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Chapter 5 - The War on Gold

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2020

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Summary

Deregulation of the financial sector has caused a financial crisis that can only be managed by fraud. Civil damages might be paid, but to halt the fraud itself would mean the collapse of the financial system. Those in charge of the system would prefer the collapse to come from outside, such as from a collapse in the value of the dollar that could be blamed on foreigners, because an outside cause gives them something to blame other than themselves.

– Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Reagan (2012)

Why then, is gold the unmentionable four letter word of economics? The answer is threefold; A misunderstanding of the role of money; a misreading of history; and finally, visceral revulsion to the notion that a metal can do a better job of guiding monetary policy than a gaggle of finance ministers, central bankers and well-degreed economists.

– Malcolm Forbes, Forbes Magazine (2002)

Gold has long been viewed by many as a barbarous relic and demonetizing it and phasing it out of the system completely seems to have a good deal of appeal in some quarters.

– Fed-Banker Alfred Hayes, speech for IMF at Economic Club in New York, 31 August 1975

Policymakers are finding it tempting to pursue ‘financial repression’ - suppressing market prices that they don't like.

– Kevin M. Warsh, former banker of the Fed (2012)

INTRO

The days of the dollar as a world reserve currency are numbered, which explains why gold is making a remarkable comeback and why a flight to hard assets including farm land and old masters has started. Every year, more and more physical gold is moving from vaults in the West to the East as a symbol of a change in the world power balance.

The US wants its dollar system to prevail for as long as possible. It therefore has every vested interest in preventing a ‘rush out of dollars towards gold’. By selling (paper) gold, bankers have been trying in the last few decades to keep the price of gold under control. This war on gold has been going on for almost one hundred years, but as I will explain in the following chapters, it gained traction in the 1960s with the forming of the London Gold Pool.

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The Big Reset
War on Gold and the Financial Endgame
, pp. 150 - 185
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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