People love doomsday scenarios of all kinds: economic, societal, apocalyptic, zombie.

The world was supposed to end twice in the past few years. A Google News search of "collapse" will yield tens of thousands of results on any given day.

To hear the talking heads tell it... The dollar's gonna collapse. The Dow's gonna collapse. The U.S. is gonna collapse.

All of this, of course, is hyperbole — bells and whistles meant to grab your attention.

But what lies beneath these calls for crisis — the data, reasoning, rationale, and denial — is very real. Icebergs aren't as exciting as avalanches, I suppose.

The major price manipulation of gold happens at GLD and the Comex. For every $100 of paper gold they have to sell at least $1 of real gold to make it look legitimate. Harvey Organ thought they would run out real gold/silver by last Christmas 31/12/14 and the whole scam would collapse.

I think Comex and GLD are using proxies to buy up the real gold and then recycle it on the next trade so their reserves do not diminish, thus this suppression could go on for some time. With Shanghai being the new centre of gold trades this will change. So don't expect PMs to suddenly rise when a collapse happens as infinite money created by these Central Bankers still has the market very controlled.

http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/12/31/new-york-federal-reserve-signaled-end-dollar-near/

Dickybird,
<<Problem is that anything that can be created at no or negligible cost has by definition to be worthless – only Monopoly money.>>
False. Cost of production does not determine value. Supply and demand does.

<<Aidan - under your system how are you suggesting that fiat dollars can be changed into providing real permanent value which does not depreciate annually without fail ?>>
By controlling supply to match demand. However it is rather silly to prioritise their value as a store of value to such an extent that it compromises their effectiveness as a means of exchange.

<<Is it fair that some people, central bankers, have arranged affairs legally so they can create and manipulate economies any way they like ?>>
When the central banks are owned by, and accountable to, the governments of the countries they're in, yes it is fair.

<<Or have they unwittingly painted themselves into a corner from which the only escape is a major depression ?>>
A major depression would be the corner, not the means of escape.

<<Or will it be Weimar Republic inflation ?>>
No, that's an extremely easy problem to avoid.

<<The corner they find themselves is that they will lose all credibility if they continue printing money (a lot of credibility has gone already) but if they stop printing money the interest rate will go up, back to normal levels, and the recipients of all that stupendous amount of credit will be unable to pay and will collapse.>>
Fortunately credibility in your eyes is completely unimportant. The dollar won't collapse if they continue the current policy, though lending to governments to do something useful with the money would be far more effective in reviving the economy.

<<Either way we have to return to a system that uses as “money” something that cannot be created out of thin air (or thin plastic).>>
They tried to do that once before, and it caused the Great Depression! We have to never ever do anything that idiotic again.

Aidan – you are such a delightful optimist. You are prepared to run appalling risks to get the rewards you want but will not accept they are appalling risks.

Supply and demand. You are right, but when supply is costless the equation only works when you can pull the wool right over the sheeples eyes. Therefore this is valid for only a limited time

Next “central banks are owned by, and accountable to, the governments of the countries they're in, yes it is fair” Central banks are neither owned by or accountable to the elected Govts in the West. This is true in autarchies. Do you think this is the way we will be going ?

“The Weimar republic is easy to avoid” By Hitler’ methods ! Or would you prefer Mussolini just making the trains run on time !

“Fortunately credibility in your eyes is completely unimportant” Wrong Credibility is vital – this is the whole point. Fiat currencies are rapidly losing it. A quick example One US $ in the beginning of the century is I believe now worth about 75 cents. One Oz of Gold – valued in US$ is up very considerably. Gold valued as ‘value for exchange purposes’ has probably remained about level. I completely agree that QE could have been better invested see FDR’s TVA scheme or the Hoover Dam.

...the Gold system... “ caused the Great Depression! We have to never ever do anything that idiotic again”. It is inevitable that we return to a ‘money’ system that is not run at the whim of central bankers who are too frightened to penalize financial transgressors (aka Gordon Gecko etc) who over step the mark. Credit should only be created when it is for genuine increases in infrastructure/assets

Too many different scenerios to be of any consequence. Too much emphisis put on world banks. Even if goldman sachs owns the building that doesn't say they own the wealth it is worth.
Your explanation of why these stories don't reach normal media is as thin as a dollar note. I prefer my version of why this does not happen.

Havn't you ever asked the bank for a printout of your wealth. It is not hard to lose track of what you have. I would suspect that happens with gold bars stashed in someone elses bank. What makes their bank any more secure than their own.

All of these hyper predicionists have something to sell, and there is enough people that crave the sorts of words they print to be a best seller.

Dickybird – you are such a delightful pessimist. You are prepared to do appalling damage to the economy just to avoid phantom risks. 'Tis as if you're so concerned about the risk of syphilis that you're advocating the consumption of arsenic!

Instead of panicking, have a look a the actual causes of hyperinflation episodes:
•In the 20th century, many of them were actually CAUSED BY the gold standard! The danger of running out of gold means that far from preventing the risk, it greatly increases it.
• A related risk is suddenly having to pay back a foreign currency loan when you don't have enough of that currency. The gold standard is not the main cause of this, but by restricting the domestic money supply it does favour foreign currency loans (which are).
• Even without the gold standard, fixing your currency against another currency can lead to hyperinflation, as it did in Russia.
• The Weimar hyperinflation was caused by the lack of an effective taxation system. Once they introduced one, the problem was quickly solved.
• And of course there's Zimbabwe, where the government effectively declared war on the main export industry while discouraging foreign investment.

The only example that does not fit any of those categories is America during its War of Independence. Continental dollars were issued to pay for the war effort, but not only was there no policy to limit supply to maintain value, but the British flooded the market with counterfeits.

But unless there's a counterfeiting problem, the low cost of production is totally unrelated to the market value. Supply is driven by the needs of the economy, not the profit motive. The claim that "Central banks are neither owned by or accountable to the elected Govts in the West" is an outright lie. They are both in every western country with the arguable exceptions of the USA (where it's accountable to a government that wons the profits but not the institution) and the Eurozone (where national central banks can no longer print money and the EuroGovernment-owned ECB's technically accountable but insufficiently so).