The Long Run is Here
The dollar is failing. Millions of people can see at least some of the major signs, such as the collapse of interest rates, record high number of people not counted in the workforce, and debt rising from already-unpayable levels at an accelerating rate.
Total US credit market debt has hit a new high of $68.6 trillion at the end of 2017. That's up from $22.3 trillion a mere 20 years ago. It's a fairly good bet this isn't sustainable. [PT]
I am going to share a little bit about myself and my personal motivation. I want to help fix this problem. The alternative, if it's not fixed, will be a repeat not of 2008 or the inflation of the 1970's or 1929. It will be a repeat of 476AD, the collapse of Rome and the known world.
If it weren't for this, I would have started another software company. I had a successful exit, a world class team that was ready to jump into the next gig with me, great advisors, and access to capital. And this was the career for which I had trained, and which I was pretty good at.
Instead, I studied monetary economics and started Monetary Metals. We are on a mission. It is not simply to sell people on gold. When Rome collapsed, I suppose people who had gold may have had a better chance to escape, than those who didn't.
But where would they go, and how would they survive in a world gone mad? Some problems, gold does not solve. It is not simply to preach that we need the gold standard. If Mises did not persuade people, then I don't expect to be successful at the same task.
I think often about that (in)famous quote from archenemy John Maynard Keynes about debauching the currency to overthrow the capitalist order. And the key sentence is:
"The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."
He was right. He understood the system and how to destroy it better than everyone else. He was a genius-evil, but a genius. Except he overestimated the number of people who could diagnose the monetary disease.
J.M. Keynes and his book. One of his bon-mots when debating people who urged to forego short term oriented interventionism in favor of sound long term economic policy was that "in the long run, we're all dead" - but now the long run has arrived, and it turns out we're not all dead. But Keynes is, so unfortunately one cannot complain to him anymore. [PT]
So the key is to engage the hidden forces of economics, though not for destruction but salvation. The key is to make it profitable to invest in the gold standard.
In this talk at the Harvard Club in New York, I discuss more openly than I ever have before what is Monetary Metals doing, and why are we doing it? What is our vision, and how does it work?
We are in Keynes' "long run". We have achieved his goal of euthanizing the rentier (killing the saver) with near-zero interest rates. If his evil plan is not reversed, we are dead.
Monetary Metals is trying to reverse it.
Chart by St. Louis Fed
Chart and image captions by PT
Dr. Keith Weiner is the president of the Gold Standard Institute USA, and CEO of Monetary Metals. Keith is a leading authority in the areas of gold, money, and credit and has made important contributions to the development of trading techniques founded upon the analysis of bid-ask spreads. Keith is a sought after speaker and regularly writes on economics. He is an Objectivist, and has his PhD from the New Austrian School of Economics. He lives with his wife near Phoenix, Arizona.