Problem is Palladium can be as volatile as any other rare metal:
Posted on 06/05/2009 1:28:11 PM PDT by pobeda1945
Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the Russian Parliament, the State Duma, said that the participants of the Economic Forum in St. Petersburg would discuss a possibility of making ruble coins from precious metals. “We could offer the world the Russian ruble made of palladium. It would be a very strong currency. One may recollect the golden ruble, which Russia had during the tsarist times. It was a freely convertible currency and was circulating very well,” Gryzlov told reporters Thursday.
The President of the Association of Russian Banks, Garegin Tosunyan said that the coins made of precious and semi-precious metals would obviously be in demand on the market. “It has little to do with convertibility, but it would be quite normal as a measure against inflation and devaluation. Why not?” he said.
State Duma deputy Anatoly Aksakov believes that such a measure would not be effective.
“Such coins will become a numismatic rarity, a must-have for private collectors. Golden ten-ruble coins used to play a positive role in domestic and international settlements indeed, although it was the period of hyperinflation. The Russian economy should be modernized to make the ruble attractive.
Palladium is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal that was discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston, who named it after the asteroid Pallas, which in turn, was named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired by her when she slew Pallas.
Palladium, along with platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium form a group of elements referred to as the platinum group metals (PGMs). Platinum group metals share similar chemical properties, but palladium has the lowest melting point and is the least dense of these precious metals. The cost of one gram of palladium makes up about $8.
so easy to counterfeit!
Meh. I imagine it’d be slightly more difficult than counterfeiting a dollar bill.
Think man! They can counterfeit it themselves. Oy.
Problem is Palladium can be as volatile as any other rare metal:
They are to be numismatic coins so go ahead and counterfeit away.
Russia cares more about its own currency than the TOTUS does it’s currency.
Why don’t they use polonium instead? :) Alexander Litvinenko would, were he alive, say it is a good metal to use...
/chuckle
Hmmm. I'm wondering if it's worth several bucks now?
Meanwhile, the Organization of American States is considering minting its currency in Latinum.
[tih ponders, breaks into enthusiastic laughter]. That's funny!
How do you KNOW its palladium? Just like gold coins, do you need a test kit?
Worse than that. You need a couple of azine dyes and a means of heating the suspect coin to high temps. MAJOR headache.
Or is it the dollar that is volatile?
Palladium is primarily an industrial metal. If monetary use became significant, it would tend to have a stabilizing influence on the price (it would also tend to increase the price).
Gold is used industrially, for jewelry, and as a monetary metal. Its monetary use is most important. It does not fluctuate as much as many other precious metals.
Actually there is a place for precious metals as a hedge against the potential inflation problems that can be caused by fiat currency. Many people are buying gold bullion to hedge against the possibility of the Fed monetizing a substantial portion of US debt.
If palladium and several other precious metals became important monetary metals, it would provide some protection against inflation, all over the world. Gold is held in vaults in many countries, for this reason, but there simply isn't enough gold to account for a significant portion of the world's wealth. If we had many more monetary metals, this would become more practical.
Obviously, Russia stands to gain from doing this. They can increase demand for the metal that they produce, and sell it for more than their production costs.
Hmm. Maybe they know something and are trying to get in on the ground floor of cold fusion.
Then someone had an idea. Counterfeit silver dollars began pouring north across the border by the millions. Equipment and supplies were purchased and the dollars put in circulation. The counterfeits were near perfect and each had slightly more silver than the official dollars. No harm and a lot of good was being done so the government let it go.
You can often tell the counterfeits because they wore faster due to the high silver content.
since the paper the US$ is made of is worthless other than what it represents and can be and is churned out at will, i don't see how using a precious as currency wouldn't get very expensive from mine to mint very quickly with a constantly depleting supply. if it was only domestic and stayed in the country, fine, but it would be impossible to contain and hence leave as fast as it's minted.
or am i missing something?
Actually coins are exceedingly hard to fake, and definitive tests are trivial. Thats what makes gold so good as money to begin with.
Counterfeit morgans?? I cant see that, unless the somehow got the dies somehow, which isn’t a stretch though. Have never heard that, but makes sense, silver prices collapsed in the thirties, so much. $5 in silver max, per purchase. Hm. So Mexican Morgans would be a nice arb.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.