Gold is Money

Gold and silver are money. Do you have any of this money? Might be a good idea to have some of this real money in this period of historic economic upheaval. This applies to everyone including Baha'i community members and institutions.

Perhaps you are like me and have spent years in intellectual pursuits without any regard or knowledge of what money is, in fact, and how the economy actually works. Thus, in "Further Reading" to the right, there are several sites -- such as GoldSeek, Market Oracle and DollarCollapse, where you can start to get educated. We don't want to live through what may be economic suffering and travail of biblical proportions in complete ignorance, now do we?

Even if you have a PhD in economics from almost any university, you have learned the Keynesian approach which implements the "something for nothing" concept that more debt is a solution, although excessive debt that can never be repaid is a major cause of this present disaster. Thus, regardless of your general interests, read and learn the basics of what is going on during this period of history.

You and your family don't want to be saying, "Gee whiz, what happened?", if and when certain plausible outcomes occur, such as sudden over-night currency devaluation (like FDR did in the U.S.), closed banks, riots, no food in stores, marshall law, your paper money (fiat currency) not accepted for goods, your savings, pension and many other assets denominated in fiat currency become worthless or nearly so.

As they say, "The world only ends once", so we don't want to be too pessimistic, or dooms-day forecasters; however, be aware that a number of astute analysts do believe (please see articles in "Further Reading") that the current fiat money is "doomed" to fail, if history is any guide at all.

What to do? Let's start by learning that real money has intrinsic value while paper money has intrinsic value only as fuel for cooking or heating. Paper money has always failed throughout history usually after a number of decades ... and its current useful life-time is ticking down to zero rapidly as we speak. It is only a promise from a third party, based only on trust and confidence, which no government that prints the money in fact merits.

Gold or silver -- real money -- in hand, are nobody's promise. Governments can print paper money; they can't print gold or silver. This is one reason why having some real money such as gold is a potent force for freedom; no government can steal all or most of your savings over-night.

You will learn that one essential property of money is that it is a store of value, a store of wealth. Just one example. While the US dollar has lost at least half of its purchasing power in just about 25 years, gold will buy about the same amount of, or indeed more, goods over the same period. Thus, when we see over an ample period of time, a rising price of gold -- and it has been a stunning rise since 2001, it is more or less correct that actually, most of what is happening is that the "price" of the dollar in gold is going down. In short, gold is real money, the universal currency that will always be accepted for payment. And as we speak, it is becoming evident that more and more people understand this. That gold is the universal money by which fiat currencies are to be evaluated.

Finally, this is a "motivational" post -- since the links cited provide material by some of the world's best analysts. Keep in mind the well-known dictum that he/she who has the gold rules. Think about it. When the going gets rough, with extreme inflation from all the paper money printing world-wide, those who need jobs will have only one option, since only the employers with gold/silver real money will be able to pay workers anything. Well, OK, work could be paid for with chickens, potatoes or other useful tangibles.

In sum, be sure you have some gold or silver, as much as you can, including other tangible assets as well, so when the music stops, you will have at least some real money. Take physical delivery.
© 2010 James J Keene