Posts by crimsonranger38

Adam Fox3 said:Suppose I decide to sell my USD at $2.50 and convert, say, $100 into local currency, then just let that $748 sit in my checking account until New Year's Day. Once January 1st rolls around, I won't actually have $100 to show for it again; instead, I’d end up with less. If I calculate $748 divided by 7.53, I get roughly $99.34. That means I’ve effectively lost $0.66 in the process.
Is my math hitting the mark here?

The logic holds up, and the final math is spot on. 😁

boldnomad8 said:The 7.53 figure was mentioned, but the deviation could hit 15%.
Everything else is just a lottery.

No way. The rate is basically set in stone. The Federal Reserve isn't going to suddenly pull a stunt and force a massive one-time revaluation or devaluation of the dollar.

A rate of roughly 7.5 is what we’re looking at for our entry into the Eurozone. Whether it lands at 7.52 or 7.55? Honestly, it's splitting hairs.

Bad boy. Quote:
It seems we’ve all collectively decided that society would somehow function better if every single store closed its doors by 5:00 PM—maybe even 6:00 PM at the latest—regardless of what the pandemic is doing. It’s funny how quickly we adapt. At this point, it isn't even about the restrictions anymore; it's just become a matter of habit. We've conditioned ourselves to expect an early curfew for retail.

Everything in life eventually boils down to habit. It’s how we function. So, the real question is: are we really going to sit back and let the political elites dictate exactly how we live our lives?

How much oversight a person actually needs is up for debate—there’s probably a logical solution for that somewhere in the weeds. But honestly? I don't see the point in dictating exactly how an entire population should live their lives or what they should be doing with their time. It's just unnecessary.

Supply and demand will dictate business hours naturally enough. Why are you so terrified of a free market that you’re practically begging for a babysitter to hold your hand?

Troublemaker. Quote:
You’re living in a fantasy land. You’re out here comparing countries where I'm certain nobody is grinding away for minimum wage.

Retail jobs in the USA sit at the very bottom of the income ladder. It’s the same story you see in the garment or footwear industries—low margins, low prestige, low pay. Even here, things have shifted slightly; retail workers aren't just scraping by on minimum wage anymore. Average paylines have crept up to around $650 a week, which puts them about 30% above the absolute floor. Still, it doesn't change the fundamental reality of the sector.

Oil day trading accounts for a mere 0.15% of global FX turnover. We're talking about a world where the USD handles 88% of transactions, the EUR sits at 33%, the JPY at 17%, the GBP at 13%, and so on. In that light, oil is essentially a rounding error when it comes to the dollar's position. Russia pulling away from the USD matters to the US about as much as a toddler picking on someone tiny at the UN. If you look at the math—daily production at roughly 10 million barrels times $60 per barrel equals $600 million a day. Now, compare that to a daily FX turnover of $6.6 trillion and tell me how much a move by Russia actually impacts the US.

Also, I’m not sure if you’re aware that Russia liquidated $160 billion in US Treasuries (which is less than 2% of the secondary market volume). It caused enough of a headache for the US that we’re still feeling the ripples today.

The USD draws its power and prestige as the world's number one currency from American output and everything else flowing out of the American economy.

Another crucial piece of the puzzle regarding the USD is this: OPEC nations, Russia, the Eurozone, and China all share a fundamental issue. They run policies aimed at maintaining trade surpluses, while the US runs on a deficit. This means if they want to keep those surpluses, they have no choice but to finance the American deficit.

When you bring up astronomical American debt, you really ought to be more precise. If you're referring to internal debt, I don't see the crisis. Credits create deposits (savings)—that’s just how the plumbing works. The real question is whether that debt is being invested productively. In the case of the US, it clearly is. No other nation of this developmental stage or sheer scale even comes close to our macroeconomic parameters. We are looking at the most productive economy on the planet.

Now, if we are discussing external debt, then yes, there can be problems because those players rely on our financing. But as long as creditors insist on running surplus policies, they are forced to fund the American deficit. Their surplus is the American deficit. A sudden stop in debtor capital inflow is always a risk, but ultimately, the mechanism for correction is a depreciation of the USD—essentially wiping out the surpluses held by China, Germany, and everyone else.

Furthermore, I don't see the Eurozone, China, Russia, OPEC members, or Japan doing anything to appreciate their own currencies against the USD to start reducing their manufacturing surpluses. On the contrary, they are fighting tooth and nail to keep their industries and exports running at full throttle to accumulate those surpluses. As long as that continues, the US doesn't need to sweat its status; its output leaves them all in the dust.

wearyotter36 said:Even if we’re nowhere near that scenario, I’ve got a question:
If gold actually regained its status and paper money became irrelevant, would the math change—specifically regarding how much gold a country holds per capita, or relative to GDP, or some other metric? That’s really all I'm asking.
I'm trying to wrap my head around the scale here—is 11,000 tons for the EU significantly more than the 8,000 tons held by the US? Or, say, would 9,000 tons in the EU be considered "larger" than 11,000 tons in the US under those specific conditions? And one last thing: is that 1,000-ton stash in Switzerland a massive deal compared to the 11,000 tons held by the rest of Europe, given all those large and mid-sized nations?

Hopefully, I made sense there. 😁

One thing to clarify: there is no such thing as "Federal Reserve gold." It belongs to the individual member states of the Eurozone. Out of that 11,000 tons, Germany holds about 30%, while France and Italy each hold roughly 22%.

If the EUR collapses, the Eurozone collapses with it, and every nation reverts to its own currency. Even with aggressive monetary expansion, Switzerland maintains a gold coverage level of about 10% against its monetary base. In a standard economic climate, those figures usually sit closer to 70 percent.

Switzerland is essentially the gold standard for macroeconomic policy—they actually care about preserving the value of their money (the franc). Over the last 25 years, cumulative inflation has been a mere 10%. Back in 2003, they implemented a fiscal pact—a set of rules requiring structural balance. If excessive spending leads to a deficit, they are mandated to hit a structural surplus in the following period. Interestingly, there is no rule forcing them to do the opposite. While the IMF frequently suggests that countries should use expansive fiscal policy to stimulate growth, the Swiss refuse to budge from their strictly conservative fiscal stance.

When planning fiscal policy, a surplus is often just the byproduct of underestimating revenue growth rates; you then have to adjust expenditure growth accordingly to avoid falling into passive fiscal management.

In the event of a total collapse of global currencies, Switzerland doesn't even strictly need a nominal anchor, yet if they ever did, they have massive amounts of gold to fall back on. I believe they hold about 6% of global reserves today. They likely regret starting to liquidate their gold portfolio in the early 2000s, which saw them drop from 2,500 tons down to the 1,000 tons they hold now through the end of 2008.

None of this implies we’ll see a systemic collapse within our lifetimes. Maybe the Eurozone and the EUR will go under, but I don't put much stock in the idea of the USA or the USD failing.

Melissa Sanchez17 said:The Eurozone is sitting on over 11,000 tons of gold. The USA has north of 8,000 tons. Switzerland has about 1,000 tons. So, there's the breakdown of the "toilet paper" reserves. To be fair, ten years ago, I was right there with you guys, obsessing over the dollar and the euro failing. But my take has shifted a bit. If we actually see a reset of this current monetary system, my bet is that it’ll be driven by an overwhelming demand for the dollar—basically making it too strong to handle. One way that could play out is if the Eurozone falls apart entirely. Anyone got a crystal ball handy? 😃

Sure, true, but if you actually look at how much gold backs the monetary aggregates—the actual value—you'll see Switzerland is playing a completely different game compared to the Eurozone or the USA. If you're looking at the long game, you'd bet on Switzerland and the USD. Their commitment to preserving purchasing power is on an entirely different level than what we see in the USA or the Eurozone. That's why, historically speaking, the Swiss franc appreciates against the USD—it used to be the Deutsche Mark, and now it's the Euro.

The USD isn't going anywhere because it's backed by massive, brutal, real-world output. The Eurozone has output too, but there's a catch: it isn't a fully realized economic union like the USA is. Having a monetary union is one thing, but you also need fiscal and financial integration to make it work.

The roadblock to deeper integration isn't just a lack of political capital—though whether anyone will even bother to build more is a question in itself. The real issue is the structural mess within the fiscal sector. You have massive disparities in how member states handle public spending. Honestly, I find it hard to imagine anyone could sell the Germans on the idea of subsidizing higher social welfare standards in France or Italy, let alone shoulder their national debts.

When everything starts falling apart, you need some kind of anchor to steady the ship. If we’re looking at a total systemic collapse, gold would likely be the go-to stabilizer for both the USD and the Euro. That leaves us wondering: what are the actual odds of the Dollar and the Euro cratering at the exact same time? And when people say "collapse," are we really talking about hyperinflation here? Especially when you consider the specific ingredients required to trigger that kind of meltdown.

dustyheron5 said:They’re playing games when I tell you... they knew exactly what that Democratic Party report looked like before they ever released it to the public...............

Take a look at this manipulation:

That’s just plain wrong. ☕

When prices start climbing, nobody starts crying "manipulation." That's just supply and demand doing its job. It happens because it *has* to happen. 😍

ironstag8 said:Look, those folks pulling the strings aren't some kind of omnipotent force—they can't stop the inevitable. They might be able to stall things for a bit, which is essentially what they're doing right now, but they can't prevent what's bound to happen eventually.

Didn't I tell you that, my friend indijanac!? 🙂

dustyheron5: It’s funny how people react when you actually point out the obvious. It’s like watching someone try to explain why they didn't see a red light when there's a giant stop sign right in their face. You think you're being helpful, providing a bit of clarity, and suddenly you're the villain in their little drama. Patrick Moore3 thinks he's got it all figured out, but honestly, it's more like someone trying to fix a jet engine with a toothpick. A lot of effort, very little actual progress. And then there's ironstag8, who seems to believe that if you just say something loud enough, it magically becomes true. It doesn't work that way. Reality isn't a popularity contest. crimsonranger38 keeps circling the same drain, too. It's a repetitive loop. Like a scratched record playing the same three notes over and over while everyone else is trying to listen to the symphony. We need more substance and a lot less noise.

Anthony Evans78 said:Based on what you've said here, I can't take you seriously for a few reasons:

Who exactly has ever sold physical crude oil or gas?

If you subtract natural population growth, we basically don't have hunger in the modern world.

As for hunger, it's declining; if it weren't for the massive population boom in developing nations, it practically wouldn't exist.

Having a credit card and a decent limit is just a sign of a high standard of living—there’s nothing wrong with that in itself.

Enough for the smart ones.

Your fundamental issue is that you’re narrow-minded. You have zero interest in actually expanding your horizons. That’s exactly what people who preach about gold being some kind of flawless panacea are aiming for. It worked on you because you were willing to swallow it whole, but it didn't work on me. I’ve always insisted on seeing the receipts—verifiable facts, not just vibes. Look, I’m more than happy to learn something new, but I refuse to be indoctrinated. What you’ve pulled together here certainly has some depth to it, I'll give you that.

dustyheron5 said:Respect to anyone who got into gold back in 2008...
Treasury bonds are arguably the largest bubble of them all—they might hold up for a few more years, sure—but by 2015? Things are going to look quite different...
A price correction for gold after jumping from $1,450 to $1,923 is perfectly normal...
Inflation can happen even without wage growth—something we are already witnessing...

Hats off to anyone making a buck on the stock market, I suppose. It just means someone else is footing the bill for those gains. As for government bonds, it’s pretty obvious we’re looking at a massive bubble. You look at the debt loads in the US, Japan, Germany, and the UK, and it’s staggering. But take Germany, for example—they’ve reached this surreal point where creditors are essentially paying them a premium just to hold onto their debt. It’s pure panic masquerading as stability. It isn't sustainable, obviously, but that’s the reality we have to navigate. A market correction? That's perfectly normal. What isn't normal is the logic coming from certain people we have the "pleasure" of reading on this forum.

To them, it’s all just one massive conspiracy theory. It’s the same mindset we saw from the crowd that maxed out their margin loans at the absolute peak in 2007, only to face the predictable fallout we all remember too well. Regarding inflation, sure, it exists—but I'm talking about a specific kind of surge. I am referring to inflation rates that actually exceed what the Federal Reserve targets. Right now, core inflation in many places sits comfortably below 2.5%. We saw prices go absolutely wild on the commodities markets a few months back, but lately, we've been staring down deflation. It’s simple math: we didn't see any significant wage indexing, which prevented an inflationary spiral from ever gaining traction.

ironstag8 said:Silver certainly has a lot of energy for debating... though I doubt he'll ever find a place in our sector.
I’ll just point out that the gold standard wasn't abandoned because of the gold itself, but rather due to the systemic abuse of that standard and a desperate craving for printing money. It brings to mind Ancient Rome—how they steadily debased their silver coinage over the centuries, much like what we see happening to the Dollar today. We all know how that story ended for the Roman Empire.
Besides, since this discussion covers the past, present, and future, drawing these kinds of parallels seems perfectly logical to me.
If I recall correctly, he mentioned somewhere that it doesn't matter if the Dollar lost 98% of its purchasing power as long as wages were rising. Regarding that, once I find a moment to sit down and crunch some numbers, I’ll post them—it will become quite clear that the standard of living in the United States has been eroding due to inflation, not improving, over the last 50 years or so. While I’m using silver as my comparison, the same logic applies to gold.

That’s just plain wrong. Look, I’m not saying the current system isn't rigged in favor of the political elites—it definitely is—but let's be real about why we even moved away from the gold standard in the first place. It was because ordinary Americans simply refused to deal with those rigid constraints anymore. Back in the late 20th century, people weren't willing to play by those old rules, and if they hadn't pushed back then, we wouldn't even be having this conversation today. The Eurozone is a perfect, glaring example of how this all plays out. If this whole mess continues on its current trajectory, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see far-right extremist parties seizing power across various fringe states in Europe. History tends to repeat itself when people feel left behind.

ironstag8 said:Silver certainly has a lot of energy for debating... though I doubt he'll ever find a place in our sector.
I’ll just point out that the gold standard wasn't abandoned because of the gold itself, but rather due to the systemic abuse of that standard and a desperate craving for printing money. It brings to mind Ancient Rome—how they steadily debased their silver coinage over the centuries, much like what we see happening to the Dollar today. We all know how that story ended for the Roman Empire.
Besides, since this discussion covers the past, present, and future, drawing these kinds of parallels seems perfectly logical to me.
If I recall correctly, he mentioned somewhere that it doesn't matter if the Dollar lost 98% of its purchasing power as long as wages were rising. Regarding that, once I find a moment to sit down and crunch some numbers, I’ll post them—it will become quite clear that the standard of living in the United States has been eroding due to inflation, not improving, over the last 50 years or so. While I’m using silver as my comparison, the same logic applies to gold.

Data? Numbers? Please. Is there anyone here with a shred of common sense who actually believes Americans today live at a lower standard of living than they did back in 1950? 😍

If we follow that logic, it implies that labor productivity in the American economy has been in a tailspin for half a century. What kind of data could possibly support such a ridiculous claim? None. Realistically, average hourly compensation in the U.S. economy has surged by about 160% over that period. How much would we have had to crash to suggest Americans are worse off than in 1950? Even a complete novice wouldn't buy that.

The bottom line is that gold is climbing because people are betting that bad macro news out of the States might trigger another round of QE. 😍 The price per ounce just jumped over 3% in a matter of minutes! You can't help but love a commodity that isn't built on pure speculation. 😍

Patrick Moore3 said:🤣

@crimsonranger38,
man, you just don't quit... 😁

I didn't, really. I just gave him a fair shot to prove he wasn't some troll—someone who isn't worth the energy in the first place. The response was exactly what you'd expect given the quality of his original post. 😍

Walter Barrett8 said:So, after weighing all the variables, the bottom line is this: precious metals aren't some magic bullet. They might never hit that $100,000 per ounce milestone we see in the wildest fever dreams, but they remain some of the sharpest plays available in the current market... 🙂

I’ll go ahead and agree with what was written. Honestly, it’s a relief to finally see an end to all that fanaticism. 😍

If you look back at the last decade, gold has been one of the absolute heavy hitters in terms of performance. On average, it’s been pulling in about a 20% return every single year. Honestly, hats off to anyone smart enough to load up on it back then. You can only imagine how much a grandparent is smiling today if they were buying gold for their grandkids when it was sitting at $1,900 an ounce. Now, will gold keep delivering those 20% annual returns for the next ten years? Maybe. But personally, I think the odds of that happening are slim to none. We’ve just witnessed a set of market conditions we haven't seen in the last decade. We're approaching a point where gold prices might just sit flat for a while. I was checking the Asian markets this morning—they're in the red. Crude oil and gold are down too, though Treasury yields are climbing. You have to adapt to these shifts and accept them for what they are. You can't just ignore reality and pretend we're living in some... alternate universe.

Quote : The Dollar posted its biggest monthly gain since 2011 in May. It actually managed to outpace bonds, stocks, and commodities for the first time this year. Think of it like a sturdy old pickup truck pulling ahead of a fleet of sports cars during a massive storm. As the sovereign debt situation across the United States spiraled, everyone started looking for a safe harbor, and they all ended up running straight toward the greenback.

Silver Argentum As specified by Walter Barrett8:
Another one who clearly hasn't spent a single second studying monetary history. Honestly, maybe take a moment to learn the difference between price and value before weighing in, okay? It’s basic stuff. Gold has always been measured by mass, whereas paper currencies are nothing more than a derivative of that gold. Sit down and take notes, kid.

So, I see we’re playing semantic games now. Fine. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I actually learned my lesson. Are you going to give me a straight answer to the question then?

You got it wrong.

Look, don't be stingy with the details then. Just give me a proper explanation of what Marin was actually trying to get at, since I clearly missed the mark.

It all goes back to that exact moment when governments decided they could just print whatever amount they felt like. Honestly, explaining this feels like a waste of breath. If solving economic crises was as simple as running the money presses, then the Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe would be global superpowers by now.

Look, it doesn't matter what the day-to-day reality looks like. Forget what people actually do in practice. What matters—the only thing that truly carries weight—is what the theory dictates.

Secondly, you’re leaning heavily on a classic straw man argument here. Where exactly did I suggest that we solve the issue—which, by the way, still needs a clear definition—by simply inflating the total money supply?

And once again, you’re conflating price with value. It’s a classic mistake.

Once again, a pretty irrelevant point to throw into an argument.

Why on earth would I bother buying gold at 1800? Even if I did, the actual purchasing power remains basically identical to what it was back then. Seriously, go ahead—challenge me to find just ONE single piece of paper currency from the 1800s that holds the same value today as a dollar does right now. I'll wait.

Why? Because that’s how you spot trends. You need to see if there’s actually any meaningful difference between gold back then versus gold today. That's the whole point. As for the second part of your comment—you missed the mark entirely. I never claimed what you just wrote, and frankly, it has absolutely nothing to do with the argument at hand.

What about Treasury bonds, stocks, and the rest of the market junk? Can you handle those too?

You're absolutely right, but now I want you to name names. Who exactly, and when, claimed that bonds or stocks were "money"? I actually appreciate you grouping gold in with bonds and stocks—it’s technically where it belongs.

It’s clear you have zero grasp of monetary history, which explains why you’re so clueless about how markets actually function. Who exactly are these people frantically offloading gold and silver? Oh, wait—there aren't any. It’s just digital promises being traded by computers, not actual physical bullion.

If we strip away the ad hominem attacks for a second, can we actually apply that same logic to every single product on the market? I mean, think about it. Who exactly—and at what point in the timeline—is actually selling raw, unrefined crude oil or natural gas? It’s a bit of a stretch.

"Quote:"

It’s pretty clear you don't even grasp the basic definition of money. Think about history for a second. When were any other metals—aside from gold, silver, or copper—actually considered currency? Never. And you know why? Because they lack the fundamental characteristics required to function as money. You might want to go back to school and actually study the concept before weighing in.

You’ve got a point there. I’ll admit, I don't dive into the research quite as aggressively as you do. But look, we need to pick a lane here. Either we're discussing the actual chemical properties of gold, or we're talking about something else entirely. We can't just pivot between definitions whenever it feels convenient to suit the argument. It’s messy. So, do me a favor: go back, read the broader context of what I actually wrote, and then come back with those questions.

Interesting... A moment ago you were claiming silver and gold have never actually functioned as money, but now you’ve pivoted to saying people decide what holds value. Talk about a complete 180. We have a new champion in the art of jumping into one's own mouth! People chose silver and gold as currency three thousand years ago; it wasn't some mandate handed down by a central bank or the federal government.

Don't try to twist my words. I never once claimed that gold and silver weren't money. They were money once upon a time, a long time ago, and they probably won't be ever again. Second; your first point doesn't actually contradict my second. Third; what on earth does the fact that people three thousand years ago chose gold and silver as currency have to do with the argument I actually made?

Let’s just briefly set aside three thousand years of human history and ignore the current global trend where central banks everywhere—think the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, or even the folks over at the People's Bank of China—are aggressively hoarding gold. Even in the middle of a massive fiscal crisis, you see major players like Germany demanding gold as collateral from countries like Italy or Greece. It’s happening all around us.

So, how exactly did you think you debunked that fact about gold and its history? Let’s get real for a second. That gold you’re obsessing over—the stuff you claim has three hundred years of legacy—isn't actually money anymore. Seriously. Go down to a local farmer's market, try to buy a sack of potatoes using a handful of gold coins, and see how the vendor reacts. They’ll take your US dollars or Euros way faster than they’ll take a shiny nugget. As for central banks hoarding gold, honestly, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of their massive asset accumulation. It’s practically negligible. And my final piece of advice? Stop believing everything you read online. Don't go looking for collateral where none exists; if they actually required it, the entire monetary union would collapse instantly.

A jeweler doesn't actually dictate the price of an ounce of gold. He might claim it’s worth $2,500 just to make a point, but he isn't the one calling the shots. The market decides the value; the guy behind the counter is just reading the scoreboard.

Jewelers don't have the slightest clue how gold actually functions as money.

What’s the actual takeaway here? That less than a fraction of a percent of the global population views gold as real money while everyone else treats it like a novelty? You also went straight for the soccer analogy again, which is pretty rich considering you didn't even touch the core argument.

If Wall Street decides an ounce of gold is worth $100,000, then that’s exactly what it’s going to be. It’s basic economics, really. Prices—gold or otherwise—are driven by the tug-of-war between supply and demand. And let's face it, we all see the pattern here: global gold supply is basically hitting a plateau, while demand keeps climbing, fueled largely by speculators looking for a quick buck. That imbalance is what pushes the price north.

Do you even realize how much nonsense you're spewing? It would probably take me several hours to walk you through the fact that price—not just for gold, but for anything—isn't solely dictated by supply and demand. Once you finally grasp that gold is the mortal enemy of fiat currency, you'll understand why the price looks the way it does.

Gold is a powerhouse commodity. Period. And sure, I get it—for a true fanatic, the price of their precious metal has nothing to do with market supply or demand. You haven't exactly broken new ground here; you're just stating the obvious.

Only an idiot would buy real estate at those prices. Oh, wait, my mistake... I forgot that real estate prices can only ever go up and they're perfectly productive assets—they just sit there, requiring zero investment and absolutely no maintenance...

Once again, you dodged the actual point because you know deep down that most people would make that choice without a second thought. As for the price per square foot, you have to accept that in a capitalist system, the market sets the price. If someone is willing to shell out $500,000 for a tiny condo, then that’s the market price. The market doesn't care if that person is making a questionable decision; the market isn't comprised entirely of Wall Street types.

The second part of your real estate rant is just more deflection—classic straw man argumentation.

A standard built on cheap energy (which isn't infinite, but that's another conversation) and the impoverishment of millions.

Human ingenuity made that energy cheap, and human ingenuity might just make it infinite one day. Secondly, subtract natural population growth from the equation and you'd see we don't actually have starving people in today's world. Furthermore, you can't enrich yourself by stripping wealth from someone who was already broke.

And if you think carrying a credit card is a way out of poverty, you're mistaken.

Having a credit card and a decent limit is simply a metric of a certain standard of living; it isn't inherently bad. Just as consumption without production makes no sense, production without consumption is equally futile.

I wrote this:

One more vital fact: I don't recall the United States or the UK ever having 100% gold backing for their total money supply. If memory serves—and it does—the last time they had any semblance of a real gold standard was back in the mid-19th century, when coverage sat at roughly 30%.

And this was your response:

You're spot on. He’s a lightweight. It's easy to manufacture value when you can just hit "print" or click a button whenever you feel like it, creating nothing more than a cheap illusion of substance.

I wasn't even talking about that. I was addressing an entirely different point, and the fact that you’re busy trolling just proves my point.

A year? Please. They’ve been pulling the strings for forty years straight.

That’s a seriously well-argued point. Honestly, I couldn't have put it better myself.

The other 99.99% of people have access to the exact same information I do. Their issue isn't a lack of data; it’s just easier to switch off the brain and sink into the mindless void of the Eurovision Song Contest or Survivor.

Maybe that’s actually a better outcome than dealing with the way certain individuals carry themselves. In that light, the rest of them aren't exactly any less sheep-like than the first group.

I could have taken the last forty years. Scratch that—I could have taken the last hundred.

So, you’re cherry-picking the last decade. Fine. But why stop there? Why didn't you look at the twenty years preceding that stretch? You conveniently skipped them because they don't support your little theory. It’s classic selection bias.

Why are you lying so blatantly? I specifically said currencies are losing value relative to gold, not that gold itself is rising. Those aren't the same thing. One of these days, you’ll finally grasp that subtle distinction. And the very fact that gold maintains its purchasing power while fiat currencies slide against it is exactly what proves gold serves as a hedge against inflation. Take the red pill with some Kool-aid oprostiti.

Look, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here, but if you’re seriously asking me to calculate what gold *should* be priced at if it were acting as a true hedge against inflation, we need to get serious. Are you actually prepared to defend that thesis? Because if you are, then stop stalling and do exactly what I told you to do. Take 1800 as your baseline year and adjust for inflation from there. Run the numbers. Let me know what final figure you land on.

You seem to be under the impression that we actually live in a free market. If you had even a passing familiarity with human history, you’d realize that the whole thing is just a byproduct of backroom conspiracies.

It’s the oldest trick in the book: if you slap a "conspiracy theory" label onto an undeniable fact, suddenly that fact loses its teeth. It’s a convenient way to shut down a conversation without actually having to address the truth.

I don't think he’s a genius—not by a long shot—and neither do the millions of people across the globe or the vast majority of folks throughout three millennia of human history. But I suppose it’s easy to get stuck in a narrow mindset, focusing only on the last few decades. In the grand scheme of things, those years are nothing more than a tiny tick on humanity's clock. I’ve mentioned this before, but look at the data: central banks have been aggressively buying up gold lately. Why? Is it just some outdated tradition? Hardly. You also have to consider the massive scale of demand from millions of Indians and Chinese citizens who have been accumulating gold and silver for generations. It's a pattern that spans centuries, not just fiscal quarters.

First off; millions out of seven billion people globally. That’s a pretty flimsy benchmark if you ask me. I already gave you my take regarding the Federal Reserve. As for invoking three thousand years of history—you seem to forget that the average person's perception of time then versus now isn't the same, and frankly, it probably never will be.

What exactly is speculative about it? Buying a piece of metal that is universally recognized as money and a store of value, then just setting it aside?

I suppose you just need to write "gold is money" eighty-eight more times before it finally becomes an indisputable fact. If it were truly universally recognized as money and a store of value, the price per ounce would be sitting at a couple million USD, not 1,600 bucks.

I don't think about it at all. That’s its biggest advantage. There’s no risk of it vanishing (like digital currency), burning up (like paper), or losing the collective belief that it functions as money (both digital and paper). It isn't anyone's liability, it isn't subject to devaluation, it isn't someone else's IOU... get it?

It’s not that you aren't thinking about it; it’s that it’s constantly on your mind, which this entire thread proves. Compare your daily habits to those of a standard saver at a Chase branch. Regarding the whole "vanishing" thing, I hope you have at least five deadbolts on your front door and another five on the door to the room where you keep that precious little hunk of metal.

Honestly, I was considering not replying at all given the level of argumentation and the quoting style here. Fix both, or we might have to part ways. 😍

dustyheron5 said:That’s the truth. I also suspect they'll try to navigate this using the strategy Ray Dalio outlines—but then again, you know what Bill Gross used to say... there are really only three ways out of this: growth, inflation, or simply wiping out the creditors. Given how slim the chances for actual growth look right now, we're essentially left with those other two options. 😍

True, but growth follows very quickly once the debt is trimmed down. So, we have the inflation we're seeing today, the haircutting that's also happening right now, and then comes the growth.

Walter Barrett8 said:There are countless ways to define money. Every single school of economic thought seems to have its own specific take on what it actually is.
Look, there’s a fundamental consensus among all the major schools of thought on what money actually needs to be: it has to be easily divisible, non-perishable, universally accepted, and—most importantly—it has to serve as a store of value. It’s that last requirement that really exposes the flaw in the system. Because they fail to act as a true store of value, fiat currencies simply aren't real money. 😉

It’s clear that 99.9% of people haven't even begun to consider gold as a serious investment vehicle. Because of that, you can't exactly blame a mass sell-off by the public for any price drops we see. If the numbers are sliding, it isn't because people are jumping ship; it’s more likely the work of some Terminator algorithms or those relentless Bot-ov programs running the show behind the scenes. 😁

Shadow Asks:
It’s entirely possible that tomorrow, the majority of Americans just stop recognizing the USD as the primary medium of exchange. Imagine a scenario where people simply lose faith in the local currency as a functional tool for trade, and instead, they start settling all goods and services in gold, Bitcoin, or some other stable alternative. It wouldn't take much—just a collective shift in perception to turn the current system upside down.

It’s just not happening. Since the USD is the official legal tender, any transaction involving goods or services that isn't happening under the table or in some gray market shadow economy has to be priced in dollars. That creates an automatic, built-in demand which keeps the currency afloat. It’s actually illegal to offer or accept Euros at a local shop here, because all the receipts have to be issued in USD, and the tax man expects his cut in dollars too.

The supply is climbing...

Real estate is a bit of a trap if you look at it closely. You can get hit with property taxes whenever the government feels like squeezing you, the structure itself can crumble, or some legal technicality could see it confiscated entirely. Then there’s the constant drain of utilities and maintenance, not to mention depreciation eating away at your equity. If you aren't actually using the space, all that "growth" in market value is just paper profit—it gets swallowed whole by the overhead. At the end of the day, if there's no utility, you're just paying to own a liability.
Rental income is fine, I guess, but let's be honest—it just accelerates the depreciation.

The response to this is provided below.

Shadow As stated by:
As far as I'm concerned, this is just more of that run-of-the-mill demagoguery we’re forced to swallow from the mainstream media every single day. They love to spin the narrative: they claim the standard of living for the average American has never been higher, and meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people are being lifted out of poverty. Somehow, they expect us to believe that this isn't a net benefit for the individual, but rather some kind of collective loss for everyone else. It's just more noise.

The West has been sliding into decline for quite some time now—actually, lately, it’s just gone downhill fast. We’re seeing record numbers of people struggling with hunger and poverty, hitting percentages we haven't seen in generations. If there’s one silver lining to this whole mess, it’s that the system is still churning out technological breakthroughs at an insane pace. I suppose you could call it the accidental, positive collateral damage of pure, unadulterated greed.

It’s happening. Those once-steady linear slopes are starting to curve upward into pure exponential madness. We're looking at a perfect storm: skyrocketing national debt, exploding private debt, massive budget deficits, trade imbalances, and that relentless, grinding inflationary pressure. It's all converging at once. Back in the day, gold acted as a stabilizer for the balance of payments, keeping everything in a state of maximum equilibrium. That stability was the bedrock for domestic manufacturing, maintaining a predictable exchange rate, and ensuring debt sustainability actually meant something. Now? The math just isn't adding up anymore.

If I've learned anything, it's that theory and practice live in completely different worlds. Since I'm a pragmatic person, the actual participants in this whole game are right in my eyes. In that context, fiat currencies are money, while gold is essentially no different than wheat, toilet paper, or uranium.

99.9% of people don't even view gold as an investment yet, so the price drop isn't coming from the public... maybe it's just some Terminators or trading bots at work.

I wasn't talking about people as individuals, but rather people in the context of market behavior. 😍

It’s not possible because the US Dollar is the legal tender. This means all transactions for goods and services that aren't "under the table" have to be priced in dollars, which automatically creates demand and keeps the dollar afloat. It would basically be illegal to offer or accept Euros in a shop since receipts are issued in dollars and taxes are collected in dollars.

Of course it can. Sure, the dollar is legal tender, but once the system starts collapsing, the laws imposed by the government lose their teeth. What kind of state exists during total anarchy? Even in milder scenarios, you always end up with a black market.

Supply is rising...

It rose last year, but if you look at a ten-year window, I think it's actually stagnating. Feel free to correct me if I'm off base.

Real estate can be taxed however the government feels like, it can collapse, get confiscated, and you've got utilities and depreciation to deal with... all of that eats into price appreciation, especially if the property sits empty and offers no utility. Rental income is fine, but it speeds up depreciation.

I wasn't getting into that, but since you brought it up, you might as well mention that the same thing could happen with gold. Naturally, when we're talking about confiscation. The government could pass a law tomorrow making it a criminal offense to own gold.

Living standards in the West have been declining for a long time, and recently they've turned quite bad, even though the percentage of the population living in poverty or hunger has never been higher. The only upside to the system is how rapidly it drives technological advancement—it's like a positive byproduct of pure greed.

Life in America today is arguably worse than in 2007, true, but it's incomparably better than in the 1980s or 1990s. As for hunger, those numbers are falling; without the massive population expansion in developing nations, the situation would practically be non-existent.

But it is happening; curves for national debt, private debt, budget deficits, trade imbalances, and inflationary pressures are all moving from linear to exponential. Gold, at least, used to keep the balance of payments in check, which is vital for domestic production, exchange rates, and debt sustainability...

I don't feel like wading through all of that right now. If you look strictly through the lens of inflation, that argument doesn't hold water, especially if you strip out the oil shocks. The same goes for the imbalance argument. Those very imbalances are what cause the balance of payments to fracture. Restoring equilibrium would require massive costs that nobody was willing to pay.

coastalviper8 said:Here’s an interesting little deep dive from Armstrong:
http://www.martinarmstrong.org/files...05-29-2012.pdf

There should be plenty of nuggets in here worth chewing on. I've learned the hard way that you can't really take anything at face value; you have to constantly poke holes in your own logic and actually have the guts to change your mind when you realize you were wrong.

I skimmed through this pretty quickly. There’s some solid info in here, though I have my disagreements with certain points.

There are going to be plenty of interesting moments ahead. Don't take anything at face value. You have to constantly question your own positions and actually possess the backbone to change them when necessary.

That mindset is absolutely vital if you want to make any real progress. 😉

crimsonranger38:

So, what exactly backs the money we’re using today? Is it just a massive leap of faith in the integrity of the U.S. government?

Are we even speaking the same language anymore? Seriously. Who around here was actually talking about today's fiat currencies?

crimsonranger38:

Just look at the price of gold per ounce back in the Weimar Republic. It’s a sobering thought.

What exactly are you trying to get at here?

crimsonranger38:

Head over there and see if she'll take a credit card or a check.

Fair point, but I’ll just stick with USD or maybe switch to EUR. At least then they'll actually accept the payment, unlike with gold.

Most people here in the States don't view gold as actual money, any more than they’d consider the Danish Krone or the British Pound to be anything beyond mere paper.

Six years ago, most people in America were convinced that real estate prices had nowhere to go but up. They thought they’d missed the boat, or worse, that the upward climb was an unstoppable law of nature. It’s funny how certainty works—it usually disappears right when you need it most.

You’re trolling. If I really stooped to your level—which, let’s be honest, isn't a very high bar—I'd point out that even if people don't say it as often these days, you still seem convinced that gold isn't actual money. When it comes to the mindset here in America, that's probably how things are going to stay for decades to come.

crimsonranger38:

Actually, it’s quite the opposite. Goods and services carry intrinsic value; currencies are merely tools for exchange and units of measurement.

Alright, let's dive back into the semantics—though, for the sake of argument, let's just say I actually agree with what was written.

crimsonranger38:

The world is going to find itself without a dominant reserve currency once that whole petrodollar paradigm finally collapses—and honestly, it’s happening much sooner than most people care to admit. Once they stop settling oil trades in dollars, the whole house of cards comes down. It's that simple.

Don't make me laugh. The petrodollar isn't the driver here; it’s just a symptom. As long as the United States maintains the world's largest economy, the USD stays sitting pretty as the number one global reserve currency. Period. The only real threat on the horizon is China, but let’s be realistic—that isn't happening in the next decade, and honestly, once you factor in all their internal struggles, we might be looking at a much longer timeline than people think.

crimsonranger38:

And that is precisely the flaw in your mental framework. In the system we inhabit—and unfortunately, it's the one we all live in—money equals credit, which equals debt. It’s a closed loop. Therefore, constant growth isn't just an objective; it's a mathematical necessity.

It’s just basic math, really. I honestly don't get how some people still haven't wrapped their heads around the fact that your debt is someone else's savings.

crimsonranger38:

You’re talking nonsense again. The Federal Reserve is a private institution. Seriously, go read *Creature from Jekyll Island* or just do a quick Google search. What is this "hundreds of owners" thing you're rambling about? You're becoming a bit of a joke.

Look, maybe try reading up on the founding of the Federal Reserve for once. And if you could, please avoid those fringe conspiracy sites.

Because they hold the exclusive keys to the printing press, the Federal Reserve has managed to erode the dollar's value by a staggering 98% over the last century. Just last month, the U.S. deficit hit $300 billion. Their entire mandate boils down to a monopoly on money issuance, and if you actually believe the President picks the FOMC members, you’re living in a fantasy land.

First off, even if what you said is true, it means absolutely nothing to the average American because their real income has grown by xx, if not xxx percent. Most Americans aren't losing sleep over the USD losing 99% of its value when, a hundred years ago, families had to shell out over 30% of their income just for groceries, whereas today it's only about 10%. When you put things in the proper context, these little narratives fall apart.

Second: I assume you're referring to the federal deficit, and if so, I have to correct you. Last month wasn't a $300 billion deficit; it was actually a $59 billion surplus. Even if we pretend the deficit was as high as you claimed, can't you see that it's just basic symmetry at work?

Unlike today, where everyone lives beyond their means.

That is mathematically impossible. How could you even write something like that?

And that is why gold served as the best possible way to maintain balance. I agree that everything can't be in perfect equilibrium, but the gold standard did a pretty decent job. Just look at the USA from 1876 to 1944.

You don't need the gold standard for that. Take Austria over the last 30 years, or Ireland, Denmark, and other nations.

Central banks killed the gold standard because they couldn't issue credit whenever and however they wanted under it. Naturally, in a fiat system, we've experienced prosperity without recessions or depressions...

First; those are stories told by people who lack even the most basic grasp of historical facts. For instance, consider the specific actions that allowed Adolf Hitler to seize power. The political elites played a decisive role there, as the public refused to accept the constraints they lived under during the gold standard era. Second; in a fiat currency system, we have indeed collectively experienced prosperity, as modern standards of living have never been higher. And sure, there have been recessions—not a depression—but the economic cycles are much smoother compared to back then.

Of course, it holds no intrinsic value, only trust and/or coercion.

What kind of divine coercion are you talking about? How does "coercion" force us to sell something worth $10 for $1? As for trust, that is a consequence, not the cause of what I am describing.

crimsonranger38:

Forty years ago, you could grab a Big Mac for less than a quarter. Even a gallon of gas was running under fifteen cents. Things were different back then.

That’s probably true, but I fail to see how that has anything to do with what I was actually talking about.

crimsonranger38:

You’re confusing price with value again. Seriously. What actual value is being created here? None. It’s zero. If I grab a coffee in downtown Chicago, am I paying for the beans, or am I paying for the atmosphere? There's a difference. $4.75 It’s worth more than the lukewarm coffee I grab out in the suburbs. $2.75?

Value is really just the amount of time you saved by doing something else—time you could have spent actually making an extra $100. Comparing it to the price of a cup of coffee? That tells me you completely missed the point.

crimsonranger38:

Ignorance is ignorance. Why? Because I said so. It’s that simple. Personally, I can't wrap my head around this whole digital "money" concept. It doesn't even have the backing of physical cash, let alone actual value. We're talking about digits being conjured out of thin air as debt, orchestrated by imaginary authorities who wouldn't know a real market if it hit them in the face... but hey, that's a rabbit hole for another day.

What’s the actual difference between digital digits and physical cash? Honestly, neither one holds any real value to you. If you don't care about the medium, why does it bother you so much?

crimsonranger38:

A correction? Based on what exactly? What could possibly happen in a three-minute window to send silver tumbling by fifty cents or knock fifteen bucks off gold? Did a meteor composed of millions of tons of precious metals just strike the Earth? Did some lab in Silicon Valley discover a new element that conducts heat and electricity better than silver? Or did someone just decide to dump five million ounces of physical silver onto the market all at once?

It’s happening again. We are seeing the exact same pattern play out across the entire commodities sector. I’ve been preaching about these long-term effects for ages, yet here we are. Today, gold and silver are sliding right along with everything else in the commodities market. Meanwhile, somehow, US Treasury yields are climbing. If you want to understand why this disconnect exists, you really have to go ask the market itself.

crimsonranger38:

Where exactly? In America? Where did they quietly dump $25 billion on MERS victims just to bury the criminal activity? And where is that other five million unsold housing units left over from the last boom? Where is the other five million units sitting in bank portfolios, held back from the market just because letting them go would tank property values even further? Where are all those mortgages that are more than half unpaid, and where is the half of the country currently underwater—where the market value is nowhere near what people actually owe the bank?

That’s not what I wrote. Go back and actually read it—with some actual comprehension this time.

crimsonranger38:

What kind of recovery are we actually talking about here? Where else do you see unemployment hitting levels this ridiculous? We have 50 million people relying on food stamps just to get by. Our industrial backbone has been gutted and shipped off to East Asia. It seems like the only "exit strategy" left in the Federal Reserve's playbook is just printing more money.

Once again, I suspect you missed my point entirely. Second; take a look at the unemployment data. You’ll see that back when we were actually on the gold standard, those numbers were incomparably higher than what we see today.

Third; regarding the industrial base, I think you're out of your depth here. No industrial base has been gutted—if anything, it’s expanded.

One factor, sure. The second is the petrodollar paradigm. Google it.

Do me a favor: grab a calculator and figure out what daily crude oil sales actually represent in terms of global USD trading volume. Do some actual research, and you'll realize this whole petrodollar narrative is too ridiculous to even bother commenting on.

Financial assets? Are we talking bonds, derivatives, CDS, CDOs, and the rest? If so, why does the USA run an annual deficit of 1.2 TRILLION USD?

I am referring to bonds, bank deposits, greenfield and brownfield investments, and so on. Furthermore, what I wrote has nothing to do with the deficit. The deficit is its own separate category. Also, you really need to define "deficit"; just tossing the word out there means absolutely nothing without context.

What safe haven? What nonsense? Is your idea of a "safe haven" investing in, say, 10-year Treasuries at a 2% yield?

Does my personal opinion even matter here? Is crimsonranger38 making the USD a safe haven, or is it the vast majority of market participants? The same people paying to hold German Bunds right now aren't looking for gold or silver—they want that specific type of financial asset.

By the way, you can't eat bonds, you know? And grandmas aren't getting paid in them. You get a 2% "yield" while the USD loses at least 6% of its purchasing power annually.

First off; I never claimed you could eat them, much like you can't eat gold. That's precisely my point: under normal conditions, gold and bonds are perceived as essentially the same thing. Neither one is money; they are assets that can be converted into money. Don't get worked up, but that is how a huge portion of the global population views it. As for losing value, you could have used gold as an example and argued that the USD has lost 20% of its value annually over the last decade.

Melissa Sanchez17 said:crimsonranger38 was out here bracing for a total collapse of the dollar and an economic meltdown in America, and then you go and drop this! 😁
But honestly, I can see your fingers have been glued to the keyboard on this topic for a minute now 😍

Whatever the case, I’m telling you—gold is in a massive bull market. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Any sane person can see it isn't just some little "hedge against inflation" nonsense when the thing has shot up over five times in the last decade.

I wrote it, I just need to polish the "manuscript" a bit more. 😍

but it looks like you've had your fingers glued to the keyboard on this topic for quite some time now.

Well, fine then... I simply said what was on my mind. 😍

Regardless, I see gold in a bull market—said that a few times already. Any sane person knows it isn't an inflation hedge when it's jumped 5.6 times over the last decade.

I could agree with your first sentence, purely because of what you noted in the second.

If I had to place a bet, I’d be betting on gold rising in the future. 😍

dustyheron5 said:Gold allows you to acquire silver at an incredibly favorable ratio—and once you have that silver, the possibilities are endless.😂😂😂

The thing is, most people see silver as a much better play than gold. It’s got way more industrial utility, and let’s face it, the entry price isn't nearly as steep as gold's.

placidlynx43 said:The cartel just dumped everything into the 6th—gold dropped $20 in five minutes flat, and silver took a hit of over 2%. Honestly, I’m dying to know... what kind of news could possibly be that bearish for gold?

It’s nothing else but a routine correction in precious metals. Just like palladium and platinum see dips, gold and silver follow suit. They aren't special cases; they're just part of the broader PM trend.

Melissa Sanchez17 said:Check this out:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...ce-report.html

placidlynx43 said:Total nonsense. This has zero connection to what's actually happening on the ground:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/march-...-quadruple-dip

Look, I have no idea how anyone connects this to the housing market. Here’s my logic: if the housing market stabilizes, it implies an economic recovery is gaining momentum. If that were true, the Federal Reserve might start their exit strategy sooner than expected. But in that scenario, crude oil and other precious metals should be rallying on growth prospects. Instead, I’m seeing commodities tanking, along with US Treasury yields.

Despite the brief rallies we're seeing in the stock indices, the overall sentiment remains decidedly bearish. And honestly, why wouldn't it be? China is slowing down significantly (massive imbalances there), all of Asia is tethered to exports, the United States is still nowhere near a genuine recovery (and a strong USD doesn't help matters), while the Middle East, South America, and Africa have essentially lived off commodity price surges. Meanwhile, the Eurozone—the world's other major economic engine—is practically falling apart. Under these conditions, gold, silver, platinum, or crude oil simply aren't going up. Anyone who thought the 20% annual returns we saw over the last decade would just keep rolling in has been seriously misled. And those waiting for some doomsday scenario to trigger a return to the gold standard? They’re likely missing the point of today's crisis entirely.

Walter Barrett8 said:First, let’s settle the Euro issue—the USDUSD exchange rate is merely the coefficient used to
convert the global, Dollar-denominated price of gold into a European price when you're buying it
in Europe, much like how everything would be multiplied by the USDUSD rate if you were buying in the US. 😉
The Dollar's advantage lies in its status as the world's reserve currency, which is why the global price of gold is denominated in Dollars. Think of the gold price as a gauge for the rot within the Dollar; the price is manipulated specifically to keep the Dollar on life support, because the securities market allows for that kind of maneuvering.
If they weren't manipulating it, the gold price in Dollars would be climbing, and since the Euro is weakening,
the price in Euros would be climbing even faster.
Last year, we saw the opposite: the Dollar price went up, but the Euro was also strengthening, so the percentage increase of gold in Euros was actually less than the increase in Dollars.

Well, this is a whole new perspective! So, keeping gold prices suppressed is what keeps the USD breathing. 😍

Have you actually looked at how much capital flooded into USD-denominated financial assets in a single month? We aren't talking about gold; we're talking about the greenback itself. During the Greek debt crisis, over three quarters of real and financial assets flowed into the United States—amounting to $980 billion—even though the actual funding requirement was only $360 billion. It didn't go into gold (which climbed 8% during that stretch); it went into dollar-denominated assets. In Q3 2010, when gold rose by 3%, $465 billion poured into the States. Basically, when things get turbulent, the safe haven isn't gold; it’s US Treasuries, corporate bonds, and dollar deposits in American banks. Since last July, gold has been flatlining while over $600 billion has entered the US. Can you look at these numbers and finally realize that gold is a literal dwarf compared to them? Claiming the status of the USD depends entirely on the movement of some gold price suggests either you have no idea what you're talking about or you've spent way too much time staring at gold charts.

Walter Barrett8 said:First, let’s settle the Euro issue—the USDUSD exchange rate is merely the coefficient used to
convert the global, Dollar-denominated price of gold into a European price when you're buying it
in Europe, much like how everything would be multiplied by the USDUSD rate if you were buying in the US. 😉
The Dollar's advantage lies in its status as the world's reserve currency, which is why the global price of gold is denominated in Dollars. Think of the gold price as a gauge for the rot within the Dollar; the price is manipulated specifically to keep the Dollar on life support, because the securities market allows for that kind of maneuvering.
If they weren't manipulating it, the gold price in Dollars would be climbing, and since the Euro is weakening,
the price in Euros would be climbing even faster.
Last year, we saw the opposite: the Dollar price went up, but the Euro was also strengthening, so the percentage increase of gold in Euros was actually less than the increase in Dollars.

And then the badger rolled up the chocolate. Repeating a lie a hundred times doesn't make it true the 101st time. If a firm like JPMorgan were actually capable of manipulating gold prices for an entire year, I'd be asking some very pointed questions myself.

quiettrucker12 said:I’d say it’s a coin flip whether we see another quick dip below 1526—though I doubt we’ll break 1490. As for miners, that's a different story; I don't see them dropping below the 16.05 level anytime soon.

At a moment when Greece—the fourth largest economy in the Eurozone—is facing a massive financial crisis, and with Portugal and Ireland practically hovering near default, Italy (the third largest) isn't far behind. When you face a systemic debt crisis spanning the public, private, and financial sectors, you can throw technical and fundamental analysis out the window. There is only one word left: panic. Right now, we are seeing moderate panic because anyone with half a brain realizes Greece won't stay in the Eurozone forever. Despite reforms and a strong export sector, Ireland is still drowning despite tens of billions of Euros being pumped into its banks, mostly because the private sector is aggressively deleveraging—bringing them closer to the Greek scenario every day. Portugal is following the exact same path as Ireland. Then there's Spain, which, given its scale, is "too big to fail" but also "too big to rescue." And Italy? Their public debt problems are essentially unsolvable. Even France is sinking deeper into the mess.

Keep this in mind: when panic hits the capital markets, the USD, JPY, CHF, and government bonds (think US Treasuries, Japanese JGBs, German Bunds, Swiss bonds, and UK Gilts) all climb while everything else sinks—including gold. It’s a dead giveaway that investors don't view gold and silver as true safe havens. That specific rally only happens when there's an underlying expectation of growth in the markets.

Anthony Evans78 said:Of course gold prices aren't the same everywhere.
That’s the fundamental misunderstanding shared by almost everyone—they fail to see that gold remains constant, while the price per ounce or gram is what actually fluctuates.
If you look back over the last decade, every single currency has lost ground against gold; some more than others, sure, but they're all steadily drifting toward zero.

If you want that other 99.99% to actually get it, you’d have to hand them the exact books you read. But there's a catch: you have to let your brain go on autopilot before you even start reading. 😍

Anthony Evans78 said:Of course gold prices aren't the same everywhere.
That’s the fundamental misunderstanding shared by almost everyone—they fail to see that gold remains constant, while the price per ounce or gram is what actually fluctuates.
If you look back over the last decade, every single currency has lost ground against gold; some more than others, sure, but they're all steadily drifting toward zero.

So, what can we infer by looking at gold over the twenty years preceding your ten-year window? Either life was a literal land of milk and honey back then, or someone spent two full decades manipulating the price. 😍

The fact that you noted gold rises against all currencies only proves that it isn't just an inflation hedge anymore. Clearly, it has evolved into something much more significant—something you lot simply refuse to admit to yourselves.

Walter Barrett8 said:They’re going to lure everyone out of dollars and into euros, just so they can pull the trigger on Quantitative Easing later. It’s a calculated move—they know the spread on swapping those euros back into dollars is going to sting, and then there's the cost of converting back again. For them, playing the Foreign Exchange market is cheap, easy, and predictable. It’s just another way to make sure the sheep get sheared once more. 😠

It's clear you don't understand how the market actually operates. To you, this is all just one giant conspiracy theory. I don't know who fed you that line, but the market has never functioned asymmetrically.

Anthony Evans78 said:Any situation mirroring what we're seeing today is a win for gold. That is, if you actually view it as a store of value and the ultimate currency—one that doesn't answer to some government or central bank.
It's always a smart move to hold precious metals, especially now with the dollar teetering on the edge of instability.
Don't sweat the daily price fluctuations; what matters is how many ounces you actually own.🙂

There you finally go and said it. So, gold is the absolute best, the most beautiful, the most, most, most—but strictly on the condition that *you* decide it is. Of course, everything is subjective since the rest of the world doesn't view it through your specific lens. But who cares about the world? I know what gold is and I know its worth. A cult? Please. Give me a break.

Anthony Evans78 said:Any situation mirroring what we're seeing today is a win for gold. That is, if you actually view it as a store of value and the ultimate currency—one that doesn't answer to some government or central bank.
It's always a smart move to hold precious metals, especially now with the dollar teetering on the edge of instability.
Don't sweat the daily price fluctuations; what matters is how many ounces you actually own.🙂

I agree, because without PMs, the world as we know it wouldn't exist. However, the way you boys and girls are playing with gold is so incredibly speculative that those Forex traders look like toddlers compared to you.

Gold is poised for the worst run of monthly losses in almost 13 years as concern that the Eurozone’s fiscal crisis is escalating drove investors to seek the dollar as a haven over the precious metal.

neondriver5 said:Honestly, this looks more like a promotional flyer... for Herbalife.
Do you guys hand out badges to new members too?

Following the double-bottom after the worst crisis in history, gold prices have been dropping for five straight months. But hey, that doesn't matter, because all that counts is how many ounces you're holding.
Brilliant.

That's the gist of it! Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against gold. You could have made a killing on it in the past, and you certainly will be able to in the future. But clutching a hunk of metal in your hands and viewing life through that prism is, if you ask me, just plain freaky. 😍

Melissa Sanchez17 said:Gold is actual money! 🙂 If you can't tell the difference between true wealth and just some fiat currency, then you clearly don't get what we "cultists" are all about 😍
Gold is headed for a massive bubble—we're talking the final, explosive stage of a bull market.
🙂

Japan and China are already looking to trade without using the dollar. The world's reserve currency is slowly bleeding out, losing value bit by bit. And honestly? It’s probably for the best, considering the Euro is an absolute dumpster fire right now 😁

Check out this interesting chart I found

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...20Currency.png

Gold functions as money in much the same way copper, real estate, or specialized knowledge does—with the one glaring distinction being that gold contributes practically nothing to the forward momentum of human civilization.

Melissa Sanchez17 said:Gold is actual money! 🙂 If you can't tell the difference between true wealth and just some fiat currency, then you clearly don't get what we "cultists" are all about 😍
Gold is headed for a massive bubble—we're talking the final, explosive stage of a bull market.
🙂

Japan and China are already looking to trade without using the dollar. The world's reserve currency is slowly bleeding out, losing value bit by bit. And honestly? It’s probably for the best, considering the Euro is an absolute dumpster fire right now 😁

Check out this interesting chart I found

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...20Currency.png

Sure, Japan and China can trade amongst themselves without the USD, but they still have to recycle the dollars they accumulate through trade surpluses back into the United States. As long as they stick to their current development model, they have no choice but to stack up greenbacks. The USD remains the undisputed number one reserve currency until some other nation manages to overtake it in both economic scale and military might. We aren't there yet, and the road is long. Just look at the Eurozone and the Euro; everyone predicted it would be the only legitimate alternative to the dollar by now. If global reserve status were determined solely by how fast a currency loses value, we’d be looking at the Swiss Franc, the Deutsche Mark, the Austrian Schilling, or even the Singapore Dollar instead. Let's not kid ourselves: most nations are perfectly happy hoarding USD and have zero interest in changing the status quo.

ironstag8 said:I’m just killing a little time on the forum today. It’s honestly pretty obvious that the vast majority of people here don't truly grasp what’s actually going on—and frankly, if they did understand the underlying mechanics of these crises, we wouldn't be having them in the first place.

I’m always down for a good laugh—even if the joke is at my own expense. We'll just have to wait and see who ends up laughing last. 😉

If we just went back to the gold standard, we wouldn't have any crises at all. Ha. Ha. Ha. If only it were that simple, we'd have a magic pill for every modern problem. 😍

ironstag8 said:I say, let’s all head down to our local banks tomorrow and try to withdraw every single cent of the cash sitting in our accounts—then we can see if it actually exists. Once the dust settles, those defenders of this smoke-and-mirrors system will start lecturing us about M1, M2, or M3, or trying to justify fractional reserve banking. Honestly, if someone doesn't view this whole fractional nonsense as a straight-up heist, they’re clearly out of their mind. All of this—all these complex terms—is just a fabrication designed to allow people to spend money they haven't actually earned. It's a mechanism for politicians to run up massive deficits to fund their next election cycles, endless wars, or various private, greedy agendas... things like paying out dividends to private individuals or the shareholders of the Federal Reserve (who, let’s be real, don't have actual reserves—just an infinite supply of digital ether they pump into the system). It allows these central bankers to inject unbacked liquidity into the economy while collecting interest they haven't earned from hardworking people who have to physically labor to pay back debt—debt that is mathematically impossible to repay, because to settle one loan, you have to take out another one plus interest, which means heading right back to the dealers of fog and ether to ask for another fix.
There is plenty of gold and silver out there to meet legitimate monetary needs, but there certainly isn't enough to fund insane deficits or the greedy desire to get rich overnight in financial casinos that exist solely for their own sake. If the fundamental idea of building wealth through labor, production, and long-term saving is somehow "unacceptable," then gold won't be acceptable to them either. The vultures—the corrupt officials, kings, prime ministers, dictators, presidents, and generals—who want everything immediately (whether it's power, control, war, or seizing another nation) need cash right now. So, they simply print as much as they need until the whole thing collapses. This isn't a new trick; it’s how Ancient Rome fell, how the Byzantine Empire crumbled, how paper currencies failed in China, and there are countless examples throughout history across Europe...
The bottom line is simple: spend only what you actually have. It comes down to common sense versus pure greed. That is why gold and silver are referred to as "honest money." The paper currency we use today is nothing more than a dirty counterfeit with zero backing.

The reason there isn't enough liquidity is strictly due to a lack of structure. We don't have a system where a $100,000 deposit triggers a 50% reserve rule—where $50,000 sits in a reserve account while the other $50,000 gets funneled straight back out as credit. It’s purely a structural failure, not a lack of deposits. It's simple symmetry: your loan is someone else's savings.

ironstag8 said:I say, let’s all head down to our local banks tomorrow and try to withdraw every single cent of the cash sitting in our accounts—then we can see if it actually exists. Once the dust settles, those defenders of this smoke-and-mirrors system will start lecturing us about M1, M2, or M3, or trying to justify fractional reserve banking. Honestly, if someone doesn't view this whole fractional nonsense as a straight-up heist, they’re clearly out of their mind. All of this—all these complex terms—is just a fabrication designed to allow people to spend money they haven't actually earned. It's a mechanism for politicians to run up massive deficits to fund their next election cycles, endless wars, or various private, greedy agendas... things like paying out dividends to private individuals or the shareholders of the Federal Reserve (who, let’s be real, don't have actual reserves—just an infinite supply of digital ether they pump into the system). It allows these central bankers to inject unbacked liquidity into the economy while collecting interest they haven't earned from hardworking people who have to physically labor to pay back debt—debt that is mathematically impossible to repay, because to settle one loan, you have to take out another one plus interest, which means heading right back to the dealers of fog and ether to ask for another fix.
There is plenty of gold and silver out there to meet legitimate monetary needs, but there certainly isn't enough to fund insane deficits or the greedy desire to get rich overnight in financial casinos that exist solely for their own sake. If the fundamental idea of building wealth through labor, production, and long-term saving is somehow "unacceptable," then gold won't be acceptable to them either. The vultures—the corrupt officials, kings, prime ministers, dictators, presidents, and generals—who want everything immediately (whether it's power, control, war, or seizing another nation) need cash right now. So, they simply print as much as they need until the whole thing collapses. This isn't a new trick; it’s how Ancient Rome fell, how the Byzantine Empire crumbled, how paper currencies failed in China, and there are countless examples throughout history across Europe...
The bottom line is simple: spend only what you actually have. It comes down to common sense versus pure greed. That is why gold and silver are referred to as "honest money." The paper currency we use today is nothing more than a dirty counterfeit with zero backing.

I’m with you on this: the whole system feels like a giant invention designed to let governments run up infinite debt just to fund endless populist agendas. It’s a cycle that never ends. But honestly, it isn't just about the public sector; it heavily favors private debtors too, which is becoming an epidemic these days. You could argue it actually benefits the majority of people. When we talk about "greedy private interests," we aren't just talking about a few fat cats in boardrooms—in America, we're looking at well over 50% of the population being part of that equation. That is a massive amount of vested interest, and we’re all footing the bill together. As for wars? They stopped being a labor-intensive business a long time ago. Nowadays, if you look at the aggregate effect, war is essentially just a mechanism for destroying capital.

ironstag8 said:I say, let’s all head down to our local banks tomorrow and try to withdraw every single cent of the cash sitting in our accounts—then we can see if it actually exists. Once the dust settles, those defenders of this smoke-and-mirrors system will start lecturing us about M1, M2, or M3, or trying to justify fractional reserve banking. Honestly, if someone doesn't view this whole fractional nonsense as a straight-up heist, they’re clearly out of their mind. All of this—all these complex terms—is just a fabrication designed to allow people to spend money they haven't actually earned. It's a mechanism for politicians to run up massive deficits to fund their next election cycles, endless wars, or various private, greedy agendas... things like paying out dividends to private individuals or the shareholders of the Federal Reserve (who, let’s be real, don't have actual reserves—just an infinite supply of digital ether they pump into the system). It allows these central bankers to inject unbacked liquidity into the economy while collecting interest they haven't earned from hardworking people who have to physically labor to pay back debt—debt that is mathematically impossible to repay, because to settle one loan, you have to take out another one plus interest, which means heading right back to the dealers of fog and ether to ask for another fix.
There is plenty of gold and silver out there to meet legitimate monetary needs, but there certainly isn't enough to fund insane deficits or the greedy desire to get rich overnight in financial casinos that exist solely for their own sake. If the fundamental idea of building wealth through labor, production, and long-term saving is somehow "unacceptable," then gold won't be acceptable to them either. The vultures—the corrupt officials, kings, prime ministers, dictators, presidents, and generals—who want everything immediately (whether it's power, control, war, or seizing another nation) need cash right now. So, they simply print as much as they need until the whole thing collapses. This isn't a new trick; it’s how Ancient Rome fell, how the Byzantine Empire crumbled, how paper currencies failed in China, and there are countless examples throughout history across Europe...
The bottom line is simple: spend only what you actually have. It comes down to common sense versus pure greed. That is why gold and silver are referred to as "honest money." The paper currency we use today is nothing more than a dirty counterfeit with zero backing.

The Federal Reserve isn't some shadowy private bank. It’s more like a quasi-private entity, which is really just a byproduct of how Americans view state ownership. Right now, the "owners" of the Fed are essentially a collection of hundreds of commercial banks operating across the US. By law, if they want to play in the American banking arena, that's the price of admission. As for those dividend rumors? Let’s look at the math. Over the last century, the Fed has generated $855 billion in net profit, and about 90% of that gets handed straight back to the US Treasury. Simple as that. If anyone thinks this is happening in a vacuum, they're mistaken. As I recall, the executive branch actually selects and confirms the FOMC members. There isn't some grand, hidden philosophy at work here; their mandate is pretty straightforward: maintain a stable inflation rate—around 2%, give or take—while closing the output gap and ensuring full employment. Monetary policy is a blunt instrument, though, which explains why they occasionally miss their inflation targets. It happens.

ironstag8 said:I say, let’s all head down to our local banks tomorrow and try to withdraw every single cent of the cash sitting in our accounts—then we can see if it actually exists. Once the dust settles, those defenders of this smoke-and-mirrors system will start lecturing us about M1, M2, or M3, or trying to justify fractional reserve banking. Honestly, if someone doesn't view this whole fractional nonsense as a straight-up heist, they’re clearly out of their mind. All of this—all these complex terms—is just a fabrication designed to allow people to spend money they haven't actually earned. It's a mechanism for politicians to run up massive deficits to fund their next election cycles, endless wars, or various private, greedy agendas... things like paying out dividends to private individuals or the shareholders of the Federal Reserve (who, let’s be real, don't have actual reserves—just an infinite supply of digital ether they pump into the system). It allows these central bankers to inject unbacked liquidity into the economy while collecting interest they haven't earned from hardworking people who have to physically labor to pay back debt—debt that is mathematically impossible to repay, because to settle one loan, you have to take out another one plus interest, which means heading right back to the dealers of fog and ether to ask for another fix.
There is plenty of gold and silver out there to meet legitimate monetary needs, but there certainly isn't enough to fund insane deficits or the greedy desire to get rich overnight in financial casinos that exist solely for their own sake. If the fundamental idea of building wealth through labor, production, and long-term saving is somehow "unacceptable," then gold won't be acceptable to them either. The vultures—the corrupt officials, kings, prime ministers, dictators, presidents, and generals—who want everything immediately (whether it's power, control, war, or seizing another nation) need cash right now. So, they simply print as much as they need until the whole thing collapses. This isn't a new trick; it’s how Ancient Rome fell, how the Byzantine Empire crumbled, how paper currencies failed in China, and there are countless examples throughout history across Europe...
The bottom line is simple: spend only what you actually have. It comes down to common sense versus pure greed. That is why gold and silver are referred to as "honest money." The paper currency we use today is nothing more than a dirty counterfeit with zero backing.

If you reject the fundamental idea of building wealth through labor, production, and long-term saving, then gold loses its appeal too.

ironstag8 said:I say, let’s all head down to our local banks tomorrow and try to withdraw every single cent of the cash sitting in our accounts—then we can see if it actually exists. Once the dust settles, those defenders of this smoke-and-mirrors system will start lecturing us about M1, M2, or M3, or trying to justify fractional reserve banking. Honestly, if someone doesn't view this whole fractional nonsense as a straight-up heist, they’re clearly out of their mind. All of this—all these complex terms—is just a fabrication designed to allow people to spend money they haven't actually earned. It's a mechanism for politicians to run up massive deficits to fund their next election cycles, endless wars, or various private, greedy agendas... things like paying out dividends to private individuals or the shareholders of the Federal Reserve (who, let’s be real, don't have actual reserves—just an infinite supply of digital ether they pump into the system). It allows these central bankers to inject unbacked liquidity into the economy while collecting interest they haven't earned from hardworking people who have to physically labor to pay back debt—debt that is mathematically impossible to repay, because to settle one loan, you have to take out another one plus interest, which means heading right back to the dealers of fog and ether to ask for another fix.
There is plenty of gold and silver out there to meet legitimate monetary needs, but there certainly isn't enough to fund insane deficits or the greedy desire to get rich overnight in financial casinos that exist solely for their own sake. If the fundamental idea of building wealth through labor, production, and long-term saving is somehow "unacceptable," then gold won't be acceptable to them either. The vultures—the corrupt officials, kings, prime ministers, dictators, presidents, and generals—who want everything immediately (whether it's power, control, war, or seizing another nation) need cash right now. So, they simply print as much as they need until the whole thing collapses. This isn't a new trick; it’s how Ancient Rome fell, how the Byzantine Empire crumbled, how paper currencies failed in China, and there are countless examples throughout history across Europe...
The bottom line is simple: spend only what you actually have. It comes down to common sense versus pure greed. That is why gold and silver are referred to as "honest money." The paper currency we use today is nothing more than a dirty counterfeit with zero backing.

And that’s precisely what happened in the end, right? They always crawl back to fiat. They always will. Fiat is the past, the present, and the future. The currency itself isn't the villain here; there are plenty of countries out there running perfectly fine on fiat systems.

ironstag8 said:I say, let’s all head down to our local banks tomorrow and try to withdraw every single cent of the cash sitting in our accounts—then we can see if it actually exists. Once the dust settles, those defenders of this smoke-and-mirrors system will start lecturing us about M1, M2, or M3, or trying to justify fractional reserve banking. Honestly, if someone doesn't view this whole fractional nonsense as a straight-up heist, they’re clearly out of their mind. All of this—all these complex terms—is just a fabrication designed to allow people to spend money they haven't actually earned. It's a mechanism for politicians to run up massive deficits to fund their next election cycles, endless wars, or various private, greedy agendas... things like paying out dividends to private individuals or the shareholders of the Federal Reserve (who, let’s be real, don't have actual reserves—just an infinite supply of digital ether they pump into the system). It allows these central bankers to inject unbacked liquidity into the economy while collecting interest they haven't earned from hardworking people who have to physically labor to pay back debt—debt that is mathematically impossible to repay, because to settle one loan, you have to take out another one plus interest, which means heading right back to the dealers of fog and ether to ask for another fix.
There is plenty of gold and silver out there to meet legitimate monetary needs, but there certainly isn't enough to fund insane deficits or the greedy desire to get rich overnight in financial casinos that exist solely for their own sake. If the fundamental idea of building wealth through labor, production, and long-term saving is somehow "unacceptable," then gold won't be acceptable to them either. The vultures—the corrupt officials, kings, prime ministers, dictators, presidents, and generals—who want everything immediately (whether it's power, control, war, or seizing another nation) need cash right now. So, they simply print as much as they need until the whole thing collapses. This isn't a new trick; it’s how Ancient Rome fell, how the Byzantine Empire crumbled, how paper currencies failed in China, and there are countless examples throughout history across Europe...
The bottom line is simple: spend only what you actually have. It comes down to common sense versus pure greed. That is why gold and silver are referred to as "honest money." The paper currency we use today is nothing more than a dirty counterfeit with zero backing.

This whole argument is nonsense. First off, even when the world was on the gold standard, there were always nations living beyond their means and others living well within them. An economy is rarely in perfect aggregate equilibrium; expecting that is like expecting an ocean without waves. Under the gold standard, debtors would trigger deflationary macro policies as gold flowed out, while creditors would push expansionary policies as gold flowed in. But that was just a theoretical rule that hardly anyone followed (much like how things work in the Eurozone today), which meant adjustments were wildly asymmetrical. Almost all the pain fell on the debtors. That’s ultimately why the gold standard collapsed; nobody sane wants to endure years of economic and social depression just to stick to a gold peg. The costs were simply too high, much like the costs we see in the Eurozone today.

Marian said:octopus had a better point, and it applies to everyone who got trapped in those massive mortgage loans.

Banks aren't the villains here for charging interest rates that would be unthinkable in most developed nations.

So, what are we supposed to take from this? On one hand, you’re calling for a return to the gold standard and fixed currency values, yet on the next breath, you’re agreeing with someone claiming that interest rates in America are too high compared to the West. You are being completely inconsistent—flipping your stance every other minute. Honestly, I’m starting to worry you don't actually grasp the subject matter you're discussing.

ironstag8 said:At the end of the day, today's currencies—regardless of whether you're looking at M1, M2, or any other metric—possess zero intrinsic value and zero backing.

It sounds like you don't quite grasp the fundamental nature of money. 🤷
Gold and silver function as money because of their inherent physical properties—traits no other commodity possesses—not simply because of a collective whim. Humanity has understood this logic for thousands of years, yet it only took a single stroke of Nixon's pen to make us forget such a straightforward, logical truth.
Fiat currencies rely entirely on the leap of faith required to believe that a scrap of paper and some ink is worth, say, a printed $100 bill, when in reality, it's barely worth a fraction of a cent.

They didn't have any back then either, even under the gold standard. It wasn't because you couldn't convert all circulating cash into gold; it was simply because only a small fraction could be converted—maybe 30% at most, and by the end of the Bretton Woods system, it was barely 2%.

ironstag8 said:At the end of the day, today's currencies—regardless of whether you're looking at M1, M2, or any other metric—possess zero intrinsic value and zero backing.

It sounds like you don't quite grasp the fundamental nature of money. 🤷
Gold and silver function as money because of their inherent physical properties—traits no other commodity possesses—not simply because of a collective whim. Humanity has understood this logic for thousands of years, yet it only took a single stroke of Nixon's pen to make us forget such a straightforward, logical truth.
Fiat currencies rely entirely on the leap of faith required to believe that a scrap of paper and some ink is worth, say, a printed $100 bill, when in reality, it's barely worth a fraction of a cent.

That is true; fiat currencies survive solely on trust. Furthermore, I don't know how many times you intend to repeat the nonsense that there is absolutely zero value backing the USD, the Swiss Franc, or the Japanese Yen. What stands behind those currencies is everything that the United States, Switzerland, and Japan represent. Their entire institutional existence—everything they are, and certainly everything they are not, like Nigeria or Zimbabwe. For instance, today, 100 USD holds enough value that you can go buy 25 Big Macs. That is its current value. Sure, it’s falling, but that doesn't change the fact that it is its value right now.

Anthony Evans78 said:Forex doesn't create any value either.
The colleague explained it perfectly... maybe learn what money actually is before jumping into a debate. 🙂

Doesn't it? Forex determines currency values, which saves the average person an immense amount of time. Someone selling their Euros to buy USD (so they can purchase a specific product or service in the US) becomes far more productive than if they had to hunt down a person willing to swap their currency at a specific rate manually.

Anthony Evans78 said:Forex doesn't create any value either.
The colleague explained it perfectly... maybe learn what money actually is before jumping into a debate. 🙂

Money is money. What really bothers people is that today's fiat currency isn't backed by an ounce of gold or silver. That’s the real sting, isn't it? It’s because you can't take your current $10,000 and magically flip it into $100,000 or $200,000 just by holding onto physical bullion.

Walter Barrett8 said:Well, you can plate contacts in consumer electronics to boost conductivity,
or use it as a protective layer for silver traces in high-end defense tech,
not to mention its role in insulating components for certain "specialized" aerospace projects.
Then there's the option of wearing it just to look good and feel important... 😍

Is gold actually the most profitable conductor when you weigh the ROI? I'd argue silver and copper beat it hands down. Only about 10% of annual gold production—which has been flatlining for a decade—actually gets utilized in industry. About 50% goes toward jewelry, and 40% is parked in investments. Those ratios tell a pretty clear story about gold's actual productivity and its role in advancing human civilization. Compared to other precious metals, it's in a league of its own.

Warren Buffett

ironstag8 said:The core issue here—something we really need to grasp—is the distinction between money and commodities, services, and so on...
Silver and gold represent money, whereas everything else simply doesn't. Historically speaking, whenever currencies have decoupled from money, things have gone south fast.
If a crowd of sheep convinces themselves that real estate, tulip bulbs, stocks, or some Facebook nonsense can hold value, then greed can drive those prices into unrealistic, illogical territory—which is how you get a bubble. On the flip side, gold and silver don't "inflate" in that sense; they *are* money. They serve as a medium of exchange with intrinsic value derived from properties that nothing else possesses (that’s why they matter). For something to truly qualify as money, it
:
it has to be liquid, easily portable, durable, fungible (which is precisely why diamonds or real estate fail this test and can't be considered money), divisible into smaller units without losing value, and difficult to counterfeit.

Real estate and tulip bulbs lack these specific traits—they aren't even permanent—so they shouldn't be compared to money. You can compare the value of a house or a bulb to another good or service, but you shouldn't compare them to a medium of exchange (in the sense that they are the same thing as money) used to trade those goods and services. If some fool decides a house is worth, say, $5,000 or 4 ounces of gold, and another fool believes him, all that does is inflate a bubble; eventually, unsold properties rot, plenty of idiots lose their shirts, and gold just stays right where it was.

If you try to measure the value of gold or silver using something like a fiat currency—which essentially holds no inherent value—you start to see just how warped this entire financial system is. It’s no wonder the whole thing is such a massive mess. Every single time people tried to play games with money by attempting to turn things that aren't money into money, the masses ended up broke and sheared like sheep. This system is rigged to benefit a tiny few at the expense of everyone else. The "beauty" of it for that elite group is that the majority of people will fight tooth and nail to defend and maintain this very system. That continues right up until the moment the structure starts cracking—and that's been happening for a while now (though if you ask me, the cracks started appearing the day Nixon signed his name to it).

And one last thing. You *can* compare real estate or tulip bulbs to fiat currency because both are subject to bubbles, which is exactly what we're seeing right now. Why is that possible? Because fiat currency isn't actually money.

Your opening sentence is pure nonsense. If you actually believe that, you seriously need to go back to school and re-indoctrinate yourself. Gold and silver aren't money—period. You can’t walk into a store and buy a gallon of milk or pay your barber with a hunk of bullion. To get anything done, you have to sell those metals first just to get the actual cash required for a transaction. As for your claim that these two metals can't be overvalued? That's just your opinion. The market—meaning the vast majority of people—clearly disagrees, which is exactly why prices have tanked by at least 20%.

The market overvalued it. Period. That’s the bottom line. Second, just because you personally believe money needs to be some permanent, unchanging thing doesn't mean that's how reality works. End of story. In that light, money could just as easily be platinum, iridium, palladium, osmium, rhodium, ruthenium, mercury, copper, or any other precious metal. Honestly, it’s almost unnecessary to point out that most of those metals are far more useful in a practical sense than gold. Gold has virtually zero utility compared to something like copper or rhodium. At the end of the day, people decide what counts as money for them. It’s entirely possible that most Americans might wake up tomorrow, decide the USD isn't worth their time anymore, and start trading goods and services in something else entirely.

ironstag8 said:The core issue here—something we really need to grasp—is the distinction between money and commodities, services, and so on...
Silver and gold represent money, whereas everything else simply doesn't. Historically speaking, whenever currencies have decoupled from money, things have gone south fast.
If a crowd of sheep convinces themselves that real estate, tulip bulbs, stocks, or some Facebook nonsense can hold value, then greed can drive those prices into unrealistic, illogical territory—which is how you get a bubble. On the flip side, gold and silver don't "inflate" in that sense; they *are* money. They serve as a medium of exchange with intrinsic value derived from properties that nothing else possesses (that’s why they matter). For something to truly qualify as money, it
:
it has to be liquid, easily portable, durable, fungible (which is precisely why diamonds or real estate fail this test and can't be considered money), divisible into smaller units without losing value, and difficult to counterfeit.

Real estate and tulip bulbs lack these specific traits—they aren't even permanent—so they shouldn't be compared to money. You can compare the value of a house or a bulb to another good or service, but you shouldn't compare them to a medium of exchange (in the sense that they are the same thing as money) used to trade those goods and services. If some fool decides a house is worth, say, $5,000 or 4 ounces of gold, and another fool believes him, all that does is inflate a bubble; eventually, unsold properties rot, plenty of idiots lose their shirts, and gold just stays right where it was.

If you try to measure the value of gold or silver using something like a fiat currency—which essentially holds no inherent value—you start to see just how warped this entire financial system is. It’s no wonder the whole thing is such a massive mess. Every single time people tried to play games with money by attempting to turn things that aren't money into money, the masses ended up broke and sheared like sheep. This system is rigged to benefit a tiny few at the expense of everyone else. The "beauty" of it for that elite group is that the majority of people will fight tooth and nail to defend and maintain this very system. That continues right up until the moment the structure starts cracking—and that's been happening for a while now (though if you ask me, the cracks started appearing the day Nixon signed his name to it).

And one last thing. You *can* compare real estate or tulip bulbs to fiat currency because both are subject to bubbles, which is exactly what we're seeing right now. Why is that possible? Because fiat currency isn't actually money.

Let’s go over this one more time: gold and silver aren't money. In their current physical state, they’re about as useful as an onion or a piece of real estate. However, unlike gold, silver and copper actually offer some sort of net benefit to society. They are productive assets. Gold? For the most part, it just ends up being used to plate microchips to make them look pretty. 😍

You’ve reached that stage where you claim nothing in this world can be truly measured against gold and silver—as if those metals are the only real currency in existence, some kind of divine standard held sacred only by you and your ilk. That’s nonsense. Of course everything can be compared. If you want proof, head down to the local farmers market and ask the vendor how much a pound of onions costs. Then, walk over to a jeweler and ask them to calculate exactly how much gold you’d need to trade for that same pound of onions. That jeweler doesn't know the price of an ounce of gold because they simply decided it was worth $10,000; they know it because the market dictated it. If the market suddenly decided an ounce of gold was worth $100,000, then that’s what it would be. Period. The price of gold, just like the price of anything else, is driven by supply and demand. And we all know the deal here: global gold supply is stagnating while demand keeps climbing—mostly fueled by speculators—which is exactly why the price keeps climbing. Simple math.

ironstag8 said:The core issue here—something we really need to grasp—is the distinction between money and commodities, services, and so on...
Silver and gold represent money, whereas everything else simply doesn't. Historically speaking, whenever currencies have decoupled from money, things have gone south fast.
If a crowd of sheep convinces themselves that real estate, tulip bulbs, stocks, or some Facebook nonsense can hold value, then greed can drive those prices into unrealistic, illogical territory—which is how you get a bubble. On the flip side, gold and silver don't "inflate" in that sense; they *are* money. They serve as a medium of exchange with intrinsic value derived from properties that nothing else possesses (that’s why they matter). For something to truly qualify as money, it
:
it has to be liquid, easily portable, durable, fungible (which is precisely why diamonds or real estate fail this test and can't be considered money), divisible into smaller units without losing value, and difficult to counterfeit.

Real estate and tulip bulbs lack these specific traits—they aren't even permanent—so they shouldn't be compared to money. You can compare the value of a house or a bulb to another good or service, but you shouldn't compare them to a medium of exchange (in the sense that they are the same thing as money) used to trade those goods and services. If some fool decides a house is worth, say, $5,000 or 4 ounces of gold, and another fool believes him, all that does is inflate a bubble; eventually, unsold properties rot, plenty of idiots lose their shirts, and gold just stays right where it was.

If you try to measure the value of gold or silver using something like a fiat currency—which essentially holds no inherent value—you start to see just how warped this entire financial system is. It’s no wonder the whole thing is such a massive mess. Every single time people tried to play games with money by attempting to turn things that aren't money into money, the masses ended up broke and sheared like sheep. This system is rigged to benefit a tiny few at the expense of everyone else. The "beauty" of it for that elite group is that the majority of people will fight tooth and nail to defend and maintain this very system. That continues right up until the moment the structure starts cracking—and that's been happening for a while now (though if you ask me, the cracks started appearing the day Nixon signed his name to it).

And one last thing. You *can* compare real estate or tulip bulbs to fiat currency because both are subject to bubbles, which is exactly what we're seeing right now. Why is that possible? Because fiat currency isn't actually money.

Look, there are properties out there with market values exceeding $10,000 per square foot. Ask the average person what they’d pick: a 1,000-square-foot home in the heart of NYC, Chicago, or Los Angeles, or maybe 770 ounces of gold. I suspect most people would choose the house they can actually live in. You can't exactly move into a bar of gold. Sorry, but you can stare at it and admire how shiny it is, but it's perishable and useless for shelter.

ironstag8 said:The core issue here—something we really need to grasp—is the distinction between money and commodities, services, and so on...
Silver and gold represent money, whereas everything else simply doesn't. Historically speaking, whenever currencies have decoupled from money, things have gone south fast.
If a crowd of sheep convinces themselves that real estate, tulip bulbs, stocks, or some Facebook nonsense can hold value, then greed can drive those prices into unrealistic, illogical territory—which is how you get a bubble. On the flip side, gold and silver don't "inflate" in that sense; they *are* money. They serve as a medium of exchange with intrinsic value derived from properties that nothing else possesses (that’s why they matter). For something to truly qualify as money, it
:
it has to be liquid, easily portable, durable, fungible (which is precisely why diamonds or real estate fail this test and can't be considered money), divisible into smaller units without losing value, and difficult to counterfeit.

Real estate and tulip bulbs lack these specific traits—they aren't even permanent—so they shouldn't be compared to money. You can compare the value of a house or a bulb to another good or service, but you shouldn't compare them to a medium of exchange (in the sense that they are the same thing as money) used to trade those goods and services. If some fool decides a house is worth, say, $5,000 or 4 ounces of gold, and another fool believes him, all that does is inflate a bubble; eventually, unsold properties rot, plenty of idiots lose their shirts, and gold just stays right where it was.

If you try to measure the value of gold or silver using something like a fiat currency—which essentially holds no inherent value—you start to see just how warped this entire financial system is. It’s no wonder the whole thing is such a massive mess. Every single time people tried to play games with money by attempting to turn things that aren't money into money, the masses ended up broke and sheared like sheep. This system is rigged to benefit a tiny few at the expense of everyone else. The "beauty" of it for that elite group is that the majority of people will fight tooth and nail to defend and maintain this very system. That continues right up until the moment the structure starts cracking—and that's been happening for a while now (though if you ask me, the cracks started appearing the day Nixon signed his name to it).

And one last thing. You *can* compare real estate or tulip bulbs to fiat currency because both are subject to bubbles, which is exactly what we're seeing right now. Why is that possible? Because fiat currency isn't actually money.

I wasn't aware that fiat currency had absolutely no value. If that's the case, I assume you won't mind handing over all that worthless paper in your wallet or sitting in your bank account to me. I'd be quite grateful, and honestly, I'd be doing you a favor by taking that trash off your hands—just scraps of paper that serve no purpose. Any system, current or future, means nothing without the people participating in it. The issue here is the human element. We aren't going to fix today's crisis simply by swapping out the system. At the end of the day, despite its flaws, this system helped build the standard of living we enjoy today—which is undoubtedly the highest in human history. If the political elites would just stop trying to micromanage market processes, things might actually improve for everyone.

ironstag8 said:The core issue here—something we really need to grasp—is the distinction between money and commodities, services, and so on...
Silver and gold represent money, whereas everything else simply doesn't. Historically speaking, whenever currencies have decoupled from money, things have gone south fast.
If a crowd of sheep convinces themselves that real estate, tulip bulbs, stocks, or some Facebook nonsense can hold value, then greed can drive those prices into unrealistic, illogical territory—which is how you get a bubble. On the flip side, gold and silver don't "inflate" in that sense; they *are* money. They serve as a medium of exchange with intrinsic value derived from properties that nothing else possesses (that’s why they matter). For something to truly qualify as money, it
:
it has to be liquid, easily portable, durable, fungible (which is precisely why diamonds or real estate fail this test and can't be considered money), divisible into smaller units without losing value, and difficult to counterfeit.

Real estate and tulip bulbs lack these specific traits—they aren't even permanent—so they shouldn't be compared to money. You can compare the value of a house or a bulb to another good or service, but you shouldn't compare them to a medium of exchange (in the sense that they are the same thing as money) used to trade those goods and services. If some fool decides a house is worth, say, $5,000 or 4 ounces of gold, and another fool believes him, all that does is inflate a bubble; eventually, unsold properties rot, plenty of idiots lose their shirts, and gold just stays right where it was.

If you try to measure the value of gold or silver using something like a fiat currency—which essentially holds no inherent value—you start to see just how warped this entire financial system is. It’s no wonder the whole thing is such a massive mess. Every single time people tried to play games with money by attempting to turn things that aren't money into money, the masses ended up broke and sheared like sheep. This system is rigged to benefit a tiny few at the expense of everyone else. The "beauty" of it for that elite group is that the majority of people will fight tooth and nail to defend and maintain this very system. That continues right up until the moment the structure starts cracking—and that's been happening for a while now (though if you ask me, the cracks started appearing the day Nixon signed his name to it).

And one last thing. You *can* compare real estate or tulip bulbs to fiat currency because both are subject to bubbles, which is exactly what we're seeing right now. Why is that possible? Because fiat currency isn't actually money.

As far as I'm concerned, that's just plain old demagoguery, the kind of stuff you hear on the news every single day. We cannot describe an era of unprecedented standards of living for Americans, alongside hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of poverty, as "benefiting a few while harming everyone else."

Warren Buffett says:

Mary Asks: The beauty of this whole setup for a select few is that most people will fight tooth and nail to defend and maintain it. They cling to it desperately. That works right up until the moment the system starts cracking—which, if you ask me, actually began the very day Nixon signed his name on the dotted line.

Ha, sure. Let’s just pivot back to that glorious gold standard you’re obsessed with, because that would obviously make your net worth skyrocket overnight. How incredibly convenient for you, right? Honestly, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that movie to start playing. You’ll probably just stick to your usual routine: daydreaming about the total collapse of the global financial system. Hey, nobody can take your fantasies away from you.

And another thing; if you honestly believe everything went south on August 15, 1971, then you clearly haven't done your homework. You’re missing the most basic facts. That whole "Gold Standard" era following World War II was essentially an illusion, and the money supply proves it. During the 26 years of BWS's life, the money supply surged from $107 billion to $720 billion—that's nearly a sevenfold increase. We're looking at an average annual growth rate of 7.7%, which actually outpaces the 5.4% we've seen over the last 27 years. Even inflation rates back then were higher than what we've dealt with recently. Honestly, even a kid in elementary school could see that there wasn't really a Gold Standard in play.

And here’s another crucial point for the record: I can’t for the life of me remember a single time the United States or the UK actually maintained 100% gold backing for their entire money supply. If memory serves—and I try to be precise about these things—the last time we saw anything resembling a legitimate gold standard was back in the mid-19th century, and even then, coverage only hovered around 30%.

If the United States actually wanted to go back to being 100% gold-backed—I can’t even remember the last time we did that—we’d have to revalue gold from its current price of $1,600 all the way up to $60,000 per ounce. Just to hit a 30% coverage level? You’re looking at roughly $17,900 an ounce. It’s the same math for the Eurozone; you’d be looking at $59,000 and $17,600 respectively to hit those targets. For anyone currently hoarding gold, that would be the ultimate jackpot. That’s exactly why the last few holdouts are screaming for a return to the gold standard. They want the payday, but they clearly haven't done the math on the absolute chaos they'd be inviting.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not suggesting the United States and the Eurozone are just printing money like there’s no tomorrow. But let's look at the math. If China were backed 100% by gold, an ounce would need to hit $432,000. Even with a more modest 30% coverage, we're looking at $130,000. It’s all about the ratios. For Russia, those numbers jump to $315,000 and $95,000 respectively. Japan sits at $466,000 and $140,000. And then you have Brazil, where things get truly absurd: $1,520,000 or $456,000 depending on how much skin you have in the game. Numbers don't lie; they just reveal how thin the ice really is. 😍

It would be absolutely bloody marvelous if someone holding $10,000 worth of gold today could just flip it tomorrow for $375,000 or maybe $112,000. A total windfall. But let’s be real—that isn't going to happen, no matter how many doomsday scenarios certain folks in this thread try to conjure up. 😍

ironstag8 said:The core issue here—something we really need to grasp—is the distinction between money and commodities, services, and so on...
Silver and gold represent money, whereas everything else simply doesn't. Historically speaking, whenever currencies have decoupled from money, things have gone south fast.
If a crowd of sheep convinces themselves that real estate, tulip bulbs, stocks, or some Facebook nonsense can hold value, then greed can drive those prices into unrealistic, illogical territory—which is how you get a bubble. On the flip side, gold and silver don't "inflate" in that sense; they *are* money. They serve as a medium of exchange with intrinsic value derived from properties that nothing else possesses (that’s why they matter). For something to truly qualify as money, it
:
it has to be liquid, easily portable, durable, fungible (which is precisely why diamonds or real estate fail this test and can't be considered money), divisible into smaller units without losing value, and difficult to counterfeit.

Real estate and tulip bulbs lack these specific traits—they aren't even permanent—so they shouldn't be compared to money. You can compare the value of a house or a bulb to another good or service, but you shouldn't compare them to a medium of exchange (in the sense that they are the same thing as money) used to trade those goods and services. If some fool decides a house is worth, say, $5,000 or 4 ounces of gold, and another fool believes him, all that does is inflate a bubble; eventually, unsold properties rot, plenty of idiots lose their shirts, and gold just stays right where it was.

If you try to measure the value of gold or silver using something like a fiat currency—which essentially holds no inherent value—you start to see just how warped this entire financial system is. It’s no wonder the whole thing is such a massive mess. Every single time people tried to play games with money by attempting to turn things that aren't money into money, the masses ended up broke and sheared like sheep. This system is rigged to benefit a tiny few at the expense of everyone else. The "beauty" of it for that elite group is that the majority of people will fight tooth and nail to defend and maintain this very system. That continues right up until the moment the structure starts cracking—and that's been happening for a while now (though if you ask me, the cracks started appearing the day Nixon signed his name to it).

And one last thing. You *can* compare real estate or tulip bulbs to fiat currency because both are subject to bubbles, which is exactly what we're seeing right now. Why is that possible? Because fiat currency isn't actually money.

I’ve always had a certain level of skepticism toward people who believe that repeating a lie a hundred times will somehow turn it into an undeniable truth on the hundred-and-first attempt. It’s a special kind of delusion. Think about it this way: imagine you walk up to a local farmer's market vendor and try to settle your tab for some organic produce by offering them a handful of gold or silver coins. You might be convinced of their intrinsic value, but that doesn't matter. What matters is how the crowd perceives them. Most Americans don't view gold as "money" in the everyday sense—just like they wouldn't try to pay for a latte with Danish Krone or British Pounds. The reality is simple, if a bit cynical: that vendor is going to take your US dollars long before they ever touch your scrap metal. At the end of the day, consensus beats conviction every single time.

Money, much like anything else in this universe, carries a price tag—a value. That value is ultimately defined by the goods and services you can actually grab with it. In certain corners of the globe, its purchasing power is climbing, whereas out here in the West, we’re seeing a more moderate slide. Then again, if you look at it through the lens of real estate, the dollar's strength tells a different story in many Western nations. It’s been much the same since last summer regarding gold and silver; the dollar has gained ground against those metals, and even against some of the more obscure currencies you might encounter.

It’s a total cult, really. You’ve already gone and said it three times—even went through the trouble of bolding it—that gold and silver are fundamentally different from every other form of currency out there. 😍

Warren Buffett

Robert Vaughn10 said:Physical gold and silver can certainly become part of a bubble. Back in 1980 here in the US, there was a moment when the total value of gold held in reserves actually outpaced the actual dollars in circulation. The reality is that hardly anyone cares about precious metals right now, so they aren't in a bubble yet. The fundamental strength of gold and silver is that they can't be easily manufactured, which makes them honest money. For the time being, the whole system lacks that honesty, and eventually, some kind of equilibrium will have to be found.

In that light, money starts looking less like paper and more like copper or some other chemical element on the periodic table.

dustyheron5 said:Quincy:

crimsonranger38 The user states: Don't you dare count me out. 😍 Gold took another 2% hit today—another sharp move. 😍 Do you actually grasp the context surrounding this correction? 😍 Every time I step into this thread, I get the distinct feeling that I’ve wandered straight into a cult. 😍

As long as deflation remains the dominant theme—metals will continue to slide. There is just one catch—the longer and more brutal this deflationary period lasts, the more massive and devastating the inflation will be when it eventually hits.

I’m noticing that miners are holding their gains even though metals are trading in the red today—which suggests a reversal is imminent.
I fully expect the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve System to print another 20 trillion just to stop the entire system from collapsing...
I am genuinely curious to see how this all plays out. 😍Central banks versus the market—it’s the fundamental tug-of-war we're watching right now.

Inflation is doing its thing, as per usual. But don't go holding your breath waiting for double-digit numbers. It’s just not going to happen. If the winds shift and things actually start looking different, I'll be the first one to give you a heads-up. 😍

Warren Buffett

dustyheron5 said:Quincy:

crimsonranger38 The user states: Don't you dare count me out. 😍 Gold took another 2% hit today—another sharp move. 😍 Do you actually grasp the context surrounding this correction? 😍 Every time I step into this thread, I get the distinct feeling that I’ve wandered straight into a cult. 😍

As long as deflation remains the dominant theme—metals will continue to slide. There is just one catch—the longer and more brutal this deflationary period lasts, the more massive and devastating the inflation will be when it eventually hits.

I’m noticing that miners are holding their gains even though metals are trading in the red today—which suggests a reversal is imminent.
I fully expect the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve System to print another 20 trillion just to stop the entire system from collapsing...
I am genuinely curious to see how this all plays out. 😍Central banks versus the market—it’s the fundamental tug-of-war we're watching right now.

The miners? They’re just sitting there, coiled like a spring, waiting for the signal to strike. Right now, China is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the commodities markets. When you bundle them together with all those other fast-growing economies, you get this massive pressure cooker effect: prices skyrocket whenever we see even a hint of growth, only to face these tiny, pathetic corrections the moment anyone gets nervous. But here’s the real kicker in this whole saga: with the Eurozone sliding into its current deep crisis, Chinese exports are starting to stall out. To compensate for that export slump, the Communist Party is already signaling a massive new investment cycle to jumpstart things. In plain English? We’re looking at even more capital misallocation.

The policy of malinvestment only works for so long. Eventually, debt hits a critical mass—a point of no return where you simply can't borrow any more—and that's when all those bad investments start collapsing like a house of cards. When that happens, expect a total meltdown in the commodities markets. The current model they're running in China isn't sustainable even in the medium term. They’re just using massive income redistribution to kick the can down the road and delay necessary economic restructuring. It's a losing game. Just like in the Eurozone, the cost of maintaining this charade rises with every single passing day.

Warren Buffett

dustyheron5 said:Quincy:

crimsonranger38 The user states: Don't you dare count me out. 😍 Gold took another 2% hit today—another sharp move. 😍 Do you actually grasp the context surrounding this correction? 😍 Every time I step into this thread, I get the distinct feeling that I’ve wandered straight into a cult. 😍

As long as deflation remains the dominant theme—metals will continue to slide. There is just one catch—the longer and more brutal this deflationary period lasts, the more massive and devastating the inflation will be when it eventually hits.

I’m noticing that miners are holding their gains even though metals are trading in the red today—which suggests a reversal is imminent.
I fully expect the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve System to print another 20 trillion just to stop the entire system from collapsing...
I am genuinely curious to see how this all plays out. 😍Central banks versus the market—it’s the fundamental tug-of-war we're watching right now.

Maybe, but all this quasi-money they’re printing doesn't actually trickle down into people's wallets. Because of that, we aren't going to see today's moderate core inflation turn into some kind of runaway gallop. What we're really seeing is just a series of inflationary and deflationary swings across the commodities markets. If you look at the total money supply in the economy from the start of the Great Depression up until now, the growth rate hasn't changed much compared to the decade and a half before the crash hit. It's the same old story. This is what I keep coming back to: the inflation the United States and Europe dealt with back in the '70s isn't comparable to what we face today. We simply don't have an inflationary income policy, and without that, you can't trigger a true inflationary spiral.

ironstag8 said:



It’s honestly hilarious watching these "true believers" cling so desperately to the status quo... if you actually take a moment to look at the charts, it's clear the bubble was inflated by paper counterfeits long before the actual metals were even involved. And as for the claim that the market hasn't been manipulated? That's just a complete red herring. The very existence of "paper" gold and silver proves the entire system was engineered for manipulation from day one—it's baked into the design. You really ought to dig into what happened with the Hunt brothers; they learned the hard way exactly how much control can be exerted over the market. But all of that is reaching a breaking point now (whether that takes a year, two, or more...). Looking at the current landscape, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that things aren't right. Once this bull run finally burns out, life goes on... thinking otherwise is just naive. Once you truly grasp that fiat currencies are essentially on death row, you start viewing these gold and silver price swings through a different lens—perhaps through the eyes of what people might call "cultists."

How can fiat currency be in a bubble? I’m a little confused there. In my view, that's impossible because its real value is being eroded by inflation every single day. Then there's the issue of people treating gold as something it isn't; they're basically predicting future inflationary moves based on quasi-money. What else do you call people who can't wrap their heads around what's happened over the last three and a half years—events that have already proven most economic theories and schools of thought to be completely hollow? Even today, American universities are teaching kids about a monetary system that effectively ceased to exist nearly two decades ago.

ironstag8 said:



It’s honestly hilarious watching these "true believers" cling so desperately to the status quo... if you actually take a moment to look at the charts, it's clear the bubble was inflated by paper counterfeits long before the actual metals were even involved. And as for the claim that the market hasn't been manipulated? That's just a complete red herring. The very existence of "paper" gold and silver proves the entire system was engineered for manipulation from day one—it's baked into the design. You really ought to dig into what happened with the Hunt brothers; they learned the hard way exactly how much control can be exerted over the market. But all of that is reaching a breaking point now (whether that takes a year, two, or more...). Looking at the current landscape, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that things aren't right. Once this bull run finally burns out, life goes on... thinking otherwise is just naive. Once you truly grasp that fiat currencies are essentially on death row, you start viewing these gold and silver price swings through a different lens—perhaps through the eyes of what people might call "cultists."

Since gold and silver have essentially become paper instruments, it seems a bit silly to cry manipulation when prices drop, yet claim everything is legitimate when they rise. Both could just as easily be results of the same tinkering. And what actually *is* gold? One thing is certain: it's an unproductive asset, and its role as an inflation hedge hasn't held up for a long time, given how far the price has decoupled from actual inflation.

Anthony Evans78 said:I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you can’t fit physical gold inside a bubble.
Since the days of fiat currency, they've pushed prices up as much as humanly possible through constant manipulation.
If we actually had a pure, untainted market setting the price, gold would probably be sitting somewhere with four or five zeros after the first digit.

On what fundamentals is gold worth $8,000 or $16,000? If you're willing to share, how exactly are you measuring its "real" value? From where I'm sitting, I see production stagnation dating back to the end of the last century, which is a massive factor for gold prices, much like it is for crude oil. It's funny, though: when the price drops, everyone screams manipulation, but when it climbs, suddenly it's just the "untainted market" doing its job. Then, when I call out the cult-like behavior, people get offended. 😍

Warren Buffett

silentviper27 said:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSaYp...eature=related

😉

They say hope is the last thing to die. Or so the old folks claim. Some are saying... well, you know how people talk. 😍

Warren Buffett

Mary Asks: If you look at the history books, silver is criminally undervalued. It’s an afterthought, really—lagging behind gold in almost every metric, and even more so when you compare it to everything else out there. Just take a look back at the era of Ancient Rome...

So, if I’ve actually grasped this correctly—the market hasn't been able to pin down a realistic price for silver and gold since the days of the Roman Empire. 😍

Well, there you have it. It’ll take another five to ten years before we actually see the verdict. 😍

Taking the total money supply—I’m not even sure where you’re pulling those numbers from, frankly—and trying to convert it into some supposed "real" gold price just proves you haven't got a clue what you're talking about. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the math. Suddenly, nobody cares about hedging against inflation anymore; instead, you're all busy comparing the price of a completely non-productive commodity to the cost of the actual goods and services that make modern life possible. Since when did an increase in the money supply stop being a direct hit to the purchasing power of the dollar?

Anthony Evans78 said:Spot on, ironstag8.
That's exactly my point—price and value are two completely different things.
But I guess it's too much to ask for people to actually tell them apart, isn't it?🙂

An investor recently offered my grandmother $100,000 for her house. To her, that was an absolute insult. She reckons that place is worth millions because she’s spent thirty years living inside those walls—every bittersweet memory and dusty corner included. Of course, her valuation has zero basis in market reality; it’s pure, unadulterated emotion. It’s fascinating, really. Some people have reached a point where they practically tuck their gold bars into bed at night. They spend their days performing this daily ritual of self-delusion, trying to convince themselves that their stash will eventually be worth ten times its current value just because they believe the world is going to pivot back to the gold standard. 😍

How can you even have a serious debate with someone who retreats all the way back to the Roman Empire just to argue that the gold they’re hiding under their mattress isn't actually worth $10,000—or maybe $100,000—when, in reality, those USD bills don't mean a thing to them anyway? And then, the second I use the word "sect," people take offense. Please. It is nothing else but a sect. If you're going to cling to this theory that gold is the ultimate hedge against inflation, do yourself a favor: pick 1800 as your starting point, adjust for today, and then look at the math. You'll see pretty quickly that gold is massively overpriced at current levels. Comparing it to stock market indices is just intellectually lazy; a hunk of metal simply hasn't performed anywhere near what the components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average have achieved. I’ve probably bruised some egos here. I know there are plenty of people holding onto their gold, dreaming of a world that reverted to how things were a century ago. Well, newsflash. 😍

ironstag8 said:The core issue here—something we really need to grasp—is the distinction between money and commodities, services, and so on...
Silver and gold represent money, whereas everything else simply doesn't. Historically speaking, whenever currencies have decoupled from money, things have gone south fast.
If a crowd of sheep convinces themselves that real estate, tulip bulbs, stocks, or some Facebook nonsense can hold value, then greed can drive those prices into unrealistic, illogical territory—which is how you get a bubble. On the flip side, gold and silver don't "inflate" in that sense; they *are* money. They serve as a medium of exchange with intrinsic value derived from properties that nothing else possesses (that’s why they matter). For something to truly qualify as money, it
:
it has to be liquid, easily portable, durable, fungible (which is precisely why diamonds or real estate fail this test and can't be considered money), divisible into smaller units without losing value, and difficult to counterfeit.

Real estate and tulip bulbs lack these specific traits—they aren't even permanent—so they shouldn't be compared to money. You can compare the value of a house or a bulb to another good or service, but you shouldn't compare them to a medium of exchange (in the sense that they are the same thing as money) used to trade those goods and services. If some fool decides a house is worth, say, $5,000 or 4 ounces of gold, and another fool believes him, all that does is inflate a bubble; eventually, unsold properties rot, plenty of idiots lose their shirts, and gold just stays right where it was.

If you try to measure the value of gold or silver using something like a fiat currency—which essentially holds no inherent value—you start to see just how warped this entire financial system is. It’s no wonder the whole thing is such a massive mess. Every single time people tried to play games with money by attempting to turn things that aren't money into money, the masses ended up broke and sheared like sheep. This system is rigged to benefit a tiny few at the expense of everyone else. The "beauty" of it for that elite group is that the majority of people will fight tooth and nail to defend and maintain this very system. That continues right up until the moment the structure starts cracking—and that's been happening for a while now (though if you ask me, the cracks started appearing the day Nixon signed his name to it).

And one last thing. You *can* compare real estate or tulip bulbs to fiat currency because both are subject to bubbles, which is exactly what we're seeing right now. Why is that possible? Because fiat currency isn't actually money.

Well, if you say so. 🙂

ironstag8 said:The core issue here—something we really need to grasp—is the distinction between money and commodities, services, and so on...
Silver and gold represent money, whereas everything else simply doesn't. Historically speaking, whenever currencies have decoupled from money, things have gone south fast.
If a crowd of sheep convinces themselves that real estate, tulip bulbs, stocks, or some Facebook nonsense can hold value, then greed can drive those prices into unrealistic, illogical territory—which is how you get a bubble. On the flip side, gold and silver don't "inflate" in that sense; they *are* money. They serve as a medium of exchange with intrinsic value derived from properties that nothing else possesses (that’s why they matter). For something to truly qualify as money, it
:
it has to be liquid, easily portable, durable, fungible (which is precisely why diamonds or real estate fail this test and can't be considered money), divisible into smaller units without losing value, and difficult to counterfeit.

Real estate and tulip bulbs lack these specific traits—they aren't even permanent—so they shouldn't be compared to money. You can compare the value of a house or a bulb to another good or service, but you shouldn't compare them to a medium of exchange (in the sense that they are the same thing as money) used to trade those goods and services. If some fool decides a house is worth, say, $5,000 or 4 ounces of gold, and another fool believes him, all that does is inflate a bubble; eventually, unsold properties rot, plenty of idiots lose their shirts, and gold just stays right where it was.

If you try to measure the value of gold or silver using something like a fiat currency—which essentially holds no inherent value—you start to see just how warped this entire financial system is. It’s no wonder the whole thing is such a massive mess. Every single time people tried to play games with money by attempting to turn things that aren't money into money, the masses ended up broke and sheared like sheep. This system is rigged to benefit a tiny few at the expense of everyone else. The "beauty" of it for that elite group is that the majority of people will fight tooth and nail to defend and maintain this very system. That continues right up until the moment the structure starts cracking—and that's been happening for a while now (though if you ask me, the cracks started appearing the day Nixon signed his name to it).

And one last thing. You *can* compare real estate or tulip bulbs to fiat currency because both are subject to bubbles, which is exactly what we're seeing right now. Why is that possible? Because fiat currency isn't actually money.

🙂

ironstag8 said:The core issue here—something we really need to grasp—is the distinction between money and commodities, services, and so on...
Silver and gold represent money, whereas everything else simply doesn't. Historically speaking, whenever currencies have decoupled from money, things have gone south fast.
If a crowd of sheep convinces themselves that real estate, tulip bulbs, stocks, or some Facebook nonsense can hold value, then greed can drive those prices into unrealistic, illogical territory—which is how you get a bubble. On the flip side, gold and silver don't "inflate" in that sense; they *are* money. They serve as a medium of exchange with intrinsic value derived from properties that nothing else possesses (that’s why they matter). For something to truly qualify as money, it
:
it has to be liquid, easily portable, durable, fungible (which is precisely why diamonds or real estate fail this test and can't be considered money), divisible into smaller units without losing value, and difficult to counterfeit.

Real estate and tulip bulbs lack these specific traits—they aren't even permanent—so they shouldn't be compared to money. You can compare the value of a house or a bulb to another good or service, but you shouldn't compare them to a medium of exchange (in the sense that they are the same thing as money) used to trade those goods and services. If some fool decides a house is worth, say, $5,000 or 4 ounces of gold, and another fool believes him, all that does is inflate a bubble; eventually, unsold properties rot, plenty of idiots lose their shirts, and gold just stays right where it was.

If you try to measure the value of gold or silver using something like a fiat currency—which essentially holds no inherent value—you start to see just how warped this entire financial system is. It’s no wonder the whole thing is such a massive mess. Every single time people tried to play games with money by attempting to turn things that aren't money into money, the masses ended up broke and sheared like sheep. This system is rigged to benefit a tiny few at the expense of everyone else. The "beauty" of it for that elite group is that the majority of people will fight tooth and nail to defend and maintain this very system. That continues right up until the moment the structure starts cracking—and that's been happening for a while now (though if you ask me, the cracks started appearing the day Nixon signed his name to it).

And one last thing. You *can* compare real estate or tulip bulbs to fiat currency because both are subject to bubbles, which is exactly what we're seeing right now. Why is that possible? Because fiat currency isn't actually money.

I assume you meant "can't," but let's be real: they can, and they do. It happens all the time. But markets aren't built on delusions forever; eventually, gravity kicks in and forces a correction. Everything gets overvalued sometimes—gold and silver included. We've seen it before, where the market had to snap back by 20% or 25% just to find its footing again.

placidlynx43 said:Nah. Among gold bugs, "the cartel" is just the standard term for the manipulators. And those manipulators are basically just JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, and to a lesser extent, Goldman Sachs.

Give me a break! 😍

Gold just took another 2% dive today. 😍

Do you actually see the context this correction is happening in? 😍

Every time I check this thread, I feel like I've stumbled straight into a cult. 😍