By Keith Weiner
Hostages of Irredeemable Scrip
Stockholm Syndrome is defined as “…a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity.” While observers would expect kidnapping victims to fear and loathe the gang who imprison and threaten them, the reality is that some don’t.
Images from the Kreditbanken robbery at Norrmalmstorg in central Stockholm in 1973. The two bank robbers took four hostages, who afterward complained that they were far more scared of the what the police might do than of the robbers. One of the hostages even struck up a personal friendship with one of the hostage takers a few years later (despite the fact that he remained a career criminal). Psychologists became interested in this odd behavior and criminologist Nils Bejerot eventually coined the term “Stockholm syndrome” to describe it. [PT]
There is a loose analogy between being held hostage and being an investor in a regime of irredeemable paper currency and zero interest rates. In both cases, the victim has little hope of escape and must seek to somehow survive under malevolent conditions.
Key behaviors displayed by victims of Stockholm Syndrome are positive feelings for their captors, a refusal to work with law enforcement afterward, and even a belief in the humanity of the terrorists.
Key behaviors of investors today show eerie parallels: a desire to bid on dollars with their assets, a refusal to support the gold standard, and even a belief that the dollar is money. This last always shows when someone — even a gold bug — says gold is going up, or gold is the best performing currency, or gold has good returns.
These words up, performance, and returns indicate that the victim accepts the dollar as money, the dollar as the measure of value, the dollar as the unit of account. The victim seeks to view gold in terms of his captor’s paradigm. Much like the kidnapping victim seeks to understand his capture and even geopolitics in terms of his captor’s world view.
Many victims are so thoroughly in thrall, that they scoff at the very idea of earning interest from a productive enterprise. They seek only the latest bubble, where they can make a profit: more dollars. Or, if not more dollars, at least more purchasing power.
For years, they sought to do this in the gold and especially silver markets. Some gold bugs go even farther, and oppose a gold standard. Perhaps they don’t want sound money, they want gold to go up which means something external that gold can go up against.
A pile of external somethings, i.e., legal tender made from dead trees. As long as it is used and accepted as a general medium of exchange people will pine for it. Government scrip derives its secondary market value primarily from the fact that it is the only form of money accepted for the payment of taxes. [PT]
We watched bemused as a speaker at the Metal Writers Conference in Vancouver on May 29 told …read more
Source:: Acting Man
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