The most famous gold coins have achieved legendary historical status not merely for their precious metal content, but for the historical moments they represent, their artistic beauty, and the cultural significance they embody. Each coin carries multiple layers of meaning: The yellow metal has been a store of value, a unit of account and a […]
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The Moscow World Standard is a proposal by Russia to create a new precious metals pricing standard to rival the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) and the Commodity Exchange (COMEX). The argument is that the LBMA and COMEX are using leveraged shorts to suppress the price of gold. As a major exporter of gold, Russia
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The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 compelled the U.S. Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver per month. This was designed to support the falling price of silver and was one episode in a long battle in U.S. monetary politics between proponents of bimetallism and proponents of a mono-metallic gold standard. The Sherman
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Key Takeaways The Roman denarius was the most important coin of its time and one of the most famous silver coins in history. Its extensive circulation across the vast reaches of the Roman Empire demonstrates the success of silver as a monetary medium. According to numismatic history legend Kenneth Harl in his outstanding book Coinage
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The history of U.S. currency begins with the foreign money of the colonial era and ends with the fiat standard of the post 1971 era. The Federal Reserve Notes that currently circulate as U.S. currency only became the exclusive legal tender of the United States in 1971. Before that, the United States had a number
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Key Takeaways The history of fiat currency failures reveals a very predictable pattern. The government starts with a small issue of paper money, thinking that they will just use it the once. Then they use it a second time. Then another and another, and another. Soon they are addicted. The government eventually prints too much,
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Is Russia currently on the gold standard? Despite a lot of speculation to the contrary, the answer is no. In early 2022, in an attempt to defend the value of the rouble, the Russian Central Bank said that it would buy gold at 5000 roubles per gram. However all this meant was that the bank
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The classical gold standard was the monetary system of the 1870s to 1914. It is one of several different types of gold standard but is what is most commonly associated with the phrase. The world’s industrial powers defined their national currencies as a fixed weight of gold and paper money was freely convertible into gold
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Gold has a long history and has been used as money for several thousand years. While not formally part of the money system today, central banks still hold gold, giving it a proximate shadow status in the current system. Of all the elements of the periodic table, gold is the one best suited for use
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Gold is important to the economy and the monetary system because its existence on central bank balance sheets gives fiat currency the credibility that it has. Governments and central banks like to pretend that gold is unimportant and is a relic of the past. This is wrong. While we no longer operate on any type
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