New Signs Gold And Silver Are Returning As Monetary Assets

TMO ^ | 12-4-2014 | Stefan Gleason

[blam]

December 04, 2014

Stefan Gleason writes: Much to the chagrin of the financial elite, gold and silver are reentering the American consciousness and starting to shake the wing nutty image of their recent past. But it’s taken a global financial crisis to get the public’s attention – one that could wipe out our nation at almost any moment.

The U.S. government’s role in the economy is on a seemingly interminable upward trajectory. The government’s official debt balance that just crossed the $18 trillion mark (with additional unfunded liabilities estimated at more than $100 trillion). Half the population now lives in households that receive government payments.

Even as private sector jobs disappear and workforce participation rates languish near generational lows, the corporate sector is seemingly thriving. Corporate profits as a percentage of the economy are at record highs. Fortune 500 corporations are using cash hoards and cheap financing – not so much to invest in capital assets or business expansion, but to buy back their own shares and send their stock prices higher.

All these dangerous excesses and distortions are made possible by our free-wheeling fiat monetary system.

What’s occurring now – endless proliferations of paper flowing into the Treasury and banking sector from the central bank – is precisely the sort of thing our Founding Fathers sought to prevent.

The Coinage Act of 1792 authorized the minting of the nation’s money. It defined a “dollar” in terms of a specific quantity of grains of silver (equivalent to about three-fourths of an ounce). Few people today even realize that the dollar bills in their pocket were originally intended to be silver.

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[CodeToad]

“Now it may be back. “

It’s been back since at least 2005 that I know of. That’s about 9 years. Not a fad at 9 years, really.

[CodeToad]

“Precious metals are lousy investments.”

Really? I bought silver at 9.65 or so and gold at a bit above 250. Seems I did well in my investments since I have also sold silver at 21 and gold at 1300, plus bought more as prices went down. I’ll be buying more, too.

[Wingy]

I bought silver at 9.65 or so and gold at a bit above 250.

Good job. I started buying silver at 5.60 and I feel good about that. Not sure how I feel about the silver I got for 22.25.

Gold that I got for 320.00 is nice, and I'm still ahead of the game with the last gold for 730.00. It looks good on paper, but I sure don't want to sell now. Why? Because one day, and I don't know when, I may need some gold and silver to get me out of a jam that greenbacks might not get me out of. As in, dollars that are worthless, or nearly so. I might need some gas for the furnace when it's 20 degrees out, and the guy doesn't have a big enough wheelbarrow to carry the dollars away, but 20 or 30 ounces of silver makes him very happy. That's the value in PM's for me.

YMMV.