Gold and Silver

[pro2A]

Gold and silver are tangible materials. Paper money is not. Money is only an over inflated receipt for the gold the government took from the American people. Do you think gold will always have value, and why do you think it will or will not always have value? Paper dollars only have value because we have been tricked into believing its worth something, all it is is a receipt for the gold. Gold actually has value.

Thoughts?

 

[MenInTights]

When I see all of these guys from the Western World together meeting behind closed doors, I wonder if they aren't coming up with a plan to slowly hyper-inflate the World.
Think about this. If one nation suffers from hyper-inflation such as the Weimer Republic Germany in the 1920's, that destroys that country. But, when the civilized world does it, it destroys the people holding the paper. The people that bought the debt.
According to Paul O'Neil, the ex-Treasury Secretary, we have about $44Trillion dollars of promissory notes(for lack of better words). These notes are primary due to Social Security recipients. We're never going to be able to pay that off unless our money is worth a lot less. The rest of the world has the same problem we have. So, what do you do? You throw as much money at the situation as you can. If everybody does it, you can prevent the dollar from crashing against the other currencies of the World. In essence, they are all crashing, but since they are compared to each other a dollar will always be worth .60ish GPB. How do you pay off $44Trillion? You make it worth $10Trillion.

Oh yeah, the gold question. So, if all of the currencies dive, the only currencies that survive will be the real currencies gold and silver. Silver more than gold, imo.

 

[ysabel]

Gold will always have a value and it is used as standard for monetary exchange. Unless things have changed since someone tried to explain it to me, currencies value could chage according to the gold reserves a country has.

When things/currencies loses value, I'm told to invest on jewelry (precious metals) because they're not supposed to depreciate. I never followed it because I don't know what to do with loads of jewelry. It's not practical for exchange unlike paper currencies.

 

[Kazmarov]

Gold has as much tangible value as paper. Perhaps it has more because it's rarer, but why has gold multiplied in value in a short period of time? Because people think it has value, which is different from actually having value.

 

[pro2A]

I think you have this backwards Kaz. Gold has value because you can't make more. Paper currency can be printed. It has no value except for the fact that the masses think its worth something. All it is is a debt to the actual gold a silver that backs it. There is only so much gold and silver, so the more paper money you have the less its worth.

 

[MenInTights]

I think you have this backwards Kaz. Gold has value because you can't make more. Paper currency can be printed. It has no value except for the fact that the masses think its worth something. All it is is a debt to the actual gold a silver that backs it. There is only so much gold and silver, so the more paper money you have the less its worth.

Kaz has a point. A factor in the rise of gold is speculation. Gold and Oil are sister commodities so its easier to see with oil. The rule is 12 barrells of oil should be worth about an once of gold. Some yahoo comes on tv and says oil is going to $200 and speculators drive oil up the next day. Which also drives gold up.

Keep this in mind when considering gold. Gold is a good investment with all the cash that's being pumped into the world banks. However, since the price is partially speculation and since oil is falling fast right now gold is probably going to be going down before it goes back up. I wouldn't touch it personally until oil settles.

This is an excellent primer in the factors of gold pricing:
http://www.usfunds.com/landingpages/whats_driving_gold/

I'm personally more partial to silver because silver has more industrial demand than gold and since its not tied to oil you don't get the wild swings.

 

[Gavik]

It has no value except for the fact that the masses think its worth something.

I think the same could be said about gold. You can't make more of it - so what? It's still just a shiny metal. If a gold standard were put into place, the economy would become dependent upon gold mining. A little too much of a gamble, because gold is limited that would mean the economy would be limited too, no? Besides, how could we guarantee that the gold standard system would remain pure and transparent?

The real problem is the private control of the federal reserve. A free society can't survive with a consortium of private bankers controlling the money supply.