Posts by ironstag8

Francisco, you completely bypassed that second image I posted—the one that actually provides the direct answer to what you’re arguing here right now.
In a financial setup where money is treated just like any other commodity, it’s only logical that the amount of paper you receive in exchange for gold or silver fluctuates. The real issue is that the entire system is terminally ill—and part of that sickness stems from this flawed idea that precious metals aren't true money (especially when you factor in deficits, endless money printing, fractional reserve banking, and the cozy, unhealthy relationship between politicians and big banks...)
We simply hold a fundamentally different perspective on all of this, and honestly, only time will tell who's actually right.

Patrick Moore3 said:Sure, we can talk without the car. Take milk... back when we used to get milk in bags, every single time it was some sour mess with a 2-3 day shelf life without being tested for a million diseases. We don't have those problems today... 😉

You can say anything about food quality. Organic farming costs money, and clearly people aren't willing to pay for it, so they buy cheap, low-quality junk... It wouldn't have been a loss if people actually bought his produce for $3.25 and paid $67 for a pound of Gouda. On the flip side, the biggest input for food production and everything else is oil, which used to be $3 and now it's nearly $100... and that, along with other energy costs, is the main reason for the price hikes we deal with every day.

Modern washing machines actually cost way less than before—back 20 or 30 years ago, you had to work much harder than the average 10 days (price of a washer divided by average salary) just to afford one... But then again, if you want quality, you have to be ready to pay for it, and obviously (be sure you aren't getting sold junk meant for emerging markets), you get all the bells and whistles: tons of programs, less ruined clothes, timers, lower electricity and water usage... damn, all that stuff costs money!

You mentioned childbirth costs earlier too... What was the infant mortality rate in 1964 versus today? Dammit, that costs money too... A woman could give birth at home for nothing with huge risks, like it used to be. We could do that with everything else, but we'd be drifting too far into off-topic territory...

Aha, so technological progress and rising standards just happen for free? Like they just show up out of nowhere? You think you'll get that for nothing just by keeping the Quincy under your bed? How could you think 😁
If you think you can earn money just by holding onto something—in this case, the Quincy—without putting in extra work, then you're a speculator just like anyone investing in real estate, stocks, funds, savings, or forex... Don't kid yourself thinking you just want to preserve the value of your labor, because you want more than that.😉

No problems with food? 😵
Oil is hitting $100 because the dollar is losing its value.
By your logic, we're headed for a long-term decline in living standards since wages can't keep pace with progress. If that's the case, who is all this progress actually for? 🤷 Isn't there something fundamentally broken in a world like that (besides the financial system)?

Where did that bolded part come from? And how do you think I earned enough to buy my Quincy? By speculating and sitting on the couch? I put in work to afford the Quincy. Investing hard-earned labor into paper that constantly loses value is a risky gamble—one that's only going to get even more obvious in the near future.

Anthony Evans78 said:Look, Patrick Moore3, you’re conflating general living standards with technological progress.
And that point you just made: "What you actually want is to take, say, 20 average salaries from 1964—enough to buy a decent car back then—and have that same amount of money (your Prime Minister's math) be enough to buy an average car in 2012."
That is what a drop in purchasing power looks like.🙂

Nice one, Silver. At first glance, I didn't realize you were essentially arguing against yourself. It seems technological advancement hasn't been matched by a corresponding jump in wages that would actually reflect an improved quality of life. So, we have progress everywhere—except, apparently, when it comes to our actual take-home pay.

Patrick Moore3 said:ironstag8, you're straight up ignoring a massive factor here—the sheer jump in standards from 1964 to 2012...
Look, say you buy the cheapest base-model Ford today, zero bells or whistles, weakest engine possible... that car is still gonna blow an average ride from 1964 out of the water, let alone compete with the luxury models back then...

What you're actually looking for is this: take 20 average salaries from 1964, what it took to buy an typical car back then... and expect that same amount of money (your purchasing power) to buy a typical car in 2012. It just isn't happening... 🙂
You'd want all the upgrades, right? A much better, more reliable engine, better bodywork, safety features, comfort, a warranty... all because you think having the purchasing power makes it equal? 😁

Let's say you have a point regarding certain aspects of cars (though, honestly, those vintage bodies in Miami and Cuba seem pretty sturdy considering they're from the 40s and 50s). Just look at refrigerators or even vacuum cleaners; things used to last 20 or 30 years, whereas nowadays, they're practically designed to last only as long as the warranty expires.
I don't want this to spiral into a complete tangent, but please don't try to inject your desire for consumerism and living beyond one's means into this debate. That exact impulse—wanting more than what is sustainable—is precisely what drives inflation and eventual ruin.
Sure, you could argue that milk is higher quality now, or that groceries are better. I’d argue the opposite—that food quality has actually dipped. And are houses being built with space-age materials these days? Not really.

Go ahead and comment on the second photo since there aren't any cars in it. Give it a shot, you skeptic.

I’d like to offer a response to Shadow regarding the decline of the American standard of living since the demonetization of silver back in 1964. Even though our main focus here is gold, allow me to use the history of silver as a lens to illustrate this broader point.
To set the stage, President Johnson made a rather "eloquent" decision—and followed it up with an equally eloquent statement:

If anybody has any idea of hoarding our silver coins, let me say this. Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be, and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin. There will be no profit in holding them out of circulation for the value of their silver content

He essentially believed that a silver dollar and a fiat dollar were interchangeable, assuming the government could simply maintain that parity as long as those old silver coins remained in circulation.
Honestly, looking back, you have to wonder who was foolish enough to buy into that nonsense.
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So, if we look at the landscape in 1964—average home prices, cars, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, postage stamps, tuition for a decent university, natural birth costs, average wages, a gallon of milk, a gallon of gas—we can see the trajectory.
Below are the figures from 2012. I've included both the raw increase and the percentage. You'll notice that while wages grew by 766%, almost everything else—except perhaps milk—skyrocketed far beyond that.
It’s particularly striking to observe the surge in college tuition. A student in '64 paid a fraction of what people pay today, yet they walked into much better-paying careers. Today, students are crushed under mountains of debt, forced to pay exorbitant fees—artificially inflated by universities, driven by a mindset similar to that of bankers or the intellectual elite—only to end up in lower-paying roles (assuming they even find work).

Let’s follow the thread through the prism of silver. President Johnson claimed there was no point in collecting silver coins because they would retain their value. First, let's compare how many ounces of silver a dollar bought in '64 versus how much it buys today. If the sheer absurdity of Johnson’s logic—and the logic of anyone distancing themselves from real money in favor of paper—isn't obvious from these numbers, then I don't know what else to say. We also see that tuition has outpaced nearly everything else. Some might argue this doesn't impact the standard of living, but 😵that's a stretch. Just as a side note: in the '50s, a single income was often enough to support a large family; nowadays, even two incomes frequently fall short.

Now, let's look at the outcome for those gambling on paper versus those holding real money.
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Suppose someone decided in 1964 to set aside $10,000—either in paper currency or in silver (which would have been about 7,150 ounces).
If the picture isn't clear: the paper lost 95% of its value. Let me break that down further. Inflation and the decoupling from gold and silver lead directly to a drop in the standard of living and purchasing power. Wage growth simply cannot keep pace with the rising cost of everything else.
Keep in mind, these figures are based on official inflation statistics. And if you want to know how truthful those numbers really are, just look at how they conveniently exclude the massive spikes in energy and food costs. If we used actual, real-world inflation metrics, the result for those holding paper would be even more catastrophic.
The question for Johnson and his contemporaries remains: was it actually worth holding onto those silver dollars from '64, or should they have just stuck with the paper dollar?

Look, those folks pulling the strings aren't some kind of omnipotent force—they can't stop the inevitable. They might be able to stall things for a bit, which is essentially what they're doing right now, but they can't prevent what's bound to happen eventually.

Anthony Evans78 said:Based on what you've said here, I can't take you seriously for a few reasons:

Who exactly has ever sold physical crude oil or gas?

If you subtract natural population growth, we basically don't have hunger in the modern world.

As for hunger, it's declining; if it weren't for the massive population boom in developing nations, it practically wouldn't exist.

Having a credit card and a decent limit is just a sign of a high standard of living—there’s nothing wrong with that in itself.

Enough for the smart ones.

Silver certainly has a lot of energy for debating... though I doubt he'll ever find a place in our sector.
I’ll just point out that the gold standard wasn't abandoned because of the gold itself, but rather due to the systemic abuse of that standard and a desperate craving for printing money. It brings to mind Ancient Rome—how they steadily debased their silver coinage over the centuries, much like what we see happening to the Dollar today. We all know how that story ended for the Roman Empire.
Besides, since this discussion covers the past, present, and future, drawing these kinds of parallels seems perfectly logical to me.
If I recall correctly, he mentioned somewhere that it doesn't matter if the Dollar lost 98% of its purchasing power as long as wages were rising. Regarding that, once I find a moment to sit down and crunch some numbers, I’ll post them—it will become quite clear that the standard of living in the United States has been eroding due to inflation, not improving, over the last 50 years or so. While I’m using silver as my comparison, the same logic applies to gold.

Paul Peterson4 said:Basically, we’re looking at a massive red flag here—the actual amount of money backed by real-world value is shrinking compared to this mountain of speculative cash, interest on top of interest, and those general paper bubbles that have absolutely zero foundation in reality.
When you look at where the West is dumping its resources lately—dealing with scams like Meta or basically sawing off the very branch they're sitting on—it’s pretty hard to see any kind of bright future in this mess.
But regarding PM, the real question I'm asking is: who actually wins and who loses when we introduce PM as the new backing for currency? It’s obvious the collectors win, but let’s be real, the collectors aren't the ones calling the shots. The people making the decisions are the ones running the political show right now. They love the current fiat setup; all they need is a minor "adjustment" to win back some semblance of trust.
Or maybe it'll be one big theatrical production. Are we going to go to war, say against Iran? But honestly, we already sold that script in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it didn't do much for anyone except line the pockets of a few people with massive profits.

At the end of the day, today's currencies—regardless of whether you're looking at M1, M2, or any other metric—possess zero intrinsic value and zero backing.

brightviper48 said:And what, exactly, is the actual utility of gold? What can one truly accomplish with it? You cannot eat it—certainly not—you cannot use it to warm your home, you cannot grow crops upon it, nor can you live inside it... it serves no practical purpose in any meaningful sense.

Gold, much like any other currency, possesses value only insofar as the rest of society agrees that it does...

Beyond that, it simply fails to generate any tangible value—on a farm, you can plant crops to sell; in the woods, you can harvest timber for profit; but with gold, you’re left doing nothing but waiting for some sucker willing to pay an even higher price...

It sounds like you don't quite grasp the fundamental nature of money. 🤷
Gold and silver function as money because of their inherent physical properties—traits no other commodity possesses—not simply because of a collective whim. Humanity has understood this logic for thousands of years, yet it only took a single stroke of Nixon's pen to make us forget such a straightforward, logical truth.
Fiat currencies rely entirely on the leap of faith required to believe that a scrap of paper and some ink is worth, say, a printed $100 bill, when in reality, it's barely worth a fraction of a cent.

I say, let’s all head down to our local banks tomorrow and try to withdraw every single cent of the cash sitting in our accounts—then we can see if it actually exists. Once the dust settles, those defenders of this smoke-and-mirrors system will start lecturing us about M1, M2, or M3, or trying to justify fractional reserve banking. Honestly, if someone doesn't view this whole fractional nonsense as a straight-up heist, they’re clearly out of their mind. All of this—all these complex terms—is just a fabrication designed to allow people to spend money they haven't actually earned. It's a mechanism for politicians to run up massive deficits to fund their next election cycles, endless wars, or various private, greedy agendas... things like paying out dividends to private individuals or the shareholders of the Federal Reserve (who, let’s be real, don't have actual reserves—just an infinite supply of digital ether they pump into the system). It allows these central bankers to inject unbacked liquidity into the economy while collecting interest they haven't earned from hardworking people who have to physically labor to pay back debt—debt that is mathematically impossible to repay, because to settle one loan, you have to take out another one plus interest, which means heading right back to the dealers of fog and ether to ask for another fix.
There is plenty of gold and silver out there to meet legitimate monetary needs, but there certainly isn't enough to fund insane deficits or the greedy desire to get rich overnight in financial casinos that exist solely for their own sake. If the fundamental idea of building wealth through labor, production, and long-term saving is somehow "unacceptable," then gold won't be acceptable to them either. The vultures—the corrupt officials, kings, prime ministers, dictators, presidents, and generals—who want everything immediately (whether it's power, control, war, or seizing another nation) need cash right now. So, they simply print as much as they need until the whole thing collapses. This isn't a new trick; it’s how Ancient Rome fell, how the Byzantine Empire crumbled, how paper currencies failed in China, and there are countless examples throughout history across Europe...
The bottom line is simple: spend only what you actually have. It comes down to common sense versus pure greed. That is why gold and silver are referred to as "honest money." The paper currency we use today is nothing more than a dirty counterfeit with zero backing.

Anthony Evans78 said:ironstag8, you're wasting your breath trying to explain things to people who can't even tell the difference between commodities and cash, let alone distinguish currency from money itself...
Everyone laughing at us just doesn't realize the entire paradigm is shifting.

I’m just killing a little time on the forum today. It’s honestly pretty obvious that the vast majority of people here don't truly grasp what’s actually going on—and frankly, if they did understand the underlying mechanics of these crises, we wouldn't be having them in the first place.

Patrick Moore3 said:Come on, take the joke for what it is... 😉

There's no point arguing anymore anyway... You guys think Gold is money, but for us, it's just commodities, and we aren't budging! Even if we go in circles a hundred times, nobody changes their mind... So why not just have a little fun with it? 🙂

I’m always down for a good laugh—even if the joke is at my own expense. We'll just have to wait and see who ends up laughing last. 😉

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
Henry Ford @Francisco

@Patrick Moore3
Either way, it gave me a good laugh.

Robert Vaughn10 said:Physical gold and silver can certainly become part of a bubble. Back in 1980 here in the US, there was a moment when the total value of gold held in reserves actually outpaced the actual dollars in circulation. The reality is that hardly anyone cares about precious metals right now, so they aren't in a bubble yet. The fundamental strength of gold and silver is that they can't be easily manufactured, which makes them honest money. For the time being, the whole system lacks that honesty, and eventually, some kind of equilibrium will have to be found.

This isn't just some temporary bubble—it’s actually how things are supposed to work. Volcker and his crew managed to pull off a bit of an illusion this round, but let’s be real: the bill is finally coming due. You can't save paper currency indefinitely without it eventually rotting away from the inside out.

Melissa Sanchez17 said:Gold is actual money! 🙂 If you can't tell the difference between true wealth and just some fiat currency, then you clearly don't get what we "cultists" are all about 😍
Gold is headed for a massive bubble—we're talking the final, explosive stage of a bull market.
🙂

Japan and China are already looking to trade without using the dollar. The world's reserve currency is slowly bleeding out, losing value bit by bit. And honestly? It’s probably for the best, considering the Euro is an absolute dumpster fire right now 😁

Check out this interesting chart I found

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...20Currency.png

It’s going to be paper in a bubble—not gold. If we decide to pivot back toward a gold standard right now, we’d essentially be triggering a massive correction where gold finally reclaims the true value that has been suppressed ever since the Federal Reserve was established back in 1913. In that scenario, fiat currency would simply plummet into an abyss, while gold stays exactly where it belongs: right where it has always been. ☕
Now, we just have to sit tight and see how this all unfolds—it's going to be interesting to watch the finer details play out. 🍿

And let’s be clear—tulips still aren't actual currency. ☕

brightviper48 said:Does that imply physical real estate can't be part of a bubble either... or perhaps even physical Lukovica tulip bulbs?

The core issue here—something we really need to grasp—is the distinction between money and commodities, services, and so on...
Silver and gold represent money, whereas everything else simply doesn't. Historically speaking, whenever currencies have decoupled from money, things have gone south fast.
If a crowd of sheep convinces themselves that real estate, tulip bulbs, stocks, or some Facebook nonsense can hold value, then greed can drive those prices into unrealistic, illogical territory—which is how you get a bubble. On the flip side, gold and silver don't "inflate" in that sense; they *are* money. They serve as a medium of exchange with intrinsic value derived from properties that nothing else possesses (that’s why they matter). For something to truly qualify as money, it
:
it has to be liquid, easily portable, durable, fungible (which is precisely why diamonds or real estate fail this test and can't be considered money), divisible into smaller units without losing value, and difficult to counterfeit.

Real estate and tulip bulbs lack these specific traits—they aren't even permanent—so they shouldn't be compared to money. You can compare the value of a house or a bulb to another good or service, but you shouldn't compare them to a medium of exchange (in the sense that they are the same thing as money) used to trade those goods and services. If some fool decides a house is worth, say, $5,000 or 4 ounces of gold, and another fool believes him, all that does is inflate a bubble; eventually, unsold properties rot, plenty of idiots lose their shirts, and gold just stays right where it was.

If you try to measure the value of gold or silver using something like a fiat currency—which essentially holds no inherent value—you start to see just how warped this entire financial system is. It’s no wonder the whole thing is such a massive mess. Every single time people tried to play games with money by attempting to turn things that aren't money into money, the masses ended up broke and sheared like sheep. This system is rigged to benefit a tiny few at the expense of everyone else. The "beauty" of it for that elite group is that the majority of people will fight tooth and nail to defend and maintain this very system. That continues right up until the moment the structure starts cracking—and that's been happening for a while now (though if you ask me, the cracks started appearing the day Nixon signed his name to it).

And one last thing. You *can* compare real estate or tulip bulbs to fiat currency because both are subject to bubbles, which is exactly what we're seeing right now. Why is that possible? Because fiat currency isn't actually money.

hollowmoose21 said:Alright, fine...
Instead of just playing mathematician with all those zeros, it’d be way more useful to look at ratios. For example, how many kilos of gold does it take to buy wheat, oil, gas, real estate, or the Dow? Look at how those ratios have shifted over the years and stack them up against where we are today.

If we take a historical perspective, silver is massively undervalued across the board—first when compared to gold, and subsequently when measured against almost everything else.
I’ll give you a quick glimpse into Ancient Rome, though history is practically overflowing with similar examples.
A Roman legionary’s annual salary was roughly 225 denarii (with one denarius being about 1/10th of an ounce of silver). Considering it was a demanding profession—much like a modern blue-collar laborer or someone working construction 😬—that annual pay translates to about $675 in today's dollars (assuming a spot price of $30 per ounce). Now, if you honestly believe a soldier's yearly salary should only be $675, then fine—you can go ahead and claim that our current valuation of silver (and gold) based on fiat paper is perfectly realistic.
On top of that, once a legionary retired, he would receive either 3,000 denarii or a decent plot of arable land, which was highly prized back then. That 3,000 denarii figure works out to roughly $9,000 in today's silver value. So, if a retirement package after 20 years of service is worth $9,000—or if that amount represents the value of prime real estate—then something in our current math is clearly broken.
This offers a bit of a rebuttal to those critics who claim there isn't enough silver or gold available for monetary use. Sure, if you look at it through a lens where gold is $1,600 and silver is $30, it looks insufficient. But if you account for the true intrinsic value these metals have maintained throughout history, the supply is more than adequate.

It’s honestly hilarious watching these "true believers" cling so desperately to the status quo... if you actually take a moment to look at the charts, it's clear the bubble was inflated by paper counterfeits long before the actual metals were even involved. And as for the claim that the market hasn't been manipulated? That's just a complete red herring. The very existence of "paper" gold and silver proves the entire system was engineered for manipulation from day one—it's baked into the design. You really ought to dig into what happened with the Hunt brothers; they learned the hard way exactly how much control can be exerted over the market. But all of that is reaching a breaking point now (whether that takes a year, two, or more...). Looking at the current landscape, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that things aren't right. Once this bull run finally burns out, life goes on... thinking otherwise is just naive. Once you truly grasp that fiat currencies are essentially on death row, you start viewing these gold and silver price swings through a different lens—perhaps through the eyes of what people might call "cultists."

Here’s a little something for those traders out there—especially the ones who still cling to the idea that the market isn't being manipulated. Pay close attention to the segment starting around 08:40 and moving forward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB_aZ...yer_embedded#!

Paper, a single bit, or even just a zero... it’s all the same kind of junk. Behind all of it, there is nothing but a massive, empty void.

Looking at the unemployment numbers here in the States

Anthony Evans78 said:"The rest of the world will just get used to Europe's issues..."

That's like saying people will eventually just get comfortable with a plague outbreak...

People will adapt—it's how they handle every epidemic. Take Ebola, for instance; we're looking at a 90% mortality rate. Eventually, that 10% who develop immunity become the new norm, and then society moves on 😬 . It's the same pattern here: masses will fall, and a few will inevitably develop the immunity needed to survive.