Category Gold

Feb 2 2023

Gold v Digital Fiat & Marxism


Armstrong Economics Blog/Gold Re-Posted Feb 2, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Hi AE…so gov’t “money” (fiat currency) will become just some abstract floating measurement of value, an electronic entry in an electronic account in the cybersphere. As these various so-called gov’ts become less reliable, even between themselves, do you see the possibility of them simply skipping their phony currencies, & trading directly in gold. Russia could ship a specific quantity of crude to China, for a specific amount of gold bars. Your argument about the impracticality of a gold-backed currency makes sense, but what about large transactions being settled in gold?

HS

ANSWER: The entire problem that people do not grasp with regard to any return to a gold standard is that if the money supply is FIXED in any way, that necessitates the collapse of SOCIALISM. The two are directly linked. Politicians only know how to run with deficits. Vote for me and I will give you this or that!

The Bretton Woods gold standard collapsed because they FIXED the price of gold at $35, but they continued to print money far beyond the supply of gold at that fixed price. In addition, you have a business cycle. There will be times when no matter what the money might be, there will be boom times when the value of money declines and the asset values rise.

This argument over gold v fiat is absolutely just nonsense. The wealth of any nation is the productive capacity of its people. For centuries, the business cycle has existed and that is the entire cause for the “inflation” in assets when money declines in value, and then the “deflation” in assets with the value of money rises. Arguing over what we use for money will NEVER stop the business cycle.

The cycle is also in part driven by all governments. It becomes a drug of power that is abused. It would not matter what we use for money right now, they want to create World War III so they can default, and escape from the abuse of this Marxism that they have turned into a system of borrowing every year with no intention of paying anything back. But we have reached the confrontation between Keynesianism where central banks are expected to prevent inflation by rising interest rates, but that has no impact on the government which has become the biggest borrower in the system.

We are going BUST not because of the money we use, but because of the abuse of power in government which has always existed since ancient times.

Trust me. Forget gold standards. They will never work because all governments act only in their own self-interest. You should have learned that with COVID. They will never admit any mistake EVER! It is far better to keep gold on our side of the table and we can then use it as a hedge against governments. They are seeking to move to digital currencies ONLY so they can track when you hired the 16-year-old girl next door to babysit for you so they can go after her for the government’s 50% share.

Even Bitcoin is fiat. There is no backing. People have dived headfirst into cryptocurrency on the entire proposition that they are limited. All they have done is proven my point. Money, historically, has been everything from seashells and cattle to bronze, silver, and gold. Of all the various forms of money, only bronze and cattle had any real commodity value based on utility.

The Egyptians really invented paper money for the farmers would deposit their grain and receive a receipt which was a bearer instrument used in trade. They also used raw metal, not coins, and traded based on weight, as it stated in the Bible. Here is a piece of pottery from Egypt recording a complaint about taxes written in Greek. It stated the sum amounted to a total of 90 talents of silver with 15 talents of tax on the transfer of land – 16.6%.

For thousands of years, Egypt had no coins until it was conquered by Alexander the Great, and upon his death, his general Ptolemy I (305/304 – 282 BC) took the throne and it was his Greek line from which Cleopatra VIII came – not Egyptian.

Our system is starting to implode. Never in the history of human civilization have governments demanded taxes on income requiring reporting every year. This was the gift of Karl Marx. Just as this Egyptian tax on the transfer of land, we see that property taxes and a form of sales tax were the norms.

The American Constitution was intended to give thenational government greater power to raise revenue because the previous Articles of Confederation had been a fiscal disaster. Nevertheless, most people remained fearful of taxation by governments. Indirect taxes were to be the way to secure our liberty from tyrannical governments. It was generally understood that indirect taxes meant taxes on consumption like a retail sales tax and/or excise taxes on imports. It was believed that indirect taxes did not lend themselves to abuse by tyrannical governments. Consequently, the general belief was that “direct taxes” has to be taken off the table. Incomes taxes, throwing out the window of all the wisdom of the ages, were imposed by the new age of Marxism in 1913.

Our computer warns that 2025 will be the turning point in Marxism.

Jan 30 2023

Military Script – Has it Been Used for Centuries?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Ancient Economies Re-Posted Jan 30, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Limes denarius (Lim-ace) or coins of the borders, may be another example of coins of necessity issued because of a shortage of silver in the border regions. It has also been suggested that they may also be officially sanctioned issues for use in regions where political unrest made it hazardous to ship large amounts of silver. Others have suggested that they were used to pay barbarians on the fringes of the empire for local work.

The most likely reason for their issue is based upon history repeats because human nature and its decision process will lead to the same conclusion no matter what the century. Therefore, it also remains possible that these were military scripts paid to soldiers on the front lines just as they did during World Wars I and II to pay locals. They would have reduced the need for vast amounts of precious metals on the front line. These bronze issues of denarii could have served troops on the front and been redeemable for good coinage when they returned to the stable regions. Whatever the reason, many of these coins exist. They have been often viewed as possibly “coins of necessity” issued during periods of a lack of silver. Some examples may still bear traces of a very thin silver wash.

A “Limes Denarius” were struck from official dies. Thus, these AE denarii official issues use the same dies as those intended for the silver denarii. However, there are also some that appear to be cast from typical clay forgers’ dies and sometimes may have been cast in molds. There are no written accounts of this practice within the official monetary system. However, if troops are paid with real money and they lose a battle, the opponent will then seize whatever money they had and use it to further fund their operations. If the soldiers only have a military script, then there is no financial benefit to the opponent if they should defeat your troops.

Jan 23 2023

The Petrodollar – Another Fake News Invention?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Gold Re-Posted Jan 23, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

The entire theory of the Petrodollar dares back to the collapse of Bretton Woods and the subsequent oil embargo protesting US support for Israel and the price shock of raising prices. Those were the days when everyone was obsessed with gold and the whole idea of a floating currency that was popular to say will crash and burn for money had to be backed but some commodity. Those were indeed the days when that theory was very popular and it dominated the thinking process of the 1970s.

Here is an advertisement from my past days as a market maker in gold during 1970s to about 1983. I too believed in all those theories until the crash came in 1975. I too had bought into all that nonsense. Gold was going to be legalized in the United States in 1975 for the first time since 1934. Being a very large dealer domestically and internationally, all my European clients were talking up the scenario that gold was going to $500 if not $1000 once Americans could buy.

Because Teddy Roosevelt was an ancient coin collector, when Franklin Roosevelt, who was a stamp collector, recognized that gold coins existed from ancient times thanks to Teddy, he confiscated gold on deposit at the banks but exempted collector coins. That was the reason why we have rolls of $20 gold coins trading to this day.

As a result, those who were really believers in gold would buy common date American $20 gold coins by the roll in those days. So when the Europeans were talking themselves into gold was going to explode in 1975 as soon as it was legalized in the United States, as a dealer, I never got a single call about buying gold from anyone other than those who already owned it. The gold crowd was only looking at gold and had no idea that any American who wanted gold bought it in coin form. They were cheering gold without understanding the reality of the marketplace.

I went short gold in January 1975 not using even technical analysis. The hype was so much and I knew that there was no line standing at the door to buy gold. My gut feeling was that gold was going to decline – not rally. I saw that in 1970 when the two-tier gold market they created in 1968 saw gold drop below the official price of $35 in 1970 – something that was not supposed to happen.

Even the Senate of New Jersey came to me and I wrote the law on sales tax regarding gold in 1974. Gold peaked in December 1974 at $197.50. It fell to $97.70 while inflation continued but economic growth declined and they called it STAGFLATION. I learned back then that all the scenarios and theories that gold rises with inflation and the dollar would not survive without some backing. I was confronted by the reality that exposes all these theories to be a throwback to times long since passed. This all only inspired me, even more, to investigate everything in detail. By 1979, I published what I called the WHY REPORT. I later republished this in 1981 and again in 1983.

To explain the survivability of the dollar since it rose between 1972 and 1976 against the British pound, with the collapse of Bretton Woods, the rise in gold, and the entire oil embargo, that is when they came up with this idea that the dollar was backed by oil. They had to explain why their theories were wrong just as they changed global warming to climate change to explain away global cooling.

All the theories were wrong. The dollar rose, and inflation soared, as did gold. None of this made sense under their theories. Something had to be done. It became obvious that it was impossible to make investment decisions based upon these theories that people just made up to sell gold which are still being used today. I also remembered that in January 1970, gold fell in the London market to $34.70. Gold was not supposed to sell below the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate of dollars to gold. It was like being smacked in the face and told to wake up!

Without question, the dealers could not sell gold if it did not rise with inflation and against the dollar since it was no longer backed by anything. They had to invent something new. That is when the sophistry specialists stepped in and boy did they succeed in bullshitting everyone.

The explanation was ah ha – the dollar is really backed by oil because it is priced in dollars. That’s it. It is really the Petrodollar! Suddenly the dollar became de facto-backed by oil. They needed an explanation to explain why all the old theories were wrong. They sold this theory and it made the front cover of Newsweek. Everyone said YES! That must be the reason. OPEC priced oil in dollars! Naturally, everything was priced in dollars because, under the fixed exchange rate of Bretton Woods, everything from wheat and corn to copper and gold was all priced in dollars.

Many people are now calling for the collapse of the dollar all because Saudi Arabia has confirmed that they will be selling oil in various currencies. Hence, relying on this old fictitious their of the Petrodolarr from the ’70s, they are telling everyone the dollar will collapse and gold will soar. They never get tired of kicking the same theories down the road without EVER just once being honest and looking if they have any validity whatsoever.

The value of any currency is NOT some commodity. It is the people. You can have all the gold in the world, but if the people do not produce, it means nothing. Indeed, Russia had the largest gold reserve of any nation ahead of the Communist Revolution. They took the gold reserves and hid them so the communists would never find them. They are still missing to this very day. Likewise, Germany and Japan has no gold reserves post-WWII yet they rose to the strongest economies in their respective regions. How is that possible? It is very simple. The true backing of a currency is the total productive capacity of its people. The US became the largest economy in the world NOT  because of gold, but because the US had a consumer-based economy built of freedom rather than Marxism as the problem with Europe. China, Japan, and Germany, all focused on the old-world mercantile economic model. Produce to sell to someone else. They failed to follow the strength of the United States in building a consumer economy.

China understands the difference and has shifted to develop that type of economy whereas Germany oppresses its people with high taxes on its citizens to sell manufactured goods to everyone else. That is why they wanted the Euro to expand their European economic marketplace.  Germany’s high taxes have put it near the bottom insofar as the German people have less net worth than Italians. The more Marxist the country, the lower the economic standard of living.