The Goat Pen

The basic premise behind most "we need to get back to gold" seems to be distrust of the government. The US Dollar is what our currency is, it is completely the creation of the US goverment and its eficacy depends largely on their competence and policies. So people who distrust government or see disaster or whatever looming because of the government, they look for something else besides the dollar to put their faith in, and the only real contender with any history is gold. People would laugh if they came up with something else, and any foreign currency is less trustworthy and more risky than the dollar.

When you talk about hyperinflation is where I start losing connectivity. I guess the idea is that everyone used to have just a few dollars so if I had a loaf of bread, depending on demand, if one guy showed up with 2 dollars while everyone else just had one, then I would sell to the guy with two dollars, and hyperinflation somehow means that more people now have 2 dollars than before so now I'm looking to sell my loaf of bread to the guy with 3 dollars.

With a gold backed dollar, we can't print more gold, so the idea that everyone would suddenly have 2 dollars by the banks flooding the population with dollars isn't possible.

If every US dollar in the world suddenly became 2 dollars, would any of us be any worse or better off?

Depends on how you are invested and what business you are in...

aTm wrote:

When you talk about hyperinflation is where I start losing connectivity. I guess the idea is that everyone used to have just a few dollars so if I had a loaf of bread, depending on demand, if one guy showed up with 2 dollars while everyone else just had one, then I would sell to the guy with two dollars, and hyperinflation somehow means that more people now have 2 dollars than before so now I'm looking to sell my loaf of bread to the guy with 3 dollars.

With a gold backed dollar, we can't print more gold, so the idea that everyone would suddenly have 2 dollars by the banks flooding the population with dollars isn't possible.

If every US dollar in the world suddenly became 2 dollars, would any of us be any worse or better off?

what if I have 5 oz of gold and due to hyperinflation, gold shoots up to say $25,000 an oz? Now I can go buy a house with gold that I paid $1200 an oz for. The issue isn't that every dollar in the world becomes 2 dollars. Its that every dollar in the world is worth .02 cents. We've been fighting that decline slowly for years , driven largely by the oil being valued by dollars on the world market.

I actually bought into that a few years ago and have some gold and silver tucked away. Of course if it comes to that the real currency is .223 FMJ

" So people who distrust government or see disaster or whatever looming because of the government, they look for something else besides the dollar to put their faith in, and the only real contender with any history is gold."

Still, I go back to your legitimate question (and I can't understand why conspiracy theorist/government haters wouldn't do so as well) of "How do we know how much gold is in Ft. Knox?" The only way we would ever know is whatever the government told us. They could make up anything and then just print the money. It's really all just a house of cards, anyway, based more of less on some idea of trust (trust that most people are going to get up every morning and do something "productive", trust that the human race is basically like every other societal species (and hopeful closer to ants) and that everyone is going to do something "helpful" in some way to the overall benefit of the tribe, however tightly or loosely you care to define that).

Many banks have the word "trust" in their names. It says "in god we trust" on all our money. Maybe it's just misguided hope and we just call it trust, but that's more or less what the whole system is based on, not some yellow ore. And even people who want gold-backed money are still just trusting that most other people will go for it, too. Otherwise, it's meaningless. Or at the very least, means less.

Obviously, one of the main things people "trust" in (certainly believe in) is raw power. Why was the german mark devalued after WWI? Because you lost, faggots. Nobody wants your loser shit. Hitler realized that and brought Germany back to where their shit had value again. Why? B/c they could back it with gold? Hell naw, b/c they could back it up with raw power. That's what gets people's attention (just like in Tombstone, when Ike Clanton slapped the bartender and said "Ya see? Rap somebody on the beak and you get some respect around here").

Look at the United States. How can we produce basically nothing except music videos and "reality" TV, export all manufacturing jobs, get illegal aliens to do all the shit work around here that nobody born here would dream of doing, and yet everybody still wants dollars? B/c we can blow the whole fucking place up if we want to. Ya see, you don't even have to slap people on the beak to get respect when you can do that.

Sure, there are always going to be gnats buzzing around who don't respect it or just don't care (or are so beaten down it doesn't make any difference anyway) and once in a lifetime, they may even pull something off like 9/11 which, yes, was horrible, but I'm sure they're thinking that living in caves and eating rocks for the past gazillion years wasn't their idea of fun, either. But what are you going to do? Swat them, I guess. It never works, but when you've got a trillion dollar swatter, you might as well use it....

"If every US dollar in the world suddenly became 2 dollars, would any of us be any worse or better off?

Depends on how you are invested and what business you are in..."

Actually, Wiz, you're going to be fucked no matter how you are invested or what business you're in. Because you're... you...

what if I have 5 oz of gold and due to hyperinflation, gold shoots up to say $25,000 an oz? Now I can go buy a house with gold that I paid $1200 an oz for.

That would just be commodity speculation, and if gold were that volotile nobody would suggest we should tie our currency to it. If it were hyperinflation that caused your 5 oz of gold to shoot up that high, then the price of a house would have gone up from $200k to $4.2M at the same time the gold did.

aTm wrote:

what if I have 5 oz of gold and due to hyperinflation, gold shoots up to say $25,000 an oz? Now I can go buy a house with gold that I paid $1200 an oz for.

That would just be commodity speculation, and if gold were that volotile nobody would suggest we should tie our currency to it. If it were hyperinflation that caused your 5 oz of gold to shoot up that high, then the price of a house would have gone up from $200k to $4.2M at the same time the gold did.

assuming there were buyers for it

"what if I have 5 oz of gold and due to hyperinflation, gold shoots up to say $25,000 an oz?"

I thought the whole point of having currency tied to gold was to control the money supply so there wouldn't be inflation, and certainly not hyperinflation...

but its not tied to gold right now

I don't understand that Arizona shooter's trial. The dude was clearly crazy. They have to force medicate him just to get him where he understands what is going on so they can then try him as sane?

what the hell? that is our justice system? Get crazy people sane so we can fry them in the chair? I know he is pleaing to get life in prison, but still is that justice?

Yep. He did it. Next.

Texas executes the mentally handicapped. We've already jumped the shark on this. Welcome to the new America.

They shoot horses, don't they?

I imagine AA mentioned this somewhere already, but my buddy in Birmingham just emailed me about Alabama recently passing a law that allowed "large" bottles of beer to be sold. He sent me a picture of his local market with a new wall of coolers full of good 22 oz. microbrews and Belgians. I asked him why they hadn't allowed sales on the big bottles before, thinking it might be b/c of the higher alcohol percentage, but what difference does that make when you can buy liquor right there in the same store? Then I asked him if they sold large bottles of "regular" beer, and of course I realized I'd answered my own question. Bammy still tryin to keep a brother down. So I was happy for the added benefit of this new law, that it wouldn't only be for well-off white Alabamian beer afficianadoes (sp?), but would finally allowed the coloreds to enjoy a cold 40 as well....

Not so fast! My buddy sent me an article in which we find this:

"The law does not allow for 40-ounce malt liquor bottles popularized in rap songs and movies. "

Goddamn, Alabama!!

Alabama had some of the worst beer laws in the nation (Penn, Okla, and Utah are/were bad, too).

That is slowly changing. We can now buy "high gravity" beer and the bottle size (with noted exclusion) has been loosened. Plus, many cities allow Sunday sales.

It's getting better, but we're still not completely free yet.

Wow, you're like a second incarnation of Martin Luther King...

I have a dream that one day this state will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that not all beers are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on Red Mountain in Birmingham that the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood and enjoy a nice high gravity IPA together.

when some celebrity's get a mug shot its funny, like James Brown or Nick Nolte.

Randy Travis just looks like he'll fuck you up

5'9" and a buck 80...I doubt it.