What’s All This Gold and Weiner Stuff, Anyway? - Part II

Way back in May, I asked the question: What's All This Gold and Weiner Stuff, Anyway?  when Congressman Weiner's office first started clucking their tongues and wagging their fingers about Goldline and other precious metal sellers.  In the intervening three months, the plot has continued to thicken - or sicken, depending on how you look at it.

Now is a good time to look at some of this again.  Why?  Unless you live under a rock, you know that gold has crossed the $1300 per ounce psychological barrier - and backed down - several times in the last few days, and the consensus of those who follow the yellow metal is that it is going to go up for the foreseeable future.  While the percolation of the daily market is always going to happen, it's hard to argue with a chart that looks like this:

Available daily at www.kitco.com

UK Finance writer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard comments on gold in his article "Gold is the final refuge against universal currency debasement".

States accounting for two-thirds of the global economy are either holding down their exchange rates by direct intervention or steering currencies lower in an attempt to shift problems on to somebody else, each with their own plausible justification. Nothing like this has been seen since the 1930s.

...

We have a new world order where China and India are buying gold on every dip, where the West faces an ageing crisis, and where the sovereign states of the US, Japan, and most of Western Europe have public debt trajectories near or beyond the point of no return. 

John Galt at Shenandoah has more direct way of saying what Pritchard says:

The Keynesian lie is about to die on its own sword as predicted by the charlatan himself. The only ceiling on gold now is the existence of Western civilization itself.

Back to the original question: what's up with Weiner and his congressional hearings?  Do you want his version or mine?  My version (this is my blog, after all) is that the Ruling Class is doing everything it can to keep you from buying gold and silver.  There's a saying among the gun culture that an armed person is a citizen, while the unarmed are merely subjects.  I maintain the same holds for independence from their monopoly on currency.  If you are able to use silver or gold for financial transactions, you're not dependent on them.  You don't depend on your welfare cheese and - far worse from their standpoint - you could be engaging in transactions that don't get raided by the IRS.  You're under their radar. 

"Gold investors (or speculators) are already punished by the federal government by having their investment, even in a gold exchange-traded-fund, taxed at the higher rates that apply to collectibles rather than long term capital gains.

Not to mention the fact that Mr. Weiner's regulatory push seems as much aimed at conservative journalists as at the gold-dealers. The press release says, "Goldline employs several conservative pundits to act as shills for its' [sic] precious metal business, including Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, Laura Ingraham, and Fred Thompson. By drumming up public fears during financially uncertain times, conservative pundits are able to drive a false narrative. Glenn Beck for example has dedicated entire segments of his program to explaining why the U.S. money supply is destined for hyperinflation with Barack Obama as president."

Don't forget the elephant brontosaurus in the room:  bond sales.  The Fed.gov leviathan desperately needs to sell bonds to keep up with their profligate spending.   If you're buying precious metals and keeping it in your house (or some other place that isn't a bank),  they're not selling enough bonds!  Ira Stoll at Seeking Alpha has some interesting points, too:

From the press release: "Under Rep. Weiner's bill, companies like Goldline would be required to disclose the reasonable resale value of items being sold." That's great. Are Mr. Weiner and Chairman Bernanke also going to agree to print on every dollar the reasonable expectation that its value will be eroded by inflation?

For sure.  So the way I see it, Rep. Weiner is holding these show hearings to make gold sellers look bad, to scare the dimwitted into more government dependency.  The self-reliant will be themselves and scoff at the Weiner show.