Currencies: The Origin Of The Term Debasement

The romans figured out ways to debase their currency, gold coins disappeared in Rome because the Roman government was debasing the currency, so everybody took the gold and hide it at home.

The term debasement in fact comes from what the Romans were doing because they put base metals, lead, copper, whatever into the silver coins and so if you look back, historically, at one point silver coins in Rome were 100 percent silver. By the end, silver coins in Rome had less than 0.2 percent. They were essentially base metals in the end. That is where we got the term debasement. So even silver coin, even gold has been debased because politicians knew ways to rob all of us.

Related trading instruments: iShares Silver Trust ETF (SLV), SPDR Gold Trust ETF (GLD)