I've seen your JZ glasses, and I hate to tell you, but they're ALWAYS 1/2 empty :shhh:
Troy, your instinct on metal might be correct, but history doesn't back that up... Yeah, gold and silver are pretty and shiny, they also have nearly unlimited industrial applications. But historically, 4000+ years, they have been the commodity basis for money in virtually every society -- gold IS money. Every single society in history which has attempted to utilize a "fiat money" standard (paper, or non-commodity backed money) has failed, every single one.
You can go back to roman emperors who first started shaving the coins, so that a 1 oz. coin actually only weighed 0.8 oz, and they pocketed the difference, and that evolves into banking, where people would deposit their real money (gold/silver) with banks in exchange for promissory notes, which would allow the bearer to go back to the bank and get that quantity of metal -- nothing wrong with that, really, as long as the banks are trustworthy and the notes are honored, it allows people not to have to carry 10lbs of metal with them just to have dinner...
The problem arises when banking becomes CENTRAL banking, and the government the allows "fractional reserve" banking to take hold. In fractional reserve banking, the bank can take $100 in metal deposits, and then loan out $1000, based on that limited reserve -- think about that, you put your $100 in the bank and get a promissory note stating that you can have it back anytime - the bank makes loans at a 10X value on that deposit, with others now having claims to the same reserves -- thus the fear of a "run on the bank" when things turn sour, as the bank simply doesn't have enough "real" money on hand to pay out all of the promissory notes it has issued...
This problem then compounds further, when the government -- like the US did first in 1913, again during FDR's administration, and finally completed in 1971 under Nixon -- severs the commodity backing of the currency, and goes off the "gold standard". Now, suddenly, instead of the promissory notes in your wallet being backed by YOUR commodities in the bank (or at least a small portion of them), it is instead backed only by "the full faith and credit of the U.S. government". Even that might have been tolerable when the citizens of the U.S. had any faith in government, and when the world recognized that the U.S. government was credit worthy -- do you think that is the case now?
And then it gets worse, which evidences exactly why the U.S. isn't considered creditworthy anymore. Rather than following the model of the rest of the world, and installing an only marginally-better government owned/run central bank, the corrupt Wilson administration in 1913 cow-towed to wealthy industrialist bankers (Rothchilds, Rockerfellers, etc.), and agreed to a PRIVATELY OWNED central bank, the FEDERAL RESERVE, which is authorized (unconstitutionally) to literally print money, as well as to invest in federal debt instruments. Now, rather than the simple evil of leaving a commodity-based currency, we have PRIVATE interests that can expand the monetary supply infinitely to serve their own purposes, devaluing each "dollar" with every new dollar they print, and allowing the U.S. government to expand infinitely, by allowing the feds to simply write themselves a check -- i.e. issue a federal bond and have it purchased by the fed in U.S. dollars hot of the printing press. It is the road to ruin, it always has been, and we passed the ability to make a u-turn a long time ago. When the US government literally triples the monetary supply since August of 2008 - those dollars which are available for use in the economy, whether physical bills or electronic currency -- what do you think that does to the value of the dollar in your pocket? The simple answer is, it is, or soon will be, worth about 33% of what it was worth in 2008. This inflationary cycle (and inflation does NOT mean rising prices, it means expanded money supply, rising prices are merely a symptom) began in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve, and since that time, each dollar has lost nearly 95% of its value -- said another way, what you could buy with a nickle in 1913 now costs a buck. Americans have been desensitized to price increases, believing it is just naturally something that occurs, but it isn't, its a product of flawed currency and flawed economic policy, and 100-some years later, those long-standing policy pigeons are coming home to roost.
In a commodity backed currency, these shenanigans can't happen. I don't really care whether that commodity is gold, silver, oil or uranium, but it has to meet the commodity standard of being finite and having an inherent value to society as a whole. If its has inherent value, people want it. If it is finite, corrupt governments can't expand the monetary supply to fund empire building. Gold and silver fit that bill, are far more portable than oil, less hazardous to your health than uranium, and have a 4 millennium history of being used world wide as "real money".
So, that's the short answer to your question about "other metal", and why IMHO, we're F@#ked -- let have a JZ :gee:
