deserts of the really real - dark nights of the soul for precious metals holders?

8/10/2019 Deserts of the Really Real - Dark Nights of the Soul for Precious Metals Holders?

1/7

Deserts of the Really Real

Dark Nights of the Soul for Precious Metals Holders?

Pity if you will, the precious metals holder, consigned to a multi-year purgatory of

depressed prices that dont make any sense as a reflection of the current dismal

economic conditions in the western world. Everything they were led to believe about

the intrinsic value of their choice of wealth protection, in response to debt, inflation,and central bank market meddling has been stood on its head, as gold and silver have

continued their long slide down from 2011 highs.

In refusing to conform to what is - in the abstract defined by economists - their

natural function, gold and silver have not only defied and disappointed the

expectations of many an investor, but also have shown themselves to be as capricious

and unpredictable as every other part of a financial system where volatility, risk, and

performance have escaped the confines of their established roles.

It's crucial to remember here that we are talking about a financial system as a whole -

where those three qualities no longer give even lip service to their defined roles.

Neither gold, silver, nor any other asset have the slightest chance of avoiding the

transformations that accompany this new paradigm. As Christopher Cole wrote most

presciently back in 2012,


2/7

Modern financial markets are a game of impossible objects. In a world where global central banks

manipulate the cost of risk the mechanics of price discovery have disengaged from reality resulting in

paradoxical expressions of value that should not exist according to efficient market theory. Fear and

safety are now interchangeable in a speculative and high stakes game.(Volatility of an Impossible

Object- Artemis Capital Management Report - 2012)

Underlining the shock value of this seemingly counter-intuitive, reverse-alchemical

change of character is the very physicality of the substances themselves. In a world

increasingly weighted towards virtual, at the expense of real, the very tangibility of

gold and silver gave them a luster of concreteness and predictability which appealed to

the conservative investor. Not only form, but tradition as well weighed in their favor,

for those suspicious of the sustainability of a system ever and ever more detached

from real goods... for,

as Richard Cantillon famously put it in the C17th,

Gold and Silver alone are of small volume, equal goodness, easily transported, divisible without loss,

convenient to keep, beautiful and brilliant in the articles made of them and durable almost to eternity.

All who have used other articles as Money return to these as soon as they can get enough of them for

exchange.

But Cantillon lived and wrote in an era when banking had yet to become the sole

arbitrator of the fates of kings, emperors and countries. It was still possible to

imagine, in those times, that over all the affairs of men there stood a Divine

Intercessor, whose power to strike against errant moneychangers in the temple would

bar things from getting totally out of hand!

That Enlightenmentof Europe which followed shortly thereafter served to dispel such

archaic mythology once and for all, giving final carte blanc to private banking to usurp

the roles of treasury and council of state...

leaving in their place a convenient fiction of "markets" and "invisible hands" that

would serve to beguile enough anyone capable of asking after their departed traditionsof actualfree enterprise!

The entire residue of thought which went under the rubric of "political economy" for

the last two centuries has been displaced and rendered useless by the gradual

induction of the West into the Hegelian notion of dialectical synthesis - whereby two

opposites converge towards each other. Economists, political observers, and those


3/7

who have tried to educate themselves to understand how people can best work

towards their own real interests have all stayed totally blind to this project of bringing

"CAPITALIST" AND "SOCIALIST" systems into convergence.

In its essence this blending of false opposites will mean a kind of neo-feudalist society

wherein the top strata of operators have successfully convinced the rest of us to

abandon all notions of self-determination in favor of a managed existence that has

attributes hinted at by writers as diverse as Illich, Orwell, and Huxley. And as Cole

also presciently warned,

For the next decade this market is going to reward philosophers over students of business. Why?

Because the modern investor must hold several contradictory ideas in his or her head at the same time

and none of them really make any sense according to business school case studies.

What, you might ask at this point, has any of that to do with my stash of shiny?

Well, in the aftermath of 2008's banking crisis, and a whole slew of omens that

seemed to confirm every tenet of 'hard money' advocacy, gold and silver took off

skywards towards $2000. To the timeless attributes of the metals which Cantillon

enumerated there was added what seemed to be a very timely quality of being the

*right asset category at the right time!* So secure did this return to the *natural* state

of affairs seem to many, that the subsequent downwards direction was assumed by

many to be a very temporary blip in a bull market that had loads of legs left it. The

next three years would leave those persons in a state of befuddlement and/or

profound angst.

Some reacted by ditching their holdings, swearing never again to be burdened bydross of metal; others fortified their resolve by finding blame with the hidden hand ofmanipulation.Those few steady enough to hold firm, but explore for some kind of'explanation' of events that goes beyond the scripted, have been forced to rely on thetendentious counsel of persons who offer to sooth-say the situation, based uponreadings of charts, 'fundamentals,' or theories about developments in the wider world

which influence the stars and planets of precious metals markets.

Although it's eminently wise to upgrade one's understanding of how the shifting sandsof geopolitics may influence their situation, the precious metals investor who seeks todo so runs immediately into a problem of filtration. Which is to say, they are caughtin a tug of war, between media sources whose loyalties tilt towards their own vestedinterests, not those of their readers. While one element of the media-sphere seeks to


4/7

exaggerate any story hinting at the demise of precious metals as a store of value orprotector of wealth, opposing voices in the alternative media constantly play upanything and everything that can be spun into a suggestion of an imminent surge intheir value.

Where one might hope to find impartial witness to current events, and thoughtfulreprising of patterns of the past, what we get instead is a snack-pak of single-dimensional black-hat/white hat characterizations that work to conceal more thanthey reveal about the real nature of what is going on in the world! That art ofconcealment is the hallmark of the private banking system which has draped itself socompletely over our polity that we can now say with certainty that it is indeed as Cole

wrote:

While it may be natural to conclude that the real economy is slave to the shadow banking system thisis not a correct interpretation ... the higher concept is that our economy 'is' the shadow bankingsystem the Empire is gone and we are living ignorantly within the abstraction. The Fed mustsupport the shadow banking oligarchy because without it the abstraction would fail.

Put another way, just as trades in 'paper gold' are now said to outweigh those in'physical' by a ratio of close to 100:1, the hollowed out economy of a post-Greenspan

America operates on a similar ratio of fictional to real goods - in which environment,the 1% or so who hold some form of precious metals as investment should fullyexpect their relegation to ghostly apparitions of bygone times rather than attempt theimpossible feat of re-arranging perception to match their concept of 'reality.' After all,

there is no way of convincing the ferryman that you've been deposited on the wrongside of the River Styx unless one admits to being stuck there in the first place!

Faced with this endless carousel ride through a funhouse of distorted mirrors, thebaffled metals investor either succumbs to despair about their prospects, orcapitulates to intravenous feedings of a sugary concoction of data points designed to


5/7

keep them alivesort of. Locked into this shadow-world of neither quite life nordeath, thousands of these poor souls haunt the byways of the internet daily, searchingout, like the hungry ghosts of Buddhist legends, any crumb which can nourish theirhopes for one more day.

Replacing this carnival of souls with something that can bring back more equilibrium

into the lives of those who pinned their fortunes and futures on the only financial

asset with no counter-party risk is no easy undertaking. But as with any exorcism or

engagement with the spirit realm, the investigator so tasked must be prepared to peer

into the dim regions of the past, in order to interpret and influence the present. There

also, one finds many ghoulish forms of misshapen truth and shadowy distortionyetwith enough patience and diligent digging it is possible to piece together enough of

the puzzle to guide the soul survivor towards a happier state of mind...

even if, in this post-reality setting, one's actual* existence, as well as the intrinsic valueof

one's metal holdings is subject to open question!


6/7

It's with all this in mind that I've chosen to accept my fate as a kind of psychopomp**

and humble spirit guideto those benighted metal holders

of the western world resolute enough to work their way through the swampland of

inverted values, jungle of upside-down markets, and desert of the really real, in

transition to that place where the map and the territory once again correspond to oneanother!!

Yes, I warrant I'll be bold enough to come right out and say it! There is that happy

place somewhere on this earth, in a timeframe not completely out range for all but the

youngest of us! But it will not be found in the expected places, nor involve many of

the scenarios which have so far been painted by the eager seers of the metals sphere...

wherefear and safetycommingle, invade each othersprecincts, and even imitate each

othersattributes, few but the bravest will able and willingly march. Beyond hope or

despair, a golden horizon and silver lining still beckon they who dare pull down the

walls of the Potemkin Village of gold/silver media disinformation.

With this post, I'm initiating the journey - join me if you will!


7/7

*from Late Latin actualis, from Latin actus - to act

**psychopomp -guide, whose primary function is to escort souls to the afterlife, but

they can also serve as guides through the various transitions of life. The term

originates from the Greek words pompos (conductor or guide) and psyche (breath,

life, soul, or mind)

deserts of the really real - dark nights of the soul for precious metals holders?

Documents