FIAT and CREDIT - "The Coming Financial Holocaust"

Kitco.com ^ | June 1, 2006 | Nigel Maund

[Pox]

From the foregoing, those fortunate enough to own their own homes and other core assets, and possess a mix of quality gold mine stocks and physical gold will be amongst the few who survive this financial equivalent of a holocaust

ROFLMAO. This sounds like a chump who has way too much gold in his portfolio and is squealing like a stuck pig that everyone should BUY gold now, which would of course save his tremendous impending losses.

[BeHoldAPaleHorse]

ROFLMAO. This sounds like a chump who has way too much gold in his portfolio and is squealing like a stuck pig that everyone should BUY gold now, which would of course save his tremendous impending losses.

When you hear Swiss America Trading commercials 24/7 on the radio, that's a sign that the gold market is near its peak, and the gold retailers are looking for chumps--er, fresh customers and first-time investors--to take the losses instead of themselves.

[Proud_USA_Republican]

FIAT = fix it again tony

[PAR35]

I had a Fiat once, X1/9, worst car I've ever owned..........The pistons were in backwards.........

So you got one of the well made ones, then. I had one urinate on my leg one time. (Remember how the hoses to the heater ran through the passenger compartment?)

[Jason_b]

That did not really have much to do with gold.

Didn't it? France and other nations were piling up dollars that were supposedly redeemable, but it was France who was going to stand up and redeem them for gold. We didn't have enough to honor the obligation. So we dishonored and let the dollar float against other currencies. There wasn't much anyone could do about that but complain.

On another issue, some of you have been defining FIAT as paper money that is made so by government decree.

I would suggest that years ago when a gold or silver coin was legal tender, that was also fiat money. When disputes about payment arose, a creditor may have preferred gold more than silver or silver more than gold, or some other commodity yet, or the debtor may have wanted to pay with the currency of another colony or a commodity such as tobacco. The law would enforce payment in the legal tender, gold coin if that is what it was at the time, by fiat. Roger Sherman is the man responsible for Article 1 Section 10, Clause 1. He wrote, "A Caveat Against Injustice," that had to deal with the problems of diverse currencies in the colonies.

I would suggest that gold and silver coin as fiat money would have been the best way to stay and squares with the U.S. Constitution; and that the recent development (1913) of the debt of a central bank as fiat money is less preferable, and repugnant to the U.S. Constitution.

[Red Badger]

We had one explode while going down the road. It was in the engine compartment between the water pump and the block. Sounded like a bomb going off!............

[Brilliant]

"We didn't have enough to honor the obligation."



True, but not the full story. We've never had enough gold to redeem all of the outstanding dollars. The value of the dollar does not derive from gold. It derives from trust.

By the time Nixon became President in 1969, we had not been backing the dollar with gold for more than 35 years. One of the first things Roosevelt did after he became President was push thru a law that said we would not honor our promise to exchange gold for gold certificates. He even banned private US citizens from owning gold altogether. It went up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court agreed that the law was Constitutional.

So it was Roosevelt who ended the connection to gold, not Nixon. And after Roosevelt ended the connection to gold, was there a deluge of rampant inflation? Absolutely not. We were in fact in the middle of one of the most extended periods of deflation in history: The Great Depression.

So we were not even on the gold standard at the time Nixon became President. Rather, what Nixon did was abrogate the Bretton Woods Accord, which said among other things that the dollar had to trade in a certain range, vis a vis other currencies, and that the US Treasury was required to intervene to make sure that it did.

When it did intervene, however, it did not do so with gold. What it did was intervene in the financial markets. The reason Nixon was forced to abandon the Accord was that the monetary pressures were simply so great that he'd have had to cause another depression in order to maintain the US obligations under the Bretton Woods Accord, and he wasn't willing to do that.

I'd have to say that it may be the one and only thing that Nixon did correctly during his Presidency. I think that virtually every economist would agree that it was the right move, regardless of political affiliation.

[headsonpikes]

OTOH, there are some who believe that the boys are set up to run gold up, and only then to bring in retail.

Check out this article from Australia : http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/big-buyers-of-gold-slip-under-radar/2006/06/05/1149359675190.html


From the linked article:

"THE world's big-money brigade is snapping up gold bullion at eight times the rate originally thought, according to UBS, the world's biggest gold trader.

The huge sums entering precious metals below the radar are likely to help to put a floor under the gold price after the dramatic fall of $US112 an ounce in late May, the sharpest correction since the bull market began five years ago.

The Swiss bank said information from its trading floor suggested that funds and investors were allocating 20 per cent of their commodity portfolios to precious metals.

This is far more than the index-tracking funds run by Goldman Sachs, Dow Jones-AIG and others that are usually taken to be a guide to overall investment flows.

UBS said these indices gave a deeply misleading impression, obscuring a silent shift of funds from oil into gold."

Let me tell you this: the move up in Canadian Venture Exchange stocks over the last year is being driven by institutional buying. I have never seen so many block trades in juniors as this past year.

Brokers assure me that Joe 6-Pack is definitely not in this market. The stocks themselves have lagged the metals due to scepticism about the sustainability of the general upward move in metals prices.

I suspect we will soon see another significant rally in gold, probably taking a shot at the old $850 level by year-end.

Own the stocks, they're undervalued. ;^)

Just kidding - stay away from my market!

[RipSawyer]

The CPI figure has so little basis in factual reality that it serves only to underscore the age old adage "there are lies, damn lies and statistics". Indeed, this figure is little more than a piece of "voodoo economics" designed to fool the unwitting populace that inflation is only a third or quarter of what it really is. The objectives are merely to put intense downward pressure on labor market wage settlements.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I came to essentially the same conclusion years ago. I am amazed at how little understanding of the truth of inflation is displayed by the younger people I meet. I have asked some of them what their impression of inflation over the last forty years is. Most of them seem to think that a dollar today buys about one third of what it would buy forty years ago, I certainly wish that were true, I would be living high on the hog indeed.

[theBuckwheat]

>>
Why? Fuel spending has a large inelastic component -- you buy so many gallons a year of gas and fuel oil (or KWH and mcf). So people have less to spend on other things.
<<

Not exactly. Because of substitution, adaption and improvements, the US economy uses about 1/2 the oil to produce the same amount of GDP as it did 30 years ago. IOW, the US has gotten twice as energy efficient.

People don't "have less to spend on other things", because they don't spend double on energy if energy prices double. Higher prices for energy send the signal that energy is more precious than say, a gigabyte of hard disk capacity.

People *choose* to reduce their energy spending by finding ways to adapt, improvise and overcome. For starters, they drive less, sometimes a lot less. The data I've seen stated that gasoline sales during the post-Katrina price spike fell 6% in some markets. For another example that runs contrary to the the theory that petroleum usage is "inelastic", wood heat is now somewhat more popular than just a few years ago.

Even so, wood heat is not nearly as popular today as it was in during the "energy crisis" of the 1970s. That simple anecdotal observation demonstrates the effects of our creeping prosperity, where at an average of 3% increase in annual wages over the last three decades has roughly doubled the standard of living of a lot of people.

Another factor of energy pricing has to do with convertibility. In my parent's youth, many people heated with coal. Today, you can still find houses in metropolitan areas that have an outside door for the coal chute going to the coal bin in the basement even. The elementary school I went to had a chimney for its coal furnace, although by the time I attended, they had converted the boiler to burn fuel oil.

But people who have an "all electric" home, cannot burn coal directly, no matter how inexpensive it may be. They are indirectly burning whatever the utility selects, and if they have the emissions permits, they may burn coal, fuel oil or natural gas depending on the cost per BTU at the time. Alternatives abound. A nearby power plant burns worn out tires in with the coal, and they get paid to do so.

But right now, coal costs a fraction per BTU than does natural gas. Not everyone can switch, and that issue keeps the markets limited and therefore the price per BTU cannot ever be the same.

A friend who owns a printing business replaced his natural gas furnace and installed a corn-burning stove in the press area. His loading dock now has pallets of sacks of corn along with pallets of paper and ink. He says that he has reduced his heating costs by about 2/3. As a result, he actually has more, not less, to spend on "other things" than when he was heating with "low cost" natural gas.

[185JHP]

"Fix It Again Tony"?

[Calpernia]

ping

[Calpernia]

>>>>However, as the reader will see, this gold boom cycle will be like none before it, and, as is often the case in human affairs, events of the past, whilst similar in outline, may differ significantly from presently unfolding events.

As per this documentary hosted by Michael York

THIS gold was found in Venezuelan waters.

http://www.pcha.gov/goldtrainfinaltoconvert.html

I don't know what has become of it; but as of 2004, the victims have received a settlement.

December 21, 2004 The federal government settled a lawsuit with 32 retired Miami Jews, regarding a legend about a trainload of gold, jewelry and other property, supposedly stolen by US Generals.

[ancient_geezer]

Copyright © 2003-2006

So he's been flogging this story for 3 years, and this time he is right?

And not very original as the same theme has been in tracts and books in my library going back to the 30's. Seems the end of the money world has been just around the corner for the last 70 years, at the least, going by some of the old pamphlets and books from the good ole days LOL.

[little jeremiah]

Gotta read this. I can only understand some of it, being a foolish high school dropout. But I think you both would like it. I'll try to think of some others.

[Quix]

Thanks.

Will check it out.

[Calpernia]

I posted at 53

[little jeremiah]

Might interest you.

[little jeremiah]

:-)

[ex-Texan]

Thanks for the *Pings*! Take a look at this study by a physicist. His second chart is eye opening. It shows that real estate prices will collapse back to 2001 or 2002 levels. Get ready for the roller coaster ride of the Century:

Physicist Says Housing Set to Slump