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Why The "1%" Hates The Gold Standard
By now everybody knows that the primary consequence, one which we originally predicted back in 2009 - and many have since agreed - was completely intended, of the past 6 years of unprecedented monetary policy has been to push wealth inequality to record levels, not just in the US but across the world. What may not be so clear is precisely when this period of unprecedented wealth disparity started. The answer, as the following handy chart from NPR shows, is that long before QE, the wealth gap for the 1% really started in the early 1980s, courtesy of none other than Greenspan's "great moderation."
More importantly, and what is certainly not known, is that between 1930 and 1970, it was only the "bottom 90%" that saw their incomes rise, as can be seen on the next chart.
This is how the NPR qualified this dramatic variance in wealth gaps, the first of which benefited most Americans, especially the middle-class, and which ended with a thud in the early 1970s, and the second which was unleashed in the early 1980s:
In the first phase, known as the great compression, inequality fell. Incomes rose for people in the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution, as the postwar boom led to high demand for workers with low and moderate skills.
At the same time, income was basically stagnant for the top 1 percent of earners. A combination of high marginal tax rates (around 80 percent) for the wealthy, and social norms, may have kept a lid on wages at the top, according to the economists who gathered the data we used to make the graphs.
In the last 35 years, the reverse occurred. Top marginal tax rates fell sharply. Incomes rose for those in the top 1 percent, largely driven by rapidly rising pay for top executives.
And this is how NPR tries to describe the transformation that took place: "a combination of global competition, automation, and declining union membership, among other factors, led to stagnant wages for most workers."
Sure, why not.
But while we are all speculating, there is one far more important and very critical event on the calendar that happened just as the ascent of the non-1% peaked.
This:
Which should also clarify just why to the "1%", including their protectors in the "developed market" central banking system, their tenured economist lackeys, their purchased politicians and their captured media outlets, the topic of a return to a gold standard is the biggest threat conceivable.
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Dre4dwolf thats the best thing ive read written in quite some time kudos.
"If we cut all programs for the poor, the poor would die and the burden on the middle class/elite would be lifted and the people who work hard would actually acquire all the latent wealth that they were previously forced to share with the poor/sick/unfit to survive."
Oh come ON! Are you for REAL?
You actually believe that you'd be better off if only we cut all benefits to the poor? That the elites, in all their generosity and wisdom, would actually ALLOW any such 'savings' to trickle on down to YOU?
Wake up...If your idea could ever be implemented, your 'savings' would follow all the rest of the wealth and go straight to those 1%'ers, and not only would you NOT see it flow into your pockets, but all those now desperate people would become YOUR problem. Because they don't simply "die off" as your theory suggests...they become dangerous. THAT'S why the 1% won't EVER do what you suggest, they know the numbers, and as long as there ARE so many poor they will continue to pacify them with YOUR tax dollars.
But go ahead, keep focusing on all those useless eaters, and keep telling yourself that THEY are the reason you just can't get ahead.
And I will focus on folks like you and wonder when you're gonna get with the program and recognize who the real enemy is. Because I'm and really and truly just sick of all this shit, and it needs to end. And it won't until people wake the fuck UP!
The only thing the "1%" worries about is the "99%" paying attention.
I do not have a clue why anyone can say the 1% hates the gold standard.
They already control the majority wealth of the world, correct?
Returning to the gold standard, ALONE, simply locks in the value of that wealth under their control.........
They already control the majority wealth of the world, correct?
Returning to the gold standard, ALONE, simply locks in the value of that wealth under their control.........
4 years and two weeks around here and you're still clueless.
How does a gold standard 'lock in the value' of the 0.1%? Even if they owned all the gold mines in the world, it would take them half a century to double the money supply. Under the present system, they can effortlessly quadruple central banks' balance sheets in less than a decade.
How exactly does 'locks in' equate to quadrupling?
If assets at present value 'lock in' to retain that value in a system impervious to devaluation due to fiat inflation, what are those assets worth at some future date (unadjusted for supply and demand)?
Maybe after 4 years of hanging around here, you should think beyond what is presented to you. They call it critical thinking.
The 0.1% are obliged to spend their money to benefit from it.
Under a gold system, even if they have a large amount of gold to start with, they need to exchange it for goods and services. ie - the gold leaves their hands.
Under the present system, the money supply is inflated and the additional currency is basically just handed to them via backdoor routes like QE.
NOW do you understand?
Just exactly how are they obligated to spend an enormous amount in a lifetime in two lifetimes???????????? Who dictated that the Pope, O'bolo, the Chinese???
What I understand is a majority portion of an enormous amount wealth is out of circulation under control of of high net worth individuals and entities whose accumulated wealth will be unaffected by inflation under a PM standard. How many 10's of billions must one invest for a return to live on a paltry 100 million a year in a non fiat universe?
What I am telling you is, that a gold standard alone does little more than to more or less lock in the net worth of individuals, whether you are a stacker down the street or Putin. If you happen to be a high value gold backed individual that has a net worth of more than your entire family could reasonably spend their, and their grandchildren, lifetime, that excess wealth exists in perpetuity subject only to mismanagement. If you happen to be a stacker down the street, you could blow it all at the strip joint in a single drunken binge. Not so likely a scenario for a gold backed billionaire.
Understand this, the only individuals scared of a gold standard are politicians or individuals living beyond their means, certainly not high net worth individuals who could not rationally spend their stagnant wealth in their and your combined lifetimes? You think the Vatican will become impoverished by a gold standard, think again?
Yeah, you're right, the wealthy are so much better off not being able to skim the (virtually) infinite amount of currency creation we've seen since the end of Bretton Woods (not that I'm an advocate of the gold, gold exchange, or Bretton Woods abominations... but at least I understand what their inadequacies aren't). Perhaps that's why the share of the world's wealth is increasingly owned by financial institutions? Because the system we have now doesn't favour them?
Go read what happened to America under its last "Gold Standard" in Eustace Mullins' "Secrets of the Federal Reserve." They can still do whatever the fuck they want with the price of gold, so long as it's not redeemable or only redeemable in small percentages. It all culminated in the Panic of 1907, an engineered bubble bursting to help usher in the Fed, and guess what? A generation of people far more intelligent than the morons we have walking around today, far more in tune with the value of real money, didn't think to ask these banks how many certificates they were actually printing.
https://archive.org/details/TheSecretsOfTheFederalReserve
...so by extension, what do you think would happen today under a Gold Standard? Huh, 'lil jimmie? I won't call you "clueless," but perhaps short-sighted and maybe a tad historically ignorant. And whadd'ya know, Chatham House says the exact same thing as Mr. Mullins, only this time, we'll have a "gold-backed" SDR.
http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/field/field_documen...
Nothing changes until you people wise up to this game, and it's a lot more complicated than "DUH BANKSTERZ VERSIS GOLD"
Hey, great combination of innuendo and strawmen you got going there. Do you work for .gov as an 'economist', by any chance?
Hats off to you, though. Comparing the manipulation back in 1907 with the increasingly breathtaking, global criminality we've seen banksters and their puppets in the CBs get away with since 1971 takes real chutzpah.
Lightweight.
No strawmen there, bub. Not a single red herring, nor any post hoc ergo propter hoc (I assume you'll have to look that fallacy up). Perhaps a subtle use of the "Beggnig the Question" fallacy, but given your misidentification of the Straw Man, I don't think you actually know what a logical fallacy is.
"Just the facts, Ma'am."
If you can't see the comparison between the Panic of 1907 and what's about to come with "gold-backed" SDRs, you need to take the fucking blinders off, mate. Both schemes are fundamentally run by the same fucking families, doesn't take some kind of "expert" geneologist to figure out.
But hey, when your head's in the sand and your ass is in the sky, ain't nothing to get but fucked in the ass. By your own preference, it will likely be a cold, hard, solid gold dildo. Enjoy.
Gosh, and I thought i put it in a nutshell...........
Everyone needs some backup sometimes, man ;) Kills me to see someone called "clueless" when they hit the nail on the head.
It's truly beautiful to see two clueless dinks high-fiving each other. We've got the other guy who seems to think the bankster class aren't in any way enabled by virtually infinite credit creation*, and then we've got you - a man who thinks throwing around a few terms from logic 101 constitutes an argument.
*makes you wonder why they're endlessly pushing to lower collateral quality and quantity, reserve ratios, etc. Oh, no, that's right - it makes 'no' difference to how easy it is for them to create money out of thin air - the primary source of their wealth.
Lightweight.
No currency can ever be backed by gold! it does not happen, because the one with the printing press always prints, and he who spends the so called "gold backed currency " first wins. ie US .gov 1971.
That is why it should never be allowed, whether it is a "SDR" fiat junk. They will still do what the US did in 71.
If I need a motor for a chev I do not want a fiat from a ford that might work but will definately devalue my chevy.
"Gold and Silver can be the only money! ever!
A .0001% percenter can pay you in FIAT which decreases his amount of fiat, which should make him less rich, but he can just print more fiat or more correctly he gets the new Fiat First and therefore gets the wealth from it before it reaches your hands and is now devalued fiat.
If I trade 1 hr labour I want 1 hr labor in return. Not devalued labor. ie3/4 hr
Only Gold and Silver can ever prevent this!
This is the first and most important thing that needs to be done!
"Where would we be if we had I.O.U.'s scrip and certificates floating all around the country?" Instead he decided to "issue currency against the sound assets of the banks. [As opposed to issuing currency against gold.] The Federal Reserve Act lets us print all we'll need. And it won't frighten the people. It won't look like stage money. It'll be money that looks like real money."
-Treasury Secretary Woodin, 3/7/1933 (Source: 'Closed for the Holiday: The Bank Holiday of 1933', p20 - Federal Reserve Bank of Boston)
A money should be a sound item that does mot devalue between the time you earn it, and the time you spend it! ever, and if it does, the fruit of your labour is being stolen, no if's and or but's!
This is how the one percent steals the purchasing power ie... your labour, serfdom.
If an electrician and a plumber trade an hrs work, should the plumber only have to pay back a 1/2 hr's work because he paid it back a year later?
The cycle of theft is complete.
This is where the cycle of hanging on to what they stole, er, accumulated begins........ Its a paradigm shift from what was to what comes next.
A big factor in all of this is the Reagan tax cuts. The wealthy didn't see their incomes stagnate for 40 years, they were hiding it in tax shelters to avoid tax rates in the range of 70 to 90%.
FUCK the 1%,... they hate everything.
Yea..the chart shows the 90% goin stagnant after the gold window closed.
Yet the same chart shows the top percenters ALSO stagnant for almost 20 years... so...while it was a bad thing...You cant say that THAT chart showz a direct correlation of 'gold window' affecting wealthy salary increases.
Just sayin.
I will say that i did not know that ONLY the bottom 90 rose over those years...so thanks for that.
1% Still Experiencing 'Unforeseeable' Problems Spreading Wealth To World's Poor
http://thestuffing-it-to-empost.blogspot.co.uk/
Misleading BS post by TD.
If I am in the 1% and we go to a gold standard, I am more able to buy gold then the lower 90%. It's called economic freedom. No matter what standard is used, the 1% can always adjust to take advantage of it.
Additionally, this higher tax rate doesn't hurt the 1% as much as it does the lower class. Why?
Well if I have a billion dollars, I can still live quite well just earning 1%. And then I can cut back in capital expenditures which means less jobs for the 90%. You do the math. What is 1% of someone that has $100 million? Oh, it's $1 million a year which I could live quite well. Now imagine an oligarch that has a billion or more. They get $10 million a year sitting on their ass. Mean while, the 90% get to fight for the scraps because of corrupt government and collusion with varies industries.
I'll tell you who really hates the gold standard. It's progressive politicians of any party and banksters. They want control and easy money.
Economic 'Freedom' is not possible in a system where a given group is given access to the fiat before others. Level the playing field so 'real' talent can be rewarded instead of relying on who you know or who you blow.....
I think this is an informative look at what things divide and what things unite the United States of America.:
http://syncreticstudies.com/2015/02/10/the-disintegration-of-the-united-states-and-the-fourth-political-theory-a-brief-overview/#more-1710
"a return to a gold standard is the biggest threat conceivable" also to the pro growth forces that believe there are no limits to growth.
In fact these counterfeiting morons are saying global over-population is going up from 7-9 Billion as if booming population growth is unrelated to the fountain of free money provide by our hidden criminal rulers.
It is nuts to say the 1% hate the gold standard.
They love it so much they want to keep it all to themselves.
This is why the majority of above-ground Gold is owned by 1%-er institutions.
Amongst themselves they trade Gold and other physical valuables.
Paper "chits" are for trading with the rest of us.
As long as we're playing the "correlation equals causation because confirmation bias" game, NPR would like to respond that FDR's gold confiscation caused the rise of the American middle class.
A "Gold Exchange Standard" is NOT A GOLD STANDARD.
It is a token that TPTB might, MIGHT, at their discretion, give you some token amount of real value in return for your goods, but only they get to decide how much to pay you...after the transaction has been completed.
If they were willing to pay you a concrete value in exchange for goods, there would be no need for a "Gold Exchange Standard" because they would just give you a coin and be done with it.
They hate gold because it impedes, and reveals, their ponzi schemes.
They love gold as a store of their theft.
The banksters need to repay us.
Ironically they protect the gold, and neglect their heads.
Do you reallly believe the 1% (and especially the 0.1%) give a shit what y'all think? Do you believe they (or their highly-paid advisors) haven't thought of myriad ways to grow, retain, and protect their wealth and power even in the face of revolution?
I enjoy ZH as much as anyone, especially for the macro-economic viewpoints, but a lot of you project your own ambitions/fears on a set of people so far-removed from your plain of existence you can't even conceive of the possibility they just don't care what you think or do.
Still, I enjoy a good rant or pontification as well as the next guy, so have at it!
Of course they don't care--that's why you need something like Zyklon-B to focus their thoughts for them...
"...from your plain of existence you can't even conceive of the possibility they just don't care what you think or do"
It is not the misplaced possibility that they might care, as they don't, but the exchange of ideas, and inducement of thought, that happens here that matters. I am better for it. I expect that many others are as well.
Ideas, and thoughts, learned, or practiced here, make me much more effective with the sheeple I encounter on a daily basis. Instead of rambling while trying to put across a legitimate, but unpracticed thought, I deliver it short and quick, and hit them harder between the ears. They can ignore it, but they cannot forget it.
Or like I like to say to friends, my mission, and goal, is to, "Be a fucking alarm clock for Liberty."
The banksters need to repay us.
Who will join be in making a loud and annoying noise for Liberty?
Gold is barter so they cant run thier magic money games. They can still play the old gold games tho.
Except from '33 to '71, we were on a partial gold backing and gold wasn't redeemabe for the real shit anywhere in this country, so there's that.
Gold Standards are the bane of Free Men, second only to Fiat. Remember the struggle of the Free Silver movement culminating in the Crime of 1873 and what the bankster class did to America in the engineered booms and busts of 1893 and 1907. Eustace Mullins, the original Federal Reserve historian, tried desperately to warn us about the folly of the Gold Standard as a transitory phase to Fiat systems.
https://archive.org/details/TheSecretsOfTheFederalReserve
If you read FDR's letters, speeches, etc. he believed gold was the governments and silver was for the people. Unfortunately he also called in silver, and charged varying high rates of charges to re-coin it during the depression. So you brought in 1.5 toz and only got 1 toz as an example. Pure theft and against what the founders thought should be charged for miniting coins around the 1st coinage act. There used to be names publihed of silver hoarders during the depression.
Gold intrinsically limits economic expansion; no gold standard has led to the "financialization of everything", and speculation to create lots of digiatl wealth held at the top. PM markets can be, and were manipulated, just as markets are today. The US needs to get back to issuing it's own currency, backed by the same instrument that back our bonds, minus all that GD interest. It woud be a painful process.
Yes get back to US non FED currency. Your argument against a gold backed currency can be rebuked easily: see article above.
No. Gold intrinsically limits credit growth. Economic expansion continues unabated.
The problem is, we measure economic expansion through credit growth. They are not the same thing.
We cannot return to a gold standard until all the bubbles collapse.
Base money on something of value and a lot of problems go away.
However, I recommend DEATH TO COUNTERFEITERS!
we have the choice. If we invest into stock, then we support the system.
If we buy hard assets, like real estate (no credits, turn them the fiat over) and gold, then we do good for us (and hurt their system, which we couldn't care less)
completely agree . one would think it would be beyond obvious ? why else is there so much manipulation of the relics asnd CB hoarding world wide ?
I know, and my sympathies go out to the 1%, who have to cut back, but life has been shit for the 99%, starting with the Nixon Shock of 1973, so maybe we need to get back to that, maybe fractional gold exchange standard.
Elite: we know you want the 99% to 'disappear' but that is not really going to happen, not as you want anyway, so maybe we should find a compromise?
Sorry Carry Trade, but it is for the greater good!
The reason is the fall of communism. To prove their cause of freedom, democracy, free markets etc, they needed an image of the 90% doing well so they were willing to share and keep the system working as it should have or not far from that. Once the commies started falling, they didn't need that anymore. (and I'm not a commie)
ahem
THE ILLUSORY GOLD STANDARD
The Gold Bugs here are loud in their cry for the return to the Gold Standard. But what would that 'Gold Standard" entail? Redeemability? Convertibility?
A true monetary 'Gold Standard' is one of gold coinage or banknotes instantly redeemable for gold.
But we have learned that a 'Gold Standard' can not coexist with a huge, capitalistic economy such as the US has today.
Remember the history of gold and US citizens.
On Aug. 15, 1971, President Nixon announced that the United States would no longer back the dollar with gold reserves, thus ending the last ties between the dollar and gold. Between 1971 and 2012 the US currency in circulation (M1) increased from $48.6 billion to over $1 trillion dollars. [4]?
In 1933 citizens were forbidden the ownership of gold.
In other words in 1971 Nixon said the US would no longer make deficit balance of payments in gold.
Prior to 1933 an American could own gold and convert certain bank notes into gold. And prior to 1971 the US paid it's trade deficits in gold.
In 1974 the right to own gold was restored.
There is no workable 'Gold Standard' today. It is like a fable told to children and reinforced by presents left under a decorated tree.
A gold standard means physical gold in a recognizable form (recognizable mass). This does not and must not include pieces of paper you can supposedly exchange for physical gold at any time.
Well, gold coinage would be a Sisyphean burden for the average housewife at Safeway, no?
I believe there were gold certificates before 1933. The 'gold standard' team would be happy pre 1933, no?
In 1971 all Nixon did was stop the use of US gold to pay the balance of payments resulting from our over-importing.
The unintended consequence of that was the explosion of dollars at home and abroad.
Reagan took office in 1981 and "MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN" appeared on the designated wall.
What!? so you really want me to believe, that both Dem and GOP are i the pockets of the 1%? c'mon people don't skp the vote, get out and vote "other".
despite marketspeak, "paper gold" and "electronic gold"
are not the same as gold bullion.
Gold standard will never happen again, why do folks keep beating this horse? It's been dead for years. I am by no means anti metal, but am pro reality. These articles only serve to remind us of things that will never come to fruition. In fact I am not so sure it would be a good thing if it did. I can see metals have a larger role going forward but just can't wrap my feeble brain around going back to a gold standard.
Maybe you can tell me what a 'gold standard' is.
A small leather pouch filled with gold coins that you toss at an assassin or a double crosser who has done your bidding?
How hard is it to counterfeit gold?
The 1% is finance. Trace their incomes. They all make their money thru the usury mechanism. Or, they own companies that are cross directorates which are then tied to finance.
Who was the 1% in the past, when we had a Gold system? It was finance. Gold had credit riding on it, and during harvest phase, bankers would demand gold or other fungible assets…your house please, or maybe even your life – as what happened in Greece before Solon’s reforms.
The 1% love Gold. They used it throughout history. Read the Protocols.
Who has the ancient gold hoards today? Are we going to monetize their hoarded metal and then give them extraordinary purchasing power? Are we going to codify in law, the ability for them to create credit riding on Gold again?
Gold and Metal money is a dialectic designed to snare the unwary. Trace the roots of credit money and you will find Gold money masters at its inception. (Hint: Focus on Amsterdam stock exchange after Vasco de Gama discovered southern route.)
What the 1% really really- really don’t want, is lawful money. That would be sovereign money. They won’t discuss it; it will be hidden from view. What they really don’t want, they don’t want you to know about. Why all the discussion about Gold but no discussion about what matters.
Those that are for Gold have been hypnotized by the dialectic; being bounced between two false systems: Private Credit vs Gold, makes us all manipulated fools.
www.sovereignmoney.eu
They absolutely do not want to lose money power: and to lose money power would be to lose an easy rentier life, where one approximates GOD with secretive money power.
Gov's and Banksters cannot be allowed to create wealth out of thin air! this is the true crime!
Gold prevents this, other things would as well but none meet the requiremnts of "MONEY" as gold and Silver do!
Inequality increased when Reagan was President? Inequality decreased when marginal income tax rates in the USA were 90%? Blasphemy!
It must be easier to manipulate paper.
Not so with the hard stuff.
Where does it say that wealth should be equal? Wealth is produced. Those who produce it are entitled to use it. Some are very productive and produce a lot, others, little or nothing.
And it's those who produce little that benefit most from this system in relation to their ability. Their lifespans alone are several times longer today primarily because of the productivity of the "rich."
Redistributing wealth "equally" is economic cannibalism, acting to harm both the rich and the poorer.
Loop, you're missing the point. On a gold standard workers had to produce the wealth (gold) and the rich had to provide benefits to them to earn it. A win-win situation.
On a fiat system the wealthy and connected get first dibs on the paper and can control how it's passed down to workers. Not a win-win but a dribble down economy.
And why should the govt be dictating what people choose to use as money? Like Jim Rogers says, if people choose to settle their affairs in seashells, why should they not be able to?
I don't know if I believe that income and income growth for the 1% were as low as NPR claims.
"The tax code of the 1950s allowed upper-income Americans to take exemptions and deductions that are unheard of today..."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324705104578151601554982808
http://tinyurl.com/la7u3rk
Are y'all frustrated gold owners on here?
Is the Apocalypse nigh?
You have gold buyers here. I am one of them. I am buying.
Slow?
The simplest explanation is generally the correct one.
But not to Zero Hedgers. For these folks, the most convoluted, byzantine and hard-to-follow interpretation carries the day.
"9/11 was an inside job and had nothing to do with angry Islamic extremists!"
"There was no moon landing!"
"Gold and silver are routinely rigged, forcing me to buy my ounces at obscene discounts!"
"Oil is routinely rigged, forcing me to buy gas at obscene discounts!"
"The zionists rule the world!"
This is entertainment at its best!
Go fuck yourself.
Bob, ya got any videos of the 'staged moon landing' you can share? :-)
For those of you bashing the 1% is like to refresh your me worries on where that begins. According to the tax foundation the top 1% stars at $386k. Now yes that is a good income but most small businesses fall into that range. The tax penalty hits the small business harder than the people you are resenting.
If you want to get mad at someone, all though I don't recommend it, get mad at the .01%. That starts at $8 meelion which is who most think of when referring to the 1%.
And for the record Jamie Dimon made $19 million last year. Wonder if his daughter ever found any wrong doing there?
x
They may "hate" the gold standard, but they are currently buying a lot of gold...along with all the big nations' central banks. What do they know that you don't?
Simple,
You can't print gold!