patrick.net

Misc says

If everyone was on the gold/silver standard the rate of return is ZERO

Isn't this what we are saying!?! Yes. You get the point. No need for a return on cash in a savings account if your cash isn't devaluing at 5.5% per year on average!

Zak says

Misc says

If everyone was on the gold/silver standard the rate of return is ZERO

Isn't this what we are saying!?! Yes. You get the point. No need for a return on cash in a savings account if your cash isn't devaluing at 5.5% per year on average!

There is also no way to get a return higher than ZERO because of system collapse and no way to save.

Misc says

Fractional Reserve banking is for the system as a whole and creates CREDIT.

Do you understand accounting? Where assets equal liabilities+ owner's equity. This is a requirement for banks too ! ! ! (Hint: You can look at any bank's balance sheet at any financial website)That 4% payment on liabilities is on all the liabilities not 10% of the liabilities. Currently the reserve requirement is set at 0%. The amount that can be loaned is based on the bank's equity.

The way SVB was operated, requring exclusive banking relationship in lending to banking clients that no other bank would lend to, essentially resulted in itself being "the system": both sides of a borrow-to-buy in the tech sector would be banking with SVB; the collateral "asset" was essentially measured in SVB plantation scripts pretending to be the Dollar. The SVB plantation script was not supposed to be cashed out for the federal reserve dollar to be parked at other banking institutions (per the exclusive banking agreement). When SVB lost money due to internal mismangement of funds, they allowed the clients to break the exclusive banking agreement to cash out the SVB plantation script for dollars, letting the "run on the bank" (which it wasn't as the script was only valued under the exclusive banking agreement, and was never supposed to be cashed out en masse for the federal reserve dollars at other banking institutions). Therefore allowing the mass transfer to take place was the heist! and having the FDIC stepping in to equate SVB plantation script to federal reserve notes was the second heist!

Misc says

The percentage of income that would need to be saved for retirement simply could not be achieved. Retirement is a fairly modern construct requiring fiat currency.

There is also no way to get a return higher than ZERO because of system collapse and no way to save.

Ironic you should make the argument that fiat central banking helps savings and retirement. You don't seem to realize that 15+% of a worker's income are forcibly taken away through payroll tax and/or self-employment tax and wasted right away (Social Security tax revenue is put into a special type of non-marketable treasury notes; i.e. a script that has no market value). i.e. government savings for retirement is entirely a Ponzi scam relying on current workers to pay for retirees, with nothing saved up. That's why the "Vaxx" toxxination was invented to kill people. That's also why wars are being fanned to kill (East) Europeans because their demographics are turning around, soon to have declining working population, therefore there public retirement "safetynet" will have negative cash flow. In reality, almost all wealth management funds are also ponzi scams after accounting for full economic cycles, as is the entire banking and financing industry. That's why banksters have been promoting wars and "pandemics" to kill people, for hundreds of years if not thousands of years. Please do not show us the stock indices, as almost all funds under-perform the indices. If someone who can consistently out-perform the indices, they'd be trading for themselves instead of allowing millions of strangers to share the pleasure of exploitng specific market inefficiencies of limited size (market profit comes from exploiting market inefficiencies; a perfectly efficient market would have no profit for anyone, and would not even continue to exist as there wouldn't be money to pay for transaction cost). The average performance of the financial industry is negative-return over the full economic cycles if we use real inflation adjustors (without hedonic adjustment, which reflects technological improvement that in a sound money system would show gradual increasing purchasing power of the sound money).

What the fiat money central banking system creates is the illusion of profit via understating inflation and/or setting specific time windows that doesn't capture the entire economic cycle (bubble and bust). As you admitted/agreed, people working for the FED wouldn't be working there if they could make more money in private sector unless the career compensation map includes bribery/corruption pay-back such as fat consulting pay from the regulated industries after retiring from the regulator positions. I'd add, likewise for large banking institutions too: people who have real business acumen would trade for themselves instead of working for large banking institutions or funds unless there is coercive element available through working in large institutions. So how exactly do those market manipulating regulations/coercions and corrupt payback/bribery enhance return for savings and retirement of the general public? They don't. Fiat Central Banking only create a scam robbing the masses to enrich a tiny group of Narcissistic few.

The classic intellectual defense for Fiat Central Banking actually is the opposite argument: it enables the robbing of "excessive savings" to put the resources towards new inventions and financing for wars. Well, we now know what the "new inventions" are, like Theranos, Moderna and many other "unicorns" funded by frauds like SVB and Gates fundation; because large financial institutions attract "woke" followers who misallocate resources, not independent thinkers capable of discovering real market opportunities. We also know wars are designed to kill savings/retirement/pension account holders (so as to eliminate liabilities to banks), while impoverishing the living domestic workers via tax-subsidized imports (i.e. subsidizing foreign slavers).

Under a sound money system, workers would be able to keep that 15+% for themselves as savings. Savings don't have to grow in numerical face amount if purchasing power is gradually increasing thank to technological improvement (think computers, cellphones that declined in price over decades) in a mildly price-deflationary market; total money supply will be increasing at pace with other mineral use (silver is a byproduct of the industrial mining of zinc, lead, tin and etc.) which should be slightly slower than products and services available because new technology enable better and more profitable use of mineral resources (i.e. a "sustainable society" would be built-in side benefit of a sound money system, instead of the current fiat FOMO scams promoting waste). Domestic workers would also have more stable jobs working real productive jobs instead of being enticed into zero-sum or negative-sum financial machinations and how to profit from foreign slave-labors/slavers (what the military-industrial-banking complex is, and is rapidly becoming slavers and slaves themselves).

Folks going on about Gold and Silver going up over time, while not mentioning the intentional precious metals manipulation on a massive scale during the RE and bank collapse under Bush and Obama are not being honest with themselves. We saw Gold go from $300 an Oz to over $1600 in the blink of an eye. And the same happened to silver, only it eventually came back down some.

Gold manipulation is a sound argument for paper currency. At least fiat money supply is more fungible than Gold. Everyone is trading the same dollars. I promise you all that under Gold, you're issued tokens or script in exchange for your labor. You can't save up those financial means to improve your situation.
You have to acquire gold. But those with the Gold will continue to make that impossible. By inflating its value. Which if you think about it, what good is placing a value on Gold if you can't buy it with fiat currency? Which is the point of this thread.
Gold made sense in a time when it was the only means. In that economy inflation through greed did not and could not exist. Only supply and demand could affect costs. To go on Gold now, we would have to roll back the economy across the board with deflation on a massive scale, just to get to where Gold could be used to operate even in the Company Store paying you script scenario I say it will create.

Value of anything is not intrinsic it's inert. So therefor the money supply must inflate and deflate to accommodate the exuberance when people can't tell the difference. Les you end up with Monopolies and Robber Barons.

10lbs says:

Gold manipulation is a sound argument for paper currency. At least fiat money supply is more fungible than Gold. Everyone is trading the same dollars. I promise you all that under Gold, you're issued tokens or script in exchange for your labor. You can't save up those financial means to improve your situation.

All the short-comings of a gold-only monetary standard are about a monopoly manipulating the prices/values of the warehouse receipts (Comex and London Gold Fix are about trading warehouse receipts, i.e. paper gold, not real gold). The Fiat Central Banking system is an even more thorough (i.e. unaccountable to public) monopoly supporting the Robber Barons unless you want to allow everyone to print their own paper money and journal entries and call it dollar like SVB was doing and FDIC would step in to back up every single privately printed "dollar" the printer's friends have deposited back into the printer's journals. It would be as if FDIC stepped in to back "Tether" or all other crypto "dollar-equivalent"; that's more or less what FDIC did when it stepped in to back up all the SVB-dollars that SVB had lent out to its banking clients (that no other bank would lend) on condition that they bank exclusively with the bank (i.e. requiring the seller to deposit all proceeds into the same bank that the buyer had borrowed from, essentially removing check-and-balance in lending standards and grossly inflating value of collateral "assets" being purchased; it's a Ponzi Scheme relying on participants not cashing out at par value into outside dollars).

If you are worried about gold-only monetary standards being manipulated by banksters hoarding gold and giving the people only warehouse receipts and fake warehouse receipts to manipulate the ups and downs of inflation/deflation, then advocate the return of the original Bimetalism of this republic.

Misc says

There is also no way to get a return higher than ZERO because of system collapse and no way to save.

This is laughable. You really have zero concept of what generating a return means.

First, lets look at increase in the (metal) commodity supply. Miners. Miners will be bringing new metal into the market. The US mint would directly exchange raw input material for coined currency. Thus new money is created. Lets say the miner gets 20 coins.

Second, some entities will be buying metals and converting them into finished products or portions of finished products. the consumers of those products
will be paying a higher amount of metal for the output product than goes in as input to the product. Thus here is 1 provable method of "generating a return" on a loan of physical metal. MORE concretely: if you give a jeweler a 1 oz gold coin, they might give you a 1/3 oz gold ring!

Therefore, the jeweler could borrow 10oz of gold from the miner to create 30 rings, sell them, pay his lender 11 gold coins, and still have 19 oz of gold remaining. Thus generating a 19x return on his 1 oz interest fee.

A miner, after mining his new gold, now has 10 1oz coins from his work, and a 10oz loan to the local jeweler. He goes to the merchant and buys some digging equipment. Now the equipment dealer has some of the newly minted gold, and from there it circulates further into the economy. Probably to some of the people buying those gold rings.

You act like this system didn't work for millenia. It's really weird.

Tenpoundbass says

Which if you think about it, what good is placing a value on Gold if you can't buy it with fiat currency? Which is the point of this thread.

Again, such weird thinking. You can produce literally anything. What you produce is what you "buy" gold with. You give out your goods and services, and people give you gold for it. Then you give out the gold for other people's goods and services. You are constantly producing through your daily output. How is this not sensible?

Also, you don't HAVE TO wait to take gold for your goods/services. You can take other goods/services, you can take silver, you can take promises of something in the future. But if someone wants to pay you a debt in minted gold, you HAVE TO take it.

And adding to what Zak was saying in comment 127, just in case you the borrower had taken out a loan when the market had been flooded with (fraudulent / over-issued) gold warehouse receipts and subsequently having to pay back the loan when the banksters have withdrawn much of the fraudulent / over-issued gold warehouse receipts so such paper-gold is nearly as hard to come by as real gold, under Bimetallism you'd be able to pay back the loan via silver at 16:1 weight ratio.

Silver is a (more abundant) byproduct during industrial mining (of zinc, tin, lead, etc.), and silver is abundant enough for carrying out transactions in normal daily life (and it is a natural germicide! unlike paper / linen cash being accused of spreading disease; banksters would love to ban cash using any excuse). The Hunts brothers' failed experiment in the early 1980's proved that it's impossible to corner silver, as there is just too much silver out there and industrial production of other far more common metals yield silver as byproduct.

Zak says

Again, such weird thinking. You can produce literally anything. What you produce is what you "buy" gold with. You give out your goods and services, and people give you gold for it. Then you give out the gold for other people's goods and services. You are constantly producing through your daily output. How is this not sensible?

If you are employed then you are not a producer, how hard is that to understand? People pretend working for fiat money is a trap, but in reality working in a Gold economy would be a bigger trap. Especially if the modern times had to reinvent a gold standard.

Everyone worries about banks devaluing money, but the thing is it happens around the world so everything stays equal. And since Money isn't a finite commodity like Gold is. .It's not Pie, that fat cats can't eat it all. At the end of the day after all of the banks have manipulated the money and the robber barons have consolidated all of the goods. The printer still goes Vrrrrrrroooooommmm and more money is created. Those on the bottom can scrap and save and still manage to produce in spite of the banks and Monopolies best efforts.

Look at all of the world economies in the 2000's. I witness first hand what happened to Peru in just a decade. In 2002 when I visited Lima with my wife. It was such a destitute hellhole, I was depressed at the sight. There was no good tourist section imo, as everywhere you went, there were the same destitute desperate poor. It sucked balls and made me ashamed to be vacationing flaunting what little bit I had, as they could never dream to achieve that.
But between 2002 and 2010, Peruvians worked hard and saved their money, and there was a lot of opportunity with the emerging Latin markets in that time.
By time I went back in 2010, those same folks in my In-laws neighborhood were a strong middle class(relatively to 10 years earlier). Everyone had a cell phone, internet, cable TV, LCD tvs. Their grocery stores were like a mega Walmart's with everything we have, and they were buying it. They turned into capable consumers.

But when you see poor in third world counties, it's always perpetrated by warlords, and greedy corrupt poltiicians and there's zero opportunity.
Countries don't need natural resources, just the mere changing money for employment, goods and services. Those that have a bank printing money and is available for small entreprenuers they thrive. But you see in countries where rare earth and precious minerals are mined. They are intentionally cut out from participating. They are poorer than my Lima 2002 impression. They must not be allowed to prosper and buy into the natural resource production or offer an althernative to the slave labor needed to mine those resouces. So even though those countries are dirt poor, they have riches beyond their wildest dreams.

That's a gold ecconomy.

Tenpoundbass says

If you are employed then you are not a producer, how hard is that to understand

It's beyond ridiculous. If workers don't produce anything, then why do employers employ them!?!?

The fact that workers trade their output for a period at a fixed rate for that period, rather than for the volume output of that period, (and not even universally!) leads nowhere near to the claim that if a person is employed, then they are not a producer!?!? Wow. Your basic foundation of reasoning on this topic is completely shattered and unstable.

Define employment. Try as hard as you can to make the case that employment is something new since 1971, before which when people were paid in "gold" they somehow didn't produce anything(good/service/labor to employer). And please explain why they were given gold then!!!

Then, please tell me about how the US was a third world country in 1969 since we were on the gold standard.

Tenpoundbass says

Everyone worries about banks devaluing money, but the thing is it happens around the world so everything stays equal. And since Money isn't a finite commodity like Gold is. .It's not Pie, that fat cats can't eat it all. At the end of the day after all of the banks have manipulated the money and the robber barons have consolidated all of the goods. The printer still goes Vrrrrrrroooooommmm and more money is created. Those on the bottom can scrap and save and still manage to produce in spite of the banks and Monopolies best efforts.

Yup, that's the dangerous part of the Gold standard.

As I've said before, the fat cats vacuum up all the gold, and give Banknote paper in return, usually far in excess of the gold backing it up. Bank panics galore in the 18th and 19th over too much paper fronting too little metal.

Even the well off would deposit 300 ounces of gold with the Bank of the Holy Ghost and Commerce in Valencia, and go back a month later to get 30 ounces for a trip, and they'd tell Lord d'Agentan-Rodgrieuz-deValdez they could only give 3 ounces of gold and 27 in paper.

Cheap silver with a mandatory minimum in metal for wages/contracts or a GDP/Land Value (avg. over 10 years) is the way to go.

Tenpoundbass says

Les you end up with Monopolies and Robber Barons.

The monopolies and robber barons run the world.

Soon they are going to start another world war, exterminate a bunch of useless eaters and try to bring the world population down to about 500,000,000. They might succeed

There is no reason to debate sound money, even though it is the system that our founding documents establish. A dollar was established as a rather specific amount and purity of silver. And the banksters has to get rid of that standard because it was too hard to perpetuate fraud with such a reliable and unfakable measure of honesty.

But again that doesn’t matter anymore, we aren’t going back to silver and gold as money. We are going forward to ones and zeroes in CBDC government controlled, social credit score monitoring accounts. But probably not until after a lot of people die (and disappear when the harpazo (aka rapture happens).

Tenpoundbass says

Countries don't need natural resources, just the mere changing money for employment, goods and services. Those that have a bank printing money and is available for small entreprenuers they thrive. But you see in countries where rare earth and precious minerals are mined. They are intentionally cut out from participating. They are poorer than my Lima 2002 impression. They must not be allowed to prosper and buy into the natural resource production or offer an althernative to the slave labor needed to mine those resouces. So even though those countries are dirt poor, they have riches beyond their wildest dreams.

That's a gold ecconomy.

The poverty you saw in Peru in 2002 had nothing to do with gold-based money. Peru didn't have gold-based money; they had hyperinflation (of their fiat money) in the late 1980's. Peru was in the throes of Maoist guerilla warfare less than a decade before you visited (Alberto Fujimori and his draconian military handlers put an end to Shining Path guerilla movement circa 1993-1994); in the year 1989 Peruvians became so desperate that they voted for a man of Japanese descent to be their President (remember, back in 1989, all the western media were saying Japan was so well run that it was going to take over the world), more than 1/4 of the districts in the country were not able to vote (no living candidate) due to armed guerillas disruption and over 100 politicians were killed by guerillas in that year alone! in a country that had only about 21 million people (i.e. about twice the population of NYC). Can you imagine 50 politicians running for office in NYC being killed in one year the election year?

The observation that countries without natural resources tend to do better than countries whose economy reply primarily on natural resources is correct, however the corollary you drew from it is exactly the opposite of reality. Countries where economy rely primarily on natural resources export give rise to government-controlled monopolies and dictatorial governments that can rely on control of natural resources export income without having to consult the population at large; whereas in countries that have no natural resources, their governments have to derive cash flow from a hard-working domestic population (e.g. Japan, Taiwan) that is competitively employed by competing enterprises in order to maintain productivity. So what do you think a Fiat Central Banking money printer is? It's the equivalent of a giant gold/oil/diamond/cobalt mine owned by the government (bureaucrats)! The governing elite's ability to print money is precisely the reason why American voters are being ignored.

PeopleUnited says

There is no reason to debate sound money, even though it is the system that our founding documents establish. A dollar was established as a rather specific amount and purity of silver. And the banksters has to get rid of that standard because it was too hard to perpetuate fraud with such a reliable and unfakable measure of honesty.

This ignores the printing of banknotes by banks.

One of the big myths of Gold bugs is how sacred and stable gold-based banking was.

It wasn't.

But silver based currency is much better, but not perfect.

The best would be a long term value that doesn't move rapidly, like a 10-year land value average currency that would gently rise with prosperity, and very gently decline (due to the 10-year rolling average) with recessions.

.

“Gold is the money of kings, silver is the money of gentlemen, barter is the money of peasants – but debt is the money of slaves.”

~ Norm Franz

.

Reality says

The poverty you saw in Peru in 2002 had nothing to do with gold-based money. Peru didn't have gold-based money; they had hyperinflation (of their fiat money) in the late 1980's

How much self sufficient was Peru ? Did it have to import energy (gas and oil) ? How much food did it have to import ? How much building supplies did it have to import ?

Did it have to rely on imported services such as architects, utility engineers, doctors, etc. ?

One thing about the USA economy is that it is somewhat self sufficient albeit some dependency on imported manufactured goods. The economy is productive and innovative for now.

I realize another generation indoctrinated by the Woke Left will further erode productivity and innovation, as well as any other advancements. Its like what Che Guevara dreamed about with his Marxist revolution through the Americas.

.

Reality says

The poverty you saw in Peru in 2002 had nothing to do with gold-based money. Peru didn't have gold-based money; they had hyperinflation (of their fiat money) in the late 1980's.

Peru is very rich in precious metals, but the Presidents in the 90's through the early 2000's squandered all of it to China. They were building a railway system, but one of the President's absconded with the funds, it sat unfinished for over 20 years. Eventually investors went to Lima and just started building. The more they built the more jobs and opportunity opened up. My BIL's now run a Refrigeration refurbish shop. They buy refurb and sale deli, and bakery refrigerated glass displays for food and snacks. Every other house is a bodega, and every street has 3 cafe's or pastry shops. Construction work and everything that goes with it just opened up. When they had minerals and wealth they were held down to dirt poor third world conditions. I saw it with my own eyes. It happens all over the world. I have also seen around the world when once third world countries have commerce open up and investors build and open business where none existed before. Those countries fast track to the 21st century over night.

ad says

How much self sufficient was Peru ? Did it have to import energy (gas and oil) ? How much food did it have to import ? How much building supplies did it have to import ?

Peru allows cars imported into their country be converted by mom and pop shops, another start up industry. And the cars run on Natural Gas. Gasoline and Deiseal is expensive there. But NG is dirt cheap. A taxi driver told me he get's about 300 miles out of his $7 tank in his trunk.

Zak says

It's beyond ridiculous. If workers don't produce anything, then why do employers employ them!?!?

Have you ever seen anyone's name on a pair of Nike's?

The total worldwide supply of gold increases at a rate of about .9% per year. The supply of silver increases at a rate of about 1.2% per year.

Without social security, let's say the savings rate would be 20% (and I'd say that is waaaaaay too low).

With people needing to save 20% minimum of what they make and the supply increasing about 1%, how long could the system survive?

Tenpoundbass says

Have you ever seen anyone's name on a pair of Nike's?

This is the answer I would expect. You don't know, but you have a question that is confusing to you. Fair enough. But that should really inform you as to whether the opinion you are putting forth holds, and you should spend time arguing for it, or if you should be trying to listen to the other people explaining the economic foundations and asking questions.

Zak says

This is the answer I would expect. You don't know, but you have a question that is confusing to you. Fair enough. But that should really inform you as to whether the opinion you are putting forth holds, and you should spend time arguing for it, or if you should be trying to listen to the other people explaining the economic foundations and asking questions.

You sound like a whole slew of Libs that knew it all in 2007 that argued with me about Liberal truisms, that all turned out I was on the right side of.

Are you really having a hard time grasping that as someone on my payroll, you are NOT a Producer that I AM?
I pay you for your employment, you're not even providing me with a service. Business associates and partners provide my business with "Services".
I pay them for cleaning services, in which they send over cleaning employees, I pay them for Mailing services, which they send employees to come collect my mail, sort it, weigh it, stamp it and mail it.

Perhaps one of those employees is keeping money in a shoebox with the hopes of one day buying a hotdog cart to push down by the fishing pier on sunny Saturdays. He will then get to be a producer for one day a week. But that can only happen in a fiat currency society. In a Gold society his would be customers would only have Microsoft and Ford script to pay for the Hotdog. Unless the Hotdog vender lived and shopped at the Microsoft and Ford company stores, and housing, he would have no use for it. Because his Reehm accommodations don't accept those scripts.

Lol. So strawmans? That's your best shot?

>Are you really having a hard time grasping that as someone on my payroll, you are NOT a Producer that I AM?

I think this word for high opinion of yourself is called narcissism . You're really laying out your insecurities, and bad management policies, but not really telling me about how your workers don't produce things for you.

Btw, I'm not saying your workers have to make the same decisions as you, but it sounds like a nightmare to work for you. No autonomy, no reward for performance? I can see why you would fear your employees having a stable means to save. They would leave your crap employment as soon as possible.

While I'm enjoying that you think I'm a Producer, I'm a realist employee.
I'm thankful to be an employee in a Fiat currency economy. Or going on my third year in my wait and see hiatus, on which way the Commies in HR are going to take this thing. I would have been out on my ass, as I wouldn't own my house, the company store would.

Let me ask you, how old are you, and how much did you pay attention in History class. Especially on the period from about 1849 though 1945?

AmericanKulak says

This ignores the printing of banknotes by banks.

That is a separate issue though. Bank deposits should be made at the depositors own risk.

But we should not have a quasi government agency that funds a bankrupt government by printing Trillions of dollars of money for a fake Covid panic and drive up the cost of most necessities. That is what sound money prevents,

Tenpoundbass says

Peru is very rich in precious metals, but the Presidents in the 90's through the early 2000's squandered all of it to China. They were building a railway system, but one of the President's absconded with the funds, it sat unfinished for over 20 years.

Alberto Fujimori was the only President of Peru between 1990 and 2000. He was not a friend of China at all, unless you consider Taiwan as China. The Maoist Shining Path communist guerillas that plagued Peru before 1990 may have had ties to Communist Chinese military intelligence, although Maoism was waning even in China itself. Communist China was a very poor place in the 1960's through 1990's, before joining the WTO at the end of 2001, so whatever their military intelligence could do back then was more along the lines of exporting ideology (and exporting chaos-making guerilla warfare through robbing the rich and upper-middle class then middle class) than throwing bribe money around like they have been doing in recent years. I find it hard to believe Communist China would be building a railroad for Peru in 1982 (20 years before 2002), when China was much poorer than Peru. Fujimori may have been a CIA asset/agent put forth to be the figurehead for Peruvian military to carry out Operation Verde (which had been planned before Fujimori came to office). He (and his military handlers) did a lot for Peruvian people, stamping out the Maoist Shining Path guerillas by 1995, so that subsequent economic development and foreign direct investment became possible. He was initially facing a worse reality in Peru in 1990 than his personal hero Pinochet faced in Chile nearly two decades earlier. While some of military handlers did use draconian methods, unlike Pinochet facing potential armed communist rebellion (and shot them in a soccer stadium to prevent armed communist rebellion from ever taking place), Fujimori was facing a deadly armed communist rebellion already in progress and had been in progress having killed tens of thousands of innocent people (victims of communist rebels) for many years; so draconian methods against the armed communist guerillas were hard to avoid. I'm not sure what happened between Fujimori and CIA between 1995 and 2000 . . . but the apparent abandonment of Fujimori (possibly recycling his money by the banksters??) was extremely devastating to anti-communist right-leaning political parties and advocates in Latin America and in Japan / Taiwan alike. Perhaps the banksters were too cheap to have another Pinochet; perhaps they were afraid Peruvians couldn't tell the difference between Fujimori's Japanese ancestry from Chinese (Peruvians called him "Chino" despite the guy had no Chinese ancestry whatsoever)

Tenpoundbass says

When they had minerals and wealth they were held down to dirt poor third world conditions. I saw it with my own eyes. It happens all over the world. I have also seen around the world when once third world countries have commerce open up and investors build and open business where none existed before. Those countries fast track to the 21st century over night.

Your observation about the perverse effect of mineral wealth (which can be monopolized by the government or government chosen cronies) on societal liberty is correct. That phenomenon is indeed nearly universal. Now think: does it matter whether that mineral wealth is oil or gold or diamond or colbalt? It doesn't. Whatever is there down the mine shaft could well be a pile of trillions of US$'s, or a printing machine that prints out trillions of US$'s! (like North Korea allegedly has, but prints far more and universally accepted outside the country). What enables a dictatorial regime is not the specific mineral per se, but the dollar value and its ability to buy support from cronies and buy violence to suppress the public. That is precisely what a Fiat Money Central Banking system is (until the currency it prints is universally rejected). The US is effectively having a giant mine that spits out trillions of dollars, the mine is the fiat money central banking system . . . and that is why the republic is gradually breaking down!

What is a gold mine or an oil well? It's only a device the control over which enables the owner to get money much more easily than usual. Government control over such a device is devastating to the public. What is a Fiat Money Central Bank? It's a device that can spit out money even more easily than a gold mine or an oil well.

Misc says

The total worldwide supply of gold increases at a rate of about .9% per year. The supply of silver increases at a rate of about 1.2% per year.

Where did you get these numbers? Currently with silver price below mining cost (so most silver production come from byproduct of mining other metals), world above-ground silver total is likely declining due to industrial use exceeding new production. Above-ground gold total has been increasing at close to 2% per year due to central banks' demand (and Indian buying for weddings, plus whatever the rest of world's public's fear of monetary instability)

Misc says

Without social security, let's say the savings rate would be 20% (and I'd say that is waaaaaay too low).

With people needing to save 20% minimum of what they make and the supply increasing about 1%, how long could the system survive?

You can't be serious when making those assumptions. Why would anyone keep savings entirely in cash beyond building up a 6month burn-rate cash reserve? Why would anyone keep that much cash instead of investing into enterprises that potentially yield higher returns? Silver can not be cornered like gold due to the huge above-ground storage / ready potential supply in people's dinner-wares, candlesticks, etc.. If/when silver price reaches above $100-200/oz, enormous silver mines can be re-opened in the US.

A fundamental problem with the current fiat money system is that, because the economically lower 80-90% population have much higher percentage of their income spent on consumption, a 6-mo ready cash pile (or even whatever cash they have in their mattress or savings account) represent a much higher percentage of their total net-worth than that is for the top 1-20%. Constantly devaluing currency disproportionately regressively taxes them. In addition, Central Bank stretching bubbles to bail out insiders while roping in the masses (including the leading edge of a young generation reaching into upper middle class) at the market tops before dropping the hammer on the latter.

The savings rate would by necessity be much higher than the rate at which the metal is mined.

Without social security, a savings rate of 20% would be very low.

You have not addressed this fundamental flaw with the system. It leads to the system collapsing. A commodity based system is not stable.

Also, if you are promoting a commodity based system, you should have some idea of how much of the commodity is being added per year.

PeopleUnited says

That is a separate issue though. Bank deposits should be made at the depositors own risk.

Not a separate issue.

Employers will be paying employees with paper banknotes if they are allowed, and keep the gold to themselves.

Therefore, it's not the employee - or the contract providers - own risk. The employer is dumping the risk of the bank failure and the acceptance by others of it's banknote on the employee. A third party externality.

Again, we have the history of the 19th to look back on, and the "Discount" rate offered between banks for other bank's notes. You could go from Ohio to Boston and suffer a 12% charge from the note, even if your bank was in good standing.

So you get $100 in gold banknotes from Ohio First Federal but Boston banks are only giving you $88 in gold if you cash it in, maybe $95 if you took their notes. That's a 5-12% discount. Nevermind 5% inflation or a 12% tax, that sucks ass - just to get physical metal OR a local banknote in common use in the area and recognizable to stores and hotels and cab drivers. "What is this Ohio First Federahl? I ain't tahking you down Quommonwealth Avenue towards Fenway Pahk for this wicked pissah funny money! You got some Bank Boston Notes?" "

But wait! Why not have nationally recognized banks for travelling or paying cross country! We'll get to that in a second.

Newspapers published the discount rate of banknotes between banks daily as they fluctuated.

The one solution to this is to mandate by law a certain minimum in physical metal that must be paid by employers or the buyer in a contract.

Otherwise all the physical metal will stick to the hands of banks and the top .1% who will pass banknotes down to the lesser entities. Hence, all the little or local banks will function at a great disadvantage and all the notes, for ease of recognition, will be issued to the biggest banks, who will also be the recipients of physical metal for those that need the flexibility of widely-recognized bank notes.

Shit, it's the reason bankers dress up so well. It was all about respectability in the banknote days.

Reality says

What enables a dictatorial regime is not the specific mineral per se, but the dollar value and its ability to buy support from cronies and buy violence to suppress the public. That is precisely what a Fiat Money Central Banking system is (until the currency it prints is universally rejected). The US is effectively having a giant mine that spits out trillions of dollars, the mine is the fiat money central banking system . . . and that is why the republic is gradually breaking down!

Great comparison, didn't think of Printing Press of World Reserve Currency = Abdundant Oil or other useful resource.

There's only about 550000 metric tons of silver in the world. There is only about 208874 metric tons of gold in the world. With the population of 1st world countries being about 1 billion, there is simply not enough of the commodity for it to be used as a currency.

Misc says

There's only about 550000 metric tons of silver in the world. There is only about 208874 metric tons of gold in the world. With the population of 1st world countries being about 1 billion, there is simply not enough of the commodity for it to be used as a currency.

We don't know the true numbers for one, and for another, we can subdivide both gold and silver to the point they are sizes of peas. The idea that "there isn't enough" is just false.

The financial attack on these metals is being done because it would crash the system if everybody just bought a small amount of each. Our financial system is just a scam, and eventually, that will correct.

AmericanKulak says

Employers will be paying employees with paper banknotes

Cool story bro but it still has nothing to do with the fact that our government functioned best when we had sound money and government could not print money out of thin air.

Private Banks are a separate issue. They need separate regulations. But depositors should work with banks at their own risk. With sound money people don’t need banks.

richwicks says

Misc says

There's only about 550000 metric tons of silver in the world. There is only about 208874 metric tons of gold in the world. With the population of 1st world countries being about 1 billion, there is simply not enough of the commodity for it to be used as a currency.

We don't know the true numbers for one, and for another, we can subdivide both gold and silver to the point they are sizes of peas. The idea that "there isn't enough" is just false.

The financial attack on these metals is being done because it would crash the system if everybody just bought a small amount of each. Our financial system is just a scam, and eventually, that will correct.

It would be smaller than peas. It would have to be flakes There simply isn't enough. You work for 2 weeks...here's your flake of silver.

Misc says

The savings rate would by necessity be much higher than the rate at which the metal is mined.

Without social security, a savings rate of 20% would be very low.

You have not addressed this fundamental flaw with the system. It leads to the system collapsing. A commodity based system is not stable.

Also, if you are promoting a commodity based system, you should have some idea of how much of the commodity is being added per year.

I have quoted the entire comment here, but don't see any answer to the specific question regarding your source for the 0.9% and 1.8% numbers. Did you pull those numbers out of thin air? The fear of running out of monetary metal is a little like the fear of running out of oil or the perennial claim of "only 30 years of oil reserve left" that lasted since 1860's. Commodity supply / "reserve" is dependent on price; price motivates new discoveries and new mining.

Your 20% saving rate hypothesis for individuals is nonsensical: a person may save during his productive years (that's even before touching the issue of a high productivity person likely invest savings after having 6mo cash on hand instead of piling up more cash), but will be a net-spender during his retirement; or his heirs will. Even if he takes his gold and silver to the grave, the tomb raiders will spend it for him! Out of hundreds of Pharoahs, only Tutenkarmon's tomb (or what was alleged to be his tomb) was relatively unraided, until the 20th century. The only hoarders that have proven somewhat successful at hoarding at a consistency that has economic consequence are institutions like coordinated banks after putting in place a gold-only standard . . . so that the institutions can run their fraudulent warehouse receipt scam in order to control the inflation and deflation cycles.

Misc says

There's only about 550000 metric tons of silver in the world. There is only about 208874 metric tons of gold in the world. With the population of 1st world countries being about 1 billion, there is simply not enough of the commodity for it to be used as a currency.

Silver is 10-20 times more common than gold in the first few hundred feet of the earth's surface. Looking at the 2.5x ratio in your numbers should have told you that silver is not being treated as monetary metal currently but as an industrial metal. There is only a couple month's above-ground storage of oil on this plant; how can the world survive on so little oil? The answer is quite simple: as industrial commodity, oil and silver are largely flow material. If the price is higher, more will be mined and prospected.

Misc says

It would be smaller than peas. It would have to be flakes There simply isn't enough. You work for 2 weeks...here's your flake of silver.

LOL! Why would you then work there instead of working for the silver mines directly? A worker operating modern mining equipment at a silver mine in the US can produce much more silver every day. Commodity based Bimetalism allows the public to increase money supply on their own, instead of making money creation an exclusive domain of the banksters that can coordinate each other to create synchronized inflation/deflation cycles.

Silver was the defacto money of the world from circa 10th century (very much behind the rebirth of market economy in Europe hundreds years after the collapse of Roman fiat money economy; the center of that silver economy was Troyes in northern France, hence the Troy Ounce and Troy Pound we know today) through the 18th/19th century (when banksters forced gold-only standard on the world in preparation for fraud money / fiat money).

Here it is

https://www.google.com/search?q=amount+of+gold+in+the+world&sxsrf=APwXEddih0Cm5n-gogdrspLmXXmSwEKMuw%3A1680359110731&source=hp&ei=xj4oZK62KsjmkPIP-Y6-oAM&iflsig=AOEireoAAAAAZChM1kV-HK_RWoCPAToNR7sFpXQwtxNP&oq=&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAEYBTIHCCMQ6gIQJzIHCCMQ6gIQJzIHCCMQ6gIQJzIHCCMQ6gIQJzIHCCMQ6gIQJzIHCCMQ6gIQJzIHCCMQ6gIQJzIHCCMQ6gIQJzIHCCMQ6gIQJzIHCCMQ6gIQJ1AAWABgkzBoAXAAeACAAQCIAQCSAQCYAQCwAQo&sclient=gws-wiz

https://www.google.com/search?q=amount+of+silver+in+the+world&sxsrf=APwXEdcTtdu2ggv0Jn9iLc7cKT2TXq5-7A%3A1680359119022&ei=zz4oZJuIAfTCkPIPzLWI-A0&oq=amount+of+gold+in+the+world&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQARgIMgoIABBHENYEELADMgoIABBHENYEELADMgoIABBHENYEELADMgoIABBHENYEELADMgoIABBHENYEELADMgoIABBHENYEELADMgoIABBHENYEELADMgoIABBHENYEELADMgoIABCKBRCwAxBDMgoIABCKBRCwAxBDSgQIQRgAUABYAGCnPmgBcAF4AIABAIgBAJIBAJgBAMgBCsABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

https://www.statista.com/statistics/253293/silver-production-volume-worldwide/

https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/gold-production-by-country?gclid=CjwKCAjwrJ-hBhB7EiwAuyBVXQZMwkN2ojfVVgpeEVii4wwBYI6ZJCrKIU_KxTcUFyXXxH-qpb5chhoCxEsQAvD_BwE

Yes, with any reasonable savings rate the rate of addition at about 1% collapses the system.

There is also about $28 trillion in bank deposits and money market accounts in this country alone, not even including the other outstanding bonds. I will let you do the math to determine the size of silver flakes that a person would receive for 2 weeks worth of work.

A commodity based system is crap.

As expected, your numbers are crap. Current silver production volume worldwide is not the same as growth rate of above-ground silver in the world, just like oil production worldwide is not the same as growth rate of above-ground oil storage in the world. Both silver and oil are being treated as industrial material, not stored monetary commodity. If/when Silver becomes monetary commodity, price will make the above-ground storage (i.e. a proxy of base money supply when it is monetary metal) increase at 10x to 20x of the current gold above-ground storage increase per year or higher (as gold is currently treated as monetary metal in some context, but not fully) simply because that's the equilibrium point between mining silver vs. mining gold as silver is 10x to 20x more abundant than gold in earth accessible to current mining technology/capital.

Misc says

Yes, with any reasonable savings rate the rate of addition at about 1% collapses the system.

First of all, the monetary metal increase per year would be much higher than the alleged "1% industrial mining rate" (which is meaningless because the annual industrial consumption is more than the mining output, thanks to continued draw down of above-ground silver that had been mined from before demonetization of silver in the 1870's). Then "savings rate" is also non-sensical to the discussion: a person can not take silver off the plant when they die, so whatever is "saved" during his work years have to be disgorged during his retirement or his heirs will (or tomb raiders will).

Misc says

There is also about $28 trillion in bank deposits and money market accounts in this country alone, not even including the other outstanding bonds. I will let you do the math to determine the size of silver flakes that a person would receive for 2 weeks worth of work.

LOL! Then by the same logic as your argument how much cash is sitting at the Federal Reserve? Near-zero! compared to the $28 trillion. Goes to the show the fraud of the fiat money system. If you are not happy to work with current pay, a silver-based money under bimetallism would allow the worker to go work for a silver mine as a way of having a higher pay. Whereas in a fiat money system, the average worker has no alternative when faced with bankster coordinated monetary tightening (or loosening when prices go up for lives' necessities, as his paper money can be infinitely duplicated by a group of central controllers highly susceptible to corruption). While gold-only standard would result in gold flakes for average weekly pay due to the rarity of gold (hence quickly leading to circulating money on the market being dominated by warehouse receipts and frauds), because silver is 10x to 20x more common than gold in the earth's crust (that is accessible to human mining effort) silver coins as the transacting currency of the world have had a long history of coin being large enough to be easy/durable to handle, thousands of years of history.

The size of the Fed's balance sheet is about $8.7 trillion.

This monetary base can be increased or decreased as needed. Unlike a commodity based system.

You are arguing that the production of gold and silver can go up at an exponentially increasing rate. This would keep up with not only increasing population but an increased need for savings as well. Mathematically this cannot occur.

You still have not done the math to tell us the size of the silver flake that would be given for 2 weeks worth of work.

Also, you seem to be arguing that the monetary base (silver) can increase by 10-20 times its current size. How in the world is this better than fiat?

Misc says

The size of the Fed's balance sheet is about $8.7 trillion.

Does that include all the MBS from 2008? Does the Fed really have any assets beyond the ability to print infinite dollars?