The Gold Exchange Report is Keith Weiner’s monthly commentary incorporating Keith’s unique insights into monetary science and economic theory. He riffs on markets, metals, macro and money.

Gold Exchange Report

Why a Yield on Gold Matters

Why a Yield on Gold Matters

To listen to the audio version of this article click here Picture, if you can, a world in which gold circulates as the medium of exchange. People pay for everything, from groceries to rent, in gold. Employers pay wages in gold. Productive enterprises borrow gold to finance everything from food production to constructing apartment buildings. […]

Transitory Inflation and Useless Ingredients

Transitory Inflation and Useless Ingredients

To listen to the audio version of this article click here Can you remember back to when you were two or three years old? Toddlers often think that there are little people inside the TV (or maybe this was only true when the TV was about as deep as it was wide—and maybe kids today […]

Gold 1, Bitcoin 0

Gold Scores one point against Bitcoin

To listen to the audio version of this article click here Coinbase, a publicly traded cryptocurrency company, recently announced that it will sell 1.5 billion worth of bonds (then revised it to 2 billion). Dollars. A leader of the crypto revolution is borrowing dollars. Without any awareness of the irony, crypto promoters say that this […]

How Do They Get Away With It?

How do they get away with it?

Picture, if you will, a government that deliberately inflicts bad policy on the people. I know this sounds crazy, and could never happen, but please bear with me. Suppose the government criminalizes hiring someone who produces less than an arbitrary threshold. Or it forces the closure of all businesses deemed to be non “essential”. Or […]

Where Does Your Profit Come From?

Where does your profit come from

To listen to the audio version of this article click here A few recent articles bring to the public’s awareness that wealthy investors are preferring not to sell their assets, and thereby pay capital gains taxes. Instead, they borrow against them, on margin. This reminds me of an experience I had some years back. I […]

What Trick did Tricky Dicky Pull 50 Years Ago Today?

What Trick did Tricky Dicky Pull 50 years ago today?

Sometimes, bad luck can strike. But other times, a catastrophe comes from a series of bad decisions, each the reaction to the consequences of the previous one. On August 15, 1971, President Nixon decreed that the US dollar would no longer be redeemable for the gold owed, even to foreign governments. This bad decision is […]

Moving from Gold-Redeemable to Irredeemable Currency

Moving from gold-redeemable to irredeemable currency

When we saw the following comment from a prominent otherwise-free-marketer, we knew it was time to write this article. “…the value of the Fed’s “liabilities”(which are so in name only) [scare quotes and parenthetic comment in original] bears only a very loose connection to the value of its assets.” This statement seems so simple. The […]

Condo and Currency Collapse

Condo and Currency Collapse

On June 24, the Champlain Towers South condominium building fell, killing at least 24 people. The collapse of this building provides a surprising number of insights into the collapse of a currency. The following discussion is based on information that is emerging about the incident. Some of the particular details we cite may later prove […]

Inflation or Lockdown Whiplash?

Inflation or Lockdown Whiplash

Mainstream analysis sees rising consumer prices, and looks for a monetary cause. Also, when it sees an increase in the quantity of dollars, it looks for rising consumer prices. It is a fact that the quantity of what the mainstream calls money (i.e. the dollar) has risen at an extraordinary rate. The M0 measure has […]

Resetting the Federal Debt

Resetting the Federal Debt

According to the US Treasury, the federal government owes $28.2 trillion. It crossed the “28” threshold on the last day of March. The debt was just under $25 trillion at the end of April a year ago. There’s no question it’s growing at a faster and faster pace, and now there’s the excuse of Covid […]