ATM dispenses GOLD now instead of cash

Discussion in 'Economics' started by peilthetraveler, May 13, 2010.

  1. i'm totally neutral toward the price of gold these days but i have to admit that post is funny... using the extremely limited supply of gold as an argument against its price appreciation or adoption as currency.

    what about money that has partial gold content? dunno, just wondering. you can dilute the stuff if you really want to
     
    #11     May 13, 2010
  2. jem

    jem

    only two pools... I think his stats are off. I bet there are two pools worth on people on saturday night in a few big cities.
     
    #12     May 13, 2010
  3. jprad

    jprad

    Giving anyone on Fast Money credit for having an original thought is what's LOL funny.

    That saying has been around long before that show and will still be around long after CNBC puts it out to pasture.
     
    #13     May 13, 2010
  4. jprad

    jprad

    The point is that the population is expanding while the total available gold out there is finite.

    Don't be so literal. The point is that the total amount of gold is finite and it's also shrinking due to commercial use that renders it permanently unrecoverable.

    That, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with the gold standard. You can't have a currency based on a closed system and make it work in an open-ended economy that provides wages, profit and interest to an unbounded population.

    Especially when you also have to consume that metal commercially and have a unequal distribution of gold mines globally for replenishment. Not to mention the fact that the mined output is decreasing as is the number of new mines being found.

    No, but money can be printed in excess of the gold you really have as we found out in the 60's when the Germans demanded gold in return for dollars, which forced Nixon into taking us off the gold standard for good.
     
    #14     May 13, 2010
  5. very true. Gold is just a total fad. Has been a total fad for thousands of years.

    So unlike fiat currencies managed by politicians and bureaucrats and politicians. Now there is a commodity with enduring value! Just ask the Ghosts of every civilization in history!

    Heck, ask how they feel in Argentina when they wake up one morning and their fiat moneys are worth 60% on the international market what they were the previous day!

    Or consider this: If the Jews escaping Germany had just had a little more faith in good, solid Weimar Republic notes instead of gold, they would have really had something substantial to rebuild their lives with!!

    Damn gold myth: Every time a civilization implodes or there is a hyperinflation, the same myth pops up and swindles a whole new group of suckers!!

    I plan to hold my rock solid paper money till it reaches its terminal value, which is about the worth of one sheet of toilet paper! Gold... I will NEVER be duped by that fraudulent relic.
     
    #15     May 13, 2010
  6. jprad

    jprad

    The sad fact is that commodity based currencies have been just as susceptible to debasement by politicians and bureaucrats as fiat currencies.

    You only have to look to the US and the deterioration of the dollar's buying power since the establishment of the Federal Reserve up until Nixon took us off the gold standard in '71.

    "$1.00 in 1914 had about the same buying power as $3.98 in 1971."

    http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm

    That it deteriorated more slowly while we were on the gold standard is not a winning rebuttal. Our commodity based currency was debased, confiscated and forfeited by politicians and bureaucrats.

    And, please, save the Fed conspiracy fodder as well. There were two central banks in the US before it as well as several financial panics.

    All ended badly, so will this one.
     
    #16     May 14, 2010
  7. It caught on because people are dumb.

    ATM's dispensing gold wouldf require people to be smart.

     
    #17     May 14, 2010
  8. 50% of all the gold every mined in the world was mined after 1960.

    Eventually the population has to stop growing(if it doesnt then in 500 years we will have a population of 1.8 trillion and I dont know where they will get enough food to feed all those people)

    There is definately a max capacity on earth before people start dying from hunger as there will not be enough food that can be grown to feed everyone. Population has to level out. We cant fit a couple of hundred trillion people on this planet. If we grow at the same rate for the next 1000 years, thats 500 trillion people that would be alive. I dont see that happening.
     
    #18     May 14, 2010
  9. LEAPup

    LEAPup

    I stand corrected.
     
    #19     May 14, 2010
  10. jem

    jem

    I trade gold. But I have no idea while anyone ascribes intrinsic worth to it - outside its industrial uses.

    Why gold vs. wampum or shells, or old woven nike shoelaces. It all in the mind.
     
    #20     May 14, 2010