I'd like to share an exchange I've been having with Jim Willie (rumor anyway) who's been posting as Grumps Labastard of the FOFOA blog. Jim Willie does not seem to think that the store of value (SOV) and medium of exchange (MOE) functions of money can be separated. This will also shed some light on the confusion as to why banana republics have such high price inflation with menial actual printing.
His words
A common assumption I find in the gold community is that there is a
somewhat constant store of value that must be available. What this blog
has done for me is that the flaws in FreeGold have allowed me to see that
value cannot be trapped and isolated for a long period of time. The SoV
and MoE functions cannot be separate. The concepts delineated on this
blog are zero order, linear. I think the truth may lie in Fekete's
Theory of Interest. It's the tension between saver, investor, and
producer, the first and second order derivative relationships that make
it impossible for the SoV not to be intertwined with the MoE.
My answer
It is already happening all over the world, all the time. Do you think
millionaires and billionaires in banana republics store their purchasing
power in their local currency ? No they don't. That's why inflation
shows up so fast in these countries. Because the producers are not
saving their excess in local currency. They save elsewhere. Thus, the
local central bank has no purchasing power to steal via printing (savings are not denominated in the medium that the central bank has the ability to print). The
printing just floods the transactional side and you get instant
price inflation.
Why hasn't the US experienced banana republic style price inflation yet ? Simple. Too much savings to to draw from via printing to have enough effect on the transactional side. Too many fools are saving in the medium that the US central bank has the ability to print.
When the producers around the world start saving in a medium other then US dollars (gold maybe ?)
there will be a corresponding amount of price inflation in the US. So it goes back to the same thing. When the bond bubble bursts (savings exit the medium that the Fed can print) the US will join the banana republic club.
Wow! Thank you for this! Certainly a point of view I had never considered.
ReplyDeleteI've been doing this for a few years now, but had never really thought much about it. It just seemed like the sensable thing to do.
ReplyDeleteYet another example of describing the present (the US being a member of the Banana Republic Club) as the future: "the US will join the banana republic club".
ReplyDeleteThere is a fundamental flaw in the "Freegold theory" and it seems Jim Willie understands that. Banana republics show what happens when Freegold is being practised and indeed (a) valueless tokens are being used as exchange and (b) gold is the store of value: the medium of exchange collapses in hyperinflation. So Freegold leads to hyperinflation, that is: the fiatmoney-for-exchange they support inevitably leads to it. Some major fiatcurrencies nowadays are in for that. One could even say Freegold is a myth: it's fiatcurrency that reigns and gold is only up to the people to discover and use as a safe haven. There's no official role for gold there. The flaw of the Freegolders is that they nevertheless uphold the "not gold, but valueless money should be medium of exchange" theory. I don't think only "millionaires and billionaires" do collapse a currency, but everyone in the country does, not just the rich ones. The currency collapses even faster. So Freegold does not work. It leads to collapse. That's why TPTB hate gold and silver and manipulate it to hell with their "paper gold and silver" supply. Physical gold and silver as money only can cure this flaw and fraud.
ReplyDeleteThe millionaires (producers) still use the local transaction currency to make their surplus. They still do business there.
DeleteWhen I went on a holiday in Jamaica, I didn't check what the debt/GDP or CPI was before I withdrew some local cash to enjoy my holiday. I didn't give a damn because it doesn't matter. The local CB knows it cant print.
Banana republics are not in a state of perpetual hyperinflation like you seem to think the west will be in if everyone saved in gold.
The capitalist system (both the corporate and state) Rape and Pillage Mk II failed in Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria) and its virulence is no longer mistaken for vigour, and the fissures begin to show.
ReplyDeleteThe corporate capitalists have serious internal splits which I will not detail, but the fatal split is between corporate and state, with both transmuting into new forms: the US controlling the Pacific Rim and loosely controlling Western Europe through the Third Reich (it was never dissolved) on behalf of the bankers (i.e. assorted Zionists), and the BRICS rebelling and building another financial system.
So the US system can still do currency swaps with S.E. Asia and Japan and maybe Western Europe and prevent all out inflation at the US centre of the funny money scam, but the rebellion is so widespread that it is impossible to stop by the usual method namely intimidation and, if that fails, assassination.
As the system fails fools grasp at straws (more fiat "solutions") while others begin to trade in "gold" (by which is meant: gold, platinum, palladium, other metals, wheat, barley, rice ... i.e. anything real and with a reasonable shelf life)
Jalaluddin
Gold is a SoV. SoV and MoE can not be separated. Close loop systems in place, though time delays and manipulations can skew the relationship at various points in time. Gold (SoV) is rising respecting the $ (MoE), that is, they can not be separated, indefinitely.
ReplyDeleteDerrick Michael Reid
http://totalcontrol.blogtownhall.com/
It is already separated in a lot of countries. You are living in the bubble.
DeleteThere hasn't been a bear market in gold priced in Indian Rupees for 50 years. The 80's ? Nope. Look at a chart.
petrodollar, is the more likely reason. That is what Iran, Syria and Iraq were trying to get out of & that is why Merica wants to war with them. If countries tear up the treaty and use another currency, then the games over for Merica.
ReplyDeleteCountries have torn up the "treaty" (diktat actually) and it is "game over" for the great satan.
ReplyDeleteJalaluddin
The petrodollar is part of the reason why so much savings is denominated in dollars. Which is why the US can print so much without causing serious prince inflation. (yet)
ReplyDeleteBut its the forced savings through Bretton Woods 2 that gives the petrodollar this printing ability. Just the use of it as a medium of exchange and reference point does not give it the printing ability.
I'll change one of these days..There has been a few complaints.
ReplyDeleteYou've got to be kidding me. White on black is the easiest on the eyes. With a white background, you're essentially firing a huge floodlight into your eyes with some blacked out areas. With a black background, only the relevant text is highlighted. Maybe changing the contrast settings would help Anonymous above?
ReplyDeleteIt not that gold is a bubble - it's that fiat is a lead balloon.
ReplyDeleteThis explains why "There hasn't been a bear market in gold priced in Indian Rupees for 50 years."
Jalaluddin
Yeah I agree with you. For some reason though, people have issues with the black on white. I don't get it....
ReplyDeleteWhat is important about the black and white issue is that it is peripheral. What is not peripheral is that fiat is illegal under both British and US law in the sense that the considerations in a contract must have specie, while fiat lacks specie
ReplyDelete.
For example the Governor of the Bank of England promises to pay the bearer one Pound - so the teller takes the customer's Pound note, moves it down and out of sight, turns it around, and gives it back to the customer.