“With the Zionist Jew controled (insert organization)”…. These “Zionist Jews” must be both the most powerful group on the planet, and the weakest. They supposedly control everything, yet their adversaries are allowed to exist..

Needless to say, I do not think you swayed many here.

It works the same for the 1891 example. If the man had placed one silver dollar and one paper dollar in a box, which would buy more goods and servoces today? Of course, any crappy condition silver dollar will still bring about $14 to $20 and the paper dollar will get you a brand new paper dollar, which MIGHT buy you a cup of coffee, at a gas station.

When I was a wee lad, my Grandfather gave me a 1909 gold US five dollar gold piece. He told me that he could buy a suit of cloths for that coin, when he was a boy, and I could sell that coin and use the money to buy a suit of cloths on that day. When I gave that coin to my son, I told him the same story, and guess what: he can sell that coin and buy a nice suit of clothes, as could his son, one day.

The gold and silver have only maintained the buying power of the day they were minted. The paper dollar has devalued drastically. The value of gold and silver declines when the dollar is strong and increases when the dollar is weak. They do, however, maintain buying power, where paper currency, backed by nothing, does not.

I collect the Liberty coins and intend to give them to my grandchildren as a memento of what money SHOULD be; something of intrinsic vlaue.

I take liberty silver coins at face value, if anyone wishes to sell them to me, in exchange for Federal Reserve Notes. I do not believe they are currency, but attractive curiousity pieces that many people admired.

Bob

What will happen if no other country uses a gold standard? Will we honor their currency? What is to stop them from simply taking all the gold through cashing in of notes or hoarding currency? How will we stop counterfeiting of notes and coins (ye old “wooden nickel”)? How will coiners or whoever is controlling the currency (government or private) keep maverick coiners from operating?

“Miracle” does seem to be an understatement regarding how a 6bn+ person world economy is going to function on a gold standard, let alone a 330+ million person US economy.

And no, I do not have a better answer than fiat currency but I do not see how these people in the warrant thought they could start their own system without confiscation happening as in the paragraph above. I also do not see how it ever would work without a massive social upheaval or complete destruction of current societal norms.

But thanks for answering the question as best possible.

Putting that system back in place would take a miracle. It’s not impossible but it is complex. It would be fought hard by the people that have manipulated our money for well over century in America and nearly two cenuries in Europe.

Nathan Lewis has a fairly recent book that covers the how, “Gold, The Once and Future Money”. It covers historical Monetary systems, current economic conditions and a process of returning to a precious metal system. It has some seriously dry stuff in it but I found it worth slugging through.

I think the best you can hope for for some time to come is protect yourself by not holding US Dollars. Whether it’s gold and silver, land or lumber, get rid of dollars, stocks bonds and mutual funds and buy some hard assets.

Keep in mind as you think about what some folks are saying on here about “trillions of dollars” an “finite supply of gold” that perhaps we should not have many of these trillions of dollars out there in the first place. We have recently seen a few trillion evaporate and I think we are just getting started. It is a scam writ larger that you are I can imagine.

Some people think the gold standard is too limiting to accomodate growth and a global economy. I think it’s just honest.

How about a real life example of salaries lagging inflation - Monetary Inflation, the issuing of additional US dollars with absolutely no backing - happens nearly every day. Employers typically give raises only once a year. That’s an eleven month, 29 day lag with no assurance your raise will outpace true inflation.

There are any number of places you can find alternative inflation statistics, http://www.shadowstats.com/cgi-bin/sgs? is just one example.

I think you are missing the point of having a backed currency. The long term price of gold primarily fluctuates due to the change in value of the Dollar. When gold made its upward leg to about $370 in 1996, the dollar had completed a 45% drop starting in 1985 when it peaked. The Dollar began to rise until about 2001-2002 and has been steadily declining since then. This gold bull market began then. Look here: http://www.shadowstats.com/cgi-bin/sgs/data for the data.

The point is, gold simply does not change all that much in value (or purchasing power). It is the floating currency that changes.

Oh, and those inflationary periods you mentioned that pre-date the insidious creation of the Federal Reserve - all of them were times of huge increases in government spending, typically to finance wars. Read your history. Read G. Edward Griffins “The Creature From Jekyll Island”. Then you can tell me about history.

That will be all I have to say about that. I, unfortunately, got sucked in to responding about monetary systems in these comments. It’s not what I wanted to discuss - I do it every day in my brokerage business - it’s a job.

What I wanted to discuss is the railroading the people at Liberty Dollar are taking at the hands of the Federal Government.

A 38 page affadavit and not one person is claiming to be a victim of any fraud!!!

I’ll participate if anyone wants to discuss it, but I’m done defending precious metals based money systems.

I’m 32 years old and retired. I’ve never put a penny into a 401(k). I owned my own before my 25th birthday. I was able to do this because I understand how money and free markets work. Gold, United States Federal Reserve notes, and anything else of value all have one thing in common…

Where there value is derived.
Anything and everything is only worth what the market says it is. This is true for money, goods, services, commodities, collectibles, and so on. Does the price of gold not fluctuate? Of course it does.

Today gold is at $797
December 1996 $369.55/oz
Thats a 215.67% difference in 10 years (21.5%/yr).
But it went down 97: December 29, 1997 $293.90 - which, off the top of my head is about a 21% drop. In less than a year. Now, when was the last time the US dollar did that? Does it do it as often as Gold? Do you want your wages and currency based on something that constantly fluctuates like that?

Gold remained steady at around or below $300 until 2003 when it worked it’s way over $400, 2005 saw $500 an oz., March 06 $600, then September 07 $700 and working it’s way to $800 now.

All of my rambling just goes to this point, if we are on a gold standard and the supply & demand cycle for gold fluctuates as it does, how do we cope with a 20% or more fluctuation in the value of our currency on a regular basis?

The gold standard is not currently used by *any government or central bank* having been replaced completely by fiat currency. There is a reason for this!

The total amount of gold that has ever been mined is estimated at ~125,000 tonnes - this entire planetary stock would be USD $3.1 trillion (at $797/oz.) The amount of USD in circulation is +/- $8 trillion.

So to restate ChrisG’s question, which no one seems to want to answer, Just what process could possibly facilitate the transition to a gold standard?

I’m going to assume, perhaps incorrectly, that one who is advocating the return to a Gold standard would be a follower of the Austrian School of Economics, or at least has studied Allen Greenspan’s 1966 paper “Gold and Economic Freedom”. I say incorrectly because most everyone I’ve discussed this topic with supports the idea simply because Ron Paul has said something about it.

The Gold Standard is opposed by the vast majority of governments and economists, because the it has frequently been shown to provide insufficient flexibility in the supply of money & in fiscal policy, because the supply of newly mined gold is finite & must be carefully husbanded and accounted for. In theory, paper money printed based on the finite amount of gold will go up in value as it becomes more rare.

So again, what steps could be taken to eliminate or minimize the negative limitations of such a standard on modern economies?

What about the very real and likely possibility that other nations would not use a GS?
How do you deal with that?
Or the fact that as population increases the gold would not, therefor, it would just have to increase in value, which would cause it’s own inflation & deflation issues?

I’m not saying that the current system is perfect, in fact it does have some issues. Primarily that the Fed manipulates interest rates to combat perceived ills in the economy rather than allowing the market and fiscal responsibility to correct them. It’s all about supply and demand, and there is much more demand than there is gold supply.

Now, concerning “The differnce[sic] is that prices tend to significantly lead salaries.”

Can you provide a source for this? I’m not suggesting you’re incorrect, I’m just checking - considering I’ve researched salaries and CPI back to 1800’s. I might also add that inflation predates the switch from the gold standard.

Feel free to correct me if I’ve made a mistake of fact anywhere. I’ll be patiently waiting for someone to supply an answer…

But the biggest difference comes about when you try to invest or save. But the time your CD matures or you can finally crack into that 401K or IRA, pay the TAXES, your actual remaining money has lost it’s purchasing power.

You seem to be thinking like a guy who’s just living paycheck to paycheck and counting on Uncle Sammy to provide for your future.

I’d be real careful

The victims of this fraud would be the people who lack the intellectual capacity to determine that an item that looks like a US monetary device such as a coin or note that is marked with US monetary denominations including the dollar sign, is not in fact money.

The check you mentioned is not money either, it’s an I.O.U. backed only by your credit worthiness and good standing in the many banking and verification services.

Now, can anyone say if any other countries are using a gold standard or similar?

The US money is backed by the market, I value a $100 bill based on what I can do with, I have employees willing to provide me with time and labor in exchange for it and there is no shortage of merchants ready and waiting to exchange my $100 for something they have as well. On the other hand it’s much harder for me to spend gold and silver.

Concerning the inflation everyone seems to keep mentioning…

What cost $100 in 1891 would cost $2164.02 in 2006. An increase of about 2164%

Also, if you were to buy exactly the same products in 2006 and 1891, they would cost you $100 and $4.62 respectively.

That looks horrible, but wait. As with everything else, inflation is relative…

An unskilled worker in 1891 had an average daily wage of $0.84 per day. Lets adjust that with the CPI… $18.18 or $2.27 an hour in 2006 dollars.

Now, how many unskilled workers do you know who earn $18 per day? or $2.27 an hour? I’m guessing not that many considering even McDonalds pays upwards of $8 an hour - that’s about as unskilled as one can get. An 8 hour day at McD’s in 2006 would pay twice as much in real dollars as it would have in 1891.

Now given that information and that a little research shows historical wages and inflation to have been both lower and higher than now in real dollars, what’s the difference?

The only difference I can really see is with labels and numbers. If something costs $1.2 billion but I earn $600 million an hour is it really any different? Other than the headache one could get from calculating how much a Snickers bar is.

Holders of the coins actually have metal in their hands that represents the value of the FRN’s they used to purchase the item or goods they traded to get it.

Holders of paper warehouse receipts had the same amount of silver, gold or platinum stored at the Sunshine Mine vault as was indicated on the receipt.

The denomination stamped on the coin or receipt is merely a price tag in FRN’s. to purchase the item and establish a value relative to the US Dollar. It’s no different than a price tag on a candy bar.

If putting a denomination on a piece of paper and passing it off as money is fraud or “uttering” for anyone but the Mint or Federal reserve then I need to be locked up for writing that check to the power company.

The FBI created the victims when they seized the silver, gold and platinum backing the warehouse receipts and took items to fill the paid in full orders waiting for coins.

As I said earlier — the US has not had a circulating coin with a value greater than $1 since 1932 when gold was confiscated. The $1 Liberty coin was a huge copper coin that no one is going to accept as a US coin by accident.

Oh! They were selling silver for more than the spot price per ounce! That has to be fraud! Apparently not - the US mint sells a one ounce (well .999 oz) silver coin and is asking $21.95 plus shipping. All silver coins sell for above the spot price.

I don’t see fraud and I don’t see “uttering” or counterfeiting here on the part of NORFED. I see a great fraud in the current us monetary system where the purchasing power of the US dollar has fallen 94% since the implementation of the Federal reserve.

That guys, is fraud.

Many companies are minting “rounds,” but not one has a stamp that says “Twenty Dollars” along with USA….what idiots.