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StealthFlation!!! Got Gold?
The StealthFlation Blog
Money is stored labor. Labor is part of human life.
To devalue money is to debase life itself.
It's not about today's Dollar and Treasury safe haven bid, it's about tomorrow's confidence in our monetary system. Are you confident in the malignant malfunctioning monetization?
STEALTHFLATION: An intractable economic condition that inevitably arises as excessively issued fiat currency compulsively pursues non-productive wealth assets in a grossly overleveraged economy, which has been artificially reflated by monetary authorities in a misguided attempt to synthetically engineer growth via extreme monetization. (Money Printing & Interest Rate Suppression)
This effectively prevents the real economy on the ground from realizing the healthy normalization of free market forces necessary to genuine bottom up capital formation, which is essential for generating legitimate and sustainable economic growth.
Under the imposition of StealthFlation, asset prices are inordinately inflated while the generative velocity of money is eviscerated. Worse still, the seeds of hyperinflation are sown, as the overtly financialized economy becomes increasingly dependent upon the interminable monetization.
They Will Reflate! There Won’t Be Growth! There Will Be Blood!
THE ORIGINAL 90% SILVER ROMAN DENARIUS
DEBASED TO LESS THAN 5% SILVER – BY 350 A.D. IT WAS WORTHLESS
Happy Holidays from the StealthFlation blog, be sure to stuff some gold bullion in your Christmas stockings.
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gold and silver for most who have plastic or paper to buy shit, are just barbarous relics of the ancients, right? or maybe the modern age
i would say stock certificates (anachronism) are the new money, because they do increase in value as the Fed and the government debase the other currency. (and since the stock market went paperless they can be exchanged just as quickly) stocks are a store of value, so you see if you want to make that your definition, then money can be just about anything. for most of history wealth has been land cattle and gold. land could be exchanged on a handshake, cattle are consummable, gold is and was irredeemable which is to say gold should never be confused with the filthy lucre. now that currency is no longer tangibile we are back to those values, eating less beef, needing less land, we still find gold for other than monetary reasons to be attractive.
stored labor...i agree. and with 7 billion laborers (no to mention the continued robotization of labor), i think labor will continuably be devalued. oversupplied labor is deflation.
but i agree you should hold some gold. but in the short term we'll be fighting deflation and commodities will continue to drop. golf will win, not because of inflation, but because of the eventually collapse in currencies - hyperinflation. just keep buying small bits regularly, nothing is changing anytime soon.
Gold?
WTF would I own a doorstop for? I have land, cash, equities and diversified strategy unlike the morons who believed you gold carpetbaggers who are now bankrupt and jumping out windows.
Why don't you pumpers simply admit it. You sold at 1900 and bought biotech and let the fish take the fall....
Then you pumped biotech and these idiots backed up the truck and stacked biotech shares cuase they are going to da moon!!!
c'mon goldbugs
Why don't you gold bugs put these gold pumpers on a pike in the town square where they belong. They are more evil than the bankers.
They broke most of you
Even with the healthy correction, gold remains the best performing asset class of the Monetized New Millennium, bar none.
Be sure to call me when that changes brother.
Gold should do well for a few months. It's not out of the woods longer term though...
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/gold-elliott-waves-forecast-a-multi-m...
I think it is a really valuable and informative article about stealth flation which will decrease the real economy of the country so much to the ground. It is necessary to Purchase Dissertation with good financial and economic stabilization.
Why argue about it...You either have it and want more of it, or, you can't see further than the nose on your face. That's right, YOU ARE BLIND!
THE FIAT RUG WILL BE PULLED FROM UNDER YOU SOON
Money is whichever side of a transaction you could get rid of for any cost, if one of the pair went Z-List. Potatoes Tools Clothes Jewellry PM's etc have a long history of not being Z-List, unlike currencies which have reinvented themselves more times than Madonna. I'm on the tatties....
Good to see an article comparing the value of life to the value of money...since so many trade one for the other. To toot my own horn, I've been a proponent of this idea for quite a while.
It's pretty clear to me: Inflation steals life. Your labor has the shelf life of lettuce.
Maybe we should just add "sunk costs" to the common core? /sarc Because that's what we're doing; we're teaching a new generation that savers are bad and following the herd into mal-investment while those in power frontrun is the only viable alternative...and as most of us @ ZH know, that's a complete and utter lie (read as buy silver/gold).
/rant
You can overreach and overextend with paper, not so much with gold and silver...
Stored labour, that is exactly what money should be in a clean, fair system. Our system is not that clean, nor fair. One objection, anyway, to the gold preference over any other real asset, or commodities. In my view all commodities will behave in a similar way in the medium term. Gold, of course, included.
Normally I just watch silver, since I swapped out the gold I had for silver in an ill-conceived GSR trade some years ago. Today a golden bull is thrashing and trashing the paper trade's china shop.
It's so fun to watch, wish I had some of dat.
Think of it this way, you may live a more fulfilling life as a wealthy common man with your silver, than a poor king owning some gold. With gold there are many unknown enemies because they know you have wealth.
Silver is up more than gold today/???
Got gold?? Yes I'd imagine the entire zh readership has some form of gold after being pressure-sold this underperforming, zero return asset for almost 5 years.
Got a new story?
Even with the severe correction, Gold remains the best performing asset class of the New Monetized Millennium, bar none. I wonder why that is?
Be sure to call me when that changes brother.........
That is incorrect. Bitcoin has outperformed gold by thousands of percentage points in the last decade and will continue to in the decades to come.
Gold has been money for 2000 years. If you want a track record with staying power Gold is where it is at. Besides crypto is just technology and as such a similar technology could be tied to an ounce of gold that you owned and stored in a vault. Learn your history.
2000 years ago they thought the earth was flat as well. There is a process called 'evolution' , which means we move through time in a forwards direction , not a backwards direction.
Horseback was a method for transportation for thousands of years too.
Paper letters were a method of communication for thousands of years too.
It's easy:
Either TPTB fuck us all and bring back the middle ages -> got gold?
Or we move into the next chapter of humanization -> got bitcoin?
My bitcoins are hedged with gold.
It wasn't even around when the New Monetized Millennium started. Not enough data nor volumes to be even considered.
Sorry Brother
Computers weren't around when there were Type Writers either.
You keep comparing bitcoins to computers and typewriters. Have you diluted your argument that much? Both used as a means to relay a message in writing, which comes from Thought. Clearly you have not thought this out enough but stand on a soap box mispreaching your own point.
The value of a typewriter is the thought man conceives to put on paper. If computers vaporized tomorrow we'd still be thinking (hopefully) and go back to type writers in the mean time.
Thought in this example is the gold. The medium doesn't matter in its transmission of writing, only the speed and convenience of the text representing the thoughts.
Face it, bitcoins are another form of fiat. Plain and simple.
That is incorrect.
Fiat means 'by decree' , in legal jargon that means it is sanctioned by government and taxes are required to be paid in Fiat in the denomination of that country. In no way does bitcoin fit into the definition of being a fiat currency.
BTC and blockchain tech, BTChez
A very nice compliment to shiny things and vise versa.
Top o' the season to the Tylers and all at ZH!
have fun putting your money into paperless lotto tix. as for me, i'll take mine in metal...
ZH seems to me to be a pro metals forum. You want to hype BC, fine but don't expect many here to get excited about it. BC is very manipulable (is that a word?) just as fiat is. Gold bugs are looking for a hedge to hide value in. Phys has at least a good chance of retaining value when the greenback collapses and is replaced by the new fiat paper or crypto currency. Phys metals have thousands of years of history, see the Denarius. BC is the new untested idea that may go somewhere and may go poof one morning. Enjoy your BC and if it turns out you were right and it was a great investment, you're a marter man than me. I want safe, in my hands value and growth of it's assumed value is not my mjor concern. In hindsight I wish I had planted cows in my field.
Yeah, like I haven't been up one side of this place and down the other in 4 and 1/2 years, you're preaching your remedial ZH blah dee blah to the wrong person...
I'm not "hyping" anything. How much has gold and silver been hyped in the last three years only to utterly destroy the real purchasing power of those who bought it, and bought into it. Unlike thousands of percentage points in appreciation for the technology that has died about 187 times so far according to ZH commenters up until recently. Get a fucking grip.
How do you know that people who are involved in BTC do not own metals, etc. also? This very tiny incorrect and inaccurate assumption shows quite a lack of flexibility in one's thought process.
You should consider the fact that you're just a little behind the curve on a lot this stuff compared to a lot of people.
Taking calculated, educated risk with capital and being very flexible have done well by me over the last few years and my core positions remain comfortably intact.
BTC and associated tech is no longer an "untested idea", it is a functioning global network of disintermediated, frictionless, trustless transactions and contractual agreements among many other things.
You need to get out of this echo chamber more often, there's a big world out there.
I disagree. Money is not stored labor. That is what they want us to believe it is. However, it is not.
People can be divided into those who create and distribute money and those who need money to live their life. The people who create money have absolutely nothing to do with labor. They create it at a whim for their own reasons.
That's the entire point?
It has to honestly represent stored labor, which today's money most assuredly does not. Our money has obviously been compromised by human avarice, which is preceisely why it must be backed by the integrity of Gold moving forward.
Short and sweet definition of "StealthFlation" - good for passing along or printing out for others to read. Thanks for the words Bruno.
p.s. don't forget silver. A ZHer comment in the last couple of weeks explored the idea of silver being manipulated to destroy its perceived value (w.r.t. to gold), in order to destroy/distort/hide the available quantities and bring about the notion of rarity on par with gold, making it unaffordable for the commoner.
Silver will play as big a role as gold in our fates.
Concur Skateboarder.
Silver is the common man's Gold...........
I'm not ashamed to admit I am a common man. But how many common men actually own physical silver? I read somewhere that their are fewer than 10 ounces per person sitting around in a form that could be converted to coins and bars.
just a reminder, up until 50 years ago everyone had Silver. All our coinage was 90% Silver, and of course you could exchange a dollar bill for 4 Quarters, 10 dimes, etc...but nobody had felt a need to do that. Gold was used to handle Settlement on Balance of Trade. Instead of me detailing some points, its much easier to point to 2 articles written so well by Hugo Salinas Price. The first link is the short version, the second longer and more detailed
Short version
04/February/2009
Gold: the protector and creator of jobs
Hugo Salinas Price
http://www.plata.com.mx/mplata/articulos/articlesFilt.asp?offset=70&fiid...
================================================
snippit:
Gold has everything to do with the loss of jobs in the US, and gold has everything to do with recovering jobs for the US economy.
Let me go back to the 60's. During those years, the US and the world were on a Gold-and-Dollar Standard.
Back in the 60's, countries were very careful about maintaining a constant monetary balance between their exports and their imports. They all wanted to be in a situation where they would export more than they imported, so that they would have increasing balances of gold or dollars in their Treasuries.
To state this more correctly, they all wanted to export more than they imported, except the United States.
The US didn't care very much about maintaining a balance between exports and imports, because the US was able to pay for its deficit in trade (more imports than exports) by simply sending more dollars overseas.
=================================================
16/June/2010The gold standard: generator and protector of jobs
http://www.plata.com.mx/mplata/articulos/articlesFilt.asp?offset=60&fiid...
============================================================
It's a figure of speech, but good point you raise..............
I guess i'm a common man. In October, instead of putting money into a rolled over IRA, I started buying silver. When my November shipment comes in i'll have 11.25 ounces of silver in hand. It's not difficult to do and i'm not shorting other family expenses to do it.
What ever happened to being a professional. Back in the day pros could make an honest living by simply sorting out the truth for costomers. It was called quality service. No need for gimmics or trickery. Just do that thing you were paid to do. We still see it but it has become rare these days. In just about every field the so called experts are FOS. Like the krugster he absolutly knows way more about economics than I ever will. The real issue is he is not telling the truth. So how much he knows is not the question. Integrity is the real question. Not some paper hanging on his wall or some prize he won. He is FOS thats all that matters.
Go down the list of current events. One so called expert or pro after another just dancing all around the truth. Krugman never said To devalue money is to devalue life itself. No the krugster is now on the road dancing all around the truth. Its in just about every profession. Drs do it. Lawyers do it. Cops do it. Everybody on the TV does it. And we sit and wonder how come everybody is so stupid? Well its right there. We were lied too at every turn. The so called experts and teachers either lied or simply repeted lies they themselves were taught. They never questioned anything. We have names for it. The company line. The game. It does not change the fact its not the truth. I used to think it was important to note weather they knew it was not true. But then I got to thinking on it. Its the duty of the expert/teacher to know the truth and sell that only. Integrity matters more than we can know. Its the core of society. Our words are the bond in that we do as we say.
What we need are more true professionals. Ones that dont need to lie to keep thier jobs. This keeping of the job now while destroying the profession. Its a great disservice.
Bruno I thank you for this great bit of truth.
This is simply a matter of supply and demand. When we demand professionals, we will get professionals. Until then, well, we get what we tolerate.
Generally speaking, lying is a cooperative act. Most people consent to being lied to. Truth is frequently inconvenient if not painful.
(What happens when a politician lies? The sheep shrug and say, "what do you expect?" and vote for him again.)
Solution? From this second on, tolerate nothing less than honesty in every aspect of your life. Don't just be honest, but also expect honesty from everyone else. Hold them accountable when they lie.
VWANDY,
BINGO!!!
Unfortunately there is more money to be made deceiving or manipulating the populis. This perverse incentive is increased with the size and scope of federal government and the central bank control of our manipulated currency.
Oh well, time to buy more gold, food, guns, etc...
The current POTUS is leading the "dancing all around the truth" crowd.
Money is an idea backed by confidence. My two page long treatise What is Money? from 1996 proves this idea out to be 100% correct. Fiat paper currencies are not money, they are a scam, every one of them that has ever been tried out. If you make a list using the alphabet as your guide, you will find over 600 of them that have failed before you even get out of the letter B!! How much more proof do you need to see the truth?
My paper WIM? will be pasted in here if it is allowed.
What is Money?
One of the most esoteric, confused, convoluted and obfuscated subjects that has ever been debated in the history of mankind is the subject of money. And from money, we go into other subjects such as banking, inflation and finance. But let's start with money first and get it properly defined, so that we can make some sense out of the whole mess, OK? And after we get money properly defined, we can then use that concept to think with and come up with good answers to some very perplexing questions. When you start to think about a problem with the components of that problem properly identified and named, it will be much easier to see the real causes and effects going on. So here we go now.
All that money is, is "an idea backed by confidence". That's all, nothing more or less than that. And in that word confidence is buried the fact that certain people have agreed upon something to function as a medium of exchange. That medium of exchange is money, regardless of whether it is wampum, diamonds or precious metals. The confidence factor then comes into strong play here and is the whole basis of that medium of exchange. Money acts as a sort of "lubricant" in the dry mechanics of an economy. It's just not always feasible for a person to haul around his crops, goods or livestock in search of someone who is willing to trade with him somewhere for what HE needs. So what do people do to get around that? Well, they use an intermediary which we call money.
When people agree that some quantity of the money represents a certain amount of labor, it can then be exchanged with someone else for a similar amount of represented labor. And that's the main thing that money does. It represents the fact that a person had to do some kind of work to come into possession of that amount of money. Usually. Now when someone either steals goods or money, or creates some "money" through some bogus means, then the confidence factor suffers and it becomes worth less and less over time. When governments print up fiat currency which has no real value behind it, it's not worth as much as actual money, something which DOES have real value behind it.
When you have two people, and one of them has to sweat out in the hot sun or work in freezing cold to earn a living while the other one does little or nothing, then there is a disparity and animosity between them. Why should one toil away while the other one is able to loaf and still eat? Welfare programs, and this includes government jobs which produce no real products (almost all government jobs fall into this category by the way!) run by governments with unlimited access to fiat currencies ALWAYS cause at first an "inflation" of the fiat currency, and then a total collapse of it. Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't look after and care for those who cannot work due to some kind of disability, but it should be done with real compassion, and NOT with the viewpoint of making someone dependent upon the government so that they then agree with all kinds of insane laws just to keep the bread and butter coming in. These economic collapses are always the result of a socialist/communist/fascist type of government. And they never last more than several decades at most. The saddest part of the whole thing is that through the manipulation of the history books, people do not know the true causes of these engineered monetary debacles, and so repeat them with great regularity.
Let's look at gold as money. It takes a certain amount of labor and equipment to locate and then collect this metal. Now back in 1925, an ounce of gold would buy a man a pretty nice suit, and today, an ounce of gold will still buy a man a pretty nice suit. Why is that? It's because back in 1925, the ounce of gold required a certain amount of time and labor to locate and collect it. Today, it still takes about the same amount of time and labor to locate and collect an ounce of gold. Please don't get confused now over the fact that "dollars" today don't equate with dollars in 1925. If we were still on the gold standard, the number of dollars that were equal to one ounce of gold in 1925 would still be the same today.
Because of the fact that our "money" is no longer backed by anything of real value, it takes more "dollars" to equal the one ounce of gold. Why is that? There are several reasons why, so let's take a look at a few of them now. First off, when these "dollars" are printed up willy-nilly, they lose most of their value right there. A big reason is that the "dollars" are all printed up with the exact same amount of ink and paper to them, regardless of their denomination. There isn't twenty times more ink and paper in a twenty "dollar" bill than there is in a one "dollar" bill, is there? So with each bill having the exact same value, they all become worth the same as the lowest one. And not just according to what's printed on it, but what it's actual intrinsic worth is. As it costs less than 5 cents to print up a fiat currency "dollar" bill of any denomination, that's about what it's really worth. And in actuality, these pieces of inked paper are Federal Reserve Notes with no value to them, other than the fact that someone down the street or around the corner may be willing to trade something of real value for them. They are also known as debt bearing corporate notes, because the corporation known as the U.S. Government has been bankrupt since 1933, but not formally acknowledged as such until 1939 with the court case of Erie R.R. v. Tompkins case.
Another reason that these fiat currency, debt bearing corporate notes lose value is because of computerized electronic bookkeeping entries being used instead of actual money changing hands. Every time that some government agency buys some goods or services with nothing but a change in bookkeeping entries, a bit more confidence is knocked out of the "money" and thus we have "inflation". All that inflation is is "a decrease in the perceived purchasing power of a fiat currency". That's all it is, folks!! Forget all of these stupid proclamations that inflation is due to an "over supply of money" or some such clap trap. If that were really true, then just by taking money out of circulation we would be able to solve inflation. But it doesn't. What it DOES do is make it even harder to purchase goods and services, and then the economy really tanks, big time.
When John and Jane Doe perceive that they will need a greater amount of fiat currency tomorrow in order to maintain their lifestyle of today, they then have two choices. One, they can work more hours in the day, or two, they can charge more for the goods or services that they provide to the society in general. And since they can work only so many hours per week, they must then increase the rates which they charge. And so begins a vicious circle of everyone down the line doing the exact same thing until it comes back around to John and Jane Doe and then it starts all over again. And when thinking of inflation, think of it not in terms of things becoming more expensive, but rather in terms of the fiat currency becoming worth less and less, which is the truth of the matter. The instability of fiat currencies and economies becomes much easier to understand once you can do this.
When fiat currency is given to people for no reason, or loans are defaulted on, there too, more and more confidence is knocked out of the fiat currency and it becomes worth less and less. This idea that there are "money multipliers" in an economy is just so much hogwash. There is absolutely NOTHING which can multiply human labor, and since money is supposed to be based upon human labor, there cannot be any money multipliers. See how simple this is? Granted, there may be more efficient methods found to do certain things, but they always come with some kind of a cost attached to them. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Someone, somewhere, somehow is paying for it.
Let's go back to gold mining for a moment and look at a few things in more detail. When a person goes out into the wilderness to look for some gold, he must take with him food, clothing and equipment to survive with and make the discovery and collection of the gold possible. And while he is collecting that gold, he cannot possibly be planting and growing food or weaving cloth for his clothes or making a shovel either for that matter. So the prospector come miner must EXCHANGE some of his labor for these items in order to start his new pursuit and continue in it once he has found a place that has some gold in it.
Mining is not like farming or ranching where the product grows and multiplies itself. It costs pretty much the same to obtain an ounce of gold no matter where it's found or the process used. The result of a man panning a few nuggets and flakes out of a riverbed by himself, or a huge mine employing thousands of workers which makes several ingots per day equates to about the same overall cost. People must be paid a wage unless they are slaves, and machinery must be bought, powered and maintained in order to get the gold out of the dirt each day. This is why there's no economy of scale (cheaper due to more volume) in mining and consequently the value of the gold stays on par.
When Mr. Tailor sells his fine suit for an ounce of gold, it's because of several reasons, but the most important one is that the sum of the labor involved in the making of the suit from raising the cotton or wool to the weaving of the cloth and then the sewing of the pieces together requires the amount of labor that the ounce of gold represents. With some allowance for a profit of course! If there's no profit in a venture, it will fail of course. And when governments step in to prop up a failing venture or support one which never had a chance of succeeding in the first place, we again get a lessening of the confidence in the monetary system and that's our old "friend" inflation coming to pay us another visit. And with friends like that, who needs enemies?
Where actual gold and silver specie are used, there's NEVER any inflation, if a free market enterprise economy is used. The reason for that is very simple. If someone gets out of line and tries to get rich quick, someone else will come along and pick up the business that the first person loses due to the price increases. And if the quality level between the two providers is about the same, the first one will drive himself out of business rather quickly!
Money is the reflection of a ledger.
Gold acted as a fairly good de-centralised ledger for a long time.
Bitcoin is the ultimate de-centralised ledger.
Bitcoin is something virtual - numbers/information - "somewhere" in a computer. As such, it carries no intrinsic value or store of labour at all, cannot be "stored" by yourself, carries some counterparty risk ( who "runs" the computer-based transactions and what are the guarantees this works flawless? ) and is just like fiat currencies subject to potentially unlimited multiplication .... I prefer real, unfalsifiable "stuff" nobody can "make" and only produce/extract at great effort. Thus, gold.
Gold is barter. Barter is barter.
I see gold as the top form of long term wealth storage. The fact that it is actualy barter should not be ignored. The real trick is golds true value needs something to be measured against. Other real value things like energy measured in volume should fix golds value and price. Gold as a coin to do trade in not so much. I own a mill no gold coin is safe from that mill. The real issue of all coin is what does it buy? Its true value in trade. Gold coin without a well defined in real terms value gets us nothing. Value is relative? Too what?
Gold is a shiny metal.
Have you noticed the next generation of kids ?
The only thing they know is iPod , Linux and Android .
You think when this lot become adults they will give 2 shits about a shiny metal beyond some rappers neck-chains ?
They will be using digital currencies my friend , the global economy is about to be transformed from analog to digital. In 10 years time even your fucking fridge will be purchasing it's electricity from wholesale energy markets in realtime.
You think a fridge knows what gold is ? It will know what bitcoin is that's for sure.
10 years time ? This financial fuck show is going to implode in less than 5. These fuckers are going to reset in GOLD....not bitcoin or any other fiat.
Are a billion Indians going to turn in their gold from generations passed for bitcoin ?
There are certain qualities gold has that supercedes any other form of wealth. One of them is the fact I can exchange some for a automatic weapon almost immediately if I know where to go. Lets see one of the black market gun brokers ask for bitcoin over a nice 18K gold ring when SHTF.
When the black market gun broker asks for bitcoin first ( as well as the local farmer), over gold, then I am a believer.
Its still a fiat. Thanks but no thanks.
That is incorrect.
Fiat means 'by decree' , in legal jargon that means it is sanctioned by government and taxes are required to be paid in Fiat in the denomination of that country. In no way does bitcoin fit into the definition of being a fiat currency.
Measure it in terms of real value. A fixed vlue is whats needed.