Guest Post: The Return Of Precious Metals And Sound Money

Submitted by Giordano Bruno of Neithercorp Press

The Return Of Precious Metals And Sound Money

Well, those devious gold bugs and sound money advocates are at it
again! They had the audacity to produce economic analysis that
consistently outshines and embarrasses mainstream Keynesian pundits.
They had the nerve to expose the seedy underpinnings of the private
Federal Reserve. They even had the gall to bring the long established
short manipulations of metals markets by global banks like JP Morgan and
HSBC into the light of day, where anyone whose head was not buried in
the dark recesses of their own colon could see and say “My god! There
really is an organized cabal against gold and silver!” But if you
thought all that was outrageous, these people, who promote the insane
notion that our currency should actually be backed by tangible wealth
and should be under the control of the voting public instead of some
unaccountable parasitic corporate central bank, have now brought state
legislators into the mix! The return to sound money has begun…

Thirteen states currently have proposed measures which would
reinstitute the long suppressed need for a precious metals standard.
Utah is the furthest ahead in this battle, its House just recently
passing a bill which would make gold and silver officially recognized as
legal tender within its borders. All that remains is a signature from
Utah’s governor:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/04/utah-house-passes-recognizing-gold-silver-legal-tender/

Colorado, Georgia, Montana, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, New Hampshire,
Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and Washington all have
similar bills to that of Utah in different stages of development. Why,
after decades of treating gold and silver standards like a cocktail
party joke, have the states suddenly turned friendly towards the idea of
commodities as currency? It makes perfect sense when you examine what
is happening all around us in the world today…

Necessity Is The Mother Of Prevention

The states are broke. Not just broke, but destitute. If California
had a loan shark, its knee caps would have felt the splintery sting of a
Louisville Slugger years ago. Illinois would have turned to
prostitution (and maybe still will). All the clawing of eyes and
gnashing of teeth that went on in Wisconsin this past month over the
rather tame cuts to labor union wage bargaining power is nothing
compared to what many states have to look forward to when they decide to
confiscate employee pensions and cut major funding to basic services
like fire, and police. Some state governments know what is coming, and
they are wisely moving to cushion the fall.

Legislators recognize that if municipal bond investment continues on
its current downward spiral, there will be widespread defaults. These
city and state bankruptcies will almost assuredly be met with offers
from the Federal Reserve of a new bailout; QE3…..or QE20 (does it really
matter anymore?). This bailout would not be “substantial”, it would be
gargantuan! What do you get when states bring in increasingly
diminished revenues while constituents demand more and more money for
welfare and public services because of inflation and the subsequent rise
in poverty? You get a space-time-debt singularity so volatile it
stretches the very fabric of your local economy until it tears wide
open, unleashing a gravity well of capital destruction similar to a
double-ended tornado that snatches your money and hurls it into the
upper stratosphere never to be seen again. The point is, you get yet
another Fanny and Freddy; a self perpetuating never ending bailout
free-for-all that fizzles only when the dollar has been thoroughly
cremated, which shouldn’t be long from now.

Intelligent and fiscally conservative local representatives have seen
the obvious danger to the stability of the dollar in this equation, and
are moving to PREVENT total collapse of their states, rather than wait
until after the fact to initiate solutions. Sound money legislation and
the creation of localized markets and barter networks give states the
ability to function beyond the lifespan of the dollar and to ensure the
continuing personal prosperity of residents. Honestly, why should the
states allow their destinies to be bound forever to the longevity of the
ailing Greenback? If there is anything good to come out of our present
predicament, it is that Americans, from average citizens to elected
officials, are beginning to understand the reality of coming collapse
and are preempting it with measures designed to insulate their
communities from the inevitable firestorm.

Eventually, as this movement escalates, certain states will come out
ahead of the pack, gaining a kind of “safe haven” status, and attracting
liberty minded people from around the country to the protective shelter
of their borders.

The Stagflationary Stranglehold

Stagflation is truly the worst of both possible worlds. A
combination of deflation in employment, wages, and traditionally high
value assets like real estate similar to the Great Depression, combined
with skyrocketing prices in base goods and extreme currency devaluation
common to Weimar-style hyperinflation. I can’t think of anything in the
field of economics more terrifying than this outcome. Unfortunately,
the U.S. is well on its way down the stagflationary path.

As many are probably already aware, the Federal Reserve has become
the largest holder of U.S. Treasury debt in the world, beating out even
China. Most analysts with any sense would agree that our central bank
generating trillions in future tax debt to temporarily stave off the
effects of present national debt is the perfect recipe for dollar
destruction. The problem is that this process of devaluation strikes
the economy from the bottom up, not the top down. Cities and states
will suffer first from inflationary pressures as well as municipal
liabilities because they do not have the capacity to fund their
operations through constant fiat printing. The Federal Government, on
the other hand, has the ability to create dollars unhindered to prop up
its functions. Therefore, as the Fed prints, it weakens state revenues
by destroying consumer buying power (and sales tax support) and
triggering price explosions, while at the same time maintaining
Washington D.C.’s administrative position and funding capability.
Ultimately, unless Congress finds a way to freeze the constant expansion
of the national debt ceiling, the Federal Government will be the last
entity damaged by the overflow of currency they set into motion.
Perhaps that has been the plan all along…

For those whose knowledge of the economy is limited to 30 second
sound bites from MSNBC, the idea of currency overflow and dollar
derailment sounds outlandish. What is a little old-school Keynesian
liquidity to the mighty American economy, right? $700 billion here,
$800 billion there, and presto, jobs fall from the sky and suburbanites
return to their iPod humvee heaven! I sob a little inside when I hear
people still using these mainstream bailout stats as if they mean
something.

The truth is, it is nearly impossible to get an accurate calculation
of the exact amount of dollars created and dumped into our financial
system by the Fed without a full audit. We hear the same TARP numbers
repeated ad nauseam and begin to believe we have a sense of what is
happening. However, if you were ignoring TARP back in July of 2009, and
instead focused on the little know SIGTARP commission’s statistics on
the overall cost of bailouts INCLUDING those debt obligations the
government had established but were yet to pay, you would have
discovered that instead of a few hundred billion stretched out over
years, the U.S. is actually in the red for nearly $24 trillion:

http://www.sigtarp.gov/reports/congress/2009/July2009_Quarterly_Report_to_Congress.pdf

This was two years ago. Not surprisingly, the far more in-depth
SIGTARP numbers on Fed quantitative easing and government costs have
been removed from subsequent reports. Apparently, they were not buried
well enough, and someone felt it would be better to pretend they never
existed instead. Some investment corporations are still keeping tabs,
though, like bond fund giant PIMCO, which has seen fit to dump the
entirety of its U.S. Treasury holdings in preparation for dollar
fallout:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/09/us-pimco-debt-idUSTRE7285M020110309

Yes, Bill Gross is a globalist insider, but beyond that, PIMCO’s
actions are incredibly prudent. It is quite possible we have not only
met the 2009 SIGTARP cost projections, but surpassed them in light of
the Federal Reserve’s new position as the global grand poobah of
T-bonds, as well as Timothy Geithner’s absurd insistence that being
required to go through Congress to raise the debt ceiling is like
“torture”:

http://imarketnews.com/node/26571

Naturally, frustrated little Timmy would prefer if there was no debt
ceiling at all, and the government was given free reign to spend money
that doesn’t really exist, for Treasuries and toxic derivatives that
don’t exist, to support a recovery that doesn’t exist. I don’t know,
these globalist bureaucratic types are so friendly and knowledgeable and
they wear such nice suits. I’m sure they mean well. That said, the
only way the states can avoid any unpleasant consequences in the event
that globalists don’t “mean well” is to allow alternative markets and
currencies to take root, helping them to mature and slowly replace the
feudal establishment system. Only when states prepare to decouple from
the disintegrating mainstream economy will they become safe from the
shockwaves of collapse.

The Shorts Are Ripe For Squeezing

JP Morgan’s fraudulent naked short positions designed to artificially
hold down silver markets have been publicly exposed and well documented
for years by this site among many others. Their issuance of paper
ETF’s representing gold and silver they don’t actually have has also
been fully uncovered. Global bankers have been manipulating precious
metals markets down for decades. This is undeniable. Why would they do
this? To prevent exactly what is happening in Utah and a dozen other
states today; the rebirth of gold and silver as a competing currency
alternative to the fiat dollar.

As long as PM’s were seen as poor market performers or relics of a
bygone era, no state would ever consider them as a viable substitute for
the thoroughly controlled Greenback. Globalization operates on the
principles of centralization, and the purpose of centralization is to
take options away from the citizenry until they have no other choice but
to use your system. Gold and silver represent a powerful option that
cannot be duplicated out of thin air to infinity, and cannot be easily
dominated by a central bank. COMEX manipulation is an inherent
extension of the centralization process. But, as communities and states
begin the acceptance of metals based trade and the issuance of gold and
silver currency, you will see the manipulations by big banks begin to
unravel.

Already, JP Morgan is beginning to take gold as collateral for
certain investment transactions, which means, first, that JP Morgan is
now treating gold not as a commodity, but as a kind of currency, and
second, that JP Morgan is in the process of shoring up its physical
metals position to prevent a “squeeze” on their naked shorts (massive
fraudulent bets that silver or gold will fall, often causing regular
investors to believe there is far more physical metal on the market than
there actually is):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704422204576130192457252596.html

It is highly unlikely, though, that the international banking cartels
will be able to generate enough excess gold and silver stock to meet
the rising demand for physical delivery, considering they have issued
far more paper securities for gold and silver than they could possibly
acquire. As physical metals go into wider use, especially through state
legislation, and spot prices keep increasing despite manipulation,
global banks with large short positions will be crushed by the ever
increasing need to cover their fake bets. This is sometimes called a
“short squeeze”, which results in history making spikes in spot price
over a very compressed period of time.

Signs of a possible short squeeze include shortages of blanks at the U.S. mint due to high demand:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/silver-touches-3490-us-mint-runs-out-bullion-blanks-halts-american-eagle-silver-coin-product

Or, the decoupling of silver or gold from dollar activity, which
signals that metals are being treated as a competing currency. Silver
and gold movements outside of the dollar are now a common weekly
occurrence, and some metals suppliers, like Pan American Silver, are
shifting away from the dollar entirely and trading their supply in other
currencies:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-16/pan-american-silver-shifts-assets-to-canadian-dollars-update1-.html

International demand for gold and silver also puts heavy pressure on
shorts. For instance, gold demand in India was up 66% in 2010:

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/gold-demand-in-india-rises-66-pct-in-2010-wgc/751398/

Gold demand in China was up 70% in 2010:

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article26463.html

Couple this kind of demand with consistently falling production
output, and you have the ingredients for a precious metals price
eruption. Gold production in major producing country South Africa was
down 6.4% in 2010, and down 17.4% in Peru:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/42070666

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/03/03/perus-january-gold-silver-zinc-output-falls-copper/#

The sooner regular Americans and state governments invest in precious
metals, the greater their head start will be when chaos unfolds in ETF
markets. There is no doubt that global banks will respond to this event
by refusing to meet physical delivery demands on paper securities they
have already issued, and millions of ETF investors are left with nothing
but worthless stock documents. States with mining operations inside
their borders will be in a prime position to become real suppliers, to
facilitate ample revenue, and to help rebuild the American economy from
the ground up, but only if they prepare now. Otherwise, the banks will
take the stage again, undisputed and ready to offer more “solutions” to
the problems that they themselves created in an incessant cycle of
deceit; the longest running con game in history.

Catastrophe Demands Concrete Solutions

Things are getting real ugly out there. The tension in the air is
dense and sweaty. Everyone feels it, but not enough people proactively
discuss it. The economy has already imploded, and is now reinflated
with volatile hydrogen like fiat, just waiting for the right spark to
bring the whole zeppelin crashing down in flames. Japan’s situation is a
prime example of the incredible sensitivity now present in the so
called global economy. One earthquake has sent world markets reeling,
and the Nikkei index into free fall, losing over 10% in one day.
Imagine the results of a massive earthquake in the U.S., or a nuclear
event like that which is unfolding north of Tokyo. What about an
escalation of Middle East political trauma or American involvement in
another war? Circumstances which could have been absorbed and dealt
with by the U.S. three years ago are now amplified by our financial
frailty.

After dozens of months filled with lost jobs, lost infrastructure,
and lost buying power, even the shock of $100 plus oil is like a sledge
hammer to the solar plexus today when it was a only a moderate nuisance
back in 2008. We cannot continue on our present path, or we WILL suffer
unthinkable cultural digression and social defeat. A declaration of
independence from the faulty structure is in order, and this begins with
individuals as well as states acting to become more self sufficient.
Sound money legislation is an important foundation of such development,
and private trade in commodities will reinforce state action. The
problem must be confronted on the personal level, the local level, and
the state level. This means alternative economies based on stable trade
and tangible currencies have to become a priority for your community
and for legislators equally. Neither one should wait around for the
other to make this happen. I think if anything is quite clear, it is
that there is no more time to guess and second guess the need for
financial flexibility and self-reliance for the states. It is time to
act. The decisive will survive and thrive, the apathetic will take
repeated blunt force fiscal trauma to their collective groins until they
learn their lesson. This is simply the way of things…

Comments

[Debtless]

"...probably have to get to $2,000 before the average joe starts to notice..."

Where have I heard that before? Oh yes, at $200, $250, $300, $500, $750, $1000, $1250, $1400....

Avg Joe IS however getting involved in Silver more than ever.

[tmosley]

I bet you were saying the same stupid shit when gold was at $500 about $1000 gold.  

I'll make a prediction here:  when gold hits $2000, you will be saying the same thing about $4000 gold.

Give it up already, loser.

[lieutenantjohnchard]

so old catfish, why the sourpuss attitude? you said the fed owned the market and a crash was impossible. your advice to your audience of one (yourself) was never to fight the fed. "never" seems a fairly decisive word.

oh, i forgot. that was your last post.

btw: did you work up the courage to sell your gold coins and gold stocks held in your ira? you know, given your crash scenario.

btw: how's the view from your apartment overlooking one of the los angeles freeways? if only i could retire to an apartment in the paved paradise of los angeles, and live a life of luxury like you.

[TheGoodDoctor]

Yo FemBot get a clue. What happens when the sovereign wealth funds, governments, pension funds, and central banks all pile in during the blow off phase? They will move to physical silver after gold. Then the miners. Good luck with your gold and silver shorts!

[Bagbalm]

States can not put enough gold and silver coins out to make them be circulated AT THE CURRENT PRICE.

As long as there is a market to buy gold or silver for fiat they will not circulate in commerce.

Only when fiat is widely viewed as worthless can there be a real switch to gold and silver at a value level high enough to facilitate circulation.

Even in Colonial times gold and silver did not work to facilitate commerce because there was such an abundance of money in England and a shortage in America.

The economy can gridlock just as easily on a reversed situation - government workers are paid in worthless fiat and the private sector has abandoned it.

You simply can't run the two side by side. It's either metal or I.O.U.s.

[css1971]

Different purposes as far as I am concerned. Gold and silver store value, paper or bits allow a common means of exchange.

The problems arise when you try to do both simultaneously.

[baldtaco]

it seems most people are missing the point of sound money. A currency backed by gold or silver would probably lead to deflation, but it would also lead to more freedom for all. It would give the power back to the people and the markets. The only way this will happen is through total collapse. The banking cartel will not let their power go without a fight. I believe the collapse has already happend, now it is all about timing. How long will it take for the other 80% of the people to realize it. Actually if about 60% of the country realized this, change would happen. Stalin once said" It is not who you vote for, it is who counts the votes." Someday we will have a leader with a plan to mobilize all of us. That person will use the constitution as the set of rules to give personel responsibility back to the citizens. This is the change we need. Will it happen I don't know, very few real men left.

.223 au h2o

[velobabe]

i really liked your article. it was kinda exciting to read about something i bought, might go up in value. yeah, i gave some dude $90,000 dollars and he gave me a piece of paper called a promissory note to pay me back in three years. now he is telling me my piece of paper is not enforceable. i just throw money away recklessly.

[lesterbegood]

The return of lawful money will mean the end of legal plunder practiced by the banksters through the use of bank liabilities (legal tender), aka fiat currency.

http://gsfsystem.ch

[dcb]

having spent a long time in the study of delfation, there ain't anything wrong with it.

something is worth less, but each unit buys you more. the reason it has been demonized is because it screws the banks and those who make money off of leverage (traders, ceo's, etc), and rewards the savers.

the way the system is structured onluy those who make a living off of leverage and credit can keep affording to buy into the political process, and now they own that.

those who believe in the demonization of deflation are just wrong. they have been sold a bill of goods by the keynesians that just isn't valid. Believe me, I have looked at all the studies on this stuff I can find, and there is no real evidence of what is said.

they never mention the deflation periods happen after the credit busts, or that the credit busts may be the cause of the problem.

may of the same faulty assumptions about efficient markets, rational economics, are seen in the assumptions about deflation and they are wrong.  

[JR]

Very, very well said, dcb! Thank you.

To elaborate even more, Henry Hazlitt exposed the fallacies of the Fed’s Keynesian system in The Failure of the New Economics, as did other reputable economists.

Unfortunately, the Fed has refused to put a stop to its economic plundering of the nation and the world, even in the face of global hardship, crisis, and war.

Keynesianism got its foothold in WWII when Keynesian deficit spending was used by America and Britain to arm themselves to the teeth in order to out-produce Germany. Germany was industrially superior at the time but hampered to compete monetarily by its more conservative economic policies.  The German people had grown to abhor the hazards of inflation and excessive deficit spending.

At the same time, the monolithic monopoly structure of Soviet statist economics, parallel in many ways to Keynesian inflationary economics, enabled the Soviet Union to pursue a massive military build up by  devoting the greater percentage of its people’s resources and capital to military production.

A constant dose of Keynesianism, as even Keynes knew, inevitably leads to moral and economic bankruptcy.  Britain experienced it and the pound sterling lost its reserve status; now, America is experiencing it.

Former MIT professor, Dr. David Hoggan, writes:

“The specifically American system consists of a Christian constitutional system of limitations in politics and a free market along scriptural lines in economics.  These values alone are conducive to the fulfillment of the American genius, and they are well worth defending.”

Bernanke and his fellow travelers do not adhere to these principles; the road they are taking leads to an economic dead end, up against a brick wall.

[SuperRay]

Does anyone really believe that the bernank doesn't know the effects of his treasonous actions.  He just allowed the banks to declare a dividend.  He looks at the 'big picture', and gives not a tiny turd about the masses.  As long at the 'leadership' (interpret as oligarchs) survives, he's done his job.  As for PM's

Ben Bernank as Eli Wallach "PM's? you don't need no stinkin' PM's! you ain't gonna keep your stinkin' PM's"  That rant comes right after marshall law is declared.  

[jomama]

just so long as a return to gold and silver as a currency doesn't mean the face value on all my coins.  fuck that.

[monopoly]

No way jo, no one pays attention to dollar value, just the weight. An ounce is an ounce and value will always come from that.

Now if your name is Robot, you might take that 50 dollar buffalo gold 1 ounce coin.... and ask for $50.00, since it is otherwise worthless.

[monopoly]

I think Robot works for Lloyd. I cannot believe the shit he comes up with. And yes, gold at 500, 1000, 1,500, rinse and repeat Robot, same posts, just change the date. I thought you had some intelligence.

[monopoly]

I think the only reason why Tyler puts up with Robot is that it provokes response from us, discussion, and gives him a laugh or two. And as always, all are free to post what they think and feel. Just like the Fed. lol

[props2009]

BARRACK OBAMA LIVE NOW
http://dawnwires.com/politics/watch-president-barrack-obama-live-now/

[DRwithEconomicC...]

2012-"The Golden Age" Those damn Mayans knew everything

[austin0388]

I may getting a little ahead of the conspiracy curve on this but consider:

- The comex is running out of gold & silver - getting closer to default.

- GLD is considered, by many, a fraud whose physical gold has been borrowed from the Bank of England.

- The Gold the Bank of England has lent to GLD is owned primarily by Arabs.

- GLD will probably never be able to repay the BOE and the BOE will probably never be able to repay their Arab clients.

- Suddenly we have "revolution" in the Arab world.

[Bastiat]

Yeah! Gangster style.  Makes sense.   Priceless, the more I think of it. 

We pay you with paper for oil, printing as much as we want thereby effectively stealing your oil,  you convert as much fiat as you can to gold (being smart).  In the end we whack you over the head and steal your gold too.  Brutal, crude, compelling model.

Whatever happened to Saddams gold? 

[Muir]

-

Bartholomew: Corporate society takes care of everything. And all it asks of anyone, all it's ever asked of anyone ever, is not to interfere with management decisions.

-

[honestann]

Translation: Slave masters take care of everything.  And all they ask of anyone, all they've ever asked of anyone ever, is for everyone to be good slaves and do what they're told.

[SME MOFO]

+1 rollerball

edit: who junks a quote from rollerball?  I find this disturbing.

[ArkOmen1]

The dollar is not a savings vehicle. It is a behavioral conditioning tool of the central planners. The economic plan of the commoners should be to "freeze" those federal reserve notes that they have in their possession that they would like to literally save. Then, if needed, liquidate and "unfreeze" for more federal reserve notes in the future only in absolute emergencies. One should work as hard as they can to continue attempting to earn federal reserve notes to pay bills and debt down, but if there is excess, those federal reserve notes should then be exchanged for precious metals while this is still possible. Continue this procedure for as long as possible until the bull market grows into a recognition phase where you can buy groceries with a silver eagle. Shame on the US govt for this betrayal. Let the gold and silver revolution begin!!

[Dr Hackenbush]

Historically big bankers have been the goldbugs, has that changed?  Why is this cycle different?  There are two concepts at play i) storing gold for a black swan event  ii) a permanent stable currency system created by and for the people.  The "sound currency" of event i) may not be suitible for ii). 

[Segestan]

The idea of 'sound money' and a 'voting public' is an ......oxymoron. To many self serving interest of every color and creed to work. Sound money is a good principal but only with an responsible leadership intent on the Re-public's good.

[theprofromdover]

Well, I think we will just start issuing our invoices with the pertaining gold or silver equivalent value at the bottom.

Clients and customers can pay in either of these three currencies within 30 days, then revert to spot price.

Later on, index-link to inflation, or WTI, or gumbo beans, or whatever.

Of course this is going to get ugly. Start makin' plans.

Gold for me; there is huge pressure out there to hold it down.

[cunningtrader]

There's a very simple fix to stop the crap going on with gold and silver,

Outlaw shorting of commodities. Make sure it's retrospectively applied, to all those who knowingly took short positions without any possibility to deliver the physical......

[buzlightening]

I live in Utah!! Federally minted US bullion eagles now being circulated as legal tender protects the sovereign citizen of our state!  dead head fed goons gone ape shit can't move in and nail Utah state citizens as financial terrorists toting gold/silver bullion in competition to FRN debt based paper dollars; fiat dollars seeking their intrinsic value. ZEROOOoooo!!  The US Mint bullion gold/silver eagle coins also receive favored status and are exempt from dead head fed goons gone ape shit capital gains tax!! Let all states seeking sovereignty join the rush to honest money gold/silver and free AmeriCON'd!! DINKERS! Dollar inkers to infinity keep your worthless paper shit!!  End the fed!!

[Zero Govt]

ETF  =  Exchange Traded Fraud ?!!

"...Their (JP Morgans) issuance of paper ETF’s representing gold and silver they don’t actually have has also been fully uncovered....  JP Morgan is in the process of shoring up its physical metals position to prevent a “squeeze” on their naked shorts (massive fraudulent bets that silver or gold will fall..."

I bought a ProShares Gold ETF Long with 2x leverage which has JP Morgan somewhere in the back office partnering ProShares. The ETF is supposed to track the Gold Index but between the 3 months I bought it Gold had not changed by more than 0.5% ....yet I lost a whopping 7%

Worse than that in the evening I was up 1-2% to the positive but in overnight trading Gold dropped not more than 3% (ie. only 0.5% less than my original buying price which was only a 1-2 hour 'blip' down before Gold shot back up past my original buying price) yet i l had 7% wiped off my investment capital 

I understand the maths of the Gold Index moving what is not at all clear to me, despite my private banks explanations, is how I lost 7%....  the pear shaped dark pool maths of ETF's ...feels like f  f  f funny business! 

[Hannibal]

MONEY,....NOT WORTH IT!

[robertocarlos]

So if you have a gold tooth you are now rich?

[Bansters-in-my-...]

Mmmm...Gold makes me hungry....

But Gold is Not....Just food,it can be much more.

[Debtless]

Markets open. Schwinggg!

Demand is insatiable. Too bad the banks spend so much cost and effort keeping the prices in check, versus putting those efforts to better use. 

[Mike Hunt III]

About the man paying his employees with Silver eagles. Yes the IRS was upset. Mad enough to file 161 charges against him. However a jury found him not guilty on all charges. Here is the gist of the case based on reading several sources. Robert Kahre of Las Vegas was paying his construction company employees with $1 silver eagles (presumebly a couple dollars/hr). Being contractors they were not subject to minimum wage laws. At tax time they would report their low dollar earnings. IRS says no you must report the intrinsic value of silver of your earnings. Counter argument was that if the IRS considers only intrinsic value and not face value than ones reported income on a $100 FRN would be about 4 to 6 cents. Not only that but in 1994 Kahre had paid a filing fee for a complaint against the IRS previous to this court case. He paid in......wait for it...silver eagles. The IRS accepted his $240 payment in eagles at face value. No change was offered. The IRS double speak and FRN ponzi scheme was revealed for all to see. Unfortunately for Kahre, he got greedy. He was convicted two years later in a 2009 trial. He was taking out car loans based on the intrinsic value of the eagles as well as purchasing real estate in other peoples names. He should have quit while ahead.

[Inibo E. Exibo]

I don't have much to add to this thread, I'm just wanting to use my awesome new commenting powers after waiting impatiently for almost two weeks to get my registration approved.

I do want to add that as someone who does not earn an astronomical salary, silver seems to be about my only hope in the face of the lunacy of the geniuses who have somehow put themselves in charge of the rest of us. So I buy twenty or so ounces a month and so far I'm better off than when I started.

I have no illusions about ever collecting social security, or if I do, of it being able to buy anything buy a pack of gum. My 401k has only shown any growth because my employer and I have been putting money in it. Otherwise it would be a sick joke.

To the folks who scoff about precious metals, what else is someone without disposable income they can afford to squander on the Ponzi scheme going to do? Dismiss us all as rubes if you want, but offer a valid alternative or shut up.

[Muir]

"I don't have much to add to this thread, I'm just wanting to use my awesome new commenting powers after waiting impatiently for almost two weeks to get my registration approved."

congrats!!

"what else is someone without disposable income they can afford to squander on the Ponzi scheme going to do? "

"You're the only son of a bitch in this headquarters who knows what he's trying to do."

[no googling]

-

[robertocarlos]

Dirty Harry?

[Papaneuf]

Gold & Silver Bitchez!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNGe7iK1O-4

[CEOoftheSOFA]

This isn't the first time Utah has allowed alternate currencies.  In the early 1930's, there was such a shortage of cash that Utah legalized the use of alternate currencies. 

[Michael Victory]

Giordano,

Very nice.

~MV

[plata pura]

A GSR of 39 is intolerable.

[All Risk No Reward]

listen carefully - this is the truth. the monetary system isn't the problem, IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO CONTROL IT.

you can switch to a gold standard, but the criminals running the current system will continue to commit crimes and avoid punishment, they will continue to asset strip citizens and nations and they will continue to destroy the civil rights of citizens and they will continue using the tax donkeys to fund their corporate war mongering and assets stripping.

stop worrying about the table settings on the titanic.

the federal reserve is criminal - read section 2a of the federal reserve act.

they have broken two portions of that black letter for over 25 years and the media, both political parties, the educational establishment, etc... all provide interference.

it isn't what backs money, it is WHO controls its quantity.

go ahead, switch to a gold standard AND WATCH THE CRIMINAL BANKING CARTELS WITH ALL THE GOLD SNATCH YOUR PROLE GOLD FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR.

the criminals must go.

that's agenda 1, agenda 2 and agenda 3.

agenda 4, agenda 5 and agenda 6.

once the criminals are being prosecuted, once debt based money is ended, once the claw backs are lined up, THEN WE CAN TALK ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE NEW CURRENCY.

the gold fetish isn't gonna solve anything, IT JUST PLAYS INTO THE HANDS OF THE CRIMINAL FINANCIAL CARTEL.

[jtb14]

you cant print gold. Use it and lose it.