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Last edited by Jamesiv1; 08-25-2012 at 09:41 AM.
- Don't lie.
- Don't cheat.
- Don't steal.
- Don't kill.
- Don't commit adultery.
- Don't covet what your neighbor has, especially his wife.
- Honor your father and mother.
- Remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy.
- Don’t use your Higher Power's name in vain, or anyone else's.
- Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
"For the love of money is the root of all evil..." -- I Timothy 6:10, KJV
The Fed Reserve Note came into existence in 1933.
FDR, by unilateral executive order, he made it illegal for American citizens to own any gold coins that had no numismatic value. The government paid the owners $20.67 per ounce. Once the gold was in the possession of the Treasury, Roosevelt officially hiked the price to $35 on January 31, 1934.
The Fed then bought the gold from the Treasury by creating new money - the Federal Reserve Note.
This newly issued money was then spent into circulation by the Treasury. The Fed now holds the gold— demonetized.
Note: the Federal Reserve Note is not backed by gold - that is, it was not redeemable for gold (as its possession was now illegal). It, itself, is redeemable for itself. You go to the bank with a $20 and ask for it to be redeemed, they give 2 x $10....
This is how the Federal Reserve Note came to exist and it has nothing to do with "debt" - it has to do with the demonetization of another commodity that was money - which then created the FRN to be money.
While it is true that that the FED increases the money supply by purchasing interest-bearing IOU's from the market ...though typically it focuses on Government debt ... it is not correct to claim such money is based on debt.
This is important to understand, since there is this strong believe that if all the debt was repaid, there would be no money.
That is, factually, false as you can now understand with knowing how the FRN was born.
^^^ MODERN MONEY MECHANICS. Go learn something.
Its "shareholders" are merely its banks, but they DON'T own the Fed as such, Fed is just another arm of the Federal Government even though it's placed as a "hybrid" of private & public sector so as to make it seem "independent" & "unaffected by politics" but calling it "private" is taking things too far, it's a decent tactic to wake up people to liberty but it's not totally accurate
So accordingly, it's the US government who holds that gold IF it's actually there or some other country doesn't have a lien on it
+1
I'm afraid you've a pet "crackpot economic theory" & only "I" know the truth & "I" make all the definitions & only "I" can see the "self-evident objective truth" & anyone else who disagrees with "me" is either an idiot or misinformed or both or has a "crackpot economic theory"
Can you eat gold? Can you drink it? Can you live in it? Can you drive it? Can you wash clothes with it? And so on
It does NOT matter who has gold, they'll have to SPEND to get the goods & services from other people & they'll also INVEST it to produce more goods & services & so on
"Money", no matter whether it's gold or whatever is NOT end in itself, it's a means to an end, it's a means to exchanging for goods & services in return
Most of the world's gold though is held in private hands, it's only recently that some central-banks have turned net-buyers but masses in India & China & people elsewhere have most of the gold, many who value it as a store of purchasing-power as well as a status-symbol & tradition
There is enormous inertia — a tyranny of the status quo — in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable
- Milton Friedman
Your explanation here only covers initial offerings of the first round of Federal Reserve notes. The money supply has expanded by a couple magnitudes since then and that expansion took place through Fed loaning money into existence and Fed-backed banks loaning money into existence. Also, trivially, Treasury coinage. So while you are correct that paying off all debt would not erase the entire money supply, it WOULD erase most of it. Just this year the Federal government borrowed more from the Fed (created out of thin air) than the entire money supply in 1933.
The proper concern of society is the preservation of individual freedom; the proper concern of the individual is the harmony of society.
"Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." - Byron
"Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe." - Milton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
^^^Kind of the reverse of what you said. But you can't say the government has never done anything LIKE it.
Click here for a free copper round. Every three people you get signed up, you get another free round! NO PURCHASE NECESSARY!
If a person with a vault full of gold doesn't put it into circulation, then they can't use it as money until they do.
Same as if you stuffed your mattress with FRNs. They're good for nothing but stuffing until they get circulated.
Well, more than that --- they can remonetize the FRN to gold to whatever they wish.
The first round was $35 - but if they deem they wish to adjust that to $1500, they can, and print up (or digit up) $1465 more FRN on a whim.
No, paying off debt would do no such thing - that's the point.The money supply has expanded by a couple magnitudes since then and that expansion took place through Fed loaning money into existence and Fed-backed banks loaning money into existence. Also, trivially, Treasury coinage. So while you are correct that paying off all debt would not erase the entire money supply, it WOULD erase most of it. Just this year the Federal government borrowed more from the Fed (created out of thin air) than the entire money supply in 1933.
If I lend you a buck, and you pay me back.... explain how the money supply changed???
You are advocating Fisher's/Keynes crackpot theory of money, not Mises, nor Rothbard, nor Friedman.
*dang, I posted a long comment and since I am a new user and usually come here to feed my Paul addiction when the DP is down, it wouldn't let me post my link and deleted my post. Bare with me, I have to post 3 comments before they allow me to post the link.
Fort knox and a place almost no one knows about off the Hudson River in Mass. stores all the gold in the US, and holds a lot of foreign gold aswell. Last I read there is over 6000 tons between the two locations.
The US govt doesn't own all of it, but hold a lot of other countrie's gold. If the economy goes caput, the govt siezes it, and issues them receipts to them with the amount confiscated, and they are free to buy it back in the new currency (fraud.) It happend in 1933. Although the dollar didn't disapear, it was devalued by $15 USD's.
Also, the Rothchild family owns the majority of the worlds gold. They supposidly have a wealth of $232 trillion (over half of the worlds wealth) aswell(according to Credit Suisse Group.) Take it with a grain of salt though. Here is the link I got it from. http://americanfreepress.net/?p=2743 A good read, and more believeable than the MSM. ***Also, if you are a book worm or like to read, add "Currency Wars, the Making to of the Next Global Crisis." Great read, and talks about the classical gold standard which produced the greatest/wealthiest/widest middle class, but ended in 1913 (because of you know what act.)
Last edited by FreedomIsAbsolute; 03-07-2012 at 12:33 PM.
http://www.gold.org/
You can go here to find out who owns the gold.
They track the declared gold reserves.
Interesting website - thanks for that.
A few statements on their "Numbers and Facts" page:
* 166,600 tons of gold mined since beginning of civilization (they don't mention how far back they're counting as "civilization")
* Over 90% of all the gold has been mined since the California Gold Rush
* Fort Knox holds 4,600 tons
* US Federal Reserve holds 6,200 tons
* 60% of gold mined today becomes jewelry
You gotta register on the site to download the document showing declared gold reserves - I'm hesitant to do that LOL
Edit:
Ok. Registered anonymously and downloaded it (update as of Feb 2012)
Interesting note:
* Says USA holds 8,133 tons, 74% of which is in the "% of reserves" column.
* "% of reserves" is defined in a footnote as "The percentage share held in gold of total foreign reserves"
That leads me to think that 26% of our holdings belong to US interests, 74% belongs to foreign interests?
Last edited by Jamesiv1; 03-09-2012 at 08:20 AM.
- Don't lie.
- Don't cheat.
- Don't steal.
- Don't kill.
- Don't commit adultery.
- Don't covet what your neighbor has, especially his wife.
- Honor your father and mother.
- Remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy.
- Don’t use your Higher Power's name in vain, or anyone else's.
- Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
"For the love of money is the root of all evil..." -- I Timothy 6:10, KJV
A bit of background.
Though gold is not money to the American citizen, gold is money to the banks and government. Funny, huh?
So all trade between nations (and hence interbank transactions) are backed up with gold bullion, called "reserves"
At the end of the day (or some accounting period), men with forklifts move pallets of gold in and out of vaults.
As far as "other reserves", those are typically money of other countries, such as yen, euro, franc, cdn$, etc. - thus, if a transfer is denominated in a currency, they can trade the paper instead.
It will then make sense that most of the world has large non-gold reserves (vast majority, US$), and the US with the most gold. The world trades on the US$, even between nations.
PS: the gold is swapped at a fixed rate of $42.22 an oz. Weird, huh?
So again these are DECLARED reserves - they may not be physically there.
The banks, holding gold at $42.22/oz. got greedy. They are not legally allowed to sell the gold to the market, so they created a front called a "bullion bank" that leased this gold from the bank.
These 'bullion banks' gave a piece of paper to the bank promising to replace the physical metal oz. to oz. on demand, and took and sold the gold at market rate .... mostly, though back in 2003-2005... and invested the proceeds in the stock exchange.
Bet you can guess these guys are in trouble.
The bank dares not call the loans - the price of gold would blow through the roof, and the bullion banks don't have money to buy it anyway, now that the market tanked.
So the central banks play a "don't look, it must be there" game.
But one day .... like an audit .... the game will end.
Last edited by Black Flag; 03-09-2012 at 11:54 AM.
Ok, I'll buy that. But still... Let's say your take-home share was just one of those racks in my vault pic. I'm betting I could feed and clothe me and mine for years and burn up maybe 4 or 5 bricks, max.
Just saying that if SHTF the amount of gold forced into circulation would be the bare minimum the gold-holders unleash to buy goods and services. And they probably have of few mansions full of valuables they would choose to part with first, me thinks.
Last edited by Jamesiv1; 08-25-2012 at 10:22 AM.
- Don't lie.
- Don't cheat.
- Don't steal.
- Don't kill.
- Don't commit adultery.
- Don't covet what your neighbor has, especially his wife.
- Honor your father and mother.
- Remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy.
- Don’t use your Higher Power's name in vain, or anyone else's.
- Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
"For the love of money is the root of all evil..." -- I Timothy 6:10, KJV
- Don't lie.
- Don't cheat.
- Don't steal.
- Don't kill.
- Don't commit adultery.
- Don't covet what your neighbor has, especially his wife.
- Honor your father and mother.
- Remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy.
- Don’t use your Higher Power's name in vain, or anyone else's.
- Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
"For the love of money is the root of all evil..." -- I Timothy 6:10, KJV
// oops. double post
- Don't lie.
- Don't cheat.
- Don't steal.
- Don't kill.
- Don't commit adultery.
- Don't covet what your neighbor has, especially his wife.
- Honor your father and mother.
- Remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy.
- Don’t use your Higher Power's name in vain, or anyone else's.
- Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
"For the love of money is the root of all evil..." -- I Timothy 6:10, KJV
The Fed doesn't own any gold. If they went "poof" all those who currently own it will still own it. (US government gold is technically owned by the Treasury though the Fed stores some of it for them).
A list of some of the biggest gold holders:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve
In general terms:
Just noticed thread is from back in March so perhaps those who posted in it earlier aren't reading this anymore.World gold holdings (2008) (Source: World Gold Council)[22]
Holding
Percentage
Jewelry
52%
Central banks
18%
Investment (bars, coins)
16%
Industrial
12%
Unaccounted
2%
Last edited by Zippyjuan; 08-25-2012 at 05:58 PM.
The leprechauns duhh.
That is not funny Leprechauns are scary , never trust a cobbler that carries one shoe around ...
Most of the gold has been rehypothecated over and over again since nobody ever in a million years considered that the gold would be called for again. So there is a bigger set of questions here. Excellent dialogue, op. The more relevant questions regarding why it is now that the establishment would like to consider discussion on the gold standard will hopefully become a little more transparent to folks.
Say you have so and so amount of ounces of gold and that you have used that gold as collateral to float a loan or issue of bonds or whatever and that it worked. OK? And then you get to thinking...well...hm... nobody is ever going to call for all of this gold so lets use this same gold to support or float a different loan or different issue of bonds. Well...when this proves to be successful you keep doing it over and over.
So now you have a huge list of leins against the same gold. That's the hidden truth. It could be said that there are certain players who did this...for specific reasons...and did it to particular people.
This is as well a problem when placed into dialogue with the AE model but perhaps best avoided on a platform like this where many defend the illusion as opposed to the reality like over in the pocket knife thread.
Last edited by Natural Citizen; 08-26-2012 at 06:33 PM.
YES. FINALLY someone understands.
The biggest players have leased out gold with such assanine levels of leverage that the POG/POS is a complete joke. When (not if) the house of leasing cards folds up - paper debt holdings will see most of their valuations evaporate and the real value of PM's will come to light.
PM manipulation is largely done though central bank leasing programs.
"Like an army falling, one by one by one" - Linkin Park
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