Do you believe Donald Trump? He is entirely convinced that if we stay on the path that we are currently on we are heading into a “great depression”, and many believe that he is right on target. Unemployment is rising, manufacturing activity is contracting, bankruptcies are soaring, home sales have fallen to depressingly low levels, the cost of living crisis never seems to end, poverty is soaring and homelessness is at the highest level ever recorded.
Since Barack Obama first entered the White House, our politicians in Washington have been propping up the economy by adding 25 trillion dollars to the national debt. Now our national debt has crossed the 35 trillion dollar mark, and our politicians continue to spend money at a pace that is absolutely absurd. But despite this tremendous influx of borrowed cash, the wheels are starting to come off the U.S. economy anyway. Continue reading
That two-by-four upside our country’s head you’ve been waiting to get whomped with? Looks like it’s landing now. We got a banger in 2008, but it didn’t make an much of an impression. Maybe you don’t even remember these people, but then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke came in like a code blue squad and hooked up the banks to an IV-drip speedball of cocaine and heroin, i.e., “money” that didn’t actually exist (a.k.a. “liquidity,” hallucinated capital), and that crew kept it coming for years. 
For a long time, there was a lot of denial about the direction that the U.S. economy was heading. The Biden administration and the mainstream media just kept insisting that everything was just fine even though everyone could clearly see that it wasn’t. But now reality is setting in. Last week we got some numbers that Wall Street really didn’t like, and a massive temper tantrum ensued.
Money is supposed to be representative of all the goods and services that the country has produced in an entire year.
February 24, 2011 – Nothing seems to arouse passions – pro and con – quite like suggestions that gold should once again play a role in our money. “Only gold is money,” says one side. “It’s a barbarous relic,” says the other. Let’s turn down the heat a bit and look into some propositions about gold. That should lead us to some reasonable ideas about whether or how gold might return. 
In discussing the Mises Institute’s June 24th full-page Wall Street Journal ad entitled “Who Needs the Fed?” on talk radio recently most of the interviewers naturally expressed skepticism over whether the Fed could ever actually be abolished and a gold-and-silver standard reinstituted. It reminded me of something Murray Rothbard said about this. If the government had monopolized say, shoe production a hundred years ago and someone suggested the privatization of shoe production, there would be cries of: “Who will make shoes? The government has always made shoes!”
Do you remember how painful the Great Recession was? 2008 and the years immediately following were definitely a very dark chapter in our history, but a new study has actually found that the percentage of Americans that worry they won’t be able to pay their bills is actually higher today than it was back then.
Well, here’s an interesting historical repeat. Apparently, it took the Roman Empire about 200 years to reduce the value of its currency, the silver Denarius, by 95%. As shown in the chart below, the silver content of the Roman currency had been nearly 100% at the peak of the Empire in 65 AD, but by 268 AD the coin had been clipped and debased so thoroughly that it was comprised of less than 5% silver. 
Cryptocurrency, which has exploded in popularity in recent years, is digital ‘money’ which lies beyond the control of central banks and governments.
