So this is little more than a random epiphany I had while watching Parks and Rec, but it actually got me pondering and I realized there was a "slight" problem with the future economic system we all assume is going to happen. Here's the background, on the show Parks and Rec there's a character who's basically a parody archetype of a libertarian, Ron Swanson. Buff, slightly overweight, hates the government and will do anything to even slightly inconvenience the bureaucracy, etc. etc. And of course, he has a literal dragon's horde of hidden gold and silver that's he's acquired over 50-ish years of being in the work force and spending most of his income on gold and silver bullion/coins.
I was watching an episode where he was being coerced into writing his will and while they never outright said it, it was heavily implied he had at least a few thousand pounds, not ounces, POUNDS, of gold and silver hidden away. That got me thinking, as much as his character is meant to parody libertarians, there actually ARE people like that IRL that have spent 50+ years hording as much gold and silver as they can get their hands on and probably legitimately have a horde in the 2,000+ pound range to their name. Especially silver, since it's only $20-ish an ounce depending on the day.
So what happens when we go back to the gold standard, and all of the artificial suppression methods used to keep gold and silver "cheap" are done away with? For those that don't know, silver is THE single most heavily shorted asset on the planet. I remember reading a report once (about a year ago I believe) that said it's estimated that there's roughly 15 Quadrillion or Quintillion (Can't remember which) dollars worth of silver being naked shorted at any given moment if you account for every single metals market on the planet.
For those that don't know, Quadrillion is the number after the trillions, and quintillion comes after the quadrillions. So yeah, we're talking about absurd numbers that only the cabal are capable of orchestrating considering that's several thousand times more silver than is currently in existence.
Now I, like most on here, firmly believe that we'll be heading back to a Gold Standard USD post-cabal, which will result in mass hyper deflation. In other words, our dollars will be worth more, and go further, but there will be a lower supply of dollars, thus resulting in lower wages, net worths, etc.
Basically, it'll be like going back to somewhere between 1900-1930 in terms of buying power and economic circumstances.
I still believe this, but as previously mentioned, I had an epiphany while watching Parks and Rec. What happens with all the horders?
Gold and Silver, Silver especially, have been artificially suppressed since the 70s. People will talk about how "an ounce of gold is still worth roughly the same as in 1900". And that's true to an extent. Gold has lost quite a bit of buying power because of the artificial suppression, but it's still holding up pretty well. It won't quite buy you "a nice suit" as I've heard many people say, but it will still buy you a "pretty decent suit".
Silver on the other hand, is horrendously underpriced. Not only is there now a smaller supply of silver than gold, meaning it should have more value than it does if for no other reason than the laws of supply and demand, but it also has more intrinsic value than gold since silver has far more industrial usage since the advent of modern technology (most modern tech uses at least a little bit of silver in the circuitry and other bits that make your tech work).
Combine that with the naked shorting, and Silver is horrendously underpriced. I remember asking on here a while back about what people thought the real price of Gold and Silver (about a year ago), and if I remember correctly, the general consensus was that Gold will be in the $20-50K range and silver will be in the $2,500-5K range per ounce.
Now that didn't account for what I've mentioned in this post about how silver should, by all measures, be more valuable than gold at this point, but let's just assume those numbers are accurate.
Someone like what I described earlier in the post, with say 2K pounds of silver accrued throughout 50 years or so, is currently sitting on a pile currently worth around $40K-ish. Assuming the $5K true value is accurate, that turns into $10 Million overnight.
Assuming silver equals the hypothetical value of gold most seem to agree on, $50K, that's $100 Million.
So yeah, this is where the possible problem comes in. Assuming any of this is remotely accurate, there's at least a few thousand people who will basically win the mega millions or powerball overnight.
I suppose that wouldn't be all bad, after all, it's not like everyone with a handful of silver half dollars or bars becomes Daddy Warbucks overnight and essentially has an infinite money cheat on, thus allowing them to wreak havoc on the newly established economy.
But at the same time, that kind of just boggled my mind. There are probably some people out there that are going to go from middle class, to 1%ers overnight because of the suppressed value of silver and gold.
The only problem I see with this, is that it's possible some kind of adjustment will have to be made due to the hyper deflation. For example that massive $100 Million example I gave assuming silver hits $50K an ounce after all the cabal shenanigans are ended? Well accounting for hyper deflation to the same level of the 1930 USD, you would only end up with $3.3 Million dollars.
I suppose that's not really a problem when the average middle class family in 1930 made a little under $5K a year, so that's basically still the same buying power.
This is probably more of a rant than I intended for it to be, but it's just something that came to me that I figured I might as well share and let people discuss since it appears we're finally nearing the endgame with all the talk of gold and silver backed currencies and all the "actors" getting more and more blunt on the stage they're being forced to play on.
Feel free to discuss below.
Today's fiat "dollar" has roughly the buying power of a single penny from the decades before Franklin "Internment Camps" Roosevelt took American's gold coins (because the FED had been counterfeiting, er, expanding the money supply since 1913 -- and letting foreign nations exchange US dollars for American gold at $20/oz was no longer sustainable).
A quick look at prices from a century (and more) ago will confirm that. Variations exist for different sectors of the market, but lopping off two zeros from your bank account gives a reasonable estimate of what your buying power is in terms of "real" American dollars (where a $20 bill could be exchanged at any bank or hardware store for a one-oz gold coin). Also: as I type this, gold is $1934.30, per the Kitco widget at 321gold.com -- so again, today's dollar is roughly equal to yesterday's penny. But the "official" gold price is based on there being a shit-ton of "paper gold" that doesn't exist in the real world, so . . . when the music stops, I expect the buying power of gold to skyrocket.
And you're right, cathole953 -- silver is far below its historical average relative to the price of gold; thus, it has even more upside.
Interesting well-known factoid:
In ancient Rome, an ounce of gold would outfit a man with a decent set of clothes -- and it still does. Gold has held its value for longer than that, actually. But the modern world has distortions never before seen (high technology, massively higher population, centuries of mining having reduced the amount of easily-obtained ore, economic fraud at never-before-seen levels due to electronic fiat central banking, CDOs, and much more). Gold may or may not go up in value as I expect, but it damn sure isn't going to zero. The market for jewelry alone is enough to keep the price fairly high regardless.
Will there be a massive reset of the value / buying power of gold and silver?
Probably.
How will it be handled? How long will disruptions last? Where will things settle down, in terms of value for both the metals and whatever paper and digital money is in use?
Unknown, but some people will do better in this transition than others.
Will owning metals be beneficial during this time?
Probably.