http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page34?oid=86213&sn=Detail "Sales and suspension of gold and silver coin or bullion coin sales by the U.S. Mint are becoming a regular part of doing business as overloaded refiners and mint facilities struggle to meet continuing high demand" This is just another reason why i believe gold and silver contracts are manipulated. People are stocking up on physical gold & silver. (myself included) I know there are still alot of people out there that think gold should be 300-400 per oz and silver should be 5 per oz the only reason being that those were the prices for nearly 20 years. It was the same back in the 70s. Alot of people thought buying gold at 100 was crazy when it was just 35 a few short years ago. People are stocking up on gold & silver. It was considered real money for 1000s of years up until a few decades ago. I think economies will soon go back to gold & silver. Its the only real way to judge the value of someones labor. Printing money and forcing businesses to pay higher min wage are not ways to judge the value of someones labor.
So a population growing by leaps and bounds will be forced to rely on a monetary source that is finite? That'll work out well.
It is also durable, divisible and has true value. I think you would do yourself a favor if you were to educate yourself about money.
Whether it's finite or not is of no relevance. The quantity in circulation simply gets stretched thinner, thus demand increases. I believe money should be backed by agricultural commodities though and not precious metals.
Hmmmm, I am with Ivan on this (even though I am long physical gold myself)... Maybe, in the spirit of 'healer, heal thyself', you should educate yourself about the Great Depression, Anaconda?
What is your point? Confiscation of gold? You think if you put the current fiat into general good such as food, ammo, medicine, tools, etc. they would not be confiscated? You may need to educate yourself about totalitarian governments. Or are you arguing serious deflation. Have you checked money supply figures? Or did you completely miss the memos about central banks printing stimulus moneys at an alarming rate. Criticizing precious metals for being finite is borderline idiocy. That's like stating "I want my money supply to be infinite". One would feel right at home in Zimbabwe with that mentality.
Pls calm down and stop making straw man arguments... When did I ever mention anything about confiscation, totalitarianism, the current stimulus or deflation? The major problem with any regime based on the gold standard is its rigidity, which has, arguably, been demonstrated to be a big problem.
That is opinion. It's not rigid and if you understand the history of money, it will be obvious why precious metals were the most popular form of money. Durable, divisible, malleable & valuable. Gold & silver are rigid in terms of inflating & deflating money supply at whim. It certainly puts big brakes on fractional reserve banking. Feel free to evaluate Zimbabwe and their system. Strangely enough, at their markets, gold is the preferred means of exchange.
Firstly, everything is an opinion, my friend. That's the nature of an argument. Secondly, I would ask you again to stop making tangential points. I know all about "durable", "divisible", etc (you forgot "fungible"). When did I ever refute this that you keep saying it? Precisely, but, again, who said anything about whim? The ability to increase/decrease money supply to counter various shocks is, in my view, valuable. Taking that ability away, just because it can be abused if the politcal process is subverted (Zimbabwe), is plain silly, in my view. Indeed, if you think that Zimbabwe's problems have arisen just because they haven't adopted the gold standard, I don't think there's any point in this discussion.
Sorry, Anaconda. Your argument is flawed and the others are right. We cannot logically go back to a gold standard.