Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
You would GLADLY give up your goodies for the mellow yellow in any high inflation scenario. That is, unless you like watching your perishables that you cannot pickle or preserve rot away.
Ha, ha, thanks for your concern, which is misplaced. My canned goods will not be "rotting away" anytime soon:
In 1820, William Perry (Parry) took an expedition in search of the Northwest Passage, toward the North Pole. He took with him some canned meats. At the time, food canning was about a 10-year-old technology.
At least one can of meat was not used and wound up in a museum in England. In 1938, it was opened and found to be edible. It was fed to a cat which suffered no ill effects from eating the 118-year-old meat.
It seems to me that gold has no more intrinsic value than Conch shells, eagle feathers or dare I say it, paper money. As a commodity of exchange, you can't eat it, you can't heat your house with it, although it makes for a better rock to throw as a weapon but other than that... In the dooms day scenarios so pervasive amongst dystopian theorist I would no more exchange a pound of gold for a kernel of corn than I would for a ton of scrap iron... actually the scrap iron might have more value since I could at least make utensils out of the scrap metal.
Gold has a history of being used as money. That is why it gets horded. Iron is a really good end of the world investment.
See this video entitled, "Navin Johnson learns the difference between sh*t and shinola" for use as a training video first of all.
That link put out there about the difference between sh*t and shinola was actually an important learning tool in helping to understand the fiat currency system. Throughout recorded history, the gold and silver standard have been there. One fine day in American history (which is only a few hundred years old rather than a few thousand), a group of politicians decided to go off the gold standard because it "inconvenienced" them. The fiat currency system was born! People were just supposed to have faith in it's value, faith that those little green pieces of paper were "good as gold" and backed by the Government because it was no longer backed in physical gold held by the Nation's treasury.
This went worldwide and the complexities of the global economy have become that much MORE complex in modern history with a major part of this being that the fiat currency system leaves quite a bit of room for "anomalies", manipulation by Governmental entities and imposition of Government control over all wealth. The current global economy has in fact been referred to by leading economists as a "giant and elaborate ponzi scheme" that has no other option but to default somewhere along the line and at some point.
Theoretically speaking, if a global economic "meltdown" did occur the only feasible option would be to fall back onto a gold and silver standard! "Back to basics" so to speak. You could wake up one morning to find that all currency is rendered invalid and that now we are to be issued some sort of different currency... you could be told that instead of having 10,000 dollars in the bank, you now have 1000 "Patriot dollars" instead. The fiat currency system allows for manipulations that were not as possible with gold-backed currency and considerably more control of currency issue and currency related matters by the Government! Smaller Governments, such as Turkey have changed their currency over in the past in it's entirety and declared the old currency worthless beyond a certain point in time, allowing for the Government to keep exact tabs and controls on currency in circulation and basically know where it all is. Citizens had to turn in their old currency for the new issue. The fiat currency system allows for absolute control of wealth by the Government and that's exactly how they want it! For many years it was illegal to own gold or stockpile gold in the US... Why would they do this? To have absolute control over the masses and control of economic matters, of course!
Currency issues over time and through the ages have come and gone, have been changed drastically, have been rendered all but worthless in some instances even! Gold and silver have remained constant though as far as being negotiable regardless of what is going on with the fiat currency system. My strong sense of being well diversified tells me to have not only a stack of currency there but also a stack of gold and silver bars because I like to have all my bases covered. Regardless of what may occur with the fiat currency system, gold and silver will hold their value. In the case of a hyperinflation situation it will increase in value to astronomical amounts. In the case of a restructuring of global economies of any type due to stupidity or negligence on the part of those people that have been running the fiat currency system, gold and silver will be a major influence of any monetary restructuring as it has throughout recorded history.
I left all this in broad-brush generalizations to keep it simple and easy to read but I have studied economics in depth for many years, not just last week's stock tickler, not just recent history... but going all the way back to when they were minting tetradrachm silver coins in Tyre, Phoencia. This, my son... is shinola.
You are quoting what those who control the gold want you to believe, I used to also. The more I learn about the history of currency, the further I want to run a from a gold baked currency.
Gold has had a pretty good run the past several years. Maybe if you hold it, it's a good time to sell. After it drops, buy it back at the lower price.
I have read each and every post (Summer73 excepted) and the gist seems to be that gold is rare which is somewhat true, and has a great track record but very few have either attempted or have come close to demonstrating the as a commodity for exchange has any intrinsic value. What makes an ounce of gold worth whatever dollar amount placed upon it?
Folks argue that the dollar isn't worth anything, but it has no less or nor more value than what people place on it. A Ferrari dealer values a car as being worth $350,000, if you hand over $350,000 you drive off the lot with the car because the $350,000 represents a measure of value not that the dollar itself has any intrinsic value in and of itself. Gold is no different. Absent paper money, the same Ferrari dealer values his car at some measure of value, and then exchanges a portion of that metal on down the line only because it represent some arbitrary measure of value.
Now as for the rarity of gold... well that is questionable. Gold is not finite and its supply is rather tightly controlled with certainly distorts the market value of gold which seems to lay outside of normal concepts of supply and demand. So, I would be curious to look for correlations between supply and price.
Either way, the speculation on the price of gold seem to me to be no more based on rational than investment in junk bonds, credit default swaps or any other instrument of exchange that derives its value in such an arbitrary manner.
One of issue that has piqued my curiosity is how the total reserve value of gold correlates to the size of the economy. For example if let's say the total amount of goal is only a fraction of GDP, then the question becomes how can an economy rise to a certain dollar value if that dollar is pegged to set price in gold. This isn't just about printing money (which like gold a exchange commodity that can be made rare or abundant at will) but is there enough gold to back an expansive global economy?
is there enough gold to back an expansive global economy?
You can theoretically run the world economy on one gold coin. Gold would simply rise to whatever level was necessary, divisible by GDP of whatever country the gold is in. Electronic purchasing can make it all possible. In any event, if you really require something to hold to transact in, then silver is the ticket.
My gold comes in cans of food, a big garden, small livestock, tools, guns and ammo for hunting, and the land I live on.
But, hey, what the hell do I know, I'm just another one of those wacko preppers who believes in tangibles being worth more than any precious metal when you and your kids show up at my door with empty bellies and some gold bars to trade.
Ask the people in Japan who lost their homes in a giant flood about how your plan would have worked out for them.
Your plan only works if your area isn't danger of some of natural or man made disaster.
I have read each and every post (Summer73 excepted) and the gist seems to be that gold is rare which is somewhat true, and has a great track record but very few have either attempted or have come close to demonstrating the as a commodity for exchange has any intrinsic value. What makes an ounce of gold worth whatever dollar amount placed upon it?
Folks argue that the dollar isn't worth anything, but it has no less or nor more value than what people place on it. A Ferrari dealer values a car as being worth $350,000, if you hand over $350,000 you drive off the lot with the car because the $350,000 represents a measure of value not that the dollar itself has any intrinsic value in and of itself. Gold is no different. Absent paper money, the same Ferrari dealer values his car at some measure of value, and then exchanges a portion of that metal on down the line only because it represent some arbitrary measure of value.
Now as for the rarity of gold... well that is questionable. Gold is not finite and its supply is rather tightly controlled with certainly distorts the market value of gold which seems to lay outside of normal concepts of supply and demand. So, I would be curious to look for correlations between supply and price.
Either way, the speculation on the price of gold seem to me to be no more based on rational than investment in junk bonds, credit default swaps or any other instrument of exchange that derives its value in such an arbitrary manner.
One of issue that has piqued my curiosity is how the total reserve value of gold correlates to the size of the economy. For example if let's say the total amount of goal is only a fraction of GDP, then the question becomes how can an economy rise to a certain dollar value if that dollar is pegged to set price in gold. This isn't just about printing money (which like gold a exchange commodity that can be made rare or abundant at will) but is there enough gold to back an expansive global economy?
You are quoting what those who control the gold want you to believe, I used to also. The more I learn about the history of currency, the further I want to run a from a gold baked currency.
I don't see why all of the States didn't secede from the District of Columbia.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Not a big gold fan.
