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Gold revisited

February 16, 2010

You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold” – William Jenning Bryan

Although it is impossible to know when it will happen, it seems that the days of paper money will be over in the not too distant future. The credit crunch and the ‘Quantitative Easing’ cannot be survived indefinitely in a normal manner by the current system.

The current system will die and a new one will take place. If we let things happen unhindered, people will say Capitalism has ended, but those in the know will see nothing has changed.

New Supranational units will emerge, in Northern- and Latin America, Asia. Eventually we will have world currency, as was prophesied many years back. The new units will be based on gold and other scarce, tightly controlled commodities.

The rise of the Gold (and maybe oil) Standard will lead to a global, excruciating deflation, with heartbreaking poverty all over the world as a result. It will be an enormous wealth transfer from the have nots to the haves. Having gold, that is.

Of course, it will be sold as the price to pay for paper inflation. But you and I know who will be paying……………

It is the usual Hegelian Dialectic at work: paper versus gold, in this case. Both leading to results fully in accordance with the goals of our not so illumined ‘Olympians’.

And that’s what it’s all about.

While most in the broader Truth community will agree that the current system of interest bearing fractional reserve banking is a central hoax in this reality of hoaxes, transcended only by the question whether we are ‘shitholes with a brain’, or energetic light beings of pure consciousness, there are basically two strains of thought about solutions.

There is the Gold Crowd and there are the interest free money people. These two crowds up till now have been living in peaceful coexistence. This peace has been inspired by the common enemy of today. But since the slimy monster is nearing the end of its current phase of development and preparing to morph into its next stage, we are nearing the question whether we will be cheerleading it to its rebirth, or take the chance that this transformation brings to slay this beast at last.

Although debunking Gold completely would take to long, there are three items I would like to offer. I believe some contemplation of these are quite sufficient for all who want to be armed suitably for the monetary struggles ahead.

In the first place, it doesn’t matter at all what means of exchange you use. Paper, bits and bytes, shells, tally sticks, salt. They have all been used successfully in the past. I could even create a working gold based unit for you, however superfluous, if you insisted, that’s not the problem.

The question is, who is in control of its supply? And what is he doing with it?

Let’s just one more time repeat a worn out quote:

“Give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes the laws.”

We all know who said this and we all know he knew his trade.

This was said when Britain was on the Gold Standard.

What is gained by control of the supply of money?

In the first place the ability to inflate and deflate it. Thereby creating the so called ‘business cycle’, not a force of nature, but an effect of tampering with money.

Inflation leads to higher prices, growth, optimism. Deflation then comes, forcing many to sell below normal prices and in this time of scarce liquidity, a few insiders with lots of cash buy up the whole lot for practically nothing.

All this doesn’t change at all with Gold. The 19th century is riddled with asset bubbles followed by depressions. It is quite clear for all with a little historic awareness, that there is an inverse relationship between monetary stability and Gold as money. Even though Gold’s record is probably not as bad as paper, it is the lesser evil at best.

Most often, however, periods with Gold as money are characterized by deflation. The controllers of the system keep Gold scarce, this is what cartels and monopolies do. Also, global gold output is insufficient to keep up with economic growth, implying structural relative decline of amount of money in circulation, compared to total output of production.

Even more important when controlling money is Interest.

Now, this really exasperates me.

The Gold people say that interest is a normal free market pricing mechanism for money. It allows for ‘optimal allocation of capital’.

Yeah, right in to the bankers pockets………….

Don’t the Gold people care about the enormous price that Labor pays for this?

Isn’t it totally atrocious to allow a few capitalists to control such an important factor of production and reap such massive profits from it just for their own sake?

Let’s get over this.

So it is not about what means of exchange you use, it is about whether we, as a people, are in control of it, so that its supply is steady and dirt cheap.

The second item of interest with the Gold narrative is, that it was financed by Rockefeller. He imported Ludwig von Mises to the US in 1940 and gave him a grant……………

The self styled ‘Illuminati’ would invest in people supporting gold and hiding this message in other, less relevant (dis)information. It would simply be a typical tactic for them, to have some people make some noise about the bankers and perhaps 9/11, at the same time selling gold as a solution and in this way leading the opposition in to a blind alley.

Third, interest free money is not an idea, it is an established fact. It is all around us in the various barter schemes around the world.

Hitler financed his war machine with his own capital and bartered internationally without one dime of gold or ‘hard’ currency. Declaring stuff like ‘breaking the thralldom of Interest is the kernel of National Socialism’ time and again………………

Hell, the greatness of the US itself is built on non interest bearing government notes! Franklin’s Colonial Scrip, Washington’s Continental (even though this was inflated into oblivion, if we take the money supply out of the hands of the bankers, please don’t give it to some career politicians………) and of course Abe Lincoln. He won the war by throwing 30% interest gold out of the window, spitting in Rothschild’s face and buying everything he needed to hammer the South by printing a few hundred million Greenbacks, some of which are in circulation even today!

Of course, he got shot for that, but that just emphasizes the point.

So is there really a case for Gold?

I think not. It is just one more of their memes, and a particularly nasty one.

Gold classically had its uses as a store of value in times of crises and the last couple of years it is making a comeback as a hedge against inflation and total systemic breakdown. But even for that it is a second rate tool. Terrible manipulation of the gold market, and now Tungsten bars all over the place…….. Gold is not very credible, really.

And at the end of the day, all this focus on ‘wealth preservation’ is rather tiring and a big problem in itself. An old friend famously said you cannot serve two masters and it is simple truths like these that need more focus and we need money more in line with it.

For real money, serving the needs of the community, instead of its producers, we need at least a few percent of the people to know about these things. Who have a basic literacy on monetary matters and who can see through the basic schemes.

The import of the matter is such, that the Truth community both has a major opportunity and responsibility to facilitate the necessary education and debate.

Because the production of the means of exchange is simply a trade and science like all the rest and is in urgent need of demystification.

And when it comes to making money in the real sense of the word, there is no reason at all to wait until the governments clean up their act and start doing their job. Its suicide to do so. Commercial barters around show that we can NOW start creating all the liquidity we need.

Waiting for the nanny state to solve our problems IS our problem.

Because “money is anything that is generally accepted by agreement as a medium of exchange”, and although most of the current barter units do not qualify as high quality money (because they are either not convertible to other currencies, or can’t supply interest free credit as I worked out here), it is clear that private, not for profit organization can start issuing interest free money right NOW. The bigger the networks in which these units circulate, the more effective they become, and the more they alleviate the plight of slavery through usury and of course function as a hedge against the continuing financial turmoil.

Let’s not forget that WIR is turning over the equivalent of 2 billion CHF per year in Switserland and is universally seen as an important factor in that nation’s stability and prosperity.

However, privately created high powered working capital is quite something different from simply printing some interest free government notes, since there is no coercion available to make people accept it. Nor are taxes payable in private money.

These challenges have not been sufficiently met. Yet.

But that is an other story.

53 Comments
  1. You are correct as to gold as monetary standard, but what about the solution. Well here it is by Mike Montagne offered since 1970s, but to no avail so far and the high time to mandate it far and wide is now.

    mathematically perfected economy™ (MPE™) 1 : the singular integral solution of 1) inflation and deflation, 2) systemic manipulation of the cost or value of money or property, and 3) inherent, artificial multiplication of debt into terminal systemic failure; 2 : every prospective debtor’s right to issue legitimate promises to pay, free of extrinsic manipulation, adulteration, or exploitation of those promises, or the natural opportunity to make good on them; 3 : our right to certify, to enforce, and to monetize industry and commerce by this one sustaining and truly economic process.

    • @ Mario,

      Thanks for this input, I’m not familiar with MPE, but modern money is based on mutual credit and in effect the money is created by the participants spending the money.

      The promis to pay is the essence of money and belongs to the one promising to pay, not to some institution like a bank.

  2. Doug permalink

    Cabbage, Kale, Carrot, Tomato, Lettuce, Beet, Turnip, Parsnip, Sweet Potato, Potato, Radish SEED, among others, to name a few, are my new chosen currency. I am building my bank, propagating my stocks, and preparing to start trading soon. Since I live in the cold northern United States, my “money” is not easy to come by at first. Until you get the hang of it that is. I have spent the last few years learning how and now, I have a very tradable currency. Even when we are wall papering our outhouses with Federal Reserve Notes, we still won’t want to eat them. If you find yourself in that dilemma, call me…during bankers hours only.

  3. THANK YOU! Of course! Otherwise why did someone buy up the whole of South Africa’s supply of gold last year. It was shipped to Switzerland, naturally.

    It is so obvious that gold is being manipulated for purposes of their own, as usual.

    Why is the gold price so low in spite of gold being in short supply? There is something going on behind the scenes – but there always is, and I am so glad to find you giving this warning.

    • Astraea, to find out what is happening with gold, check out gata.org, who have been blowing the whistle on Gold manipulation for years.

      The basic story is that a number of powerful banks (JP Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank) have massive long positions on gold, suppressing its price.

      The reason for this is, they don’t want the gold price to show how bad paper inflation has been, and how low the market trust in paper really is.

      • curious permalink

        Should it not be:

        X, Y, Z have massive SHORT positions on gold, suppressing its price.

        1. This allows them to preferentially purchase all the mined gold very cheaply, excluding the general public.

        2. And, anyway, if their short positions are squeezed, they will get the government treasuries to bail them out if this threatens their collapse.

        3. (Your explanation, protecting their paper currency for as long as possible).

  4. Larry Cohen permalink

    What shall we use in place of gold? Salt? Beads? Your article delights in bashing gold – what are you offering as an alternative right now? A non-profit organization putting out a new paper currency? Do you have this right now? Some new money that has, as you put it, “general acceptance,” and within the current “legal tender laws?” Perhaps we should revoke all the legal tender laws, so that anyone can put out his own money. Then, revoke all the other laws that interfere with free enterprise, including taxes, licensing laws, and bank charters. Now, given that you haven’t yet offered a new money system, what is the problem with someone using gold, silver, platinum, or some other commodity money that is available right now? There can never be any shortage of metals – if one ends up scarce, we go to another one that isn’t. Is the problem just who’s controlling the money, or our crippled understanding of free enterprise?

  5. @Larry,

    My suggestion is the creation of non interest bearing private money, distributed preferably by not for profit organizations.

    This money needs to be based on no commodity. The credit of the community within which the money circulates is the real basis of money.

    There are however a number of challenges to negotiate before this can be really successful.

    With the Gelre we are developing freely convertible barter units. Allowing for both interest free credit and convertibility to Euro. We believe we can in this way make a major step forward in the development of non-governmental/bank money.

    I will be writing in more detail about the needs of modern money, so keep posted!

    • Larry Cohen permalink

      Naturally, I look forward to seeing your “money,” if that’s the right word for it, as opposed to “barter instrument.” Your posted letter is leaving my head spinning. Why would you want a non-profit organization issuing our money, instead of private people, like you and I, simply putting precious commodities into circulation, where everyone recognizes the inherent value? And how will your money be “put” into circulation? What determines the value of something?
      Even if the price of gold is tampered with, as is now the case, it doesn’t change the fact that gold has a universally-recognized value, internationally, and is nearly guaranteed to withstand and surpass the failings of all other paper imitations. I want to repeat that no money system is worth a damn without free enterprise. The more government encroaches on our liberties and hampers our ability to produce and keep the fruits of our labors, the more we may as well ditch the money system and live like animals. In my view, at least half the battle here lies in unconstitutional laws that lock thousands of people out of the free markets, and enslave those who manage to find the right chains for themselves within the system.

      • The account function of the money is simply left to the euro: we say 1 Gelre = 1 Euro.

        What you call a barter instrument, I call money, because money is means of exchange that we agree upon.

        The reason we don’t want to depend on metals is twofold: in the first place its supply is manipulated and by taking some of it out of circulation, the Powers that Be have created depressions.

        Secondly, it is impossible to offer interest free credit based on metal. We need to allow people themselves to create liquidity by going into debt (to the community) without interest.
        In this way cheap capital can be made available to many people.

  6. Luther Blissett permalink

    It is clear to me that we must now evolve to a society that does not use money of any kind whatsoever. This sounds a little mad, I know, but it is the only thing (other than hemp) that’ll save us. The little voice says ‘but wait on, won’t people just eat until they get fat?’ Isn’t that what we do now?! Even if one were not to find any good technical arguments for this view, one might simply say if 99% of the world’s people have major debt and are in debt slavery, well 100% having zero would be a real fantastic step up!!

    • Larry Cohen permalink

      We are already evolving into such a society, that does not use “money.” It’s called the “Welfare State,” where the government pays people on plastic cards and bank ledger entries not to work, and to have children so they can also end up with a moneyless “welfare society.” The “master plan” here is to have everyone totally dependent on, and enslaved to the government, and the corporations that control it. By abandoning commodity money, we end up losing our privacy, our independence, and self-worth. Valuable money, such as gold, lets us recover our values. Our choice of money reflects our self-esteem, and our understanding of real value.

      • Luther Blissett permalink

        Quite the contrary I believe, although I appreciate your sentiments. I said all money, which implies also zero control. You assume that this power be in the hands of a criminal elite which is exactly the situation we are in now, and have been for some time. Without “their” money, we are free to express our self-esteem and understanding of real value in any other ways we choose.

  7. Mike permalink

    The one thing all failed countries or governments have in common is Fiat Currency, and their failure can be directly linked to their ability to print money!

    Gold and Silver are the only real Money!

  8. Kate permalink

    I’m with Doug on this one. I’ve “owned” gold and silver. The #1 store of wealth is of course our walk with Jesus Christ and consume HIS Spiritual FOOD and now is the time to gain all of the knowledge written in the Holy Biblical scriptures as one can. The #2 store of wealth “in my opinion” will get all the gold and silver anyone owns when one is starving. Again, why would anyone want gold and silver when they are starving to death? Both energising Foods are the ultimate store of wealth. I know I am not alone in this effort, but I am attempting to gather as much of the 2 foods as possible because I will not be turning anyone hungry for either away. Most men/women if only they stop thinking of ME and MINE and would store to “share” with others when the time comes, thus truly loving one another then the evil and illusive powers that be would definitely have lost their greedy, divisive battle. This is something that they wouldnot have planned for, b/c these powers indeed do know the evil “Hearts of Men.”

  9. Patrick Sullivan permalink

    The authority to issue money comprises the organizing principle of advanced societies. This power has been wrongfully used to create the war crimes cartel, a wholly owned and operated business of the central bankers.

    Money, which is an “Abstract receipt of labor” has been used to misdirect human activities towards death and destruction.

    The nuclear war fighting elite in the central banks have placed all of their bets on their ability to destroy us with the use of advanced nuclear weaponry before we figured it out. They’ve lost their bet and now are to be removed from civil society and placed into humane institutional care.

    “Act against them; Lay hands on them; Seize them!”

  10. Dale permalink

    Debt based paper money is simply a wealth confiscation scheme. Abrogating the gold clause also abrogates the right of contract, since no contract can then be executed at law. Therefore no one has the power, at law, to buy anything and consequently all property is owned by the “state”, a collection of corporations impersonating constitutional government.

    Under such system, the PROMISE to pay money IS the money.

    The people, under public policy, are treated as corporations and as debtor-slaves, having no rights whatsoever. That is to say, until the people wake up and learn who they really are: The ultimate paramount creditors in the whole scheme.

    • Hi Dale,

      the problem is not debt, but interest. Interest free money is partly debt based, which is not a problem, because the debts are incurred for investment in real economic activity. The debt is repayed without any interest added and the money goes out of circulation when repayed, so there is no long term inflationary effect.

      Creating money out of nothing is really very pleasant. It becomes unpleasant, if this simple tool is taxed with outrageous fee’s like interest, for instance paying 400k interest on a 200k mortgage in 30 years……..

  11. Attila permalink

    Thus far paper money is been one of the biggest invention into enslaving and controling mankind. In the documentary Food Inc, the farmer that was sued by MonSanto said ” What scared me the most is that, they (Monsanto) had every check that I have written for the past 10 years on different bank accounts”.
    In another documentary Phaze 3 part 11 “Computerized Humanity” shows the reason behind all the economic downfall.
    The new monetary currency will be implanted in us, a bar code. “He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead”. “And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name”. “Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666”. Revelation 13: 16-18
    This will be the future. They show us the benefit that we’ll get from it, though farmers like you’ll see in the documentary Food Inc, will be shocked when they figure it out how a private company have access to private accounts.
    Its the same people the same club the same in every industry, governments, media, etc…. Illuminati, Masons, Satanists = New World Order.
    We have to stand up and educate each other, it starts at home.

  12. Larry Cohen permalink

    Dear Anthony: This is what you wrote: “The reason we don’t want to depend on metals is twofold: in the first place its supply is manipulated and by taking some of it out of circulation, the Powers that Be have created depressions.”
    I want to suggest that we have depressions due to not allowing free enterprise in our money supply, as well as our general commerce, including banking. Secondly, please explain why interest-free loans and interest free loans are impossible using metals. Are you advocating that a paper money system with unlimited elastic potential be used? I have already given interest-free loans using paper money – I could just as easily have used gold. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to create money out of nothing as credit, with an elastic paper currency. I’m not clear on why you would favor any kind of money that isn’t valuable in and of itself, such as gold that is bought and used independently of any government interference.

  13. Dale permalink

    Hello Anthony–

    Re “for instance paying 400k interest on a 200k mortgage in 30 years……..” … and the truly amazing thing is is that the house has been “paid for” at the moment when the buyer signs the original promissory note, since under the United States commercial system, the PROMISE to pay money IS the money. Sadly, due to misinformation and misdirection, the buyer abandons his claim on the note, his asset, when he starts making his monthly payments. The bank that “lent” the buyer the “loan” to buy the house used the private credit of the buyer, and then has the temerity (which can be equated to fraud) to charge interest!! The phony debt based money scheme preys upon people’s ignorance, which has been institutionally instilled by the public school system, etc

  14. Larry Cohen permalink

    Dear Anthony, Something occurred to me recently which might interest you. Since you want a non-profit agency to put out a paper currency, what if I did it for you? Supposing I put out a non-profit paper “barter instrument?” Would you cover the costs of ink and paper for me? I’ll show you a tentative design, explaining to people it is a “barter instrument,” put out “not for profit,” and the rules you might want to attach to it. If this is all you’re looking for in a “money system,” maybe I can save you the costs and trouble of setting up a non-profit organization. If you see this proposal as completely insane, would you please tell me why? I happen to regard it as nuts! But if this is what you want, I think we can work together. What is my interest in it? I have a feeling that everyone who uses it will wonder the same things I’m wondering about, and they might even start using gold! You never know!

    • Larry Cohen wrote:

      “Dear Anthony, Something occurred to me recently which might interest you. Since you want a non-profit agency to put out a paper currency, what if I did it for you? Supposing I put out a non-profit paper “barter instrument?””

      —–

      Larry,

      While some here are mistaken about the Constitution’s implications regarding “money,” it does absolutely forbid coining (or printing) money even by the states. The power is delegated strictly to Congress. Of course, that does not convey a further power (without constitutional amendment) to privatize the delegated power, even if the act is performed under the purportedly watchful eye of Congress.

      The real problem here is that the gold standard cannot serve us, because it would have been impossible to sustain the industrial growth since the founding on gold monetary reserves. This fault is why a precious metal monetary standard always lapses into fractional reserve implementations which essentially violate the limitations of the precious metal monetary standard.

      The founders realized the faults of gold. Not all of them; but even Hamilton used the arguments against gold to argue for “credit.” What Hamilton meant however was NOT credit. He meant an obfuscation of credit, in which a pretended banking system merely publishes our promissory notes to each other; absorbs the mere printing costs; essentially launders our promissory obligations to each other into their own possession; and then, as if the negligible costs of publication comprised risk, charges us interest; which compels us to maintain a vital circulation by perpetually re-borrowing principal and interest as ever greater and eventually terminal sums of debt, perpetually increased by so much as periodic interest on an ever greater sum of debt.

      In the natural lifespan of a promissory note of course, as the note is paid, it is retired — it no longer represents an obligation, or anything. By publishing our promissory notes to each other, the pretended banking system rightly acts to collect the notes (which they have only published), but instead of retiring them, effectively launders them into their own persistent possession. They thus artificially enrichen the banking system by all the principal which is coercively “financed” by this obfuscation; and of course, multiplication of artificial indebtedness forces all property to be “financed” in the further collateralization which must ensue in the further multiplication of the artificial indebtedness by the obfuscation of interest.

      So these are our problems. I originally published my thesis of inevitable failure and proof of singular solution (mathematically perfected economy(tm)) in 1979 (after speaking on it for some ten years prior). Computer models I provided the Reagan Administration in 1983-4 projected that the present failure would transpire in the present year, 2010 AD.

      Now, over the years, many people have approached me to form a world bank on the principles of mathematically perfected economy(tm). You may trust that I would gladly do so; except that the “banking” laws of virtually every nation strictly forbid it.

      This is why I’ve approached the problem as I have over the past 30 years: Only if the people understand this issue so well that they will stand for nothing short of mathematically perfected economy(tm), WILL we have it.

      Assuming you have some inherent authority to coin (produce) money will likely land you in jail.

      • Larry Cohen permalink

        Consider: We “lapse” into fractional reserve banking because it benefits the bankers, who get all the benefits right away, while the rest of us lose purchasing power. Based on fractional reserve lending, and the inflation of the volume of currency, we end up with the idea that there isn’t enough gold and silver to represent our industrial growth. It serves the bankers well to convince us all of that, and meanwhile they can enrich themselves on paper money to buy out whatever they want on the planet. Despite the fact that we have a paper currency right now, our industrial growth is being stifled and exported overseas – do you think it would be happening right now if people had gold, and free enterprise? And if they ran out of gold, they could switch to four other precious metals. I fail to see any compelling evidence otherwise, other than banker brainwashing. Incidentally, I would not be “printing money,” for you. As I mentioned in my letter, the paper would be labeled “barter instruments,” not “legal tender.” I’m not aware of any law forbidding someone from issuing “barter instruments,” or “trading sheets,” that would have value among those choosing to use them. If you know of a law against such sheets, let me know.

  15. Mike permalink

    SC Lawmaker Proposes Ban on Federal Currency
    Thursday, 18 Feb 2010 09:07 AM Article Font Size
    By: Greg Brown

    A South Carolina politician wants his constituents to stop using dollars — and for the people in his state to rely on gold and silver coins instead.

    Rep. Mike Pitts, a state representative and Republican, has introduced legislation that would make paper money illegal in the state.

    “I’m not one to cry ‘chicken little,’ but if our federal government keeps spending at the rate we’re spending I don’t see any other outcome than the collapse of the economic system,” Pitts told The Palmetto Scoop, which broke the story.

    “The Germans felt their system wouldn’t collapse, but it took a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread in the 1930s,” Pitts later told CBS News site Political Hotsheet.

    “The Soviet Union didn’t think their system would collapse, but it did. Ours is capable of collapsing also.”

    Inflation has become a renewed concern after China has dumped tens of billions of its huge U.S. debt holdings this week.

    Now Japan — the other major U.S. creditor abroad — could follow suit, warn top Japanese bankers.

    The implication for interest rates and for the value of the U.S. dollar has investors buzzing about gold and other hedges against a falling greenback.

    It also creates serious concern for the nascent U.S. recovery. Quickly rising interest rates could slam the brakes on the recent GDP rebound.

    Treasury said this week that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury bills slipped by $53 billion in December, far more than the previous record drop of $44.5 billion in April 2009.

    China alone dumped $34.2 billion of its U.S. debt, falling to $755.4 billion and, a result, pushing Japan into the No. 1 position among U.S. foreign creditors.

    “Fears are growing that the U.S. fiscal health will worsen further as (President Barack) Obama hasn’t been able to offer details on how to rebuild government finances,” Akihiro Nishida, senior fixed income strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities, told The New York Times.

  16. Mike permalink

    In the US, The Constitution states that money is silver or gold coin. The $1 Federal Reserve note was at one time considered equal in value to the silver dollar.
    The last time a $1 Federal Reserve note was equal in value to a $1dollar silver coin was 1961.
    At the present time, the spot price for silver is about $16 (in Federal Reserve notes), which means that the Federal Reserve dollar is worth 1/16 of what it was worth in 1961, when it was equal to the Silver Dollar. That means the Federal Reserve dollar is worth 6.3 cents relative to not just the Silver Dollar, but to the Federal Reserves Note’s former self.
    To put this into perspective, a home which is, today, valued at $1.6 million, is really worth $100,000 Silver dollars. It’s not the home that’s gone up in value; it is the Federal Dollar that has lost value.
    The experts are saying that the dollar is dead or dying quickly, and since its present value is only 5.26 cents, there doesn’t seem to be much life left in the Federal Reserve dollar.
    Imagine a person who is alive, but only 6.3% alive, that is to say 93.7% of the person’s bodily functions have stopped working; how long do you think this person has to live?
    The only reason the dollars hasn’t died yet is that our government has the dollar on a respirator. They manipulate the market to make the dollar look better than it is and they manipulate the gold and silver markets to keep the price of gold and silver down, because Silver is the real indicator of the strength of the Federal Reserve dollar.
    If silver gets to $20 per ounce, then the Federal Reserve dollar will be worth 5 cents relative to silver. If silver gets to $50 per ounce as many experts are predicting, then the Federal Reserve dollar will be worth 2 cents and at $100 per ounce for silver, the Federal Reserve dollar will be worth 1 cent.
    We are in a game of musical chairs and when the music stops, the losers are the people holding Federal Reserve notes. Silver is Money!

    • And yet, the last thing the gold bugs really want is a return to “the Constitutional value” of a dollar (or gold).

      Likewise, the last thing the purported economy could withstand is such a return. See the facts on gold held in monetary reserves. Can you imagine (really?) sustaining US commerce on our gold reserves?

      If so, cite the justifying math.

      Even moreso, cite the math which would make that currency immutable tokens of value (which can offend no one).

  17. Dennis Spain permalink

    When gold leaves the hands of the banker, it no longer functions as a tool of the banker! The banker has lost his power to the new owner of gold, unlike under today’s system of monetary feudalism in which money is created as fiduciary media by the sole act of the banker “loaning” pure bookkeeping entries to individuals signing promissory notes, and then charging interest on the numbers “created”!

    Gold in the hands of the individual automatically gives that individual power over the medium of exchange and greater autonomy in his business dealings. Bankers, under a true gold system, have to spend the gold, parting with it and thereby losing autonomy with each purchase. They must of necessity lose control of the supply of gold over time as they can’t simply sit on it and survive eating gold pancakes. Every outflow of gold that is not a loan is potentially lost to them.

    What caused the business cycle with its alternating booms and busts during times when there was a quasi-gold standard cannot be attributed to the medium of gold itself but to the practice of fractional-reserve lending by its creation of banknotes not fully backed up by gold. Outlaw that unethical practice and stringently enforce laws against fraud, and the happy result will be a true gold standard not controlled by the banks but by actors in the market.

    And individuals who have saved a stockpile of gold have every right to loan their capital at whatever rate a truly free capital market can support. Interest is the premium paid for foregoing consumption now for rewards later, a very wise human behavior.

    • No Dennis, so long as gold and “banking” are purported to be coexistable, interest will transfer title of all gold to the banks.

      In fact, the first official action of the so called Federal Reserve was to close the security exchanges so that the Bank of England could not immediately become the owner of the monetary gold which the 12 private banking corporations which comprise the so called “Federal” “Reserve” intended to possess.

  18. Thx, Anthony Migchels, as there is only one and only one formula for making water the water, there is only one formula for making economy sustainably growing, and is not economy with currency based on gold, silver or other commodities, but based in hard science of mathematics.

    Mike: here is the link to the story “The Gold Standard and Other Monetary Myths” I re-posted on MPE forum.
    http://www.perfecteconomy.com/f/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=891

    mathematically perfected economy™ (MPE™) 1 : the singular integral solution of 1) inflation and deflation, 2) systemic manipulation of the cost or value of money or property, and 3) inherent, artificial multiplication of debt into terminal systemic failure; 2 : every prospective debtor’s right to issue legitimate promises to pay, free of extrinsic manipulation, adulteration, or exploitation of those promises, or the natural opportunity to make good on them; 3 : our right to certify, to enforce, and to monetize industry and commerce by this one sustaining and truly economic process.

  19. MIKE permalink

    Mario,
    You forgot the most important part of your equation; it is called the human element! You can have the best mathematics and formulas ever created, but you can not control the human element. People are flawed and that is why fiat currencies have never worked in the long run through out history. That is why the US Dollar, the Euro the Yen, the Yuan and most others are failing TODAY!
    You don’t have this problem with precious metals. Sure someone may try to steal your gold, but they can’t steal its value, the way the Fed steals the value (what little is left) of the Dollar. Yes, a precious metals economy would be a slow moving economy, that’s good, we need to slow down. May be we’d be slow to start wars, because we can’t afford them and we won’t be able to print money any more, unless there is some of innate value behind it. We would have to be very frugal, as a nation and only spend money on the things that are most important. This just might help eliminate the B. S. spending that goes on in Washington today. Maybe we could eliminate about 2/3 of the U.S. government and save a bundle. I know we can return to a Constitutional Government and we won’t need 2/3 of the present government!
    But don’t mind me, I’m not an economist, my fields are Logic, Ethics and Psychology.

  20. Mike,

    Enough of your “human element” argument, and enough of your pretension that anyone is advocating people have to be controlled. The reason fiat currencies have never worked is not that people are flawed; it is because the particular brand of fiat to which fiat has always been restricted, itself is flawed. How in fact can we prove so?

    In the case of what you only call “fiat,” what we have is an obfuscation of a promissory note. It isn’t *the paper* which is responsible for the ramifications of this obfuscation — it’s the obfuscation:

    All that we are allowing central banks to do is to publish our promissory notes to each other. This perpetrates two very serious crimes.

    1. Whereas a promissory note is retired from circulation to the extent it is paid off, the obfuscation first wrongs us by allowing the pretended banking system to take possession of the notes. This as much as launders all money into the possession of the pretended banking system, and from the very outset of any initial “debt” (which is NOT a debt to the banking system at all), artificially enriches the banking system so much as all the principal which is ever coercively “financed” this way.

    2. Worse, virtually all property is necessarily financed this way, because interest forces us to maintain a vital circulation by perpetually borrowing interest and principal back into general circulation, as ever greater and eventually terminal sums of debt.

    So then, it isn’t the paper; it’s the interest.

    Your precious metal monetary standard has no power whatever to arrest this perpetual multiplication of artificial indebtedness by interest; nor can the relatively minuscule quantity of monetary gold in the world sustain the world’s industry; in fact, interest will ultimately transfer title to all property (including gold) to the pretended banking system.

    Obviously, you’ve never actually done the math; and if you think we’re better off for slowing down, you have no business blogging on this issue.

    WAKE UP.

    • I couldn’t agree more!

    • cyrus permalink

      Mike Montagne,

      If your argument is that it’s not paper it’s the interest, then you should agree that it’s not the metal, it’s interest. Also, it appears that you overlook the fact that the amount of metals is adequate for economies b/c the metals will not have a static value, but instead they will have a market value, which always appreciates with the growth of the economy. The total amount of money would be made equal to the value of all of the goods and services produced by that economy. Using metals which have a market value can only be erroneous when the supply is mainly controlled by one group, which does happen to be the case with gold, and probably silver too, but that’s not your argument. We, as a nation, could also take, i.e. seize for the common good, the accumulated gold of “the money changers” and distribute it far and wide, thereby breaking up “their” age old monopoly on the metal by the force of the state.

      What I see going on now is that “they” (not just bankers) are attempting to transfer all of the wealth of the world held in fiat currencies to themselves, the possessors of metals. Fiat is crashing, no doubt because “they” are causing it to crash, but sitting by and not obtaining the metals is not going to help the individual, because this juggernaut is moving with too much force.

      I’d also be interested to hear how, in your system, money as a medium of exchange is introduced; how is value determined; how is credit worthiness determined if we wouldn’t use the current credit score due to it reflecting, in a large measure, the inevitable unsustainability of the interest bearing debt under which the debtor sank? Further, who would control the system and how would accountability be secured when we’ve already failed so miserably?

      Thanks,

      Cyrus

      • Oh, *certainly* Cyrus. Thus if the metal and interest are to purportedly coexist, as the obfuscation of promissory obligations inherently transfers all paper to the purported banking system, so it would transfer all gold to the purported banking system.

        But as has been stated (and my original 1979 article on gold proved), a finite quantity of *any* material cannot immutably tokenize a differing (and vacillating) quantity of all other wealth. This is the reason a gold standard has always been abandoned — it could never serve the necessary purpose of immutable tokenization.

        This of course is remarkably well observed in Benjamin Franklin’s paper, “A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency.” (See this at virginia.edu.)

        Effectively then, the gold standard (or any precious metal standard; or any other finite standard either) is *necessarily* abandoned when the related, finite circulation is *found* to be insufficient to tokenize the further wealth/production, which it is necessary to represent simultaneously, in order to sustain related commerce (trade of production).

        So the only standard which *can always* and *will* always work is a standard which effectively makes *the wealth (or thus, production)* “the reserve” — a standard which makes the currency always redeemable in the very wealth it is intended to represent, and must represent altogether, if we are to conduct all possible trade (including therefore, even a potential trade of all wealth at once).

        Thus the only vehicle for such representation is a promissory obligation — which itself does not represent *going into debt*, but instead actually only represents a commitment to pay for represented property as it is consumed or depreciated.

        This then prescribes the currency of mathematically perfected economy — which *alone* therefore can immutably monetize all wealth.

        Effectively then, mathematically perfected economy is only two things: a) it is eradication of interest; and b) it is an obligatory schedule of payment retiring principal at the rate of consumption or depreciation of the related property.

        Thus it is likewise the *only* immutable tokenization of value, because this and this alone maintains a perpetual 1:1:1 relationship between remaining circulation, remaining value of represented wealth, and remaining obligation (which cements a perpetual value of every unit of circulation to the so many units of wealth it represents from the unit’s beginning to its end).

        Thus for instance, a $100,000 home with a 100-year lifespan costs us $1,000 per year or $83.33 per month under mathematically perfected economy.

        In the transition to mathematically perfected economy moreover (which I prescribed as a singular solution to the Reagan Campaign in 1979), we (rightly) count all prior payments of interest toward principal. This itself (rightly) dissolves all multiplication of artificial indebtedness related to existent property.

        Furthermore and finally then, we refinance the remaining principal (if any) under mathematically perfected economy, thus paying and retiring very little remaining principal at a relatively dramatically reduced rate of payment — to in general, approximately 1/12 what we are paying against terminal sums of artificial indebtedness now.

  21. Well said Mr Montagne! How can people be so thick?! Do they have other interests other then to offer real solution?!

    Every major religion warns about the danger of usury, but the secular case against it is even more powerful. It is the most powerful centralizing centripetal force ever invented, and it steadily increases velocity to the point where life becomes nothing but a sprint in a hamster wheel to keep the debt system running.

    There is no mystery to projecting the pattern of failure engendered by any purported economy subject to interest.
    As interest multiplies debt in proportion to a circulation, ever more of every existing dollar is dedicated to servicing multiplying debt, and ever less of every existing dollar can be dedicated to sustaining the commerce which is obligated to service the multiplying debt. Everything around you can be understood from the obvious consequences.

  22. MIKE permalink

    Mr Montagne
    Sounds to me you have a problem with free speech. But then you seem have a problem with The Constitution itself, for it declares that only Gold and Silver shall be used as money.
    Instead of ranting and raving about some fantasy system based on fantasy currency that will never work in the real world, try studying history. Gold and Silver have been used as money for about 6000 years! And the only time the existing economies worked was when they were Gold and Silver based economies. Well, there was a period in English history where they use a Tally Stick, which was an actual stick with notches carved in it. If you look at Roman history, their economy flourished when their currency was Gold and Silver, but over time the Gold and Silver content of the coinage was reduced until it was basically tin. One can plot the decline of the Roman Empire by following the debasement of the currency
    Of course you would like a fast moving economy because our economy is based on buying and selling and the faster one buys and sells the more money one makes. It is also easier to manipulate The Market when the system is moving too fast for any one to notice.
    You see, a slow moving economy tends to be a friendlier, more social, more human and more visible. We need to evolve beyond the petty greed and avarice that inflicts our society and has lead to the destruction of our once great nation. It is because of foolish people like yourself, who want to put the economic well being of this nation or this planet into the hands a few men, even though history has shown us time and time again that man, when left to his own judgments, will screwed things up every time.
    That is the whole point about Gold and Silver. An economy based on precious metals is a 98% honest economy, for nothing is 100%. You either have Gold or you don’t, there is no fudging. No double set of books, no accounting fraud. That’s why governments hate a Gold and Silver based economy. It is the People’s best way to try to keep politicians honest. It is an impossible job, but we need to make the effort.
    I’m sorry if your mind can not look beyond you petty belief system and realize the lessons that history has taught us, or has tried to teach us. Very few metals qualify as precious metal and I believe there is a reason for that, perhaps they exist for the exact purpose we have used them for over the last 6000 years, because they are money. Remember, of all the Gold ever mined, most is still here, for Gold is a store of wealth, it has no other purpose, even as jewelry or art; it is still a store of wealth. A dollar bill is an I.O.U with nothing backing it!

    • And quite frankly Mike, I observe you have a problem with *right thinking*, in lieu of which you tend to resort to ad hominem.

      The fact is, no founder pretended the Constitution is perfect. If you were a student of Jefferson in fact, he explains how observation of the law above principle is the most foolish and self destructive of all possible consequences:

      “A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self- preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.”

      Now, if on the contrary, it were not you who held the fantasy you accuse me of, you could answer how your precious gold could sustain all commerce forever without impediment, couldn’t you?

      What history has taught us is that neither has gold “worked” — and of course, the reason is plainly that a finite quantity of gold (or any other such finite quantity) absolutely cannot sustain necessary trade and desirable industry.

      We don’t “keep politicians honest” by returning to the failed gold standard (see Franklin’s “Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency”). On the contrary, we keep them honest *only* by restoring *our* right to issue our promissory obligations free of unwarranted, unjustified, unassented and terminal exploitation by a purported banking system.

      Period.

      • PS.

        *SUCH* a dollar then, and *only* such a dollar is *a redeemable* IOU, *with the very wealth it represents backing it*.

        Nothing but nothing but nothing else can comprise a circulation which is altogether a) always capable of sustaining all trade (even a trade of all wealth at once); b) always fully redeemable in and fully disposable to the very wealth it represents; and always, in every case, immutably tokenizes value in every unit, in every moment, and in every case of participation.

  23. MIKE wrote:

    “Mr Montagne
    Sounds to me you have a problem with free speech. But then you seem have a problem with The Constitution itself, for it declares that only Gold and Silver shall be used as money.”

    IDIOTS put words in others’ mouths to argue against them for the benefit of other IDIOTS. I have no problem with free speech; but I do have a problem with people who cannot qualify what they say, and so merely make assertions. Your math is equally pretentious — 98% honest? HAH. You have to be kidding.

    But your pretended knowledge of history is even worse. The Constitution ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT declare that only gold or silver can be used as “money.” The Constitution does not even DEFINE money; on the contrary, it assigns values to the units of money in terms of gold and silver. There is a huge difference.

    No one versed in history would make your gross exaggeration: “And the only time the existing economies worked was when they were Gold and Silver based economies. ” Benjamin Franklin, in his “Modest Inquiry into the Nature AND NECESSITY of a Paper Currency,” observes how paper currency increased colonial prosperity above what was possible on the limited circulation of gold or silver — obviously, because finite monetary reserves can NEVER sustain substantial industry requiring a circulation which exceeds the quantity of monetary reserves.

    The claim is imbecilic; and you can (further) prove it to us by explaining how we are going to sustain a multi-trillion-“dollar” GDP, pay an admitted federal debt of at least a dozen trillion “dollars,” pay “near term unfunded federal liabilities” of possibly one or two-hundred trillion “dollars,” pay however many trillions in foreign debt, resolve however many trillions of “dollars” of insoluble private debt — all on the approximately $80 b of monetary reserves reported to belong to the U.S. Treasury.

    How is gold going to arrest multiplication of artificial indebtedness of all the artificial debts which already exist, as we are further compelled to maintain a vital circulation by perpetually re-borrowing interest and principal paid out of the general circulation, as ever greater and eventually (presently) terminal sums of debt — perpetually increased so much as periodic interest?

    Gold doesn’t have a single power to do so.

    In fact, the “banking system,” for merely publishing our promises to pay, will come to own that gold — as it has in every case of a central banking system.

    There is nothing “honest” in the accounting you attribute to gold. As production increases, more production obviously competes for the same circulation. Is it “honest” that industry, already having paid costs of production, is forced to cast that production to “free markets” deprived of the circulation because a few IDIOTS claimed gold would solve inflation and deflation. Gold makes solution of inflation and deflation impossible. Plain and simple. However much industrial production might rise or fall, it is subject to the same circulation — which by the very principles gold bugs constantly preach are destructive (inflation and deflation), are equally destructive under gold as otherwise.

    Debt is not the problem; inherent, irreversible, and therefore terminal multiplication of artificial debt in proportion to capacity to pay is the problem. It isn’t the material “the money” is made of; it’s the process (interest), artificially attached to what are no more than our own promissory notes — “borrowed” into circulation from no more than a mere publisher of our own promissory obligations TO EACH OTHER.

    What’s “honest,” “sir,” is to recognize that we have every right instead to issue our promissory obligations without exploitation. YOU don’t want a “constitutional” return to gold or silver. Nor do your gold bug friends. You want to cop unearned profit. There’s nothing honest about that at all.

  24. PS.

    In what you call a fantasy, what backs the money is the very property it represents. Gold can’t claim this virtue, for its limited, finite circulation perpetually alters the spendable value of money or property. The only way to maintain a perpetual 1:1:1 relationship between remaining circulation, remaining value of represented property, and remaining obligation, is to pay our promissory obligations at the rate of consumption or depreciation of the related property. The only way to do that is to eradicate interest.

    Sure, gold is a store of wealth; and as you yourself confess, it is a store of only the wealth it represents. It can hardly represent all other things at the same time then. Worse, to pretend we can tokenize all other wealth, however much, in a finite “reserve” of gold artificially drives up the price of gold, because it prevents us from using gold for all the things we would otherwise use it.

    All you’re wanting with gold is a very expensive token, claiming that represents an ever disparate quantity of things, as would preserve the value of “money.” But you can’t have your cake and eat it too; if inflation and deflation are issues (and they certainly are), the gold imposes these adversities upon us because it is impossible to solve inflation and deflation if the circulation cannot fluctuate with the remaining value of all represented production.

  25. Dennis Spain permalink

    In the “mathematically perfected” monetary system, who controls the issuance of money?

    It seems to me that the argument that gold is unacceptable as money because there is not enough of it to facilitate exchanges in a complicated modern economy, overlooks the possibility that prices in terms of gold will be adjusted automatically to the correct level with respect to the quantity of gold available, and as the quantity of goods and services increases with growing prosperity, the weight of gold attached to each service or product can adjust accordingly. Of course, under such a system, banks could not resort to fractional-reserve lending as that constitutes the main fraud infecting the present-day monetary system, IMHO.

    Also, I disagree with the belief that gold will end up concentrated in the hands of a few. How can that be, as it must constantly be spent and transferred to others in the act of exchange?

    • The PEOPLE do. A “Common Monetary Foundry,” replaces the roles of a central banking system, preserving the nature of promissory obligations (freedom from exploitation [interest], and retirement by payment); certifying the credit-worthiness of prospective debtors; issuing currency in a common form; maintaining accounts (payments); and enforcing payment (even in the case of default: in MPE(tm), the remaining value of property is always sufficient to recoup the remaining obligation/debt). Obligated rate of payment at the rate of consumption or depreciation of the related property perpetually maintains a 1:1:1 relationship between remaining circulation, PERPETUAL REDEEMABILITY IN THE VERY REMAINING VALUE OF THE VERY PROPERTY REPRESENTED BY THE CURRENCY, and remaining obligation.

      Effectively, the currency is always redeemable in the property it represents; in part because of this perpetually maintained relationship; in part because eradication of interest prevents ever more of every unit from being dedicated to servicing debt, versus sustaining industry and commerce.

      You write:

      “It seems to me that the argument that gold is unacceptable as money because there is not enough of it to facilitate exchanges in a complicated modern economy, overlooks the possibility that prices in terms of gold will be adjusted automatically to the correct level with respect to the quantity of gold available, and as the quantity of goods and services increases with growing prosperity, the weight of gold attached to each service or product can adjust accordingly.”

      There you go, AFFIRMING that the value of “money” HAS TO CHANGE in a system pretending gold/silver/etc. provide “stability.” It’s just not so. The perpetual corruption of the value of the money, and its usually restrictive effects on commerce (which generally increases otherwise) cause injury: when the *relative* (not REAL) value of gold (purported “money”) goes up, holders of property are offended; when it goes down, holders of gold are offended.

      You further write:

      “Also, I disagree with the belief that gold will end up concentrated in the hands of a few. How can that be, as it must constantly be spent and transferred to others in the act of exchange?”

      Then pay existent debts with gold and see what happens to it. BTW, how much of our production can “banks” actually consume? Hmm. If they can’t consume the production, what are they going to buy but the means of production?

      Of course that doesn’t matter to “traders.” But it does to a country where free enterprise was once the way to prosperity.

      That is, “freedom” means freedom from exploitation, from obfuscation, from dispossession by inherent instability, wrought by currencies which are readily perfected of their faults by one and one only set of principles, which alone solve 1) inflation and deflation; 2) systemic manipulation of the cost or value of money or property; and 3) inherent, irreversible, and therefore terminal multiplication of artificial indebtedness by interest.

      The one formula (which has already been cited) does so virtually without cost; accomplishes its purposes even without regulation (by its schedule of payment); and so, sustains any possible and desirable volume of industry without cost, impediment, or injury.

  26. MIKE permalink

    Montagne
    I f you read selectively, you may have missed section 10. Section 8 does say: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
    However, section 10 states: No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
    In French the word for money is argent and the word for Silver is argent. The same is true in Hebrew; כסף and כסף. Silver is Money!
    Now as to this so called debt, allow me to delve in to history again. The Supreme Court 1803 Marbury vs. Madison: The Supreme Court ruled that any law which is repugnant to The Constitution is void of law and is not law!
    The Federal Reserve is an illegal unconstitutional entity. The idea that we, the American People actual owe a debt to the Federal Reserve is ludicrous on face value. They print paper and ink, and then claim we owe them interest on worthless paper and ink. Any one who would go along with this has to be insane. The dumbest pigeon would never fail for a con this absurd.
    However, they knew no one would fall for this without some leverage, so they created the I.R.S., another unconstitutional illegal entity. The I.R.S is the Fed’s collection agency, the Fed’s muscle. If you don’t play the game, we take everything you have under force of law. And yet, when questioned the I.R.S. can not produce a law, any law which obligates the average American citizen to pay an income tax.
    The Fed is a PRIVATELY owned corporation that was started by J P Morgan, Paul Warburg and John D Rockefeller. They sold their plan for a private banker controlled central bank to President Woodrow Wilson who later remarked:
    “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men.”
    The citizens of The United States are not responsible for the actions of a private corporation. The Fed prints `Federal Reserve Notes’. These are not United States dollars, they are not the property of The United States, and hence the reason we must pay interest on the money `loaned’ to the United States Government. Since Federal Reserve Notes belong to the Fed and not to the United States Government, we, the citizens, and our government have no obligation to redeem or honor Federal Reserve Notes. Therefore, what we need to do is return to Constitutional Government and mint coins of Gold and Silver as is required by The Constitution. Once we have returned to minting real money, we can simply stop using Federal Reserve Notes. The Federal Reserve would be responsible for redeeming the worlds Federal Reserve Notes. I’m not sure just what the Fed will exchange Federal Reserve Notes for, since they are not backed by anything. But I would love to see 1.3 billion Chinese waving fists full of Fed notes at the Fed.
    Next, I never said Gold and Silver would get us out of the mess that we are in now. This system is toast! It can not be saved. We need to default on the Fed’s debt. Then abolish the Fed and the I.R.S. Only then can we rebuild with a Precious Metals based economy.
    The problem with your system is it leaves the economy in the hands of the same people or same type of people that created this mess in the first place. In other words, you burned down the house and now you want a new house and new box of matches.
    As I said before, the problem is not your system or your mathematics. The problem is you and your kind, who think they can solve the world’s problems when they have never succeeded before. It is like putting a 16 year old kid behind the wheel of a Ferrari just because he has license.
    Many people are unaware that there was a depression in 1920. It only lasted about 3 years because no one interfered with the economy and the economy corrected itself. Only it was not what the Fed wanted so they crashed the economy again in 1929, only this time they made sure the government stepped in to help, to assure that it would be a long drawn out depression.
    Ben Bernanke wrote a paper with a man named Carey which compared the 1920 depression with the 1929 depression so he knows what works and what does not and yet everything he has done has mirrored the actions taken during the 1929 depression. He has deliberately prolongated today’s depression. And you want a system run by the same kind of scum.
    We need to stop the printing presses and return to value based currency like Gold and Silver.

    • “We need to stop the printing presses and return to value based currency like Gold and Silver.”

      There you go again. The reason you CANNOT show us how we’re going to sustain even our crippled GDP and all the incredible debt we now suffer under a circulation of gold and silver, is you haven’t heard anyone else explain how, either.

      Like I said, nor do you want a return to the Constitution, for that would deprive you of the “honest” unearned profit you must be so hoping for, that you disregard all the fatal attributes which have already been disproven, to say again and again, that gold solves what it does not.

      But to say I want an economy run by the same kind of scum as Bernanke?

      Yeah, you said you are a psychiatrist, didn’t you.

      No, that’s not a question. FYI, a while I ago I likewise informed someone else here of the restrictions on coining money. What do you say, you and I forget each other exists? YOU get to use your gold for whatever you want. Don’t take any paper for it. Everyone like you can sustain whatever they can, strictly on gold.

      And so, since the debts left by paper are so destructive, why don’t you start paying them with gold? Silver? Platinum? Whatever?

  27. Dennis Spain permalink

    Under the present system of fiat, debt-based money, I define usury as the charge that banks place on money created out of nothing but debt. They get this extra money by unwarranted legal privilege in a political system that enshrines credit creation ex nihilo.

    True interest is the compensation someone requires as the price of foregoing consumption in the process of saving.

    The former is an alien concept depending on political connections. The latter is a natural result of human nature.

  28. MIKE permalink

    I’ve been chastised for not knowing The Constitution when in fact it is my accuser that does not know The Constitution, or chooses the parts he agrees with and ignores the rest. He also chastised me for not knowing history, when the truth is that I might present a Readers Digest explanation of history for the sake of brevity, but my facts are correct. Below is an article which pretty much sums up what I’ve been saying and hopefully you will read it and learn the truth about Gold and fiat currency.

    Why does fiat money seemingly work?
    by Trotsky, edited by Mish

    Imagine that you live on a small island mining the local salt mine, together with Pete the fisherman and Tom the apple grower. You’d exchange your salt for Pete’s fishes and Tom’s apples, while they would exchange fishes and apples between them.

    One day Pete says: “Instead of fish, from now on I will give you pieces of papyrus with numbers marked on them. (Papyrus grows in near unlimited quantities nearby, to the obvious benefit of Pete).” Pete continues “One papyrus mark will represent 1 fish or 5 apples or 2 bags of salt (equivalent to current barter exchange rates). This will make it easier for us to trade among ourselves . We won’t have to lug fishes, apples and salt around all the time. Instead, we simply present the papyrus for exchange on demand.”

    In short, Pete wants to modernize your little island economy by introducing money – and he already has one of those $1 papyrus notes with him, which he’s eager to exchange for salt.

    You’d laugh him out of the room, since you would realize that the papyrus per se is not of any value. If you were all to agree on using the papyrus, its value would rest on a promise alone – Pete’s promise that papyrus he issues is actually backed by fish. Since the stuff grows everywhere, he could easily issue it by the bucket load. In fact, it’s unlikely that any of the islanders would ever come up with such an absurd idea.

    More likely they would use another good for which there is an actual demand (for instance, a rare type of sea-shell that is prized as an ornament and only seldom found on the island) as their medium of exchange.

    In short, a free market medium of exchange/store of value can only be something with an already established demand. No worthless object would ever emerge to function as money in a free market.

    So how did it happen?

    How did essentially worthless objects come into widespread acceptance as money? To answer that question, we need to take a brief look at history.

    Flashback: Rome 27 BC

    Rome’s history of inflation and money debasement actually began with Cesar’s successor Augustus, whereby his method was at least not a prima facie fraud. He simply ordered the mines to overproduce silver in an attempt to finance the empire that had grown greatly under Cesar and himself.

    When this overproduction began to have inflationary effects, Augustus wisely decided to cut back on the issuance of coins. This was the last time that a Roman emperor attempted to honestly correct a monetary policy blunder, aside from a brief flashing up of monetary rectitude under Aurelius some 280 years later.

    Under Augustus’ successors, things began to deteriorate fast. Claudius , Caligula and Nero embarked on enormous spending sprees that depleted Rome’s treasury. It was Nero who first came up with the idea to actually debase coins by reducing their silver content in AD 64 , and it all went downhill from there.

    It should be mentioned that Mark Anthony of Hollywood fame financed the army he used in his fight against Octavian – then later Augustus – also with debased coinage. These coins remained in circulation for a long time, obeying Gresham’s Law – “bad money drives good money from circulation”.

    In AD 274 Aurelius entered the scene with a well-intentioned monetary reform, which fixed the silver-copper content of the then most widely used coin (the Antonianus)at 1:20 – however, just as soon as this reform was instituted, the silver content resumed its inexorable decline.

    In AD 301 Emperor Diocletian tried his hand at reform, this time by instituting price controls, an idiocy repeated numerous times thereafter, in spite of the incontrovertible evidence that it never works (Richard Nixon’s ill-fated experiment being the most recent example) .

    Naturally, those price controls accelerated Rome’s downfall as goods simply began to disappear from the market place. Merchants began to hide their goods rather than accept the edict to sell them at a loss. This is of course why price controls are always doomed to failure.

    One recurring feature of Rome’s long history of debasing its money was a perennial trade deficit due to overconsumption. Does this sound vaguely familiar?

    The leap from clipping coins to outright fiat money

    How was the leap from debasing coinage to outright fiat money accomplished?

    There are two distinct intertwined historical developments that led ultimately to the present system.

    Goldsmiths become bankers

    The idea of fractional reserve banking was first introduced by the forerunners of our modern day banking system, the goldsmiths.

    Goldsmiths were used as depositories for gold and silver, and the receipts they issued for such deposits soon began to circulate as the first bank notes – especially once they hit upon the idea to make them out to the ‘bearer’ instead of tying them to a specific deposit.

    Above: An early goldsmith bank receipt

    The convenience of carrying these bank notes instead bags of gold and silver soon caught on, and it didn’t take long for the goldsmiths to realize that deposits were rarely claimed in great quantities. It followed that one could temporarily lend deposits out and collect interest on such loans. So far so good – this is the legitimate business of banks.

    But the goldsmiths decided to go one step further, issuing additional receipts for gold, even if they were not actually backed by a deposit. This is what came to be known as ‘fractional reserves banking’ – lending out far more ‘money’ than one actually has in the form of deposits.

    Obviously this is fraud. Nonetheless, it’s perfectly legal today, but in essence it remains the same fraud it has always been, with the main difference being that today it’s a more sophisticated as well as officially sanctioned fraud.

    When bank notes were backed (at least partially) by gold and silver on deposit, fraud of this nature was frequently held in check by bank runs (or from a banker’s perspective, fear of bank runs). Nowadays, no such fear exists. The ‘lender of last resort’ – the central bank – can (at least in theory) prevent such bank runs by conjuring new ‘money’ out of thin air. In essence, a de facto insolvent banking system is supported by this trick.

    Tally sticks and Charles II

    The other historical development that can be seen as an ancestor of the modern day fiat money system is England’s application of the medieval ‘tally stick’ method of recording debt payments.

    Taxes in the largely agricultural economy of the Middle Ages were usually paid in the form of goods, and these payments were recorded with notches on wooden sticks that were then split length-wise (one half remained with the tax payer serf, as proof of payment). This was an ingenious method of avoiding counterfeiting.

    In AD 1100, King Henry the First ascended the English throne, and adopted the tally stick method of recording tax payments. By the time of Henry II, taxes were paid twice a year, and the tally sticks recording the partial tax payment made at Easter soon began to circulate in a secondary discount market – i.e., they began to be accepted as payment for goods and services at a discount , since they could be later presented to the treasury as proof of taxes paid.

    It didn’t take long for the King and his treasurer to realize that they could actually issue tally sticks in advance, in order to finance ‘emergency spending’ (not surprisingly, such emergencies often involved war – after the extortion of tax money the second big hobby of governments).

    The selling of these claims to future tax revenue created the market for government debt – an essential part of today’s fiat money system as well.

    By 1660, the English monarchy , after a brief hiatus of experimentation with a pseudo-republican government under Cromwell, was reinstated and Charles II began his reign but with vastly reduced powers, especially in the realm of taxation.

    Since Charles had to beg for tax money from the parliament, he struggled mightily with paying his vast pile of bills. Whenever Charles wrangled permission to raise taxes from parliament, he immediately went to cash in the future tax receipts by selling tally sticks to the goldsmiths at a discount. This necessitated the introduction of previously referred to method of making such debt payable to the bearer, which allowed the goldsmiths to sell it in the secondary market to raise funds for more lending to the King.

    They also began to pay interest to depositors, in order to attract still more funds. At that stage of the game, the goldsmiths had a good thing going for them, since the King was the equivalent of a triple A rated sovereign borrower, who could always be relied upon to cover his debt with future tax receipts. No one thought it problematic that the vaults soon contained more wooden sticks than gold . There was an active market in this government debt, and the goldsmiths profited handsomely.

    The King meanwhile decided to circumvent parliament and began to issue tally sticks as he pleased (as an aside, one half of such a stick, which originally remained with the treasury had a handle and was called the ‘stock’ – the term that has evolved to describe shares in publicly listed corporations today) .

    Naturally, Charles was more than happy to exchange wooden sticks for gold, and not surprisingly, soon kicked off a veritable credit boom by upping his wooden sticks production.

    Why was he nicknamed the “Merry Monarch”? Well, you would be merry too if you could kick off an enormous credit boom by exchanging sticks for gold.

    So what does a king do with all that gold he received for sticks? During his 25 year reign, he waged 3 losing wars (2 against the Dutch, one against France); he survived 4 different parliaments (only the first of which wasn’t hostile to him); he helped to establish the East India Company, made shady deals with Louis XIV of France (his cousin), sired a horde of illegitimate children of which he acknowledged 14, and was renown for his hedonistic court. That’s a lot of “merry”.

    Of course, there was a natural limit to this debt expansion. Once all the money attracted from depositors had been transferred to the King, additional deposits could only be acquired by means of offering higher interest rates than previously.

    By 1671 the annual discount on the King’s debt had reached 10% and due to redemptions nearly overwhelming funds raised by new debt issues, things clearly had ceased to work for him. Charles suddenly and conveniently remembered that there was a law against usury on the books, and lo and behold, interest rates in excess of 6% were not permissible.

    With all his recent loans carrying a far bigger discount, he simply declared the debt illegal, and stopped payments on it (with a few judiciously selected exceptions). Overnight, the King’s tally sticks reverted back to what they had really always been – worthless sticks of wood.

    The King’s creditors, chiefly the goldsmiths and their customers, had, quite literally, “drawn the short end of the stick” (if you ever wondered where this expression came from, this is it).

    Although tally sticks were still used until the early 19th century, and even formed part of the capital of the Bank of England when it was founded in 1694, the secondary market never truly recovered from this blow. Charles had, with the stroke of a pen, killed the better part of London’s budding banking system, and transformed countless of his creditors into destitute involuntary tax payers.

    To add insult to injury, he even gained a propaganda victory, as the public tended to blame the goldsmiths for the mess (they were of course not entirely innocent, and above all had been quite gullible).

    What the tally stick system and its application by Charles II however did achieve, was to plant the idea of how a fiat money system might actually be made to ‘work’.

    John Law’s fiat money experiment in France

    It was a Scotsman – John Law – ironically born in the very year (1671) when Charles defaulted on his debt, who tried the first great fiat money experiment inspired by these ideas. Living in exile in France, he found a willing partner in Philppe II Duke of Orleans’ near bankrupt state for putting his ideas into practice.

    In his words, “Domestic trade depends upon money. A greater quantity [of money] employs more people than a lesser quantity. An addition to the money adds to the value of the country.”

    With the above logic, John Law arguably became the world’s first Keynesian economist.

    John Law became the comptroller general of finances and set up the Banque Generale Privee (later the ‘Banque Royale’), which used French government debt as the bulk of its reserves and began to emit paper money ‘backed’ by this debt – with a promise attached that the notes could be converted to gold coin on demand.

    In an effort to make the new paper money more palatable to a distrustful public, it was decided to make it acceptable for payment of taxes (this idea is key and we will get back to it). A credit and asset boom of vast proportions ensued, especially after Law decided to float the shares of the Mississippi company, which enjoyed a trade monopoly with the New World and the West Indies.

    Between 1719 and 1720 shares in the company rose from 500 to 18,000 livres. Then, predictably, the bubble burst, and it lost 97% of its market capitalization in the subsequent bust. Enraged and nervous financiers tried to reconvert their bank notes into specie in the ensuing massive economic crisis, but naturally, the central bank’s promise of convertibility could not be put into practice – it had inflated the supply of bank notes too much (the notes traded at discounts of up to 99% in the end).

    The government at first tried to stem the tide with edicts forbidding the private ownership of gold , but in the end, the enraged mob drove Law into exile, and the fiat money experiment ended with the Banque Royale closing its doors forever .

    The crisis following the collapse of Law’s Mississippi enterprise gripped all of Europe – the eloquent master of fiat disaster had seduced investors from all over the continent, many of whom were suddenly penniless. Confidence in other European corporations eroded as well, and a great many bankruptcies took place.

    Failures Everywhere

    The history of the world is filled with examples like the above. Unfortunately time and space considerations will not let us detail the backdoor coup that enabled the establishment of the Federal Reserve, FDR’s sinister gold confiscation, Nixon’s dropping of the last remnant of the dollar’s gold convertibility, or China’s earlier experiment with paper money which ended in a disastrous hyper-inflation.

    The brief monetary history of Rome is intended to establish the fact that the State has sought to engage in theft from the citizenry via monetary debasement from the very dawn of Western civilization. The focus on the 17th century application of the tally stick system in the UK as well as the focus of the transformation of London’s goldsmiths to bankers is meant to establish from whence the idea of putting together a workable fiat money system stems. This is an extremely important part of monetary history but is generally a less well known one.

    The above historical recap was written to fill in some additional as well as essential information if one wants to understand how we arrived where we are today. With that history lesson out of the way, let’s now address the question we asked at the top. How did worthless objects come into widespread acceptance as money?

    Public Demand for Fiat Money

    For a long time, States were forced to accept gold’s role as money. The absurdity of introducing unbacked paper money wasn’t considered a viable avenue of robbing the citizenry. Rather, heads of State resorted to ‘clipping’ their coins or diluting their precious metals content if they wished to inflate. These early instances of inflation via reduction of the precious metals content of coins were intimately connected to the downfall of entire empires – most famously, the Roman empire. But along came Charles II, followed by John Law who had a brilliant idea for gaining public demand for fiat currency.

    Demand for fiat money was created by its acceptance for payment of taxes.

    What we have here, is really no less than the explanation for why pieces of paper with some ink slapped on them are not a priori laughed out of the room, as we proposed would happen with Pete’s papyrus promises in paragraph one. The demand for this paper is established by its acceptance for the payment of taxes.

    The two major pillars of the system are based on coercion: directly via the legal tender laws (which decree that fiat currency must be used/accepted for all payments of debt, public or private) and indirectly via the value imputed to government debt which rests on the faith in the government’s ability to extort enough future tax revenue to be able to repay its debt.

    This latter point is extremely important for the system to function. Government bonds are the tally sticks of our age, and serve as the main ‘backing’ of bank notes and their digital counterparts in circulation. They are what is tying the government and the banking system together, via the central bank.

    The central bank has the power to ‘monetize’ such debt by creating money out of thin air, however, this roundabout way of going about it is an essential part of the confidence game, the creation of the illusion of value.

    Theft of Purchasing Power

    Since the central bank’s balance sheet is largely composed of government debt, it has an incentive to manage the public’s ‘inflation expectations’ and inflate the currency as inconspicuously as possible.

    This does of course not mean that the inflation racket is inhibited per se. The theft has merely been organized in such a way that the people don’t complain too much.

    If the government had to actually raise taxes instead of borrowing the staggering sums of money it uses to keep its welfare/warfare programs running (and keeping the vote buying mechanisms well oiled) it would have to raise taxes by so much that it would face a rebellion.

    Instead government resorts to inflation.

    Inflation is nothing but a cleverly disguised tax and that is the real meaning of that last chart.

    The fox guards the hen house

    Richard Russell, in a recent missive, reminisced about the $125 his first job after college earned him per month and the then high $22.50 he had to pay every month for his $10,000 GI life insurance policy. A new car cost $450. Those were princely sums in the 1940’s, but have become what he now calls ‘chump change’.

    Obviously this hasn’t happened overnight although it can, as witnessed by Zimbabwe. Rather the public has become used to and injured by the ‘inflation tax’ proceeding at what appears to be a snail’s pace (at least according to the government’s official ‘inflation data’, which is like the fox guarding the hen house). It is of course not possible to measure an ‘average price’ of disparate goods , so this is just another part of an elaborate scam.

    With the legal tender legislation in place, fiat money has also successfully put gold out of circulation. After all, no one is going to use ‘good money’ for transactions when he has the choice of using ‘bad money’ instead. Indeed, what has happened is that gold has increasingly shifted from the world’s monetary bureaucracies into private hands, as a store of value.

    On a global basis, only about 2.5% of all official central bank reserves are in gold nowadays (obviously, some countries have far larger percentages of their reserves in gold, most notably the US and many European countries – even so, these reserves pale in comparison to the amount of fiat money and credit they have issued).

    Everyone is Happy

    It is also important to note that although they are being subjected to a hidden tax, most citizens actually are quite happy with things as they are. As Gary North has observed in a recent essay, everybody involved appears to be happy, the robbers as well as the robbed.

    The banks are happy to be part of a cartel led by the central bank, which gives them immense latitude in indulging in consistent and flagrant over trading of their capital – spurred on by the moral hazard created by having a ‘lender of last resort’ at their disposal, with no restrictions on how much ‘money’ it can conjure up out of thin air;

    The politicians and the bureaucrats are happy because there is no restriction on their spending and there is nothing stopping them from buying votes or indulging in whatever ‘pet projects’ they happen to dream up.

    And lastly, among the people who should actually rise in protest, there are large sub-groups that are either wards of the State and dependent on its largesse (the shameful secret of the welfare state is that it makes irresponsible slaves out of previously free and responsible people), or have been seduced by the banking cartel’s propaganda and amassed so much debt in the pursuit of consumption that they are quite happy to see money being devalued at a steady pace.

    Wealth Producers Have No Say

    In a nation of debtors, inflation is the politically most palatable form of monetary policy – after all, everybody is focused on the short term (politicians and bureaucrats on their terms of office, consumers on their debt and their desire to buy more things they don’t need with money they don’t have, and so forth).

    No one considers for a moment, that in the long run, this policy means ruin. Over time, the middle and lower classes will see their real incomes and living standards shrink ever more, while the true beneficiaries of inflation – those who get first dibs on every dollop of newly created fiat money – amass more and more of the wealth that is stolen from its producers by inflation.

    Not surprisingly, the small elite that actually profits from the fiat money system is quite content to take the long term view for itself.

    The actual producers of wealth are a very small group, too small to have a decisive voice in how things should be run. They would have to pull a John Galt type stunt and all go on strike if they wanted to exercise some pressure. Unfortunately, big business is usually in bed with the State and also happy with the status quo.

    One must always keep in mind that big corporations are generally not in favor of truly free, competitive markets. They give lip service to the idea, but concurrently lobby for anti-competitive regulations all the time.

    Decades of successful propaganda

    The propagandistic effort in support of the fiat money system has been enormous over the decades, and has been extremely successful.

    When Alan Greenspan told Ron Paul on occasion of his semi-annual testimony in Congress that he believed “we have had extraordinary success in replicating the features of a gold standard” he knew quite well that this was a bald-faced lie.

    And yet, no one outside of Ron Paul would have even thought of questioning this absurd assertion.

    As to why it is obviously a lie, consult the chart above. The dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power since the Fed has been in business.

    Let us also not forget that there still is a remnant of a market economy operating alongside the huge swathes of economic activity that have been appropriated by parasitic entities such as the State and its dependents.

    It is this remnant that produces all of our wealth, in spite of the fiat money system. It involuntarily supports the system’s continued viability by doing what it does best – enhancing productivity, and thereby exerting downward pressure on the prices of goods and services (which works against the upside pressure on prices created by monetary inflation).

    This in a nutshell shows why the system ‘seems’ to work – and actually does work on a short term basis.

    Economic Interventionism vs. the Free Market

    Apologists of the current system tend to laud its “flexibility”. In reality this argument is nothing more than an argument for economic interventionism which history proves time and time again can’t work in the long haul.

    Another commonly heard argument is: “If the economy is to grow, so must the supply of money”, as if that were immediately obvious. In fact, most people who hear this sentence do believe it to be a truism. In reality, increasing the supply of money confers no benefit whatsoever on society at large. It is not important how much money one has in terms of number entries in one’s bank account, it is important what this money can buy. Didn’t John Law’s experiment prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt?

    It is not 100% certain that a modern free market economy would settle on gold as its money. In fact, it is not important what would emerge as money. What is important is that the decision on what should be used as money would be arrived at voluntarily by the collective actions of market participants.

    That said, it seems highly likely that the previous historical period of trial and error that has led to the establishment of precious metals as money would still be accepted as having produced a satisfactory outcome by a modern free market economy. After all, we know that gold trades in the marketplace as if it were money. See Trotsky on Gold – Misconceptions about Gold for proof.

    In a free market with a relatively stable supply of money, the supply and demand for money would still be subject to fluctuations similar to that for other goods, depending on time preferences. The free market interest rate would at all times correctly signal to entrepreneurs what the state of time preferences was at a given point in time, allowing them to allocate capital in the most efficient manner.

    A fiat money system with interest rates administered by a bureaucratic central economic planning agency meanwhile constantly sends wrong signals to entrepreneurs about expected future demand and the true cost of capital and thereby encourages malinvestment.

    The phases during which credit expands and malinvestments proliferate are known as “economic booms”, and everybody loves them. When the liquidation phase occurs, otherwise known as “busts” few people are aware that it is the preceding booms that are at fault. And so the cry for more monetary and fiscal intervention arises, which lengthens and deepens the malaise by putting malinvested capital on artificial life support.

    On the other hand, the free market tends to consistently lower the prices of goods and services over time. That is the logical result of increasing productivity. This is why the widely accepted tenet that we “need some inflation of the money supply to enable the economy to grow” is a complete lie.

    Government mandated fiat currency simply does not work in the long run. We have empirical evidence galore – every fiat currency in history has failed, except the present one, which has not failed yet.

    Nonetheless, the current fiat system is more ingeniously designed than its predecessors and has a far greater amount of accumulated real wealth to draw sustenance from, so it will likely be relatively long lived at least as far as fiat money systems go.

    How long can this one last?

    Bernanke shows us…

    “It will work this long.”
    In a truly free market, fiat money would never come into existence. And that is why Greenspan is wrong. Governments can not create something “as good as gold”. History clearly shows that that only the real thing will do.

    • You simply assert:

      “In a truly free market, fiat money would never come into existence. And that is why Greenspan is wrong. Governments can not create something “as good as gold”. History clearly shows that that only the real thing will do.”

      Without comprehensively citing a single relevant mechanism of principle, you simply reiterate the perpetual assertions of purported “Austrian economists” (and other purported “economists”) who practice a pseudo science *wholly bereft of formal proof or theorem*… to pretend that the consequences of the present obfuscation of our currency are consequences of the material, instead of the interest which is advocated by purported Austrian Economists.

      The fact is, the banking system never gives up any lawful consideration to obfuscate our promissory obligations to each other into purported debts to the central bank; and the further fact is that this is the cause of our problems, because we can only maintain a vital circulation by perpetually re-borrowing principal and interest we pay out of the circulation in the way of servicing any existent sum of debt… as new debt… with principal equalling the prior sum of debt which would otherwise be resolved (and thus making it mathematically impossible to pay down the sum of debt); and with interest borrowed back into circulation (to maintain the vital circulation) comprising new debt, above the former sum of debt.

      Thus merely for maintaining a vital circulation so long as we can, or until we suffer a terminal sum of artificial debt to the purported banking system, the sum of falsified debt to the purported banking system perpetually increases at an inherently escalating rate of ever greater increments of periodic interest on an ever greater sum of debt, until we succumb to a terminal sum of debt.

      The problem is not *the material* on which the promissory obligations are printed (evidenced); the problem is the obfuscation of the currency into a falsified debt to the purported banking system — which of course, in turn, ostensibly justifies interest — which of course is the fundamental cause of inevitable failure.

      So the problem isn’t “fiat”; nor is solution a purported (and very wrong) assertion that promissory obligations are destructive (for in no other way even[!] can we sustain so much industry above the present monetary equivalent of purported gold reserves); it’s people refusing to understand the problem is that our promissory obligations (merely evidenced on paper) are not destructive — it is THE OBFUSCATION WHICH IS DESTRUCTIVE!

      Period.

      Your precious gold can’t save us. It never has, and it never will, because in all history, growing economies ultimately exceed the capacity of a gold circulation to sustain the further industry and commerce which they develop.

      You will probably claim otherwise. But to your further discredit then, read Benjamin Franklin’s paper, “A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency.”

      (Just for your edification.)

  29. DrGhetto permalink

    Are you still working to create a Gelre exchange? I’m quite interested.

    • @DrGhetto
      Absolutely, in fact we are very close: september 29th, wednesday next week, we launch the new website including Gelre Exchange!
      If you are in the neighborhood: join the party! Send me an email and I will give you the details!
      Thanks for asking,
      Anthony

  30. It’s good page, I was looking for something like this

  31. Hi Guys,

    Great news from Iceland….the evidently deservedly prevailing proposition is being adopted [currently starting in Iceland via http://www.ifri.is/ Icelandic Financial Reform Initiative, audio file for listening http://www.perfectedeconomy.org/ftp/tnsradio/20101218-mike-montagne-of-pfmpe-on-tnsradio-009-iceland-ifri-meeting.mp3%5D as a world wide movement for actual monetary reform in MPE or Mathematically Perfected Economy™.

    If they setup MPE in Iceland I’m moving, Mathematically Perfected Economy™ is the only way forward…xx

    MLG

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