Cable Salad

[Skybird]

Gold is no investment, it produces no interests. Any gains you get from it, are from other factors: political instability for exmaple, inflation, but not from economic fostering. Its a safeguard to conserve buying power, "not more". Anythign more is just an unplanned benefit.

Do you really not know that there has been an extensive gold prohibition in the US 1934 to 1974? That the United Kingdom had (still has?) tight restrictions in place limiting the amount of gold private people were allowed to legally hold? That Germany already had severla limitations and even complete prohibtions of private ownership of gold, every time linked to high inflations and lousy state finances? That India 2 or 3 years ago has made another attempt to prohibit the owning/trading of gold?

Owning gold is a way to avoid fraudulent state finance currencies like paper Dollar and Euro, and thus states hate it. The idea is the same like in the medieval: by securing minting privileges, kings back then were able to forge silver coins be reducing their silver content and replacing it with tin. That way they could forge more coins to buy war stuff with, then they actaully had silver.

The idea behind paper money is the same. They call it FIAT money, from Latin: fiat: "it shall become, it shall be". Fiat lux: there shall be light. It means the "money" has no value, but that one has the hope that one day by magic and miracle it may get value. One day, the coutnerfeit money is hoped to turn into rela money.

Money has an intrinsic value. Paper money has none. Thats why Voltaire said: every paper money over time inevitably returns to its intrinsic value, which is zero. And Ludwig von Mises said: "Money is a trading good like any other." By that he did NOT mean that you can take state counterfeit currency and then trade it like we do at the stockmarkets today, but he meant that money derives from an ordinary good that is traded on the market, and then people agree on is value and its pragmatism, and by consensus agree to accept it to have additional functions that then actually make it the money of this market. And what many different things have been used as money in this meaning! Rare Feathers. precious seeds. Bacon slices. Nuts. Seashells. Precious metals have advanatges. They do not rot. Their value is the same, no matter in what form you bring them into, its the weight alone that decides the market value. Water doe snot destroy them, fire only melts them form certian highe rtemperature son, and even then it doe snto get desroye,d only alters its form and shape but "is still there". You can cut them in small and big pieces, according to your needs. All this are reasons why it is gold and silver that made it to lasting value and fame over the past thousands of years, and not bacon slices or bird feathers anymore. In this meaning it is to be understood that they have a - market-apporoved "intrinsic" value. Its no natural law, but pragmatic concensus of people.

In the early times of the US, after founding time, there were half a dozen different dollar currencies from private mints in circulation! And that was okay, because the word dollar comes from "Taler", and the word Taler stems from a physical unit indicating a certain amount of something, like carat. Both are weight units. A silver dollar is silver with the weight of one "dollar", like you say silver, 31 grams of it, which is called: one ounce. It does not matter who minted the coin, and whether it has state approval or not, it just does not matter, a dollar of silver from private mint A is the same value like an amount of one dollar of silver from mint B.

Governments cannot inflate their buying options if they are bound to absolute quantities of physically existing items of value, like gold and silver, and they are angry because they cannot give these items their own wanted value, but it is the market deciding the value of items. In this meaning, items have an "intrinsic value" independent from government control. Thats why they ban private people from holding these independent value items, like gold, and replaced these real-money systems with fraudulent counterfeit-currency systems.

That many central banks nevertheless hord gold and buy it like crazy (espcially the Russians, increaisngly again China), should tell you something. For example that they are telling lies to the people when they say gold has no value today, is pointless. They buy it and hold it because they know all to well that it is the real money there is. Not their worthless dollar notes and Euro coins. These are nothing, are a ponzi scheme only. The plastic chips you buy in a casino to play with, is the same. Before you leave, you trade it back into real currency, because outside the casino nobody would accept you paying with plastic coins. When the government says: the D-Mark is gone, now its the Euro, all your notes sooner or later have no buying power anymore. Try that stunt with gold, silver, material values like jewels! Politicians can preach a thouand times that jewels are immoral and gold shall not be seen as valuable. People will not care for their obvious nonsense.

These counterfeit paper currency systems only run as long as enough people believe the lies and illusions. Once the mistrust gains a critical mass, its game over and the system explodes. Then its Sajonara to the national economy for many years to come, and most people lose almost everything they ever had. - We have plot course for that destination, and have put our economy on autopilot to follow it tot he bitter end.


Some clever smartheads say"You cannot eat gold!" Thats true. But I can eat what I can buy with gold, and if I have no bartering items to barter with, I cannot buy anything to eat. Simple, eh?

[Shady Bill]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Do you really not know that there has been an extensive gold prohibition in the US 1934 to 1974?

Sir, I am but a simple man...I had no idea. But am reading up on

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act

How was this allowed to happen in the US? What sort of fruitcake president comes up with this? FDR of all people I guess...certainly no fan there.

That the United Kingdom had (still has?) tight restrictions in place limiting the amount of gold private people were allowed to legally hold? That Germany already had severla limitations and even complete prohibtions of private ownership of gold, every time linked to high inflations and lousy state finances? That India 2 or 3 years ago has made another attempt to prohibit the owning/trading of gold?

I assume the amount of gold one can own is pretty large? I am a man of modest means and desires. Certainly no gold trader by any means. Any gold I acquire would automatically be transferred to my wife's possession as per normal protocol.

[Shady Bill]

I was born in 1975. I guess they ended this madness before my lifetime.
God showed favor on me once again.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Shady Bill

How was this allowed to happen in the US?

How was it allowed to happen to end the gold standard that bound the value of the paper dollar to the gold the US owned? Simple answer: Vietnam. The costs of the war had ruined the state finances, more liquidity and buying power for war stuff was needed than the US had dollars and its economy could produce in profits. Not if dolalrs were emant to mean a real material value - like it was when the dollar was still bound to the amount of gold the Fed Reserve held. - Well, a bit simplified, I know, but lets keep it simple, for the purpose of this brief post.

Its alsways the same story. People still believing centran banks are "independent", are fooling themselves. The reason central banls were founded and allowed by politicians is to repalce real money with fraudulent currency schemes and ponzi schemes! In this meaning they were never independent form politicss, but fulfill the order politics has given them. Today, the ECB in Europe executes this exemplarily. The first centrla bank of the world, the Bank of England, in the end was founded by private entrepreneurs in the wake of the crashing state finances in England due to the wars against Napoleon. They founded a lending organisation that lended private money from business to the crown, in the following thirty years or so the crown gave it more and more priviliges until it ended up with pretty much that power the Bank of England, which it was later renamed as, today holds.

Centrals banks showed up because politicians had run their states bancrupt. That simple it is.

I recommend you one book, which is easy to read, not long, and includes the basics. I consider it to be a classic on the topic and one of the best books on money ever written. Easy to read, and short. The download is FREE, and LEGAL !


https://cdn.mises.org/What%20Has%20G...%20Money_3.pdf



The first who had a paper money system actually were - the Chinese, in the 12th century. There was a kingdom that was at war and had a rat-tail of social issues and wanted to also help replacing the copper coin currency they had being replaced wiht something more pragmatic in everyday use. To cut history short, not even 30 years later, the economy was completely busted and had crashed, civil war was raging and the fire had spread across the borders into one or two other kingdoms as well. The new money had completely obliterated the social order and the economic system of that place, of that time. The Chinese abandoned paper money and did not touch it again until modern time.