James,
While I am sure that this has been covered here before, it demands review. I was searching for information on a “safe store of value” and I came across the following. On or about 1966, Alan Greenspan wrote a lucid note entitled, “Gold and Economic Freedom.” Greenspan’s essay ends with, “This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.” Awesome verbiage, for a change, from the Maestro. As a related follow-on, Gary North provided great commentary given Greenspan’s answers to Dr. Paul’s questions in 2005. In his replies to Dr. Paul, Greenspan, called on the Gold carpet, stumbles in a way that only he can. Summary: 1966, Gold is golden. 2005, What, me worry? Perhaps on a tangent, or for a biographer, how did Dr. Greenspan’s net worth change over that time period?
I urge readers to read the complete 1966 essay. It is short and unusually clear. The description of the events leading up to the Great Depression in light of today’s conditions is quite informative. I even learned that my initial search was completely in vain. Greenspan said, “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value [emphasis added]. If there were, the government [emphasis added] would have to make its holding illegal [emphasis added], as was done in the case of gold.”
So, there is no safe store of value [in dollars]. Easy, I went out and bought more quality ammunition. Then I picked up Boston’s Gun Bible and continued reading. James, thanks again for your hard work. – The DFer