Posted on 04/29/2002 5:14:43 PM PDT by shrinkermd
This is the part that the gold bugs don't want to mention. Given a high enough level of energy throughput, any form of matter--which, after all, is merely another form of energy--can be manufactured from existing energy quite easily. This includes gold.
I AGREE But the main point is that PAPER MONEY is a commodity, and a small increase in supply can easily crash a commodity market. It happens all the time with oil AND IN COUNTRIES THAT PRACTICE THEIR VERSION OF MONETARY POLICY Even the [i]fear[/i] of a restriction or increase in supply causes huge price variations. And this is supposed to be the 'solid basis' for a currency? History shows that is pure fantasy. <br
FYI, alchemy is not widely believed to have a basis in fact.
Like I said, push enough energy around, and that becomes reality. If you don't like that, how about a plasma shock torch? It reduces any material to its component elements.
FYI, alchemy is not widely believed to have a basis in fact.
FYI, modern physics is not "alchemy."
It's a matter of having enough energy available.
It never ceases to amaze me that decent conservatives can throw socialist platitudes around to demonize capitalist style revenue instruments and central banking.
I'll haul away all the useless colored paper anybody cares to discard.
I just did a google search on that quote. "Dr. Franz Pick" comes up on a whole raft of gold bug and old Y2K panic exploitation sites. Pick argues that anybody who buys gummint bonds is "paying the government for the privilege of spending the taxpayers money." He advocates liquidation of all government assets to clear the books of all debts and obligations. So do communists. Nuff said.
A fixed exchange rate between the U.S. Dollar and the Russian Ruble would have been a joke. The U.S. economy was performing much more strongly throughout the entire 20th century. The underlying economic truth was that the Ruble should have been falling against the Dollar almost continuously from 1917 on. Where markets were allowed to operate, that in fact happened. Who is so smart that they know better than the market?
This is only true when the only source of money in a society is loaned into existence. Even your own bottlecap analogy does not have that flawed characteristic (the current monetary system does have this characteriistic, however).
As Headsonspikes has already pointed out to you, the IBOND does not solve the problem of monetary risk if the issuer doesn't maintain the scarcity integrity of the currency. And, BTW, no one who has ever had the power to issue money out of thin air has EVER maintained such integrity!
Fixede exchange rates in no way require economies to grow at the same rates. In fact they have nothing to do with the performance of economies.
They merely require integrity from each party. The current fiat purveyors have no such integrity. If each monetary unit is defined as, and redeemable for, an explicit quantity of a given substance (gold works), then, by definition, exchange rates are fixed.
If we are looking for the match of monetary opinions to 'modern' ideologies, we need look no further than a Mr. Vlad Lenin, who opined (and I paraphrase), 'comes the Revolution, the only use for gold will be in public toilets'.
I do not think that this was mere idiosyncrisy on his part. Such hostility to any objective, non-socialist means of preserving and trading wealth is common to all the modern Totalitarianisms.
That will include Euro-Socialism, American Socialism, Chinese and other 'Communisms'.
The arguments against gold as money are illusory. Take a look at your allies in this quarrel: hordes of tax-eating gubmint trough-lickers, alarmed at the prospect of facing any real limits to their appetites.
Paper tokens would work well if only mankind were not human, 'all too human'. Place your faith in agents of the State, if you will, but don't expect others to share your touching naivete.
Yes, when loans are created in our current monetary system money is created. That is NOT a characteristic of the lending process, per se, and isn’t even a characteristic of the 70 bottle cap society you introduced.
gold is dilluted on a one to one redemption with a dollar.
What does this mean?
If you have savings…put it in an IBOND
Translation: if you want to store value, lend it, instead, to the government in the hopes that they will have the integrity to maintain some semblance of rationality to the currency. IOW, hope you don’t become Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, etc., etc. Somewhere in the back of your mind, however, I am sure a voice of reason is reminding you of what Santyana counseled: he who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.
I don’t know whether your love for the IBOND or hatred of GOLD is the more irrational and misguided. I can’t imagine, however, that anyone (except you) pays attention to your vapid, shrill ravings on these issues.
We've agreed and sided with each other on way too many important issues to flirt with argumentum ad hominem.
Call it "naivete" if you will, but one cannot help but note the following:
Name two.
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