Situational Ethics

We live in a time and place where all sophisticated people believe that all ethics are "Situational."  Of course, there is "right and wrong" when is comes to vast generalities to be debated in public forums: Gay Marriage destroys the family!  A srrong military is crucial to combat evil in the world!  The Financial System - on the whole - if filled with the smartest, finest, most competent, brightest, hardest working people in the world!  A strong dollar is the backbone of a strong economy!

Yet none of these broad pronouncements means anything at all when it comes to personal behavior - either within government, or within the broader society - or even within the family unit.

Family value candidates like Newt Gingrich spends his personal time screwing staffers, divorcing wives and neglecting children.  Not to pick on him, but he's made himself the current poster boy for family values.  All other poster boys are just as bad.  Pro funnel-all-our-money-into-the military candidates like George Bush and Dick Cheney and their "ideas guy" Paul Wolfwowitz all spent the Vietnam War Era running away from military duty.  Not one of them spent one second fighting.

And, of course, Free Market guys, like Larry Kudlow and Dennis Gartman and Sean Hannity, guys who scream about "Free markets" at the top of their lungs on TV every night, are all Huge anti-Free Market defenders of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Banking Cartel that owns the Fed.  They're "free market" when it comes to the very poor who are looking for a handout, but when it comes to the banks looking for a handout a trillion times larger, they're all meek and mute.  In fact, when a real Ethics Guy like Ron Paul says "Bring the troops home and end the Fed" precisely because we can't afford any of that - all the sophisticated "Situational Ethics" guys laugh at the poor misguided dope.

And what does this have to do with gold?  Gold is the only currency that can not be manipulated by situational ethicists.  Sure, they can move the futures price around in the short run.  And the they do.  But, over the medium term - that is to say - over months - and years - 5 thousand so far -  there's nothing they can do to destroy the value of the world's oldest currency.

In fact, to their horror, everything they do right now only increases the value of gold.  The more they print money to funnel to the banks, to the military, to their pork projects back home, to their mistresses - and into their own pockets via kickbacks, slush funds, ponzi schemes and lobbying payments - the higher the price of gold.

Gold is like the Pinocchio's nose of currencies.  Every financial ethics violation make the value of gold grow bigger. Which is why the situational ethicists then hasten to label it a "Bubble," and a "Barbarous relic."

Ask yourself - do you believe in the efficacy of situational ethics?  To the extent you answer "yes" will be the extent that you'll find it hard to buy into the gold story.

Does that mean every gold bug is a better person than the average situational ethicist?  No, of course not.  Just because your ethics are consistent, does not make them right or good.  But it's a start.