The Daily Bell

We truly live in a convoluted and strangely chaotic world. This last week alone has been a mix of all kinds of 'Updates' -worthy matters to discuss, one interlinked with the other. Where should I start??? Goldman Sachs? Eyjafjallajokull (the ominous volcano in Iceland)? US-Chinese trade battles? International currency wars?

We promised ourselves not to write about the Greek/Euro crisis again for a couple of days, but we can't help but return to it when we see articles like the one excerpted above. In our view, the Greek crisis seems designed to provide real-life examples of what we've been writing about these past few years.

We've been reading the reactions to the Arizona anti-immigrant bill, and we've seen how the bill is being utilized to ignite a seeming groundswell of support for upcoming immigration legislation planned by the administration. Arizona's new law makes it easier to deport "illegal immigrants." What the US administration has planned (if not now, then in a year or two) will make it easier to be a South American immigrant and to stay in the US regardless of status.

To the degree that these elites will use the financial crisis to further concentrate power and wealth, we think that increased, monetary chaos is a possibility. If, on the other hand, national economic elites allow a semblance of a marketplace for money to operate, perhaps the situation can be salvaged. A private gold and silver standard would be most useful in this regard. Further consolidation of the money system under, say, an IMF regime, would not be.

We agree with Eric Sprott about gold, or at least as his comments are reported in the above excerpted article. And of course we take into account that his optimism is colored by his launch of a gold hedge fund with a perceived superiority because investors can redeem their shares for physical gold. We would only point out that one might think of buying physical gold to begin with and taking delivery - thus short-circuiting the necessity of buying an ETF at all.