Is gold money? Ron Paul makes Ben Bernanke squirm.

[Feuer Frei!]

A Deer caught in the headlights, when Ron Paul asks Bernanke about this:



Congressman Ron Paul questions Fed Chair Ben Bernanke in the U.S. House Financial Services Committee meeting.

Dated 13 July.

[Anthony W.]

Gold is money. Cash and coin are not. Cash and coin are only representations of gold.

[Sailor Steve]

Actually money is whatever we choose to use as a trade medium. Some societies use beads as money. Bernanke may be an idiot, but in this case he has a point. Gold is a precious metal against which we measure value. When gold was removed as our standard it was selling for $35 per ounce. What did he say it is now? $1500?

An old boss of mine once told me that things don't get more expensive, money is just worth less. People used to complain that "In 1900 you could buy a steak dinner for a quarter". Then I found out that in 1900 $30 per month was considered a good wage. Then my old boss pointed out that if you had a 1900 quarter it would still buy you a steak dinner.

But Ron Paul is the best. Too bad he's seventy-six years old.

[Anthony W.]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Actually money is whatever we choose to use as a trade medium. Some societies use beads as money. Bernanke may be an idiot, but in this case he has a point. Gold is a precious metal against which we measure value. When gold was removed as our standard it was selling for $35 per ounce. What did he say it is now? $1500?

An old boss of mine once told me that things don't get more expensive, money is just worth less. People used to complain that "In 1900 you could buy a steak dinner for a quarter". Then I found out that in 1900 $30 per month was considered a good wage. Then my old boss pointed out that if you had a 1900 quarter it would still buy you a steak dinner.

But Ron Paul is the best. Too bad he's seventy-six years old.

Why is age such an issue with people? 76 is nothing. My grandfather was sharp as a tack and went to work every day till he was 94.

And - my grandmother does that to me. I always remind her that back then, a quarter was almost 4 dollars (inflation calculated), and 30 dollars was almost 500.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Anthony W.

Cash and coin are only representations of gold.

Actually its not, US Dollars are "Fiat Money", it only has value because the US Treasury says it does- it is not backed by gold or silver anymore.

[Anthony W.]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Actually its not, US Dollars are "Fiat Money", it only has value because the US Treasury says it does- it is not backed by gold or silver anymore.

Yeah, forgot about that.

Damn feds.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Anthony W.

Why is age such an issue with people? 76 is nothing. My grandfather was sharp as a tack and went to work every day till he was 94.

Age an issue with me? I'm 61 and I still play in a fairly hardcore band. That said, if he's elected he'll be 81 at the end of his first term, which means he has a fair chance of not making it that long, which I'd hate to see happen, but there it is. It's not the mental skills I'm worried about, it's the staying power.

Originally Posted by Anthony W.

Yeah, forgot about that.

Damn feds.

And, damn "Federal" Reserve.

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

It's not the mental skills I'm worried about, it's the staying power.

And let's not forget from a marketing point of view.
From a selling view point, voters would never go for it.

Why is age such an issue with people?

Because it is a high stress job with a potential 24/7 requirement

[Skybird]

"Money" is a standardised quantification of "value" that society holds consensus over. That's what makes rewaly assets like property or gold more important (and crisis-proof) than "virtual" money, like bank numbers or printed notes and coins (as long as the latter are not made of silver or gold themselves).

And if there ever will be a global doomsday scenario affecting all the world, that killer rock falling down from the sky or a big war, then it will not be toy assets like dollars and euros people use for trading and chnaging, but real items and, if they can afford it, gold, diamonds, and the like.

Dollar and Euro cannot be trusted anymore. Bad news is that the fleeing of many investors into foreign currencies like the Swiss Franken has hollowed out these currencies as kind of safe havens as well, and by that have started to damage the Swiss economy as well. In the past three years, the Franken went dsown from ov er 1.60 per 1 Euro, to now 1.10 per Euro, and still falling. For Switzerland, this means deeply worrying economic and financial problems.

That way, Euro and dollar can ruin other,. so far stable currencies as well, pulling them down along with them. I fear that the Swidsh Krona may be the next.

In switzerland, the camp, so far still a minority, being insane enough to want to join the Euro, is growing. I have my doubts that a mjaoirty of the Swiss people will ever vote for that in the forseeable future, but if they would, this would turn Switzerland into a netto contributor to the transfer union the Eurozone as a matter of fact now is, thanks to French pressure and German cowardice to stand up against that. I do not give the Euro any longtime surviving chance anymore, but as I see it, it will not be given up before it has maximes the utmost possible damage to European economies, especially to thsoe that currently still are seen as relatively strong. Not before the last netto contributor has been ruined, they will give it up, I fear. Because doing so would mean to admit that the Euro and its hopelessly premature timing and corrupted ruleset was a giant mistake. and as we all know, most politicians are turning into monuments of righteousness when needing to admit they were wrong.

Will not be the first attempt stalling to install European currency unions in Eurpean history, there hjave been several. But none of them went so far like the Euro, and none of them were so damaging and costly.

Bernanke is a zero. I personally think he got totally lost in too reality-disconnected theories, and - like many - just hoping for miracles out of nowhere. He should have become a newspaper printing machine operator. Printing paper that one day later gets put into the bin is something he is really good at.

Beyond that I hope that people start insurgencies and uprises against European governments and force them to quit on the Euro, and that more countries follow the example of the Swedish Reichsbank and prohibit trading with American credits and bonds. An utopiuc drea, I know. But at least dreaming must still be allowed in this politically corrected dictatorship.

[Tchocky]

Gold used to be money. Nowadays a lot of people seem to think that it will become money again. No real reason why we should be returning to backed-currency, also no real reason why gold should be particularly valued over anything else.
Gold has value because buyers and sellers think it has. The same is true of hard currency, the salient difference being that one is legal tender and the other is not.

Got my gold in the basement, ready to eat.

Gold used to be money. Nowadays a lot of people seem to think that it will become money again. No real reason why we should be returning to backed-currency, also no real reason why gold should be particularly valued over anything else.

The problems with gold or silver or copper or even pretty shells as money are just as real as paper money.
Such Standards as people fantasise about returning to require levels of stability, consistancy, co-operation and equality that they are a pipe dream that cannot match reality. It is the reason the Standards lurched from crisis to crisis before in turn being abandoned.

[Skybird]

The value is decisively defined by the availability and rareness of an item. Thats what devalues the dollar so much - just switching on the printing machines without backing the notes by any real value (like a gold standard), means nothing regarding the economic potency of those owning the machines. Doing so in a way is nothing but cheating, a infinite-money cheat or God-mode if you want. If the official currency is disconnected from real value-measuring and its ammount by which it is available does not in any way reflect the real possessions of the owning economic system, it just is this: toy money for playing a round of monopoly.

A currency that must not be affordable by those maintaining it, means nothing. We see that in the market reaction (or lack of positive reaction) on the US debt deal, or the Euro crisis.

Everybody who ever used to play a system-simulation like for example Sim City, and used a moneyx cheat to build more than by natural income he could afford, knows how it end: yoiu need to run by that cheat on and on. If you switch it off and want to run your game status from that point on by just the reuglar income it produces, it is the more unlikely that the system will not collpase them more excessively you have stepped beyaond the natural budget your game produced. You lived on tic, and when the God-mode is switched off, you then see it all crumble, becasue you built more than by income you could maintain.

In a more general context, a soceity, that does not use gains to form reserves for bad times, but uses them to grow in size (namely population), so that it will need even more income in the future (resources namelyx) to just survive), will never reach a status where it is suited for times of loss, and will never have rteserves. Instead it will increase the rate by which it consumes limited resources, may it be money, or natural resources. The cause for this self-destroying disease is the belief of constant growth, and the need for constant growth, or the (ideologic) wish for constant growth. It makies societies live beyond their means.

Unlimited growth simply is not possible, but necessarily speeds up later collapse. A dynamic, self-maintaining stability that flucutuates within limits where that fluctuation does no real damage is what is needed. Capitalism of course has not the means to understand that, since it's greed for always more absoluetly literally knows no limits. Planned economies also do not understand that, since they often represent totalitarian systems which again make claims for unlimited power and control - and for acchieving that they again demand: growth, growth, growth.

We live beyond our means. We consume more than we can afford. We are too many. That simple the truth about the basic causes of mankind's problems is.

[August]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Age an issue with me? I'm 61 and I still play in a fairly hardcore band. That said, if he's elected he'll be 81 at the end of his first term, which means he has a fair chance of not making it that long, which I'd hate to see happen, but there it is. It's not the mental skills I'm worried about, it's the staying power.

Exactly, and the Presidency in particular is a job that seriously ages people. Obama has only been in office three years and you can already see a major difference.