Posted on 11/29/2014 1:07:15 PM PST by TurboZamboni
On Sunday, the people of Switzerland will go to the voting booth to decide their nation’s economic future. The “Swiss gold vote,” as it’s being called, would require that the nation put its currency back onto a gold standard, which would require the Swiss central bank to buy large amounts of gold from the global market in order to put their currency on a gold-based standard.
The Swiss gold vote will have historic implications whether the citizens of Switzerland vote yes or no this weekend. This referendum is a measure that sets requirements for the Swiss National Bank (SNB) with the following rules, according to Business Insider: The SNB cannot sell its gold reserves. Gold reserves must be stored physically in Switzerland. At least 20 percent of the bank’s assets must be held in gold.
(Excerpt) Read more at inquisitr.com ...
Yes but, it’s price has to be relative to a physical asset otherwise it too becomes a fiat currency and since an ungodly amount of our GDP is software and services, we don’t exactly carry that around with us.
I barely keep spare change anymore...
Article I, section 10, bans states from issuing fiat currency, not the federal government. Article I, section 8, in sharp contrast, gives Congress the power "To coin money, [and] regulate the value thereof," without requiring gold or silver backing. (If money is made of, or backed by, gold or silver, Congress cannot "regulate the value thereof," because the value of the money will be the market value of the metal.)
The Founders were very familiar with paper money, having financed the Revolution with "Continental Dollars." They didn't want the states issuing competing paper currencies, but wanted to preserve the option of the central government issuing paper money.
“There’s not enough gold in the world to make a gold standard feasible”
If you think that then you don’t understand the gold standard.
The Swiss more or less agreed to backstop the Euro a few years back, the last time it collapsed down to $1.20. As a result, they’re no longer as free of entanglement as many suppose. The Euro is close to that rate of exchange once again, so what’s left to shore it up? Return to the gold standard. Gold has been experiencing something of a collapse itself from historic highs of over a year ago. Could be a shrewd move, could be a hail mary since nothing else is left to do.
Thatz okay.
I’ve been getting told by Democrats, since the days of Reagan, I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Kind of a standard I live by anymore...
EVERY unbacked currency in history has eventually failed. Currencies in the USA have already failed twice and gone to zero. Gold has never lost its intrinsic value. Ever. Even the dollar has lost 95 - 97% of its purchasing power over the past 100 years, and central bankers at the Federal Reserve, having dropped a supposed commitment to maintaining the currency now openly seek to reduce its value through inflation as a matter of deliberate, urgent, inflation.
/bingo
You can base the standard on a basket; Include silver, maybe copper, rare earths...
Rare Earth elements are not particularly rare. Their problem is that they are incredibly polluting to refine, because the different elements are very chemically similar.
The US has an active Rare Earth mine in California, the Mountain Pass rare earth mine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_rare_earth_mine
Then there are the huge deposits at Barringer Hill in Texas, which is under lake Buchanan. Described by the United States Geological Survey as one of the greatest deposits of rare-earth minerals in the world, the pegmatite was the first place geologists discovered fergusonite, monofergusonite, thorogummite, yttrialite, and nivenite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barringer_Hill
Since there are good times to buy gold and bad times to buy gold, why would any country’s citizens want to impose an inflexible gold-standard rule on its banks and sovereign wealth fund?
What is a good time to buy gold? According to Vladimir Putin, it’s an ideal time now for the Russian government to be buying tons of gold, mostly from its domestic producers, in exchange for falling rubles.
This seems to make good sense. Gold is a much more stable currency than ever-cheapening rubles. In fact, what harm would it do if Russia started printing even more rubles to exchange for gold? Fears of inflation? But gold is a hedge against inflation.
What if the head of Germany’s Bundesbank during the Weimar Republic had continually exchanged the falling deutche mark of the 1920’s for gold? It definitely would have stabilized the German economy at least to some extent, and possibly would have helped to avert the crisis that brought Hitler to power.
Along with every fiat currency, choose your poison.
Not feasible for the US, not sure about the Swiss. In a recent interview Greenspan noted that a gold standard is incompatible with a welfare state.
Shinny beads and clam shells too...
Hell, with that kind of wealth, we could buy an island.
No thank you. Gold, silver and copper will do for the purposes of minting real money. And since wealth is created when you can produce and sell oil and rare earths, those particular commodities can be included in the basket that backs the currency.
You couldn’t be more wrong:
When we hear that gold (or silver) is so much an ounce, we are being given a ratio — almost always the case with the media friends of paper money — precisely opposite of how it SHOULD be expressed.
As this was written, gold is NOT, for example, $1,200. an ounce, rather, the “dollar” has been reduced to a value of 1/1,200th of an ounce of gold. If the “dollar” is inflated to 1/6,300th of an ounce of gold, folks would get a more meaningful picture of what the politicians and the Fed have done to the currency.
Another interesting stat is that before the vote-buying politicians and masters of the universe at the Fed pulled us off a precious metals standard back in the day, the dollar was equal to 1/35th of an ounce of gold. And it has been calculated that the “dollar” of today is equivalent to less than 1 cent when measured against the dollar of 1913 or so BEFORE the Fed and the beloved INCOME TAX.
Sadly, it will ever be thus and it seems we must relearn those painful lessons every few generations.
Submitted for your consideration while standing by for FURIOUS FLAMES from the FRIENDS OF PAPER MONEY!
I wrote this a number of years ago when things were NOT going well with the economy. Trust me: They WILL get ugly once again as man — or certain men — cannot resist playing god. We continue to violate the universal, immutable laws of economics at our great peril.
History proves that EVERY house of cards eventually comes down. And the higher the card house, the harder the fall when it finally comes. And when it does, the more freedoms we will voluntarily surrender to “restore order.” It was the Founders’ concern about this historically valid problem which prompted their attempt — now ignored — to keep American “money” sound and honest.)
And I certainly recognize that NO system of commodity backed paper “money” is foolproof (and we now seem to be led by some of history’s biggest fools) how’s the current UNBACKED system working out for you?
I have noted with interest that I have lately been getting far, far fewer flames from the paper money lovers out there. And when, a number of years ago, I began ranting about the incredibly stupid financial devices (derivatives, mortgage backed securities, etc.) being created to hoodwink the greater fools out there who were snapping up these things, I could count on about half the responders to tell me I was too simple-minded to understand these highly complicated financial “products.” I guess all those really bright financial guys are too busy now washing car windows at traffic lights to post here.
And I’d ask you to consider that when gold and silver come up in the news, the talking heads fall into the old, establishment fostered trap of measuring the precious metals in the rapidly failing paper when they SHOULD remark that it is the metals that are – within the narrow confines of fluctuations caused by their uses as industrial commodities – holding THEIR value and it is the paper that is INFLATING. (The classic example is that around 1900, one could buy a fine man’s suit for one ounce of gold. YOU STILL CAN!!!)
A fiat money system of the sort we are now painfully watching collapse creates a FALSE world of FALSE feelings of well-being and elevated lifestyles. During the expansion phase of such a system, those living under it spend or borrow more than they should, have more children than they can afford and, at the national level, come to believe they can afford to allow a score of millions of illegals to come here for educations, welfare payments, medical care, etc. They reject the immutable and universal economic realities and embrace what my old friend, the late Tupper Saussy, called “the IDEASPHERE.”
Now that the inevitable economic catastrophe is upon us, how much fun is it to watch the idiots in congress who triggered this thing scramble for cover by blaming everyone else? Not much!
The only folks who feel good now are the Hank Paulsons and Obamaites of the world who are in the process of conducting what may prove to be one of the largest raids on the REAL wealth of this nation – our labor and real property – ever witnessed.
And I’ll readily concede that while a precious metals backed money system ain’t perfect, ASK YOURSELF HOW THE FIAT MONEY SYSTEM NOW COLLAPSING ALL AROUND US HAS BEEN WORKING FOR YA’?
I’m down with that.
Now someone get that message to our fearless leader...
Currency must be based on something in a free market.
Fiat currencies are based on the power of the state, and ultimately they can only work long term if the world becomes a prison.
When the dollar loses its reserve status, a world currency will likely emerge. A world currency eventually means a world government.
The globalists are pushing fiat currency down out throats. They think it can work once they turn the world into a police state.
In fact, the only place that fiat currencies can work indefinitely are in prisons.
tl; dr
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