Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Is paper money worthless?
I rarely listen to conservative talk radio, so when I do I am always surprised by the incessant advertisements for investments in specie, which in certain circles is taken to be a more reliable store of value than fiat currency. The State of Utah has recently pandered a bit to the hard-money crowd and declared gold and silver to be legal tender, and other states are considering similar measures. (Gresham's law does not apply in Utah because the exchange rate between the "bad money" and the "good" is not set by law, but we still do not expect to see see double eagles in our pocket change.)
In the middle of all of this ante-Rooseveltian precious metals revivalism, a financial blogger has fun at the expense of a gold investor. Literally.
3 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue May 31, 11:53:00 PM:
It is interesting. I hope this investment lean doesn't end up being a bust. How about spending all your money in chocolate? It all does fit the anti-Gov / Libertarian Beck fashion which crept up after 2004 (and it's overt Political Party equating). A conspiracy vision of all. Much of it is understandable seeing the policies of the Democratic Party in full tilt.
I have to strongly believe so much of it is fashion. It doesn't seem the choices are actually based on a great deal of reality. I usually think of how special this Country is, and how it will be fine - then I remember we gave control of the House to Nancy Pelosi. Can the USA be truly lost?
So much sounds not truly conservative. I could be wrong, but it reminds me of so many things I hear in conservative media circles these days, which tends to pander to a certain fad, as opposed to leading with some basis and reason.
After hyping Donald Trump overtly, now so many are back to pushing Sarah Palin. I am beginning to believe that we are all doomed. Visions of dramatic failure are being fostered with memories of O'Donnell in Delaware coming on a much larger scale - giving Obama a huge gift. And yes, I think the Conservative Pundits are a major part of the problem - ratings and acceptance are far more dominate, than getting it right and finally winning the day.
That is my two cents, and I hope I am wrong, but I thought the same about the impending Maverick disaster.
By Brian Schmidt, at
Wed Jun 01, 05:06:00 PM:
Unfortunately, the progressive radio I sometimes listen to is no better. I've never done any type of put investments, but gold stocks seem like a good place to start.
By , at
Thu Jun 02, 03:39:00 PM:
The Animal Farm Pigs are about to send Boxer to the glue factory.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/PhotoPopup.aspx?path=Web2c0602.jpg&docId=573982&xmpSource=&width=800&height=492&caption=
This graph which was just posted on Instapundit tells the story. It measures the change in total real PRIVATE SECTOR wages in the USA on a rolling ten-year basis. It looks like 30% growth over ten years is the norm, and so averages about 3% per year. The 1940s were articially high coming out of the 1930s.
What this graph tells me is that the private sector has been declining to the point where we now have no growth in private sector wages. (4.2% isn't much higher than our population growth, and would probably be negative if properly adjusted for true inflation).
We've had a lot of growth in public sector wages -- especially over the last decade, but we don't have the private sector tax base to support it, so we've been borrowing to cover it.
You just need to extrapolate the trend lines on both out for five years or so to see it imploding -- unless you think autarchy and a centralized command economy are a good thing.
This graph suggests that we're in a worse place than we were in the 1970s and early 1980s.
You can look at Obama-Pelosi's Stimulus as furtherance of these trends -- it "saved" one public sector job at the cost of two or three in the private sector.
Funny thing, the European experience with windmills is that one new green job gets created at the loss of two old private sector jobs.
But we make it up in volume!
