Gold: The "New" Money

Gold: The "New" Money
by Paul Nathan

Ben Bernanke said in testimony in front of congress that he did not understand what was causing the gold price to go up. In fact he said he didn't understand gold. Larry Kudlow has been asking everyone on his program "what is causing the price of gold to move up?" The use of the term "gold standard" and "new reserve currency" has been used more in the last few months than in the last few decades. Perhaps that is the tip off...

My suggestion to Ron Paul and all those wanting to return to gold, is the best way to accomplish this is not by proclaiming your determination to replace the Federal Reserve Board with the gold standard, but to attack the legal tender laws of this country. I was one of the few back in the early 70's along with Ron Paul that fought for the legalization of gold to be allowed back into the American system. That was the first step in returning to the gold standard. Today is very much the same. The next step is to institutionalize competing monies.

The key is to go after the governments monopoly on money. If broken, gold will find it's way into the monetary system, as it is today, and reclaim it's superior role as long as it is not prevented from doing so. Legal tender laws do just that. They prevent choice.

Today, to be an advocate of a gold standard is to be laughed at and ridiculed as naive. But, to be against legal tender laws, wipes the snickers off the face of those against gold very quickly. To be against legal tender laws is to be for freedom of choice and against government coercion. You will not find the same chuckles from "intellectuals" when confronted with a proposal of this nature. On the contrary, you will find terror...

In my opinion the private market is in the process of developing a private competing money. No one can predict where this will lead us, but it is happening as we speak. We are seeing the emergence of gold ATMs whereby individuals can convert dollars for gold on demand. If those machine eventually are equipped to also accept gold for paper money, we will have the specter of convertibility on street corners everywhere.

"We are going to make gold public with these machines," said Thomas Geissler, CEO of Ex Oriente Lux AG, which owns “GOLD to go." Fifty thousand machines are being produced to be placed in countries all over the world. And retailers such as Sears and K-Mart have announced they will now be dealing in gold. Companies that buy gold are everywhere, and companies that sell gold are increasing. Convertibility is becoming an industry. This is a further sign of the establishment of the "new" private money.

How this will evolve, not even the market "knows". But it is obvious the market is telling us that there is a demand for gold as money. Will we start computing commodity prices, stock values, and possibly all prices in terms of gold as well as the dollar to know whether we have deflation or inflation and to what degree? Will credit card companies start pricing and translating purchases of goods and services in terms of dollars and gold as they do foreign currencies? Will financial institutions store gold as a new form of savings account, en masse? In a new world of modern technology there is no telling how gold will be used, but it is being explored by entrepreneurs world wide as we speak...

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