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Monday, November 23, 2009 at 09:35PM 
I note that Gold has a high of 1173 dollars an ounce today.
Readers may remember that back in May 1999, Gordon Brown took the decision to sell off half of the UK's gold assets at an average price of 276 dollars an ounce.
King Midas in reverse.
Gordon Brown 
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Reader Comments (14)
Each new day is good for a gold high. It's important to note why; it's not only that gold itself is rising in value, it's that government inflation is degrading the greenback's value. It's against gold that we see the effect of that inflation and many are buying gold because governments cannot degrade its value.
Governments, central banks and their lickspittle media mouthpieces are happy for it to be reported that "gold is rising" or that there was "another gold high" today but it's not really the case. The alternative is to tell the truth, which is that when government chips our coins it steals our wealth. Gold reveals that truth.
The point is that the dollar is degrading - and Americans are becoming visibly poorer - because of the conscious efforts of the government/federal reserve/Wall Street criminal cabal.
Indeed, Pete.
In fact, long-term, I often think that even gold ought not to be regarded as the ultimate standard for asset value; its price is more a reflection of its rarity than of its practical industrial use.
Americans are becoming visibly poorer - because of the conscious efforts of the government/federal reserve/Wall Street criminal cabal.
Very many Americans are not becoming visibly poorer at all. Certainly not because of the price of gold. Gold is trash, and I don't plan on buying any of it. Lenin was correct, it should be used to line the insides of urinals.
Tom Tyler -
Well, gold does have some industrial use, but yes its appeal is partly because of its rarity. The point of gold, however, is that its value is pretty constant over thousands of years.
Any commodity based only on an industrial application would be worthless when technology moves on and makes it redundant.
Phantom
Those would be cool urinals. Mind you, Gordon Brown has been performing a similar function in UK politicsfor some years now!
Phantom -
When McDoom deflated the gold price, by announcing a forthcoming garage sale of our gold stocks (what a genius), it went to $276/ounce.
Now you'd have to pay $1173/ounce.
Yep, you're becoming poorer.
Gold has not just gone up as expressed in US dollars. It has gone up a lot in Euro, pounds, and all the currencies far as I can tell
Its all fear of the unknown - understandable - but what has gone up will most assuredly go down if the world economy sorts itself out a bit.
It will never be zero, but it could well be way less than now. Plus it pays you no interest, etc.
Invest in Labour MPs. Hopefully they're going to become pretty rare next year.
Phantom -
Yes, as I said above that partly because investors are looking for a safe haven against all that currency inflation that's going on. It's easier to see the effects of fed inflation because gold is priced in dollars.
Not for no reason is the Bank of England(!!) pension fund heavy in gold.
Lenin's dream !
As a finite resource, gold has always been a reliable way of measuring and preserving a nations true wealth. Why else would India recently buy 200 tons of the 400 that the IMF are selling (I bet China takes the rest). Fiat currencies come and go (bye-bye, US dollar), but gold will outlast them all. Gordo's gold sale has, in some quarters, come to be known as, "Brown's bottom"!
As for Americans not getting poorer...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/11/16/ST2009111601621.html
"Nearly 50 million people -- including almost one child in four -- struggled last year to get enough to eat."
Says it all really...
The US only stays afloat because it is living on credit.
It can only do that because for so long it has been the world's leading economy and the US dollar reigned supreme. Backed up by a powerful economy in credit.
Everyone knows that if America's economy fails..we're all in trouble.
America is getting poorer and unfortunately, its influence is on the wane..
Gold is recovering its original and natural role: that of real money. Pieces of paper,mass-produced by profligate governments whose value is determined by the amount that the Rothschilds would be willing to lend that Government (i.e. its 'credit-worthiness'), are certainly not money and this will become more evident as debt in the western countries destroys the purchasing power of each currency.
Possibly a deliberate takedown of the dollar to soften for the Amero. Two intertwined phenomena here. The fall in the dollar against a basket of currencies and the rise in the price of gold against the same basket.
The dollar is falling against every other currency and commodity. The value of the dollar as numeraire is falling hence it takes more dollars to represent the world value of everything else-gold and oil etc.
Is gold an absolute standard of value ? No. The only absolute standard of value is labour time ie world socially necessary labour time. The value of gold is determined by the world socially necessary labour time in gold mining. All the gold ever mined comes to about 10000 tonnes with a small annual addition. Most gold doesn't change hands in a year and the price is imputed by the gold that does change hands. The gold price is determined by supply and demand of course and the gold price determines the profitability (including difference rents) in gold mining hence the supply of new gold. And the value of the new gold determines the value of the old gold.
I would like to see a return to gold as money and treasure chests too ! Fiat money created by fractional reserve banks on a monetary base created by the state is not unsound in principle but given the nature of real world government pirates then fiat money even at best will always result in an above zero, fluctuating inflation rate, and sometimes galloping inflation and hyperinflation . But a return to the Gold Standard would require a boom in gold mining because total world monetary gold is small compared to the size of economies and trade flows. And a boom in gold mining would benefit the Rothschilds and Oppenheimers (RTZ, Anglo-American) by pushing up the difference rents of the best mines (Allan@Aberdeen and myself wouldn't be keen on that ). Most of the money under the Gold Standard was wide money created by the fractional reserve banking system, bills of exchange etc with only a small amount of actual gold at the base. But the ability to demand payment in gold did prevent politicians from using the printing press to debauch the currency. And the Gold Standard didn't stop prices rising in a boom. But the discipline of the Gold Standard stopped governments from preventing prices falling in a slump. The relative stability of the general price level in the 19th century was largely accidental due to gold strikes, gold mining technology, economy in the use of gold as money. For example, at one time silver was regarded as sound money until silver strikes and silver extraction technology improved in the US in the 19th century and the world value of silver fell relative to gold and all other commodities. Creditors were most keen to have the US switch from the silver backing to gold backing of the dollar.
Ballooning national debts don't automatically lead to the fall in the value of money. Expected inflation rates are accounted for in nominal bond interest rates of new bonds so a creeping inflation neither robs bondholders or lightens the national debt. But when governments have created a debt several times larger than the national output they have an incentive to deliberately whip up unexpected inflations to inflate the national debt away.
I read it somewhere that the average real interest rate received on the whole of the western national debt throughout the 20th century was precisely zero !!