Ch 11.3 - Gold
"A pillow of gold might be a little hard, but it will actually help you sleep better at night." - Unknown
Narrative: Gold is a barbarous relic. People dig it up, refine it, and then just put it back in another hole in the ground somewhere else. It’s a colossal waste of time and resources.
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a. History
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"He who has the gold makes the rules." - Unknown
"Aside from thirst, hunger and sex, gold is history’s greatest motivator." - Unknown
”Gold has been money for 4,000 years.” - Gold: The Story of Man's 6000 Year Obsession
"Roman coins were less than an ounce of silver (they shaved the coins, ancient ‘inflation’), whereas the Hebrew shekels weighed a full ounce of silver. It is believed that Jesus told the Hebrews to pay Caesar’s tax with Caesar’s shaved coins (give unto Caesar, that which is Caesar’s) and keep your shekels (God’s money) for tithing to the temple." - Unknown
"Your Founders told you to use gold and silver for a reason. You ignored them." - Unknown
"No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." - US Constitution, Art. I, sec. 10, cl. 1.
"Gold fundamental value is global debt / global gold
313 trillion / 7.5b oz = $42k gold
Silver is $2k at 20:1" - Catherine Austin Fitts
"Over a longer run, the U.S. money supply has trebled since the global financial crisis of 2008, while the gold supply has grown by only 1 percent to 2 percent per year. Gold prices, which are expressed in dollar terms, have thus tripled alongside the money supply, suggesting that gold has been a more honest representation of purchasing power than the depreciating dollar." - Unknown
"The 10 largest companies in the US are worth 17 trilllion. The total value of gold is 17 trillion. It’s ridiculous. 10 companies are worth the same as all the money ever produced." - Unknown
"Gold is so rare that the world produces more steel in one hour than it has mined gold throughout all of recorded history." - Unknown
"The FED and IRS were created in 1913. In 1920 the average household income was $3,269 or 158oz of gold. In 2022 the average household income was $70,957 or 38oz of gold. If our money still held the same purchasing power as 158oz of gold in 1913, the average household would be making $280,175!" - Unknown
"In 1808, an ounce of gold was $20 and could buy a good suit, shoes, shirt, socks, breakfast, lunch, dinner, a cup of coffee at an OK restaurant, and a pack of smokes. Today an ounce is $2,000 and can buy the same. $20 today can buy a cup of coffee and smokes." - Unknown
"Use gold for savings. Use fiat for liquidity. Store your wealth and gold and covert to fiat when you need to buy something. See case-in-point below:
- In 1920 5k dollar house avg house price and gold 20 an ounce. 250 one ounce bars buys one house
- In 2024 500k dollar house same shoebox from 1920 in gold still buys one house" - Unknown
"Fun fact: If you had bought a Ford F-150 in 1973 with gold, you’d have paid 30 ounces. Today? Those same 30 ounces buy two trucks. It’s not the truck that got more expensive. It’s the dollar that collapsed." - Unknown
”Nixon Lies:
- Suspend temporarily the convertibility of $ into gold
- Strength of the currency based on the strength of the economy
- Your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow” - Richard Nixon after closing the gold window in 1971
"If anybody has any idea of hoarding our silver coins, let me say this. Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin. There will be no profit in holding them out of circulation for the value of their silver content" - Lyndon Johnson
b. Properties
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"Gold is money. Gold is durable, divisible, consistent, convenient, scarce, and, most important, it's the 'hardest' of all physical commodities. In other words, gold is 'hard to produce' relative to existing stockpiles and is the one physical commodity most resistant to inflation. That's what gives gold its monetary properties." - Unknown
"Gold has a large number of characteristics that make it an ideal currency and of all the elements available it is perhaps the best physical element to serve as a currency.
- it isn't a gas or liquid
- It doesn't burn
- it's non-reactive
- it doesn't have an absurdly high melting point (as with platinum)
- it's rare but not TOO rare (like rhodium)
- it won't kill you (as with a radioactive metal)
- it doesn't corrode or tarnish
- it's relatively easy to test with a 'touchstone' and 'the acid test'
- it's easy to divide, or 'mint' in various sizes (an issue with gems, diamonds, etc.)" - Unknown
"Yet gold has special properties that no other currency, with the possible exception of silver, can claim. For more than two millennia, gold has had virtually unquestioned acceptance as payment. It has never required the credit guarantee of a third party. No questions are raised when gold or direct claims to gold are offered in payment of an obligation." - Unknown
"gold, which is a hedge against the 3Ds: debt, deficit, debasement" - Unknown
"Gold can’t run a deficit. It can’t default. It can’t go to war. It’s isolated from government failure. That’s why people trust it." - Unknown
“Gold is money. Everything else is credit.” - J.P. Morgan
"Gold is Bearer asset doesn’t involve trust." - Unknown
"Gold is the only asset that is not simultaneously someone else’s liability." - Unknown
"Gold has intrinsic value unlike a dollar or any other currency, let alone bitcoin." - Dutch Central Banker
"Gold isn’t money. It’s an insurance policy against financial chaos." - Unknown
"Gold isn’t a hedge against inflation. It’s a hedge against government." - Unknown
"Gold is a handgun you keep in your drawer you never want to use." - Unknown
"People buy gold for six reasons:
1) as an inflation hedge
2) as a currency hedge
3) as a portfolio diversified
4) as a commodity
5) as a safe haven
6) as savings" - Unknown
"Three possibilities in the future:
1) Gold goes back to jewelry.
2) Gold goes back to money of last resort. Jewelry + Insurance.
3) Gold goes back to some sort of monetary function. Jewelry + Insurance + Money" - Unknown
"Luxury goods have long fascinated economists because they stress the normal laws of demand. There are two types:
- Veblen goods - higher status triggers a sense that it should be more valuable (French wine/LV Handbags)
- Giffen goods - price rise itself signals a great broad demand regardless of social status (Bitcoin/Gold)" - Unknown
"Here's the thing: China and the rest of the big buyers of physical gold don't give a shit about the RSI on paper gold. There's no such thing a 'overbought' or 'oversold' with real physical gold. There IS 'under-owned' and real gold is under-owned by everyone..." - Unknown
c. Reserve Asset
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"Because of Basel 3, Gold is the only asset on a bank's balance sheet that doesn't carry a national currency risk, doesn't have a duration risk, and doesn't carry a BIS risk weighting. Nothing else does this. Bankers need Gold on their balance sheet and they need it to go higher." - Unknown
"Gold isn’t becoming Tier 1 because of price. It’s rising in price because it’s becoming Tier 1." - Unknown
"The central banks aren’t buying gold. They’re selling fiat. There’s a difference." - Unknown
"There's a chance we do get to this BRICs currency that will have gold as part of a basket and I've always said that if Gold's part of a basket it will eventually rise to the top of it for all. The reasons we know if you put wheat in the basket wheat rots. If you put oil in the basket oil gets consumed. If you put copper in the basket copper gets used in industry. Gold's the only thing that is a pure asset. Pure gold can be put in there. It's a pure asset that has no real other need, but to be this Reserve asset. You know that's why it's perfect money. Because you don't need to consume it in any other way so what would happen is people would start to trade out these other Commodities that they're using to back their currency for gold." - Parallel Mike
"If we can weaponize the dollar, they (BRICS) can weaponize gold, silver, and other commodities." - Unknown
"Gold is the currency of kings.
Silver is the currency of gentlemen.
Credit is the currency of slaves.
Bitcoin is the currency of grifters.
Gold is money and nothing else." - Unknown
"Why is Gold superior to Bitcoin?
Gold without miners still has value
Gold below production cost still has value
Gold spends 500 yrs at the bottom of the ocean and still has value
Gold without private key still has value
Gold can leave zero if it ever gets there
#Gold $BTC" - Unknown
"When you buy gold and silver, it comes with a central bank guarantee. The guarantee is they will absolutely not stop printing money... If you had the ability to print money out of thin air, would you stop?" - Unknown
"The West has become extremely aggressive in its geopolitics. You simply do not buy the debt of your enemy. Central banks are buying gold because the USD is political." - Unknown
"Now you know where all that currency that got printed is going. I put my cut in gold. Let me ask you what is AI good for? How does it taste? Can it cut the lawn? Does it help you place better "bets" in the casino, er, market? Almost everything you see now on a daily basis is a result of the lack of sound money." - Unknown, on the price rise of Nvidia
"Understand goal of global deep state is ensure stocks never go down, while ensuring strategic commodities never go up? Many including myself have wasted decades to come to that conclusion." - Unknown
"5x amount of gold is traded in London each day as oil is traded in New York
1) why did they give oversight of gold to BOE
2) why are regulations voluntary - self regulating by members
3) why is gold and silver a promissory note
4) 200m oz of gold a day traded in London when 120m oz mined globally each year
5) 3b oz of silver a day traded in London when 830m oz mined globally each year" - Unknown
"I'm not the kind of conspiracy buff that many of my friends in the industry are, but it's hard to look at silver and not see some hidden hands at work (especially considering who holds so much of the metal in both physical and paper forms while acting as custodian for the biggest silver exchange-traded fund)." - Brien Lundin wrote on the failure of silver prices to keep up with gold prices.
"There always will be a market. If it’s illegal, then there’s a black market. People sell all kinds of drugs in this country, and they’re not legal. But there are plenty of buyers. It just means the market is underground, and of course, even if it’s illegal in America, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be illegal in every country, so there will be plenty of legal gold markets. If they ever make it illegal to own gold, the one thing you want to own is gold. They’re not going to make it illegal because nobody wants it and the price is really low, right? They’re going to make it illegal because everybody is buying gold and it’s really expensive." - Peter Schiff
"When money derivatives, chiefly the dollar, can no longer be converted back into money, they cease to be money derivatives, and lose all purchasing power. Money could no longer be converted in 1933. We were allowed to exchange it in 1974." - Unknown
"Not to worry, USA has 8000 tons of Gold at Fort Knox. Sure, nobody has seen the Gold since before the 1970's, but to imply that it is not there is crazy conspiracy crap." - Unknown
"Owning $GLD is like keeping a photo of a gun for self-defense purposes." - Unknown
"Future tail wagging the spot dog." - Unknown
”We already have digital gold. It's called a futures contract.” - Raoul Pal
"Contango implies the existence of a healthy supply of the commodity in the warehouses available for immediate delivery, while backwardation implies shortages and conjures up the scraping of the bottom of the barrel. The cure for the backwardation of any commodity is more backwardation. For gold, there is no cure. Backwardation in gold is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon: it is a reminder of the incurable pathology of paper money. It dramatizes the decay of the regime of irredeemable currency. It can only get worse. As confidence in the value of fiat money is a fragile thing, it will not get better. It depicts the paper dollar as Humpty Dumpty who sat on a wall and had a great fall and, now, “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.” To paraphrase a proverb, give paper currency a bad name, you might as well scrap it. Gold going to permanent backwardation means that gold is no longer for sale at any price, whether it is quoted in dollars, yens, euros, or Swiss francs. The situation is exactly the same as it has been for years: gold is not for sale at any price quoted in Zimbabwe currency, however high the quote is." - Unknown
"Few people realize that the shutting down of the gold trade, which is what is happening, means the shutting down of world trade. This is a financial earthquake measuring ten on the Greenspan scale, with epicenter at the Comex in New York, where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood." - Unknown
d. Insurance
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"Gold is life insurance for dying currencies." - Unknown
"Gold will retain its value even when someone cuts off the power to the global financial system, destroying traditional assets based on electronic accounting records. Of course, we do not assume that this will happen. But as the saying goes – forewarned is always insured. And the central bank is required to be prepared for even the most unfavorable circumstances. That is why we see a special place for gold in our foreign exchange management process." - Glapiński
"The family motto has always been: 'Keep a fast junk in the harbour with gold bars and a second set of papers'. The modern equivalent would be a private jet, a couple of passports and foreign bank accounts. That is the world we are in . . . it is tough stuff." - Lesperance
"Crypto - and gold - is really only a threat to government tax exactions...and that's the most terrifying thing of all to any regime. Never mind all this nonsense about 'your security', 'terrorism', etc., etc." - Unknown
"Many of the assets you think you own you are merely holding in trust for another beneficiary... Any coin with a monarch on the back is a 'coin of the realm' according to Coinage Act of 1971 (coincidentally the same year Bretton Woods failed) issued by a British Commonwealth nation. Coins with denominations on the back classed as legal tender is considered a coin of the realm. Legal tender means it can be used in the settlement of debts. Do not buy coins that are capital gains tax free issued by a national mint. 'Her Majesty may... call in coins of any date or denomination, or coins made before a date specified in the proclamation.' Also ' no person shall... melt down or break up any metal coin...'" - Parallel Mike
"How does a family keep its wealth for so long? It defies the odds. There must be a secret. She smiled and said, “Of course. It’s easy.” You just invest in “the things that last.” She added that the secret was, “a third, a third, and a third.” She paused, knowing I needed more, and continued, “You keep one-third in land, one-third in art and one-third in gold.” Her advice followed the first rule of investing — diversification. But the “old money” shows that true wealth preservation comes from art, gold and land rather than stocks and bonds." - Unknown
"They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumbling block of their iniquity." - Ezekiel 7:19 KJV
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