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.