• 
• 

Published on April 4, 2008

You will learn the background of how we all became users of purely paper or fiat money due the end of the gold standard, how that money is not backed by a real asset like gold and how it is created out of thin air by central bankers.

The problems this then causes are discussed, such as how printing money inflates our economies and thus causes prices to rise. It is not the prices rising themselves that is inflation, but rather expansion of the money supply. Following are easily understood explanations of the debt situation of the US and the view of the future collapse of that currency and how that will have a knock-on effect on all of the other fiat currencies, including the pound and the euro.

The authors then offer solutions to this coming collapse. We will probably have to agree to a return to the gold standard to cure the ills of the financial system and to people buying and storing gold coins and bars to preserve their wealth. However, we will probably not have to agree to gold exchange-traded funds or "digital gold", in which you access your personal gold holdings stored in a vault by using the Internet as an electronic payment vehicle.

Things like put options may still be paper-currency-based, and even if you cash in on that investment, you will still be left holding worthless paper dollars, euros or pounds, and by then you will not be able to get your hands on gold; it will be too late.

If you want further reading about only the coming dollar collapse, then go for Richard Duncan's excellent "The Dollar Crisis" in paperback, because it has been revised and updated.

But a word of warning: think carefully about his suggested solutions.

Two excellent books on the history of the gold standard and fiat money are Murray Rothbard's "What Has Government Done to Our Money? And the Case for a 100-Per-Cent-Gold Dollar" and Ferdinand Lips' "Gold Wars".

That should keep you busy for a while thinking seriously about why you should be buying gold. Paper and fiat currencies have always failed and will do so again. Read these books and you will know why this is the truth.

The Nation