wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard. @Matthew -- I see a gold standard as the last stronghold of the elite if their plans turn sour. They control it through all the holdings of the central banks, including China. Not the mention that a lot of these holdings are simply sitting in New York or London, very easy to confiscate. As I`ve proclaimed at one the "end the Fed" rally: "Honest money is debt free money, debt free money is honest money!"