Nice, but most people don't have physical gold... being that you do, I have a question. If the economy's around the globe fail; who, what and how would you exchange your gold?

Gold has value because people are buying GLD like mad.. making the demand go up, when the supply is solid. If banks or reserves aren't exchanging gold, because they have nothing to exchange it with (a eco issue) - how does it have value?

Gold has been the central medium of exchange and store of wealth for millennia, so people will always find a way to trade it.

I see. We have an office in Austin -- lived there from 1997-2000. I really like Austin and all the hill country.

So no storage of arms and food/water? :winkwink:

Time to invest in those mining companies ;)

How did it do during the great depression and depressions/recessions before then? If you can't exchange it, it has no value.

Exchange wise, or movement of anything with value, produces wealth. If it's gold, stocks, money, or chickens... as long as you can move it - wealth is produced, if it can't be moved/traded/exchanged to keep the 'flow' going, it has no value.

Gold has value because people are buying it...(money is moving) the amount of money in gold does not equal the actual amount of gold people can get. It's value is fake.

I'm not expecting the Apocalypse, but I do have gold in a variety of shapes and sizes. Large bars, small bars, coins, etc. I'm also sitting on a large amount of cash right now so I'm not all in on gold.

The biggest risk I see is gold becomes too valuable and it is made illegal again. The US government did this before and it could happen again.

For sure a ton of money to be made with gold... no doubt about that. If the Afgan find does drop the value, it's going to be a time like no other to buy. Assuming the worst doesn't happen, gold will be making money for a long time or until people get tired of buying it.

The hill country is amazing. And no storage for anything lol.

During the Great Depression Roosevelt forced everyone in America to sell their gold to the Federal Reserve and made it illegal to hold gold bullion, coins or certificates. He did not do this because it had no value, but rather the opposite...

Well, this is the main point I ask people to recognize, the "depressions" you refer to were deflations.

Gold is money. The idea is that if one has gold in an inflationary (especially hyper-inflationary) environment, they protect their purchasing power. Fine -- in an inflationary environment.

In any event, there is the problem of using it as a medium of exchange -- meaning that some but not all people you want to accept gold as money will be willing to do so.

If you take a look back at most civilization collapses that had to do with finances, it's because they went off gold or silver and started using some kind of paper currency. Now Pre WW1 Gold Standard was not the same thing as post WW1 Gold Standard, which was a perversion and doomed to fail. Also, not many people held physical gold at that time.

That's why before there were fiat currencies, there was gold and silver, as well as barter systems.

This is completely inaccurate. Gold is the only precious metal without any real industrial use so it's ONLY use is a medium of exchange and a store of wealth.

Some of you are so cute finding security in precious metals. If global currencies break down, the only metal you really will need a stockpile of is lead.

True, but there was no currency crisis during the Great Depression. Everyone trusted the Dollar still. Also, have you noticed that gold and the /dx have decoupled? It's not uncommon to see both the /dx go up and gold go up the same day.

Aye, but that was more removing gold as our money system and forcing us onto notes and the rest of the new deal crap. Before the take over - gold's value was flat, afterward it increased and eventually our money value too.

It was flat because it we were on a gold standard. The dollar was "as good as gold". Roosevelt forced everyone to sell their gold and then devalued the dollar (making gold more valuable) re-pegging it to gold at a lower valuation.

ditto me.... but it will only drop if the "hype" sets in and most gold traders are not really "hype" sensitive like most stock traders are.

Before the fiat currencies, we traded anything and everything. Historically, not everyone put value on gold. You could be wealthy and not own a lick of gold, back then just like today. As you said, not many 'people' held physical gold back then, however they did business and wealth was produced

Gold is used in damn near every electronic produced in the world today. From your TV, to your Stove, to your phone, to the smoke detector, your car and lots in your Computer and monitors. Under water and space exploration use gold heavily, many major industries (oil) use gold.

We have so much gold... you throw it in the trash when you're done with it.

Yes, I have. It is a rare event (meaning the span of time we have seen this happening recently).

I said Gold didn't have any significant industrial uses. Whenever it's used, it's a miniscule amount.

Yea, I will never do that. If you look at the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, the Assyrians, gold was the one thing they all traded, and they all at one point had financial collapse when they tried to use an ancient form of fiat currency.



And yes wig, the great depression was a deflationary depression but it had a lot to do with the Gold Standard they switched to after WW1.

Let me rephrase that... before the gold take over (stale gold value), most of us were dirt poor. Me exchanging gold for a chicken, produces no wealth. If you went to the bank to exchange your gold, you got a note from that bank, a tiny bit of money flow is created and wealth is produced. The take over changed that to a central system that all banks would recognize.

Once the take over happened, gold could be exchanged for money that everyone saw at the same value, they both increased in value (now look at today), some type of money market was able to finally start moving - and wealth was created and exploded.

If you kept us today gold equal to money, none of us would have any money.

I'm not so sure about this. If you plot commitment of traders reports, etc. over almost any instrument, you will see that over optimism / pessimism (hype / fear) correlate with tops and bottoms.

Human nature is not limited to specific financial instruments as far as I can tell.

It doesnt matter how much gold there is in that afghan mine, it will never keep up with the pace of gold demand at least not in the next few years.......

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aHpXqUGhFqv4

“In the long run, all paper money will go exactly to its intrinsic value, which is zero.”

Im not sure i agree, but i guess if you keep printing it thats what eventually happens.

I'm not arguing for or against that, I'm just pointing out that comparing the price action of gold during deflationary depressions as compared to say the stagflation of the 1970's in order to show that gold does not always fare well in bad times is missing the point.

"About 78% of the gold consumed each year is used in the manufacture of jewelry."

It's used in "everything" - It's even in the pills you take.

Cell phones have about 50 cents of gold in them (just those tiny cell phones) and over 1 billion cell phones are produced with Gold in them each year. Most of the connectors in your PC and devices that plug into them have gold pins. Ruby glass color building = gold in the glass.

Truly I can list the shit for ever... don't underestimate gold used in Industry.


Again, we have soooooooo much gold, we just throw it away.

If gold goes to $5000/oz, it may be actually worth the cost to extract it from these sources. :winkwink:

hmm...buying gold to make wealth is fine and all..but owning gold in case the end of the world comes?
if shit hits the fan that bad..you can count on 50% of the city folk to be dead within a couple months...farms will become armed camps. your gold will probably only buy you safe passage to a farm..where you will be killed and relieved of your gold...lol

rice will be more valuable then gold.

I don't get your point. You are talking about such minuscule amounts of gold per unit that, in most cases, it would be the equivalent of a few cents in coins falling out of your pocket.

recyclers are making a mint(yuk yuk) off of that too.

Key word is IF. IF it breaks down, my 1 lb bag of rice will be worth more than everyones gold in this entire thread. However IF it doesn't break down those who are sitting on a lot of gold are gonna have something worth a lot.

The current value of gold already has that happening... it has also created another mini-gold rush in America, people panning for gold.

Per unit, but not overall... 50 cents X 1 billion phones per year on 1 electronic device alone, is not a minuscule amount of gold.

If gold was really in short supply and the 'real' demand for actual gold was really sky rocketing... things would be very different in the electronics world.

Some place here that you can send your phones to them "to dispose of correctly" - they farm the gold, batteries, and reusable parts from the phones.

moron. Keep your gold, and you WILL lose out big time. Gold is totally useless, unlike Lithium which has many uses.

Anyway whatever. I hope you fail.

You do realize that the price paid for gold in electronics components does fluctuate with spot, right?

gold isnt going to go down!

Considering most people are holding pieces of paper that says they have gold and the people who sold it to them are selling it on a fractional reserve basis I would say as long as the comex and such can't keep up with deliveries for demand for the physical then you won't be seeing any major decline. And yes it will most likely double before we know it.

You might be right short term but no way in hell will it be down this time next year.

I'm sure it does... but if it was really in that short of supply the cost of electronics would go up instead of going down, it probably wouldn't be used because we could use something else and throwing gold away would be crazy.

Who's to say they don't Mine it or get it from the source? It's not like the gold costs a $1000 per Oz to pull out of the ground... hello, fake inflated value.

Gold for August delivery rose $11, or 0.9%, to $1,259.70 an ounce in recent Friday action. It earlier rose as high as $1,260.90 an ounce.

On Thursday, the August contract gained 1.5% to settle at $1,248.70 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, leaving its June 8 record close of $1,245.60 in the dust.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gol...k=MW_news_stmp

And Gold has hit a record high:) Go ahead guys, sell your gold, I'll buy it.

The most valuable commodity in the next 25 year will be water. Smart people will invest in water purification systems and home solar battery technologies.

:thumbsup
i was reading a great article the other day on solar energy/panels/batteries. it stated the markete will increase from 3-4billion$ to 23billion$ in revenues by 2014.

:thumbsup

You really do not understand this stuff at all :2 cents: