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Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.

Coming up we’ll hear a wonderful interview with Guy Christopher, one of our most popular columnists at MoneyMetals.com. Guy enlightens us as only he can on a couple of well-known but very misunderstood stories – Robin Hood and The Wizard of Oz – and explains how both underwent changes and ultimately developed either a socialistic or an anti-sound money narrative. You will not want to miss a fascinating interview with Guy Christopher, coming up after this week’s market update.

Well, it’s been a big week in the precious metals markets, with gold and silver prices surging following the Federal Reserve’s rate decision.

As expected, the Fed left its benchmark interest rate unchanged. Fed chair Janet Yellen touted “progress” in the economy. She expressed confidence that more progress would allow the Fed to hike before the end of the year – just not before the election.

Of course, there is plenty of suspicion swirling that the Fed’s policy timing is politically motivated. Yellen herself issued a pointed denial following Wednesday’s policy announcement. Doth protest to much?

NBR News: The Fed’s next meeting comes just one week before the November elections with the Fed chair dismissing statements from Republican Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, that policymakers are playing politics with interest rate decisions.

Janet Yellen: I can say emphatically that partisan politics plays no role in our decisions about the appropriate stance of monetary policy.

If Fed officials were in the bag for Hillary, they surely wouldn’t come out and admit it. So their denials don’t prove that their decisions are free from political bias. At the same time, it would be difficult to prove that they are intentionally trying to help Hillary Clinton win the election. Fed officials are very careful with what language they let slip out to the public.

The Fed operates behind an institutional veil of secrecy. And so far Fed officials and their allies in Congress have successfully resisted a public audit of the Federal Reserve. But the fight to audit the Fed continues. Representative Thomas Massie is helping lead the push in Congress. He pushed the latest version of the Federal Reserve Transparency Act through committee this summer. The bill is now eligible for a full House vote. The last time that happened, Audit the Fed passed by an overwhelming 333 votes to 92.

But in the Senate, key Democrats have blocked the bill. With party control of the Senate up for grabs this fall, monetary reformers hold out hope that the next Senate will be more favorable to auditing the Fed.

Republicans aren’t likely to do any better than keep their current tally of 54 Senate seats. With the way the competitive races are lining up now, top political forecasters expect Democrats to pick up at least a couple seats. Perhaps, though, some incoming Democrats will be more open to making a deal on auditing the Fed. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is retiring, offering at least some room for hope that things will be different in the next Senate.

In the meantime, it’s business as usual in Washington and on Wall Street. The stock market responded positively to the Fed’s latest non-hike, as did the bond market and the precious metals markets.

For the week, gold is up $19 or 2.2% to bring spot prices to $1,340 an ounce. Gold is glittering as we head officially into the fall, but silver is shining even brighter. Silver prices advanced strongly this week through Thursday’s close to touch the $20 level. As of this Friday morning recording, silver trades at $19.84 per ounce, up a full dollar on the week and good for a 5.3% gain since last Friday’s close.

Turning to the platinum group metals, platinum prices trade at $1,057, up 3.6% this week. Platinum has traded at a discount to gold for the past 2 and a half years and continues to represent a value opportunity within the precious metals space – arguably more so now than palladium. Palladium currently checks in at $707 an ounce and is registering a 4.7% weekly gain.

The positive post-Fed price action in all the precious metals is an encouraging sign for bulls who are looking for a big fall rally. America’s avowedly non-political central bankers seem content to elevate all asset markets, at least until after the election. At some point, there will be a letdown and possibly a hard landing in the stock market. And at some point, gold and silver will decouple from stocks, bonds, and other financial assets.

But for now, everything is floating on a rising tide of Fed liquidity. Odds favor a higher stock market and higher precious metals prices in the weeks ahead.

Well now, without further delay, let’s get right to this week’s exclusive interview.

Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome Guy Christopher, one of the featured columnists on our MoneyMetals.com website. Guy is an investigative journalist and published author, but he's also a former stockbroker and veteran of the 101st Airborne serving in the Vietnam War. All of this real world experience combined with his communication skills has helped him provide our readers and customers with some really great insights. We have thousands reading and commenting on his writings each time we publish one of his pithy articles.

Guy, welcome back, it's always great to talk to you and it's been a while. How are you?

Guy Christopher: Well thank you Mike, it's a pleasure to be with you and an honor to be invited on your program.

Mike Gleason: I'm excited to have you on today because it allows us to ask you about some of the great articles you've penned for us over these last few months. First off, in your piece titled The Colors of Money, you wrote about how Andrew Jackson, a strong advocate against central banking, is going to be replaced on the $20 bill here soon. Something he probably never wanted to be on to begin with based on his ideas about paper money, but it's a slap in the face nonetheless. As we start out here, give us a little bit of background and history on the man they called Old Hickory. Talk about his insistence on waging a fight against the idea of central banking, something he even called "subversive to liberty".

Guy Christopher: Sure. Andrew Jackson, President, 1829-1836, was a foe of central banking. He believed in sound money. A lot of folks don't know that Andrew Jackson actually forced buyers and customers of the federal government to use gold and silver rather than paper money. He did that by executive order, and it caused a lot of concern among bankers because they had to come up with gold instead of paper. He was a foe of central banks for the same reason that people today are against central banks, he saw the dangers of printing money that was not backed by sound money, by gold and silver.

And it was the subject matter of the early 1830s when he was President, and he finally got rid of what was known as the Second Central Bank of the U.S. He got rid of it in 1836 when its charter expired. It ran from 1816 to 1836, and Jackson was absolutely instrumental in getting rid of the central bank. And of course we went for 70 or 80 years, up until 1913, before the U.S. had another central bank. So his legacy there was several decades of central bank free commerce in the United States, and it was financially and economically, except for the five years of the Civil War, it was a pretty good economic system for the country. I think Andrew Jackson was probably correct in fighting the central banks, but he was certainly known as the Bank Buster back in his day.

Mike Gleason: Expanding on the point here, you talked about the formation of the Federal Reserve, and you describe the purpose of it in your Color of Money article. Now I'll quote you here and then get your comments. You wrote:

"Old Hickory's 1836 victory held steady until 1913, when the bankers gathered in secret at Jekyll Island, Georgia to plot the greatest bank robbery in history. The scheme was simple. First, print all the money they wanted backed only by government promises. Then, day by day, steal all the wealth it represented through built-in, unstoppable inflation.

As more and more Federal Reserve debt coupons would litter the landscape their value would shrivel to less and less. Since government always has first use of cash hot off the presses, only unsuspecting taxpaying citizens would ever be financially harmed. It worked like a charm."

Since the Fed was created, the dollar has lost about 98% in the 100 years since, Guy, and we've had nothing but a constant cycle of booms and busts. But it wasn't always that way, as you alluded to a moment ago. Please talk about the U.S. economy both before and after the Fed.

Guy Christopher: I could illustrate it with one example, Mike. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson paid just about the same in cost for a good horse, for a good shotgun, for a tankard of ale at the inn, as Teddy Roosevelt paid in 1906. So 120 years, inflation was not a word that was in the American lexicon. Yes there was such a thing as inflation, but nobody talked about it because prices weren't going up.

Prices were pretty steady for about 100 years or more, and the only real inflation problem that the country suffered was during the war between the states, 1861 to ‘65, when costs got out of hand for the U.S. government. Of course the Confederacy was destroyed and every paper dollar the Confederacy printed went to zero, except for the ones today that are so rare that they are actually collector's items, but from an everyday common man standpoint the Confederate money was worthless. Confederates minted, very few silver coins.

I'm not aware of any gold coins ever circulated by the Confederacy, but still in all, for most of the 1800s, prices remained the same. Graphs show that, history shows that. And that was largely because gold and silver had backed any paper money that the government printed. And it worked for quite a long time until, of course 1913, when the Federal Reserve was created, in secret, by bankers, to protect their ability to print money. So the Federal Reserve and the Central Bank of the United States was really a new idea in 1913. Most people had no idea what meant. They thought, hey, the government's doing it, let's go along with it. Of course what we have today is constant, every day, moment by moment inflation.

It's a myth that the government has never defaulted on its debts. I hear quite often that America has a perfect credit record and has never defaulted, but that's just not true. Starting with the Continental dollar, the first paper money, printed by the Continental Congress in the 1780s. The Continental dollar crashed, giving us the phrase, "not worth a Continental." Well that's where the phrase came from, because there were millions, literally millions, of Continental dollars out there, and the public wouldn't use them because the public found them worthless. The government defaulted on its gold obligations 1933, wiping out, gold bonds, gold obligations. The government defaulted again on gold in 1971, when Nixon, quote "closed the gold window," unquote.

So the government has defaulted on its obligations several times in its history, and the greatest default has been ongoing, planned, deliberate inflation. And if folks don't understand inflation, it just boils down to, the more that money's printed, and the more money that floats around out there, the less it's worth. Usually sooner than later, but now it depends on the times and the politics, but that money suddenly becomes worth less than it was yesterday, and so you've got higher prices, which creep up by pennies a week, or pennies a day, and people really don't notice. But in that respect the United States government has defaulted on lots and lots and lots of obligations. So it's not unusual to think that the United States might one day again default on its obligations.

Mike Gleason: Obviously with Fed policy we have a lot of booms and busts that are created, they just basically prop up different asset bubbles, we're seeing that in spades here today. And while we're on the topic of the Fed, we've just seen officials there once again hiking rates. They've painted themselves into a corner. It's easy to print money and lower rates, but it's also very hard to stop. Do you think they can pull themselves out of that jam that they're in and normalize interest rates, or might they stay the course at zero, or even go to negative rates at some point in the future until pensions collapse, or the bubbles that they've been blowing up in bonds, equities, and real estate finally pop, bringing about a crisis even bigger than 2008? What are your thoughts there, Guy?

Guy Christopher: My thoughts are not optimistic. I don't believe the Fed is going to raise rates for a long time, and when they do, a quarter point is really meaningless. A quarter point doesn't mean a lot. You've had other guests on your program say the same thing, and I tend to agree with them. A quarter point is not such a big deal, but when you look at the big picture, the interest rate should tell you what your money is worth, what the savings you have is worth, what the money that the government is printing is worth.

If interest rates were around 5% – historically that's where they've been for a long time – if you had interest rates that were normal, then that would mean that your money is pretty stable and that your money is worth anything. But when the government itself, and the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury, when they themselves tell you that the interest rate should be zero or even negative interest rates, known as NIRP, and that's something they're talking about, we've seen it overseas in Europe and we're hearing about more and more of that in the United States. When they tell you that interest rates are zero, they're telling you the dollar's worthless, that the dollar has no value, that the dollar is just a piece of paper with zero value, or with negative value.

If you sit and look at that and say, "My government is telling me that the money that's floating around in circulation is worthless, why should we trust this money, why should we pay attention to what the government is saying about this money," we should be worried about that. Most people don't think about it because inflation was planned in the first place to be so minute, day by day, year by year, that we would not notice it. That is why I wrote it worked like a charm. We haven't noticed it. For the most part, Americans don't really understand inflation. They think that prices are supposed to go up, but that's just not the case in a healthy economy.

Mike Gleason: Certainly it gets back to the idea of Keynesianism versus Austrian economics. You've got savers being punished with zero interest rates and a lot of speculators are out there trying to chase yield, and that's what money does. It tries to chase yield and builds up these asset bubbles, and the whole thing is just based on debt, and that's not really how it's supposed to work.

Now moving on, I want to chat about your latest piece called Fiction, Fairy Tales, and Fiat. You highlight how, sadly, so few Americans these days have any clue about the sound money ideas that we're talking about right now, and why it's so important. And I'm especially talking about the millennials, or that age block in the 18 to 24 demographic. There almost seems to be a turn towards the ideals of government-run socialism as you discuss in this piece. You make the case that the very thought of taking from the rich and giving to the poor is ingrained in the younger generation from an early age thanks to the story of Robin Hood, but the original story is actually totally misunderstood by most. Talk about this.

Guy Christopher: The story of Robin Hood started 600 years ago. It was folklore passed on by balladeers, passed on father to son, so to speak, and basically it was an anti-government storyline. It was a storyline that said the government is stealing everything we’ve got, and here is our champion, this fellow named Robin Hood, who is out there trying to take that wealth back from the government, and redistribute it, actually, to the people it was stolen from in the first place. Well that storyline wasn't very popular, especially after Franklin Roosevelt grabbed everybody's gold in 1933. That storyline has changed to what we have today, which is Robin Hood robbed from the rich to give to the poor.

I just read a piece, I love the guy's writing, David Stockman, who was one of Reagan's budget guys. Stockman wrote a piece in which he referenced Robin Hood as a fellow who robbed the rich to give to the poor. It is an ingrained thought that that's what Robin Hood was doing, but the fact of the matter is, Robin Hood was hijacking the IRS on the roads of Sherwood Forest trying to get tax money back that had been stolen away from the common folk. Educators and government weren't really happy with that particular storyline of course, so it became one of robbing the rich to give to the poor, which is basically where we are today with socialism.

Redistribution of wealth, taking it from those who earn it and those who work for it, and giving it to those who did not earn it or did not work for it, is a form government subsidies. We've known this could happen since 1805 when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy In America that the American system would work just fine until the people discovered that they could vote themselves money from the common treasury. And I think that he was right. It has worked just fine until we've gotten around to this "share the wealth" attitude. And that's something I believe, by the way, that Andrew Jackson was well aware of. He and de Tocqueville lived in the same timeframe, and I'm sure that Andrew Jackson was aware of de Tocqueville's writings, and may very well have been influenced by them.

So Robin Hood is well entrenched as a socialist, and when you tell these stories to children in grade school, and they get it stuck in their heads that, “Hey, it's okay to rob the rich to give to the poor”, then what do you expect when Bernie Sanders runs for president? You're going to have a heck of a following right behind him because they were taught from the age of four, or five, that socialism is a good thing, even though they may not have known what to call it.

Mike Gleason: Now later on in that piece you write about another well-known story, that of The Wizard of Oz. It was actually author L. Frank Baum's commentary on the battle between the proponents of the gold standard and the silver standard, but yet key parts of the original story were adapted and changed for the major motion picture that was made shortly after FDR coincidentally confiscated gold from the American public. Give us some background on that, The Wizard of Oz.

Guy Christopher: The entire episode was known as bimetallism. Silver interests wanted more silver in circulation, and that happened to coincide with the American public, which needed more silver in circulation. There was a legitimate argument against it in that more silver in circulation might have meant inflation, it might have meant higher prices, it might have meant a loss of control of the economy, and so it was a legitimate discussion. The author of The Wizard of Oz was on the “silverites'” side, they were called “silverites”, and he felt that the common man was getting gipped because they didn't have enough silver in circulation. When he wrote his classic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, it was in effect about the fight between the gold and the sliver interests. The silver interests actually wanted both a gold and a silver standard. The opposition wanted to just leave the standard at gold.

The story has a young woman being torn from her home by the forces of nature, she's thrust onto this adventure where she meets wonderful people, and she meets a lot of bad actors along the way, the same type of experiences all of us have during life. And the big change in that story was that she was wearing silver slippers, and that she did not understand, in her journey, that the power of silver in her slippers was all she needed to find her way home. And finding her way home was really the only thing she wanted in the first place, was to get back to where she was when the tornado ripped her out of her Kansas house. She doesn't understand that. She learns it later, but silver was dropped from the script. The silver became rubies, there's no mention of the yellow brick road being a road of gold.

And the reason for dropping silver, of course, was to get silver and gold off the mind of the American public. This movie was made In 1939, just a few years after FDR made his 1933 gold grab. There was no appetite whatsoever for bringing up again the argument that sound money is better than paper money. Nobody wanted to hear that. Hollywood played along with government, and so we ended up with The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy in ruby slippers, no mention of silver, and a movie that everybody loved, I think primarily because of the graphics. The travels that the girl made during her adventure were well animated, and I think that had a lot to do with that picture's success. It certainly didn't have anything to do with the honesty that Baum had tried to put into the parable that he wrote about bimetallism.

Mike Gleason: I've heard other comparisons there, other analysis on that, about how I think the Wicked Witch of the East represented the evil bankers, and of course yeah, obviously the yellow brick road represented the gold standard and so forth. Fascinating stuff, revisionist history is always very interesting.

We do have this move towards socialism and globalism, and obviously it's very concerning, but there is some reason for hope. Brexit and the growing discontent elsewhere in Europe seems to be signaling that many people have had enough of the march toward collectivism and globalism, we'll see if this current unrest is temporary or if it represents the beginning of the end of the EU. Do you see any of the current anti-globalist sentiment that is driving support for outsiders like Donald Trump here in the U.S. having any lasting impact?

Guy Christopher: Oh I think it's going to have a great impact. We're seeing it all over the world, we are seeing it big time here in this country. I think Trump's support is under-reported. That's a personal opinion. I read an article a few days ago that Donald Trump has broken all records for small donor donations, and I'm reading every day that he's gaining traction with minorities, black minorities, Hispanic minorities. I think that a lot of folks who had given up on politics over the past 10, 20, 30, 40 years are waking up and saying, "I think I'll take a chance on this guy." Why? Do they love the fellow? Not necessarily, but he represents something that they think they've lost. I believe his support is looking at him as a fellow who might restore some of the things that have been lost to this country. I don't think they're necessarily in love with Trump, I think they are in love with a lot of the things he has to say.

Those things have been repeated around the world. Brexit was a wake-up call for that. Many other countries are talking about breaking away from centralized authority. Germany, heck Andrea Merkel has just lost two major votes in Germany. The last was Sunday, just a few days ago. She has now turned around and said, "Well maybe I will rethink bringing in 1 million refugees to Germany." That is a big signal that nationalism is playing a big role right now, rather than the global outlook. And I think that has come to this country, and I think Trump hit a nerve that no one really wanted to talk about. Had Trump not been in this race, immigration would not be on the discussion agenda, I believe. A lot of other things wouldn't be on the agenda.

But I think that Trump has hit a nerve that is actually a worldwide nerve. Around the globe, Italy, France, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, they are all saying, "We are losing our identities. We don't like that. We want our identities back." And they are all, in some form or fashion, following the things that Brexit, and now Trump, are heralding.

Mike Gleason: Yeah, interesting times we live in here, and there's a lot going on. We'll see how this winds up with the whole battle between globalism and nationalism, it's going to be very interesting to see.

Guy Christopher: It's just a few weeks away for the United States. It's going to be a tense time, I think, for me and for others, and I'm sure everybody on both sides of that fence is going to be very anxious about November 8th.

Mike Gleason: Couldn't agree more. Very well put, great stuff as always. Thanks for your excellent insights once again. We always enjoy your writings and I look forward to reading more, as well as having you on from time to time to discuss those articles with our audience here. Keep up the good work. Take care and we'll talk to you again very soon. Hope you have a very good weekend, my friend.

Guy Christopher: Mike, thank you. I've always congratulated Money Metals Exchange for the educational efforts. I would repeat that again today. I think you guys do a great job trying to educate folks as to just what finance, money, economics, sound money, are all about.

Mike Gleason: Well thanks a lot. You're certainly a big part of that, and we're glad to have you a part of our team. Well that will do it for this week. Thanks again to Guy Christopher, MoneyMetals.com columnist. To check out any of his fabulous work, just go to MoneyMetals.com and type in “Guy Christopher” into the search bar for links to all of his great articles.

And check back here next Friday for the next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. Until then, this has been Mike Gleason with Money Metals Exchange. Thanks for listening, and have a great weekend, everybody.

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Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.

Coming up we'll hear an encore of one of the most important interviews we've ever done on this program. MoneyMetals.com contributor Guy Christopher speaks about personal responsibility, estate planning, and making sure you don't leave your loved ones with a financial nightmare and an unwelcome scavenger hunt. Some timeless wisdom, coming up after this week's market update.

As the dog days of summer approach, the animal spirits seem intent on driving the stock market to higher highs in spite of a hawkish Fed. Precious metals bulls hoped for a more dovish statement than the one delivered by the central bank this week. Instead, gold and silver markets took a near-term bearish turn.

Now isn’t the time for investors to be sheepish in the face of long-term value opportunities. Disciplined buying in bullion will ultimately be rewarded with more than a dead cat bounce.

Investors who are now going hog wild in overvalued financial markets risk getting slaughtered like pigs. They would do well to re-direct their animal spirits to gold and Silver Eagles, Australian Kangaroos, Chinese Pandas, and Canadian Cougars. Those on the hunt for a more exotic specimen might find a great catch in the Australian Platinum Platypus or the 2-ounce Queen’s Beast Dragon silver coin.

All of the aforementioned coins, plus many others, are currently available through Money Metals Exchange. And premiums right now are as low as ever.

Well, as noted earlier, the Federal Reserve delivered its expected quarter point rate hike with a somewhat hawkish tone. Fed chair Janet Yellen warned markets that she would soon begin reducing the central bank’s massive balance sheet.

Nightly Business Report: The Fed hiking the target range for the Federal Funds rate by a quarter point to between one and one and a quarter percent. The Fed's forecast suggests it may hike one more time this year for a total of three increases. The rate hikes could mean higher monthly payments for credit card users and people with home equity lines of credit or adjustable rate mortgages. The Fed was looking for inflation at about 2% this year, but now believes inflation will be a little less than that. The Fed also announcing a detailed plan to wind down its balance sheet this year, selling off some of the assets the central bank bought to stabilize the economy during the financial crisis. Right now, the Fed is sitting on more than $4 trillion.

Janet Yellen: We currently expect to begin implementing a balance sheet normalization program this year.

Janet Yellen might call it “normalization,” but it would effectively amount to quantitative tightening – a reversal of quantitative easing programs that continue providing stimulus through reinvestments. If the Fed proceeds too rapidly with normalization, stock and bond markets might not cope well. The unwinding of the Fed’s massive balance sheet represents potentially a much bigger danger than another quarter point rate hike.

For now, complacency continues to rule markets. Measures of investor fear such as the VIX volatility index remain near historic lows. As a consequence, gold and silver markets haven’t seen a major safe-haven buying surge in quite some time.

Gold prices have remained in a range of between about $1,220 and $1,300 per ounce this spring. Prices currently come in at $1,255, lower by 1.0% this week.

Silver shows a weekly loss of 3.0% to bring spot prices to $16.76 an ounce. Platinum is off 1.7% to trade at $928. And palladium continues to outperform, hitting a multiyear high earlier in the week but is off now by 1.2% since last Friday’s close to bring spot prices to $874 an ounce as of this Friday morning recording.

The rest of the precious metals complex will need a new catalyst to get sustained summer rallies going. The summer period is typically quiet in metals markets. But buying interest could pick up later this summer. Although if recent history holds we could see a rally in the metals following this week’s interest rate hike, just like the rallies we saw immediately following the three previous hikes that have taken place over the last 19 months.

If the Senate fails to deliver anything on healthcare or taxes before going into recess, that could certainly disappoint stock market investors and perhaps trigger some flight into gold and silver. If the Bitcoin bubble bursts this summer, many of those who abandoned hard currency for crypto-currency over the past couple years could come back home to hard currency.

The inflation trade could also begin to slowly re-emerge. Summer driving season typically means higher demand for oil and gas. Crude oil prices have sold off over the past month and may be due to rebound. The entire commodities complex is extremely depressed, with the CRB commodities index at generational lows versus stocks.

Low prices for hard assets means under-investment in future production as mines shut down at the margins and exploration and development budgets are slashed. Huge supply deficits are likely in store for base metals and precious metals over the next couple years. The impact on prices will be significant when it finally comes.

For now, long-term investors are well advised to maintain their long-term perspective. The summer doldrums are the time to exercise patience, avoid getting shaken out of your positions, and add to your holdings as opportunities present.

Well now, without further delay, let’s get right to this week’s exclusive interview.

Mike Gleason: It is my privilege to welcome in Guy Christopher, one of the featured columnists on our Money Metals.com website. Guy is an investigative journalist and published author, but he's also a former stock broker and veteran of the 101st Airborne, serving in the Vietnam War. All of this real world experience, combined with his communication skills, has helped him provide our readers and customers with some really great insights, which thousands of you have benefited from to date.

Guy, welcome back, it's been quite a while. It's a pleasure to speak with you again, how are you?

Guy Christopher: Mike, I'm doing fine. Thanks for the honor of having me on.

Mike Gleason: Well, I'm excited to have you on today because you just authored a fantastic piece for us this week titled, You Worked to Have It... Now Work to Keep It. In that, you described how many Americans, who may have been thoughtful and diligent when it comes to accumulating some wealth, are often totally neglectful when it comes to protecting it. Talk about that. What do you mean, and what is it that so many people often overlook?

Guy Christopher: Well, I think folks don't like to talk about, or think about, dying and so they don't pay a whole lot of attention to it. We have research from some pretty high powered research firms that show more than half of the United States citizens have no will or no legal trust, and really haven't made a great many plans for taking care of their estates. Which can be complicated as gold and silver. That's very often left at the bottom of the ladder when it comes time to explain things to family. You and I both know that very often family members don't have any idea what your interests in gold and silver really are. They don't understand it and that's too bad, but that's the way it is. When you're trying to pass on gold and silver inheritances to family members, or to friends, they may be sitting there staring at a great deal of wealth, and they're not sure how to handle it. I think it's one of those things that we all have to face, some of us do a little better job of it than others. I think it starts with going to an attorney, and sitting down and saying, "What do I need to protect my estate for my children or my ... and my family?"

Mike Gleason: Talking about precious metals specifically there. I can tell you from experience we often hear from heirs who just had a loved one pass, and they immediately just want to get rid of the gold and silver that grandpa, or grandma had there. They say, "What the heck are we going to do with this? Yeah, let's just get rid of it right away." So those conversations are often not happening between individuals and their heirs, and they don't even understand the importance of owning gold and silver, and they want to get rid of it like a hot potato. I'm sure you've seen that sort of thing.

Guy Christopher: I have seen it, Mike. The example you just provided is excellent. When folks, first of all, families very often don't agree with how to divvy up the remains of an estate unless there's a will, and unless there are written instructions and legal instructions. I have personally seen families who have had great difficulties individually with each other, trying to decide what to do with this valuable, or that asset, or that keep sake. Certainly something, which is unfortunately as mysterious as gold and silver can be to some people. Unfortunately, those things are often left with estate matters, and like you said, folks call and say, "Hey, what's this dollar amount?" They really don't know what they have in their hands, and they just want to turn it into cash and move on.

So that's unfortunate. I think that if you are a gold and silver owner, if you believe that you're acquiring real wealth through gold and silver, and that it is a great way to save, and a great insurance policy, then I think it's necessary, its incumbent upon you to try to explain to close family members, to close friends, what this is and why you have it, and what they should be thinking of doing with it. You don't want to put your business on the streets too much, we've written articles about that. You can do these instructions legally, in a will, or you can do them in a letter to your family… just explaining, “Look, I believe in this stuff, and I want you to believe in it too”. I think that it's just as necessary to have written instructions for gold and silver as it is to have for a real estate, or any other valuables you may own.

The reason you've got to that is because nobody else is going to do it for you. You and I both know there are a lot of folks out there who will take advantage of people who are suddenly given a handful of gold, or a bag full of silver. There are folks out there who can easily take advantage of your heirs, your grandchildren, your children, your wife, your husband, who don't really understand what it is you have and why you have it. So I think that just leaving some written instructions ... You're not really spreading your business around on the street that way. You're leaving written instructions with trusted people to say, "This is why I have this and this is why you should value it." I think folks really appreciate that. Losing a loved one, we've all been there. Losing a loved one is a terrible thing to go through. You have enough on your mind, really, between funeral arrangements and just the grieving process. You have enough on your mind without also worrying about, “Hey, what's this stuff worth in dollars?” First things first, you have your grieving to do, and then you also have business to take care of, and that's always the case. I think it's just helpful for your heirs, for your children, to have something that says, "This is why I had that and this why you should value it."

Mike Gleason: Now, I know many precious metals investors are hiding them somewhere in their home, which is a great idea as it may deter theft if you're unfortunate enough to have a break in. But it could also be problematic for your heirs after you pass. What advice to you have for people there? That's something else you do have to keep in mind.

Guy Christopher: Absolutely, it's a great idea to have your metals put away privately and secretly, but not so secretly that no one will ever find them. In the article we just published, we talk about the true story of a fellow. I knew the fellow, or know him, he's still living, who was very secretive about his belongings. He lived in a very big house, many, many rooms, long hallways. His two daughters were grown. His two daughters visited once in a while, but they didn't really hang out and explore the house that they grew up in. It was months and months and months before those children of his were able to come to grips with the fact that they didn't know where anything was. There may be a great deal of wealth on that property, that may never be found. It may not be found for 200 years. We just don't know, because there were no written instructions.

Those kinds of stories are repeated over, and over, and over. They're unfortunate. They are preventable, but still in all when folks don't take the time to think ahead, then they are really doing their loved ones a big disservice, because they haven't taken the time to say to themselves, "I need to write down some things," like the combination to the safe. I can't imagine a worse situation than knowing your dad, or your mom, or someone has a safe, and you have to go find a safe hacker to get it open because there's no combination written down anywhere, and nobody knows how to get into it. That's a problem that a grieving family shouldn't have to have. It's just one example of the kinds of things you can do now to ensure that you can take care of yourself, and if you're not around, you can take care of your family.

Mike Gleason: I know in the case of your acquaintance there, I'm sure there's probably some real piling up medical bills, based on his condition. So having access to those precious metals that his daughters can't find, I'm sure would be very helpful in covering some of those costs. Yeah, it's very important, of course, to leave instructions.

Now, we're are talking about people here that have already bought some precious metals. Those that haven't yet, what would you say to the person who is still hesitating to make his, or her, first purchase of precious metals? Prices are down, it seems like a good time to act, but some may be afraid prices will go even lower. What do you have to say to that person?

Guy Christopher: That's so true. I've noticed prices dropping, and I've also noticed the folks I know who are buying are the old timers who are committed to gold and silver, who believe in gold and silver, who understand gold and silver. Not so much the newcomers, the newbies, the folks who are just now looking around and saying, "What's that gold and silver stuff all about?" The buying has been primarily, at least as far as I know, by those folks who are already acquainted with it. The problem we have, and we've written about this before, and it's been written many times at Money Metals, not just by me. The problem we have is a matter of media and education. The government doesn't like you owning gold and silver. The government would prefer you have either cash or digital money, that gets us down the road into the weeds and war on cash, but it's very real.
The government would prefer that you just forget all about gold and silver, and they have been very masterful at brainwashing Americans into believing that gold and silver are not real money. You and I know that gold and silver are currencies. We know that they are representations of wealth. The government knows they are real money, and the government knows they are representations of real wealth, but the government would prefer you not know that. The government would prefer you have debt as your money, which is exactly what the treasury bond, exactly what a U.S ... one dollar, ten dollar, five dollar, fifty dollar bill is. It's a note, it's debt. It's not real wealth, it's just a representation of debt. And people have used this debt, they use these I.O.U's as real money. They begin to think of these I.O.U's as real wealth, and you and I know they're not.

So the real problem we have here is that the government has been quite successful, over the past seven or eight decades, ever since FDR's gold grab in the 1930's, the government has been very successful in drumming gold and silver out of the American psyche. The last phase of that was probably 1965, when the government stopped putting silver in American coins, and gave us the mystery metal that we use today. I don't know what's in a 25 cent piece, I think there's some copper, and some tin and maybe some zinc, I don't know. Then, in 1982 they stopped putting copper in pennies. The government has tried to get away from precious metals as wealth. They've done that so that the rest of us will think of debt as money, as wealth, as currency.

The reason that it's so hard to get new people involved is because they are, I hate to say the word again, but they are largely brainwashed into believing that real money is a digital message on a smart phone. That real money is an account statement from your bank. When, in fact, that's not real money, that's just a representation of debt. It's too bad that more people don't have the educated instincts to begin looking hard at what's going on. If you look around the world, last few days we've had China jump in with both feet in what Jim Rickards calls, the currency wars. We've had stock markets up and down 200, 300, points per day, up 300, 200, points per day down. A lot of turmoil there. We've had trade wars, which we hear about in the news all the time. Different nations are trying to get a hand up, a leg up, on other nations in trade wars. There is every evidence that the economic system around the world is unraveling. And as it unravels, debt is going to be exposed as a serious, serious flaw in global economic matters. And the antidote to that flaw is, of course, precious metals.

Mike Gleason: Yeah, you certainly can't be on an upward trajectory endlessly towards more and more debt without there being some sort of coming moment when it all comes crashing down. It's just inevitable. It's really just physics when you get down to it.

Guy Christopher: Well, you know Mike I saw in one internet report that the federal government has actually frozen the reporting of the national debt at around 18 trillion, for the last 150 days. I don't understand why folks aren't asking questions about that, and screaming to their representatives and their senators saying, "We would like to know why the government stopped reporting the national debt." $18 trillion is a lot, but that's not the real number now. We know that real number is much, much higher.

Mike Gleason: All of this does get back to education, as you hit on a moment ago, and it's definitely one of our missions here, which of course you play a big role in. In one of those topics we've covered extensively this year, you alluded to it earlier, is the war on cash. We've talk about it many times here on the podcast, and in a lot of our articles, which many of them you've been responsible for, of course. Now, you wrote a great piece a few months back and I wanted to have you comment on that a bit. In your article titled FDIC Plots a Bank Heist Involving Your Account you wrote:

Court cases have upheld for decades that putting your money in savings, a C.D, or other bank products, means you've become an unsecured creditor. Your deposit is actually an unsecured loan to the bank, with all the problems of counterparty risk. Instead of being presented with collateral, you get an I.O.U, that pays a penitence in interest, or in many cases, nothing.

A busted bank doesn't have to return your principle deposits, unlike when YOU are the borrower and THE BANK is the lender. The bank didn't tender you a lawyer-ed up promissory note, or offer you a lean on its assets. Legally speaking, you may as well have handed your money to a stranger in the alley.

Unsecured creditor, means just what it says. No security.

Talk about this, because many people may not even be aware that this is how it works.

Guy Christopher: Mike, again, that's just part in parcel of the lack of education and the extreme success the government, aided by its lapdog media, the government and the media have successfully erased the notion that we have to actually protect and fight for what we believe is right. Yes, when you put your money in the bank ... and I didn't know this when I was a young man, it took me a while to discover it. Most people don't know that when you put your money in the bank, it's the banks money at that point. Your money is listed as a debt from the bank to you. If the bank can't pay you back, then you lose, which is why we have FDIC insurance, for what it's worth. FDIC insurance came along because banks were going busted in the 1930's, thanks to the Great Depression.

As those banks went out of business, farms failed, businesses failed, families failed. The government said, “Well, let's throw some insurance on there.” Well, that FDIC insurance is largely worthless for two reasons. Number one, there's not enough to pay for the trillions of dollars that are in banking accounts, savings, C.D's, and what have you. And the other problem is that the FDIC can change the rules anytime it wants, as we wrote in that article. The FDIC can change, and probably will change, the rules anytime it wants to lower insurance rates or insurance limits, which are now supposedly $250,000 per account. They can change those rules anytime they want to make your deposits largely un-insurable, or worthless.
In Greece, we have some rumblings of capital controls, a war on cash. Banks closing, ATM's giving out just sixty euros per day, because the banks were going bust. Billions of euros were leaving Greece as the latest Greek bailout came through. And the opposite of the bailout is the bail in. The bail in is simply, if your money's in the bank, that's the money we'll take to save the bank. The thing to remember about bail ins, they are not designed to save you, your family, your way of life. They are designed to save the bank. The banks are what's important to governments, not you, not your life, not your way of life.

Mike Gleason: Well, it's all very troubling and sobering to think about some of that stuff, but that's where gold and silver can provide an alternative. We've said it before, but it really is true, it's a different form of cash. It's one that you hold in your hands. It's one that's free from counterparty risk, and it's definitely something that more and more people need to be thinking about as we get more and more uncertain here with the global economic environment and landscape. And also, of course, the geopolitical issues and currency wars that we're going to be facing here over the next decade. It's a dangerous world and we're glad that we have somebody like you on our team to help explain it all. It's great stuff, and I always appreciate your insights. I know our audience does as well, and I enjoy your writings, and look forward to speaking with you again down the road. Thanks very much Guy for your time.

Guy Christopher: Mike, I appreciate that, and let me say that I'm very proud of Money Metals for the educational efforts that you folks do. You folks have poured a lot of time, energy, and money into education, and I just wish more people would take advantage of it.

Mike Gleason: Well, you're certainly a big part of that, so thanks for your efforts and the role you play in that department.

Guy Christopher: Thank you, Mike. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

Mike Gleason: Well that will do it for this week, thanks again to Guy Christopher, Money Metals columnist. Check out his work at MoneyMetals.com.

And check back here next Friday for our next weekly market wrap podcast. Until then, this has been Mike Gleason with Money Metals Exchange. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend everybody.

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Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.

Coming up we’ll hear an encore of a wonderful interview with Guy Christopher, who wrote many popular columns for MoneyMetals.com before his passing. Throughout his time at Money Metals, Guy would often enlighten us as only he could, sharing his insights through his wonderful articles on our website, and we often had the privilege of discussing some of those stories with him here during our weekly podcasts.

In the conversation you will hear in just a bit I spoke with Guy on the topic of personal responsibility, estate planning, and making sure you don't leave your loved ones with a financial nightmare and an unwelcome scavenger hunt. Some timeless wisdom from the late Guy Christopher, coming up after this week's market update.

A big week on Wall Street, and a bigger week in Washington, have given us relatively quiet trading in gold and silver markets.

For the week, gold is down 0.4% to bring spot prices to $1,558 an ounce. Silver shows a weekly loss of 0.9% to trade at $18.02. The gold and silver mining stocks appear to have put in a near-term bottom. They rallied mid-week, so perhaps bullion will soon follow suit.

Turning to the platinum group metals, they are showing some real strength once again. Platinum prices look higher by 4.3% since last Friday’s close to come in at $1,025 per ounce.

Meanwhile, palladium continues to defy the odds and is surging here today and keeps breaking record after record. As of this Friday morning recording the white metal is up over $200, and that’s just in today’s trading and it now sports a price tag of $2,533 per ounce thanks to this week’s $407 or 19.1% gain. You heard that right, 19.1%. The massive price advance is due to lease rates spiking once again in the futures market, indicating a serious supply shortage for the industrial metal.

As the metals markets diverged, the S&P 500 surged to a new record high on Thursday. Stock market investors celebrated the passage of two big trade deals – a Phase One trade agreement with China and the USCMA pact with Canada and Mexico.

Democrats were completely upstaged after trying to make a show of delivering Articles of Impeachment to the U.S. Senate. Despite the mainstream media’s hyping of new Russian and Ukrainian conspiracy theories, the public seems to have lost interest in the entire charade. Everyone knows – and has known from the beginning – that it will end in President Donald Trump’s acquittal.

Meanwhile, CNN and the Democrats put on a debate that turned into an embarrassment for everyone involved. The party elites are trying to knock off Bernie Sanders, and their efforts are backfiring. He continues to surge ahead of Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden. But the 78-year-old socialist is now facing accusations of being insufficiently “woke” on race and gender issues.

The party has historically weaponized identity politics against Republicans with great success. Now without a charismatic figure like Barack Obama to unify the various grievance groups, they are turning on each other.

This is all great news for Donald Trump, of course. The smart money is now betting on President Trump to cruise to re-election in November.

But if the Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders, that doesn’t mean investors can relax. There is a chance – a non-zero chance, anyway – that a black swan event or a change in social mood could propel him to an upset victory. That would likely cause a severe sell-off in stocks and a surge in safe-haven buying of gold.

Regardless of who wins, government spending and deficits will continue to grow – as will unpayable entitlement promises. It’s a bipartisan problem with no solution in sight.

On Monday the Treasury Department announced the federal budget deficit is running 11.8% higher compared to last year. Officials now expect to record a deficit in excess of a trillion dollars this year – and for many years to come.

News Anchor #1: For the first time in seven years the U.S. finds itself in a trillion dollar hole.

News Anchor #2: In a trillion dollar hole.

News Anchor #3: In a trillion dollar hole. The federal government's budget deficit was released Monday by the treasury department. According to the data the government spent 1 trillion more than it took in during 2019 and the first quarter of 2020 is showing some similar signs. From October through December military spending and healthcare costs caused the deficit disorder 12% over the previous year.

Rising deficits mean the government will need a rising currency supply. That means a likely roll out of various bond buying and QE type programs by the Federal Reserve.

The Fed has already committed several hundred billion dollars to Treasury bill and repo markets over the past few months. According to the Wall Street Journal, the central bank is now considering a new tool to intervene even more deeply into overnight lending markets. Essentially it would involve pumping in more liquidity through hedge funds – yes, hedge funds.

Incredibly, all we hear is silence from Democrats who are supposed to be against helping Wall Street get richer at our expense. And on the other side, all we hear is silence from Republicans who are supposed to be against more interventions by unaccountable central planners.

The truth is that both sides are as addicted to inflationary stimulus from the Fed as Wall Street and the big banks are.

The steady inflationary pressures ahead should be enough to produce modest gains for precious metals markets. At some point if the fear trade kicks in over inflation, or national insolvency, or a socialist President, or a financial crisis on Wall Street, then gold and silver can be expected to deliver very outsized gains.

And now, we’ll pay tribute to our late friend Guy Christopher, who during his time with us here on earth lived quite a life. He was a member of the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War and later worked as a stock broker, investigative journalist, and published author. All of this real-world experience combined with his communication skills helped him provide our readers and customers with some really great insights over the years. Thousands of readers enjoyed and often commented on his writings at MoneyMetals.com.

Today we’ll replay a conversation I had with Guy on a very important topic. The interview begins with a question about an article he wrote several years ago titled You Worked to Have It... Now Work to Keep It, a piece about how many Americans, who may have been thoughtful and diligent when it comes to accumulating some wealth, are often totally neglectful when it comes to protecting it. As we start out this interview, I asked Guy to address the question about why so many people regularly overlook having this important conversation.

All of this does get back to education, as you hit on a moment ago, and it's definitely one of our missions here, which of course you play a big role in. In one of those topics we've covered extensively this year, you alluded to it earlier, is the war on cash. We've talk about it many times here on the podcast, and in a lot of our articles, which many of them you've been responsible for, of course. Now, you wrote a great piece a few months back and I wanted to have you comment on that a bit. In your article titled FDIC Plots a Bank Heist Involving Your Account you wrote:

Unsecured creditor, means just what it says. No security.

Talk about this, because many people may not even be aware that this is how it works.

Mike Gleason: Well, you're certainly a big part of that, so thanks for your efforts and the role you play in that department.

Guy Christopher: Thank you, Mike. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the replay of that interview with Guy Christopher as much as I did. It was always a real joy to speak with Guy and he will be truly missed, but his wisdom lives on.

Well that will do it for this week. Please check back next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. Until then this has been Mike Gleason with Money Metals Exchange, thanks for listening, and have a great weekend everyone.

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By now you’ve probably read at least one pithy column penned by Money Metals columnist Guy Christopher. But if you haven’t had the opportunity, you sure need to!

Guy Christopher is a veteran writer living on the Gulf Coast. A retired investigative journalist, published author, and former stockbroker. He’s taught college as an adjunct professor and is a veteran of the 101st Airborne in Vietnam.

Guy Christopher has lots of practical experience in the gold and silver markets, he knows what’s on people’s minds, and he has a knack for clear communication and common sense. He likes to zero in on those moments in life that make you stop and think.

That's why a few months back, I asked him to join our team of writers to support Money Metals’ educational mission.

Guy is tackling some extremely important (and sometimes provocative) topics surrounding gold and silver investing. And from all the comments folks are posting at www.MoneyMetals.com, I know he’s making you think:

Thanks to Guy Christopher for all his great work so far! And thank you for making Money Metals Exchange your source for hard-hitting and honest news, commentary, and analysis.

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Welcome to this week's Market Wrap Podcast, I'm Mike Gleason. During this quiet Thanksgiving week on this trading front, we felt it was an appropriate time to check in again with Guy Christopher to discuss some broader topics on the minds of precious metals buyers. Guy is a featured columnist at MoneyMetals.com and has a real talent and ability in speaking to the everyday investor. Guy is a retired investigative journalist, published author, and former stockbroker, and veteran of the 101st Airborne serving in the Vietnam war. As a result of all those life experiences, he offers a unique perspective to our readers.

He knows what's on people's minds. As a write, he likes to zero in on those moments in life that make you stop and think. He's done just that with a string of popular articles published at MoneyMetals.com over the last few months.

Mike Gleason: Welcome back, Guy. It's great to have you on today and Happy Thanksgiving to you.

Guy Christopher: Thank you very much sir. Glad to be with you.

Mike Gleason: I'm going to bounce around a little bit here and discuss some of the important topics about what you've written over the last couple of months, which continues to be top-notch stuff by the way, so first let me say thank you very much for the contribution you're making to our site. Now in your most recent article, you wrote about the use of gold and silver as money, and I want to dig into that subject with you here because questions about that come up a lot with our customers. Now one example I've heard before from those who discredit the idea that gold and silver might ever become useful, let alone necessary and a possible currency replacement in a catastrophic scenario is Hurricane Katrina where items like bottled water and generators were in very high demand and you could buy almost anything with those items if you had them.

Now we would be the first to say that you really do need to have an adequate supply of essential items like a good supply of food and water and an alternative power source, etc, but in a long term situation is a society where the currency itself is breaking down, we need a stable currency to function. Is that where you see gold and more likely silver coming into play?

Guy Christopher: I think that's a perfect example. When Hurricane Katrina roared into the Gulf Coast, specifically New Orleans in 2005, a lot of folks don't know this, Mike, but the City of New Orleans, which was partially flooded, lost at least 19 branches of a particular bank. The bank was called Hibernia at the time. It is now Capital One. A lot of folks know the Capital One banking system. Nineteen banks under water for about three months. By the time these banks were finally cleaned out and opened up, it turned out that the safety deposit boxes in those banks were under water of course for that length of time, and everything in those safety deposit boxes was ruined.

That would be stock certificates. That would be cash. That would be anything of paper. Gold and silver would probably have been the right thing to have in there except in the case of those banks, many of them were opened without the owner's present, so the question of hard money as opposed to paper money as opposed to stock certificates I think is answered with that example. The banks were closed. If you had a favorite bank on the corner and you went down to try to do business there and you found that it was closed because it was under water or any reason, you were out of luck for a while. If you didn't have electricity, if you didn't have the computers, if you didn't have a way to draw some of your money, some of your wealth, a pocket full of silver would have done a lot of good.

Most of the folks, over 100,000 of the people in New Orleans left the city and never came back. What did they take with them? Did they take mountains of furniture and mountains of personal belongings? No. They got in their cars and they just started driving. A lot of them ended up in Houston, Texas. When they got to Houston, they had what they had on their backs and in their pockets. I would think that gold and silver would have been an easier thing to carry with them than would tons and tons of supplies that they might have been lucky enough to put away along the way, like bottles of water and stores of food and things like that.

It wouldn't have been any problem at all to take that gold and silver and change it into usable currency. Dollar bills I guess would be useful currency in Houston. It wouldn't have been any trouble to take that and restore some of their chances of survival after having escaped the city.

Mike Gleason: Natural disasters are one thing, but preparing for a financial disaster is simply an imperative, given the economic and monetary environment we live in today. And not only did we come very close to a total financial catastrophe recently, we also might see something worse than the collapse we nearly saw a few years ago based on the response to that near miss. Talk about that situation, because I don't think many Americans know the full story about that fateful weekend in September of 2008.

Guy Christopher: It really is remarkable, Mike, that the date was the 14th of September, 2008. It was a Sunday night. The banking system was imploding. It was over-leveraged. The Federal government was holding non-stop meetings day and night that weekend to try to save some of these banks and they chose to let one called Lehman Brothers, which was a behemoth of a financial institution, they chose to let it go, and worked out a deal where they would just find the cash, print the cash to shore up the banking system. Of course many other banks failed in the following weeks. The problem we had, or the problem the United States government had and the problem the world had was too much debt, so how did they try to solve it? By issuing more debt and they've been issuing that debt to the tune of uncounted trillions of dollars now for the past six years.

Nobody knows how much money is in circulation. I know that governments have computers and statistical analysts and things like that, but I doubt seriously anybody knows how much paper money is floating around out there and so what we have is a problem that we cannot even identify. It's that bad. The debt is mounting. There's no end in sight to it and at some point that debt is going to bring the financial system down, and I mean the global financial system, and it may come down in domino form or it may come down all at once overnight. Who knows? The problem is we don't know how it's going to look because we've never in history had a situation like this before.

It's very dangerous and I wish more folks would pay attention to that danger. Unfortunately they don't hear about that danger day in and day out the way they hear about other news events or other social events, so it's not on their minds. It's very few, very few folks actually take the time to sit down and say to themselves what's going on in the world and how can I protect myself? How can I plan on surviving if in fact things don't go the way the governments tell us they're going? The governments are telling us that the economy is improving. Look at the stock market. The stock market is going up every day.

Now we know from several sources that the Central Banks are buying those stocks. The companies themselves are doing stock buy-backs. The stock market is being held aloft artificially. The value is not there. The value that is supposedly reflected in the very high numbers the stock market is showing, the value is not there. That is a mirage and that mirage one day, it's a bubble that's just going to pop. When it does, financial institutions around the country are going to fail. They're going to come down crashing. Banks are going to close. Disruptions are going to start occurring everywhere.

Transportation, power, and of course financial institutions. When those disruptions occur, lives begin to change, and we've already seen that in this country. Millions and millions of people are on some sort of government handout, some sort of welfare, whether it's food stamps or government assistance of some sort, those lives have been in effect ruined by what happened September 14th, 2008. I say to folks whenever I can, it's important that you sit down and think about what's going to happen if the worst happens, and why would you worry about that? Because history tells us we are at a point we have never been before and we need to be vigilant about surviving financially, spiritually, and in every other way.

Mike Gleason: One of the things we often talk to customers about is that precious metals is almost like a form of insurance. Gold and silver, we don't necessarily like it as much as we do because it's shiny and pretty, it's really a form of protection against the paper collapse or the financial collapse, the banking collapse that you just spoke about, having something that would be usable in one of those types of events. You're going to be darn glad you had it if you needed it versus not needing it and having it.

Guy Christopher: Sure. If you don't need it, that's great. You haven't lost any money. You can always turn around and sell it. Folks like Money Metals Exchange and other bullion dealers, they really are the bankers of the bullion industry and it's very easy to turn that metal into the cash that's used whenever you are, whether it's dollars, whether it's Euros, whether it's pesos or whatever it is you're using. It's very easy to turn that money back into the cash that you would need to get through everyday life. I would think that if we don't have it, we are at a great disadvantage.

Unfortunately as I said and as we all know, so few people are really paying attention to that and that's going to be a terrible, terrible thing for all of us to face when friends and relatives and folks we care about who have not paid attention are suddenly destitute just because they didn't pay a little bit of attention to some insurance of trying to ensure their wealth. They spent their lives building their wealth and they've spent their lives enjoying their wealth, but for some reason protecting that wealth seems to be a problem that they just don't understand.

Mike Gleason: So many people are very quick to get the homeowners insurance or the auto insurance, but they don't seem to have currency insurance so to speak. Everything we're talking about here today, Guy, falls into a category of subjects that the Wall Street and banking elite in this country would rather people just not hear. You examined this subject in one of your other recent articles where you uncovered the reasons why your local stockbroker hates gold. You used to play in that Wall Street world a number or years ago yourself, so you have a unique perspective on the matter, but give our listeners a few reasons metals are pooh-poohed or viewed with just outright disdain in the main stream financial industry.

Guy Christopher: That was fun to write. I actually went to some old stock broker friends and told them I was writing an article about the stockbroker attitudes towards gold and even though they did not want to be named of course, they were pretty open with me. Number one, the biggest problem they had with it is they don't make any recurring commissions on it. Once you buy gold, that's pretty much the end of it. Gold is private wealth. Gold is not listed on an exchange anywhere. You don't have to worry about annual statements. You don't have to worry about CEOs going to jail either. You don't have to worry about gold being perp-walked across the street for television cameras.

Gold is not the type of thing that they're used to selling because it doesn't pay annual commissions. A lot of folks don't understand that even profits that you make from a stock account, when they are reinvested in some contracts, those profits are subject to new commissions and so if you make 10% on your money and that 10% amounts to $10,000, six percent of $10,000 is 600 bucks, which comes off the top, goes into the stock brokers pocket and you get the other $9,400 put back into your stock account. With gold, they can't do that. The other reason that they hate gold is because gold represents independence. Gold represents something that the United States government has tried to drum out of the American psyche for eight decades now ever since FDR went to war against gold owners back in 1933.

The government doesn't want you having wealth. The government prefers you having debt. And in order to make you comfortable with that, the government has been on a very long campaign to convince you that debt is wealth. A lot of Americans, too many Americans have bought into that idea that it's a simple equation. I can spend money with a credit card. I can write a check. What do I need with real wealth to spend? A credit card is really a derivative. You're actually borrowing money into existence whenever you swipe that credit card. You are borrowing money into existence just as a bank loans money into existence when it writes a loan to somebody.

That money doesn't come off the shelf in a back room somewhere. It's instantly created out of thin air. That debt is now in the hundreds of trillions, if not thousands of trillions circulating around the world, and it's an unsustainable system because at some point, someone is going to want to get paid. Someone is going to want wealth for that debt and there isn't enough wealth to cover that wealth, so that brings us right back to the terrible, terrible catastrophe that is looming. I can't say it's coming tomorrow or next week or next year, but it's coming. It's coming one day to this country and it's coming one day to the globe because the debt is unsustainable.

I've been reading for the last couple of days very interesting articles about France. This morning, just today, one of the major political parties in France is now clamoring to have French gold brought back to France from New York, London, Ottawa, places where French gold has been stored. We have a very serious question in Switzerland about gold, which you folks have been writing about. I notice David Smith may have written something about it very recently. The Swiss are actually having an election, a referendum to decide whether or not to force their central bank to return to some sort of semi-gold standard by holding gold and building up their gold reserves.

This is the same thing we've seen in Germany. It's very close to what Venezuela did a few years ago when they demanded that over 100 tons of gold be returned to Venezuela. Folks around the world are starting to pay some attention to this. Unfortunately it's not mainstream news in the United States. It's mainstream news in Europe. It's mainstream news in Asia, but it's not mainstream news in the United States.

Mike Gleason: It's really an issue of national security and I think that's why a lot of these countries are recognizing the dangers in having the gold held outside of their control. We're seeing a tremendous amount of gold from the US stockpiles leave and go to Asia. In another article you wrote titled, “Warning: Three Million People Covet Your Gold”, you paint a very interesting picture of how prevalent gold is in China and I want to read and excerpt from that column and then get your comments. You wrote:

"Gold watchers today make two important comparisons. China is known to be buying gold while the US is strongly suspected to be selling its gold, and the US is widely thought to have much less than it claims while China is fully believed to have much more than it admits.

China now seems weary of the paper money it invented over a thousand years ago. Yes, gold goes where it is best loved and most appreciated. That means China has backed up the truck. If you worry who might every buy your gold and silver, talk to the folks with thousands of years more experience with failed governments and failed currencies than we Americans have. Be assured that nearly half of the world's population, over there billion customers happily stand in line to buy your gold and silver with their unwanted dollars. But don't necessarily expect to get those precious metals back!"

What do they know that we don't and what should the average American be thinking about here?

Guy Christopher: That example I think hits the nail on the head, not because I wrote it, but because it's actually very, very telling. China, Vietnam, the Mideast, those nations have thousands of years of history that the United States of America does not have. We have 230 some odd years of history. They have thousands of years, 2300 years of history, ten times as much as we do, and their histories are constant revolutions, constant changes of government, constant changes of borders, changes of flags, changes of leadership, and along the way, those folks have dealt with a lot of blown up currencies, whether they were paper currencies or whether they were something else, those folks woke up one day year after year, decade after decade discovering their money was no good unless that money was gold, silver, or copper, and they have that memory in their DNA.

They are born knowing gold and silver is money. Quoting J.P. Morgan back in 1904, I think it was, “gold is money and nothing else.” Those folks overseas know this stuff. Americans do not. Americans may have known it in the 1800s, the early 1900s, but that's been drummed out of Americans over the past century. The idea of real wealth to hold onto has been drummed out of American psyches, and the reason for that is because the government prefers you be in debt. That's why they issue you money that is clearly debt. That's why they don't want you using gold and silver. The folks overseas understand this. The governments overseas understand this, especially China.

China is very cagy. Those people are not dumb. They're not buying every ounce of gold they can find for just the heck of it. They understand that it is money to at least three billion people, and they understand that it is power, and they understand that governments around the world understand gold even if their people do not understand it. The Chinese, the Middle Eastern countries, many of these countries are our enemies unfortunately. They're not very friendly to us and we're not very friendly with them and while they are amassing all of this gold and other natural resources, oil, timber, what else you can name, there's plenty of things that China is buying, everything from seaports to agricultural property.

China is a very big player in Africa where they are developing gold mines. They're developing agricultural properties. They understand that real wealth is not paper money. They understand that true wealth is physical stuff that you can use, that you can use to live off of, that you can trade, and unfortunately Americans don't understand that for the most part. I would say 1%, 2% or Americans have even held a gold coin in their hands, much less owned one. The idea of gold and silver is very foreign to us. However, I have seen a lot of evidence lately that that is changing. It's slow. It's going to take a while to change, but it is changing.

More and more folks I think are paying some attention to the problems of the United States debt. They're paying attention to the loss of the United States prestige around the world. One of the problems I think we see is that our enemies and our friends don't have the respect for us that they used to have. Our enemies are not afraid of us as they used to be or as they should be, and our friends are abandoning us in great numbers. Every time one of them signs a deal with China, that cuts the United States’ petro dollar out of the equation. Without the world using dollars for international commerce, the United States government is out of business.

The United States government loses all credibility if the dollar loses credibility. That is at play right now, and as you mentioned a minute ago, it's probably one of the greatest dangers to this country that we face right now.

Mike Gleason: I couldn't agree more. Certainly our position as the world's reserve currency is aiding us quite a bit in keeping this whole system afloat longer than many would have expected, but it definitely does have an end in sight I would say. Now it's worth noting that with the holidays now in full tilt, our listeners will probably have a few more opportunities for family interactions and one of the topics that Guy has covered in the past is how to talk to your friends and family about gold and silver so everyone ought to check out that article at MoneyMetals.com, but since we have you here with us Guy, can you give our podcast listeners a couple of pointers on how to broach the subject with loved ones and what kinds of things should they expect when doing so?

Guy Christopher: My Christmas shopping is done because I got my hands on a very small order of quite a few silver rounds and some gold that I intend to use as Christmas presents. I don't think there's a better sales pitch for gold and silver than to let someone use a gold or silver coin in his hand, to look at it, to feel the heft of it, to see the gleam of a gold or silver coin, and so I regularly have for years given gold and silver coins to relatives or friends for Christmas presents, and when I do of course, they say "thank you very much, this is very nice”, and I say I want you to look at it and think about it because you might want to think about buying some of those, a couple of rolls of this or that, for yourself. That sometimes opens up the conversation.

It's like giving someone a puppy. Even if they really want a puppy or they don't, but it's a heck of a surprise when you show up with a puppy and say I'm giving you this dog for a gift, folks just have to be conditioned. They don't have the education. They don't have the history to understand that gold and silver is really important and so it takes a little bit of prodding, a little bit of education to get folks to talk about these things sometimes. It takes a little bit of patience to work with those folks who you care about so that they too might one day see the wisdom, the beauty of precious metals and what those precious metals can do for you.

Mike Gleason: Guy, great stuff. Thanks so much for your insights. Certainly keep up the good work and definitely want to do this with you again real soon.

Guy Christopher: I have enjoyed working with you folks at the Money Metals Exchange a lot and I look forward to working with you a lot more and I think you're a good group of folks.

Mike Gleason: Thank you very much, and yeah, likewise. That will do it for this week. Thanks again to Guy Christopher. Check back next Friday for our next weekly Market Wrap podcast. Until then, this has been Mike Gleason with Money Metals Exchange. Thanks for listening and have a great Thanksgiving weekend everybody.

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Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.

Coming up later in today’s program we’ve got a fantastic interview with MoneyMetals.com columnist Guy Christopher. Guy shares some helpful tips on how to talk to your family and friends about the importance of gold and silver, and offers up some of his other great insights as well. You won’t want to miss my interview with Guy Christopher, coming up after this week’s market update.

For the third week in a row, the gold market traded up near $1,300 an ounce. And for the third week in a row, sellers came in to defend that major resistance level.

Gold prices currently come in at $1,291, posting a weekly advance now of 0.3%. Silver also shows a small gain, up 0.5% this week to bring spot prices to $17.13 an ounce. Relatively quiet trading is taking place in both the platinum and palladium markets as well, with prices checking in at $984 and $935 an ounce, respectively.

Elsewhere in the metals universe, copper is on the move. On Thursday, copper prices surged above $3 a pound to a three year high. Base metals are benefiting from recovering industrial demand out of Asia and concerns about limited global supplies.

The mining industry nearly got obliterated by the bear market of 2011-2015. Whether it’s copper, nickel, gold, or silver, metals prices have only recently recovered enough to save more mines from closing. It will take much higher prices to actually bring new production online.

Meanwhile, political uncertainty could help drive safe-haven demand for precious metals and weigh on the stock market in the weeks ahead. President Donald Trump is growing frustrated with the uninspired and legislatively unproductive leadership of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. This week Trump feuded with McConnell and other establishment Republicans. Trump told Congress that it must provide funding for a border wall in its bill to fund the government or else risk triggering a government shutdown.

Threats of government shutdowns have happened so regularly in recent years that markets might take it in stride. But the calls on the left for Trump’s impeachment aren’t stopping. If Trump’s rocky relationship with Republican leaders in Congress worsens, that will only put his policy agenda – and possibly his presidency – into further jeopardy.

Trump has few allies in corporate America. Silicon Valley is now pursuing what amounts to political content censorship online. First, they come for the alt-right… then they come for anyone to the right of centrist Mitt Romney.

The concept of “de-platforming” people who hold political views that offend social justice activists first gained traction on college campuses. It spread to social media sites. Now social justice warriors are going after people’s finances. They’re getting individuals and organizations they don’t like de-platformed from the credit card processing system.

This week, leading online payments processor PayPal booted several conservative groups, including Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch. Far from being an organization that promotes violent extremism, its whole purpose is to oppose it. But Jihad Watch was nevertheless financially de-platformed for promoting alleged “hate speech.”

Stuart Varney (Fox Business News): PayPal kicked Jihad Watch out. Said it could no longer raise money through them. Why? Because leftist groups said, Jihad Watch showed "Extreme hostility to Muslims." They equated conservative opinion with hate.

Robert Spencer (Director of Jihad Watch): The thing about it is PayPal, just like the other leftist groups that were behind us, notably the Southern Poverty Law Center, they don't allow any appeal. They don't allow you to decent, to discuss, to debate, to explain.

After much outcry from conservatives, PayPal restored the account of Jihad Watch. But many other groups remain blacklisted by PayPal and other online payment processing services based on their political views. Even the leading Bitcoin exchange Coinbase has succumbed to pressure to close accounts based on “hate” lists drawn up by leftists.

Very dangerous precedents are now being set that threaten financial freedom as we have known it. Just a small number of companies have the technical ability to ban anyone they want from e-commerce for holding the wrong opinions. Outrage mobs are trying to retrofit the internet onto the “index card of allowable opinion,” as free-market economist Tom Woods puts it.

They probably won’t succeed in doing that. But they can succeed in making it financially costly to be politically incorrect.

The sudden emergence of online financial de-platforming serves as a warning against going completely cashless. Your access to the digital economy can be turned off by the corporations that control it. Even your ability to use digital crypto-currencies could be revoked. They are harder to control than credit card systems. But a future law aimed at combating so-called “hate speech,” or terrorism, or drug trafficking, or something else could force crypto-currency exchanges offline and relegate Bitcoin to the dark web.

In the totally cashless society that bankers and government bureaucrats want to take us toward, people could become digitally purged from the economy. Those banned from using credit cards or smartphone apps would find themselves unable to buy anything. They’d be left to survive through begging and barter.

This isn’t necessarily where the war on cash and the war on politically incorrect speech will lead. It’s where they could lead in a worst-case scenario.

Other threats such as hacking and digital theft make it prudent for everyone to hold a significant portion of their wealth in tangible form. It’s not a bad idea to have a few hundred dollars in paper cash for convenience during an emergency. But physical precious metals are a superior long-term store of value and should make up the bulk of your tangible wealth stash.

Well now, without further delay, let’s get right to this week’s exclusive interview.

Mike Gleason: It is my privilege to bring in Guy Christopher now, one of our featured columnists on our MoneyMetals.com website. Guy is an investigative journalist and published author, but he's also a former stock broker and veteran of the 101st Airborne serving in the Vietnam War. All of this real world experience combined with his communication skills has helped provide our readers and customers with some really great insights. Since joining our team he's written some hard-hitting columns, even one or two that might have challenged you a bit. Guy, welcome. It's great to have you on with us today.

Guy Christopher: Mike, thank you for having me. It's very kind of you.

Mike Gleason: I want to talk to you about two of your recent articles in particular, the first one titled, "You and I Have No Right to Be Scared." In that piece, you give an illustration of just how bad things have been getting and how incredibly important it is to own precious metals given the current landscape; but even with all the events of the last 10 or 15 years, it can still be hard for people to overcome that first psychological hurdle.

I want to read an excerpt from your article and then get your comments. You wrote,

"Buying precious metals for the first time is a big move; I know. Now you worry if that's the right decision, that perhaps you don't yet know enough about precious metals. You've heard they make awful investments, while the Dow is hitting all-time highs. When the time comes to convert some cash into gold and silver, once again, you get scared. Except this time, you have no right to be scared. None at all. Neither do I."

Explain your thinking there.

Guy Christopher: I guess psychologically it might have to do with being inside of a crowd, it's easy to do things when the crowd is going along with you. My feeling when I was first buying gold and silver, which was about 10 years ago, I was all alone and I felt all alone and I couldn't go to friends and say, "Oh, look what I paid $800 for or $600 for." When I did, once or twice, I got strange looks and like, "Whoa! What are you wasting your money on that for?" So I had to rely on my own instincts that I was doing the right thing. There wasn't a big crowd of folks standing there with me and there wasn't a crowd of folks or a line of folks behind me if I decided I made a mistake and needed to turn around and sell it; there was nobody to sell it to.

That was the emphasis for writing that story. I felt that it was important to let folks know that when they have those feelings, they aren't alone today. The folks who had a right to be scared were the folks who were buying the stuff 10 to 15 years ago when there was no one else standing in the line.

Mike Gleason: Certainly, the world has changed a tremendous amount since then and we've got governments that are just spending money like nobody's business here and the dollars continue to get devalued. Precious metals are just an extremely important part of a person's personal financial strategy, is it not? That's certainly one of the main reasons I think you're in the camp that they were in here…you've got so many reasons out there to own it. Like you said, there's no reason to be scared, given everything that we've got, it's a scary proposition to not own any precious metals, right?

Guy Christopher: Well that’s right. The world was not as scary 15 years ago as it is today. Fifteen years ago we didn't know of all the horrors and manipulations that we are going through today. The government, the political structure, trillions and trillions of dollars in debt that we didn't have to deal with back then, but there were indications and it was those indications that helped those folks who bought gold and silver early on. It was their instincts that the indications were pointing to bad things coming and then guess what; bad things did come.

Today, we have every piece of knowledge in front of us that says hey, you have everything you need to make a decision right now. You know what direction the country seems to be headed in, you know what societal changes are being made and you also know that the US dollar is a lot weaker because it's been printed into an infinity, that the US dollar is so much weaker now that history and mathematics tells us the dollar is not going to survive.

Once you have all that information in front of you, you should have a pretty good basis for making an informed decision as to what to do with your money.

Mike Gleason: How did you come up with the idea through this column? Was it based on a real experience you had, perhaps or what was the driving force?

Guy Christopher: Yes. I'm happy to tell that story. I was out on a meeting that ran late one night and as I was leaving in the meeting, two ladies, married, children, approached me and said, "We heard you say something gold and silver. We’d like to take you to lunch." And I said to them, "How about I take you to a coin convention." We had one coming up in the area about a week later. Now coin conventions, the name is coin convention but obviously there's a lot of bullion being sold at coin conventions.

I met these gals at the show that following weekend and walked them through the show. It's an interesting thing to walk into a hotel ballroom with $50 million on a table in gold and silver. We spent about an hour meeting people and looking at the displays and I was explaining this is a roll of this and this is a bag of that. They'd never really noticed 90% silver, they didn't know what a bag of 90% silver was. They'd probably never seen a Silver Eagle or a Gold Eagle bullion coin for that matter.

We sat and talked and they kind of looked at each other and I'd said, well, perhaps these gals aren't ready and I mentioned to them, "Why don't we go get a cup of coffee?" We went to the coffee shop and we sat there and we talked for a moment and they said, "Well, we're kind of scared about this, this is a lot of money to be forking over for this stuff."

That's when I said to them just off the cuff, "You have don't have a right to be scared. The guys who were making these shows 15 years ago when there was nobody else in the show, when they were the only customers in the room, those are the people who had a right to be scared."

They looked at each other and I said (to myself), “well I don't know if I've lost them or not.” I got up and refreshed my coffee and came back and I said them, "Well I guess, ladies, I'm going to stick around," and they said, "No, we're ready to go. We're ready to buy now."

Over the next hour and a half, with my help, they spent $15,000 buying for the first time in their lives gold, silver, 90% bags and stuff like that. I never forgot that story. The two ladies have become very good friends of mine, their families and I are very good friends today and they are still buying gold and silver; I hear from them all the time.

Mike Gleason: That leads me to my next question here and then we're going to move on to the one of the other columns you penned for us, one titled, "What to Expect When Telling Friends About Gold and Silver." You've mentioned a success story there but we often run into a lot of opposition and I don't know if it's my imagination here, but it seems like most people are programmed to turn their nose up at gold and silver as either risky or wacky or somehow a stupid thing to own. Why is that, do you think?

Guy Christopher: It's simply because Americans have been conditioned to see money, gold and silver, credit cards, dollar bills in a way that is unhealthy, financially and monetarily. For the last eighty years, the government has been pretty successful in drumming gold and silver out of the American psyche. They replaced it quite easily, I think too easily, they replaced the constitutional money, gold and silver, they replaced it with credit cards, they replaced it with debt.

They convinced Americans that debt is money rather than gold and silver. They had the schools who helped them, of course. The government fund schools and so schools do what the governments tell them. They had Hollywood on their side and of course they had the media on their side. And so for decades, Americans have been hearing that it's good to be in debt. If you watch television, one of the ads I see constantly is let's go get a credit check, let's get a free credit check.

I don't see any ads from the government saying hey, you should be buying gold and silver. I supposed that if it’s that difficult to get folks to get interested in gold and silver that it shouldn't be a big surprise that you can talk to 100 people and only find two or three who are actually interested. After a while you're almost ready to give up.

I found a technique that I call the "kitchen table seminar". I invite folks who seem to be interested to my house or I get an invitation to their house, Sunday afternoon and I sit down at their kitchen table with them and I spread out gold and silver on the kitchen table. I found that once they get a one ounce Silver Eagle in their hand, they seem to have a better idea of just what it is we're talking about. There's something about a gold coin in your hand that it's kind of magical and it's certainly a lot easier to convince a close friend or a relative that they should take a hard look at gold and silver when you can show them that your money is where your mouth is.

Now obviously, you have to sit down with trusted folks, I don't invite strangers in, but I do find that my success rate is a little higher than average when I sit down with folks and show them, empty a bag of 90% silver on a table and folks perk up and they say, "That looks like the old change from the old days." Well it is the old change from the old days when they made it in silver and now this old change from the old days is worth a great deal of money, great deal of paper money.

That demonstration I found is a lot more effective and it's obviously more effective than just sitting and talking to someone over a cup of coffee.

Mike Gleason: I think we can all relate to the struggles of trying to get the point across and if you’ve got your conviction then don't lose that and just continue to fight a good fight, I suppose. I really do believe like you do that it's incredibly important that people have some sort of protection against what may be coming and a collapse in paper that seem somewhat inevitable, so we certainly want to continue to share the gold and silver story with folks who have not heard it or don't seem to buy into it just yet.

Now you also point out the great hypocrisy that's taking place in government and among the central banks. Well on one hand, they're tirelessly trying to get the citizens to look down on precious metals; they're secretly dealing in gold behind the scenes. Explain what's happening there.

Guy Christopher: We could start with Ben Bernanke who told Ron Paul a few years ago in Congressional hearings that Ron Paul asking, "Is gold money?" and he said, "No, it's an asset, but it's not money." That is the official line from the government but the truth is that governments know a darn well that gold is money. We know that because they hoard gold and they sell gold and they do it secretly and they won't tell us anything about it. It's been for quite a few years since we've had a proper audit of Fort Knox. 1953 was the last credible audit of Fort Knox and the reason we can't get any hard information on where the gold is and who owns it is because the government doesn't want us to know about it. The government prefers that we see the dollar bill as money. The dollar bill is debt. There's nothing backing it except full faith in credit and that full faith in credit right now is on the edge of the cliff as we all know.

So with that situation that the government won't tell us what's going in with our own gold and silver, that's America's gold, it's not Federal Reserve’s, with that situation it tells us that the government is in trouble. It tells us that the government is keeping secrets that they cannot possibly reveal because if they do reveal those secrets a lot of trouble is going to come their way. They're protecting themselves, not protecting the country.

Mike Gleason: Definitely something people need to be very mindful of what’s happening on that front. Well Guy, great stuff. Thanks very much for your insights. I have to say that I personally have really enjoyed your writings and look forward to reading more, as well as having you discuss those with our audience here. So keep up the good work and hopefully we'll talk with you again soon.

Guy Christopher: Mike, I appreciate the opportunity to share some of these thoughts with. Thanks for your invitation.

Mike Gleason: Well that will do it for this week. Thanks again to Guy Christopher, Money Metals columnist.

Check out his work at MoneyMetals.com and tune in next Friday for our next weekly Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. Until then, this has been Mike Mike Gleason with Money Metals Exchange. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend everybody.

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"","secondary_keywords":"","publish_date":"2017-08-25","podcast_url":"http://traffic.libsyn.com/moneymetals/ILB-170825-WeeklyMarketWrap.mp3","quick_text":"...","author_id":2,"content_type_id":3,"created_at":"2017-08-25T16:12:03.000000Z","updated_at":"2019-07-12T16:23:34.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"Audio Alert: Gold & Silver Bumping Up to Key Levels","meta_description":"Today we’ve got a fantastic interview with MoneyMetals.com columnist Guy Christopher. Guy shares some helpful tips on how to talk to your family and friends about the importance of gold and silver, and offers up some of his other great insights as wel","podcast_duration":"23:18","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher.jpg","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"","facebook_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher-social.jpg","twitter_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher-social.jpg","status":1,"show_guest_author":1,"guest_author_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/guy-christopher-xs.jpg","guest_author_name":"Guy Christopher","guest_author_description":"Guy Christopher, one of our featured columnists on MoneyMetals.com, is an investigative journalist and published author. He's also a former stock broker and veteran of the 101st Airborne serving in the Vietnam War. All of this real world experience combin","h2_header":"Guy Christopher's Advice on Talking to Your Friends & Family about Gold","image_width":700,"image_height":368,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"podcasts/2017/08/25/metals-flirt-with-breakout-001143","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher.jpg","truncated_description":"Today we’ve got a fantastic interview with MoneyMetals.com columnist Guy Christopher. Guy shares som...","pretty_publish_date":"August 25th, 2017"}},{"page_description":"Today we’ll replay an interview with Guy where he shares some helpful tips on how to talk to your friends and family about the importance of gold and silver. More timeless wisdom from the late Guy Christopher.","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher-social.jpg","page_title":"South Africa Political Disaster; Guy Christopher: Tips for Discreetly Discussing Gold & Silver","page_type":"podcast","score":14.02714201815394,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/podcasts/2018/08/10/south-africa-political-disaster-001592","data":{"id":1592,"title":"South Africa Political Disaster; Guy Christopher: Tips for Discreetly Discussing Gold & Silver","description":"Today we’ll replay an interview with Guy where he shares some helpful tips on how to talk to your friends and family about the importance of gold and silver. More timeless wisdom from the late Guy Christopher.","rss_title":"South Africa Political Disaster; Guy Christopher: Tips for Discreetly Discussing Gold & Silver","slug":"south-africa-political-disaster","h1_header":"South Africa Political Disaster to Bolster Precious Metals","content":"

Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.

Coming up we’ll continue our recent tribute to Guy Christopher, one of our most popular columnists at MoneyMetals.com who recently passed away. Throughout his time with us here at Money Metals, Guy would enlighten our listeners and readers as only he could, and we frequently had the privilege of discussing his insightful articles with him here on our weekly podcasts.

Today we’ll replay an interview with Guy where he shares some helpful tips on how to talk to your friends and family about the importance of gold and silver. More timeless wisdom from the late Guy Christopher, coming up after this week's market update.

Well, paper speculators continue to test the patience of physical holders of precious metals as we endure another week of lackluster market action.

Hedge funds are helping to depress gold prices by taking out record naked short positions in the futures market. At some point they will have to cover these positions, which will generate big buying volumes and possibly a big price rally. Odds favor at least something of a bounce in the near future off these deeply oversold levels.

Gold prices currently come in at $1,214 an ounce and is now essentially unchanged for the week. Silver trades 0.5% lower since last Friday’s close to sport a $15.39 handle. Platinum prices are flat for the week to trade at $836. And finally, palladium is off a slight 0.4% at $915 per ounce as of this Friday morning recording

Whether metals markets can stage more than just a technical bounce from these levels… whether they can actually put in a major bottom… will depend on the fundamentals. In the near term, it’s all about paper machinations and manipulations. In the long term, it’s all about physical supply and demand – the forces that should cause precious metals prices to trend higher over not just months but years.

On the demand side, it’s true that investor buying has been soft since President Donald Trump’s election in 2016. That likely won’t change until the politics change or the major uptrend in the stock market reverses. As you may have heard, there will be an election this fall. If Democrats sweep back into power in Congress, that would bode ill for the Trump economic growth agenda going forward and could send investors fleeing for safe-haven assets, including gold and silver.

Even if that doesn’t play out, supply destruction has the potential to pressure prices higher. Gold mining supply out of South Africa is plummeting, with production down 16% in the latest monthly report compared to last year. A variety of factors are crimping production, including low market prices and rising extraction costs.

Another negative factor for the industry is rising political risk. South Africa’s Marxist government is moving to impose stringent new rules on mining companies that are intended to redistribute wealth and promote “Black empowerment.” The government is stopping short of full nationalization – for now. But AngloGold Ashanti’s chairman said recently that he feared the government’s new Mining Charter could still kill the industry.

South Africa’s black majority government has embarked on what amounts to an ethnic cleansing campaign aimed at driving whites out of high-skilled jobs and kicking them off their land. As white farmers suffer horrific invasions by organized mobs that rape, torture, and murder the people who feed the country, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa vows to implement land expropriation without compensation.

Here is Ramaphosa in his own ominous words, followed by the words of militant land grab advocates at a recent town hall.

President Cyril Ramaphosa: The AMC will, through the parliamentary process, finalize a proposed amendment to the constitution that outlines more clearly the conditions under which expropriation of land without compensation can be effected. More explicit about expropriation of land without compensation.

Speaker at Town Hall Meeting: We must take our land either through policy or by force.

Speaker at Town Hall Meeting: Nothing stops us from taking the land by force. As a matter of fact, we are the majority here in South Africa.

Speaker at Town Hall Meeting: Us black people who are sick and tired of the white people...

Speaker at Town Hall Meeting: The white people that don't belong here in South Africa. White people are from Europe.

Speaker at Town Hall Meeting: Our patience is running out, and once that patience has run out, chairperson, we will have no alternative but to forcefully take this land back to us.

South Africa’s future now seems set – property rights will be trampled, human rights will be violated, and the non-racial constitutional democracy that Nelson Mandela had supposedly fought for will meet a Zimbabwe-style end. Unless the government changes course, economic collapse and hyperinflation will be the likely outcomes.

And that will have huge implications for gold, silver, platinum, and palladium markets. South Africa is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of these precious metals. But it’s hard to run a mining business – or any business – inside a country that is actively pursuing Communist economic policies. If investors flee and mines shutter, then production will tank.

That would be a sad fate for a country that gave us the iconic Krugerrand. For over 50 years, the South African Krugerrand has been one of the best selling and most widely recognized gold coins in the world. The current Communist-inspired government at least seems to grasp the economic benefits of allowing these coins to be minted and sold despite their commemoration of 19th century Boer hero Paul Kruger.

The Krugerrand may one day be deemed politically incorrect by South African commissars and discontinued. But right now it is actually becoming more available to more investors at a more affordable price than ever before. That’s because for the first time, the South African Mint has released a bullion strike version of the 1-ounce silver Krugerrand – composed of .999 fine silver.

Silver Krugerrands share the iconic design features of gold Krugerrands. The coins’ face features the profile of Paul Kruger. He rose to prominence in the Second Boer War as South Africans of Dutch descent fought against British influence. Kruger went on to serve as president of the South African Republic from 1883 - 1902.

The coin's reverse depicts the Springbok antelope – a national symbol – bounding across a South African plain.

The silver Krugerrand is one of the most anticipated releases in recent years. The first batch of these brand new coins is now available for sale at Money Metals Exchange. The 2018 dated silver Krugerrands, being their first year of issue in a bullion form, are bound to move quickly.

And now, we’ll pay tribute to an American treasure, our late friend Guy Christopher, who during his time with us here on earth lived quite a life. He was a member of the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War and later worked as a stock broker, investigative journalist, and published author. All of this real-world experience combined with his communication skills helped him provide our readers and customers with some really great insights over the years.

Thousands of readers enjoyed and often commented on his writings at MoneyMetals.com. Today we’ll replay a conversation I had with Guy on a very important topic: how to talk to your friends and family about the importance of owning gold and silver. So, sit back and listen to our my conversation with a wonderful man and a great communicator, the late Guy Christopher.

I want to read an excerpt from your article and then get your comments. You wrote,

"Buying precious metals for the first time is a big move; I know. Now you worry if that's the right decision, that perhaps you don't yet know enough about precious metals. You've heard they make awful investments, while the Dow is hitting all-time highs. When the time comes to convert some cash into gold and silver, once again, you get scared. Except this time, you have no right to be scared. None at all. Neither do I."

Explain your thinking there.

Once you have all that information in front of you, you should have a pretty good basis for making an informed decision as to what to do with your money.

Mike Gleason: How did you come up with the idea through this column? Was it based on a real experience you had, perhaps or what was the driving force?

That demonstration I found is a lot more effective and it's obviously more effective than just sitting and talking to someone over a cup of coffee.

Guy Christopher: Mike, I appreciate the opportunity to share some of these thoughts with. Thanks for your invitation.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the replay of that interview with Guy Christopher as much as I did. It was always a joy to speak with Guy and he will be missed. After his passing a couple months back, we announced we are naming an academic scholarship award annually in memory of our late friend. The Guy Christopher People’s Choice award will be given to the student whose essay on sound money is the most popular of all our entries each year – a fitting tribute to Guy Christopher, who connected with our readers and customers in a remarkable way.

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"south africa political disaster podcast","secondary_keywords":"","publish_date":"2018-08-10","podcast_url":"http://traffic.libsyn.com/moneymetals/ILB-180810-WeeklyMarketWrap.mp3","quick_text":"...","author_id":2,"content_type_id":3,"created_at":"2018-08-10T17:03:35.000000Z","updated_at":"2019-07-11T18:01:25.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"Audio: South Africa Political Disaster to Bolster Precious Metals","meta_description":"Today we’ll replay an interview with Guy where he shares some helpful tips on how to talk to your friends and family about the importance of gold and silver. More timeless wisdom from the late Guy Christopher.","podcast_duration":"24:07","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher.jpg","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"","facebook_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher-social.jpg","twitter_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher-social.jpg","status":1,"show_guest_author":1,"guest_author_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/guy-christopher-xs.jpg","guest_author_name":"Guy Christopher","guest_author_description":"MoneyMetals.com columnist Guy Christopher is a seasoned writer living on the Gulf Coast. A retired investigative journalist, published author, and former stockbroker, Christopher has taught college as an adjunct professor and is a veteran of the 101st Air","h2_header":"Guy Christopher: Tips for Discreetly Discussing Gold & Silver with Family and Friends","image_width":700,"image_height":368,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"podcasts/2018/08/10/south-africa-political-disaster-001592","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher.jpg","truncated_description":"Today we’ll replay an interview with Guy where he shares some helpful tips on how to talk to your fr...","pretty_publish_date":"August 10th, 2018"}},{"page_description":"Coming up we’ll go down memory lane with Guy Christopher, one of our most popular columnists at MoneyMetals.com who recently passed away. Throughout his time with us here at Money Metals, Guy would often enlighten us as only he could, sharing his insights","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher-social.jpg","page_title":"Precious Metals Pull Back; Tribute to the Late Guy Christopher","page_type":"podcast","score":14.02613920146372,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/podcasts/2018/05/18/silver-hangs-tough-guy-christopher-tribute-001480","data":{"id":1480,"title":"Precious Metals Pull Back; Tribute to the Late Guy Christopher","description":"Coming up we’ll go down memory lane with Guy Christopher, one of our most popular columnists at MoneyMetals.com who recently passed away. Throughout his time with us here at Money Metals, Guy would often enlighten us as only he could, sharing his insights through his wonderful articles on our website, and we often had the privilege of discussing some of those stories with him here during our weekly podcasts.","rss_title":"Precious Metals Pull Back; Tribute to the Late Guy Christopher","slug":"silver-hangs-tough-guy-christopher-tribute","h1_header":"Precious Metals Pull Back but Silver Hangs Tough","content":"

Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.

Coming up we’ll go down memory lane with Guy Christopher, one of our most popular columnists at MoneyMetals.com who recently passed away. Throughout his time with us here at Money Metals, Guy would often enlighten us as only he could, sharing his insights through his wonderful articles on our website, and we often had the privilege of discussing some of those stories with him here during our weekly podcasts. Today we’ll replay an interview he gave a couple of years ago where he set the record straight on what two very well-known but very misunderstood stories – Robin Hood and The Wizard of Oz – were really about -- and he explained how these classics have been distorted and turned into socialistic or an anti-sound money narratives. You will not want to miss today’s replay of this fascinating interview with the late Guy Christopher, coming up after this week’s market update.

Precious metals markets faced selling pressure this week as bulls gave up some important technical ground to bears. Gold broke below the $1,300 level and currently trades at $1,291 an ounce, down 2.1% since last Friday’s close.

Silver also sold off early in the week, threatening to trigger a major breakdown out of a two-year consolidation. But buyers quickly came in to push prices back up into the white metal’s recent trading range. Silver currently checks in 1.7% lower for the week at $16.47 an ounce.

Platinum made a new price low for the year this week but did manage to hold above its 2017 low. Platinum now trades at $890 after this week’s 4.1% drop, while its sister metal palladium is off 2.4% to trade at $972 an ounce as of this Friday morning recording.

For weeks, hedge funds and other speculators have been holding huge short positions in metals futures markets. The shorts were especially lopsided in silver. This is not normally the kind of positioning you see at the beginning of a major selloff. Bearish sentiment usually maxes out near the end of a major downside move. The fact that traders came into this week’s trading positioned heavily on the bearish side is one indicator that the selling pressure may already be close to exhausted.

On a more fundamental basis, rising costs of production by precious metals miners should soon put a floor underneath prices. Rising energy and labor costs are making it more expensive to bring gold and silver out of the ground. In some cases, mines are producing at losses. At current prices, there is virtually no speculative premium on gold and silver, and that’s reflected in very low premiums across the board on most popular bullion products.

Crude oil prices are holding firm this week at around $72 per barrel. Some prominent energy analysts are calling for oil to hit $80 per barrel this summer and possibly $100 by next year as the effects of U.S. sanctions and ongoing depletion of existing oil sources take their toll. The record supply glut of a couple years ago is no more.

One way consumers and investors can hedge themselves against higher energy costs is by owning physical precious metals. They are, in a very real sense, a form of stored energy. Think of all the energy inputs required to move the earth… to separate relatively tiny quantities of precious metals from tons upon tons of rock and dirt… to refine the raw ore into pure gold, silver, platinum, or palladium. And finally, to mint the precious metal into beautiful bullion coins, rounds and bars.

All that energy is represented in a tangible form you can hold in your hand.

Silver in particular has practical applications in the production of energy. Silver is used in many types of batteries, including the ones that power smartphones and electric vehicles. Silver is also used in solar panels. Solar is the second fastest-growing energy source in the world and solar panel manufacturing is expected to consume at least 107 million ounces of silver in 2018.

Although solar is far less efficient at generating power than fossil fuels, this “clean” energy source enjoys government subsidies and mandates. California recently mandated that starting in 2020 all new homes in the state must have solar panels installed on them – regardless of whether buyers want them or not, regardless of whether they make economic sense or not.

The good news for those forced by the government to buy solar power systems is that solar energy has become more efficient in recent years. As prices for oil and natural gas rise, solar and other alternatives become relatively more cost effective. And the good news for precious metals investors is that more demand for solar panels means more demand for silver.

Now is a great time to bolster your reserves of this form of stored energy, while silver can still be had at bargain prices. The silver bullion products at Money Metals Exchange – from fractional tenth-ouncers all the way up to 100-ounce bars – are currently available at low premiums and with fast turn around on virtually all orders. If you want to know how

Well now, without further delay, let’s get to my interview with the late Guy Christopher, who during his time with us here on earth lived quite a life. He was a member of the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War and later worked as a stock broker, investigative journalist, and published author. All of this real-world experience combined with his communication skills has helped him provide our readers and customers with some really great insights over the years. Thousands of readers enjoyed and often commented on his writings at MoneyMetals.com. We hope you’ll enjoy one this conversation as we remember and pay tribute to a great American.

"Old Hickory's 1836 victory held steady until 1913, when the bankers gathered in secret at Jekyll Island, Georgia to plot the greatest bank robbery in history. The scheme was simple. First, print all the money they wanted backed only by government promises. Then, day by day, steal all the wealth it represented through built-in, unstoppable inflation.

As more and more Federal Reserve debt coupons would litter the landscape their value would shrivel to less and less. Since government always has first use of cash hot off the presses, only unsuspecting taxpaying citizens would ever be financially harmed. It worked like a charm."

Guy Christopher: My thoughts are not optimistic. A quarter point is really meaningless. A quarter point doesn't mean a lot. You've had other guests on your program say the same thing, and I tend to agree with them. A quarter point is not such a big deal, but when you look at the big picture, the interest rate should tell you what your money is worth, what the savings you have is worth, what the money that the government is printing is worth.

Guy Christopher: Oh I think it's going to have a great impact. We're seeing it all over the world, we are seeing it big time here in this country. I read an article a few days ago that Donald Trump has broken all records for small donor donations. I think that a lot of folks who had given up on politics over the past 10, 20, 30, 40 years are waking up and saying, "I think I'll take a chance on this guy." Why? Do they love the fellow? Not necessarily, but he represents something that they think they've lost. I believe his support is looking at him as a fellow who might restore some of the things that have been lost to this country. I don't think they're necessarily in love with Trump, I think they are in love with a lot of the things he has to say.

Well I hope you enjoyed that the replay of that interview with Guy Christopher as much as I did. It was always a real joy to speak with Guy and he will truly be missed. And I’m pleased to announce today that Money Metals is naming an academic scholarship award and will do so every year in memory of our late friend. The Guy Christopher People’s Choice award will be given to the student whose essay on sound money is the most popular of all our entries each year – a fitting tribute to Guy Christopher, who connected with our readers and customers in a remarkable way.

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"silver hangs tough guy christopher tribute podcast","secondary_keywords":"","publish_date":"2018-05-18","podcast_url":"http://traffic.libsyn.com/moneymetals/ILB-180518-WeeklyMarketWrap.mp3","quick_text":"...","author_id":2,"content_type_id":3,"created_at":"2018-05-18T17:00:02.000000Z","updated_at":"2024-03-26T19:14:35.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"Audio Alert: Rising Oil Prices & Solar Demand May Boost Silver","meta_description":"Coming up we’ll go down memory lane with Guy Christopher, one of our most popular columnists at MoneyMetals.com who recently passed away. Throughout his time with us here at Money Metals, Guy would often enlighten us as only he could, sharing his insights","podcast_duration":"28:18","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher.jpg","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"","facebook_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher-social.jpg","twitter_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher-social.jpg","status":1,"show_guest_author":1,"guest_author_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/guy-christopher-xs.jpg","guest_author_name":"Guy Christopher","guest_author_description":"MoneyMetals.com columnist Guy Christopher is a seasoned writer living on the Gulf Coast. A retired investigative journalist, published author, and former stockbroker, Christopher has taught college as an adjunct professor and is a veteran of the 101st Air","h2_header":"Tribute to the Late Guy Christopher, former Money Metals Columnist","image_width":700,"image_height":368,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"podcasts/2018/05/18/silver-hangs-tough-guy-christopher-tribute-001480","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher.jpg","truncated_description":"Coming up we’ll go down memory lane with Guy Christopher, one of our most popular columnists at Mone...","pretty_publish_date":"May 18th, 2018"}},{"page_description":"This week we continue our recent tribute to Guy Christopher, who recently passed away. We replay an interview with Guy on the topic of personal responsibility, estate planning, and making sure you don't leave your loved ones with a financial nightmare and","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher-social.jpg","page_title":"Trump’s Trade War Begins; Guy Christopher’s Posthumous Wisdom on Estate Planning","page_type":"podcast","score":13.959710566973877,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/podcasts/2018/07/06/lack-of-gold-trump-trade-war-001568","data":{"id":1568,"title":"Trump’s Trade War Begins; Guy Christopher’s Posthumous Wisdom on Estate Planning","description":"This week we continue our recent tribute to Guy Christopher, who recently passed away. We replay an interview with Guy on the topic of personal responsibility, estate planning, and making sure you don't leave your loved ones with a financial nightmare and an unwelcome scavenger hunt.","rss_title":"Trump’s Trade War Begins; Guy Christopher’s Posthumous Wisdom on Estate Planning","slug":"lack-of-gold-trump-trade-war","h1_header":"Trump’s Trade War Begins: Is Lack of Gold a Hidden Factor?","content":"

Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.

Coming up we’ll continue our recent tribute to Guy Christopher, one of our most popular columnists at MoneyMetals.com who recently passed away. Throughout his time with us here at Money Metals, Guy would often enlighten us as only he could, sharing his insights through his wonderful articles on our website, and we often had the privilege of discussing some of those stories with him here during our weekly podcasts.

Today we’ll replay an interview with Guy on the topic of personal responsibility, estate planning, and making sure you don't leave your loved ones with a financial nightmare and an unwelcome scavenger hunt. Some timeless wisdom from the late Guy Christopher, coming up after this week's market update.

Precious metals markets attracted some buying interest in this first week of July following an ugly month of June. Gold prices fell 4.2% in June, their worst monthly showing since Donald Trump’s election.

The gold market bounced off deeply oversold levels on Tuesday. Spot gold prices currently come in at $1,256 an ounce, up a very slight 0.2% on the week.

The more speculative gold mining sector continues to show relative strength. The GDX gold miners ETF traded up near a 2-month high on Thursday. Mining stock investors seem to be anticipating a recovery in metals prices.

Turning to silver, the white metal is off 0.7% this week to trade at $16.02 aso. The red metal, meanwhile, has fallen off a cliff over the past month. Copper prices plunged 5% this week to 11-month lows on escalating trade wars between the United States and Canada, the European Union, and China. As an economically sensitive industrial metal, copper is responding to the potential for tariffs to crimp global demand.

The Trump administration’s $34 billion in tariffs on imported Chinese goods take effect this Friday. China is retaliating by slapping new 25% tariffs on U.S. goods. These tit for tat taxes on trade threaten to throw entire industries into turmoil as new sets of winners and losers emerge.

CBS News Anchor: The World Trade Organization says uncertainty about a possible trade war is already dragging down the world economy. The WTO issued that warning just before new U.S. tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports go into effect.

CNBC Anchor: So what we see now is rhetoric turning to reality on these Chinese tariffs. What is going to happen when they do take effect?

Steve Okun (Sr Advisor, McClarty Assoc): Well, let's remember we are already in a trade war. Donald Trump has been waging a trade war against the global trading system from the day he came into office.

If Trump’s trade wars backfire on the U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve could be forced to rethink its planned rate hikes. The recent strength in the U.S. dollar is also in jeopardy.

President Trump is playing a high stakes game with global trading partners. Perceived U.S. hostility could ultimately test the U.S. dollar’s status as world reserve currency.

China’s financial nuclear option in these trade wars would be to dump its $1.2 trillion in U.S. Treasury reserves. Other countries that are unhappy with U.S. tariffs and/or economic sanctions may increasingly replace their dollar reserves with gold.

Russia has bought heavily into gold in recent years. The Kremlin is now also slashing its holdings of U.S. bonds – from a high of $109 billion in 2017 to below $50 billion today. Russia is attempting to forge regional trading alliances that bypass the dollar.

For many others reasons, the U.S. dollar is slowly losing its privileged status in international trade. No other single national currency seems capable of replacing it at this time. As trade wars escalate, gold may increasingly come to be seen as the ultimate form of settlement.

Gold had played that role in the world economy explicitly until President Richard Nixon revoked the Bretton Woods system in 1971. Under that post-World War II agreement, foreign governments could convert their accumulated dollars into gold.

While not a true sound money system, it did link international trade to the discipline and stability of gold. Under Bretton Woods, the U.S. current account balance was positive. It has turned sharply negative in the years since, as deficits have exploded.

Gold serves as a check on politicians and international bankers who are keen on running up debts. Under a gold standard, a trade deficit country such as the United States would owe gold to trade surplus countries. Gold flows would be the balancing mechanism for accounts between countries.

Under our current fiat order, the terms of trade are all made arbitrarily on the fly by politicians and central bankers. The World Trade Organization and various trade agreements such as NAFTA aim to bind nations into the world order.

President Trump is serving as a great disruptor. He’s disrupting decades of arrangements put in place by globalists who clearly don’t have America’s interests at heart. The risk is that the rest of world refuses to accept Trump’s terms, shuns the U.S. in international trade, and dumps U.S. dollars. The opportunity is that as these trade wars escalate, they could spark a flight into gold as the ultimate form of money.

We all took time to honor America this week as we celebrated our nation’s birthday this past Wednesday. And now, we’ll pay tribute to an American treasure, our late friend Guy Christopher, who during his time with us here on earth lived quite a life. He was a member of the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War and later worked as a stock broker, investigative journalist, and published author. All of this real-world experience combined with his communication skills helped him provide our readers and customers with some really great insights over the years.

Thousands of readers enjoyed and often commented on his writings at MoneyMetals.com. Today we’ll replay a conversation I had with Guy on a very important topic. The interview begins with a question about an article he wrote several years ago titled You Worked to Have It... Now Work to Keep It, a piece about how many Americans, who may have been thoughtful and diligent when it comes to accumulating some wealth, are often totally neglectful when it comes to protecting it. As we start out this interview, I asked Guy to address the question about why so many people regularly overlook having this important conversation.

Unsecured creditor, means just what it says. No security.

Talk about this, because many people may not even be aware that this is how it works.

Mike Gleason: Well, you're certainly a big part of that, so thanks for your efforts and the role you play in that department.

Guy Christopher: Thank you, Mike. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the replay of that interview with Guy Christopher as much as I did. It was always a real joy to speak with Guy and he will truly be missed. After his passing a couple months back, we announced we are naming an academic scholarship award annually in memory of our late friend. The Guy Christopher People’s Choice award will be given to the student whose essay on sound money is the most popular of all our entries each year – a fitting tribute to Guy Christopher, who connected with our readers and customers in a remarkable way.

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"lack of gold trump trade war featured","secondary_keywords":"","publish_date":"2018-07-06","podcast_url":"http://traffic.libsyn.com/moneymetals/ILB-180706-WeeklyMarketWrap.mp3","quick_text":"...","author_id":2,"content_type_id":3,"created_at":"2018-07-06T17:56:18.000000Z","updated_at":"2019-07-11T19:09:37.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"Audio: Trump’s Trade War Gamble & the Role of Gold","meta_description":"This week we continue our recent tribute to Guy Christopher, who recently passed away. We replay an interview with Guy on the topic of personal responsibility, estate planning, and making sure you don't leave your loved ones with a financial nightmare and","podcast_duration":"26:53","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher.jpg","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"","facebook_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher-social.jpg","twitter_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher-social.jpg","status":1,"show_guest_author":1,"guest_author_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/guy-christopher-xs.jpg","guest_author_name":"Guy Christopher","guest_author_description":"MoneyMetals.com columnist Guy Christopher is a seasoned writer living on the Gulf Coast. A retired investigative journalist, published author, and former stockbroker, Christopher has taught college as an adjunct professor and is a veteran of the 101st Air","h2_header":"Guy Christopher’s Posthumous Wisdom on Estate Planning and Personal Responsibility","image_width":700,"image_height":368,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"podcasts/2018/07/06/lack-of-gold-trump-trade-war-001568","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/youtube-thumbnail-guychristopher.jpg","truncated_description":"This week we continue our recent tribute to Guy Christopher, who recently passed away. We replay an ...","pretty_publish_date":"July 6th, 2018"}},{"page_description":"Tales of the Wizard of Oz was a satire on the value & future of sound money. While for the Robin Hood folktale, Robin Hood was anti-government & busy hijacking the IRS!","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/fiction-fairy-tales-fiat-social.png","page_title":"What the Wizard of Oz & Robin Hood Can Teach You About Economics","page_type":"news","score":6.091152689385325,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2016/09/08/fiction-fairy-tales-fiat-000921","data":{"id":921,"title":"What the Wizard of Oz & Robin Hood Can Teach You About Economics","description":"Do young Americans today know anything about economics? No, they don't, according to a study during the 2016 presidential primary season, which says lots of other Americans don't either.","rss_title":"What the Wizard of Oz & Robin Hood Can Teach You About Economics","slug":"fiction-fairy-tales-fiat","h1_header":"Fiction, Fairy Tales, and Fiat","content":"

Do young Americans today know anything about economics?

No, they don't, according to a study during the 2016 presidential primary season, which says lots of other Americans don't either.

The survey found 58% of millennials favor government-run socialism (statistically 6 out of 10), while a nearly identical number (64%) don't want government interference in free markets.

The incompatible findings make no sense, unless... Americans aged 18-24 simply don't understand the real meanings of either concept.

Sadly, the study says that's true of one-third of all Americans. Not a clue. The evidence is the large following behind avowed socialist Bernie Sanders during his presidential campaign.

This lack of understanding is concerning, as the implications for individual lives and the nation's future are significant. Witness the latest failure of socialism in Venezuela, where millions are rebelling against the government-controlled economy driving their lives into the dirt.

We know one answer. The thrust of government-influenced, politically correct education for many decades has been to rewrite history and literature, aimed at growing government power while diminishing individual liberties. It starts with childhood.

The first global macro-economics lesson ever taught to children was The Legend of Robin Hood

Ask anyone, and you'll hear Robin Hood was the guy who robbed the rich to give to the poor. The ingrained implication is clear – sharing wealth through class conflict is the way to go.

Balladeers passed along this folk tale beginning 600 years ago. Since silent movie days, Robin Hood has been played as a champion of the oppressed by every major entertainer from Errol Flynn to Kermit The Frog.

Robin Hood Classic Comics

Even Bill Clinton marketed the popular view in recent days. “I was sorta Robin Hood,” he said, defending the millions he's raked in selling influence around the globe.

We're sorry to bring this up now, but we've all been living a lie.

The “rich” in Robin Hood's days were primarily government bureaucratic officials, bestowed with royal titles, and beholden to the king. Robin's constant nemesis was the Sheriff of Nottingham, the onerous, tyrannical tax collector.

The Merry Men of Sherwood Forest were in reality anti-government, anti-tax activists! Robin Hood was busy hijacking the IRS!

But that's certainly not a plot line government's compliant educators wanted to be planted in young, inquiring, minds. Over the years they pushed a wholly incorrect socialist view of Robin Hood, burying the anti-tax storyline.

A few weeks after you elect a new president, win or lose, you'll want time to enjoy the holidays. MGM's The Wizard of Oz will air often between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a screen classic now for 77 years.

What you're getting is another rewrite.

You'll see Judy Garland as Dorothy, ripped from her home by a tornado, off to discover the truth of courage, intelligence, and heartfelt compassion.

Wizard of Oz

That 1939 film became instantly, universally loved. In 1941, two brigades of burly Australian troops marched across North Africa against Nazi tanks singing “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

Then, in 1963, a New York high school teacher was preparing a lesson plan on the history of sound money. Before he knew it, Henry Littlefield had written a scholarly study, the first to recognize author Lyman Frank Baum's fantasy classic as a historical satire of the bimetallism political fight of the 1890s.

In short, silver mining interests wanted government to put more silver into circulation, while officially recognizing both a gold and a silver standard. The argument became one of choosing the meaning of money for yourself.

Bimetallism was a major populist issue in the 1896 presidential election, with “Silverites” opposing bankers and industrialists, who preferred gold as the sole, standard accounting unit.

Baum had strong political sentiments. Years before he wrote his classic, he marched in demonstrations with the “Silverites.” His many books satirized other social issues, including feminism and suffrage. Littlefield concluded Baum's Wizard of Oz was a satire about the value and future of sound money.

That would not be what Franklin Roosevelt wanted to hear in 1939 when MGM cast Hollywood's first “girl next door” in her iconic role as Dorothy.

FDR had just grabbed America's gold six years earlier in 1933. Gold as currency was out the door, moving ever so farther away from America's consciousness. There was no political appetite to explore the economic politics of sound money evident in Baum's allegory.

Why bring it all up again in a star-studded mega-hit destined for the ages?

Left on the cutting room floor was the “magic power of silver” that would show Dorothy the way home. Her original “silver shoes” following a road of yellow bricks (allegorical gold ingots) were changed to red rubies.

Problem solved.

With merry bands of tax reformers successfully morphed into free-stuff socialists, with sound money hidden behind still another curtain, the government was encouraged to write its financial fiction, performed on the world stage by compliant educators and media.

Today's best-selling government fairy tale is that debt is wealth and that countless trillions in paper and digital currency can be spread around the world without catastrophic societal upheaval.

The fantasy ignores sound money and belittles those who separate fact from fiction. This fable teaches the more unpayable debt, the merrier.

This month, the national debt reached $19.5 trillion, up a half trillion in seven months. That's deceptive. Add $12 trillion in America's household debt, hundreds of trillions more in the future, unfunded government promises, and what you've got is a very scary movie.

A trillion is written as a 1 with 12 zeroes. We looked for fanciful yet mathematically recognized numbers and stopped at a millinillion, equal to 1,000 quingentillion. A millinillion is a 1 with 3,003 zeros.

Join us in hoping some fairy tales never come true.

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"The Economic Truth About Robin Hood","secondary_keywords":"","publish_date":"2016-09-08","podcast_url":"","quick_text":"...","author_id":5,"content_type_id":1,"created_at":"2016-09-08T15:19:23.000000Z","updated_at":"2023-08-01T21:10:31.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"","meta_description":"Tales of the Wizard of Oz was a satire on the value & future of sound money. While for the Robin Hood folktale, Robin Hood was anti-government & busy hijacking the IRS!","podcast_duration":"","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/the-economic-truth-about-robin-hood.jpg","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/the-economic-truth-about-robin-hood.jpg","facebook_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/fiction-fairy-tales-fiat-social.png","twitter_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/fiction-fairy-tales-fiat-social.png","status":1,"show_guest_author":0,"guest_author_image":"","guest_author_name":"","guest_author_description":"","h2_header":"","image_width":700,"image_height":368,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"news/2016/09/08/fiction-fairy-tales-fiat-000921","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/the-economic-truth-about-robin-hood.jpg","truncated_description":"Do young Americans today know anything about economics? No, they don't, according to a study during ...","pretty_publish_date":"September 8th, 2016"}},{"page_description":"Charlotte, NC (November 6, 2019) – Seven outstanding students beat out over 100 of their high-school and college peers in making the best case for sound money through an international, gold-backed scholarship competition—and the winners walked away with a","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/gold-diploma.jpg","page_title":"Sound Money Scholarship Winners Announced -- 7 Outstanding Thinkers Earn Nearly $10,000 in Tuition Assistance","page_type":"news","score":6.089702627695701,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2019/11/05/sound-money-scholarship-winners-announced-001900","data":{"id":1900,"title":"Sound Money Scholarship Winners Announced -- 7 Outstanding Thinkers Earn Nearly $10,000 in Tuition Assistance","description":"Charlotte, NC (November 6, 2019) – Seven outstanding students beat out over 100 of their high-school and college peers in making the best case for sound money through an international, gold-backed scholarship competition—and the winners walked away with almost $10,000 in scholarship awards for their exceptional, thought-provoking essays.","rss_title":"Sound Money Scholarship Winners Announced -- 7 Outstanding Thinkers Earn Nearly $10,000 in Tuition Assistance","slug":"sound-money-scholarship-winners-announced","h1_header":"Sound Money Scholarship Winners Announced -- 7 Outstanding Thinkers Earn Nearly $10,000 in Tuition Assistance","content":"

Eagle, ID (November 6, 2019) – Seven outstanding students beat out over 100 of their high-school and college peers in making the best case for sound money through an international, gold-backed scholarship competition...

...and the winners walked away with almost $10,000 in scholarship awards for their exceptional, thought-provoking essays.

For the fourth-straight year, Money Metals Exchange, the national precious metals dealer that was recently ranked “Best in the USA,” has teamed up with the Sound Money Defense League to offer the first gold-backed scholarship of the modern era.

These groups have set aside 100 ounces of physical gold to reward exemplary students who display a thorough understanding of economics, monetary policy, and sound money.

The 2019 Sound Money Scholarship winners are as follows:

Undergraduate Winners:

First place: Emma Worthington, Fort Hays State University
Second place: Emily Arguelles, 12^th grade, Homeschooled
Third place: Spencer Call, University of Utah
Fourth place: Marika Sullivan, Macalester College

Graduate Winners:

First place: Kristoffer Hansen, University of Angers, France
Second place: Sydney Bright, University of Portland
Third place: Ronald Pan, Azusa Pacific University

Upon the selection of these top seven students, the Guy Christopher People’s Choice Award portion of the contest begins. The award honors Guy Christopher and goes to the student whose essay attracts the most page views and interest on social media (shares, likes, retweets, etc., on Facebook and Twitter).

This year's Guy Christopher People's Choice Award goes to Emily Arguelles, whose essay on sound money garnered hundreds of readers.

The following blue-ribbon panel of judges selected the finalists:

Jacob Hornberger, Future Freedom Foundation
Dr. Karl-Friedrich Israel, Institute for Economic Policy, Leipzig University
Andrew Moran, LibertyNation
John Tamny, FreedomWorks

Since its creation in 2016, the Sound Money Scholarship has had hundreds of applicants representing more than 250 different high schools, colleges, institutes, and universities across more than 40 states, 5 countries, and 4 continents.

“Students everywhere are waking up to the ongoing and deliberate devaluation of the Federal Reserve Note (today mislabeled as the ‘dollar’) – and the immoral, central-bank policy to punish savers, wage-earners, and retirees especially,” said Stefan Gleason, president of Money Metals Exchange.

“Our scholarship gives students the opportunity to display their understanding of economics while lessening the burden of the significantly inflated costs associated with attending college,” said Jp Cortez, policy director of the Sound Money Defense League. “This year’s competition resulted in the largest turnout we’ve ever seen, and we expect that trend to continue.”

The deadline to submit applications for consideration next year is October 31, 2020. For more information, visit moneymetals.com/scholarship or email scholarship@moneymetals.com.

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"","secondary_keywords":"","publish_date":"2019-11-05","podcast_url":"","quick_text":"...","author_id":11,"content_type_id":1,"created_at":"2019-11-05T19:06:02.000000Z","updated_at":"2023-07-31T13:49:36.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"","meta_description":"Charlotte, NC (November 6, 2019) – Seven outstanding students beat out over 100 of their high-school and college peers in making the best case for sound money through an international, gold-backed scholarship competition—and the winners walked away with a","podcast_duration":"","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/gold-diploma.jpg","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/gold-diploma.jpg","facebook_image":"","twitter_image":"","status":1,"show_guest_author":0,"guest_author_image":"","guest_author_name":"","guest_author_description":"","h2_header":"","image_width":0,"image_height":0,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"news/2019/11/05/sound-money-scholarship-winners-announced-001900","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/gold-diploma.jpg","truncated_description":"Charlotte, NC (November 6, 2019) – Seven outstanding students beat out over 100 of their high-school...","pretty_publish_date":"November 5th, 2019"}},{"page_description":"Andrew Jackson whose now on the $20 bill & once called the central bank “subversive to liberty” would welcome any character who finally gets him off the paper money.","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/colors-of-money-mmx-social.png","page_title":"The History of Andrew Jackson Against Central Banks & Paper Money","page_type":"news","score":6.075502729349733,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2016/08/03/andrew-jackson-bank-war-000905","data":{"id":905,"title":"The History of Andrew Jackson Against Central Banks & Paper Money","description":"This year marks the 101st anniversary of Andrew Jackson rolling over and over in his grave. Back in 1915, the brand new Federal Reserve pasted the 7th President's likeness on its first $10 debt note – a sharp slap to the President who fought and won his famously bitter battle to destroy the “corrupting monster” of central banking.","rss_title":"The History of Andrew Jackson Against Central Banks & Paper Money","slug":"andrew-jackson-bank-war","h1_header":"The Colors of Money: Andrew Jackson Still Fights the Banking War","content":"

This year marks the 101^st anniversary of Andrew Jackson rolling over and over in his grave.

Back in 1915, the brand new Federal Reserve passed the 7^th President's likeness on its first $10 debt note – a sharp slap to the President who fought and won his famously bitter battle to destroy the “corrupting monster” of central banking.

Old Hickory's 1836 victory held steady until 1913 when the bankers gathered in secret at Jekyll Island, Georgia to plot the greatest bank robbery in history.

Andrew Jackson

President Jackson railed against
central banks and paper money.

The scheme was simple. First, print all the money they wanted, backed only by government promises. Then, day by day, steal all the wealth it represented through built-in, unstoppable inflation.

As more and more Federal Reserve debt coupons would litter the landscape, their value would shrivel to less and less. Since government always has the first use of cash hot off the presses, only unsuspecting, taxpaying citizens would ever be financially harmed.

Worked like a charm.

Their crime-in-progress has now lasted longer than Andrew Jackson's victory to wipe them out, reducing the value of the 1913 dollar to maybe two cents over the past 103 years, as uncounted mega-trillions wash across the planet.

But The Fed wasn't finished sticking it to Jackson.

The hero of the last battle of the War of 1812, who killed a man in a duel after his wife was insulted, who survived the first attempted assassination of a sitting President (and then beat his hapless assailant senseless with a cane), would find his picture plastered on the $20 debt ticket in 1928, where it seemed destined to remain – until now.

Replacing Jackson on Twenty-Dollar Bill?

A recently announced substitution for Jackson discloses more than just another hilarious “inside joke” at The Fed.

Harriet Tubman became famous for escorting slaves along the Underground Railroad before the American Civil War. She was credited with guiding 70 families to their freedom. Like Jackson, she knew how to handle a pistol.

She was also a self-admitted co-conspirator with abolitionist John Brown in the 1859 assault on the U.S. Armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, meant to spark a slave uprising.

Six townspeople and one U.S. Marine were killed during the gun battle. Nine townspeople and a Marine were wounded. The first man shot to death by Brown and Tubman's insurgents was a railroad baggage handler, an unarmed black man who was not a slave.

That headline today would read “Terrorist Attack.”

Tubman helped plan, finance, and recruit for the attack, but she wasn't there when the shooting started, for reasons debated but never explained.

Tubman was not around when Brown and six of her other co-conspirators were tried, convicted, and hanged for murder and treason.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's dubious decision to feature Tubman on the twenty (moving Jackson to the reverse) is an acknowledged, politically correct appeasement primarily to Hollywood and media politicos demanding women and civil rights figures on the currency.

It was bankers and bureaucrats acting in their political interests who took the most celebrated woman off coinage and currency in the first place.

The allegorical Lady Liberty graced American coins from 1793 through 1947, and paper currency until the early 1900s, before being forgotten in favor of politically correct substitutions.

It's already too late to feature the first named woman on circulating U.S. currency. Martha Washington, who donated her silver to mint the first American silver coins, graced the $1 Silver Certificate in 1886 and again in 1896 – when paper dollars were still a trusted substitute for sound money.

Too late also to put the first civil rights heroine on U.S. money. Suffragette Susan B. Anthony's 1979 dollar coin was instantly despised, not to mention intrinsically worthless. “Susy B's” lasted three years before Washington figured out Americans wouldn't use them.

That dollar coin would have been successful at the dawn of the stylish, swinging, entertaining Eighties had it been modeled after actress Susan Anton instead of Susan Anthony.

Since picking images for coins and currencies seems arbitrarily up for grabs, we have a suggestion for Secretary Lew...

Disney Dollars | $1

This paper money is rising in value.

A few months ago, Disneyland discontinued printing their popular Disney Dollars – corporate coupons used at theme parks. They feature historically significant figures like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and other internationally famous cartoon icons.

The surprise decision caught Disney fans unprepared. One currency dealer and avid collector tell us the market value of existing Disney Bucks is shooting sky-high.

Since Disney is no longer using Mickey and Goofy, or even gender-inclusive Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck on theme park cash, we suggest Treasury adopt Disney's images for all changes to U.S. currency.

Fictional cartoon characters would represent America's central banking more faithfully than any whimsical fairy tale bureaucrats can invent.

As existing Disney Dollars continue to zoom in value, putting Mickey and Goofy on U.S. currency would give that paper something it does not have now – instant intrinsic value – as collector items!

Okay, we know opinions about pictures on money skirt the underlying issue – that paper is not backed by sound money. Gold was driven out of the American psyche when taken from circulation in 1933, and silver in 1964. Only a fraction of Americans alive today have ever seen a gold or silver coin, much less owned one.

To acquaint modern Americans with sound money again, we encourage the Treasury to seriously consider another historic Disney character.

That would be Scrooge McDuck, a champion of hard work, savings, and thrift, and usually portrayed playing in his vault, waist-deep in physical gold and pure silver coins.

Wouldn't matter to Andy Jackson. The President who called the central bank “subversive to liberty” would welcome any character who finally gets him off the paper money.

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At Money Metals Exchange, we believe a significant part of our mission is to educate customers and the public at large about the many aspects of the precious metals market.

Our precious metals Specialists enjoy addressing your many excellent questions on an individual basis. But we know you also like to see what others are asking about.

Precious Metals Questions Answered

So we regularly share some of the most relevant questions and answers in a more public way...

Who is Harry Dent? He keeps running newsletter ads telling people to sell their gold and silver. He argues we are having a deflation and says gold will drop to $600 per ounce while silver falls to $5.50. I am freaking out!

Deflation vs Inflation

While we do not have a crystal ball, we believe that Harry Dent and other deflationists will continue to be wrong about gold prices as they have been most of the bull market over the last 10-15 years. Those who heeded the deflationists' advice over the past 15 years probably regret doing so, unless they happened to buy within a few months of the $1,900 gold high in 2011.

There is always a temptation to try to time the market...

But it's downright dangerous NOT to own some gold and instead place your full faith in paper assets, the politicians, and the central bankers.

Physical gold and silver are financial insurance, and folks should have some whether prices are going up or down at any given time.

While there are indeed deflationary forces at play, central planners at the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world are committed to counteracting those forces with inflationary policies, and they have the unrestrained power to create unbacked fiat money to do so.

Inflationary forces have “won” throughout the Federal Reserve's 102-year history, a period in which the U.S. dollar has lost more than 97% of its purchasing power. And there is no reason to believe this trend will suddenly change.

As Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan admitted recently:

"The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default. We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and whatever size you like but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power. Because we can always print money but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power."

Here is a deeper examination of the deflationists' views and why we at MoneyMetals.com feel they will continue to be misguided in their predictions. On the subject of “freaking out,” here is a great article by our columnist Guy Christopher that may quell your fears. And please take a look at the advice Money Metals contributor David Smith shares about using a “secret investment tool” – your mind! – when investing.

If I want to buy a good amount of gold, and I do not have the money to buy it outright, can I pay for it a little at a time?

Yes! This is exactly why we have a monthly savings plan. It’s perfect for accumulating gold and silver over time.

You can put your individualized plan on autopilot and even set it to happen automatically via bank debit.

Money Metals’ gold/silver savings plan is one of very few in America, and over 3,000 people are currently enrolled to purchase every month. The monthly minimum is just $100 for silver and $200 for gold.

It’s popular for folks who are on smaller budgets or who wish to take the guesswork out of timing purchases.

Dollar-cost averaging is a proven, disciplined way of building wealth over time. Check out all the details here.

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Are you a millionaire yet? Me neither.

We might have been by now, had we better understood the finer points of “fear” and “greed” during our investing lives.

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” said fictional corporate raider Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas in 1987's “Wall Street.” The quote became a rallying cry for the 13-year stock market surge following the October '87 crash.

Wall Street

Fear, On the Other Hand, can be Just as Influential in Charting Investments

“I have only two positions right now – cash and fetal,” wailed investor Jeff Mackey, staring wide-eyed into CNBC's cameras on October 2, 2008. The subprime mortgage crisis was in full cascade mode, as the stock market meltdown washed banks and balance sheets over the cliff.

Greed was not Gekko's best idea. He went to prison for insider trading, alongside a couple of the very real characters he was based on.

In hindsight, Mackey was terrified of losing money one year too late. Stocks had started tanking exactly 51 weeks earlier, from a high of 14,164 on the Dow, ultimately suffering a 53% disaster. That was peanuts compared to the 90% losses to the Dow stretching over the years of The Great Depression but for modern investors, bad enough.

Obviously, market tops and bottoms are recognized only in the rearview mirror. It takes time for hard facts to illustrate the equations, which means this stuff is never that easy.

After a five-year fall from the highs of 2011, metals have been rising in dollar terms since mid-December, with a headline-grabbing hike the night of Great Britain's historic Brexit vote to leave the European Union.

This week, both gold and silver took hard hits in dollar terms, causing stress for some precious metals stackers. And that's the perfect classroom for today's lesson, where we have some excellent teachers lined up.

Watching Wall Street

British commodities trader Andrew Maguire is the fellow who demonstrated bullion bank price manipulation to the world with his testimony to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in 2010.

Maguire correctly identified intricate price changes hours before they happened, because he knew where the fix was in.

He now says the dollar-price takedown earlier this week was artificially engineered by bullion banks to cover losses in the paper metals markets.

In other words, gold and silver were brought down in dollar terms through greedy, political manipulation, not by a loss of intrinsic value, and not by a loss of trust in metals.

Maguire's advice today: “This is a physical buying window for gold and silver that will not last long.”

The classic lesson of fear and greed comes from The Battle of Waterloo, where French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was whipped by the British in 1815.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild had bankrolled much of Great Britain's war against Napoleon and had everything to lose if Napoleon won. Early reports from the battlefield convinced the London stock market Napoleon had been victorious, which led to widespread panic selling. But Rothschild had his own observer watching the battle, and reporting privately to him.

Knowing the British had won, he mopped up everything at sacrifice prices from terrified sellers.

The story, which some historians believe has been embellished, gave us the adage “buy when blood is running in the streets.”

What is undisputed – of all the wealthy investors of that era, the one name surviving 200 years as a modern household synonym for massive wealth is “Rothschild.”

Buying Low Isn't Easy

It means going against the crowd. But if you think that's hard, try selling high, when everything looks just great, before blood runs in the streets. Either strategy makes you a “contrarian,” which means your intellect has overcome the emotional clutches of fear and greed.

We know today the stock and bond markets have been stitched together and driven higher by free money from central banks funneled to Wall Street, all in a government effort to make the economy seem healthy when it's not.

As Money Metals has been reporting for months, disciplined movers and shakers, one after another, are taking their money and leaving the stock and bond markets, dropping well-reasoned warnings of economic catastrophe along the way.

And incidentally, many of them also report they are stocking up on gold.

Is there a way to corral fear and greed? The answer is yes if you're talking about gold and silver.

See metals for what they are – as solid savings in the only intrinsically valuable currency – and not as financial investments. Fear only enters the picture when you count gold and silver in dollar terms.

As for greed, that depends entirely on how many ounces and grams you can get for your paper money.

A reliable teacher in buying low and selling high is China, the world's leader in reshaping the modern gold story.

The Chinese have patiently been buying low for perhaps decades, as other nations and investors lost interest in gold. As for selling – the Chinese are still hanging onto their gold. They aren't selling.

So, how should sellers approach fear and greed? If you see gold and silver as investments, then sell when you're ahead in dollar terms.

If you see gold and silver as savings, as insurance against calamity, then sell when there's something you want more than your savings and insurance.

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If you’ve already picked up some precious metals, you certainly have a right to be proud. You are probably quite comfortable with your decision to turn some paper money into sound money.

Over the past several years, you've come through a barrage of bad news and warning after warning of the economic dangers facing your family and your country. That onslaught changed your outlook.

You paid attention and understood having part of your savings portfolio in gold and silver is crucial. Importantly, and something you may not have realized, is that you overcame enormous forces working against you and dedicated to your ruin.

You congratulate yourself that you have a head start on surviving a devastating financial crisis that may yet come at any time, and you just can't keep that to yourself.

You want to share your knowledge about the imperative of owning precious metals with those you care about. Out of deep concern for their well-being, you want to urge them to take action as you have, so you confidently suggest they should own gold and silver.

No paper currency has ever survived massive over-printing by any government in history

Prepare to be disappointed.

How can you fail, you wonder, to convince others of dangers so evident? After all, you know your facts...

Paper money is debt, backed by nothing;
No paper currency has ever survived massive over-printing by any government in history;
Gold and silver have been true money since antiquity with an undisputed track record of holding value through all wars and natural calamities;
All governments on Earth are on the same path to drive their nations into ruinous debt with no regard for their citizens; simple math shows our national debt can never, ever be paid;
And history proves conclusively from Ancient Rome to the old Soviet Union that no civilization can escape the massive economic chaos that comes with devaluing their currencies.

You might add the simple observation that fiat money is created in unlimited quantities by an office clerk tapping on a computer key, while gold and silver coins are produced only after men with courage and dreams have searched the planet, dug the ground, sweated their labors, matched their brawn to a bit of luck, and often found they must then brave thieves and murderers who would steal their hard-earned wealth.

I'd say you've got some pretty good arguments there. But they won't work. Not all the time, not very often, and not with everyone you care about.

You will invariably get the standard replies, led by the number-one favorite on my top ten list of excuses to never buy gold: If things got so bad, you would not use a gold coin to buy a loaf of bread.

I estimate my record of selling the gold and silver story to my friends and loved ones at a 4% success rate. The success reported by friends who own precious metals is a bit lower, between 2% and 4%. Another informal survey I saw years ago found similar, very low results of around 3%.

Gold Was Booted from the Monetary System, Wall Street, and Academia

There is a very good reason that gold and silver are a tough sell: gold and silver have been drummed out of the American psyche over the past ninety years, starting in 1933 with FDR's war on gold ownership.

The drumming continued through 1965 when LBJ ordered silver out of everyday U.S. coinage, trading mystery metal for the silver in our pocket change. Nixon finished us off in 1971 when he defaulted on America's promise to foreign nations to redeem their dollars for our gold.

Nixon closes gold window August 15, 1971

That U.S. government campaign to destroy America's link to sound money was conducted on purpose and with masterful results. It was meant to separate Americans from their Constitutional ties to a sound economy, so that government could go on an eighty-year spending spree, easily outpacing the already tawdry reputation of drunken sailors.

At first, the takeover was slow.

The government first needed to gain control over formal education and later was happily joined by the lapdog media. Wall Street was never a problem. It was on board the whole way.

Together, they convinced Americans that true money is the plastic credit card, not gold. Together they successfully redefined wealth as debt, replacing thousands of years of monetary history in just eight short decades.

Your government used your schools, your once-free press, and the financial industry to shamelessly steal your economic power to have that wealth for itself. The dirty secret all governments hid from you, and hid very successfully, is that gold is the only money those governments trust or truly care about.

Governments Secretly Deal in Gold While Belittling It Publicly

Governments don't trust each other’s paper money, nor contracts with each other, treaties, promises, or handshakes. When governments wish to seal the deal, they honor and trust gold above all paper currencies.

That's why all governments keep their dealings involving gold secret, and why it would take an Act of Congress to properly audit and account for America's gold. That's also why the Establishment Media ignores or corrupts the gold story because they play on the government's side.

Government lie: they deal with gold while saying otherwise to the public

Your government prefers you hold debt, not wealth. They want that wealth in their hands, not in yours. Your government worked very long and very hard to ensure Americans don't even think about gold.

It worked like a charm.

That's what you're up against when you begin to tell the gold and silver story to someone you care for.

You swim against a tide of misinformation, corrupted education, and outright, blatant lies, all thoroughly believed by too many Americans. It's a tough challenge for you to change opinions, habits, and beliefs that were eighty years in the making. You will find only a few will pay the same attention you've paid. But reaching those few should be a worthy goal, for now.

The free market itself will one day force everyone to pay attention.

Meanwhile, answer those ho-hum excuses about gold with honesty. Admit that when things do go bad, you too would never use a gold coin to buy a loaf of bread... you'd use that gold coin to buy the bakery!

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Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.

Coming up we’ll hear an important interview with David Smith, Senior Analyst at The Morgan Report and MoneyMetals.com columnist. David gives precious metals investors some tremendously useful advice in the face of some difficult market action for gold and silver -- and he also tells us why he believes 2017 will be the year that general public discovers gold and silver in a big way. Don’t miss my conversation with David Smith, coming up after this week’s market update.

Precious metals markets have been slammed hard in recent days. Hawkish comments from Federal Reserve officials drove a breakdown of support levels in gold and silver, and that breakdown trigged a wave of heavy technical selling. Gold suffered its biggest down day in nearly three years, while silver dropped 10% on the week through Thursday’s close.

Some gold bugs are asking whether the Federal Reserve has an agenda to drive down precious metals prices and keep the stock and bond markets elevated. It’s not an unreasonable concern given Fed chair Janet Yellen’s recent comments indicating that the central bank is considering buying assets in the stock market and other markets. CNBC’s Rick Santelli weighed in with a rant on central banker overreach:

Rick Santelli: What if the central banks all get together and decide, "Well okay, we don't want that to happen, let's buy Deutsche Bank, or when any other bank or a company is in trouble. We'll buy that," or as you get the political highlight points, like at election times. You want to keep everything pretty clean. Make sure nothing goes down. Is that the world we really want to live in?

As of this Friday recording, gold prices come in at $1,256 an ounce, posting a 4.7% decline this week. Silver is down twice as much or 9.4% since last Friday’s close to trade at $17.44 an ounce. The platinum group metals also got besieged with selling pressure. Pla tinum is off 6% this week while palladium is down 5.9%

The bad news for metals bulls is that prices are down and the near-term momentum is negative. The good news is that sharp, severe corrections like these are often quite short in duration. They typically represent good buying opportunities. The name of the game is to buy when value opportunities present themselves and not worry about trying to pick a bottom. You won’t buy in at the exact bottom of any pullback in markets as volatile as these unless you’re incredibly lucky.

Well, luck isn’t on the side of those whose homes are right in the path of a massive storm. As a devastating Category 4 hurricane rips along the Florida coastline and moves up the Atlantic coast, millions of people have faced the prospect of severe property damage and protracted power outages. In recent days, gasoline shortages spread throughout the southeast and grocery store shelves were stripped bare of bottled water, batteries, and other emergency supplies.

In any kind of disaster situation, those who fail to prepare – or wait too long to prepare – will be the most vulnerable. You can never know when a freak weather event or natural disaster or man-made disaster or financial meltdown might adversely affect you and your family.

Regardless of where you live, make sure you have emergency backup supplies of bottled water and long-lasting food on hand. Backup power sources, including solar and gas powered generators are also worth considering.

Make sure you are ALSO prepared for a financial emergency. The banking system is fragile and vulnerable to any number of threats, including derivates blow ups and cyber attacks. If banks close and ATMs become inaccessible, you’ll be glad you kept an emergency cash stash.

But don’t put your full faith in the value of the dollar. It is sure to lose value over time and could one day suffer a massive loss of confidence all at once. If top Treasury and Federal Reserve officials get their way, cash in the form of coins and bills will no longer even circulate in a future cashless economy.

The ultimate money in the event of a war on cash or in any type of crisis situation remains physical precious metals. If you need to use gold and silver for barter and trade, you’ll want to have a variety of sizes for maximum flexibility. One ounce gold coins are great for storing large amounts of wealth, but they are not necessarily ideal for buying produce at a local farmer’s market. Having gold in quarter ounce, tenth ounce, and even 1 gram denominations gives you more options.

Of course, silver is the more practical metal for smaller transactions. One-ounce silver coins and rounds will be widely useful. For smaller transactions and to make change, you’ll also want to have some fractional sized silver.

Pre-1965 90% silver quarters and dimes are essential for any barter stash. During an economic panic or retail silver shortage, premiums on pre-1965 silver coins could surge. It’s best to stock up on these historic, no longer minted coins while premiums are still low, as they are now.

And finally, don’t worry about being ridiculed for diversifying out of the financial system. The ones doing the ridiculing are the same ones who didn’t see the financial panic of 2008 coming. And today, of course, they don’t see any trouble ahead for conventional investments.

CNBC Anchor: I'd rather have cash because both assets are of value.

Steve Liesman: Some people have thought that for the last eight or nine years. And they've missed a very powerful move, both in the bond market and in the stock market. I wish them well. And some of them are also sitting on great big piles of gold, or perhaps cans of tuna down in their bunker.

No, you don’t need to build a literal bunker or go overboard with stockpiling enough food and supplies to last you for decades. But it is prudent to have at least one month’s worth of survival essentials readily accessible in your home. Better to end up never needing it than to one day need it and not have it.

Well now, without further delay, let’s get right to this week’s exclusive interview.

Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to be joined by David Smith, senior analyst at The Morgan Report and regular contributor to MoneyMetals.com. David, it's good to talk to you again and welcome back.

David Smith: It's always good to be back, Mike and we're in momentous and interesting times right now with the metals and the miners.

Mike Gleason: Yes we are. Well as we're talking here on Thursday morning David, the metals have a faced a tough week so far. Silver fell nearly a dollar on Tuesday alone and gold sold off more than $40 that day which are some big, big moves for both metals. They're continuing to drop a little bit here Wednesday and Thursday. Now when we had you on back in July, you were calling for a pull-back and after not seeing much deviation from the range trades that persisted in the two-plus months since that conversation, we finally saw the range broken to the downside here this week. So we are finally getting that correction just like you had predicted.

Before we get into what a great opportunity that this is presenting to metals investors, give us your thoughts on what's driving the correction here. Is it just technical selling that's driving this now that we've take out support levels and then do you think it's going to be short-lived or do you see more downside to come?

David Smith: Well Mike, I think a lot of use were looking for a potential correction from May on really, because this has been an historic rise in the mining stocks and to a lesser extent the metals themselves. But there was kind of like rope-a-dope going on the last couple of months before this thing finally hit and it looked like, "Oh this could be a correction and it would go on up and make a new high," and that's the sort of thing that shakes a lot of people up. Well, we’ve finally got it.

I think this is what we've been waiting for and hoping for, until I came here at any rate but it is the pause that refreshes. And it's painful now but it's important for people to realize that if we didn't have something like this and it goes up vertically and gets out of control, then it's going to crash and burn the same way which I believe most of us believe will happen and we want to see, if we want to see an enduring market in the gold and silver (markets) and the mining stocks that last through several years we need to have this type of a consolidation and re-tracement in order to shake out the weak hands. This is what Mr. Market does and then it consolidates and makes a new platform and then goes off on its way up again.

Mike Gleason: Despite the fact that we did breech support on the charts, is the longer term uptrend that began back in January still intact? What's that looking like now, David?

David Smith: It really is. A lot of people look at sloping trend lines and the professionals tend to spend a lot more time on what are called the horizontal support and resistance so you want to look at lines that have held before, drawn in a line right across the chart and look at some of these longer term lines and not get wrapped up in the 50 day (moving average) so much or even the 200 day. Some people even look at the 20 month. So when you look at the bigger picture, bigger, bigger, bigger, then you can see what's going on over a period of years and not get caught up in what's going on right in front of your face and then get too emotional about it.

Mike Gleason: Yeah, and people should keep in mind that despite being off their highs from a couple of months ago, silver is still up almost $4 on the year and gold is up about $200. So it just shows you how fantastic they performed over the first 6 or 7 months of the year so a pull-back was definitely in the cards, as frustrating as it may be to witness for precious metals bulls… mining stock investors, bullion investors and so forth.

I want to get into your most recent article here for MoneyMetals.com where you talk about how 2017 is going to bring about a public recognition phase for gold and silver in your view. Give us some insights into your thinking there. What will cause the average investor to get precious metals religion next year, David?

David Smith: Well, I think if you look at how bull markets get started, regardless of what the product is, it's going to be a bull market. Usually, the public doesn't pay attention for about a year after it gets started. And then they start seeing more positive articles and their gurus start talking about it and they look at charts and things like this and they start getting interested. And it's kind of funny. People tend to get interested once the price has risen quite a bit, most people. So they don't want to buy when it's on sale because it could go lower but they think if it's high it could go higher. They assume that will happen and then start coming in.

So I think next year, because of the culmination of a lot of the problems that we've had that are getting harder and harder to cover up at the international level, I think people are going to start seeing that they really need to hold some gold and silver if they don't have it or even add to it because this business of trying to move everybody into digital transactions where you don't use cash at all for things, all this is is a control technique on the part of governments around the world because they can track everything you do and if they want to have negative interest rates they can debit your account and things like this. So gold and silver are even more important now than they've ever been before. That's why we have this move by the governments to restrict our ability to have some kind of privacy.

Mike Gleason: In that article, you talk about some key levels on the charts that you're looking at down the road as we move higher, talk about that and then what do you think may happen once we do take out some of those key technical levels overhead for gold and silver?

David Smith: I think there are a couple of levels. This is not just exactly to the nearest penny, but let me round it a little bit. I think $26 for silver is extremely important because that was an area that a couple of years ago was penetrated after 4 attempts on the downside and when you see a price go 4 times over a period of months to a certain level, you really want to pay attention so it broke through that at $26 and then went down into the low teens and it took a couple more years to do that. So when that level has penetrated not just a poke, but when it gets up there and establishes a platform to move on up, I think that people are going to go, "Oh, my gosh. Look at this. This is huge." And they're going to get really, really getting interested and of course the smart money has been buying before that.

But they'll be continued to add and then the new people coming in will add more impetus to the volume and this doesn't operate in a vacuum because other things will be going on in the greater scheme of things, politically and economically and things like that which will be supportive of that. And then for gold, you could actually say a band of $1,450 to $1,550, but I think to be safe, I think you’re looking at $1,500 to $1,550. When prices get up there and spend a few days there and get ready to move on up, people are going to go, "Oh, my gosh. It's only $350-400 away from its all-time high, I'd better get going." And those 2 levels, they may not occur at the exact moment because gold and silver play tag-team in the bull market, but one of them will get there at that level that I just mentioned and then at some point within maybe a few weeks or even a few days, the other one will reach that particular other critical level for itself and then you'll have a matched pair and then it'll be off to the races.

And that will become an emotion driven market much more than a fact driven market and that's what's going to cause the metals to move very quickly upward to challenge the belts of resistance up to their nominal highs of 2011, which is around $50 for silver and around $1,900, I think $1,923 was the exact high for gold.

Mike Gleason: We're a little bit further away from those key overhead levels now. $26 silver is a little further away than it was just a few days ago so investors may have to wait a little bit here in order to see that line approached.

I love having you on during weeks like this David because your calming voice of reason is just what the doctor ordered for many metals enthusiasts. Now it has been very encouraging that we've seen some tremendous demand and huge buying this week in the physical market as the dip buyers and bargain hunters have been out in droves so perhaps some people are keeping the bigger picture in mind finally, but talk about investor's psychology here for a minute because while many may be seizing on this buying opportunity that seems to be presenting itself during a week like this, a majority of folks still aren't because perhaps they've gotten spooked. What advice do you have for people here? How do you keep from letting your emotions get the best of you during volatile market conditions?

David Smith: Guy Christopher made a comment on my article on the website there a few days ago and I commented to him and I used the quote by Stu Thompson when he talked about the fact ... This guy's a real professional, you know. He says, "We all have to undergo pain when we buy and price declines. And we just have to admit that we all feel that way and we have to go against that when we've done our research.” And that's what it is, and if you're not willing or able to do that then you're not going to make the big score. So that's the bottom line. You (need to) go against that.

It isn't easy for me to add money stocks this week. I put some orders in. That's another thing. You put the order in, you decide where you're going to go if it gets there and when it does you do it and you block out all that side reference and it's a good feeling knowing that you bought quality company for 30-40% off from what you would have paid a month ago and you go about your business.

And another thing I think that helps, and this is not just from mining stocks, but it's also for physical buying too. Maybe people that are considering buying some more gold from you and silver, or if they've already bought some or a new position, don't say, "Oh, today must be the bottom. I'm going to put every cent that I have into this situation” because it may be but it probably isn't. But if you go in trenches, and this is something I've written about a number of times on the site. If you buy in portions, let's say if you want to put X dollars into silver and you think, "Today looks good. It's down sharply," then buy half of what you intend to buy, your whole program. Tell yourself, "How much do I want to contribute to this idea altogether?" And then buy half of it or buy a third of it.

And when you do that, it turns the psychology of investing on its head because if you buy today and silver's down another 50 cents tomorrow, you are just absolutely rubbing your hands together because you're going to get it cheaper tomorrow or next week or whenever that is. And so you won't be in a panic if you bought it all today and then you go, "Oh, I was wrong. It's down tomorrow," then you're immediately being upset. So it's about controlling your emotions and you've got to do that otherwise you just have a lot of heartburn.

Mike Gleason: It's certainly good to keep some powder dry but then also seize on the opportunity that presents itself. Don't overthink it, especially if you're convicted and you understand why you want to own this stuff in the first place. Now offline, before we got going here, you were talking about something you just ran across regarding tunnel vision. Talk about that. I thought that was great.

David Smith: I been thinking about this in terms of any kind of threat management, whether you're looking at an accident on the freeway that you're trying to avoid or whether you've been attacked by a mugger or whatever it is or whether, or your accounts have been attacked by falling prices. What happens, when any kind of a threat is going on, this goes back to the caveman days. You know Mike, this is something too… I call us today, primitives with computers. We have these computers and we can push a button and do all this stuff or use our cell phone to buy and sell but we still operate out of the reptilian brain. And the moment that something goes on that startles us that we hadn't planned on, we go right back to what we did in the old days and we develop this tunnel vision and we block out everything on the side and we're focused on the threat. And for now the threat is lower prices in the metals.

You're looking at that and you're getting emotional and it starts out as a thought and then it becomes an emotion and then it goes into your stomach and it's hard to operate that way when you let all that take place. But if you realize tunnel vision is the sort of thing that nature gives us to deal with a problem. You go into that and you focus on what that threat is but you can come back out of it and look around and then you can go back in again.

You look at the prices, you look at the chart. You see where silver and gold are down today and then you can come back out and look at the bigger picture and go, "Wait a minute. Why did I buy in the first place? It's because I believe that because of all the problems that we have that aren't solved and also because of the love trade coming out of China and India, 3 billion people are going to be buying more gold and silver with their new wealth, that this story has a lot of merit. I'm a believer in it so why am I upset now? Why am I not happy that I'm getting something on sale that I hadn't planned on?"

I went to the grocery store yesterday. I like this type of tea, Numi Tea. They don't put it on sale very often and so I was looking to buy 2 or 3 kinds. I walked in. It hadn't been on (sale) for a long time. It was on for $2.50 a box off. I was going to buy just a couple boxes altogether. I went in and I saw that, I bought about 10 boxes because that's a deal. I just made my money go farther. And so I think if you look at the metals and the miners the same way and you buy in trenches and you do your research ahead of time I think you'll be well ahead of the game and when this is over and prices are going up and exceeding the highs that we saw a couple months ago, you're going to feel pretty good about it.

Mike Gleason: We're about a month away now from the big November election and I'm curious what you're thinking about all of this madness on the campaign trail and what effect do you see the outcome having on the metals specifically? Because David, I think you might be able to make a case that... either it doesn't matter who wins or that gold and silver might get a boost with either outcome. What say you, David?

David Smith: I think you could make a case for both of those because you're going to have the flash estimate of the market and it's going to be simple. Who knows what it is… I've heard compelling cases for both sides of what it's going to do for either candidate. But also the fundamental problems haven't been worked on at all and you're assuming that whoever gets to be president is going to have this massive hand that brings solutions to all sorts of problems and the reality is first among equals, there's hundreds of players that are going to pound out decisions that may or may not work. We've got so much systemically going on that has not been addressed for many, many years that this is not going to be solved overnight.

So when the prices calm down, whether they have a bump or whether they have a drop, they're going to get back to reality and people are going to go, "Okay, where are we now and where are we going to go over the next few years?" They're going to see that the problem still remains and they're going say, "You know, I'm glad I've got some gold and silver, because it's real money, it always has been and it'll help insure me against the depredations of the government is going to do, which often doesn't work."

Mike Gleason: They certainly are the true safe havens and I think more and more people will be recognizing them to be just that, especially into next year just like you were writing about in that article.

Well David, as we begin to close here, any final thoughts on what the rest of the year might hold and then also give us some information on the book that you and David Morgan are working on because when I saw you last in late August, you were hard at work on that and you told me this is a book that you and David really believe needed to get out to the public this year. So talk about that as well as we begin to wrap up.

David Smith: Okay, well let me give people a link first of all that they might want to look at. I just read this this morning. Bob Moriarty, and you can find it on his site at 321gold.com. He wrote something to the effect of, "I'm a buyer at $16 silver." Look at this as not so much a predictor of where you should buy silver at $16 or whatever, but look at it as a way to calm yourself down and see the bigger picture. And Bob has an unerring ability to catch big turns. Not to the day, but within a reasonable time frame. And I think if people read what he writes, I think that will help them see the bigger picture and put things into perspective.

Regarding the book that David and I are working on, we hope to have it available for the Gold and Silver Summit November 14th & 15th in San Francisco. It's going to be pretty tight but it certainly will be available soon thereafter. I was just talking to the publisher today and doing some things on it, waiting for that first galley. But it's called Second Chance How To Make and Keep Big Money During the Coming Gold and Silver Shock Wave. That's a pretty good mouthful for a title but it says what we really want to get out there. The idea that the second chance, you may have missed it in the run up in 2011. You may have missed what's going on now. You may have invested in May and now you're under water.

The point is, this is just the beginning of the third major secular up-leg in gold and silver that we believe will take them to all-time nominal highs, well above anything that they've achieved before. The idea too, a lot of times most of the books that you'll see something like this is about how to make a lot of money in the markets but it doesn't talk at all about how to hang on to it. And so we believe that there's a sensible way to deal with your profits when they accrue so that you can keep a lot of those profits when the market finally turns down some years hence, rather than ending up riding it all the way up and all the way down like people did in dot-com 2000, and like they've done in most other booms and busts.

We've got a long way ahead of us for higher metals prices but at some point you'll need to reassess that when those price levels are achieved. So we want to give people an opportunity to think about it that way and we're directing our book at two primary groups. We're directing it at the Baby Boomers, the people that were born between 1946 and 1964 and the Millennials who were born from about 1982 to 2004. Both David Morgan and myself have two millennials that we have raised.

We feel this might be a way to help out a little bit and give something back to the people in our children's generation who are going to be the new leaders who are going to take over when the Baby Boomers step off the stage after all the mess they've made and we hope the Millennials can get things put together. But this is an important time in our history and we believe that it's an important time to be thinking about the biggest picture and we think that the precious metals play a very important role in helping people to end up with the wherewithal and the insurance coverage to, as we go through that new great gate of destiny that Neil Howell talks about and Strauss in the book before The Turning.

It will be a generational change, we want to have the Millennials and the Boomers too, who are both under-capitalized and under-financed right now, we want to help them perhaps move to a little better space financially and not to mention emotionally so that they can be change agents along the way and help out and also be people that are independent and can help in the rebuild process rather than people that are standing in line waiting for the government to do something to get them off the dime.

Mike Gleason: Really looking forward to that. I'm sure it's going to be fantastic information. You and David putting your minds together and your experience into a book is going to be very exciting. David, it's always enlightening to hear your thoughts and listen to your wisdom. Thanks once again for your time and your excellent insights. Keep up the great work. Good luck with the upcoming book and we'll look forward to your next article for MoneyMetals.com. It's always great stuff there as well. I hope you enjoy your weekend, my friend. We'll talk to you again soon.

David Smith: Thank you very much, Mike. Have a good weekend and we'll look forward to speaking again.

Mike Gleason: That will do it for this week. Thanks again to David Smith, Senior Analyst at The Morgan Report and regular contributor and regular columnist for MoneyMetals.com. To check out any of David's insightful columns, just go to the news section on MoneyMetals.com or just type in David Smith in the search box and you'll get links to all of his fabulous work. Be sure to check that out.

Check back here next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. Until then, this has been Mike Gleason with Money Metals Exchange. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend, everybody.

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Money Metals recently published my article on the growing threat to gold and silver owners from armed thugs committing home invasion crimes. We reminded our readers who keep gold and silver close by that it's best to keep your mouth shut about what you own and where you store it.

But how do you stop criminals from stealing other forms of wealth?

It turns out, that's a lot harder than protecting a stack of silver from armed robbers. Every cent of wealth ever created is at risk of being stolen or lost every minute of the day, no matter what form that wealth takes.

Theft can't happen without a counterparty And it has always been that way.

There is a long list of illegal and legal ways of stealing your money, ranging from fraud to mismanagement, to hiking your taxes, to destroying your purchasing power through deliberate inflation. Those thefts cannot happen to you without a counterparty, who is simply the other guy in the deal.

Anyone you contract with -- from your employer, to your lender, to your investment firm, to the guy who sells you a car -- is your counterparty. You put your wealth at risk whenever you take on a counterparty. You protect yourself by wisely choosing whom that counterparty should be, or whether to even have a counterparty in the first place.

It's best that you read all the fine print.

Putting money in a bank savings account makes the bank your counterparty. You contract to be paid interest while the bank takes control of your money. And under the law not widely understood, it now legally owns what used to be your money. You become an “unsecured creditor” of the bank, a legal status for depositors upheld by many courts for many years.

You Are an Unsecured Creditor Standing at the End of the Line

“Unsecured creditor” means just what it says -- if the bank goes bust, you are the first to lose. Your cash on deposit will be the money that “secured” creditors legally get to dip into to recover their losses.

FDIC insurance is supposed to protect you, but only up to a certain amount and only so long as FDIC itself is financially sound. Government can change FDIC protections any time it wishes, meaning anytime abnormal economic pressures arise.

The same counterparty concerns apply to stock accounts, mutual funds, insurance policies, and your deadbeat brother-in-law. You assume the risk of losing it all when you entrust your wealth to a counterparty.

Uncle Sam Is Robbing Dollar Holders through Deliberate Inflation

Even if you keep your dollar in your pocket, it's destined for theft from the largest counterparty in existence, the U.S. government. Its banker, the Federal Reserve, issues those dollars, and Uncle Sam forces you to use them by law. The theft comes in the form of deliberate inflation which seriously erodes your dollar's purchasing power year after year.

This planned inflation has been underway since 1913 when the Federal Reserve was established as the central bank. The erosion of more than 97% of the dollar’s purchasing power since 1913 is no accident. It’s the result of an insidious plan to cheat Americans while no one notices.

Deliberate inflation is robbing U.S. dollar holders The government profits from inflation simply by having money whenever it wants to pay for whatever it wants, such as wars and welfare programs. As more money is printed, a process which is also known as currency debasement, those dollars flow into the economy, resulting in higher prices as more dollars chase the same number of goods and services. You finance this theft by paying higher prices. If prices get too expensive for the government, it merely prints more money, which means you are that much poorer. Even if your income rises in nominal terms, the buying power of your wealth evaporates.

Currency debasement has been used by dishonest governments for centuries. The U.S. Federal Reserve did not invent currency debasement. It only perfected it.

Today's dollar will buy only what three cents bought in 1913, give or take a fraction. Yet, for the first 135 years of our nation's history, inflation barely existed in the United States.

The word “inflation” was not part of the American vocabulary until the 20th century, because, before then, prices were linked to a gold standard. It also happens that for the best ninety of those years, there wasn’t even a central bank.

Your Property Taxes Are Tantamount to Rent Paid to the Government

Closely following inflation on our list is the property tax. You might think you own your home, but you don't. In truth, no one in America owns a home. Whether your mortgage is paid or not, you rent your home from the government (your counterparty) thanks to property taxes.

If you don't pay your rent to the government, it will seize your home. Your counterparty will send men with guns to throw you out. Resist, and men with guns will lock you away. Somehow, that doesn't square with my understanding of ownership!

You protect yourself from the ravages of inflation and higher taxes with precious metals. Gold and silver have served as stores of wealth for centuries because they have proven to hold their purchasing power throughout all of written history.

Here's the kicker in the case of storing your wealth in precious metals: they have no counterparty. They offer the choice to hold wealth with no counterparty.

Physical Precious Metals You Hold Have No counterparty Risk

Although dollar values of gold and silver often act as investments, metals are truly best utilized as stores of wealth, as savings. With your savings held in gold and silver, you don't have to worry about being paid or re-paid by any counterparty. Your gold or silver in your control is your pay.

Precious metals don't erode with inflation, don't go bankrupt, and come with only one sentence of fine print: Gold and silver have been unanimously voted by every civilization on Earth as the best representation of money through every war and every government collapse since antiquity, all with no counterparty risk.

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For many of us, it's been a rough few years. We have endured disturbing social and political changes, which too often have been beyond our individual control.

Some rough years still ahead may bring personal demands we haven't yet imagined. How we handle those challenges will depend on our ability to think and act independently -- and our appreciation of personal responsibility.

If you own and possess gold and silver, you've taken a big step toward securing financial protection for yourself and your family. You've made the right decisions and taken the right steps. Like most, you probably keep all or some of your precious metals close at hand. After all, that's largely what precious metals are for.

Now it's time to take another important step… one you may not have considered.

So You've Stored Your Gold and Silver - What's Next?

gold silver storage

Now you must take a look at yourself, your personality, and your habits to identify some strengths and weaknesses. It's here that you can and should take control of changing times. This self-examination could save your life.

That's because by storing some (or all) of your gold and silver close by, which minimizes counterparty risk and boosts emergency preparedness, you could be a potential target of vicious criminals if you aren't careful. The same is true if you have cash or jewelry. The best defense you'll ever have is to keep your business to yourself. Secrecy is key.

You can become your own worst enemy by ignoring your responsibility to protect your privacy. For too many, that lesson was learned too late, or sadly, never learned at all:

December 2011. A man, his wife, and his daughter returned home from dinner at a restaurant near their home just outside Houston, Texas. As they entered the house, two thugs hiding outside broke in waving pistols, demanding the homeowner open his safe. They terrified the family for over two hours and got what they came for only after shoving a pistol in the daughter's mouth. The brutal criminals escaped with a half million in cash and gold.

February 2012. A retiree in Gonzales, Louisiana answered his door around 10 p.m. He recognized his visitor, a former employee. As he opened the door, five others hiding outside rushed in and overpowered the man, his wife, and their son-in-law. The killers cut their throats before stealing a metal safe reportedly containing a hundred thousand dollars in gold coins and bullion, silver, and rare coins. Police learned during their investigation the murdered retiree happily talked to anybody and everybody about the wealth he kept in his safe at home.

March 2013. An elderly man living northwest of Baltimore, Maryland answered his door at 3 a.m. Three criminals rushed in with guns. They pistol-whipped the victim, then went straight to a safe containing gold and cash, which they took away with them. As they left, they pistol-whipped the victim again.

August 2013. A woman returning home just after midnight in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho found two strangers parked in her driveway. When she confronted them, they fled. Inside, she found her elderly, disabled father unharmed, but two safes containing a reported quarter million dollars in cash and gold were gone.

November 2013. Three armed criminals overpowered a sleeping homeowner living in a luxury high-rise near Palisades Park, New Jersey, and escaped with $2 million in cash and gold. They knew what they wanted, came prepared, and spent three hours ransacking his home and his safe.

While Still Rare, Home Invasions Are Increasing

gold silver storage theft

There are more such stories, particularly involving folks with stashes of cash or jewelry. The common theme to these home invasion crimes is the victims were not randomly selected.

In each case, someone knew about the valuables kept at home but had no business knowing.

Someone talked who should not have talked. What should have been confidential information about fortunes kept at home was out there on the streets.

Professional bullion and coin dealers, jewelry merchants, pawn shop operators, and bank tellers have been living with threats of robbery and murder for as long as they've been in business. But cases of savage home invasions by criminals looking for gold and silver used to be extremely rare. Now, those crimes are slowly increasing in number and frequency as public awareness of precious metals grows, as the economy slowly sinks into the mud, and as gold and silver become more sought after.

That puts your name on the list of potential targets.

Do You Blab about Things You Own?

Now is the time to take a responsible look at your habits and practices, by asking yourself just a few personal questions. The idea here is not to turn you into a real-life action hero but to avoid the need for close-combat heroics in the first place.

protect gold silver storage

Do you generally believe bad things happen to others but never to you?
Do you like to brag, or can you keep a secret?
Do you confide your dealings to a short list of friends, or do many casual acquaintances know your business?

These key questions indicate whether you are risking too much by broadcasting your private matters.

Do you share too much about your business online through social media such as Facebook?
Do you use Craigslist or newspaper want ads to buy or sell variables?

Social media is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean you have to risk your safety by advertising every private matter in your life, especially those involving your wealth.

How would you describe your patterns of noting your surroundings at home or when traveling?
Do you believe the growth of crime and civil unrest increases your odds of becoming a victim, or are you someone who believes the police are taking care of all that for you?
Do you take special note of strangers in your neighborhood? Do you pay attention to barking dogs?

Developing a keener power of observation during your normal routines can become a valuable habit that will pay off.

Young children who know about private family business are a special matter.

gold silver storage protection

Do neighborhood children play in and around your home?
Have they spotted that safe?
Do you coach your kids about the importance of keeping things private and not talking to strangers?

We know children can be raised in responsible homes to respect firearms safety and automobile safety, so they can certainly be raised to understand family privacy.

Keeping Your Precious Metals Hidden

A hard look at your honest answers to my questions and other questions of your own will go a long way in preventing criminal horrors from happening to you.

Don't look to friends, relatives, police, government, or media for any answers. Look instead to your own responsible, independent, God-given common sense.

Own precious metals to protect your wealth. Then keep your mouth shut to protect your safety.

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I know it's easy to brush off those constantly mounting reports and stories of decay, destruction, and despair. I sometimes find myself ignoring as much bad news as possible, just to keep my sanity.

Then I realize that heaping one atrocity after another onto my growing pile of information overload is purposely designed to wear me out so that I'll ignore new attacks on my Constitution and new betrayals from those I elected to office. They want me to grow weary of learning what's true, hoping I'll overlook what I recognize as lies.

They want me to think I'm the one who's crazy.

They use an age-old strategy to keep me in line. It's the tried and true political ploy called “bread and circuses,” proven effective for dying governments to keep restless citizens fed just enough, and sufficiently entertained, to keep the pitchforks from the palace gates.

This propaganda tactic comes to us from the Ancient Roman Empire, which fearfully recognized it was suffocating under the weight of its decadence.

The Caesars first made sure hungry citizens had rations of government grain to keep them fed. Then, to deflect attention from endless foreign wars and massive public corruption, the Caesars provided gladiator entertainment in grand coliseums. The brutal contests distracted attention from the other life-and-death issues of looming financial ruin and moral decay.

The dying Roman Empire invented bread and circuses to buy itself time.

Hiding Economic Misery and Distracting the Masses with Entertainment, Deflation is not the Issue

The modern American version also begins with public grain handouts. But rather than remind everyone of the ugly soup kitchens of the 1930s Great Depression, bread lines today are disguised by plastic food stamp debit cards to hide 47 million impoverished Americans in the supermarket checkout lanes.

It's the tried and true political ploy called “bread and circuses,” proven effective for dying governments to keep restless citizens fed just enough, and sufficiently entertained, to keep the pitchforks from the palace gates.
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Government employment statistics distort the true human misery of 102 million out of work – 43 million men and 59 million women over age 16 – who cannot provide for themselves or their families without assistance. Among those who have work, a recent government survey found 57% of all Americans have less than $500 in savings, with 62% living paycheck to paycheck.

To keep me calm about these modern evils, I'm invited to mingle with a cheering crowd. The tricky part is convincing me my opinion matters, just as citizens in Roman coliseums were invited to recommend thumbs up or thumbs down. They have found me the perfect circus.

They give me the Super Bowl.

And I get a new one every year, numbered in Latin in honor of Ancient Rome.

My first super bowl party was Super Bowl III. I watched the game in an Army barracks, joining other young soldiers just returned from overseas. We sat in folding chairs in front of a portable black and white TV sitting atop a card table. A coin-operated snack machine supplied the chips.

Did the brash upstart Joe Namath keep his crowd-pleasing, widely publicized boast to defeat the nationally beloved veteran Johnny “Golden Arm” Unitas that Sunday in January of 1969? I don't remember. Turns out it wasn't that important after all.

Forty-six years later, I plan to steal a few hours from my work to watch the game. My big screen and comfy recliner are improvements, but this time I'll know what the game is all about.

Also, I'll see the same contest played out that each of us has seen each day of our lives.

I will see that victory and defeat are odds of chance, improved only by training, skill, and self-determination. I will see there is never success without sacrifice. I will see that triumph is possible, but survival is never guaranteed.

Watching This Year's Super Bowl Is Seven Times More Expensive

One thing that certainly has not survived these 46 years is the value of the dollars we all earned and saved, thanks to government-planned inflation designed to cheat us every day of our wealth.

The cost to enjoy Super Bowl XLIX at home will be about seven times the cost to watch Super Bowl III in 1969. A 25-cent bag of chips now costs $1.77, according to the federal government's understated numbers. A 20-cent bottle of brew is now $1.41 if you buy the 12-pack at the grocery. Chicken went for 29 cents per pound. Try getting even a whiff of one spicy wing for that today.

There's a new and disturbing aspect to my modern bread and circuses. The value of a captive audience has proven too tempting for circus masters to waste on folks just wanting an entertaining break from their worries.

How do I avoid the growing political rants sandwiched into the game by players and sportscasters? I'd rather see athletes make great plays than make politically correct statements. Watching the end-zone victory dance blown apart by a satchel charge of political rhetoric is not what I tune in for.

“DeflateGate” Is the Wrong Inflation Scandal to Be Debating

This year, I cannot avoid the added drama of “deflate-gate,” the name given to this overblown tactic for ball control. For millions of Americans out of work, surviving on government assistance – with no financial independence to turn to after that game ends Sunday night – it's the wrong meaning of inflation to toss around, the wrong pumped-up ball to kick back and forth, the wrong hot air to test for integrity.

It's the wrong question of just who is cheating whom.

I'll find myself in good company for Super Bowl XLIX. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows for every unemployed American who will spend those Sunday afternoon hours looking for work or minding other chores, six will be watching television. Together, they and I will help to fill the largest virtual coliseum ever known to mankind, handed down from a dying Ancient Rome, keeping pitchforks from the gates just a bit longer.

I recommend Caesar thumbs down.

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As gold continues to hold its own this week amid the Fed's so-called “hawkish pause,” it's a good time to reflect on the things the naysayers have been saying for years… and how they have tended to be wrong.

It's often a clash of worldviews.

Back in 2011, Ron Paul, a Republican U.S. Representative from Texas, questioned Ben Bernanke, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, about gold during a U.S. House Committee on Financial Services hearing.

Their exchange serves as compelling content for gold enthusiasts. Ron Paul starts with a ten-second opening statement with a visual showing that the price of gold had increased 53.7% in three years (2009-2011).

Then Paul, adopting a prosecutorial tone, tells Ben Bernanke and members at the hearing "that the dollar during these same three years was devalued almost 50%."

The exchange between Paul and Bernanke highlights fundamentally different views on the role of gold in the modern economy.

Paul argued that gold is an indispensable store of value and a hedge against inflation and default. Paul also pointed out that gold has been money for 6,000 years.

Bernanke, on the other hand, argued that gold is not money. When pressed, he stated that central banks merely hold gold (instead of diamonds, for example) because of “tradition.”

After a subtly smirking Bernanke denied that gold was money, Paul knew there was no need to continue the questioning. Ron Paul closed just like he began. He was confident, concise, and victorious, whereas Bernanke used double-speak and deflection.

Bernanke could be called a gold basher or a "paper bug". But he is not alone.

Fake News

So many gold villains walk undetected. They don't sport black capes, hats, or cartoon masks. Nor do they threaten to poison the public like the Joker in Batman (though I'd argue that debasing our currency is a form of poisoning the economy).

The media and the financial establishment have been churning out their anti-gold propaganda for years, as so adroitly explained by Guy Christopher, the late Money Metals columnist.

Christopher wrote some wonderfully insightful articles on this topic that are worth your time – such as The Ugly Truth Why Your Stockbroker Doesn't Want You to Buy Gold or Silver and The Seven Biggest Lies Told (and Believed) about Gold.

Another notable gold basher is radio personality, Dave Ramsey. This financial “guru” rears his head to bash gold from his TV and radio show platform a handful of times each year.

Ramsey's talking points against gold are based on false assumptions, and he tends to bully and ridicule his callers asking about gold.

The more false his claims happen to be, the more he proclaims them with fervor and bombast as if they are universally held laws of sound finance.

For example, he constantly falls back on similar themes he believes will play well with uneducated investors. (The same type of folks who recently sued Ramsey for $150 million after he steered them to a "timeshare exit" company that shut down after it was accused of fraud.)

Ramsey says that gold is:

Too volatile. To the upside? Remember, gold was $35 per ounce when Nixon closed the gold window in 1971.
Does not produce income. Putting aside that income on gold is possible, explosive capital gains beat earning interest in a depreciating currency.
Is not useful. Tell that to central banks that have recently been stocking up at record rates. Gold became recognized as money precisely because of its utility. It's fungible, divisible, a store of value, and a medium of exchange.
Is not liquid. Ha! Gold is traded in huge volumes all day and night. Read "Sell your Gold & Silver in 3 easy steps.

For more examples of Ramsey's ongoing misinformation campaign about gold, go here and here.

Another inglorious gold basher is Harry Dent. Like Ramsey, he makes many preposterous and unsubstantiated statements.

Dent's misinformation is regularly trotted out there under headlines like "Gold is going to $500 per ounce."

Barrick recently reported that its cost of production for gold has reached $1,700 per ounce. That puts something of a floor under the price of gold.

Where is gold today? Nearly $2,000 per ounce.

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The big question our readers are asking – the sticking point everyone wants to know when making financial decisions: Is a global economic disaster coming or not? According to headlines shouting green shoot recovery, rising employment, and a red hot stock market, the answer is Not.

Those propaganda headlines come with soothing tales of compassionate, wise, and unified central bankers running the show, having everything under control.

One by one, those bankers are now separating their nations' fortunes, and their own, from one another. Many are publicly demonstrating they don't trust each other, and just as certainly, proving why you should not trust any of them.

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For starters, nothing says “I don't trust you anymore” like demanding the return of tons of gold stored for safekeeping in the U.S. for most of eight decades. Bank masters in Austria, Germany, Venezuela, Holland, and other nations began publicly calling their gold home from Fort Knox shortly after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis brought the world face to face with economic annihilation.

And no one says “I don't trust the paper money we've all been printing” louder than Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank for 19 years until 2006.

Only Now Does Greenspan Level with Us

Alan Greenspan on Gold

Greenspan sixty years ago was a close friend and collaborator of philosopher and free-market icon Ayn Rand. He was without question a strong proponent of gold. But during decades as a supposed financial wizard and then head of the Fed, Greenspan abandoned Rand's teachings that markets should be free from government meddling.

Now aware his historical legacy is up for grabs, he is rewriting his resume, publicly throwing his still-considerable influence to favor gold. Since leaving the Fed, he has been saying loudly and without apology gold is better to hold than paper money, starting with U.S. dollars.

“Gold is a currency... by all evidence, a premier currency. No fiat currency, including the dollar, can match it,” he said in 2014. He told the BBC in February he believes the Euro is doomed.

Greenspan pretended for 19 years he ran a non-political Federal Reserve. But at a financial conference last year, he had jaws dropping everywhere.

“I never said the U.S. Federal Reserve was independent,” was his response to a question about his policies. Greenspan's bombshell was meant to inoculate himself from the long lasting effects of his dangerous policies. But it serves as an off-hand admission he spent his life as a puppet, not a puppet master.

You Pay the Price for Central Bankers' Lies

One of the most transparent, lying bank masters on record is Jean-Claude Juncker, former prime minister of Luxembourg, former economic wizard of the European Council, and current President of the European Commission. Juncker happily bragged about lying. “When it becomes serious, you have to lie,”he said in a now infamous self-tribute.

In a videotaped economic conference in 2011, Juncker told his audience he often “had to lie” while running Europe as its economic superstar. Sometimes he truthfully told us why. “I am for secret, dark debates,” he said in 2011. It would “not be intelligent to draw public attention” to facts, he once told a top British banker. One chilling Juncker quotation admitted central bankers criminally manipulate a sleep-walking public. Most people can't understand what we do, he said, so “we continue step by step until there is no turning back."

Some former central bankers are coming clean, but Ben Bernanke is the holdout. Infamous for his 2006 assurance to Congress the housing market was solid and in fine shape a year before it collapsed, Bernanke is writing his autobiography to explain how he saved the world by printing and giving away trillions. He gets $250,000 of those dollars back for one-hour speaking engagements.

Central bankers are edgy. They recognize they've created disasters and want to distance themselves from the consequences.

In Washington earlier this month, banking officials from across the globe gathered to publicly discuss hot buttons like Greece, Iraq, and Ukraine. The New York Times reported the top subject discussed behind closed doors was Beltway “dysfunction,” quoting one central bank official saying the “single most important issue” of all the meetings was U.S. failures.

Any list of America's top allies will show most of them abandoning the U.S. economically. Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Korea, France, Germany, and 51 other nations are clamoring to join either Russia's Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) or China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIA). Both are designed to compete with – and eventually destroy – U.S. economic and military influence around the world.

What is the Collapse of the Dollar?

When the value of international currency becomes more valuable than the US dollar, then those countries can decide to remove their holdings. If they do this, then the US dollar's value will decrease, and it can lead to a collapse.

America's Allies Are Hedging Themselves

U.S. allies are eagerly making deals to replace the U.S. petro-dollar with the Chinese yuan for international trade, while Washington begs them not to. Even Taiwan, long protected by the U.S., tried to join China's AIIA against Washington's wishes.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, a top economic adviser to presidents Obama and Clinton, warned a few weeks ago economic allies abandoning the U.S. marks “the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system.”

The economist who defined the modern-day currency war, author Jim Rickards, summed it up in a comprehensive Money Metals podcast interview April 10th. Rickards describes the global economy as not in recovery but in depression. Central bankers “don't know what they're doing. They won't say it publicly but they do say it privately. This is one big science experiment.”

Today, across the world, the big money is rapidly changing hands as bankers frantically change dance partners. Bank masters are telling us big changes are coming, either over time or perhaps overnight.

Would big changes necessarily mean another global, catastrophic economic meltdown on its way with no turning back? The record is clear – the people with that answer would be those who caused it with their secret policies and actions.

They haven't yet told us everything they know, but they have told us they cannot be trusted.

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"Economic Collapse Timeline","secondary_keywords":"economic collapse timeline, when will the economy recover, when will economy collapse, economic collapse","publish_date":"2015-04-29","podcast_url":"","quick_text":"...","author_id":5,"content_type_id":1,"created_at":"2015-04-29T15:16:25.000000Z","updated_at":"2023-08-01T19:00:49.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"","meta_description":"If international currency becomes more valuable than the US dollar, those countries can remove their holdings. This value decrease & leads to a collapse of the dollar.","podcast_duration":"","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/economic-collapse-timeline.jpg","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"","facebook_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/crisis-google.png","twitter_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/crisis-google.png","status":1,"show_guest_author":0,"guest_author_image":"","guest_author_name":"","guest_author_description":"","h2_header":null,"image_width":700,"image_height":368,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"news/2015/04/29/economic-collapse-timeline-000699","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/economic-collapse-timeline.jpg","truncated_description":"The big question our readers are asking – the sticking point everyone wants to know when making fina...","pretty_publish_date":"April 29th, 2015"}},{"page_description":"They wanted to create a republic with checks & balances. While the Electoral College is part of our constitutional system. The Federal Reserve is not supposed to be.","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/electoral-college-v-central-bank-social.jpg","page_title":"Electoral College Makes More Constitutional Sense than Central Bank","page_type":"news","score":5.993683079861767,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2016/12/19/constitutional-electoral-college-central-bank-000972","data":{"id":972,"title":"Electoral College Makes More Constitutional Sense than Central Bank","description":"The Electoral College is part of our constitutional system. The Federal Reserve isn’t – or at least wasn’t ever supposed to be. Central banks that print fiat money are antiquated and unconstitutional. The Founders warned against the dangers of central banks, and previous presidents have tried to get rid of them.","rss_title":"Electoral College Makes More Constitutional Sense than Central Bank","slug":"constitutional-electoral-college-central-bank","h1_header":"The Electoral College Makes More Constitutional Sense than a Central Bank","content":"

On Monday, the Electoral College convenes to formally choose the next President of the United States. The Electoral College vote is normally little more than a ceremonial event that makes the results of the election official. This year is different.

Embittered Democrats and a few “Never Trump” Republicans are urging some of Donald Trump’s would-be electors to break ranks and vote for someone else. There is no constitutional requirement that the 538 electors must honor the will of the majority in their respective states.

Election Stamp

But there are laws in some states that effectively bind their electors to the popular vote results. Only on rare occasions has an elector decided to go rogue and vote against the will of his or her state.

Anti-Trump forces claim that several electors may be willing to join in a coordinated effort to deny Trump the presidency and throw the election to the House of Representatives. A few renegades may well make their voices heard. However, it’s extremely unlikely to be enough to deny Trump the presidency. He has a big margin of victory in the electoral count, thanks to wins in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan (he only needed to win one of those states to clinch).

The recount efforts in those states fizzled out, so there’s little hope left for Democrats to get the results overturned. What they can do is try to undermine the incoming president’s perceived legitimacy. If something unexpected does happen with the Electoral College vote on Monday, it could certainly rattle markets.

Some of the same activists who now want to use the Electoral College to stop Trump have, in previous election cycles, blasted it as antiquated and undemocratic.

The Founders Didn’t Want to Create a Direct Democracy

They wanted to create a republic with checks and balances.

The Electoral College is part of our constitutional system. The Federal Reserve isn’t – or at least wasn’t ever supposed to be.

Central banks that print fiat money are antiquated and unconstitutional. The Founders warned against the dangers of central banks, and previous presidents have tried to get rid of them. One such president was Andrew Jackson.

As Money Metals analyst Guy Christopher explained in our podcast interview with him last week, “Andrew Jackson, President, 1829-1836, was a foe of central banking. He believed in sound money. A lot of folks don't know that Andrew Jackson forced buyers and customers of the federal government to use gold and silver rather than paper money. He did that by executive order, and it caused a lot of concern among bankers because they had to come up with gold instead of paper. He was a foe of central banks for the same reason that people today are against central banks, he saw the dangers of printing money that was not backed by sound money, by gold and silver.”

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"","secondary_keywords":"","publish_date":"2016-12-19","podcast_url":"","quick_text":"...","author_id":4,"content_type_id":1,"created_at":"2016-12-19T15:28:14.000000Z","updated_at":"2023-07-26T20:05:36.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"","meta_description":"They wanted to create a republic with checks & balances. While the Electoral College is part of our constitutional system. The Federal Reserve is not supposed to be.","podcast_duration":"","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/electoral-college-v-central-bank.jpg","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/electoral-college-v-central-bank.jpg","facebook_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/electoral-college-v-central-bank-social.jpg","twitter_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/electoral-college-v-central-bank-social.jpg","status":1,"show_guest_author":0,"guest_author_image":"","guest_author_name":"","guest_author_description":"","h2_header":"","image_width":700,"image_height":368,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"news/2016/12/19/constitutional-electoral-college-central-bank-000972","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/electoral-college-v-central-bank.jpg","truncated_description":"The Electoral College is part of our constitutional system. The Federal Reserve isn’t – or at least ...","pretty_publish_date":"December 19th, 2016"}},{"page_description":"Will Silver Make a Comeback as Legal Tender? What happens when gold future contracts come due? How will COMEX come up with the physical metal? Read to find out...","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/silver-legal-tender.png","page_title":"Silver as Legal Tender & Manipulation in Metals Markets Revealed","page_type":"news","score":5.9932245332936525,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2015/09/14/silver-legal-tender-000764","data":{"id":764,"title":"Silver as Legal Tender & Manipulation in Metals Markets Revealed","description":"At Money Metals Exchange, we believe a significant part of our mission is to educate customers and the public at large about the many aspects of the precious metals market.","rss_title":"Questions Answered: Silver as Legal Tender & Manipulation in Metals Markets","slug":"silver-legal-tender","h1_header":"Questions Our Readers Want Answered...","content":"

At Money Metals Exchange, we believe a significant part of our mission is to educate customers and the public at large about the many aspects of the precious metals market.

While our precious metals specialists have the pleasure of addressing your excellent questions on an individual basis, we occasionally take the opportunity to answer some of the best and most common questions in a more public way...

Silver As Legal Tender

Will Silver Make a Comeback as Legal Tender?

Evangeline writes: I have recently started with your monthly gold/silver accumulation program. I do have some concerns, as I am not sure how this will help in the event of the dollar losing all its value. I also have a small amount of silver that I came by over the years. Will silver ever be used again as legal tender? Or will I have to sell it? How difficult will that be when things fall apart, like delivery of mail? What will I sell it for if the dollar is gone?

Actual silver coinage may never be officially reintroduced into circulation. Governments around the world are moving to drive out even paper money to create a digital economy. There's a reason why there are no $1,000 bills or $10,000 bills anymore. The government wants to make it impracticable to pay for large purchases in cash.

Bills and coins represent only 7% of all economic transactions in the U.S. and as little as 3% in Sweden, where public buses don't accept cash. Governments want all transactions to be electronic (credit cards, debit cards, smartphones, etc.) so that all purchases can be automatically logged and traced back to individual purchasers.

This excellent article by Guy Christopher discusses the question of “spending” your gold and silver.

But short of a currency collapse, it’s likely that silver-backed and gold-backed currencies (both private and governmental) will be integrated into the electronic economy through debit cards, etc. That would make directly spending your gold and silver seamless.

As for your other questions, keep in mind that silver's real value exists independent of the dollar's value.

There never has been and never will be a time in the history of civilization when silver ceases to be a store of value. Whether you use it directly as money in a barter transaction or sell it for whatever the exchange rate happens to be in whatever currency you pay your bills in, silver will be widely recognized and accepted.

You can always sell your gold and silver to local jewelers, pawn shops, or coin shops or to major national dealers such as Money Metals Exchange. It’s super easy to sell your precious metals to us. We will generally pay you the spot price of the metal at the time or a fair bit more, depending on the item and market conditions.

Manipulation in Metals Markets

Henry asks: The amount of physical metal in COMEX vaults available to deliver on futures contracts has been exceptionally low for some time. However, recent data shows this problem suddenly becoming even worse. As of last week, over 200 ounces of paper gold are trading for every ounce of physical gold in the vaults. What happens when these contracts come due? Don't they have to come up with the physical metal?

In effect, the commercial short sellers who hold an inordinately large position in the futures market don't have to deliver the metal they've sold. The contracts are almost always settled in cash. If all "longs" demanded delivery of the metal, which they are entitled to do, then the COMEX futures exchange would have a problem on its hands, because there is nowhere near enough gold (or silver) in reserve to meet that kind of demand.

However, in a delivery default situation, the COMEX can allow a settlement in cash, even though the credibility of the COMEX (and the electronic markets generally) would certainly be damaged.

The danger that an investor may not be able to secure delivery of his metal is one of many reasons why the futures market is a lousy place to be.

It is possible this massive and growing leverage in precious metals futures is part of the reason why paper gold and silver have not gotten much safe-haven buying in recent weeks. Most of the buying in precious metals has been concentrated in physical bullion at the same time there has been huge amounts of selling on paper.

Take heart. If prices remain artificially low, the availability of the physical metal at these prices will dry up, and this disconnect between the paper and physical markets will be reconciled. For now, you have the opportunity to accumulate physical metal at discounted prices (while it’s still available).

For more on the subject of manipulation and why it will ultimately fail, go here.

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"legal tender, metal market manipulation","secondary_keywords":"","publish_date":"2015-09-14","podcast_url":"","quick_text":"...","author_id":0,"content_type_id":1,"created_at":"2015-09-14T14:43:10.000000Z","updated_at":"2023-07-27T20:56:36.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"","meta_description":"Will Silver Make a Comeback as Legal Tender? What happens when gold future contracts come due? How will COMEX come up with the physical metal? Read to find out...","podcast_duration":"","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/silver-legal-tender.jpg","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/silver-legal-tender.jpg","facebook_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/silver-legal-tender.png","twitter_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/silver-legal-tender.png","status":1,"show_guest_author":0,"guest_author_image":"","guest_author_name":"","guest_author_description":"","h2_header":null,"image_width":700,"image_height":368,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"news/2015/09/14/silver-legal-tender-000764","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/silver-legal-tender.jpg","truncated_description":"At Money Metals Exchange, we believe a significant part of our mission is to educate customers and t...","pretty_publish_date":"September 14th, 2015"}},{"page_description":"Owners of precious metals generally redeem their holdings through a dealer. It takes a moment for holders of widely traded bullion products to convert them into cash.","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/how-do-you-redeem-gold-during-an-economic-crisis-social.png","page_title":"How do you Redeem Gold During an Economic Crisis?","page_type":"news","score":5.989882418174846,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2014/09/17/two-pressing-questions-on-our-readers-minds-000604","data":{"id":604,"title":"How do you Redeem Gold During an Economic Crisis?","description":"Our precious metals Specialists enjoy addressing the many excellent questions posed by our customers on an individual basis, and we do our best to share some of the most common questions and answers in a more public way...","rss_title":"Two Pressing Questions on Our Readers’ Minds…","slug":"two-pressing-questions-on-our-readers-minds","h1_header":"Two Pressing Questions on Our Readers’ Minds…","content":"

At Money Metals, we believe a significant part of our mission is to educate customers and the public at large about the many aspects of the precious metals market.

Our precious metals Specialists enjoy addressing the many excellent questions posed by our customers on an individual basis, and we do our best to share some of the most common questions and answers in a more public way...

Laura asks: I read your excellent article "What to Expect When Telling Friends about Gold and Silver" by Guy Christopher. When I talk to friends, they often ask “Where are you going to redeem the gold if the economy goes bad? Will a local grocery store be able to "handle" or break the gold into smaller denominations?" How would you respond?

We expect that to get easier for people -- not harder – to redeem gold bullion coins in a serious economic crisis. And it is very easy now.

Owners of Precious Metals

At the current time, owners of precious metals generally redeem their holdings through a dealer. Money Metals Exchange and other dealers are constantly buying inventory – many times throughout the day. We publish on our website real-time prices we pay to buy various items. Customers can call any time, lock their prices and simply mail us the items. As soon as we receive the shipment, we issue payment via wire, ACH, or check.

It takes just a few moments for holders of widely traded bullion products (the products Money Metals focuses exclusively on) to convert them into cash with us or any other dealer in the country.

You can also trade with neighbors, friends, and others -- anyone who recognizes the full value of the bullion offered. For now, though, this remains a very small contingent. Most estimate that fewer than 2% of people have ever owned physical gold and silver bullion.

Should we have a serious currency crisis in the future where merchants no longer accept dollars for their goods and services, you can expect these merchants to do what they have done throughout history around the world. They will exchange their wares for gold and silver.

If history is any guide, people who hold gold and silver, even just 1 troy oz of silver or gold, during this sort of crisis will be extraordinarily glad – not inconvenienced or disadvantaged. They will be able to exchange their precious metals at a premium directly with merchants for the things they need.

We recommend anyone concerned about needing precious metals to barter and trade with buy a mix of gold and silver and pick up at least some metal in "fractional" size (less than 1 ounce). Pre-1965 90% silver U.S. coins, 1/10 oz silver rounds, pre-1933 coins and 1/10th oz gold coins are all well-suited for making change or bartering in small amounts.

John asks: What is the spot price and how does it relate to premiums?

The “spot” price represents the current base market value of the various precious metals. It is set in large global futures exchanges, including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (COMEX). Traders actively buy and sell futures contracts, representing claims on very large bars at some future date, nearly 24 hours a day from Sunday evening to Friday evening.

Technically, the “spot” price is the price of the most recent trade for the nearest active delivery month. And it changes from moment to moment – much like stock prices – as tens of thousands of contracts change hands daily.

Every precious metals dealer should be using a live spot price that is almost the same at any given time – with the only variation being attributable to a small time lag or the particular reporting service being utilized.

Many mints and industrial users buy futures contracts and take delivery of very large bars, like silver bullion bars and gold bars directly from exchange vaults. But these exchange-sized bars are typically not suitable for private investors who want to take possession. They are difficult and expensive to ship and will generally need to be re-assayed when it is time to sell.

Bullion Premiums

The bullion products that Money Metals Exchange and other dealers offer carry a “premium” that is added to the spot price. This premium includes wholesale premiums dealers must pay and/or the manufacturing cost of converting the large exchange-sized bars and other raw inputs into finished coins, rounds, and smaller bars designed for bullion investors to easily hold and trade. Premiums also include dealer overhead and profit.

Premiums will vary from company to company and from product to product – but for bullion coins, bars, and rounds, premiums are typically between 4% and 12% of the spot price. (As a general rule, small fractionals will tend to carry higher premiums and large multi-ounce items will carry lower premiums. As a percentage of total value, gold premiums tend to be lower than silver premiums.) You can check out how much a 1-troy-ounce gold coin is currently worth to get a better idea of gold premiums.

Some of the saddest situations we have encountered involve customers who bought supposedly “rare” coins from a high-pressure sales outfit often paying premiums of at least 40% (and sometimes multiples of that). Later they discover the coins aren’t scarce at all and won’t bring much more than their melt value based on the spot price. That’s why we have labeled such slabbed and graded coins “Ripoff Gold” and “Ripoff Silver.”

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"The silver spot price represents the current base market value of that precious metal","secondary_keywords":"spot price, questions, faq","publish_date":"2014-09-17","podcast_url":"","quick_text":"...","author_id":1,"content_type_id":1,"created_at":"2014-09-17T14:57:55.000000Z","updated_at":"2024-02-14T21:00:40.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"","meta_description":"Owners of precious metals generally redeem their holdings through a dealer. It takes a moment for holders of widely traded bullion products to convert them into cash.","podcast_duration":"","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/live-silver-spot-price-chart.png","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"","facebook_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/how-do-you-redeem-gold-during-an-economic-crisis-social.png","twitter_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/how-do-you-redeem-gold-during-an-economic-crisis-social.png","status":1,"show_guest_author":0,"guest_author_image":"","guest_author_name":"","guest_author_description":"","h2_header":null,"image_width":700,"image_height":368,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"news/2014/09/17/two-pressing-questions-on-our-readers-minds-000604","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/live-silver-spot-price-chart.png","truncated_description":"Our precious metals Specialists enjoy addressing the many excellent questions posed by our customers...","pretty_publish_date":"September 17th, 2014"}},{"page_description":"Investors reacted to the jobs data as the financial media trumpeted unemployment “falling” to 5.5% in last week’s jobs report.","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/media-botches-unemployment-reporting-social.png","page_title":"Government's Unemployment Rate is a "Big Lie"","page_type":"news","score":5.9889668628727595,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2015/03/09/media-botches-unemployment-reporting-000679","data":{"id":679,"title":"Government's Unemployment Rate is a "Big Lie"","description":"Investors reacted to the jobs data as the financial media trumpeted unemployment “falling” to 5.5% in last week’s jobs report.","rss_title":"Media Botches Unemployment Reporting","slug":"media-botches-unemployment-reporting","h1_header":"Media Botches Unemployment Reporting","content":"

Headline unemployment rate is a sham

The financial media trumpeted unemployment “falling” to 5.5% in last week’s jobs report. Maybe investors relied upon CNBC’s analysis and reached the wrong conclusion, that the falling unemployment rate and the economic recovery behind it support the rationale for the Fed to abandon stimulus and start raising interest rates.

If the Fed raises rates, it’s good news for the dollar – but it’s not necessarily bad news for gold and silver which in the past have shown strength in a rising interest rate environment.

However, even if Fed officials may use declining headline unemployment as an excuse to raise rates, they are smart enough to know the underlying jobs data is anything but good. Maybe last week’s reaction to the Employment Situation indicates investors know better too.

A deeper look at the numbers, once again, reveals just what a sham the headline unemployment rate is. The fact is that 92.9 million Americans are no longer receiving unemployment benefits and remain without jobs. The BLS shoves them off the books to calculate the headline rate. The rate of employment is the lowest it has been since women began entering the workforce more than 40 years ago, and it’s continuing to fall.

Government's unemployment number is being dubbed The Big Lie

Even the 92.9 million number doesn’t tell the whole story. Money Metals contributor Guy Christopher astutely points out that the media errs almost universally by publishing that number as the total unemployed. They forget to add back in the number of people that the BLS recognizes- those without work, but still receiving benefits. This amounts to another 8.7 million in the most recent report.

So the official government number of working-age Americans without a job is 101,600,000. And that doesn’t even take into account some of the adjustments the BLS makes to underreport the unemployment epidemic, prompting the head of the prestigious Gallop Organization to call the government's unemployment number "The Big Lie."

Regardless of whether investors fear a deteriorating economy, Fed tightening, or both, for now, they are selling most assets and holding dollars. But gold and silver prices have remained above the bottom they established last fall.

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The History of Gold in China

It has been said gold goes where it is best appreciated. Rapidly rising wealth across Asia has Easterners in Turkey, Iran, Vietnam, and China buying gold, saving gold, and using gold as money.

But for most Americans and many Europeans, gold is no big deal. What's the explanation for the East's love of gold and the West's nonchalance? Importantly, what does this mean to you?

The answer is found in the histories of failed governments, shifting borders, changing flags, and collapsed currencies. As governments crumbled over the centuries and currencies became worthless, confidence in gold and silver as true wealth was always the last man standing. The descendants of those destroyed societies understand gold as no others can.

The United States and China are standout examples of polar opposite views toward gold.

The United States, a nation existing for only 238 years, has not suffered centuries of calamities. Our history has often been violent and divisive, but we've held onto our borders, our flag, and our form of government. And, we still call our money the dollar, although it's no longer backed by gold.

China is one of the oldest civilizations, with 3,000 years of brutal, tribal conflict, as feudal dynasties fiercely outfought and outlasted each other for a couple of hundred years here and there.

China Invented Paper Money But Is Super Wary Today

Chinese monetary history includes copper, gold, silver, and one curious innovation. Over a thousand years ago, China was the first civilization to print money. The adventurer Marco Polo carried Chinese paper money home to Europe, which in turn introduced hundreds of years of inflationary disasters and currency failures throughout the world.

When the Communists came to power in 1949, they forbade private gold ownership. Only in 2003 did China lift that ban, for keen economic and political reasons. China feared America's failing dollar while studying America's sleepwalking ignorance and disparagement of gold and silver.

The Chinese government had seized an opportunity no other nation on Earth recognized. It very quietly began fortifying its economic empire with gold.

Thousands of Chinese men and women
stand in line to buy gold

Everyday Chinese shopping habits and evolving customs reveal the modern differences between East and West.

Chinese banks invite customers to buy gold, sell gold, and use gold as collateral for loans. Government-sponsored advertising plays across China, encouraging citizens to buy and hold gold and silver. News programs update gold and silver prices and alert listeners to bargains in premiums.

Citizens get regular reminders that taking gold and silver out of the country without permission is illegal, reminding smugglers to think twice before losing their heads.

Gold dealers are plentiful, from mom-and-pop kiosks to big-city jewelers. Upscale shops resembling nightclubs stay open until the wee hours. Hostesses carrying trays of hors d'oeuvres, drinks, and sample bars and coins circulate among customers lounging on overstuffed leather.

The most important of the holiday gift-giving seasons is the Chinese New Year. Gift shopping is easy. No kitchen gadgets for mom or ugly ties for dad – parents and children alike want, and get, gold and silver. Analysts say purchasing for that holiday is so heavy it influences international supply and pricing.

Asian buyers instinctively rush to stock up whenever prices fall. They “buy the dip,” and they shop for bargains. Long waiting lines to buy gold are not uncommon.

Chinese cherish gold jewelry

Eleven years ago, the Chinese could not legally own gold. Today they openly discuss news and regulations regarding gold and silver.

Chinese workers don't have IRAs. Instead, jewels, gold, and silver are customary stores of wealth.

And they are perfect for showing off. Fashion shows feature Asian supermodels in gold-laced dresses and lingerie. Last July, China hosted The International Gold & Jewelry Beauty Queens pageant. Yes, there was even a swimsuit event!

The U.S. and China, like all nations, are secretive about their official gold dealings. The last credible audit of America's gold was in 1953, despite recent political and public pressure to open the books. Critics want answers to two questions: how much is there and who really owns it?

The last official notice of China's gold holdings astounded the financial world. In April 2009, China announced it held 1,054 tons, almost double what was previously known. That lifted China into fifth place among nations holding gold. That headline helped boost gold prices in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008.

Gold Is Flowing Out of the West and into Asian Vaults

China's announcement was a shock wave to other central bankers, who were known to be selling gold. Most of the world's central bankers took the hint, quickly reversed course, and became buyers also. Nervous governments (such as Germany) began asking the U.S. to return their gold.

Besides importing mountains of gold, China is a major mining producer, buys gold and silver mines around the world, and builds massive vaults to hold it all. It pays with gobs of unwanted dollars.

China developed the largest physical gold market in the world, the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE). The SGE opened for international trading last week with a ceremony led by China’s central bank chief who raved about the importance of gold ownership. China has made it clear it wants control of the world’s physical gold market.

The U.S. is widely thought to have much less than it claims, while China is fully believed to have much more than it admits.
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Gold watchers today make two important comparisons: China is known to be buying gold, while the U.S. is strongly suspected of selling its gold. And the U.S. is widely thought to have much less than it claims, while China is fully believed to have much more than it admits.

China now seems wary of the paper money it invented over a thousand years ago.

Yes, gold goes where it is best-loved and most appreciated. That means China has backed up the truck.

If you worry about who might ever buy your gold and silver, talk to the folks with thousands of years more experience with failed governments and failed currencies than we Americans have. Be assured half the world's population, over three billion customers, happily stand in line to buy your gold and silver with their unwanted dollars. But don't necessarily expect to get those precious metals back!

","image_selection":1,"primary_keywords":"The History of Gold in China","secondary_keywords":"china buying gold","publish_date":"2014-09-24","podcast_url":"","quick_text":"...","author_id":5,"content_type_id":1,"created_at":"2014-09-24T15:35:13.000000Z","updated_at":"2023-07-25T21:02:18.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"","meta_description":"How much gold does China own? In April 2009, China announced it held 1,054 tons, almost double what was previously known. Making it fifth among nations holding gold.","podcast_duration":"","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/china-buying-gold.jpg","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"","facebook_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/is-china-buying-up-all-the-gold-social.png","twitter_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/is-china-buying-up-all-the-gold-social.png","status":1,"show_guest_author":0,"guest_author_image":"","guest_author_name":"","guest_author_description":"","h2_header":null,"image_width":700,"image_height":368,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"news/2014/09/24/warning-3-billion-people-covet-your-gold-000607","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/china-buying-gold.jpg","truncated_description":"It has been said gold goes where it is best appreciated. Rapidly rising wealth across Asia has Easte...","pretty_publish_date":"September 24th, 2014"}},{"page_description":"The astounding results of a groundbreaking, scientific study just released, the first of its kind we know of, confirms a lot we’ve suspected about mainstream journalists. Journalists are different than the rest of us. That’s a polite way of saying journal","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/fake-news-on-gold-social.jpg","page_title":"The Fake News Media and Gold","page_type":"news","score":5.979295606342234,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2017/06/01/fake-news-media-hate-gold-001085","data":{"id":1085,"title":"The Fake News Media and Gold","description":"The astounding results of a groundbreaking, scientific study just released, the first of its kind we know of, confirms a lot we’ve suspected about mainstream journalists. Journalists are different than the rest of us. That’s a polite way of saying journalists are dumber than you and I.","rss_title":"The Fake News Media and Gold","slug":"fake-news-media-hate-gold","h1_header":"MEDIA STUDY WARNS: Don’t Trust Us Dummies with Your Gold","content":"

The astounding results of a groundbreaking, scientific study just released, the first of its kind we know of, confirm a lot we’ve suspected about mainstream journalists.

Journalists are different than the rest of us.

Researchers found journalists’ brains just don’t work as well as yours and mine.

That’s a polite way of saying journalists are dumber than you and I.

The study flatly says journalists have less brain power than others to “regulate emotions, solve complex problems... and think flexibly and creatively,” although study findings say they are no more stressed than the average worker.

That means they understand less about what’s going on than you and I. It also means they are not as competent to figure out what’s wrong – or how to make it right.

Drunken Man

There’s one more stunner: the study found journalists have less ability to “suppress biases” than workers in other jobs and professions.

What? Isn’t that part of the job description?

It certainly doesn’t help matters that journalists stay a little drunker than the rest of us.

Researchers found journalists use alcohol more than average. The study concluded it is “likely” alcohol contributed to the study group’s overall low scores.

Dummies R Us

The London Press Club never meant to shoot journalism’s self-image in the rump last year when it commissioned this scientific study by Dr. Tara Swart.

Dr. Swart, a neuroscientist, and psychiatrist, educated at Oxford and King’s College London, is on the staff at MIT, where she studies and teaches a carload of high-end “team building” topics, including brain performance and stress management. Her pre-test protocols include physical and psychological analysis.

Recruited constantly by Fortune 500 companies for her expertise in team building, Dr. Swart sometimes conducts one-day seminars for global corporate bigwigs.

But Dr. Swart’s work for the London Press Club was no short course. Her completed study of twenty-one journalists took seven months.

Before you complain that’s not much of a study sample, you should know over ninety journalists initially signed up.

Some just couldn’t go the distance, and gave up or flunked out.

Others were thrown out for using anti-depressants. That left forty cutting the study, but only half of those (twenty-one) sweated it out to the finish line.

In its press statement, The London Press Club went from dumb to dumber trying to emphasize a positive finding.

Journalists, said the press club, are sustained by strong beliefs in their work, and as a result, are willing to work for lower pay than they might make in other professions.

Press club honchos found it “surprising” that “journalists’ brains” showed a “lower level of function” than non-journalists. The press statement laments that alcohol and brain power problems are holding journalists back, but doesn’t address how those failings might influence their reporting, accuracy, or honesty.

Journalists Fail Another Test

Trust in news media has been in a nosedive for decades. Pew Research and Gallup polling show growing public perceptions of bias and inaccurate reporting leaving a majority of news consumers distrusting news people.

Fake News

That distrust is at an all-time high.

Even more telling, a just-released Fox News poll found 65% believe reporters write fake news, making it up as they go along.

On the upside for them, trust in journalists still ranks slightly better than car salesmen, and way, way above Congress.

Follow the Money

Nowhere would a smart journalist’s brain power be more welcomed than providing knowledge of all things financial – wealth, wealth building, and wealth preservation.

While media covers stock markets, mounting debt, taxation, and even wealth inequality, mainstream journalism ignores the greatest unreported economic story out there – gold’s significance to personal liberty, and government policies to brutally suppress that liberty.

No one has connected those dots better than GATA, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee. And no one knows better than GATA’s Chris Powell that mainstream journalists are cowards when it comes to reporting what Powell calls “the financial news story of the century.”

GATA has been pounding that table for years, a table stacked now several feet high with solid documentation that governments hide their gold dealings and manipulate the paper price of gold, all to control financial markets across the board.

And all the while, a compliant, lapdog media plays along. Powell has offered piles of documentation to every mainstream journalist he’s ever met, with no takers.

“This is elementary journalism,” Powell said in a Money Metals podcast.

“Really any first-year journalism student could do it, but the mainstream financial press refuses to do it, I think largely because it is so sensitive to governments.”

So, just what does Dr. Swart’s study, connected to the dots at Pew and Gallup, connected to GATA’s dots of market and media manipulation, tell us about the people society has allowed to corner mainstream news and information?

One conclusion we can draw – while journalists aren’t as bright as you and I, are no more stressed but are a bit more tipsy, and cannot comprehend bias as well as the rest of us, they can be relentless in what they believe is their exclusive calling to influence thought and opinion.

And they don’t seem bothered at all that their life’s work is not trusted.

There’s one more dot to connect – one that leads to you.

Question the shortcomings of all news and information, place confidence only where it’s earned, and become your own trusted reliable source.

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"","secondary_keywords":"","publish_date":"2017-06-01","podcast_url":"","quick_text":"...","author_id":5,"content_type_id":1,"created_at":"2017-06-01T13:22:16.000000Z","updated_at":"2023-07-31T20:26:15.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"","meta_description":"The astounding results of a groundbreaking, scientific study just released, the first of its kind we know of, confirms a lot we’ve suspected about mainstream journalists. Journalists are different than the rest of us. That’s a polite way of saying journal","podcast_duration":"","header_image":"","article_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/fake-news-on-gold.jpg","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/fake-news-on-gold.jpg","facebook_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/fake-news-on-gold-social.jpg","twitter_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/fake-news-on-gold-social.jpg","status":1,"show_guest_author":0,"guest_author_image":"","guest_author_name":"","guest_author_description":"","h2_header":"","image_width":700,"image_height":368,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"news/2017/06/01/fake-news-media-hate-gold-001085","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/fake-news-on-gold.jpg","truncated_description":"The astounding results of a groundbreaking, scientific study just released, the first of its kind we...","pretty_publish_date":"June 1st, 2017"}},{"page_description":"Learn how to test gold & silver at home with these 5 proven methods. These methods for testing gold & silver will confirm the authenticity of your precious metals.","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/images/products/thumbs/thumb-American-Silver-Eagle.jpg","page_title":"How to Test Gold & Silver at Home (5 Proven Methods) - Money Metals Exchange","page_type":"guide","score":5.978356841216925,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/guides/how-to-test-gold-and-silver-at-home","data":{"id":2559,"title":"How to Test Gold & Silver at Home (5 Proven Methods) - Money Metals Exchange","description":"Just about all bullion investors worry about counterfeits. Those concerns are magnified when someone is buying for the first time. Stories about fake coins from Asia and gold bars drilled and filled with Tungsten have been in the headlines recently. But the truth is, counterfeiting is just about as old as the concept of money itself.","rss_title":"How to Test Gold & Silver at Home (5 Proven Methods) - Money Metals Exchange","slug":"how-to-test-gold-and-silver-at-home","h1_header":"How to Test Gold & Silver at Home: 5 Proven Bullion Testing Methods","content":"

Just about all bullion investors worry about counterfeits. Those concerns are magnified when someone is buying for the first time. Stories about fake coins from Asia and gold bullion bars drilled and filled with Tungsten have been in the headlines recently. But the truth is, counterfeiting is just about as old as the concept of money itself.

Popular Gold & Silver Products:

1 Oz Silver American Eagle

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1 oz American Gold Eagle

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1 oz Trump Silver Rounds

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Before diving into all the ways that fakes can be detected, the first and best protection is to work with a reputable and knowledgeable dealer such as Money Metals Exchange. Recently voted "Best in the USA," Money Metals has high-quality control and internal screening standards, plus it stands behind the metals that it sells to customers.

Fortunately, making phony coins or bars isn’t easy. The equipment involved is significant – it takes far more than a color printer and the right paper. And making fakes good enough to pass a few simple tests is darn near impossible.

Some testing equipment, such as mass spectrometers and sonogram machines, are expensive and impractical for the typical person to use.

However, there are some lower-budget ways you can determine whether or not the bullion you hold is genuine.

Here are 5 proven methods for testing your gold and silver:

Contents

How to Tell if Gold Is Real
Test 1: Size and Weight
Test 2: Sound or “Ping” Testing
Test 3: Silver & Gold Magnet Test

Test 4: Thermal Conductivity Testing for Silver
Test 5: Silver & Gold Acid Test
4 Tips for Avoiding Tungsten Fakes

How to Tell if Gold Is Real

Watch the video below to see each test that will help you check if gold is real:

Test 1: Size and Weight

Fisch Tester

Gold and silver are extraordinarily dense metals – much denser than just about any base metal (even lead and mercury in the case of gold). That means just about all fakes that weigh correctly will be too large in diameter and/or thickness. Or they will be underweight in order to achieve the right diameter and thickness. Simply comparing the diameter and thickness of the coin in question with others known to be genuine could be enough to put you at ease.

If not, an inexpensive set of calipers and a jeweler's scale are a good way of checking. Every bullion coin or round is produced with close tolerances in terms of diameter, thickness, and weight. You can find these dimensions on the “Specifications” tab on our coin and round product pages.

Using a Fisch Tester to Reveal Counterfeit Gold Coins

Investors might also consider Fisch Testers. Genuine coins will be both small enough in diameter and thin enough to fit through a slot in the tool, while remaining heavy enough to tip the tool on its fulcrum. Simple and very effective.

See: Best Gold Coins to Buy

Test 2: Sound or “Ping” Testing

Authentic gold and silver coins chime when struck and the difference is notable versus base metals. (For more about the melodic Ring of Truth you hear in Sound Money, read Guy Christopher’s essay "Sound Money and the Ring of Truth")

Base metal coins will sound duller and their ring will be shorter -- much like the difference between clinking crystal versus glass champagne flutes.

Try balancing the coin on your fingertip and strike it with another coin.

1 Oz Silver Canadian Maple Leaf

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1 oz Canadian Gold Maple Leaf

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1 oz Australian Silver Kangaroo

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SmartPhone Apps to Help Test Your Gold & Silver

CoinTrust iPhone App

Investors with an iPhone can also install the CoinTrust application and test a short list of the most popular silver and gold bullion coins by gently spinning them on a hard surface with the phone’s microphone positioned nearby.

Android users can install the Bullion Test app. Choose the coin from a drop down list, press the microphone button, then balance the coin on your fingertip and strike it with a fingernail or another coin. Results are instant and accurate.

Test 3: Silver & Gold Magnet Test

The above video on ping testing also references another simple technique for using a magnet to identify fakes. Gold and silver are non-magnetic. Placing a strong magnet on a coin and tipping it to watch whether the magnet slides off, as it should, or sticks, like it would to a counterfeit, requires only an inexpensive magnet and a few seconds. (Note that some base metals used in counterfeiting are also non-magnetic, so we suggest doing this in conjunction with some other techniques listed.)

Is real silver magnetic?

Silver possesses a number of remarkable properties that make it valuable in a variety of industrial and high-tech applications. Silver is dense, ductile, highly reflective, and one of the most highly conductive metals in existence. However, silver is not magnetic.

Silver’s lack of magnetic attraction gives you a quick way to test any given silver product to see if it contains foreign metals such nickel, iron, or cobalt. These cheaper metals will respond to magnets.

Fake silver products rarely appear for sale anywhere, if no other reason than there’s far greater financial incentive for forgers to tamper with gold bars or numismatic coins. Some fake silver novelty items from China may occasionally show up at flea markets or on eBay. You won’t have to worry about that if you buy your precious metals from a reputable coin dealer that sells products guaranteed by mints to have specific weight and purity.

Test 4: Thermal Conductivity Testing for Silver

Silver is one of the best conductors of thermal energy found in nature. That makes it easy to test silver bullion using nothing more than an ice cube. Place an ice cube on top of a coin, round, or bar, and you should see it begin melting almost instantly as heat is quickly transferred, as long as it is a pure silver bar, coin or round. Holding a coin or round between fingers or in the palm of your hand makes the results even more noticeable as the silver rapidly cools to your touch.

Test 5: Silver & Gold Acid Test

Silver and Gold Acid Test

Investors can purchaseinexpensive acid test kits for gold and silver. Watching the color change in a drop of acid can reveal whether or not a sample is genuine. However, acids should be handled carefully. Your items can be permanently discolored.

Since bullion coins, rounds, and bars are valued for their metal content, not their beauty, discoloration is unlikely to reduce the value of your bullion by more than a small amount. But it’s still wise to use acid testing sparingly and with caution.

4 Tips for Avoiding Tungsten Fakes

Some of the hardest to detect counterfeit gold products involve tungsten. Tungsten’s density is close to that of gold, and it is relatively inexpensive. Here are some of the best ways to avoid problems:

1. Avoid Large Gold Bars

10-ounce and 50 grams gold bars are among the easiest to tamper with as they can be drilled, filled with tungsten, and then plugged again with gold. This is more difficult with units 1 oz and smaller. Tungsten is extraordinarily hard whereas gold is soft. This means tungsten is very difficult to use in minting or fabricating small items. It is brittle, and stamping it with a design will result in coins with less detail unless it has been plated with a thick layer of gold.

2. Utilize Ring Testing

As outlined above should still offer defense against tungsten fakes.

3. Avoid Deals That Are Too Good To Be True

Never buy gold bullion below its melt value unless you know and trust its origins.

4. Buy Silver

No metal shares a similar density to silver, making it even more difficult to make good counterfeits than with gold. Plus, the financial incentive is lower.

Recently some of the more prominent mints and refiners have begun employing technology to mark products with seals that assure authenticity. For example, Sunshine Minting rounds and bars carry a seal that reads "VALID" when viewed using their proprietary lens and oriented correctly.

Investors can expect this sort of technology to be more widely used in the coming years. (Note: the lens carries a cost of around $20.00 and needs to be purchased separately from the metal itself.)

As mentioned above, the best defense against fake bullion is to buy from a reputable dealer. Money Metals Exchange sources products directly from well-regarded mints and refiners and employs good quality controls. That is why we can confidently stand behind every product we sell – guaranteeing authenticity, weight, and purity.

","image_selection":0,"primary_keywords":"","secondary_keywords":"","publish_date":"2022-07-14","podcast_url":"","quick_text":"

Just about all bullion investors worry about counterfeits. Those concerns are magnified when someone is buying for the first time.

","author_id":1,"content_type_id":9,"created_at":"2022-07-14T20:48:50.000000Z","updated_at":"2024-03-26T15:35:49.000000Z","podcast_subject_line":"","meta_description":"Learn how to test gold & silver at home with these 5 proven methods. These methods for testing gold & silver will confirm the authenticity of your precious metals.","podcast_duration":"","header_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/how-to-test-gold.jpg","article_image":"","redirect":"","canonical":"","sort":null,"featured_image":"","facebook_image":"","twitter_image":"","status":1,"show_guest_author":0,"guest_author_image":"","guest_author_name":"","guest_author_description":"","h2_header":"","image_width":0,"image_height":0,"noindex_flag":0,"podcast_embed":"","added_schema":"","banner_image":null,"full_url":"guides/how-to-test-gold-and-silver-at-home","first_image":"https://www.moneymetals.com/images/products/thumbs/thumb-American-Silver-Eagle.jpg","truncated_description":"Just about all bullion investors worry about counterfeits. Those concerns are magnified when someone...","pretty_publish_date":"July 14th, 2022"}},{"page_description":"We spoke to several brokers about what they thought the best ways to invest money are. Did they mention gold & silver? The brokers insisted on anonymity, as you'll see.","page_image_url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/your-stockbroker-doen-t-like-gold-silver-social.png","page_title":"Why Doesn't Your Stockbroker Want You to Buy Gold and Silver?","page_type":"news","score":5.97679991926594,"url":"https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2014/10/29/why-your-stockbroker-hates-gold-the-ugly-truth-000623","data":{"id":623,"title":"Why Doesn't Your Stockbroker Want You to Buy Gold and Silver?","description":"We spoke to several brokers about what they thought the best ways to invest money are. The brokers insisted on anonymity, as you'll see...","rss_title":"Your Stockbroker Doesn't Want You to Buy Gold or Silver: The Ugly Truth","slug":"why-your-stockbroker-hates-gold-the-ugly-truth","h1_header":"Your Stockbroker Doesn't Want You to Buy Gold or Silver: The Ugly Truth","content":"

Gold is a touchy subject on Wall Street. It has been ever since FDR drove Americans and their gold apart 80 years ago. Although gold bullion ownership has been legal in the U.S. since 1974, a relentless government campaign to dampen the gold price has left gold trailing in public popularity and perception.

Wall street gold and silver

Gold is money. No one knows that better than Wall Street. But it prefers to keep matters of gold to itself. Wall Street doesn't want you buying gold or even thinking about gold and treats you shabbily if you do.

As an individual investor, you will probably never come face to face with the masterminds on Wall Street. But you might meet a representative on Main Street, your local stockbroker. He adopts Wall Street's disdain for gold, whether consciously or in response to institutional incentives for him to push financial products only.

To understand, we looked at how stockbrokers are trained and managed by their Wall Street employers. We spoke to several brokers and regular clients about what they thought the best ways to invest money were. The brokers insisted on anonymity, as you'll see.

Stockbrokers Are Steeped in Establishment Thinking, No Mention of Precious Metals

Our hat is off to stockbrokers for the hard work it takes to earn that license. Their basic education revolves around a tough exam called Series 7, considered by some as difficult as the bar exam. It's a computer-generated, timed test of 250 questions lasting 7 hours, taken under government supervision. One study guide shows 8,000 possible test questions.

No two exams are identical, which eliminates cheating.

The material covers regulations, laws, and taxation involved in trading common securities like stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

It also covers government-mandated “ethics” training, supposedly meant to protect clients and their money from unfair practices. That includes understanding diversification, which requires evaluating a client's total assets, risk tolerance, and ways of spreading risk around among many types of investments. One test for risk tolerance is whether the client can sleep at night with his broker's recommendations.

The ethics rules also mean brokers are heavily regulated in what they can say or put in advertising to influence clients. One told us even the “Christmas cards to clients have to carry a disclaimer.”

Brokerage firms designate “compliance officers” to make sure the rules are followed. Brokers get surprise visits in person and must open all records for inspection, including emails, texts, even personal checkbooks. Just the act of commenting on this article would have required a compliance officer's approval, had we bothered to ask.

Brokers attend annual, mandatory continuing education classes. But despite covering almost every aspect of investing and wealth known to mankind, nowhere in your stockbroker's training, testing, or continuing ed is there a discussion of investing your money in physical gold or any precious metals.

Mainstream Brokers Try to Steer You Away from Gold

Brokers must follow Wall Street's lead. One told us, "I don't like gold, but if I did, I couldn't talk to you about it. I'd lose my license." He added, "You're not using names for this article, right?"

Mainstream brokers steer you away from gold and silver

While they can recommend and sell plenty of paper gold (gold mining shares, mutual funds, etc.), brokers can't sell physical gold. Also, they don't know any more about gold than most Americans, which is very little. So, they rely on Wall Street's mantra dismissing gold as a murky investment and will do their level best to talk you out of buying even a single ounce.

Wall Street's vast public relations and advertising empire, known previously as America's free press, gladly back them up, spreading lies about gold and scorning gold owners.

The exceptions on Wall Street are the mega-players quoted as owning gold and believing in gold. We firmly believe some local stockbrokers are secretly gold and silver stackers, but could never say so.

We uncovered one brokerage's secret to dealing with physical gold. When a valued client insisted on buying gold (like gold bars) and silver bullion, the brokerage quietly introduced the client to – a bullion dealer! Doing so satisfied the client (who would otherwise have lost confidence in the firm), and it kept the brokerage a long arm's length from any heavily regulated discussions of gold.

Individual investors we spoke to revealed a lot about investing confidence among the public.

Most investors in securities are honest in admitting they don't know exactly what their stock market dollars bought. “My investments are in an IRA” is too often the reply. Stock investors rely heavily on their advisers, telling us they need to believe their advisers have extensive knowledge of securities, which clients admit they don't have. They also express a need to believe their brokers have their best interests at heart, and many are satisfied.

Stockbrokers don't get paid if you buy physical gold and silver

Gold and silver investors see confidence differently. They trust self-confidence. Precious metals buyers have no massive financial machinery pared with a complicit media to champion gold and silver, except for free-market forces. Self-reliance emerges as a character trait for metal owners, who just don't get a lot of hand-holding.

The Most Important Reason Wall Street Hates Gold

Precious metals in your possession have no counterparties and no continuing fees and commissions, unlike the thousands of investments brokers sell. Once you own gold, that part of your wealth and your future is out of Wall Street's hands.

Decades ago, Wall Street routinely recommended a gold allocation of 5% for any portfolio -- a standard footnote to every financial analysis. Can you imagine the shock waves in markets today if a mere 5% of trillions of investment dollars suddenly went from stocks and bonds into physical gold and silver?

By pretending precious metals are not legitimate stores of wealth, and by belittling those who buy gold and silver as assets, Wall Street does a two-faced kabuki dance around its own ethics code of clear communication and client diversification. Wall Street and its complicit business media go against their advice to diversify, revealing a fraudulent – dare we say inconvenient – tale of true wealth.

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Post-election airwaves and publications today are filled with bad news, good news, and fake news.

The bad news is ‘fake news’ is very real. The good news is fake news is nothing new. The even better news for gold and silver stackers is they have learned to live with decades of fake news about sound money.

You already know all about fake news. It used to go by other names – lies, propaganda, false advertising, and brainwashing, to name a few. Now we can add polling results and agenda-driven predictions to that list.

Fake News Is a Cover Story

The term ‘fake news’ is a recent invention by mainstream liberal media to cover their asterisks after choking on pitifully biased presidential election coverage.

It’s an old political tactic – accuse everyone else of whatever you’re guilty of. Easier to disguise lousy journalism if everyone's doing it.

The story spawning the term ‘fake news’ was a Washington Post analysis charging that Russia interfered with the presidential election, including using leaked emails to pound Hillary Clinton.

The Post accused a couple of hundred news publishers of being treasonous liars. The pushback quickly piled up, some of it surprisingly harsh from mainstream media.

“I thought it was completely ridiculous that the Post would put this sorry piece of trash on the front page,” said the Washington editor of Harper’s magazine.

“Shameful and disgusting,” was the verdict by Rolling Stone’s star writer, Matt Taibbi. (That’s the same magazine found guilty of libel after sensationalizing a false story of gang rape at the University of Virginia).

Talented, respected Hollywood actor Denzel Washington, a Clinton supporter, was upset after an erroneous news item listed him in the Trump camp. He said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read it, you’re misinformed.”

Washington was actually paraphrasing 19th Century author and political observer, Mark Twain. Fake news has been around for a long, long, time.

Those who do not read the news are uninformed. Those that do are misinformed."

-Mark Twain

Update: The disgraced Washington Post now acknowledges its story about fake Russian news, filled with holes and inaccuracies was – fake news! There is, however, a more sinister threat behind fake news than just slandering actors and politicians.

Bogus hand-wringing over fake news could be used to create a public clamor for ‘standardized news’ – acceptance of government-regulated news coverage – aimed strictly at criminalizing alternative media, and could lead to government licensing of journalists.

Communist China has quickly jumped in front of the crowd eager to criminalize news. Xinjiang Province officials have threatened those who defy banned news practices with heavy fines. The accused should worry about imprisonment and even death sentences can’t be far behind.

To show everyone she’s not going away anytime soon, Hillary Clinton asked Congress to crack down on fake news. Last week, Congress did just that, passing the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act.

Any crackdown would mean shredding the First Amendment. It’s happened before, notably in wartime, when information was severely monitored by government censors. Designating a foreign power, like Russia, as an enemy in an information war, could lead to heavy censorship again.

Both Vlad Putin and Julian Assange of Wikileaks have denied Russia had anything to do with Wikileaks’ massive data dumps that so embarrassed the democrats leading up to the election.

We’ve seen other crackdown previews – various proposed internet regulations and so-called ‘net neutrality.’ Facebook‘s Mark Zuckerberg has so far failed to answer accusations that Facebook’s News Feed routinely excludes conservative news sites and news items. Facebook counts one billion news consumers daily, making it the largest media company on Earth.

No News Means Fake News

None of this is surprising to sound money advocates. The U.S. and other governments have long suppressed legitimate issues of debt and sound money. It’s in every big-spending government’s interests that gold and silver not compete with printed currency. A compliant, state-controlled media is crucial to that news manipulation.

Lies and myths about gold and silver have endured for decades, documented by dedicated publications such as Money Metals and many others.

Ongoing at this moment is the most stunning financial crime story on the planet.

You won’t find it in your local newspaper, or on any popular business channel. You’ll find it only in specialty publications dedicated to sound money.

It’s Deutsche Bank’s stunning admission that it and other banks have criminally suppressed the paper price of precious metals for years.

Deutsche Bank’s confession came after suspicious investors sued a string of banks. German regulators even started investigating the bank’s illegal actions in the gold market. To save its own hide, the bank recently agreed to turn on co-conspirators in the price-fixing scheme.

Deutsche Bank Eurosystem

Precious metals price-fixing, long suspected, alleged, and denied – is now demonstrated, proven, and admitted.

That’s a big story, but not one main media is interested in exploring or explaining.

The news that mainstream media fears to report is that price fixing is not some conspiracy theory. Of all the economic metrics manipulated by governments and banks, including interest rates and stock markets, the gold price is the one governments must control at all costs to stay in power.

If ever honestly reported and explained, the Deutsche Bank story would have widespread momentous effects on the way economic worlds work – just as earthshaking as the election of a political maverick to the Presidency.

Rather than risk the public exposure of theft, deceit, and fraud, the government and its compliant media will undoubtedly prefer to invent still another fake news cover story.

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