On Being a Good Neighbor

Pin down a ‘gold bug’ and you’ll discover that his real passion is for what gold represents, not the gold itself, and that passion is for HONESTY. With more than half the world’s known gold reserves in US Treasury vaults in 1950, and a dollar that was redeemable in gold to foreigners, America’s foreign trade flourished. We were on top of the world. Our government could sell their bonds, notes and bills of debt, all redeemable in gold at $35 an ounce, to foreign central banks which redeemed their US$’s turned in by their own citizens from their trade with Americans. Receiving US gold from the dollar exchanges was held as monetary reserves by the foreign central banks for the issuance of their own domestic currencies. 

Life was good. The whole world loved us – for our honesty.

But, then the Great Betrayal took hold. You know what that was. Korea, Vietnam, The Great Society, guns and butter, UN, foreign aid, and welfare aid to just about any “cause” you can imagine. In effect, Americans permitted a transfer of its wealth from those who earned it to those interests that didn’t. And, that is not HONEST.

Governments do that sort of thing. Always. It was never the government’s gold to begin with. The more Americans received as handouts from a beneficent government, the more they were re-elected. He who rewards a whining child with what he/she wants is a great Dad, isn’t he? Hardly. Family heads ordinarily expect a child to “earn” a special reward. On the other hand, the family is perhaps the only socialist institution that we can tolerate. It’s an institution whereby special privileges and awards are granted, seldom with the expectation that reciprocation is forthcoming from its children. A family is held together with love for one another. Only love is expected in return.

In the absence of “loving thy neighbor” we must expect some degree of honesty and accountability from him at the least. To say that the world is a “family” or a “village” of nations is absurd. They are our neighbors, not our lovers. To be a good neighbor, we pay them promptly upon mowing our lawn, or compensate them in some other way fairly for helping us construct our fence. It’s what neighbors do. You tend his dog and feed his fish while he’s away, and he’ll lend you his trailer when you want to pick up some supplies from Home Depot. You don’t have any sort of a ‘mutual defense treaty’, but an understanding that if one is threatened – outside of family matters – you would come to each other’s aid. But – hear this – this understanding does not extend to the neighborhood across town. We would in no way commit to come to someone’s aid for a purpose undefined. We want to retain our independence from harm for events that do not threaten our own well being. Life is really that simple. It’s the reality that’s complicated.

At Christmas time every year we give our mailman Morgan silver dollars. We don’t know what he does with them. Probably sensing they are worth more than a dollar, he tosses them in his dresser drawer. I do know that I get exemplary service from him each year though. Why? Because he knows subconsciously that silver is honest money. He’s not unlike a non-practicing Christian knowing that God exists, because his christian heritage roots run deep. My mailman has never lived when silver coin circulated as money, but because of America’s long experiments with sound money, his heritage roots tells him to hold on to the Morgans.

All of this has led up to elucidate that honest Americans are living under a dishonest government. How can a people professing honesty live under a leadership that they elect, but rule dishonestly? The answer is, they can’t. 

This is why Americans, up until now regarded as the most ‘honest’ of neighbors, must demand a full and complete physical audit of US Treasury gold. It’s not enough for our leaders to just utter a feeble “No!” when calls for selling off IMF gold to help anyone. We suspect that there is no real threat to the selling off “official” gold. The clamor is just a gong that the bankers bong once in a while as a threat and a reminder that they do, indeed, have gold. I say they don’t have it! There are solid arguments to be made that the US Treasury gold has now all been transferred to the private Federal Reserve System to satisfy the debt obligations contracted with the US Government.

Gold bugs should be clamoring for a full and transparent physical audit for the world’s “official” gold reserves, not pleading and whining “Oh, please Massa, don’t sell off our gold, I be good and use your paper!”

We need an honest accounting of our money to restore genuine free trade, not regulated trade, with nations of our own choosing.

This is what good neighbors do.

- – Bill Rummel