If you haven’t been watching the open-market prices of gold and silver, I have two bits of advice for you:
- Check them;
- Don’t check them.
Advice #1 is for those with sound constitutions. Advice #2 is for those who are prone to fret.
The U.S. dollar may yet survive as a respected currency, but over a long baseline it’s not looking good. The experiment in planned inflation that’s been going on since 1913 has reaped a terrible reward. The gold-to-dollars and silver-to-dollars curves are beginning to go asymptotic. Given the availability of this data, I’ve begun to worry about mass disaffection from the dollar as a store of value. The more people notice the deterioration, the more people will notice. Then things get spicy.
The dollar, like all fiat currencies, is sustained by faith: specifically, the faith of millions that dollars will continue to purchase what they need and want. undermined. Faith is a deposit of hope in the truth of a given proposition. Events can undermine faith. When faith in a currency is undermined, we have financial panics.
With regard to financial panics, Robert Ringer quoted economist Gary North in How You Can Find Happiness During the Collapse of Western Civilization:
When a majority of depositors become convinced that a majority of depositors have become convinced that a majority of depositors are going to try to get their money out simultaneously, a majority of depositors start trying to get their money out simultaneously.
Why are all those depositors trying to get their money out simultaneously? Some have this reason: they can see that the purchasing power of their money is sliding ever more swiftly downward. Others have another: they see other depositors making mass withdrawals, and they suspect that those others know something they don’t. Those two motivations cause one another to accelerate. They bring about a panic.
Underlying the panic is a loss of faith in the enduring ability of the dollar to store value.
If a panic against the dollar is to occur in the near future, the availability of information that for many years was kept away from private citizens is the most likely trigger. The Internet has made that information freely available. More private citizens than ever before are making use of it.
As always in an approaching-panic situation, being among the first to act will confer a large advantage. This site is about the promptest and most reliable provider of regular information about the money metals and their dollar values. I check it regularly. I’d advise you to do the same. (Don’t neglect copper!)
Finally, for more of the whys and wherefores, review these pieces:
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