Mark Thornton: It’s a Very Rational Decision to Invest Against the Political Disorder

A very short podcast I heard recently from Mises really caught my attention. The analysis by Mark Thornton was excellent, but the part that really woke me up was hearing how many people are unaware that precious metals are truly the “smart money” during economic chaos. So, I downloaded the audio for this video to share with more than just his podcast audience.

Those who are considering physical precious metals should check out the four companies that qualified as truly “America First.” It shocked me after vetting out 31 total gold companies how many of them are donating to Democrats, working with the CCP, and/or embracing Central Bank Digital Currencies. These four are not.

Here’s the writeup followed by the transcript:

Mark discusses something bigger than the Disney layoffs: the Wall Street Journal‘s April 25 frontpage article on investing in gold. It would seem that the recent rise of the price of gold is the result of tired, dumb, and disillusioned crypto currency investors throwing in the towel to “chase shiny new object—gold.” Mark explains that the rational reasons for investing in gold loom larger than the entire

Hello, my name is Mark Thornton, and this is another episode of Minor Issues. Today’s episode was going to be about the Disney nightmares and layoffs, but that’s been replaced, so I’ll just say that this does not impact the hour employees at theme parks, so you won’t find them deserted this summer, and the layoffs will occur where the Austrian Business Cycle theory expects in terms of things like talent and content generation, capital building areas of Disney responding to higher interest rates and having to cut costs.

But today’s episode is replaced with an article from the front page of the Wall Street Journal on investing in gold. It’s quite comical, unfortunately, but it’s still great to see the Wall Street Journal forced to publish something on their front page about investing in gold.

It’s titled, “Weary Bitcoin Investors Chase Shiny New Object: Gold.” So all you tired and confused and dumb investors who’ve been putting your money in cryptocurrency have now found a new shiny object… making fun of today’s current gold investors. They say, for example, that in the old days, gold and silver, they were for old farts, but now gold is portrayed as safe and stable.

They point out that the searches for gold investing are way up. Sales of gold coins are way up, and the prices of securities of gold and silver investments are also gaining a lot of ground. But of course, don’t expect gold dealer Super Bowl ads anytime soon, and when you do see them, it’s probably a good signal that you might have to sell some of your gold.

So, they talk about gold being beautiful and shiny and very dense. You can melt it and recycle it. But those are really all the properties that made gold such a great form of money in the first place. We’ve been talking about investing in gold as a hedge against monetary disorder and chaos. And so we’re not surprised that gold is up over $2,000 an ounce right now.

And who can blame the market at that level given that central bankers are left wing, at least in terms of the United States, the Euro and the European Central Bank, and of course the Bank of Japan and many others. And then of course, we’ve gone through nearly a dozen years of zero interest rate policy, which had never been done before, and massive quantitative easing which had never been done before.

And so you get these, particularly US and European politicians and central bankers, they can’t get peace with Russia. They can’t cooperate with China. They can’t balance their own budget. They can’t control their own national debts. They seem to be very dysfunctional in a general sense and very disinterested in serving the economic interests of citizens in their countries, and that would include of course, also Russia and China as well.

But now we contemplate thrown into this situation a severe economic contraction, which is certainly possible. What does that mean if you have a foundation of monetary and government chaos, and then you add in a severe economic contraction? Well, of course that’s gonna adversely affect banks, finance, stock markets.

It’s gonna adversely affect government budgets. Revenues are gonna go down, expenditures are gonna go up, widening the deficits and increasing the interest expense of those national debts. And then of course, the potential for higher taxes and other crimes. And so when you look forward into that potential, what you see is the potential for much bigger bailouts and more monetary inflation.

So the interest in gold that people are displaying all over the country is not irrational. It’s not a second best choice, but it’s a very rational decision to invest against the political disorder, which politicians are fomenting, and the monetary and economic disorder, which central banks have been busy doing for many, many years.

About Mark

Mark Thornton is the Peterson-Luddy Chair in Austrian Economics and a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute. He is the book review editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and has authored seven books and is a frequent guest on national radio shows.