Friday
See the link below for the article. This may appear to be slightly irrelevant at the moment, because no one would use gold or silver for purchases when they can still use their government paper money for transactions. However, it does join the movement laying a foundation for when the monetary metals do return.
Monetary Metals in the U.S. is leading the way in actually causing gold and silver circulate again.
Saturday
Want to understand the blood, sweat and tears of a real entrepreneur? Check out the following article from Keith Weiner, C.E.O. of Monetary Metals. It was published at Keith Weiner Economics
The life of an entrepreneur is not what most people would call “normal”. I don’t refer to the guy who buys a fast-food franchise. Nor to the gal who builds a chain of hair salons. Nor to the folks who have law or accounting firms. These are all entrepreneurship. I don’t know a lot about how these businesses work, but I do know one thing. They should reach cash-flow positive very quickly, and if not, then something is wrong. And most of them reach their capacity fairly quickly too. They do not have the open-ended upside of a global corporation. Nor the ever-looming possibility of utter failure.
I refer to the entrepreneur who starts something Big (something like 3D voice or a gold monetary system). And the challenge is that Big things necessarily have to get… well… big. They don’t work at the scale of one person in a home office, or a few people in a storefront. They require inputs of lots of capital, talented specialists who are willing to buy-in to the mission before it’s realized, and early customers willing to take a chance on not just an unknown company, but an unproven concept.
This kind of entrepreneur is only certain of chronic uncertainty, he must be comfortable with chronic discomfort. He rides a roller coaster that soars to manic, euphoric highs one day, and crushing, despairing lows the next. He usually doesn’t know where his next problem will come flying out of, who his next customer will be, who will want to come work for his company, or where he will find his next round of funding.
Lots of things could come out of Left Field to derail your vision: a manager could go bad, a key employee could quit, a vendor could decide it doesn’t want your business any more, a regulator could decide the public would be safer if he distracted you for a few months and bled you of a hundred thousand dollars. Did I mention there was always uncertainty?
In the early days, in this kind of entrepreneurial venture, the whole world agrees on one thing. You’re wrong. Your whole concept does not make sense. Actually, two things. You are not just wrong but a damnfool. You better be OK with that, because you are going to have to work very hard. Not just hard, tirelessly, relentlessly, doggedly to prove yourself right. You, a damnfool working on an idea that the whole world agrees does not make sense.
Read it all HERE
Thursday
This company has brought gold back into circulation. Those looking for governments to re-introduce the gold standard (i.e., circulating gold) need to understand that the process will be a bottom-up affair, not a top-down one. Governments will never voluntarily give away the power and control attendant to printed currencies.
Monetary Metals – A Yield on Gold, Paid in Gold®
Sunday
Early this month, Congressman Alex Mooney of West Virginia introduced the Gold Standard Restoration Act (H.R. 9157). If enacted into law, it would require public disclosure of the federal government’s gold holdings and eventually define the dollar as a weight of gold.
For the moment, the bill’s chances of passage are as nil as nil gets. Sound money, whether it’s gold or silver or paper that is “backed” by one or both metals, may not acquire a sizable constituency again until a monetary disaster demands it. That’s a sad commentary on the general state of economic knowledge. In the meantime, we can at least hope that Mr. Mooney’s bill may stimulate a long overdue discussion.
America is a nation whose very independence was first jeopardized by unbacked paper money only to be purchased later by precious metal. That’s a story often left out of history classes but I summarized it in The Times That Tried Men’s Economic Souls. After the runaway inflation of continental dollars, I explained,
A currency reform in 1780 asked everyone to turn in the old money for a new one at the ratio of 20 to 1. Congress offered to redeem the paper in gold in 1786, but this didn’t wash with a citizenry already burned by paper promises. The new currency plummeted in value until Congress was forced to get honest. By 1781 it abandoned its legal-tender laws and started paying for supplies in whatever gold and silver it could muster from the states or convince a friend (like France) to lend it. Not by coincidence, supplies and morale improved, which helped to bring the war to a successful end just two years later.
The enemy observed the last days of the continental hyperinflation with delight, expecting that it was a harbinger of inevitable British victory. Historian Barbara A. Mitchell writes,
As the government printed more money, Continental currency continued to hyperinflate. The council in Philadelphia began publishing the month-to-month rates of currency to specie, which weary consumers then multiplied by three. When the currency finally collapsed in May 1781, its ratio to specie was officially 175 to 1, or 525 to 1 by public reckoning. A spirited procession was staged in Philadelphia to mark its collapse, with people marching with dollars in their hats as paper plumes. An unhappy dog trotted alongside, tarred and pasted with the worthless paper.
America’s war with its mother country commenced in 1775 but as late as 1780, it wasn’t going well for the rebels. General George Washington’s troops had lost more battles than they won. While Congress paid in depreciating paper, supplies and suppliers ran for the hills. Washington’s troops hadn’t been paid in months. With families at home that depended upon them, it was not at all clear that those troops would stick around. Rumors swirled that the Army might melt away in a desperate act of mass desertion. Mitchell reveals,
As he planned for the Yorktown campaign, Washington was desperate for hard currency to pay his troops. He wrote to Robert Morris [the famous patriot and financier of the Revolution]: “I must entreat you, if possible, to procure one month’s pay in specie for the detachment under my command. Part of the troops have not been paid anything for a long time past and have upon several occasions shown marks of great discontent,” an understated reference to the mutinies by some Continental troops and the general unrest among many.
Then the unexpected occurred and dramatically changed the course of the war. Two hundred and forty-one years ago this week, sound money helped save the day during the critical Battle of Yorktown.
A French naval fleet under the command of Admiral de Grasse was well aware of the dire financial straits of Washington’s army. De Grasse stopped in Havana, Cuba in mid-August, expecting to secure gold and silver (mostly from mines in Mexico) he planned to deliver to the Americans, only to discover that the specie hadn’t yet arrived. So, he solicited private contributions from the residents of Havana, who came through with an amazing half million pesos in silver and a smaller measure of gold—enough to pay Washington’s men and keep the Continental Army intact.
De Grasse knew that the clock was ticking, that Washington would soon move on Yorktown and that London would send a fleet to relieve British troops holed up in the city. To the enormous satisfaction of Washington and his men, de Grasse arrived in time. The troops were paid in sound money. The three-week siege of Yorktown ended on October 17 when British General Cornwallis, unable to escape by sea because of the French fleet, surrendered. The war that so few once thought could ever end in American victory, was effectively over.
I cannot recall any moment in history when either an army or a cause were mortally endangered by sound money and were saved at the last minute by depreciated, fiat-paper money. Yorktown was a victory every lover of liberty and sound money should celebrate, now and forever.
Whatever consideration Rep. Mooney’s Gold Standard Restoration Act gets, it should be informed at least in part by the role sound money played in America’s remarkable history. It starts at Yorktown.
From Gold Seek HERE
Sunday
This particular format for a return to honest money is not ideal, but the fact that gold is again being brought out of the closet is a good thing. Kudos to Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV).
A US$130trillion plus debt and a wobbly bond market could have something to do with it.
Read the article HERE