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Giving Cyprus (and the world) ideas about alternatives in money
1:14p ET Saturday, April 6, 2013
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
GoldMoney and Bitcoin magazine have made a 14-minute documentary from interviews of residents of Cyprus, whose money and wealth have just been pretty much yanked out from under them, inviting them to consider alternatives to the money they have been using.
GoldMoney's Alasdair Macleod concludes the video this way: "We want to invite people around the world to think of a better, more honest money system, a world in which invidivuals are free to choose their own currencies -- whether that is paper money, bitcoin, gold, silver, or something else, and in any combination. In a free society we hold the freedom of choice sancrosanct and value the ability to choose between multiple goods and services. Why should this not apply to money as well?"
... Dispatch continues below ...
GoldMoney Reduces Storage and Exchange Fees
From April 1 GoldMoney will be reducing by a third its storage fees on gold stored at all VIA MAT vaults to just 0.12 percent per year and halving the cost of storing silver with VIA MAT Switzerland to bring it in line with GoldMoney's silver storage fees at other vault locations: 0.49 percent per year as the standard fee and 0.39 percent per year for more than 50,000 ounces of silver. In addition, GoldMoney's minimum storage fee will be reduced to only 0.001 grams per month for gold, platinum, and palladium, and 0.001 ounces per month for silver. In April GoldMoney also will be simplifying and reducing its metal-to-metal exchange fees. For the full details of these significant fee reductions, please visit:
http://www.goldmoney.com/lower-fees-overview?gmrefcode=gata
Of course Macleod's question has an answer, if an unfavorable one: Freedom of choice in money imposes limits on government's power, and government isn't likely to cooperate with that. Money is a mechanism by which government exercises power; power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely. One uses government's money only at government's suffrance.
This lesson goes back to biblical times and beyond and was among the lessons Jesus himself taught.
And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, so that they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor.
And they asked him, saying, "Master, we know that thou sayest and teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest the way of God truly. Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no?"
But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, "Why tempt ye me? Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it?"
They answered and said, "Caesar's."
And he said unto them, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's."
That is, in part: If your money is government-issued, it's never really fully yours; it's government's. And if you're going to use government's money, government will be determining its value and terms of use, and so may change that value and those terms at any moment, expropriating those who have trusted in that money. Government-issued money is not reliable.
That may be a bit of a corollary to the British economist Peter Warburton's critical suggestion in his 2001 essay, "The Debasement of World Currency: It Is Inflation but Not as We Know It" (http://www.gata.org/node/8303), that the primary objective of Western central banking has become to deprive the world of a "stable numeraire," an enduring standard against which everything financial can be measured.
In the end the gold war is about far more than money. It is about the allocation of power between government and individuals, a war between absolute power -- totalitarianism -- and freedom.
The GoldMoney/Bitcoin Foundation video about Cyprus is posted at the GoldMoney Internet site here:
http://www.goldmoney.com/video/cyprus-a-wake-up-call-rethinking-money.ht...
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
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