Gold the Supernova Metal
Commodities / Gold & Silver Nov 11, 2008 - 05:22 AMBy: Submission
Edward Wray writes: It might be refreshing for a moment to back away from all the Sturm und Drang of the Dirtbag economics chaos and return to a simpler time when Andy might have said to Opie, "Do you see that! That's a silver coin boy, and ifin you save enough of these in your piggy bank, you might just get out of Mayberry and become a famous movie director. Really Pa?"
So, if we suspend disbelief for a bit, and accept the radical proposition that "Money is something of value which can be used as a medium of exchange", then it stands to reason that we need to determine how best to go about establishing what substances or items might best serve our needs for exchanging value.
In many different societies throughout the history of planet Earth, all kinds of things have been designated as "Coin of the Realm." On the island of Yap stone disks with a hole in the middle, called Rai and several other names, according to size and other parameters such as appearance, age and history, were used as money; A bit cumbersome, but still in use to this day for some transactions.
Shells and beads (wampum), precious and semi-precious stones, cows, humans, birds and almost anything you can think of have been used for money. Most notably though, Gold and Silver have been used, along with copper, bronze and iron tokens.
How does all this relate to our current circumstances? Well, we are presently learning the difference between tangible assets like gold, land, food, housing and transportation, and the sleazy application of double-speak documentations which are attached like leeches to our chattels which corrupt their uses and damage the concept of ownership (as if property tax were not enough).
The appearance, scarcity, malleability and usefulness of gold and silver made them valuable in the minds of humans. To this day we have witness to that from those who should know, such as "Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan [who] once argued, before the advent of monetarism, [otherwise known as "Voodoo Economics" which he helped to create] that:" – [Wiki]
"under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy's stability and balanced growth-- The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit... In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation."[
As we all know, A.G. was made an offer he couldn't refuse, and went along to get along when the progenitors of fiscal chaos began to accelerate their plan of debt fabrication and currency esoterics by getting their greedy hooks into unsuspecting citizen's lives. Unrepentant freebooters and privateers began to run amok behind the walls of financial institutions nesting in huge piles of crisp new ferns and breeding like flies. They concocted every conceivable ruse and sham to build a vast web of interlocking, highly cosmetic instruments with which to surgically remove any hope of sanity in the world of finance and equity.
Today's upheavals are nothing new when it comes to the deadly combination of greed, good and bad intentions and unintended consequences. The race is neck-and-neck to see who can do the most damage to the security and freedom of all Humanity.
This passage, attributed to Lord Alexander Tyler, pretty much explains how we got to where we are today:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
- Lord Alexander Tyler on the fall of the Athenian republic
Do-gooder socialists and so-called humanitarians throw money, food, housing and whatever else they can find (or extract from taxpayers at the point of a gun) to assist the "less fortunate" [lazy]. From what was supposed to be temporary assistance, huge entitlement programs arose like poisonous mushrooms overnight, robbing people of their self-sufficiency and making single parent homes a profit center.
By the way, what is your definition of royalty? My definition of royalty is any person or family who are by reason of birth, or bestowed title, given a complete, and sometimes luxurious livelihood from the kingdom of their nativity without having to work for said gratuities. Excuse the h**l out of me, but doesn't it say in Article One, Section Ten of the U.S. Constitution that:
No State shall - grant any Title of Nobility.
What's the difference? Doesn't entitlement mean to "bestow a title?" They are, after all, sometimes referred to as "Welfare Queens." So millions of Americans have been declared to be titled and are supported in the manner to which their royal station in life befits. Truly, even municipalities such as San Francisco bestow a monthly stipend ($410) on those who claim to be homeless. Now anyone with a speck of compassion would like to help others in need and there is an associated social work component, but that does not necessarily justify the means.
Private charities used to deal with this problem almost exclusively and taxpayers were not fleeced by government brigands to involuntarily participate. The most eloquent refutation of these activities comes from the life of Colonel David Crockett the famed explorer and member of Congress; to wit:
One day in the House of Representatives, a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:
"Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him.
Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."
He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost. (Compiled by Edward S. Ellis)
Colonel Crockett's explanation to a friend as to why he rejected the bill:
http://www.fee.org/library/books/notyours.asp
Is one of the most beautiful stories of how a man comes to understanding through the offices of civil discourse with one of his constituents. Please read this dialogue between Crockett and a farmer named Horatio Bunce. No other conversation, from the Federalist Papers to our Constitutional Convention, is a better example of the purity of thought and ethical courage.
If I could speak with Colonel Crockett, I would repeat what I said here as a closing statement last time we met on Rense.com. I bade you all farewell with these words:
"I am honored that you would take the time to share your insights. For me, the greatest freedoms are to think (imagine) and share. In all the galaxies of time and space, the comfort of friendly discourse is the Golden Rule of existence. The most valuable works of man are not the material wonders he hath wrought; more admirable still is the gift of mutual understanding."
When a star explodes in a supernova at the end of its thermonuclear life, it blasts forth into the universe all manner of elements which eventually coalesce into new stars and planets. A current model of the universe states that heavier elements are formed in the cores of stars in a succession of supernovae. Starting with stars which are almost exclusively helium and hydrogen, a progression of explosions and reformation, of a certain number, eventually produce the range of elements we find listed on the periodic chart of basic elements.
Human bodies are made of star stuff. Gold and Silver are cosmic gifts to us from the hundred million degree crucibles in the dark matter void. Whether the universe is an electric hologram or the more mundane milieu they are researching at CERN, we have Gold and Silver as two of the things we currently value on Planet Earth.
Economists have argued back-and-forth about the advisability of attempting to use gold and silver directly or as backing for a nation's certificated commerce. There are two banking systems being formed at this time which are attempting to answer the need for global financial stability. One of the banks will be 100% on the gold standard. The other "bank" will operate on stored value (debit card) using a hack proof, heavily encrypted RFID core. Hopefully this bank will implement arbitrage of any deposits depending, of course, on whether there are different sovereign currencies in the foreseeable future.
This author believes that a possibility exists wherein the right people, who are responsible and honest, can manage a global, gold and silver based system of value exchanges. It may seem kinda simplistic, but it sounds better than the current situation. It all has much to do with communication and instant completion of equity transfers.
As the fiber optic grid supplants the internet and yet another explosion of changes accelerates historical velocity, humans will be tasked to find a way to buy and sell without the necessity for slight-of-hand, usury or hidden agendas. Don't hold your breath. There are some really sick puppies loose on the globe and they are dangerous beyond belief.
The main problem is the pliability of human consciousness. Whether informed or not concerning basic ethics, or history not best repeated, humans can be corrupted with disturbing ease. From birth to death we are all susceptible to psychological mutation given the right circumstances.
Young children are pliable, impressionable and susceptible to the most egregious cabalistic inculcations. Every human is a potential Manchurian Candidate who might think nothing of fantastic cruelty and destruction under the "right" circumstances. Psychological studies have shown that even in role play scenarios college students will become subservient "prisoners" who are horribly "abused" by the "guards" in settings where situational ethics are allowed to flow freely.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a prime example of isolation ethics, where under the right conditions, the subjects will kill to satisfy the proctor in order to get a good grade.
From the eightieth floor of an office building in Manhattan, a group of corporate executives sitting around an oak table occasionally glance out the window at the "ants" passing below and think, "It's good to be the account manager" or "I love my golden parachute" or "I'm coming for you suckers."
It would appear that we are living in a time where the ultimate global greedsters may play out their sick, monopolistic fantasies as they blindly stumble through the dark, labyrinthine underworld their fathers and brothers led them to believe was good. Against these carnivorous beasts, who are the true vampires so well parodied in 1930s movies, normal, hard working humans have little defense. Look into their eyes as they rail against honesty, charity, compassion, ethics and filial love. Perhaps this caution may cause in them the slightest hesitation allowing us to just barely escape their clutches:
"Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." - Thomas Jefferson
EPILOGUE:
"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime."
- Frederic Bastiat, The Law
By Edward Wray Morehouse
wrayedwards@gmail.com
© 2008 Copyright Edward Wray Morehouse- All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.
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