211–220 of 282 posts
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London has an old school gold exchange. Pretty much you can buy and sell by moving a part between vaults (at least that's how I understood it to work in the past). Now I expect it to be just a spreadsheet but who knows.
My understanding is that it’s on shelves in a shared vault and you relabel who owns that shelf/slot/bin.
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But almost invariably in this context they mean "the continent" ie France, Spain, Italy and so on, probably not Scandi and not Ireland. So that's more like how people would say they're going "to the UK" when actually they're travelling to like the Isle of Man or even sometimes Jersey which are not in the UK but like sure, people who speak English live there, if some lunatics attacked them the military forces would wo…
The British Isles lie on the Eurasian tectonic plate, on the northwestern part of the European continental margin. Going to "the continent" is an incorrect expression. You are already on it. I'm being highly pedantic here.
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That said, it's not necessarily a great deal for the US middle class anymore, due to the Triffin Dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma This 2020 piece by Lyn Alden is a great explainer: https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/ (Not that I think anything Trump has done has helped the situation even accidentally.)
Vance is making this idea popular/mainstream again lately, I wonder why? The US will predictably lose reserve-currency status as a consequence of losing all the rest of the trust and good will available to her, so it's time to make it seem like that was the plan all along. Sure, there was a serious conversation to be had about this at some point, but it was probably before stacking up tons of unsustainable debt that…
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I am not defending the US government but the reason why you hold treasuries is because if you want to buy something in two years, or ten years, etc. there is a good chance you will want to buy something with dollars. Oil, soy beans, New York real estate..
Until you can buy oil without dollars. This was an explicit agreement called the Petrodollar system, which was premised on the US navy securing international trade. If the US navy proves unable to do that (and exhausts its arms and demonstrates unpreparedness for future conflicts) then the whole premise falls apart. You might also stop buying real estate if the government seems unstable and economy is poised to colla…
https://watcher.guru/news/20-billion-oil-deals-paid-in-chine...
"China and Saudi Arabia Settle First Oil Trade Using Digital Yuan"
https://www.economywatch.com/china-and-saudi-arabia-settle-f...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That said, it's not necessarily a great deal for the US middle class anymore, due to the Triffin Dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma This 2020 piece by Lyn Alden is a great explainer: https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/ (Not that I think anything Trump has done has helped the situation even accidentally.)
Vance is making this idea popular/mainstream again lately, I wonder why? The US will predictably lose reserve-currency status as a consequence of losing all the rest of the trust and good will available to her, so it's time to make it seem like that was the plan all along. Sure, there was a serious conversation to be had about this at some point, but it was probably before stacking up tons of unsustainable debt that…
And is your proposal to just hope to be one of the next generation who still can eat their children? Or better yet, the children of those who didn't make it before the ladder was pulled up?
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Is gold really sufficiently fungible to enable daily bidirectional sizable flows across the Atlantic, but not fungible enough to allow somebody to net these flows out and save at least one way of the airfare?
Yes. Gold is fungible only within the same custodian. Many people buy (normally small) gold bars only to discover that they can't sell them back by the same price.
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Most of this is googleable but there are thousands of traders that make sure the gold price is the same globally so nobody had to “move” their gold in the reverse for this trade to work. The difference between London and the US is that the bars are of different size (12.5 vs 1kg).
The price of gold is not equal globally, there is a ‘loco swap’ price differential, reflecting the price of moving the metal, eg flights, security, tariffs that may be attracted, whether the location can service futures delivery etc
Isn't lithium the new gold?