The date of issue of the last ‘The Gold Standard’, was the 40th anniversary of the extraordinary day that the US defaulted. President Nixon – Tricky Dick – lived up to his nickname and, with a stroke of his pen and a flourish of his forked tongue, severed the US$ from gold.
This is well known to supporters of The Gold Standard Institute; it was not however well known to the general public… until the 15th of last month that is. From the Wall Street Journal and the Australian Financial Review to the China Business News, articles on the default were everywhere. The vast majority that I read were supportive of a return to some form of a gold standard.
The process of rising awareness by the mainstream media of the Gold Standard has been in progress for many months; the 40th anniversary of the most infamous day in US history has raised it to levels unprecedented in modern times. Finally the Gold Standard genie is out of the mainstream media bottle.
Make no mistake, it will not be put back in again. The few articles against the Gold Standard were lame and half-hearted. They read as though a reluctant hack was under instructions from an unreconstructed Nixonite editor to write an anti-gold article. The facts were either non-facts or distorted facts, and the logic was as distant from compelling as Brigitte Bardot is from munching on a Big Mac.
With the Gold Standard as a valid ‘item’ for the mainstream media it is time for all our readers, from the four corners of the world, and there are now enough of you to matter, to begin a ‘letters to the editor’ campaign. Write into your local and national papers and voice support for the Gold Standard. Respond to the diehard paper-bugs who will now work themselves into a literary froth in their efforts to continue the denigration of gold. All of them lack knowledge (or honesty), but none of them lack conviction or passion. We speak from not only the logical, historical and monetary, but from the moral high ground.
Lies can only flourish in an atmosphere depleted of truth… be the active voice for truth in your area. The central fact to point home in your letters is that it is NOT the price of gold that is rising, but the value of paper money that is falling… the graphs are upside down and back-to-front. The value of the paper monies of the world has been degraded to the point where it is becoming more and more obvious that they are literally heading to non-existence. This is the reality to push.
It is the prodding of the hip-pocket nerve that will win the day, all the rest is irrelevant hot air as far as the general public is concerned. They need to be brought to the understanding that their wages and pensions are being paid in a paper money that has an ever diminishing value that will eventually go to zero. It is this one fact that will cause them to finally understand that today’s monetary problems very much concern them. Only then will they enter the debate in sufficient numbers to make the difference.
It is not the economic academics, either of the Keynesian or Austrian mold, who will energise this debate; it is the ordinary men and women who at this point are still entirely unconcerned with the Gold Standard and blissfully ignorant about its benefits. Letters to the editor and talk-back radio are the conduits into this most influential and important segment of society.
And what is the ideal? It is a Gold Coin Standard with both gold and silver coin circulating and with control of the money supply out of the hands of governments. Enough of the experiments in paper money. Enough of the central bankers and politicians who have pontificated and plundered for far too long. They have polluted the life blood of commerce and brought the whole world to its knees in the process.
The treason of Tricky Dick was one of the low points of the 20th century which, in the scale of its death through wars and starvation, was itself one of the low points of civilised history. It is an odd claim to most that such immorality can mostly be brought to an end by the reintroduction of honest money, but it is so. Only gold maintains a stable value over time and the restoration of this one virtue is all that is needed to retrieve a natural order and decency out of the existing paper money chaos. Indeed, circulating gold and silver is the only thing that can do so.
Philip Barton
26th August 2011