Weimar Germany after World War One went through one of the worst hyperinflations in history, unleashing untold horrors on the German people and their economy.
Memories of Weimar still haunt the eurozone today. The European Central Bank, widely considered to be the only institution with the firepower to stem the euro crisis, is somewhat restrained by the legacy of the German Bundesbank. Continue reading
Coinage is imprinted gold or silver, by which the prices of things bought and sold are reckoned according to the regulations of any State or its ruler. Therefore money is, as it were, a common measure of values. That which ought to be a measure, however, must always preserve a fixed and constant standard. Otherwise, public order is necessarily disturbed, with buyers and sellers being cheated in many ways, just as if the yard, bushel, or pound did not maintain an invariable magnitude. Hence this measure is in my opinion the coin’s face value. Although this is based on the metal’s purity, nevertheless intrinsic value must be distinguished from face value. For, the denomination of a coin may exceed its metallic content, and the other way around. Continue to complete commentary article…
Dr. Martin Murenbeeld, chief economist for Dundee Wealth Economics and one of the smartest gold minds around, outlines below his nine bullish arguments for gold.
1. Global fiscal and monetary reflation
The world’s major economies have taken on extensive amounts of debt to keep their economies afloat…[and] the U.S. has spent hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus money and is still losing jobs.
2. Global imbalances
The dollar has benefited from the troubles in other countries in its role as a relative safe haven. “Relative” is the key word…[as] trillions of dollars are expected to be added to the U.S. federal debt burden through 2019 and the U.S. trade imbalances are huge. These trends stand to weigh on the dollar and support gold’s safe haven status over the longer term. Continue reading
Gold confiscation is a subject that divides gold investors. Some say it won’t happen again and others say it will happen again. The one thing they tend to agree on is that they don’t want it to happen again.
One factor that is sometimes quoted against a likelihood of government seizure of gold is the alleged fact that only a minority of American citizens turned in their gold after Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102 in April 1933. If that were true, one may be led to believe that a confiscation decree is something that can be ignored since the government could not possibly enforce a nationwide search of all suspect households. Therefore, the deduction is that the government won’t bother resorting to such coercion. Continue reading
An intriguing conversation with monetary scholar James Turk.
Money. It’s the one thing that is never far from most people’s minds. We strive after it and fight over it. We can have enough, or too little, but never too much. Yet few give even a fleeting thought to what it is, or whether what is generally considered to be money is sound or unsound.
What is sound money?
“Sound money,” he says, “is an asset. Something physical that you can exchange for something else. When you receive it, you know you’re receiving a tangible good.”
So it isn’t scraps of paper (a term that for our purposes we will use to include the modern equivalent, bits and bytes in an account)?
“No, in the absence of it being convertible to something physical, paper is merely a “fiat” (unbacked) currency, a promise on the part of the government. You don’t know whether that promise is reliable and of course, promises can be broken.” Continue reading
In the year 440 BC, more than two decades into the reign of Pericles, an audit of treasury in Athens showed a massive surplus of more than 9700 “talents”.
A talent was a common unit of measurement in the ancient world, especially for gold and silver, and, based on today’s precious metals prices and the traditional gold/silver ratio (14:1) used by the ancient Greeks, 9700 talents is equivalent to about $700 million today.
At the time, Athens boasted a population of around 43,000 citizens and 28,500 foreign residents… so on a “per capita” basis, the ancient Athenian surplus amounted to just under $10,000 per person in today’s money.
If you compare this figure to our modern world, it’s pretty extraordinary. Continue reading
Socialism a century ago seemed to be the wave of the future. There were various schools of socialism, but the common ideal was to guarantee support for basic needs, and for state ownership to free society from landlords, predatory banking and monopolies. In the West these hopes are now much further away than they seemed in 1917. Land and natural resources, basic infrastructure monopolies, health care and pensions have been increasingly privatized and financialized.
Instead of Germany and other advanced industrial nations leading the way as expected, Russia’s October 1917 Revolution made the greatest leap. But the failures of Stalinism became an argument against Marxism – guilt-by-association with Soviet bureaucracy. European parties calling themselves socialist or “labour” since the 1980s have supported neoliberal policies that are the opposite of socialist policy. Russia itself has chosen neoliberalism.
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It is genuinely amazing that so many economists and investment professionals continue to promote ‘business as usual’ investment advice. Their clients will surely pay a steep price for this ‘head in the sand’ approach to investing.
Current Investment Realities
a) Stocks ~ In spite of the fact that equities are more or less fully priced, there are those who continue to recommend stocks without caution to their inherent risk. We know the FED’s propensity to create money out of thin air continues unabated and that money has to find a home somewhere. Is a traditional portfolio of stocks the place to be in this new environment? Continue reading
As most of you know much of our current law was based on English case law. Hence, this was the Royal Mint’s disposition of counterfeiters and forgers. The methods employed for carrying out the death penalty are appropriate even today.:
SOLOMON IDSWELL, Deception > forgery, 20th May 1795.
Reference Number: t17950520-26
Offence: Deception > forgery
Verdict: Guilty
Punishment: Death
Are Counterfeiting and Treason any less painful a crime upon the people today? We vote “Nay!” Hasn’t our central government stolen real money by bank note deception and broken sworn promises of redeemability from the American people and their foreign trading partners? And haven’t our current leaders and appointees past and present lied knowingly to perpetuate these crimes ? To this, we vote “Yea!” on both charges. Continue reading
An Australian millionaire and real estate mogul has advice for millennials struggling to purchase a home: stop buying avocado toast.
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