China’s financial regulator and local commercial banks have begun blocking gold and silver sales to local individual investors, Reuters reported. Officially, their goal is to stop the “speculation” after the prices of both metals have shot up in recent days and reached record levels.In practice, however, the authorities are trying to prevent what in the economy is called “escape to safe value” – a situation in which consumers turn their backs on depreciating money and turn to physical assets with stable value. This was the reason why, in the midst of the Great Depression, President Theodore Roosevelt confiscated the Americans’ gold.Inflation or prosperity: How central banks secretly destroy the standard of living.