I’ll keep my stackables as a hedge against global economic collapse. Wherever we end up, it will have value.
If Jesus returns before then, it won’t matter.
Anonymous
February 27, 2014 8:20 am
Actually, gold is very poor when used as money. Society has always demanded flexible money and always will. It is integral to human nature. It is why no gold standard has ever lasted the test of time.
Gold is however the ultimate form of wealth. Money is not wealth. Money is an IOU. Money seen as wealth has a limited lifespan just as gold as money has. Money is always debased, eventually it must be re-defined. This is why no fiat money has ever stood the test of time.
The better course of action is to acknowledge what our money is and what it cannot be. We can then earn, spend, borrow, and lend money. When it is time to save our net productivity, we save in wealth instead of money. We save in physical gold.
TPC
February 27, 2014 10:02 am
@Anon – People aren’t known for turning gold down, its the ultimate flexible money. It carries its value across borders, and across time.
Billy
February 27, 2014 12:42 pm
Oh bullshit, Anon!
The demand for “flexible money” (whatever the fuck THAT is…) is what caused the fall of the Roman Empire and the end of their monetary system?
The demand for “flexible money” is what caused Nixon to break the Bretton Woods agreement, and NOT because we overspent on the Vietnam war, folks got nervous and then the French called in all their dollars?
You make the statement that the ‘demand for “flexible money’ has always “been integral with human nature”…
What the FUCK does that even MEAN??!? You made the assertion that the above is true, even though one would think that a stable, enduring medium, such as gold, would be more valued since stability and longevity fosters the generation of wealth…
I want you to PROVE IT. I want you to cite chapter and verse to backstop your bullshit statement – tell us what your definition of ‘flexible money’ is (because I can’t for the life of me figure out what the fuck that even IS), and exactly why it has been ‘integral with human nature’ since 564BC…
BUCKHED
February 27, 2014 1:02 pm
ANON…gold will always be a “Flexible ” form of money..this is the reason you can buy gold in so many different measures ie 1 gram,1/4 ounce etc.
Fool on the hill
February 27, 2014 1:11 pm
Yup GOTSUM and sum Ag 2
Stucky
February 27, 2014 1:13 pm
A flexible money system is when the government bends you over backwards in order to extract your last fucking red cent from your asshole.
That’s just a guess. I love TBP. All this exposure to new ideas, new words, new terms, new things I’ve never heard of before.
Billy, don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t have a lot of patience, do you? lol
Stucky
February 27, 2014 1:36 pm
“The debasement of Roman currency is one of the reasons cited by historians as a cause for the downfall of the empire” ————- from the article
I believe there are current 1,394 theories as to why Rome fell.
Nice visual of all the gold ever mined.
[img[/img]
Billy
February 27, 2014 1:55 pm
“Billy, don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t have a lot of patience, do you? lol” — The Stuckinator
Well, I know this sounds like a cop-out, but it depends…
When I am teaching young people something, I have almost limitless patience. Going all Hulk-ragey on them is counter-productive.
When I encounter idiocy of monumental proportions, then yeah, I got no patience for stupid shit… “stupid shit” is different than teasing or clowning around… both have their places and I enjoy a good laugh as much as the next guy, maybe more so (my best friend is hilarious… he said he likes making me laugh because I got this big, booming laugh…)
But to get back on subject, stupid shit is damn near intolerable to me… and yeah, I do get the urge to choke the shit out of people who display monumental amounts of stupidity…. like parroting shit they heard somewhere like ‘flexible money’ without knowing what the hell it is or even defining it so others know what you’re talking about… I can just see Anon and a bunch of other Anons sitting there while some Keynesian talks about “flexible money” and they’re all nodding like they know what the fuck he’s talking about… none dare stick their hand in the air to ask “What the fuck is flexible money?” for fear of looking bad…
I’ll tell you an anecdote.. this actually happened.
I was in Germany working a protective services detail and me and my partner, some kid, were in our vehicle on the way to do our mission. We’re in downtown Stuttgart, and it’s fucking cold and rainy and foggy… just shit weather.
Out of nowhere, this kid (whom I do not know) busts ass. Just a really, really rank fart… and, since it’s fucking raining, I can’t roll down the window.
I got a case of the ass and told him “Dude, knock that shit off. I might have to work with you, but sure as hell don’t have to breathe the fumes that came out of your ass. You do that again, and I’ll throw you out of this fucking car.”
He didn’t believe me, and about 10 minutes later he busts ass again, just as bad.
I immediately pulled over.
“Get out.”
“Wait… what?”
“Get the fuck out. I told you not to do that again. Get out.”
“You can’t throw me out.”
“Wanna bet? I’ll drag you out of this motherfucker if I have to, but you ARE going to get out..”
“Well… for how long?”
“Until you stop busting ass or until you learn your lesson… and that’s on you.”
So, bitching under his breath, he gets out in the rain and just stands there. I took the radio and called in a delay and then sat there for 10 minutes while Smelly stood in the fucking cold assed rain…
He gets back in.
“Okay.. I’m sorry. I won’t bust ass in the car anymore…”
“Ever.”
“Yeah, okay.. ever.. ”
I even threw my own sister out of my car once when I was younger. I was giving her a ride out of the goodness of my heart, and she started bitching… I just couldn’t take it and just pulled over. Threw her ass out and went home. Last fucking time she bitched in my car…
Administrator
Author
February 27, 2014 4:54 pm
“The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit…For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Stucky
February 27, 2014 5:05 pm
Billy
Pretty funny anecdote. When you “bust ass”, do you throw yourself out of the car? (It’s a funny visual just thinking about it.)
We could never go on a trip together. I fart more than the normal Kraut, and ain’t nobody throwin’ me out of a car.
archie
February 27, 2014 7:06 pm
anonymous sounds a lot like someone who follows the blog of FOFOA, which i have been reading on and off for about 6 months. when anon writes that gold isn’t money and that it is wealth, this is what FOFOA says, though you’d have to wade through several hundred pages of his writings to understand what he means by this. his blog is erudite, his essays are long and carefully written. he also upsets goldbugs. anyway. from what i gather from him, the problem with money is that it cannot fulfill its own proper definition of being a store of value on the one hand, and being a unit of account and a medium of exchange on the other.
if gold is used as money, then either it restricts the extension of credit unreasonably, or the gold is diluted by having credit lent out in the way people want (then there exist too many claims on the same amount of gold which is fixed in price).
if fiat money is used, then credit can be unrestricted, pleasing everyone except people who want to save. the store of value function of money becomes an empty promise and sooner or later everyone either becomes a speculator of sorts or loses their purchasing power by keeping it in the bank at a rate of return much lower than the real rate of inflation.
if i understand him correctly, FOFOA suggests that in the future paper money, fiat money, be used for the unit of account and medium of exchange. Gold, detached from all derivatives markets (where paper gold rules) and currency pegs (no return to a gold standard), is free to float against all currencies. it may then be used for savers who wish to live a simple life free from the shark-tank world of finance and speculation. gold will be what it is good at–being a store of wealth. in the meantime, gold will have to be revalued overnight at some point to shore up the bloated, broken balance sheets of the central banks. he reckons the price will be much higher, at the low end to be $10k and the high end around $100k per troy ounce.
maybe i mis-stated the thesis (or got some of the terminology wrong) of FOFOA. if any FOFOA folks read this i am sure they will correct me. i have only read about 600 pages of the blog, re-reading about half of that. i have another 500 or so to go it looks like. and billy, please don’t get pissed off at me! i am not his spokesman. i am merely trying to reconstruct what anonymous wrote.
by the way, FOFOA is just the most recent incarnation of his predecessors, A, which stands for Another, and FOA, which stands for Friend of Another. the freegold thesis has been around since 1997, and it is thought that A was highly placed banker in Europe. just for shits and giggles, FOFOA is the only gold analyst that i know of who predicted a steep decline in paper price of gold in 2013. he is extremely smart and has a good sense of humor, much like our own host here at TBP.
Billy
February 28, 2014 7:47 am
“We could never go on a trip together. I fart more than the normal Kraut, and ain’t nobody throwin’ me out of a car.” — Stucky
Oh that’s fine.. Just remind me to bring my tazer and a roll of duct tape.
Technically, you’ll still be IN the car… I’ll make sure there’s air holes..
Billy
February 28, 2014 7:56 am
archie
Nah, I ain’t gonna nuke you… that’s like the King getting bad news from a messenger or translator, and then stringing up the guy who told him the bad news..
Never heard of this FOA guy… one thing you said I agree with though – that there’s more than one claim on every ounce of gold in the world. Thanks to the banks and their fuckery of loaning out gold to bullion banks, and then counting what they loaned out as a physical asset, they’ve created this mess… the bullion banks can do whatever they want with the loaned out gold, but it’s still counted as an asset…
Probably the reason why the Fed won’t let Germany have their gold back for the next 7 years… they took their gold, loaned it out to a bullion bank, who then turned around and loaned that out… meaning, the gold the Germans gave the Fed for safekeeping does not exist anymore, so we either have to chase down all the loaned out gold and get it back, or scrape up enough gold to give back to the Germans…
This theory is bolstered by the fact that the Fed has given the Germans back about 7 tons of their gold, probably to shut them up, but the problem is that the gold they gave back to the Germans isn’t the same gold that the Germans gave the Fed…
Something’s fishy…
archie
February 28, 2014 5:46 pm
billy, hehe, yeah i knew you weren’t going to unload both barrels at me, but i thought i’d hoist the white flag in any case. there is enough strife in my life right now that i hardly need the headache of engaging in virtual battle.
“Something’s fishy”…you ain’t kidding. the whole house of cards could come down any time now. gold is at the center of it, now that all the big boy nations are insolvent. heaven knows what kind of chicanery happens behind the scenes. my guess is that a playbook was written when nixon severed the gold link to the dollar because it is simply inevitable that fiat currency dies. no doubt the playbook has been re-written many times in the last 40 years, but whatever it says presently, there is no doubt that the ussa is going to eat a shit sandwich.
I’ll keep my stackables as a hedge against global economic collapse. Wherever we end up, it will have value.
If Jesus returns before then, it won’t matter.
Actually, gold is very poor when used as money. Society has always demanded flexible money and always will. It is integral to human nature. It is why no gold standard has ever lasted the test of time.
Gold is however the ultimate form of wealth. Money is not wealth. Money is an IOU. Money seen as wealth has a limited lifespan just as gold as money has. Money is always debased, eventually it must be re-defined. This is why no fiat money has ever stood the test of time.
The better course of action is to acknowledge what our money is and what it cannot be. We can then earn, spend, borrow, and lend money. When it is time to save our net productivity, we save in wealth instead of money. We save in physical gold.
@Anon – People aren’t known for turning gold down, its the ultimate flexible money. It carries its value across borders, and across time.
Oh bullshit, Anon!
The demand for “flexible money” (whatever the fuck THAT is…) is what caused the fall of the Roman Empire and the end of their monetary system?
The demand for “flexible money” is what caused Nixon to break the Bretton Woods agreement, and NOT because we overspent on the Vietnam war, folks got nervous and then the French called in all their dollars?
You make the statement that the ‘demand for “flexible money’ has always “been integral with human nature”…
What the FUCK does that even MEAN??!? You made the assertion that the above is true, even though one would think that a stable, enduring medium, such as gold, would be more valued since stability and longevity fosters the generation of wealth…
I want you to PROVE IT. I want you to cite chapter and verse to backstop your bullshit statement – tell us what your definition of ‘flexible money’ is (because I can’t for the life of me figure out what the fuck that even IS), and exactly why it has been ‘integral with human nature’ since 564BC…
ANON…gold will always be a “Flexible ” form of money..this is the reason you can buy gold in so many different measures ie 1 gram,1/4 ounce etc.
Yup GOTSUM and sum Ag 2
A flexible money system is when the government bends you over backwards in order to extract your last fucking red cent from your asshole.
That’s just a guess. I love TBP. All this exposure to new ideas, new words, new terms, new things I’ve never heard of before.
Billy, don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t have a lot of patience, do you? lol
“The debasement of Roman currency is one of the reasons cited by historians as a cause for the downfall of the empire” ————- from the article
I believe there are current 1,394 theories as to why Rome fell.
Nice visual of all the gold ever mined.
[/img]
[img
“Billy, don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t have a lot of patience, do you? lol” — The Stuckinator
Well, I know this sounds like a cop-out, but it depends…
When I am teaching young people something, I have almost limitless patience. Going all Hulk-ragey on them is counter-productive.
When I encounter idiocy of monumental proportions, then yeah, I got no patience for stupid shit… “stupid shit” is different than teasing or clowning around… both have their places and I enjoy a good laugh as much as the next guy, maybe more so (my best friend is hilarious… he said he likes making me laugh because I got this big, booming laugh…)
But to get back on subject, stupid shit is damn near intolerable to me… and yeah, I do get the urge to choke the shit out of people who display monumental amounts of stupidity…. like parroting shit they heard somewhere like ‘flexible money’ without knowing what the hell it is or even defining it so others know what you’re talking about… I can just see Anon and a bunch of other Anons sitting there while some Keynesian talks about “flexible money” and they’re all nodding like they know what the fuck he’s talking about… none dare stick their hand in the air to ask “What the fuck is flexible money?” for fear of looking bad…
I’ll tell you an anecdote.. this actually happened.
I was in Germany working a protective services detail and me and my partner, some kid, were in our vehicle on the way to do our mission. We’re in downtown Stuttgart, and it’s fucking cold and rainy and foggy… just shit weather.
Out of nowhere, this kid (whom I do not know) busts ass. Just a really, really rank fart… and, since it’s fucking raining, I can’t roll down the window.
I got a case of the ass and told him “Dude, knock that shit off. I might have to work with you, but sure as hell don’t have to breathe the fumes that came out of your ass. You do that again, and I’ll throw you out of this fucking car.”
He didn’t believe me, and about 10 minutes later he busts ass again, just as bad.
I immediately pulled over.
“Get out.”
“Wait… what?”
“Get the fuck out. I told you not to do that again. Get out.”
“You can’t throw me out.”
“Wanna bet? I’ll drag you out of this motherfucker if I have to, but you ARE going to get out..”
“Well… for how long?”
“Until you stop busting ass or until you learn your lesson… and that’s on you.”
So, bitching under his breath, he gets out in the rain and just stands there. I took the radio and called in a delay and then sat there for 10 minutes while Smelly stood in the fucking cold assed rain…
He gets back in.
“Okay.. I’m sorry. I won’t bust ass in the car anymore…”
“Ever.”
“Yeah, okay.. ever.. ”
I even threw my own sister out of my car once when I was younger. I was giving her a ride out of the goodness of my heart, and she started bitching… I just couldn’t take it and just pulled over. Threw her ass out and went home. Last fucking time she bitched in my car…
“The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit…For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Billy
Pretty funny anecdote. When you “bust ass”, do you throw yourself out of the car? (It’s a funny visual just thinking about it.)
We could never go on a trip together. I fart more than the normal Kraut, and ain’t nobody throwin’ me out of a car.
anonymous sounds a lot like someone who follows the blog of FOFOA, which i have been reading on and off for about 6 months. when anon writes that gold isn’t money and that it is wealth, this is what FOFOA says, though you’d have to wade through several hundred pages of his writings to understand what he means by this. his blog is erudite, his essays are long and carefully written. he also upsets goldbugs. anyway. from what i gather from him, the problem with money is that it cannot fulfill its own proper definition of being a store of value on the one hand, and being a unit of account and a medium of exchange on the other.
if gold is used as money, then either it restricts the extension of credit unreasonably, or the gold is diluted by having credit lent out in the way people want (then there exist too many claims on the same amount of gold which is fixed in price).
if fiat money is used, then credit can be unrestricted, pleasing everyone except people who want to save. the store of value function of money becomes an empty promise and sooner or later everyone either becomes a speculator of sorts or loses their purchasing power by keeping it in the bank at a rate of return much lower than the real rate of inflation.
if i understand him correctly, FOFOA suggests that in the future paper money, fiat money, be used for the unit of account and medium of exchange. Gold, detached from all derivatives markets (where paper gold rules) and currency pegs (no return to a gold standard), is free to float against all currencies. it may then be used for savers who wish to live a simple life free from the shark-tank world of finance and speculation. gold will be what it is good at–being a store of wealth. in the meantime, gold will have to be revalued overnight at some point to shore up the bloated, broken balance sheets of the central banks. he reckons the price will be much higher, at the low end to be $10k and the high end around $100k per troy ounce.
maybe i mis-stated the thesis (or got some of the terminology wrong) of FOFOA. if any FOFOA folks read this i am sure they will correct me. i have only read about 600 pages of the blog, re-reading about half of that. i have another 500 or so to go it looks like. and billy, please don’t get pissed off at me! i am not his spokesman. i am merely trying to reconstruct what anonymous wrote.
by the way, FOFOA is just the most recent incarnation of his predecessors, A, which stands for Another, and FOA, which stands for Friend of Another. the freegold thesis has been around since 1997, and it is thought that A was highly placed banker in Europe. just for shits and giggles, FOFOA is the only gold analyst that i know of who predicted a steep decline in paper price of gold in 2013. he is extremely smart and has a good sense of humor, much like our own host here at TBP.
“We could never go on a trip together. I fart more than the normal Kraut, and ain’t nobody throwin’ me out of a car.” — Stucky
Oh that’s fine.. Just remind me to bring my tazer and a roll of duct tape.
Technically, you’ll still be IN the car… I’ll make sure there’s air holes..
archie
Nah, I ain’t gonna nuke you… that’s like the King getting bad news from a messenger or translator, and then stringing up the guy who told him the bad news..
Never heard of this FOA guy… one thing you said I agree with though – that there’s more than one claim on every ounce of gold in the world. Thanks to the banks and their fuckery of loaning out gold to bullion banks, and then counting what they loaned out as a physical asset, they’ve created this mess… the bullion banks can do whatever they want with the loaned out gold, but it’s still counted as an asset…
Probably the reason why the Fed won’t let Germany have their gold back for the next 7 years… they took their gold, loaned it out to a bullion bank, who then turned around and loaned that out… meaning, the gold the Germans gave the Fed for safekeeping does not exist anymore, so we either have to chase down all the loaned out gold and get it back, or scrape up enough gold to give back to the Germans…
This theory is bolstered by the fact that the Fed has given the Germans back about 7 tons of their gold, probably to shut them up, but the problem is that the gold they gave back to the Germans isn’t the same gold that the Germans gave the Fed…
Something’s fishy…
billy, hehe, yeah i knew you weren’t going to unload both barrels at me, but i thought i’d hoist the white flag in any case. there is enough strife in my life right now that i hardly need the headache of engaging in virtual battle.
“Something’s fishy”…you ain’t kidding. the whole house of cards could come down any time now. gold is at the center of it, now that all the big boy nations are insolvent. heaven knows what kind of chicanery happens behind the scenes. my guess is that a playbook was written when nixon severed the gold link to the dollar because it is simply inevitable that fiat currency dies. no doubt the playbook has been re-written many times in the last 40 years, but whatever it says presently, there is no doubt that the ussa is going to eat a shit sandwich.