[Written in 1966, 21 years before Greenspan introduced money printing to the Federal Reserve system. Greenspan served as Chairman of the Fed for nearly 21 years.] This article originally appeared in the newsletter The Objectivist and was reprinted in Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one
Our Founding Fathers knew of the evils paper money and warned against its issuance.
Over the past fifty years, if you lived in India, South Africa, China , or Turkey, there was not a single decade you lost money owing gold five decades in a row!
As silver continues to touch new lows, bearish reports abound. One called it the worst investment ever. Really? The reasons to buy silver lie neither in the metal itself nor its many industrial and medical applications. Silver should be bought because it — along with gold – has for millennia been proven to be safe
The history of paper money is that it is printed until it is worthless. The Zimbabwe dollar is the perfect example.
The dollar sank 11.7% over the last twelve months, and gold climbed 10%. The dollar is measured against a basket of non-redeemable paper currencies, the euro (57.6%), the yen (13.6%), pound sterling (11.9%), Canadian dollar (9.1%), Swedish krona (4.2%) and the Swiss franc (3.6%). Only a few decades ago currencies were measured against gold. For
One of the reasons that gold and silver are safe investments is that today central bank printing of paper money is widely accepted. Additionally, there are no limits on how much money central banks can create. The graph shows the balance sheets of the European Central Bank, the Fed and the Bank of Japan. Note
A little over a year ago, the IMF announced that the renminbi, China’s currency, would be added the IMF’s “basket of currencies” that makes up SDRs (Special Drawing Rights). A loud outcry ensued from many pro-gold analysts that the inclusion would mean the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and would result
The dollar is a favorite refuge for money seeking safety as the European banking crisis again dominates financial news. Consequently, 10-year US treasury bills are now yielding a record low of 1.39% as money pours into them. (As bond prices are bid higher, yields drop.)
In what is being reported as an effort to impede criminal activity and terrorism, the European Central Bank announced that it will discontinue issuing €500 notes around the end of 2018. However, the ECB was quick to affirm that the €500 notes already in circulation “will remain legal tender and . . . always retain