At the Casey Research Summit last month, Chris had the opportunity to sit down with longtime precious metals investor and proprietor of 321gold.com, Bob Moriarty.
Right before their conversation, Bob had picked up a local Arizona newspaper and read an AP article titled "US Reliability Questioned Overseas" (the government shutdown was in full swing at this time). It discussed, among other concerns voiced by foreigners, whether continuing to rely on the US dollar as the world's reserve currency is prudent given America's political dysfunction and its debt levels.
Bob took this as one of a growing number of important data points that suggest the world public is beginning to wake up to the fact that the status quo may not be sustainable, or wise. By no means is this awareness mainstream, but it's notably more prevalent than it was 5+ years ago (to the point where it can be discussed openly in a small US metro newspaper). Bob feels, now more than ever, that sites like his, PeakProsperity.com and their 'alternative media' peer set can play a critical role in helping the world get to the "tipping point" of awareness that the system is not just broken, but needs a full reset - and to agitate constructively for it. In his eyes, returning to a sound, fixed currency system is an important place to start:
We know exactly what the weight of a gram is. And a gram weighs the same thing in the United States that it weighs in France and it weighs in Tanzania. We know exactly what the quantity of liter is. A liter is a liter is a liter, no matter where you go. We understand temperature and temperature is fixed.
Now, there are some things that in life that have to be fixed. If you are going to be a tailor and you are going to make a suit for someone, the length of a meter cannot change from day to day. Because if you made half the suit and then you went home, you had dinner, you went to bed, and you got up the next day, and they changed the length of a meter, and you are making the left side of the suit as opposed to the right side, the length of the sleeve would be different. It might be longer, it might be shorter, but because the value of the meter has changed, it would be impossible for you to make a suit that actually works.
Here is something I have never heard anybody say but everybody needs to think about: Between noon Monday and noon Tuesday, the value of the U.S. dollar on the commodities exchanges will probably change 10,000 times. Now, if a Martian flew to Earth and landed, and he was talking to you, and he said, okay, how do you measure length, and you say, well, we do it in meters, and it is this long, and he says, oh, that is cool; how often does that change? Well, it never changes; the length of a meter is fixed. And that way, everybody that makes a suit, makes suits with sleeves that are the same length. And he says okay, well, how do you actually measure the weight of something? You say, well, we use grams, and gram is the same from day to day, and people say that is cool. And the Martian says okay, I can see that that works. How do you measure something like water or gasoline or liquids? Well, we use liters. And the Martian says, okay, I like that; that makes a lot of sense. And he says, okay, what do you use for currency, how do you exchange goods, you trade things? And you say, well, we use dollars. And he says, okay, dollars; that is cool; how often does the value of the dollar change? and you say, well, between noon today and noon tomorrow, it will change about 10,000 times. The Martian would look at you and he would be convinced you had lost your mind. Because how can the value of a currency change 10,000 times in a day?
Now, that did not occur prior to 1970; currencies were relatively fixed. They changed periodically based on economic events, but currencies were relatively fixed. When we got off the gold standard in August of 1971, all of a sudden we had a currency system that changed on a constant basis. Now what I am telling you is, that is absolutely insane. And when you go insane, you have to regain your sanity and you have to come up with something that makes sense. The value of money should be fixed. And I argue that many of the political problems that we have, the political bankruptcy that we have, the fiscal bankruptcy that we have, the failure of our education system, the failure of our health system, the failure of our legal system, is all tied to having a currency that is not fixed.
We do not know what value is anymore. So we have lost our financial compass, and that affects a lot of other things. We need to have that restored. And to read in an average newspaper, a German newspaper is writing about America being politically bankrupt – something that I have said for years, people here at the conference have said for years -- but people are waking up to it. We are financially bankrupt, we are politically bankrupt. You can be a Democrat and you can believe the Republicans are the worst people in the world, or you can be a Republican and believe the Democrats are the worst people in the world. But what we have is total corruption in government. If you are the biggest supporter of Obamacare, there is a 99% chance that you cannot even sign up. Our government is in a state of failure, and we need to restart, we need to reset.
Click the play button below to listen to Chris's interview with Bob Moriarty (26m:39s):
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://peakprosperity.com/bob-moriarty-solving-our-national-problems-starts-with-sound-money/
