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Who Said It? "Deficit Spending Is A Scheme To Confiscate Wealth. Gold Stands In The Way Of This Insidious Process"
...by Alan Greenspan
Published in Ayn Rand’s “Objectivist” newsletter in 1966, and reprinted in her book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, in 1967.
An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense — perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire — that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.
In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society.
Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium of exchange, is universally acceptable to all participants in an exchange economy as payment for their goods or services, and can, therefore, be used as a standard of market value and as a store of value, i.e., as a means of saving.
The existence of such a commodity is a precondition of a division of labor economy. If men did not have some commodity of objective value which was generally acceptable as money, they would have to resort to primitive barter or be forced to live on self-sufficient farms and forgo the inestimable advantages of specialization. If men had no means to store value, i.e., to save, neither long-range planning nor exchange would be possible.
What medium of exchange will be acceptable to all participants in an economy is not determined arbitrarily. First, the medium of exchange should be durable. In a primitive society of meager wealth, wheat might be sufficiently durable to serve as a medium, since all exchanges would occur only during and immediately after the harvest, leaving no value-surplus to store. But where store-of-value considerations are important, as they are in richer, more civilized societies, the medium of exchange must be a durable commodity, usually a metal. A metal is generally chosen because it is homogeneous and divisible: every unit is the same as every other and it can be blended or formed in any quantity. Precious jewels, for example, are neither homogeneous nor divisible. More important, the commodity chosen as a medium must be a luxury. Human desires for luxuries are unlimited and, therefore, luxury goods are always in demand and will always be acceptable. Wheat is a luxury in underfed civilizations, but not in a prosperous society. Cigarettes ordinarily would not serve as money, but they did in post-World War II Europe where they were considered a luxury. The term “luxury good” implies scarcity and high unit value. Having a high unit value, such a good is easily portable; for instance, an ounce of gold is worth a half-ton of pig iron.
In the early stages of a developing money economy, several media of exchange might be used, since a wide variety of commodities would fulfill the foregoing conditions. However, one of the commodities will gradually displace all others, by being more widely acceptable. Preferences on what to hold as a store of value will shift to the most widely acceptable commodity, which, in turn, will make it still more acceptable. The shift is progressive until that commodity becomes the sole medium of exchange. The use of a single medium is highly advantageous for the same reasons that a money economy is superior to a barter economy: it makes exchanges possible on an incalculably wider scale.
Whether the single medium is gold, silver, seashells, cattle, or tobacco is optional, depending on the context and development of a given economy. In fact, all have been employed, at various times, as media of exchange. Even in the present century, two major commodities, gold and silver, have been used as international media of exchange, with gold becoming the predominant one. Gold, having both artistic and functional uses and being relatively scarce, has significant advantages over all other media of exchange. Since the beginning of World War I, it has been virtually the sole international standard of exchange. If all goods and services were to be paid for in gold, large payments would be difficult to execute and this would tend to limit the extent of a society’s divisions of labor and specialization. Thus a logical extension of the creation of a medium of exchange is the development of a banking system and credit instruments (bank notes and deposits) which act as a substitute for, but are convertible into, gold.
A free banking system based on gold is able to extend credit and thus to create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the production requirements of the economy. Individual owners of gold are induced, by payments of interest, to deposit their gold in a bank (against which they can draw checks). But since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves. This enables the banker to loan out more than the amount of his gold deposits (which means that he holds claims to gold rather than gold as security of his deposits). But the amount of loans which he can afford to make is not arbitrary: he has to gauge it in relation to his reserves and to the status of his investments.
When banks loan money to finance productive and profitable endeavors, the loans are paid off rapidly and bank credit continues to be generally available. But when the business ventures financed by bank credit are less profitable and slow to pay off, bankers soon find that their loans outstanding are excessive relative to their gold reserves, and they begin to curtail new lending, usually by charging higher interest rates. This tends to restrict the financing of new ventures and requires the existing borrowers to improve their profitability before they can obtain credit for further expansion. Thus, under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy’s stability and balanced growth. When gold is accepted as the medium of exchange by most or all nations, an unhampered free international gold standard serves to foster a world-wide division of labor and the broadest international trade. Even though the units of exchange (the dollar, the pound, the franc, etc.) differ from country to country, when all are defined in terms of gold the economies of the different countries act as one — so long as there are no restraints on trade or on the movement of capital. Credit, interest rates, and prices tend to follow similar patterns in all countries. For example, if banks in one country extend credit too liberally, interest rates in that country will tend to fall, inducing depositors to shift their gold to higher-interest paying banks in other countries. This will immediately cause a shortage of bank reserves in the “easy money” country, inducing tighter credit standards and a return to competitively higher interest rates again.
A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World War I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.
But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank reserves was causing a business decline — argued economic interventionists — why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely — it was claimed — there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1913. It consisted of twelve regional Federal Reserve banks nominally owned by private bankers, but in fact government sponsored, controlled, and supported. Credit extended by these banks is in practice (though not legally) backed by the taxing power of the federal government. Technically, we remained on the gold standard; individuals were still free to own gold, and gold continued to be used as bank reserves. But now, in addition to gold, credit extended by the Federal Reserve banks (“paper reserves”) could serve as legal tender to pay depositors.
When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve’s attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain’s gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates. The “Fed” succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market, triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
With a logic reminiscent of a generation earlier, statists argued that the gold standard was largely to blame for the credit debacle which led to the Great Depression. If the gold standard had not existed, they argued, Britain’s abandonment of gold payments in 1931 would not have caused the failure of banks all over the world. (The irony was that since 1913, we had been, not on a gold standard, but on what may be termed “a mixed gold standard”; yet it is gold that took the blame.) But the opposition to the gold standard in any form — from a growing number of welfare-state advocates — was prompted by a much subtler insight: the realization that the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state). Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.
Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy’s tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government’s promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited. The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created paper reserves in the form of government bonds which — through a complex series of steps — the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if they were an actual deposit, i.e., as the equivalent of what was formerly a deposit of gold. The holder of a government bond or of a bank deposit created by paper reserves believes that he has a valid claim on a real asset. But the fact is that there are now more claims outstanding than real assets. The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy’s books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed by bank credit expansion.
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.
* * *
Somewhat explains his recent commentary...
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Dur digital currency id used fer when da lights is being on, son.
Business idea. Develop an app/Firefox addon that automatically blocks posts that begin with the word 'listen'. Alternative is an app that automatically downvotes same. The ipo alone will make you a multi-millionaire.
As posted earlier today... we CAN have honest, real and universal Money and Currency if we use Gold Coins and Gold Notes.
In my post of (11/08/2014 - 19:35 | 5428339) I talked about issuing Currency in various Metric weights of Gold coins. E.g. 1, 2, 5, 10, 25 gram coins. Said coins would be encapsulated in hard plastic, to keep them from wear, tear and deliberate scratches. As an afterthought, the inner surfaces of the plastic casing would have sophisticated Holograms to ensure authenticity.
Blogger Steroid responded (11/08/2014 - 20:34 | 5428477 ) that gold could be woven into micro or nano fibers and weaved with Kevlar into Notes that are virtually indestructible -- compared to current Notes.
So, between Gold Coins and Gold-woven Notes, we could have all the Honest and Real Money the world needs.
So where do we get all that gold from to get this rolling?
A few milligrams of gold leaf sandwiched into a note made of polymer layers.
Much like the "detailed metallic imagery" in the Banque du Canada note.
If there is 170,000 tonnes of gold stacked,
Then there is 170 quadrillion milligrams of gold stacked,
Or 170 million quadrillion nanograms of gold stacked.
Would a penny per nanogram cover the debt?
So you got 170,000 tonnes to kick in. Im a little short.
Heh, heh, heh. don't I wish.
At the rate I'm going I need
Only 17 gigayears.
Slightly under 24 grams per person on earth
1 Troy ounce - approx 31 grams.
I American Eagle puts you above that mark.
Won't matter, after all the defaults, no one will have any money to get anything started execpt the holders of bullion who will sell it to the gvt to make the precious $5000 coins, start rolling your eyes.
How will they pay you for your gold? Fiat or force? My guess is they will force you.
It won't work that way, methinks.
Gold won't circulate. Not for everyday commerce. It is your "reserve" . How much is needed? How much at $100,000.00 per ounce? Sound stupid? Well what is a dollar? How much is it worth?
You don't know. Your just " trained" and conditioned to value everything in dollars.
Suppose..... The average house = 10 ounces of gold?
A car, 1 ounce of gold.
An ounce of gold is an ounce of gold. You need to mine it, buy it or steal it. You can't print it at will. Makes it perfect. Except for "Them".
Another thing is a few hunder years of honest money lots of people will have accumulated a good amount of savings. Whats to keep us from having a velocity issue?
A constitutional convention and defaults.
Alan Greespan famously said that...
Then he betrayed humanity. Then he married a Joker-Face Bitch journalist. Then he got really old and was about to die when he suddenly decided to go back to talking about gold and freedom and the dangers of debasment of fiat currency again as if the intervening 50 years of his treasonous evil life had never happened.
The absolute determination that gold and silver are the true money!
Genesis 13:1-2
"And Abram went up out of Egypt, he and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south. And he was very rich in possession of gold and silver."
Along the way they stopped at a Chick-Fil-A.......I read that in II Nebuchadnezzar.
There is not much hope to progress for people believing, value come out of sticks, sacks and jingles.
The tell goes, money came to birth in pure virginity to help people up to produce more. And in this fashion we like to have a pricture of it, smiling.
The ancestry of money is not bartering. It's the creation of value with the sword. And money had to kept on that idea, summing the result of the battle behind worth creation in two columns, credit and debit, won or lose.
The equilibrium status, also known as peace an wellfare for all, freedom, is of none interest.
The whom the attention, that's always the question and it's a moral choice.
If you let that job on the money, you'll ever fail.
Don't get me wrong I like gold. But, the statists see a never ending digital world where modernity allows for the banker/politician to be unaccountable in the fog of mathematics and slight of hand.
The thing about math.....is.....it's math.
Unless it's Common Core math.....and then.....2 plus 2 does not equal 4.
A gold standard is a step in the right direction, but its administration is inextricably linked with a measure of government control which is abuseable.
Currency must intrinsically be comprised of gold and silver and not find value by proxy.
Its the actual buying power that matters. I care not where the paper comes from as long as it buys the same gallon of gas.
Remember the gvt gave you that superior 40 year car and you crashed it, so now you are walking and don't care about the price of a gallon of gas.
Gold is tooo blingy and besides i don't have enough of it. Much better off with paper gold as you can do origami or make paper hats or airplanes for the kids birthdays or Christmas parties. It's all about the kids really.
A really nice stockbroker, well he had a nice voice informed me that if i hand over my stack i can get credits and merits and qualify for a further 5% reduction on groupon coupons.
I sleep better now not having to worry about that stack hidden in the house. i can finally start living , getting my life back on track. . . SOBS UNCONTROLLABLY
You need a fucking boating accident.
Gold Bitchez....I pick up pennies
I bet real good hookers take gold. Just sayin.
wedding rings
Ooh, harsh. +1
Interesting article. I'm always amazed how nothing changes. Same problems, same things are blamed, same solutions suggested. As a Jew myself, I wonder when I will need to flee this country. Most of the bankers are Jewish, so this doesn't bode well. The people will once again think all Jews are zionists (like thinking all white people are Klan members).
Greenspan and Obama are examples of how it will never change. Everyone is corrupted by money and power. The only variable is how much it takes.
This time around it may be status as an "american" that gets you thrown in the oven.
October 26, 2010
I take this opportunity to comment on the precious metals markets and in particular the silver markets. More than two years ago, the agency began an investigation into silver markets. I have been urging the agency to say something on the matter for months. The public deserves some answers to their concerns that silver markets are being, and have been, manipulated.
The legal definition of manipulation under the law is a high bar to prove. It is a much different test than what the average person might consider as manipulation. Under existing law, to prove manipulation, the government is required to demonstrate not only specific intent, we also need to prove that as a result of the intent and market control, that activity caused an artificial price—a point which can certainly be debated by economists. Attempted manipulation is less difficult to prove—requiring an intent to manipulate and some overt act in furtherance of that intent. There are also other violations of law that could contort markets and distort prices.
I believe that there have been repeated attempts to influence prices in the silver markets. There have been fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control that price. Based on what I have been told by members of the public, and reviewed in publicly available documents, I believe violations to the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) have taken place in silver markets and that any such violation of the law in this regard should be prosecuted.
In saying this, I am fully aware of the prohibition from divulging trader names or information about their positions. I am extremely careful not to violate the law in this, or any, regard. I also cannot pre-judge anything the agency may do with regard to our silver investigation, or any other matter.
The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which I strongly supported, contains new manipulation provisions as well as antidisruptive trading rules. These new authorities, along with the implementation of thoughtful position limits in metals will go a long way toward ensuring more efficient and effective metals markets devoid of fraud, abuse, and manipulation.
Thoughtful investigations take time. The CFTC staff has worked extremely hard on the silver investigation. That said, there is a point at which it is our responsibility to say something. Within the law, I have done so. I am hopeful that the agency will speak publicly about the investigation in the very near future and when they do so that it will be in a more granular fashion than I am permitted from doing at this time.
Last Updated: October 26, 2010
A report was issued.....NO PRICE FIXING OF SILVER WAS FOUND! Ummm...ok then. Back to stealing.Humans need to learn to exchange physical gold (money). The moment some pack of predators calling themselves a "central bank" or "government" creates a "currency" with some supposed relationship to gold, the predators will always win, they will always steal untold wealth by means of changing the mandated relationship between gold and their fiat paper (like they did in 1933 in the USSA), and/or they will create more "paper gold" (fiat currency) than they have physical to back it up.
So, the only solution that can possibly work is... humans get used to buying and selling with the physical gold itself. No currency. No gold receipts. Nothing but real value for real value, with no third parties involved.
The reason banksters and government totally freak out when this is mentioned is... because they'd have to go produce something for a living if all their fraudulant paper scams were shut down. And the only way to shut them down is to trade real, physical gold for real, physical goods and goodies, or real physical goods and goodies for real, physical gold.
People think "the world just can't be that simple". But the fact is, the world only works efficiently and honestly when the world does work that simple.
^^^This.
Fair enough. I'll do that but not when PMs are grossly undervalued.
Sure you can... just do the half that makes sense given your analysis. Trade the goods and goodies you produce for gold. But if you think gold and silver are grossly undervalued (and I agree), then trade fiat for goods and goodies (as long as suckers remain who accept fiat).
Nonetheless, trading with gold became as common as trading with fiat is today, you can be sure gold would not be undervalued... or overvalued.
Everybody should carry scales and the means to cut gold as well.
If Acapulco gold is involved, possibly.
You just have to look back at the past to see into the future.
Gold has stood the test of time, it was here long before the dollar and will be here long after it.
Fiat currencies come and go, but after the dust settles there will always be gold.
This is the reason no one can talk me out of owning precious metals and it's the reason I couldn't give a flying monkey about $ £ € ¥ nominated price.
My wealth is counted in ounces and kilos and in other tangible items that have intrinsic value or use that will not just disappear at a stroke of a key.
"You just have to look back at the past to see into the future."
Yes ... and if the government wants your gold they will take it. Probably through a 'srategic asset tax' of 90% for all precious metal trades made between individuals. Of course, the government will buy it back from you for 10% of market value.
In 1980, when the eastern banks wanted to shut down the Hunts and protect their march '80 shorts, they just told the COMEX to suspend silver trading ... they did and silver goes from $50 per oz to $10 per oz. The Government has so many ways to protect the banks and confiscate your precious metal hoard.
If you want to know how to really protect your wealth ... buy my newsletter
The chinks are paying him to talk up gold.
He spent most of his time at the Fed talking it down.
It all comes down to responsibility, labor forces it. If you labor you want money to be based on labor, gold is labor based.
"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value."
Sorry, but tell that to someone that bought alot of gold at $2k/oz.
It might be different still if you told that to someone that bought a lot of gold at $.025k/oz about 15 years ago. But the point of holding a significant amount of gold is that you can be assured of having a significant amount of wealth, regardless of the ups and downs versus the fiat currencies.
I, for one, do not day trade gold and silver coins, so could care less what the paper pushers do to it on a daily basis. They are busy digging the very same hole that they themselves will be resting at the bottom of one day. Happy digging and God speed fellas!
CFTC site won't allow search on "silver manipulation".
I just go there for the Bart Chilton swim shoot layouts.
I heard he's now posing for romance novel covers....but it's just a rumor.
There is a country with gold backed currency although not explicitly stated as such. I was in Bolivia earlier this year and walked into the Central Bank and traded my Boliviano currency for Bolivian gold coins and I'm not even a citizen or resident.
Yeah, right.
So, do you still have these gold coins? I would like a physical description of what you have.
And what was, generally speaking, the exchange rate. dollar=Bolivian= gold.
Just curious.
See post below. The exchange rate was like buying from the US Mint. A significant premium over spot but it was directly from the Central Bank.
traded my Boliviano currency for Bolivian gold coins
Wait a minute.....are telling you can just walk in and they'll give you gold for money?
Yes that is correct. Being a foriegner I obviously had to exchange dollars for Bolivianos first but any local only needs Bolivianos. I bought one coin called an Indigena and one called a Minero.
Here is a link to the Central Bank's web page for gold coins.
http://www.bcb.gob.bo/especiales/monedasbilletes/index.html
last time i looked you can buy gold from a vending machine in DE
And in Dubai.
And here is the real problem:
The problem is that all these individual loans create an environment where credit is more and more available. In order to continually increase profits, bankers loosen and loosen credit requirements until they are throwing loans at unemployed homeless people. Then comes a moment when someone sees the insanity and the crash follows.
Gold DOES NOT prevent this process. Gold was the currency du-jour during the 1929 crash and 1932 depression. This is because the process has nothing to do with the currency itself. It is caused by FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING.
No. Gold was not the "currency du-jour" .
You ruin your whole argument with that statement. Gold is MONEY. It has been currency. But it wasn't the currency du-jour in 1930. Paper dollars were.
Gold and Silver= Real Money. They both fit every definition, gold better.
Gold Backed Currency= A note convertible into gold, directly.
Modern Currency/ Fiat Currency = A very good paper/ fiber product backed by our mutual fantasy and the long arm of the government, whatever the fuck that is.
A Gold based system removes " their" privilidge to fuck us. " they" don't like that. We should.
Edit; the insanity can only exist in the fiat paradigm.
Sophistry. We've been there and done that with gold.
We've already been over that road. Gold -> gold backed -> fiat.
Gold doesn't solve the problem.
If you keep making the same mistake again and again and again; insisting on conflating a medium of exchange with a store of value you will always get this progression.
Bingo. I take it you my friend are a producer?
you miss the purpose of a gold standard is not to prevent recession but to mitigate recessions. the threat of a creditor calling in your gold is enough to constrain the market. the post war bretton woods agreement worked like a dream. the usa defaulted as it should have when france called in its gold and the usa did not have it to pay them. the usa used its economic force to change to the oil based dollar standard rather than default. the gold standard would work better in a floating forex so there is a daily measure of default risk so countries can print to the limit of the market and the investor can stay even no matter where he is with a few gold and silver coins.
Bull. The reason for a gold standard is to avoid the issues of barter. Equal value for equal value barter is fine. Unequal it sucks.
Now a chit redeamable for x has the value of x. It need not be gold. Hell a hand shake could work. It depends on the handshake?
Does that sound crazy? All the best deals I ever made were done that way.
Regardless of the narrative one chooses to believe, I like what Kyle Bass has stated: "Buying gold is just buying a put against the idiocy of the political cycle. It's That Simple."
http://olduvai.ca
FUCK MY LIFE.
FUCK MY LIFE.
Here are crooks who enable the silver manipulation. Give them a jingle and ask them what is it like to be stooges for JP Morgan?
U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission:
http://www, cftc. gov/
http://www, cftc. 9ov/About/Com m issioners/i n dex. htm
Chairman Gary Gensler, http://www.cftc.gov/AboutJCornrnissioners/GaryGensler/index.htrn, email:
GGensler@CFTC.gov
Commissioner Michael Dunn, http://www.cftc.gov/About/Commissioners/MichaelDunn/index.htm, email:
MDunn@CFTC.gov
Commissioner Jill E. Sommers, http://www.cftc.qov/About/Commissioners/JillESommers/index.htm, email:
JSommers@CFTC.gov
Commissioner Bart Chilton, http://www.cftc.qov/About/Commissioners/BartChilton/index.htm, email:
BChilton@CFTC.gov
Commissioner Scott D. O’Malia, http://www.cftc.gov/About/Commissioners/ScottDOMalia/index.htm, email:
Somalia@ctfc.gov
Enforcement Division, email: enforcement@cftc.gov
Old list but still....they need some fans!
JP Morqan Chase:
http:~~www~~pm~rgan~c~m~pages~jpm~rgan~investbk~s~~uti~ns~c~mm~dities~team~b~ythemasters
Ms. Blythe Masters, email: Blythe.Masters@chase.com
Annmarie Hause, email: annmarie.hauser@jpmchase.com
Kristin Lemkau, email: kristin.lemkau@jpmorgan.com
Thomas A. Kelly, email: thomas.a.kelly@chase.com
Darin Oduyoye: darin.oduyoye@jpmchase.com
Doublas O. Morris, email: douglas.o.morris@jpmchase.com
Kirsten Chambers, email: kristen.chambers@jpmchase.com
Mary Sedarat, email: mary.sedarat@jpmorgan.com
John Johmann, email: john.johmann@jpmchase.com
Juliana R. Wheeler, email: juliana.r.wheeler@jpmchase.com
James P. Murphy, email: james.p.murphy@jpmchase.com
Jennifer R. Zuccarelli, email: jennifer.r.zuccarelli@jpmchase.com
Tasha Pelio, email: tasha.pelio@jpmorgan.com
Stefania Signorelli, email: stefania.signorelli@jpmorgan.com
Matthew Mcgrath, email: mattthew.mcgrath@jpmorgan.com
Valeria M. Cafe, email: valeria.m.cafe@jpmchase.com
All this gold buggery is not workable. So stop it please.
It is thier fall back plan and it sucks for people that are producers.
If they have to go back to gold they will. Right after they kill you and take your gold to do it. TPTB will not be issuing thier gold as coin. Yours on the other hand they are aok with that. Thats what all them bullets are for. Be carefull what you ask for.
Think they wont just take your gold by force?
I still have not pointed out a few other real bad issues with a gold standard. It is not going to work like you want ever.
Yes gold will keep its value relativly speaking. But as a monetary means of exchange not a good choice.
Rather than looking at this top down try looking at it bottem up. The coin you trade with should in an honest system buy the same amount as when you made the first deal. No matter when you make another deal with that very same coin.
You make the assumption that We won't defend our gold with force. And there's a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them. Maybe this is why they've been pushing gun control so hard?
Gome and get it!
Your pee shooter aint gonna stop fiat.
Isn't that "pea shooter"? Anyway, +1 for the Freudian slip of the week!
Thanks Alan!
Fuck you Alan.
(Back to basics.)
If you had a farm and hired me to pick crops by hand, how long would I have to work for you to pay me 1 oz of gold?
Can that be answered without any consideration of current wages/hr in fiat?
You are free to set the value of your labor. If you want to be paid in x,y or z its up to you.
"But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease"
This is by design.
Endeavor to persevere...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ
When that hangman's noose comes into focus you will start to reconsider your previous operating assumptions...
Greenspan is one of American history's biggest sell-outs IMHO.
IMHO every one even remotely associated with the FED ... is Truth Challenged
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/09/us-japan-economy-boj-idUSKBN0I...
Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda sprang easing surprise to head off damaging inflation forecast
By Leika Kihara
TOKYO Sun Nov 9, 2014 4:31am EST
(Reuters) - The Bank of Japan Governor not only surprised the markets with his latest splurge of monetary easing. He sprang it on his own board members just two days earlier, jolted into action to stop them making a low-ball forecast that might have sunk his flagship inflation target.
To achieve maximum effect for the shock decision, Haruhiko Kuroda and right-hand man Masayoshi Amamiya kept only a handful of elite central bank bureaucrats in the loop as they laid the ground for the expansion of their quantitative and qualitative easing (QQE) programme.
They didn't even give the usual forewarning to senior bureaucrats at the Ministry of Finance, according to interviews with nearly a dozen insiders and government sources with knowledge of the bank's deliberations.
No leaks reached the media, and the announcement at the Oct. 31 policy meeting pushed the Nikkei stock average to seven-year highs and the yen to seven-year lows against the dollar.
The market reaction will have been welcome news to Kuroda, but the impact he wanted above all was to alter inflation expectations in a country that has struggled with crippling deflation for two decades.
Timing was critical - and not of his choosing. At the policy meeting the board would also issue a new consumer inflation forecast for the next fiscal year, based on the median estimate from the nine members. But two days before publication, the preliminary estimate was only around 1.5 percent, three of the sources said.
That was well below the 1.9 percent forecast made in July, and if published could have been fatal to his key goal of hitting 2 percent from April next year. Since price expectations play a key role in the consumer behaviours that ultimately determine prices, doubts about the target could be self-fulfilling.
The more I read of the Maestro's early works the more I start to think that Bix Weir was on to something with his "Road to Roota" conspiracy. For those of you who haven't heard of this theory, essentially it is that Alan Greenspan infiltrated the Fed and then purposefully destroyed the Federal Reserve from the inside so that we would be forced to return to a sound money monetary system.
I don't think I've bought into that particular conspiracy yet but the facts Bix brings up are certainly "interesting".
Except his monetary policies destroyed the real economy, not the Fed(!)
I rather tend to think that his comments of late are trying to re-integrate himself after realising what a disaster he was at the Fed.
Funny how sane people become in the last years of their life. Greenspam is just old and trying to get into heaven.
Unless he's recanted on this as well, if he was part of Ayn Rand's "Collective" I'm fairly certain he's an atheist.
(Though perhaps you meant that as a metaphor for a concern for his legacy, his treatment in the history books, etc., in which case I suspect you're right on the, um, money.)
Problem is, "money" is also very easily manipulated. What we have today is not money but credit.
The next problem is the current system is not "free market".
The biggest next problem is that people are not the idealized fantasy figures Rand(im a hateful lesbo) presented them as. the minute one gets on top, he will either start buying everyone else and create a monopoly or use his money to suprss the competition.
Sorry Rand, but your bullshit fantasy is very easily proven to be just that: a fantasy.
And when the welfare bums get on top - everything is taken and wasted. There will always be a sheep-herder, just support the best.
I agree with the the article and with CDiss. They know what they are doing and it is criminal regardless of whatever reasons they use to justify their actions. I'm pretty sure they justify it by rationalizing that in the modern world free markets are too dangerous, there are too many threats and somebody has to be in control but they fail to see what technology really has to offer for the survival of people or refuse to acknowledge the benefits of open source software because it is not in their interests.
Dudes, they need to be arrested and prosecuted.
Every American should be maintaining a treason list. A list of all of the criminals and their crimes that the list maker is aware of. I call mine the Crimes Against the American People List(CAAPL).
List their name, personal info and background, position(s), crime(s) committed(Article 3, Section 3 treason, counterfeiting, ponzi operations, murder, war-crimes, theft. oath violations, etc.), details of each of their crime(s).
Such a list can be used to bring them to justice later, even if the list creator is not still around.
An American, not US subject.
"So, they want to maintain lists?! 330 million can play that game too."
my list would contain 99% of CONgress both todays and January's
The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests. - Rothschild Brothers of London
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-23/useful-idiots-and-something-not...
So, where you been keeping all that "GOLD" you been hoarding all these years Greens?
bet you got bunches
Greenspan: "Gold is money"
The power and money elites to Greenspan: "We'll pay you a bunch if you'll provide cover for our ponzies, scams, and thefts."
Greenspan: "Gold is not money."
The power and money elites to Greenspan: "We're done with you."
Greenspan: "Gold is money."
An American, not US subject.
"Remember, ignorance lies not with the liar, but with the believer."
And this is where Fraud and Criminal Banking Started.
There is no need for this part, especially now.
This part is essentially coin shaving, the banker shaves the coins that you deposited with him and steals some of your gold.
The society has to deal with market distortions when the banks get big, and the market distortions cause mal-investment... (since the consequences of poor spending are hidden until its to-late to correct them... causing crashes and mass poverty.
This should be abolished and criminalized and punished by the highest order of the law, such activities in banking should be treated as counterfeiting because thats exactly what it is.
The secret service should by all counts of the law, shut down the federal reserve and restructure all member banks.
"A free banking system based on gold is able to extend credit and thus to create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the production requirements of the economy."
A fraudulent-reserve banking system "...is able to extend credit and thus to create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the production requirements of the economy." That is fraud, as they steal the depoistors' deposits and counterfeit money out of thin-air. It is only sustainable for a short time unless backed by the violence of government like the FedRes is.
A non-criminal government that is properly empowered to provide justice to the people would quickly bring such a schem to an end.
I.e. don't confuse "free banking" with fraudulent-reserve banking.ac
An American, not US subject.
"Guillotine the Fed!"a
That might be your best post yet. Integrity Matters. Thats what it all comes down to.
The currency must be backed by something other than the good ol' boys word. Gold fits the requirement.
So does a gallon of milk.
http://www.safehaven.com/article/35742/the-financial-repression-authority-with-chris-martenson
Dr. Chris Martenson Talks FINANCIAL REPRESSION in clear and simple language that we can all follow. A professional educator, he makes the complex easy to grasp. Elements of Financial Repression require this skill to make clear the stealth game governments are taking against its citizens in the name of preserving the financial stability of the state.
Financial Repression
"When governments get into too much debt there are only so many ways to get themselves out from under the debt." There is:
1. Austerity,
2. Default on the Debt or
3. Financial Repression
In reality, the third is the only politically viable solution. Financial Repression " the cornerstone involves taking a little from everybody and giving it to a couple of favored parties". To do this involves three basic elements:
1. Negative Real Interest Rates,
2. Ring Fencing via Regulatory Controls,
3. Elimination of warning signals such as gold appreciation.
Japan as an Example
Let's consider Japan as an example. The Yen is down 33% over the last year as a stated policy direction of the government's Financial Repression implementation. As a direct consequence, imports are higher therefore making consumption items like energy more expensive for the average person in Japan.
Real wages and savings for the middle class in Japan are falling. However, if you are a corporation like Toyota it is better for business. Chris argues that Financial Repression is nothing more than a transfer from the people to companies such as Toyota . The government effectively believes it knows better through central control and planning where the public's money will be most effectively utilized.
Central planning never worked in Russia and after more than 20 years the proof can once again be confirmed in Japan. This is the stealth game being played against the public, not only in Japan but by countries practicing policies of Financial Repression around the world.
The Coming Crisis
True wealth NEVER gets destroyed, it only gets transferred!"
Chris points out that wealth is never destroyed. but rather it is the claims on wealth which are destroyed during a crisis. "A profound currency accident is coming" according to Chris where he "would not be surprised to see the Yen be completely obliterated just like the the Zimbabwe dollar." His strong recommendations are:
1. Understand the problem,
2. To importantly, take action,
3. Be in Productive Assets,
4. Make sure your money is managed by those who understand the new reality and today's true risks.
Wealth can no longer be stored in paper currency or "paper" claims in a Fiat Currency System.
Price and Value are separating and people forget that price is what you pay, but value is what you get. We soon will see an event where it will be perceived that great wealth is again destroyed. However, what investors MUST fully comprehend is that wealth is not destroyed but rather only transferred.
True wealth is the land, the property, plant & equipment, productive enterprises, raw resources and the people who fashion it all. That is the real wealth. Everything else is nothing more than paper claims on the true wealth. These claims can be made worthless overnight but wealth never is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0eSCECnqrw
Few people know that Greenspan was once a staunch advocate of the Austrian School of economics. His ideas about gold are not new to those of us who know his history. His essay, quoted above, was written in 1967 and it arguably the most important treatise on how gold stands in the ways of the State's oppression, protecting property rights and guarding against the theft of wealth.
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/what-caused-a-brilliant-young-economi...
Get the full essay here...
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/gold_and_e...
True. Whenever I point that out, people look at me like I've grown a tree out one ear.
Have you read the "Road to Roota" theory? It shows evidence that Greenspan and others were forced to abbandon the gold standard, and so set up this fiat system to fail and return to gold. :: http://www.roadtoroota.com/public/190.cfm
An important read over all.
The debate fiat vs gold coin. Its a false choice. Those are not the only choices. The third choice is never mentioned. An energy backed coin or an asset backed coin. Why is that? It seems in an honest debate the fiat and gold coin are not the best choice. Just about every question put up I was easily able to answer. I thought monday morning all the bigtime gold bugs would show up. Makes me wonder if they believe or are they just playing thier book?
By framing the debate into two bad choices they get thier desiered outcome.
If you really want to see an ass whippin. Look at the advantages we Would gain with a true asset backed coin. The actuall buying power is what matters. All the rest is just more smoke.
Anybody up for round two? Im game.
Good things can happen without force or lies. The truth dont need a coat of paint. Greespan is fos on every level. Even now he is trying to sucker us all again as he always was. That guy understands money. Why dont we see one word from him about an asset backed coin? Not one economist ever mentioned energy backed coin that I can recall.
We are always facing false choices. Trick questions. This is one of the most pressing issues society faces. The least we should expect is an open and honest debate about it.
A save the ass of the middle-class lecture this is. Isn't?
It's mark, not having found out the nature of money. A commodity of objective value, ha-ha, give me a horse for a kingdom.
Medium of exchange - don't you see the crystall globe in midst of the room and the fingers tipped upon.
The middle-class dream we see profiling in utter despair there could be wealth that doesn't hurt along what a coin is claiming: do, what I've paid you for.
We feel invited to give a hand to the venture,