Saturday, September 17, 2011

Thar's gold in them thar ills dept.

Is gold being suppressed?

According to the Motley Fool, yeah ...

The money quote. In this case, literally:

"... Whatever you think about gold, there can be no doubt that gold has dramatically re-asserted its immutable role within the global financial realm over the past decade. Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan conceded in 2009 that "gold still holds reign over the financial system as the ultimate source of payment." The world experimented with moving away from gold beginning in 1971 with the "Nixon Shock," but extremely poor stewardship of the key paper currencies has ushered gold back as the sole currency immune to the ravages of obscene debt and competitive devaluation. On that point, the case is quite simply closed.

The question remains, however, whether Western central banks may be intervening in the gold market to mitigate or delay the appreciation of gold against their troubled paper currencies..."

Link to full article:

3 comments:

Marty Fugate said...

In my know-nothing opinion, various central banks have a good motive for suppressing the gold market. The gold standard is gone. Good. Gold is a metal. There's only so much of it on the planet. Let's say we make that finite quantity of gold [X] = the total amount of wealth on the planet [Y]. In that case, gold will be worth about $100 an atom. It's !@#$ ridiculous.

The gold standard doesn't work. But various purveyors of gold push their product anyway -- as a hedge against inflation and volatility -- creating a defacto gold standard in the minds of their customers, and a market for gold based on the BS illusion of security obtained by having actual gold bars in the crawl space under your house -- and an insanely inflated gold bubble based on panic-driven speculation as a result.

Coincidentally, the radio shock jocks who keep their audiences in a perpetual state of fear invariably have some gold company as one of their major sponsors. Their programming boils down to, "Civilization is doomed, the end is near, and now a word from our sponsor ... BUY GOLD!"

Marty Fugate said...

In my science fiction universe, I've toyed with the idea of an "energy standard." The basic concept being: the total wealth of the world = the available energy in the world. Your wealth = your share of that energy. Not an abstraction, but the thing itself.

Marty Fugate said...

Ben -- and good luck on your Towles Court art space! I will definitely be dropping by!