Currency wars and gold

Excessive sanctions tend to turn into trade wars.
Trade wars tend to turn into currency wars, and those get dangerous.

A trade war between China and the U.S. has become something bigger: a currency war. Beijing’s weakening of the yuan prompted the Treasury Department to brand it a “currency manipulator.” Central banks around the world, including Thailand, India and New Zealand, promptly followed China’s lead nonetheless.

This isn’t the first time that protectionism became entangled in exchange rates. In fact, what we’re seeing has an eerie resemblance to a back-and-forth volley of currency devaluations and retaliatory tariffs that ripped apart the global economy in the 1930s. There’s no reason something similar won’t happen again.

Having a currency war with one of our biggest trading partners is not good.
It's especially bad when that trading partner is your largest creditor. They might decide not to send their extra trade surplus cash your way.

When Trump was elected in 2016, China FDI was a record smashing $46.5 billion, more than double the 2015 record breaking year of $15.3 billion. But after two and a half years with Trump in command, China investments here went from $29.7 billion in 2017 to $5.4 billion in 2018 to an estimated $3.5 billion this year, based on numbers from the Rhodium Group.

Let's not forget that China has a $1 Trillion economic nuclear weapon.
It's even worse when your budget deficits are exploding due to a bloated military budget.

The U.S. fiscal deficit has already exceeded the full-year figure for last year, as spending growth outpaces revenue.

The gap grew to $866.8 billion in the first 10 months of the fiscal year, up 27% from the same period a year earlier, the Treasury Department said in an emailed statement on Monday. That’s wider than last fiscal year’s shortfall of $779 billion -- which was the largest federal deficit since 2012.

So if the U.S. dollar is in danger from incompetent mismanagement in Washington, and you can't invest in the Yuan, where is safe?
The Pound is Brexit'ing, so that's a no go.
The Euro has a big problem with the Italians, plus negative interest rates.
The Yen has permanent QE plus negative interest rates.
Same with the Swiss and the Nordic countries.

That leaves only one notable option.

Investors should diversify away from the U.S. dollar and increase their exposure to other major currencies and gold, according to a report from JP Morgan.

In a recent market note, the bank stated that it sees the U.S. dollar losing its status as the world’s dominant currency, and consequently depreciating in value.

Gold is expected to hit $1,600 before the end of the year, which is a conservative prediction.
Gold is currently at all-time highs in 83 currencies.

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A lot of liberals have irrational hatred of gold because a few conmen on the right hustled gold a few years back.
You can't let that get in your way.

You know who else hates gold? The ruling elites.
They can't print gold, so banksters despise and fear it.
Just as importantly, because there is no debt attached to gold, they can't track it if it is used in a transaction. So the authoritarians hate and fear it.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

Kaiser Report in the EB last week. Stock up on whatever you can because prices will increase rapidly. It’s coming.

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

ggersh's picture

I got property at Mar a Lago to sell ya.

While tRumpolini is playing this game as tit for tat
China is playing this game long term.

As for Gold it's neoliberlaism and the banks that
propagate the myth that Gold is a horrible investment.
Why are all the CB's outside of ameriKa buying physical
Gold with both hands.

ameriKa and neoliberalism are in the endgame only being
a nuclear power can they prolong this game

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

boriscleto's picture

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

Creosote.'s picture

@boriscleto
That's ghastly. The mine's waste ponds, located in the mountains above the city and the fishery, would be loaded with cyanide, lead, and other toxic materials. These ponds would easily break during the frequent earthquakes there, unleashing a deathly tsunami that would permanently destroy almost everything downhill, both the whole town and one of the last sustainable salmon fisheries, not to mention thousands of Indigenous lives alone.

These public climate breakdown denialists/mine interests are frauds; they know global warming is real and are making and using every chance to enrich themselves while they can.

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an eerie resemblance to a back-and-forth volley of currency devaluations and retaliatory tariffs that ripped apart the global economy in the 1930s. There’s no reason something similar won’t happen again.

Also the FED cuts rates but CD rates increase.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Pieces of shit all of them.

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Just as importantly, because there is no debt attached to gold, they can't track it if it is used in a transaction.

I made the same comment in thread about a month ago. I was told that a gold coin was debt because all money is debt. Could not get through to this person that all money is not debt. Maybe that person will listen to you.

My problem with gold as money is that it is both scarce and horded and in a generation only the horders have it and inequality soars. If you think inequality is bad now, you ain't seen nothing yet, if gold becomes the world's currency. Money needs to be made from something ubiquitous in order to prevent hording, which is why we have paper money.

But maybe a gold currency is the only way to get banks out of the currency business. But what a inequality catastrophe that would create.

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If countries are going to trade in the future they will need gold. Dollar hegemony will suddenly and catastrophically come to an end. It's fiat currency, which means that when you stop believing in it, it becomes worthless. The US is 5% of the world population and about 15% of the world GDP, monotonically shrinking every year. It's completely outrageous that it is the world's reserve currency. It happened by sleight of hand. At the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods New Hampshire 75 years ago the world met and, needing a global trading system backed by gold, selected the US dollar as the reserve currency. The US could not possibly back up a growing world GDP and trade with it's gold and increasing US deficits and thus Nixon in 1971 removed gold from the dollar. At that point the world should have designed a new global trade scheme. But it didn't and the last almost 50 years have been a complete sham. There isn't enough space here to describe the incredible economic advantages that the US has enjoyed over the rest of the world because of this.

Well, the world and the US are about to get a really rude awakening. China, India and Russia are fully aware of this and have been buying gold at a furious pace. The bottom line is that if you want to trade you need gold. The good news is that there is plenty of gold out there. The US, GB, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, China and India have large gold reserves, but no one has nearly enough to establish themselves as the world reserve currency. The US reserve is a big question mark. How much of it is real, and how much is owned by other countries? When other countries ask for their gold back they get stalled and then the gold they get is not marked as when stored in the US. Technology uses gold in many processes. How much has been sold? The US would have to come clean if it wants to participate in a distributed, peer to peer, gold backed trading scheme. Fasten your seatbelts! That, by the way, are the many reasons that the US has been desperate to depress the price of gold.

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

@The Wizard There is not nearly enough gold to be a currency or even back a currency. Anybody who knows anything about chemistry and how rare certain particular elements are on the periodic table will tell you that gold is an outrageously rare element. It is sixteen times rarer than silver, which is why historically it is worth about sixteen times as much.

Gold's value is due to its rarity. Platinum is about the same rarity as gold and that is why platinum is worth so much. Gold has virtually no commercial use whatsoever because of its rarity. It is the best conductor of electricity, but because of its rarity it can not be used for that. Other than jewelry, gold has no commercial use. Same applies to platinum and even silver.

I wish people would understand that is the rarity of gold and these other rare elements that make them have value and not much else.

You simply can not run a world economy based on something so rare. There is not nearly enough to go around. It is a recipe for WW3.

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@davidgmillsatty
How gold-backed currency works.
If you made your currency 100%-backed by gold at, say $20 an ounce, then you are right.
There's not enough gold.

But if your currency is 40% gold backed (which is closer to historical trends) at $2,000 an ounce, then there is a whole lot more cash available.

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@gjohnsit
most estimates of the total available gold above ground would put the value of it at about 2 Trillion dollars, at $2000/oz. At 40% value, that's 5 trillion dollars. From Googling around, it looks like the US currency supply is around 2 trillion, and the money supply somewhat over 3 trillion; and the world's currency supply is around 10 trillion.

So I dunno -- especially given that a huge fraction of that 2 trillion worth of mined gold is privately owned jewelry, unavailable to back a currency.

The biggest problem with gold -- or any other rare thing -- as a backing for the money supply is that it is not subject to controlled supply. If we need to grow the money supply, we're limited to the 50 million troy ounces mined annually (i read). This was precisely the cause of the populist uprisings of the late 19th century, and WJB's classic Cross of Gold speech. The farmers wanted an easy-money policy based on silver, but the eastern bankers wanted gold, gold, gold. With the economy crippled by the short-money supply, farm prices were doomed to fall, and farmers were doomed to fail.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd
First of all, the Eastern Bankers managed to buy Congress into shrinking the money supply by eliminating the Civil War Greenbacks (issued by the Treasury).
And then they demonetized silver in 1873, which further shrank the money supply.
Neither of those things can be blamed on gold.
So when people think "gold = deflation" they are unaware of the context.

Do you know that the Constitution actually says what money is?

No State shall... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts

That clause doesn't preclude having other types of money than gold and silver, but it's more than obvious that they intended gold and silver to be the money of the land.

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@gjohnsit That clause you site applies only to the states and is part of the clause that prevents the states from issuing currency.

Here is the full applicable part of that quote from Article I Section 10:

No State shall ... coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts;

In contrast, the operative part of the Constitution with respect to the federal government is Article I, Section 8 which says:

The Congress shall have the power....

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures....

You will note that states are prohibited from coining money and issuing bills of credit in Section 10. The federal government is permitted to coin money in Section 8 but the Constitution is silent about bills of credit with respect to the federal government.

When Lincoln issued his greenbacks there was a question as to whether the federal government could issue greenbacks because they were presumed to be bills of credit. The Supreme Court later confirmed the greenbacks to be bills of credit and declared their issuance to be constitutional for three main reasons: (1)because the federal government was not prohibited from issuing them when the states were, (2) they were the paper equivalent of coins, and (3) they were part of Congress's war power. The war power rationale is indicative of how important the court believed the issuance of bills of credit to be with respect to the preservation of nation's sovereignty.

States can make gold and silver coin legal tender for the payment of debts, but I am not aware of any state that has done that. Maybe in early America, but I don't know any incident in recent history. I seem to recall that Texas may be trying to do something of this nature, but I am not sure what. It is an interesting question. Could a state pass legislation permitting payment of debts with gold or silver coins when the federal government no longer issues them and states are prevented from issuing coins? Would Krugerands work? Gold pesos?

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@gjohnsit
If you want someone to accept your credit in a foreign trade you need to back it with something. I'm suggesting that gold reserves can be used to back trades. In which case you don't need much gold, only enough to float current transactions. Where you get into trouble is when you are a chonic net trade deficit nation. In which case you need to fix your trading by revaluing your currency or becoming more trade competitive. Otherwise you run out of gold. The US fixed this by becoming the default fiat currency. It then became a problem for other nations. For instance, what to do with surplus fiat cash. Hold US instruments, buy US assets? It all resulted in massive net flow of capital into the US buying overvalued inflated assets.

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@The Wizard

Thanks for clarifying the issue, Wizard. Can cryptos can be useful in expanding the money supply (or contracting it when the population reaches a sustainable 2 or 3 billion)?

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
lotlizard's picture

@davidgmillsatty  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Electronics

Only 10% of the world consumption of new gold produced goes to industry, but by far the most important industrial use for new gold is in fabrication of corrosion-free electrical connectors in computers and other electrical devices. For example, according to the World Gold Council, a typical cell phone may contain 50 mg of gold, worth about 50 cents. But since nearly one billion cell phones are produced each year, a gold value of 50 cents in each phone adds to $500 million in gold from just this application.

It is estimated that 16% of the world’s gold and 22% of the world’s silver is contained in electronic technology in Japan.

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boriscleto's picture

@lotlizard

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

@lotlizard It is the best conductor of electricity there is, so it would have some commercial application in those instances where only the best will do. Hell, I remember Lexus bragging about gold connectors on their air bag system but that was frivolous.

I guess if only the best well do in certain electronic parts then gold has some commercial value after all. Not sure why copper would not suffice.

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lotlizard's picture

@davidgmillsatty  
The oxide layer is not a good conductor of electricity. Silver has the same problem.

So copper is great when everything is permanently soldered together, but not the best when there is an exposed surface (as in sliding contacts whose surfaces are exposed to air anytime they’re not plugged in).

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@davidgmillsatty gold is used in circuitry. It's not just the conductivity but the resistance to corrosion, unlike copper. I've got boxes of dead motherboards and obsolete computer chips with gold contacts I'd love to recover, but it's just too expensive. It's still used in electronics today, like in your phone.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

Silver (I think my father said he has some investment in that, but probably not much)?
Copper?
Platinum?
Gems?
Lithium (which might soon explode in value if electric cars continue to develop in a certain direction)?
Uranium...?

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

hecate's picture

is stupid and boring. When the white people brought their gold jones to the Superstition Mountains, the Indians could not understand what was their problem. The Indians more valued turquoise, which is tears of joy mixed with rain.

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@hecate
It just sits there...retaining value.

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hecate's picture

@gjohnsit
has no value. Any more than does paper currency, or a stick, or a booger. The “value” is but a mass delusion of the human mind.

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@hecate
What other mass delusions last so long?

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hecate's picture

@gjohnsit
cares? There's nothing more boring than money. It hasn't even been around all that long, was only invented by the Lydians about 7000 years ago. Before the white people went everywhere, a lot of the humans didn't even have any money. Like the Indians of the Superstition Mountains, who gave no shits for gold. And they were hardly alone; it's only the people who have hard-ons for gold, who think that everybody else does, too. But they don't. It's all a deep dumbness, like cities and jobs and guns and whatnot, and will soon be over now.

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@hecate

There's nothing more boring than money. It hasn't even been around all that long, was only invented by the Lydians about 7000 years ago.

4,000. 7,000. 2,500.
It all counts as a whole lot of years to me.
Gold continued to be used as money after the fall of Rome.

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hecate's picture

@gjohnsit
most recent wisdom is that humans have been around for 195,000-800,000 years. So, in that, 7000 years is but an eye-blink.

Romans: also stupid and boring. Anything interesting about them, they filched from the Greeks.

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@gjohnsit

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@gjohnsit That is its problem. It just sits there and can do nothing else because it has no value other than its rarity. And while it is sitting there, it needs to be protected from thieves, which is how goldsmiths with their vaults started the monetary racket we now have, by issuing paper receipts for gold that goldsmiths did not have. These receipts became paper money when governments by fiat required their usage as money.

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@davidgmillsatty @davidgmillsatty old problem of how an individual can safely store physical gold. Storage and insurance costs. For some investors, I would imagine it would give some peace of mind knowing the gold you own is right there in your home. To others, this would present a peace of mind problem of continuing security concerns.

Of course there are alternatives to buying and holding actual physical gold.

For me, as a potential investor, I never managed to satisfy myself on which way was preferable, and my slight preference for holding the physical gold myself seemed like a constant worry over security.

To the proponents of gold here: In what form do you buy and hold gold?

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@wokkamile
Your cash is sitting safely in a bank...and lost half of its value in two days.

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@gjohnsit And if your gold was sitting in your house and you got robbed it would be worth nothing. And converting it to cash is a real bitch. They don't take gold at Kroger. Gold is for rich people.

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@davidgmillsatty
which is anchored into cement. The bolt heads are inside the safe.
I wish those thieves a lot of luck.
(note: not in my house)
I don't loose any sleep over it.
I'm a lot more concerned about my cash in the bank.

As for converting gold into cash, find me a man who would refuse gold and you've found a rare fool.

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@gjohnsit
"cash" meant coins made of gold or silver.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@gjohnsit When they put a gun to your head you might reconsider opening that safe. And all I said was that Kroger wouldn't take your gold. Can't think of many times in my life I was asked to take gold for payment. Probably goes for most people. If I was absolutely sure it was gold and I was getting a really good deal, I would probably do it. But that requires me to know it is gold and to know the price of it which is highly variable and of course how much the gold weighs. Pawn brokers are set up for this, but the average consumer is not.

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@davidgmillsatty

When they put a gun to your head

What about when they shoot me dead?
I've seen this argument before.
If you really don't like gold you will find a reason not to have it.
But then that is true for cash, credit, anything.

But that requires me to know it is gold and to know the price of it which is highly variable and of course how much the gold weighs. Pawn brokers are set up for this, but the average consumer is not.

It doesn't require a lot of knowledge.
The price is posted online 24/7.
The weight is a sure giveaway. Plus the type of coin.

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@gjohnsit gold is accepted just about nowhere, and the knowledge thing is easier said than done. Could add considerable time to the check-out experience for all concerned.

BTC is far easier to transact with. Acceptance is coming along. Overstock.com was one of the early accepters, thanks to their forward-looking CEO. Reports that Starbucks is planning BTC acceptance in the near future, which would be huge. The floodgates will open once SBUX jumps in.

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@wokkamile

gold is accepted just about nowhere

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that you are wrong.
and you've been wrong for 4,000 years.

So you wouldn't accept gold if someone offered it to you.
You are in an extremely small minority.

, and the knowledge thing is easier said than done.

If you held a gold coin in your hand you might understand.

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@gjohnsit can I buy that sofa, bicycle, coffee maker with gold? Is there a merchant equivalent of Overstock out there that accepts payments in gold?

As for me, since you ask, I would buy or sell gold only through authorized, licensed, long-in-business gold traders, and only after sizing them up first. And only the physical stuff, not the piece of paper saying I own gold somewhere.

Much prefer BTC -- more risk definitely, but much more upside potential in the coming years. It's the wave of the future and a perfect complement to the internet.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@wokkamile

There are signs every few blocks that say: "We buy gold."

When you go inside, there are monitors showing the exact spot price of gold all over the world at that moment in time. The price is fixed once each day in London. Gold is a 24 hour market on the Forex; the price ticks up and down before your eyes. There is a buy price and a sell price. You can perform either task using your preferred fiat currency and be on your way. From your home computer, you can sell gold (make a deposit) into your crypto account or into your bank account, electronically, without handling the gold at all. it as as versatile as any other currency I trade.

In countries where currencies fail, if you have a heavy gold chain, or a pile of small gold chains and a pair of jeweler's snips and pliers, you can shop freely throughout a modern city like Buenos Aries. There are card tables in front of every store, set up with small scales, testing devices, and a cell-phone displaying a live gold price monitor — making change for your shopping pleasure.

It doesn't get more versatile than that.

This is a common sight and popular service in most parts of the world.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic They are still not going to take your gold chain at Kroger. And you are not going to be walking around town with gold coins in your pocket or take a Brinks truck with you.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@davidgmillsatty

Bless your heart.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic I am guessing you never heard of the adventures of Robin Hood.

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@wokkamile So if you are going to let somebody else hold the gold, then you have the modern version of the goldsmiths who began to hold gold for their owners after the Europeans stole all the gold from the Americas. And the history lesson is that these goldsmiths gave receipts for gold they did not have. Ten receipts for the same piece of gold became the norm, and that is how we got fractional reserve banking of ten to one. Until of course that was scammed and gold reserves were far less than ten to one.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@wokkamile

Unallocated in a vault at a mine in Perth, Australia accounted and certified monthly via an investment bank in Florida.
Unallocated in a vault in Zurich, Switzerland via an active self-managed gold trading account at Bullion Vault in Jersey, UK.
In uncirculated 50 Peso gold coins stored in a safety deposit box and stored in the old fashioned way.

One tends to forget all about it in the struggles of everyday life, until it becomes a ticket to personal sovereignty or personal freedom.

But then, it's not something you can talk about with the Left. Their heads explode.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Pluto's Republic's picture

...I am now determined to get to the bottom of this. As the author of this piece notes:

A lot of liberals have irrational hatred of gold because a few conmen on the right hustled gold a few years back.

I've long been pro gold, especially, for regular folks who want to cushion themselves for times of terrible adversity. This is a prudent practice throughout India, China, and the Middle East, for example. How do you think those tens of millions of refugees that the US creates manage to pay their way out of their countries and feed themselves along their long journey? What resources do you think they rely upon? Think!

Yet mention gold in any context at all in liberal enclaves online, and people actively panic. Their comments are irrational and viciously angry. Where does this madness this come from? The dumb platitudes start to fly. My favorite:

You can't eat gold.

But knowing now what we do about mass brainwashing in the US, it may be informative to trace this indoctrination of the Left back to its source. It is an utterly bizarre over-reaction to an ancient, standard, and boring store of wealth — one that has rescued billions of ordinary, non-wealthy people from disaster during wars and economic catastrophes. It's an asset class and protective hedge that is used by all Central Banks, and used in most professionally managed investment portfolios the world over. Gold is generally viewed as the ultimate safe-haven asset, usually weathering market turbulence and retaining its value during periods of uncertainty.

Who, in the US, conspired to cripple the minds of the Left with disinformation this specific? I would like to know.

Again, the author provides the clue:

You know who else hates gold? The ruling elites. They can't print gold, so banksters despise and fear it.
Just as importantly, because there is no debt attached to gold, they can't track it if it is used in a transaction. So the authoritarians hate and fear it.

Plain as day. Stop buying into the brainwashing. Think rationally.

@Pluto's Republic

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic And some of my best friends don't own gold. They have the standard savings and retirement accounts, real estate and stocks. No precious metals. I wonder what % of the public owns gold? It's been around since the ancient Egyptians mastered the art of working with gold, thousands of years before Bitcoin.

I'm merely asking questions about it. What form you buy it in, how to keep it secure, which merchants accept it.

Wasn't aware this was some lefty anti-gold issue. A former leftyish guest here a few yrs ago was proud of her holdings in gold and silver and got me interested to begin looking into it -- and then sidetracked as I learned about this thing called Bitcoin, and never looked back.

Bitcoin suited me better all around, including peace of mind. And holding gold in a vault in a foreign country -- no thanks. I would be worried 24/7 about what's going on there thousands of miles away. Personal preference to be able to check on my investment with just a few mouse clicks.

Down the road a bit, when BTC takes off and I take some cream off the top, I might consider a modest investment in gold coins, as I do like the idea of holding a shiny valuable coin. But not so much that I would only feel safe with armed 24/7 hired security here.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@wokkamile

In either case, gold or bitcoin, I am primarily interested in trading and holding. I can transfer cash into my US bank account easily from either one. Both have an upside, gold especially at the moment.

I live in a modern world and use Visa and Mastercard to shop. If the power went out, like in Venezuela, cash or junk silver (coins) in hand will feed me. My Bitcoin and MasterCard, would be DOA. Nobody on this planet carries gold coins in their pocket and tries to get change for $1500 so they can buy a taco or a pack of cigarrettes. Your imagination has been unmoored by too much TV.

They all have their uses. Right now, I sure wouldn't hold equities in my retirement account without enough gold to hedge, so that my wealth held its present value when the market crashed.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@wokkamile

Wasn't aware this was some lefty anti-gold issue. A former leftyish guest here a few yrs ago was proud of her holdings in gold and silver and got me interested to begin looking into it -- and then sidetracked as I learned about this thing called Bitcoin, and never looked back.

Bitcoin suited me better all around, including peace of mind.

BTC and gold couldn't be more different.
BTC is a pure speculative bet with high volatility on a currency.
If that gives you peace of mind then you may not understand the situation.

Gold functions first and foremost as a stable store of value.
It has never been used for everyday purchases (that's silver).

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@gjohnsit which only underscores Bitcoin's greater versatility.

Peace of mind for me in BTC refers to my relative POM as to easily and securely holding it (in 2 secure ways) and not worrying thereafter, as compared to holding a similar substantial sum in gold and securing all that. As to the risk in investing in BTC, as I've mentioned many times before, I'm well aware of this factor -- its tremendous price fluctuation is known even to aboriginal tribesmen in the Amazon.

Because I'm convinced that ultimately it will become accepted more and more in establishment investment circles and in the commercial marketplace as a means of payment, and as fewer and fewer BTCs become available to purchase, I am fairly confident there will be impressive price numbers in the next 2-5 yrs as acceptance and scarcity kick in.

Gold will likely make steady but relatively modest gains in value.

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@wokkamile
They can, and do, make other cryptocurrencies all the time.

One day, I don't know when, it may not be for decades, BTC will go to zero.

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@gjohnsit useful and versatile and secure as BTC. I'm inclined to agree with Max Keiser that the day of the alt-coins from a few yrs ago has come and gone, and they will slowly sink to zero. BTC already does what most of them claim to do, and better, and what little is left to improve on BTC will soon do that as well.

Must be on my way now ...

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@wokkamile
Nope. Still just 1's and 0's.

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@Pluto's Republic In ancient Rome it was the horders of gold that impoverished the entire society. That is the problem. And it doesn't take long. A generation or two in the case of Rome. And those that held the gold were the elites. So you have to say in that situation the elites loved gold. And I don't believe the elites hate gold for a minute. The want to horde it and make everyone else use their paper. They want both.

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@davidgmillsatty

In ancient Rome it was the horders of gold that impoverished the entire society.

It was the hoarders of LAND that impoverished Rome.
Plus it changed from a small farms economy to a slave plantation economy.

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@gjohnsit It was the debasement of the silver denarius from about 4.5 grams of pure silver to about 5% of that weight from 64 AD to 268 AD. In the end Rome's currency was worthless and trade evolved into barter.

http://money.visualcapitalist.com/currency-and-the-collapse-of-the-roman...

In the end though, even silver was too scarce to make a stable currency. Gold would have collapsed the empire far sooner.

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@davidgmillsatty

In the end though, even silver was too scarce to make a stable currency. Gold would have collapsed the empire far sooner.

Roman silver and gold coins were used as money for centuries after the fall of Rome, yet they are responsible for the fall of Rome?

Really?

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@davidgmillsatty . That doesn't make them a good currency for a nation. And a nation without a viable currency is not much of a nation. For one thing it has no money to pay soldiers. The US Supreme Court recognized this in the greenback cases.

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boriscleto's picture

@davidgmillsatty But they had no bankers because they had expelled the Jews in 1492...

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

ggersh's picture

@boriscleto who they also killed, so
why reference the Jews, only Jews are
bankers and thieves?

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

boriscleto's picture

@ggersh So all the gold that came from exploiting the New World was wasted on wars. Spain ended up one of the poorest countries in Europe.

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

@boriscleto
that Spain spent all of the thousands of tonnes of silver they stole from the New World on the 80 Years War.

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lotlizard's picture

@gjohnsit  
(rises and stands at attention as ♪ Het Wilhelmus ♪ plays)

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@gjohnsit just like the ultra wealthy, and useless, too.

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The Golden Asteroid Between Mars and Jupiter Is Worth $700 Quintillion

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/the-golden-asteroid-between-mars-and...

https://www.rt.com/business/462703-golden-asteroid-everyone-billionaire/

Where do you think rockets will soon be heading?

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