# Think Tank > Austrian Economics / Economic Theory >  Still No Crash: Were Austrian Economists Wrong about the Dollar?  Robert Murphy

## IanCioffi

Source: LibertyChat.com

By Robert Murphy

Critics of the U.S. government often warn of the dangers of fiat money. Indeed, ever since the Richard Nixon severed the dollars gold backing (in 1971), many proponents of hard money have warned about a dollar crash. This has led critics of these gold bugs to laugh at their seemingly erroneous predictions and crankish views. In the present post Ill walk through some of the main issues in this area. As well see, the gold bugs may have the last laugh.

Under the classical gold standard, the U.S. dollar was convertible into gold at the rate of $20.67 per ounce. When FDR came into office in 1933, he took the dollar off this strict peg and confiscated the nations gold. (The famous gold depository at Fort Knox was actually constructed in order to store the gold stolen from Americans.) Eventually the dollar was locked into a stable convertibility ratio of $35 per ounce, which lasted throughout the Bretton Woods era following World War II. Under this arrangement, regular citizens had no right to turn in their paper dollars for gold, but other central banks could do so. The rest of the world was encouraged to use dollarsnot goldas their reserve, because (they were told) the dollar itself was as good as gold.

The huge government expenditures of the late 1960sincluding the Vietnam War and LBJs War on Povertycaused the Federal Reserve to issue new dollars in order to purchase the federal governments bond issues. In other words, it was the time-honored method of government turning to the printing press (indirectly in this case) to cover its budget deficits during wartime. Other governments began to get nervous, notably France, and began sending their dollars back to the U.S. for redemption in gold. This eventually put the U.S. government in a position of either slowing its monetary inflation (and hence cutting its spending), or abandoning its commitment to redeem dollars in gold. Nixon opted for the latter in 1971.

Read more

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## staerker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._United_States

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## helmuth_hubener

The Austrian who spent the most time and mental effort actually applying the insights and principles of Austrianism to the field of investing was Harry Browne.  And no, he wasn't wrong.

Other Austrians with more shallow approaches, yes, have been shown by reality to be fundamentally misguided and have lost people following their approaches a lot of money.

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## NACBA

*Austrian Economist and Gold/Silver Seller Peter Schiff is NEVER wrong*

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## dannno

I'll be bumping this thread some day and you will all be laughed at.

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## helmuth_hubener

> It will go up A LOT eventually.


 -- Dannno, Nov. 18th, 2013, 04:41 PM

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## acptulsa

The dangers of fiat money are real.  This has been proven over and over.

Whether the currency crashes or not depends on how hard the central bank runs the printing presses.  But history has never seen the fiat currency that didn't crash, at some rate or another.  And though the crash has been too slow to really be called a crash, the Federal Reserve's poor excuse for a so-called 'dollar' has lost some ninety-five percent of its value in a hundred years.  If it takes forty or fifty of them to buy what you could once get for one, has it crashed?

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## heavenlyboy34

> The dangers of fiat money are real.  This has been proven over and over.
> 
> Whether the currency crashes or not depends on how hard the central bank runs the printing presses.  But history has never seen the fiat currency that didn't crash, at some rate or another.  And though the crash has been too slow to really be called a crash, the Federal Reserve's poor excuse for a so-called 'dollar' has lost some ninety-five percent of its value in a hundred years.  If it takes forty or fifty of them to buy what you could once get for one, has it crashed?


Gold is fiat too.  The only way out of this situation is separation of economy and state.  IIRC, RP introduced a freedom of currency act some years ago.  That's one congressional measure I wouldn't mind.

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## presence

> Gold is fiat too.


ummm??

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## heavenlyboy34

> ummm??


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

I suppose i should be more specific-when used as a government-issued exchange medium (which most gold-standard types advocate, in my experience), it is fiat.  When market actors choose gold voluntarily, it can be looked at as "money" or "barter", depending on context.

ETA: one of my biggest peeves WRT the classical liberal/Constitutionalist wing of the liberty movement at large is they don't "get" why money ought not be a government business.

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## helmuth_hubener

> Gold is fiat too.


OK, you go on and explain yourself in post #10, and I definitely agree with you that money and state should be separated.  Creating, maintaining, valuing, and doing everything else in regards to money should just be done by free people in a free market.  Free Market Money FTW! as you'd put it.

But still, this statement makes no sense.  It makes no sense to me, and I don't think it would to anyone else, and I don't think that it communicates what you intended it to.  "I do not think that word means what you think it means."

Fiat = decreeing or creating something arbitrarily.  The totally arbitrary nature of the act, not constrained nor based upon anything else, is what makes it fiat.  A fiat parental rule is what it is "because I said so."  Fiat money is money "because I said so," and there can be as much or as little as I happen to say so.  Gold is not fiat like that.  Gold's existence or non-existence is not arbitrary.  It can't be poofed into existence by the decree of any government, nor of anyone else.

So, I would not say that gold is fiat.  A government gold standard is, I suppose, decreed by the government, but the gold itself is not fiat.  It is not brought about nor controlled by any kind of fiat.  Unless you are selling a Fiat for gold, in which case the Fiat would bring the gold about to your hand.

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## helmuth_hubener

Or perhaps driving a Fiat for Uber, in which case the gold you made from the gig would be Uber-Fiat gold.

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## Ronin Truth

Not wrong, just early.

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## DamianTV

Market Crashes are appearing to be more and more cyclical.  About 5 to 8 years between, roughly.  I think we are right on track for another Economic Collapse which will be at least as bad as the "Great Recession" but expect it to be much much worse.  If things were getting better, then the Quality of Life would go up world wide, and Misery Index would be dropping like a Lead Brick.

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## dannno

> -- Dannno, Nov. 18th, 2013, 04:41 PM


What exactly did you think I meant by eventually?  Why do you keep acting like just because it hasn't happen yet, it won't? What is logical about that?

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## TheCount

> I'll be bumping this thread some day and you will all be laughed at.

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## acptulsa

> Gold is fiat too.


LOLOL

Yeah, 'cause you couldn't find a soul to pay something north of fifteen hundred an ounce for the stuff if Congress didn't demand we use it for all debts, public and private.

Oh, wait...

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## Bastiat's The Law

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money
> 
> I suppose i should be more specific-when used as a government-issued exchange medium (which most gold-standard types advocate, in my experience), it is fiat.  When market actors choose gold voluntarily, it can be looked at as "money" or "barter", depending on context.
> 
> ETA: one of my biggest peeves WRT the classical liberal/Constitutionalist wing of the liberty movement at large is they don't "get" why money ought not be a government business.


Free market works everyone else, why not money?

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## The Gold Standard

Technically, any government enforced legal tender is fiat money. People just tend to use that term for paper money because government fiat is the only way anyone would ever use it as money.

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## acptulsa

> Technically, any government enforced legal tender is fiat money. People just tend to use that term for paper money because government fiat is the only way anyone would ever use it as money.


No.  Fiat money is something that has no value whatsoever _except_ through government fiat.  What you're thinking of is 'official currency'.  That doesn't have the same definition as 'fiat money', technically or otherwise.

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## helmuth_hubener

> What exactly did you think I meant by eventually?


 I think that you meant: "I would like to take this conversation out of the realm of the practical and into the realm of the faith-based and disprovable."




> Why do you keep acting like just because it hasn't happen yet, it won't?


 I would never act like that.  That you think I would ever act like that (and indeed, that I am continually doing so!) just shows how profoundly and completely you have misunderstood everything I have ever written on this topic.

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## Ronin Truth

*“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” -- Yogi Berra*

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## Zippyjuan

Excellent article from Martin Armstrong over at Armstrong Economics (some others cite him here from time to time):

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/0...ts-confidence/




> All money is fiat if you define it incorrectly as intangible money rather than An arbitrary order or decree. *As long as money floats in value and it is legal tender meaning government accepts it in return for taxes, then it is not fiat in real terms.* The idea that money must be tangible also has no basis in fact. Money has been many things to many people. *The entire basis of money is you will accept something as money as long as you have CONFIDENCE that in turn someone else will accept it from you.*
> 
> TaxCollectorBar
> 
> *This idea that somehow gold coin is not fiat has been so misleading.* Here is a Roman tax collector gold bar because the government minted gold coins cheating in quality but refused to accept them in return for taxes. Thus, taxes were imposed based upon weight – not coins! Therefore, the gold coins of the day were not trusted and even government had no CONFIDENCE in them, which is why they were NOT legal tender (acceptable for taxes).
> 
> AesRude-1
> 
> Before “coins”  money was always various things in different areas depending upon what people valued. It has been primarily grain, precious metals (mainly silver as noted in the Bible and Babylonian law tablets), and bronze. Pictured above is Roman bronze that traded by weight in lumps before 300BC.
> ...


More at link.

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## helmuth_hubener

> Excellent article from Martin Armstrong over at Armstrong Economics (some others cite him here from time to time):
> 
> http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/0...ts-confidence/


 So much wrong, so much shallow misunderstanding there.

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## otherone

"FIAT" IMAGE OF A

SLOW-BOILED FROG

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## ThePaleoLibertarian

> *Austrian Economist and Gold/Silver Seller Peter Schiff is NEVER wrong*


Peter Schiff is not an economist, and hasn't really done the Austrians any favors with his apocalyptic predictions. It's a shame that people feel entitled to dismiss the Austrians because of Schiff's wrong predictions, and this is coming from someone with a Chicago school perspective more than an Austrian (though fundamentally I'm a big-tenter when it comes to laissez faire).

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## NorthCarolinaLiberty

Crash not needed.  Death by a 1000 cuts.  US has been declining over 50 years.

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## osan

The answer here is that we have no idea what the future will hold in this regard.  This is due in large part, it not entirely, on the wildcard that electronic currencies represent.  With bits replacing bills, the money supply may be expanded and contracted at will and in matters of hours.  This was never before possible because once releases, paper cannot be so easily recalled.  But when you have the ability to magically increase or reduce the number of "dollars" (what a joke) freely resident in the world, all of a sudden the game is changed radically.  This is a fundamental shift in the control paradigm of the monetary order.

In ages past, once the king released his mintage, he effectively lost most of his control of it.  The coin of the realm could be hidden in any of a vast number of ways, or it could be spirited away or even changed form.  There is nothing from stopping a man such as myself, a trained and experienced gold- and silver-smith from melting down the king's coin and rolling sheet from which I produce works of value.  Such coins are lost to the king forever.  The salient point is that of control, which was never before within the hands of the king with "real money" as it has become with the phony baloney representations of money stored in computers.  Cyprus showed the world the possibilities when they unilaterally gave every account in their banks a 10% haircut.  They simply closed the doors to all banks, froze all the accounts, then merrily clipped and snipped until everyone was shorter by ten percent.  And the world got to see how easily it was accomplished.  It got to see that the people whose accounts had been raided had absolutely no recourse to this act of brigandry.

That was a great lesson to we, the people who purport to represent the human drive for liberty.  Yeah... right.  People stood idly and watched Themme shank them for 10%.  They did NOTHING.  Barely a whimper, and Theye laughed their asses off over $5K bottles of fine single-barrel whiskies and $40 cigars.

The human race, on the whole, is a sad, sad joke.  We talk our $#@! about freedom as we sit by waiting for someone else to make it real.  I've even watched it here - every "project" to which I have put my eyes in the respective posts has gone nowhere, accomplishing nothing.  What in hell is the point of all this?  I am all for discussing political philosophies and analyzing activity such as case studies of police brutality - but I will not longer call myself and activist because it is a lie.  Do as you please, but if all you are doing is getting Joe Schmoe elected, then I must insist that you are accomplishing nothing effective.  A few thousands of "us" moved to NH and what have they accomplished?  Damned nearly nothing.  The $#@! cops still hassle open carriers and others who exercise their rights.  There is still no "constitutional carry", and even so who gives a $#@! in the face of the endless litany of ways in which we have been reduced to slave status?  How about property taxes?  So long as they persist, not a one of you, nor myself, own the land on which we reside, and yet I hear no significant talk of end such nonsense.

How many more election cycles shall be needed before you realize you are wasting your time and that Theye are laughing at your pitiful self?  Will it EVER be acceptable to acknowledge that 800# gorilla sitting next to you on the couch?  Will it ever be acceptable to call a rose a rose?  Will it ever be acceptable to say that standing tall and employing murderous force against Themme is the only likely avenue that holds even the least hope of yielding a good result?  Seriously, why is it that people who claim to want liberty restored always decry those who say that it is time to take matters into our unequivocal hands and put those who trample us to their ends?  Why is that always looked upon as a non-solution?  Do you never wonder about that?

I can but wonder whether hordes of Theire lapdogs shooting us down in the streets would even prove sufficient to get the big talkers to get up and actually do something beside talk and attempt to appease.  It has come to the point for me that I am so sick and tired of the "liberty movement" and mostly of myself that I hope to see the worst befall us.  Let all those legalized Mexicans be drafted into the US armed forces, trained, armed, and ordered to subdue the gringo.  If that doesn't wake the people of this land to the harsh reality that stares them in the face this very hour, then we deserve the damnation that completes itself upon us.

Theye keep pulling the same tricks on us over and over and we keep falling for it.  I'm as full of $#@! as any of you and I am beginning to feel a certain burn on that account.

I suppose I must have gone bat$#@! somewhere over the past couple of decades because nothing I see makes rational sense.  What in hell am I missing?  I ask because I must be wrong.  I cannot be the only one seeing what I see and still be right.  $#@! a duck... maybe I just need to get old and die and be done with this lunatic race of which I am, now shamefully, a part.

What do you all think?  Am I cracked?  Need I be taken and put down?  This $#@! has me tired and bored to the point of tears.  My disappointment in myself and those around me (I mean the whole world here) is beyond containment.  There is no vessel large enough to hold it all.

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## heavenlyboy34

> The answer here is that we have no idea what the future will hold in this regard.  This is due in large part, it not entirely, on the wildcard that electronic currencies represent.  With bits replacing bills, the money supply may be expanded and contracted at will and in matters of hours.  This was never before possible because once releases, paper cannot be so easily recalled.  But when you have the ability to magically increase or reduce the number of "dollars" (what a joke) freely resident in the world, all of a sudden the game is changed radically.  This is a fundamental shift in the control paradigm of the monetary order.
> [...]is no vessel large enough to hold it all.


You win the internets, my friend.  The "Liberty Movement", as defined on these forums, is more about sloganeering and begging for scraps at the Emperor's table nowadays.  Long gone are the days when the radicals of the world dared to push back.  Now the radicals are silenced and marginalized by the "conservatives" and such.

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## heavenlyboy34

> OK, you go on and explain yourself in post #10, and I definitely agree with you that money and state should be separated.  Creating, maintaining, valuing, and doing everything else in regards to money should just be done by free people in a free market.  Free Market Money FTW! as you'd put it.
> 
> But still, this statement makes no sense.  It makes no sense to me, and I don't think it would to anyone else, and I don't think that it communicates what you intended it to.  "I do not think that word means what you think it means."
> 
> Fiat = decreeing or creating something arbitrarily.  The totally arbitrary nature of the act, not constrained nor based upon anything else, is what makes it fiat.  A fiat parental rule is what it is "because I said so."  Fiat money is money "because I said so," and there can be as much or as little as I happen to say so.  Gold is not fiat like that.  Gold's existence or non-existence is not arbitrary.  It can't be poofed into existence by the decree of any government, nor of anyone else.
> 
> So, I would not say that gold is fiat.  A government gold standard is, I suppose, decreed by the government, but the gold itself is not fiat.  It is not brought about nor controlled by any kind of fiat.  Unless you are selling a Fiat for gold, in which case the Fiat would bring the gold about to your hand.


Well, more specifically-a gov'ment issued "gold standard" is probably more specific and appropriate than "fiat" generally in this case.  Thanks for helping me clarify.  In the real world, PMs' value is determined by market actors.  

I'd also like to mention that value is everywhere and always subjective and arbitrary.  Hard money advocates _should_ stop using buzzwords and slogans like "intrinsic value".  That's a mega pet peeve of mine.

Indeed, Austrian econ, FTW!  I raise a glass to you, my friend!

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## HVACTech

> You win the internets, my friend.  The "Liberty Movement", as defined on these forums, is more about sloganeering and begging for scraps at the Emperor's table nowadays.  Long gone are the days when the radicals of the world dared to push back.  Now the radicals are silenced and marginalized by the "conservatives" and such.

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## georgiaboy

> ...


I feel ya.  We all do. Here's what keeps me going, and will for the rest of my life.

Two Words.  Ron Paul.

If he can do what he did for all those decades, fighting the good fight against such odds, so can I, especially, as compared to him, in my measly way.

Look at how long it took for him to see anything even close to fruit.  And look at how much the hockey stick has begun to tilt.  Worldwide.

Be ever hopeful, as he always was and still is.

Ultimately, we win.  Not a doubt in my mind.

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## HVACTech

Osan.




> If that doesn't wake the people of this land to the harsh reality that stares them in the face this very hour, then we deserve the damnation that completes itself upon us.


I understand your words. I struggle with them myself on a daily basis..
I have also recently witnessed the destruction of a family that I knew. gobbled up and destroyed by this very monster.
thus, I now can define my enemy, he is those who WILL NOT pay attention. and learn.
I do not consider this a very high bar in our days and times. 
what I continue to not understand.. is that my very narrow circle of friends. contains people who are VERY smart and clever.
why can they not employ this same intellect to the problem at hand? 
that they do not, or cannot see the problem both concerns and confounds me.

that is probably why I hang around this place. I felt less alone in reading your words.
thanks friend.

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## DamianTV

Wait until October...

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## cocrehamster

Looks to me like after making predictions of coming inflation for years Murphy is still telling the same story for why it is coming while making more inaccurate (so far, another ~7 months later...) baseless predictions. My question to people like Dannno is how long are you going to give them on these predictions? If you allow an unlimited time horizon then I guess they will never be wrong in your mind.

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## DamianTV

> Looks to me like after making predictions of coming inflation for years Murphy is still telling the same story for why it is coming while making more inaccurate (so far, another ~7 months later...) baseless predictions. My question to people like Dannno is how long are you going to give them on these predictions? If you allow an unlimited time horizon then I guess they will never be wrong in your mind.


Doomsday is always just Six Months Away.

The thing is, we know it is coming.  It is inevitable.  For many people, the stark reality is too harsh for their minds to grasp, and they go into a perpetual state of Denial.  They will hear what they want to hear, whether it is all the doom and gloom, or unicorns and rainbows, and will ignore anything that opposes what they want to believe.  Many many people are so hopelessly dependant on this existing system that they will fight to protect it because it protects "their" way of life.  What worked for them does not work for us.  A good education is supposed to be a path to a good job.  There is no good education and there are no good jobs.  But in order for them to maintain their way of life, the perpetual ponzi scheme that is our economy has to be fed new victims, us.  We have gone so far down that we couldnt contribute to their way of life even if we wanted.

A person can ignore Reality, but they can not ignore the consequences of ignoring Reality.

When everything finally does fall apart, people will no longer be able to embrace their Denial.  This is where it gets dangerous, because the next stage of grief is Anger.  This is when there will be Riots, but for all the wrong reasons.  People wont Riot as long as what they see does not threaten their means of continued existence.  If you wanted to start a Riot tomorrow, cut off both Pensions and all forms of Welfare.  This country will collapse in a matter of hours.

There is an upside to this.  Those who are aware of what is coming will have already dealt with their own inner turmoil.  Most people here will be well beyond the Anger phase.  Military grunts are instilled with a philosophy of "hurry up and wait", but it is rarely addressed why such a philosophy is embraced.  Hurry up and wait is nothing more than "be prepared".  Hence, why all the "Preppers" are being associated with nutters.  People that have already prepared for the inevitable collapse of this country will stand the best chance of survival.  Not only will they be physically prepared, but psychologically.  Everyone else will scurry around like rats that lost their precious cheese and begin to eat each other.  They will be so angry over having literally lost everything that they will place blame on the very first person that expresses an opposing point of view.  This Ponzi Paradigm needs to die.  Once it dies, then and only then, can we start to rebuild from the ashes of what was once the most powerful and free nation in human history.

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## Peter4Paul2016

Whether or not we see "Doomsday" in six months... There has NEVER been an Up market for more than seven years.  It's time for another recession.  That's just the cycle of the market... 

SOOO I believe that the instability of the market will begin to show signs in coming months - and as people lose confidence in the markets, precious metals will begin to move.  At current prices, I think one can conservatively estimate that they're positioned for profit as the market begins it's descent...

Gold & Silver Price Charts in Real-Time

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## Zippyjuan

Doomsday is always six months away. But when it comes, all will be forgiven and peace and tranquility will reign on the Earth for a thousand years.  There won't be any greedy bankers or corporations.  Everybody will be millionaires and everything will cost a nickel.  Unemployment will be a thing of the past. No governments to tell people what to do.  Everybody will be nice and nobody will be poor. Rainbows for everybody! 

But only those "in the know" who "prepared" will be saved.  They will not feel pain from the chaos.

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## DamianTV

Devil's Advoacte post.

What if we are wrong?  What if the economy doesnt crash and everyone ends up living the unicorns and rainbows lives?  What if people dont prepare for financial catastrophe because the idea of this paradigm shift is too difficult to accept?  What if I am wrong?  What if I got burned so many times in my life by the financial elite that I questioned the system itself?  What if the Financial Elite are wrong and the world really is headed toward a collapse?  What if Zippy took a step back and challenged his own ideas just to understand them better and concluded he was wrong?  What if Peter Shiff was actually wrong?  What if this was a Divide and Conquer tactic that splits us into two categories: Our system is a Ponzi Scam, and "it worked fine for me" and that creates Friction that keeps us from moving forward?  What if Doomsday really was six months away?  What if the broken clock just happens to be right for a change?  What if the Keynsian Economist supporters held on to an idea that in the end will only benefit the Financial Eliete?  What if Zippy realized he doesnt have to worry about us, but has to worry about the Financial Elite considering him to no longer be an asset and as a result, it puts his very life at risk?  What if the minds of the very people we are trying to save refuse to let go of the chains they revere because of some misplaced values that are not even their own?  What if I am wrong?  What if you are wrong?  Are we even asking the right questions?

What if I try to answer some of these questions?  What if we are all wrong and the world doesnt end in Financial or Nuclar War?  If we are wrong and the world doesnt end, then so be it.  But to answer the question, should not both possible outcomes be addressed?  What if we are correct and WWIII is right around the corner?  What if humanity is enslaved to the dominant will of the Financial Elite to such a degree that our suffering becomes eternal?  Which one of the two possible outcomes is the world we want to create for ourselves?

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## helmuth_hubener

> What if I am wrong?


 Yes!  That is exactly the question that I believe we should ask ourselves repeatedly and sincerely when investing.  Because, chances are: we are!




> What if I am wrong?  What if you are wrong?  Are we even asking the right questions?


 This should not be taken as a "devil's advocate" post at all.  This is wonderful, perfect advice to anyone trying to invest their hard-earned savings.




> But to answer the question, should not both possible outcomes be addressed?


 YES!  You may have just got across my point far better than perhaps I ever have.  "Preppers" all too often are "prepared" only for their specific scenario they are convinced will play out.  They have a set of futures in their heads that they are convinced will happen -- one kind of collapse or another -- and prepare only for that.  Instead, we should be balanced.  We should prepare for disaster, of course, yes, but we should also prepare for prosperity.  It's possible to *totally tear your life* up trying to prepare for the Apocalypse.  People do it!  It's a shame.

And from an investment perspective, it's too risky.  It will lose you money.

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## angelatc

> *“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” -- Yogi Berra*


Yes, but Ron Paul has always said that the field tends to make long term predictions, and not actually forecast timelines.    There's either some merit to that or it's akin to Jeanne Dixon predicting the assassination of JFK, in that she predicted a presidential calamity every election cycle for a couple of decades.

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## NorthCarolinaLiberty

> Yes, but Ron Paul has always said that the field tends to make long term predictions, and not actually forecast timelines.    There's either some merit to that or it's akin to Jeanne Dixon predicting the assassination of JFK, in that she predicted a presidential calamity every election cycle for a couple of decades.



It gets late early out there.

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## Vanguard101

Mark Spitznagel is rarely wrong

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## kfarnan

All currencies fail.  Currency is not money.  Fiat currency is not money.

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## Paul Or Nothing II

> All currencies fail.  Currency is not money.  Fiat currency is not money.


"Money" is anything that is the "most marketable commodity" in a given economy. So if people used toilet-paper in their exchanges to the extent that it becomes the most marketable commodity in an economy then that toilet-paper IS money.

https://mises.org/library/carl-menge...y-origin-money

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## wizardwatson

Austrians I think underestimate the Feds ability to monitor and mitigate catastrophic bubble damage.  There is a finite number of accounts and numbers.  It is not hard for a computer to "see" the model when every FRN account is wired into the central bank.

Currency death will be slow and painful if they do it properly.  Crack up booms I think aren't as much of a risk as they were in the days of Mises.

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## Ronin Truth

A 98% loss of purchasing power in 100 years and $200+ TRILLIONS in government debt, how much more of a crash do you need?

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## wizardwatson

> A 98% loss of purchasing power in 100 years and $200+ TRILLIONS in government debt, how much more of a crash do you need?


Well, everyone secretly yearns for the apocalypse, but God ain't gonna let no "event" steal His thunder.

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## Ronin Truth

> Well, everyone secretly yearns for the apocalypse, but God ain't gonna let no "event" steal His thunder.


*"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.  And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds." -- R.D. Laing*

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## TaftFan

I think Mike "Mish" Shedlock was right and Schiff was wrong.

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## kfarnan

> "Money" is anything that is the "most marketable commodity" in a given economy. So if people used toilet-paper in their exchanges to the extent that it becomes the most marketable commodity in an economy then that toilet-paper IS money.
> 
> https://mises.org/library/carl-menge...y-origin-money



Classicaly currency is not the same as money.

TP isn't: a store of value, fungible, durable or divisible.

http://www.preservearticles.com/2010...-material.html

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## TheTexan

Maybe there won't ever be another crash, because the Fed has mastered how to print $#@!loads of money while keeping it out of the economy.

Seems like a sustainable solution to me.

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## TheTexan

> sloganeering


I dunno, 'Stand with Rand' is pretty clever tho

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## TheTexan

> A 98% loss of purchasing power in 100 years and $200+ TRILLIONS in government debt, how much more of a crash do you need?


Yes but look how much our economy has grown, clearly and correlatedly as a result of that

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## kfarnan

> Yes but look how much our economy has grown, clearly and correlatedly as a result of that


Actually we were more prosperous before the fed was created and destroyed the economy.

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## Zippyjuan

How do you determine "prosperous"?

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## Danke

> How do you determine "prosperous"?


Able to keep what I earned/produced.  I know, a foreign concept for you.  Why are you here again?

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## Paul Or Nothing II

> Classicaly currency is not the same as money.
> 
> TP isn't: a store of value, fungible, durable or divisible.
> 
> http://www.preservearticles.com/2010...-material.html


"Classically", money hasn't always been what you're proposing it to be either! Things like salt, tobacco, coffee beans, seashells & what not have all been used as "money", given the primary function of "money" is to facilitate exchange of non-fungible products. Today, nearly everywhere, government-paper is most frequently used to facilitate exchange of non-fungible products so they are "money".

It goes without saying that gold & silver might serve better as money but as things stand right now, government paper IS money.

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