable to come to terms on even the simplest of agendas, the East, led predominately by the financial juggernaut that is China, continues to chug along, slowly but surely carrying through on their long term plans.

While we look inward and fight among one another, becoming increasingly polarized and isolated into our various political “camps”, ceasing any form of communication with each other, our economic rivals are racing past us, forming partnerships and making plans.

Russia and China are two such countries that I have often talked about in past articles, highlighting how the West has forced these two countries into a partnership that threatens to overtake the West as the economic powerhouse of the world.

While our financial “gurus” continue to shuffle pieces of paper back and forth between each other, trading digital numbers in ever increasingly quantities, as if they had any real, true intrinsic value.

Russia and China are happily making moves around the world, acquiring physical, tangible assets that will play key roles in the coming economic conflict that the world will inevitably face at some point in our not too distant future.

Although their demand for oil, rare earths and various other forms of assets is seemingly insatiable, there is one asset class above all others that I am particularly interested in, precious metals.

Both countries have made it blatantly obvious that they are not happy with the current “status quo” and would love to see an eventual change. That change being a toppling of the US Dollar as the reserve currency of the world.

This has led to a rapid accumulation in precious metals by Russia, who have forecast their purchases on an almost monthly basis.

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

Story of a Gold Coin

December 28, 2018

Story of a Gold Coin

Here’s a true story of one gold coin, a 50 Pesos gold coin like that pictured above.

Earlier this month, my friend Hugo Salinas Price emailed an interesting story about a single gold coin that that he still holds dearly.

Story of a Gold Coin by Hugo Salinas Price

As I was shuffling papers in some old files, I came across a slip of paper on which I had written down the price I had paid for a Mexican $50 gold peso coin: 717 Mexican pesos.

Judging from the price, I figure that the purchase was made sometime in 1972, when the price of a Troy ounce of gold was $46 dollars. The Mexican $50 gold peso coin contains 37.5 grams of pure gold, and 37.5/31.1 grams per Troy ounce, is 1.206: so there is 1.206 times more gold in a Mexican $50 gold peso piece, that in a Troy ounce of gold.

Thus, $46 dollars per ounce x 1.206 = $55.48 dollars as the value of the gold in the $50 gold peso coin, in 1972.

The rate of exchange Dollar/Peso in 1972 was 12.50 Mexican pesos per dollar, so $55.48 US x $12.50 = 693.50 pesos. I paid 717 pesos, because gold coins are always sold for a small percentage more than the price of bullion gold; in this case, the surcharge was for 3.4%.

The international price of an ounce of gold, as of November 30 was $1,222.10 dollars. The rate of exchange was at 20.40 Mexican pesos per dollar. So today’s price of the Mexican $50 gold peso coin should be close to $1,222.10 x 20.40 x 1.206 = 30,067 pesos. The quote this morning is: 30,890 pesos.

So my investment of 717 pesos, made 46 years ago, has turned into an investment worth 30,890 pesos today. Looks like a good investment.

But there’s a lot more! Because back in 1993, our President Salinas de Gortari chopped three zeroes off the rate of exchange. So actually, the 717 pesos I invested turned into 30,890,000 of the old pesos!

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

The War Against Cash

December 14, 2018

The War Against Cash

Where every keystroke becomes part of one’s permanent record, where e-devices track one’s every move, the ability to pay physical cash for a financial transaction may have become the only off-the-record action one can execute, unless, of course, it’s recorded on one of the ubiquitous security cams. But signs are everywhere that this last freedom is slated for oblivion. Many paths appear aimed toward a global monetary system in which every buy/sell exchange, from castle to candy bar, is recorded onto the accumulating history of each human unit. The trick has been to prepare the public in step-wise, frog-in-gradually-heated-water fashion.

“There is nothing, however, in standard theories of money that requires transactions to be anonymous from tax- or law-enforcement authorities.” —Kenneth Rogoff, 2014

In 2014, Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff (winner of the 2011 Deutsche Bank Prize and a former chief economist for the IMF) authored “Costs and Benefits to Phasing Out Paper Currency” in which he wrote “Paper currency facilitates making transactions anonymous, helping conceal activities from the government in a way that might help agents avoid laws, regulations and taxes…. [E]lectronic money, in principle, can be traced by the government.” 78% of U.S. currency in circulation is in $100 bills, and similar high/low denomination ratios are seen in Japan and the EU. That large denomination bills are the preferred currency for much of crime — drug running, money laundering, tax-evasion — has become the prime argument for doing away with them in favor of electronic money. In 2017, Rogoff published a book on his theories, The Curse of Cash. Other prominent economists, e.g. former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, have, likewise, advocated dropping currency. The discussions have generally focused on large denomination bills only, $100, $50, perhaps $20. Still, Rogoff has written flatly that “Currency should be becoming technologically obsolete”.

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

Measures of Value – Precious Metals Supply and Demand

October 25, 2018

Measures of Value – Precious Metals Supply and Demand

Aiming for Knowledge and Better Decision-Making

The price of yellow metal went up nine bucks last week. And the price of silver three rose cents, which is back to where it was two weeks earlier. We need to rant, and promise to tie it back to the prices of the metals. We have written these past several weeks about the fact that the franc has been rendered useless. Owning a franc does nothing for you, other than to trade to the next person at hopefully a higher price.

When the money of the realm becomes literally useless as money – the charts and data example above shows excerpts of what happened in Germany from WW1 to the hyperinflation blow-out of 1923. In the end, one simply could no longer use the Reichsmark as a medium of exchange. [PT]

This is the state into which gold has been forced, by a series of actions by the US and other governments.

Indeed, so useless has gold become, that we measure its value in terms of the irredeemable fiat dollar. We all love to hate the dollar, we all think the dollar will collapse at some point in the future. Yet so ubiquitous — and useful — is it that we measure even money in terms of dollars!

And “we” does not refer to Keynesians and their close cousins the Monetarists. “We” refers to many Monetary Metals clients and prospective clients. Yes, truly, the folks that are keen to earn interest on their money paid in money — gold — ask constantly our opinion on the price of money in terms of irredeemable Fed credit notes!

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

How States Can Escape America’s Looming Financial Meltdown

October 16, 2018

How States Can Escape America’s Looming Financial Meltdown

The USA is $21.4 trillion in debt. That is larger than the entire US economy. And it shows no sign of slowing down.

To put that in perspective, imagine spending $28 million per day, EVERYDAY since Jesus walked the earth. Even then, you’d still have a trillion dollars to go…

But it gets worse. This debt does not even include unfunded liabilities, like the promise to pay out Social Security benefits to retirees. Social Security is underfunded by a whopping $50 TRILLION.

Worse still is that the Federal Reserve has the power to print money, and set interest rates. That means the economy you and I see on a daily basis is not reality.

Markets always have corrections. It is natural for sectors to wax and wane. Some years boom, and some years bust.

But the Federal Reserve has made this problem a hundred times worse. The booms are astronomical because of artificially low interest rates.

That means it is easy to borrow money, even if there isn’t much real capital out there to borrow. And that means money gets wasted, placed in bad investments, or squandered and misallocated on unneeded projects.

We are living in a ticking time bomb.

I have no particular faith in any government.

But I do believe the smaller the government gets, the easier it is to control. Your vote might actually count at the state level.

And living down the street from your State Representative helps to keep him fearful of his constituents. Politicians should fear the people.

State governments can cushion the collapse of the federal government.

This collapse will be triggered by monetary policy.

So states should make sure their economies can keep on chugging along in the event of such a catastrophic financial meltdown.

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

What Turkey Can Teach Us About Gold

September 6, 2018

What Turkey Can Teach Us About Gold

If you were contemplating an investment at the beginning of 2014, which of the two assets graphed below would you prefer to own?

Data Courtesy: Bloomberg

In the traditional and logical way of thinking about investing, the asset that appreciates more is usually the preferred choice.

However, the chart above depicts the same asset expressed in two different currencies. The orange line is gold priced in U.S. dollars and the teal line is gold priced in Turkish lira. The y-axis is the price of gold divided by 100.

Had you owned gold priced in U.S. dollar terms, your investment return since 2014 has been relatively flat. Conversely, had you bought gold using Turkish Lira in 2014, your investment has risen from 2,805 to 7,226 or 2.58x. The gain occurred as the value of the Turkish lira deteriorated from 2.33 to 6.04 relative to the U.S. dollar.

Although the optics suggest that the value of gold in Turkish Lira has risen sharply, the value of the Turkish Lira relative to the U.S. dollar has fallen by an equal amount. A position in gold acquired using lira yielded no more than an investment in gold using U.S. dollars.

Data Courtesy: Bloomberg

This real-world example is elusive but important. It helps quantify the effects of the recent economic chaos in Turkey. Turkey’s economic future remains uncertain, but the reality is that their currency has devalued as a result of large fiscal deficits and heavy borrowing used to make up the revenue shortfall. Inflation is not the cause of the problem; it is a symptom. The cause is the dramatic increase in the supply of lira designed to solve the poor fiscal condition.

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

John Law–300 Years On

August 30, 2018

JOHN LAW – 300 YEARS ON

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.

Law was a somewhat louche character, who in his Continental travels had spent his mornings studying finance and the principles of trade, and the evenings in the gaming-houses of Europe. He was a successful gambler, because of his ability to calculate odds.

Some similarities with the personality of Keynes two hundred years later are striking. Keynes was a mathematician first, and an economist second. Their approach was also similar: see a problem and try to find a solution, instead of seeing a problem and trying to understand why it existed before solving it. Both Law and Keynes felt that sound money was too restrictive for the enhancement of an economy.

Consequently, much of what Law proposed and then enacted in France rhymes with our neo-Keynesian world today. The difference, perhaps, is that when given the opportunity Law seized it, and had ultimate financial and monetary power. He harnessed the roles of a central bank, monopolist in international trade, stock promoter and finance minister.

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

‘No Cash’ Signs Everywhere Has Sweden Worried It’s Gone Too Far

February 19, 2018

‘No Cash’ Signs Everywhere Has Sweden Worried It’s Gone Too Far

Cash usage declining both as share of GDP and in nominal terms
Riksbank committee could publish report on issue in summer

Sweden ‘Most Cashless’ Society in the World

The value oof notes and coins in circulation are the lowest in nearly 30 years. Bloomberg’s Amanda Billner reports.

“No cash accepted” signs are becoming an increasingly common sight in shops and eateries across Sweden as payments go digital and mobile.

But the pace at which cash is vanishing has authorities worried. A broad review of central bank legislation that’s under way is now taking a special look at the situation, with an interim report due as early as the summer.

Going Cashless: Bad for Tax Cheats, Privacy, the Poor: QuickTake

“If this development with cash disappearing happens too fast, it can be difficult to maintain the infrastructure” for handling cash, said Mats Dillen, the head of the parliamentary review. He declined to give more details on the types of proposals that could be included in the report.

Sweden is widely regarded as the most cashless society on the planet. Most of the country’s bank branches have stopped handling cash; many shops, museums and restaurants now only accept plastic or mobile payments. But there’s a downside, since many people, in particular the elderly, don’t have access to the digital society.

“One may get into a negative spiral which can threaten the cash infrastructure,” Dillen said. “It’s those types of issues we are looking more closely at.”

Last year, the amount of cash in circulation in Sweden dropped to the lowest level since 1990 and is more than 40 percent below its 2007 peak. The declines in 2016 and 2017 were the biggest on record.

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

Economic Collapse and Dollar Hegemony – How Did This Start?

January 26, 2018

Economic Collapse and Dollar Hegemony – How Did This Start?

In the previous article I explained why bitcoin should be considered a reaction to US dollar hegemony and how other nations and central banks are facing the crisis of the dollar brought on by de-dollarization. In this article I will go into how we came to this point and what mechanisms helped to bring about a debt-based society. In the third and last article we will examine the nature of the future geopolitical and geo-financial transition as well as the signals we need look out for in the immediate future.

From Gold to Paper

To understand what is happening today we must look back to simpler times, back when people bartered with each other. The utility and availability of commodities determined their value. Gold in particular represented a finite good that was difficult to find and was useful in various fields. For this reason gold has always been considered the highest example of a valuable good, together with diamonds, platinum, silver and other elements that are difficult to find but have a common or daily use. For example, the importance of utility transformed uranium, an otherwise worthless element, into a valuable commodity following the discovery of atomic energy. Returning to gold, one can understand how in the era of barter, gold was the reference element with which to price the value of everything. Little by little, gold was joined by silver and then bronze in simplifying the exchange of goods and increasing convenience of use.

Gold had its own intrinsic value and was valid in every empire around the world; the same with silver and bronze. Gold had become not only a means of exchange and a measure of value but also a reservoir of value to be bequeathed to heirs. Above all it was a means of payment.

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

The Virtual Economy Is The End Of Freedom

December 13, 2017

The Virtual Economy Is The End Of Freedom

There is one simple rule to follow when understanding the tragic history of economies: Never put blind faith in a system built on an establishment-created foundation. You would think this would not be a difficult concept to grasp being that we have so many examples of controlled economies and collapse to reference over the centuries, but in our era more than ever the allure of a virtual world with promises of endless wealth and ease is overwhelming.

Yes, I am referring primarily to cyptocurrency “tulip-mania” (sorry bitcoiners, the description is too fitting, it isn’t going away), but not this issue alone. I am also referring to a far-reaching problem of which cryptocurrencies are a mere reflection. Namely, the fact that humanity is swiftly losing sight of what a true economy is and what it is supposed to accomplish. It is because of this reality that crypto is thriving.

First, let’s be clear, fiat currencies are one of the first machinations of the virtual economy. Once paper currencies printed from thin air by central bankers were separated from tangible backing and accepted by the masses as “valuable” and worth trading labor for, the seed of financial cancer was planted. Today, there is one final step needed for the establishment to accomplish complete tyranny in global trade and that is to disconnect the masses fully from private transactions. In other words, we must be tricked into going digital, where privacy is an absurd memory.

Virtual economics is appealing for several reasons, most of them bad.

Americans and much of the west in particular are increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of real production. The latest generation coming into political and social influence, the millenials, is a perfect example.

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

Venezuela Has Officially Abandoned The Petrodollar – Does This Make War With Venezuela More Likely?

September 15, 2017

Venezuela Has Officially Abandoned The Petrodollar – Does This Make War With Venezuela More Likely?

Venezuela is the 11th largest oil producing country in the entire world, and it has just announced that it is going to stop using the petrodollar. Most Americans don’t even know what the petrodollar is, but for those of you that do understand what I am talking about, this should send a chill up your spine. The petrodollar is one of the key pillars of the global financial system, and it allows us to live a far higher standard of living than we actually deserve. The dominance of the petrodollar has been very jealously guarded by our government in the past, and that is why many are now concerned that this move by Venezuela could potentially lead us to war.

I don’t know why this isn’t headline news all over the country, but it should be. One of the few major media outlets that is reporting on this is the Wall Street Journal…

The government of this oil-rich but struggling country, looking for ways to circumvent U.S. sanctions, is telling oil traders that it will no longer receive or send payments in dollars, people familiar with the new policy have told The Wall Street Journal.

Before we go any further, we should discuss what we mean by the “petrodollar” for those that are not familiar with the concept. The following comes from an excellent article by Christopher Doran…

In a nutshell, any country that wants to purchase oil from an oil producing country has to do so in U.S. dollars. This is a long standing agreement within all oil exporting nations, aka OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The UK for example, cannot simply buy oil from Saudi Arabia by exchanging British pounds. Instead, the UK must exchange its pounds for U.S. dollars. The major exception at present is, of course, Iran.

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

Government Monopoly Money vs. Personal Choice in Currency

July 4, 2017

GOVERNMENT MONOPOLY MONEY VS. PERSONAL CHOICE IN CURRENCY

For more than two hundred years, practically all of even the most free market advocates have assumed that money and banking were different from other types of goods and markets. From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, the presumption has been competitive markets and free consumer choice are far better than government control and planning – except in the realm of money and financial intermediation.

This belief has been taken to the extreme over the last one hundred years, during which governments have claimed virtually absolute and unlimited authority over national monetary systems through the institution of paper money.

At least before the First World War the general consensus among economists, many political leaders, and the vast majority of the citizenry was that governments could not be completely trusted with management of the monetary system. Abuse of the monetary printing press would always be too tempting for demagogues, special interest groups, and shortsighted politicians looking for easy ways to fund their way to power, privilege, and political advantage.

The Gold Standard and the Monetary “Rules of the Game”

Thus, before 1914 the national currencies of practically all the major countries of what used to be called the “civilized world” were anchored to market-based commodities, either gold or silver. This was meant to place money outside the immediate and arbitrary manipulation of governments. Any increase in gold or silver money required private individuals to find it profitable to prospect for it in various parts of the world, mine it out of the ground and transport it to where it might be refined into usable forms, and then mint part of any new supplies into coins and bullion, with the rest made into various commercial and industrial products demanded on the market.

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

Cash Bans and the Next Crisis

September 17, 2016

Cash Bans and the Next Crisis

Criminalizing Cash

Money sometimes goes “full politics”. Take poor Kenneth Rogoff at Harvard. He wants a dollar with a voter registration card, a U.S. flag on its windshield, and a handgun in its belt – the kind of money that supports the Establishment and votes for Hillary.

Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics at Harvard University, participates in a session on the third day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2011 in Davos, Switzerland, on Friday, Jan. 28, 2011. The World Economic Forum in Davos will be attended by a record number of chief executive officers, with a total of 2,500 delegates attending the five-day meeting. Etatiste tool Kenneth Rogoff, whose authoritarian jeremiads against cash currency we have first discussed and criticized in 2014 in “Meet Kenneth Rogoff, Unreconstructed Statist”. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe once noted: “[I]ntellectuals are now typically public employees, even if they work for nominally private institutions or foundations. Almost completely protected from the vagaries of consumer demand (“tenured”), their number has dramatically increased and their compensation is on average far above their genuine market value. At the same time the quality of their intellectual output has constantly fallen. What you will discover is mostly irrelevance and incomprehensibility. Worse, insofar as today’s intellectual output is at all relevant and comprehensible, it is viciously statist.”

Photo credit: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg

Writing last month in the Wall Street Journal under the headline “The Sinister Side of Cash”, he noted that:

“Paper currency, especially large notes such as the U.S. $100 bill, facilitate crime: racketeering, extortion, money laundering, drug and human trafficking, the corruption of public officials, not to mention terrorism.”

Of course, large notes do make it easier for criminals to operate. Like cellphones. And sunglasses. And automobiles with air-conditioning. But that’s what money is supposed to do: make it easier for an economy to function. You use it as you please.

Yes, dear reader, we are back to our regular beat. Money. But what’s this? Finally, we’re beginning to see some action. You’ll recall that the markets have been eerily quiet – with less movement in stocks than we’ve seen in the last 100 years. What gives?

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

Voluntary Enslavement

December 28, 2015

Voluntary Enslavement

In recent years, I’ve been predicting that the governments, particularly those of the EU and US, will seek to eliminate paper currency. The objective will be to make monetary transactions between private parties as difficult as they can, by requiring that all transactions take place through financial institutions. If they can do this, they will effectively make a run on banks impossible in the future as the banks will simply shut off the money tap, as the Greek banks did. This power will additionally make negative interest rates and confiscations more possible.

A few years ago, this forecast was seen by most as poppycock, but the prelude has now begun, with most of the world’s banks disallowing large transfers and some lowering these amounts over time. Many governments are aiding the effort, requiring reporting on some transfers.

At some point, governments and banks will seek to eliminate paper currency, completing the encirclement of private party monetary transfer. From that point on, it would be illegal for any transfer of money to be undertaken except through a financial institution (most probably through the use of a plastic card or smartphone).

At about the same time as I began predicting the above, I also began forecasting what I considered to be a companion campaign against virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin. Such currencies will prove to be a threat to a bank-only transfer system as they would provide an alternate method of payment between private parties – one that does not come under the control of any government. Governments and financial institutions will therefore seek to eliminate virtual currencies, or make them too difficult to use.

The greatest weakness inherent in virtual currencies, in my view, is that they’re intangible. Unlike precious metals which, once physically possessed, exist forever, virtual currencies exist only as an idea. Like all fiat currencies, they have value only as long as two parties continue to have faith in their value.

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

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