How to accurately measure the diminished buying power of the paper (and digital) money emitted by the privately owned banking cartel that owns the federal government? Certainly not by trusting the accuracy of the poodle government’s statements about “inflation” being only around 3 percent this year.
Never mind the “inflation” of the previous several years.
We are supposed to not include that in our calculations.
So how to get a true measure of how much less our money – the paper and digital Dollars emitted by the banking cartel – is worth? How about the double-digit increases in the value of silver and gold?
You may have read that as of right now – mid-December, 2025 – one ounce of silver costs about $64 in paper or digital Dollars. This same one ounce could be purchased with about $23 Dollars as recently as three or four years ago. That amounts to a near-tripling of the value of an ounce of silver, which can also be described as a massive devaluation of the buying power of a Dollar. This is worse than it sounds, too – because of the rate at which the buying power of a Dollar has declined.
This decline can be measured also in the double digit increases in the number of Dollars needed to purchase a new car – about 28 percent more vs. 2020 – as well as insurance, which also requires double digits more Dollars to buy. People in my area are having to come up with about 30 percent more Dollars to buy a load of firewood, which many around here use to heat their homes in winter. There are many other examples.
Some analysts are predicting silver could ascend to $100 for one ounce. That an ounce of gold could go as high as $10,000 or even more than that. This is wonderful news for people who have got some silver and gold, even if they do not have a lot of it. Imagine a scenario: The buying power of a Dollar is reduced to essentially nothing. At which point the value of silver and gold may be everything – in terms of what they can buy, from people who only had Dollars and now (suddenly, probably) have nothing. If those people are in debt – as for their homes or their vehicles or other such things – many will not be able to make their payments because the Dollars they have won’t be worth the paper they are printed on. This scene played out in Germany back in the 1920s. People who had things were forced to sell their things to people who had other things – and the people who had to sell didn’t get much for the things they had while the people who were able to buy got a lot.
There are stories from that time of Americans – this was back when a Dollar had buying power because a Dollar was tied to gold and silver in those days – were able to buy a house in Germany for what a shed would cost in America, because the Germans (most of them) were bankrupted by “inflation,” i.e., the rendering worthless of German paper money via the printing of it as if it were toilet paper. Which is what it ended up being used for.
It feels like the Dollar is headed in the same direction. Its small parts – loose change that adds up to a Dollar – is already nearly worthless. It costs more to make a zinc penny than that penny is worth – which is why the penny is no longer being minted. The nickel and dime are surely next. What is the buying power of a quarter of a dollar? Two of them used to be enough to buy a can of soda from a vending machine. The same can now requires a Dollar plus change.
How much soda can one silver one ounce coin buy? Well, at the current going price, it can buy several cases of soda. So many you’d need a pick-up truck to carry them all home in one run. Imagine a scenario – perhaps not that far distant – when you will be able to buy an entire Dollar Store for an ounce of gold.
It is not that far-fetched. It has happened in the past, which means it could happen again. Of course, if it does happen, there will be social unrest and probably violence that has not been seen in this country since 1861-1865. That was an economic war, too – although court historians prefer to call it the Civil War, in order to evade discussing what it actually was all about.
What might be coming could be worse – because it is possible millions will be rendered destitute and so desperate in a very short space of time. Some of them are not going to sit quietly as everything is taken from them by the few who have everything – and want still more.
Had the Dollar been kept in check – by keeping it tied to precious metals – the scenario that is developing likely would not have developed. It is harder to steal everything people have via gutting the value of the money they are forced to use if the value of that money cannot be easily diminished via the hidden hand of “inflation.” But once that check is removed, there is nothing to prevent the banking cartel from devaluing the Dollar until a Dollar isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
It happens slowly, at first. And then all at once. Which feels like it could be any day now.
. . .
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“It happens slowly, at first. And then all at once. Which feels like it could be any day now.”
You mean maybe like silver at $109 and gold at $5,060 on 1/26/2026?
Absolutely, Kitco –
It’s crazy – and alarming. I bought some silver when it was $22. Its current price indicates something highly unusual i afoot.
Who are the owners of the Federal Reserve? The member banks, whose stock holders are who? Tribe members. In related news, the headline reads:
“Blackwater CEO Larry Fink Is Sitting with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff at the Ukraine Negotiating Table”
Larry Fink is a Jew, as is Jared Kushner, and witcoff and zelensky. 4 jews carving up ukraine, they will get rich on the pile of white ukranians kids.
just like the jew bankers got rich off of owning the currency of the Jewnited States of Amerika.
do you all get it yet, they are raping us to death
For the last few years, mainstream economists have insisted that the inflation rate is declining, which they assured us would lead to an eventual drop in retail prices…any day now!
I keep a weekly chart of several key staple items based on Walmart prices. That raw “inflation index” has been trending higher in the last couple of years, but in recent months was showing signs of pulling back.
Egg prices, for instance, are back down to where they were two years ago. Bacon prices have come down substantially in recent months. Even garbage bag prices have come down, while the nationwide gasoline average is now at its lowest level since 2021. But here’s where it goes completely off the rails: laundry detergent prices have increased by at least 25% in just the last couple of months — solely because of tariffs. This has caused a significant spike in my retail inflation index to record highs.
My point is this: how much of the recent silver rally is the result of Trump’s retarded tariffs as opposed to our nation’s organic (sans tariffs) inflation rate? Without those tariffs, my inflation index would actually be trending lower right now. Thanks for nothing, Orange Julius!
Hmm, RE: “Without those tariffs, my inflation index would actually be trending lower right now.”
While I git the gist of your rant, imho, you’re wildly off base.
Get a clue:
‘Price Inflation Rose in June to a Five Month High—But Don’t Blame Tariffs’
“If we wish to find the real cause of general price inflation, we need look no further than the monetary inflation that continues to be baked into the US economy. The US economy is still dogged by the more-than-five-trillion dollars that was created as a result of the Fed’s covid-era inflationist policies. This massive infusion of new money will continue to show up in unpredictable ways.” …
https://mises.org/mises-wire/price-inflation-rose-june-five-month-high-dont-blame-tariffs
Sadly, modern government paper money is not even fit to be used as toilet paper…
I remember visiting northern South Africa at around the time it took a billion Zimbabwe dollars in the former Rhodesia to buy an egg, and almost every Zimbabwean was a trillionaire.
There were signs at public toilets on the SA side of the border along the lines of “Please refrain from flushing Zim dollars down our toilets. It blocks the pipes!”
Many countries these days have plastic banknotes, which is even worse. It is not advisable to attempt wiping one’s behind with those!
Interesting, that. John.
Do comment more, as I suspect you have good insight on = where things are headed.
Many commentors here seem to have misconceptions concerning precious metal standards versus fiat money.
Fiat (as noted by Funk Doctor Spidock below) is inherently unstable BECAUSE it is ELASTIC.
What is a dollar/yen/euro/ruble/etc? It’s whatever the gov/central bank says it is. It’s not a FIXED MEASURE of anything. It changes over time.
An ounce of gold or silver will always be an ounce, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. An ounce, as a universally accepted fixed unit of measure, is not elastic. It does not change over time.
Some will argue that it’s inconvenient to carry around gold or silver, which is true. Paper, however, is not. An IOU/certificate/cheque for a OUNCE of silver weighs almost nothing, yet is NOT elastic because it defines a fixed measure of silver.
(Yes, I know. We’ve had Gold and Silver Certificates in the past. Sadly, they were denominated in Dollars instead of a fixed unit of measure, and so were no less elastic than Federal Reserve Notes.)
Personally, I don’t like hearing people say “the price of gold is xxx dollars”. In reality, the VALUE of gold is unchanging. An ounce of gold is an ounce of gold. What they’re really saying is, it now takes many more of our devalued, elastic dollars to buy it.
Keep reminding yourself that the word DOLLAR (insert your fiat currency name here) is a nonsense word, because it’s value (meaning) is constantly changing.
OK, let me try this with slightly different nomenclature. Yes, OK, fiat is “inherently unstable” — but only because of a deliberate political decision to make it that way. Gold is not a real substitute because the primary government power remains the power of seigniorage — the power to create and denominate money. Government also has the power to regulate and denominate and even ban (as it did in the 1930s) gold. Government could just as easily debase gold by outlawing the private ownership of it, or be regulating or taxing its exchange.
Gold is more difficult for the government to accumulate and regulate than paper money, and it costs government more to have gold-backed paper than it does to have merely printed paper backed by nothing more than “full faith and credit” LOL.
But the principle is the same — government can determine the value of exchange-money and determine what is, and what is not, “legal tender for all debts public and private.” If government wanted to destroy the gold market, all they would have to do is tax gold exchanges 100%.
The problem of fiat money is that its value is being deliberately eroded so that the government can maintain a $38 trillion debt, and interest rates are deliberately being kept low for the same reason. Deficit spending and inflationary money printing is what makes the fiat money unsound.
George Washington specifically warned us against this in 1796:
“As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible… avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.”
Of course he never imagined we’d incur debt for over sixty straight years as Standard Operating Procedure… he thought it would only happen due to “unavoidable wars.”
I’m not advocating Gold and silver as substitutes. Lots of reasons, as you say, why that won’t completely work. It does work as a default for individuals and those they freely associate with.. Across the sands of time, since humans discovered shiny shit. It checks off the boxes for a currency. Stable, recognizable, dividable, non perishable, easily transported. Won’t work now because grifters had to grift until they broke the motor of the world.
Deficit spending and money printing won’t cease until a mass purge of our political class and their Talmudic masters. They have no fear or consequence to their reckless behavior. In all honesty, I’m surprised it has continued on for this long.
It’s interesting you found fiat inherently unstable because of a ‘deliberate political decision to make it that way.’ Not sure that could ever be overcome since politics draws the dark hearted types who ruin everything. Beginning to think you could replace the Federal Reserve (our best and brightest economists, lol) with a bunch of Jr high school gurls, and the result would be about the same. The erosion of our money is clearly a feature, not a bug of a civilization in steep decline.
“Government also has the power to regulate and denominate and even ban (as it did in the 1930s) gold. Government could just as easily debase gold by outlawing the private ownership of it, or be regulating or taxing its exchange.” X
History tends to rhyme does it not?
FDR devalued the U.S. dollar by raising the official price of gold from $20.67 per ounce to $35 per ounce in 1934.
You have it exactly backwards. It was the Dollar that was debased not the gold by outlawing and confiscating gold.
Just because the US government bans gold doesn’t negate the global demand nor do all the rubes turn over the gold. Where is the history that increasing the scarcity of Gold that has lead to the debasement of gold itself?
That so many $20 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles still exist to this day is a testament to their flight to Europe and having been squirreled away by those that knew better. The fact that it now takes about $4000 Federal Reserve Notes to buy a gold coin denominated at $20 speaks for itself.
Prices have not gone up . . . The value of the dollar has gone down as all fiat currencies do by design.
Ooooh, BLT,
Why are you discriminating against the “Liberty Eagle “?? the shy cousin to the .Flashy St. Gaudens Double sawbuck??….
NO INFLATION FIAT YAK CHAT about coin collection challenge stuff is worth a damn unless you have the matched pair. Granted the pre 1907s are very “Cluttered” with
“USA, USA”… nonsense , but it is USA history….So there..
That was well-said, Leadfoot – thanks for saying it!
RE: “An ounce, as a universally accepted fixed unit of measure, is not elastic. It does not change over time.”
Oh, but it does.
To a thirsty man in a desert, an ounce of gold is worth a drop of water.
To a gold miner on a vein full of gold, a drop of water is pitful.
All value, is subjective.
Also, RE: “An ounce, as a universally accepted fixed unit of measure”
…”Fixed” determined by whom>? Your overlord? Psft.
“Subjective value is not measurable, because it is impossible to observe for anyone but the individual who actually perceives the value.” …
https://mises.org/mises-wire/genius-misess-action-axiom
Here is a real-life, real-time example of the ‘dishonest custodian’ problem:
‘At next week’s EU Summit, European leaders will consider using frozen Russian assets to fund Ursula von der Leyen’s plan to cover part of Ukraine’s needs for 2026 and 2027. Until now, much of the funding came from interest on the frozen assets. Russia is calling it theft. While the EU argues that there is no “theft” as “the right of the Russian Central Bank to make a claim on its money and Euroclear’s duty to repay will remain intact,” one key EU player is taking Russia’s side.
‘Prime Minister of Belgium, Bart De Wever voiced the following: “The European states pushing for the confiscation of Russian assets in Belgium are mostly those bordering Russia, which have experienced Soviet tyranny and are psychologically at war. But we are not at war with Russia. And we do not wish to be at war with Russia. We must negotiate based on reality, not fantasy. In reality, you don’t steal money from a foreign central bank. Stealing from a central bank is like robbing an embassy.”
‘Confiscating Russian assets could also complicate peace negotiations. Reducing incentives for the aggressor to agree to a ceasefire may not be the most effective strategy. For now, Belgium appears outnumbered and the EU seems poised to approve the measure.’
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/belgium-gets-cold-shoulder-ahead-russian-asset-confiscation
For centuries, a central banker’s word was his bond. Now, the degenerate EU and US regimes have destroyed that tradition, never to return. Already, BRICS et al are accumulating gold, as a foreign exchange asset which cannot be stolen from them. This inevitably will destroy the euro and then the US dollar. Both these unbacked, politically-tainted fiat currencies are emitted by corrupt empires sustaining themselves with fraud and piracy.
In the beginning of convid when they started all the extra money printing, I took extra money and bought a bunch of silver around $25. Ebay was a great place to buy quantity at spot or less depending on the day. I have a local dealer near me that also has low commission on gold.
Recently bought more even though it was over $50 because it was still a good deal vs gold.
When the silver/gold ratio goes down, I’ll trade it for gold.
With the current US debt of $38.4 trillion, that’s never getting paid back. The dollar can’t be sustained. Looking at what happens to other currencies in freefall, metals will be the only way you hang on.
It seems a smart idea to get at least some metals now as an insurance policy to have something that people want in the future. I don’t put it past the government to make a desperation play like freezing money in bank accounts or stock markets.
“Prices aren’t going up, the value of a dollar is going down.” – author unknown
“not one man in a thousand understands inflation” – author unknown
I think your second quote, if perhaps not in quite those same words, is actually attributed to John Maynard Keynes, who, ironically, was the grandfather of economic policies justifying government meddling in an economy.
“Lenin was certainly right. 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.”
https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/archive/keynes_persuasion/Inflation.htm
An additional wrinkle is that gold and silver are not really freely traded and truly market priced. They’re controlled paper commodities so the COMEX price represents how tight of a lid TPTB can keep on trying to balance commodity value against money value.
They can’t have precious metals jumping wildly up and down in value on their books, showing the true nature of the economic facade.
Silver especially is volatile because so much of it relies on actually being used. Gold has utility other than storage as wealth but the physical volume is small compared to the physical volume silver demand generates, so they can put IOUs in vaults and lease the physical gold to balance books. There’s certainly reason to believe most balance sheet gold does not exist but until someone actually takes delivery or does an audit (hint-hint) you’d never know.
At a market level the premium charged on physical bars and coins can damp the disconnect. Around 350 tons of gold is consumed (e.g. made into jewelry or used in electronics) annually and newly mined hovers around 3,500 tons. So the balance is bullion made into coins and bars.
The silver market consumption is about 39,000 tons annually, (which is substantially industrial as jewelry and bullion represent a small fraction) with a 2025 supply deficit so far of around 6,000 tons (the amount demanded minus amount newly mined).
That’s hard to paper over. Some users are willing to pay whatever it cost to get silver and that demand is nearly insatiable.
Point here is that the spot price for gold and silver should be higher based on supply and demand. Silver especially has a lot of price fixing to keep down. Gold on the other hand they could unleash without too much industrial market disruption. They keep it capped for appearances and to prevent financial chaos.
Good observations; thanks.
For those who want an annually updated, book-length [443 pages] education on gold, here it is:
https://ingoldwetrust.report/in-gold-we-trust-report/?lang=en
Thankfully, there’s a 40-page version there that should please the followers of Mr. Hillegass.
Another problem with the silver market is the exchanges can change the “rules” anytime they get in a jam so that they win and you lose. Just ask the Hunt brothers.
‘It happens slowly at first. Then all at once.’ — eric
To paraphrase Papa Hemingway, that is. (He said ‘gradually.’) And so it is when governments get themselves into financial trouble. Under the old Bretton Woods regime (1944-1971) of fixed exchange rates, governments which ran out of foreign exchange had to devalue, as the UK famously did in 1967. Even the Fab Four — John, Paul, George and Ringo — couldn’t keep its decrepit coal-fired economy afloat.
Under the rootless post-1973 fiat currency free float, devaluation happens continuously, daily, against fixed references such as gold and silver, and against other worthless confetti currencies such as the euro, J-yen, British pound, etc.
Over-indebted governments have two ways of defaulting: gradually or suddenly. The latter means their checks bounce — like shutting off SNAP payments during the recent shutdown. Whereas the gradual route means keeping nominal prices steadily rising, to inflate away the real value of crushing government debt. ‘Soft default’ can take decades.
After the inflation caused by Ape Lincoln’s war and greenback emissions, in 1871 Clowngress relinked the dollar to gold at the prewar parity. Bad mistake: the next quarter century featured a gradual, grinding deflation, in which land prices fell about 1% per year. Its end was marked by Demonrat political candidate William Jennings Bryan famously declaring, “You shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold.”
Ironically, if the dollar had be relinked to gold at the postwar inflated price level — the objective being to stabilize its value in the future, not to sweat out the wartime inflation — the very technologically productive late 19th century would not have been so painful for farmers. But even such a milder approach is impossible for today’s degenerate US fedgov, which just shifted back to counterfeiting currency again, after three years of sweating out the covid-driven inflation of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet.
As BLOTUS is wont to say in private, Death to the dollar!
‘Today we have the first POMO Lite operation by the Fed, in which the central bank will buy $8.2BN in T-bills this morning, setting up the market for a Christmas rally.’ — Tyler Durden
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/futures-dip-after-hitting-record-high-feds-qe-lite-sets-christmas-rally
POMO = Permanent Open Market Operations
This is how digital counterfeiting is done. It’s starting again today, after being shut down since June 2022 — the exact month when the 12-month CPI change crested at 9.1%.
Now the Trump regime has decided to ‘run the economy hot’ again, as it faces R-party electoral ruin in November 2026. Inflation is likely to crank higher accordingly. The price of crude oil and copper affect the real economy more than gold and silver do.
Meet the dynamic duo: Crude Earl and Doctor Copper … at your service! 🙂
I feel personally robbed by this. I have saved a fair amount of money, for a few reasons. First of all, I can fix a lot of things (especially cars) so I do not need to throw them away and buy new ones. Second I am not greedy or impulsive, I am not mesmerized by bling, and I do not follow stupid trends. Therefore I have never been the type to spend every dime just to fit in or just to be part of the latest fad. Third, I have never made much money and nobody has ever GIVEN me ANYTHING for free (other than a beating). No one has ever given me a hand that wasn’t a closed fist. Consequently I have avoided debt because I have never been certain to be able to pay it off, or have someone else pay it off for me.
So I saved what little I had, and over time it accumulated. I kept it in ultra-safe “investments” — CDs, Treasuries. I thought stocks were a gambling casino. Precious metals are also a Ponzi, you have to sell them eventually to some other sucker who will give you more paper dollars for them.
Now I feel like a fool, because the Federal reserve and the government has stolen probably 40-50% of my wealth while the debtors, the consumers, the people in the stock market Ponzi and the government employees with guaranteed pensions seem to be doing quite well.
It’s completely fucked-up country when the people who keep their nose to the grindstone get screwed but the swindlers, scammers and grifters get ahead. Maybe I should have spent every penny and then demanded the government take care of me. But I am a white guy, there are no special programs or scholarships or job set-asides for me.
I should be outraged but that would only give me high blood pressure.
Precious metals are also a Ponzi, you have to sell them eventually to some other sucker who will give you more paper dollars for them.
WTF – that’s the takeaway?
The problem with metals is that you can’t take your gold holdings (typically in gold fund shares) down to the grocery store to buy a head of lettuce or a gallon of gas, you have to convert them back into fiat money to make them useful.
In order for gold or silver to “hold its value” you need to have a constant supply of buyers willing to give you ever more and more debased fiat dollars for it. At some point this becomes a Ponzi. Gold itself does not have any productive value, it is simply an placeholder for fiat money. If you got into gold at $3000 an ounce and sell at $4000, you’re doing great (of course there will be a tax liability) but if it drops down to $3000 or under, you’re SOL.
Basically it’s not much different than holding stocks, it only works for you if you “buy low, sell high” — in other words, a Ponzi.
This is why the government and the Federal reserve have such an interest in deliberate inflation, low interest rates, and money-printing, they want to keep inflating the gold, real estate, and stock bubbles that have been artificially inflated by unsound money. And the unsound money and low rates enable the government to run a $38 trillion debt.
The answer is not to play the game of buying precious metals — or anything else for that matter — and flipping it for more fiat money. That might work for a few shrewd people in the short run, but not as a national economic strategy. The answer is to have sound money tied to actual value of labor, productivity and useful goods.
“So I saved what little I had, and over time it accumulated. I kept it in ultra-safe “investments” — CDs, Treasuries.”
I respectfully suggest that you aren’t fully grasping inflation, its causes or how to combat it.
“ The answer is to have sound money tied to actual value of labor, productivity and useful goods.”
Your own statement is making the case for a precious metals standard. Despite the propaganda to the contrary, gold and silver are both useful goods that have many uses thought an economy and in the production of other goods.
I’m not sure that there is anything I can write that will help. You are correct that having skills will be key to survival going forward. But without a system of sound money, you will soon find out how limited a barter system is.
Also, why would you pay taxes on your gold, since it IS money. It’s not gaining in value at all. And nobody should know about your private money stash or what you exchange it for except you and the vendor.
Good try, guys. Good try. Maybe, he gets it, maybe he doesn’t. Idk.
But, good try.
Hats off to you, for trying.
“buy low, sell high” — in other words, a Ponzi
Sorry that isn’t the definition of a Ponzi Scheme. Words have meanings.
What are the other options?
Buy high – sell low?
Buy, hold forever, sell at same price?
Never buy?
I’m pretty sure we are on such opposite ends of the spectrum that there isn’t much I can say other than good luck man. I do wish you the best. However, beware – inflation is a mathematical certainty in this fallen world we live in and it will crush those that don’t understand its causes, or how to minimize inflations effect.
It’s not easy to argue against mainstream media talking points on money and credit. The people on TV are either willfully ignorant or just ignorant (most likely the latter, they’re just good looking stenographers for the cartel when you boil it down).
The pat recommendation is read about money vs currency and Rothbard’s book is one of the best balances of practical and theory, neither treating the reader like a 3rd grade moron nor an wonky academic.
https://mises.org/library/book/what-has-government-done-our-money
‘Precious metals are also a Ponzi’ — Burn it Down
Ponzi scheme: an investment fraud in which early investors are paid returns using money from new, later investors, not from actual profits.
Gold does not generate profits or pay dividends. An investment fraud designed around gold would involve nonexistent gold reserves in unaudited vaults (*cough* “Fort Knox” *cough*). But the fault is with a dishonest custodian, not gold itself.
No one can be defrauded on gold that s/he physically controls. No Ponzi elements are present.
Jim – that comment was from X
Sorry – forgot to include quotation marks in my reply to X
Got it — sorry for the misattribution.
The stumbling block I think for a lot of people is grasping economics and why we need money and currency in the first place. It’s so easy to understand the single person stranded on an island example, who can’t eat gold. Of course there’s no need for it. Expand that conceptually to a small village. Barter works fine if you have limited and modest economic needs.
To leap up in population and complexity the need for money is self evident. Civilization and money co-developed. It’s considered a discovery instead of invention, albeit not an obvious discovery such as most that come to mind. It’s a concept that when we discovered, the idea of abstracting the individual’s labor and production into a unit of measure that could be universally valued and exchanged. You didn’t need to be the miner actually holding the iron ore to derive value from that economic benefit.
It’s a later development to further abstract the money, that which represents value, into a currency you can trade as a claim to the money. That’s where economists see the issue. Money has value because we believe it has value implicitly. No one had to force people to want gold we just did. Lots of things were tried and over time economists have determined durable criteria that make money. Scarce without being too rare, fungible, durable, useful without being too useful, portable. Gold is not perfect but nothing else comes remotely close to being a good money.
What we don’t need is the complexity of currency. The basic utility of currency, a slip of paper that says you’re good for the money that’s held in a bank, is useful so you didn’t have to carry around the actually valuable thing. But it requires too much trust and is subject to usury and fraud by the holding agent, e.g. banks. This is exactly what the Founder were trying to tell us by writing in the Constitution that only the government could do that in a recognized medium of gold and silver. Government is of course not 100% trustworthy but it’s the best shot we got in a diverse and big economy of having a publicly reviewable mechanism.
X, I think you’re my long lost brother. But PMs are not a Ponzi, you just have to learn how to buy and sell them. Dealers mark up the product they’re selling and mark down the product they’re buying. It’s a business, and they will be as greedy as you let them.
Buy your PM from private parties, and sell them to private parties, whenever you can. Same goes for the blued steel and phosphates precious metals. And use cash, break the surveillance and paper trail whenever you can.
Meh…PMs haven’t even entered the mania phase yet. The stackers I know are still accumulating and would rarely consider selling. Silver could go to 400$, or back to 5$ where stacks were built 25+ years ago. Maybe trade some for an APC or some such.
At the end of the day, your stack remains the same. It’s the ultimate stable coin. Unless you sold it, gave some away, or fell victim to the great Golden Shores Jon boat catastrophe of 2024, your dollar cost matters little. I’m a little surprised at you X. Thought you’d been paying closer attention.
I am paying attention, my point is that money — in whatever form — is a means for storing and accumulating the value of your labor. If we have stable fiat, you don’t need gold or any other metal (except maybe if the fiat is tied to the intrinsic value of the metal as it was under the gold standard).
Debasing fiat is theft, pure and simple. It is the theft of the value of people’s labor that they have stored up in their fiat money. It is theft by debtors from creditors (and we all know who the biggest debtor in the world is).
So as I said, metal is not the long-term solution. It may be a method by which relatively few shrewd people can beat getting screwed the system — for a while. But even that can be eviscerated by the government overnight. Remember, FDR banned people from owning or hoarding gold in the 1930s. People were forced to exchange it for fiat at the government’s artificial price ($35 an ounce, IIRC). People who didn’t turn it in were arrested.
The only reason people can own gold at all today is that the government re-allowed them the limited PRIVILEGE of doing so in the 1970s.
Government literally confiscated the private gold once. They can do it again.
Fiat money is inherently unstable. Its promoters use the word “elastic.” Money tied to the intrinsic value of metals, such as gold in a “gold standard” isn’t fiat money.
Sorry brother, but your reply says you aren’t. You are right about the storage and accumulation angle. Your premise of ‘stable fiat’ is faulty. There is, and never has been, any such critter. Maybe for a short period of time. But fiat is always debased, So, on a long enough timeline….
Since the first Jiaozii took flight off the press’s of the Ching/Chong dynasty, the end result has always been the same. Fiat currency always goes to zero. With absolute certainty, Every Single Time. Perhaps some small group of foreigners helped the Chinese invent fiat? That might shed more light on the subject.
As for government confiscating assets, well they can try. It won’t be a cake walk this time. Covid hipped lots of people. Hopefully enough will realize, we are all Solzhenitsyn now.
On a trip to Mexico 35 years ago, I found some large (about half-dollar size) coins lying in the yard of the family we were visiting.
“Hey! Look! I found some money!”, I said to one of their children.
“Oh, those aren’t worth anything. Those coins are Old Money. No valen nada.”
OMG, the dude, I wish wasn’t so ignorant – is, “If we have stable fiat, you don’t need gold or any other metal” !
Ha!
See above: ““Oh, those aren’t worth anything. Those coins are Old Money. No valen nada.”
All value, is subjective.
Our overlords Demand a stable fiat currency! You. Must. Value It!
“It’s completely fucked-up country when the people who keep their nose to the grindstone get screwed but the swindlers, scammers and grifters get ahead.”
Blump just ‘commuted’ another Jew Ponzi and cancelled his $15.5 million fine (no word how much the Blump got for signing the commutation): “Convicted fraudster David Gentile, a former private equity executive whose seven-year sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump shortly after entering prison, will not have to pay the $15.5 million in restitution associated with his conviction, according to a grant of clemency Trump signed in late November.
“Gentile and his business partner, Jeffry Schneider, were convicted in August 2024 of conspiring to defraud thousands of investors in a capital funds scheme totaling $1.6 billion and using funding from investors to “pay distributions and create a false appearance of success.” He was sentenced in May.
“The White House has maintained that Gentile’s firm had notified its investors of the strategy.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/03/david-gentile-fraud-restitution-trump-00674963
“Fraudster’s Victims Are Seething After Trump Commuted His Sentence. David Gentile spent just days in prison for his conviction in what prosecutors described as a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of investors.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/nyregion/david-gentile-trump-commutation.html
The envelope that my birth certificate was mailed in (in 1961; my mother kept it) has a 4-cent stamp on it. That stamp costs 78 cents today. And if you buy it the grocery store, they might just round it up to 80 cents.
I’ve read that the price of silver when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the market was $50.00 but adjusted for inflation is now north of $200.00. Sites like Survival Blog are recommending selling one metal and going into others as the ratio between them changes.
Like many on this site I no doubt have all the common “precious metals” from lead on up. In these trying times I’ve heard people mention the book “The modern survival manual : surviving the economic collapse”by Fernando Ferfal Aguirre. Sadly at one time available for free at archive.org but sadly no longer.
Either way he gives advice on what happened in Argentina such as that police were not around to stop crime but was to arrest the citizens who bought back (IIRC). I suspect if that happens wise people will remember the three S’s.
Best advise become debt free as soon as possible and learn skills to barter with. One of Fernando Ferfal Aguirre’s tips was that their was a lag of a few days between hyper inflation going ballistic and loans being recalculated. Which for the wise let them convert some precious metals to fiat and pay off all their debts for pennies on the dollar.
Think on this so as to be ready.
I bought the book & read it. And, read his blog, at the time. His best advise was to get other streams of income.
I don’t recall anything about, “a few days between hyper inflation going ballistic and loans being recalculated” but, ymmv, I guess?
It was more about, everybody got fucked & crime was everywhere worse.
Also, barter doesn’t work.
What castle?
It used to be a bit of a check on the overlords that the peasants could storm the castle from time to time and kill them. Now they just jump in their jets and fly away.
MANPADS. A one word answer to that proposition.
I’d imagine there are lots of advantages to being that rich, but security isnt one of them.
What this country needs is a good $2,995 MANPADS that I can buy at my local gun shop. 🙂
Hi Jim.
Drones anybody?
For most of my adult life tech and telecom advances have been a massive deflationary pull on the global economy. It fairly well mirrors the 1920s, when electricity and precision manufacturing were figured out well enough to drive costs down. It was a great time to be a human. We went from horses and hand tools to Model Ts and Black&Decker and productive labor skyrocketed, creating the middle class.
In the 1990s there were elements of the same thing happening with knowledge work, replacing the mechanical with electrical, access to cheap energy with better tech and brining Russia into the global oil market in a big way. Except this time the gains went to the shareholders. And the efficiency gains were squandered by governments and regulatory bodies. That giant sucking sound that Ross Perot talked about wasn’t just jobs leaving the US, it was the lifeblood of the middle class being priced out by communist countries and their citizen slaves.
Someone in a DC think tank erroneously thought that once the communist citizen slaves got some money in their hands they’d overthrow the Party. Too bad they forgot that the Party still had all the guns, ran all the schools, courts, and rewarded some with house n***er status or let them into the Party. So it worked out great for the shareholders, great for the communists and great for the government stooges who could pretend to beat up corporations, while the State Department celebrated every new factory in some far off land. At least we got stuff that deflated faster than the fed could inflate, which again reflects what happened in the roaring 20s. right up until it didn’t. The markets have been trying to crash for most of the 21st century and creative accounting (money printing) makes the illusion of a fix. When will the printing press stop being effective? Probably when there’s no new stuff coming out, just more of the same but worse. Or when the conglomerates run out of stuff to buy. Pop! goes the economy…
One thing about slave labor is it is incredibly deflationary. This was one of the biggest drivers of the US Civil War, the northern states, with their water-driven factories, were worried that James Watt’s improved steam engine would allow the plantation owners to cover the Piedmont in factories run by slaves and powered by steam. No way that would be allowed. One could imagine some Yankee bankers playing the long game by pushing production out to communist countries, winning the game they were so worried about in the 19th century.
‘Worried that James Watt’s improved steam engines would allow plantation owners to cover the Piedmont in factories run by slaves and powered by steam.’ — Ready Kilowatt
What a great thesis for an alt-history novel: radicalized slaves take over steam-powered arms and ammo factories … then their black regiments head for DC to overthrow it, while inventing rap music as they march along Virginia’s dusty wagon roads.
My name is Vainberg
I like ho’s
Sniff ’em out
Wid my Hebrew nose
— Gary Shteyngart, Absurdistan
Where did you learn that, Ready? I’ve lived in the Seat of Secession for over 40 years, and have studied Lincoln’s War off-and-on for much of that time. And I’ve never even heard tell of the damnyankees fearing that with steam power Southern slave-run factories would out-produce those in the North. This fear was a “driver” of the US Civil (sic) War? What?
I want to say it was in Tom Woods’ Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. Read it a very long time ago and probably remembering it as ranking higher than it really was. But I imagine there were factory owners who put the two together and figured it would be bad for business.
Thanks! I will read that book.
Do, tell us what you learn.
It’s a kick-ass eye-opening book.
Glad to read that you’re trying to know.
The last time Ron Paul ran for president, he said at a debate that he could purchase a gallon of gasoline for 10 cents. Then he went on to explain that dime had to one made in 1964 or before. The “news” “reporters” pretty much mocked him as foolish because they were total idiots when it came to sound money.
Basic economics for the past 3 or 4 decades has not been taught in public schools and the public at large is getting a lesson at the results of using fiat currency.
Unfortunately many are clueless as to why it’s happening and that opens up the opportunity for the next smooth talking sleaze bag to “save us all”.
For a long time, I never understood how Hitler came to power in an educated nation like Germany. Now I’m beginning to understand.
At 62 fedbux per silver ounce, it is now less that 7 cents per gallon.
The 1964 average was 30 cents per gallon. At today’s $3 price that’s a 900% rise.
Measured in the coulda shoulda prices of sound money that’s a 4000% rise. This is the true measure of what’s been stolen from us. All the productivity gains of six decades plus 900% more.
We have reached the knee of the exponential curve. In a moderate to severe financial crisis, a little real money will serve you well. In an empire/civilization full on collapse, a little weed, whiskey and pussy might ease your unavoidable transition into the dirt.
Weed whiskey and pussy will get you through times of no shiny better than shiny will get you through times of no weed no whisky and no pussy. Although it’s assumed shiny could still buy all those things and more.
That said, “Weed whiskey and pussy” ain’t likely got no value to the 80 yr. old in control of the local Gestapo.
…’Er, what? I dunno, ymmv.
All value is subjective.
[Such a shame, it ain’t all timeless.]
I’m no expert, but one good measure would be the total currency in circulation, compared to pre-1913 when the fed came into life.
The St Louis FED tool FRED can sort of show you this back to 1959.
See if either of think links work.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1OLNW
Prior to 1913 this paper (ironically also the St. Louis FED) starts to dig into it.
https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/wp/2003/2003-006.pdf
Every talking head on both sides of the political spectrum are willingly ignorant of the definition of inflation. Thomas Massie and Rand Paul being the exception.
Ditto the talking heads. I can’t think of any of the mainstream “conservatives” who truly get it. There’re internet outliers like Thomas Woods, Brion McClanahan, and Judge Napolitano. But they’re niche, not mainstream.
I feel like it’s all proper fucked, largely thanks to metastasizing leftism over decades, and they know it. So they just feed line after line of feel good bullshit and lethal doses of Hopium from Scott Bessent, et al who are independently wealthy and continually tell us that it’s all going to be wonderful any day now in the hopes that they can placate enough people to not storm the castle for another day.
And now another 800 million for Ukraine.
Fuck this, I want off the merry go round.
And just how do people like Scott Bessent become independently wealthy? Most have access to insane amounts of credit. They can leverage that credit to buy even more productive assets, which leads to ever greater amounts of credit. Much like when someone carries a large balance on maxed out credit cards the banks will often just raise the limit. When I was young and dumb and on the credit merry go round I had this happen to me. Instead of stopping new purchases on my topped out $10,000 limit and working out a sensible payment plan that would get the bill paid off, the bank just upped my limit to $25K! And as long as I kept making at least the minimum payment that probably would have gone even higher.
That’s how Trump made his fortune, that’s how most real estate tycoons make their way. And like every good crony capitalist, when they lose they declare bankruptcy. Oh wait, not them. Their LLC that they formed when they bought the property to begin with, that’s “who” goes bankrupt. On paper they might be millionaires, but they watch money move in and right back out again. As long as they can hold on to enough to buy groceries they’re coming out ahead.
Take away the easy credit and a lot of these paper millionaires aren’t so independent any more.
Almost all of them, actually. The Silicon Valley tech boys pretty much all have important friends with thumbs on the scale, if you have connections and friends you will have access to those insane amounts of credit.
Meanwhile, down at our level if someone clears all the hurdles and brings some revolutionary product or service to market, the credit will remain just tight enough to throttle growth until some insider can step in and take it for far less than it ought to be worth.
It’s been outsiders vs insiders since at least 1913 in this country. The law is something used by insiders against outsiders.
Man, It’s been, outsiders vs insiders since, …forever.
It’s always been that way.
Since, the beginning.