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Are You Prepared for More Bank Trouble?

You’re not prepared if you don’t own gold and silver

Silicon Valley Bank.  Signature Bank.  First Republic Bank.  Credit Suisse. 

Now we’re hearing rumors of deep trouble at German banking behemoth: Deutsche Bank.  That comes as no surprise to us.  We were writing about Deutsche Bank’s troubles last year, HERE and HERE.

How many more are there like the foregoing?  No one knows.  Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell insisted last week that SVB was a one-off, an isolated event, and not something systemic.

We call balderdash (or something stronger) on that!

Let’s have David Stockman explain the basics.  Between February 2022 and the interim rate peak in October, he tells us, yields on 30-year mortgages and 10-year US treasuries doubled in a matter of months.

Well, of course, they did.  The Fed was embarking on its rate hike program.  Stockman details what happened next:

That caused bond prices to fall sharply and the resulting level of unrealized losses on fixed income securities held by the banking system to literally explode. That’s just freshman bond math, and should have been on the dashboard of everyone who inhabits the Eccles Building, save perhaps for the janitors.

… And then in absolute and utterly predictable lock step with the Fed’s rate raising campaign and the resulting soaring bond yields, impending trouble at the OK corral literally screamed out from SVB’s financial statements. By July last year it was already evident that unrealized losses of $14.2 billion amounted to nearly all of the company’s book equity. And besides that, it also had $150 billion of uninsured and potentially flighty deposits.

Yet these dunderheads spent the weekend wondering what happened?

Yet these dunderheads are also now telling us that SVB, which accounted for just 2.5% of the unrealized losses in the banking system at year-end, was some kind of aberration. And that the rest of the system is sound and healthy.

Well, if they couldn’t see the sequence below as it happened, how in the world do they know what is happening just below the surface in today highly fragile financial system, freighted-down with unprecedented levels of debt…?

Ron Paul says that the new wave of bank failures along with foreign nations ending the dollar’s world reserve currency status are indications that the US economy is either in or on the verge of another serious Fed-caused recession. It looks like “America’s disastrous experiment with fiat money” is coming to an end, he says.

That appears to be the case.  And if it is so, there is no better monetary protection than gold and silver.

As for Powell’s assertion that Silicon Valley Bank’s failure was an outlier, it reminds us of his claim that America’s resurgence of inflation was merely transitory.  That was two years ago.


Gold for the Uncertain Future

Hasn’t it always been part of the American promise, the American Dream, that people were always confident that their children would lead lives that were better than their own?

All that has been thrown into reverse.  Of course, the fake money system is largely to blame.  It’s hard to see how anyone can miss the corollary between sound money and prosperity, but it shines forth clearly in one historical era after another.

Fake money coincides with deteriorating life circumstances.   

Now, to no one’s surprise, a new poll shows American confidence in improved circumstances for the next generation is falling.  A new Wall Street Journal-NORC Poll shows growing skepticism about the future.  Economic pessimism is growing, the perceived value of a college degree is fading, and we are experiencing record-low levels of overall happiness.

Furthermore, four out of five survey respondents rate the economy as not so good or poor.  Almost half think it will get even worse in the next year.  

It is not widely known, but a country built on a currency like the dollar, one that is always in decline, changes people’s time horizons.  It affects their saving habits, their industriousness, and their willingness to work to provide for a better future.

But economic pessimism is not the only problem. Our life spans are shrinking, too.  And don’t let the authorities blame it all on Covid, either.  Our lifespans had been mostly increasing until 2015.  Now that is over.  

One more thing.  IQs are falling, too.  Americans, we read, are getting stupider.

Now, what does this have to do with protecting yourself and your family with gold?  Only this.  Prosperous and free people live longer.  Their nutrition and hygiene are better, as is their healthcare.  And it seems self-evident that well-nourished and prosperous people with adequate health care will be smarter.  We know that schools with parents who value education perform better than schools with parents who don’t.  Part of that has to do with income.  Subsistence earners often don’t have the resources or the know-how to role model educational appreciation and higher IQs for their children.

Less hope for the future,  receding longevity, and falling intelligence.  It’s pretty grim.  The best advice we know of is to insulate yourself from the failures of a declining culture.  And the place to begin is with gold, the money of prosperous civilizations.  Its time horizons are healthy and long, unlike the Federal Reserve dollar.

In times of civilizational decline, people turn to gold to avoid being victimized by a state currency that is also in decline.  Like ours.


Janet Yellen

Is the U.S. Banking System Sound?

“Janet Yellen is one continuous anti-prosperity horror show!”

That’s former US budget director David Stockman’s take on the United States Secretary of the Treasury Secretary.  

It’s hard not to agree.  

Yellen should by now be famous for her long insistence that US inflation was “transitory.”  We are willing to acknowledge that anyone can make a mistake, but Yellen has made a career out of it.  And yet Presidents Obama and Biden appointed her to head the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury, respectively.

Is this the best the United States of America can do?

Don’t answer that!

Here is an account of Yellen insisting in 2017 that there wouldn’t be another financial crisis in our lifetimes:

That kind of cluelessness should be enough to scare the daylights out of you.  Here’s a snippet from ZeroHedge which noted that Yellen has altered a previous statement in which she maintained that the banks are safe.  It must have been obvious that Yellen was protesting too much, and that her track record when she does so is dismal:

Deleted paragraph from March 22:

“As I said last week, the US banking system is sound. The federal government’s recent actions have demonstrated our resolute commitment to take the necessary steps to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe.”

New paragraph on March 23:

“As I have said, we have used important tools to act quickly to prevent contagion. And they are tools we could use again. The strong actions we have taken ensure that Americans’ deposits are safe. Certainly, we would be prepared to take additional actions if warranted.

But she removed the “US banking system is sound”, sparking total chaos.

And here is Stockman’s dead-on description of the bailout of the crony-connected Silicon Valley Bank and the consequences:

Nonetheless, Janet Yellen and her fellow Washington clowns got themselves warmed-up last week by bailing-out $155 billion of uninsured deposits at SVB—deposits that had been wantonly put in harm’s way by reckless management on a stock-pumping joy ride.

To wit, between 2020 and 2021 SVB’s assets nearly doubled from $115 billion to $211 billion, while the HTM (securities held to maturity) portion of that balance sheet literally exploded from $17 billion to $98 billion. And more than 95% of this massive HTM book had maturities of 10-years or more!

Here’s the thing. These fools massively mismatched their book even without the safeguard of deposit insurance. What in the world is going to happen when deposits are 100% insured?

… So if nothing else, we need deposit flight and bank failures to purge the bad actors, incompetents and reckless cowboys from the banking industry. Yet the de facto policy is now that no depositor can lose money, no bank can fail and no one’s resume should be besmirched.

Whatever that is, it’s not market-based capitalism. And it’s going to lead to massive waste and malinvestment, not bank-fueled prosperity.

We concur.  Yellen and the rest of the Deep State Money Manipulators are an anti-prosperity – and we might add, a currency destroying – horror show.

Time to buy more gold!


Bank Crisis Deepens By the Day

Sampling Notable Observations During the Calamity…

A quick sampling of opinions about the fast-developing global bank crisis, beginning with tweets from our friend Robert Kiyosaki:

“Biden says bailout of SVB Silicon Valley Bank will not costs taxpayers anything. What is he smoking?”

“BAIL OUTS begin. More fake money to invade sick economy. Still recommend same response. Buy more G[Gold], S[Silver], BC. Take care. Crash landing ahead.”

Robert Kioysaki

More from the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad here.

As usual, the Washington bailout of SVB and Silvergate Bank is a windfall for Washington’s cronies, and will destroy the heartland’s banks as you can see in this congressional questioning of the clueless Treasury secretary Janet Yellen:

There is more pain ahead for Wall Street.  Michael Harnett, Bank of America’s chief investment strategist, warned Friday about a deep fall in stock prices.  The market could fall all the way to its October lows, about nine percent from here.

“Stock lows to be tested one last time in the coming months [due to] no equity capitulation and market too greedy for rate cuts – not fearful enough of a recession.”

Michael Harnett

Jeffrey Gundlach, the widely followed bond market icon says Fed inflation is back in play:

“The Fed is broke. The Fed’s balance sheet is negative $1.1 trillion. There’s nothing they can do to fight any problems except for printing money.

They have nothing left. The Fed used to send money to Treasury. Now Treasury sends money to the Fed.

We’re at this point in time where we don’t have any road left to kick the can on our mismanagement of finances and monetary policy.”

Jeffrey Gundlach

“I think gold is a good long-term hold,” says Gundlach, “Gold and other real assets with true value.”

The Federal Reserve’s policies have made clear once again that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”  Its major policies initiatives all have major costs, from years of unconscionable money-printing and interest rate repression to the past year of interest rate hikes.  

The gold market, which spent February concerned with just how high the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates, now no longer many cares.  With the damage, Fed policies have done to banks and other bond portfolios now out in the open, gold appears to be making up for lost time.

We have warned repeatedly that US policies, from the Fed’s monetary mismanagement to a sanctions-driven US foreign policy, are going to mean the end of the US dollar’s special privilege, the global dollar reserve privilege.  Now billionaire Sam Zell, the chairman of Equity Group Investments, says we are becoming the Weimar Republic, referring to one of the modern industrialized world’s most famous and destructive inflation episodes.  Losing the dollar’s reserve currency status will mean a 20-25 percent reduction in our standard of living, says Zell.  

We at Republic Monetary Exchange are dedicated to helping as many of our friends and clients as possible take refuge from this widening calamity.  No one needs any encouragement to protect their assets from banks, so we are experiencing record volume and your precious metals professionals are returning calls just as quickly as possible.  Thanks for your understanding during this demanding time.


Getting Kids on the Path to Smart Investing

Teach your children and grandchildren well about gold!

Many of Republic Monetary Exchange’s friends and clients add a little something extra to their gold and silver investments to have something to give their kids and grandkids.  

That makes a lot of sense, according to the leading hedge fund manager of all time.  

Most of what follows is from an article on Yahoo! Finance about Ray Dalio, who does the same thing.

Looking for the perfect way to get your kids or grandkids on the path of smart investing

Ray Dalio, the legendary hedge fund manager, has shared that he gives his kids and grandkids gold coins as gifts to start them on their investment journey. Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world by a mile.

According to Dalio, this lustrous metal is the best way to get kids excited about investing. He gives his grandkids a gold coin every holiday and birthday celebration.

Gold coins are an excellent choice for gifts because they are physical assets that kids can hold and appreciate. Unlike stocks or mutual funds, gold coins are tangible, making it easier for children to grasp the concept of investing. The unique beauty and luster of gold only help to capture their interest.

Dalio’s approach reflects a growing trend among parents and grandparents who want to pass on financial knowledge and skills to the next generation. Giving tangible assets like gold coins can be a great way to introduce children to the concept of investing.

By giving the gift of investing, they can set children up for financial success and teach them important life skills that are often not taught in schools.

Another great feature of gold is that it’s essentially timeless. Gold has been highly valued by people from all walks of life for thousands of years, and that doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon. As an investment, gold has also historically been a safe haven during times of economic uncertainty. This factor makes it one of the most popular long-term investments.

Ray Dalio

That is well said.  For a couple of generations now, people have forgotten what gives money value.  Why do people accept little pieces of paper in exchange for real things?  They have forgotten the paper money was supposed to be a claim check or a warehouse receipt for gold and silver.  

Over time people have become conditioned to think that paper is real money.  But all that is beginning to change.  With the failure of banks and high inflation, people are beginning to remember what they have forgotten:  that gold and silver are real money.  And unbacked paper and made-up digital dollars are fake money.

So do what the world’s leading hedge fund guy, Ray Dalio, does, and then teach your children.

SVB (Silicon Valley Bust!)

Gold Surges as Banks Tumble!

The best place to start a discussion about bank troubles is to point out that the financial establishment has been wrong about virtually everything.  

Federal Reserve chairman Powell testified before congress last week.  You would have walked away from his testimony thinking everything looked just fine and without any concern about bank solvency.

Days later, Powell and others gathered to figure out how to save the teetering banking system.

That should not surprise you.  A year ago, the Fed thought inflation was transient.  Now, a year later the Consumer Price Index in Phoenix where we live is rolling along at an 8.5 percent annual rate.

Silicon Valley Bank went under just 14 days after the Big Four accounting firm KMPG gave the bank a clean bill of health.

KMPG signed off on its audit of Signature Bank just a couple of weeks ago, too.  Eleven days later Signature Bank collapsed.

The accounting firm should be embarrassed into next year, but it seems brazen instead.  Here is its statement:  “It’s important to recognize that audit opinions, which only address the financial statements and internal controls of the business, are based on audit evidence available up to and at the date of the opinion.” 

We guess that it is too much to ask them to notice bond portfolios that are billions of dollars upside down.

In any event, conditions are grim enough in the banking industry that Moody’s Investor Services has now downgraded the entire banking system to “negative.”

As for Treasury secretary Janet Yellen this week: 

 “I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system remains sound and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them.”

Right.  That is the same Janet Yellen who announced a few years ago that we wouldn’t have another financial crisis in our lifetimes.

Meanwhile, somebody named “Tim” has now been put in charge of the quivering hulk that once was Silicon Valley Bank.  Tim has alerted the bank’s client that there is no place safer than SVB.  Here’s his tweet to clients: 

So, the Fed meets in a couple of days to figure out what to do next.   They will announce their interest rate plans on March 22.  As usual, instead of solving anything they will try to kick the problem down the road for a while longer.  

We have a lot more financial crises ahead of us.

As usual during times like this, gold and silver are the place to be.  Gold and silver never declare bankruptcy!

We urge you to speak with your Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional as soon as possible.  Our phone traffic is high, and we are very busy as you can imagine, but we value our friends and clients greatly and will get back to you right away.


Bank Trouble!

Special Alert Direct From Rich Dad Poor Dad’s Robert Kiyosaki!

My friend Robert Kiyosaki asked me to make sure everybody sees his Red Alert below.  Thanks, Robert, for sharing this crucial information with our friends and clients!

– Jim Clark 

Bank dominos are falling, just as I have been warning you!  Silvergate Bank was first on Thursday.  Silicon Valley Bank was shot down on Friday.  That’s the largest bank failure since 2008.

Will Credit Suisse, the Swiss banking giant be next? 

This is the screaming front-page headline of Friday’s Drudge Report:

The Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes are starting to exact their toll.  Silicon Valley Bank, the nation’s sixteenth-largest bank, was shuttered by the authorities on Friday morning.  The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is now serving as the receiver.

Gold and silver both surged on the news.

That’s because gold and silver are real money.  

The question is whether SVB’s problems will show up elsewhere and cascade throughout the banking industry much like the 2008 meltdown.  Another bank, Silvergate, caught up in the cryptocurrency market, is also closing.  

SVB reportedly took a $1.8 billion loss when it liquidated its $21 billion bond portfolio.  It is worth spending a few minutes on the issue of bond losses.  

Bonds and interest rates can be thought of as two ends of a teeter-totter.  When interest rates rise, the price of bonds goes down.  The Fed’s interest rate increases over the past year mean that bank bond portfolios have losses the extent of which is presently unknown.  

SVB looks like the canary in the coal mine, an early warning of system-wide bank failures.  Don’t be victimized!

Problems like these feed on themselves.  As concerned depositors stand in line to withdraw funds, banks can be forced to sell low-interest-rate bonds for losses.  So not only are the banks losing money on their bond portfolios, they lose depositors as well.  

Here is a chart of a regional bank stock ETF that will make my point clear:

Remember, all this has been foreseeable.  Now it is happening.  Remember that paper is fake money.  Gold and silver are real money!

Good luck,

Robert Kiyosaki


In addition to Robert’s words above, we would like to share with you this video showing how he’s been right many times before!


Singapore Just Bought Tons of Gold

The Central Bank of Singapore Added 1,434,600 Ounces!

Official records show that the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the central bank of the Republic of Singapore, boosted its gold holdings by 44.6 tons in a single month.

Between December 2022 and the end of January 2033, the central bank’s gold position grew by 29 percent.  In terms of troy ounces, the MAS added 1,434,600 ounces to bring its total holdings to 6,378,041 ounces, or a total of 198.4 tons.

The significance of central bank gold buying can hardly be overstated.  We have called it the most important monetary megatrend of our era.

With the ending of World War II and the Bretton Woods Agreement, the US dollar’s role as the post-war’s international currency reserve was formalized.  It was a privileged position that provided support to the dollar’s international strength, dollar demand ultimately adding lift to the standard of living of the American people.

Now that dollar standard is breaking down.  The evidence is seen in foreign central banks de-dollarizing and building their gold reserves.

This isn’t the first surge in Singapore’s gold holdings.  Two years ago, it added 26.35 tons in just two months. 

Foreign central banks are like the canary in the coal mine.  They are acutely aware of the consequences of money printing because they practice it themselves.  They simply don’t want to be victimized by our monetary recklessness.  Foreseeing a crisis in the dollar’s value, they move to secure their own wealth in gold.  

To underscore the tempo of today’s de-dollarization, we refer you to our recent commentaries “Colossal” Gold Demand from the World’s Central Banks! and China Continues to Dump Dollars!

The world’s central banks see what is coming and you should, too!  

Speak to a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional today and de-dollarizing for wealth protection.  


High Rates Mean More Bankruptcies

Think of this as a bank shot.  You hit the cue ball into another ball that bounces off the rail and goes into the pocket.  

Fed interest rate policy will drive an increase in bankruptcies, corporate and personal.  But banking off the rail, its subsequent effect is that it will drive people to gold.  

Let us explain.

Led by US monetary policy and the money manipulators at the Federal Reserve, the entire world became dependent on artificially low-interest rates.  But the era of interest rate suppression is over – at least for now. 

Chairman Jerome Powell was explicit in congressional testimony this past week that the Fed would drive interest rates higher than expected in its battle against inflation.  “We will stay the course until the job is done,” he said.  But the higher interest rates have their own knock-on effect:  

Bankruptcies!

Last month ZeroHedge reported on a January spike in large corporate bankruptcies (defined as those with $50 million or more in liabilities): “In the first month of the year, the number of US bankruptcies topped 20, the highest in any other January dating back to 2010,” it said.

Unfortunately, January wasn’t a one-off, says ZeroHedge.  “According to Bloomberg data, one month later – as of the end of February – no less than 39 large companies had filed for bankruptcy in the US so far this year, as February’s pace matches that of January; the YTD total represents the fastest pace of companies filing for bankruptcy since the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2009.”

That’s not all.  The number of Americans filing Chapters 7, 11, and 13 bankruptcies in January rocketed up 20 percent from a year earlier.  Along that line, we are republishing a chart from last week about rising credit card delinquencies.

At some point, troubles become apparent among banks themselves.  Most recently, Silvergate, a federally insured bank deep into banking Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto enterprises, has filed a notice of doubts about its “ability to continue as a going concern.” 

Credit Suisse, the global investment bank headquartered in Switzerland, is also a train wreck.

Some major banks are setting aside reserves for the rocky road ahead, but higher rates are like termites eating away at the entire industry.  We presume many financial institutions have mismatched portfolios (since they almost always do), which means they have borrowed short-term money but have made long-term loans.  Now they must pay higher rates in the next round of borrowing that we’re not part of their plan. 

When these problems begin to cascade, to spill over from one bank to another, our troubles really begin.  Things quickly get out of control.  A rising number of bankruptcies and consumer debt delinquencies are a sign that that day is getting closer.  

You will be very glad that you own gold and silver on that day.


Five More Reasons to Buy Gold

We thought we should share with you a couple of more reasons to buy gold and silver.  The list is not exhaustive, but just five of the things in the news that we don’t want our friends and clients to overlook:

#1
A perfect financial storm is brewing.

Economist Nouriel Roubini says a “perfect storm” consisting of a debt crisis, recession, and out-of-control inflation is headed to the markets this year.  In fact, he says the S&P 500 could tank another 30 percent 

Roubini advises owning inflation hedges, and what better inflation hedge than gold?

#2
Exploding US national debt.

The on-the-books national debt has already reached the statutory debt limit of $31.38 trillion.  But look where it is headed!

#3
China is positioned for a crisis.

China added another 15 tons of gold to its currency reserves in January.  Meanwhile, for the fifth month in a row, China continues to dump US treasuries.  

#4
Growing consumer debt/delinquencies.

Look at the growing credit card delinquency rates among Millennials, and Gens X and Z!  Not good!

#5
Inflation remains in the Red Zone all around the world.

Persistent high inflation will drive global gold demand much higher.

Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist today!


The Winds of War

The US State Department advises Americans to leave Russia.  

Uh oh!

What happens next?

Next Russia announces that it will no longer participate in an offensive strategic arms treaty with the US, the last remaining nuclear arms agreement between the two nuclear powers.

At the same time, Putin puts new ground-based strategic systems on combat duty.

In the background is the disclosure by one of America’s most accomplished investigative reporters that it was indeed the US that took out Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea last September – an obvious act of war.

China says it is “deeply worried” that the Ukraine war could spin out of control.  “We urge certain countries to immediately stop fuelling the fire,” said China’s foreign minister.

The White House dispatches the Treasury secretary to Kyiv to announce even more taxpayer money will be sent to Ukraine.  (The Treasury secretary?  Seems odd.)

The US announces new sanctions on Chinese companies in response to China’s support for Russia in Ukraine.  China calls the sanctions illegal, and an act of bullying.

China’s People’s Liberation Army complains bitterly about a US Navy surveillance flight through the Strait of Taiwan.

NATO’s Secretary-General warns China against supplying arms to Russia.  China claims the US is creating an endless war by supplying arms to Ukraine.

Russia calls for NATO to hold an emergency summit over the Nord Stream sabotage.

President Zelensky declares Ukraine is preparing to attack Crimea.

Smart investors buy gold.

Russia warns of that continued US dumping of arms in Ukraine could lead to an “apocalypse.”

China keeps dumping US treasury bonds.  December makes five months in a row.

What happens next?  Do countries recall their ambassadors?  An accident in the South China Sea?  A false flag attack?  

We don’t know, but it sure looks a lot like Europe on the road to war in the 1930s.  No wonder central bankers and smart investors are buying gold.  


Trump Chooses the Printing Press

If the Dollar Was Backed By Gold…

What would it take to back the dollar with gold again?

The US dollar is backed by nothing. If it was still backed by gold, the price of gold would be a lot, lot higher!

That is why the Federal Reserve can create trillions of dollars out of thin air with not much more than a few simple computer keystrokes.  There is nothing to restrain them in this act of legal counterfeiting.

In fact, the US dollar hasn’t been backed by anything at all in over 50 years.  And we’re beginning to pay for it.

But suppose anyway, with all that money printing, what would the gold price have to be to back up the dollar?  The answer is it would have to be much, much higher.  Here are a couple of ways to look at it thanks to calculations in a Eurasia Review article called The Great Gold Rush:  Central Banks in a Frenzy.

It would take a gold price of $8,800 per ounce to back all the outstanding US currency with gold.

That is about 5 times today’s gold price.

But we’re only getting started.  Gold would have to be about $32,000 if all the money the Fed has created were backed by gold.  

That is almost 18 times today’s gold price.

That’s far enough.  Backing total US bank deposits or backing total US credit market debt, government, and commercial would require gold prices so high, we don’t even want to mention them.  Suffice it to say that backing the dollar to any meaningful extent would require an explosive move-up in gold prices.

Today’s global currency and monetary situation are more precarious than ever.  The article says, “Record gold purchases by central banks are a red flag regarding the stability of our current monetary system. When central banks embrace gold, it is an indicator that they are losing trust in the current system.”

Today none of the world’s currencies are backed by gold – or anything else.  That is why it is best not to rely on any of them and to back your own wealth with gold of your own.

To learn more about the developing showdown between unbacked paper and digital currencies and gold, the enduring money of the ages, speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals specialist today.


Stubborn Inflation and a Confused President

Here is a chart showing the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index going all the way back to the Stagflationary 70s and their aftermath.  When people talk about inflation at a forty-year high, they are referring back to the peak inflation of that era.  

Just days ago, President Biden commented on the January Consumer Price Index numbers.  Inflation is coming down, he said:

Inflation in America is continuing to come down, which is good news for families and businesses across the country. Today’s data confirm that annual inflation has fallen for seven straight months. Inflation for food at the grocery store came down again last month. Gas prices are down about $1.60 from their peak last year. And real wages for working Americans are up over the last seven months, delivering welcome breathing room for American families. We are seeing this progress even as unemployment remains at its lowest level since 1969 and job growth remains resilient.  

Did he mention that both the November and December CPI numbers had to be revised higher?  Probably not.

No, definitely not.

It is a good idea to take everything politicians say with a grain of salt.  This is of course especially true with Joe Biden.  So, we decided to turn to Ryan McMaken, the editor of Mises.org for some non-politician straight talk:

This is a rather tortured description of the situation. With the CPI rising both month over month and year over year, it’s a bit of a stretch to say price inflation “came down” in January. It would be more accurate to say that the rate of increase slowed very slightly.

This hasn’t stopped President Biden from declaring that the economy has already achieved a “soft landing” as Politico suggested yesterday.

The markets apparently disagreed… Markets likely fear that—in spite of Biden’s narrative—price inflation looks stubborn, suggesting the Fed will continue to move interest rates up. Wall Street, heavily dependent on easy money, wants to see inflation fall so that the Fed will begin loosening again. If price inflation is seen to be slowing, this could be interpreted as an excuse for the Fed to force interest rates back down and resume asset purchases. If a soft landing were already in the cards, Wall Street would be planning for an acceleration of monetary loosening.

National currencies everywhere are in bad trouble.  Years of money printing are catching up with them.  Like us, Japan is now dealing with its own inflation crisis.  Like ours, it is now the highest it has been in 40 years.

Like our Fed, Japan’s officials are muttering something about this new surging inflation being merely “transitory.”

Right.  Transitory.  

By the way, just a few days after Biden crowed about inflation coming down, the Fed’s preferred measurement of inflation, the Personal Consumption Index, reported that inflation was up for the 12 months ending in January.  For January alone the index rose 0.6 percent.  Even core inflation, which excludes food and energy and is a measure they use to minimize the real inflation rate, rose 0.6 percent in January.  Try annualizing that!

Said the president last week, “Today’s data reinforces that we have made historic progress and are on the right track, and now we need to finish the job.”

Finish the job?  That’s just what we are afraid of for US dollar holders.  When these governments stumble about in confusion, boasting about their fiscal and monetary management without even knowing what is really happening under their watch, one would be wise to stay away from their currencies entirely.  


China Continues to Dump Dollars

An Update on the Biggest Monetary Megatrend of our Time!

China’s holdings of US treasury debt are dropping fast.  

China got rid of 17 percent of its dollar holdings in 2022.  Ten years ago it was America’s largest creditor with more the $1.3 trillion of US government bonds.  Last year it still had a portfolio of more than $1 trillion of US debt.

Now it is unwinding its holdings fast!  In December it reduced its US government debt holdings, for the fifth straight month in a row, to $867 billion.  

Altogether, foreign holdings of US government securities fell by 6 percent.  None of this comes at a good time for the Treasury Department, with skyrocketing government debt that needs to be funded somehow.  Today the US government’s visible on-the-books debt is $31.456 trillion.  That is up more than $100 billion since the first of the year, and up by more than $3.5 trillion dollars in the last two years.

At the same time that foreigners are dumping US dollar debt, the Federal Reserve is doing the same, unwinding its own portfolio of more than $8.4 trillion at the rate of $95 billion a month, or $1.140 trillion a year.

So, if the government must borrow more to keep the lights on and to fund the escapade in Ukraine, not to mention everything else it does, but the available universe of lenders is shrinking, how does the Treasury keep selling its IOUs?  

Simple.  It will have to offer higher and higher interest rates to attract sufficient buying.

And that is what is already happening.  Here is a chart of 1-year US Treasury rates.  From below 1 percent a year ago, the 1-year rate has now climbed to more than 5 percent.

But higher rates put a strain on the Treasury.  Its cost of borrowing rises, which means the debt begins to grow even faster.

Eventually, it will look to the Federal Reserve, the lender of last resort, to help out.  Because keeping the debt paid is an existential crisis for the government, the Fed will have to do as Washington wishes:  PRINT MORE MONEY!

China has figured all this out already.  That is why it is getting rid of dollars and keeps buying more and more gold.

Are you doing the same?


Huge Jump in Credit Card Debt

Another Financial Crisis Showing Up Soon!

 Americans have burned through most of the “stymie” money they got from the government now.  But as Milton Friedman once said, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” So thanks to those very government giveaways – and more like them – prices of everything have been rising relentlessly.

Now Americans are increasingly turning to their credit cards to pay for things like food!  

Consumer credit card debt has spiked 18.5 percent over this time last year.  

Oh, and the average credit card interest rate is now almost 20 percent and is poised to move even higher.

As gold expert John Rubino says, “the epicenter of the coming quake is plastic.”

The average consumer balance is $5,805.  Bankrate calculates that at today’s average interest rate of nearly 20 percent, those making minimum payments would spend 17 years paying off their credit card debt.

Meanwhile, more new credit card holders are subprime customers, and delinquencies are rising.  At the same time, Lending Club reports that 64 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

With the stars continuing to line up for a recession, Rubino says, “If you own bank, auto, housing, or credit card company shares they’re vulnerable to a consumer-driven bear market.”

We suggest a timely move to gold and silver.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals expert today.


Big Hitter Says to Own Gold

“You’d be better off keeping your investment reserves in gold at this point.”

That’s the advice from John Paulson.  He’s the head of Paulson & Co., a major investment firm.  He made billions by spotting the housing bubble in 2007.  Wikipedia says he made another $5 billion in 2010 primarily investing in gold.  

With those kinds of numbers, we think we can just call Paulson “a big hitter!”

Now Paulson sounds more serious than ever about gold.  Here are a few snippets from an interview with Alain Elkann earlier this month (transcript HERE).

  • “The amount of money printing the U.S. central bank has done in order to stimulate the economy has also caused doubt. A lot of our growth has been based on fiscal spending that has been financed by the Fed buying the debt of government. The Fed balance sheet has exploded due to ‘quantitative easing’, a polite way of saying ‘money printing’, and inflation resulted. If you had dollars and 9% inflation, this year you lost 9% of your money.”
  • “We’re at the beginning of trends that are going to increase the demand for gold, and inflation and geopolitical tensions will determine the rate at which gold increases. This year gold will appreciate versus the dollar, and also over a three, five and ten-year basis.”
  • “My anticipation is that bond prices, particularly non-investment grade but also investment grade, will decline throughout the course of this year and yields will rise. As that happens, and as the Fed withdraws liquidity, I would expect that the stock market will also correct, and in the second quarter start to decline from current levels.”

And finally, here is the money quote:

“There has been a significant increase in demand from central banks to replace dollars with gold, and we’re just at the beginning of that trend. Gold will go up and the dollar will go down, so you’d be better off keeping your investment reserves in gold at this point. “

We couldn’t have said it better!


Rich Dad Says Giant Crash is Coming

Our friend Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame, holds up a gold coin in one hand and a dollar in the other.  “This is real,” he says about the money in one hand, “and this is fake,” he says about the other.

You don’t have to guess which is which.  Robert is a great communicator, which is why his Rich Dad book is the biggest-selling personal financial book of all time.

Now we want to share some alarming recent tweets from Robert.

Robert’s warnings have become more frequent this year.  

There are some rough times ahead.  In the meantime, Robert knows that lower prices are a great buying opportunity!

Is it time to review your gold and silver positions before the crash?  Make an appointment with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals professional today!


Social Security and Medicare Crack-Up Dead Ahead!

Protect your future with gold & silver!

Now we know a little about how it felt to be on the bridge of the Titanic.  We are racing to a major financial crack-up and we can’t change course in time to avoid a calamity!

As we wrote recently, “The CBO now projects that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund would be exhausted in 2033 and the Disability Insurance Trust Fund would be exhausted in 2048. If the two trust funds were combined, the exhaustion date would come in 2033.”  (See our recent post “Senior Citizen Poverty Could Double in the Next 10 Years.”)

The Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will run out in 2026.

We are not suggesting that Washington will default overtly on Social Security payments.  We believe that they will be paid in “nominal” terms as long as possible… but not in “real” terms.  In other words, recipients will likely get their checks bearing the same face value, but in terms of purchasing power, they will be inadequate.  That is at least the most likely near-term expedient to expect from Washington.

That is something like a slow-motion default.  Printing press money is used to meet expectations of payments, but the printing press money has progressively less and less value.  

The chart on the right illustrates the decline in the purchasing power of the dollar (in green) since the US abandoned the gold standard in 1971, versus the rising price of gold over the intervening years.

That is why we urge our friends and clients to prepare for their future, their retirement, and old age with gold and silver, long-term tools of wealth preservation par excellence

It is often said that the United States has never defaulted on its debt.  Treasury Secretary repeated it as a talking point about the debt ceiling debate just the other day.  But it is not true.

For those that would like to learn something about the US government’s past debt defaults, we refer you to this article by Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute.  It is called “Yes, the US Government Has Defaulted Before.”


Americans Are Pessimistic of the Economy

Americans Aren’t Too Confident as New Poll Bears What You Already Suspected!

Americans are expecting higher inflation, unemployment, and interest rates, according to a new Gallup poll.  

That’s not all.  They also expect slower economic growth and lower stock market prices.  

“The latest results are from the Jan. 2-22 Mood of the Nation poll, which also found that Americans’ confidence in the economy remains low,” reports Gallup.  “The public’s gloomy outlook for the economy was similarly predicted in a November-December Gallup poll that found eight in 10 Americans thought 2023 would be a year of economic difficulty.”

The poll also found that a record-high percentage of respondents are predicting a stock market decline.  According to Gallup, “A record-high 48 percent plurality of U.S. adults now predict the market will fall in the first half of 2023; 18 percent expect that it will remain the same, while 31 percent say it will go up.”

Most of this assessment strikes us as simply realistic.  A trend in force remains a trend in force until it changes.  Gallup concludes “the public is bracing for a 2023 marked by worsening economic conditions.:

If you are concerned with our monetary and economic trajectory, we suggest you speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional to discuss a sound plan to protect yourself from inflation, government debt, money-printing and reckless spending.  

There is a reason that gold has been the enduring money of the ages around the world and through the centuries.


“Colossal” Gold Demand from the World’s Central Banks

Central Banks are choosing gold over cash… and investors should follow.

The numbers are now all in for the end of the year, and Central banks continue to look down the road at developing monetary conditions and increasingly opt to hold gold in their reserves.

The World Gold Council (WGC) reports that annual gold demand reached an 11-year high in 2022.  

The WGC characterized central bank gold buying as “colossal!”

Central bank gold purchases hit a 55-year-high, for total acquisitions of 1,136 tons.

Overall gold demand was strong all year, including the finishing quarter.  “Annual gold demand (excluding OTC) jumped 18 percent to 4,741 tons, almost on a par with 2011 – a time of exceptional investment demand. 

Retail demand for coins and bars was brisk in 2022 as well, setting a nine-year high.

The trade association expects investment to rise in 2023.  “Gold ETF and OTC demand – depressed during 2022 – looks set to take the baton held by last year’s strong retail bar and coin demand. Retail investments will likely be lower in Western markets albeit still healthy, as inflation fears fade, but should be robust in Asia on higher growth. However, elevated recession and geopolitical risks will likely sustain interest in gold and present upside potential as the year progresses.”

With failing confidence in the debt state monetary authorities, government debt in the unpayable range, and wars possible on two fronts, accompanied by nuclear saber-rattling, we expect significantly higher gold and silver prices in 2023.  Find out more.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals professional today for the latest news on prices and trends.


Senior Citizen Poverty Could Double in the Next Ten Years

We hope you are not relying on a pension plan for your golden years.  And that goes for Social Security, too.

Private pension plans like 401(k)s have taken a beating in this market.  And Social Security gets iffier by the day.  In fact, the Congressional Budget Office now says that the Social Security “trust fund” will be drained dry by 2033.

That’s too close for comfort.  That’s why you need to turn to gold and silver for retirement planning. 

To be more specific, the CBO now projects that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund would be exhausted in 2033 and the Disability Insurance Trust Fund would be exhausted in 2048. If the two trust funds were combined, the exhaustion date would come in 2033.

As we say, much too close for comfort.

Congressman David Schweikert points out that we are on track to double senior citizen poverty in the next ten years.

It is not pleasant, but you should watch this video of Schweikert’s recent House presentation of our fiscal picture… and then speak to an RME professional today to learn how you can protect your financial future.


Fighting Counterparty Risk with Gold

The following is an excerpt from Jim Clark’s important book REAL MONEY FOR FREE PEOPLE: The American Gold Story.

Gold and silver are the only monetary assets that are not someone else’s liability. They are not dependent on someone else’s solvency, promises to perform, or honesty. Their value does not depend on the endorsement, propriety, or honesty of any State or institution. They have no counterparty risk, no risk of rule changes, nonpayment, default, or bankruptcy by individuals, companies, financial exchanges, institutions, and banks—quite apart from being insulated from the risks of the Fed’s fiat dollar as well. 

Order your copy of Real Money for Free People today!

It is a wonderful thing for people’s promises to be reliable, and for institutions to be vigorous fiduciaries of their clients’ interests. The modern world with all its miracles is built on the assurance that people will meet their obligations, fulfill their contracts, and respect others’ property. 

When this environment of trust begins to fray, sophisticated civilization itself is at risk. 

Counterparty risk can pop up anywhere and at any time. Proliferating counterparty risks lead wise investors to the safe haven of gold and silver. But their unique advantage only applies to physical precious metals, the gold and silver coins, and bullion that you own outright and have taken into your own possession. It does not extend to paper gold, stocks, and other representations of gold ownership, commodity contracts, ETFs, or precious metals controlled by a fund, bank, or exchange. Or any other investment vehicle in which State cronies can change the rules in the middle of the game.

In this book we have chronicled the American founders’ wise constitutional provision of real money for free people, its contribution to American prosperity, and how it has been undone, both with the elimination of gold from our monetary system at the hands of Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, along with the abandonment of silver.

The US dollar has remained unmoored, unanchored, untied to anything real ever since. Unlike fiat currencies that have gone before, the dollar is the ultimate fiat currency. It is global in scope because it is the world’s reserve currency. At the same time, the United States is the biggest debtor in history.

By now you should have realized that central banks and fiat money are managed for the greater glory of the State and for the special advantage of the State’s cronies, and not for the benefit of the people. Inflation is the means by which the State enriches itself by subterfuge, quietly eroding the purchasing power of the currency for its own benefit. And while inflation itself is actually the State’s increase of the supply of money and credit, it is the effects of that increase—higher prices because of the currency’s failing purchasing power—that people call inflation.

The destruction of a currency’s purchasing power is evidence of the currency system’s failure.  It remains only to describe where we are today and how it all ends.


REAL MONEY FOR FREE PEOPLE tells the entire American gold story in a clear and easy-to-understand way!  And because it is information you need for the challenging times coming our way, we want you to have a copy absolutely free!

Learn why the Founding Fathers, to assure a free and prosperous America, built the new republic on a solid monetary foundation of gold and silver.  Learn how later politicians, those of lesser character, have abandoned that foresight by handing America’s future and prosperity over to self-serving bankers and money manipulators.

Want a free copy of the book?
If you are in the Phoenix area, stop by Republic Monetary Exchange for a copy.

Not able to make it to the office? We will send you a copy!

Order your complimentary copy online


The dollar is losing value

Dollar Woes

How much are you willing to lose at the hands of Washington?

Over the years we have mocked reports, repeated like a mantra by the mainstream media, about the strength of the US dollar. 

Sure, sometimes one of the major world currencies is losing value faster than the dollar, and sometimes more slowly, so the dollar can be said to be up or down against the bluro or the yawn or some other unbacked fiat currency.

But just don’t call that strength.  If the dollar buys you less, it is in no way strong.  It is weak.

And as Americans know, the dollar is buying them a lot less these days.  And its not just the price of eggs, either.

Jeffrey Tucker from the Brownstone Institute describes the real living experience of the American people this way:

The bottom line is undeniable: in a mere two years, many of the things you loved, healthy food for your families—I’m not talking about the all-carb diet they want us to adopt—has now doubled in price.

Some is up 50 percent and some is up 150 percent. This damage is absolutely not captured in the CPI, which has huge drawbacks by being calculated on an annual basis and for being a weighted index number that fails to capture the reality on the ground.

The reality you see on the shelves of your local store. The grocery prices tell the truth that you are being pillaged.

The pillaging is not limited to this problem however. And by the way, this is NOT going to improve. It would take a dramatic deflation to restore our living standards. The Fed will never permit that. At best, their intention is to take down the inflation rate to 2 percent per annum. It now stands at about 6 percent, maybe. So even if it happens to fall to zero, all prevailing prices will stick. That means that you have been robbed.

All of this has happened out in the open.  The responsible parties have been hiding in plain sight, says Tucker:

Please understand: this was accomplished not by Putin or greedy corporations but by the Federal Reserve. They have the legal power to counterfeit. They do it by buying government debt with money that had not previously existed. This new money makes its way through the economy, watering down the value of existing money.

… It does not matter that the dollar can buy more foreign currencies than ever. That has nothing to do with anything. What matters is not how much foreign currency it can buy but how many goods and services it can buy. The reason it buys far less traces to the outrageous monetary expansions of 2020 and 2021. That’s the whole reason. At one point, monetary expansion was running 26 percent per year!

They robbed you to fund their outrageous lockdown experiment and put as many businesses and people on the payroll as possible. They might as well have dropped money from helicopters. Now we are paying the price for this monetary malfeasance.

 Of course, it is not the Davos crowd that is paying the price of this malfeasance.  It is the average American family that has lost $4,000 to $5,000 in real-take-home pay in this period.  

So, maybe you are paid in dollars.  Your income is in dollars.  Just don’t be fooled by the mainstream media with their on-again, off-again talk of a strong dollar.  It is not true and you don’t have to save in a wasting currency.

In fact, take a look at your dollar holdings and ask yourself how much you are willing to lose at the hands of Washington.  When you decide that enough is enough, come see us at Republic Monetary Exchange.


Front-Running a Plunging Currency

Financial analyst John Rubino has uttered a real truth for our time.  “Once people start front-running a plunging currency,” he said, “you get the Austrian school of economics’ crack-up boom, which is basically a total loss of faith in the currency.”

“Then it’s game over!”

Let’s define two terms here.  First, front-running.

Investopedia defines front-running as trading stock or any other financial asset by a broker who has inside knowledge of a future transaction that is about to affect its price substantially.

Suppose, for example, a broker knows his client is going to buy a gazillion shares of XYZ Corp.  If he puts an order in ahead of his client, knowing that he will profit when the price rockets higher, he is front-running.  His client is the victim because the client’s price will be higher due to the broker executing an order ahead of the client.

This is obviously unethical.  All you have to do is ask yourself if you would want a broker who acts that way with your account.  You do not.

Investopedia’s definition of front-running goes on to describe a broker using insider knowledge that their firm is about to issue a buy or sell recommendation to clients, one that will almost certainly affect the price of an asset.  In that case, the broker’s firm is the victim.  The firm intended to benefit all of its clients with its buy or sell recommendation, but the broker placed his order beforehand, limiting the clients’ opportunities.  

In the case of the plunging currency, Rubino is describing people who know perfectly well what is going to happen to the US dollar.  It is the same thing that happens to all unbacked, fiat currencies.  It is going to tank.

So there is nothing unethical about being one of the first people out the door on the expectation that the dollar is going to tank.  Some will act on that knowledge earlier and some will act on it later.  But foreknowledge is available to anyone who seeks it out.

Your choice.

Let us give you a real-life example.  At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan, said that Saudi Arabia “will consider trading in currencies other than the US dollar.”

This will materially affect the international role and value of the US dollar since OPEC oil is traditionally priced in dollars.  You would be wise to add to your gold portfolio by trading dollars for gold, knowing that this development is inevitable.  In doing so, you are not doing anything unethical.  There is no specific victim.  Every dollar holder is being fleeced by the monetary authorities, but not because someone else beat them to the dollar exit.  

Rubino’s point is sound.  As more and more people begin to realize that the dollar is plunging, their dollar selling will cause the dollar plunge to accelerate.  Which will lead to more selling.

That is where we are today.  Individuals, not to mention foreign central banks, and any others moving out of dollars could be said to be front-running.

Now, the Crack-Up Boom.

We have described this many times.  The Crack-Up Boom is the evocative name offered by the late economist Ludwig von Mises for a moment when the breakdown of a currency becomes clear to everyone: 

If once public opinion is convinced that the increase in the quantity of money will continue and never come to an end, and that consequently the prices of all commodities and services will not cease to rise, everybody becomes eager to buy as much as possible and to restrict his cash holding to a minimum size. For under these circumstances the regular costs incurred by holding cash are increased by the losses caused by the progressive fall in purchasing power. The advantages of holding cash must be paid for by sacrifices which are deemed unreasonably burdensome. This phenomenon was, in the great European inflations of the ‘twenties, called flight into real goods or crack-up boom.

You don’t want to be holding dollars when the Crack-Up Boom hits.  You want to own gold and silver.  

Don’t wait for the Crack-Up Boom.  You can front-run the dollar breakdown without blame.  See us today at Republic Monetary Exchange.


Initial Reports Suggest Record Demand for Silver in 2022

When all of the numbers come in, it looks like silver demand in 2022 will hit a new all-time high!

That’s the news from the Silver Institute, the industry’s trade association.  The Institute forecasts total demand to have surged 16 percent in the just-finished year, to a record high of 1.21 billion ounces.  It cites industrial use, jewelry and silverware offtake, and physical investment.

Purchases of silver coins and bars in 2022 were forecast to jump 18 percent according to the report, to 329 million ounces. “Support was due to investor fears of high inflation, the Russia-Ukraine war, recessionary concerns, and buying on price dips. The rise was boosted further by a near-doubling of Indian demand, with investors often taking advantage of lower rupee prices.”

Other highlights:

  • Industrial demand was on course to grow to 539 million ounces mainly because of ongoing vehicle electrification, growing acceptance of 5G technologies, and government commitments to green infrastructure. 
  • Exchange-traded products, in contrast, were forecast to see the largest annual decline in holdings, totaling 110 million ounces, due in part to silver’s higher volatility than gold, which has made it more vulnerable to profit-taking.
  • Silver jewelry and silverware were set to surge by 29% and 72% respectively to 235 million ounces and 73 million ounces in 2022. This has partly been driven by strong inventory replenishment ahead of the Indian festive and wedding season, following heavy stock depletion in 2021. 
  • The global silver market was forecast to record a second consecutive annual deficit in 2022. At 194 million ounces, this will be a multi-decade high and four times the level seen in 2021.

Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange specialist today about the silver bull market and adding silver to your wealth protection strategy!


Central Banks Are Still Buying Gold!

We call it the biggest monetary megatrend of our time.  It is a development with long-term implications for the US dollar (not good) and for the price of gold (very good).

The headline from the World Gold Council reads, “Central banks add more gold in November as China joins the fray.”

According to the report, “Central banks bought a further 50 tons on a net basis during the month, a 47 percent increase from October’s (revised) 34 tons.  Of this net total, three central banks accounted for gross buying of 55 tons, while two largely contributed to gross sales of 5 tons, showing the strength of demand.”

“The biggest announcement of the month came from the People’s Bank of China (PBoC). It reported an increase of 32 tons, the largest reported purchase in November and the first announced increase in its gold reserves since September 2019. This announcement is significant given China’s historic position as a large gold buyer, having accumulated 1,448t between 2002 and 2019.

Central banks added a further 50t to global official reserves in November*

The WGC calls central bank gold buying one of the highlights of the year gone by with acquisitions of 673 tones between the first and third quarter of 2022.

Of course, we think calling this a “highlight” understates its importance for three reasons:

  1. Central banks fortifying their reserves with gold are doing so after the evaluation of the US dollar.  They find gold to be a more reliable alternative.
  2. It implies the long-term return of gold to its central place in the world’s monetary system.  We remind our readers along the way that countries that are net acquirers of gold become more dominant in the affairs of mankind.  (That means China.)  Those that are net dishoarders of gold find their global positions marginalized.
  3. Gold held by central banks is gold in strong hands, as opposed to ETF holdings.  Central banks are not holding gold as short-term speculations.  

We encourage our friends and clients to take note of this gold megatrend and participate in the powerful breakout move in gold that has been underway for two months.  Move to the safety of gold.

In the meantime, the WGC promises to make the 2022 full-year numbers available at the end of January.  


Why Wasn’t the Surge in Inflation on the Fed’s Radar?

Neel Kashkari is the president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.  

In a new essay, Kashkari wonders why he missed the inflation that is hurting our economy so badly.  He says the Fed and others outside made the same errors.  “First, being surprised when inflation surged as much as it did and, second, assuming that inflation would fall quickly.”

They missed it because they made the same errors.  They missed it because their “tools” didn’t work.  They missed it because their “models” were wrong.

Now that’s a real nothing burger for you.  They missed it because they missed it.

The financial news website ZeroHedge is simply merciless in its criticism of Kashkari, calling him a real “failer-upper.”  We have to agree.  He was a Goldman Sachs man who Hank Paulsen brought along with him to Treasury.  The story about how Kashkari arrived at the $800 billion Bush bailout of the big banks is a classic.  He figured out how to save the economy on his Blackberry.  It turned out to be one of the biggest wealth transfers of all time!

ZeroHedge writes that “market participants are used to broadly ignoring the Minneapolis Fed president’s insights into the monetary policy (not only does he not understand it, but he has been wrong about pretty much everything during his relatively brief Fed career) if only to listen to him for perspective on what will not happen.”

A year ago Kashkari thought the Fed funds rate would be 1 percent in 2023.  It is actually 4.25—4.5 percent.  

We don’t especially fault Kashkari or anyone else for being wrong in their forecasts.  “Predictions are hard, especially about the future,” said the great physicist Niels Bohr.  But we do fault Kashkari and his fellow Deep State Money Manipulators for screwing around with interest rates, imposing their wild guesses on the economy.  In his book about the errors of socialism, Hayek called this the Fatal Conceit.  People like Kashkari and the rest of the Fed geniuses don’t know what they don’t know.  “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design,” said Hayek.

Interest rates are the price of money, and like other prices, they should be set not by bureaucrats and PhDs, but by real conditions of supply and demand.  Otherwise, they create huge distortions in the economy.  Milk prices set artificially high by the government lead to warehouses filled with surplus cheese.  Prices set too low by the government lead to shortages.  That is why Soviet grocery stores were always empty.

And that is why the Fed’s monkeying around with interest rates creates bubbles.  And ruins currencies.

It’s about time we put the Fed out of our misery.  Don’t be victimized by their mismanagement of our economy and the US dollar.  Protect yourself, your family, and your wealth from the likes of Neel Kashkari.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist today.  

Remember, they can’t just print more gold!


Wages Fail To Keep Up as Gold and Silver Race Ahead

The $20 advance gold put on with the release of the latest inflation numbers on Thursday, 1/12, was exceeded by a hike of about $23 dollar hike in gold prices the next day, on Friday, 1/13.

Silver marched higher as well, up $0.52 an ounce on Thursday, followed by another sharp gain of $0.46 gain on Friday.  

We have identified central bank gold buying as one of the driving forces of this surge in precious metals prices.  The current move-up began in early November and continued through December and now well into January.  So, you will not be surprised to learn that China’s central bank is reported to have purchased 32 metric tons of gold in November and another 30 tons in December.

That is a total of 62 tons since November which is substantial indeed.  As one new commentator put it, “China is weaning itself from the US dollar.”

Now we hear from sources that we presume are reliable that China’s buying has actually continued, escalating to a recent total of 100 tons.  

Here is an assortment of forecasts for the gold price in 2023 gathered by newsletter writer Jeff Clark:

While gold keeps racing ahead, we thought we should share with you what is happening to the average weekly earnings of Americans under Biden-nomics.

Prices continue to rise, while wages fail to keep up.  Isn’t it time to invest in gold and silver for wealth preservation, retirement security, and profit?  Learn more about gold and silver investing by speaking with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals expert today.


The Inflation Story Behind the Story

Near Double-Digit Inflation in Phoenix Metro!

If inflation is surprising on the downside, why does gold just keep marching higher?

Could it be there is more to this story than meets the eye?

As usual, the answer is yes.  

The Consumer price index through December shows prices up 6.5 percent over the past 12 months.

Lower gasoline prices helped keep the overall CPI number from registering higher.  The gas component of the CPI for the month of December was down 9.4 percent from the November level.  Nevertheless, overall energy costs climbed 7.3 percent over the 12 months. 

Food prices registered an increase of 10.4 percent over the year.  The shelter index was up 7.5 percent.

Most alarming may be the increase in services, which accounts for two-thirds of consumer spending.  The services price index rose 7.5 percent, the most in 40 years.

Lower gas prices are a function of lower crude oil prices globally.  Reduced crude demand may be signaling a gathering recession, although China’s reopening of its economy can be expected to push up gas prices higher.

Consumer prices continue to rise at near double-digit rates in the Phoenix metropolitan area.  The Phoenix CPI is up 9.5 over the past 12 months.

In the meantime, real average weekly earning for American workers have now trended lower for 21 consecutive months.

Many analysts and Wall Streeters are calling for the Fed to slow or stop hiking interest rates in response to the lower CPI report.  The next Fed meeting is at the end of January.

Just as it has been climbing fast since the beginning of November, the gold market greeted the CPI news on Thursday (1/12) by racing ahead $20, sharing the expectation that the Fed will pivot to a policy of reduced rate increases and ultimately higher inflation.


The Great Stagflationary Debt Crisis

War leads to larger fiscal deficits, more debt monetization, and higher inflation on a persistent basis!

Nouriel Roubini is an economics professor emeritus at New York University’s Stern School of Business.  But he’s better known to some as “Dr. Doom” stemming from his correct call of the 2008 meltdown.

Roubini warns that wars burden national budgets, exacerbating already high debt levels and inflation.

Here is his assessment of the state of world conflicts today:  

The world is going through a form of “geopolitical depression” topped by the escalating rivalry between the West and aligned (if not allied) revisionist powers such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. Cold and hot wars are on the rise. Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine could still expand and involve NATO. Israel – and thus the United States – is on a collision course with Iran, which is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear-armed state. The broader Middle East is a powder keg. And the US and China are facing off over the questions of who will dominate Asia and whether Taiwan will be forcibly reunited with the mainland.

Accordingly, the US, Europe, and NATO are re-arming, as is pretty much everyone in the Middle East and Asia, including Japan, which has embarked on its biggest military build-up in many decades. Higher levels of spending on conventional and unconventional weapons (including nuclear, cyber, bio, and chemical) are all but assured, and these expenditures will weigh on the public purse.

These factors make inflation “secular,” rather than “transitory,”  warns Roubini.  So you should plan on elevated inflation for a long time.  

Roubini at World Economic Forum, 2012. Photo: Moritz Hager

We will only add to Roubini’s description the observation that China’s surge of gold buying in the last two months may be preparation for a forthcoming conflict.  

“A conflict with China, would be fundamentally unlike the regional conflicts and counterinsurgencies that the United States has experienced since World War II, with casualties exceeding anything in recent memory,” warns a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  “The high losses would damage the United States’ global position for many years.”

In any case, “a great stagflationary debt crisis is upon us,” says Roubini.  And that means high unemployment, high inflation, and a major stock market crash.  

Furthermore, the crisis will be “deep and protracted,” he says.

Is your gold and silver portfolio up to date?  This would be a good time to make sure you are protected from war, crashes, and high inflation. 

Our Fearless Predictions for 2023

Ten Things That Won’t Happen in 2023!

Below are our predictions for the New Year.  Read all ten 2023 predictions and at the end, you’ll discover a little surprise about our list!

10.  The Federal Reserve won’t stop managing the monetary system to benefit the banks that created it to serve their interests in the first place.

9.  Foreign central banks won’t increase their dollar holdings, although they will increase their gold holdings.

8.  Congress won’t reduce federal spending; it won’t stop creating trillion-dollar deficits; and it won’t make a serious attempt to reduce the $31.3 trillion debt.  

7.   The Washington establishment won’t hold most of its members to the same legal standards that it applies to the ordinary people.

6.  Washington Republicans and Democrats won’t stop trying to divide the people to win elections.  They will, however, concentrate their attention on smaller divisive issues while the fundamental issues of America’s freedom and prosperity go unaddressed.  

5.  The establishment’s lapdog press won’t bother to report accurately on the fate of the dollar.  Nor will their reporting on gold be accurate.

4.  The establishment lapdog press won’t blame the nation’s monetary problems on the Federal Reserve and the nation’s money manipulators.  It will blame the people instead.   

3.  While Washington may commission a study, launch a new bureau, or even appoint a bureaucrat, nothing meaningful will be done about the declining lifespan of the American people. 

2.  Monetary and fiscal policy won’t stop shrinking the American middle class.

1.  In a crisis, you won’t see people standing in line to exchange their gold for paper money like dollars.  It’s always the other way around.

Now here is the surprise.  

These are basically the same predictions we made last year, at the beginning of 2022.  And the year before that, at the beginning of 2021.  And at the beginning of 2020.  And 2019!  

Well, actually, they aren’t exactly the same.  As the debt continues to climb, we have to make a change every year to number 8.   This proves the point of the prediction, that Washington won’t stop creating trillion-dollar deficits!

Because these predictions have worked out so well, we dusted them off to reissue them for 2023.  How accurate do you think these predictions will be when we look back on them next year?  

In the meantime, all we can say is buy gold, and have a Happy and Prosperous New Year!


Washington’s Stocking Stuffers

The Capital City’s Corruption is Complete!

The colorful wrapping paper and bright bows had been thrown away, and the trees have come down.  So, let’s see what the Washington people gave themselves with your money this Christmas.

As we survey their stocking stuffers, remember that the end days of any republic are a good time to own gold.  That’s because the governing classes, the power centers, and the cronies steal everything that is not nailed down. And they always debauch the currency – the people’s money, your money – to pay for it.

Here’s one:  Besides the 87,000 new armed IRS agents, Congress is now appropriating money for the IRS Commissioner to have a chauffeur.  

Great!

There is a $45 billion new gift under the tree for Ukraine. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says these appropriations are good for America’s economy because they create American jobs: “These investments will help expand our defense manufacturing capacity and contribute to an industry that supports high-paying American jobs.”

This is typical of the economic confusion that characterizes Washington.  Without that appropriation, the $45 billion would remain in the pockets of Americans who would spend it on things that actually make their lives better.  McConnell’s work only takes money from the people at large to give to well-connected cronies who can be counted on to make generous campaign contributions to people like… well, people like Mitch McConnell.

So here are some of the other goodies they gave themselves in the year-end omnibus bill, as reported by the always-alert Jim Bovard in a New York Post article.

  • “Monuments to Me” in the bill commemorate politicians’ generosity with other people’s money — including the “Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building” in San Francisco and the “Nancy Pelosi Fellowship Program” for the State Department. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) finagled his name onto the Patrick Leahy Lake Champlain Basin Program. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) also got his name on an FBI training facility even though “almost everything in Alabama is already named after him,” according to Scott Parkinson of the Club for Growth. 
  • $3.6 million for the Michelle Obama Trail in DeKalb, Ga. Perhaps the four-mile trail will be a consolation prize for Michelle after her signature “Let’s Move” campaign dismally failed to end childhood obesity. 
  • $200 billion is budgeted for the Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund, part of President Biden’s glorious worldwide crusade for the rights of females. Will that program include sending condolence cards to the women of Afghanistan? Or maybe all the money will be fizzled for zany projects like “Women’s Economic Empowerment through Gender Sensitive Value Chain ­Interventions” in Albania.
  • The bill provides massive subsidies to encourage the continuing tidal wave of illegal immigration while banning spending any funds “to construct border fencing in certain areas,” according to the Heritage Foundation. While scoffing at safeguarding the US border, Congress is sending $410 million for “enhanced border security” to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman, according to Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC). 
  • Congress is dolloping out $1.5 million for the COVID-19 American History Project. That program is more likely to have rows of Anthony Fauci Bobbleheads than to include the sordid details of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health browbeating Twitter to censor critics who exposed the deceits of federal policymakers.

Brovard also points out that “to fill the fearmongering void caused by Fauci’s retirement, the omnibus bill creates a new White House pandemic czar.”

Just what we need!

So, it is always a Merry Christmas for Washington’s cronies.  As for us, we can see the dollar going up in smoke, and we will be buying more gold and silver in the New Year!


More Things Worth Remembering About Gold and Silver

Here are a few observations about gold and silver that we have been collecting to share with our friends and clients!

 People are frustrated with the economy, because they worry about how everything is getting much more expensive, and they’re blaming the government and politicians because that’s what they’re being asked about, and they’re not blaming the Fed, because the polls never ask about the Fed, and because many people don’t even understand what the Fed does and how it does it.”

– Wolf Richter

You can’t keep printing trillions of dollars without getting serious inflation. There’s no getting around it.

The people making these decisions know that perfectly well. But thats the secret: They want inflation. In fact, they need inflation. Why? Because they’ve gotten rich from debt. That’s the real economy. Leverage is their entire business model. So for the finance class, inflation is the only way out of all that debt. When money is worthless, you owe less. Meanwhile, hard assets — like upscale real estate on Martha’s Vineyard — will be worth more.

So inflation may crush you, but it will make the people making the decisions richer. Everyone else — regular wage earners, people living on fixed income, every middle-class retiree in the country,  anyone who bothered to live like a responsible person and save money —  will be in serious trouble when inflation arrives. 

That’s not speculation. It’s coming, and anyone who’s paying attention knows it’s coming.

– Tucker Carlson, Fox News

Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labor bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them.

— David Ricardo
British political economist (1772-1823)

To some it may appear melodramatic to announce that we are at a monetary endgame.  But it is clear-eyed realism that follows from the historical precedents.  And from the hard accounting.

— Jim Clark

Gold is an investment in monetary disorder, which is what we have.

— James Grant

The gold standard makes the determination of money’s purchasing power independent of the changing ambitions and doctrines of political parties and pressure groups. This is not a defect of the gold standard; it is its main excellence.

— Ludwig von Misis

With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.

— F. A. Hayek

Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: “Account Overdrawn.”

— Ayn Rand

Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world. Fiat money in extremis is accepted by nobody. Gold is always accepted.

—  Alan Greenspan

The Fed took a dollar and eliminated 98% of its purchasing power and they’re doing that more rapidly than ever but it just hasn’t been fully discounted. When it is, gold is going to be much, much higher.

— Ron Paul

Things Worth Remembering About Gold and Silver

Here are a few observations about gold and the economy that we have been collecting to share with our friends and clients!

The problem, of course, is that the 12 mortals who sit on the FOMC are not clairvoyant, and for the most part not even astute. They have proven over and over again that they have no ability to forecast the course of a $25 trillion domestic GDP, intricately interwoven into a $90 trillion global economy.

David Stockman

60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck heading into the peak shopping season.

CNBC

A U.S. dollar is an I.O.U. from the Federal Reserve Bank. It’s not backed by gold or silver. It’s a promissory note that doesn’t actually promise anything. 

P.J. O’Rourke

A currency that rises in value over time incentivizes saving and thus investing for the long term.

The late 19th century provided a good example of this. Under the gold standard, money grew more valuable over time, thus rewarding long-term thinking and instilling that outlook in the culture at large.

Inflation has the opposite effect. It punishes saving. It forces a penalty on economic behavior that is future-oriented. That means also discouraging investment in long-term projects, which is the whole key to building a complex division of labor and causing wealth to emerge from the muck of the state of nature. Every bit of inflation trims back that future orientation.

Hyperinflation utterly wrecks it.  

Jeffrey Tucker

Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world. Fiat money in extremis is accepted by nobody. Gold is always accepted.

Alan Greenspan

Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labor bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them.

David Ricardo
British political economist (1772-1823)

I grew up in a purely urban family. We had no relatives in the country. I’m born in 1944. When I was a baby, my mother could only buy food because she still had some gold coins. Without gold, I would have starved. She always told me that. Therefore, this generation already has a certain gold affinity. In extreme times of crisis, this is one of the few things left to be accepted. Gold was the only thing left to the people of the city at that time. Before the silver cutlery was also traded at the farmer.

Ewald Nowotny
Former European Central Bank governor

The gold standard makes the determination of money’s purchasing power independent of the changing ambitions and doctrines of political parties and pressure groups. This is not a defect of the gold standard; it is its main excellence.

Ludwig von Mises

With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.

F. A. Hayek

And finally, one more note about gold:

A Dip in the CPI

Don’t get too excited over one good inflation report.  So advised a Bloomberg news headline after the November Consumer Price Index came in a little lower than the previous month!

Everywhere people crowed.  Biden and his economic team rushed to the cameras to take credit.  “What is clear is my economic plan is working and we’re just getting started,” Biden said.

On average, consumer prices paid by the American people have risen 13.8 percent since Biden took office.  Higher prices are costing the average family $5,800 per year according to the Heritage Foundation.  To that higher interest rates must be added.  The average cost of interest rates per family is $1,300, for a total yearly hit of $7,100 under Biden.

The CPI for the 12 months through November was up 7.1 percent.   7.1 percent is down from 7.7 the month before, and down from 9.1 percent in June.

But before anyone gets too excited about a better month, let us take a deep breath and remember that inflation is not like a light switch that can be turned on or off.  The rate of inflation cannot be fine-tuned.  The economy is not mechanical, and prices cannot be engineered by a central authority.

Perhaps some of our readers are old enough to remember the way inflation rose and fell and rose again during the stagflation decade of the 1970s.  This chart captures the annual CPI rates as they were reported during that period.  You can see inflation came in waves.

Price inflation climbed to 10 percent and beyond in 1974, dipping to 5 percent in 1976, before surging to almost 15 percent in 1980.

We wish it were not so, but a couple of good months don’t mean the inflation monster has been slain.


This Special Time of Year

This time of year, with holiday gatherings and celebrations, many of our thoughts center on family.    

Nothing in the lifetimes of many of our friends and clients and their families has matched this period for its financial instability.  The year gone by has been one of serious inflation – rising to double-digit rates in many parts of the country including our own.  The Fed’s attempts to bring inflation under control have been both too little and too late and the dollar and people’s savings and retirement plans have been badly diminished.  

We may be witnessing the end of another fiat monetary system.  

For wealth protection, from generation to generation, nothing endures like gold.  In fact, someone called gold and silver “the superheroes of wealth preservation.”

Gold is one of the least reactive chemical elements;  it does not tarnish or rust.  It is handy to think of that as a metaphor for the fact that gold’s core value is impervious to corruption by the actions of its issuer.  The value of an ounce of gold is not dependent on whose picture or name is inscribed on it.  Nor does it depend on any government; governments come and go, but the value of gold persists.

If you had your choice of putting some government paper money in a box under the Christmas tree, or gold, to pass along to your children and grandchildren, you would be wise to choose gold.  

Gold ownership has traditionally been prized as a means of passing wealth along in families, in discreet, private ways.  

It is the only financial asset that is not someone else’s liability, not dependent on someone else’s promises.  

Gold’s special virtues have been recognized around the world throughout the centuries.  So honored is gold that the wise men who followed a star made it among their gifts to a child born in a stable more than 2,000 years ago.

So this time of year, while so many of our thoughts center on family, choose to protect your family and all that you’ve worked for.  Find out why gold is the money of the ages, and why it makes a perfect gift for family members and loved ones.  

Merry Christmas from all of us at Republic Monetary Exchange!


Must See: Robert Kiyosaki’s Last Warning!

“This Is Very Serious!  We’re In Trouble!”

Our friend Robert Kiyosaki is the author of the number one biggest-selling personal finance book of all time, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Jim Clark and Robert Kiyosaki
Jim with Robert Kiyosaki

Rich Dad, Poor Dad has been translated into 51 languages.  It has sold more than 40 million copies.  Robert has written dozens of other books, including two books he co-authored with Donald Trump.

The following video, “Robert Kiyosaki’s Last Warning,” is Robert’s high-level overview of our financial and political position.  As always, Robert is outspoken.  We highly recommend you spend a few minutes watching this warning video.

Can’t see the video? Click here to watch on YouTube.


Uh Oh… Exploding Deficit

What’s Going On in Washington?

Spending.

That’s what’s going on in Washington.  Seriously, it is almost like their disconnection from financial reality has as last become complete.  

And it has.  Here are the facts for November:

Federal spending for the month was $501 billion.

Federal revenue was $252 billion.

You probably already figured out for yourself just how gigantic the November deficit was.  It you thought it was about a quarter of a trillion dollars, you are right there in the ballpark:  It was a record $249 billion.

That implies an annual deficit of $3 trillion.  

This is so far from manageable as to make mature, responsible people break down and cry.  Former US budget director David Stockman (himself a mature and responsible person) asks, “In exactly what universe, therefore, is that not inflationary?

By the way, why did federal spending come in so high, up 53 percent from the same month last year?  The answer is debt service.  As we have all noticed, the Fed has been prodding interest rates higher, and Washington suffers those higher rates just like the rest of us. 

Check out the sharp spike on the far right-hand side of an already skyrocketing chart of Federal interest rate expenses: 

Want more spending news?  Probably not, but here it is anyway.

By a vote of 83 to 11, Congress has now passed a record-busting  $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act.  It is headed to the White House for President Biden’s signature.  

Will Biden sign it?  Of course, he will, even though it is $45 billion more than he asked for.  

By the way, the bill includes $10 billion for Taiwan, which will be used to purchase weapons from US arms manufacturers.  

There’s more.  Ron Paul writes that more money is being shoveled into the Ukraine black hole.  “Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has signaled that the next huge check – nearly $38 billion – will be conveniently hidden in a year-end, must-pass omnibus bill. It’s a way to keep the gravy train flowing while sparing Members the inconvenience of having to face voters.”

Meanwhile, even mainstream news outlets are noticing the popping of the central bankers’ Superbubbles.  He’s a clip from The Hill:  “While recent crashes in British bond prices, real estate in China, and stocks in the U.S. were driven by different catalysts, they all reflect a common cause largely ignored: the popping of a worldwide wealth bubble.”

And here’s a disturbing number from CNBC:  “As of November, 63% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck, according to a monthly LendingClub report — up from 60% the previous month.”

Doesn’t it just make you want more gold and silver?  It does us, too!


ron-paul-stock-market-bubble

Ron Paul Says The Fed is in a Real Fix!

So the Federal Reserve is slowing down on its interest rate increases.  After raising rates by 75 basis points (3/4 of a percent) at each of its last four meetings, the Fed opted to pull back to 50 basis points this month.

But it hasn’t yet achieved its objective of wringing inflation out of the US economy.  In fact, consumer price inflation remains at a 40-year high.

What gives?  Why pull back before the mission is accomplished?  It is because the Fed is in a jam, between a rock and a hard place.  For a more complete answer, we give the floor to gold and economics expert Congressman Ron Paul who explains the Fed’s bind:

If it [the Fed] raises rates to the levels needed to really combat price inflation, the increase in interest payments will impose hardships on individuals and businesses, as well as raise federal interest payments to unsustainable levels. This will cause a major economic crisis including a government default on its debt causing a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. Also, if the Fed continues to facilitate federal deficits by monetizing the debt, the result will be an economic crisis caused by a collapse in the dollar’s value and rejection of the dollar’s world reserve status.

The crisis will lead to social unrest and violence, as well as increased popularity of authoritarian movements on both the left and the right. This will lead to government crackdowns on civil liberties and increased government control of our economy. The only bright spot is this crisis will also fuel interest in the ideas of liberty and could even help bring about a return to limited, constitutional government, free markets, individual liberty, and a foreign policy of peaceful trade with all. Those of us who know the truth have two responsibilities. The first is to make the necessary plans to ensure our families can survive the forthcoming turmoil. The second is to do all we can to introduce as many people as possible to the ideas of liberty.

When Dr. Paul says “to make the necessary plans to ensure our families can survive the forthcoming turmoil,” that’s where we come in.  That’s what we do.

Make an appointment with your Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional to get updates and review your own plans for the financial turmoil ahead.


Gold Breaking Out as Wholesale Prices Continue to Rise

Wholesale prices keep on climbing.  And so do gold and silver!

Wholesale prices have risen at a 7.4 percent rate in the 12 months ending in November.

Does anybody think a 7.4 percent hike in the Producer Price Index represents a victory over inflation and that the Federal Reserve Board members can all come out and take a bow?

Probably not.  Remember that wholesale prices are in the pipeline headed toward you as consumer prices.  Consumer prices through November will be reported on Tuesday (12/13/22).  

Then the Fed announces its policy changes the next day, Wednesday.  If it raises its Fed funds rate by one-half percent, it is effectively taking a bow, telling itself that it has done well.  If it doesn’t raise rates more, a possible 75 basis points, it means it is more worried about a general slowdown and is settling for halfway measures on the inflation front.

One of the financial news site headlines called the producer price numbers “a surprise inflation read.”  Seem like the financial press has been surprised by just about everything lately.

Blackrock, the world’s largest investment firm might have a better idea about things right now than the media consensus.  We’re entering a period of heightened instability, it says, and watch out for the stock market: “Equity valuations don’t yet reflect the damage ahead.”  As if to confirm that view, for the week of December 7, US equity funds experienced the biggest outflow in about a year and a half.

gold and silver investments

Blackrock must have noticed as well that the personal savings rate is at a 17-year low, but consumer credit card debt is at an all-time high.

For our part, we notice all the things Washington is going to pay for with money it doesn’t have.  For example, President Biden intends to bail out union pension funds with a $36 billion gift.  And more money for Ukraine again.  Seriously, do they think money grows on trees?

Probably not.  And who needs trees when they can just create the money they need with a computer keystroke at the Fed building?

Walmart probably has a better handle on real consumers that the financial press, and it says consumers remain “stressed” by inflation.

The gold and silver markets certainly don’t think inflation is yesterday’s news, either. From a low in November of $1618, gold has climbed swiftly to around $1800.  

It looks like a breakout, as we said last week in this commentary. 

Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange professional today.


Have You “De-Dollarized”?

China is getting out of the way.  You better get started, too!

The smart money has begun de-dollarizing.  They see that the future holds a more rapid devaluation of the US dollar.

It is the only way Washington can keep its mega-debt serviced.

The media tells you the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates dramatically, a replay of the Volcker method, designed to once again wring inflation out of the dollar economy.  But the Volcker method involved raising interest rates well above the inflation rate.

The current consumer price inflation rate is said to be 7.7 percent annually.  But the Fed’s targeted policy rate, the Fed funds rate, has only been raised to 3.75 – 4.00 percent, still way below the inflation rate.   The forthcoming December Fed meeting is widely believed to result in throttling back to a lesser rate increase than the prior months. 

Leaving the Volcker job undone.

If you wonder about the Fed’s apparent lack of resolve on the inflation front, we point you to the open secret that rates somewhere below the inflation rate are needed so that the monetary authorities can devalue the otherwise unpayable US debt burden.

We call this an open secret, because other central banks, know the craft of money printing themselves, are moving out of dollars and into gold.  

 In just the last week we learned that China has added another 32 tons of gold to its reserve holdings. It is the first officially acknowledged addition to China’s gold position in more than three years, putting its official reserves at 1980 tons.  

China gold bars
China has recently added another 32 tons of gold to its reserve holdings

The World Gold Council reports that central banks added 400 tons of gold to their holding in the July-August-September quarter this year.  

Central banks have been net purchasers of gold for 13 consecutive years.  

Meanwhile, the WGC, looking ahead to 2023, is in the camp of those who foresee a recession.  WGC noted that gold has seen positive returns during five of the last seven recessions.

“Historically, tightening cycles [such as we are in now] have ended in a recession,” says Juan Carlos Artigas, WGC’s head of global research.  “The more severe the recession, the better gold does.”


Spending More Than You Have Means More Debt!

It’s hard to comprehend just how much money has gone into Washington’s “stimulus” measures.  But this might help.

It compares Biden’s spending measure to other US benchmark spending bills.

Biden’s American Rescue Plan is 2.4 times larger than all the New Deal spending between 1933 and 1940.  The so-called Inflation Reduction Act is 8.5 times the size of the Marshall Plan that rebuilt much of Europe after World War II.  The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is about the same size as the Inflation Reduction Act.

By the way, all of these costs have been converted to 2020 dollars to make comparisons possible.

You might think that all this spending would generate some red ink.  Well, you would be correct.  

Take a look:

As you can see, the debt problem does not consist solely of federal debt.  State and local, consumer debt, and corporate debt all add up to $64 trillion.  But almost half of that is federal debt.

According to the International Institute of Finance, total global debt has been running about $300 trillion.  That’s about three times the total global production.

We’re not saying that the interest on $300 trillion is nothing but a cakewalk, but it’s a lot more manageable when interest rates are 1 or 2 percent than it is when rates are closer to 5 percent, which is where they are headed.

The problem gets even worse when interest rates are higher and growth falters as it does in a recession.  That means the level of taxable activity falls.  At the same time, government social spending usually rises and deficits get larger.

As always, the Federal Reserve has a printing press (digital, of course) on standby, ready to print however many new US dollars it takes to keep up Washington’s appearance of solvency.

But no matter how hard they try, they haven’t been able to figure out how to print gold!

Have you spoken with an RME gold and silver specialist lately?  With the entire world struggling under an unsustainable and unpayable load of debt, it would be wise to do so!


Looks Like Gold and Silver Are Breaking Out!

We don’t spend a lot of time showing you gold and silver price charts.  But we really think you should see these!

First silver.

This silver chart shows the short-term (50-day) moving average (blue line), and the long-term (200-day) moving average price (red line).  

As you can see, this past week silver has exploded to the upside.  Its price traded down to, and tested support at the short-term moving average a couple of times in November, bouncing off that support line.  Within the day it raced higher and it has now moved convincingly about its long-term moving average.

The gold charts appear to confirm a breakout in precious metals.  Over the last few months, the gold price has run into overhead resistance at the 50-day moving average.  A powerful bull move in the first ten days of November penetrated that resistance.  Now gold has greeted December by closing over the long-term moving average on both trading days.

Charts are an important tool for understanding where we have been and they can indicate momentum and trajectory as well.  But we always like to add some fundamental observations that buttress the technical picture.  In this case, the fundamental news is central bank gold buying that we have discussed often (see HERE and HERE).

Now The Economist has taken note and provides a graphic illustration of the scope of this important megatrend in an article called Why Central Banks Are Stockpiling Gold.

Remember that you can always speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional to learn more about precious metals investing.


Our Friend Robert Kiyosaki’s Warning

“God have mercy on us all!”

When someone tries to warn you about what’s going to happen and says “God have mercy on us all,” you better believe they’re talking about something very serious indeed.

But those are the exact words of our friend Robert Kiyosaki, warning about what is going to happen to the economy.  And to you.’

Robert Kiyosaki is the author of the number one biggest-selling personal finance book of all time, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad has been translated into 51 languages.  It has sold more than 40 million copies.  Robert has written dozens of other books, including two books he co-authored with Donald Trump.

Now, in remarks blasted all around the globe, Kiyosaki says we are in the biggest financial bubble in the history of the world!

Others have called it a Superbubble and the Everything Bubble.  (Learn more here and here.)

Warning of the damage from the popping Superbubble which are markets inflated to unsustainable heights by the Federal Reserve’s money printers, Kiyosaki says, “I would get out of all paper assets.”

The FTX digital exchange bankruptcy and Bitcoin falling from the heights are signs of the air coming out of the bubbles. At the same time, the Fed is now test-driving its own digital currency.

Robert Kiyosaki’s warning sounds serious, and it is serious.  It’s “the biggest bubble in world history,” he says.

If you would like help protecting yourself and your retirement from the bursting of the biggest financial bubble of all time, contact us at once.

Let us show you how to protect yourself with gold and silver.


A Lesson from the Pilgrims

We hope that you can count good health and prosperity as among your greatest blessings in this inflationary year.  Will are grateful for you and all of our friends and clients in 2022.  

Among our Thanksgiving traditions, right along with turkey, family, and even football, is a story we like to tell each year, a story of our country’s founding with a moral that we hope is able to remain a part of the American national character, one remembered each Thanksgiving. 

It comes from the history of the Pilgrims, who arrived on the Mayflower and settled at Plymouth in 1620 in pursuit of religious freedom. 

Within five months of landing, half the company had died of sickness and starvation. 

The sponsors of the enterprise had insisted that for the first seven years the colony would have “all things in common.” This communal organization, socialism by another name, exacerbated the settlement’s woes. 

The pilgrim’s governor, William Bradford wrote that men complained about working for other men’s wives and children without being compensated while the wives thought it a form of slavery “to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc.; they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.” 

Altogether the experience of communal property “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”

Eventually, it was decided, wrote Bradford, that each family would be assigned its own parcel of land so “that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves.” 

The success of the new arrangement was predictable. 

After one year Bradford reported,

“This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. . . . The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

The Pilgrims had their religious freedom, but prosperity wasn’t part of their experience until they had economic freedom as well.  In experimenting with collectivized economic organization, they discovered what everybody owns, nobody owns. 

It’s a lesson that mankind has had to learn and relearn after many bitter experiences, from the “starving times” of the pilgrims to the millions of deaths from Stalin’s terror famine in Ukraine, to many millions more deaths from the collectivized farming under Mao Tse-tung in China.  

The result of enforced collective ownership, socialized, or what is often called public ownership, is waste, neglect, and overuse.  

What everybody owns, nobody owns.  This year has seen the advance of collectivization in our national life, the sort of policies that decimated the Pilgrims.  We are among many who see the spread of this philosophy at breakneck speed over the last two years.  It is evident on many fronts but especially seen in the relentless assault on American property rights and in the expansion of the state and its spending.  We hope the new year sees this trend reverse.  

In the meantime, we are grateful for your business and friendship!  Here’s to a free and prosperous America!  Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones!


Move to Gold Ahead of Global De-Dollarization

There is more movement afoot in the US dollar’s global status.   But first, the backstory:

The US emerged from World War II as a mightier powerhouse than ever.  Other leading industrial economies lay in ruins, but not the US.  The US dollar was said to be as good as gold.  Because foreign governments, many of whom were dependent on US aid for rebuilding, seemed to believe it, they bought into the Bretton Woods international agreement to hold dollars instead of gold as their own reserves.

But that was now a long time ago.  In the meantime, as Nixon’s Treasury secretary announced to the world, “The dollar is our currency, but it is your problem.”

It is true.  The dollar is their problem.  It is a growing problem.  Those that are dependent on their dollar reserves see the handwriting on the wall.  If the US can print trillions of dollars in just a few years, the dollar is no place to park its reserves.

And so many of them are moving their central bank holdings away from dollars and into the safety of gold.  We have described this as the most important monetary megatrend of our time.

Three years ago, in a commentary called De-Dollarization: The Global Monetary Mega-Trend, we wrote:

First, if one central bank decides to upgrade its reserves with the world’s most enduring money, it may only represent a political statement.  It is perfectly understandable if a heavily sanctioned state like Iran or Venezuela decides to avoid dollars for political reasons.  (Note, though, that US sanctions have proliferated to so many countries that the US is forcing the world’s turn to dollar alternatives.)

But those jumping on the gold-bandwagon include friendly countries like Hungary and Poland.  Most recently Poland has been ratcheting up its gold reserves, purchasing 125 metric tons over the past two years.  At the same time Poland is repatriating gold.  This week Poland announced that it has brought home to Warsaw 1oo tons of gold that had been held on its behalf by the Bank of England.  This is not a sign of long-term confidence in the post-war dollar reserve monetary order.

Ten years ago, China held more than $1.3 trillion of US debt.  Now its holdings have slipped below $1 trillion to $933 billion.  

But China is not the only country dumping US treasury debt. 

In November 2021, Japan held $1.33 trillion of US treasury debt.  Now, just a year later, it has dumped almost 16 percent of that portfolio.

It is an open secret in the capital markets that the Treasury is having liquidity challenges.  Foreign holders, friends and foes alike, are backing away.  And even the Fed itself, has pivoted from buying US debt to unhoarding its holdings.

This is not good for the US dollar.  It is not good for the US economy, because at some point the treasury will have to offer much higher interest rates to attract buyers for its voracious borrowing.  Along the way, the Fed will try to ease conditions and rates by printing more money.

That’s what it always does.  

It will make gold move much, much higher.  Move to gold now as the megatrend gathers momentum.


Here Comes the Silver Shortage

With the US Mint and other suppliers woefully behind on minting silver coins, coupled with high premiums on popular silver investment products, no one could possibly feel blindsided to hear research reports reveal a developing silver shortage.

Net jewelry and physical investment silver demand will finish 2022 50 million ounces higher than last year, according to a newly released report from The Silver Institute, a non-profit international research and trade association.  

The report attributes the surge to “investor fears of high inflation, the Russia-Ukraine war, recessionary concerns, mistrust in government, and buying on price dips.”

silver bars

Total 2022 global silver demand is expected to climb 16 percent from 2021 for a new record high of 1.21 billion ounces.

Silver mining output is only expected to increase by 1 percent for the current year to a total of 830 million ounces. High inflation, particularly oil and natural gas prices have been a factor in mine production.

Altogether The Silver Institute projects a record silver deficit this year of 194 million ounces.  That would be four times the deficit experienced in 2021 and result in two consecutive years of silver deficit.

The report cites three specifics contributing substantially to surging demand:

Industrial demand is on course to grow to 539 million ounces. Developments such as ongoing vehicle electrification (despite sluggish vehicle sales), growing adoption of 5G technologies and government commitments to green infrastructure will have industrial demand overcome macro-economic headwinds and weaker consumer electronics demand.

Silver jewelry and silverware are set to surge by 29 percent and 72 percent respectively to 235 million ounces and 73 million ounces this year, mainly thanks to an unprecedented rebound in Indian demand. This has partly been driven by strong inventory replenishment ahead of the festive and wedding season, following heavy stock depletion in 2021.

Additional details are available at The Silver Institute.


Double-Digit Price Hikes Slam Phoenix Again

Consumer prices climbed 7.7 percent during the 12 months through October, according to the Labor Department.

While administration officials celebrate the October report because it was down from the 8.2 percent rate reported a month earlier, residents of the Phoenix metropolitan area- where Republic Monetary Exchange is located- had no reason for celebration.  That is because consumer prices continued to climb at double-digit rates for Phoenicians.

The Phoenix metro Consumer Price Index for the 12-month period clocked in a 12.1 percent.  

Meanwhile, the technical picture for gold and silver prices has turned bullish.  Gold displayed a breakout above its lows just above $1,630 that were touched just briefly in the prior three months.

Gold has now moved decisively above its 50-day moving average (the blue trend line), and may be preparing an assault on the 200-day moving average (the red trend line), currently just over $1,800.  

Silver has also moved well above its 50-day moving average and has now penetrated its 200-day moving average as well.

Keep current on this volatile economy.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional and create a sensible plan to protect your wealth and your family.


Ready for Hyperinflation?

Inflation is bad enough.  But hyperinflation is something else again.  It is the ruin of entire nations and cultures.  Now at least one credible observer says hyperinflation is on its way.

Time to get ready!

Paul Singer is the founder and president of Elliot Management which the Financial Times calls a “prominent” asset manager.  That’s one way to describe it.  It is one of the largest asset managers around, responsible for some $56 billion. 

In a private letter to their clients, Singer and Elliot Management are warning that the world is “on the path to hyperinflation.”  This could lead to “global societal collapse and civil or international strife”.

They are advising clients who have already experienced the stagflation of the 1970s, the dot com and housing bubbles collapse, not to think they have seen everything, but warn of “frightening and seriously negative possibilities” and a “seriously adverse unwind of the everything bubble.” 

So, what is hyperinflation?   Well, it is just what the name implies.  It is a lot of inflation!

People who write and talk about these things try to come up with a fixed inflation rate to qualify as hyper.  But those definitions are wholly arbitrary.  Measuring inflation is a sketchy challenge anyway, with criteria that are constantly changing.  We have consumer price inflation, core inflation, producer price inflation, personal consumption index, and the core personal consumption index.  And so it goes.

We think the best way to describe hyperinflation is that it is the point at which the public finally concludes that it isn’t simply a matter of prices going up, but rather that it is the currency itself that is losing value.  That’s when the Crack-Up Boom hits.

The Crack-Up Boom is the evocative name offered by the late economist Ludwig von Mises for that moment: 

If once public opinion is convinced that the increase in the quantity of money will continue and never come to an end, and that consequently the prices of all commodities and services will not cease to rise, everybody becomes eager to buy as much as possible and to restrict his cash holding to a minimum size. For under these circumstances the regular costs incurred by holding cash are increased by the losses caused by the progressive fall in purchasing power. The advantages of holding cash must be paid for by sacrifices which are deemed unreasonably burdensome. This phenomenon was, in the great European inflations of the ‘twenties, called flight into real goods or crack-up boom.

You don’t want to be holding dollars when the Crack-Up Boom hits.  You want to own gold and silver.  

Singer and the firm are explicit that their warning is for “a set of outcomes that would be at or beyond the boundaries of the entire post-WWII period.”  To blame for the state of affairs, says the client advisory, are policymakers who have been “dishonest” about the real cause behind rising inflation, and of not taken responsibility for the part central banks played in creating it.

We would not have said it much differently.  For more information, speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional today.  You don’t want to be holding dollars when the crack-up boom arrives.


More Bidenflation

Is there any doubt that the surge in Washington spending is instrumental in the surge in consumer prices?

If there are any doubters, the folks at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity have provided a graphic to make it more clear.

It charts cumulative new spending beginning in December 2020, after Biden’s election. It begins with a $900 billion COVID package that President Trump and Speaker Pelosi agreed to that month.   And it just keeps stacking up from there.  As you can see from the yellow bars, the cumulative spending increases now total $4.5 trillion.

That’s a lot of new spending.  

Meanwhile, the blue line tracks the Consumer Price Increases over the same period.  The CPI was running below 2 percent when Biden came into office.  Soon it had climbed to 5 percent, and then month after month over 8 percent.

As Stephen Moore writes, “The latest White House spin is that inflation isn’t their fault. It’s just an act of nature or something like that.  But Bidenflation didn’t happen as the natural course of events.  Stop us if you’ve heard this many times before on these pages, but inflation sprang to life when the multi-trillions of ‘stimulus’ money drenched the economy.” 

We don’t think a lot more convincing is needed.  By the way, unhinged spending is not limited to the US.  It is a global phenomenon and so is high inflation.

And with that in mind, we repeat our previous report that central banks bought 399 tons of gold in the third quarter this year, almost double the previous record gold purchases.  And when they buy gold, remember that they are doing so in preference to holding US dollars.  

We think they are on to something.


Will Powell Save the Dollar?

Don’t bet on it!

It doesn’t take long to ruin a currency.  A little run of double-digit inflation soon has people looking for a better store of wealth.

Like gold and silver.

Look no further than at the other central banks of the world.  They know the money-printing game as well as Federal Reserve officials in the US do.  They run the exact same scam on their own citizen.  Take a look at inflation rates in a few other countries:


And those aren’t even the banana republics.  Those are what are thought of as the Western bloc nations (yes, including Japan).  The inflation rate in Turkey is 83 percent.  That’s the highest among the G20 nations.  We can’t even be bothered to keep up with the inflation rate in Venezuela.  It was somewhere around 120,000 percent, but last year it issued a new currency after knocking six zeros off the old one.  So now it may have an inflation rate of 120 percent.  But who knows?

It is because central bankers everywhere from Argentina to Zimbabwe know the money printing game so well – they run the scam on their own people all the time – it is because they know the game themselves that they don’t want to be victimized by us running it on them.

Which is why there is an international movement away from the US dollar.  Central banks bought 399 tons of gold in the third quarter this year according to the World Gold Council.  That’s almost double the previous record gold purchases.  

But isn’t Powell serious this time about wringing inflation out of our monetary system?  Well, first of all, he has no intention of ending the practice.  He simply wants to destroy the dollar’s purchasing power at a fixed and sustained rate.  (By the way, we don’t mind predicting here that the Fed’s target rate for inflation will probably be raised from 2 percent annually to somewhere around 4 percent annually.  That will help devalue the otherwise unpayable US national debt.)

Think about it this way.  It has been eight months since the Fed saw the light and realized that inflation wasn’t transitory.  It’s been eight months since the Fed began raising interest rates.  And it has been eight months of Hamlet-like soliloquies and halfway measures from Powell.  But inflation rages, nonetheless.

Indeed, Powell’s record of money-printing puts all the prior Fed chairmen to shame, as David Stockman describes:

When Powell was sworn in as Fed Chairman in January 2018, the Fed’s balance sheet stood at $4.439 trillion, the work of 15 chairmen over 104 years.

When he finally blinked in March 2022 and began to reluctantly raise rates from the zero-bound where they had been hideously impaled, the balance sheet stood at $8.937 trillion.

So the math of it speaks a thousand words. The gain during Powell’s first 50-months was $4.298 trillion, a figure larger than the money-printing total of all of his predecessors combined!

It makes no more sense to think that the chairman who oversaw a lightning-like doubling of the Fed’s balance sheet will now get it all under control than it does to believe that the wolf who has been raiding the henhouse has suddenly become a vegetarian. 

It doesn’t take long to ruin a currency.  That is why central banks are selling dollars at today’s highs to buy gold at today’s bargain prices.

We recommend you do likewise.  To learn more, speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional today.


The Fed Sows Confusion, Chaos

Mixed Messages Mess with Markets!

It seems strange that the mighty capitalist markets should be constantly waiting for the next pronouncement of a small, grey band of mostly unknown bureaucrats, most of whom – if not all – showing little evidence of having created any wealth in their own lives, sitting around conference tables in the Marriner Eccles building in Washington, to issue diktats about where interest rates must be.

But we go through this several times each year.  And now we have just gone through it again.  The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee met in the first two days of November, a meeting culminating with the announcement that it had decided to raise its influential policy rate, the Fed funds rate, by 0.75 percent effective immediately.

This is the latest in a series of Fed rate hikes that began in March when the central bankers finally and reluctantly confessed that inflation was not, after all, transitory, effectively confessing as well that they didn’t understand inflation or really know what they were doing.  So, they began hiking rates: 0.25 percent in March, 0.50 percent in May, and 0.75 percent in June, July, and September.

And now once again in November.  The target range now for this Fed policy rate is 3.75 to 4.00 percent effective immediately.

Wall Street – both debt (bond) and equity (stock) markets – follow this action as a matter of life and death.  They know that by driving rates lower (by inflating the currency or money supply) for decades, the Fed’s manipulations were stove-piping money their way. 

Oh, life was good.  Very good.   

But inflation having risen and begun to irritate the people, the Fed finally fell under some pressure to get it back down.  This terrifies Wall Street which understandably doesn’t want to see its good thing come to an end.  So, the Fed’s pronouncements are a very big deal.  Wall Street watches for the least sign the blasted rate hikes will stop and that their happy days of free printing-press money will soon return.

The Fed concludes its meetings, issues a statement about its latest decision, and then shortly after the chairman, Jerome Powell answers the questions of a sycophantic corps of journalists assigned to the Fed beat.

We assigned a hapless member of our crew to follow the action on Wednesday and this is what he reported on the sequence of events. 

On the release of the Fed statement, he watched in real-time as all the markets moved up.  The real-time charts on CNBC were all awash in green.  That is because the Fed’s statement read in part, “In determining the pace of future increases in the target range, the Committee will take into account the cumulative tightening of monetary policy, the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, and economic and financial developments.”  That was all it took.  It must mean that the Fed was going to slow down its hikes, maybe before long stopping altogether, and even begin easing again.  

The markets were exuberant.  The Dow was up over 400 points.  And when Powell took to the podium, they remained that way.  

Until…

Until Powell spoiled the party, saying that they will continue “to look for compelling evidence that inflation is coming down.”  Uh oh!  Because there is no such compelling evidence to be found.  Powell even went on to say, “Another unusually large [rate] increase could be appropriate at our next meeting.”

Well!  That wasn’t supposed to happen.  And with that short observation, the markets turned as one.  They went south.  Euphoria left the room.  The buzz was killed.  All the lines on all the charts turned red, the color of red ink.  

After the markets closed, the Wall Street Journal swept up the debris with this headline:

Stocks Sink After Powell Signals Need for More Rate Rises

Fed chairman says rates will likely need to end higher than anticipated

So, by the end of the day, the Dow was down 500 points, the Nasdaq fell 366, and the S&P500 was off almost 100 points.

Not quite what Wall Street hoped.  

Just another day in the fiat money and fake interest rate economy.  As for ourselves, we think interest rates should be determined by real conditions of capital supply and demand.  That would prevent distortions and malinvestment and the constant booming and busting cycles in our economy by artificially jiggering rates.

And we think gold is real money.  Since it is real and can’t be printed, there is no need for the central banking apparatus that has spent more than a century destroying the dollar and bailing out its cronies.  

But that’s just us.


Biden, Biden, Biden!

When the truth takes a backseat!

It is one thing, and a very sad one indeed, to see anyone addled and losing their ability to think clearly.  But it is more than sad when the affected person’s inability is felt in the realm of policy and in our civic life.

It is a danger.  

President Biden’s confusion has gone far beyond fodder for cable news commentators.  And it seems that his befuddlement is compounded by even the written remarks his staff prepare for him, because they have developed a supreme and wanton indifference to the truth of the things they write for him to say.

Stephen Moore writes that at a recent stop on the campaign trail in New York, Biden took credit for the gas price dropping to $3.39 a gallon.  That is “down from over $5 when I took office,” said the President.

Not even close.  Moore points out that when Biden was inaugurated, the average gas price was $2.42.  And even as Biden spoke the price of gas was 10 percent higher than he said.  

Then Biden went on to explain that $7 gasoline “has always been the case in California.”

Again, not even close.  Sure, gas briefly hit $7 in Beverly Hills and in a couple of other spots, but in simply has not “always been the case.”  

Actually, the salient feature of this California retail gas price chart is that gas prices began their relentless climb shortly after Biden’s inauguration.  That’s no surprise.  Biden cancelled the Keystone Pipeline on his inauguration day.  Seriously.  On inauguration day.  

The President also recently came up with this one:  “Today, my administration announced that this year the deficit fell by $1.4 trillion — the largest one-year drop in American history.”

We’ll let Moore respond to that one:

“Joe Biden has spent and borrowed more money in his first twenty months in the White House than any other president in history. He’s already increased spending over the next 10 years by well over $4 trillion.  

“We went back and looked at what the Congressional Budget Office baseline was the month Biden left office and compared that to Biden’s fiscal results so far.  The first chart below shows he has ALREADY added just shy of $900 billion to the amount the feds would have spent and borrowed if he had simply done nothing.”

There are so many more.  Remember the one about the economy having “zero percent inflation in July… Zero percent!”  

C’mon man!

You can see the work of a clueless staffer who sent a clueless man out to meet the press with that one.

We don’t intend to go any further.  We are not going to curate Biden’s material misstatements of economic reality.  But if someone wants to, fine.  It’s a growth industry!  There’s room for everyone!

As for us, we prefer to insulate ourselves from the foolish and fraudulent in Washington.  That’s why we own gold.  And why we recommend that you do, too.  

Speak with a Republic Monetary Affairs gold and silver professional today.  


Halloween Prices are Scary

In covering inflation it is almost expected that we report on the cost of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner.   And we probably will in a month or so.

But we just happened to notice the rising cost of Halloween candy.  This year it is up by an unlucky 13 percent.  

Consumer prices in the Phoenix area just happen to have risen 13 percent over the past year as well.  It’s our bad luck here that that is the fastest inflation rate in the entire nation.

The Labor Department says that this year’s increase in candy is the largest ever.  According to the Wall Street Journal, it boils down to “surging labor costs and skyrocketing flour and sugar prices.”

The National Retail Federation says that the average household will spend about $100 on Halloween items this year.  That includes candy, decorations, and even costumes.  In 2015, that amount was only $74.

But back to candy. “Starburst and Skittles have had the biggest price increases—35 and 42 percent, respectively, since last year, reports the Journal.  “Crunch and Butterfinger bars saw the lowest price increases of 6 and 7 percent respectively.”

But the worst trick in buying a treat is the incredible shrinking candy bar.  That is the one that keeps getting smaller each year, but is packaged with a lot of cardboard to make it appear the same size as before.  

So, what explains it all?  Whatever did happen to the nickel candy bar?  

We think you know the answer.  It’s not that candy has gone up in price so much as it is that the dollar is losing purchasing power.

The chart above shows the decline in dollar purchasing power since the US severed the thin link of the currency to gold in 1971.  The dollar has been down ever since, and it is not going up.

And that is why people buy gold!


Inflation on Display

The US 12-month inflation rate as measured by the Consumer Price Index has been over 8 percent for 7 months in a row, since last March.  It has been raging along over 5 percent for 14 months in a row.

The pain is not evenly distributed across the county.  As you can see in the following graphic, inflation has hit hardest in the Mountain West region and in the West South-Central region.

The highest inflation rate by far has been in the Phoenix Metropolitan area.  Their consumer prices have risen at a 13 percent annual rate.  The next closest is the Atlanta metro at 11.7 percent, followed by the Miami and Tampa regions and Baltimore, which are registering double-digit inflation rates.

To round out the picture here is a breakdown of the increase in food and other costs over the past 12 months.  You will note the home heating oil is show the greatest price increase of all the items, just in time for the high-demand winter months.

And finally, we think it is time to include one of the most revealing graphs of this era.  It is a long-term trend chart showing the gold price against the declining purchasing power of the US dollar. 

For more information about adding gold and silver to your wealth preservation and profit strategy, speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange specialist today.


Why Are Americans So Down on the Economy?

The New York Times Has to Ask!

A recent New York Times “think piece” (that’s what they call them!) asks why Americans are so down on the economy.  

Seriously?

One easily wearies of the Times tendentious and partisan analysis.  The piece is sprinkled with nonsense like this tweet from someone described as the founder of the Center for Economic Policy and Research: “Think of where Biden would be if the NYT, WaPo, CNN, NPR and the rest weren’t doing everything they could to trash his performance on the economy.”

There are psychological reasons that inflation might have a depressive effect on the national mood, explains the Times.

 Right.  If the reality of Bidenomics and inflation itself is too much for the Times editors to process, we can hardly expect them to expand the scope of their inquiry to include the collapsing retirement hopes of the people.  But consider, as the Times crosstown rival reported recently, Americans’ 401(k) retirement plans have lost $2.1 trillion just since the first of the year!  

The average 401(k) retirement plan has lost 25 percent of its value in less than a year.  Traditional pension funds are getting crushed, too.  (We thought this important enough to pass along in our RME radio messages.)

That is Bidenomics.  Those losses are not just psychological.  They are real.  But one searches the Times piece in vain for even the word “stocks,” “retirement,” or “savings.”

It grieves us to think that the New York Times is considered the newspaper of the intelligentsia.  We trust all the senior White House and Fed officials read it.  And take it seriously.

If that is so, it confirms what we have long suspected.  The blind are leading the blind.  As long as they are, you need to protect yourselves for they are about to stumble into a very deep ditch, taking the whole country along with them.

Buy gold.


Revisiting the Gold and Silver Shortage

(And a bill to restore the gold standard!)

We have written several times of late about the recent shortages of gold and silver and the way prices in the “paper gold” or gold-substitute markets have decoupled from the prices of real, physical gold and silver coins and bars.

In essence, the question is how can the international benchmark prices (spot market prices) for gold and silver be lower while, due to rising premiums reflecting thin supplies, the real market prices of silver coins and bars are higher. (See our October 3 post Market Condition Alert! Gold and Silver Shortages!)

Republic Monetary Exchange’s trading department still has gold and silver in stock for immediate delivery for many items, although we are experiencing strong demand and we cannot guarantee that this crisis is only temporary. 

While premiums are high, worsening conditions may mean that no physical gold and silver will be available at any price.  

These market conditions have been noticed in Washington, and have provoked one congressman to demand answers.

In a September 2 post (Explain the Silver Shortage:  Congressman Demands Answers from the US Mint and Treasury Secretary!), we reported on Congressman Alex Mooney’s (R. -WV) attempt to get answers. In light of the Mint’s statutory obligation to provide sufficient coinage to meet market demand, Congressman Mooney wants to know how this shortage has been allowed to happen, driving premiums on American Eagle US silver coins to such heights, and what the authorities intend to do about it.

Due to keen interest in this story from many of our clients, here is a link to Congressman Mooney’s letter to Treasury secretary Janet Yellen and US Mint Director Ventris Gibson.

Meanwhile, we note with both interest and enthusiasm that just two weeks ago Mooney introduced H.R. 9157, the “Gold Standard Restoration Act.” 

The legislation calls for the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve to publicly disclose all gold holdings and gold transactions within 30 months, after which time the Federal Reserve note “dollar” would be pegged to a fixed weight of gold at its then-market price. Federal Reserve notes would become fully redeemable for and exchangeable with gold at the new fixed price, with the U.S. Treasury and its gold reserves backstopping Federal Reserve Banks as guarantors.

“The gold standard would protect against Washington’s irresponsible spending habits and the creation of money out of thin air,” said Congressman Alex X. Mooney. ”Prices would be shaped by economics rather than the instincts of bureaucrats. No longer would our economy be at the mercy of the Federal Reserve and reckless Washington spenders.” 


Real Money For Free People!

We want to give you a signed copy!

The following is an excerpt from Jim Clark’s important book REAL MONEY FOR FREE PEOPLE: The American Gold Story.

Both Fed money-printing and federal debt are evidence of severe character deficiencies among the American governing classes.

Fed money printing is a slap in the face of normal, healthy human interactions. Civilization is built on the implicit understanding that one may achieve his own ends by serving others. The butcher does not eat all that meat himself. The baker does not need all that bread. The candlestick maker has no use for all those candles himself. The things people in all their diversity want in satisfaction of their personal objectives are most readily achieved by the earnings they derive from providing goods and services others want, giving fair value for value received. But the proponents and beneficiaries of money printing are involved in a brazen attempt to take something for nothing, to acquire purchasing power by monetary manipulation, for which they provide nothing in return.  

It is much the same with government debt. It allows for present consumption while shuffling the bill off to future generations. Normal, healthy people try to leave something to their children and grandchildren. The framers of the Constitution wrote that their aim was to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” for those to come. But a perverse generation burdens little children who have no say-so in the matter with debt that they must bear all their lives at the expense of their own prosperity.

The founders created the conditions for an explosion of human prosperity. Our governing classes and monetary authorities are their opposites. They have created the conditions for an explosion of impoverishment. They are the big spenders and reckless borrowers of both parties. They are the grand councilors and academic advisors of the almighty State. They and their statist epigone and media servitors are the inevitable offspring of connivers like Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, who stole the people’s gold and betrayed the nation’s good-as-gold dollar. They are a generation of trousered apes who do not know the difference between ditchwater and champagne, and of like-minded Fed officials who conflate empty paper promises with the real, enduring monetary wealth of the ages, who trade the real money of free people for a mess of monetary pottage.

By their own logic, there is no turning back. They must now continue to print money until the system crashes. It is the endgame of their folly.

REAL MONEY FOR FREE PEOPLE tells the entire American gold story in a clear and easy-to-understand way!  And because it is information you need for the challenging times coming our way, we want you to have a copy absolutely free!

Learn why the Founding Fathers, to assure a free and prosperous America, built the new republic on a solid monetary foundation of gold and silver.  Learn how later politicians, those of lesser character, have abandoned that foresight by handing America’s future and prosperity over to self-serving bankers and money manipulators.

In this book, I pull back the curtain to reveal what the mainstream media conceals:  how the unsustainable and reckless policies of the Federal Reserve are destroying the dollar and your savings.

Just stop by Republic Monetary Exchange and let us give you a copy of REAL MONEY FOR FREE PEOPLE!

No cost.  No obligation.


Why We’re in the Mess We’re In

This Explains a Lot!

The Fed doesn’t understand inflation. Janet Yellen has even apologized for the Fed’s cluelessness.  The Fed has missed all the biggest financial calamities of our time, like the dot com bubble, the mortgage meltdown, and the return of inflation to levels last seen 40 years ago.

How can this be explained?

Clearly, the monetary authorities don’t understand the stabilizing role of an honest precious metals currency.  Congressman Ron Paul once asked a Fed chairman in congressional testimony if gold was money.  No, replied the chairman.  Well, asked Paul, if it’s not money, then why does the Fed keep so much of it?

The chairman’s non-explanatory explanation:  It’s traditional.

Whatever.

And now with inflation running hot for at least 20 months, and over 8 percent annually month after month, the Fed still hasn’t gotten a handle on things.

So maybe this explains things.  

A study from Independent Review finds that Fed board members are heavily tilted to the left.  The ratio of Democrats to Republicans is 48.5 to 1.

It is a trend that keeps on trending.  According to the study, among the Fed’s countless PhDs, the younger economists are even more likely than the older ones to be Democrats.

But here’s the kicker.  The study’s examination of papers and speeches by Fed officials came to this woeful conclusion:  “Research and speeches by the Fed economists are increasingly focusing on climate change, gender, race, and inequality.”

That explains a lot.

Climate change.  Gender.  Race.  Inequality.

Or as summed up by the Unleash Prosperity Hotline, “The Fed can’t stop inflation, but they CAN change the earth’s temperature.”


Serious Inflation

It was only a year ago that the Federal Reserve was insisting that inflation was a transitory malady.  Yet it is still with us.  Big time!

The government likes to refer to so-called “core inflation” which excludes food and energy prices.  (Like who would need either food or energy?)  The core inflation rate for the 12 months through September is up 6.6 percent.  That is the biggest increase in more than 40 years.  

So, the Fed hasn’t made a dent in inflation.  As David Stockman observes, “the Fed has raised interest rate by 300 basis points in the last six months, yet the upstream inflationary pressures embodied in the producer price index have not even budged.”

As for the overall consumer price index, it was up 8.2 percent for the 12 months through September.  That is seven months in a row that prices have risen at a rate of 8 percent or more.  Wage earners find their hourly earnings up 4.92 percent which means that with prices rising faster – 8.2 percent – they simply aren’t able to keep up.

When the hot inflation reading came in, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said, “ “It does show the data not cooperating.”  

Right!  That darn data!

Have you spoken with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist to find out how precious metals can protect you from reckless governments, their unhinged spending, and their monetary folly?

Call today and make a no-obligation appointment!


How Inflation Really Works to Make You Poorer

More About the Government’s Shell Game!

The inflation numbers for September are in and they are running red hot!  They also provide a perfect opportunity to shine a light on the government’s inflation and cost of living shell game.

Consumer prices (CPI) are up 8.2 percent from a year earlier.  Wholesale prices (PPI) are up 8.5 percent.  Meanwhile, gas prices have been rising this month so it is likely that next month’s consumer price index will be even higher.

Groceries were up 13 percent year-over-year.

The Social Security cost of living increase for 2023 will be 8.7 percent.  But recipients have been paying these higher prices for a year.  The benefits increase lags what people have been spending just to stay even.  For example, at the beginning of 2022, beneficiaries received a 5.9 percent cost of living increase.  That number was calculated from a price increased in 2021, but it was inadequate for the sharply higher prices in 2022 as inflation raged much higher through the year.

Stated differently, retirees pay higher prices all along until those prices are used to calculate a benefit increase that will be made months from now.  So, the cost of living outruns the increases.

Oh, and by the way, our Phoenix-metro clients will remember that their prices have risen 13 percent.  So, they are slipping even further behind. And that is without counting the brutal hit that many have suffered with stocks and bonds in their savings or retirement accounts.

For those who take a long-term view of wealth preservation and know the history of inflationary periods throughout history, gold makes perfect sense!


Ben Bernanke Predicts

Nobel Prize for Inflation?!

Helicopter Ben Bernanke recognized for… for what exactly?  Spreading around free money!

 The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded its 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics to former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

We don’t mean to be churlish with our headline calling it an award for inflation.  We just mean to be plain-spoken.  Inflation is exactly what Bernanke’s stewardship has gifted us.  Anyone looking at the bailout of the banksters in 2008-9, the double-digit increases in food prices, the rip-roaring higher energy prices and the everyday cost of living today has Ben Bernanke to thank.

It is not just we who are saying so.  Michael Shedlock headlines the award story this way:  Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke Wins Nobel Prize For Wrecking the Economy.

Not to be outdone, The Committee to Unleash Prosperity newsletter puts it like this:   Ben Bernanke Wins Nobel Prize For Being Wrong On The Subprime Housing Crisis.  

That works, too.

In fact, we should expect just such awards from the Nobel judges.  The newsletter from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity points out that, “most winners of the Nobel prize in economics have been awarded to big-government Keynesians.  And most of the medal winners have an abysmal record of predicting the future. Remember, more than 14 Nobel laureates in economics wrote a joint letter in the New York Times last year assuring us that Biden’s policies would NOT cause inflation.”

David Stockman’s take is equally full of disdain:  “Oh, puleese! Ben Bernanke got the Nobel Prize for his early 1980s work on, well, why banks exist! That’s right. What all students of banking knew 100 years ago—-that banks are inherently risky because they lend long and borrow short—got gussied up into a fancy theory of ‘maturity transformation.’”

Shedlock imagined up a spoof interview with Bernanke that would go something like this:

Shedlock: Why do you think you won the Nobel Prize? 

“To learn how to save the economy, we first had to wreck it. That’s the real reason I won the prize,” said Bernanke. “And boy did we wreck it.”

“I expect to win another prize in 2025,” added Bernanke. 

“I paved the way for the Powell Fed to learn from my mistakes. QE and bank bailouts created an even bigger housing bubble under Powell than I created.”

Bernanke shares the prize with theorists Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig “for research on banks and financial crises.”  We don’t know them or their work, and we’re not going to look it up.


Silver’s Monetary Role

The extreme divergence in the world markets between “paper” precious metals and real physical gold and silver continues. “Paper” precious metals are nothing more than the purported paper title to gold and silver that promise to deliver at some future date.

The high premiums on physical silver suggest that in our present economic circumstance of high inflation the world is once again awakening to silver’s role as a monetary commodity.  Often, especially in normal times of growth and economic resiliency, the industrial demand for silver dominates its dual role as money as well.  Silver has actually been used as money in more times and places throughout history than gold itself.  

See our recent post Market Condition Alert! Gold and Silver Shortages!

The graph of gold and silver demand from pre-pandemic 2019 shows investment accounts for 19 percent of silver demand.  But during times of economic distress, silver’s monetary role grows more prominent.

And that is exactly what the divergence in paper silver prices and real physical silver prices suggest, that investors want silver for protection from state currency mismanagement and fraud.  And they are willing to pay for it.

Meanwhile, a new report designed to examine its long-run benefits ratifies the view that silver belongs in one’s investment portfolio.  From a news release by the Silver Institute, an international non-profit trade association:

OPTIMAL INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO SHOULD INCLUDE 4-6 PERCENT SILVER ACCORDING TO NEW REPORT

Silver Can Be a Strategic Asset Within Efficient Multi-Asset Portfolios

(Washington, D.C. – September 29, 2022) – Silver as a distinct asset class should be considered as a strategic investment allocation within a global multi-asset portfolio, according to new research by Oxford Economics, a leading independent economic advisory firm. The firm finds that investors would benefit from an average 4-6 percent silver allocation within their portfolio, significantly higher than current holdings of silver by most institutional and individual investors.


The entire report can be read HERE.

Silver’s volatility is storied.  Many remember how dramatically it outpaced gold during the last stagflation decade.  When the world turns to silver for monetary protection, its performance can be stellar.


Wars and Rumors of Wars

Gold in times of chaos and conflict!

When things get bad enough, especially on the economic front, many governments follow the advice the dying king gives his son in Shakespeare’s Henry IV:  

“Be it thy course, to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels.”

Now, with red-hot inflation, the national debt spiraling up over $31 trillion, and the Biden administration adding trillions in new spending, it stands to reason that it would intervene anywhere and everywhere to divert attention from the dismal performance of Bidenomics.

Along the way, the world is quickly growing far more dangerous, a veritable tinder box waiting for a spark.

The jury may still be out on the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, but for us, the key question is cui bono? Who benefits?  In any case, it is clearly an act of war.

North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan just days ago; a South Korean display of its prowess in response went awry. When its own missile misfired and hit the ground inside its own base, nearby residents were fearful that a war was underway.  It does underscore the likelihood of mistakes and miscues ratcheting up dangerous standoffs.  The US and south Korean responded by firing missiles into the sea. 

A New York Times headline and lead describe Washington thinking and the escalation of risk over Taiwan.  “U.S. Aims to Turn Taiwan Into Giant Weapons Depot,” is the headline, followed by this lead: “Officials say Taiwan needs to become a ‘porcupine’ with enough weapons to hold out if the Chinese military blockades and invades it, even if Washington decides to send troops.”

After three weeks, demonstrations and counterdemonstrations continue in the streets of Iran.  When Iran grows unstable, it is good to remember that more than 20 percent of the world’s oil flows through the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz.  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has pointed a finger at the US for planning the Iranian protests.  Those who watched the US intervention that toppled the government in Ukraine in 2014, are not willing to deny the charge.

Russia has annexed the occupied Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia.  Meanwhile, the US has committed some $16 billion in aid and armaments to Ukraine.  As if that is not enough for busy giddy minds, President Biden is openly calling for the US to remove Putin.

But there is more.  No American should miss the news that Washington is loading up on anti-radiation medication.  Saber-rattling and nuclear threats have risen to a level not seen since the Cold War, when the Soviet’s invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian Revolution, leftist militarism on the rise in Central America, and fundamentalists occupying a holy site in Saudi Arabia, all conspired to help propel gold and silver to new all-time highs.

We spend a great deal of digital ink on describing the latest developments on the monetary and fiscal fronts, but the escalation of nuclear threats is enough to remind us that gold is the wealth protection haven par excellence in times of chaos and war.


Looking for a Place to Hide?

May We Suggest…

A Drudge Report headline the other day read, “Wary Investors Struggling to Find Places to Hide…”

That’s because stocks have been taking a pounding.

It linked to a Wall Street Journal piece titled, “Wary Investors Struggle to Evade Market Tumult”:  

“The S&P 500 has fallen 25% this year, with all three major U.S. stock indexes heading toward their worst annual performances since 2008. Bonds haven’t provided a ballast to portfolios—the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate bond index is on pace for its worst year on record going back to 1976, down 16%.”

Altogether, the markets are “leaving nervous investors questioning where to hide from further pain.”

Well, we feel their pain.  But it can’t be helped.   The Fed has raised interest rates five times this year to increase the cost of borrowing money.  It is trying to put the inflation genie back in the bottle.  So far, it hasn’t accomplished much other than spewing all that red ink around the stock and bond markets.

The higher rates have driven the dollar up and have driven yield-hungry Wall Street speculators and hedge funds to liquidate gold mutual funds and ETFs for 12 consecutive weeks.

But while they are leaving paper gold instruments, real people are buying real gold and silver.  They are concerned about the continued viability of the dollar and Biden-nomics.

As we have explained (Market Condition Alert! Gold and Silver Shortages!), the price of “paper” gold and silver has completely diverged from the price of real gold and silver.  High premiums on gold and silver bullion and coins mean that the real price of physical gold and silver is not taking the pounding that stocks and bonds are taking.

So, for those seeking refuge from the Wall Street carnage, we say come to us and we will give you shelter from the storm!  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist today.


Market Condition Alert! Gold and Silver Shortages!

Because of extreme demand for precious metals in these uncertain times, the prices for real gold and silver have decoupled from the price of gold substitutes and paper benchmark prices.  The world gold prices and index prices you read about in the newspaper are not the real price for physical gold you can take home and put in your safe.  There is not enough gold at those benchmark prices to satisfy today’s demand!


The divergence between the price of gold and silver in the “paper” market and the price for real, physical metals that you own and take possession of has now become extreme.

Premiums on all the popular gold and silver bullion coins have jumped in recent weeks, reflecting strong demand but only limited supplies.   And as we have reported, the US Mint has not been able to meet market demand as required by law.

Please see our article from the beginning of September on the silver shortage, “Congressman demands answers from US Mint and Treasury Secretary.”

Many dealers are once again unable to make immediate gold and silver delivery to their clients.  Some are forecasting long delays before they are able to make delivery.

Thanks to its long experience and market foresight, Republic Monetary Exchange’s trading department still has gold and silver in stock for immediate delivery for many items, although we are experiencing strong demand and we cannot guarantee that this crisis is only temporary. 

While premiums are high, worsening conditions may mean that no physical gold and silver will be available at any price.  

To restate:  Many of our competitors are out of gold and silver.  Either sold out, or without the necessary inventory, market connections, and experience we have.  In any case, they are not able to deliver gold and silver.

Some say to pay them now, but it will be weeks before they can come up with your gold.  

gold moves

That is a bad idea!  Do not do that!

We are Republic Monetary Exchange. We’ve been around a long time, both buying and selling precious metals.  We have inventory for immediate delivery.   

And while we think everyone needs to own gold and silver, if you need to sell precious metals, remember because of our volumes and active market, we pay the most when you need to sell. 

Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional today.   


The Lost Decade

“I don’t rule out something bad happening!” says legendary investor!

The Dow won’t be much higher in 10 years than it is today.  

That’s the opinion of billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller.  Stock, bond, and real estate bubbles are all popping, all having been inflated by the artificial creation of money and credit.  “All those factors that cause a bull market, they’re not only stopping, they’re reversing every one of them,” Druckenmiller said on CNBC. “We are in deep trouble.”

We have cited Druckenmiller from time to time over last few years among other big money players who were buying gold.   

In 2020, he was seeing 5 – 10 percent inflation ahead.  Here is what he was saying more than a year ago, in June 2021:

“I don’t think there has been a greater engine of inequality than the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States… so hearing the Chairman [Powell] talking about visiting homeless shelters is very rich indeed… everyone wealthy that I know is making fortunes” because “this guy [Powell] is printing money like there’s no tomorrow….…for the life of me I can’t understand why the left is so excited about money-printing when all the data shows that the people who benefit from money-printing are rich people.”

“The odds-on bet is that we’re going to have inflation and inflation is going to hurt poor people, again, a lot more than rich people. The asset bubble which [Powell] is blowing up into unbelievable proportions will bust before the inflation ever really manifests itself. That’s what happened in the housing bubble in 08/09. We never really got to the inflation because the asset bubble burst… not dis-similar to what happened in 1929.”

Stanley Drunkenmiller

As for the way things a being run by the administration today, Druckenmiller is severely critical of Biden for running down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (for what looks to us like a cynical move employed for short-term electoral advantage).  And he chides Treasury secretary Janet Yellen for running down the treasury’s savings account at the same time she could have borrowed money for a mere one percent.

Oh, well.  She didn’t understand inflation either.

Say a prayer for America and buy gold!


Are We in Trouble?

Sure. That’s why you’re going to need gold and silver!

The Federal Reserve’s decision to begin raising interest rates and unwinding a lot of the assets it bought with made-up digital money over the last 14 years is beginning to take a toll. 

Stocks down.  Bonds down.  Real estate down.  Cryptos down.

The Fed’s new higher interest rates – although still deeply negative – look good to Wall Street and foreign exchange speculators here and abroad who have been starving for interest returns.  The current yield on the US 10-year Treasury is 3.75 percent.  

That must look pretty good compared to things two years ago.  The 10-year yield was less than one percent then.  So, they have been buying dollars and making the dollar rise against other currencies.

But today’s rates are still not enough to wring inflation out of the dollar economy, at least according the Fed’s own favorite theory.  That theory demands that market rates be raised over the inflation rate.  That is why, with inflation touching 14 percent, former Fed chairman Paul Volcker pushed the Fed’s policy rate, the Fed funds rate to over 20 percent.  

It was the undoing of double-digit inflation, to be sure.  But it created the steepest US economic downturn since the Great Depression.

So now the Fed is again raising rates to undo the damage from their years of creating trillions of digital dollars.  It has already begun causing pain, but it is still completely inadequate for the Fed’s purposes.

Here is a chart showing more than 50 years of both the Fed funds rate and the CPI inflation rate.  You can see the Fed funds rate, the spiking blue line in the early 1980s, and the steep drop in the inflation rate in yellow.

On the right-hand side of the chart, you can see that the Fed has begun raising interest rates, but those rates are still far below the inflation rate.

Will the Fed stay the course?  Are Chairman Powell and Fed board members really willing to crush the economy to undo what they shouldn’t have done in the first place?  So far Powell’s record at the Fed has resembled Hamlet’s dithering:  Powell flips and he flops.  He has been indecisive and has been afraid to act when he should have.  So, we will see.  

But remember Ronald Reagan’s famous line when he was about to flip-flop on something: “When I feel the heat, I see the light!”  When unemployment soars and the recession deepens, the people will scream and the politicians will bluster and threaten.  

And the Fed will see the light.  It will crank up the digital printing presses.  If you would like a precedent, look no further than the Bank of England’s action this week.  It panicked.  As the pain from monetary tightening grew too intense, it turned on a dime, suddenly reversing course and starting money-printing and bond-buying all over again.

How do you protect yourself from these people?   With gold, of course.  


They’re Going to Need All Those IRS Agents

Reason #439 to own gold and silver!

Today we post without (much) commentary, excerpts of recent remarks by Treasury secretary Janel Yellen about the Internal Revenue Service.  Much of what Yellen said at the 9/15/22 event at the IRS facility in New Carrolton, MD, is simply wrong, but we feel you should see them for yourself:

As our nation’s revenue collection agency, the IRS is a foundation of our government and society. The IRS collects 96% of the revenue that funds the federal government – supporting our priorities from national security to infrastructure to social security.[1] It also is one of the very few parts of the federal government that touches nearly every American household….

Well, now.  We can’t resist denying the IRS is a foundation of our government and society.  Because words mean things, we point out that foundation means something there from the beginning upon which everything else is built or rests, like the foundation of a building.  But the Internal Revenue bureau was a civil war creation of Abraham Lincoln in 1862, while the 16th Amendment, the income tax amendment, wasn’t appended to the Constitution until 1913.

On one day last year – March 15 – the IRS received 8.6 million phone calls….

The world has become more complex. Enforcing tax laws is not as simple as it was a few decades ago. Average tax returns for large corporations now reach 6,000 pages. And more complicated partnerships have skyrocketed from less than 5% of total income in 1990 to over a third today.

As a result, the tax gap – the amount of unpaid taxes – has grown to enormous levels. It’s estimated at $7 trillion over the next decade.  And since the IRS has lacked the resources to effectively audit high earners – whose audits are more complex and take more time – these high earners are responsible for a disproportionate share of unpaid taxes.

To illustrate: In 2019, the top one percent of Americans was estimated to owe over a fifth of unpaid taxes – totaling around $160 billion.  Data shows that less than half of all taxes from more complex sources of income are paid. Yet nearly all taxes due from wages and salaries – which are earned by ordinary Americans – are paid.

In sum, high earners are paying far less than they owe. This means that working families are shouldering a disproportionate burden…. 

This inequity is unacceptable. As leaders and employees at the IRS have warned for years now, enforcement of the law is not only a means to raise revenue. It is also a matter of fundamental fairness….

Statists always use appeals to fairness to gobble up more statist territory.  For example, inflation has historically shifted lower-income taxpayers into tax brackets that were originally enacted to “get the rich.”  Similarly, Americans are plagued with paperwork and bureaucracy that was enacted as a means to “get the drug dealers.”  But they really burden the people with paperwork and increase state surveillance, while the drug dealers go about dealing their wares.  Indeed, despite decades of proliferating regulations and laws, last year saw more drug deaths among Americans than any other year in history.  

Yellen continues:

Last week, I gave an economic speech discussing how our administration’s plan will create a stronger, more resilient economy with greater fairness for all. I believe that adequately funding the IRS is core to our success. It raises the revenue for us to make important investments in our economic strength. It makes sure that all Americans are playing by the same rules. It avoids misallocation of resources in the economy at large. And it does so by deterring taxpayers from shifting their activities toward more opaque sources or engaging in tax evasion.

And finally, having word-searched Yellen’s speech, except of the badly misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act,” the Treasury secretary didn’t utter a word about inflation, which is an un-debated, un-enacted, and un-legislated (and therefore illegal) tax on the people.  If Yellen wishes to go on at length about unfair taxation, maybe she should mention that.  

But then, Yellen admitted recently that she didn’t really understand inflation.  Which, in the current circumstances especially, should be grounds to ask for her resignation.

So, there you have it.  The growth of the IRS and its 87,000 additional armed agents is reason #439 to own gold and silver.


Biden Accelerating Central Bank Digital Currency

Biden is putting the pedal to the metal for a Central Bank digital currency. Time to fortify your gold and silver position!

Suppose the government wants to ration gasoline or anything else.  Suppose it wanted to stop anyone who disagrees with it from traveling.  Suppose it wants to devalue the currency or impose a new tax.  Suppose it wants to know everything you do.

That’s when a new Federal Reserve digital currency will come in handy!  So, to add to its long record of accomplishments – like the Afghan withdrawal, double-digit inflation, and the border mess – the Biden team is pushing hard on creating a new Central Bank Digital Currency.

The White House is publicizing it as just another part of Biden’s “vision.”

Here is the latest from the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (9/16/2022)  – The Biden administration is moving one step closer to developing a central bank digital currency, known as the digital dollar, saying it would help reinforce the U.S. role as a leader in the world financial system.

The White House said on Friday that after President Joe Biden issued an executive order in March calling on agencies to look at ways to regulate digital assets, the agencies came up with nine reports, covering cryptocurrency impacts on financial markets, the environment, innovation and other elements of the economic system.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said one Treasury recommendation is that the U.S. “advance policy and technical work on a potential central bank digital currency, or CBDC, so that the United States is prepared if CBDC is determined to be in the national interest.”

“Right now, some aspects of our current payment system are too slow or too expensive,” Yellen said on a Thursday call with reporters laying out some of the findings of the reports.

Central bank digital currencies differ from existing digital money available to the general public, such as the balance in a bank account, because they would be a direct liability of the Federal Reserve, not a commercial bank. According to the Atlantic Council nonpartisan think tank, 105 countries already are exploring or have created a central bank digital currency.  The council found that the U.S. and the U.K. are far behind in creating a digital dollar or its equivalent.

Treasury, the Justice Department, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the Securities and Exchange Commission and other agencies were tasked with contributing to reports that would address various concerns about the risks, development and usage of digital assets. Several reports will come out in the next weeks and months.

gold and silver investments

The US government has been at war with cash for some time.  For example, it imposes burdensome and often quite ridiculous restraint on the use of cases, including needless reporting requirements and even a presumption that cash transactions are necessarily indicative of criminal behavior.

The reality is that in an age of widespread identity theft and large-scale computer hacking, cash may be a preferred way for one to protect his privacy from the prying eyes of criminals.

But the objective of a central bank digital currency is the complete elimination of physical cash for any transaction.  It seeks the state’s total surveillance of each individual and every commercial activity.  

It is a dagger aimed right at the heart of American freedom.

Your single best defense against a central bank digital currency is the ownership of physical gold and silver, the world’s most enduring monetary assets that you have in your physical possession.


Common Sense About Fed Interest Rate Policy

It’s too little, too late to stop inflation!

“The Great Central Bank Pivot is now underway around the globe, but it’s not the one Wall Street has been praying for. Instead of another round of easing juice to brake the obvious fall in economic activity, central banks en masse are racing to goose interest rates by 75 or even 100 basis points.”

David Stockman

It’s not often we find ourselves pointing to anything that emanates from the Federal Reserve’s huge stable of economists.  But like a stopped clock, somebody there is bound to be right sometime.

Now we have a candidate.  A pair of economists, Francesco Bianchi of Johns Hopkins University and Leonardo Melosi of the Chicago Fed presented a report at the recent central bank confab at Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  Their paper, “Inflation as a Fiscal Limit,” deserves a little more exposure.

Especially amidst all the hubbub and confusion surrounding the Fed’s interest rate hikes.  We will paraphrase the authors’ point:  Even if the Fed (representing monetary policy) is serious about wringing inflation out of the economy, if the big spenders in Washington (representing fiscal policy) don’t take offsetting steps to rein in spending, “a vicious circle of rising nominal interest rates, rising inflation, economic stagnation, and increasing debt would arise.”

That is really pretty elementary, although it is a viewpoint that may not be often expressed in the Marriner Eccles building.  But it is exactly where we are today.  The Fed can raise rates but expecting the White House and Capitol Hill to do something about spending… forget about it!

Without endorsing everything the authors say, here is a bit more common sense:

In this pathological situation, monetary tightening would actually spur higher inflation and would spark pernicious fiscal stagflation, with the inflation rate drifting away from the monetary authority’s target and with GDP growth slowing down considerably. While in the short run, monetary tightening might succeed in partially reducing the business cycle component of inflation, the trend component of inflation would move in the opposite direction as a result of the higher fiscal burden.

The authors argue in a nice, political, and academic way that something must be done about spending.  Well, the Biden administration is doing something about spending:  they are driving it to the moon!  The exact opposite of what needs to be done!

The folks at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimate that “the Biden Administration has enacted policies through legislation and executive actions that will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits between 2021 and 2031…. This is on top of the trillions of dollars we were projected to borrow before President Biden took office.”

We are not politicians or Fed economists, so we don’t mind addressing the situation directly and honestly:  It’s every man for himself!  In other words, don’t expect the authorities to rescue or protect your wealth.  You must do so yourself.  You must do so with gold and silver.


Views About Stocks and Gold

Worth Considering!

Here is a sampling of market views from people we follow from time to time, some about gold, the dollar, the stock market, and the economy.   These are all important topics, and we encourage you to visit with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist to create a sensible plan to protect yourself in these inflationary and turbulent times.

Charlies Munger is Warren Buffett’s partner at Berkshire Hathaway.  He is 98 years old and still astute and worth heeding:

“There’s never been anything quite like what we’re doing now, and we do know from what’s happened in other nations if you try and print too much money, it eventually causes terrible trouble. And we’re closer to terrible “trouble than we’ve been in the past, but it may still be a long way off. I certainly hope so….

”Well, when Volker, after the seventies, took the prime rate to 20% and the government was paying 15% on its government bonds, that was a horrible recession. Lasted a long time, caused a lot of anger and agony. And I certainly hope we’re not going there again. I think the conditions that allowed Volcker to do that without an interference from the politicians were very unusual… 

“You may wish you had you had a Volcker style recession instead of what you’re going to get. The troubles that come to us could be worse than what Volcker was dealing with. And harder to fix.”

Raj Subramaniam is the CEO of FedEx.  He believes the economy is headed into a worldwide recession.  After a disappointing quarterly report for the first quarter, Subramaniam said:

“We’re seeing that volume decline in every segment around the world, and so you know, we’ve just started our second quarter,” he said. “The weekly numbers are not looking so good, so we just assume at this point that the economic conditions are not really good….

“We are a reflection of everybody else’s business, especially the high-value economy in the world.”

FedEx is responding to its troubling situation by closing more than 90 FedEx Office locations and five corporate offices.  

Alasdair Macleod is a well-known gold market commentator.  We cut to a succinct comment from Macleod in a longer piece carried on ZeroHedge:

“We can begin to anticipate the path to the destruction of purchasing power for all fiat currencies, not just those of Zimbabwe, Turkey, and Venezuela et al. A global hyperinflation is proving impossible to avoid.”

Doug Casey has been commenting on the economy and the state of freedom in the US for decades.  Here is a snippet from Casey about the new 87,000 armed IRS agents:

“These new IRS agents are a direct attack on the middle class. The elite hate the middle class and what they stand for—independence, stability, and traditional values. The fact that they’re doubling the size of the tax police is truly extraordinary. As the economy continues to decline, you can expect class warfare—along with race and sex warfare—to increase.”

The last word goes to famed investor Jim Rogers:

“If we have inflation, you should own things that will go up in price. Real assets always go up in inflation and that is the way I am looking to protect myself.”


The CPI Numbers Should be Even Worse

A few words about energy prices and gold!

Consumer Price increases reported through August were higher than most people on Wall Street seem to have anticipated.  So, with the latest CPI report, the stock market broke and broke hard.  The Dow Jones Industrials fell 1,276.37 points, or almost 4 percent on Tuesday (9/13).  

But the CPI numbers would have been much worse if it were not for the fact that gas prices, sky-high at around $5 a gallon last summer, have eased off.

Despite the recent dip, gas prices have spent the last six months much higher than they were for the year before.  But even with gas prices falling more than 10 percent in August, and helping moderate overall consumer prices, the CPI was still up a red-hot 8.3 percent for the last 12 months (and in case you missed it, up 13 percent in Phoenix).  

But does the fact that gas prices were lower mean that things are getting better on the energy front?  We’re afraid not.  

Gas prices are down in part because of weaker demand.  Americans have meaningfully cut back on their driving, consolidating errands, foregoing trips, avoiding going into the office, and taking any other steps they can to cut down on trips to the gas pump.  President Biden has been taking credit for lower gas prices in an unseemly way.  If all commercial driving ground to a standstill, gas prices would fall even lower, but it would hardly be a sign of economic resilience.

Other energy prices across the economy are still high and, like gas prices this summer, they are having a depressive effect on the economy.  More and more Americans are having trouble keeping their energy bills paid.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Gasoline prices may be falling but other energy costs are rising, report Collin Eaton and Jennifer Hiller. Electricity costs rose 15.8% in August from a year ago, the biggest jump since 1981, driven by higher prices for natural gas. About one is six American families has fallen behind on energy bills and owe a collective $16 billion, roughly twice the amount in 2019. That number could rise this winter, a time when energy bills typically increase.

We call this to your attention not only because energy makes the world go around, but because this won’t be the first time that rising energy prices have driven precious metals prices higher.  We cite the oil price shocks of 1973-74 beginning with the Arab oil embargo and the dramatic gold and silver bull markets of that decade. 

In any case, rising oil prices act as a tax hike on the productive economy and threaten us with the stagflation that accompanied the 1970s.

High US inflation also causes foreign energy producers to resist selling their appreciating resources for a depreciating currency like the dollar.  This in turn promises to accelerate the move by the central banks of the world out of the dollar and into gold reserves instead.


Biden’s Banana Republic

Take advantage of Bidenomics to protect yourself!

It’s a distinction no one would hope for, no one would want.  But it goes to the Phoenix area, nonetheless.

Phoenix once again has the highest Consumer Price Inflation in America.  Prices are screaming along, up 13 percent over the past 12 months.  That’s almost five percent over the national inflation rate of 8.3 percent.  We take special note of this distinction because Republic Monetary Exchange’s offices are in Phoenix.  And although we have clients across the country, many are here in Arizona.

Food prices are up double-digits, too.  Everywhere, not just here.  

It is no exaggeration to say that we are now in banana republic territory!

Biden is determined to turn America into a third-world country and to turn the US dollar into a throwaway currency.  And he’s doing a damn good job of it!

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve remains in a state of confusion.  It was last December the Fed finally realized that inflation wasn’t transitory.  That’s when they said they would take whatever steps were necessary to fix it.  That was nine months ago, yet inflation continues to run red hot!

Now they really are in over their heads.  The prospect of them reeling from one mistake to another has created buying opportunities in precious metals that you could only have hoped for.   But you must act.  Don’t be victimized by Bidenflation.  Take advantage of their policies and this opportunity to buy gold at preferred prices.

Things have become much too serious to delay any longer.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals professional and protect your wealth and your family yourself with gold and silver.

Protect yourself with gold and silver.  Real money.  Constitutional money.  

While you still can!


USA Slips Again in Annual Freedom Ranking

The Fraser Institute in Canada is one of the world’s leading think tanks.  Each year the Institute publishes an Economic Freedom of the World Report.  The review compares the state of human freedom in the nations of the world, ranking countries for the policies that support freedom, including sound money, legal systems and property rights, the size of government, and similar criteria.

Hong Kong again tops the Fraser Institute’s 2022 Annual Report for human freedom, covering conditions through 2020.  

US freedom has been decaying for years.  In 1980 and 1990, the US ranked second, but it fell to fifth place in 2010 and to sixth place in 2015.

Slipping again, the United States today ranks only number seven.  

In overall freedom ratings, the US metrics came in lower than at any time since the Jimmy Carter administration.

Because the assembled data in this year’s report is through 2020, it covers the pandemic lockdowns, not a banner interlude for free people.  In fact, after years of improving freedom worldwide, the Institute’s rating for 2020 fell .14 points.

Here are the top 10 most free countries in order:

  1. Hong Kong
  2. Singapore
  3. Switzerland
  4. New Zealand
  5. Denmark
  6. Australia
  7. United States
  8. Estonia
  9. Mauritius
  10. Ireland

The countries in the bottom ten are no surprise.  In descending order, they are Democratic Republic of Congo, Algeria, Republic of Congo, Iran, Libya, Argentina, Syria, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Venezuela.

The freedom rankings of other countries of interest include Japan (12th), Canada (14th), Germany (25th), Italy (44th), France (54th), Mexico (64th), India (89th), Russia (94th), Brazil (114th), and China (116th).

When we watch our country’s freedom ebbing away, we are reminded of an old Swiss saying: “Good money is coined freedom.”  It makes sense to compensate for the deteriorating economic environment with a portfolio of gold and silver coins in your personal possession.


How Are Americans Doing in the Bidenflation Regime?

So how are your fellow Americans faring under the Bidenflation regime?  

Just like you think they are.  Not well!

Well over half say that they are suffering moderate to severe financial hardships, according to a new Gallup poll.  

In November, when the authorities were still insisting that inflation was transitory, 45 percent of Americans said the price increase was causing their household financial hardship.  By January the number had risen to 49 percent.

But the numbers keep climbing.  Now a majority, 56 percent of Americans, are citing financial hardship.  It doesn’t take long to impoverish the middle class and upend an entire country with funny money, does it?

Among those with household incomes less than $48,000, 26 percent cite severe hardship, as do 12% of middle-income Americans.  Even upper-income Americans are feeling the pinch, with 4 percent citing severe hardship.  

We don’t have much confidence in any of the government measures of price inflation, but for the record, here is the one the Federal Reserve claims to rely upon, the Personal Consumption Index.  It is back into territory that has not been seen since the early 1980s.

With prices climbing, and rates where we haven’t been in decades, the Gallup survey asks what respondents are doing to cope.  Many cite buying only essential items.  Others are traveling less, driving less, and canceling vacations.  Other strategies involved buying cheaper and generic goods, dining out less, and cutting entertainment. 

And that – widespread spending cuts across the board – is how recessions get underway and pick up steam.

For many Americans, the struggle to stay even involves working more hours and looking for a second job.  Others report they are canceling medical appointments and procedures.  No wonder the American lifespan is falling fast.

The British Medical Journal reported this month that American longevity has seen its sharpest decline in a century.   It is down by almost three years since 2019.  

The Gallup poll results are based on an Aug. 1-22 web survey that interviewed over 1,500 members of Gallup’s probability-based panel.


But Who Will Pay for It All?

Stand down, Powell!  We’re going to need that printing press!

After the humiliating matter of insisting that inflation was transitory when it was anything but, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell insists now that the Fed is going to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to get inflation under control.  

Never mind that he hemmed and he hawed around about if for months.  But finally at the central bankers’ confab at Jackson Hole, Wyoming last month, Powell displayed new resolve to do what Paul Volcker did 40 years ago, and raise interest rates until inflation has been mostly wrung out of the economy – or at least relapsed to two percent annually.

We don’t know if Powell can pull it off – if the money-printing coalition of Fed board members will turn on him before he gets there, but for now, we are willing to just watch.

Unfortunately, the folks a stone’s throw away from the Fed at the White House and those down the Mall at the Capitol have a different idea.  

They have some serious spending to do.   After all, there’s an election dead ahead and another one after that.  “Get out of the way,” they seem to be shouting at the central bankers in the Mariner Eccles building, “We have votes to buy!”

It is a little hard to keep up with all the new Federal spending.  The latest big-ticket item is Biden’s student loan initiative.  That’s a half-trillion-dollar proposition.  In fact, counting what came before, Biden has shoveled some $750 billion toward the student loan boondoggles.

Meanwhile, we confess to being incapable of keeping up with all the money Biden is stovepiping Ukraine’s way.  But don’t blame us.  The spending is coming so thick and fast that it would challenge any number cruncher.  Here’s just a sampling of the headlines:

  • Biden administration announces nearly $3 billion in new military aid for Ukraine
  • Biden-Harris Administration Announces $550 Million in New U.S. Military Assistance for Ukraine
  • Biden signs a $40 billion package to help Ukraine fight Russia
  • Biden announces an additional $1B in weapons and humanitarian aid to Ukraine
  • Biden administration announces $450 million in additional military assistance for Ukraine

You begin to see the problem.  Keeping up with it all would be a full-time job.  And we have a business to run and clients to serve.

But there are a couple of other things that will contribute to Bidenflation.  $480 billion for the Inflation Reduction Act.   The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.  The 1.2 trillion Infrastructure bill.  

They used to say a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.  But things have evolved.  Now they say, a trillion here and a trillion there…

So keep those printing presses warmed up, Jerry.  We’re going to need them!


Do it Now!

You’ve Always Meant To… and Now is the Time to Buy.

Things are happening fast.  The Constitution is ignored, the President is brandishing F-15s, and the monetary system is in trouble.  And forty percent of the people think we’re headed for civil war!

But wait, as they say in infomercials…  There’s more!

California thinks it should outlaw the internal combustion engine.  And you know who is doing well?  The dollar stores, as Americans grapple with Bidenflation.  In fact, the Daily Mail reports that Americans are spending about $500 more per month than we did last year for the same items.

We’re in trouble.

So you always meant to buy gold and silver, but you haven’t gotten around to it yet?

Better not wait.  Act now.  Right now!  Summer is over, beach vacations are becoming memories, and kids are back in school.  It’s a great time to make changes for the future.

You probably already know a lot of important reasons to buy gold. Like its thousands of years of history as the world’s preferred money.

Let us give you one more reason.  It is the unfortunate but unchanging trajectory of American prosperity.

Wages that don’t keep up with inflation, the destruction of the dollar, the explosion of debt, and the polarization of wealth: are all trends in force.   And a trend in force remains a trend in force until something changes it.  There is nothing on the horizon – nothing short of a complete reboot of the monetary system – that will change these trends.

Silver Bars

This is a good time to assess our national trajectory as well as your personal trajectory.  Let us show you how gold and silver can help you.  

If you have always thought about owning precious metals, call on us now.  Don’t wait for what a Financial Times story the other day called “A post-dollar world!”  

And don’t wait for higher prices.  Act now on what you have long resolved to do anyway!  


The Most Important Global Monetary Megatrend!

The De-Dollarizing World!

Wall Street and bubble-vision endlessly fret and debate over the Federal Reserve’s next move.  “Will the Fed raise rates 50 basis points in September?  Or will it go for 75?”  But while they obsess, something much bigger is going on.  Something that is mostly overlooked.

We have called it the world’s most important monetary megatrend because it changes the correlation of global economic forces even as it will suppress Americans’ standard of living.

It is the move away from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.  It appears to be re-enacting Hemingway’s description of how someone goes bankrupt: “Slowly at first, and then all at once!”

With many countries abandoning the gold standard during World War I, the still gold- backed US dollar became the world’s de facto reserve currency.  That status was formalized after World War II.  

But being the world’s go-to currency doesn’t last forever.  There have been six globally dominant reserve currencies since the 15th century.  They have lasted an average of 94 years.

The dollar has had a run of about 100 years at the world’s primary reserve currency and standard of international commerce.  It is not that a lifespan of 100 years is pre-ordained or the result of some iron financial law.  In fact, if the dollar were honestly managed as a gold-based currency it would have had a much longer run in this privileged role.  

But instead, confidence in the global dollar-based monetary system is beginning to crack.  Banks around the world are replacing their dollar reserves with gold.  In the first half of 2022, central bank gold reserves grew by 270 metric tons.

This loss of confidence in the dollar is justified by roaring inflation, trillion-dollar deficits, ballooning debts, both corporate and governmental, and politics driven by giveaways, vote-buying, and spending sprees.  Dollar users are also being driven away by an endless parade of US sanctions against countries that don’t defer to the American empire.  In this way, the US is hurting itself.

We would like to see our friends and clients protect themselves and profit from advance knowledge of this historic trend.  Simply call or visit an RME Gold professional to implement a sound strategy for the times ahead.


Explain the Silver Shortage

Congressman Demands Answers from US Mint and Treasury Secretary!

The market for physical silver investors has been challenging for at least a couple of years now, with widespread shortages and the failure of the US mint to meet market demand as the law requires.

Fortunately for our clients, Republic Monetary Exchange has been able to meet its customers demand for silver, even as many of our competitors have cited long delays and even asked clients to pay in advance for silver to be delivered at some indeterminate time in the future.

Now a US Congressman has written Treasury secretary Janet Yellen and US Mint direct0r Ventris Gibson demanding answers.

In his letter, Congressman Alex Mooney (R. -WV) notes that “the U.S. Mint has only made 11.6 million ounces of the silver bullion coin available to the public through July 2022 – barely half of what has been supplied through the first seven months of prior years when demand has been similarly strong.”

“This shortage in U.S. Mint production has apparently led to extremely high market-based premiums on Silver Eagles (as high as 70% over the silver melt value) – even as comparable items produced by other sovereign mints and private mints were not beset by such shortages or historically high premiums.”

“The high costs resulting from the U.S. Mint production shortage directly harm U.S. citizens wishing to avail themselves of a U.S. legal tender means of protecting their financial security from the effects of inflation.”

Rep. Mooney is demanding answers from Yellen and Gibson to these specific questions:

  • Does the Secretary believe the Silver American Eagle coin is being produced in “qualities and quantities that… are sufficient to meet public demand”?
  • Why is only a single supplier currently allowed to (or willing to) provide the U.S. Mint with silver blanks for its Silver Eagle program?
  • Given its statutory mandate to amply supply these coins to the public, why doesn’t the U.S. Mint have a policy to build a reserve of silver blanks during periods of slower demand in order to create a buffer for periods of higher demand?
  • Has the U.S. Mint examined the practices of other sovereign mints – such as Britain’s Royal Mint, Australia’s Perth Mint, the Austrian Mint, or the Royal Canadian Mint – to learn from their relative success in meeting high public demand for their own silver coins? If so, what were the resulting findings or recommendations?
  • What actions are currently being undertaken to address the Mint’s production problems (which reportedly extend beyond the Silver American Eagle coin program) and when will the U.S. Mint once again be able to fulfill its mandate to meet public demand?

Republic Monetary Exchange subscribes to best practices for the protection of its clients.  Due to superior market experience and capitalization, we have been able to make delivery to our clients of all the popular silver and gold investment products when others could not, even during the difficult years of the pandemic lockdowns and supply chain challenges.  We strongly advise against sending money to boiler room operators or undercapitalized dealers and waiting for future delivery.  Republic Monetary Exchange delivers both gold and silver “on the spot” at the time of purchase and provides immediate payment for liquidations.

We eagerly await and will report the Treasury and US Mint’s responses to Rep. Mooney’s inquiries.


featured image credit: Gage Skidmore

The End of Abundance

“What we are currently living through is a kind of major tipping point or a great upheaval … we are living the end of what could have seemed an era of abundance … the end of the abundance of products of technologies that seemed always available … the end of the abundance of land and materials including water.” 

French President Emmanuel Macron, August 24, 2022

Is it the end of abundance?  Not just for France, but for much of the rest of the world including us?

Well, of course, it is.  Governments like theirs and like ours have killed the goose that laid the golden egg.  And it is just that simple.

Look no further than President Biden’s new student debt initiative.  Some people owe other people a lot of money.   Now Biden says they don’t owe it anymore.  But his public relations people are unable to answer the simple question, “Who pays for it?  Who eats the loss?”

There is no understanding in Washington and most of the media that there are two sides to the balance sheet.  So, we hear a great deal about the wonderful benefits to those who are relieved of their debt.  And we get no answers about who is left holding the bag, and who pays for it.

The political calculation is obvious.  Biden isn’t actually paying for anything himself.  He’s not forgiving anyone who owes him money.  He’s shifting the burden from the visible 20 million borrowers who will benefit, to the less visible those not identified by the White House, who will now carry the load.

But months before the election, Biden expects that he and his party will be rewarded for this burden shifting by the votes of the grateful.

This has prompted newsletter writer Bill Bonner to remark that Biden should “take aim at all the other disagreeable debits in our lives; he should cancel auto-loans… and mortgage loans… and payday loans… revolving loans… government debt… pawn shop loans… bank loans… credit card debt… margin loans… social obligations (‘they invited us…we need to reciprocate’) …loans for solar panels and EVs… child support… alimony… gambling debts… and bar tabs too.”

When governments spend without regard to who pays the bills and how debt leads to disaster!

The world is struggling under the weight of unsupportable debt. Total world debt is about $300 trillion.  That is more than 350 percent of the global GDP.  It is more debt than can honestly be repaid.   There will be huge losses.  And it is growing ever more difficult for governments and central bankers to conceal the extent of the crisis.  That is why Macron admits that France has been living under a series of crises, “each worse than the last.”

We can’t let the governing classes blame all this debt on the pandemic.  Debt began growing rapidly long before anyone heard the word Covid.

What will be done?   The same thing has been done many times in many places.  The authorities will print ever more worthless money to pay their bills and service their debt.  It is really a painful way of defaulting over time.  Creditors, savers, pensioners, and Social Security recipients get the nominal amount they expect, but it doesn’t buy as much.  We are seeing this already.  

The Federal Reserve holds trillions of dollars of US Treasury debt.  Think for a minute just how weird that is.  The government spends money it doesn’t have, so it borrows it by issuing and selling Treasury bonds.  Then the Federal Reserve purchases those bonds with money that it doesn’t have.  It purchases those bonds by digitally “printing” new dollars.

We think that the goose that laid the golden egg is being slaughtered.  But this business of the Fed covering the US deficit by printing money suggests a different animal metaphor:

The snake swallowing its own tail!  

Either way, it is the end of abundance.  


The Economy in Pictures

You’ll want to own gold after this…

Let’s start with a chart of inflation rates around the world.

At 8.5 percent, the US inflation rate is above other countries in the developed world like Germany (7.5 percent) and Canada (7.6 percent), but slightly below the Eurozone (8.9 percent. 

Here is the overall US inflation rate centered on the CPI.  No matter how they spin it with alternative measurements, it remains bad news.  

As far as food prices go, you have two choices:  food at home and food away from home.  Here are both.

New home sales are crashing.  Michael Shedlock reports that new home sales in July are down 12.6 percent from a month ago and 29.6 percent from a year ago.

Here is some grim reaper news.  American life spans are growing shorter.   Not a good thing.

And finally, here is the gold price this century.


Why the Inflation Reduction Act Will Not Reduce Inflation

Stop the Presses! The “Inflation Reduction Act” won’t Reduce Inflation!

In a story that should surprise precisely no one, Yahoo/Finance reports that President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act “will have no measurable impact on inflation.”

The story cites Oxford Economics economists who write, “Our preliminary analysis of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a climate, tax, and health-focused bill, shows it will boost the level of GDP by about 0.2%-0.3% by the end of 2031 and, despite its name, will have no measurable impact on inflation.”

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania was slightly more skeptical, finding that the Act would slightly increase inflation through 2024.

Some have been asking, in light of President Biden’s pronouncement that inflation was “zero” in July, why we would even need an inflation reduction act.  

US households are spending an average of almost $500 a month more this year for the same goods and services they bought last year.  If the Inflation Reduction Act actually reduced inflation, that extra $500 a month expense would go down, which is something nobody expects.  

What the Inflation Reduction Act will accomplish, though, is the intrusion and harassment of the American people.  The Congressional Budget Office reports that the IRS will collect billions of dollars from low- and middle-income households.  It finds that audits of taxpayers making under $400,000 will squeeze some $20 billion dollars in additional revenue.

Let us leave you with this representation of the skyrocketing Producer Price Index.  Producer prices are wholesale prices.  They grow up to be consumer prices!

China and India Keep Buying Gold!

The subterranean flow of gold from the West to the East keeps on keeping on!

Swiss exports of gold to China surged in July, according to the latest reporting from Reuters.

More than 80 metric tons of gold worth $4.6 billion made its way from Switzerland to China in June.  That is up from 32.5 tons shipped in June and is the second highest monthly total in the ten years that numbers have been tracked

Altogether in July, Switzerland, the largest gold refining and transit center, shipped 186.2 tons of gold.  15.8 tons of that went to India, the most sent to India since 2016.

According to Reuters, Swiss customs data shows that “Switzerland imported 261 kilograms of gold from Russia, taking the total imported during May, June, and July to 3.6 tons worth 225 million Swiss francs ($235 million).

Although Switzerland banned imports of Russian gold following the invasion of Ukraine, according to Reuters, Swiss customs officials say “the imports in May and June were of Russian gold but that the metal came from Britain, a major gold storage center. They said they had no evidence that the gold was produced after Russia invaded Ukraine.”

This news is just additional evidence that the world center for gold is shifting to the East.  China’s total gold holdings continue to climb, with much of its position unreported.  In addition to its central bank’s official gold reserves, many authorities have concluded that even more gold reserves are held off the books by entities like the Communist Youth League and by China’s army.

It has been our repeated observation that nations and cultures that are net acquirers of gold tend to dominate the affairs of mankind, while those, like the West, that dishoard gold tend to become subordinated to them.

We believe that what is good for the monetary health of nation-states as they jockey among one another for dominance is also good for individuals.  Just as gold can prefigure the rise and fall of nations, it provides superior wealth preservation for individuals, especially during periods in which the world is being shaken.

Find out more.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist today.

graphic credit: Visual Capitalist (design by Amy Kuo)

Wall Street Bloodbath!

What They Are Saying!

We hope you haven’t wearied of us writing from time to time about Michael Burry.  For those who don’t remember, Burry is the somewhat quirky investment advisor made famous in the movie about the bursting of the mortgage bubble, The Big Short, in which he was played by Christian Bale.

Burry made himself and the investors in his fund hundreds of millions of dollars by shorting mortgage credit instruments back during the mortgage meltdown.  

It’s not that he is always right.  Nobody is.  But Burry understands more about finance and economics than your average Federal Reserve official.  And he regularly shows flashes of brilliance.  

For example, while the Fed was patiently explaining transitory inflation to us a year and a half ago, Burry was tweeting furiously about inflation on our doorstep.  And not just a little.

Most recently, Burry’s hedge fund Scion Asset Management has dumped almost all his stock holdings.  Among the stocks he exited are big names like Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook).

We’re not surprised.  Burry has been talking about a stock crash since before the big sell-off hit earlier this year, and he doesn’t think it’s over yet.

We want to mention Wall Street veteran Art Cashin as well.  Cashin is Director of Floor Operations at UBS Financial Services.  “Overbought” is Cashin’s description of stocks at today’s levels.

Have you heard the term “analyst herding”?  It is when stock analysts are acting like cattle, and sometimes stampeding off a cliff together.  Robert Buckland, who heads a team of stock strategists at Citigroup, finds that, just like prior market crashes, “analysts are net buyers of every sector in every region.  But then they usually are.”

“Our index of global sell-side recommendations,” Buckland says, “is back to peak bullishness levels reached in 2000 and 2007, after which global equities halved.” 

And finally, here’s the latest from Wall Street legend and bubble expert Jeremy Grantham who thinks the next leg down in the stock market could hit in September:  “There’s nothing as quick and spectacular as a bear market rally. With hindsight they signify very little, but at the time they frighten the pants off bears, and they give hope that all is over, all is forgotten, and it’s back to the races.” 

Despite the evidence of your own eyes, Washington pronounces zero inflation and zero recession.  If you would like some straight talk about monetary conditions and how to protect yourself and your family, speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional today.


The Unbacked Dollar Anniversary

The Day They Closed the Gold Window!

This week we mark a day that lives in monetary infamy, a day fifty-one years ago that determined America’s economic trajectory to this very day.

It is important enough for Americans to understand what happened then and how the gold dollar became the unbacked paper dollar, a dollar that made today’s inflation possible, that we re-tell the story every year about this time.  

Here is the way we recounted the story three years ago, in 2019:

The US has had paper dollars for a long time, but throughout most of our history, even the paper dollars were tied to gold.  Until this date, August 15, back in 1971.  It was then, 48 years ago today, that President Nixon severed the last remaining link of the U.S. dollar to gold.  

Today, almost half a century later, we are experiencing the long-term consequences of that decision.   Those consequences include a trade and currency war, a race among nations to destroy the purchasing power of their currencies, unrestrained money printing, inadequate personal savings, interest rate manipulations, weak economic growth, a stalled out middle-class, growing deficits, and skyrocketing debt.

Under the post-World War II monetary regime, the rest of the world had been persuaded to hold dollars as reserves and conduct international commerce in dollars.   But U.S. politicians of both parties had a grand time for years spending money and buying votes left and right to delight their special constituencies.   There was the Great Society and the Vietnam War, too.  Because they had the Federal Reserve to print money for them, it had been a wild spree.  

Richard Nixon, 37th President of the united States
Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States

But as any ne’er do well, the U.S. was writing bad checks.  The state was issuing more dollars than it could possibly redeem for gold at the promised exchange rate of $35 per ounce.

The rest of the world saw the U.S. money printing under the dollar/gold exchange standard and noted the falling purchasing power of the dollars they held.

They began to race for the exits. They wanted to cash their paper dollars in for gold while they could.

Like a run on the bank, the demand to exchange dollars for gold was beyond containment.  

Nixon decided to find a bogeyman to blame for the government’s wastrel ways.  He chose “international money speculators.”

The crisis of the U.S. writing hot checks was their fault, he said.

In making his case against them, Nixon uttered more monetary babble.  “The strength of a nation’s currency is based on the strength of that nation’s economy,” he said.  But that was simply untrue: America’s economy has been growing while the value of the dollar was sinking.  

And so, on that hot August night in 1971, Nixon closed the gold window and abandoned any pretense of dollar redeemability in gold.  

gold moves

That was 48 years ago today.  

Now we find ourselves on the doorstep of a long-brewing currency crisis.  With the dollar redeemable in nothing, what would act as a restraint on the issuance of more and more dollars, an endless torrent of money printing?

If the rest of the world noticed that they were having difficulty cashing in their dollars for gold decades ago, consider how they must feel today knowing that there is nothing to cash them in for.

We are speeding toward the long inevitable crisis of resolution.  On every hand, the central banks and governments of foreign nations, are taking steps to insulate themselves from the developing dollar crisis.  

Many central banks are using dollars to add to their gold reserves.  They may not mind fleecing their citizens with their own debased currencies, but they didn’t want to be victimized by ours 48 years ago.  And they still don’t want to be victimized by it today.  

And neither should you.


Release the IRS Kraken!

Sure, and drive everyone to gold and silver!

The Kraken, that giant sea monster of Norwegian myth, reappeared in popular culture with Pirates of the Caribbean and the Clash of the Titans movies.

Releasing the Kraken means to let loose destructive forces of immeasurable powers.

Now it looks like the Biden administration is prepared to set loose an IRS Kraken, 87,000 new IRS agents – many of them armed – to squeeze more resources out of the American people.  It is spectacularly bad timing as the people’s earnings aren’t keeping up with the cost of living and their savings are being devalued by inflation.

But there is more to the picture than just the financial squeeze.  At a time of record distrust and dissatisfaction with Washington, at a time of maximum social polarization, it is a move that will heighten all of that.

Stove-piping $80 billion to the IRS is but one component of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.  “According to expert analysis,” writes Senator Ted Cruz, “it will supercharge the IRS with 87,000 new IRS agents to target Americans with 1.2 million new audits, more than half of which would be for people making less than $75,000 a year.”

Thanks to the Byzantine tax code, nosey auditors will be able to find something just about anywhere they turn.  And they will be armed, too.  Here are a couple of snippets from an IRS hiring ad: “min50 hours per week, which may include irregular hours, and be on-call 24/7, including holidays and weekends” and “Carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.” 

Writing in the New York Post, Steve Forbes points out that the provision comes hard on the heels of the last IRS scandal This proposal comes just a year after the IRS’s latest scandal with agents illegally leaking the private tax returns of the wealthy.  But don’t think that the rest of the people will get off easy:

The plan is estimated to double the number of Americans audited each year. To quote the Church Lady from “Saturday Night Live”: “Well, isn’t that special?”

Most of the money raised from these audits won’t come from the superrich or multibillion-dollar corporations — both well-stocked with accountants and tax attorneys to fight IRS allegations.

Small-business owners and upper-middle-income workers will likely be the targets. The woman who runs an accounting firm or a restaurant won’t have the resources to fight the government in tax court.

Washington is releasing the Kraken because it is desperate.  Its currency is failing.  Foreign central bankers in China and elsewhere are de-dollarizing.  Elected officials are writing spending bills with no visible means of support.  And you don’t have to look under the carpets to see that people in high places are stealing everything they can get their hands on.

Time to refuse to be fleeced by Washington’s financial irresponsibility.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional and establish a plan to protect your family and your wealth.


Biden Announces Zero Inflation

He would know, wouldn’t he?

The President took to the podium on Wednesday (8/11) to announce a number: “Zero.”

Inflation was zero in July, he said.

You could count us among the surprised.  After all, we’ve been to the grocery store.  But who are you going to believe, the President or your lying eyes?

Then to add to the confusion, we read this morning that at the end of July grocery prices were up 13.1 percent from last July.  The price of eggs alone has nearly doubled and coffee is up $1.50 a pound.  

What a way to start the morning.  Makes it hard to enjoy breakfast.   

Still, the President has Bidenflation zeroed out.  We wish we could remember who said it, but someone on TV wondered why, with zero inflation, we need the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 along with 87,000 more IRS agents.

Then someone else asked why shouldn’t we have zero inflation since despite two consecutive quarters of a shrinking economy we have zero recession.  

Next, while still choking down breakfast, we read that producer prices rose 9.8 percent for the 12 months ended in July.  Producer prices are wholesale prices.  They are soon going to show up in consumer prices.  And that’s not good.

So how does the President get his zero inflation bragging rights?  Simple.  Gas is down from its all time high of just a couple of weeks ago.  And why is gas down?  Because American families have had to radically adjust their gas consumption and driving.  That and the “zero recession” slowing economy.  

So other stuff is way up, while gas is down – no thanks to the White House, but due to a lowered standard of living.  And then we read that 30 percent of Americans are using credit cards and loans to meet their spending needs.  Even as the President and the Vice President are crowing about zero inflation.

What can you do?  Buy gold and silver while the Deep State Money Manipulators at the Fed and the spin people in the White House are on the loose.

And how was your breakfast?


Victory Over Inflation?

Right!  Wall Street Will Pretend Anything!

US inflation keeps running hot, with the headline Consumer Price Index for the 12 months ending in July up 8.5 percent.  

Lower energy prices contributed to the index easing off from the 40-year high of 9.1 percent reported in June.

Lower energy prices factored into the modestly lower inflation numbers.  Overall energy fell 4.6 percent led by gasoline which was down 7.7 percent.

Wall Street treated the lower CPI numbers like a long-term Federal Reserve victory over inflation.  Stocks surged across the board.  Never mind that an inflation rate of 8.5 percent would have been considered calamitous just six months ago.  Indeed, it would have been thought an impossibility a year ago.    

DOES THIS LOOK LIKE VICTORY OVER INFLATION TO YOU?

Wearing rose-colored glasses, Wall Street speculators leaped to the conclusion that with consumer prices coming in lower, the Federal Reserve will be less inclined to raise rates or to raise them as much at its September meeting.

More disciplined economic minds would not have reacted to the numbers with the same giddiness demonstrated by Wall Street traders.  Defining inflation strictly as an increase in the supply of money and credit, they would not have overlooked the trillions of dollars the Fed stovepiped into the American economy over the last few years.  They would have viewed the change in gasoline prices as simply a price change in one commodity, albeit an essential one.  And in the absence of a change in monetary conditions, they would have noted that the additional money that consumers were forced to pay for gasoline would be offset by lower savings or reduced spending on other goods and services. 

But it would not have changed their calculation of the inflationary shenanigans of the Deep State Money Manipulators.  And that clear-eyed assessment of the cause of higher prices could have guided policy changes to corral inflation and return to normal.

Unfortunately, people like Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen are not among those disciplined economic minds of days gone by.

That is why they can’t fix our monetary problems and why you must buy gold and silver to protect yourself.


Is the Bloodbath Over in the Stock Market?

The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates four times this year.  Fed officials are displaying a rare unanimity that more rate hikes are coming.  Higher mortgage rates have residential real estate reeling.  Inflation is at the highest level in 40 years.  The official GDP numbers say the economy has entered a recession. War drums are beating to our East and to our West.  

Of course, gold is inching higher day after day as money seeks a safe haven from the chaos.

So, is this really a time to be in stocks?  Is the bloodbath we have already experienced this year over?  Or is the stock bear market just pausing before the next round?

It looks like there is more carnage ahead in the stock market.  Here are a few snippets that we think confirm that outlook:

I expect the Fed to be behind the curve… it doesn’t really have a clue about market bubbles and the damage they do when they break.

–Jeremy Grantham interview, Investors Podcast’s 7/29/2022

It’s Happening: Here Is A List Of 12 Big Companies That Have Announced Layoffs Within The Last 2 Weeks:

#1 Ultratec Inc. says that it will be laying off more than 600 workers.

#2 Electric truck maker Rivian will be laying off approximately 840 workers.

#3 7-Eleven has announced that it will be eliminating 880 corporate jobs.

#4 Shopify is laying off about 1,000 people.

#5 Vimeo says that it will be eliminating 6 percent of its current workforce.

#6 Redfin will be reducing the size of its workforce by 8 percent.

#7 Compass will be reducing the size of its workforce by 10 percent.

#8 RE/MAX will be reducing the size of its workforce by 17 percent.

#9 Robinhood will be reducing the size of its workforce by 23 percent.

#10 It is being reported that Ford “is preparing to cut as many as 8,000 jobs in the coming weeks”.

#11 Geico has closed every single one of its offices in the state of California, and that will result in vast numbers of workers losing their jobs…

#12 Fender, the USA musical instrument giant, has reportedly laid off 300 California plant workers this past week without any notice or severance pay.

On top of everything else, Amazon has announced that it reduced the size of its workforce by approximately 100,000 workers in just one quarter.

–The Economic Collapse Blog. Com, 8/3/2022

The problem is that after a decade of deranged monetary policies that ultimately amplified speculation beyond 1929 and 2000 extremes, we are so far from “normal’ that arriving anywhere near that neighborhood will be a journey. The recent market decline has simply retraced the frothiest portion of the recent bubble, bringing the most reliable market valuation measures back toward their 1929 and 2000 extremes 

– John Hussman, Hussman Funds, 7/7/2022

Adjusted for inflation, 2022 first-half S&P 500 down 25-26%, and Nasdaq down 34-35%, Bitcoin down 64-65%.  That was multiple compression. Next up, earnings compression. So, maybe halfway there.

– “Big Short” Michael Burry, 7/30/2022

Stocks were in a primary downtrend from 1966 to 1982. Before that, the primary trend was up, from the bottom of the Great Depression until the mid-‘60s. The most recent bull market primary trend began in August of 1982 and continued until December of 2021.    

If a new, bear market primary trend has begun, we’ll see real values for stocks go down for many years. Few baby boomers will ever again see equities so richly priced as they were at the close of 2021….

A primary trend is relentless. And now, after 4 decades of rising stocks and falling interest rates, have we just witnessed the beginning of a new one?  Probably. Because, it’s about the money. The trend of the last 42 years was sustained by borrowing at lower and lower interest rates…with dramatic ‘saves’ by the Fed whenever a correction threatened. But those rescues are no longer possible.  

–Bill Bonner, Bonner Private Research, 8/2/2022

Take steps now to prepare for growing stock market turbulence in the remainder of 2022.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional without delay.


Inflation Isn’t For Everybody

Inflation is a problem for everyone. Over nine percent nationally.  Double digits in Phoenix.  Incomes aren’t keeping up with rising prices.  Plus rents are going up about one percent a month.

So, it’s a problem for everyone, right?

Well, not so fast!

It’s not a problem for me, says one senior official at the Federal Reserve, the institution that is the author of our currency’s destruction.

Mary Daly is the President of the San Francisco Fed.  In a Reuters interview, Daly explained that it’s not a problem for her.  Because she has enough:  “I don’t feel the pain of inflation anymore. I see prices rising but I have enough… I sometimes balk at the price of things, but I don’t find myself in a space where I have to make tradeoffs because I have enough, and many Americans have enough.”

Pretty cavalier, don’t you think?

Daly is paid $422,900 a year.  Not to mention medical, vision, and dental insurance.  Pension plans.  Private dining rooms.  Aircraft.  Cars and drivers.

Daly doesn’t feel your pain. She has enough. 

The sign at the front door of the SF Fed reads, “, “Our work touches every American and countless global citizens.” Yes, it touches them just like a pickpocket touches them, reducing the value of their savings without the benefit of public debate or legislation.

If you are not a Federal Reserve official and you believe that inflation is a problem, why not speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange professional?  Take steps today to protect yourself, your family, and your wealth with precious metals.  Fed officials like Mary Daly can’t print more gold and silver!


The Inflation Reduction Act

“Inflation Reduction”. Haha.

Since inflation is a deliberate policy of the monetary authorities when someone promises to do something about inflation we always look to see if they are talking about throwing the off-switch.

Are they talking about ending the artificial creation of money and credit by any of its thousands of names:  liquidity operations, Quantitative Easing, stimulating the economy, monetary injections, loosening credit conditions, fine-tuning the economy, repo operations, backstopping depository institutions, monetizing federal debt, and so on.

If they aren’t throwing the off-switch on all the foregoing, they aren’t stopping inflation.  

That’s why we had to laugh when we heard about The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.  Ha ha ha!  Even the name is funny.  It evokes the names of other ridiculous federal legislation.  Sort of like calling a big tax bill The Universal Prosperity Act. 

How about these:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act 

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act

Or The USA Patriot Act.  Its real name is the Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act.

The Patriot Act doesn’t just torture American civil liberties and opens the doors to the total surveillance state.  It also tortures syntax in its clumsy search for an acronym.  

We’re not the only ones to see the irony.  Ron Paul, who spent years in Congress fighting this kind of nonsense, names it among The Most Inappropriately Named Bills.

Here’s Dr. Paul’s description of what the bill actually does:

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act increases government spending. For example, the bill authorizes spending hundreds of billions of dollars on energy and fighting climate change. Much of this is subsidies for renewable energy — in other words green corporate welfare. Government programs subsidizing certain industries take resources out of the hands of investors and entrepreneurs, who allocate resources in accordance with the wants and needs of consumers, and give the resources to the government, where resources are allocated according to the agendas of politicians and bureaucrats. When government takes resources out of the market, it also disrupts the price system through which entrepreneurs, investors, workers, and consumers discover the true value of goods and services. Thus, “green energy” programs will lead to increased cronyism and waste.

The bill also spends 80 billion dollars on the IRS. Supposedly this will help collect more revenue from “rich tax cheats.” While supporters of increasing the IRS’s ability to harass taxpayers claim their target is the rich, these new powers will actually be used against middle-class taxpayers and small businesses that cannot afford legions of tax accountants and attorneys and thus are likely to simply pay the agency whatever it demands.

Here’s our advice.  Until they quit the cutesy legislation and actually throw the switch and stop inflation, you should take steps to protect yourself with gold and silver.  

Because cutesy bills won’t prevent the US dollar from continuing to waste away.  


They Aren’t Buying What Washington is Peddling

The Gold and Silver Market Can See Right Through It!

We think it is worth going back thru what Washington has been peddling over the last week.

It starts with the Federal Reserve’s announcement on Wednesday (7/27) that it was raising its policy interest rate, the Fed funds rate by 75 basis points, or ¾ of a percent.

Wait just a runaway-inflation second here!  

Just weeks earlier the Consumer Price Index for the 12 months through June was reported.  It was up to 9.1 percent.  That is serious inflation by anyone’s standard.  In fact, it was well higher than the consensus forecast of 8.8 percent.  

In the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metro area, inflation spiked to 12.3 percent!

Accordingly, it was assumed in many quarters that at their July meeting the Fed would have to – would have to! – show its resolve and raise rates a full percent.  That’s because things were clearly spinning out of control!

But the Fed punted.  Chairman Powell announced a lesser rate hike.  

It looks as though the Fed isn’t really serious about corralling inflation.  So gold ticked up.

Then, the next day (7/28), the numbers came in on the nation’s productivity.  For the second quarter in a row, the US economy was contracting.  Another excuse for the Fed to shirk its responsibility to terminate inflation.  Gold ticked up again.

Then, the day afterward (7/29) another inflation report came out.  This is the one the Fed prefers to rely on (probably because it soft-pedals the extent of the problem).  This one, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index climbed more quickly than it has in 40 years, up a full one percent for the month of May alone.

So gold ticked up again.

Now Biden has a new bill with hundreds of billions of new taxes and spending.   

Here’s what makes the irony complete.  They are calling it The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.  Of course, it won’t do anything to reduce inflation.  Even Wharton researchers at the University of Pennsylvania get that.  “Statistically indistinguishable from zero,” says the Wharton School study.

We think it will increase inflation.  It’s on a success track along with Biden’s deft Afghan withdrawal, or his claim that you can’t get Covid if you have the shot.  Maybe you remember “transitory inflation.”   Or its cousin “there is no recession.”

We’re in trouble.     

Time to buy gold.  Your best defense against Bidenflation.  


Yes, This is a Recession

Time to Get Up-To-Date on Gold and Silver!

Okay, we all know America’s economy isn’t what it was, thanks to the shutdowns,  trillions of dollars in “stimmies,” and Bidenflation.   But now it’s official:  We are definitely in a recession.

Well, check that.  We are definitely in a recession.  But it’s not really official until a board of bureaucrats says it’s official.  And they haven’t said yet.

We all pretty much know a recession when we see one.  It’s when the economy isn’t growing, it’s contracting.  Companies cut jobs.  People cut their spending for fear of the future.  They stop throwing money at silly things like NFTs (whatever they were) and amazing new crypto-currencies like $Cat and SpankChain.  And banks call some loans and make others hard to get.

We think we see a lot of these signs.  And now we learn that according to the official GDP numbers, the economy hasn’t been growing.  In fact, for the last two quarters it has been contracting.

We knew that before the numbers were reported.  How did we know?  We knew because the White House was spinning furiously in advance, denying that two consecutive quarters was a long-standing definition of a recession.  The White House had inside information that they were using, not for the good of the country, but to try to soften the public relations blow, and limit the eventual electoral damage of a recession developing on their watch.

They were trading on material inside information.  Not for stock market gain, but for political gain.  

Face it, the governing classes are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down.  Federal Reserve Board officials are implicated in trading on inside information.  The whole scandal appears to have disappeared.  The husband of the Speaker of the House just liquidated a huge position, selling $4 million worth of Nvidia stock at a major loss because the stench of cronyism and official inside dealing had become too much for even the lapdog press in Washington.

Martha Stewart went to jail for less.  

Anyway, gold went up on the bad news Thursday morning (7/28) that the economy is in a recession.  Why?  Because it means that the Fed is going to find itself printing more money sooner rather than later.  That is bad for the dollar, of course.  But it is good for people who invest in gold.

The day before, we watched as Fed chairman Jerome Powell announced a new Fed funds interest rate increase.  We watched gold go up then, too, because Powell is so transparent.  Faced with an opportunity to do some serious about inflation, he punted.  

Think about it.  The official US inflation rate is over 9 percent.  Powell raised the Fed policy rate to a target of 2.25 to 2.50 percent.  The Fed’s own interest rate is more than six percent below the inflation rate.  Stated differently, the Fed is keeping real interest rates negative.  And that is not how you wring inflation out of the economy. 

No wonder gold started moving back up.  

Have you spoken to your Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist lately?  This would be a very good time.


Interest Rates are Going Up in 2017

The Rate Hike

More Halfway Measures from Powell’s Fed; Nothing Gets Fixed!

The Fed says it is moving expeditiously to bring inflation down.  

You wouldn’t know it based on its latest move.  In fact, both gold and silver were so little impressed with the latest from the Fed that both jumped higher.

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point for the second straight meeting on Wednesday (7/27) in an attempt to get inflation under control.  

But inflation is roaring ahead anyway.  And the Fed’s half-hearted move is more politics than substance

After all, the inflation rate is 9.1 percent, while wholesale price inflation is over 11 percent.  

The last time we had inflation this high, the Fed had to raise interest rates above the inflation rate to get things under control.  

The Fed’s new move doesn’t even come close to doing that.  It has raised its policy rate, the Fed funds rate, from 2.25 – 2.50 percent.  The Fed would need to raise rates another 6.5 percent to implement the successful inflation-fighting strategy from 40 years ago.  

Meanwhile, big companies like Coke and Mcdonald’s, as well as others, are raising prices.  

Powell says the Fed will need to be “nimble” in its policy changes.  That means it has no clear idea where inflation comes from and what to do about it.  It means the Fed is simply going to be reactive to the economic numbers as they come in.  But the numbers once gathered are already history.  So, the Fed is constantly behind the curve of real events, always playing catch-up.  That explains why it is always surprised by real conditions, for example, its discovery that inflation did not prove to be transitory.  

Meanwhile, the Fed is hoping desperately that conditions normalize all by themselves.  It hopes that gas prices will fall, that harvests will be abundant, and that the supply chains will work themselves out.  Then the Fed can escape blame for its promiscuous money printing.  Its unhinged creation of $8 trillion dollars since the last market crack-up will be thought to have nothing to do with the dollar’s failing.

But nimble or no, actions have consequences.  And that includes legalized counterfeiting of dollars.  By printing and spending all that money, the Fed has enabled powerful claims on the future.  It spent money it didn’t really have.  That bill will be paid.

We hope you don’t find yourself victimized by the dollar’s coming deterioration.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist today.


Banks vs. The People

Backed by Tanks, the Banks in China are Prohibiting Withdrawals!

It started in April when a few banks in China’s Henan province prohibited cash withdrawals.  

Now things have spread and escalated.  Hundred of thousands of people have been unable to withdraw their money.  In Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan, the government has deployed tanks to the streets to intimidate depositors, with police violently dispersing others.  

Now the government is using the country’s health code to control protestors, down-grading their government health rankings to derail their travel and other activities.

There are other troubles brewing in China that are mostly off-the-radar screens.  One of the biggest is a growing mortgage boycott.  Here is a story from Bloomberg News on July 14:

“It is spreading like wildfire. Homebuyers in China are refusing to pay the mortgage on properties they’ve bought but that their financially strapped developers can’t finish. Some say that they will only resume payments when construction restarts… The frustrated buyers accuse the developers of misusing sales proceeds and the banks of failing to safeguard their loans. China has never seen anything like this. As in the US — until the 2007 subprime crisis — the possibility of troubles in the mortgage market was vanishingly small.”

There are a reported 100 million apartment units in China that are unoccupied.  Remember “jingle mail”?  That was the term in America’s mortgage meltdown for borrowers who walked away from their loans when their home values slipped below their mortgage debt.  They defaulted, left the house keys in the mailbox, and walked away, leaving the problem to the lender.  

As market values tumble below what is owed, the same sort of thing can happen in a way unique to China.  

China is buried in debt, which explains why its holdings of US debt has recently fallen below a trillion dollars.  The US can hardly afford to lose a leading creditor like China, but events in the credit market there are happening very fast.  Doug Noland who writes the Credit Bubble Bulletin says that credit conditions in China continue to deteriorate and that the “housing downturn is becoming only more deeply entrenched.”

What happens to the rest of the world if the second largest economy experiences a credit collapse?  We can say only two things:  1).  it will be like a nuclear bomb going off in the global economy, and 2).  you will be very glad you protected yourself with gold and silver.


Buried Treasures: They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To!

Remember When Discovering a Buried Treasure Meant Instant Fortune and Riches?

Rich Gilson was doing some work on the driveway of his home in Wildwood, New Jersey a few weeks ago.  Digging around, he’s just hitting concrete and rocks when suddenly he strikes what he thinks are a couple of plant root balls.

So he tosses them aside.

Then he hits another one.  Now he’s curious and pulls at the edge of one.  “Hey,” he realizes, “This is money!”

Rich Gilson working at his home in New Jersey

Rich discovered rolls of $10 and $20 dollar bills wrapped up in brown paper, all from the same lot dated 1934.  

His “windfall” amounted to about $1,000.  

Rich suspects this was cash taken out of the bank during the Great Depression, a time when so many institutions were failing as a result.  Or to add to the intrigue of the story maybe it was from a bank heist? But most likely, given the sequential 1934 markings on the bills, odds are it was money pulled from the bank in desperation- a very common tale of the time.

We think it was probably a good idea for someone to take their money out of the bank back then, but even that forethought wouldn’t have been quite enough.  You see, US paper money has lost a lot of purchasing power since it was buried in 1934.  It would take more than $22,000 today to equal the purchasing power of $1,000 back then.  

That’s because the Federal Reserve has printed up a lot more dollars in the intervening years, making each dollar worth less.  

Whoever buried the money back then would have been much wiser to have buried $1,000 worth of gold.  A year earlier, in 1933,  President Roosevelt nationalized (stole) the peoples’ gold.   At the time $1,000 would have been 50 US $20 gold pieces.  The gold alone would have a current value of $92,500 at recent prices. Even if the coins were circulated from common usage, 50 $20 dollar gold pieces would be worth somewhere around $1,125,000 today.  And much more if they were in collectible condition. 

And by the way, since it was all just depreciating paper US dollars, Rich is not even going to bother to spend his “windfall.”  It’s not worth enough – he’d feel silly just spending it on a hoagie, he says – so he’s keeping it just for a conversation piece.  

So, we draw this conclusion from Rich’s story.  If you want to preserve your wealth, it is much wiser to do it in the form of gold, real money of enduring value.


The Strong Dollar?

You’ve Heard “The Dollar is Strong”. Ha-ha-ha!

We hear it all the time.  Sometimes all day long in the financial news media.  About the strong dollar.  Here are some examples:

“What the strong dollar means for Americans”  — The Hill

“The Dollar Is Extremely Strong, Pushing Down the World”  — NYTimes

‘What does a strong dollar mean for the US and world economics?”  — Marketplace.org

Although we have written about this before, the topic demands a re-visit.

Now we guess you can call it a strong dollar if you’re going to Europe on your summer vacation.  Or if you’re importing Mercedes.

But for the sake of clear communication, the term “strong dollar” should go in the deleted file.  Especially since most of us at any given time isn’t doing any of those things.

In fact, the dollar isn’t really strong at all.   It is weak.  Extraordinarily weak. 

That’s because the function of a currency is to allow people to purchase things.  With that in mind, here is a 10-year chart of the US dollar’s purchasing power:

You might notice the trend.  The best description is that dollar purchasing power is down, down, down.  In fact, the dollar’s loss of purchasing power has accelerated in the last year or two.

Here are the actual Consumer Price Index numbers for 2021 – 22.  They show for each month how much the price of consumer goods has increased over the prior 12 months.  It’s the inverse of the chart above.  


2021 (percentage increase)

  • Jan: 1.400
  • Feb: 1.676
  • Mar: 2.620
  • Apr: 4.160
  • May: 4.993
  • Jun: 5.391
  • Jul: 5.365
  • Aug: 5.251
  • Sep: 5.390
  • Oct: 6.222
  • Nov: 6.809
  • Dec: 7.036

2021 (percentage increase)

  • Jan: 7.480
  • Feb: 7.871
  • Mar: 8.542
  • Apr: 8.259
  • May: 8.582
  • Jun: 9.060

You might notice a trend there, with prices going up, up, up.  

No matter how you look at it, its not a good deal for Americans who earn paychecks, buy things, and try to save all in terms of US dollars.

So, if the people’s currency buys them less and less with each passing month, shouldn’t we drop the propagandistic term “strong”?

Because, after all, the dollar has never been weaker.  Period.  It buys less than it ever has.  Period.

And that should be nobody’s definition of strong.

Sophisticated financial writers and commentators may want to try communicating clearly, noting that for now, other currencies like the euro and the yen are actually losing value even faster than the dollar.

Isn’t that more accurate?  Can’t they do better?   

If you would like to get a clear description of current monetary conditions and how people protect themselves from inflation with gold and silver, speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange professional today.


The Bottom is In on Gold and Silver!

Precious Metals at Cost of Production? The Time to Buy is Now!

The correction in gold and silver that accompanied the panicked selling of stocks, bonds, and crypto-currencies this year is over, says Jim Clark, CEO of Republic Monetary Exchange.

“Both metals have found a bottom in this range,” according to Clark.  “Gold at $1700 and silver at $18 an ounce.”

Those levels represent the cost of production for the metals, he says. 

“You can go out at dig and try to find gold and silver, recover and refine them, and then mint and transport them at that price,” he says.

Jim Clark, CEO, Republic Monetary Exchange

“Or you can buy them at these prices with all that work already done for you.”  

Clark notes that the cost of mining has gone up.  “Mining is energy-intensive,” he notes.  “Higher fuel costs mean higher costs of production for both gold and silver.”

As often happens, according to Clark, Wall Street and other speculators sold gold for the cash they desperately needed as the stock and bond markets collapsed this year.  

“It’s a pattern we’ve seen before.  We’re confident that the global factors that drive precious metals higher, including war, government debt, and fear of recession are in place and that with the rising cost of production, both gold and silver are in an especially attractive zone for buyers,” he said.

With more than fifty years in the industry, Clark is one of the nation’s most experienced precious metals traders.  He is the founder and CEO of Republic Monetary Exchange in Phoenix, AZ.


US Inflation: It’s a Disgrace

In the Phoenix-Scottsdale-Mesa metropolitan area prices have climbed 12.3 percent! 

More news on the inflation front.  And it is bad!  

Consumer prices rose 9.1 percent nationally over the last 12 months.  

Those are the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers for the 12 months through June 30.  The national rate is up a full one-half a percent since the end of May.

The consensus guesstimate of economists was for the number to come in at 8.8 percent, but the White House already knew it was going to be worse and began trying to soft-pedal the bad news in advance.  

The Washington party line is that gas prices were at their highest in June and have since backed off so that the numbers should be lower next month.

That’s funny.  Last month they didn’t go out of their way to say that surging gas prices than would mean a higher inflation report for June. 

Why didn’t the Fed do something about inflation a year ago when the CPI was climbing at a 5 percent rate?  Former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke says it is because the Fed didn’t want to “shock the market.”

Well, how’s this for a shock?  12.3 percent inflation in Phoenix where Republic Monetary Exchange is located and so many of our clients live.

It’s a disgrace!

We think the real reason for the Fed’s foot-dragging on rising inflation is that it was stalling for time.  They thought rising prices were all the fault of supply chain problems, so they stalled and they stalled and they stalled.  Untreated, the problem grew worse.  Apparently, Fed officials didn’t think their creation of $8 trillion since 2008 would matter much.  Nobody had ever taught them the quantity theory of money.  Or much about supply and demand.  

Since consumer prices didn’t explode when Bernanke started Quantitative Easing, they seemed to think money-printing didn’t matter.

But that’s the stupidest thing since Dick Cheney said deficits don’t matter.

Money printing does matter.  The money-printing has been so enormous that it will change the US dollar forever.  And not in a good way.  Inflation this high makes things happen. We can’t foresee all of them, but here are a couple of possibilities:

  • With American families having to pay these fast-rising prices for necessities like gas and groceries, something else in the household budgets must give.  Things like leisure, restaurants, and travel are already weakening.  It’s like a door opening to a recession.
  • What about China (or America’s other foreign creditors)?  Are they going to watch their trillion-dollar portfolios get eaten up by the dollar’s collapsing purchasing power?

The possible consequences are grave.  No one knows what happens next, but it won’t be good.  Prepare yourself.  Gold is beckoning!


Dollar Falls With Blinding Speed

Consumer prices climb sky high!  Producer prices rising even faster!

We can’t help but laugh.  Maybe we shouldn’t laugh, but we do.  Every time the financial press and the mainstream media tell us how “strong” the dollar is these days!

For real people in the real world, this is the weakest the dollar has ever been.  Bought gasoline in the last couple of months?  How about food?  If so, you should know what we mean.  Your dollars just don’t buy as much.

In fact, the US dollar has never bought less!  It’s that weak!

Here are a couple of metrics.   According to the government’s own numbers, consumer prices have risen 9.1 percent over the last year.  The Producer Price Index, wholesale prices that are headed right your way, rose 11.3 percent over the last year.

Let’s be clear about what these number mean.  They mean the US dollar buys 9.1 percent fewer consumer goods than it did a year ago.  They mean that the US dollar buys 11.3 percent fewer wholesale goods than in did a year ago.  

These numbers mean that dollars – which people hold and save for one reason only, for what they will buy – are falling fast.  

The US dollar has never bought less!  It’s that weak!  Then maybe holding dollars, saving dollars, planning your retirement in dollars isn’t that great an idea, right?  

It’s true that with the recent bloodletting in stocks, bonds, and cryptos, desperate Wall Street speculators have had to sell gold to keep from going under.  Probably not much of it is what we think of as real gold.  It’s mainly paper gold:  title to gold that is presumably held intact somewhere but we’re not sure anybody knows, gold shares, ETFs, futures contracts.  As David Stockman puts it, they are whistling past the inflationary graveyard.  But they have to in order to keep afloat.   Good!  When they dump paper gold, it helps create a buying opportunity for us!  In real physical gold that actually exist and not just on paper.  You can take it with you?

So what’s with this strong dollar business that is all over the news?  It simply means that the dollar’s exchange value is somewhat high when compared to other currencies that are also losing value!

The Dollar Index that is referred to in these reports consists of half a dozen foreign currencies.  The Euro and the Japanese yen account for more than 70 percent of the index, and both the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have negative interest rates.  But saying the dollar is strong is like saying that the Titanic floats better than the Lusitania as they both sink!

In the meantime, the sky is the limit for gold.  These inflationary episodes often end with an angry public demanding an end to funny money and that real money – gold- backed money – be reestablished.  One writer noted the other day that based on the current money supply numbers (using M0 which is a measurement of cash), simply providing a 20 percent gold backing to the dollar would require a gold price of $7,500 an ounce.

But for now, be aware that the value, the worthiness, the purchasing power of US dollar has been falling at a speed that hasn’t been seen in more than 40 years.

The dollar has never been weaker!

Own gold?


More Loss and Pain Ahead for Stock Investors!

Regular readers know that we enjoy citing the market observations of Michael Burry.  

You probably remember Burry if you saw the 2015 movie The Big Short.  If you haven’t seen it, it is probably worth streaming just for an alternative look at how things work on Wall Street.  Burry, a real-life rock-drumming, hedge fund manager is played by Christian Bale.  When disaster struck the subprime mortgage market, Burry’s clients made about $700 million from his fund.  

In addition to warning about the real estate bubble, Burry more recently warned about inflation’s return while most of the financial establishments were in denial. 

Burry dubbed the Fed-inflated markets “Greatest Speculative Bubble of All Time in All Things.” Now with those bubbles popping and after all the carnage and mayhem suffered by stock and crypto investors in the first half of this year, Burry says there is more to come.

In fact, he suggests that the losses could double from here.

“Adjusted for inflation, 2022 first-half S&P 500 down 25-26%, and Nasdaq down 34-35%, Bitcoin down 64-65%,” Burry tweeted.  “That was multiple compression. Next up, earnings compression. So, maybe halfway there.”

Here are the bullet points Business Insider used to describe the latest from the Scion Asset hedge fund manager:

  • Michael Burry warned the plunge in stocks and crypto might only be at the halfway point.
  • “The Big Short” investors expect weak corporate earnings to fuel the next leg down in markets.
  • Burry predicts a slump in consumer spending will weigh on company profits later this year.

There is a little more detail in a recent piece by John Hussman, president of Hussman Funds, so we will finish with a couple of points from his recent client advisory letter

The danger for investors is that they have learned all the wrong lessons from this bubble. They’ve come to believe that valuations can be ignored, and that Fed easing is omnipotent. They’ve come to believe that “it always comes back.” They’ve learned to embrace passive investing, because they look back over their shoulder at prices that have gone nowhere but up, and conclude that attending to valuations would have been costly and useless. They’ve come to imagine that more risk means more return, regardless of the prices they pay to get in. All these misguided beliefs will be their undoing….

When the collapse comes (and I suspect it will), don’t blame Fed tightening for bursting the bubble. Once “bubble” is in hand, “burst” is inevitable. Blame the decade of reckless monetary policy that encouraged the bubble in the first place.

If you would like to avoid further losses in stocks, bonds, and cryptos, move to the safety sidelines no with a wealth-protecting gold and silver portfolio.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals professional today.


Warning to the Fed Raising Rates

Unless they want to blow the federal budget to smithereens!

We wish the Federal Reserve hadn’t created all this inflation in the first place.  It’s decapitalizing America and making the people poorer.  So, we wish they hadn’t done it in the first place.

As long as we’re on the subject, we wish that Washington hadn’t spent the country into this deep debt hole, and then invited the Fed to finance the deficit by printing trillions of dollars.

But we are forced to live with their malperformance and irresponsibility.  So, the best we can do to protect ourselves is to buy gold and silver.

Meanwhile the Fed now apparently wishes it hadn’t created all this inflation, too.  Now it says it isn’t going to rest until it brings it back under control.  Now Chairman Powell says, “”We understand better how little we understand about inflation.”  

But we are at pains to understand the source of their confusion.  After all, inflation has been well understood for a very long time.  With hundreds of professional economists on the Fed’s payroll, couldn’t someone have explained what Germany’s central bank did a century ago when Powell’s counterpart, Rudolf von Havenstein, decimated the economy and radicalized the entire nation with runaway inflation?  Couldn’t one academic economist at the Fed have pointed to the precedent in Zimbabwe?  There Powell’s counterpart, one Gideon Gono, impoverished the country and made Zimbabwe a laughingstock with its extraordinary money printing.

So now the Fed is trying to unwind a little of what it has done.  “There’s a clock running here. The risk is that because of the multiplicity of shocks, you start to transition into a higher-inflation regime. Our job is literally to prevent that from happening, and we will prevent that from happening,” says Powell.  Its primary tool is raising interest rates.  It has done some of that already and promises another increase in the Fed funds rate later this month.

But there is a limit on how much the Fed can raise rates.  That is because the US government is the biggest debtor in the world.  As interest rates rise, it must pay higher rates to roll over its existing $34 trillion debt, not to mention the additional debt it piles on.  

With that prelude, we turn our attention to Jeff Deist, the President of the Mises Institute:

If Treasury rates continue to rise and rise precipitously, the effects on congressional budgeting will be immediate and severe. Even if we laughably assume total federal debt remains static at around $23.8 trillion (the publicly held portion of the $30 trillion), interest rates of merely 2 or 3 percent will cause interest expense to rise considerably. Average weighted rates of only 5 percent would cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion every year. Historically, average rates of 7 percent swell that number to more than $1.5 trillion. Rates of 10 percent—hardly unthinkable, given the Paul Volcker era of the late seventies and early eighties—would cause debt service to explode to over $2.3 trillion….

Everyone knows the US will never pay its debts except nominally through inflation; everyone knows off-balance sheet entitlement promises cannot be kept in any meaningful way. Spendthrifts get cut off eventually.

Stated differently, there is no way out.  If the Fed doesn’t try to rein in inflation, it will destroy the dollar, the capital markets, and the resilience of the US economy.  It does try to rein in inflation by raising its policy rates and reducing its holding of bonds, it will drive rates to the moon and bankrupt the Treasury.

Oh, we wish they hadn’t started this fiat, unbacked money nonsense.  But people of sound mind who examined the historical precedents (We’re looking at you Zimbabwe.  And you Germany.  And France and Venezuela and hundreds of other monetary fraudsters!) knew that no good would come of it.  And they said so.  Over and over.

Have you spoken with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist?  It would be a good idea to do so right away.

Interest on debt in the hands of the public at different interest rates (billions)

Total debt in the hands of the public$23,874. 2
Interest rateInterest expense
1%$238.70
2%$477.50
3%$716.20
4%$955.00
5%$1,193.70
6%$1,432.50
7%$1,671.20
8%$1,909.90
9%$2,148.70
10%$2,387.40

Fed Still Concerned About Entrenched Inflation

50 or 75 basis point rate hike later this month?

Just released minutes from the Federal Reserve Board’s June meeting which saw the Fed’s key policy rate hiked by 75 basis points (3/4 of a percent) show the Fed remains concerned about entrenched inflation.

To no one’s surprise, the minutes foresee another Fed rate hike in late July: “Participants judged that an increase of 50- or 75- basis points would likely be appropriate at the next meeting.”

The Fed does not want to appear weak or to have already lost control of its reversal on inflation.  A week ago, Chairman Powell repeatedly voiced an anti-inflation resolve: “The process is highly likely to involve some pain, but the worse pain would be in failing to address this high inflation and allowing it to become persistent.”

Even so, with the increasing likelihood that the US is already in or is entering a recession and with consumer spending slowing, the question is already being asked how long that resolve will last.  Will the Fed raise the Fed Fund’s rate an additional 50- or 75-basis points this month?  Or will it pause?

Fed watchers go carefully through the minutes of each meeting when it is released weeks after the fact, looking for clues.  Here is what they found: “Participants concurred that the economic outlook warranted moving to a restrictive stance of policy, and they recognized the possibility that an even more restrictive stance could be appropriate if elevated inflation pressures were to persist.”

We don’t find much to go on there.  Most market participants seem to expect the larger Fed Funds rate hike.  But we are always perplexed by what the Fed does and doesn’t do and we don’t mind admitting it.  For example, during the recovery from the Great Recession, the longest expansion from a recession in history, one that lasted 128 months, the Fed kept gunning money and credit conditions along the way, even though doing so was utterly unnecessary, even by the standards of the Fed’s own Keynesian philosophy. 

As a consequence, we will let others mine the minutes and parse official comments looking for a key to future monetary developments.  We’re not much interested in the short-run trading momentum – except for our thanks that Wall Street has given us a great gold buying opportunity!  

But for us, we see what the Fed has done and what must happen as a consequence.  From 2007 as the Great Recession was getting underway, until today, Fed assets (reflecting its creation of made-up dollars, unbacked by anything) grew from $800 billion to $8.9 trillion.  That’s an increase of 1,100 percent.  

That’s a lot of made-up funny money.  It means those dollars will buy far less down the road, including far less gold.  And if the Fed raises rates much more, as it may, it will soon make the interest cost of $34 trillion in US national debt the next big crisis.

Buy gold and avoid all the hysteria.  And the sure-fire dollar crisis.


First Half of 2022 Grim for Stocks, Bonds, and Crypto

Gold Holds Its Own; Silver Demand “Insatiable”!

Between inflation in double-digit neighborhoods and a dark-robed creature named Recession knocking on the door, 2022 has been a tough year for stocks, bonds, and crypto-currencies. 

It doesn’t help that the year is only half over.

A few first-half numbers:

The S&P 500 tumbled 20.6 percent, the worst start for a year since 1970;

The DJIA fell 15.3 percent, the worst start since 1963;

The Nasdaq fell 29.5 percent, the worst start in its history;

Bitcoin fell below 20,000, quite a collapse from 67,000 just eight months ago.  The Wall Street Journal’s description was vivid: “Crypto’s rocket ship to the moon crash-landed back on Earth in the second quarter”;

Mortgage rates have risen to multi-year highs.

We don’t normally spend a lot of time on technical analysis, but we want to show you a quick series of charts.  First the Dow Industrials:

 Next the S&P 500:

The Nasdaq Composite:

Despite the carnage and bloodshed, and with Wall Street speculators and hedge funders selling “paper gold” vehicles like gold shares and ETF to meet margin calls and keep their doors open, gold itself managed to hold its own and finish in the black during some of the worst market turbulence since Richard Nixon was president.  While virtually everything else was dripping red ink, gold, which closed on the first trading day of the 2022 at $1,800, finished the first half virtually unchanged (in fact just slightly higher) at $1,807.  

No wonder people look to gold for wealth preservation!

Meanwhile we remind you the Goldman Sachs is projecting gold to finish this year six months from now at $2,500 and that the US Mint continues to point to record sales of its real gold, physical gold products like American Eagle gold coins, while leading precious metals research consultancy Metals Focus in London, calls US demand for retail silver investment products “almost insatiable.”

It looks to us like the pain on Wall Street is just getting started.  We find it easy to take Goldman Sachs’ projection for much higher gold quite seriously.  After all, we have lived through these inflation and market crises before!  So many of the same mistakes are beging made, only this time they debt and money-printing are measure not in billions, but in trillions.


Now Introducing… Skimpflation!

Everybody knows about Shrinkflation… but have you heard about Skimpflation?

By now, pretty much everybody knows about inflation.  It’s hard to miss at the gas pump or at the grocery store.  Prices are up everywhere on just about everything.

The government says the official inflation rate is 8.6 percent.  By that they mean that at the end of May, the average price on consumer goods was 8.6 percent higher that it was at the end of May 2021.

Since inflation is a monetary phenomenon, we prefer to describe it this way:  It you had $100,000 in your mattress or in the bank for the last year, today it only buys you $91,400 worth of stuff.  

The collapsing purchasing power of the dollar is easy to see in this chart from the Federal Reserve:

We, of course, think the government’s inflation number are way off.  In fact, it has devised a number of ways to soft-pedal the real inflation rate. 

We don’t feel sorry for the government taking the blame for inflation since it is the responsible agency.  But we feel a tiny – very small – bit of sympathy for the businesses that have to pass higher prices along to their customers.  Our sympathy for them is moderated by the knowledge that America’s largest businesses had the collective political clout to do something about the destruction of the dollar… if they had wanted to.  

But they didn’t want to.  Most thought inflation was either just a minor nuisance or an actual benefit to them in some way. 

In any case, businesses have resorted to the incredible shrinking candy bar tactic to avoid being the bearers of bad price news.  Today we call their practice shrinkflation.  Trying to hide rising prices, manufacturers reduce package sizes.  Cereal boxes look the same size on the shelf, but they’re narrower and hold less. Toilet paper rolls shrink.     

But have you heard of skimpflation?  It is like shrinkflation, but involves a deterioration in quality, instead of size.  If a product once came assembled, now you have to assemble it yourself.  It had a one-year warranty, now it may have only 90 days, or even no warranty at all.  Furniture that was made with durable hardwood is now mostly particle board.  Once upon a time a server brought food to your table.  Increasingly now, you have to go pick it up yourself.  Skimpflation.

A former Bank of England official describes it this way in The Guardian: “I remember it from many years ago: the price of socks remained the same and, as costs changed, the thickness of the sock changed. I don’t know how big a deal it [skimpflation] is … I’d ask a different question: to what extent does inflation measure things properly?”

Skimpflation or shrinkflation – either way, you get less for your money.  Consumers need to realize that it reflects the currency being debauched by the monetary authorities.

Don’t let skimpflation or shrinkflation erode your standard of living.  Don’t let inflation destroy your savings and your wealth.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional today about a sensible plan to shift out of eroding currency and into the enduring money of the ages.


Goldman Sachs Raises Its Gold Price Target

The investment banking giant is predicting $2,500 this year!

Goldman Sachs, the multinational investment banking firm, has raised its 2022 year-end gold price forecast to $2,500.

The company explained that increasing prospects of a recession could power the move.  It noted that inflation is likely to remain an important factor in the gold price for the rest of this year.

Goldman Sachs explained, as we have repeatedly, that gold has no liabilities.  It is not dependent on someone else’s promises or performance but is a monetary asset in its own right.  This is especially important in times of economic turmoil.  Of course, that descsription only refers to physical gold in your possession.  The safety and assurances that most investors seek from gold is not part of investments in “paper” gold, such as gold shares, ETFs, commodity contracts, or promissory notes.

Gold Sachs year end target price of $2,500 represents an increase in the second half of this year of of more that 37 percent from the recent gold price.

Meanwhile, Metals Focus, the prestigious London-based independent precious metal research consultancy, reports that the US continues for second year to be the largest destination for Swiss silver bullion.  It says that shipment reflect the “almost insatiable demand” in the US for retail investment products.  

Prepare yourself for more Bidenflation and the second half or 2022.  Speak with us at Republic Monetary Exchange today about wealth preservation and profit with gold and silver.


Americans See the Light On Inflation

Ronald Reagan had a great line (actually he had a lot of good lines).  He once said, “When I feel the pain, I see the light.”

The American people have been feeling plenty of pain from Biden inflation – pain at the gas pump, pain at the grocery check-out line, pain that their pay isn’t keeping up with inflation.  

But at least many of them are at last beginning to see the light.  

Despite all of the President’s finger-pointing and blame-shifting, a new poll (I&I/TIPP) finds that 64 percent identify Biden as responsible for “causing the current inflation.”  Responses ranged from “very responsible” (38 percent) to “somewhat responsible” (26 percent).

Democrats aren’t letting Biden off the hook, either.  The Poll reveals that 53 percent of Democrats blame Biden for today’s inflation.

Drilling down a little closer provides more encouraging news.  More than two out of three surveyed say that excessive government spending “worsens inflation.”

The poll’s sponsors write that the questions asked, “came in response to recent White House claims that uncontrollable forces outside of their policies were to blame for the upsurge in inflation.”

“Biden and his spokespeople have steadfastly denied any responsibility for the surge in inflation and said a recession was ‘not inevitable.’”

The gold and silver professionals at Republic Monetary Exchange have been warning you about all of this loud and clear… about Washington spending, money printing, and Bidenomics!

And now it’s front and center in your life, impossible to miss at the grocery store and at the gas pump.

Don’t wait for Biden to protect your hard-earned money.  Talk to a Republic Monetary Exchange professional today about a sensible precious metals portfolio.  Because in troubled times and in a currency crisis, nothing outperforms gold and silver.  


Seeing is Believing

You know inflation is higher now than it has been in the lifetimes of most Americans.  Gas prices have gone stratospheric, food prices are soaring, consumer confidence is in the tank, interest rates have home buyers and sellers angry, and a recession is knocking on the door.  

But there is nothing like seeing it in living color and in motion graphics!  See for yourself!

President Biden seems to believe that his popularity has less to do with objective real-world conditions than with his staff’s ability to communicate all the wonderful things happening under his leadership.  We know POTUS doesn’t pump his own gas or do his own grocery shopping.  So maybe someone ought to help him get the picture and show him this graphic!

As for the rest of us, those of us who do pump our own gas and do our own shopping, we’ve gotten the message:  inflation is not a matter of perception.  Pardon us if we protect our wealth and profit with gold and silver!


Ron Paul Says…

Fed too late, too little!

It was just weeks ago that Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said that raising interest rates 75 basis points at its June meeting was something that wasn’t under consideration.

BANG!  The Fed raised interest rates 75 basis points at its June meeting after all.  And it will likely do so again at its July meeting. 

But after 14 years of pumping money into the economy by the trillions, are a couple of interest rate hikes that still leave the Fed funds policy rate (now 1.50 to 1.75 percent) about seven percentage points below the inflation rate (now 8.6 percent), enough to do what Paul Volcker did 40 years ago when he drove interest rates to double-digits?  Is it enough to wring inflation out of the economy?

Can the Fed stop inflation with baby steps and halfway measures and thereby avoid crushing employment and throwing the economy into a recession?

Are we headed for a soft landing?  Or a crash landing?

Monetary authority Dr. Ron Paul says a soft landing is highly unlikely:

This latest rate increase will only raise rates to where they were before the lockdowns led the Fed to embark on a historic money-creating spree. The Federal Reserve cannot increase rates to anywhere near the level they would be in a free market because doing so would increase interest payments to unsustainable levels for debt-ridden consumers, businesses, and the federal government.

Increases of a couple percent or less in interest rates can cause big increases in federal debt payments. The resulting new spending puts pressure on the supposedly “independent” Fed to maintain low rates, making it more likely the Fed will fail to tame inflation but succeed in resurrecting stagflation, combining price inflation with a recession. This new stagflation will make the 1970s look like a golden era.

A lack of serious intent and pussy-footing approaches to today’s destructive inflation rates can only mean that inflation will persist.  And, as the stagflation experience of the 1970s showed, a persistent inflation is enough to power to unforeseeable new heights.

Dr. Paul points to another consequence of a coming bout of stagflation, one that we have called one of the most important monetary megatrends of the day: the ending of the dollar’s post-war reserve currency status.

Says Dr. Paul, “The return of stagflation will increase the growing movement to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency. This will be the final nail in the welfare-warfare-fiat money regime’s coffin.”

The preceding commentary is provided to encourage readers to assure that their gold and silver holdings are sufficient for the monetary turmoil ahead!


One Chart to Explain it All

(With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien and his famous line from The Lord of the Rings, “One ring to rule them all.”)

We have published this chart before, but it tells the story of gold’s rise overlaid against the dollar’s loss of purchasing power so completely that we present it again with no commentary.

 Okay, one little bit of commentary.  We just saw this talk, apparently to a Rotary Club, by the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Kentucky Congressman John Yarmuth.  

While the above chart displays the result of US monetary policy, in this you will see how the US ended up with $30 trillion in unpayable debt.  Here is a link to the 2021 video in which Yarmuth says that “We don’t really need to pay for Federal spending or debt. We are like the banker in monopoly,” he explains.  “We create the money.” 

And he’s the Budget Chairman.  

That explains a lot.     

We will leave matters there without any additional commentary.


Bidenomics Up Close

No Wonder People Are Buying Gold and Silver!

“Their need for mental health in America has skyrocketed,” says President Biden.

The people should always have mental health.  Of course, what Biden actually means is that the need for mental health care in America has skyrocketed.  

Actually, what the people need most is a break from the confusion and chaos coming at them from the top.  People always need clarity.  They can’t be expected to function optimally in an environment of deceit.  But deceit and confusion are coming at them at breakneck speed from Washington.

When you gas up this weekend, do the grocery shopping, or check your 401k, you might want to consider the words of Karine Jean-Pierre, the president’s spokesperson:

 The US economy “is in a better place than it has been historically.”

 She actually said that but she’s new and she’s like the old RCA Victor ad called “His Master’s Voice.”  She’s only expected to repeat what her masters say, so we won’t dwell on her.  

But the president is another story.  So today we turn to what Biden says about economic matters with the help of the great reporter James Bovard and a recent piece in the New York Post called “Debunking 10 of Joe Biden’s lies about the state of the US economy.”

You can read the entire list HERE, but we’ve selected a few snippets:

CLAIM: Biden boasted that he “put America in a position to tackle the worldwide problem that’s worse everywhere but here: inflation.”

REALITY: Were Biden’s speechwriters using “Common Core” math that makes all bad numbers vanish? Inflation is 8.6% in America and 5.4% in South Korea, 5.1% in Australia, 6.8% in Canada.

CLAIM: Biden continued blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for price hikes here in America.

REALITY: National Public Radio reported earlier this year that “between 2019 and 2021, the US saw one of the biggest inflation-rate increases in the world, behind only Brazil and Turkey.” Inflation had increased fourfold under Biden — reaching 7% — before Russia invaded Ukraine. Wholesale price inflation last month was almost 11% — signaling worse times ahead for US consumers.

CLAIM: Biden apparently thinks that public raving can restore confidence in his leadership. He literally screamed at the AFL-CIO audience: “I don’t want to hear any more of these lies about reckless spending. We’re changing people’s lives!”

REALITY: Federal Reserve analysts estimated that Biden’s deluge of handouts added 3% to the inflation rate by late last year. The Federal Reserve has boosted the money supply by 40% since the start of the pandemic, helping fuel price surges across the board.

CLAIM: Biden claimed that he had “created the greatest job recovery in American history. … Since I’ve become president, we’ve created 8.7 million new jobs in 16 months.”

REALITY: Does it count as a “new job” if it was “created” solely because politicians ceased prohibiting people from going to work? Almost all of the Biden “success story” is simply jobs returning from the pandemic shutdowns and disruptions. According to Statista.com, nationwide employment this year will be roughly the same level as 2019.

There is much more, but we think this makes the point.  If you had such confusion issuing from the top levels of your government, wouldn’t you be buying gold and silver for protection from the chaos?

We would too.


The Federal Reserve Clown Show

The dollar, like all unbacked paper and digital money, is a confidence game.  That’s why we are watching the Federal Reserve with horror.  Behind the curve doesn’t begin to describe it.

It’s a clown show!

It’s almost as if they are trying to destroy confidence in the dollar.  But whether they are doing it on purpose or just lurching about in their confusion doesn’t matter right now.

Consumer confidence is in the tank.  The University of Michigan’s consumer confidence index for June is at an all-time low, mostly due to inflation.

We don’t think anyone should be surprised.  Just weeks ago, chairman Jerome Powell scoffed at the idea of the Fed needing to raise interest rates 75 basis points (three-quarters of a percent).

Yet this week the Fed did just that.

That comes hard on the heels of former Fed head Janet Yellen explaining that she just didn’t really understand inflation.  But none of them do.  It’s as though Fed officials have never heard of the quantity theory of money – the more dollars they print, the less each is worth.  It’s as though they’ve never really mastered supply and demand.

So now while the American people are suffering pain at the pump and America itself is being decapitalized, the Fed keeps stalling for time.  Instead of taking serious measures, it hopes that inflation will disappear on its own.  For example, the Fed has said it needed to unwind its balance sheet, to undo some of the $8 trillion it has printed in the last 14 years.  But if it is important to do that, why are they stalling?  If it will help, why didn’t they start right away?  They have no sense of urgency.  They don’t pump their own gas.  They dine for free in the Marriner Eccles building dining room.  So now they are finally dipping their toe into the unwinding process but won’t really ramp up until this fall.  Mañana, mañana, mañana.  

While the Fed dilly-dallies, blood is running on both Main Street and Wall Street.  Inflation keeps ratcheting up, up, up.  Producer prices are rising at double-digit rates.  Mortgages rates have doubled, leaving both home buyers and sellers in a lurch.  And the stock market has lost $11 trillion already this year.  

It’s a clown show, that’s for sure.  Don’t be victimized.  If you haven’t moved a substantial share of your assets into gold and silver, it’s certain you will continue to be victimized by fiat, made-up, unbacked paper or digital money.  

The clown show will make you poorer.


Political Policy Confusion

The US economy “is in a better place than it has been historically.”

So says President Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre from the White House briefing room.  And we thought Powell and Yellen were confused.

It is said that a diplomat is a person paid to lie for their country.  But they can’t hold a candle to presidential flacks. 

Only a flack or a sociopath could look you straight in the eye at telling you that we’re in a better economic position than ever before.  Obviously, Karine Jean-Pierre doesn’t pump her own gas.  

 “We are in a good position to take on inflation,” she announced.  “We are in a good position to really start working on lowering prices.”

Right.  One of the reasons White House aides are so shameless in defending their boss is that he has switched gears.  He was blaming corporations and Russia for inflation.  Now he has switched to blaming his PR people for not doing an adequate job defending him.

But in any case, we don’t need to “take on” inflation.  We need the monetary authorities to refrain from inflating.  But it’s a little late for that.  The $8 trillion in funny money they conjured up out of thin air in the last 14 years is going to exert its cost.  

But if they truly believe the economy is in a better place than ever in history, why don’t they leave things alone and they can bask in their success?

Because, as we all know, the economy is on the verge of something very unpleasant.  You don’t have to be skilled at reading between the lines to know that they are ready to make everything worse.

Would you like an example?  Here’s one from the popular financial blogger Michael Shedlock:

Last September, 20 House Democrats introduced the Fossil Free Finance Act, which would require the Federal Reserve Bank to take steps to stop banks from investing in fossil-fuel production. The bill’s goal was “no financing of new or expanded fossil fuel projects after 2022,” the Naderite group Public Citizen noted approvingly.

Sticking with $5.00 plus gasoline, someone wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal called “Why Energy Companies Won’t Produce.”   Simple.  It’s because they expect the war on fossil fuels to resume when the current crisis ends.  Here’s a snippet:

President Biden has urged oil and natural-gas companies to ramp up production, and you’d think, given the current high prices, that it would be in their interest to do so. But the industry has been slow to respond, with some justification. Companies expect that as soon as the current turmoil subsides, the Biden administration will shift back to hostile rhetoric, anti-energy legislative proposals, and oppositional regulatory policies.

Just remember that the same confused philosophies, policymakers, and presidential appointees who have made a trip to the gas station a heart-stopping experience have been subverting the value of our money for a very long time.  

We say get out of their way.  Preserve your wealth with gold and silver and do it now.  Because the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost.

You need to own gold and silver because Washington remains as confused as ever!


How is Janet Yellen Getting Away With It?

Why is Janet Yellen Treasury Secretary?

They get away with it for a while.  Then when the consequences hit, they duck, bob, and weave desperately to try to avoid blame for their policies.

“Deficits don’t matter,” said Vice President Dick Cheney.  

That was in November 2002.  The national debt was $6.325 trillion.

Today the national debt is $30.420, almost five times the size.  How did it get so large?  Because of the accumulation of Cheney’s “don’t matter” deficits year after year.  

So, deficits decidedly do matter. 

Janet Yellen, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve insisted that rapid growth of the money supply would not lead to inflation.  The old verities about debt and money printing were outdated, she said.  So, inflation was “manageable,” “small risk,” and “not a problem,” she said.

No wonder the Fed created $8 trillion since 2008.  The old verities had been overruled by geniuses named Yellen, Powell, and Biden.

Except that now we have the highest inflation in most people’s lifetimes.  And record-high gas prices.  And sharply higher mortgage rates slamming both buyers and sellers.

So now that the inflationary cow is out of the barn, Treasury secretary Yellen is on an apology tour confessing that she did not “fully understand” inflation.

Then why should she be the Treasury secretary?

Yellen’s tune has changed.  “I do expect inflation to remain high, although I very much hope it will be coming down now.”

She hopes?  Do we get the foolish drug of “hopium” in the place of badly needed insight?  That’s Yellen for you.  Five years ago, she shared her hope for the rest of our lifetimes and her doubt that there would ever be another financial crisis:  

“Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis?” Yellen said.  “You know probably that would be going too far but I do think we’re much safer and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes and I don’t believe it will be.”

More hopium.  More ungrounded beliefs.

The truth is that inflation has been understood for centuries.  It is the destruction of the purchasing power of the currency.  

We warned you about it while the money printing splurge was going on.

Now there’s a hurricane headed your way.  Preserve your wealth from the mismanagement of our money by Yellen and Powell.  Protect yourself from Biden inflation with gold and silver.

Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional today.   Before the next shoe drops!


Biden Respects the Fed

We respect gold and silver!

We have the worst inflation in decades.  It is pounding the stock market.  It is whipping the bond market.  Mortgage rates are climbing fast to the dismay of both home buyers and sellers.  It is draining household budgets with every stop at the gas station.

And President Biden says the answer is to respect the Fed?  Who, pray tell, is responsible for the appalling state of our money, the US dollar?  Perhaps the monetary authorities, the Fed, might have something to do with it?  

And if not they, who?

Biden says that part of his job is to nominate people for the Fed and to “give them the space they need to do their job, not interfere with their critically important work.”  Indeed, it is Biden who reappointed Fed chairman Powell to a second four-year term.  

A bi-partisan Senate vote just last month confirmed Powell’s new term.  

That’s funny.  Despite his cluelessness about the advent of trouble — the US inflation rate was over 8 percent – Senators by a vote of 80 to 19 thought it best to continue entrusting our monetary affairs to Powell.  It reminds us Janet Yellen.  She admits she didn’t get it about inflation either – as she didn’t get it about most things while she was with the Fed – but that’s good enough for her to be US Treasury secretary.

Biden went out of the way to mention that his respect for the Fed is unlike that of his predecessor Donald Trump.  What did Trump do?   He sent some mean Tweets about the Fed.

Mean tweets?  Oh, my!

Congressman Ron Paul writes that presidents have tried to have a hand in monetary policy for a very long time:

It is hard to believe that someone who has been in DC as long as Joe Biden really thinks Donald Trump was the first President to try to influence the Fed’s conduct of monetary policy. Since the Fed’s creation, Presidents have used public and private pressure to “convince” the Fed to tailor monetary policy to advance their policy and political goals. When it comes to “demeaning” the Fed, Trump has nothing on Lyndon Johnson, who, frustrated over the Fed’s refusal to tailor monetary policy to finance the Great Society and Vietnam war, threw the Fed chairman against a wall.

By “passing the buck” on inflation, Biden no doubt hopes to deflect blame from himself and his party before the midterm elections. Unlike Biden’s previous inflation scapegoats — greedy corporations and Vladimir Putin — the Fed actually is responsible for creating and controlling inflation….

Treasury Secretary and former Fed Chair Janet Yellen and Chairman Powell have both admitted they were wrong to publicly dismiss inflation as “transitory.” The fact that the two most recent Fed chairs made such a huge blunder (or purposely refused to admit what was clear to many people for over a year), shows the folly of relying on a secretive central bank to manage monetary policy. Instead of “respecting the Fed’s independence,” President Biden should work with Congress to audit, then end the Fed.

The continuation of Powell and Yellen in positions of authority reminds us of the old expression that if you keep on doing what you’ve been doing, you’re going to keep on getting what you’ve been getting.

President Biden can respect the Fed if he wishes.  As for us, when it comes to money, we respect gold and silver.


American Gold Coin Sales Through the Roof

Investors are turning to Gold Eagles in the Bidenflation era!

Thanks to sky-high inflation, the US getting deeper into a European war, gas prices at all-time highs, and possible food shortages in development, Americans in big numbers turned to US American Eagle gold coins for safety.

In May, the US mint sold 147,000 ounces of American Eagle gold coins of various denominations, but mostly the popular one-ounce denomination.  That represents a 67 percent increase from April sales, and an impressive 617 percent increase from May 2021 sales totals.

So far in 2022, US Mint Gold Eagle sales have totaled 661,500.  That’s an increase of 40.5 percent for the same period in 2021.

American Gold Eagle coins are the world’s foremost bullion coins with more than 22 million ounces sold since 1986.  The US Mint describes bullion coins this way:

A bullion coin is an investment-grade coin that is valued by the weight and fineness of a specific precious metal. Unlike commemorative or numismatic coins valued by limited mintage, rarity, condition, and age, bullion coins are purchased by investors seeking a simple and tangible means to own and invest in the gold, silver, platinum, and palladium markets.

American Eagle Gold Bullion Coins are available in four sizes: one ounce, one-half ounce, one-quarter ounce, and one-tenth ounce. American Eagle Silver, Platinum, Palladium, and American Buffalo Gold Bullion Coins are available in one-ounce sizes.

To invest in American Gold Eagle coins and other popular gold and silver wealth preservation products, speak with a knowledgeable Republic Monetary Exchange advisor today.


How to Brace for a (Financial) Hurricane

“It’s a hurricane. That hurricane is right there, down the road, and coming our way.”

So says Jamie Dimon.  He’s the head of JP Morgan Chase, banking’s most influential figure.

“You better brace yourself,” warns Dimon.  

Now that you’ve heard from the C-suites, let’s go down to the field to see what they are saying.

“People don’t realize what’s fixing to hit them,” said Texas farmer Lynn “Bugsy” Allen.  “They think it’s tough right now, you give it until October. Food prices are going to double.”

From the high rises of Manhattan to rural Texas, the stagflation threat grows clearer every day.  Manufacturing employment looks to have already begun sliding.  Price inflation remains high.  

Food prices are taking even more of the household budget.

And the war in Ukraine, responsible for today’s higher energy prices, could send prices even higher.  Dimon says we could see oil soar to $150 or $175 a barrel.

The Wall Street Journal estimates that higher gas prices are already costing the American people an extra $2000 a year.  

Higher oil prices mean even higher food prices, too.  “They have no electric trucks delivering that food and there are no electric tractors,” Allen said.  “It takes diesel to run all this.”

So how do you brace for a hurricane?  You’re not a multi-national financial institution.  You can’t call loans to troubled borrowers.  You can’t just raise rates on hopelessly indebted credit card customers.  And you sure as heck can’t borrow money from the Fed at crony below market rates.  You’re probably not on the special list of those who get bailed out by congress, either.

So how do you brace for a hurricane?  Get out of the Fed’s failing money.  Just the other day former Fed chairman and current Treasury secretary Janet Yellen confessed that she had been wrong about the whole inflation thing.  “I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take,” she said. “As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy…that I, at the time, didn’t fully understand.”

Right.  There are only thousands of years of history regarding inflation.  People who knew that history knew we had an inflation thunderstorm headed right at us.  But Janet Yellen didn’t know.  Nor did Jerome Powell.

Now we have to brace for a hurricane.  

The best way to do that is to get out of the Yellen-Powell-Biden dollar.  Thousands of years of history teach that gold and silver are the best way to brace yourself for a currency crisis.

Want to know more?  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist.  Just don’t wait for the hurricane to make landfall!


Economic Pessimism Growing

Remember, the authorities can’t print more gold!

Gallup, the polling organization, tells us that consumer confidence has fallen off a cliff.  It lower today than during the worst of the pandemic shutdown.

In fact, consumer confidence has not been this low since the Great Recession with the mortgage meltdown and the housing bubble bust.  

Collapsing consumer confidence is a leading indicator of recessions.  

The problem today according to Gallup’s survey: High inflation and rising interest rates.  

Meanwhile, President Biden had a photo op with Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell on Tuesday (5/31).   It was a chance for Biden to make sure Powell and the Fed take as much of the blame as possible for our inflation crisis.  “I’m not going to interfere with their critically important work,” said Biden at the start of the meeting. “They have a laser focus on addressing inflation, just like I am [sic].”

Officials can pose and blame shift all they want, but Texas hedge funder Kyle Bass says there are two things that they can’t change.  “They can’t change the global supply problem for hydrocarbons, which has been based upon a decade of bad policy, and they can’t change the price of food.”

“We’re in a scenario where we have a stagflationary environment,” Bass said. “I think the economy’s going to cool off, I think we’ll have a recession by the end of this year or the beginning of next year.”

We take his opinion seriously.  Bass is the founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management.  He made half a billion dollars disregarding government economists like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.

We wrote about Bass a year ago when he was challenging the Fed to talk about transitory inflation.  The massive increase in broad money measures since Covid started, said Bass, rules out transitory.  “So, we’re going to see prices stay high, and move higher over time if the Fed continues to expand its balance sheet,” he said.  

The answer for investors is hard assets, according to Bass.  He is a member of the University of Texas endowment board and was instrumental in having the endowment invest in a billion dollars’ worth of gold.  Why?  Because, said Bass, the Fed cannot print more gold!

That sounds like something we’d say!  And in fact, we have said it over and over.

Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist today, for wealth preservation and profit.


A Simple Story: Gold and the Money Supply

Gold’s price trajectory is more reflective of the growing money supply than it is of the Consumer Price Index.

Although the CPI is widely reported by the popular news media, it is a lagging indicator.  It purports to reflect price increases after they have occurred.

The money supply is generally considered a leading indicator.  

The World Gold Council recently provided the following chart to illustrate the relationship between money supply and gold.

The chart reaches back to 1971 when the US severed the last remaining link of the dollar to gold.  Over that 50-plus year span, the CPI shows a compound annual growth rate of 3.9 percent.  The money supply’s compound annual growth rate for the period (M2) is 7 percent.

Gold shows a compound annual growth rate over the half-century of 8.1 percent.

Accordingly, we present a five-year chart of the growth of the M2 money supply, a broad measure of liquidity consisting of currency and coins, checkable deposits, travelers’ checks, and savings and money market deposits.  

Meanwhile, the Commerce Department’s personal consumption expenditures price index, the inflation index the Fed prefers to follow, dipped in April, rising 6.3 percent, off slightly from its 6.6 pace from the annual rate ending in March.  

As you would expect, the PCE and the CPI track one another fairly closely as this chart illustrates.

The Fed prefers to use the PCE barometer of prices, in part because it allows for consumers to switch spending patterns to buy lower price alternatives to those food items that have risen the most.  As a consequence, it is accused of soft-pedaling the real impact of price hikes.

By any measure, government price statistics can ebb and flow from month to month.  It is more important to be aware that the dollar’s purchasing power is continually eroding over time than it is to assume that a monetary crisis means that each month’s inflation figure needs to be higher than the month before.


wall street

More Losses Are Heading Wall Street’s Way

Grantham likes gold!  Superbubble expert sees more stock trouble ahead! 

If you think you’ve seen some blood spilled on Wall Street so far, wait until those losses double.  

That’s the warning from legendary investor Jeremy Grantham.

Grantham is co-founder and chief investment strategist of Grantham, Mayo, & van Otterloo (GMO), a Boston-based asset management firm. Wikipedia says that “Grantham has built much of his investing reputation over his long career by claiming to identify speculative market ‘bubbles’ as they were unfolding.”

We last cited Grantham in January when he wrote an important piece called, “LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN!Approaching the End of) The First U.S. Bubble Extravaganza: Housing, Equities, Bonds, and Commodities.”

As Grantham wrote then, “Today in the U.S. we are in the fourth superbubble of the last hundred years.”  Investors may have months – but not years – to take their profits and head for safety, he added.

It looks like Grantham was right again, with bubbles starting to pop everywhere.  

Now Grantham expects the losses we’ve already seen in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq stock indexes to double: “I would say that at minimum we are likely to do twice that and if we are unlucky, which is quite possible, we will do three legs like that and it may take a couple of years, as it did 2000.”

Whether it turns out to be mild or severe, Grantham said on CNBC last week, “we should be in some sort of recession fairly quickly and profit margins, from a real peak, have a long way that they can decline.”

“I think this kind of 2000 bubble that we had is dangerously likely to morph into the 1970s, where inflation is always a part of the background discussion and where growth rate starts to dwindle away.”

As you might already have concluded, Grantham advises that gold and silver are good safe harbors to counter inflation.

Learn more by speaking with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional.


From Gas to Hamburgers

Let’s take a look at the real-world experience people are having with inflation.

CBS News has found a handful of California gas stations charging $7.25 a gallon, more that the federal minimum hourly wage.  

The Wall Street Journal reports that US households are now paying an annual rate of $4,800 for gasoline compared to $2,800 a year ago. 

Something in the budget of an American household must give to accommodate $2,000 more a year for gas.  A survey by OnePoll finds that skyrocketing gas prices and inflation have more than half of the people, 56 percent, “extremely” or “noticeably” more stressed.

Never mind that.  The President says that high gas prices are part of our “incredible transition” away from fossil fuels:

  “[When] it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger, and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over.”

Now does that sound like an everyday American who pumps his own gas and is left stunned at the sticker shock? 

It was only a couple of months ago that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that government spending was not contributing to inflation and was “reducing the national debt.”   It was apparently from that peculiar economic vantage point that this week she offered up that, “In terms of inflation, so much is being done by this president, we have to make sure that public sentiment understands that.”

Speaking of the everyday American, what has inflation done to the price of a hamburger?  Take a look!

Along the same line, we caught a Yahoo Finance story that reports for the first time in decades the frozen food category is outgrowing the fresh food category.  It says that so far this year, frozen food outgrew fresh by 230 percent.  And so, the American standard of living continues to deteriorate at the hands of central bank inflationists.

Changing consumer spending patterns can also be seen in huge excess inventories that caught major retailers by surprise, and by the subsequent sharp sell-off of retailer shares including Amazon, Wal-Mart, Costco, and Target.

By the way, the OnePoll survey referred to earlier reports that on average those polled believe it will take them 38 years to pay off their credit card debt.  

We can’t do anything about the price of gas and hamburgers, but we can help you preserve your wealth and even profit in this age of inflation.  Contact us at Republic Monetary Exchange.  We have knowledgeable gold and silver professionals standing by to help you.


How Are They Going to Fix it All?

Here is a short list of some of the things going wrong.  It is not exhaustive.  It is just some of the things no one can miss:

  • Gas prices through the roof
  • Double-digit inflation
  • Mortgage rates running up and housing ready to topple
  • Consumer confidence in the tank, an important recession indicator
  • Americans losing trillions in the stock market
  • Unexpectedly rising unemployment claims
  • The US economy shrank in the last quarter
  • And then there is the little old matter of what The Economist calls “The coming food catastrophe.”

We know it sounds troublesome, but not to worry.  Washington knows how to fix it all.  It’ll just send $40 billion to Ukraine!  That should do the trick.

Where will it get the money to do that?  Don’t be a worrier!  It can just borrow the money from China.  China has already loaned Uncle Sam over a trillion dollars.  What’s another $40 billion?  Between friends?

And if China won’t loan it to us, Washington will just have the Federal Reserve print it up.  After all, the Fed has printed up $8 trillion unbacked dollars over the last 14 years.  Today it owns almost 20 percent of US debt.  Purchased with money created out of thin air.  What’s another $40 billion?  

Okay.   Enough of being facetious about all this.  We think a financial calamity is brewing.  And we do not believe the authorities know what to do. 

In our recent memory, the Fed said we needed more inflation.  Then it said inflation was transitory.  Now it says it will stop inflation.  Not only will it stop inflation, but it will also do so deftly, so smoothly that it will be called “a soft landing.”  Although they aren’t too sure about that last part.

We advise getting out of the way of this brewing monetary and financial disaster.  Protect your wealth with gold and silver before the authorities do any more harm.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional today.


Gas Price Déjà vu!

Another real-life indicator of our inflation calamity!

Gasoline prices are now over $4 everywhere in the country.  But California gets the award for being the first state to cross over $6 a gallon. 

Why are gas prices so high?  In a nutshell, it is because your US dollars don’t buy as much as they did.   

When people say this is the highest inflation in forty years, they are really saying that the dollar is losing purchasing power at the fastest rate in forty years.

There are other reasons, of course, for today’s sky-high oil prices, including a growth-killing Washington, DC war on oil. 

We have been through energy crises like this before.  In the early 1970s, when Nixon suddenly cut the last ties of the dollar to gold, foreign oil producers wondered why they should keep selling us their oil at the old prices.  After all, the oil they sold was produced at the cost of real capital.  It demanded costly exploration, expensive drilling and pumping operations, refining, and transportation. But the dollars they sold it for could be created in any denomination – just add a zero – at the cost of nothing more than paper and ink.  Indeed, these days it is all created digitally without even the expense of paper and the messy trouble of big printing operations.  

So, the OPEC producing nations warned repeatedly in the Stagflation Decade that if the dollar kept losing value, the oil price would have to move sharply higher.  And it did. The oil price shocks of the 1970s had a repressive effect on the US economy.

Today energy costs are just another burden on the slowing US economy, depleting the wealth and lowering the savings and discretionary spending of the American people.

Of course, the government could do something about that. It could get out of our own way in energy production.   It would quit trying to prolong the needless war in Ukraine and let Russia sell its oil to the people of the world at lower costs.   

Here is a chart of oil prices (West Texas Intermediate Crude) since Biden’s election on November 3, 2020.  Perhaps you will remember that on Inauguration Day, in January 2021, President Biden canceled the federal permit for the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.  Keystone was expected to deliver 800,000 barrels per day from Canada to the US.  

Returning the US to a stable and honest monetary system would help tremendously, too.  That would require a return to honest money that cannot simply be rolled off a printing press somewhere.

In the meantime, for real wealth protection in an age of monetary, financial, and resource confusion, speak with the gold and silver professionals at Republic Monetary Exchange.