Gold _has_ been a solid investment for the past 8 years. It went from a low of $255 in 2001 to a high of $1,213 in 2009. So a 475% rise in 8 years.
Scott Adams: Shiny Objects
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Re: Scott Adams: Shiny Objects
#12Gold _has_ been a solid investment for the past 8 years. It went from a low of $255 in 2001 to a high of $1,213 in 2009. So a 475% rise in 8 years.
Yes, and in 1981 it was ~$800. Which means a return of ~50% over 29 years while paying no dividends whatsoever.
You can make pretty much anything look like a good or bad investment if you pick your start and endpoints carefully.
Re: Scott Adams: Shiny Objects
#13It's always possible that a major catastrophe will destroy our economic system, but its far more likely that we will either limp along or improve. I remember the same fears in the seventies, and the concomitant buying of gold, at the same time as the price of gold spiked to $800.00. Yes, the economy was turbulent, but that's not an indication of imminent total meltdown. In the past year the price of gold has been at…
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Re: Scott Adams: Shiny Objects
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, unless you have gold, which you will, given time, without question be able to convert back to usable wealth.
Try taking a gold bar down to the gas station and buying a tank of gas and a hot dog. Do you have change for this? A couple of doubloons and a nugget? It's battering. Gold is a commodity. So if things really did get that bad, gasoline, food, water or anything else (batteries), would be a much better bargaining medium. That's what people don't understand when they make this argument. If you hold the physical gold, the…
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Re: Scott Adams: Shiny Objects
#15I'd like to highlight that debt isn't so much a problem as the trade imbalance is. And the idea that no currently traded specie will have value at some arbitrary point in the near future is silly: the USD might not be the currency of global exchange, but there will still be such a currency (likely the Euro, the RMB, or a synthetic currency) or exchange becomes incredibly difficult.
China is not likely to stop intervening in foreign currency markets, though there is a substantial risk to their economy if they do so. But people forget that long before China was subsidizing US trade imbalances, Japan was. And they'd likely replace China as the purchaser of dollar securities in order to stave off the inflation of the yen.
Please visit http://www.bookstore.petersoninstitute.org/publications/inte... for more information.
Re: Scott Adams: Shiny Objects
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, unless you have gold, which you will, given time, without question be able to convert back to usable wealth.
Try taking a gold bar down to the gas station and buying a tank of gas and a hot dog. Do you have change for this? A couple of doubloons and a nugget? It's battering. Gold is a commodity. So if things really did get that bad, gasoline, food, water or anything else (batteries), would be a much better bargaining medium. That's what people don't understand when they make this argument. If you hold the physical gold, the…
You entirely missed the point. Notice the little qualifying phrase, "given time"? Yes, in a crisis, gold is not worth much to you. But if you want a method of retaining wealth that is guaranteed to be convertable in almost any country in the world, you need gold.
Re: Scott Adams: Shiny Objects
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, unless you have gold, which you will, given time, without question be able to convert back to usable wealth.
"without question" I question. You clearly take that as virtually axiomatic, but I question. Gold's ultimate value is that it is pretty and shiny, and industry has produce metric shitloads of prettyshiny since the last time gold had any real independent value as uniquely prettyshiny. Your gold is only worth what people will give you in return for it. If society collapses, who is going to trade you gold for food? You'…
No. Gold's value is in its intrinsic suitability as an instrument of exchange, far more than any other substance on earth. Can you point to any time in the history of civilization where gold has been worthless? I mean, really, any period of time from, say, the days of the Babylonian empire until today? Just what about today's times have changed the intrinsic value of gold? See my other post in this thread for just what that value is. It is by no means arbitrary.
Re: Scott Adams: Shiny Objects
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, unless you have gold, which you will, given time, without question be able to convert back to usable wealth.
I'm not sure that's true. There is no value in gold, it's imaginary and over time, people have tended to give up beliefs in imaginary things.
No, it's not imaginary. Far from it. Gold is not like tulips in Holland. Not even remotely. It's value is in its scarcity, divisibility, and durability. Nothing else compares. Never has (unless you want to say Silver). That is why gold has been money for thousands of years, and that shows no signs whatsoever of changing. It is one thing that no matter what the markets do will still have value.
Is it an investment? No, and anyone treating gold as an investment is acting very foolishly. Gold is money, plain and simple. It has retained its essential value for centuries.
Re: Scott Adams: Shiny Objects
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, unless you have gold, which you will, given time, without question be able to convert back to usable wealth.
"without question" I question. You clearly take that as virtually axiomatic, but I question. Gold's ultimate value is that it is pretty and shiny, and industry has produce metric shitloads of prettyshiny since the last time gold had any real independent value as uniquely prettyshiny. Your gold is only worth what people will give you in return for it. If society collapses, who is going to trade you gold for food? You'…
The economic expansion when we start asteroid mining will be so enormous that most people won't have much to worry about, financially.
Re: Scott Adams: Shiny Objects
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, unless you have gold, which you will, given time, without question be able to convert back to usable wealth.
I'm not sure that's true. There is no value in gold, it's imaginary and over time, people have tended to give up beliefs in imaginary things.
What's really amusing to me is when gold-nuts rail against modern currencies as fiat currencies. It seems to me gold is just as arbitrarily denoted a currency as any other, it just has no explicit guarantor.
EDIT: Also, why is it so hard to imagine taking care of the debt? Or is it because he has little faith in taxpayers' willingness to pay into it?