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A few thoughts on Gold, currency and “risk free savings” in the wake of Brexit
Today is one of those days that I almost wish I had taken the blue pill.
As the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of the world’s only gold-backed financial service institution, I’ve received a lot of questions and comments today about the violent movements in gold and currency markets. The starting assumption is that I must somehow be happy for this, and to be celebrating that “we were right”. This assumption could not be further from the truth.
Gold did not make anyone rich today, the currencies built on debt and false promises, unproven and illogical economic theories, THIS money absolutely made people poorer today.
Today the gold savings accounts of our clients were spared over 9 figures in collective devaluation (no, gold is not rising, currency is failing par excellence). I’m not celebrating because this debasement of global currencies hurts the poor and vulnerable most, it is the core of their savings, it measures their contractual wage, and it’s their costs of food, energy, medicine, housing, and education that moved a little farther out of reach today.
This talk of “no inflation risks”, and “post scarcity economics” of robots and “free living wages” is peak hubris from the elites, an insult to the majority of the world’s aspiring middle class that works for their prosperity, and have been realizing at least 5% compounding inflation in EVERYTHING it means to be middle class (except their wage of course). Frankly it makes me disgusted. And today the failed promises of central planners is being manifested across the UK and Europe, as it has been the past few years for most of the worlds emerging market currencies (Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Nigeria, they are becoming too many and too frequent to name).
The Elites that caused this mess in the first place will be bailed out with “emergency liquidity measures” — ie printing money and devaluing the cash of many, the poor, to float asset prices of the few. This is how it has always worked, when money is unbacked “fiat” and only valued by decree (is it backed? no. Is it scarce because savers receive an interest rate? no. Do banks have to work for this interest-free savings? no.). Emergency liquidity is not magic, it does not come from magic people, its snake oil and always ends the same way.
Do you hear this version of the story anywhere in mainstream “news”? FT, where are you at? WSJ, where are you at? Economist, where you at? The view I present today is backed up in math, history, logic, physics, and philosophy. No, what you hear is that ignorant voters caused this (first they rig markets and tell you free markets and capitalism is failing, now they have a problem with democracy too?). You hear that gold, a stable money by the decree of natural law and physics, is rising irrationally out of fear. They call it a speculative commodity, with no value except that its shiny and liked by the uneducated. Oh really? So when I measure everything that is bound by the scarcity of time, toil and energy (food, energy, housing, education, health care), why is gold perfectly correlated with these things? When I price these things 30 years ago in gold, measured in gold, they are the same price today. Gold does not make people rich, debt makes them poor.
So no, our clients are not richer today because a speculative asset is in a 10,000 year bubble and went up; those that only put faith in unbacked currencies are just poorer. We built this businesses because we believed we were right about the logical end points, the case study that is EVERY instance in history, but no, it doesn’t make us happy. There is too much good happening in the world, our currencies are more volatile than the amazing economy they were designed to serve. Free markets and democracy and the invisible hand is the reason for our prosperity and social progress, not the cause of today’s panic.
Gold ascended as natural money due to the binding laws of nature: scarcity, randomness, decay, entropy. These laws make it work as money even if forgotten or obfuscated by the elites. In other words, there was no decree that made gold money, and no decree that stopped gold from being money. Our elites are so lost (or obfuscating), that they actually believe that the value of money is subjective, or valuable only because of their ivory tower decrees. They increasingly believe the wisdom of crowds is just ignorance and a random walk of bias and immorality. Don’t listen to their words, look at their actions, they don’t want free markets, they don’t want democracy. They want control. But their control is not aligned with laws of nature. Uncertainty rules, entropy rules, and this must be embraced or any unnatural system will fail.
The invisible hand has always been energy. Money is energy, everything is energy. Gold is simply its physical equivalence, the only immortal index of time, energy, labour and information you can hold. Measure your wage, measure your value, store your value appropriately. Today its easier than ever with technology.
If the past 8 hours aren’t a reminder, look to the past 8 years. If the past 8 years not a reminder, look at the past 8 decades…centuries…millennia.
If you agree, support our mission. It’s not always fun, but it’s time to take the red pill, too much good happening, to much value to be destroyed by this prevailing financial hubris and ignorance. Today proves that ignorance is not bliss.
Sincerely,
Josh & Roy
Contrafactual 