The Anti-Concepts of Money. The cash-value of promoting each of these anti-concepts is that they lead people to think that the central bank should impose a monetary policy. To make our lives better. 

The life of an entrepreneur is not what most people would call “normal”. I don’t refer to the guy who buys a fast-food franchise. Nor to the gal who builds a chain of hair salons. Nor to the folks who have law or accounting firms. These are all entrepreneurship. I don’t know a lot about how these businesses work, but I do know one thing.

We finally had a resolution, of sorts, in silver. Since April 13, we have had a falling price of silver (indicated as a rising price of the dollar, as measured in silver). And along with this price trend, a growing scarcity of the metal to the market (i.e. the cobasis, the red line). Indeed, the price (of the dollar) and silver scarcity move with uncanny coordination. Almost as if they are linked.

The headline reads “Moscow World Standard to Destroy LBMA’s Monopoly in Precious Metals Pricing”. Wow! Could it be? Is this it?! The gold revaluation we’ve all been waiting for! Someone, who has the power, will give us a venue in which we can sell our gold at its true price… how does $50,000 sound, eh?

Since our last silver article, the price of silver has dropped. With due respect to Frederic Bastiat, the price is the seen. The basis mostly goes unseen. We will take a look at the market data, revised for a few more days of trading.

Listen to the audio version of this article here.
The price of silver hit a peak over $26.50 on March 8. It spent about a month and a half breaking down, and then the bottom fell out. It’s currently down from that peak almost 8 bucks.
Breaking Down Fundamental Silver Prices
However, the opposite has been happening to silver’s scarcity. First, let’s look at a chart of the silver market price and the silver fundamental price.

It’s pretty, isn’t it? Gold, Liquid Gold, and Inflation. Gold has a unique appearance. It is also astonishingly heavy—much heavier than it has any right to be. It’s just an inch and a quarter in diameter yet weighs 0.075 pounds. Everyone should hold one in his hand (and own a few).

The dollar rose this week, from 17.87mg gold to 18.24mg (that’s “gold fell from $1,740 to $1,705” in DollarSpeak), a gain of 2.1%. In silver terms, it rose from 1.61g to 1.67g (in DollarSpeak, “silver dropped from $19.24 to $18.64), or 3.7%.
As always, we want to look past the market price action. Two explanations are hot today. Let’s look at them first, before moving on to our unique analysis of the basis.

Something has happened which has not occurred since 2009. The silver basis—our measure of abundance of the metal to the market—has gone way under the gold basis. This means silver is less abundant to the market than gold. Here is the picture.

Senator Elizabeth Warren and President Joe Biden claim that inflation[i] is caused by greedy corporations. And they propose to solve this problem by making the corporations pay. Whether it’s extracting a “windfall profits” tax, crushing them under even more regulation, or attacking them with antitrust enforcement, the idea is the same.

Gentlemen: I am writing to you in response to your Podcast #276. The first thing I want to say is—well done! You talked about economics and money for four hours and attracted over two million viewers. The monetary system faces grave problems and discussing them is important.

On Thursday May 12, the price of silver fell about a buck. As with every one of these big price moves, the question is: what really happened? Below is a chart of the day’s action, with price overlaid with basis. Basis = future – spot. It is a great (i.e. the only) indicator of abundance or scarcity of metal to the market.

The last few days of trading in silver have been a wild ride. 
On Wednesday morning in New York, six hours before the Fed was to announce its interest rate hike, the price of silver began to drop. It went from around $22.65 to a low of $22.25 before recovering about 20 cents. 
At 2pm (NY time), the Fed made the announcement. The price had already begun spiking higher for about two minutes. 
As an aside, we wonder a bit about how they keep privileged traders from peeking at such announcements before the rest of the world gets to see it. If there was not central planning which ruled our fates with its every edict, this issue would not exist. 
Anyways, the price moved up 23 cents by 2:05. It moved sideways waiting for the Fed press conference. Within 11 minutes of the start, the price was

The price of silver has been going down, and then down some more. From over $28 a year ago, and over $26.50 a month ago, it’s now at a new low under $22.50. Four bucks down in a month.

Part III – Gold Standards, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Gresham’s law and gold. Is it even possible to return to a gold standard today? Is Russia leading the push, or do we need something else?  

Part I – Unpacking the narrative of how Russia is going to change the global monetary system. There is a Narrative about Russia and how it will change the monetary system. Many analysts in the gold community are promoting this story. There’s just one problem with this Narrative. It is like how Michael Crighton described the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, stating that the newspaper is full of stories explaining how “wet streets cause rain.” 

Keith Weiner is founder and CEO of Monetary Metals, an investment firm that pays interest on gold, and the founder of the Gold Standard Institute USA. Weiner’s mission is to provide entrepreneurial services and education to help restore gold as the world’s money par excellence.

We have recently seen an increase in social media posts about the big increase in short positions by the bullion banks. What would motivate them to short a commodity during this period of inflation, much less a monetary metal when central banks are printing money with reckless abandon? And doesn’t their shorting of silver push down the price? 

Can Russia Enact a Gold Standard?
In Part I we discussed how the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine will lead to inflation, but not in the way most people think.  In Part II we discuss the possibility of Russia repudiating the dollar and going on a gold standard. Can they do it? How would the world react? Why not enact a Bitcoin Standard instead?

Every once in a while, one regrets not acting sooner, or not acting soon enough. In our case, we did not publish this Tuesday evening. We should have. Today the price is down, and others may also call for lower silver prices.

In March, I flew for the first time since the start of Covid health theater. I was invited to speak at the Austrian Economics Research Conference in Auburn, AL. My talk covered Jimi Hendrix, and an infamous bridge collapse. In other words, I discussed my theory of interest and prices.
At the end of November, I flew to London for two weeks of business meetings. This was my first international trip since the Covid lockdown. I offer three comments. One, the UK government forces you to get a Covid test to visit the country and the US government forces you to get another test to be allowed to board a flight back home. Yes, even US citizens. No, I do not think this is constitutional (but who cares about that old document).
Two, by the way, having a stick jammed up your nose is an unpleasant

The Ship of Theseus is an old philosophical thought experiment. It asks a question about identity. Suppose you replace all of the boards of a ship with new ones—is it still the same ship? We are not going to try to resolve this millennia-old paradox. Instead, we are going to add one more element, and then tie it to the monetary system.

Listen to the audio version of this article here! In the last Supply and Demand update, we discussed some different theories which attempt to explain what causes the gold and silver prices to move. We mentioned the: “…attempt to hold up a famous buyer of metal, while ignoring the thousands of not-famous sellers who sold the metal to said famous buyer.”

Opposing Monetary Directions
“Real estate is the future of the monetary system,” declares a real estate bug.
Does this make any sense? We would ask him this.
“OK how will houses be borrowed and lent?”
“Look at this housing bond,” he says, pointing to a bond denominated in dollars, with principal and interest paid in dollars.
“What do you mean ‘housing’ bond’,” we ask, “it’s a bond denominated in dollars!”
“Yes, but housing is the collateral.”
OK, so it’s not a housing bond. It’s a dollar bond used to finance the purchase of houses. These are not the same thing at all, the way chalk and cheese are not the same thing, despite both being single-syllable words beginning with the letters “ch”.
 

El Salvador’s Bitcoin Gamble
A few weeks back, we looked at the investor’s side of the lending

“Real estate is the future of the monetary system,” declares a real estate bug. Does this make any sense? We would ask him this. “OK how will houses be borrowed and lent?” “Look at this housing bond,” he says, pointing to a bond denominated in dollars, with principal and interest paid in dollars.

Breaking Down the Dollar Monetary System If you ask most people, “what is money?” they will answer that money is the generally accepted medium of exchange. If you ask Google Images, it will show you many pictures of green pieces of paper. Virtually everyone agrees that money means the dollar.

 Prices move up and down, in the restless churn of our irredeemable monetary system. There are several schools of thought whose theories attempt to describe, if not predict, the next price move.

Picture, if you can, a world in which gold circulates as the medium of exchange. People pay for everything, from groceries to rent, in gold. Employers pay wages in gold. Productive enterprises borrow gold to finance everything from food production to constructing apartment buildings. In other words, picture a world where there’s abundant opportunities to earn a yield on gold and finance productive businesses in gold.

Many voices in the gold community are making a simple point. Look at the prices of oil, copper, and other commodities. They are skyrocketing. The mainstream explanation—shared by Keynesians, Monetarists, and many Austrians—is that the cause of this skyrocketing is the increase in the quantity of what is called “money”. 

Can you remember back to when you were two or three years old? Toddlers often think that there are little people inside the TV (or maybe this was only true when the TV was about as deep as it was wide—and maybe kids today don’t think this when looking at a 60-inch flatscreen…)

The price of silver dropped a dollar, or over 4% on Wednesday. Some voices in the precious metals press want you to think that there is only one conceivable cause. We should coin a term for this form of logical fallacy: argumentum ad ignorantia. This is an argument of the form: “the cause must be XYZ, as I cannot conceive of anything else.”

This time, we start with the gold-silver ratio. Let’s revisit something we said on 23 August:
“…the supply and demand fundamentals of silver are stronger here than they have been since the Covid crisis

Picture, if you will, a government that deliberately inflicts bad policy on the people. I know this sounds crazy, and could never happen, but please bear with me. Suppose the government criminalizes hiring someone who produces less than an arbitrary threshold. Or it forces the closure of all businesses deemed to be non “essential”.

One way to look at the price of gold, is that it dropped from its high around $1,900 in early June. Another way is to zoom out, and look at the big picture. Here is a 10-year chart of gold and silver prices.
For over four years, after the peak around $1,900 ten years ago (early September 2011), the price of gold moved down. By December 2015, it was just over $1,000. Then it was a sideways market until three years ago (August 2018), when the price was well under $1,200. It spent two years rapidly rising, to well over $2,000 a year ago (August 2020). Since then, it has been down and sideways to its current level under $1,800.
The silver price has had a greater fall, and did not begin to rise until later (it was under $12 until the onset of the Covid lockdown). Its rise may have begun later,

Sometimes, bad luck can strike. But other times, a catastrophe comes from a series of bad decisions, each the reaction to the consequences of the previous one.
On August 15, 1971, President Nixon decreed that the US dollar would no longer be redeemable for the gold owed, even to foreign governments.

The following article was written by Keith Weiner, CEO of Monetary Metals, as a counterpoint to this article, POINT: Should the US Return to the Gold Standard? No It was originally published at InsideSources, here: COUNTERPOINT: Is the Gold Standard the Economists’ Punching Bag?

No sooner did we write Silver Rorschach Test, than the price of gold flash-crashed, or was smashed down. On Sunday afternoon in Arizona—i.e. Monday morning in Australia and Asia—the gold price dropped sharply. Gold bug sources claim that the drop was $100, but as we can see from the price graph included in this report, the actual crash itself was about $70.

When we saw the following comment from a prominent otherwise-free-marketer, we knew it was time to write this article. “…the value of the Fed’s "liabilities"(which are so in name only) [scare quotes and parenthetic comment in original] bears only a very loose connection to the value of its assets.”

We’re seeing the argument, again, that silver stocks are being consumed in solar panels, medical applications, and of course, electronics. This argument has a certain temptation. After all, the standard assumption is that value is inversely proportional to quantity. Purchasing power is widely believed to be 1 / N (N is number of units of currency issued).

There is sometimes a tendency to confuse ends and means. For example, in traveling through an airport there is extensive inspection of passengers. Before you are allowed to board an airplane, you must go through a process that is intrusive and increasingly invasive.

Mainstream analysis sees rising consumer prices, and looks for a monetary cause. Also, when it sees an increase in the quantity of dollars, it looks for rising consumer prices. It is a fact that the quantity of what the mainstream calls money (i.e. the dollar) has risen at an extraordinary rate.

The price of gold (and silver) was on a tear in April and May. Then some sideways action. And then this week, thud. On Twitter, a popular meme is that the banks smashed the price by selling futures contracts, though there was no selling of gold bars. Let’s just say that if the price of an August contract fell by $120, while the price of a gold bar held steady, there would be a backwardation of around 40%!

According to the US Treasury, the federal government owes $28.2 trillion. It crossed the “28” threshold on the last day of March. The debt was just under $25 trillion at the end of April a year ago. There’s no question it’s growing at a faster and faster pace, and now there’s the excuse of Covid to spend more.

The prices of the metals hit their lows by the end of April. Gold traded for around $1,685, and is now over $1,900. Silver was around $24, and is now over $28. These are big moves (though of course nothing like bitcoin).

Some recent videos about the silver market are generating more buzz than we have seen in a while. They make several points, but the main one is that there is a global shortage of silver. This assertion stands in contradiction to the fact that the silver price has dropped. As of the date of the first of these videos, it had dropped around 10% from its level just a month earlier.

Scottsdale, Ariz, April 1, 2021— Monetary Metals® announces that it has issued a gold token. Unlike the company’s other products, this one is not designed to pay a yield.
In a sign of the times, the company intends this product to generate big speculative gains. It is designed to GO UP!

Before we talk about Fedcoins, let’s look at the old school non-digital, non-blockchain, coin. Gold. And silver. Since January 4, the price has dropped about $244. And the price of silver has fallen about $4. Are these buying opportunities? Or the end of the brief gold bull market of 2020 (i.e. Covid)?

The price of silver is going up and down like a yo-yo. On Sunday and into the first part of Monday, the price skyrocketed on news that Reddit was touting the metal. But as the data clearly showed, the price was not driven up by retail buying of physical metal.

Sometimes you can count on the manipulation conspiracy theorists to get it exactly wrong. Not just a little bit wrong, nor halfway wrong. Not even mostly wrong. Totally wrong, backwards.

Wow, it has been a heckuva year! One thought leads to another on this sunny-but-cool January 1. Having watched a few seasons of Forged in Fire, I’ve gained an appreciation of how difficult it is to pound and grind a lump of steel into a blade, even with power tools. There are many ways for it to go wrong.

We are hearing rumors this week of a shortage of the big silver bars, the thousand-ouncers. No, we don’t refer to bullion banks saying this. Nor big dealers, who are happy to sell us as many of these as we can buy. Nor our peeps in high places (we don’t claim to have any such peeps).

There are now two entirely different notions of a coming “reset”. One has been popular among those who speculate on the gold price. They expect a revaluation of the dollar.

On Monday the dollar had a ferocious rally, moving up from 15.87mg gold to 16.77mg and from 1.21g silver to 1.32g. In mainstream terms, the price of gold dropped about a hundred bucks, and the price of silver crashed $2.20.

On Wednesday last week, the price of silver dropped from over $24.25 to just a bit over $23 before bouncing back to around $23.50. The next day, the price dropped again, briefly to around $22.60 before mostly recovering (but a dime to a quarter down).

On Friday, the price of silver went up from $24.25 to $25.20, or +4%. Let’s look at the graph of the price and basis (i.e. abundance) action. For the first part of the day, the action is from speculators, for the most part.

There was a big drop in the price of silver last Wednesday. Then the price moved up, and down, but mostly up. Let’s look at a graph of the silver price and basis showing Sep 30 through Oct 5, with intraday resolution.

While the silver price was dropping recently, we published analyses here and here. At that time, we saw a basis that fell with price, but which recovered during “off” days. In short, there was not much of a decrease in abundance of the metal to the markets commensurate with the price drops.

A few days ago, we wrote about a big silver crash. The price dropped around 7.5%. And the basis dropped from around 2% to 0.6%. At the end, we said: “The key question is: what is the follow-through? If the price stays down and the basis goes back up, that will be a bearish signal. If the basis stays down, that means the silver market is markedly tighter at $24.50 than it was at $26.75.”

The big news in the monetary metals is that Warren Buffett — famed disliker of gold — sold bank stocks to buy gold mining shares. What is interesting to us is not that we think he has any special powers to predict the gold price. After all, he famously bet on silver, and lost.

It must be Monday, because the price of silver skyrocketed. From $26.10, it shot up to $27.50, or +5.4%. The last time we wrote about silver was after its crash to $25. Silver is now priced 10% above that low point.

And, *bam!* Just like that, silver sells for $29. It seems so simple, so obvious, so black-and-white. Seeing the price chart in recent weeks, you wouldn’t know that silver speculators have been waiting for this moment since March, 2013 (when silver crossed the $29 line to the downside, and has not looked back until now).

The silver market witnessed another explosive day! At midnight (in London), the price of the metal was $26.90. By 9pm, it had rocketed up to $28.95, a gain of 7.6%. This is not normal.

The action on 27 July was not. Notice the big drop in the basis starting around midnight (London time). It falls from over 7% to under 2%.

Yesterday, the price of silver spiked about 10%. We wrote that it was driven by: “…buying of physical metal.” And we added: “This is a pretty good signal that a bull market may be returning to silver. Let’s watch the basis and price action closely and see how it develops, before we join the pack…”

The price of silver has just spiked up about $2.00—that’s about 10%. All the usual suspects have been calling for silver to skyrocket. With some amusement, we have been watching ads from a guy known for savvy junior mining stock investments, who has been calling for gold to go up for a while.

One of our colleagues recently wrote an open letter to Ted Butler. The point was that Monetary Metals gold leasing is a different kind of activity than what is called “gold leasing” in the institutional bullion market. We make it possible for gold owners to lease their metal to gold-using businesses, and thereby earn interest in gold.

Are you familiar with the bet? Ehrlich wrote a book titled The Population Bomb. He held a pessimistic view of the future, in which population growth would outstrip resources (essentially the same as Thomas Malthus).

We are reading now about possible regulations for air travel. In brief: passengers might be forced to spend hours at the airport. Authorities will perform medical checks, including possibly needles to draw blood, no lounges, no food or drink on board the plane, masks required at all times, and even denied the use of a bathroom except by special permission.

The Federal Reserve has become more aggressive again, after several years of acting docile. As you can see on this chart of the Fed’s balance sheet, it has very rapidly expanded from a baseline from (prior to) 2015 through 2018, of about $4.4 trillion. After which, it had attempted to taper, getting down to $3.8 trillion last summer. Then it was obliged to reverse itself well before responding to the COVID lockdown. Since then, its balance sheet has gone vertical.

The loan is denominated in gold with interest and principal paid in gold. Scottsdale, Ariz., June 9, 2020—Monetary Metals® announced today that it has loaned gold to Sector Resources Canada Ltd., a British Columbia based gold mining company. The private transaction was conducted off-market, and the interest rate and terms were not disclosed.

The price of gold dropped a few bucks this week, but the price of silver jumped about half a buck. The drumbeat for the gold bull market is well underway, and it is beginning now for silver. So let’s do a quick update on the supply and demand fundamentals.

Suppose you wanted to run an enterprise the right way (we know, we know, this is pretty far-out fiction, but bear with us). And, your enterprise has a $1 million dollar piece of equipment that wears out after 10 years. You must set aside $100,000 a year, so that you have $1 million at the end of 10 years when the equipment needs replacing. There’s a word, now archaic, to describe the account in which you set aside this money.

I am writing in response to the comments you made in a letter to investors yesterday, which were widely reported. You have set the gold community afire, with claims that are not new and not true. So I shall attempt to douse the flames.
As everyone knows, President Roosevelt outlawed the ownership of gold in 1933. Although gold was legalized in 1975, fears linger today that the governments may repeat this heinous act.

The price of gold dropped $29 and the price of silver dropped $0.27. We’ll get back to where we think the prices are likely to go in a bit. In recent Reports, we’ve looked at the elevated bid-ask spread in gold (though not nearly as elevated as some goldbugs would have you believe) and the elevated gold basis.

The response to the virus has added a new mechanism of capital consumption to the many we have documented over the years. Businesses are shut down, yet they continue to incur expenses. There is a popular misconception out there that this is merely a paper loss. One can almost picture a neutron bomb that somehow wipes out only paper, leaving all the physical assets and plant unscathed.

The price of gold has been up steadily for the last 30 days (with a few zigs and zags), now re-attaining the high it achieved prior to the big drop in March. Gold ended the week at $1,662. Alas, it’s not quite the same story in silver, whose price drop was bigger. Now its price blip is smaller. Silver ended the week at $15.19.

Scottsdale, Ariz, April 7, 2020—Monetary Metals® announced today that it has leased gold to UK-based Brite Metals. The lease enables Brite Metals to buy gold from Latin American gold miners, and sell it to European refiners.

So, the stock market has dropped. Every government in the world has responded to the coronavirus with drastic, if not unprecedented, violations of the rights of the people. Not to mention, extremely aggressive monetary policy. And, they are about to unleash massive fiscal stimulus as well (for example, the United States government is about to dole out over $2 trillion worth of loot).

“The Medievals were smarter than most people think,” says Dr. Michael Mus. “I mean, sure, they tortured people for believing that the sun was the center of our solar system, and they burned witches at the stake. But they knew a thing or two about gold.”

The price of gold dropped $31, and that of silver fell even more by proportion, $2.14. The gold-silver ratio hit a hit of over 126 before closing the week around 119. This exceeds the high in the ratio last hit in the George H.W. Bush recession.
Last week, we were warming up to silver, if not recommending it.

Escribo esto el 18 de marzo, después de haber visto un cambio de 180 grados en la forma de pensar sobre las enfermedades contagiosas. Anteriormente, poníamos a los enfermos en cuarentena y respetamos el derecho de los sanos a seguir con sus vidas. Ahora estamos al borde de la ley marcial. En nuestro afán por combatir el coronavirus, estamos cerrando los viajes, las reuniones públicas, los restaurantes, etc.

We got hate mail after publishing Silver Backwardation Returns. It seems that someone thought backwardation means silver is a backward idea, or a bad bet. “You are a *&%#! idiot,” cursed he. “Silver is the most underpriced asset on the planet,” he offered as his sole supporting evidence. He doesn’t know that backwardation means scarcity, not that a commodity’s price is too high.

Most people assume that the central bank prints money when it buys bonds. They further assume that this increase in the quantity of money causes an increase in the general price level. And, this leads them to assume that the value of the money is 1 / P (P is the general price level). Therefore, when the central bank prints money to buy bonds, it is diluting the value of the money held by everyone—in proportion to the amount printed divided by the total amount in circulation.

The big news this week was the drop in the prices of the metals (though we believe that it is the dollar which is going up), $57 and $1.81 respectively. Of course, when the price drops the injured goldbugs come out. We have written the authoritative debunking of the gold and silver price suppression conspiracy here. We provide both the scientific theory and the data.

The price of gold rose $14 and the price of silver fell $0.07. The gold-silver ratio rose further with this price action. Welcome to our new Gold and Silver Market Report, or “Market Report” for short. We are separating this from the economics essay, which was attached for many years. As they used to say in many toy commercials of yore, “batteries sold separately”—or in this case essays.

We apologize for not posting articles during January. We have been busy, and going forward will publish a separate Market Report every Monday morning plus macroeconomics essays later in the week, as time permits.

GDP – A Poor Measure of “Growth” Last week the prices of the metals rose $35 and $0.82. But, then, the price of a basket of the 500 biggest stocks rose 62. The price of a barrel of oil rose $1.63. Even the euro went up a smidgen. One thing that did not go up was bitcoin. Another was the much-hated asset in the longest bull market. We refer to the US Treasury.

Dear Mr. Taft: I eagerly read your piece Warriors for Opportunity on Wednesday, as I often do about pieces that argue that capitalism is not working today. You begin by saying: “Financial capitalism – free markets powered by a robust financial system – is the dominant economic model in the world today. Yet many who have benefited from the system agree it’s not working the way it ought to.”

“There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

The basic idea behind the Quantity Theory of Money could be stated as: too much money supply is chasing too little goods supply, so prices rise. We have debunked this from several angles. For example, we can use a technique that every first year student in physics is expected to know. Dimensional analysis looks at the units on both sides of an equation.

Physics students study mechanical systems in which pulleys are massless and frictionless. Economics students study monetary systems in which rising prices are everywhere and always caused by rising quantity of currency. There is a similarity between this pair of assumptions. Both are facile. They oversimplify reality, and if one is not careful they can lead to spectacularly wrong conclusions.

Today, we want to say two things about negative interest rates. The first is really simple. Anyone who believes in a theory of interest that says “the savers demand interest to compensate for inflation” needs to ask if this explains negative interest in Switzerland, Europe, and other countries. If not, then we need a new theory (Keith just presented his theory at the Austrian Economics conference at King Juan Carlos University in Madrid—it is radically different).

Scottsdale, Ariz, October 25, 2019—Monetary Metals® announced today that it has leased platinum to Money Metals Exchange® to support its U.S.-based business of selling precious metals at retail and wholesale. Investors earn 3% on their platinum, which is held in Money Metals’ inventory vault in the form of platinum coins, bars, and rounds. The lease fee is paid in gold.

Let’s revisit a point that came up in passing, in the Silver Doctors’ interview of Keith. At around 35:45, he begins a question about weights and measures, and references the Coinage Act of 1792. This raises an interesting set of issues, and we have encountered much confusion (including from one PhD economist whose dissertation committee was headed by Milton Friedman himself).

Not too long ago, we wrote about the so called Modern Monetary so called Theory (MMT). It is not modern, and it is not a theory. We called it a cargo cult. You’d think that everyone would know that donning fake headphones made of coconut shells, and waving tiki torches will not summon airplanes loaded with cargo. At least the people who believe in this have the excuse of being illiterate.

Keith gave a keynote address—the only speaker with an hour to cover his topic—at the Gold and Alternative Investments Conference in Sydney on Saturday. Said topic was the nature of money.
“Money is a matter of functions four: a medium, a measure, a standard, a store.”

We talk a lot about the falling interest rate, the too-low interest rate, the near-zero interest rate, the zero interest rate, and the negative interest rate. Hat Tip to Switzerland, where Credit Suisse is now going to pay depositors -0.85%. That is, if you lend your francs to this bank, they take some of them every year. Almost 1% of them.

This week, we will delve into something really abstract. Not like monetary economics, which is so simple even a caveman can do it. We refer to a clever rhetorical trick. It’s when someone makes a broad and important assertion, in very general terms. But when challenged, the assertion is switched for one that is entirely uncontroversial but also narrow and unimportant.

It seems one cannot make a name for one’s self on the Left, unless one has a proposal to tax wealth. Academics like Tomas Piketty have proposed it. And now the Democratic candidates for president in the US propose it too, while Jeremy Corbyn proposes it in the UK. Venezuela finally added a wealth tax in July.

We discuss capital consumption all the time, because it is the megatrend of our era. However, capital consumption is an abstract idea. So let’s consider some concrete examples, to help make it clearer. First, let’s look at the case of Timothy Housetrader. Tim has a small two-bedroom house. Next door, his neighbor Ian Idjit, owns a four-bedroom house which is twice the size.

Something happened in the credit market this week. A Barron’s article about it began: “There have been disruptions in the plumbing of U.S. markets this week. While the process of fixing them was bumpy, it was more of a technical mishap than a cause for investor concern.” Keep Calm and Carry On. So, before they tell us what happened, they tell us it’s just plumbing, it’s been fixed, and that we should not be concerned.

This week, the prices of the metals fell further, with gold -$18 and silver -$0.73. On May 28, the price of silver hit its nadir, of $14.30. From the last three days of May through Sep 4, the price rose to $19.65. This was a gain of $5.35, or +37%. Congratulations to everyone who bought silver on May 28 and who sold it on Sep 4.

Germany has recently joined Switzerland in the dubious All Negative Club. The interest rate on every government bond, from short to 30 years, is now negative. Many would say “congratulations”, in the belief that this proves their credit risk is … well … umm … negative(?) And anyways, it will let them borrow more to spend on consumption which will stimulate … umm… well… all of the wasteful consumption for which governments are rightly infamous.

A paradigm is a mental framework. It has a both a positive pressure and a negative filter. It structures one’s thoughts, orients them in a certain direction, and rules out certain ideas. Paradigms can be very useful, for example the scientific method directs one to begin with facts, explain them in a consistent way, and to ignore peyote dreams from the smoke lodge and claims of mental spoon-bending.

Everyone must ask himself the question. Do you want the world to move to an honest money system, or do you just want gold to go up (we italicize discussion of apparent moves in gold, because it’s the dollar that’s moving down—not gold going up—but we sometimes frame it in mainstream terms).

At a shopping mall recently, we observed an interesting deal at Sketchers. If you buy two pairs of shoes, the second is 30% off. Sketchers has long offered deals like this (sometimes 50% off). This is a sign of deflation. Regular readers know to wait for the punchline. Manufacturer Gives Away Its Margins

We have recently written several essays about the fallacious concept of Gross Domestic Product. Among GDP’s several fatal flaws, it goes up when capital is converted to consumer goods, when seed corn is served at the feast. So we proposed—and originally dismissed—the idea of a national balance sheet.

“I know it, when I see it.” This phrase was first used by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, in a case of obscenity. Instead of defining it—we would think that this would be a requirement for a law, which is of course backed by threat of imprisonment—he resorted to what might be called Begging Common Sense. It’s just common sense, it’s easy-peasy, there’s no need to define the term…

We have spilled many electrons on the topic of capital consumption. Still, this is a very abstract topic and we think many people still struggle to picture what it means. Thus, the inspiration for this week’s essay. Suppose a young man, Early Enterprise, inherits a car from his grandfather. Early decides to drive for Uber to earn a living. Being enterprising, he is up at dawn and drives all day.

Folks in the liberty movement often say that the economy is fake. But this does not persuade anyone. It’s just preaching to the choir! We hope that this series on GDP provides more effective ammunition to argue with the Left-Right-Wall-Street-Main-Street-Capitalists-Socialists.

Last week, we looked at the idea of a national balance sheet, as a better way to measure the economy than GDP (which is production + destruction). The national balance sheet would take into account both assets and liabilities. If we take on another $1,000,000 debt to buy a $1,000,000 asset, then we have not added any equity.

We have been writing on the flaws in GDP: that it is no measure of the economy, because it looks only at cash and not the balance sheet, and that there are positive feedback loops.
“OK, Mr. Smarty Pants,” you’re thinking (yes, we know you’re thinking this), “if GDP is not a good measure of the economy, then what is?!”

Our economic views and unique product are generating buzz. There have been a number of interviews recently (more will be posted soon). Lobo Tiggre interviewed Keith Weiner (video) about the unique Monetary Metals business model to pay interest on gold.

Last week, we discussed the fundamental flaw in GDP. GDP is a perfect tool for central planning tools. But for measuring the economy, not so much. This is because it looks only at cash revenues. It does not look at the balance sheet. It does not take into account capital consumption or debt accumulation. Any Keynesian fool can add to GDP by borrowing to spend. But that is not economic growth.

Let’s start with Frederic Bastiat’s 170-year old parable of the broken window. A shopkeeper has a broken window. The shopkeeper is, of course, upset at the loss of six francs (0.06oz gold, or about $75). Bastiat discusses a then-popular facile argument: the glass guy is making money (to which all we can say is, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”).

Monetary Metals leased silver to Gold Bullion International, to support the growth of its gold jewelry line. The metal is held in the form of inventory in a third party depository.

We will start this off with a pet peeve. Too often, one is reading something about gold. It starts off well enough, discussing problems with the dollar or the bond market or a real estate bubble… and them bam! Buy gold because the dollar is gonna be worthless! That number again is 1-800-BUY-GOLD or we have another 1-800-GOT-GOLD in case the lines on the first number are busy!

In what has become a four-part series, we are looking at the monetary science of China’s potential strategy to nuke the Treasury bond market. In Part I, we gave a list of reasons why selling dollars would hurt China. In Part II we showed that interest rates, being that the dollar is irredeemable, are not subject to bond vigilantes.

We have been discussing the impossibility of China nuking the Treasury bond market. We covered a list of challenges China would face. Then last week we showed that there cannot be such a thing as a bond vigilante in an irredeemable currency. Now we want to explore a different path to the same conclusion that China cannot nuke the Treasury bond market.

Last week, we wrote about the impossibility of China nuking the Treasury bond market. Really, this is not about China but mostly about the nature of the dollar and the structure of the monetary system. We showed that there are a whole host of problems with the idea of selling a trillion dollars of Treasurys: Yuan holders are selling yuan to buy dollars, PBOC can’t squander its dollar reserves If it doesn’t buy another currency, it merely tightens monetary conditions in China

There is a drumbeat pounding on a monetary issue, which is now rising into a crescendo. The issue is: China might sell its holdings of Treasury bonds—well over $1 trillion—and crash the Treasury bond market. Since the interest rate is inverse to the bond price, a crash of the price would be a skyrocket of the rate. The US government would face spiraling costs of servicing its debt, and quickly collapse into bankruptcy.

We have deviated, these past several weeks, from matters monetary. We have written a lot about a nonmonetary driver of higher prices—mandatory useless ingredients. The government forces businesses to put ingredients into their products that consumers don’t know about, and don’t want. These useless ingredients, such as ADA-compliant bathrooms and supply chain tracking, add a lot to the price of every good.

Over the past several weeks, we have debunked the idea that purchasing power—i.e. what a dollar can buy—is intrinsic to the currency itself. We have discussed a large non-monetary force that drives up prices. Governments at every level force producers to add useless ingredients, via regulation, taxation, labor law, environmentalism, etc.

Monetary Metals leased silver to Money Metals Exchange, to support the growth of its gold and silver bullion  business. The metal is held in the form of inventory in its vault. For more information see Monetary Metals’ press release.

Monetary Metals® announces that it has leased silver to Money Metals Exchange® to support the growth of its business of selling gold and silver at retail and wholesale. Investors earn 2.2% on their silver, which is held in Money Metals’ vault in the form of silver products.

The bid-ask spread of both (spot) gold and silver has blown out. Both, on March 1. In gold, the spread had been humming along around 13 cents—gold is the most marketable commodity, and this is the proof, a bid-ask spread around 1bps—until… *BAM!* It explodes to around 35 cents, or two and half times as wide.

We have a postscript to our ongoing discussion of inflation. A reader pointed out that Levis 501 jeans are $39.19 on Amazon (in Keith’s size—Amazon advertises prices as low as $16.31, which we assume is for either a very small size that uses less fabric, or an odd size that isn’t selling). Think of the enormity of this. The jeans were $50 in 1983. After 36 years of relentless inflation (or hot air about inflation), the price is down to $39.31. Down 21.4%.

We have a postscript to last week’s article. We said that rising prices today are not due to the dollar going down. It’s not that the dollar buys less. It’s that producers are forced to include more and more ingredients, which are not only useless to the consumer. But even invisible to the consumer. For example, dairy producers must provide ADA-compliant bathrooms to their employees.

Last week, we wrote that regulations, taxes, environmental compliance, and fear of lawsuits forces companies to put useless ingredients into their products. We said: “For example, milk comes from the ingredients of: land, cows, ranch labor, dairy labor, dairy capital equipment, distribution labor, distribution capital, and consumable containers.”

This week, the Supply and Demand Report featured a graph of debt vs profitability in the Russell 2000. Here’s the graph again: This graph shows a theme that we, and practically no one else(!) have been discussing for years. It is the diminishing marginal utility of debt. In this case, more and more debt is required to add what looks like less and less profit (we don’t have the raw data, only the graphic).

We have written much about the notion of inflation. We don’t want to rehash our many previous points, but to look at the idea of purchasing power from a new angle. Purchasing power is assumed to be intrinsic to the currency. We have said that the problem with the word inflation is that it treats two different phenomena as if they are the same.

A number of commentators have predicted that the rules of the Basel III bank regulations will cause gold to skyrocket (no, this article is not about our view that gold does not go up, that it’s the dollar going down, that the lighthouse does not go up, it’s the sinking ship going down in the storm).

Last week, I ranted about the problem with our monetary system and trajectory: falling interest rates is Keynes’ evil genius plan to destroy civilization. This week, I continue the theme—if in a more measured tone—addressing the ideas predominant among the groups who are most likely to fight against Keynes’ destructionism.

My goal is to make you mad. Not at me (though I expect to ruffle a few feathers with this one). At the evil being wrought in the name of fighting inflation and maximizing employment. And at the aggressive indifference to this evil, exhibited by the capitalists, the gold bugs, and the otherwise-free-marketers.

This is a pair of photographs taken by Keith Weiner, for a high school project. It seemed a fitting picture for the dual nature of money, the dual nature of wood both as logs to be consumed and dimensional lumber to be used to construct buildings.

We have written numerous articles about capital consumption. Our monetary system has a falling interest rate, which causes both capital churn and conversion of one party’s wealth into another’s income. It also has too-low interest, which encourages borrowing to consume (which, as everyone knows, adds to Gross Domestic Product—GDP).

Ayn Rand famously defended money. In Atlas Shrugged, Francisco D’Anconia says: “So you think that money is the root of all evil? . . . Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them.

It is easy to think of government interference into the economy like a kind of friction. If producers and traders were fully free, then they could improve our quality of life—with new technologies, better products, and lower prices—at a rate of X. But the more that the government does, the more it burdens them. So instead of X rate of progress, we get the same end result but 10% slower or 20% slower.

Monetary Metals leased gold to Quantum Metal, to support the growth of its gold distribution business through retail bank branches. The metal is held in the form of retail Perth Mint bars.

Last week, in part I of this essay, we discussed why a central planner cannot know the right interest rate. Central planner’s macroeconomic aggregate measures like GDP are blind to the problem of capital consumption, including especially capital consumption caused by the central plan itself.

Scottsdale, Ariz, February 8, 2019—Monetary Metals® announces that it has leased gold to Quantum Metal, to support the growth of its business of selling gold through retail banks. Investors earn 4.5% on their gold, which is held as Perth Mint minted gold bars in inventory. Monetary Metals has a disruptive model, leasing gold from investors who own it and subleasing it to businesses who need it, typically for inventory or work-in-progress.

On January 6, we wrote the Surest Way to Overthrow Capitalism. We said: “In a future article, we will expand on why these two statements are true principles: (1) there is no way a central planner could set the right rate, even if he knew and (2) only a free market can know the right rate.” Today’s article is part I that promised article.

Newly elected Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) absolutely needed to be “a larger part of our conversation.” Her comment shines a spotlight on MMT. So what is it? According to Wikipedia, it is: “a macroeconomic theory that describes the currency as a public monopoly and unemployment as the evidence that a currency monopolist is restricting the supply of the financial assets needed to pay taxes and satisfy savings desires.”

Last week, we joked that we don’t challenge beliefs. Here’s one that we want to challenge today: the dollar doesn’t work as a currency, because it’s losing value. Even the dollar’s proponents, admit it loses value. The Fed itself states that its mandate is price stability—which it admits means relentless two percent annual debasement (Orwell would be proud).

For years, people blamed the global financial crisis on greed. Doesn’t this make you want to scream out, “what, were people not greedy in 2007 or 1997??” Greed utterly fails to explain the phenomenon. It merely serves to reinforce a previously-held belief.

One of the most important problems in economics is: How do we know if an enterprise is creating or destroying wealth? The line between the two is objective, black and white. It should be clear that if business managers can’t tell the difference between a wealth-creating or wealth-destroying activity, then our whole society will be miserably poor.

Last week, the price of gold rose $25, and that of silver $0.60. Is it our turn? Is now when gold begins to go up? To outperform stocks? Something has changed in the supply and demand picture. Let’s look at that picture. But, first, here is the chart of the prices of gold and silver.

We could also have entitled this essay How to Measure Your Own Capital Destruction. But this headline would not have set expectations correctly. As always, when looking at the phenomenon of a credit-fueled boom, the destruction does not occur when prices crash. It occurs while they’re rising.

For the first time since we began publishing this Report, it is a day late. We apologize. Keith has just returned Saturday from two months on the road. Unlike the rest of the world, we define inflation as monetary counterfeiting. We do not put the emphasis on quantity (and the dollar is not money, it’s a currency). We focus on the quality. An awful lot of our monetary counterfeiting occurs to fuel consumption spending.

The Baby Boom generation may be the first generation to leave less to their children than they inherited. Or to leave nothing at all. We hear lots—often from Baby Boomers—about the propensities of their children’s generation. The millennials don’t have good jobs, don’t save, don’t buy houses in the same proportions as their parents, etc.

What is inflation? Any layman can tell you—and nearly everyone uses it this way in informal speech—that inflation is rising prices. Some will say “due to devaluation of the money.” Economists will say, no it’s not rising prices per se. That is everywhere and always the effect. The cause, the inflation as such, is an increase in the quantity of money. Which is the same thing as saying devaluation.

There is the freedom of speech battle, with the forces of darkness advancing all over. For example, in Pakistan, there are killings of journalists. Saudi Arabia apparently had journalist Khashoggi killed. New Zealand now can force travellers to provide the password to their phones so the government can go through all your data, presumably including your gmail, Onedrive, Evernote, and WhatsApp.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away we wrote a series of articles arguing that bitcoin is not money and is not sound. Bitcoin was skyrocketing at the time, as we wrote most of them between July 30 and Oct 1 last year. Back in those halcyon days, volatility was deemed to be a feature.

So this happened: Republic Metals, a gold refiner, filed bankruptcy on November 2. The company had found a discrepancy in its inventory of around $90 million, while preparing its financial statements.
We are not going to point the Finger of Blame at Republic or its management, as we do not know if this was honest error or theft.

Terry Goodkind wrote an epic fantasy series. The first book in the series is entitled Wizard’s First Rule. We recommend the book highly, if you’re into that sort of thing. However, for purposes of this essay, the important part is the rule itself: “Wizard’s First Rule: people are stupid.” “People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything.

There is a popular notion, at least among American libertarians and gold bugs. The idea is that people will one day “get woke”, and suddenly realize that the dollar is bad / unbacked / fiat / unsound / Ponzi / other countries don’t like it / . When they do, they will repudiate it. That is, sell all their dollars to buy consumer goods (i.e. hyperinflation), gold, and/or whatever other currency.
Redemptions Balanced With Deposits
No national currency is gold-backed today. In a gold backed currency, each currency unit begins life with someone who chooses to deposit his gold coin in exchange for the paper currency. And it ends life with someone redeeming the paper to get back the gold coin. A good analogy is bone in the human body. One process is constantly removing bone material. And another

Let’s continue to look at the fiasco in the franc. We say “fiasco”, because anyone in Switzerland who is trying to save for retirement has been put on a treadmill, which is now running backwards at –¾ mph (yes, miles per hour in keeping with our treadmill analogy). Instead of being propelled forward towards their retirement goals by earning interest that compounds, they are losing principal.

I was on the Jay Taylor Show again, to talk about the the Swiss franc. No, the headline was not of my choosing. Adam Caroll gave a Ted Talk about how people behave differently when money isn’t real. And gets into a discussion of how kids will click to spend on their parents’ phones without any real appreciation for what it costs. It’s called “When money isn’t real“.

You Actually Can Eat Gold, But Its Nutritional Value is Dubious. “You can’t eat gold.” The enemies of gold often unleash this little zinger, as if it dismisses the idea of owning gold and indeed the whole gold standard. It is a fact, you cannot eat gold. However, it dismisses nothing.

“You can’t eat gold.” The enemies of gold often unleash this little zinger, as if it dismisses the idea of owning gold and indeed the whole gold standard. It is a fact, you cannot eat gold. However, it dismisses nothing.
This gives us an idea. Let’s tie three facts together. One, you can’t eat gold. Two, gold is in backwardation in Switzerland. And three, speculation is a bet on the price action.

Last week, we shined a spotlight on a crack in the monetary system that few people outside of Switzerland (and not many inside either) were aware of. There is permanent gold backwardation measured in Swiss francs. Everyone knows that the Swiss franc has a negative interest rate, but so far as we know, Keith is the only one who predicted this would lead to its collapse (and he was quite early, having written that in January 2015).

This is a textbook case. Well, it would be if there was a textbook that presented the dynamics of the rising and falling interest rate cycles. Costco is spending over a quarter billion dollars, to make a capital investment in chicken processing. This is not the typical entrepreneurial investment, which seeks to increase margins by serving an unserved or underserved demand.

The price of gold fell nine bucks last week. However, the price of silver shot up 33 cents. Our central planners of credit (i.e., the Fed) raised short-term interest rates, and threatened to do it again in December. Meanwhile, the stock market continues to act as if investors do not understand the concepts of marginal debtor, zombie corporation, and net present value.

Sometimes, one just needs to look in the right place. And often in those cases, it just takes a conversation to alert one where to look. We had a call with a Swiss company this week, to discuss gold financing for their business. They reminded us that there is a negative interest rate on Swiss francs. And then they said that a swap of francs for gold has a cost. That is, the CHF GOFO rate is negative (the dollar based 12-month MM GOFO™ is +2.4%).

We do not have a free market in interest rates today. We have not had one since the creation of the Fed in 1913. The Fed began buying bonds almost immediately, which pushes up the price and hence pushes down the interest rate. However, as I discuss in my theory of interest and prices, the Fed creates a resonant system with positive feedback loops.

Last week, we talked about the capital consumed by Netflix—$8 billion to produce 700 shows. They’re spending more than two thirds of their gross revenue generating content. And this content has so little value, that a quarter of their audience would stop watching if Netflix adds ads (sorry, we couldn’t resist a little fun with the English language).

For about ten bucks a month, Netflix will give you all the movies you can watch, plus tons of TV show series and other programs, such as one-off science documentaries. They don’t offer all movies, merely more than you can watch. Oh, and there are no commercials. They don’t just give you old BBC reruns, which you know they can get for a pittance.

It’s not every day that a clear example showing the horrors of central planning comes along—the doublethink, the distortions, and the perverse incentives. It’s not every year that such an example occurs for monetary central planning. One came to the national attention this week. A company called TNB applied for a Master Account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

This week, we are back to our ongoing series on capital destruction. Let’s consider the simple transaction of issuing a bond. Party X sells a bond to Party Y. We will first offer something entirely uncontroversial. If the interest rate rises after Y buys the bond, then Y takes a loss. Or if the interest rate falls, then Y makes a capital gain. This is simply saying that the bond price moves inverse to the interest rate.

Life is good. They could not have imagined what we have now, back in the dark ages. So I have never understood why people prep for a return to the dark ages. The only thing I can think of is that they don’t really picture what life is like. 14 hours a day of back-breaking labor to eke out a subsistence living. Subject to the risks of rain, sun, and insects.

Last week, we said that the consensus is that gold must go down (as measured in terms of the unstable dollar) and then will rocket higher. We suggested that if everyone expects an outcome in the market, the outcome is likely not to turn out that way. We also said that this time, there is likely less leverage employed to buy gold and that gold is less leveraged as well.

Last week, the lighthouse went down 24 meters (gold went down $24), or 50 inches (if you prefer, silver went down 50 cents). However, let’s take a look at the only true picture of supply and demand. Are the fundamentals dropping with the market price?

Last week, we discussed the tension between forces pushing the dollar up and down (measured in gold—you cannot measure the dollar in terms of its derivatives such as euro, pound, yen, and yuan). And we gave short shrift to the forces pushing the dollar down. We said only that to own a dollar is to be a creditor. And if the debtors seem in imminent danger of default, then creditors should want to escape this risk.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet famously dismissed gold. “Gold has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative.” I have recently written about how a government with gold mining tax revenues can use gold. The benefits of issuing gold bonds include reducing risk, and getting out of debt at a discount. Pretty useful, eh?

Last week in Monetary Paradigm Reset, we talked about the challenge of explaining a new paradigm. We said: “The hard part of accepting this paradigm shift, was that people had to rethink their entire view of cosmology, theology, and philosophy. In the best case, people take time to grapple with these challenges to their idea of man’s place in the universe. Some never accept the new idea.” We were talking about the fact that money is the unit of account, and the assertion that irredeemable paper currencies are money.

Keith had two more in-depth, ideaful interviews. Keith was interviewed on the Jason Stapleton Program. Keith had a lively discussion with Peter Bell and Mickey Fulp, the Mercenary Geologist.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Let’s return to our ongoing series on the destruction of capital, and how to identify the signs. Steve Saville posted a thoughtful article this week entitled The “Productivity of Debt” Myth. His article provides a good opportunity to add some additional thoughts. We have written quite a lot on this topic. Indeed, we have a landing page for marginal productivity of debt (MPoD) with four articles so far.

The price of gold fell another ten bucks and that of silver another 28 cents last week. Perspective: if you are waiting for the right moment to buy, the market is offering you a better deal than it did last week (literally, the market price of gold is at a 7.2% discount to the fundamental price vs. 4.6% last week). If you wanted to sell, this wasn’t a good week to wait. Which is your intention, and why?

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

In part I the Great Reset, we said that a reset is a terrible thing. The closest example is the fall of Rome in 476AD, in which more than 90% of the population of the city fled or died. No one should wish for this to happen, but we are unfortunate to live under a failing monetary system. Debt is growing exponentially. A way must be found to transition to the use of gold. We covered a few ways that won’t work.

Before it collapsed, the city of Rome had a population greater than 1,000,000 people. That was an extraordinary accomplishment in the ancient world, made possible by many innovative technologies and the organization of the greatest civilization that the world had ever seen. Such an incredible urban population depended on capital accumulated over centuries. But the Roman Empire squandered this capital, until it was no longer sufficient to sustain the city (we are aware the story is more complicated than this).

Race to the Bottom, Last week the price of gold fell $17, and that of silver $0.30. Why? We can tell you about the fundamentals. We can show charts of the basis. But we can’t get into the heads of the sellers. We can say that in the mainstream view, the dollar is rising. The dollar, in their view, is not measured in gold but in rupees in yuan and rubles. You know, all the superior forms of money…

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

A gold bond is debt obligation that is denominated in gold, with interest and principal paid in gold. As I will explain below, it’s a way for the issuer to pay off its debt in full, and there are other advantages. Sometimes, I find that it’s helpful to show a picture of what I’m talking about. At the Harvard Club in New York, an old gold bond is hanging on the wall among other memorabilia.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Back in the drug-soaked, if not halcyon, days known at the sexual and drug revolution—the 1960’s—many people were on a quest for the “perfect trip”, and the “perfect hit of acid” (the drug lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD). We will no doubt generate some hate mail for saying this, but we don’t believe that anyone ever attained that goal.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

The dollar is failing. Millions of people can see at least some of the major signs, such as the collapse of interest rates, record high number of people not counted in the workforce, and debt rising from already-unpayable levels at an accelerating rate.

Picture, if you will, a group of slaves owned by a cruel man. Most of them are content, but one says to the others, “I will defy the Master”. While his statement would superficially appear to yearn towards freedom, it does not. It betrays that this slave, just like the others, thinks of the man who beats them as their “Master” (note the capital M). This slave does not seek freedom, but merely a small gesture of disloyalty.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

We have been promising to get back to the topic of capital destruction, which we put on hiatus for the last several weeks to make our case that the interest rate remains in a falling trend. Today, we have a different way of looking at capital destruction.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Predicting the likely path of the prices of the metals in the near term is easy. Just look at the fundamentals. We have invested many man-years in developing the theory, model, and software to calculate it. Every week we publish charts and our calculated fundamental prices.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

The Senate just passed a 500-page tax reform bill. Assuming it lives up to its promise, it will cut taxes on corporations and individuals. Predictably, the Left hates it and the Right loves it. I am writing to argue why the Right should hate it (no, not for the reason the Left does, a desire to get the rich).

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Physicists say that the universe is expanding. However, they hotly debate (OK, pun intended as a foreshadowing device) if the rate of expansion is sufficient to overcome gravity—called escape velocity. It may seem like an arcane topic, but the consequences are dire either way.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Amassing Unproductive Debt.Last week, we discussed the marginal productivity of debt. This is how much each newly-borrowed dollar adds to GDP. And ever since the interest rate began its falling trend in 1981, marginal productivity of debt has tightly correlated with interest. The lower the interest rate, the less productive additional borrowing has in fact become.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Claim-Less Delirium. Yesterday, the Department of Labor announced that initial jobless claims dropped. Quite a lot. So naturally, markets reacted. The stock market began to rise. The euro rose, at least for a while. And the prices of our favorite heavy metals rose, particularly silver. Silver was around its low of $16.92 before the report. Two and a half hours later, it was $17.26. Our first reaction was to ask, “really??

Discounting the Present Value of Future Income. Last week, we discussed the ongoing fall of dividend, and especially earnings, yields. This Report is not a stock letter, and we make no stock market predictions. We talk about this phenomenon to make a different point. The discount rate has fallen to a very low level indeed.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Too Big to Fail? Dear Mr. Butler, in your article of 2 October, entitled Thoughtful Disagreement, you say: “Someone will come up with the thoughtful disagreement that makes the body of my premise invalid or the price of silver will validate the premise by exploding.” Ted Butler – we first became aware of Mr. Butler in 1998, and as far as we know, he has been making the bullish case for silver ever since.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

The Instability Problem. Bitcoin is often promoted as the antidote to the madness of fiat irredeemable currencies. It is also promoted as their replacement. Bitcoin is promoted not only as money, but the future money, and our monetary future. In fact, it is not. Why not? To answer, let us start with a look at the incentives offered by bitcoin.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

We have noticed a proliferation of pundits, newsletter hawkers, and even mainstream market analysts focusing on one aspect of the bitcoin market. Big money, institutional money, public markets money, is soon to flood into bitcoin. Or so they say.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

How We Got Used to Fiat Money
Most false or irrational ideas about money are not new. For example, take the idea that government can just fix the price of one monetary asset against another. Some people think that we can have a gold standard by such a decree today. This idea goes back at least as far as the Coinage Act of 1792, when the government fixed 371.25 grains of silver to the same value as 24.75 grains of gold, or a ratio of 15 to 1.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Stockholm Syndrome is defined as “…a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity.” While observers would expect kidnapping victims to fear and loathe the gang who imprison and threaten them, the reality is that some don’t.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

This question is no longer moot. As the world moves inexorably towards the use of metallic money, interest on gold and silver will return with it. This raises an important question. Which interest rate will be higher?

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Institute wrote an article, The Myth of Banking Deregulation, to debunk a lie. The lie is that bank regulation is good. That it helped stabilize the economy in the 1930’s. And that deregulation at the end of the century destabilized the economy and caused the crisis of 2008.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

I address this essay to two groups. One group is those among the liberty movement, who believe that there’s nothing wrong with inequality. These are often Objectivists, who unknowingly defend a regime that artificially suppresses working people.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Collectivism Across Party Lines “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.” – Elizabeth Warren, campaign speech 2011. “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

I gave a 45-minute presentation on Yield Purchasing Power at American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, MA on October 14, 2016. I am grateful to the Institute for recording video of my presentation plus extended Q&A.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price. This week a partial silver crash, reason the Non-Manufacturing ISM?

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

The prices of the metals didn’t change much this week. We thought we would take this opportunity to quote Warren Buffet. A comment he made at Harvard in 1998 earned him the scorn of the gold community.
“Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

The Arizona House of Representatives has convened an Ad Hoc Committee on Gold Bonds. The purpose is to explore if and how the state could sell a gold bond. This is an exciting development, as the issuance of a gold bond would be a major step towards a working gold standard.Yours truly is a member of the committee.

Calculation Problem. What is the real interest rate? It is the nominal rate minus the inflation rate. This is a problematic idea. Let’s drill deeper into what they mean by inflation. You can’t add apples and oranges, or so the old expression claims. However, economists insist that you can average the prices of apples, oranges, oil, rent, and a ski trip at St. Moritz.

Modern monetary economics is a siren song, especially alluring in a world of falling, zero, and negative interest rates. I urge you not to dash your wealth against the rocks.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

What is the real interest rate? It is the nominal rate minus the inflation rate. This is a problematic idea. Let’s drill deeper into what they mean by inflation. You can’t add apples and oranges, or so the old expression claims. However, economists insist that you can average the prices of apples, oranges, oil, rent, and a ski trip at St. Moritz. This is despite problems that prevent them from agreeing on what should be included.

“Bad” Monopolies? An argument against absolutely free markets comes up often. What about so-called natural monopolies? So-called infrastructure projects (e.g. sewage plants) have high barriers to entry, and are a challenge to true competition.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

It goes without question, among economists of the central planning mindset, that if a central bank can just set the right quantity of dollars, then the price level, GDP, unemployment, and everything else will be right at the Goldilocks Optimum. One such approach that has become popular in recent years is nominal GDP targeting.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

  The Euthanasia of Widows and Orphans In my testimony in support of the gold legal tender bill this year, I discussed failing pension funds. Retirees who count on their pension checks are being told that their monthly check will be reduced by up to …

Unpersuaded by either the plight of the pensioners or the prospect of business growth in Arizona, Ducey vetoed gold. This is his second time to shoot down gold.

The Gold Standard Institute starts posting on snbchf.com. It is based in Phoenix AZ, is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt educational organization dedicated to spreading awareness and knowledge of gold, and to promoting the use of gold as money.

The popular belief is that gold is a good hedge against inflation. Owning gold will protect you from rising prices. Is that true?

  A Loss of Momentum The price of gold moved down slightly this week, while that of silver dropped more substantially—1.9%. We don’t see much decrease in the enthusiasm yet from this minor setback. This was a shortened week due to the May Day holiday…

  The Metals Take Off The price of gold shot up over $60 this week. The price of silver moved up proportionally, gaining over $0.85. The mood is now palpable. The feeling in the air is that of long suffering suddenly turned to optimism. Big gains, if…

  Erroneous Analysis of Precious Metals Fundamentals We came across an article at Bloomberg today, talking about silver supply troubles. We get it. The price of silver has rallied quite a lot, so the press needs to cover the story. They need to expla…

  The Prices of Gold and Silver Drift Apart Another interesting week, in that the price of silver separated from the price of gold. The former went no nowhere, while the latter gained over 4.5%. We get the trading thesis, that if the precious metals …

  What Differentiates Gold from Silver? Well that was an interesting week. Gold went down over thirty bucks and silver went up over thirty cents. How much longer can this silver rally continue in the face of gold’s non-participation? Will speculators…

This leads to our present question. To speak of borrowing and a ready market in which the Fed can borrow, means there is a lender. Who is the lender to the Fed?

  Tricky and Dangerous Assumptions For at least a few weeks now, we have noticed a growing drumbeat from a growing corps of analysts. Gold is going to thousands of dollars. And silver is going to outperform. Reasons given are myriad. Goldman Sachs ap…

  A Spot of Irrational Exuberance There were some fireworks last week. Gold went up on Tuesday (it was a shortened week due to Easter Monday), from a low of $1,215 to $1,244 over the day, a move of over 2 percent. Silver moved from $15.02 to $15.44, …

There were some fireworks this week. Gold went up on Tuesday (it was a shortened week due to Easter Monday), from a low of $1,215 to $1,244 over the day, a move of over 2 percent. Silver moved from $15.02 to $15.44, almost 3 percent. What happened on…

Gold went down (as the muggles would measure it, in dollars). It dropped almost 40 bucks. Silver fell almost 60 cents. Since silver fell proportionally farther than gold, the gold-silver ratio went up.

Early on Monday morning (Arizona time), silver began to rise. From its close on Friday of $15.46, it ran up to $15.82. Then it began to slide, eventually dropping to $15.17 by midmorning on Wednesday. Then…

On the week, the prices of the metals didn’t move all that much. However, the move around 6am (Arizona time) on Thursday is notable. The price of silver spiked up from around $15.12 to $15.64—3.4%—by around 8am. Twelve hours later, the price touched …

So the price of silver rocketed up 80 cents, while the price of gold jumped $37. Silver is now more expensive than it was two weeks ago; the price decline of last week was more than overcompensated. This pushed the gold-silver ratio down about two wh…

A company offers interest on gold, and the gold community goes ballistic. Why so visceral a response? To answer that, we need to look at the backdrop of today’s bizarre financial world.

Zero Hedge published an article on Canadian Bullion Services (CBS) last week. Other sites ran similar articles. The common thread through these articles, and in the user comments section, is that CBS is committing criminal fraud. Or, if not, then it’…

The gold to silver ratio moved up very sharply this week, +4.2%. How did this happen? It was not because of a move in the price of gold, which barely budged this week. It was due entirely to silver being repriced 66 cents lower.

The big news is that the gold-silver ratio closed at 80. This is not only a new high for the move. It’s higher than it has been since 2008. It’s also exactly what Monetary Metals has been calling for. Last week, we said the gold fundamental was $1,45…

Again, we had another big drop in the dollar this week. No, we don’t mean against the dollar derivatives known as the euro, pound, etc. We mean by the only standard capable of measuring it: gold. The dollar fell 1.4 milligrams, to 25.1mg gold. Or, if…

Last Thursday, January 28, there was a flash crash on the price chart for silver. Here is a graph of the price action. The Price of Silver, Jan 28 (All times GMT) If you read more about it, you will see that there was an irregularity around the silve…

Part I Last Thursday, January 28, there was a flash crash on the price chart for silver. Here is a graph of the price action. The Price of Silver, Jan 28 (All times GMT) If you read more about it, you will see that there was an irregularity around th…

Wow, did the dollar move down this week! It dropped more than it has in quite a while. It fell 1.3mg gold, or 0.1g silver. Gold and silver bugs of course are excited, as they look at it as the prices of the metals going up $55 and 72 cents respective…

The price of the dollar was down 50mg gold, to 27.8mg, or if you prefer 0.04g silver to 2.18g. Why do we measure the volatile dollar in terms of gold and silver? There’s nothing else to measure it, certainly not the dollar-derivatives called euro, po…

We have consistently been making the contrarian call for a falling silver price and a rising gold to silver ratio for years. This ratio has risen a lot during this time. So are we ready to change our call yet?

Will stocks go up more, or will gold outperform? With the paperocentric theory, this is hard to answer. We have to estimate rates of inflation (meaning increases in the quantity of dollars) and calculate how much inflation (meaning rising prices of all things, consumer and asset) that will cause. Then we have to somehow put a value on gold. It boils down to a guess.

We have consistently been making the contrarian call for a falling silver price and a rising gold to silver ratio for years. This ratio has risen a lot during this time. So are we ready to change our call yet? This being the start of a new year, we w…

This will be a brief report, as we’re focused on releasing our Outlook 2016 Report which is over 8,000 words of our assessment of the gold, silver, currency, and credit markets. Also, this was a holiday-shortened week (Monday was Martin Luther King D…

The great stock bull market is, perhaps, done. To most people, a bull market is good, and its end is bad. After all, a rising market signifies a healthy economy. Investors are making money. Share prices are connected to business productivity, aren’t they?

There is a great lyric in Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who: Then I’ll get on my knees and prayWe don’t get fooled again Remember last week, when the price of silver spiked? On Thursday that week, the price was moving sideways around $14. Then around…

Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan ChaseBrian T. Moynihan, Bank of AmericaMichael Corbat, Citigroup Gentlemen: On Friday, I attended a digital money summit at the Consumer Electronics Show. I am writing to you to warn you about the disruption that is about to oc…

On Friday, I attended a digital money summit at the Consumer Electronics Show. I am writing to you to warn you about the disruption that is about to occur in banking. There are many startups (and larger companies too) that are gunning for you. Perhaps you have watched what Uber has done to the taxi business? Well, these guys are planning the same thing for the banking business.

No doubt, many people were excited on Thursday to see a spike in the silver price. The big news almost seemed like it would be a spike in the silver price. We were not quite so exuberant, tweeting (follow us on Twitter @Monetary_Metals):

There is no shortage of sound money conferences. They’re regularly put on by think tanks, and dutifully attended by all the free market academics who can get travel budget. But I have a premonition. The move to the gold standard won’t be led, or driven by these events.

Perhaps it may be lesser known than his other Laws, but Murphy wrote one for the basis analysis. It goes like this. If we observe that the fundamental price of a metal is far removed from the market price, the two won’t likely converge the next week….

There is a populist idea of money printing. The idea is that banks can just print what they want, enriching themselves in a massive fraud. But, does it really work this way?

The prices of the metals rose a bit this quiet, holiday week. Merry Christmas! Speaking of Christmas, Keith’s brother who is an amateur woodworker of growing skill, gave him this present on Friday.

There’s this article, saying rising rates are good for gold. It repeats two old errors: gold goes up, and things that cause it (e.g. a collapsing paper currency) are “good”. We have recently been emphasizing that interest does not correlate well with…

The Fed is going to have to take back this interest rate hike (Dec 16). The process that sets the interest rate is complex. I have written many words on its terminal decline. However, there are two simple reasons why the trend remains downward.

The prices of the metals were sagging. Silver was trading around $13.80. On Wednesday, Janet “Good News” Yellen said the magic words. The Federal Reserve hiked the federal funds rate by 25 basis points. The price of silver was surging in anticipation…

Most people assume that prices move as a result of changes in the money supply. Instead, let’s look at the effect of falling interest. To start, consider a hamburger restaurant. Suppose that the average profit in the burger business is ten percent of invested capital. If MacDowell’s is thinking about expanding, it has to consider the interest rate. Why?

“That [half a dollar of buying] frenzy was not stackers lining up to buy phyz. It was speculators buying paper. Why does that matter? Speculators, who typically use leverage, can’t hold the market price against the tide of the hoarders. They can push…

The prices of the metals moved mostly sideways this week. That is, until Friday. Then foom! (Foom is the sound of a rocket taking off.) From 6 to 10am (Arizona time, i.e. 8 to 12 NY time) the price of gold rose from $1,061 to $1,087. Not surprisingly…

Unless you’re living under a rock, you know that we have an administered interest rate. This means that the bureaucrats at the Federal Reserve decide what’s good for the little people. Then they impose it on us.
In trying to return to freedom, many people wonder why couldn’t we let the market set the interest rate. After all, we don’t have a Corn Control Agency or a Lumber Board (pun intended). So why do we have a Federal Open Market Committee? It’s a very good question.

In this holiday-shortened week (Thanksgiving), the price of gold dropped $20 and silver 10 cents. Friday, when the price dropped the most, could not have had much liquidity as most Americans were out of work shopping or partying. Whatever they may ha…

First, there’s a word for someone who buys gold in the hope its price will rise. This word is not investor, but speculator. Second, statistical anomalies cannot be asserted as proof of manipulation. Also, the article is giving the reader the blueprin…

The prevailing view in the gold community is that banks are speculators who bet on a falling price. To begin, they commit the casino faux-pas of betting on Do Not Pass at the craps table. When everyone wants the price to go up, the banks seem to want…

The price of gold dropped six bucks, and silver seven cents. Without much price action, let’s look a few other angles to gain some perspective. First, here’s the chart of both silver and the decidedly not-monetary metal copper.

At the Cato Monetary Conference, Scott Sumner said he had a “modest” proposal, that there should be a highly liquid futures market in Nominal Gross Domestic Product (NGDP). Sumner is known for his view that the Fed should target NGDP as the basis for monetary policy. So a GDP futures market that predicts it would be convenient. Let’s look at his idea more closely.

In gold terms, the dollar went up a small 0.15 milligrams gold. The price of the dollar in silver went up considerably more as a percentage, 0.08 grams to 2.18g. Most people would say that gold went down and silver went down (though we continue to as…

The price of gold dropped abruptly Friday morning (Arizona time). How much of a drop? $10.30, as measured by the bid on the December future. How abruptly? That move happened in under a second. At first, the price of gold in the spot market did not react. This caused what looks like a massive backwardation…

The flip side of falling interest rates is the rising price of bonds. Bonds are in an endless, ferocious bull market. Why do I call it ferocious? Perhaps voracious is a better word, as it is gobbling up capital like the Cookie Monster jamming tollhouses into his maw. There are several mechanisms by which this occurs.

What’s the difference between the Supply and Demand Report 1 November and the Supply and Demand Report 8 November? Just a minor punctuation change. Last week, we asked (rhetorically) if silver would have a 14 handle again.
This week, the …

The prices of the metals dropped by 20 bucks and 20 pennies this week. In other words, the dollar went up ½ milligram gold or 30 mg silver. It wasn’t the euro, which ended the week unchanged. It wasn’t the US stock market, which ended up seven bucks.
What was it? …

Keith Weiner argues that the money that many money managers make does not come from producing anything of value. It’s other people’s life savings that they are driving and eating.

At the risk of being boring, there’s not a lot to say about the markets for gold and silver this week (and frankly being on a challenging travel itinerary, flying from Vienna to Sydney to give a keynote at the Gold Symposium this week, is part of it). There was a modest drop in the prices of the metals, $13 in ….

There are two ways to run a gold mining company. One respects the simple fact that it is producing money. It is not eager to trade its the money it produces for government paper, legal tender laws be damned. It keeps its books in gold, and produces and trades to earn more money (i.e. gold).
This article is about the…

The dollar dropped about half a milligram gold, and 50mg silver.
But who wants to read about the universal currency falling, failing? Few people are so barbarous as to think of the dollar’s value as being priced in terms a monetary metal. As all right thinking folks know, the value of these commodities …

The gold price moved up $18. However, the silver price moved up 60 cents which is a much bigger percentage. The silver community is getting pretty excited.
A market trend will often begin when a small number of traders learn something new. As they begin buying (or selling), the price begins to move. Others become aware of the ….

Keith Weiner zeigt, dass Griechenland bankrott gehen wird, egal ob es im Euro bleibt oder auf Dollar oder eine neue Drachme umstellt. Er schlägt eine Umstellung auf gold-denominierte Obligationen vor. Nur die Sicherheit von Gold wird Kapital wieder in das Land locken.

For a few frenzied minutes, while everyone was sleeping, the price of silver spiked 56 cents. Well, at least the West Coast of America was sleeping. It began at 8:30 in New York, where presumably most traders were not sleeping. And of course, it was afternoon here in London (where Monetary ….

We’re going to be introducing some new formats. One of them is quick article links, with the good ones labelled Pure Gold and the bad ones labelled Soggy Dollars.
Pure Gold
When a Fed-induced boom turns to bust: “In the lynch-mob….

The price of gold moved up moderately, and the price of silver moved down a few cents this week. However, there were some interesting fireworks in the middle of the week. Tuesday, the prices dropped and Thursday the prices of the metals popped $23 and $0.34 respectively.
Everyone can judge the sentiment prevailing in gold…

In the famous Sherlock Holmes Story, the detective identified the perpetrator from the fact that a dog didn’t bark. The dog didn’t bark because it dog knew the perp. This story makes a good analogy to what happened on Thursday, Sep 17. Perhaps I should say what did not happen.

The Fed did not raise the interest rate.

The prices of the metals moved up a bunch this week, with gold + $32 and silver +$0.55. We have seen some discussion of gold backwardation in the context of scarcity, and hence setting expectations of higher prices. That’s good, as the swings from contango to backwardation and back ….

You are cordially invited to a discussion of the economy, markets, interest rates, commodities, speculation, investment, and of course the monetary metals and our unique approach to valuing them. This seminar was successful in New York on Sep 11, and all the seats filled up.
Here is the agenda. ….

Consider the sport of betting on the sport of horse racing. It’s actually similar to the analysis of the gold and silver markets. How’s that? First, there is the manic-depressive crowd. Sometimes (as we are told—we don’t hang out at race tracks) the bettors sometimes get overly excited about a horse…

For Keith Weiner the Federal Reserve operates like a Cotton Candy Machine for the housing market. It creates a massive bubble, financed with debt. It spins the price of a house, with the help of credit and debt, into something many times its original size.

The American Principles Project and the Atlas Network Sound Money Project, provided a much needed alternative in the Jackson Hole Summit.

The development of lending was a revolutionary breakthrough. Lending allowed the retiree to do business with the entrepreneur. The retiree has wealth, but no income. The entrepreneur is the opposite, with income but not wealth. The retiree lets the entrepreneur use his wealth, in exchange for an income. The entrepreneur is happy to pay interest, in order to grow his business and increase profits.

At times throughout the centuries, governments prohibited lending at interest. No one will risk his wealth, or even forego possession of it, without getting something in return.

Today lending is not illegal, but the Fed has been driving down interest for over three decades.

I have been writing about consumption of capital, using the example of a farmer who sells off his farm to buy groceries. It’s a striking story, because people don’t normally act like this. Of course, there are self-destructive people in every society, but, not many. Most people know not to spend themselves into poverty.

To make people hurt themselves, we need to add the essential element: a perverse incentive. Consider a parlor game called Shubik’s Dollar Auction…

If you’re an American over a certain age, you remember roller skating rinks (I have no idea if it caught on in other countries). This industry boomed in the 1970’s disco era. However, by the mid 1980’s, the fad was fading. Imagine running a rink company at the end of the craze. You know it is not going to survive for long. How do you operate your business?

You milk it.

Yield Purchasing Power reveals that with today’s zero interest we are living in times of hyperinflation. Larry worked for his savings his whole life. Through the lens of conventional purchasing power defintions, we don’t focus on the liquidation of Larry’s wealth. We ignore—or take it for granted—that he’s trading his life savings for bread. We only ask how many loaves he got.

If you had a farm, would you consider trading it away, to feed your family for a year? I hope not. A farm should grow food forever. Its true worth is its crop yield, not the pile of bacon from a one-time deal.

The troika wants you to accept another bailout deal, to service Greek debts a while longer. Since bailouts mean borrowing more, you cannot avoid default in the end. Going deeper into debt is no good for anyone.

However, Greece has no future so long as it clings to the euro.

By inflation, I don’t refer to rising consumer prices in Athens. My Greek friends tell me that prices have been steady there in recent years. The focus on prices is the greatest sleight of hand ever perpetrated. It diverts your attention away from the real action.
Inflation is the counterfeiting of credit. It is borrowing, when you can’t pay and you know it. Inflation is taking money under false pretenses, and issuing fraudulent bonds.
This describes the Greek finances perfectly.

Hyperinflation is commonly defined as rapidly rising prices which get out of control. Let’s restate this in terms of purchasing power. In hyperinflation, the purchasing power of the currency collapses.

Many critics of the central banks have predicted that this end is coming soon. They have been frustrated as prices are clearly not skyrocketing. For example, the price of crude oil was cut almost in half (so far). There’s little to see if one looks at the purchasing power of the dollar, euro, Swiss franc, etc.

However, Yield Purchasing Power (YPP) shows how much you can buy, not with a dollar of cash, but with the earnings on a dollar of productive capital. YPP is collapsing.

You’re getting onto a highway. You want to go to your destination but there are roadblocks. The barriers are stacked up in layers. Even if one is removed, you still can’t get anywhere. So is it worth it to start eliminating obstacles, even though it won’t clear the road yet?

On June 12, 2015 Texas said yes.

The road we’re talking about is the path forward to the gold standard.

Economists say real interest = nominal interest – inflation. They paint a false and misleading picture.

They’re coming to take away your cash. Not for the sake of control or steal your money, but to protect the banks.

Mainstream economists tell us that the Federal Reserve protects us from economic waves, indeed from the business cycle itself. In their view, people naturally tend to go overboard and cause wild swings in both directions. Thus, we need an economic central planner to alternatively stimulate us and then take away the punch bowl.

The very idea of centrally planning money and credit boggles the mind.

“The top 25 hedge fund managers made more than all the kindergarten teachers in the country,” declared President Obama in a discussion of poverty at Georgetown University. Calling them “society’s lottery winners,” he proposed to hike their taxes. Predictably, battle lines have been formed between two polarized sides. One side is unhappy with the pay disparity. The other is quick to defend the status quo. Rather than arguing about whether hedge fund managers or teachers should make more, we should condemn this unfair system.

Our paper currency causes falling productivity, though not in terms of bushels per acre. What falls is productivity per dollar or euro of savings. This is the real meaning of the falling interest rate. When the rate was 10 percent, $1,000 of principal produced $100 of return. When it falls to two percent, then the same capital generates a return of only $20. Now with the Swiss 10-year bond, CHF 1,000 earns only CHF 1.3. Keith Weiner argues that one should forget about inflation measurements like the CPI, but prefer the yield purchasing power, the income that our insurance investments generate.

The dollar is always losing value. To measure the decline, people turn to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), or various alternative measures such as Shadow Stats or Billion Prices Project. They measure a basket of goods, and we can see how it changes every year.

However, companies are constantly cutting costs. If we see nominal—i.e. dollar—prices rising, it’s despite this relentless increase in efficiency.

At the same time, the interest rate is falling, decreasing return on capital. Yield Purchasing Power is what you can buy with the yield on your savings.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have made Arizona the third state behind Utah and Oklahoma to recognize gold and silver as legal tender. This isn’t yet another in a long series of articles lamenting the Federal Reserve, power, politicians, corruption, and the hopelessness of fighting the status quo.

Keynes called for “the euthanasia of the rentier” by government suppression of the interest rate (chapter 24 of General Theory). Bernanke did the same with pensioners, he threw them under a bus with low interest rates; still he “was concerned about those seniors as well.”

In 1809 Goethe wrote “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” According to Keith Weiner, this is today’s status of American workers, stuck with debt and the losing value of the dollar.

Keith Weiner suggests that one should abstract from economic variables like CPI, U6 unemployment measure, M0 or GDP. We know that the Fed manipulates key variables of the economy; hence we live in a world of central planners, a socialist world, not much better than the period of Mao or Stalin. The gold standard is free of central bank manipulation.

Keith Weiner explains what happens when credit is mispriced. The rich are privileged because they can profit on the volatility and the bubbles the cheap credit createes.

Keith Weiner describes how the Fed pushes down the interest rate and due to that, it drives up prices of food and rents. This implies that businesses are clearly priviliged against workers. The gold standard does the opposite, if prefers savings and workers. Hence Democrats should be fan of the gold standard.

Keith Weiner argues that there are 3 reasons why we use the dollar. One, people don’t care about what money really is. Two, people are indoctrinated in the ideology of central planning. Three, many people like to get something for free and they want continue getting it for free. Endless borrowing is simply not possible in the gold standard, but only with paper money like the dollar.

Keith Weiner argues that the question should be, not when the Fed will raise interest rates, but if. Before our central planners can raise rates, they must deal with a problem of their own making.

When the cost of borrowing is too low, it becomes an irresistible siren song luring people into debt, borrowing becomes too cheap and spending too easy. No wonder that you don’t put 10% of your paycheck into the bank every month for future uncertainties. The Fed, with its zero interest policy, deserves much of the blame for your financial troubles.

The topic of whether the Federal Reserve can see bubbles in advance, and what they can do about them, is hotly debated. The price of an earning asset depends directly on the interest rate. This is because of time preference. It is better to have your cash today than tomorrow. The Fed’s problem is that the calculation depends on a rate of interest that it heavily influences. Its analysis is therefore circular and self-fulfilling. It’s like taking a picture of a painting. Therefore the Fed cannot spot bubbles.

Keith Weiner explains why Inflation is, at root, a monetary fraud, it is finally caused by an increase in the money supply. The Fed deceives us into accepting this bad paper as currency by making its new dollars look like real currency. This is the very essence of counterfeiting.

Keith Weiner explains why gold and silver, two shiny metals, have become money. They fill different human needs, and evolved through different paths. Money solves a problem called the coincidence of wants. Moreover he looks on the choice between gold and silver.

The United States needs the gold standard more than ever. The gold standard is neither barbaric nor impractical, and it is more urgently needed every day. This is because the standard of paper money is failing. It has set in motion an accelerating series of crises, each worse than the previous. The nation cannot continue to borrow to infinity, nor can the U.S. endure zero interest much longer.

Keith Weiner explains the relationship between hoarding and lending. He advocates that interest rates should not be repressed artificially, otherwise bubbles will arise that destroy capital.

According to Keith Weiner of the Gold Standard Institute USA, the U.S. government reports its debt at more than 17 trillion dollars, often called “unfunded liabilities”. To put this sum in perspective, it’s well over 50 thousand bucks for every man, woman, and child in America. The best way to help everyone understand the truth is to use plain and accurate language. Instead of using the term unfunded liabilities, he suggests “fraudulent promises”.

Keith Weiner explains why the 1% wealth will not like the gold standard, they want to keep achieving trading profits caused by asset price inflation.

Ayn Rand argued that it is the Communists’ intention to make people think that personal success is somehow achieved at the expense of others.
What can we say about the goal of the Fed’s quantitative easing? The central bank’s every act over 6 years has been to force markets towards the opposite outcome that free people would choose, one example is Goldman Sachs that profited greatly on Fed’s bail-outs.

On February 4, 2015 Keith Weiner testified before the Arizona House Federalism and States’ Rights Committee in support of HB 2173. The bill would recognize gold and silver as legal tender and eliminates taxes on them.

Monetary Metals specialist Keith Weiner gives a weekly update on price movements of gold and silver and the causes. Moreover, George Dorgan gives the fundamental basis for pricing gold and silver.

According to Keith Weiner, capital adds leverage to human effort. Capital makes employment and wages possible. Keith argues that Fed destroys savings with zero interest rates, and herds savers into bubbles. It causes wages to fall and creates chronic pressure to lay off workers. The Fed destroys capital.

Keith Weiner explains that a negative deposit rate means that commercial banks pay the central bank a percentage. It is a privilege, for which they must pay. The result of the ECB operation won’t be much of an increase in business lending or consumer prices. The result will be even lower interest rates on government bonds.

Keith Weiner explains, why Thomas Piketty’s book and his proposition of a 80% income tax represent a new Communist Manifesto.

The Fed has pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system since 2008. The unintended consequences of this bank bailout have spilled over into the markets. Fed money injections go directly into bonds, tending to push up their prices.

In 2013, President Obama nominated Janet Yellen to be the next Federal Reserve Chairman. We need to know what she stands for if we want to predict what the central bank will do to us next. Clearly, Yellen will continue Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing, but her papers and speeches show that she is quite different from her predecessor.

Keith Weiner of the US Gold Standard Institute makes clear that gold is the best money. It has the narrowest spread of all comparable goods, including the good we call money today, the dollar.