'What social benefit does humanity derive from gold bricks sitting in bank vaults? What social benefit does humanity derive by diverting tremendous amounts of resources into the mining of gold, just so that after the gold is mined it can sit in bank vaults, completely unappreciated for its aesthetic beauty. Those same resources could have been used to mine iron and make steel for the production of consumer goods. The argument might be made that humanity needs money to trade with, so therefore the social benefit is derived from the existence of a money. However, I would argue that is not true. Humanity needs a money that cannot be arbitrarily inflated and is created through the free enterprise system, but this does NOT necessitate that the money be backed by anything in particular. ...we can say that a “socially optimal” money should have the following characteristics, in addition to those already laid out by the Austrian School: #A socially optimal money should not precipitate the mass diversion of physical resources into the production of money. #A socially optimal money should be infinitely divisible to deal with deflation over the long term. #A socially optimal money is one in which the units of account are prevented from being inflated or co-opted by the state. Gold does not meet any of those characteristics. As we have seen from our past history, the state can easily co-opt a gold money supply and inflate the units of account. -- Bitcoin addresses all of gold’s shortcomings. Bitcoin is clearly a more “socially optimal” form of money than gold. Further, since Bitcoin is entirely digital, it can be transmitted across a wire transaction, thereby eliminating the need for expensive insurance and shipping costs. These costs needed to be accounted for under free banking, where banks would accept notes issued by other banks at a discount to cover the cost of transporting the gold between banks. With Bitcoin, this is not an issue. In fact, since Bitcoin is a global network, it would retain its full value between banks on differing continents! While I appreciate the gold standard and Herbener’s address to Congress, I think it is time we stop advocating for Roman era money and start advocating for a 21st century upgrade.'

'Every year India spends $12 billion on purchasing oil from Iran, but now it is using gold instead of dollars. India might not be alone; China has suggested it would jump on board with India. New Delhi and Beijing account for 40 percent of the Iranian oil exports.' -- Competition is a sin!

"The next time there's a Lehman-style crisis the bailout will not come from The Fed, it will not come from the ECB, it'll come from the IMF in the form of SDRs."

'It's the modern day gold mining, people. Don't be left behind when I'm rolling the dough of multi-thousand dollar bills. Sure, you might melt your hand off with all that acid but gold! Gold! GOLD!'

'Mike Maloney is the author of the world's best selling book on precious metals investing. Since 2003 he has been advocating gold and silver as the ultimate means of protecting wealth from the games played by our governments and banking sector. In this 90 minute presentation he lays down his 'most likely' scenario for the global economy over the next decade... short term deflation, followed by big or even hyperinflation. Here you will learn the true definitions of inflation/deflation, the difference between currency and money, price vs value, 'Wealth Cycles', gold and silver accounting for the expansion of fiat currency, gold and silver supply and demand, the differences between the today's bull market and that of the 1970s, The Debt Collapse, and more.' -- "Voodoo, hocus-pocus scheme."

'For astute observers of recent history, we have seen what happens when people like Saddam Hussein or Libya's Muammar Gaddafi threaten to create gold backed currencies or international trade (in particular, oil) that could be settled not in US dollars – but gold. These people have very short life expectancies, to say the least. And here we have the little dictator from Venezuela coming along and demanding the repatriation of his country's gold from the Bank of England at that. This is really not going to go over very well with the powers that be, to say the least. The international oil-game has long been a significant piece to maintaining dollar dominance. Having nations go their own way and seek alternative means to settling that trade would be devastating to the dollar. Once again, neither Iraq nor Libya will see that happen – at least not now. Will Chavez get away with this plan? Or will he face a newfound Western attack unleashed, already in place to unfold when needed?'

'The Fabian-socialist economist John Maynard Keynes famously said not one man in a million could comprehend the workings of the central bank – so large is the lie that the money system is based upon. But Keynes's statement was pre-Internet. The giveaway of the Fed's trillions and trillions has played out under the merciless spotlight of digital coverage. Thousands of bloggers and perhaps millions of articles have commented on these impossible figures. And gradually, around the world – and certainly in America – it has occurred to the jobless, homeless and hopeless that SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT. The great, grasping mechanism of mercantilist central banking has been exposed for all to see. Societies that use some form of gold-as-money are apt to be fairer and healthier than fiat-money societies. The Chinese who have experienced eight ruinous bouts with fiat currency call it "flying money." Gold doesn't fly. In this sense, it has a morality as well as a utility.'

'The company behind the gold bar vending machines plans to install 50 across Britain over the next few years, allowing ordinary shoppers to invest in the precious metal as an investment. Michael McCleary, a businessman from Croydon, yesterday became the first person in Britain to buy a nugget from one of the machines. He paid in cash and bought a 1g "bar" of gold, costing £47. In reality the piece of gold was smaller and thinner than a mobile phone SIM card, but came in a presentation box.'

'...decentralisation has actually achieved defensibility against State confiscation since any other non-digital type of intrinsic value would be subject to confiscation via its centralised location. ...as the as the State-dominated monetary world inevitably expands, the value component assigned to a cryptocurrency for its survivability, or ultimate longevity, features may be greater than what the market assigns to its exchange value component. It may even be greater than what the market assigns to its value component for user-defined anonymity and untraceability. Without a world reserve fiat currency and the massive exponential debt from the centrally-planned monetary system, early leaders of Austrian economics probably would not have considered the disproportionate importance of mere survivability for a currency competitor. It was only slowly dawning on them that the power of the monetary monopoly was the most insidious monopoly of all and the most fiercely protected.'

'...even in the worst-case scenario where a government decides to back its currency with Bitcoin and all Bitcoin reserves flow to a central bank, Bitcoin’s power is its non-uniqueness. Change a few parameters of the cryptographic functions and you have an identical replacement for Bitcoin. Despite the demonstrated beneficence of a gold monetary standard, it’s all too easy to centralize reserves and “cheat” the system for political gain. Bitcoin, though it behaves economically very similarly to gold, is by nature institutionally much more robust, because it is more replaceable. There are clear reasons to prefer gold over silver, or one physical commodity over another, but there are not necessarily any such reasons to prefer one cryptocurrency over another. This very fact makes it very easy to “escape” should the cryptography of a series of currencies be compromised, or should a government attempt to monopolize or centralize reserves.'

'This is the reason why Bitcoins are valuable. There is no service like it anywhere. #You can get started with them instantly. #You do not have to identify yourself. #You can use them from any location. #You can send them to any location. #You can fund them with any currency. #You can spend them immediately. #Your transactions are private. #There are no taxes on transactions. #Transaction fees are so small as to be irrelevant, and if you are a miner, you get the fees back from other users. All of these features and more make Bitcoin a tool with a very high level of utility. Bitcoins are scarce, and you need them if you want to make purchases without the onerous and illegitimate predations of the State. No one who uses Bitcoin is going to accept GoldMoney as ‘digital currency like Bitcoin’. This does not, obviously, invalidate the immutable, irrefutable idea that the best money is gold. All it means is that on the internet, if you want to spend money, the best way to do it is Bitcoin.'

'"If Gaddafi had an intent to try to re-price his oil or whatever else the country was selling on the global market and accept something else as a currency or maybe launch a gold dinar currency, any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world's central banks," says Anthony Wile, founder and Chief Editor of the Daily Bell. "So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward from moving him from power." And it has happened before. In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced Iraqi oil would be traded in euros, not dollars. Some say sanctions and an invasion followed because the Americans were desperate to prevent OPEC from transferring oil trading in all its member countries to the euro. A gold dinar would have had serious consequences for the world financial system...'

'"If Gaddafi had an intent to try to re-price his oil or whatever else the country was selling on the global market and accept something else as a currency or maybe launch a gold dinar currency, any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world's central banks," says Anthony Wile, founder and Chief Editor of the Daily Bell. "So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward from moving him from power." And it has happened before.'

'"If Gaddafi had an intent to try to re-price his oil or whatever else the country was selling on the global market and accept something else as a currency or maybe launch a gold dinar currency, any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world's central banks," says Anthony Wile, founder and Chief Editor of the Daily Bell. "So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward from moving him from power." And it has happened before. In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced Iraqi oil would be traded in euros, not dollars. Some say sanctions and an invasion followed because the Americans were desperate to prevent OPEC from transferring oil trading in all its member countries to the euro. A gold dinar would have had serious consequences for the world financial system...'

'...in a modern economy, anyone can save in anything. Retiring in 2030? You can put your entire retirement portfolio in 2030 pork-belly futures. If you don't want to spend your entire old age gnawing on pork bellies, you can trade these for other goods. So it's clear why the whole world needs one standard for Internet packets. It's also clear why it might want one standard for payments. It's not as clear why it needs a standard commodity (or security) of saving. Probably the easiest way to understand monetary standardization is to consider only the problem of restandardization: selecting a new standard when the existing standard collapses...finding the most overvalued good...this will become the standard trade: money, which is the bubble that never has to pop.' -- Hyperinflation: 'The new purchasing power comes from the exploding portfolios of gold's "early adopters." ...the broader global economy (still on the dollar standard for most prices) experiences a gold-driven wealth effect.'

'...the gold standard is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for achieving lower unemployment. A necessary and sufficient condition would assume that ... Real Bills doctrine is also rehabilitated along with the gold... The bill market is the clearing house, without which the gold standard cannot survive. The explanation why it collapsed in the years 1931-35 is that, when the victorious Entente powers decided to restore the gold standard after World War I, they also decided not to restore real bill financing of world trade or world-wide real bill circulation. Thus the gold standard which Britain reestablished in 1925 lacked a vital organ: a clearing house. The Entente wanted bilateral (to the exclusion of multilateral) trade for fear of German supremacy in exports. This decision was a great setback for world trade. In effect, it meant a return to barter. The consequence was: beggaring-thy-neighbor, trade war, the destruction of the wage fund, and massive unemployment world-wide.'

'...the gold standard is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for achieving lower unemployment. A necessary and sufficient condition would assume that ... Real Bills doctrine is also rehabilitated along with the gold... The bill market is the clearing house, without which the gold standard cannot survive. The explanation why it collapsed in the years 1931-35 is that, when the victorious Entente powers decided to restore the gold standard after World War I, they also decided not to restore real bill financing of world trade or world-wide real bill circulation. Thus the gold standard which Britain reestablished in 1925 lacked a vital organ: a clearing house. The Entente wanted bilateral (to the exclusion of multilateral) trade for fear of German supremacy in exports. This decision was a great setback for world trade. In effect, it meant a return to barter. The consequence was: beggaring-thy-neighbor, trade war, the destruction of the wage fund, and massive unemployment world-wide.'

'“The physical market has now completely diverged from the paper market. The only way to fight it, and it can’t be done in the US, but it can over here in England (the Asians can), is to buy the foreign exchange transaction which is gold versus dollar, silver versus dollar. So essentially what you are doing is shorting... The point of all of these purchases is to eventually convert them to physical gold, or physical silver, 100% of them.” “If these guys converted all of their spot to physical, there would be a massive default today. No one in the US understands that, the Asians are laughing at these guys. It’s a way to unload billions and billions of dollars into the market. Looking at the futures market gives you a totally false impression of what is going on, this is going to totally blow up.” “... at some point these buyers will say, ‘I’m indexed, but I actually want to get all of this physical gold and silver now.’ When that happens, the game is over.”'

'Dominant Social Theme: Gold provides hope for the world. Let the government get out of the way. The proper function for the authorities is merely to set the standard and then leave it alone. -- Money is being argued about again, which is a good thing. But as usual (it seems to us) the argument is being framed in terms of what "ought" to be done. This is a kind of promotion, a dominant social theme, whether or not one wishes to admit it. Of course in the current day, government is a given—a necessary reality that until recently has been accepted with the same stuporous acquiescence as one tolerates bodily functions. But we will predict that acceptance of this most fundamental of all memes is beginning to shift. As the truth-telling of the Internet continues to have an impact, government mendacity is increasingly exposed and its logical fallacies are revealed, along with its false promotions. No, nothing SHOULD be done. That's the whole point. Money is private! Let the market work.'

'...we do believe in gold and silver as money – private money. In a private money system, absent government control, even the biggest holders of gold and silver would not be able to manipulate the market. The ratio between gold and silver, once tampered with, would sound the alarm as well. This kind of ancient money system has worked well, so far as we can tell, on and off for thousands of years. Our preference, therefore, is a scenario in which governments can come to no agreement on what money is or how much it is worth. This would leave it up to the market itself to decide – and there would then be no predetermined prices or price ratios to distort the market... Given digital technology and its infinite divisibility, there is no reason why a single additional ounce of gold (or silver) would need to be mined to produce a workable, free-market system.'

'Dominant Social Theme: Don't look at the man behind the drawn curtain. There. The one looking miserable. He's just been served. If the exposure and resultant litigation cannot be controlled, the entire mess that is the West's current and rapidly eroding fiat-money system might simply collapse. We're not making a prediction, merely pointing out a possibility. On the other hand, we have noticed when it comes to power elite promotions that investigations tend to move slowly and all but the most serious fiat-money catastrophes tend to be in some sense averted. What does happen over time is that the system erodes as people simply lose faith in it and logic divorces from emotion. But because the elite essentially CONTROLS the system—all parts of it from the judiciary to the legislative and even the executive, both in the US and Europe, the ability to challenge elite sociopolitical and economic structures is always constrained. As a result, we're not sure of how fast the unraveling happens.'

'Real bill circulation will start spontaneously after the total prostration of the world's banking system. Yes, there is life after the sudden death of the banking system. People are not going to commit collective suicide at the altar of fiat currencies. People want to live. They will use whatever little gold is available to them to trade by drawing real bills against the production and distribution of goods they want to consume. It will be a repetition of the miracle at the end of the Middle Ages, when the bill of exchange was invented in Italian city-states such as Florence, Venice and Genoa. It will happen again. The world will do very well with real bills and without banks... When contract law will once again reach the level of highest respect, and promises to pay gold can once again be believed, banks may once again be in vogue. When that day dawns, the best earning assets of the new banks will be real bills drawn on consumer goods in most urgent demand maturing into gold coins.'

'Both parties want the central bank abolished. It is important to understand this crucial difference between the gold standard advocated by the Austrians and the gold standard that is advocated by bankers. The Austrians want a 100% reserve gold backed system of private currencies. A 100% reserve system means the banks essentially act like warehouses. They hold the people’s money and charge a nominal fee for this service. They don’t actually create money through lending like they do now. Inflation in a 100% reserve gold system can only occur if the supply of gold is increased, which requires a large amount of time and effort on the part of gold miners. In a greenback system, inflation is caused by government simply running a printing press and then spending that newly printed money into the economy. If government can’t control its borrowing now, it is ridiculous to think it will be able to control its printing under a greenback system.'

'The elite seems to be betting on the IMF being able to introduce some of sort of worldwide SDR/bancor paper gold currency system that would effectively reconfigure the IMF as a global central bank. In order for this work, however, the Anglo-American elite needs to keep control of the IMF and there are many nations in the world whose leaders remain either angry or uncomfortable with the IMF's previous arrogance... The IMF's noxious approach to necessary "austerity" for client countries includes tax hikes, cuts in social programs and "privatization" of national assets that are often purchased by Anglo-American corporations at very low prices. The IMF recipe is usually a middle-class killer. The population at large ends up suffering for the greed of the elite, which often flees with the billions that the country's citizens are then compelled to pay back to international banks. We are not at all sure that the IMF has sufficient authority to create a new international financial system.'

I ain't gettin' on no paper, fool!

'James Turk shares his thoughts on the future of money and the role GoldMoney's digital gold currency can play.'

'...by the end of the day...it became obvious that something was definitely wrong. After speaking with many of the attendees, Mike was alarmed to find that practically none of the international bankers understood our present monetary system. Most had no idea how currency is created! Here at wealthcycles.com, we've often wondered exactly how well modern day bankers understand the worldwide predicament that we find ourselves in. Ladies and gentlemen, our worst fears have been confirmed - the lights are on, but there's nobody home. Whether you are a banker or a baker, a lawyer or a bricklayer...the time to get educated is NOW. We hope you enjoy Mike's frantic effort to awaken the conference from its slumber. It would have been nice for Mike to finish his speech, but perhaps there was a little too much reality on the stage...' -- "I'm sorry Mr Maloney, this is far too much reality for one day." "I think you should stop before you wake up too many people."

'We have no idea what is going on in the well-appointed back rooms of central banks around the world. But we do believe that the powers-that-be must worry continually about the economic climate and the potential for backsliding. A managed financial crisis is probably to the benefit of the elite as it makes the general populace more malleable. But a prolonged and vicious Great Recession, or even depression of sorts is probably a bridge too far. Generally, Western economies are going to be in for a miserable time, we predict. So, we would believe, are the central banks and their bankers. If people do lose faith in central banking after more than a century of implementation, then something else, somehow, will have to take its place. The elite, even if it wishes for its promotions to persist beyond all logic, will eventually concede that what worked in the 20th century does not work in the 21st. This ... bodes well for the future of honest money – gold and silver.'

'Death in the Morning examines the standardization of precious metal with the touchstone in the ancient world.'

'So gold is in a bubble, eh? How many times are we going to read this statement in the mainstream media? And as many times as we ask this question, we point out that the same media never state that stock or bond markets are in a bubble. It is taken for granted that when stock markets move up in aggregate it is because of a "recovery" and that fundamentals are "good" and are "lifting all boats." When large numbers of government bonds are being disposed of without effort, this is seen as a sign of government's underlying health as well. But let gold or silver begin to levitate and the mainstream media inevitably comes alive with analyses featuring "nervousness" and "fear." When investors purchase blue chip stocks, it is never out of worry, but when the same investor buys gold and silver, he or she is inevitably doing so as a result of some sort of deep psychic dissatisfaction – a kind metaphysical fugue.'

'... another power elite dominant social theme – or a sub-theme of the larger theme which is that world needs reserve currencies (versus gold) and that if it cannot have just one it ought to have several. -- Both [Russian and Chinese] central banks are net, aggressive buyers of gold. ...gold is likely becoming a defacto, secondary reserve currency. Reserve currencies have to be recognized universally and buyers and sellers have to have confidence in them. Gold fits the bill. Not only that, but we would argue that gold has never ceased to be the "real" reserve currency for the world's wealthiest families and individuals and even for central bankers. Of course the powers-that-be will never admit this, which is one reason why there are continual statements regarding other reserve currencies, regional currencies, etc. Those who want to figure out what is really going on ought to simply "follow the money." And money is gold.'

'By setting up regional currencies and by floating the SDR as well, one has created both the building blocks for a potential crisis and the potential solution (a one-world currency). This conceptual strategy is known formally as the Hegelian Dialectic, and it is a tool that the power elite uses as part of its larger promotional efforts. In fact, this might explain why the elites are so determined to salvage the euro. Without the euro, and the EU, the elite would be stripped, down the road, of the possibility of creating another phony crisis (disorder), which could result in salvation (order) in the form of the SDR (or something similar). ...the elite has muffed the whole EU/central bank/currency thing pretty badly of late, it is fairly possible that one fall-back the elite is contemplating is a new gold standard of some sort. However, since the elite emphatically doesn't want to return to a world of nation states, the powers-that-be would have to find a more globalized play on gold.'

'Max interviews investment adviser, Michael Krieger, about "America's Disneyland and Neo-feudalistic, Gulag Casino Economy," financial war between the US and China; and about which nation will be the first to back its currency with gold.' -- "You want to short the system? Buy physical gold."

'Long ago at an international confab, the mainstream press was supposedly thanked by a powerful personage for keeping quiet about various maneuvers leading to world government. But today the mainstream media, led by "conservative" media titan Rupert Murdoch, is fighting furiously to retain its audience and cannot hush up power elite machinations for fear of losing credibility. The world is changing ...the elite is playing catch-up. Their promotions (some of them) are fading and the goalposts are being replanted. From an investment standpoint, the dominant social theme at work here is that gold is a "barbaric metal" and one that is not worth buying—and this theme has now come under attack, even by those who would otherwise seek to promote it. Those who made a decision earlier in the decade that the power elite might lose control over the price of gold (thanks to the Internet) seem to be on to something.'

On legal tender: '"The question was: Why would anyone except a piece of paper in exchange for his goods and services? And the answer was: Because if you didn't, the Emperor would kill you!" -- If the money is good, why do you need to force the people to use it?'

'KEY COMPONENTS OF THE ROAD TO ROOTA THEORY: #1) All markets have been 100% controlled by computer programs since the 1970's in order to steer and control prices thus prolonging the fiat monetary system. #3) In the early 1900's the United States embarked on a secret policy to hide all of its own natural resources and exploit the rest of the world's until resource scarcity was fully recognized. #4) In order to support the oil backed US Dollar and the world's petro-based economic system the "powers that be" have hidden new energy technologies that would greatly benefit the world's population as well as the environment. #5) Since 9/11 there is a group of people and governments that have decided "enough is enough" and are in the process of removing the banking cabal from their seat of power. #6) The planned destruction of the fiat monetary system is the type of "Creative Destruction" event that will force the implementation of a new Gold Standard within the United States.'

'Greenspan spent his early years as an economist trumpeting the virtues of sound money and of a gold standard. Midway through his career, though, Greenspan abruptly pulls a 180 deg. philosophical change of conviction to embrace the fiat money, welfare system that he so vehemently despised in earlier writings. Not only did he embrace fiat money, but he used and abused it to a degree which steered us down the path of irreversible self destruction. What came over him? How does such an intelligent and seemingly honest human being become so corrupt as to use and abuse the monetary system of the entire world further enriching the wealthy and abusing the poor? Could he have done it all on purpose? I contend in this article that Alan Greenspan learned how the banking cartel stole the global monetary system from the people. This knowledge has been his lifelong obsession and he has finally devised a way back to the Gold Standard by orchestrating the pending destruction of the fiat money system.'

'Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert look at the scandals of Tony "No Blood for Oil" Blair lying about selling the UK gold supply on "technical advice of the Bank of England;" a millionaire tramp in Sweden and a casino that refuses to pay in America; and, finally, the Irish 'Bad Bank' and the 'Celtic Chernobyl.''

Bell: '...the biggest secret of all is that there are billions of average people and only a few thousand of the elite. That's why planning was done in secret. That's why hundreds of millions had to be made to believe that all these dominant social themes of fear and control—leading to further wealth concentration—were THEIR idea. You can't run a billion people down with cars. You can't just turn off a billion computers. You can't silence the rising tide of communication technology by shutting down factories. Certainly, you can pass the laws you want, but what use are the laws if fewer and fewer believe in them? What happens when more understand that laws are essentially an economically distortive price fix? You can print money, but what use is it if enough understand its innate worthlessness and cease to believe in its value? You can promote authoritarian memes, and even totalitarian solutions, but of what use is it if fewer are frightened and more analyze them as a manipulation?'

'Denial is a psychotropic, mind-altering drug that by comparison makes crack cocaine look like health food, and addiction to it shuts down the brain. Addiction breeds immorality. Addicts will stop at nothing to get their drug of choice. -- The colossal miscalculation made by Washington and Wall Street is that they could control the moral hazard genie once they removed it from the bottle. They believed they could use the genie to enrich themselves with trillions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer money, and then replace it in the bottle before its magic spell of immorality metastasized throughout society at large. They assumed that the people would be too stupid to see what was going on. There is accumulating evidence that the Washington/Wall Street moral hazard experiment has gone disastrously wrong, and just like any other accidental discharge of a deadly virus, the moral hazard virus is now loose and swiftly propagating throughout society.'

'Andrew Maguire & Adrian Douglas: Discuss What Could Be the Largest Fraud in History - Andrew is an independent metals trader turned whistleblower at the center of a storm for exposing what could be the largest fraud in history involving countries, banks and government leaders. Adrian Douglas Board of Director from GATA, the man who Andrew reached out to joins in this interview where they discuss a fraud so extraordinary and so unimaginable that it is the kind of thing that only happens in hollywood thrillers. They also discuss the CFTC sponsored meeting on metals which was an unmitigated disaster because it additionally exposed the fraud on a grander scale.' -- "All they [(potential short squeezers)] need to establish in their minds is that it [(gold)] is naked [(100 times oversold)]." -- !!!

'Christian [CPM] confirms that the gold market is basically a ponzi: "in the “physical market” as the market uses that term, there is much more metal than that…there is a hundred times what there is." And there you have it: as Douglas [GATA] eloquently summarizes: "LBMA trades over 100 times the amount of gold it actually has to back the trades. [T]he giant Ponzi trading of gold ledger entries can be sustained only if there is never a liquidity crisis in the REAL physical market. If someone asks for gold and there isn’t any the default would trigger the biggest “bank run” and default in history. [Those] who have purchased gold in good faith in “unallocated accounts”, are going to demand delivery of their metal. They will then discover that there is only one ounce for every one hundred ounces claimed. They will find out they are “unsecured creditors”. As long as everyone is prepared to buy and sell “ledger entries” for imaginary gold in the vault no one will ever discover the fraud."'

'So now the West's central banks are buying gold. They couldn't sell enough of it when the yellow metal was priced around US$250 just about a decade ago. But now that it is well over US$1,000 they can't buy enough. This alone should disabuse people of the notion that central bankers are wise and efficient utilizers of the vast money power that they have control over. Central bankers are probably loath to leave so much of this important stuff in people's hands. -- Precious metals standards do not, in fact, need elaborate governmental interventions to be installed (just another meme in our opinion). Honest money becomes the standard of the land by evolution, as people turn to gold and silver while paper currency collapses. One need make no complex prognostications about how to "reintegrate" a precious metals standard into society. If paper money loses enough credibility, it will simply happen. It already is, according to Gartman. We are not surprised, and neither are you.'

'In front of 3 witnesses, Bank of England Governor Eddie George spoke to Nicholas J. Morrell (CEO of Lonmin Plc) after the Washington Agreement gold price explosion in Sept/Oct 1999. Mr. George said: "We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further. A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake. Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it. It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded. The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down. So was the U.K." -- There is also a credible speculation that the sale was designed to benefit a few of the London based bullion banks which were heavily short... The unlikely names mentioned were AIG and the House of Rothschild. The terms of the bailout was that once their positions were covered, they were to leave the LBMA, the largest physical bullion market in the world.'

'Following a series of freedom of information requests from The Daily Telegraph over the past four years, the Information Commissioner has ordered the Treasury to release some details. The Treasury must publish the information demanded within 35 calendar days – by the end of April. The sale is expected to be become a major election issue, casting light on Mr Brown's decisions while at the Treasury.'

"The system does not collapse but evaporates."

'When the British Empire was replaced by the American Empire as the new, dominant economy, the entire world was on a gold-standard – preventing the sort of insane accumulations of debt, and reckless money-printing which characterizes the global economy today. There has never been a scenario where the global economy has attempted a transition from fiat currencies back to a gold standard. Given that such transitions never go smoothly when even a single economy has made such a move, significant economic disruptions are a certainty. -- ...once such a transition was announced, the consequences would be obvious. Given a choice between holding “fiat” U.S. dollars - “backed” by nothing but a bankrupt U.S. economy – and gold-backed renminbi, we would witness an economic stampede of Biblical proportions.'

'China is willing to take whatever “hit” that it must on the dollars which it is holding (through currency swaps), because it is effectively “sterilizing” global trade from the cancerous effect of the biggest flood of greenbacks in history (and the horrific inflation they would cause). -- The second aspect of China's monetary campaign is to improve the “backing” of the renminbi through a “hard asset”: gold—instead of the worthless paper of Western bankers. Indeed, this is clearly the favorite means of China's government to rid itself of dollars—by swapping them for gold. Now, every time the anti-gold cabal drives down the price of gold a few percent, the Chinese government steps in, buys the cheap gold, and rids itself of unwanted dollars. -- With the renminbi taking over as “reserve currency” and with it rising in value against other currencies, suddenly the renminbi becomes the vehicle for all economies to rid themselves of U.S.-imported inflation (through the use of the dollar).'

'Newspapers report that coal bosses, driven out of business by a nationalisation campaign, are caught in bidding wars for gold mines instead. "People are running around with bags of cash to buy the right to exploit gold as soon as possible," Liu Jun, a former coal boss from Zhejiang, told the Xinmin Evening Post.

'The artist will star in the company's television advertisements in Britain. As The Telegraph reported last week, he joins Eighties pop star MC Hammer, who has become an equity partner in the gold buying service.' -- 'The company now employs 300 people and receives more than 1,700 oz of gold per day, with 94pc of respondents accepting its cash offer.' -- Stick up kids are out to tax. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFQQeUNaZtc

Bischoff: "The kind of taxation for which the school argues is the only tax that when applied does not provide less of what is taxed, namely land values. Any other tax applied causes a diminishing effect to the matter taxed." -- On America: "The only way the crises can be resolved is by returning to the gold standard, by reviving the Bill Market, by returning to the provisions of the original Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and definitely by suspending paragraph (b) of Section 14 of the act, and by repealing "legal tender" laws. Thereafter, the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith will take over and launch us on the road to an unimaginable prosperity, provided of course that the only tax collected by sovereign States and governments is Henry George's "single [land value] tax". Due to its constitution, and due to the work ethics, the general common sense and the goodness of its people, the United States is uniquely positioned to overcome the present economic and government crises."

'A revolution involves five crucial elements: (1) a new view of sovereignty; (2) a new view of authority; (3) a new view of law; (4) a new view of sanctions; (5) a new view of the future. Any revolution that does not involve all five is more of a coup than a revolution: a substitution of new rulers for old, not a change in the system. -- The battles for the hearts and minds of men are being fought today in all five areas. Points three through five are still up for grabs. These are intensely ethical issues. They are intensely religious. They will not be decided by technology. There is no group and no worldview that has a clear advantage in these three areas. But the outcome of the battle over points one and two is going to be decided in terms of digits: the digits of the Internet and the digits known as money. In both areas, the existing Establishments of the world are under attack. I am convinced they are going to lose. We will simply walk away from the system.' -- Starve the state.

'Jen has a warning for those who think that gold has risen far too high, is necessarily in a speculative bubble, and must soon come clattering back down. The gold story—essentially—is that the rising economic powers of Asia, the Middle East, and the commodity bloc are rejecting Western fiat currencies. China, India, and Russia have all been buying gold on a large scale over recent months. ..the share of gold in their reserves is just 2.2pc compared to 38pc for the Old World... They would have to buy $115bn of gold at current prices to raise their bullion to just 5pc of total reserves, and $700bn to reach just half western levels. The killer-term here is at current prices since any such move in the tiny global market for gold would send prices into the stratosphere. China is amassing almost as much each month as the United States ($63bn) has built up in the entire history of the country. True, the US understates the value of its gold, but you get the picture. Something big is going on.'

Short the dollar on credit by buying gold. (Disclaimer: Not intended as financial advice, but advocated for central bank-killing righteousness.)

'The tide of history rolls in, and does not conduct focus groups, or popularity polls, or honor the consensus of the crowd. The smart money tests it, and then moves early with it, or at least does not fight it. The only traces of the trend are what the few are doing and where their money is flowing. The tide moves slowly, inexorably, but is there for any and all to see if they would just look past their preconceptions, their ideologies, their desire for what once was, but can no longer be. At this point in history, gold is a harbinger of change. People of the status quo fear change and change agents, always. And despite their best efforts to stop it, to discredit the messenger, obliterate its effects, to silence the message, the tide of history comes and washes over them, and the landscape is changed. And the familiar is a thing of the past. We live in remarkable times.'

13:12: "'Cash 4 Clunkers' was a Chinese program because China wouldn't take US dollars for their exports; we had to send them a bunch of metal and steel for them to give any type of credit to the US. A lot of people don't know that."

Aaron Regent, Barrick: "There is a strong case to be made that we are already at 'peak gold'." -- Peak credit, peak oil, peak gold. May you live in interesting times!

Max: "Environmentalists should be buying gold because only by supporting gold are you going to take away the means by which these companies that you're fighting against have to leverage the economy and cause more ecological destruction." -- Fight the fiat.

'The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may have sold US Treasuries to fund its gold purchase from the International Monetary Fund. Last week, RBI purchased 200 tonnes of IMF gold for $6.7 billion, increasing the share of gold in its reserves by 250 basis points. “This purchase suggests that the Indian monetary authorities are seeking to change the composition of their foreign reserve holdings, most likely diversifying away from US Treasury securities,” said Nikhilesh Bhattacharya, an economist with the research arm of ratings firm Moody’s in a report. He added that the move was prudent as India needed liquid assets as a buffer against sudden, destabilising capital outflows.'

'GoldMoney's Founder James Turk interviewed at Baird & Co. by ITN's London Tonight on 2nd June 2009.'

'#Dominant Social Theme: Don't look to the man behind the curtain? #Free-Market Analysis: The difference between Japan currently and the rest of the West is probably one of time and perhaps of culture. The population seems very hard working and not prone to disorderly bursts of insurrection. The Japanese tolerate a great deal, in other words, and their culture discourages discord. In a fiat money economy, a lack of opposition to the central banking power structure makes the inevitable decay that much more likely and deeper ... sooner rather than later. -- The Telegraph calls for Japan to cut back its social spending and open the floodgates of cheap money. This is indeed probably all that can be done when fiat money has worked its black magic and wreaked its havoc. But the West generally is well down the road toward this solution (the wildly cheap-money part, anyway) and the result will only be more tears. -- #Conclusion: There is a real solution, of course...'

'Gold prices that jumped above $1,000 an ounce this week are signaling that investors are buying metals to hedge against declines in currencies, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said. The gains are “strictly a monetary phenomenon,” Greenspan said today at an investment conference in New York. Rising prices of precious metals and other commodities are “an indication of a very early stage of an endeavor to move away from paper currencies,” he said. “What is fascinating is the extent to which gold still holds reign over the financial system as the ultimate source of payment,” Greenspan said.' -- "Fascinating". Would that have anything to do with 'Gold and Economic Freedom by Alan Greenspan, 1967', by any chance, Mr Greenspan?

'"If you don't trust [G]old, do you trust the logic of taking a beautiful pine tree, worth about $4,000 - $5,000, cutting it up, turning it into pulp and then paper, putting some ink on it and then calling it one billion dollars?" -- Yet, such is the logic of the paperbugs. They believe confidence in men is eternal and more reliable than nature. Hasn't history exposed the folly of such beliefs over and over? Gold is money not because any one individual calls it that but because people and societies over the past few thousand years have figured out that it functions well in this role for multiple reasons. The main reason is basic: people in power are not to be trusted! Why is the collective wisdom of millions of people and hundreds of societies less valuable than the decree of a few scheming bankstaz and their paid-for bureaucratic bozos?'

Al-Fayed's revenge?

'Bernanke: "After 1918, when the war ended, nations around the world made extensive efforts to reconstitute the gold standard, believing that it would be a key element in the return to normal functioning of the international economic system. Great Britain was among the first of the major countries to return to the gold standard, in 1925, and by 1929 the great majority of the world's nations had done so. Unlike the gold standard before World War I, however, the gold standard as reconstituted in the 1920s proved to be both unstable and destabilizing." -- He's lying through his teeth! Great Britain never returned to the "classical" gold standard after 1914! In 1929, NONE of the countries that had left the "classical" gold standard returned to it! NONE ever would! Sure, he admits that the post-WWI "gold standard" did not work well, but he does not state the true reason why! The British pound, the German mark, the Italian lira, et cetera were all just fiat in disguise!' -- Great quotes

'The deal to support the shutdown of the Petro-Dollar contract between the US and Saudis represents the latest big piece to the Comprehensive Chinese Plan. Note the Yuan Swap facility to aid global trade (check Brazil). Note the transition to the Yuan in the Chinese banking deposits. Note the ASEAN emergency fund in Yuan accounts. Note the announced dishonor of OTC derivative contracts with a declared Stop Loss. Note the accumulation of gold by the Chinese central bank and permission for citizens to save in gold also. The Chinese have embarked on a comprehensive plan that escapes Western financial media analysts. This latest development is a climax step that changes gears of the transition. -- The urgent message is clear. The first nations to discard the USDollar and embrace even an IMF global currency basket, will emerge as the next leaders. The basket is a Straw Man transition device toward global gold-backed currencies, of which there will be at least three eventually.'

B& -- Comment: chumbawamba: 'They have been running at chronic shortages since before last year's crash. This is nothing new. They won't be able to confiscate gold this time around. First of all, the dynamic is different. We don't have gold certificates, and we certainly don't have any gold or silver coin in circulation. Also, and most importantly, many Americans who "hoard" gold also "hoard" bullets. And the hoard the latter specifically to protect the former. We're not imbeciles! We read our history.' -- Hehe

"They don't want to finance America's wars anymore." -- Constitution time.

'In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning—along with China, Russia, Japan and France—to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. -- The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. -- The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.' -- !!!

On inflation/deflation/hyperinflation, china's gold put, the stockmarket accounting bubble, america's police state: the sheeple vs the oligarchs, migration east, etc

Video: Jim Rickards on the unwinding of the dollar ponzi scheme and the new ponzi startup with SDRs.

'In a nutshell Burns' entire argument revolves around the equivalency of gold and money, and furthermore points out that if the Fed does not control this core relationship, it would "easily frustrate our efforts to control world liquidity" but also "dangerously prejudge the shape of the future monetary system." Furthermore, the memo goes on to highlight the extensive level of gold price manipulation by central banks even after the gold standard has been formally abolished. -- At some point governments of advanced nations will say "enough" to the covert domination of their controlling bodies by the Federal Reserve, which through manipulation of its gold and money interests, effectively has control over not just the French, but every government which has a monetary basis to its respective economy and a relationship to the US "reserve" currency... Which means virtually every country in the world. The backlash, if and when it occurs, will be memorable.'

'The US$ exchange rates will be heavily subdued, with any rebounds totally smothered, resulting in a relentless Gold rise with gusto. -- The coordinated and systematic ruin of major currencies, through monetizations, through vast federal deficits, through sustained near 0% official rates, and through chronically insolvent national bank systems, will assure that the Gold asset will be a favorite for the USDollar Carry Trade for at least a couple years, maybe more. Furthermore, installation of the USDollar Carry Trade will assure that No Exit Strategy will be available to the USFed also. Wall Street firms will participate in this free lunch carry trade, just like all others. Wall Street will not permit a USFed rate hike to firm the US$ exchange rate. Talk about a strong perverse factor behind the USDollar. The USFed will justify its decision not to hike rates, not to halt money creation, all the while discussing theoretically an Exit Strategy. Try not to laugh too hard!'

Declassified telegram to the Secretary of State sent in 1968: "Special attention has to be given to the extent of the membership of the reshuffle club. A simple and effective rule probably would be that countries with asset holdings that are higher in relation to their gold holdings than the relation that is obtained amongst reshuffling countries are free not to participate in the reshuffles. On the other hand, countries whose asset holdings are relatively low (and whose gold holdings, therefore, are relatively high) should be obliged to submit themselves to the reshuffles. Indeed, this obligation seems so essential that it would have to become part and parcel of the new reserve asset scheme." -- FRAUD

'Greenspan thought that he could conduct the financial system in the same way as the gold standard would operate. "I [Greenspan] think that you will find … that the most effective central banks in this fiat money period tend to be successful largely because we tend to replicate that which would have probably have occurred under a commodity standard in general." -- In other words, we need to remove government from the money supply, unless, of course, I and people like me are in control. Greenspan's position brings to mind a Jewish tradition about King Solomon; he thought that the restrictions imposed in Deuteronomy (17: 16–17) on kings about wives and horses did not apply to him. As the wisest of men, Solomon believed he knew the reasons for these restrictions, so he could avoid the temptations that the rules guarded against and take more wives and horses than allowed. His overweening arrogance led to disaster, and Greenspan fell victim to the same syndrome.' -- Disgrace by doublethink

'What appeared to many analysts as an impossibility, the replacement of the $US by the RMB, is fast moving towards a real possibility. One interesting speculation is that the move by China to accumulate gold might be the first steps towards a gold standard RMB, but I would reemphaise that this is nothing more than wild speculation... However, in the coming currency chaos, such a move would absolutely secure the status of the RMB. -- Having followed the progress of Chinese policy, it has become ever more apparent that they have been playing the 'great game' to win, and that they have played their hand beautifully. I find myself with a grudging admiration for the way in which they have positioned themselves, and find a measure of contempt for the politicians in the West who have allowed China to play the game so effectively. As the current situation stands, we are witnessing the shift of economic power from the West to the East, with China emerging as the world economic super power.'

'China is buying the dips, and will continue to do so as a systematic policy. His comment captures exactly what observation of gold price action suggests is happening. Every time it looks as if the bullion market is going to buckle, some big force steps in from the unknown.

'Max Keiser talks to Stacy Herbert about the gold rally and price manipulation with the limit for long positions but no limits for short positions.'

'China's Central Television, the main state-owned television company, has run a news programme letting the public know how easy it is to buy precious metals as an investment. On silver investment the announcer is quoted as saying " China has introduced its first ever investment opportunity for silver bullion. The bars are available in 500g, 1kg, 2kg and 5kg with a purity of 99.9%. Figures show that gold was fifty times more expensive than silver in 2007, but now that figure has reached over seventy times. Analysts say that silver has been undervalued in recent years. They add that the metal is the right investment for individual investors and could be a good way to cash in." What appears to have happened in China is a total relaxation of strictures on holding precious metals by the individual with the government pushing gold and silver as an investment option, seemingly at every opportunity.' -- Consumer economy time

'Hong Kong is pulling all its physical gold holdings from depositories in London, transferring them to a high-security depository newly built at the city's airport, in a move that won praise from local traders Thursday.' -- And so it begins