Originally posted at SprottMoney February 21, 2017
Is 2017 even real? What kind of weird, fantastical twilight zone have we entered into? The world has been turned upside down and I will continue to point out the bizarre and unusual things that continue to be said and acted upon as we go forward. If past results are any future indication, then things are going to get a whole lot weirder.
Alan Greenspan, the "Maestro" of fiat money and one of the most prolific fiat money printers that the world has ever seen has entered into this bizarre alternative reality and is yes, now once again a gold bug!
To those of you who know your history, you will remember the following, wrote by Alan Greenspan in 1966:
"Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy’s tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government’s promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited. The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit."
This common sense statement, which was just a part of Alan Greenspan's larger work titled "Gold and Economic Freedom", would be brought up over and over again during his tenure as the head of the Federal Reserve.
It would be pointed to time and time again, to showcase just how far he had gotten away from common sense and to highlight that once upon a time, Alan Greenspan didn't just believe in money printing to infinity, he actually once believed in reality-based economics!
It appears, that either he has once again found "religion", or he was just full of it during his time at the FED and was only pandering to Wall Street, attempting to appease them. He did this likely for his own profit, as he is once again returning to his past beliefs.
In a recent statement he had to following to say:
"Investment in gold now is insurance. It’s not for short-term gain, but for long-term protection. Today, going back on to the gold standard would be perceived as an act of desperation. But if the gold standard were in place today, we would not have reached the situation in which we now find ourselves."
This comes on the heels of a previous statement he made in 2014, which was dismissed by many at the time, but now proves that he truly does believe in this ideology given his recent doubling down:
"Intrinsic currencies like gold and silver are acceptable without a third party guarantee. Gold serves a very important place in monetary reserves...
Why did Central Banks put money into an asset which has no rate of return, but cost of storage and insurance and everything else like that - why are they doing that? If you look at the data, with very few exceptions, all of the developed countries have gold reserves. Why?"
So there you have it. Alan Greenspan, one of the biggest money printers of all time, has grown a conscience. Sadly for him, it's a little too late for redemption. Perhaps he doesn't want to go down as one of the most sadistic money printers of all time.
Perhaps he would now like to correct the error of his ways and return back to the sound common sense principles his young self once believed in. For that, we praise him, but this will never erase the reckless actions of his past, of which the true damage is yet to come. The greatest collapse of our modern times is on its way.
