Written by John Rubino via ZeroHedge
Have you been fantasizing about a world in which your gold really does make you rich?
If so you’re in good – or at least numerous – company.
So let’s sketch out such a world.
Start by envisioning an America in which a handful of oligopolies have captured banking, media, healthcare, and several other important industries, while a tiny group of super-rich neo-aristocrats controls as much wealth as the 200 million least-rich citizens.
Toss in a US president who goes out of his way to pick fights which he then proceeds to lose, leading to both falling poll numbers and derisive headlines around the world.
That’s a good start but probably not enough to take gold to its rightful price of $10,000. So let’s add a US opposition party – which, given the above president’s declining popularity, has at least a 50-50 shot at taking power in the next election – that is skewing madly, unprecedentedly to the left.
Meanwhile, imagine that that same opposition party recently gained control of the branch of Congress that can investigate the President, leading to an escalating battle between legislature and executive that adds an element of legal chaos to what would already have been a presidential campaign of off-the-charts vitriol.
Now that’s a crazy country where gold should be in demand.
But it’s just one place. There’s a whole big world out there where gold and silver can trade. For precious metals to truly go to the moon everyone, not just traumatized Americans, has to desperately crave sound money.
So let’s imagine France roiled by violent street protesters with numerous but nebulous aims, forcing a rattled government to ramp up deficit spending on pretty much everything that anyone seems to want. And let’s have misguided but at least emotionally stable German Chancellor Angela Merkel be pushed out of office in favor of no one knows what.
Italy has to be in there somewhere, of course. So let’s pretend its banking system has some insane amount of nonperforming loans. Maybe 18% of total loans – three times what would normally be considered extremely dangerous. We can’t even call that banking system a zombie. Instead, let’s go with a “persistent vegetative state.”