.
my mother was alive, although a mere tot, when the last american double eagle was minted. just shy of a full ounce of gold, it was a thing of beauty:
and it was worth twenty american dollars--i.e., this damn thing was spending money.
of course, if you didn't wanna walk around with a bunch o' huge, clunky gold coins in your pockets, you could, like most people, use the infinitely-more convenient greenback instead
secure in the knowledge that, anytime you wanted, you could freely switch between the two. because, as it had been since its inception, every american paper dollar in circulation--as it said right there on its face--was fully redeemable in an immutably-fixed amount of gold.
by the time my mother was eating solid food, that was no longer true--americans had by then been forced by their government to surrender their gold, given $20 and change for each ounce they possessed, and then left to watch in helpless dismay as that same government then hiked the exchange rate to $35 an ounce, thus (a) granting itself the ability to print tons of new dollars, which had the effect of (b) instantly diminishing its own citizens' wealth by almost half.
nice, huh? all done in the name of patriotism, of course--and thus, dollar inflation was born.
we kept it in check for awhile, but only because our international trading partners weren't as easily cowed as our citizens--having gold-backed currencies themselves, they demanded the same from us. and thus, gold remained internationally redeemable at $35 per ounce for almost 40 more years.
what changed? simple: the french, shrewdly realizing by the late 60's that we were running huge trade deficits and couldn't possibly be paying for the vietnam debacle without printing far more dollars than could be redeemed at a mere $35/oz, started demanding gold instead of greenbacks in settlement of trade. this drain on fort knox went on until 1971, when nixon finally said "fuck it" and closed the gold window.
and thus, freed from the shackles of the gold standard, america fired up the printing presses and never looked back.
* * * * *
silver? now, silver was different--a relatively cheap, unappreciated metal, silver remained the american coin of the realm well into my childhood. quarters, dimes, half-dollars--they were all 90% silver until 1965.
until, that is, the money-sucking military-industrial complex swung into full gear, and that quickly changed. i still remember how they sold our money's sudden new debasement to the american people:
see? we were "saving" silver with these new coins. they even had a cute name--they were called "sandwich" coins, for the fact that, instead of the solid silver of the originals, they consisted of a thick copper core, with a thin coating of cheap nickel on each side (i.e., not a speck of silver to be found).
i remember when they came into circulation, all the kids at school couldn't wait to trade their stodgy old silver coins for the neat new sandwich versions because they were so shiny and cool. but we were just dumb kids--what did we know?
in retrospect, it's the reaction of the adults of america to the new coins that's so goddam disheartening. most of 'em were old enough to remember when their gold had been taken away a mere 30 years before, but even with that memory fresh in their minds, they let their silver be stolen with nary a whimper.
* * * * *
today?
it would take seventy-one $20 bills to buy that same ounce of gold a single twenty woulda bought you in 1933.
the silver ratio's not as extreme--you can still pick up a pre-1965 silver quarter for only twenty-two of today's copper/nickel quarters--a bargain, you ask me.
why did i write this post? because i'm tired of being called glenn beck, and because i'm tired of hearing all this bullshit from the government and the economists and the pseudo-intelligentsia about how gold and silver are barbarous relics which have no place in today's "modern" monetary system.
but mainly, because i'm tired of americans looking at "inflation" as just a commonplace occurrence, like the weather or something. because it's not--it's a systematic, carefully calculated theft of your wealth.
and you know what? regardless of how much these assholes try to convince you otherwise, they still ARE money--in fact, the only money that matters.
a fact that's gonna become only more apparent in the coming months--trust me.
