Posts by Taylor Robinson51

hollowmoose21 said:Here we go again with this "forbidden fruit" nonsense, so I’ll give you my answer one more time.
That logic might work if you're talking about sleeping with your neighbor's wife or something, but it has zero business being applied to where you park your life savings.
It’s funny how nobody has actually come up with a coherent reason why these various "bans" would even happen. I remember chewing this over with Maximus once, and the big argument was basically just "there would be riots..." Some gold bugs think we're heading back to a gold standard, but honestly? It feels more like gold will just move to an underground scene—at least for the average Joe. I think Armstrong has been hinting at something similar lately too.
Look, I'm not saying holding gold isn't a good move. Far from it. But these kinds of weak arguments really grate on me, NHF.
If owning gold were actually a bad thing, most buyers in the States wouldn't be busy stashing their bullion in vaults at Swiss or Austrian banks, effectively killing one of the biggest perks of owning physical assets.

Just because the government here is structured like an absolute disaster doesn't mean everyone else operates on the same level of stupidity. Within the EU, there are specific regulations stating that investment-grade gold is exempt from VAT and other taxes. Until the US aligns its laws with these standards, we'll see people pulling their gold out of overseas vaults and bringing it back home, waving it right in the faces of customs agents...

Frank Walker7 said:On another note, I have a quick question for those of you who see a direct link between a weakening Dollar and rising gold prices, or vice versa.

Let's say the Dollar keeps sliding for x number of years until it hits rock bottom. What happens at that breaking point? Does gold eventually peg itself to some other currency, essentially restarting the whole cycle from scratch, or does the absolute floor of the Dollar represent the ultimate peak for gold? It's one of those things I can't stop thinking about.

It's more of a big-picture question; as the Dollar falls and gold climbs, where is the actual limit to this system—what comes next? Like, what happens once a new global currency takes over?

Why would any specific amount in Dollars or Euros even matter? Look, one ounce of gold is an absolute standard that hasn't changed in thousands of years. A single Dollar, however, is a moving target; its value as a measurement shrinks every single year... In twenty years, people won't brag about saving 10,000 Dollars or Euros. They will talk about holding 250 grams of gold, just like how back in the day, nobody bragged about having millions in devalued currency, they bragged about having strong Deutsche Marks.

I suspect that in the future, the real metrics will be relationships like gold-to-oil or gold-to-wheat, rather than gold-to-Dollar or gold-to-Euro. For instance, nominally, I made a 20% profit in Euros on gold I bought a year ago, but my actual purchasing power gain is less than 5% if you look at it in terms of gas prices...

wearygull4 said:@ Goldman Sachs & Co. & Anthony Evans78
While you both seem reasonably informed on current economic trends, your comments regarding Warren Buffett have cost you significant credibility.
The ultimate failure in decision-making is seeking out only the data that reinforces our existing biases.
I’ve read several books on the man and am just finishing "Snowball," his biography. To label this financial genius an insider trader only proves how little you actually understand him.

A few facts to consider:
-Consider the sheer volume of literature written about the "successes" of Enron; I would take anything written in those books with extreme skepticism.
-Wealth is not a metric of talent. If it were, Carlos Slim would be the most capable manager on the planet. In reality, he is a standard type of businessman known for using connections to effectively "privatize" Mexican telecom and major banks, leaving phone calls in Mexico among the most expensive in the world.
-Warren Buffett's era coincided perfectly with one of the greatest stock market bull runs and constant tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. One wonders what Warren Buffett would have done if his career spanned 1920 to 1970 instead...
-No matter how much they try to polish the narrative of individual success, nepotism is rampant in America. Warren Buffett's father was a Congressman, and Bill Gates' mother comes from one of the oldest families in the US, having arrived on the Mayflower. Do you honestly believe Microsoft happened to land the contract for MS-DOS from IBM by pure chance? Or perhaps his mother had a quiet word with old friends from the elite university where most IBM executives were educated?

Of course, one cannot deny that both Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are exceptionally talented, but I am unconvinced that their wealth is proportional to their actual contribution to society as a whole.

Ultimately, Warren Buffett was somewhat correct in his statement; perhaps there was an unnecessary amount of noise surrounding it. My interpretation is that he suggested it is better to own productive assets—like farmland or a manufacturing plant—rather than gold. This is perfectly acceptable in a system that rewards producers. I would prefer such assets in a system that rewards individual labor, but in a system of corporate plutocracy, your farm or factory will simply be destroyed by dumping imports from somewhere like China or Argentina, while individuals like Warren Buffett reap the maximum profit...