Gold Wars: The Battle for the Global Economy

by Kelly Mitchell

Overview

This second edition of Gold Wars: The Battle for the Global Economy features new chapters on China’s gold, cryptocurrencies, and a new foreword. It addresses out of control imbalances in the financial system. As gold is the barometer of systemic ills, a war on gold–-to hold down its price—is taking place to hide the negative impacts of fiat currency, shadow banking and central banking on the global financial system.
Starting with a critical discussion on the nature of money and the bizarre fractional reserve structure currently in place, Mitchell moves on to address the massive, but little-known systemic pivot point: the Petrodollar standard, a standard which appears to be failing.
Next, Mitchell addresses the twins of shadow and central banking. Then, with the stage set and the distortions, corruptions and levers of power in better view, he examines a few historical precedents and likely outcomes through deflationary/inflationary effects and their combinations.
A detailed breakdown of long-running manipulations in the gold market follows—from nonexistent paper gold, smackdowns, high-frequency trading, and ETF’s to CentralBank games like swapping/leasing, shell accounting, midnight raids, clandestine gold movements and regulatory attacks on investors. Mitchell offers a prediction of the results for the gold market: when the manipulation fails, paper and physical prices will separate, with the physical selling for multiples of paper.
Western banks, lacking the gold to cover their obligations, are increasingly trying to financialize the problem. They’ve largely succeeded in preventing a major gold or silver-based implosion, but the threat still looms in the background.
Power is flowing East as China and Russia have drawn in massive amounts of gold while dumping Treasuries. The BRICS will unveil a gold backed e-CNY to compete with the dollar. Simultaneously, they are forcing the US debt back home in exchange for real assets, choking the Fed/Treasury on the mountain of paper, and grabbing the financial power. This momentous shift is already underway.
A Chinese edition of the original edition of Gold Wars was published by the prestigious Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press in 2015.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781963892260
Publisher:	Clarity Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/01/2026
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	334
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Kelly is a writer and financial analyst, specializing in precious metals and cryptocurrency. He lives in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia with his wife and 2 boys.

Read an Excerpt

Foreword
A book like this can benefit from a guiding metaphor — like a handle to grab. The Paul Krugman con is appropriate. Economist Paul Krugman, according to the mainstream media, won the 'Nobel Prize in Economics.' However, there is no such prize. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was created in 1968 and passed off by the Swedish Central Bank as a true Nobel in an effort to save the dismal reputation of economics. "It's most often awarded to stock market speculators," one of the Nobel heirs claimed. Robert Merton and Myron Sholes won it for their formula valuing derivatives to minimize risk. Nine months later, their firm LTCM nearly imploded global bond markets and required an emergency intervention.
The bank managed to slip the prize in with those created by Alfred Nobel. They did it to get scientific validation and wrest control from democratic processes — a relentless central bank strategy in all countries. Scientists are miffed but the public is none the wiser. That's the way it is with central banks in particular. Most non-insider experts more or less despise them as a renegade force that has seized control, but the public is treated to a steady diet of propaganda and little understands the intense debate. Far worse, they have no idea that the stakes could not be higher.
Modern economic theory is useless. In fact, it is dangerous. The global economy is undergoing a paradigm shift. Mainstream economists see the series of crises (real estate bubble pop, banking crises, sovereign debt problems) as external — problems stemming from various participants and their inability to properly manage their situation in the overall context. Economics, as it is said, is very useful as employment for economists. In the real world, the theories are mismatched and worsen the situation. The problems are not external, nor are they a series of isolated events. The problems are the early warning signs of the failure of the global monetary system. We are witnessing a worldwide paradigm shift. The current way of doing things is crumbling. The process is not reversible, nor can it be stabilized at a lower level. The imbalances are too large. It can be slowed somewhat, and has been. It can also be broken apart to let separate pieces fail without dragging the entire system down as rapidly. This is meeting with little success, however. The globalized system is quite integrated. It is failing as a whole, but few people see this.

Table of Contents

Author's Foreword 9

Introduction 12

1 Money: Form and Function 20

2 The Fractional Reserve System 34

3 The Petrodollar standard 45

4 Shadow Banking, QE, and ZIRP 61

5 Physical Gold 97

6 Central Banking and the Federal Reserve 100

Fed and US Central Banking history

World Central Bank history

Fed Policy

7 Inflation, Deflation, Disinflation, Stagflation, and Hyperinflation 128

Inflation 130

Deflation 136

Hyperinflation 140

Other 'flations 145

8 Metals Trading, Manipulations and Theft 148

Propaganda 151

Spot, Futures and Fixes 156

Smackdowns 163

Allocated Gold, Pools, ETFs, and Other Games 168

Central Bank Manipulations 176

Leasing 185

Regulatory Schemes, Cover-ups and Legalized Confiscation 192

Precious Metals Hunts 195

Fort Knox, Fed Audits, Tungsten Fills, and Other Games with Gold Bars 197

The End Result 203

9 Silver: A Special Case 211

Manipulation 213

10 Resistance 228

Sino-Soviet Alliance 231

Gold Drain 240

Monetary Reform Act and Local Currencies 244

Local Resistance 247

Conclusion 252

Counterparty Obligation 255

Glossary 258

Index 264

Editorial Reviews

"If you want to escape the false reality of the economic Matrix in which we live, read Kelly Mitchell's book." — Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury

From the Publisher