More Gold Nuggets of News and Information

17 Dec

More Gold Nuggets of News and Information

DOLLAR DEBASEMENT CONTINUES AT RECORD PACE!

The Federal Reserve is positively gushing dollars.  As the US money supply surges, it ultimately depreciates the value of the dollar.

Over the last 12 months, the M2 money supply has grown by an unprecedented $1.1 trillion dollars.

WASHINGTON CAN’T/WON’T BUDGET RESPONSIBLY!

Here are some quotes from Maya MacGuineas, The Hill, from 12/17/19:

“Later this week we will reach the expiration date on the current short-term continuing resolution that is funding the federal government and preventing a shutdown.”  

“This is no way to run a government. That the largest economic entity in the world is running without an actual budget in place should be shocking; that it has become routine is downright depressing. Yet we have entered a new fiscal year without a budget in 12 of the last 20 years…

“It is time for Congress and the president to, at the very least, take the Hippocratic oath to do no harm and not add more borrowing on top of our already massive national debt.”

EAST EUROPE’S NATIONALIST LEADERS OBSESSED WITH GOLD!

Gold is all that nationalist leaders in Eastern Europe can talk about these days.

Just this week, the Polish government touted its economic might after completing the repatriation of 100 tons of the metal.

In Hungary, anti-immigrant Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been ramping up holdings of the safe-haven asset to boost the security of the nation’s reserves…

The gold rush mirrors steps by Russia and China to diversify reserves exceeding US$3 trillion away from the US dollar amid flaring geopolitical tensions with the US.

However, motivations in Europe’s ex-communist wing can vary.

Take the latest example. Former Slovak prime minister Robert Fico, who has a shot at returning to power, has urged parliament to compel the central bank into bringing home gold stocks stored in the UK.

The reason? Sometimes your international partners can betray you, Fico said, citing a 1938 pact by France, the UK, Italy, and Germany allowing Adolf Hitler to annex a chunk of what was then Czechoslovakia, and — more recently — the Bank of England’s refusal to return Venezuela’s gold stock over political differences.

“You can hardly trust even the closest allies after the Munich Agreement,” Fico told reporters. “I guarantee that if something happens, we won’t see a single gram of this gold. Let’s do it as quickly as possible.” – Bloomberg, 11/28/19

A TRILLION HERE, A TRILLION THERE!

With just two weeks left in 2019, the US Federal Debt has climbed to $23.108 trillion.

How can one imagine a number that large?  Consider for a moment that a trillion seconds ago was 31,709 years ago.  That was in the period known as Last Glacial Maximum when sheets of ice covered much of North America, Europe, and Asia.

So 23 trillion seconds ago was 729,325 years ago.   That takes us back to the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age, about a half-million years before homo sapiens evolved.

But in Washington, these days, a trillion dollars is just a rounding error!