When it comes to currency, don’t do as the Romans did…
Ancient Rome wasn’t built in a day, the old adage goes. It wasn’t torn down in a day either, but a good measure of its long decline to oblivion was the government’s bad habit of chipping away at the value of its own currency.
In this essay we refer to “inflation,” but in its classical sense—an increase in the supply of money in excess of the demand for money. The modern-day subversion of the term to mean rising prices, which are one key effect of inflation but not the inflation itself, only confuses the matter and points away from the real culprit, the powers in charge of the money supply. Continue reading
“Although there are countless scourges which in general debilitate kingdoms, principalities, and republics, the four most important (in my judgment) are dissension, [abnormal] mortality, barren soil, and debasement of the currency. The first three are so obvious that nobody is unaware of their existence. But the fourth, which concerns money, is taken into account by few persons and only the most perspicacious. For it undermines states, not by a single attack all at once, but gradually and in a certain covert manner.” – Copernicus, 
In his “Manifesto of the Communist Party” (1848), published together with Frederick Engels, Karl Marx calls for “measures” — by which he means “despotic inroads on the rights of property” –, which would be “unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production,” that is, bringing about socialism-communism. Marx’s measure number five reads: “Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.” This is a rather perspicacious postulation, especially as at the time when Marx formulated it, precious metals — gold and silver in particular — served as money. 
I wonder if all the newsletter folks…Bix, David “Silver Gorilla” Morgan, Jim “Golden Asshole” Wiley, Lynette Zang and the rest…throw big parties at the end of the year…to count their newsletter money (green paper, fiat money) and have a good laugh at us PM investors and what suckers we are for listening to them. Some of them might compete to see who can come up with the most outrageous prediction that we suckers will believe.
When we think of “economic collapse” our imaginations usually lead us immediately to the desperation we’ve witnessed in places like 
Adulting, the now common 
Long term holders of gold have a different perspective of the world. They are not believers in instant gratification. Nor do they believe that a world based on money printing and debt can create sustainable wealth. They also know that the socialism which has spread like a plague in the Western world – only works until you run out of other people’s money. 
