Gold.

[Wombaticus Rex]

It is my understanding that the bankers control most of the gold reserves anyway, so i'm not sure how the gold standard helps exactly because they will simply game the system? Right?

Yeah, the transition part is what loses me. Gold Standard is roughly on par with The Venus Project, as a realistic and workable option in 2011.



Jack, great link, thank you.

[SonicG]

I have stated my opinion on this silliness elsewhere- it smacks of a very naive view of modern capitalist relation as well as "traditional" capitalist relations. Of course there has to be some movement towards a more locally based environmentally sustainable world but the focus should be on convincing people that is actually a necessary and viable option. Right now, it is impossible to see how the modern capitalist arrangement of commerce could be magically transformed overnight by a return to the gold standard without massive economic upheaval...

[JackRiddler]

It is my understanding that the bankers control most of the gold reserves anyway, so i'm not sure how the gold standard helps exactly because they will simply game the system? Right?

Yeah, the transition part is what loses me. Gold Standard is roughly on par with The Venus Project, as a realistic and workable option in 2011.



Jack, great link, thank you.

I know nothing about The Venus Project but as a picture of some cool buildable dwellings that looks a lot more realistic and less faith-based than the notion that mere adoption of a gold standard (which obtained into the Great Depression and in altered form until 1971) would lead to a just and humane reform in human economics.

.

[82_28]

World gold holdings (2008)
(Source: World Gold Council[20])
Holding Percentage
Jewelry 52%
Central banks 18%
Investment (bars, coins) 16%
Industrial 12%
Unaccounted 2%

Thus, there must be something else that powers this myth of gold. Whether it be real or not, gold is a myth that has destroyed many a humans' lives and the wilderness around where it was procured and the places of embarking upon the journeys by many to procure this gold, also, most importantly the ancient civilizations built around said gold. Such as Nome -- a semi forgotten place where many many people lost their lives to get about the equivalent of $7 2011. Seattle was Nome south. Why, in the long run? Why the fuck gold? I couldn't give a fuck less about gold in and of what I give a shit about such things.

Human and animal and death labor and human suffering are the gold and always have been as per Luciferian influence. The empire never ended. It wound up being plastics and petroleum based bullshit in this iteration of the same empire which once conquested for gold in the same sense it sells you a plastic slurpee cup with a symbolically important super hero printed upon it, year after year after year.

[Stephen Morgan]

The banks and the speculators would have a much harder time coming up with "exotic financial instruments" with a gold standard in place. Also, how would they make all these debilitating loans to people and nations, and thus force everyone into debt slavery, if they had to actually have the gold to loan, rather than literally creating money simply by the act of loaning it??

I wish I could literally create money by creating a loan. That's better than alchemy!!

Of course if money can't be magically created then those who hold the money now have a permanent monopoly on power. The amount of money available to the average man on the street would therefore be drastically reduced, especially in those nations currently funding themselves through deficit spending, so their only possible means of survival would be debt-slavery to those who can fund their continued existence.

[Stephen Morgan]

The greatest financial depressions in this country's history all occurred during the use of the gold standard. That's the history here. Historically, deflationary depression is the endemic hallmark of gold standard economies (see: 1928, which can't be blamed on the gold standard, but surely wasn't helped by the adherence), because out of all the ways to produce wealth, only one produces gold and that is mining, so anytime you have actual growth in productivity and output within the economy, the money supply suffers practical contraction and subsequent deflation.

Bingo. The supply of currency must be able to reflect, or lead, the changes in available national liquid wealth. Hence it should be entirely in the remit of democratically elected governments, not debt mongers and definitely not gold-holders and -miners.

I honestly feel like I could argue either side of this question, but at the moment I'm happy to serve up some of my reservations with the gold standard. But I'm not particularly vehement about much of it, at least partly because I successfully counseled my immediate family to embrace gold in their portfolio when it was around $750, and they love me for the many thousands of dollars they feel they've made or saved. But now I'm trepidacious about at exactly what point they might wish to sell off and take profit in FRNs, or if this is even a good idea.

Look to Sir Isaac Newton's experiences during the South Sea Bubble.

[Stephen Morgan]

I don't think that modern capitalism and the gold standard are compatible systems.

The past disagree with you.

[Stephen Morgan]

well let the games begin! suffice it to say that the whole economy and production and consumption would be completely different. it's inimical to large-scale centralized corporate production and distribution and the withholding of taxes at the source with government and banks getting first dibs on the loot. today, under the FR empire war machine, the gov is sovereign over the citizens and the fed is sovereign over the gov via irredeemable currency.

Currency is redeemable for whatever peole are willing to sell. The solution to theft of sovereignty is to take it for the state, not to try and shift it from money-lenders to gold-miners.

with sovereign money in the hands of the people it would be the other way round. i hope to add to the discussion time permitting. try not to picture it as life today, just substituting all the payments we now make with gold. apples/oranges. some things needed to make it work: free coinage at the national mint for gold and silver,

But not for labour.

no legislated ratio in the exchange rate between gold and silver,

That'll make the money-changers happy,, anyway, something to gamble on.

and no interference in a gold "bill" market that includes free "discount" houses (like a bank but that trade only gold bills). that way actual physical gold coins need not change hands at every transaction. gov? get ready for some local democracy. the situation would also be inimical to a large centralized, gov.

As if a small government is a good thing.

from a practical standpoint as we have discussed before, the only way to transition is to legalize a standard gold (and silver) coin as payable for debts alongside the currently protected federal reserve notes, at the totally free option of the parties. if they don't agree, no deal and no one's gold or silver can be taken away without going through a court first.

Your money can't be taken away without going through a court first, and you can already agree to pay your debts in gold, or you could if there was anyone willing to lend in gold, which there isn't and wouldn't be. People want real money, not shiny-shiny. You could agree to pay in bags of horse-shit if you could find someone willing to let you.

the us gold reserves should be dispersed to the citizens via tax return information at the IRS. they should not be the conduit however.

So those who don't pay income tax due to poverty get to starve.

[Stephen Morgan]

re silver, i confess i read salinas price's article and flat did not understand what he was saying. gold and silver are perfect complements to each other. au is low volume, high value, ag is higher volume lower value. together, depending on the needs of any given situation, they can answer all fiduciary needs. i see no need to denominate either in anything other than the prevailing gold/silver ratio. they have to be freely convertible into each other.

Their value fluctuates so heavily, mister free market, that a few would simply gamble until they accumulated all the metal. See: the past.

[Stephen Morgan]

[lucky]

The front of all paper notes in the Uk bear the legend "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of Five pounds", ten pounds etc My question is who is making the promise (the bank of England?) and what do i get when I exchange my Five pound note? In other words what "is" five pounds

[Stephen Morgan]

The front of all paper notes in the Uk bear the legend "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of Five pounds", ten pounds etc My question is who is making the promise (the bank of England?) and what do i get when I exchange my Five pound note? In other words what "is" five pounds

Five pound coins, shiny round bits of real money. Or possibly one of those and two two-pound coins. The pound coins are simply issued by the government, in whatever numbers they see fit, totally unbacked by debt or by gold or by anything else other than the faith of the public.

The promise is that of the Governor of the Bank of England, on the behalf of the Bank. The bank is wholly owned by the tax-payer at the present time, although controlled by the Monetary Policy Committee, a supposedly apolitical body who are meant to ensure a stable rate of inflation through setting interest rates.

[Elihu]

The pound coins are simply issued by the government, in whatever numbers they see fit, totally unbacked by debt or by gold or by anything else other than the faith of the public.

People want real money, not shiny-shiny. You could agree to pay in bags of horse-shit if you could find someone willing to let you.

i couldn't find anybody. seems the gov did though...

[lucky]

The front of all paper notes in the Uk bear the legend "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of Five pounds", ten pounds etc My question is who is making the promise (the bank of England?) and what do i get when I exchange my Five pound note? In other words what "is" five pounds

Five pound coins, shiny round bits of real money. Or possibly one of those and two two-pound coins. The pound coins are simply issued by the government, in whatever numbers they see fit, totally unbacked by debt or by gold or by anything else other than the faith of the public.

The promise is that of the Governor of the Bank of England, on the behalf of the Bank. The bank is wholly owned by the tax-payer at the present time, although controlled by the Monetary Policy Committee, a supposedly apolitical body who are meant to ensure a stable rate of inflation through setting interest rates.

I thought the bankofengland was a private company with its own board of directors?

[freemason9]

I don't think that modern capitalism and the gold standard are compatible systems.

The past disagree with you.

I added the bold font to emphasize "modern." Capitalism in the past was a younger version in its growth phase. The modern version is in an aggregation phase. This is important.