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How much gold has been found in the world?

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Re: How much gold has been found in the world?

#71

Post by machina_ex_deus »

imtringued wrote: post #69
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is circular reasoning, because if the currencies were backed by gold, its price would skyrocket to fit the GDP. You can't compare price of gold as a speculative investment to price of gold backing an entire financial system.

What if gold creates needless friction that prevents a higher GDP? For example, in a global gold reserve system it is possible for individual countries to run out of gold, possibly reducing their GDP to nothing. This happened way more often than you think and for many wildly different reasons. For example, the famous Weimar Republic hyperinflation was caused by an outflow of gold due to forced reparation payments tha…

My personal opinion is that the gold shenanigan is nothing compared to the shenanigans going on in banks.

It all boils down to a monopoly of very few organisations over the entire money creation system, and the instabilities are a result of the fact that few managers at the top are given extremely crude tools to manage extremely delicate system. Every little error using those extremely crude tools has extreme consequences.

There was always one redeeming quality of gold-backed currencies, and it's the restriction of those crude tools.

As for Weimar republic, the gold was never the issue. They were given an impossible debt to pay as reparations, and they could have that debt denominated in whatever tangible way you can think of, it wouldn't be paid. The reason the common German was devastated by the inflation was that their local currency wasn't backed by gold, it was allowed to be printed indefinitely by a government trying to fulfill an impossible debt.

Re: How much gold has been found in the world?

#72

Post by scottiebarnes »

imtringued wrote: post #70
scottiebarnes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want store of value buy cash/dividend producing assets. Cash/dividends denominated in falling currency is not a store of value. Ie. a profitable business that takes revenue in and pays out dividends in Turkish Lira or Venezuelan Bolivar. Not an issue for those in west, but not everyone has access to stable currency/markets. > to ask currency to both act as transaction and store of value (those are opposite r…

>This is how we got to a gold standard over some thousands of years. We started with gift based economies where people keep track of favors in their head and after that ancient Egypt introduced a grain standard which did the exact opposite of holding value and it worked for thousands of years and encouraged long term investments like the pyramids as there is no point in making the rest of the economy wait eternally.…

> Money is an asset whose primary property is to be highly liquid. Liquidity is the ability to trade one asset for another.

And what gives an asset ultimate liquidity? Liquidity is desire to be owned by someone else. Something needs to make it desirable, what could that be?

Otherwise we'd be using feathers as money.

Re: How much gold has been found in the world?

#73

Post by FooBarWidget »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #51
fsloth wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the money bin is filled with coins (some notes as filler as well), most of which have never been minted out of gold :D

But are they gold coins? We can see Scrooge diving into and swimming through it. Either they are light and have low plasticity, or Scrooge is denser than any known element, and stronger than any known living creature.

Money is to Scrooge what the sun is to Superman. So under the right conditions, Scrooge is denser than any known element, and stronger than any known living creature.

Re: How much gold has been found in the world?

#74

Post by euroderf »

valleyer wrote: post #48
tpmx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, thanks! (Not a native speaker.)

FWIW, they are either joking or just wrong about "dailily". "Daily" by itself is a perfectly fine adverb, and I've never heard or seen "dailily". To prevent cavities, brush your teeth twice daily.

Yes, I was joking. Apologies. But hey, "daily" can be an adjective too, so why not indulge with adverbial "dailily" ?

(OK, I'll go back to my cave now.)

Re: How much gold has been found in the world?

#76

Post by homeland221 »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #39
TacticalCoder wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure if that's more or less than I'd expect. Most people "owning" gold in the world hold paper gold that isn't backed by physical gold. And the paper gold volume traded on a daily basis is several orders of magnitude higher than the physical one. So even if it's less physical gold than one would expect (I didn't check you maths btw), there's "more" to it than just the physical gold.

Perhaps a stupid question from a non-economics laymen: If people are holding 'paper' gold that isn't backed by physical gold, then doesn't that mean that gold as a product is more scarce than the market demand? Wouldn't it mean that by increase the volume of 'paper' gold assets we are artificially pricing gold incorrectly?

Bingo! We are artificially pricing gold incorrectly! USA has very little gold compare to others like Russia and China. Nixon realized this in the 70s and then we have fiat dollars. Most people don't know the price of gold other than what is being advertised on the market which is based on paper gold mostly. Having gold as valuable can undermine USA petroldollar dominance and bad for America in general as gold commodity USA has very little to influence worldwide order.

Re: How much gold has been found in the world?

#77

Post by valleyer »

euroderf wrote: post #74
valleyer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, they are either joking or just wrong about "dailily". "Daily" by itself is a perfectly fine adverb, and I've never heard or seen "dailily". To prevent cavities, brush your teeth twice daily.

Yes, I was joking. Apologies. But hey, "daily" can be an adjective too, so why not indulge with adverbial "dailily" ? (OK, I'll go back to my cave now.)

I appreciate the joke. :)
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