Who says a novel can’t be predictive?

And if a novel about such things as trucking, salvation, and finding the truth is to save your financial skin, you’ve first got to PAY ATTENTION !

Last week, local and national TV newscasters were posting no notices. But if you happened to scour the financial pages, you’d have caught the price of an ounce of gold closing Friday, September 11, 2009 at a new all-time high of $1005.

Why should you give a hoot? Does this means we’re inflating?…deflating? Gold might rise in either instance. But with economic confusion reigning supreme at the present, it’s most likely a sign that substantial portions of the world (not just folks here at home) think that the currency of the United States of America is due for more shrinkage.

A one-ounce certified gold coin in your hand, carries NO DEBT with it. It’s real money - transferable and fungible…99.9% pure, solid gold.

The big deal about gold is that it holds its purchasing power through the years. One ounce of gold in 1910 would buy you the best suit in the store, and, in 2009, will still do the same. The U.S. dollar, since 1913 has lost more than 95% of its purchasing power. Where would your savings have done better? In the bank, collecting interest - or as gold, buried somewhere in the “back forty” appreciating from $20 an ounce to Friday’s close at $1005. That’s a 5000% gain, or fifty times in purchasing power, over a little less than a hundred years…not bad, eh? Well, you might ask, what does all that have to do with my mainstream novel, 3 ACES?

In Chapter 20, Dawn and Abner have parked their truck by a closed-down silver mine near Wallace, Idaho. The weather is threatening and Abner is anxious to cross over the Cascades before they are snowed in. Dawn, his co-driver and the object of his affections, is fascinated by what an out of work miner, Jim Hall, is recounting. Here’s the excerpt from my chapter:

Hart shook his head. “…The past eight years, it ain’t labor was the problem. What’s really fixed us is falling gold prices.”

Abner stole another glance toward Lookout Pass and dug Dawn in the ribs; her attention was elsewhere.

“I’m not following you, Mr. Hart.”

“Silver and gold sleeps in the same bed. When gold drops, silver goes with it - it’s the world’s Central Banks do the shoving!”

Dawn looked oddly at Hart. “How can you be so sure of that?”

“I got all the time a man needs for studyin’ and writin’ letters… Lyndon Johnson got took in nineteen sixty-eight - his advisors talked him into dumpin’ four hundred million ounces of our nation’s gold onto the London market to scare folks off. He thought the Bank of England would step in and buy that gold back - return it to the U.S. Treasury. But a big private group in Europe was set to grab it first. With fourteen billion inflating U.S. paper dollars they didn’t want no more’n anybody else did, Europe’s Central Bankers loaded up with our gold.”

Abner had heard enough. “Listen, Hart - I’m an army man, and I’ll tell you right now, our country’s gold is under guard at Fort Knox!”

“No, it ain’t! Johnson poured it down a rat hole tryin’ to scare us away from swappin’ paper dollars into thirty-five-dollar-an-ounce gold!”

Dawn tried pouring oil on the ruffled waters. “But Mr. Hart, really—who would want gold at that price?”

“They didn’t trust Johnson’s take on the Vietnam War. All that inflation, they figured no government couldn’t never keep gold down. And by nineteen eighty, sure enough, it was eight hundred and twelve dollars an ounce!”

“That doesn’t explain what closed this mine.”

“In nineteen sixty-five, in the middle of the Vietnam War, Johnson - so’s he could print up more dollars - took the silver out of our coins, except the fifty-cent pieces he cut from ninety percent to forty percent silver. Then in nineteen sixty-eight, Nixon took every last bit of gold-and-silver backing from our paper bills. In nineteen seventy-one he slammed the gold window shut, to stop the French from swappin’ their big stash of dollars into gold and totally drainin’ Ft. Knox. . . .”

Abner’s temper burst into full flame: “That’s bullshit, Hart, and you know it! I can get real silver for my bills at any bank in this country!”

“Pull out your wallet—tell me what them bills say!”

Abner inspected the money from his wallet in silence.

“Where’s the mention of gold or silver on them bills? It says, ‘In God We Trust.’ If the Treasury trusts God to pay you, they don’t need no silver from this mine, do they?”

Flustered, Abner steered Dawn to the truck. Hart limped along behind.

“. . . Eight years now, those Central Banks been loaning hundreds of tons of gold - parts of it ours - at one percent to Bullion Banks. Them banks loans the gold, through brokers, to speculators and big gold miners who writes up Sell tickets at high prices. Seein’ the Central Banks pour gold on the open market and shove the price on down, they sit and wait. Then they buy in, on the cheap - the mines payin’ with their new mined gold. What’s called ‘short sales.’ ”

Abner opened the truck door for Dawn, as she turned back to Hart. “But what could anyone gain from such complexity?”

“ . . . Central Banks makes some interest money on their gold, speculators gets a little richer, big gold miners hedge what they can produce. U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve - our Central Bank - keeps drivin’ gold lower, issuin’ more paper money. And since gold don’t rise, they tell you, ‘ain’t no inflation . . . gold’s a barb’rous relic’ - and silver along with it!”

While the Cat was warming up, Hart moved around to Abner’s lowered window. “I’ve looked into this pretty careful. On Jekyll Island, in Georgia, nineteen ten, our Federal Reserve Board was set up at a secret meeting by a bunch a’ New York City boys, some of ‘em fronting for foreign bankers - a private, for-profit company . . .”

Alongside Abner’s angry face, Pip’s head thrust from the open truck window, flinging canine rage at Hart. Abner threw on their headlamps, letting the rig creep ahead.

“Hart, you’re a damn fool! You got no idea what in hell you’re talkin’ about. I didn’t risk my life in Vietnam because I thought a bunch of crooks in Washington was nutzin’ around with my money!”

Hart hobbled alongside the truck, his cries barely audible over the snort of the diesel and Pip’s yelping. “Do your homework, sonny! Judases - tellin’ you real money mined of man’s sweat and labor is worthless! . . . Politicians can’t print silver and gold. They’re paperin’ your wallet! . . .”

Thus my characters, in 3 ACES, part in the middle of a hot scene. But is it any less hot than the scene you and I face, right now, here in America?

In 1913 Congress and Woodrow Wilson, our President, saw fit to approve the creation of the Federal Reserve Board, a Federally chartered, private company that was to safeguard the nation’s currency against inflation and deflation. So how have they done?

1913 prices: Average Income $1,296; Loaf of Bread $.06; Gallon of Gas $.12; Gallon of Milk $.36; New Car $490.00; New House $3,395,00; Dow Jones Index: 78. A one-ounce Gold Double Eagle then was $20.00

What do those items cost right now? Go figure…anywhere from 10 to 70 times their price in 1913.

2009: The money supply is up well over 100 times since 1913, and, for the first time EVER, growing by mountains of proposed new fiat dollars - 13 trillion of them - waiting to be manufactured by the money printing presses in Washington. Today, a one-ounce U.S American Gold Eagle will cost you a bit over $1062.

Now tell me who was right: Congress and the sitting U.S. President in 1913, or Jim Hart in Chapter 20 of 3 ACES?

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 3:37 pm and is filed under $Buck-Banter$, Family Forum, Truckers' interests, Writers' Corner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.