Growing up in the 80s we accepted as natural that the U.S. dollar was the world’s currency. I didn’t really know why, like everything else it seemed that the world wanted to adopt Western ways and that part of being a superpower was to have the best money (along with the best military, not coincidentally). We never were taught any association between gold and money. Gold was something to wear around your finger, your neck, or have between your teeth. The U.S. dollar, cash, moola, dough, that was something everyone obviously desired as intrinsically value. And the ultimate crime caper was to open up those mythic vaults in the back of the bank where everyone’s money was stored, right?
Well, most of us have now learned there is no cash in the bank. There are digits on spreadsheets that are created as credit with very minimal reserves required by the Fed as part of the fiat empire scheme of the great western powers of the U.S., England, Germany, Japan, etc. But mostly it’s the U.S. dollar, which I believe is around 50-75% of all currency in world circulation.
The U.S. has rigged the system whereby we pay for our imports with an ever increasing supply of dollars and the Japanese, Saudis, Koreans and everyone else accepts them with a chagrined face. Our debts roll up but we just keep "printing" (more like typing) more dollars and the national debt crosses $20 trillion dollars. Will this debt ever by repaid? Hell no, it is a ponzi scheme of fantastic proportions, and the Japanese, British and now even the Chinese also have their own play money dynamics. But still the dollar is the strongest (purportedly) of all the phoney baloney fiat money systems we parade around the globe.
But how did things used to be? Used to be that gold was money and the paper money was only a receipt for gold. They were IOUs for gold that could be exchanged among businessmen and entrepreneurs so as gold did not have to travel around precariously. Yet this system started to work too well (as nearly all systems do) and pretty soon there were so many paper notes made by bankers which far outstripped the actual amount of gold in the bank. For the average citizen, trade was done in silver, and the original U.S. money was silver notes, not federal reserve notes.
The gold standard became so manipulated and contrived over the years that soon it was admitted that countries only had a fraction of the gold purported in their currency. Once that iteration of the system failed it was just the U.S. that had to hold a fraction gold to back the U.S. dollar and all other world currencies were pegged to it. That system failed in 1971 and now there is no gold backing anything. Yet, now that gold is legal to own again (it was illegal to own between approximately 1935-1975) the price of gold has shot up from $35/ounce to $1235/ounce. Why? Because gold is money.
So, as all things do, we have come full circle. The great debacle of 2008 exposed that the world monetary system is just a shell game orchestrated by Wall St. in coordination with the privately owned Federal Reserve banks and backed by the U.S. President and Congress. That left most of us, who were still naïve at that time, stunned and looking for the next frontier in money. One nascent version is cryptocurrency, which holds a lot of interest among millennials and the poor and disenfranchised nations of the world. The other is a reappreciation of gold and silver as money.
As we now skate to the edge of another global financial collapse Generation Xers are confronted again with financial existential questions. What is money, who controls it, by what means, and what is my role in that system? History is unveiled once more before our eyes as we confront the harsh reality of our fiat brainwashing and the plentiful bromides we heard about the almighty dollar. We’ve literally been sold a “bill” of goods, a system that sequestered the truths about equality and liberty, and buried them under a plethora of oligarchs, insider deals, and the corrupt entitlement of military backed financialization. As we look to the future, we need a new arbiter to honestly equilibrate the realms of society, finance, health, environment, and the world order in an equitable manner. This will be freedom. There are many paths, and one way up the mountain will surely be gold.
Peace in America @ClumsySilverDad (brought to you by engrave.website blogging on the STEEM blockchain).