SGS Notes: Still a lot of chatter out there about a return to the gold standard… honest money… increasing investment demand for gold and silver in China and India… (What do THEY know that we don't?)

When Bad is Good; What is Money Anyway?

Dan Eden

Here's the REAL reason the US Dollar is shrinking... and will continue to shrink!

When you finish reading this article, you may change your mind about the war in Iraq.

I've written about extraterrestrials, HAARP and even the end of the world. So when Viewzone asked me to write about a boring topic like "global currency" I was inclined to say, "no way!" Heck, I can't even balance my checkbook. Money has always slipped through my fingers like beach sand. But I like a challenge, so here it is.

The information they gave me came from a brilliant investigative journalist, Rudo de Ruijter. It took time for me to digest what he wrote, and even more time to understand the importance of what he revealed. I must confess, I'm still shocked by what I learned.

This information is not new. International bankers and politicians know these facts all too well. It's the ordinary people -- the little guys like us -- who are told that these things are too complex for us to understand; yet it is because of "global currency" that we invaded Iraq, Afghanistan and, perhaps soon, also Iran. Sure, it's all about oil -- but not the way you think.

What Is Money?

At the dawn of civilization, the earliest way to get something that you needed was called barter. I give you a cow and you build me a hut to live in. But what if I want a tiny hut? Do I give you half a cow? Placing a standard value on goods and services was first achieved through the use of currency, or money. Almost every culture has money. Ancient cultures used everything from sea shells and beads to huge circular stones to buy and sell. Eventually, precious metals were used and more recently the standard currency has been based on gold.

The value of precious metal is determined by its weight. Instead of carrying chunks or nuggets of gold and silver, early empires made standard "coins" of the metals and set a standard valuein the marketplace. Coins were great for most transactions, but they were heavy and wore out your pants pockets quickly. Soon a new idea, paper money, was invented.

The original idea behind paper money was convenience. Each piece of paper represented a specific weight of a precious metal, usually silver or gold, that was kept somewhere in a treasury. If an individual wanted to, he could exchange the paper money for the gold or silver that it represented. It was all based on trust and a promise. In fact, the early paper money in America was called a "promisary note."

If you can find old dollar bills, you will read the promise written on each note. You will also notice that the notes are numbered. In this way, each note is unique and represents a corresponding weight of silver or gold in the US Treasury vaults.

On a global scale, when someone in America bought something from a foreign country, they would pay in US dollars. The foreign company would then go to their local bank and exchange the dollars for their local currency. When foreign banks had a surplus of US dollars, they would then exchange them for gold. This meant that the US Treasury was always needing to acquire more gold to replenish its vaults and maintain the "gold backed" dollars in circulation.

Prior to 1971 the dollars of the US were trusted all over the world. Each dollar was based on 1/35th ounce of gold, held in the US Treasury. The value of gold was fixed by law at 35 dollars = 1 ounce, so the value of each dollar was very stable. This made the dollar attractive as an international currency. But in 1971 this all changed.

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