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Netherlands pulls gold out of the US

abc.net.au

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Re: Netherlands pulls gold out of the US

#281

Post by owebmaster »

ericmay wrote: post #135
wazoox wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

England is definitely a European country. I'm tired of people constantly making this political abuse of language of conflating "the EU" with "Europe". (And yes, saying "America" for "US of A" annoys me too. First step towards losing an imperialist state of mind is letting people from Canada and Brazil be in America).

> (And yes, saying "America" for "US of A" annoys me too. First step towards losing an imperialist state of mind is letting people from Canada and Brazil be in America). Hmm, maybe I should be pro-imperialism. I’ll do that before calling a Brazilian, Canadian, or Mexican an American to satisfy the whims of the language police. But if you want to go to uni and call Americans United Statesians and fight a made up cultu…

> Hmm, maybe I should be pro-imperialism. I’ll do that before calling a Brazilian, Canadian, or Mexican an American to satisfy the whims of the language police.

Sounds like a culture warrior

Re: Netherlands pulls gold out of the US

#282

Post by carlosjobim »

marcosdumay wrote: post #280
carlosjobim wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the spread which the gold dealers have to make a profit. But bullion is bullion anywhere you turn and no matter to who you sell. No gold dealer will turn down investment grade gold.

> No gold dealer will turn down investment grade gold. For sure. As long as you pay the laboratory fee up front to prove that the thing you have is investment grade...

Never have a gold dealer anywhere asked me for any laboratory fee when selling bullion to them. They have their spread and that's it. It's their job to recognize bullion and have their own laboratory to quickly check if needed.

Re: Netherlands pulls gold out of the US

#283

Post by bitfilped »

fmajid wrote: post #157
anon84873628 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Or until you don't need to buy oil at all. China has reduced its consumption by 1.5M barrels/day this year alone.

China is drawing down reserves it's been building over the last three years, not using less petro from a decrease in demand.

Re: Netherlands pulls gold out of the US

#285

Post by smallmancontrov »

epistasis wrote: post #260
smallmancontrov wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A current account deficit is a capital account surplus. We can pay for imports with things we make or things we own. To a first approximation, making things employs people and owning things does not. If we pay with things we make, our economy employs people. If we pay with things we own, the jobs disappear while stocks/bonds/real estate soar. If you want the whole story from an actual economist, read "Trade Wars are…

You're missing the third thing we pay with: T-bills. We literally print money. That's it. We didn't give up anything we own. We didn't give up anything we made. We printed money, because there needs to be enough currency to represent the ever growing wealth of the world and the world has chosen the US dollar as the reserve currency, to the great benefit of the US.

You're missing that the T-bills are replacing exports (including services) that would otherwise have had to happen to support the imports, and that the latter employs people while the former doesn't.

The benefit is to the US in aggregate but is a detriment to most US citizens, since most US citizens get their money primarily from working rather than from owning assets. But for the minority of people who mostly get their money from owning assets, this is brilliant, I agree.

Re: Netherlands pulls gold out of the US

#286

Post by IAmBroom »

logicchains wrote: post #148
epistasis wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you point out here is a major weakness in the typical US citizen's understanding of where US wealth and power comes from. The US prints two kinds of dollars, the regular kind, then the T-bills. T-bills get exchanged like dollars, investors/governments buy them because they are thought to be as stable as dollars, but also bear a bit of yield. The US benefits by printing T-bills over dollars because merely by chan…

>deflation is the only thing worse than inflation. In any empirical sense this is absolutely false. The only instance of a significant negative instance of deflation was its contribution to the Great Depression in the early nineteen hundreds, and the effect of that was minor compared to the effects of extreme inflation (hyperinflation) that occurred in places like Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe. Deflation is inherently…

> the Great Depression in the early nineteen hundreds, and the effect of that was minor compared to the effects of extreme inflation (hyperinflation) that occurred in places like Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe.

Millions unemployed, dependent on soup lines for survival, and their families living in makeshift shanty towns, is "minor"? Children were sold to provide subsistence. Generational wealth, from industries to family farms, were erased.

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