This is from a couple of sentences from one of Hollywood’s greatest films, “Inherit the Wind,” (1960), with Spencer Tracy and Frederic March. It’s the story of the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial,” held in Dayton Tennessee. A high school teacher, John Scopes was teaching evolution, which was against the law in that state. Spencer Tracy, played the famous lawyer, Clarence Darrow, and March, played William Jennings Bryan. March was made up to look almost exactly like the real Bryan, and Bryan did indeed die within four days of the trial’s ending. It’s a most marvelous, beautifully directed, Incredibly acted, multiple Academy Award winning movie which you must own, rent, or see. I own one. You’ll never regret it.
In the film, after the day’s court action was over, Tracy was remembering when he was a child, and it all is such a great imitation of 2024 in my opinion. He said to March, “You know, when I was a kid of maybe seven, there was a wonderful rocking horse in a department store window named Golden Dancer. I thought that if could have Golden Dancer that would be everything in the world I would like to have. We were poor and Golden Dancer would have to be separated from me by that department store window.
“Dad worked overtime for a month, and Mom skimped on groceries. It was Christmas and I woke up, and there was Golden Dancer under the tree. I hopped on, and it fell apart. The wood was rotten, and it was held together with spit and sealing wax.”
Today, what goes for security, and almost all human desires, especially for retirement, is probably what 90% of America wants, and which would fill everyone’s ‘Golden Dancer,’ dream of everything they could possibly desire. Possession of their ‘Golden Dancer,’ are stocks, bonds, savings accounts, CD’s, IRA’s etc., and to me they’re all made of rotten wood and held together with spit and sealing wax. The latest fraud probably, is the stock related to Donald Trump, which he owns majority of, and which will make him a billionaire, they say. It makes nothing, represents nothing, and is as empty as a broken bottle, but fools are buying it. One single, non-metallic, $70,000 Bit-coin, which you can’t even physically possess, other than a computer entry, represents absolutely nothing, makes nothing, won’t buy anything, and is a total fraud also. Remember Bernie Madoff? The Wall Street Journal, almost daily, has stock failures, bankruptcies, and even frauds, such as the guy who stole $8 billion from Bit-coin investors, and has been sentenced to 25 years in the slammer. That doesn’t get the $8 billion back, which he donated most of to the Democratic Party!
Most everyone’s dreams, are about having dollars, now, or for retirement. The same dollar, which used to buy five gallons of gasoline, 100 pieces of penny candy, ten tickets to a Saturday matinee at the local theatre, or twenty Hershey bars. For a hundred years, gold, silver, Hershey bars, penny candy, and gasoline’s prices were stable. Roosevelt had not been elected, and Congress didn’t find it necessary to authorize non-backed dollars to be printed to pay Roosevelt’s enormous efforts to get us out of the great depression. In eight years, the debts were enormous, the dollar’s value had shrunk, and we were still in the depression! Roosevelt, was about to get us into World War Two, which doubled prices and shrank the buck 50%, in just 3 ½ years. That got us out of the depression. Has you saved in dollars in 1941, by 1945, they would buy exactly half of what they bought 3 ½ years before. Could this happen again? You decide, but I think the answer is elementary. I have gold and silver as the insurance they give, with no monthly payments.
Each succeeding President and Congress, keeps printing, and haven’t even the remotest idea of how to stop, without costing them the next election. In other words, it’ll go one forever, till the buck collapses eventually. Now, the debt is over $34 trillion, and is totally unpayable, other than with Monopoly Money, with no value, or ‘print to pay,’ as I pointed out in a previous column. That’s what everyone is saving in, except a few, such as our customers, who know that the only real money, anywhere in the world today, happens to be gold and silver. Not a single nation on Earth, has their currency backed by gold or silver, which is real money. Sorry to take a couple sentences from a magnificent film, but Tracy’s Golden Dancer’s being made of rotten wood, and being held together with spit and sealing wax, reminds me ever so much of the dollar, which is held tother by almost the same stuff.
Don Stott- Don@coloradogld.com