Unity Through Currency

May peace be with you,
Joshua

I also agree on your point about “PGS”. The world has NEVER been paradise (post Garden of Eden) and we’re left to deal with it in the best way possible under the circumstances before us. In a way, this isn’t a macro problem as much as a micro one. It’s what we do in reaction to what’s happening that’s critical. In the meantime, the world will do what the world will do.

There is plenty of gold available to support the global economy at the right price. The market determines the appropriate price level. Short term trends, deceit, manipulations, and events certainly create distortions in perceptions of appropriate pricing, but long term trends are not impacted to any significant degree.

If the price of gold went from the current level of $1100 to $4000-5000, there would be more and more exploration and mine development and an increase in supply. With the higher prices, demand may be reduced somewhat or those buying gold may shift their sights to “poor man’s gold” which is silver.

We saw this phenomenon play out in oil recently. It hit a high of $147 or so a barrel and the high prices at the pump reduced consumption. The point we are trying to make is there is nothing on God’s green earth that is scarce that isn’t easily remedied by the market pricing mechanism. The more government intervention we have in the pricing mechanism, the more distortions (volitility) we have in supply and demand. Scarcity is simply a lagging indicator of a future market adjustment that will bring abundance (supply) back in alignment with demand at some price point.

We are somewhat skeptical of any type of gold standard which is managed or controlled by governments because of their notoriety for perverting the standard at some point and decieving those who are counting on (placing faith in) governments to provide for “just weights and measures.” Historically, governments haven’t earned such trust.

Our preference is for what we refer to as a Personal Gold Standard (PGS) where we allocate a percentage of our portfolio to precious metals (just weights and measures) to off-set our holdings of dollars representing unjust weights and measures. We look at precious metals (just weights and measures) as being God’s money and fiat money (unjust weights and measures) as being man’s money. Where do you want to place your faith?

A PGS isn’t contingent upon trusting governments and is in alignment with your view of being fiscally responsible, even if more so on a personal level. And, does it really make any difference if our neighbor or the nation is fiscally responsible, or not, as long as we as individuals are? Additionally, we don’t feel any need whatsoever to fix a “system” that is inherently corrupt to its core, but rather choose to spend our energies in being the change we want to see in the rest of the world. Therefore, if there are any merits to a gold standard, having one for ourselves is the first step in achieving that goal without forcing our viewpoint on others. They, too, can choose where they want to place their faith.

GO USA!

Going back onto a gold standard would destroy our economy overnight. Specifically because you lose the ‘fractional reserve banking system’. You think we had a credit-crisis before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

My personal feelings is that money should be backed by _time_ only. It can’t be created faster than you want (inflation-hyperinflation) at the whim of governments, it’s not based on a metal with an unknown future growth (mining operations), nor ever destroyed. The money supply needs to increase at a slow and methodical rate to avoid bubbles, and recessions / depressions, yet at the same time allow for growth of the human population. The money supply needs to grow as the population grows — to have neither monetary deflation, nor inflation of prices. The money would retain it’s exact value / worth forever.

Think of ‘money’ to be defined as 1-hour of some type of work/labor. If I’m skilled, perhaps I get paid 5 ‘money-units’ per hour (equivalent to 5x the pay of unskilled labor) — but it is always ‘backed’ by labor/work performed. If it is only you and me in the economy, then we don’t need to grow the money supply — we just keep trading work back and forth.

The reason that the money supply must grow, though, is that if I later have a son who also is able to perform work-for-pay, then the money supply needs to grow by the exact amount of the work he performs — if the money-supply doesn’t grow, then the existing money-supply must _deflate_ (or increase) in value. More work is being performed than there is currency to support it. Before you know it, the 1unit of currency is now worth 2 hours of unskilled labor — which is the monetary phenomenon that we want to avoid.

Our fiat-currency, if handled very carefully, would fit the bill. Unfortunately the tinkerers screw up and inflate the currency too far (too much money supply created too quickly for the amount of work being performed), which reduces the value of the money –> leading to bubbles, which will ‘correct’ itself and deflate the money supply through recessions/depressions (another monetary phenomena).

Sometimes you have dumb politicians who think they can just ‘print’ more money to fix the problem, which is the absolute wrong thing to do, and causes hyper-inflation and a public with (rightfully so) no trust in the government or the currency.

Worse, the notion that money supplies and public spending must always grow isn’t consistent with the finite amount of gold in the world.

There’s no substitute for fiscal responsibility. A paper/electronic money system should work just fine with fiscal responsibility. No system, not even a gold based one, will work without it. We have to fix that before any system will work.

Having a global currency is just like being california. Monetary policy is beyond their control. They cannot print money.They are now running massive deficits and have tons of debt. They are forced to deal with this.

Contrast this to good old USA federal government. We seem to print our way out of trouble and not tackle any of our fiscal issues. If we strip away sovereign powers to print money, this is the best thing that can happen.

As to one world currency/order…I think this is MUCH bigger than America vs. the world. We like to spin it this way because it plays well in patriotic circles. And no, I don’t think it’s part of some sort of mastermind conspiracy to rule the world.

Every government in the world is borrowing money to keep itself afloat. Too many expectations from too many people, too many promises to meet impossible needs, too much money chasing technology that’s become prohibitively expensive. We have serious problems with malinvestment and missallocation built on top of a weakening foundation of crumbling fortunes.

Governments are papering (literally) over all of this by borrowing and printing money in a desperate attempt to preserve the idea that all is well and we’re just in a cyclical downdraft that we need to spend our way out of.

Greece is probably the omen of things to come. Deep in debt, misrepresenting it’s national finances and sustaining a level of spending that isn’t justified by the size of it’s economy–how many other countries does that describe? ALL OF THEM!

My thinking is that we’ll get a new global currency in an act of desperation to clean all of this up. Most see this as a looming catastrophe, I think the catastrophe is already playing out and currency unification will be the latest band aid on the problem. I’m not as concerned about this as others because of my faith, but also because I doubt it’ll be permanent.

Let’em eat cake can only work for so long, no matter how it’s packaged. It’s only worked as long as it has because it fits neatly with human greed. Who wouldn’t want $1 in benefits for 70 cents in taxes? Most of the citizenry don’t want this fixed for precisely that reason! That’s the part of this unfolding drama we’re missing.

However I have to admit that I that I think a one world currency is a bad idea. Conspiracy theorists have been talking about the outcome of this for a long time and they may well be right…. Basically the same translation you took from the bible…. The conspiracists say that the one currency would be purposely collapsed so that the people in the towers could use the masses as slaves in some ways…. I am not sure it will be this dramatic but who knows.

I am a firm believer that currency needs to become less of our lives and we need to start adopting local trade systems…. Trading our services with neighbours with no monetary swapping (some systems like this involve points and you can earn and spend with anyone in the service….. all away from the tax system and the money system).

Just wanted to give you a heads up that the first video you embedded has been removed by the user so it will no longer play.

China and Japan just want to know they’ll be paid back. As it stands, no one really believes that the US will pay them back in today’s dollars. Hence the need for massive inflation (or, some future unimaginable massive increase in domestic taxes to pay for it.). Talk about a rock and a hard place. This will definitely have negative consequences, but the people with the power to act on it (Fed, Treasury, etc.) can’t say they didn’t see this coming.