The Gold Standard: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as presented in Behold a Pale Horse pp. 322-326

Protocol 20: Part II

We are still in Protocol 20 and we are still discussing financial stuff. Last week I mentioned that this Protocol was going to shift subjects. We’re still talking money but we aren’t talking “money.” The new demon that our plagiarist concentrates on is the gold standard. 

Remember how to read this: everything the cabal recommends is what we are supposed to hate. 

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the plagiarist is in way over his head here. There is nothing in Serge Nilus’s background that would indicate he has any kind of expertise or even competence in economics. What we do know is that Nilus has some financial troubles. When people who are conspiracy theorists run into financial problems, they always run to one thing–gold. 

They love their gold because gold would have gotten them out of their troubles, but also because they understand gold. Gold is a thing you can touch. It’s pretty, it’s shiny, and if I tell you that gold is worth 2,2970/ounce (as of the moment I wrote that); you can have an idea that an ounce is this much, and that means this much money. It’s a solid, unlike say, a bank note which is worth whatever “they” say it is. The difference between 1 dollar bill and 100 dollar bill is merely what is printed on the exact same paper. Silver is worth less than gold but those two elements are entirely different things. Don’t get them started on currency exchanges or bond markets; those are all just fictions made up to make other people rich (oddly they embrace crypto which isn’t even paper). 

Remember also, that the Russian Empire is pretty broke. 

“You are aware tha the gold standard has been the ruin of the States which adopted it, for it has not been able to satisfy the demands for money, the more so that we have removed gold from circulation as far as possible.” 

The reason that conspiracy theorists love the gold standard is that they just aren’t intellectually curious enough to understand how things like this work. A large pile of gold means a state is wealthy, no gold means it is poor. This is simple and this is an economic system called “Mercantilism.” Mercantilism was the dominant economic model during the age of colonization; and it would remain so until Adam Smith detonated his magnum opus, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” Most of us know that book by the last three words in the title. 

Now that you’ve re-read that title, understand that what Smith did was place the wealth of a nation into the hands of its workforce rather than its material stores. The United Kingdom in the 18th century had both, and smartly, it increased them at the same time. The ethics of how it did this are pretty terrible, but every time it conquered a new land for its material wealth, it also assumed a new workforce. This continued the illusion that material goods were the necessary feature of the power of a state. Smith recognized that the issue was that material goods were necessary to feed the workforce. Silver was important, but not intrinsically -the price of silver was set at how much of the staple crop (in this case corn) the market would exchange for a certain amount. Smith’s work absolutely obliterated the concept of mercantilism. Mercantilism now, only exists as an economic model favored by idiots who think that resource hoarding is how you “win” at economics–hence their adoption of crypto. 

The gold standard works when you are winning at gold. The advantage of the gold standard is that it is a bulwark against hyper-inflation, but the downsides are numerous. For one, moving wealth is very difficult because you have to move the literal gold. Those Dwarves in the Lonely Mountain may have a literal pile of gold but what can they do with it? 

What the Elder is claiming to have done is stolen the gold out of the system which is why Russia has fallen so far. It’s not terrible decisions like going to war with the Japanese and losing, it’s because the Jews stole the gold. This isn’t the origin of the anti-Semitic trope but it is pushing it. 

The rest of this protocol is a justification for the Russian economic woes and it strikes me as very familiar, “Every kind of loan proves infirmity in the State and a want of understanding of the rights of the State. Loans hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of ruler, who, instead of taking from their subjects by a temporary tax, come begging with outstretched palm of [sic] our bankers.”

What a state should do, according to the Elder, is just toss a quick, simple tax on the population to fix the deficit but they go the banks. Here, is where Nilus’s knowledge fails. He thinks that the point Machiavelli is making in the original is the good point. What Machiavelli is actually doing is lampooning the method by which Napolean III funded his states. He kept borrowing but maintained a simple tax rate. Tax increases make the people cry out, he says, but call it something else and maybe you can float it around. 

Instead, the states take loans. Loans which only “they” understand and cause the state to go bankrupt. These are merely external loans made by foreign governments…

And I’m bored. Sorry, but it’s hard to follow this because the plagiarist has cut and pasted from the original. In the original Machiavelli and Montesquieu spend pages on percentages and getting into much greater economic details. The elder makes a point about the fictional nature of foreign loans, and why a state doesn’t actually need to pay them-and again, it’s just an idiot’s version of how finance works. We see this in modern times when the US Debt Ceiling conversation happens. The people against raising the ceiling are following this line of reasoning. We don’t need to pay them back because it’s not like they can repossess a tank. The reasoning that Nilus is trying to get us to adopt, by having the Elder demonize it, is that a state isn’t a person and the banks have no authority over it. Which, if this is how such things worked would be a good point. However, it’s not, and while I do not understand exactly how international loans, bonds, and markets work; I do know that they don’t work like my car loan.