Free Republic

Today, June 5th, is the anniversary of the birth of John Maynard Keynes, once upon a time the great foe of the gold standard. Today also, coincidentally, happens to be the anniversary of the date celebrated of FDR’s “taking America off the gold standard.” These events are not mere historical curios. The current presidential campaign, and underlying political climate, shows we are finally, maybe definitively, emerging from the academic economists’ anathema on the gold standard... ...Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, is on record as strongly appreciating the gold standard... ...The “interwar gold standard” in fact was a barbarous relic....

Prior to the election of AmericaÂ’s longest serving socialist president, our money was backed by gold. Anyone holding our paper currency could demand to exchange it for gold at a set price. In 1913, the gold standard was officially made part of the Federal Reserve and the price of gold was fixed at $20.67 per ounce. The same law mandated that the Federal Reserve kept enough gold on hand to equal 40% of the currency issued at the time.On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn into office for the first time. The day after his inauguration, Roosevelt closed...

Last year Texas Governor Gregg Abbott signed HB 483, allowing the creation of the Texas Gold Depository. “With the passage of this bill, the Texas Bullion Depository will become the first state-level facility of its kind in the nation, increasing the security and stability of our gold reserves and keeping taxpayer funds from leaving Texas to pay for fees to store gold in facilities outside our state,” he said last June. This gold bank would allow Texas to recover the gold that it has stored in New York vaults, and give Texan citizens and institutions a chance to store their...

Here is just ONE example, although its a very good example, of why Hillary should be convicted of failing to secure CONFIDENTIAL government foreign-affairs documents... This one is from Sid Blumenthal to Hillary on April 2, 2010. Clearly from the subject matter, it does not belong on any unsecured computer system. It hints at the upcoming killing by the US, France, and NATO of Mohamar Qadaffi, and it even implys WHY this has to be done: Because Qadaffi is creating a 7-billion dollar fund of gold-backed dinars, which will be the only currency allowed for middle-east oil purchases. The message...

Venezuela’s gold reserves have plunged to their lowest level on record after it sold $1.7 billion of the precious metal in the first quarter of the year to repay debts. The country is grappling with an economic crisis that has left it struggling to feed its population.

Scientists have been searching for the origin of some of the most precious metals on Earth - including gold, silver, and platinum - for almost six decades. And now we might finally have the answer. Heavy, and often valuable elements like these are called r-process elements, and they require an incredible amount of energy to produce. So far, no one's been able to explain how they came to exist in the Universe. But the discovery that an ancient dwarf galaxy called Reticulum II - about 98,000 light-years from Earth - has stars that contain a "whopping" amount of these metals...

MIAMI -- For the second time, Venezuela has failed to pay mining company Gold Reserve the $750 million it has been awarded for Venezuela's expropriation of its gold mining operation in 2007.

'King of clubs' being sheltered by Syrian army By Damien Mcelroy in Damascus (Filed: 11/05/2003) The king of clubs from America's card deck of most wanted Iraqis is being sheltered at a military base in the Syrian capital Damascus, according to a Gulf diplomat. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former vice-president of Iraq and one of Saddam Hussein's closest henchmen, is said to be under the protection of Syria's Republican Guard in the decrepit military base near the airport. He is among thousands of regime figures who are believed to have slipped into Syria before Damascus sealed the border. Izzat had...

BEYDA, Libya—Underneath a bank in this eastern coastal city, a vault holds a trove of gold and silver coins worth $184 million. It belongs to the central bank, which could use the money to alleviate a crippling cash shortage. The pile, however, presents some problems. The coins are locked away with a five-number code that central bankers in this part of the country don’t have. A rival government in Tripoli, which has effective control over the bank system, won’t hand over the digits and has expressed concern the money could fund armed militias opposed to its rule. To make things...

Back in February, when we commented on the unprecedented hyperinflation about the be unleashed in the Latin American country whose president just announced that he would expand the "weekend" for public workers to 5 days...... we joked that it is unclear just where the country will find all the paper banknotes it needs for all its new physical currency. After all, central-bank data shows Venezuela more than doubled the supply of 100-, 50- and 2-bolivar notes in 2015 as it doubled monetary liquidity including bank deposits. Supply has grown even as Venezuela has fewer U.S. dollars to support new...

<p>Two treasure hunters who claim to have found the last resting place of a German military train believed be to laden gold are set to begin digging on the site despite widespread scepticism over their claim.</p> <p>Piotr Koper and Andreas Richter, the two treasure hunters, sparked international attention and a mini gold rush last summer when they claimed to have found the train in a secret siding beside a railway line near the southern Polish town of Walbrzych.</p>

Blood Money Former Exec: American Company Paid Terrorist Group to Protect Overseas Interests By Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz April 16 — Before his company sent him overseas, Allan Laird, a former Denver-based mining executive, had never heard of Abu Sayyaf. As Laird quickly learned when he arrived in the Philippines, Abu Sayyaf is one of the world's most-feared terrorist organizations, closely connected to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Laird said he also soon discovered the company for whom he formerly worked, Echo Bay, was regularly paying Abu Sayyaf and other terror groups in the Philippines in exchange for...

April 27, 2016 Sol_Palha We are still not convinced that Gold is fully out of the woods. Peter Schiff is busy telling everyone that it was a bad idea to have sold Gold in 2011, we beg to differ for the trend indicates otherwise, and so does the price of Gold. He is coming out with scary scenarios though they are not as grandiose as James Sinclair's scenario that calls for Gold to move to $50,000 an ounce. Even, when we dream we find it hard to envision such a price, so it is interesting that he can come up...

Chief editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer debunks negative interest rates, banning cash, and helicopter money. ... Epoch Times spoke to Mr. Grant about the spotty track record of central bankers, deflation, gold and the gold standard, as well as negative interest rates and a ban on cash. A negative interest rate is not only a tax on saving, it is the destruction of saving. ... Negative interest rates are an attempt to tax thrift. The idea of earning dollar bills and putting those dollar bills in a bank and having them accumulate over time, the accumulation of which is...

The Texan senator’s gold standard policy is a terrible idea with a long history. But if you run a business, are employed by one, care about the stability of the financial system, or would prefer that the U.S. economy not be needlessly thrown into disarray — a group that seems like a pretty broad coalition of voters — Cruz’s economic policy is not OK. He told CNBC on Friday that he wants to push America back to the gold standard. This is a hare-brained policy that no other country uses and not a single surveyed economist thinks is a good...

In a deal that defies currently accepted norms, Donald Trump has rented out the 50th floor of the Trump Building at 40 Wall Street to American Precious Metals Exchange (APMEX) and has allowed the company to pay the security deposit in gold.Trump agreed to accept three 32-ounce bars of gold in lieu of the cash security deposit. As of this writing, gold was trading at $1227.40 per ounce, making the 96 ounces of gold that Trump is holding worth $117,830.40. That should be more than sufficient to cover the security deposit for the 10-year rental.The deal is a win-win situation...

For the first few months of 1980, the silver market had been slipping as newly enacted rules began tightening their grip on the Hunt Brothers’ silver scheme. On March 27 (known as “Silver Thursday”), silver opened at $15.80 and closed at $10.80 as the Hunt Brothers reportedly initiated a massive sell-off of silver and contracts to meet their obligations. Commodities and the futures market crashed on these reports, but rallied somewhat, bringing silver to $12 an ounce within a few days. But the futures contracts owned by the Hunts were predicated on silver at $35 an ounce. What had been...

The lords of finance are losing their touch. Institutions which dragged the world from its worst depression since the early 20th century are finally seeing their magic desert them, if conventional wisdom is to be believed. Eight years on the from the Great Recession, voices as authoritative as the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements - dubbed the 'central bank of central banks' - have called time on the era of extraordinary monetary policy. Having hoovered up $12.3 trillion (£8.5 trillion) in financial assets and carried out 637 interest rate cuts since 2008, central banks have been stunned...

Canada, home to some of the world’s largest gold-mining companies, recently announced that it had effectively liquidated all of the country’s holdings of the shiny metal and is moving to what a government spokesperson described as “easily tradable” assets. It has been a long process. Canada held 1,088 tons of gold in 1955. By 2000, it was down to 46 tons. Today, just 77 ounces remain. This puts Canada in last place in the most up-to-date compilation of data on gold reserves compiled by an industry group, the World Gold Council. In the Council rankings, Canada is now in last...

Laurie Rimon spotted a gleam while on a hike in northern Israel with several friends. It turned out to be a gold coin so unusual, Israeli archaeologists say there is only one other one with the same symbols in the world. "It's extremely exciting," said Dr. Donald Ariel, an expert with the Israel Antiquities Authority, in comments released by the agency, which says the coin was struck by Roman Emperor Trajan in the year 107. "His gold coins are extremely rare." One side of the gold disc shows an image of Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire more than...