Martin Armstrong Discussion

[vokain]

If things DO go really bad, if the Dark Ages (let's say little/no electricity for the moment), then Bitcoin ain't going to do the job!!  Yeah I know that BTC can still function at some level without an Internet, but, it will fail in actual use...

Nothing will work as money. Which is why it collapses into a Dark Age. Pray we don't go there

Bullets would be used as pointed out already. Though my personal preference is for the good ol' AK-47 7.62×39 mm round, useful in both cold polar and hot desert conditions (which are to be expected then). Guns are stronger than people overall, so we can be damn sure that if we sink into the new Dark Ages pretty fast, i.e. within one generation, there will be plenty of firearms around, at least for a few dozen years of their active usage...

After that we either turn back to arrows and bows or pull through the collapse

In North America, the 5.56x45mm is the more available/supported round, especially when supply lines get cut. Most 7.62 ammunition is imported.

[deisik]

If things DO go really bad, if the Dark Ages (let's say little/no electricity for the moment), then Bitcoin ain't going to do the job!!  Yeah I know that BTC can still function at some level without an Internet, but, it will fail in actual use...

Nothing will work as money. Which is why it collapses into a Dark Age. Pray we don't go there

Bullets would be used as pointed out already. Though my personal preference is for the good ol' AK-47 7.62×39 mm round, useful in both cold polar and hot desert conditions (which are to be expected then). Guns are stronger than people overall, so we can be damn sure that if we sink into the new Dark Ages pretty fast, i.e. within one generation, there will be plenty of firearms around, at least for a few dozen years of their active usage...

After that we either turn back to arrows and bows or pull through the collapse

In North America, the 5.56x45mm is the more available/supported round, especially when supply lines get cut. Most 7.62 ammunition is imported.

As far as I understand it, the 7.62 rounds are much more effective than the 5.56 mm ones at long ranges, so if you want to "reach out and touch" someone you would go for such cartridges. Size does matter after all. Anyways, there are quite a few local manufacturers in NA that manufacture both AK-47/AKM clones and ammo for them...

So that shouldn't be an issue

[vokain]

If things DO go really bad, if the Dark Ages (let's say little/no electricity for the moment), then Bitcoin ain't going to do the job!!  Yeah I know that BTC can still function at some level without an Internet, but, it will fail in actual use...

Nothing will work as money. Which is why it collapses into a Dark Age. Pray we don't go there

Bullets would be used as pointed out already. Though my personal preference is for the good ol' AK-47 7.62×39 mm round, useful in both cold polar and hot desert conditions (which are to be expected then). Guns are stronger than people overall, so we can be damn sure that if we sink into the new Dark Ages pretty fast, i.e. within one generation, there will be plenty of firearms around, at least for a few dozen years of their active usage...

After that we either turn back to arrows and bows or pull through the collapse

In North America, the 5.56x45mm is the more available/supported round, especially when supply lines get cut. Most 7.62 ammunition is imported.

As far as I understand it, the 7.62 rounds are much more effective than the 5.56 mm ones at long ranges, so if you want to "reach out and touch" someone you would go for such cartridges. Size does matter after all. Anyways, there are quite a few local manufacturers in NA that manufacture both AK-47/AKM clones and ammo for them...

So that shouldn't be an issue

You may be thinking of the 7.62x51mm round.

[deisik]

If things DO go really bad, if the Dark Ages (let's say little/no electricity for the moment), then Bitcoin ain't going to do the job!!  Yeah I know that BTC can still function at some level without an Internet, but, it will fail in actual use...

Nothing will work as money. Which is why it collapses into a Dark Age. Pray we don't go there

Bullets would be used as pointed out already. Though my personal preference is for the good ol' AK-47 7.62×39 mm round, useful in both cold polar and hot desert conditions (which are to be expected then). Guns are stronger than people overall, so we can be damn sure that if we sink into the new Dark Ages pretty fast, i.e. within one generation, there will be plenty of firearms around, at least for a few dozen years of their active usage...

After that we either turn back to arrows and bows or pull through the collapse

In North America, the 5.56x45mm is the more available/supported round, especially when supply lines get cut. Most 7.62 ammunition is imported.

As far as I understand it, the 7.62 rounds are much more effective than the 5.56 mm ones at long ranges, so if you want to "reach out and touch" someone you would go for such cartridges. Size does matter after all. Anyways, there are quite a few local manufacturers in NA that manufacture both AK-47/AKM clones and ammo for them...

So that shouldn't be an issue

You may be thinking of the 7.62x51mm round.

I expected that you would raise this question

Actually, it was you who said about that most 7.62 ammunition is imported, without specifying the case length, so I just followed your lead. Regarding the effective ranges for 7.62×39 mm vs 5.56x45 mm (the latter has longer range, flatter path, higher velocity) and which of these cartridges is better, this is an old question, and I don't think it is worth to discuss here. But I would still choose the larger and heavier bullet of the former for its effectiveness in the close range combat, for example, in urban area skirmishes (knocks people down better even wrapped in body armor or behind a wall). And still more so if you are in for self-defense

[iamnotback]

Those betting against Armstrong's computer beware:

Crude rallied during October reaching the $52 level. Yet for the close, it crashed and burned on the last day to AVOID a buy signal at $49.35 level. We bounced off the first Downtrend Line, which now stands at $51.86 for November. This is what I mean about the hidden order within markets. This has NOTHING to do with me making a great call or some personal opinion to pound my chest. There is something much more significant taking place in market activity. This is what our model simply allows you to see. The numbers are the numbers. It has nothing to do with me being personally right or wrong. The numbers will continue to be generated long after I am gone.

This is all about becoming a STUDENT of the markets. Getting back to our roots as true analysts to observe and ponder. Not to force something to fit a predetermined conclusion because that is what we would personally like to see. From Comey coming out on the exact day of the ECM to announce reopening the investigation against Hillary all the way to our computer forecasting decades in advance that 2016 would be the biggest spike in third party (anti-establishment) voting and having Donald Trump show up on time is all rather amazing to me. It has been my privilege to have bumped into this hidden order in the middle of the night. I never presumed such order existed. This order found me to reveal itself rather than me trying to prove there was some order I could not see. It happens to be a discovery of something extraordinary that connects and binds all of us together reflected through the price movement of markets, which is the product of human interaction on a global scale.

NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, takes place without a reason. The failure of oil to have elected that Monthly Bullish Reversal yesterday just as gold could not elect $1362 on a monthly basis and then crashed and burned to avoid the Quarterly Bullish Reversal in the $1340 zone, are subtle reminders that there is hidden order, which defeats the rhetoric of everyone.

[r0ach]

Precious metal bugs are irrational extremists, who are locked and loaded in their basements.

SOMEONE sounds jealous there are no basements in the Philippines to be locked and loaded in.

[sidhujag]

Nobody cares about Martin Armstrong since his BS call of 2015.75:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=martin%20armstrong

Yeh he continues to make short term predictions and mistakes.. i stopped reading now

[iamnotback]

Note @sidhujag has been added to Ignore for being a envious, blind, fool. I have clearly documented upthread that Putin invaded Middle East precisely on the day (Oct 1) of 2015.75.

Money has always been what people trust and have confidence in. This doesn't mean the metal itself, but as Armstrong has explained many times it was the stamp on the metal. Even when the invaders took over the Roman Empire, they used the stamps on the coins from the former Empire because it was more trusted.

Bitcoin (crypto-currency on a blockchain) enable trustless money, where we don't have to trust any authority. We trust the decentralized protocol. Now that was the ideal. Unfortunately Satoshi's proof-of-work centralizes and thus we end up trusting Gregory Maxwell and the Chinese mining cartel

I disagree that that trust in the case of hard currencies has anything to do with authorities and the stamp on the metal they make. In fact, in medieval times you could just grab a piece of gold and take it to the royal mint where you got your royal coins stamped for a small fee. This tells us that the stamp had rather a utilitarian function than an existential one. On the other hand, if it all came down to trust in authorities, there would be no case for Gresham's Law where you had essentially the same stamp but, nevertheless, different levels of trust...

Which wouldn't be ever possible unless you in fact trusted the metal more than the stamp on it as you claim

Sorry but if you have access to a lot of data such as Armstrong who has collected all the ancient coins (at enormous cost), you will come to learn that your understanding is factually incorrect.

Why did we build the largest coin collection in the world? Because coins are the documented history of the fiscal mismanagement of centuries of mankind. There is nothing that does not fluctuate even what is used for money.

The Mongols conquered China and maintained their monetary system. They honored the paper money in circulation and used that as the monetary base rather than coins.

The barbarians issued coins at first maintaining the pretense of the Roman Empire pretending that they now held the throne.

...the next target marks the end of the Roman Empire that formally falls in 476AD with the last real emperor. However, then the barbarians assume the throne for a brief period of time. They issued coins that appeared to be Roman in appearance. Effectively, at the end, the barbarians wanted to be Romans where as the Vandals just stripped even the copper from the roofs of temples in Rome.

The idea that money must be tangible also has no basis in fact. Money has been many things to many people. The entire basis of money is you will accept something as money as long as you have CONFIDENCE that in turn someone else will accept it from you.

This idea that somehow gold coin is not fiat has been so misleading. Here is a Roman tax collector gold bar because the government minted gold coins cheating in quality but refused to accept them in return for taxes. Thus, taxes were imposed based upon weight – not coins! Therefore, the gold coins of the day were not trusted and even government had no CONFIDENCE in them, which is why they were NOT legal tender (acceptable for taxes).

...

Early attempts at wage and prices controls always failed from Babylonian times right up to the Wage & Price Controls of Diocletian (284-305AD) who attempted to restore silver coinage AFTER the Great Monetary collapse. It did not matter that coinage was restored. CONFIDENCE still collapsed and the coinage was rapidly hoarded and vanished from circulation. So yes, even when the money is of full value, it still will not circulate if people do not BELIEVE government. Indeed, there was still another war and finally Constantine (309-337AD) emerged as Emperor after defeating all rivals. He enjoyed some success but had to abandon Rome and created a new Capital Constantinople and revised the monetary system again.

...

Government then began to stamp the image or badge of the city to impress people.However, the first city to “coin” money was also the first to discover “fiat” meaning the value is simply dictated by government

...

The whole reason people began to use banks was because the “money” could not be verified. Just because the coins were silver or gold did not mean anything. They could be debased, shaved, or forged. You deposited money in a bank and the bank CERTIFIED you were paying in “good” money. People did not want coins, they wanted the bank paper receipts. Like the moneychanger, the bank was certifying the transaction was taking place with proper value in “money”. Thus, paper money began in middle ages as receipts certifying deposits.

...

Ancient Egypt always had “fiat” money receipts for grain in public warehouses trading as money. They did not have any coinage until Alexander the Great conquered them in 334BC. Virginia also had the same system of tobacco receipts that circulated as money in colonial times.

China and Japan were the same. They never had circulating gold or silver coinage. This nonsense that money has to be tangible is NOT supported by the facts. Money has always been based solely upon what someone else is will to accept. Go to a WaWa or Starbucks and try to buy with a gold coin. They will not accept it. Hell, some places will not even take a $100 bill anymore and want plastic. If they do not BELIEVE gold is acceptable for payment or you hand them $1 in 1964 silver quarters to by a $5 coffee, you are out of luck. They will see it as $1 not worth $5. This is the real economy. MONEY is only valuable based upon what the OTHER person believes – not you!

It is NOT the fiat. It is simply CONFIDENCE. Bank and warehouse paper receipts have circulated as money for thousands of years. Even dollars under Bretton Woods gold standard were simply receipts redeemable in gold in international transactions. It was NOT gold that actually circulated. When people as a whole distrust government, then barter replaces official “money” and that can be a lot of things and the worse it gets the more likely it boils down to food. We have run every possible correlation and have the database to do so.

When Genghis Khan invaded China, which was using paper money, he too accepted it and did not devalue the paper money that was in circulation. He too accepted the paper money from the previous emperors.

By the time this economic implosion is over, you will PRAY for HYPERINFLATION. What we face is far worse. It is loss of everything with the risk of tanks rolling down your streets hunting money!

It has always been a confidence game. Those in power are constantly trying to boost the confidence of the people in order to stabilize their control over society. Above is a Roman coin from the tetrarchy period of Diocletian & Maximinus. The term meant “leadership of four” whereas there had been a chaotic period that spanned across 20 emperors whereby they came to power only to be overthrown by another. There was no political stability. The Emperor Diocletian sought to create political stability and established the tetrarchy where there were two emperors and two “Caesars” who were like vice presidents in waiting. The power of governing the empire was split and marked the end of the crisis of the third century.

You do not see hyperinflation in Britain or China despite the fact that both declined from major economic peaks. Money never becomes worthless in a major core society for if the core were to collapse then everything else must fall as well. Genghis Khan accepted the paper currency of China upon his conquest and did not render it worthless. It continued to circulate and he accepted it in payment himself. That is showing the Moguls wanted the dignity of conquering civilization and merely replaced the emperor.

Human nature does not change with time. It remains consistent and this is why history repeats. With the fall of Rome, the invading barbarians wanted to be Roman. Their rulers initially issued coins merely pretending to be the emperor. One of the great kings was Theodebert I (534-548AD) whose tomb is erected and still standing as if he too had been a Roman Emperor. Thus the invaders wanted to be the head of the civilization both in China and Europe showing confidence did not vanish, just a change in ownership and no hyperinflation.

The term ‘barbarous coinage’ of the 3rd century refers to imitative coins that are typically crude in style. Their origin stems from the use of Roman coins outside the empire and as a result there was a high demand that was not often met. Consequently, then shortage of official coinage was compensated by the strike of imitative coinage that was underweight, but there was no real intrinsic metal value. Like US dollars circulate in Russia and China, it is the confidence in the foreign government that provides the inherent value to the monetary instrument rather than the metal content.

Indian Ancient Imitations of Roman Coins

The peripheral economy with respect to the center core economy has routinely imitated the coinage of the dominant economy which is the financial capital of the world. In the case of India, these imitations of Roman coinage in gold are known as far back as the Roman Emperor Tiberius (14-37AD). These are imitations rather than counterfeits for the metal content is the same or at times even better. Pictured here is an Indian contemporary Indian imitation of a gold aureus of Tiberius (AV Aureus 19mm, 6.69 grams) copied from a coin struck at Lugdunum (Lyon) mint issue in modern day France which obviously made it to India.

Even your example is another confirmation that it is indeed the confidence the public has in the authority which drives the use as currency, because the public innately understands that power vacuum of society which I had explained.

You misunderstand Gresham's Law. The hoarding is for the melt value, not for the currency value. In fact, the hoarding is removing the currency attribute.

[iamnotback]

Precious metal bugs are irrational extremists, who are locked and loaded in their basements.

SOMEONE sounds jealous there are no basements in the Philippines to be locked and loaded in.

While you are enjoying boasting about how foolish you are, note that my experience of chaos in the Philippines has made me more attuned and realistic about the chaos that is coming. Whereas, you are overconfident and making the wrong decisions, because you have not experienced chaos first hand.

I will be realistically prepared. You'll be blindsided by reality because you are deluded by your comforts (and the comfy coin dealers which will disappear).

[iamnotback]

The USD is about to top and Gold is about to bottom. But shhh don't tell Martin Armstrong and his adepts 

Quoted so you can't erase this foolish statement. You will have egg all over your face.

[OROBTC]

...

We have started treading into monetary terrain that I have not been into before tonight...  So it's possible that the below has not been well thought-out, or is common knowledge among those more knowledgeable than I am.

Yes, I will agree that confidence of users of whatever currency is what makes it work (useful to transact with it vs. bartering).  Indeed there are many examples of paper (or linen) working just fine, even in difficult circumstances.  The fact that that has been happening since China before and during the reign of the Mongols is a good example.

The stamp on the metal became a dominant feature coins from Lydia (approx 500 BC).  The lion and bull obverse with the two rectangle reverse would likely have given confidence among users that the metals were indeed real, and so accepted.  Remember that most ancients were not adept at checking their metals for purity, etc...

I will also grant iamnotback something that I do not have: having lived through a genuine turbulent experience.  From what I read and hear, such experience DOES educate someone in certain realities...

*  *  *

Still, whatever Armstrong knows, there is a LOT that I do not.  And I still stand that there are so many scenarios out there that could happen that I cannot predict..., so part of my wealth is help in precious metals -- primarily gold.  Which is still retained about as much in Storage of Value now as it had way back when.

[r0ach]

Precious metal bugs are irrational extremists, who are locked and loaded in their basements.

SOMEONE sounds jealous there are no basements in the Philippines to be locked and loaded in.

While you are enjoying boasting about how foolish you are, note that my experience of chaos in the Philippines has made me more attuned and realistic about the chaos that is coming. Whereas, you are overconfident and making the wrong decisions, because you have not experienced chaos first hand.

I will be realistically prepared. You'll be blindsided by reality because you are deluded by your comforts (and the comfy coin dealers which will disappear).

No, I already know what happens.  Human population centers have always been built near the sea/rivers for food, trade, and to supplement farming.  When things blow up, there's an inverse relationship between distance to water and random killings (unless the population is too high for fishing to support - NYC).

[deisik]

Even your example is another confirmation that it is indeed the confidence the public has in the authority which drives the use as currency, because the public innately understands that power vacuum of society which I had explained

The authorities had been collecting taxes in gold coins, so the population had to use the royal mint to get these coins. The authorities had also been heavily after counterfeiters, despite their own constant debasement of coinage

You misunderstand Gresham's Law. The hoarding is for the melt value, not for the currency value. In fact, the hoarding is removing the currency attribute

No problem really. But you have to:

  1. Explain what exactly I misunderstood in Gresham's Law
  2. Give a correct explanation of it

You see, just claiming that someone doesn't understand or misunderstands something won't work. Gresham's Law is not about melting coins and it has nothing to do with the melt value. Basically, it says that people don't believe the nominal value of a specie set by authorities, which directly challenges your point...

Namely, that value of a coin is the stamp on the metal

[r0ach]

Nobody cares about Martin Armstrong since his BS call of 2015.75:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=martin%20armstrong

Yeh he continues to make short term predictions and mistakes.. i stopped reading now

It's pretty easy to tell why Armstrong is bogus.  All of his "capital flows" nonsense implies that we have an aggregate market when we don't.  It doesn't matter what the fuck "capital flows" are doing when even that TED talk big data analysis says we only have ONE BANK and that JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and everything else are just proxies for it.  That's why it's called a casino gulag.  A gulag isn't an aggregate market, it's a dictator.

The dictator is a permanent, impending black swan that can just flip a switch at any second of the day and cause whatever it wants to happen no matter what capital flows are doing.  It's the Ashkenazi-Khazarian mafia that's captured the media and banks at the heart of it all, and no form of technical analysis is valid without an aggregate market.  Yes, that's all the fuck Armstrong is doing.  He does not have a "magical computer", it's just plain old algorithmic TA.  Does he even have the best algorithmic TA in the world?  Probably not since there seems to be a whole lot of competition there.

The whole idea his "computer" is some nostradamus-like figure is ridiculous.  For instance, maybe his algo says when a country's debt reaches a certain, capital will shift from X to Y.  Maybe it would be accurate for America, but maybe when you apply it to Japan, it turns out the Japanese are more obedient and just buy the bonds to infinity even though they're setting money on fire on purpose.  There are too many variables for a deterministic, Nostradamus computer, and an aggregate market is also required, which we do not have.

[iamnotback]

It's pretty easy to tell why Armstrong is bogus.

...

The whole idea his "computer" is some nostradamus-like figure is ridiculous.

Ridiculous but already proven beyond any doubt to be true.

You can lead a r0ach to water, but you can't make it drink.

r0ach, please buy more silver. There is only one way for you to learn.

[iamnotback]

Even your example is another confirmation that it is indeed the confidence the public has in the authority which drives the use as currency, because the public innately understands that power vacuum of society which I had explained

The authorities had been collecting taxes in gold coins, so the population had to use the royal mint to get these coins. The authorities had also been heavily after counterfeiters, despite their own constant debasement of coinage

When you stop studying the bark and structure that comprises the forest, look over the tree tops. There is a huge billboard, "PUBLIC CONFIDENCE" that determines whether the forest exists.

You misunderstand Gresham's Law. The hoarding is for the melt value, not for the currency value. In fact, the hoarding is removing the currency attribute

No problem really. But you have to:

  1. Explain what exactly I misunderstood in Gresham's Law
  2. Give a correct explanation of it

You see, just claiming that someone doesn't understand or misunderstands something won't work. Gresham's Law is not about melting coins and it has nothing to do with the melt value. Basically, it says that people don't believe the nominal value of a specie set by authorities, which directly challenges your point...

Namely, that value of a coin is the stamp on the metal

I already told you that when the melt value (i.e. the value of the metal) is greater than the legal tender value, the coins stop circulating as currency. This is the definition of Gresham's Law.

On the other hand, if it all came down to trust in authorities, there would be no case for Gresham's Law where you had essentially the same stamp but, nevertheless, different levels of trust...

Which wouldn't be ever possible unless you in fact trusted the metal more than the stamp on it as you claim

The people haven't stopped believing that the authorities can set the legal tender value of currency. It shows that the people respect the power of the authorities to dictate the exchange value of legal tender. So the people stop using the metal as currency and hoard it for its metal value, abandoning its value/utility as a currency (where circulating currency has a multiple of each exchange value/utility due to multiple exchanges per unit time, aka monetary velocity).

I made the claim that PUBLIC CONFIDENCE in the authority that dictates what is currency is that enables currency to exist. You claimed Gresham's Law was a counter-example. I am explaining to you that it is not a counter-example and thus you have a mistake.

The public doesn't hoard coins for the metal value thinking that they will be useful for currency at full metal value. They hoard it thinking they can sell it for its metal value as an investment or for melting. Most people are as delusional as goldbugs and are quite rational. They realize they hoarded silver dimes so they could sell them to collectors. That is why you can buy bags of silver dimes now. They did not circulate back to the US Mint for melting when they became worn.

[deisik]

Even your example is another confirmation that it is indeed the confidence the public has in the authority which drives the use as currency, because the public innately understands that power vacuum of society which I had explained

The authorities had been collecting taxes in gold coins, so the population had to use the royal mint to get these coins. The authorities had also been heavily after counterfeiters, despite their own constant debasement of coinage

When you stop studying the bark and structure that comprises the forest, look over the tree tops. There is a huge billboard, "PUBLIC CONFIDENCE" that determines whether the forest exists.

Yes, this is the confidence of the public in the value of the precious metal that the coins are minted from. If what you say were true (i.e. the trust in the stamp prevailing over the trust in the metal itself), authorities could debase the coins indefinitely. In fact, they wouldn't even need to mint the coins from precious metals at all in the first place...

I don't really see why you continue challenging that point

You misunderstand Gresham's Law. The hoarding is for the melt value, not for the currency value. In fact, the hoarding is removing the currency attribute

No problem really. But you have to:

  1. Explain what exactly I misunderstood in Gresham's Law
  2. Give a correct explanation of it

You see, just claiming that someone doesn't understand or misunderstands something won't work. Gresham's Law is not about melting coins and it has nothing to do with the melt value. Basically, it says that people don't believe the nominal value of a specie set by authorities, which directly challenges your point...

Namely, that value of a coin is the stamp on the metal

I already told you that when the melt value (i.e. the value of the metal) is greater than the legal tender value, the coins stop circulating as currency. This is the definition of Gresham's Law

This is just another way of saying that people no longer believe in the stamp. Or, alternately stated, they believe in the stamp only as long as the nominal value of the coin corresponds to the real metal content of it...

Which, in its turn, basically means that the stamp is pretty much irrelevant in this aspect

[sloanf]

glad to see that so many people are finally getting what a dirty charlatan MA is, except for this hopeless clown TBTB. He miserably failed at his own forecasts (even though nobody has ever asked him for his views) on gold and virtually anything but still is denying the reality. Gold bottomed last December and since then is rising but he together with his con artist idol is refusing to admit his stupidity. Eleven months!

Which is exactly what gold did in 2011 and the resulting decline to $1050 before 2015.75. And in the 2014/5 gold report, MA further clarified that the final low would be in Q1 2016 < $1000 (perhaps < $850).

Gold < 850 in Q1? Ok, now gold is at 1160 and keeps rising. We have one month to go down more than $300. Should we wait till March to yet again witness your stupidity or shall we ask you to admit it right now?

 

MA has always been a failure but this year he managed to go even further. After failing at gold, the Dow, USTs, the USD, etc, he simply stopped publishing his bs forecasts because even complete and utter idiots figured it out. Now once that stopped working, he turned his cheap blog into news agency posting political news in poor efforts to capitalize on people's anger and frustration from politics. That's how he now sells his bs conferences, because even idiots like tbtb won't buy them because they are broke after listening to MA's advice.

[iamnotback]

When you stop studying the bark and structure that comprises the forest, look over the tree tops. There is a huge billboard, "PUBLIC CONFIDENCE" that determines whether the forest exists.

If what you say were true (i.e. the trust in the stamp prevailing over the trust in the metal itself), authorities could debase the coins indefinitely.

Let me try to unravel it a bit so you can wrap you mind around it, because you are thinking too simplistically (conflating) thus entirely missing the point.

A human being can be rational by doing both of the following:

• Recognizing that the value of the metal is greater than the legal tender exchange face value of the coin and deciding to not circulate it at face value and instead sell it to collectors/speculators/investors at metal value.
• Recognizing that only currency that is endorsed by the government is trusted by the public-at-large, and only it has PUBLIC CONFIDENCE and thus liquidity as a universal unit-of-exchange.

You are conflating two orthogonal judgments that rational humans make.

The trust in the stamp doesn't prevail or not prevail over the value of the metal. The use as a currency is orthogonal to the use as an investment/collectable/speculative asset.

I can guarantee you do not have a Mensa level IQ, but that is okay. You aren't dumb. You simply made a logic error.

In fact, they wouldn't even need to mint the coins from precious metals at all in the first place...

I don't really see why you continue challenging that point

It is quite common for someone who doesn't understand their logic error to think they are correct, when in fact they are incorrect. It is a form of Dunning-Kruger myopia.

This is why it is very important to be humble, unless you are sure you have a 180 IQ like Freeman Dyson. <--- He dismantled Richard Dawkins author of the Selfish Gene.

You misunderstand Gresham's Law. The hoarding is for the melt value, not for the currency value. In fact, the hoarding is removing the currency attribute

No problem really. But you have to:

  1. Explain what exactly I misunderstood in Gresham's Law
  2. Give a correct explanation of it

You see, just claiming that someone doesn't understand or misunderstands something won't work. Gresham's Law is not about melting coins and it has nothing to do with the melt value. Basically, it says that people don't believe the nominal value of a specie set by authorities, which directly challenges your point...

Namely, that value of a coin is the stamp on the metal

I already told you that when the melt value (i.e. the value of the metal) is greater than the legal tender value, the coins stop circulating as currency. This is the definition of Gresham's Law.

This is just another way of saying that people no longer believe in the stamp. Or, alternately stated, they believe in the stamp only as long as the nominal value of the coin corresponds to the real metal content of it...

You are conflating believing in the stamp as enforcing PUBLIC CONFIDENCE in what should be the currency, with recognizing when the value of what the stamp is printed on is worth more than the face value of the stamp.

Which, in its turn, basically means that the stamp is pretty much irrelevant in this aspect

Incorrect. The stamp remains what people trust to enforce what circulates as currency. That doesn't mean they have to lie to themselves about if the metal content is worth more than the stamp.

With modern day fiat money it isn't necessary for the value of the metal to be equal to the value of the stamp, rather it can be much less. The $100 bills I use do not contain $100 of paper.

[deisik]

With modern day fiat money it isn't necessary for the value of the metal to be equal to the value of the stamp, rather it can be much less. The $100 bills I use do not contain $100 of paper.

I expected that you would end up saying something along these lines. But this has evidently nothing to do with the trust that people reveal towards precious metals. You seem to have massively forgotten what you started with. Namely, that the trust that people have toward a gold specie doesn't depend on what this specie is made from, but only on the stamp of it. But you still can't escape the simple question why authorities continued to use precious metals for minting coins until very recent...

And why people started evading such coins when the authorities began debasing them