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!
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)
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
Ask anyone in Germany what they associate with gold and, more often than not, they will say that it is synonymous with enduring value and economic prosperity. Ask us at the Bundesbank what our gold holdings mean for us and we will tell you that, first and foremost, they make up a very large share of Germany’s reserve assets … [and they] are a major anchor underpinning confidence in the intrinsic value of the Bundesbank’s balance sheet.”
- Jens Wiedmann, President, Bundesbank
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
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
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.
– Alexander Tyler, 18th century historian and jurist
And finally, one more chart about 2020:
