Secure Direct Messages

Here is a secure way of exchanging instant messages.

XMPP is an (open standard) instant messaging protocol that runs on multiple servers without any central authority. OMEMO is an extension of XMPP that implements the “Signal Protocol” as an open standard. The Signal Protocol (advertized by Ed Snowden around 2015) provides fully end-to-end encrypted instant messages between two or more parties.

Advantages:

• no central authority such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp involved that has access to all meta-data, can censor content, can lock out participants, or maintain back-door keys
• fully end-to-end encrypted messages between two or more participants
• every user can have several client programs (mobile app and desktop program, say), the encryption keys remain on the individual devices, and the protocol keeps messages synchronized between devices even if some devices are off-line some of the time

What you need to do:

• obtain a mobile app such as Conversations (Android) or ChatSecure (iOS) or a desktop programm such as Gajim or Dino
• register an XMPP account with a public XMPP server that implements the OMEMO standard – usually you can create new accounts from within the app (see the first reference below for how to find a server).
• add my temporary account, victorthecleaner@jab.im, as a contact and identify youself through another channel (email, etc.). I’ll then tell you my real XMPP account. Don’t use jab.im for your account. Find another server using the first link below.

References:

• https://compliance.conversations.im/ – suggests OMEMO capable XMPP servers and verifies protocol compliance, chose a server and then register your account with that server
• https://conversations.im/ – Conversations (Android app) – if you use F-Droid, it’s free
• https://chatsecure.org/ –  ChatSecure (iOS app)
• https://dino.im/– Dino (desktop program, Linux)
• https://gajim.org/ – Gajim (desktop program, Windows, Apple, Linux)
• https://xmpp.org/ – XMPP standard
• https://conversations.im/omemo/ – OMEMO standard

Hope to see some of you soon.

 

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Tweets on International Clearing using Gold

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you see that the architecture of the Eurosystem is not only ready for, but actually favours this international monetary system: international clearing in gold, but local fiat currencies. It's even way superior to the (historically grown) pre-1922 arrangement.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

You can see this mechanism in action before the 1920s. Just don't get confused by the fact that most countries also used gold as their medium of exchange. Always think about the price of gold relative to goods and services.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If a country ran a trade surplus, they cashed in on this surplus and asked for physical gold delivered. So gold flowed from the deficit country to the surplus country. The amount of gold in the surplus country increases, but not the amount of goods and services available locally.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Therefore, the price of gold in terms of goods and services in the surplus country *decreases*. With a gold standard, this meant inflation of the medium of exchange. In the deficit country, the opposite happens. Gold leaves the country, its price relative to goods and services…

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

increases (and with a gold standard the medium of exchange experiences deflation). But now real goods and also labour from the deficit country, if priced in gold (that's what was relevant internationally), become cheaper from the point of view of the surplus country.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This tends to counteract the trade imbalance that caused the move of gold that happened in the begnning of the example. This form of international clearing is self-stabilizing. It prevents the accumulation of imbalances, i.e. deficits (and also surpluses) in the long run.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why gold? From the example, it's obvious that it should be an asset whose "quantity" does not vary much. Gold's stock-to-flow ratio comes in handy, is infact unparalleled. You cannot use credit for this (as done post-1922) because the quantity of credit can change a lot.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, you would need to use physical gold for the clearing, and **it would be foolish to write credit on it** (because foreigners would not accept that – in fact that was the "rule of the game" prior to 1922). You shouldn't base credit on it. @cjenscook please read this.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the 1944 Bretton-Woods conference, Keynes didn't propose gold, but his "bancor", but he did advertise it precisely for the mechanism described above. His proposal was indeed based on the mechanism that no country alone was able to create bancors arbitrarily.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally re the local currencies, the local medium of exchange. Before 1922 it was mostly gold, but the mechanism did not depend on it. In fact, you could use local fiat money and have the local central banks target zero inflation, but clear internationally in physical gold.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, when gold flows and the system responds to temporary imbalances, you don't get inflation/deflation of the medium of exchange as the shock absorber,but you would rather have stable medium of exchange with a varying price of gold and varying FX rates between local currencies.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you see what is the position of the Eurosystem here? Account for gold at market price and target local consumer price inflation? Ready to switch over.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

Here is how Blondie put it at @FOFOA999 's blog in 2012: You need to accept a varying gold price in order to have the Euro fulfil all three functions of money: medium of exchange (done),unit of acount (done),store of value (zero inflation, working on it, but still not there yet).

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

 

Or as Aristotle put it in the 2001/02 discussion at the USA Gold Forum: "I was positively shocked to find out that we absolutely need fiat money in order to set gold free." (from memory) Which says the same thing from the opposite point of view.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

 

Finally, once you have arrived here, please read Barsky-Summers on "Gibson's paradox and the gold standard". It will be a huge eye-opener. Yes, it's *the* @LHSummers. Link to the article: https://t.co/cCZbtaHUEQ

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

Also see @FOFOA999 's "Once upon a time" https://t.co/APBBwScGMQ – It is interestig to note that the 1920s Fed contributed to the end of the international gold standard (most likely inadvertently).

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

After WW1 with reconstruction in Europe, the U.S. ran a huge trade surplus with Europe and in turn gained a lot of gold. As described above, this caused inflation. This was the first major occasion at which the Fed engaged in monetary policy in order to *fight* this inflation.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

Of course, when you think about the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, this made the deflation in Europe worse and contrubuted to the end of international gold clearing with the 1922 Genoa Conference.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

Now think about the Euro architecture. It is adapted to the international gold standard (account for gold at market price, use gold as number one reserve, in fact the only reserve named explicitly on their balance sheet !!).

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

But locally,they run an inflation targeting fiat currency,the Euro. In a situation such as right after WW1 with huge trade imbalances,this would *not* have created local inflation in the surplus country and there would not have been any political pressure to fight that inflation.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

Instead, the local central bank can manage their local currency as they see fit, but the gold price in local currency declines. The gold price in the local currency of the deficit country, in contract, increases. No harm in the deficit country from deflation in local currency.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

Do you see that the architecture of the Eurosystem is not only ready for, but actually favours this international monetary system: international clearing in gold, but local fiat currencies. It's even way superior to the (historically grown) pre-1922 arrangement.

— Victor The Cleaner (@VictorCleaner) April 14, 2019

Twitter: London Gold Clearing and the Role of the Bank of England

This is just to organize a recent discussion regarding the clearing procedure in the London bullion market and the role played by the Bank of England. Warning: Lots of embedded tweets make this page rather slow.

Snippets on Euro, Gold, Dollar and International Trade

Taking the twitter functions of WordPress to the limit … Warning: Loading this page may be a little slow due to all the embedded tweets.

Central Bank Gold Leasing

The salespeople of the gold investment industry publish a lot of bold claims about central bank activities in the gold market (for example, here) along the lines of “All central banks want to suppress the gold price.“, “The central banks have secretly leased and sold most of their gold.” The present article is an attempt to summarize the facts that we know and to offer a rather different interpretation.

Before the Thoughts! and Before the Trail

Jeff at FOFOA’s blog has discovered a partial copy of the old Kitco mailing list. The following is a compilation of what I hope are the relevant messages by The Writer, Big Trader, GFD and SimpleMan (as far as they relate to contact with Big Trader), and ANOTHER.

How Credit Suppresses the Gold Price (with Alice and Bob)

Alternative title: How Credit Creates Inflation
Alternative title: How Gresham’s Law Destroys the Gold Standard

Our small closed economy has five main protagonists, Alice the Automobile Saleswoman, Bob the Banker, Charlie the Capitalist, Dave the Debtor, and Steve the Saver. This small economy is on a gold coin standard, i.e. gold coins circulate as cash. In order to see how the real price of gold (measured in Ferrari sports cars) depends on the creation of credit, we consider the following scenarios.

• A cash based economy without any lending and without any banks.
• An economy with banks, but without lending.
• An economy with banks and with fractional reserve lending.
• An economy without banks, but with private-to-private lending.
• An economy without banks, but with commercial Real Bills.

Currency Wars: Why The United States Cannot Return To A Gold Standard

The book Currency Wars by James G. Rickards (Penguin, 2011) quickly became a bestseller not only in goldbug circles. One of the main theses presented by Rickards is that the United States ought to return to a Gold Standard.

Have you ever wondered whether this would be possible? The answer is No. But why not? The reason we give might strike you as rather unexpected, but it leads you right into the question of what will be the future international monetary system. The answer is that it is the existence of the Euro that prevents the United States from returning to a gold standard.

The Euro zone is set up in such a way that it values gold at its free market price. Since the Euro zone is a major global trade hub, they are in fact in a strong position to block any attempt by the United States at returning to a gold standard. They can rather force the US to value gold at its free market price, too. Any attempt at linking the US dollar to a fixed weight of gold is futile in the long run because this would eventually lead to an under-valuation of gold in US$ and thereby irreversibly drain gold reserves from the United States. In the present article, we explain these ideas in greater detail.

The Many Values Of Gold

The present article gives an overview of various ideas on how much an ounce of gold might be worth.

We know the price of an ounce of gold. Last week, on 3 February 2012, the price of gold was US$ 1734.00 per ounce (London pm fixing). So much about the price. But what is its value?

Backwardation in the Case of a Monetary Metal

Silver has been in backwardation at the LBMA according to the published SIFO (Silver Forward Offered Rates) since January 19, 2011. It has also been in backwardation at the COMEX (New York Commodity Exchange) since around February 7, 2011. Figure 1 shows the LBMA Silver Forward Offered Rate from November 22, 2010, to May 19, 2011.

Figure 1: LBMA Silver Forward Offered Rate (SIFO) 2010-2011

 
I was dissatisfied with much of what has been written on this topic. This is an attempt of a better explanation.

Summary

I explain that silver should not be viewed as an industrial commodity that is consumed, but that one should rather view US$ and silver as a currency pair. If one takes this point of view, backwardation is not a market inefficiency due to a supply shortage, but rather indicates counterparty risk.

Update (27 February 2012): Backwardation is also possible if US$ deposits are subject to carrying charges or if nominal interest rates are negative, see Red Alert Update.