Gold, lost its Glister?

sabretoothtigger

You could always get Gordon Brown who will come sell your valuables at their lowest prices

I wish we could trade thanks like a currency system. That would make for a funny lesson

gadgetmind

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

Y
I wish we could trade thanks like a currency system. That would make for a funny lesson

Yeah, but then someone would start applying Black Scholes to the MSE Thanks derivatives market and it would all stop being quite so much fun.

sabretoothtigger

It would get messy no doubt and corrupt then fail.
It would help understand why these economic systems be it housing debt or Bitcoins will tear themselves apart from all the apparent faults. Creative destruction ?

People talk about greed and how rich people are evil, total bs. Even our thanks system would show up how failure is normal ie. bankruptcy is normal, profit incentive always exists, etc

Most of those buying gold do so in the hope of selling it on - not many want a useless lump of metal for its own sake. So the price of gold depends on one factor - the bigger fool factor

Its not quite that way. Gold has a massive premium, we can all agree that
It also has a use beyond looking shiny, if you have a mobile phone you own gold and also rare earths both unique elements of limited supply.

The reason we use gold as wealth is its very limited and also can be recast infinitely - so distributed easily.
The rare earths are difficult to acquire sometimes radioactive but are not rare, you can always get as many as you like with enough cheap labour

DiggerUK

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

.......I wish we could trade thanks like a currency system. That would make for a funny lesson

MSE Bitthanks, the sockpuppets would manipulate the market.
..._

sabretoothtigger

The fact gold is not really industrial so worth more as money is ironic.

No matter what I read Ag is more available then gold and I guess this supply is what restricts its storage over decades by big central banks or other entities.

There was an idea gold could be used in catalytic convertors as a very expensive aid to air quality like Platinum.
It didnt happen but I presume this would raise its cost as demand would rise. (historically platinum had this rise)

Ag is mined alongside other metals, its supply is partly linked to mining activity which is rising for years now. I dont think demand has risen enough to create a spike yet.
We could talk about oil as well or phosphate mining. They are useful but less compact, more subject to variation in supply demand all are inferior to gold then.

The main change in the last ten years has been a break down in dollar value and rising need for replacement of that system, so the biggest pressure will be on anything able to restore stability and combat price volatility in global contracted trade

got destroyed on an industrial scale

There might be vital point that gold cannot be destroyed. Is there a way I dont know about, the biggest thing would be distribution like happens from erosion into sea water otherwise no ?

The labour spent to refine gold never goes away but nobody knows exactly why this one element beats the others for continuity as wealth

neverdespairgirl

Generali wrote: »

Who are 'they'?

Took the post right off my fingers.

I tend to lose interest in any topic where a mysterious and apparently all-powerful "they" creeps into the conversation.

OffGridLiving

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Took the post right off my fingers.

I tend to lose interest in any topic where a mysterious and apparently all-powerful "they" creeps into the conversation.

You should define a new law along the lines of Godwins law, but instead of "The longer an internet discussion gets, the higher the likelyhood that someone will mention Hitler or the Nazi's", you could have "As soon as anyone discusses investing in Gold, someone will mention 'Them'."

TDM850

Still got further to fall according to GS and others although there is increasing speculation over a Gold fixing scandal, hot on the heels of the Libor scandal. More here

sabretoothtigger

That is why I start reading threads from the last post first. If its a good thread it will snowball into something of substance. If its an avalanche of diatribe I can step out the way and save myself the effort reading any further

Godwins law

Gresham's law is that bad money drives out good, maybe forum posts too

GDB2222

Gold is going down like ... well, something that goes down very fast indeed.

I shorted it, so :j:j:j:j:j:j

Sadly, though, I didn't bet the farm on it going down, so :(:(:(:(