"For more than two thousand years gold's natural qualities made it man's universal medium of exchange. In contrast to political money, gold is honest money that survived the ages and will live on long after the political fiats of today have gone the way of all paper."
---Hans F. Sennholz---
Throughout centuries, men have experimented with the idea of money and they have tried thousands of different things as money but the only thing left standing today, as money, after all that time and after all that struggle, is Gold. This shiny yellow metal is in fact a great warrior and it has defeated the mightiest of the mighty who tried to manipulate its value; it still remains today, as strong as ever and as valid as ever. Gold has defeated every fraud on the face of the earth to assert and reveal its real value since thousands of years. There is no other substance that by its intrinsic value can compare to gold. Gold is the ultimate money and it has stood the test of time but what is it so about gold that makes is so?
This shiny yellow metal chunk is no ordinary metal but it has certain qualities and certain special virtues that make it the best candidate to be considered as money and as a store of value. Before we find out why gold is the only real money, let us first understand what is money?
Money is a common medium of exchange of value of goods and services. Money is not only a medium of exchange but it is also a medium of saving the value of your goods and services over the time. In short, money is a medium of storing wealth in a very portable way. Gold is the most ideal form for storing wealth for the following reasons:
# Gold is durable and does not rot even if kept for thousands of years.
# Gold being a metal is malleable and can be made into jewelry and hence is used to wear as ornaments which is a great way to store your wealth.
# Gold is desirable: The luster and the shine of this metal is unique and something that people desire very much of their free aesthetic sense. It is a medium of exchange acceptable to all and thus can be used to buy things anywhere and anytime.
# Since gold is a metal it is homogeneous and divisible in such a way that each part will retain all the properties of the metal. This makes it very easy to mold into any shape or size and denomination.
# Gold cannot be printed hence no government or bank can duplicate it.
# Gold is very valuable: Gold is valuable because it is present in exactly such limited quantity and it perpetually remains so much in demand. An ounce of gold can buy a lot more than a truck load of iron.
# Gold is portable: Since it is homogeneous, divisible and valuable, it can store a large amount of wealth in a tiny quantity. One can easily carry it in one’s pockets and hold it in the palm of one’s hand.
Today in the world, there is yet another war against Gold. This war is being waged by the banks and the government. They have replaced gold with currency backed by nothing. Initially currency was backed by Gold. When a currency is backed by gold it means that the government can only print currency proportionate to the physical Gold it has in its vaults. This restricts the amount of currency that the government can print because Gold is limited. A gold standard currency is always limited in quantity and hence it cannot be inflated and people who hold such gold backed currency will not have to face the brunt of inflation and their purchasing power will not be harmed.
Unfortunately today we are on currency which is no more backed by Gold and the government and the banks are able to print unlimited amounts of it thus creating massive inflation and robbing people of purchasing power. The world we live in has limited resources and thus limited goods and services is what we can produce and when we print unlimited currency, then more currency chases the limited amount of goods and services and thus the price increases and this is inflation. Inflation kills savings and pushes out savers and forces people to gamble with their currency. Because when you put currency in the bank and you get 8% annual interest on your currency but the real inflation is 12% you are then in effect losing your purchasing power by 4% annually. So you would be forced to take the money and put it in risky investments such as bonds, stock markets etc.
Why do I use the word ‘currency’ above to denote what the government and banks print and not money? The reason is that both are quite different. Currency is printed on paper or it is stored in computers and books in the form of electronic blips and numbers but with real money you cannot do that. With Gold you cannot do that, you cannot print it on paper and you cannot store it in an electronic form on computers. It is physical and it cannot be duplicated. Consider this example; suppose you are walking down the road and on the side walk you find a stray piece of soiled paper then would you pick it up and clean it and keep it in your purse? But suppose you are walking along the road another time you find a piece of gold fallen on the side walk, would you pick it up or just walk on avoiding it? The answer is obvious that you would not pick up any stray paper but you would definitely pick up a piece of gold no matter how deformed it is or in whatever shape it is. The paper that we call currency is just a paper with some print and once you remove the print all you have is ordinary paper and nothing more. That’s how fragile the modern day currency is. Initially, when currency was gold-backed, the print of the paper called currency meant something because by law it was backed by an equivalent amount of gold stored away in the vaults, but the present day currency is backed by nothing. It is a big joke. All of us working so hard to earn some pieces of paper backed by nothing, having no intrinsic value and which continuously go down in purchasing power due to inflation, is simply ridiculous. Modern day currency is a scam designed to steal away people’s produce and hard work and make them poorer. Modern day currency is in fact an impostor parading around as money which it is not. History has shown that there have been many such impostors in the past and they have all been beaten time and again by Gold.
Gold as money or even Currency solidly backed by gold, i.e., gold standard is the only moral and practical way for people on the earth to live together under a system that has freedom and justice for all etched deeply at its core. The only money which cannot be manipulated or printed by any authority is the money that will be good for people. People who work hard need something that will store the value of their hard work over the time and when needed can be readily exchanged. The price of gold a hundred years ago in terms of dollar was $20 an ounce. Suppose you kept those 20 dollars in a box and that one ounce Gold too in it and opened it today then which would retain its purchasing power, the $20 or the ounce of Gold? The answer is simple. Gold is the ideal form of money and it entails economic freedom. Under gold standard, neither the government nor the bank can confiscate people’s wealth in a hidden way. People’s wealth earned by their hard work will remain safe and their purchasing power will not be diminished or stolen away by inflation created by excess currency printing. For an economy to function in the most efficient way, one of the most important things to be ensured is that the monetary system is a just and fair one and which does not take away the people’s wealth.
Once again, the world finds itself in the midst of one such great war of Currency versus Gold. Will Gold win this war too? I leave this for the reader to decide. All I will say is that the answer is there in the reading of history. Gold has always won and defeated the scourge of fiat currency time after time and the conditions this time are very similar too. As the governments and the banks of the world are struggling hard to keep this world going on a fraudulent system, will Gold once again provide justice and will it avenge the truth and honesty that the system has attempted to destroy. This great war of Gold versus Currency is underway right now. Let’s buckle our seat belts and see who wins. Gold is the hero of the people while fiat currency is the stooge on the side of the governments and banks. It is a war essentially between good and evil. On which side do you wish to stand? Good or Evil!?
