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Darryl Robert Schoon
Depressions are monetary phenomena caused by central bank issuance of excessive credit. In 1913, the newly created US central bank, the Federal Reserve, began issuing credit-based money in the US. Within ten years, the central bank flow of credit ignited the 1920s US stock market bubble; and shortly thereafter, following the collapse of the bubble in 1929, the world entered its first Great Depression in 1933.

Investment banks are the undoing of central banking. While all banks, central, commercial and investment, view credit as the opportunity to exploit society’s growth and productivity, investment bank exploitation of growth and productivity exposes society to extreme risks - for investment banks use society’s savings to make their volatile and speculative bets.
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Photo: Courtesy of u07ch
This from Michael Fox in The Smirking Chip:
In an excellent column on the state of the dollar, Brother, Can you Spare $10,000, economist Peter Schiff writes that:

“…Bernanke blames the [Great] Depression on the Fed not printing enough money. Had the Fed done precisely what Bernanke now thinks they should have, the Great Depression would have been much worse. Had the Fed tried to re-inflate the stock market bubble or keep it from bursting in the first place, it’s the dollar that would have collapsed, and Depression-era America would have looked liked Weimar Republic Germany. As bad as the Great Depression was, hyperinflation would have made it even worse. The good news is that there is still time to alter course and steer clear of both hyper-inflation and depression. The bad news is that if we remain on our current course that is precisely where we will end up.”

So what can you do to hedge against this? Precious metals, especially platinum and gold. But remember, if anyone thinks saving coins qualifies, they don’t (unless they’re very old).
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