From 2000 through 2012, the price of gold increased every year, rising from around $280 an ounce to nearly $1,700. It was an unprecedented run. Then, in 2013, gold took a nose dive, losing over 27% of its value. It was widely reported that the Swiss National Bank, the former bastion of monetary conservatism, lost $10 billion that year just on its gold holdings.

In September 1986, The Economist weekly newspaper published its first-ever “Big Mac Index”. It was a light-hearted way for the paper to gauge whether foreign currencies are over- or under-valued by comparing the prices of Big Macs around the world. In theory, the price of a Big Mac in Rio de Janeiro should be the same as a Big Mac in Cairo or Toronto.

Let’s say you have two equal size safety deposit boxes. One box you completely fill up with stacks of $100 bills. The other box you fill up with gold. Which of the two is “worth” more? It’s easy to calculate. A stack of 100x $100 bills is 6.14 inches long, 2.61 inches wide, and 0.43 inches tall. That’s a volume of 6.89 cubic inches (112.92 cubic centimeters… and we’ll use the metric system from here on out because it really does make more sense!).

It’s happening faster than we could have ever imagined. Every time we turn around, it seems, there’s another major assault in the War on Cash. India is the most notable recent example– the embarrassing debacle a few weeks ago in which the government, overnight, “demonetized” its two largest denominations of cash, leaving an entire nation in chaos.

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
By all accounts Bernhard Gubser was living the American Dream.
Born in Switzerland he moved to the Land of the Free in the early 1980s to work at an international shipping company based in Laredo, Texas….

Simon Black of the Sovereign Man explain how revolutions start. Using negative rates, the ECB blames the own people that it is saving too much. But revolutions can also start in the financial system and lead to its collapse.

Switzerland is famous for being punctual. The trains. The buses. The meticulously crafted, hand polished luxury watches. The Swiss are so culturally punctual that they even tend to pay their taxes well in advance of the filing deadline. But with negative rates, the cantons’ tax office do no longer like this.

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
Switzerland is famous for being punctual.
The trains. The buses. The meticulously crafted, hand polished luxury watches.
The Swiss are so culturally punctual that they even tend to pay their taxes well i…