Silver as an investment
Rounds
Some hard money enthusiatists use .999 fine silver rounds like the Liberty Dollar as a store of value. A cross between bars and coins, silver rounds are produced by a huge array of Mint (coin)mints, generally contain an ounce of silver in the shape of a coin but have no status as legal tender. Rounds can be ordered with a custom design stamped on the faces or in random assorted batches.
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Gold nugget
A gold nugget is a naturally occurring piece of native gold. Watercourses often concentrate the nuggets and they are recovered by placer mining. They are often not pure 24K in compositon but rather about 20 to 22K (~about 83% to 92%). The common impurities are silver and copper.
The largest gold nugget ever found was the Welcome Stranger, found in Victoria, Australia in 1867. It weighed over 2,100 troy ounces (65.2 kg). The largest gold nugget in existence is the Hand of Faith, found by Kevin Hillier in Victoria in 1980 using a metal detector.
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Bank for International Settlements
Criticism
The UN agencies are echoing a broader complaint. Critics of capitalism as presently managed, including George Soros (who personally made billions exploiting the UK's clumsy attempts to prop up the pound sterling), argue that there is no will to enforce any significant regulation in the present competitive financial industry, where nations effectively compete to offer less regulation.
These critics often plead for a stronger role for the BIS in part as a hedge against the ideology prevailing at the International Monetary Fund, which has proven to be disastrous in many (some say most or all) cases. Strict reserve and capital discipline based on a non-ideological analysis of fundamental liabilities and rationally and scientifically expected risk would be far less likely, argue the critics, to be subordinated to a passing fashion in development policy.
For instance, regarding climate change, all of the living Nobel Prize scientists in the world signed a letter stating that the evidence for it was overwhelming and action was required. It is quite difficult to find any technical economic policy that has a similarly unanimous support, yet the IMF experts are often in a position to impose such fashions, while science is not reflected in central bank decision making.
Other doubts about the BIS's mandate, its program, its effectiveness, and the desirability of any existing institution taking the lead role in accounting reform, especially in light of serious failures of money-laundering law enforcement, major breaches of prudence and supervision in the United States (e.g. Enron), have led to some minor critique of the BIS in the anti-capitalism and anti-globalization movements. This is incidental usually to critiques of the IMF and World Bank, whose role is far more visible, and which have far more discretion in their policy.
The BIS is also a frequent target of allegations by conspiracy theorists, many of whom portray it as a front organisation through which a wealthy elite controls the world. Some argue that the bank has not helped matters through a culture of secretiveness, and that lack of information always encourages some people to imagine what they do not know.
"Another fly in the ointment has been the recent Nazi gold controversy, in which it was indicated that venerable Basel – and, more specifically, the little-known but extremely powerful Bank for International Settlements headquartered in the city – spent the 1930s and ’40s quietly laundering the Nazis’ ill-gotten gains under a cloak of neutrality. Evidence of such murky banking practice was received with shock, anger and disbelief in Basel and around the country, and has yet to be fully accepted. Unaccustomed to being faced with pointing fingers, Baslers may take some decades to assess and absorb the accusations." (quote: http://switzerland.isyours.com/e/guide/basel/index.html)
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Money
Economics offers various definitions for money, though it is now commonly considered to be any good or token that functions as a medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account. Some authors explicitly require money to be a standard of deferred payment, too [1]. In common usage, money refers more specifically to currency, particularly the many circulating currencies with legal tender status; deposit accounts denominated in such currencies are also considered part of the money supply.
The use of money provides an alternative to bartering, which is often inefficient because it requires a coincidence of wants between traders. The efficiency gains through the use of money are thought to encourage trade and the division of labour, in turn increasing productivity and wealth.
Commodity money such as gold or silver was amongst the earliest forms of money to emerge. Under a commodity money system, the objects used as money have intrinsic value, i.e., they have value beyond their use as money. For example, gold coins retain value as gold even if inflation damages their value as currency, whereas paper notes are only worth as much as the monetary value assigned to them. Commodity money is usually adopted to simplify transactions in a barter economy, and so it functions first as a medium of exchange[citation needed]. It quickly begins functioning as a store of value[citation needed], since holders of perishable goods can easily convert them into durable money.
Fiat money is a relatively modern invention. A central authority (government) creates a new money object that has negligible inherent value. The widespread acceptance of fiat money is most frequently enhanced by the central authority mandating the money's acceptance under penalty of law and demanding this money in payment of taxes or tribute. At various times in history, government-issued promissory notes have later become fiat currencies (e.g. US Dollar) and fiat currencies have gone on to become a form of commodity currency (e.g. Swiss Dinar) [2].
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