221–230 of 238 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You read the news "Robberies in have increased by 30%". Would that make you more willing to redirect half your savings to my account? If so, I'm happy to discuss further via email.
If the alternative was keeping it under my mattress, and you were known to be a respectable citizen, then I don't see why not. Isn't this basically what a bank does already?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if the Fed "lost" some of the gold (which would be a hilarious story), does it really matter? There has to be some liability clause in whatever agreement put the gold in the Fed's hands to begin with- if they lose track of Germany's property (or claim to have, or whatever), they're obligated to pay Germany back for it. Revealing that would be a gigantic embarrassment, sure, but primarily only concerning the Amer…
1200 tons of gold is worth around 44 Billion, a trivial amount of money as far the US government is worth. So the idea that it would be stolen by the government is ludicrous.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gold sort of works for sovereigns. It's crap for individuals. Any situation where you need to rely on physical gold is a situation where someone else will take it from you by force.
Yes, the value is much smaller since your power to keep it is smaller. But the amount will also be smaller. And I would say there are still quite a few situations where having something of trade value is better than having nothing.
This is my reading anyway, based on what I understand is usual diplomatic custom and lingo in such affairs.
Pass.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because central banks managed to convince us that we don't need it to back up our currency. No, it's because we switched to much more productive things to back up our currency. Our currency is backed by the willingness of our citizens to work and the value of the land and other possessions. The currency is stabilized by not printing more than what there is to back it up, nor less. Gold is a terrible thing to use be…
I think that fiat money is backed by the state's ultimate monopoly on violence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's already built into our understanding of what "$44b" is. If not, then all values should be inflated by 10x, which would keep the $44b at the same ratio of the total pie - which is to say nothing.
No, in fact it is not. To help you understand why, if the US were to switch back to a gold-backed currency and somehow do it relatively seamlessly, it would need to find enough gold to back a money supply of about $7 trillion dollars (or $20+ trillion, depending...). All the gold in the world is currently "worth" less than $7 trillion dollars, and the US would be lucky to land 15% of that, or about 25,000 tonnes. In…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's already built into our understanding of what "$44b" is. If not, then all values should be inflated by 10x, which would keep the $44b at the same ratio of the total pie - which is to say nothing.
No, in fact it is not. To help you understand why, if the US were to switch back to a gold-backed currency and somehow do it relatively seamlessly, it would need to find enough gold to back a money supply of about $7 trillion dollars (or $20+ trillion, depending...). All the gold in the world is currently "worth" less than $7 trillion dollars, and the US would be lucky to land 15% of that, or about 25,000 tonnes. In…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the past, diversified land holdings across many countries haven't been a great strategy, because they're too difficult for the foreign owner to hold on to politically and military. Land is expensive to protect.
>> Land is expensive to protect. So you use your wealth to ensure that local authorities protect your interests. You setup people in power, vassal kings, to protect land interests above all others. Who is in charge now? Who are their friends? Do they own property scattered all over the globe? Do any of them care about a box of gold?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To build the gang you must recruit where `new-recruit-power < total-gang-power`. Since to start you are the only gang member, you can only recruit one dude who is 0.75 your strength. Now the gang is 1.75 strength, so you can go after another dude who's really strong, say 1.25. Now your gang has a strength of 3. Eventually you will be able to swallow up whole other gangs.
That is not at all how anything works. What is "gang power"? What factors contribute to it? Manpower, wealth, weaponry, or what?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's about the symbolism. The value of gold does not track the total value of other assets, making it unable to be use as a currency substitute because you would need too much of it to do anything meaningful. Revealing a "problem" with US-held gold would be a blow to US currency dominance. The value of such a shift in global power is vastly more than the total value of gold on the planet, which is about 8-9 tril…
Eventually there will be asteroid mining, and like we already have a sense of 1 trillion dollars worth of palladium in an asteroid, there will be 1 trillion dollars worth of new gold - which did cost a lot to get. Google claims the entire mined gold in the world's history is 8 trillion, but tons (ha) have been lost over time. Anyway, you get 12.5% more in that first shipment. Maybe it will be a 100 years from now. An…
A good example to consider is aluminium. In early 1880s, the price of aluminium was around $10000 of today's dollars for kilogram -- actually the price of ounce made more sense, as you very rarely saw pieces of aluminium so large to weigh a kilogram back then. For example, the capstone for Washington Monument, weighing 9 kilograms, was the largest single piece of aluminium ever cast at that time.
Then, in 1888, the modern process of aluminium was invented, and soon its price rapidly fell by orders of magnitude.