“The wealth of Moria was not in gold or jewels but mithril.” – Fellowship of the Ring
Steel suppliers are facing high iron prices and low finished steel prices. They say it’s a terrible ore-deal.
What we call money was for the longest time gold. For . . . a long time, really. It has never quite been valueless and even jungle savages and pyramid builders (who had, I must remind you, no iPhones™ used it for trinkets because it was pretty.
But cash has gone to zero.
The phrase “Not worth a Continental” came about because the Continental Congress decided to print a lot of cash to fight the Revolutionary War. It worked, but the cash became valueless because they printed too much.
How bad was it?
Bad enough that a wheelbarrow of Continentals might buy you a loaf of bread, if the baker was using them to start his fire. It was a bad enough experience that the Framers of the Constitution tossed in the whole, “No State shall make anything but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”
Then we went to gold because the Constitution said so. Gold worked for a while. There was a reset during the Civil War with the National Banking Act, which made paper “greenbacks” official tender. Lincoln needed cash to fund the Union army, so they cranked up the presses again. By war’s end, greenbacks were worth about half their face value, and people grumbled, but hey, at least the North bankers won.
I’m in shape for that, though. I exorcise regularly.
Then in the awful year of 1913, the Fed® was put into place, and the monkey business began anew. Another currency reset, first for World War I, where they suspended gold convertibility to print for the war machine. Huh. It’s like I’ve heard that before. When the value of the dollar started to increase in the Great Depression, Roosevelt came in and made owning significant amounts of gold illegal.
I mean, illegal for the plebs. Rich dudes could still own all they wanted, because, well, they’re rich. What don’t you understand about that, pleb? FDR’s Executive Order 6102 forced folks to turn in their gold at $20.67 an ounce, then he jacked the price to $35 overnight.
Instant 69% profit for Uncle Sam. Nice work, if you can get it.
Eventually, LBJ took all of the silver out of the money, too. In 1965, quarters went from 90% silver to clad junk, because Vietnam wasn’t going to fund itself. People hoarded the old real silver coins, and Gresham’s Law kicked in: bad money drives out good.
Finally, Nixon took the dollar off of the gold standard as a “temporary emergency measure” in 1971. Temporary, my foot. It was the final nail in the gold coffin, all because we were spending like drunken sailors on wine, women, wars and welfare.
Was there panic? Confusion? Market turmoil? Riots in the streets?
Nah. None of that happened at any of these currency resets. Partially because people are distracted. Back then it was Vietnam protests or bra burnings or Watergate scandals.
Despite the name, when I wore The Mrs.’, I couldn’t do any more than usual.
And, partially because people still had dollars to spend that were worth something, right? I mean, until the inflation of the 1970s hit. People adapted, grumbled, but kept chugging along because what else were we gonna do? Start a revolution over milk prices?
All of these resets, every single one of them, happened because the United States government (or its precursor) had spent way too much, had too much debt, and didn’t want to pay it. It’s the old, “Hey, let’s you and me split the bill. Half is fair right? I mean, I had the steak and lobster and you had a salad, so 50-50 works.”
Except you don’t get to object.
This confiscation is what gold (and silver) holders, real physical metal holders, now worry about: the government coming for their gold and silver.
I am here to tell you that will never happen.
Never.
What’s the zodiac sign for a donut? Torus.
Why bother with door-to-door confiscation when they can just make it painful to use? History shows they prefer the sneaky route. What will happen is, say, that .gov will tax people who sell gold at a profit at a huge rate. 70%? 90%? Heck, maybe 110% if they get creative with penalties.
And no one will care. Why? Well, rich people will have insulated themselves from this by offshoring those investments: think Swiss vaults or Cayman trusts. The tax will probably only apply to individuals (so those with corporations won’t care, they’ll just LLC their stack), and the people who don’t have silver and gold will think that anyone who had any silver and gold probably deserves such a high tax rate.
“Greedy hoarders,” they’ll say, while scrolling through their InstaFace© feed of dancing feminists.
That’s one way. What’s another?
Mandate reporting on all precious metal sales over, say, $100. Turn your local coin shop into a snitch for the IRS®. Or tie it to “anti-money laundering” laws, making grandma’s heirloom coins suspicious. It’s not confiscation; it’s just “regulation for your safety.
“You can sell your gold and silver. And dollars, even, into a new currency!”
And only into that new currency. This new currency will be great! We’ll call it a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). It’s like crypto, but now the Fed® controls it!
I have a friend who is half-Indian. His name is Ian.
What could go wrong?
Well, from the perspective of the Fed©, absolutely nothing. They can make your CBDC evaporate unless you spend it: like digital milk in the fridge with an expiration date enforced by big brother. “Use it or lose it, citizen!”
They can track every cent (oops) dime that you spend. Bought too much ammo? Flag. Donated to the “wrong” cause? Freeze. They can stop transactions they don’t like. “Sorry, no more red meat, your carbon score’s too high today.”
They can use it to create an activity profile: “John’s been buying survival gear again; better send the social worker. Have her bring cigars and scotch to calm him down.”
It will, of course, all be for your own good. It’ll stop crime. And money-laundering.
And those rich people! It will stop them. I mean, sure they’ll have the fancy estates in France and Bill Gates will own half of the farmland in the country and also own Picassos and Renoirs and Monets and Manets and a Chinese antibiotics manufacturer, but it’ll really get him.
Bill Gates caught a very strong STD: Herpules.
Us plebs? We’ll get the full surveillance package.
Boy, those rich people are sure going to suffer if we force them to use CBDC.
So, we can keep our gold and silver. It’s just a barbaric relic. And we’re awful if we want to keep it since it’s probably anti-patriotic or pro-colonialism (depending on who is in office) to keep the gold and silver, which should be safely stored.
In a Central Bank.
For your own good.
And the CBDC? That’s as good as gold. It’s not like the Continental at all. And, it comes with a new iPhone® app.
What a deal!
“we [the government] were spending like drunken sailors”
As has often been said: “At least the drunken sailor was spending his own money”
If they printed it, its their money.
Yes. What most continue to overlook is that Our Economy is not ours. Top to bottom, it does not serve the People, we serve it as labor and consumption – according to terms they cull from the sky just as they print money and moral imperatives and terms-of-service to keep us all chained to that mentality.
When Pammy says “why are you fussing over epsteen pedos when the DOW is record high”. When Trump says “congratulations america the market is record high.” When the agents of the marketplace print fake and gay metrics and then roll them back by 10x a few months later. When agents of the marketplace create new gibs accounts to “reward” you for having kids by printing another $1000 into a captured, managed account that keeps the ponzi going and some special people raking their fees. When “government waste” is a theater production to provide data bridge access and backdoor infrastructure controls. When “waste” is saved only to be spent 2x in some new necessary spend in dotmil or special people programs.
Everything in the MAGA2.0 production is designed to keep it all going on their terms. Maybe they jumped the shark. I dunno. Happy Days ran for 6 more seasons (of 11 total) after Fonzi jumped that shark. So…
Bingo!
Thats why you invest in booze. A bottle of Jack can be currency just like weed or cigarettes. Swiss army knives or Leatherman tools can also work.
And then the “aliens” showed up
First there was Contagion, now comes Disclosure Day.
Big 10 4 Sky
Blue Beans!
Today starts the Spring Based Book Sale. Hundreds of books by indie authors, all 99₵ or free, including a few of mine. Go check it out and pick up some good reads.
https://basedbooksale.substack.com/p/the-2026-spring-based-book-sale
I’ve scanned their offerings. More than half were written by women; many show black heroes/heroines; NOT ‘based’ by my metrics.
Not everything there, no, but there are a lot of good stories. I’ve read several books from the BBS and written reviews. Usually good, sometimes excellent.
https://zaklog.substack.com/t/based-book-sale
Nothing about the Lost Cause or the JQ. Children’s stories, unless we allow for potboiler fiction from H Ryder Haggard and the other ancient reprints. Easier to get from Gutenburg or the library.
How’s it going?
I sold a few. I picked up a few. Never going to get rich this way, but it’s fun.
Remember what happened to nickel in 2022?
https://www.warriortrading.com/nickel-short-squeeze/
What happened to nickel in 2022 is coming soon to silver in 2026. Instead of “Ukraine War cuts off Russian nickel”, this time it’s “January 1 embargo cuts off Chinese silver”
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/31/china-silver-export-controls-2026-us-economy-prices-rare-earths-critical-minerals-xag-metals.html
Buy as much silver as you can ASAP. I am.
https://justdario.com/2026/02/whats-next-for-silver-2022-nickle-but-on-steroids/
Yes keep the little hat spinning.
Silver will regain historical 17 to 1 ratio.
Real shortages wreck paper markets.
A clear signal for a silver crunch will be when electronics manufacturers are allowed / forced to go back to using tin / lead solder (lead free solder in electronics contains roughly 2% silver and the industry uses a lot of solder).
Russian radio manufacturers developed a solder-less assembly technique, when tin was in short supply: spot-welding the components together. It worked, in an era of vacuum tube electronics. I wouldn’t want to try it on surface-mount ICs. (But, on the other hand, the chips are all welded internally from the silicon to the lead frame, so maybe…?)
Lathechuck
Yup, that will be big.
Um, it’s not just silver and the entire economy that’s about to do a complete reset…
https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening
Wow!
Just wow!
Thanks for that AI analysis. It seems to me that, for anyone who’s job is “language in/ language out”, the AI LLMs can be a threat. There was news about how an AI wrote a whole new C compiler, in a new language (Rust), that was able to compile the Linux kernel. But I shrug: the ideas behind writing a C compiler are embedded in open-source C compilers already, and just because it takes a human brain weeks to grasp and implement them, doesn’t mean that this is creative work. Writing “an app” might seem impressive, if you don’t know how to do it, but if you have a thousand examples to browse through, maybe not that hard to gather the pieces that you need. Back in the 1950s, the task of transforming mathematical formulae into computer instructions was thought to be high-level intellectual labor; then came Fortran, and it was recognized as a mechanical process. Playing chess? Mechanical, if you have a big enough machine. My own experiments with AI showed that if I gave it specific terms to describe my problem, and it didn’t recognize them, it simply ignored them, and produced a plausible solution to a generic problem but not for my problem. A higher level of intelligence would observe that some of the provided data was not used in the solution, and let the user know that.
Lathechuck
if it puts 15% of the work force out on the street the empire is dead
There is probably a working AI Template for Phase I Environmental Site Assessments (ESAs), or there will be one soon. An ESA is a MUST for 90%+ of CRE loans.
Yes, a visit to the Subject Property & its surrounding area will be a must for verification and taking photos.
Overall, it’ll decimate consultant margins. Or, the lending institution might use AI to make a report after a qualified signatory does the field review.
My guess was that 60%+ of environmental consultants will be out of a job in 2 years. Glad I’m 72.
I spent 30 plus years doing Phase I ESAs, and I had the same thought after reading Sumer’s post on AI. I’m glad I’m 72 and sold my consulting business years ago.
Just saw a vidya on that after having read it. It’s catching fire.
When I first read, “Next Default, Gold, Bras, and Confiscation” I assumed you had a typo for Bars. Even with the comma. Granted I can think of much better illustrations than the bag of chips- or, at least things I’d much rather look at – but I had to drop the typo idea.
When I saw the headline, I thought it was “Gold, Brass, and Confiscation”… must be getting old and cranky.
Lathechuck
SNAP changes have lowered Dorito prices by 15% lol
Well, I could have done Gold Bras, but I’m not Dr. Goldfoot. I looked for a good one, but ended up with the chips giving away less.
-goes out to garage; looks about in toolbox; finds old saw and brings it back in; sits at keyboard-
“Gold and silver only have value when backed by lead.”
protected not backed
Bingo.
One of the things people forget in a managed economy, is that a second economy erupts, in which anything that has fluid value, (that is to say, it’s available, and moves through an economy well) despite all the prohibitions that a govt. can throw at it. Cigarettes were prohibited from being used as a currency in post WW2 Germany, yet for several years funded the underground economy so that people could obtain both necessities, and extras. A stable economy gradually killed that. In the future, I see gold and silver being used to buy whatever people want, in spite of a CBCD, as long as you’re “cool” with it, and don’t turn anyone in. You could probably get yourself killed for turning someone in.
Yup. Or ammo.
It will eventually end up as Barter Town. TPTB will huff and puff but even with a network of “See something, say something” snitches, people will still use junk silver coins to barter for needful things. Sadly, it is apparent to me and others we have been thoroughly betrayed and compromised by the Golden Golem and his minions. His true believers are still insisting he is getting bad advice from his inner circle. All that line of thinking does is explain that he is not of sound mind. And after that embarrassing, rambling monologue at the Charlie Kirk memorial, I knew we had been had.
Stay vigilant and focused. Identify all threats and issues in your A/O with local enemies. I cannot control what goes on in my state capital or Mordor-On-The-Potomac. Kill House Rules are now in place, as we edge closer to going full Weimar. No one will be coming to save us. Bleib ubrig.
Yes. We are on our own.