Probably hard cash in that case. It was before the central banks had completely nuked faith in the almighty dollar. Moneys value is as much an exercise in collective belief as it is hard value. I am very worried this belief has been broken as people have literally watched the money printer go BRRRRRRRRRRRRR in 2020. The central banks have created a monster. They have floated a ton of complex financial instruments through the COVID crisis using printed money. ALOT of printed money. There are trillions of US dollars out there in the wild that need to be unwound and they simply cannot find a path to doing so. The entire ledger has become an unholy mess. Even Gold and Silver are caught up in it as the major funds have hedged their bets with paper options of both, and then further muddled the waters with complex financial instruments in both.
I think the block chain ledgers are the ONLY financial instruments left with clearly determined value. Jesus christ I am writing this post and even I cannot believe what I am writing. Someone PLEASE call me a sped and tell me to calm down.
I've been thinking about this rambling post I made and the more i am looking into the more convinced i am this is actually the case. Cold Fusion actually did a really good video on this very subject a few months ago, so apparently I am not the only person who thinks this is going on.
The one key thing I am noticing from a Historians viewpoint is that all the financial institutions, central banks, and economists are looking at this from a position of pure math, statistics and short/long term averages when really they should be looking at it as the lead up to a major war nobody wants.
Wars, especially in the modern era (post 1600) are not desirable. They carry enormous risks, are expensive, they may pay off for you if you are lucky but could just as easily absolutely wreck you. So in general leadership works to avoid war. Yet a series of short term moves that may seem innocuous at first...say, France building forts to protect fur traders in the north american wilderness from natives and the encroaching english settlers circa 1750s can start to cascade. I dont think either France or England planned on such an innocuous (but aggressive) move triggering a 7 year global conflict and ultimately leading to both the American and French Revolutions, but that is what happened. More importantly though once the escalation chain was established none of the political leaders could turn the ship of state around. Events had taken a life of their own and all they could do was hang on for dear life.
In this case war isnt the impending problem, a full blown financial meltdown is and quantitative easing was our french forts in the wilderness. Both created to solve an immediate problem, but leading to much larger and more destructive problems long term. And the short term problem is the entire economy....scratch that the entire global economy is tied up in debt obligations that exceed the entire output of the global economy. Even worse, the debt obligations have ballooned out of control meaning the interest charges on the entire mass are exponentially growing, which means the central banks NEED to keep running the money printer. If they dont, the debts start defaulting and the first card in this massive house of cards falls. Like the political leaders before the start of the 7 years war, the central banks know they are heading for disaster but for the life of them they cant figure out how to turn the ship around.
So all they can do is keep printing money until finally a shock to the system, like some asshole named George Washington taking one of those french forts, brings the entire sorry edifice down and after that....