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Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

economictimes.indiatimes.com

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Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#191

Post by temp8830 »

bijowo1676 wrote: post #45
andsoitis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gold has always been stable, because it is physically limited. Incorrect. Physical scarcity matters, but it’s not the main driver. Gold’s price is far more sensitive to interest rates, dollar strength, sentiment and fear, speculative flows. The stability it’s historically shown was mostly the result of fixed monetary systems, and those are long gone.

its because you are measuring stable Gold in volatile fiat which is being printed every day depending on the factors you mentioned (interest rates, expectations of future growth, sentiment etc). because you are getting paycheck in fiat, you are psychologically programmed to think of fiat as something stable, and Gold as volatile. while in reality prices expressed in Gold ounces remained fairly stable for example: htt…

The only "stability" gold has is an emergent property of an interconnected system of hairless apes somehow making each other believe they need it. Same with fiat, bitcoin, or whatever we come up with tomorrow. None of these things have any real utility outside of an expectation that the peer ape also finds them valuable.

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#192

Post by AngryData »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #150
0x3f wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public is almost fully to blame, and gets the government it deserves. I only hedge a little because education is in control of the state, so to some degree people don't choose whether to be educated on the relevant matters. It may be familiarity breeding contempt but I find members of the British public in particular very myopic in obtaining benefits for 'their group'. There's very little interest in society as a…

> The public is almost fully to blame, and gets the government it deserves. I'd frame this another way -- the public are largely responsible, but we put all the blame on politicians/government. we vote for these people while we all know they're all talking complete and utter nonsense just to get past the job interview . it is the game. i wish it wasn't. i wish i could stand in the house of commons during PMQs and poi…

As a side note if you did just get fat and smoke you wouldn't be a drain on the NHS because being fat and smoking disqualifies you from many procedures and you are likely to die right around retirement age, after you paid most of your lifetime taxes but before you start consuming the very expensive age-related healthcare.

Ironically it is the unhealthy that are overpaying and the very healthy who are underpaying because age related care is such a huge proportion of lifetime medical costs, and that is still before adding in potential sin taxes paid.

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#193

Post by AngryData »

berdario wrote: post #148
IAmGraydon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that he has done countless things that are harmful to the US and not a single thing that is in the country's best interests tells me all I need to know. Either he's aligned with an enemy or he just hates the country and wants to destroy it.

I think this is denialism of the profit that the USA extracts with its crimes. The most recent example include the profits from Venezuelan oil: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgn7p7g79wo https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/trump-administration-manda... That money is held in a US treasury account. In February the estimated price from the first 50 M barrels was $2.8bn... with the USA+Israel bombing of Iran, the pri…

I mean on their own those are nice numbers, but you also have to add in the extra military costs of blowing crap up and it starts to seem like chump change to me. We just had a 1.5 trillion defense spending proposal.

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#194

Post by afpx »

gpt5 wrote: post #130
yosefk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're at it, when did central banks start to buy lots of gold and under which POTUS? Could it have something to do with the freezing of hundreds of billions of some sovereign assets?

There is something awfully bad happening to the internet, including Hacker News. It seems like rage-baiting, polarizing titles and vibe based comments are being upvoted, with no interest in the facts. For example, in this case: 1. The growth of the gold reserve in comparison to US Treasuries have very little to do with growth in gold acquisition, and has everything to do with gold more than doubling in price in a yea…

Well, having tracked soft-science experts for 30 years, I have to say they're wrong over 50% of the time. Moreso, if it's coming from media that's owned by the same country that is causing evil.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/russias-central-ban...

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#195

Post by duskdozer »

sph wrote: post #128
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One less conspiratorial but more pernicious angle, is that attacking things that are good but complex is a great strategy for troll politicians who don't care about the success of their country but just like the attention. See Brexit, and free trade in general. It's a good way to get "the establishment" to gang up on you and defend something complicated while you present simple but wrong alternatives and promise the…

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." The issue is that the stupider the politician, the more likely they are unable to understand why their clear, simple answer to the ills of the world is also wrong. Brexit, whatever is happening in the US, is caused by narcissism (a common trait among politicians) paired with a great deal of stupidity and ineptitude, not only among politi…

the politician doesn't necessarily have to be stupid, just know that there are enough stupid voters

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#196

Post by scruple »

rapind wrote: post #42
aloha2436 wrote: post #26

America was in practice running an empire that collected tribute from the rest of planet earth in exchange for entries in a database denominated in a currency they controlled and that was accepted everywhere. Really the only way it could go wrong is putting it under the control of someone who doesn't understand the kayfabe...

> someone too stupid to understand That's only true if he's actually "your guy". There's an alternative where it's not stupidity that I think more people should be mulling over.

So it's a controlled demolition? In this view, is the goal to devalue our own debt? Extract value while it still has value?

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#197

Post by scruple »

ghywertelling wrote: post #103
cmcaleer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's as much a gun to adversaries' heads if they hold lots of your bonds (China used to hold over $1T in USTs) so they would have an interest in not having that blow up by not annoying the US so much they refuse to pay foreign bonds. It's also kind of neat as a financial MAD instrument, because China obviously can't just get everyone to go into their brokerage and market sell a trillion in USTs so they get a lever to…

After the US Dollar with Luke Gromen https://youtu.be/OOW-oSruO80?t=4072 Luke's key point lands at about 1:08:27–1:08:33, where he says that instead of selling treasuries outright (which would draw attention from the American embassy), China can use them as collateral — and the American banks are happy to take it. He then lists what China gets in return: "I'll take Pereus. I'll take that oil field. I'll take that cop…

Aren't these things just legal fictions that only exist because/as long as the US government allows it?

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#199

Post by somenameforme »

ivell wrote: post #69
consumer451 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you, the world is always ending. But, I am well past mid-life, I am a huge beneficiary of Pax Americana, and 47 feels like something truly different. Maybe it's just the end of a long pattern, but it is still the end. US-led NATO is dead, and the stability of the USA is dead, therefore the dollar's dominance is weakening. Don't take my word for it. Listen to Mark Carney at Davos.

I think there is a realization that (1) US' checks and balances do not work, (2) Trump is not a "mistake" of voters and can repeat again. This is the main reason that things are different. Most presidents were reasonable in their hegemony, and Trump's naked aggression makes everyone to hedge against US.

Bush invaded Iraq on completely and maliciously fabricated evidence. Literally - all of it was made up. He sought EU approval to invade, was rejected, and then invaded anyhow, starting a decades long war leaving the region in complete chaos severely undermining US (to say nothing of global) security. Other presidents happily carried on and even magnified his war in some ways.

And as you go back you can see that our more contemporary actions are just echoes of the past anyhow. Vietnam was also started on a complete and malicious lie. [1] That lie then led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, practically bankrupted the country (playing a major role in the events of 1971), left the country more divided than ever, and concluded with us running away from Vietnam with our tail tucked.

We didn't start the fire. It just always feels so different in the present because you don't know how things are going to turn out, so there's always the possibility that this time it might be something extraordinary as opposed to just this perpetual and never-ending self-crippling.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident

Re: Gold overtakes U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset

#200

Post by robocat »

vincnetas wrote: post #41
dpb001 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The union of states arrangement has the side effect of putting the states in competition with each other for things like new/expanding businesses and residents. It's relatively easy to relocate (or even remain in a state while legally "residing" elsewhere). So there are diminishing returns to raising the tax rates significantly on the upper brackets at the state level. I'm not a believer in the trickle down theory bu…

this somehow excludes such human concept as sense of belonging. might be in usa it has atrophied already but sense of home is really important in some places. place where you spend most of your life, where you have you real social network, neighbors and childhood friends. sometimes its lower tax is not worth loosing it all. its not everything about money (for some) ps im talking about real persons here, not corporati…

Wealthy people move between countries and change citizenship to avoid overtaxation. Moving between states isn't as big a move.

Countries fight back with exit-taxes, controlling asset movement, and taxing (now) foreign owned assets. The US in particular makes it very difficult to take your theoretical winnings from the table.

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