What Happened to America's Middle Class? It's All in One Graph

Feel like your dollar is buying less, even though the financial press claims that the dollar is strong? It is buying less — but so are the other fiat currencies.  Zero Hedge

Middle class wages and purchasing power have plummet since Nixon de-tethered the dollar from gold in 1971 via an Executive Order and without congressional authority. Middle class prosperity peaked in 1971 and plummeted when Nixon de-tethered the dollar from gold.

To create the illusion of prosperity, the government swapped out real prosperity for fake debt based prosperity. So long as the dollar was tethered to gold, gold was a noose around the Bankster's necks and prevented 'Banksters Gone Wild' and 'Government Gone Wild".  

Since 1971, wealth and power has been concentrated into the hands of corporatists, banksters and government as the wealth of the 99% got transferred to the 1%.

The above chart is from Zero Hedge, one of my favorite blogs.

John Maynard Keynes, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett all said or implied that gold was a barbarous relic. But what’s the barbarous relic? The precious metal that shows prices without a veneer of manipulation, or the paper currency that smudges the true state of supply and demand through money printing, thus misleading markets and society? Charlie Munger says gold is not for civilised people, but in reality gold may be the most civilised currency of all — because it allows civilised people to purchase insurance against the risk of civilisation failing.

A central bank can claim to have demonetised gold. It can claim gold is a barbarous relic (even while keeping thousands of tonnes on its books), or just an “instrument to hedge tail risk” (although Jamie Dimon surely disagrees — J.P. Morgan prefers to “hedge tail risk” by making huge speculatory prop bets on credit derivatives).

But gold is still gold. It’s still that same shining yellow metal that investors have for thousands of years held up as a unit of account and store of value, and a medium of exchange.

Central bankers can’t just abolish history. On the other hand, history may very well abolish the central bankers and their fiat currencies.

Read the rest here

Zero Hedge