Keith Weiner: Our Gold Fundamental Price Has Breached $1400 To The Upside…(Worst Cold Ever!)
SilverDoctors.com
February 19, 2019
Keith says the gold price was previously higher due to speculators, but now the higher gold price is due to the buying of metal. Here’s more…
by Keith Weiner of Monetary-Metals
Central Planning Is More than Just Friction
It is easy to think of government interference into the economy like a kind of friction. If producers and traders were fully free, then they could improve our quality of life—with new technologies, better products, and lower prices—at a rate of X. But the more that the government does, the more it burdens them. So instead of X rate of progress, we get the same end result but 10% slower or 20% slower.
Some would go so far as to say, “The free market finds ways to work even through government restrictions, taxes, and regulations.” We won’t address cardboard straws emerging where plastic straws are banned. Or gangs selling illegal drugs on the black market, when they are prohibited by law.
As usual, we want to talk about the most important kind of government intervention. And it happens to be the one kind of government intervention that is accepted by nearly everyone. The intervention supported by the otherwise-free-marketers.
Monetary intervention.
Under monetary central planning, do people work at the same tasks, at the same companies they would have worked in a free market, producing the same goods? And is the only consequence, that goods have a higher price (due to inflation)?
Can we treat the dollar as a universal constant, if we adjust it for the change in prices?
Keynes and Lenin
We will trot out that infamous quote of Keynes citing Lenin, again. From Consequences of the Peace:
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become “profiteers,” who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.”
The first part would fit with the above-stated premise. Government confiscates, and make the people poorer. The same as they had been, only a bit less in proportional to the amount confiscated. However, the next part observes that the confiscation harms most people but enriches a few, arbitrarily.
Think about a serious inflation. Suppose prices are going up 10% a year. Some businesses will have the foresight to buy extra raw materials. This hoarding enables them to make extra profits when they sell their finished goods, months or a year later. They could make even more, if they borrowed to finance even-greater hoarding. This is a picture of the 1970’s.
Now let’s look at the next part of that quote. It breeds resentment. Are we there yet, today? Nearly everyone takes so-called inequalityto be a problem, with the Left moving on to the solution phase (taxes, of course).
We will skip to the last part for a moment. “…Wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble…” Buy stocks, buy real estate, buy bitcoin, and even buy gold. Everyone just wants to know what asset will go up next. Few question if this central-banking assets-going-up mechanism is destructive.
Now back to the most interesting part of the quote. This theme is not often written-about. The relationship between debtor and creditor is the foundation of capitalism. Keep in mind, this is coming from Keynes, about whom Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy, said:
“Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter’s prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes’ excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud.”
And Keynes is claiming that the origin of the above quote about destroying capitalism, is actually the communist butcher, Vladimir Lenin. Neither of these two were for capitalism, free markets, or freedom. And yet they think that the credit relationship is the foundation of capitalism.
As an aside, this touches on the age-old question of what is money. Is the dollar money? Or is gold money? Or are they both money, and gold just better money? There is no question that the dollar is the generally-accepted medium of exchange. But is medium of exchange the definition of money?
If one thinks of capitalism as merely people buying and selling in a market, then why isn’t this definition right? What else could money mean, other than medium of exchange?
But, if one thinks that the creditor-debtor relationship is vitally important (much less the foundation of capitalism), then one has a reason to question this definition. Money must perform the function of extinguishing debt.
The dollar cannot perform this function.
And indeed, Keynes and Lenin understood that the government can destroy the capitalist system by debauching the currency. Note that, twice they use the word “currency”, but not the word “money”. Keynes understood something in 1920 that many people do not, today.
Why would the credit relationship be the foundation of capitalism? Can’t people buy and sell things without credit? Consumers can certainly buy consumer goods without credit.
But what about producers?
The Foundation of Capitalism
Production, even in an industrial economy of the form that existed before World War I, occurs at large scale in factories full of machines. The enterprises who own and operate these factories depend on credit to finance them. Without credit, such factories would not exist and civilization would be dragged backwards to a much less efficient mode of production. Goods we take for granted would not be available at all. Basic necessities like food and clothing would be far more expensive. And wages would drop drastically, with the drop in productivity.
Of course, earning interest is important to people who work for wages, and also to retirees who live on the income on their savings. If the government destroys the relationship between creditor and debtor, then workers are impeded in saving for retirement. And retirees must consume their meager savings.
Suppose it is true, that industrial production and distribution is capital-intensive. Suppose it is true that this capital is provided by creditors. Suppose it is true that workers and retirees need interest…
Maybe Lenin and Keynes were right (in this one premise), that the relationship between creditor and debtor is sacred, and the foundation of the modern economy.
One thing is for sure. The price of borrowing money (i.e. interest rate) affects the price of everything else. And if the rate goes too high, producers begin to be bankrupted. Just as if the rate falls to low, producers are destroyed (by a different means).
Let’s tie this back in to the topic we opened at the start of this essay. Government interference in the credit market does not merely slow the economy. It stops some people from engaging in wealth-creating production and trade. And encourages other people to engage in wealth-consuming activities instead. That is, the altered price of credit alters, in turn, the incentives that drive everyone in the economy.
When people blame the so-called one percent, when they rail against so-called late-stage capitalism, when they decry inequality, they are the leading edge of what was described by Lenin:
“Those to whom the system brings windfalls… become “profiteers,” who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat.”
This is our motivation to re-develop a market for interest on gold, not subject to the central planners.
Supply and Demand Fundamentals
The Rest…HERE
