Question: Hello Martin,
I saw a couple of days ago that Canada seems to have sold all its gold.
http://www.fin.gc.ca/n16/16-030-eng.asp
Is it just a way to find short-term easy money?
Or is it part of a global process to sell any tangible asset that the government could have ?
I personally don’t think this to be a smart move, as in my opinion a government should mix between tangible and non tangible assets. After all, they’re using OUR money…
Thank you.
R
REPLY: You have to look at this from their perspective. They are moving to electronic money. Gold is a throwback to an ancient economy to them. We should expect other countries to follow Canada. They see no use for gold, and they are dead broke. George III was broke and began charging people with any petty crime, right down to stealing an apple. He then used that as the excuse to sell citizens to farmers in the United States as an indentured servant for their time of sentence. The historian Charles Hibbert recorded the sentence handed down by a judge on this issue in his classic work “Roots of Evil”:
Because you have committed this offence, the sentence of the court is that you shall no longer be burdened with the support of your wife and family. You shall be immediately removed from a very bad climate and a country overburdened with people to one of the finest regions of the earth where demand for human labour is every hour increasing and where it is highly probable you may ultimately regain your character and improve your future. (Roots of Evil, 145)
Benjamin Franklin objected to this practice. He had previously written on it in the “Gazette” on May 9, 1751, where he argued against the trade that was welcomed for it was cheap labor needed in the colonies. This was replaced with slavery from Africa by the Dutch following the Revolution.
Today when a government is broke, they can sell the gold. Soon, it may be expanding government workforces using prison labor for making a right turn on a red light without making a complete stop or some other nonsense.
