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Message:: [QUOTE="doug444, post: 1651851, member: 38849"]This is the first instance I've seen of cases where, for a limited period of time, the PMs had declining value during economic upheaval -- not for their fundamentals, but due to political intrigue.  Still, as a stacker, I like to read both sides. Excerpted from "The Prudent Bear" newsletter, February 25, 2013: "...However, as you can read in Jung Chang's "Wild Swans," during the Maoist  famine years of the "Great Leap Forward" of 1958-61, when market  mechanisms ceased to operate, gold and silver were no longer useful,  because possession of them endangered your position in a society that  was full of informants and imprisoned the bourgeois. Similarly during  the Ukrainian famine of 1928-32, possession of gold and silver got you  labeled as a "kulak" and subject to liquidation by Stalin's secret  police. In both cases however, food itself remained a highly acceptable  means of exchange and could obtain you any kind of services available,  or indeed antique furniture and jewelry if your taste ran to that sort  of thing and you were confident your political connections made you safe  from liquidation."[/QUOTE]