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Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

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Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#431

Post by scottiebarnes »

bluGill wrote: post #328
idiotsecant wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will be true right up until the point it is not. The US dollar dominance is not a feature of the universe, it's a social agreement that, like any such agreement, will eventually come undone.

Eventually, but that eventually shows no sign of stopping soon. There are two cases where it stops: the US decides to replace the dollar with something else, and there is a clear trade in program (the EU went to the Euro, and India did something similar); or things change slowly over time so you will have plenty of time where your dollar maybe isn't worth what it was yesterday but still is worth almost a dollar - odd…

You're forgetting the case where the US dollar gets hyperinflated or highly inflated due to something like a debt crisis. Speaking of which...$33 trillion.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#432

Post by landemva »

ericmay wrote: post #355
olalonde wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. If you want to buy a pad Thai in Thailand, US dollars are probably going to be more widely accepted. On the other hand, if you have savings in an inflating currency, you might want to convert them to a medium that holds value well in the long term, rather than US dollars. That does include S&P500 stocks but those are not bearer instruments and not easily accessible, especially in foreign countries.

Well you can sell the stock and convert it into dollars and then use those. That's something I can do easily today if I wanted regardless of the country I'm in so long as I have the Internet and an ATM. Gold you can't travel with (weight and loss due to theft and also probably actually illegal) and is also not accessible, and Bitcoin you can't buy a coffee with. Other available crypto currencies just do worse jobs th…

> internet and atm

Power and ATMs were out for two weeks on Puerto Rico, which is basically run by the USA. Maybe keep a couple weeks of cash under the mattress.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/01/us/hurricane-fiona-puerto-ric...

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#433

Post by MerelyMortal »

giantg2 wrote: post #246
rightbyte wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to figure out how to convert that gold into something somebody will actually take You need coins. You can't walk around with a gold bar. I would say silver coins to keep the value down, too. As a "my government made our money useless" back up. USD cash are good too unless you are American, obviously.

These aren't really "bars" like ingots. Trading sealed packages of 1oz gold tabs is probably better than trying to trade gold coins of unverified composition/weight.

It's actually better to trade coins which are easily verifiable in weight and size than bars that you can't measure (size or weight) because they are in packages.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#434

Post by lotsofpulp »

Ancapistani wrote: post #428
lotsofpulp wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think the US is at risk of collapsing however I would suggest you buy a gun before gold You need friends and allies before you need guns.

As someone pretty well marinating in "right wing" - based on where I live and the social circles I tend to run in - you're mostly right. They aren't mutually exclusive; you can have guns and friends at the same time. You can even have friends with guns.

Of course, but from what I can tell, all the "preppers" seem to know that they need to buy supplies and weapons, but all of that is useless if you are not part of a community tight knit enough to be willing to defend you, and that takes years of work to build up and constant maintenance of relationships.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#435

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #117
ggm wrote: post #8

I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that's way way off market price. So it's an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and d…

> I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price Directly-held gold is mostly a scam. In good times, vault gold trades at a premium. (Like diamonds, try to sell your ingot of gold for anywhere close to commodity spot.) In bad times, someone will stab you for it. Unless you have $100+ million, where you can charter your own logistics outside government-sanction…

If you do not want gold to be traced, surely it is worth taking a hit in value and melting down the stamped ids?

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#436

Post by Dylan16807 »

caeril wrote: post #382
refurb wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not paraphrasing and assuming, I’m drawing conclusions from your statements. What do you mean “blocked off transport”? Is that the only form of protest deserving of harsh measures? Do you not think rioting in commercial centers and setting fire to businesses would rise to a similar level as blocking downtown streets as was done in Ottawa? Clearly you feel blocking city streets is sufficient, so burning down busin…

You can't have this discussion on HN. It is firmly established precedent here that murdering people and burning down buildings is a superior form of protest to slightly inconveniencing commerce. I don't know what you thought you'd accomplish arguing on the basis of net harm on this site, but that doesn't happen here. You need to only understand the oppressor/oppressed dynamic. Protesting injustice against ten million…

> It is firmly established precedent here that murdering people and burning down buildings is a superior form of protest to slightly inconveniencing commerce.

Have you considered that the percent of the people in the crowd committing crimes makes a big difference for how some people want to enforce the law? Instead of that stupid strawman?

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#437

Post by [deleted] »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #254
pjc50 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argentina has 100% annual inflation and going up while the US has less than 10% and going down. The USD is not going anywhere spectacular, because there is no more stable country to flee to. The one thing that can reliably trigger inflation in almost any country is oil/gas shortages on the global market, and you can't hedge that with precious metals nor store a 20 year supply in your house.

> one thing that can reliably trigger inflation in almost any country is oil/gas shortages I am convinced we are making a huge mistake by conflating shortage of raw material with general inflation. If there was shortage of food tomorrow, the correct responce is not to raise interest rates - that would cause even greater problems and famine. The correct responce is immediate intervention to expand supply - build green…

[deleted]

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#438

Post by fuzzfactor »

scottiebarnes wrote: post #431
bluGill wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually, but that eventually shows no sign of stopping soon. There are two cases where it stops: the US decides to replace the dollar with something else, and there is a clear trade in program (the EU went to the Euro, and India did something similar); or things change slowly over time so you will have plenty of time where your dollar maybe isn't worth what it was yesterday but still is worth almost a dollar - odd…

You're forgetting the case where the US dollar gets hyperinflated or highly inflated due to something like a debt crisis. Speaking of which...$33 trillion.

A hundred years ago a US silver dollar would buy you a decent steak dinner, and naturally a US $10 gold eagle coin would serve 10 people.

Now that same kind of dinner can still be had for the same silver dollar, but the amount of gold in the small 1923 gold eagle[0] would be enough to serve 30 today, not merely the 10 diners of 100 years ago.

And some of these are nice restaurants.

Today if your dollar does not contain the full ounce of silver it was originally intended to, and all you have is a $1 bank note instead, it still buys a kid-sized ice cream cone at McDonald's. Now sometimes only during special promotions depending on market.

[0] Regular ordinary legal tender, but were all confiscated by the government because they were gold in 1933, when the ownership of gold by Americans was outlawed until decades later (only after its backing of the dollar was discontinued).

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#439

Post by archagon »

hliyan wrote: post #73
e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people keep thinking that a financial meltdown means societal meltdown. There's plenty of places where the economy is or has already melted down even right now -- Sri Lanka, Argentina, Venezuela, etc. We can observe what happens when political institutions completely and utterly collapse, because it's happened multiple times already . What happens is not immediate apocalypse where people riot a…

Sri Lankan here. I personally experienced this last year and was very surprised. We Sri Lankans love to criticise ourselves for our wonky moral compasses, so when the early protests started, I stocked up on food and installed an extra CCTV camera, expecting widespread riots and looting. They never came. There were many organised protests, and protesters did clash with riot police around government buildings, but peop…

Reminds me of this comment from Dee Xtrovert on Metafilter, who survived the seige of Sarajevo: https://www.metafilter.com/78669/What-if-things-just-keep-ge....

“But here's the main point: 'Preparing' for the disaster really didn't do anyone much good. Those who 'prepared' ate a little better for a while. They stayed warmer for a few extra days. They enjoyed the radio for a while longer (via batteries.) But in the end, they ended up hungry, cold and bored too, just like the rest of us. Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces. The worst parts of war were psychological - the fear, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, paranoia, bad dreams. Respite from those things came with sharing food with a neighbor, finding a piece of clothing that would fit someone you knew, commiserating with others in your position, figuring out how to make make-up from brick or french fries from wheat paste and spreading this newly-acquired war knowledge around the mahala.

We knew who had extra food and supplies. For the most part, they weren't attacked or hassled or bothered. Contrary to what these survivalists say, those in dire times generally hold on to their personal sense of pride even more than they do in normal times. I'd take a bite of a friend's salad without bothering to ask in normal times. I'd never have done that in wartime, no matter how hungry I was.

Within the domain of those trapped in the city, civility greatly increased.”

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#440

Post by plonk »

marcosdumay wrote: post #395
noduerme wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the US has less than 10% and going down First of all, there's no evidence it's going down. Secondly, 10% is a wild figure. That's far over the breach for the population to begin to alter their behaviour by either hoarding or spending. My point was, the mentality of coping with even 10% inflation is very foreign to Americans. But it's a learned skill, and people will learn it. When they do, it will resemble Argenti…

Yes, it's a wild figure for the US (as a comparison, the US had an year with higher inflation than Brazil). But that lasted for a short period, and it's been measured going down. Anyway, hoarding gold is not a natural behavior for a population at 10% inflation. It's natural for a population that distrusts the government and the financial markets. Inflation by itself pushes people into banks.

Why would inflation push people into banks? In my (EU) country, banks don’t offer anything that matches current inflation besides speculative investments.
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