The below shows a fraction of the Golden Sources. At this time, Golden Sources as a product is only available to central banks and select research institutions.
History
The Golden Sources began as an unintended result of research into corporate healthcare costs while benefiting from data collected throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2009, the SqlinSix founder assisted several companies into exploring why healthcare costs were rising rapidly. Given the founder's research and data experience, the data revealed a major red flag.
In the founder's view, indexes were misreporting healthcare inflation, one major cost being a shortage of medical care labor. Additionally, some product prices inflated much higher than what was also being reported. This led to further research, as the founder uncovered that products tracked since decades earlier were much higher in price or lower in quality.
But even these observations didn't explain everything our founder discovered. Throughout the early decades of the 2000s, saline IV fluid was in a shortage many years. When our founder asked around about this shortage, our founder noted that no one could explain why.
As prices rose and changes occurred with the money supply in the form of low interest rates, quantitative easing, hedonic adjustments and other manipulations, fiat currencies made an inaccurate basis of comparison. The Golden Sources were born, as one troy ounce of gold 1000 years ago was one troy ounce of gold, and one troy ounce of gold in 1000 years will still be one troy ounce of gold.
While SqlinSix continues to serve customers in data and research environments, it also collects information on gold over time, as gold has made a useful numeraire to retain the same underlying unit of measurement.
Purpose
Golden Sources provides information from a variety of sources to train or add to AI tools, such as LLMs. It may also be useful for research purposes where a team needs curated information.
Unlike most information sources, SqlinSix does not assume that any source of information is accurate. A source of information may be inaccurate for a variety of reasons. An example might be that the information changed, making old information incorrect. In general, some information can change over time (relevancy) while other information never changes (truth). In addition, some information is completely false and this can be challenging to detect at first glance.
For Golden Sources, SqlinSix collects a broad range of information on the topic of gold and over time, detects patterns that might indicate truth about the topic gold or may indicate relevancy for a period of time.
There is no guarantee of information accuracy in this product or on this page. For researchers, Golden Sources may provide curated information that expands existing research or serves as a starting point for new research.
Technical
SqlinSix experiments with various document formats for either adding to or training AI tools. This page highlights Golden Sources as a specific document format. The product Golden Sources may feature other forms of these data.
We base our changes with the product Golden Sources from experiments we continuously conduct. In addition to creating useful information, we use the results of our experiments to assist clients with their own data structures to reduce AI hallucinations or other inaccurate results.
We will not change the data format for this snippet page, as we only use this page as a highlight of a small fraction of the Golden Sources.
Financial and Investment Disclosure
Nothing contained in the product Golden Sources or on this Golden Sources snippet page constitutes tax, legal, insurance or investment advice. Both the product Golden Sources and snippet Golden Sources are created for the purpose of research and identifying possible truths, whether permanent or temporary. In any financial or investment context, past performance is not a guarantee of future results and the only guarantee in life is death with a 100% probability of occurrence.
Structure
All Golden Sources contain a what describer of the source along with the where locator of the source, such as "Father Knowledge" describing what the source is and "conversation and reflection" describing where the source arose (or where the source can be found). In other words:
Source: What the Source Is (Where the source arose)
Every source then contains source pointers starting at place 0. Because many developers will use Golden Sources by adding the source pointers to the array within a dictionary, I start at the 0th position to save these developers time.
Following the pointer is the basis of the information. Returning to the earlier point of information may be inaccurate, the basis covers how the information was obtained. After this basis comes the information. Generally, information is delineated into pointers that summarize complete statements. In other words:
Order starting at 0. Basis of information. Complete statement summarizing the information.
For most sources on this snippet page of Golden Sources, one or only a few of the pointers for each source are shown with some exceptions. This snippet page highlights no more than 4% of the total Golden Sources. Unlike the product Golden Sources, existing pointers on this page are not updated if new information is uncovered or existing information requires updates.
Version History
Version 1. Initial version. This version is no longer available.
Version 2. Source disclosures added for some source types. This version is no longer available.
Version 3. Interviews summarized and retained separately as a part of the Golden Sources. This version is no longer available.
Version 4. Source consolidation if the sources align on a topic or fit a topic context. While this creates multiple sources within a source along with differing observation types, this increases the retrieval related to specific topics. In testing this approach versus the old approach, SqlinSix found a significant reduction in hallucinations along with improvements in sourcing. This version is no longer available.
Version 5. Enhanced timing contexts where appropriate. This version is no longer available.
Version 6. Partitioned sources as separate documents by source category.
Snippet
Source: Father Knowledge (conversation and reflection)
0. Revelatory. 3 bases or foundations of knowledge. Empirical base: you observe something with one or more of your senses. Rational: you arrive at a conclusion with logic, such as 2 + 2 = 4 or through application/deduction of reality in combination with other bases of knowledge (empirical and revelatory; for instance, you see a statue of Caesar Augustus and read a document supposedly written by him in Latin and rationally conclude he must have existed - you're combining your bases of knowledge here). Revelation: someone tells you something, such as Caesar Augustus was the emperor of Rome at the time of Jesus Christ's birth.
Source: Gold Creation (mental observation)
0. Rational. When I hear people say that nothing backs up gold or that a gold standard isn't useful because it's vain trust in gold, it's worth noting what gold represents. First, gold represents fundamental industrial uses. I won't dive deep into this as I have other examples of this in this source material. Second, gold requires energy, labor and innovation to obtain. The gold that we get now only comes because we've innovated. Likewise, if we ever mine meteors or asteroids for gold, this will require innovation (along with energy and labor). This innovation will move mankind forward because mining for gold means that we'll be able to extract other resources too. This gets missed when people say that a gold standard is useless because a gold standard encourages both labor and energy innovation as well as intellectual innovation to get more resources.
1. Rational. In comparison with the gold standard is the fiat standard. Since no innovation is required in fiat, as fiat is Latin for "it shall be" and is solely based on a belief in future value, the result of a fiat standard is laziness and complacency. A fiat standard discourages both hard work and actual innovation, as a person can become rich easily without work by playing leveraged games. However, this carries huge costs to a society over the long run, as innovation is discouraged. It is worth noting that in my study of human history, humans innovate significantly under gold standards. It's less about gold and more about removing human's ability to make their life easier.
Source: Poker Conspiracy Theories (multiple experiments)
0. Test-Contextual. I've played poker with friends and family about thirty to forty times in total. Many of these times, I've played for fun (no money). With the remaining of these games, we played with a $5 maximum and $0.05 buy-in each hand, meaning that I could play 20 hands for $1. I play the same way consistently by folding at least the first forty hands ($2 when funds are involved). Sometimes, I fold until I run out of funds completely. Without revealing that I'm simply observing how everyone is playing (and sometimes, I simply am playing for no reason at all except to fold), no one can grasp why someone would fold forty hands in a row that would guarantee a loss regardless of the hand for a period. No matter who I've played against, everyone believes that I have a master plan. Because I've done with experiment with different groups of people, I theorize that this partially explains what I find in markets when people talk about conspiracy, manipulation or coordination.
1. Rational. I theorize that this mental pattern partially explains conspiracies. Many people believe that a pattern or behavior cannot be as simple as I described. They theorize that there must be a master plan or something behind it other than the simple fact. In reality, my plan is as simple as it looks - I get entertainment by listening to everyone's conspiracy theories as to what I'm up to doing (intentionally losing).
2. Rational. In playing poker as many times as I've done this way, I tend to finish higher than most players. At first glance, this seems impossible as I'm folding every hand in the game, which means I'm losing every round. But in a game of at least five players (minimum amount of players in the games I've participated), I'll generally do better than at least two other players because I'm slowly losing where as at least two players are quickly losing. I can see the mental confusion these players experience: "Someone who is folding every hand is ahead of me and I've had 1 full house, two three-pairs and four two-pairs." But the better their hands (in their mind), the more they bet. They forget that someone else may have an even better hand in that round. Meanwhile, I'm guaranteed the minimum loss each hand (though there may be several players that also participate in this minimum loss). This is another pattern that explains conspiracies: ego protection. It becomes difficult for a person who's losing while acting with reason to admit they're losing to someone who's folding every hand. Nothing drives a smart person more crazy than a dumb person beating him. Thus the losing players create a conspiracy that explains that the person losing every hand is not actually losing every hand, but has devised a strategy to eventually win. Stated another way (from their perspective): "A dumb person isn't beating me; this person is pretending to be dumb, but is actually a master at this game and has a plan."
3. Rational. In the gold community, I frequently see and hear accusations of manipulation. The claim in the community is that bullion banks or traders of some type engage in games with gold to keep the price suppressed. I don't think this is the case anymore than a hedge fund leveraging forty-to-one is engaging in a conspiracy or manipulation. I think that these entities want to maximize their earnings as much as possible and do so with leverage that unintentionally creates more of something than exists (ie: paper gold, which does not exist, at points has had higher amounts than physical gold, which is where paper gold is derived). This isn't price suppression, but profit seeking. Of course, the unintended consequences of this short-sighted profit seeking is that an even more powerful entity can use this lower price caused by leveraged derivatives to snap up the underlying product of those derivatives. I suspect this is precisely what China is doing - taking advantage of the paper games the West is playing. But China isn't engaging in a conspiracy either: they are simply profit-seeking but on a longer timeline because it allows them to purchase cheaper commodities (knowing that the West has no attention span).
4. Rational. I should consider that anytime I hear accusations of conspiracy the actual explanation could be (1) far simpler than anyone wants to admit, or (2) a way for people to protect their ego. I'm not saying conspiracies never exist, but that I should never overlook the simple explanation first. In the case of price manipulation, it's often profit-seeking and not manipulation that drives the pattern. I should also remember that profit seeking is not always immediate; a person (or entity) can seek profit over the long run that is far more profitable than if they tried to get profit in the short run.
Source: 1995 Gold Mines (experiences)
1. Empirical, Rational. The dive mine had major dangers in that flooding could easily destroy the mine. In fact, this particular mine was flooded - and in a region that didn't receive much rainfall each year. In reflection of this mine experience, this highlights an example of a "cost detail" that can be easily overlooked. A dive mine must be constructed in a way that can handle flooding. Also, I noticed that the mine attempted to create a cave mine further down (also flooded), but this raised the risk of collapse.
Source: 2003 Latest Base Staple Product (product price tracking)
1. Empirical. In 2004 the staple product cost $70 (in US dollars) and 0.17840 (in troy ounces of gold).
9. Empirical. In 2012 the staple product cost $160 (in US dollars) and 0.09293 (in troy ounces of gold).
17. Empirical. In 2020 the staple product cost $200 (in US dollars) and 0.11656 (in troy ounces of gold). The company limited purchases of this product during this year.
24. Empirical, Rational. In tracking prices of various products over time, before 2006 this staple product was stable with extremely low inflation and in a few years, deflation.
Source: 2013 Financial Advisor (conversation)
0. Rational, Revelatory. My financial advisor criticized my exposure to gold. I explained to him that I used gold for long term savings, rather than bonds or currency since zero interest rates (or even low interest rates) inaccurately price money in my opinion. He disagreed and stated that zero interest rates were temporary and bonds would eventually crush gold.
Source: 2015 Cryptosphere Speech and Golden Asteroids (discussion)
0. Empirical. I gave a talk at a cryptosphere discussion in Dallas Texas. During the question and answer part of my speech, young man in the audience stated that gold was all over asteroids. He made the claim that this meant that gold was not rare. He further stated that we would extract gold from asteroids, making gold abundant. Because he had read articles on the internet telling him of this possibility, he stated that we'd see it within a few years. I asked him a few questions related to costs and he had no answers for these cost-related questions.
1. Empirical, Rational. When I was ten, several of my friends told me that we'd have fusion energy in five years. These friends of mine consumed significant television, whereas my family was too poor to own a TV. In high school, two of my teachers told a similar story. They had heard back in the 1960s that the United States would have fusion energy in that decade. To this day, fusion energy has not been achieved. I theorize that humanity won't have fusion energy when the twenty-first century ends.
2. Rational. In general, I've observed that people who consume significant media (TV, internet, news, etc) tend to believe things that seldom become true. Likewise, even if these promises do become true, it's not worth pondering them as pondering what could be is a waste of time anyway. Most of these promises are a form of marketing, hoping to hype something (attention, investment, etc).
3. Rational. All promises are liabilities, not assets. As Ramit Sethi once told me, the best predictor for future behavior is current behavior. A promise is current behavior doing nothing toward a future behavior that would be required. A person actually creating fusion wouldn't be talking about it; he'd be building it. The same is true with asteroid mining. People would be doing this, if it's as cost effective as described. I'll also note here that humans haven't successfully mined the moon with regularity, which is much closer than an asteroid, and the moon contains over one hundred quadrillion dollars in resources. Where is this moon mining operation? Current behavior says this future behavioral promise is marketing myth. I suspect that asteroid mining may be achieved in my grandchildren's generation or later, but unlikely to occur with any regularity during my lifetime.
4. Rational. Physical gold is the finished product. Physical gold is not a liability. Physical gold is not a promise. Physical gold exists. In addition, the only way to get more gold is through significant innovation in energy or technology that allows extraction methods to fall in costs (Lineage - Gold Creation). I have yet to see either of those become true in my lifetime, though the promises of these eventually being true has been hyped significantly.
Source: 2016 Cryptosphere Token Changes Observation (observation)
0. Empirical, Rational, Revelatory. This year, quite a few cryptosphere projects have either created new tokens for their projects or have tried to add more tokens to an existing project with extra crowdsales. A few examples of these are the projects NXT and Synereo. In my view, this actually creates new risks for people who hold these tokens as (1) it adds complexity in the form of new tokens that have to managed - assuming that a person is rewarded with the new token from holding the old token; (2) it could be a way to raise additional funding if there's a new crowdsale; (3) it may violate the original agreement or market participant's understanding of the original agreement, if the original token contract said nothing of this change; (4) other possible related risks.
1. Empirical, Revelatory. The NXT project created the token ARDR with the justification of delineating the security and transactional functionality, with ARDR becoming the parent chain for security and consensus.
3. Empirical, Revelatory. Synereo started a project (saved snap of 2015 crowdsale page - https://archive.is/nnLbR) and engaged in another crowdsale in 2016 (saved snap of 2016 crowdsale page - https://archive.is/Lk3kv). On an alleged medium site, Dor Konforty of Synereo discussed a rule change in 2015 (https://medium.com/synereo/rule-change-9c2a4ca6de9f).
7. Rational. In my view, this is yet another advantage of gold. Gold is gold. Gold doesn't have newer versions of itself. Gold doesn't need to delineate the chemical features it offers from itself - it's one element on the periodic table that can serve in a wide variety of uses. Likewise, gold doesn't need new crowdsales or share dilutions so that its CEO can maintain his yacht. Gold doesn't have a CEO. Gold also doesn't have an executive team. I theorize that this partially explains why gold might outperform stock indexes over long periods of time during fiat periods of money: it's less about gold being valuable and more about companies with executive teams that engage in unreliable behavior.
Source: 2017 GDP Consideration Versus Gold Expense Ratio (theory)
0. Empirical, Rational. According to modern economics, GDP measures economic output with the following equation of private consumption (C) plus private investment (I) plus government consumption (G) plus net exports (exports minus imports). I've both seen and heard people present GDP along with GDP growth as a measure of national success, such as presenting a nation with higher GDP as being superior to a nation with lower GDP. In general, equations such as GDP tend to lead to central planning because people find shortcuts when they create measures to track success and what cannot be measured is far more important than what cannot be measured (Lineage - Poor Charlie's Almanack).
1. Rational. In college, my economics professors taught us that Simon Kuznets came up with GDP (in the 1930s). No professor mentioned that the US dollar was backed by gold at the time Simon Kuznets developed GDP. As a measure, GDP under a gold standard is extremely different than GDP under a fiat standard. All dollars invested or spent under a gold standard must be backed by gold. This is not the case with a fiat standard. This mirrors the pattern of what I find with people who talk about Benjamin Graham being critical of gold, yet missing that most of his life was under the gold standard (Lineage - The Intelligent Investor Revised Edition). The people who use GDP as a measure while ignoring (or hiding) the fact that this measure was developed under a gold standard reveal their inability to critically evaluate the measure itself along with its underlying assumptions.
2. Rational. In my view, GDP is not a useful measure in a fiat standard. In a fiat standard, central authorities such as governments or central banks will create rationalizations to create money, usually through emergency economic situations. This money creation will result in widespread mispricing of both goods, services and labor over time. Under a gold standard, GDP could be a useful measure if done independently and not done as a target. Unfortunately, targeting measures tends to lead to shortcuts to achieve those measures, which then makes them irrelevant.
3. Rational. In my view, a superior alternative to GDP in a fiat standard is the Gold Expense Ratio (GER). The GER measures the overall health of an economy in my view: median individual expenses subtracted from median individual income with the resulting value divided by the units of gold (using the same underlying unit of measurement, such as grams or troy ounces). Throughout human history, every rising economy resulted in median citizens with high GERs relative to when those countries were in decline or collapse.
4. Empirical, Rational, Revelatory. Using the year 1997 as a base year from data that I have involving specific lower income level households, the Gold Expense Ratio (GER) for a bottom 25% household in the United States was 182.40 grams of gold. The household sizes in terms of members in the household were all above both average and median household members sizes as of 1997 data. As of this year (2017), the median individual income is approximately $37,000 with median individual expenses at approximately $38,500 (includes only needs such as housing, food, healthcare, transportation, required insurances, etc). Using the Golden Expense Ratio (GER): $37,000 - $38,500 = -$1,500 (negative value), with this value being divided by the average price of a gram of gold at $40.2 equals -37.3 grams of gold (there are 31.1035 grams per troy ounce of gold, so this would be over a negative troy ounce of gold). Comparing these figures: a bottom 25% household with an above average and median amount of members had a 82.4 GER while a median individual in 1997 had a -37.3 GER. This measure isn't exactly ceteris paribus, as one measure involves an individual at the 2017 50% median individual income, while the other figure looks at a bottom 1997 25% income household with more members than both average and normal; however, using deduction, I would expect the individual in 2017 to have a higher GER than the bottom 25% 1997 household with more members than average and median. As a contrast on a country level, the Gold Expense Ratio for China as of this year is approximately 51.4 grams of gold.
5. Rational. To measure a country's overall financial discipline, use the gold-to-debt ratio: a country's gold valued in its currency divided by its debt measured in its currency. As of this year, the United States has approximately $20 trillion in debt with approximately $327 billion in gold, meaning the United States' financial discipline is 1.63%.
6. Rational. In my view, while gold prevents central authorities from manipulating numbers, measures in general are always less valuable than non-measures. One reason involves what Charlie Munger noticed (Lineage - Poor Charlie's Almanack). In my view, another reason involves the mean reversion effect: as people discover and report a measure for success, the measure regresses to the mean. A third reason could also be because people try to target something, even if that doesn't make sense in their situation (an analogy would be a mining company following the rules of a service business when these are two entirely different types of businesses).
Source: All YouTube Videos (caution)
0. Rational, Revelatory. I do not consider YouTube an empirical basis of knowledge since anything can be faked. This means that both the information and or what is presented in video could be fake - it is impossible to know. YouTube videos fall under the Revelatory basis of knowledge. I will sometimes rationally consider information I see on YouTube and compare it to other sources of information that I've obtained.
1. Rational. In some cases, a video will no longer exist because the creator removed it. While I take notes on the videos that I watch, I cannot guarantee that they will exist in the future. I would suggest that viewers of videos that still exist take their own notes, as they may find some information in the videos more relevant.
2. Rational. I've ordered most of my YouTube videos from when I watched them with some exceptions. Because some videos involve timing with the information, I add the year of the video if I perceive that the time may relate. In other cases, I do this for my own organization.
Source: 2016 Kitco Rob McEwen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y5SLyuYGtU)
0. Revelatory. Rob McEwen refers to streamers as the "payday loans" of the mining industry and calls streaming a "plague." Rob loops in royalty and streaming companies ("if you owned a royalty or stream, I think you're in really good position").
1. Revelatory. (Key quote) "[Mining companies] have gone out and sold their profit margins" (0:42). Rob goes on to say that the streamers and royalty companies outperform miners because the miners gave up the margin.
3. Revelatory. Rob McEwen states there's no share dilution, but less profits because of streamers and royalty companies.
6. Rational. A repeat point and I use repetition to emphasize a point to myself. I have heard very few people talk about this. I also notice very few views (plus, most views don't pay attention from my own experience running a YouTube channel). This provides a great example of a small detail that many people gloss over because it involves understanding how the financing in an industry functions. Without revealing your knowledge to industry experts and leaders when you speak to them, uncover if they are evaluating measures like this. If I don't hear any discussion of streamers and royalties when I know they're involved with a company, then I know that I'm talking to someone who isn't paying attention to key details.
Source: April 2016 Gold Analysis (YouTube channel banned)
0. Empirical, Rational. On April 2016, I presented on a YouTube channel about my view point on gold. At the time, the US dollar price of gold was $1,250 per troy ounce. The YouTube channel was later banned during he-who-cannot-be-named based on a prediction that I made during that period and the YouTube channel is no longer available. I've kept all videos I produced for the YouTube channel and will no longer produce content for silicon valley companies due to censorship. This video is worth noting because I seldom did analysis on gold for the channel, as the channel involved statistical discussions and data analysis. Note that this source is not listed in the YouTube section, as I was the content creator.
1. Rational. I observed in 2016 the central bank demand for gold and the peculiar observation that people were not paying attention to this demand. I also noted that I believed central banks would continue to buy gold into the future. I made the case that from a central bank standpoint, I couldn't think of a single argument against gold.
2. Revelatory. I quoted James Rickards in the presentation and his view (at the time) that the globalists wanted a strong dollar so that China can unwind a significant portion of its US Treasury holdings. I also noted that gold imports to China were significant, but that the gold was not officially being held by China's central bank.
Source: 2018 Naguib Sawiris Gold Mining (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87b4t6zt_EI)
0. Revelatory. Many media have reported that Naguib Sawiris invested half of his wealth in gold. In this interview, Maria Bartiromo speaks with Naguib Sawiris about some of his recent investments, which relate to gold and copper.
1. Revelatory. Maria Bartiromo asks Naguib Sawiris about recent corruption crackdown which Naguib does not speak to directly, but notes that corruption in general creates uncertainty as it creates distrust in the system. Naguib notes that he's more bullish on gold here.
2. Rational, Revelatory. Naguib Sawiris notes that he's a large investor in gold mining (near 0:30). Naguib goes on to note that by buying gold mining shares, he gets a discount per troy ounce per gold and that most mining companies are not familiar with business and they tend to only have miners, geologists or bankers on their boards (near 0:59). Notice how both of these observations are seldom seen by people in the West (in my view, he's right about mining companies not understanding how business works). I've long argued that mining companies don't understand their business, so I felt good hearing Naguib say this because I'm surprised how many people don't realize this.
3. Revelatory. Naguib Sawiris pushed companies to expand exploration in both copper and gold. Naguib notes that copper will have more demand in the future given its broad use. He notes that gold continues to be in high demand in both China and India. He goes on to caution that we haven't had major findings in both copper or gold, even though both of these are in high demand.
Source: Zero Days (2016 documentary produced by Alex Gibney)
0. Rational. I watched this documentary from the view of cyber capabilities. I do not have geopolitical thoughts on this documentary outside of what global central banks may have done (or may think) following this information becoming more public. For this reason, I am unconcerned with the "who" entities discussed in this documentary. This documentary provided fascinating information on how a piece of software could have significant real world effects as well as addressing some common cyber illusions about digital security.
9. Empirical. Physical gold is immune to cyber-attacks.
10. Rational. For myself, after reviewing this documentary and reflecting over the material, how would central bankers view this documentary? In my view, this documentary makes the strongest case I've seen (unintentionally) for physical gold stored within a country. In addition from only my view, if I ever ran a central bank, I would require that a percent of the money supply always remain physical in case of a disaster so that the financial system could still run in an analog way. One point made in this documentary is that people often don't realize how changes could cause unintended effects - for instance, everyone wanting digital money, but not realizing if it doesn't work at all, they forgot to keep the analog money in case of this type of disaster. Would central bankers conclude the same? It's impossible to know, but this is one lesson I learned from this (I would also apply this to all critical infrastructure - it's too dangerous to allow these to be digital, though I realize how unpopular my view will be on this).
Source: The Coming Soviet Crash (book by Judy Shelton)
3. Revelatory. Judy Shelton points out that Soviet data officials (such as the Central Statistical Administration) told the population that inflation was low compared to their wages. Judy highlights that while some in the leadership class went along with these statements, ordinary Soviet workers did not feel this way about inflation and their wages. Ordinary Soviet workers felt frustration with high inflation, but officials from the Soviet Union declared that relative to monthly wage growth, inflation was low and that there was no decline in the standard of living. Judy makes the case here that the ordinary Soviet citizens had deeper insight into the economic reality of the Soviet Union.
5. Rational, Revelatory. Judy Shelton notes that with the Soviet Union desperate for hard currency and oil prices declining, along with declining Soviet productivity, Moscow could only rely on its gold for value. Judy highlights that Moscow didn't want to sell gold, but resorted to selling gold in 1985 as Moscow's oil earnings declined (remember that the Soviet Union was a communist system, thus it wasn't a company's oil revenue, but the state's oil revenue due to central planning and control). The Soviet Union sold less than 100 metric tonnes of gold per year from the years 1982 to 1984, then sold 200 metric tonnes of gold in 1985 and 300 metric tonnes of gold in 1986. She points out that the CIA estimated Moscow's gold holdings at $34 billion (at the time, gold was $450 per troy ounce). This means that Judy estimated Moscow's gold holdings at 2,350 metric tonnes ($34 billion divided by $450 per troy ounce; that amount divided by 32,150.7 - which is the amount of troy ounces in a metric tonne; this results in 2,350 metric tonnes). Notice that she observes that Moscow didn't want to sell its gold and what this communicates about gold; even with the communists being extremely incompetent and anti-incentive, they fundamentally understood that gold had value.
Source: The Intelligent Investor Revised Edition (book by Benjamin Graham and Jason Zweig)
0. Empirical, Rational. During most of Benjamin Graham's, the US dollar was backed by gold. In addition, the gold standard ended as a temporary act (Lineage - Quoted 1971 August Nixon Gold). At the time many people, possibly including Benjamin Graham, believed this would only be a temporary action. I base this on conversations with people who lived during this period. Benjamin Graham died in 1976. This point gets missed when people raise that Benjamin Graham didn't view gold as a currency or as a useful numeraire. No one needed to use gold as a numeraire when the US dollar was backed by gold. To my knowledge, Benjamin Graham also never saw zero or negative nominal interest rates. This further raises the question of how Benjamin Graham would view gold in a world where bonds pay zero or negative yields along with governments struggling to control their spending.
3. Rational, Revelatory. Consider an investment's moat - this is the strength of its position in the market. In the case of a company, it could be a combination of things such as brand, resistance to competitors, etc. In the case of a commodity, it could be use or perception of use. Also what goes missing in the analysis of commodities relative to stocks and bonds, as more money flows into stocks and bonds, commodities remain cheap relative to either. Some commodities expire, but some (like gold) do not. Likewise, in order for companies to justify their earnings, they have to sell more products. In some cases, these products that companies sell involve commodities. If commodities are cheap relative to these stocks, it doesn't make sense that a company which sells these products is priced high when the justification centers around product sales (cheap commodities mean ease of competitors).
Source: Poor Charlie's Almanack (book by Peter Kaufman)
13. Rational, Revelatory. In my view, Charlie Munger's twenty-five human psychological tendencies make the strongest argument I've ever read in favor of a gold standard (gold as a monetary numeraire, not investment). After reading this chapter multiple times and realizing that even the best human would still fall prey to the downsides of some of these tendencies, I think that humans having power over money is a poor idea. One advantage of a gold standard among many advantages is that a gold standard removes human's worst tendencies because it prevent us from creating money. When I consider the tendencies that Charlie raises caution and I combine these tendencies with the power to create money, it becomes clear how humans could abuse this power. Charlie Munger would probably not agree with me here, but I think this entire chapter is one of the strongest arguments I've read in favor of a gold standard. However, this chapter also explains why human systems rush to get out of gold standards - a recurring pattern in human history.
Source: The Periodic Table A Visual Guide To the Elements (book by Tom Jackson)
6. Revelatory. Using Mohl's scale of hardness, gold has a 2.5 rating of hardness (ROH). Related elements and the platinum group elements: silver - 2.5 ROH, copper - 3.0 ROH, platinum - 3.5 ROH, palladium - 4.75 ROH, iridium - 6.5 ROH, rhodium - 6.0, osmium - 7.0 ROH, ruthenium - 6.5 ROH.
Source: All Online Media (caution)
0. Rational. I do not consider any online media content an empirical basis of knowledge unless I have firsthand evidence of the assertions.
1. Empirical, Rational. Online media can be easy to create and assert, making any statement questionable as people seldom invest energy or time when they can easily do something (this is a pattern that I've observed about human behavior). Where there is great difficulty, there is often more accuracy.
2. Rational. In addition to the internet being full of misinformation, the topic itself often misleads. A good example of this is GDP. The internet has over a petabyte of GDP information. Yet in my view GDP is a completely useless measure. This is one of many challenges with data in general; you may have data, but that doesn't mean that your data is meaningful at all and in some cases, having more data is distracting.
Source: 2008 China Major USA Lender (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/12/be-nice-to-the-countries-that-lend-you-money/307148/)
3. Rational. One major drawback of the system that Gao Xiqing describes could be inaccurate pricing. While this system doesn't guarantee inaccurate pricing, it may lead to it because people demand products that don't actually exist. This unintentionally reduces demand for the actual products. Using the example of gold - if people buy contracts on gold, but the underlying security of those contracts doesn't have the demand from the people (because many used leverage), a separate entity could buy all the actual products of underneath those contracts, which would result in every person getting wiped out into nothingness. Or, using Gao's analogy - an entity could buy the book, making all mirror images of the book meaningless. If the gold paper contract system creates more gold than actually exists and if this reduces the price of gold because it hides the demand, a country could buy all the physical gold at a much cheaper price than if gold had been priced accurately. This would be terrible for the paper holders of gold (they may be completely wiped out), but not the country buying the actual gold.
Source: 2015 Chinascope Dollar Weapon (https://chinascope.org/archives/6458)
1. Revelatory. Qiao Liang believes that the most important event in the 20th century was the dollar unpegging to gold because the US became a financial empire. Qiao notes that when the United States prints dollars and exports those dollars, it actually limits its own internal inflation because other countries must hold on to dollars and thus maintain the value of the dollar. He notes that the Federal Reserve will only create so much dollars, then bring them home by raising interest rates (which pulls back dollars to the United States). He notes that this is a form of hidden financial imperialism that affects other countries and allows the United States to gain access to actual resources with money that is simply printed, rather than a unit that reflects fundamental value (like gold).
3. Rational, Revelatory. Qiao Liang observes that the United States has no real economy because the country believes that manufacturing is a "low value" industry. While Qiao may not have been in my college, he's right that my professors told me this when I was in college. They described manufacturing as beneath us and said that when the United States lost manufacturing jobs, it was good. Even if some people pushed back on this in the United States, they were often labelled as outdated (or misinformed). When Qiao later describes the United States' major enemy as itself, I can't help but agree, as I was taught exactly what he observed about the United States.
Source: 2016 Kenneth Rogoff (https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/gold-as-emerging-market-reserve-asset-by-kenneth-rogoff-2016-05)
3. Revelatory. Kenneth Rogoff presents three arguments in favor of gold: gold tends to appreciate at a rate that mirrors short term debt while itself being low risk, gold has strong volume in terms of buying and selling worldwide, and gold has no limit on its price.
Source: 2016 Bangladesh Cyber Bank Theft (https://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/op-ed/122939/the-great-bangladesh-cyber-heist-shows-truth-is)
4. Rational. Any physical gold that the bank of Bangladesh held within its own walls would have been immune from this cyber theft. In addition, physical gold is immune to quantum computing risks.
Source: 2018 Open Source Code Risks (https://www.sqlshack.com/sql-server-security-considerations-with-open-source-tools/)
0. Empirical, Rational. I wrote this article for SqlShack. In the development community, people assume that an open source tool is safe because many eyes look at the code. One reason that I wrote this article originated from the missing insight that open source tools can also be viewed by hackers to determine how to undermine them, along with how these open source tools change over time. One example of this was the security bug Heartbleed.
1. Rational. People arguing in favor of open source frequently claim that many eyes review it, which means that this is inherently more secure. This can carry some truth and provided it doesn't discourage people from responsibility, this could be a strong argument in favor of open source tools.
2. Rational. All humans are subject to the diffusion of responsibility as it allows the mind to fall back to its natural state of laziness. As I note in the article, in security this means "someone else is probably looking at this code base and will solve any vulnerability that arises." This thinking misses that open source tools allows hackers to also understand a code base along with how it may be implemented, which allows them to plan and conduct attacks.
3. Rational. Closed source software can create a challenge for hackers in the context that they (1) do not see the code being used, (2) may not be aware if the software secures anything valuable, (3) and do not know how frequently the code changes. In general, the more frequently a code base is used (this includes software tools as well), the more hackers benefit from targeting them. Stated another way, if a software tool is only used by one company, this means that a hacker spending time to compromise it will get access to that one company. But if one thousand companies use a separate software tool, then a hacker compromising that software tools has one thousand companies that he has compromised.
4. Rational. In the financial industry, I've seen the term "open source" used as a way to dismiss security concerns - "we use open source tools." Likewise, I've noticed a few software vendors that brag about working with some clients. If I was the CEO of a bank, then I would terminate all agreements with software vendors like this as this type of marketing actually raises risks for customers (hackers now know what software is being used by what financial institution). Whether open source or closed source software, marketing software tools by revealing who specific customers are raises significant risks to those institutions using that software. I frequently state that most marketing practices involving "who are clients are" actually contradict strong security.
5. Rational. Physical gold does not require open source or closed source software to secure it, or to make it useful. In addition, physical gold is immune to cyber-attacks and cyber theft. It is worth noting here that this does not apply to digital forms of gold, such as gold ETFs or other digital gold instruments.
Source: 2023 Linkability Security Violations (https://osintteam.blog/what-is-linkability-bd3f0587e4ba)
0. Rational. I wrote this article and the OSINT team reached out to have it curated on their site and I agreed. I wrote this article because linkability poses significant risks and many people don't consider these risks until they've been compromised.
1. Empirical, Rational, Revelatory. Linkability makes it possible for an attacker to take one transaction and link it to other parts of an identity. This happens because transactions often use information that carries links, such as the simple example of a credit card having a person's name on it (or a credit card being used to determine who is on an account). In the article, I note that a significant amount of supposed innovation actually violates linkability security risks - the technology is tying out identity data points and this increases the risk of a minor compromise turning into a bigger compromise.
2. Rational. I caution readers in the article that many security experts often don't consider bigger picture problems in security. I use the example of sim-swaps when these were new - security experts were advising people to use their mobile phone for security when this is extremely dangerous. I've seen the same with linkability; security experts present as if linking more information is safer, when in reality, they have it backwards. The more you link your identity to secure your information, the more you open yourself to a bigger compromise.
3. Empirical, Rational, Revelatory. Qiao Liang observes that the United States has no real economy because the country believes that manufacturing is a "low value" industry. While Qiao may not have been in my college, several of my professors in college described manufacturing as unncessary and irrelevant. They stated that the United States did not need to produce physical goods or resources; the US could get these good produced from the rest of the world. In fact, one professor described the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States as a good event. As I read Qiao's thoughts, I recalled being taught this in college.