Thursday, June 18, 2009

Gold mania

Via the Freakonomics blog I just learned that there's a racket going on in Germany where they have vending machines that sell gold coins and bars at 30% above the current market rate. Brilliant!

When economic times get tough, the tough think of creative new ways to steal from the fearful. I've been noticing with much bemusement how full show-length advertisements on Christian radio loudly exhort their listeners to buy gold, and before that I've been fascinated by a precious metal pyramid scheme known as "Liberty Dollars."

Now this one... you really have to stand and goggle in awe at the sheer unmitigated chutzpah of a company whose business model provides a service that is so utterly worthless, and which displays so much naked greed.

Let me explain this again. Gold is an investment. Maybe it's a good investment right now, and maybe it's a bad one, but that's not the point. The point is that [edit: for most people] gold has no other value than as decoration or investment, and it's a really freaking bad investment if you have to pay 30% overhead up front.

Vending machines are for impulse buys. If you are walking past a vending machine in an airport and you see a candy bar for $1.50, and you say "Hmmm, a candy bar sounds mighty tasty right now" then to you at that moment, the candy bar is worth $1.50. Never mind that the same candy bar would cost you half as much or less if you bought it from a store. It has utility value to you.

Gold doesn't have has very limited utility value, and if you buy an investment with impulse dollars at a 30% markup, you are beyond stupid. Go home, do some freaking research, and buy it from a reputable vendor who will charge you 1-3% up front. You don't have to own the gold RIGHT NOW THIS INSTANT. I mean, if you're in an airport at the exact moment when The End Of The World As We Know It hits, maybe you could make a case for raiding the gold vending machine. But if that's the case, I think you might want to focus a little more on fleeing for your life at that point.

21 comments:

  1. Kazim: your claim that gold doesn't have utility value is nonsensical. You typed this post on a computer that very likely contains some gold.

    gold is used in computers and electronics, dentistry, medicine, aerospace, in chemistry gold is used both as a catalyst and in numerous compounds.

    If gold were cheaper, its properties would mean we'd be using it a *lot*.

    google on uses for gold...

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  2. I stand corrected -- instead of "doesn't have utility value" I should have said "limited utility."

    However, I'll stand by my statements in the sense that I'm fairly positive that people are not buying little overpriced gold bars from airport vending machines in order to make electronics or tooth fillings. Anyone who had an industrial use for it would not be making it an impulse buy. Fair statement?

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  3. Anonymous8:48 PM

    And I thought that Germany couldn't get worse.

    Well, there goes that thought.

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  4. I always felt that if you wanted to make the case that our money should be "backed" by something, it should not be gold, because gold as little "real" value, as you stated in your post. Sure you can use it in your computer, but if we got to the point where you would have to trade in your money for the thing it was backed with, selling gold to run a computer would be pointless. I think it makes more since to back it with something usable, like shoes, or rice. Something that if the end of the world did come, would be useful.

    That being said, gold has about the same "utility" as the paper dollar in an end of the world situation. You could sell gold for the looks, or to make computers, and you could burn the money to keep you warm in the zombie apolocyspe.

    This being said, I want to make it clear that I am not advocating "backing" our money with anything. If you have an elementary understanding of economics, you know it all works under the same system, and there is no difference in backing the dollar with gold, versus valuing the dollar for what it is worth. Backing it with gold does not make the dollar more or less stable.

    Also, I frikkin flipped when I saw that left for dead youtube clip. talk about AWESOME!!!

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  5. Robert, if you haven't you should read Making Money by Terry Pratchett. It goes over some of the same ideas as you just listed. The main character says gold is useless to back money and that a cabbage is worth more than gold.

    I think whoever is selling the gold at a 30% markup is rather genius. I see nothing wrong with them selling it. Caveat emptor. It is like spending full price on a bad video game, for example Left Behind or Left Behind 2.

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  6. Robert,

    A lot of sci-fi stories use exactly your concept of backing money with something people really need. For instance, in the first book of the Death Gate Cycle, there's a realm where water is very scarce, and thus the unit of currency is a "barl." Each coin is backed by a barrel of water in the kingdom's reserve stores.

    Similarly, I've been reading Dune, which of course takes place on a desert planet. Owning a lot of water is similarly treated as a sign of great status or wealth. And then of course there's the infamous "spice," which is supposed to be some of the most valuable stuff in the universe, but not just because people put an arbitrary value on it; it's only exists on one planet, and it provides people who eat it with special powers.

    However, I am also wary of the use of consumable commodities as a currency, since the supply will most likely decrease over time. In the 19th century, William Jennings Bryan made a famous speech about a "cross of gold" where he denounced the gold standard because a quantity of gold was becoming harder to come by and thus too expensive for the average person even in small amounts.

    I don't really know what a currency backed by rice would do... although it seems like it would give farmers a huge incentive to grow a lot of rice, replacing most other crops and actually reducing the total food supply in the world (since people would probably want to hoard rice instead of eat it).

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  7. yeah, I was not saying it was a good idea, I just thought it made more since than gold.

    As you point out, the amount of dollars in the economy we have direct control over. So, while we may not be able to control the demand of the dollar, we can control the supply, which gives us a more stable currency I think. As opposed to gold, or, rice, which would be more difficult (and impossible in the case of gold) to control the supply.

    You also bring up a valid criticism of the rice idea, as people may indeed horde it, thus reducing the total supply for eating.

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  8. steve6:31 PM

    Backing your currency with something instills economic discipline. The problem with fiat currency is that central bankers and politicians are inclined to keep printing it. Historically, people can not be trusted to have any self discipline once money is no longer backed by a physical asset. Even Alan Greenspan, who spent his entire career making the case for a gold standard; once he became Fed Chairman it wasnt too long before he turned towards a loose monetary policy.

    Backing your money with stuff like rice is problematic because you have to remove it form your food supply. You also can not store it very long before it rots away. The point is, you dont want your currency to be useful for anything other than use as a medium of exchange. In the case of rice and water, those are things we also consume. For every unit of rice used to back the currency, thats one less unit available for eating. Gold is better suited because other than its limited modern industrial uses, its not really useful for much anything else other than decoration.

    And the physical quantity of gold doesnt really make a difference. The problem of physically dividing it is eliminated when you can store the gold and keep track of its divisions electronically. The entire economy could technically run off of one ounce of gold; that ounce would just be really expensive. All you would need is to have that one ounce sitting in a vault, and a computer keeping track of subdivisions of nanograms and picograms

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  9. Historically, people can not be trusted to have any self discipline once money is no longer backed by a physical asset. Even Alan Greenspan, who spent his entire career making the case for a gold standard; once he became Fed Chairman it wasnt too long before he turned towards a loose monetary policy.

    While I'm not a big fan of Alan Greenspan these days, I am curious about the motivation behind this. To you, this says that Alan Greenspan couldn't be trusted. For myself, I am wondering if this implies that Greenspan changed his mind because holding currency fixed wasn't actually practical. Perhaps people who hold a gold standard as an ideal "can't be trusted" because once they actually hold the reigns, they discover problems they hadn't anticipated.

    The point is, you dont want your currency to be useful for anything other than use as a medium of exchange.

    Yeah, I agree with this, but it eliminates one of the chief arguments commonly used against "fiat currency" -- that dollars are just worthless pieces of paper. By your own argument here, your currency had BETTER be "worthless" or else you're asking for trouble. I understand that you've still got other criticisms against unbacked paper currency, but still, that's interesting.

    And the physical quantity of gold doesnt really make a difference. The problem of physically dividing it is eliminated when you can store the gold and keep track of its divisions electronically. The entire economy could technically run off of one ounce of gold; that ounce would just be really expensive. All you would need is to have that one ounce sitting in a vault, and a computer keeping track of subdivisions of nanograms and picograms

    I'm still skeptical of what this accomplishes, and here's the primary reason. People who want a gold standard seem to primarily focus on converting the United States to a gold economy. What about the rest of the world? We effectively have a global economy now, with trade and loans flowing continually back and forth across borders.

    What effect does a gold standard have on such trade? I assume not all countries will accept a one world currency -- heck, many of our own home grown conspiracy theorists will see that as a sign that the antichrist is taking over. So what happens when other countries buy or sell our gold? Doesn't that just bring all the same "variable money supply" right back again?

    Or do we cut off our borders and refuse to trade with any nation that doesn't also convert to a metal-backed currency?

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  10. steve2:33 PM

    Yeah, I agree with this, but it eliminates one of the chief arguments commonly used against "fiat currency" -- that dollars are just worthless pieces of paper. By your own argument here, your currency had BETTER be "worthless" or else you're asking for trouble. I understand that you've still got other criticisms against unbacked paper currency, but still, that's interesting.

    The difference is gold is a finite metal that we have to physically mine out of the ground. It has a market value. Under a fiat system, the central bank can manipulate the value of the currency directly. There are no limitations at all on how much they can create.

    The only reason you would want to have this type of control over the money supply would be if you are trying to eliminate booms and busts. Ideally, you could accomplish this. A fiat currency would work just as well as a backed currency, minus the booms and busts. However, nobody has been able to do this yet, and I doubt it is politically reasonable to assume any government is capable.

    The thing is, counter to the popular sentiment, its not the busts that are the problem, but the booms. Lets go back to 1999 when Tickle-me-Elmos were all the rage. When the prices eventually collapsed and people realized how dumb it was to pay hundreds of dollars for them, thats not where the problem was. The problem was that they rose in price with speculative mania to begin with. It was the Tickle-me-Elmo boom that caused all the trouble. But when you transfer this idea to stocks and real estate, and people have their life savings and a majority of their financial assets on the line, everyone wants the boom to keep rising and the bust to never come.

    This tends to shape the political side. Every president and governor likes to stand on the podium and say, "Under my administration, more Americans are living in houses than ever before." Another side of this is when Paul Krugman said in 2002, "Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.” Krugman has recently come out and said that this was not policy advice but economic analysis, however the fact remains that he thought the housing bubble was a good idea.

    As for Alan Greenspan, I have no idea what was going through his head. My own speculation is that it was something along the lines of "When I said central banks cant properly tweak monetary policy, I was talking about all those other guys. Not me, Im smart enough to do this."

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  11. Currency is also finite. There are a limited number of trees, a limited number of power the run the machines needed to printed the currency, and a limited amount of time to make the currency. So, while certainly their can be a lot more amount of dollars, it still is finite, which gives it a market value.

    The fed does not place a control the price of currency, if you are getting at this. The market does, just like gold, rice, shoes, etc. It all operates under the principles of supply and demand. The fed could print more money, or take money out of the market, but it does not have direct control over how much the currency is worth.

    The fed could "manipulate" the currency in the same way with gold. They could put more gold in the market place, or take gold out in exactly the same way. Debeers, from what I understand, does (or use to) manipulate the price of diamonds by with holding them from the market. The same way the fed could with gold to manipulate the value of the currency. Placing us on the gold standard does not solve this problem, which, I do not think is a problem at all. By having the fed do things like raising and lowering interest rates, and printing money, it gives us some small degree of control over the economy, so we can prevent catastrophe.

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  12. Another side of this is when Paul Krugman said in 2002, "Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.” Krugman has recently come out and said that this was not policy advice but economic analysis, however the fact remains that he thought the housing bubble was a good idea.

    I went and tracked down the original article, and I do have to say that this quote seems egregiously out of context to me. Anyone using the word "bubble" to describe the economy is extremely unlikely to be saying so in a positive context, and Krugman in particular has consistently expressed strong concerns against bubble based economies.

    In the column, the quote comes across as obviously sardonic -- that it's foolish to grasp at bubbles to keep economic stability long term, but knowing Greenspan, he'll likely try to do it by encouraging a housing bubble. Krugman has been an economic pessimist for years, including during the Clinton decade and its tech bubble. And the obviously sarcastic sentence right after the quote ends -- "Judging by Mr. Greenspan's remarkably cheerful recent testimony, he still thinks he can pull that off" -- only bears out that point.

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  13. Currency is also finite. There are a limited number of trees, a limited number of power the run the machines needed to printed the currency, and a limited amount of time to make the currency. So, while certainly their can be a lot more amount of dollars, it still is finite, which gives it a market value.

    Not at all. Most of the money out there is not in paper bills. M1 is only about $1 Trillion. When people say "print money", they are not literally talking about the physical printing of money. They are talking about an increase in the money supply.


    The fed does not place a control the price of currency, if you are getting at this. The market does, just like gold, rice, shoes, etc. It all operates under the principles of supply and demand. The fed could print more money, or take money out of the market, but it does not have direct control over how much the currency is worth


    The value of the currency is a function of the supply, which the Fed does influence.

    The fed could "manipulate" the currency in the same way with gold. They could put more gold in the market place, or take gold out in exactly the same way.

    No, because under a gold standard a set number of dollars are pegged to a set amount of gold. The way in which the Fed influences the monetary base is through the buying and selling of bonds, which are promises of payment in dollars. They buy up the bonds with newly created money. Under a gold standard, these bonds are promises of payment in gold. Since they cant print out more gold, they must buy up the bonds in gold they already have. In that case, they would simply be using gold to pay for gold. Nothing has changed. There is no ability to affect the monetary base at all.If gold was just as manipulatable as fiat currency, why do you think they would have abandoned the gold standard in the first place?

    The overall point is, do you think we should have a monetary policy or not? I am on the "no" side because it becomes not an economic tool, but a political tool. The idea behind shifting to a fiat currency was to minimize the boom and bust cycle. Then under political will, this shifted into sustaining a boom and minimizing the bust. After many decades, it has not really worked out either way. We still have booms and busts, and you could argue that they are bigger than before.

    The reason for gold, rather than some other asset, is simply because gold has been accepted as currency by much of the world for a very long time, and we havnt been off of it for too long. Everyone knows what it is. Thus its more likely to be accepted as a pegged standard over some other asset.

    Rice or water currency is still a pretty bad idea. When you use something as a currency, you are removing those unites from any other use they could have and sticking them in a vault. With gold, the only other thing being done with it is jewelry, and more recently some electronic and industrial applications. There is such a high amount of gold to outweigh the jewelry and electronic demand, this isnt really a problem. But in the case of rice and water, much of the world lives in extreme poverty and starvation. It doesnt seem wise to use a vital resource as a currency.

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  14. No, because under a gold standard a set number of dollars are pegged to a set amount of gold. The way in which the Fed influences the monetary base is through the buying and selling of bonds, which are promises of payment in dollars. They buy up the bonds with newly created money. Under a gold standard, these bonds are promises of payment in gold. Since they cant print out more gold, they must buy up the bonds in gold they already have. In that case, they would simply be using gold to pay for gold. Nothing has changed. There is no ability to affect the monetary base at all.

    Simply not true. While it's true that you can't just print more gold, there are ways to manipulate the price and value of a limited commodity. This has actually happened quite a few times historically. Read this, for example.

    In 1979 the sons of patriarch H.L. Hunt, Nelson Bunker and William Herbert, together with some wealthy Arabs, formed a silver pool. In a short period of time they had amassed more than 200 million ounces of silver, equivalent to half the world's deliverable supply.

    When the Hunt's had begun accumulating silver back in 1973 the price was in the $1.95 / ounce range. Early in '79, the price was about $5. Late '79 / early '80 the price was in the $50's, peaking at $54.


    My grandfather had a dental practice that suffered greatly due to the silver manipulation, because it became much harder to supply fillings; that's the reason I remembered this incident.

    The point being, if there is something that is designated as "valuable," whether by fiat or by intrinsic worth, people will try to find ways to manipulate it. Precious metal can't be printed, but printing is not the only way to jack with supply.

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  15. No, this is still wrong. This is an example of a currency being used to purchase a commodity. This is not the same when the commodity in question is the same commodity being used as currency.

    I think you are getting sidetracked into a weird argument that central banks maintain the same operations under a commodity currency as they do under a fiat currency. This is simply wrong. By definition, a commodity based currency means that the commodity and the paper representing them are on a fixed ratio. The entire argument between a commodity currency and a fiat currency is that under a fiat currency central banks can use monetary policy to tweak short run production fluctuations, and under a commodity currency they cant.

    As I said, a fiat currency can function better than a commodity currency if the central bank successfully follows a monetary policy that works to minimize fluctuations. Never mind that it may not work out well in practice, it is a moot point because this is not the model anyone follows.

    It can be best summed up by a quote from Keynes's "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money"

    "The right remedy for the trade cycle is not to be found in abolishing booms and thus keeping us permanently in a semi-slump; but in abolishing slumps and keeping us permanently in a quasi-boom."

    It really all comes down to whether or not you think this statement is a good economic strategy to follow. I would oppose this. I don't think its a good idea at all. A boom is simply when short-run output exceeds long run potential sustainable output. Its a malinvestment of resources. You don't really want booms. And when they happen, they are corrected through busts.

    There are really three options being advocated. 1. Commodity based currency (such as a gold standard) in which fluctuations in production are allowed to occur. 2. A fiat currency with a monetary policy designed to eliminate booms, and thus eliminate busts. 3. A fiat currency with a monetary policy designed to embrace booms and eliminate the bust. I don't think the second option, although preferable, is politically feasible. This is likely why nobody really follows it. It inevitably transitions into the third option because it would require policy makers to say things like, "we must take steps to put less people in homes."

    An extreme example of this would be the housing bubble. Here you have a boom that was actively embraced by policy makers. Politicians loved putting more people in homes, and the people loved seeing their equity rise. And you had economic commentators like Paul Krugman, who in a multitude of instances between 2001 and 2005 advocated lower interest rates to drive up housing spending in an attempt to combat the bursting of the NASDAQ.

    I think the problem with advocates of a gold standard is that they keep using buzzwords and platitudes like "worthless pieces of paper" and "gold is real money". Their arguments essentially come down something along the lines of screaming out "Gold is magic!" repeatedly.

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  16. Steve,

    Earlier I said:


    What effect does a gold standard have on such trade? I assume not all countries will accept a one world currency -- heck, many of our own home grown conspiracy theorists will see that as a sign that the antichrist is taking over. So what happens when other countries buy or sell our gold? Doesn't that just bring all the same "variable money supply" right back again?

    Or do we cut off our borders and refuse to trade with any nation that doesn't also convert to a metal-backed currency?


    I notice you didn't address this point about international currency, so I'm repeating it. In the first place, the United States isn't the only country that once had a metal standard and then abandoned it; there are few if any countries that still currently tie their currencies to either gold or silver.

    And that seems to me like it would be a big gaping hole in the theory that we could control the supply of money and keep that nasty unbound money from causing fluctuations in prices, if only we would all agree to use gold and nothing else as our currency. Unless the United States has a near monopoly on the world's gold supply -- which I am pretty sure we don't -- I don't see how you can avoid other countries screwing with our money supply.

    Seriously, what do we do when a wealthy Japanese business comes over with a large amount of Yen and wishes to use it to buy goods and services from us? Do we tell him his money's no good here? What happens when someone like the Hunt brothers comes in from, say, Saudi Arabia, and strikes a deal with other commodities to obtain and keep a large supply of gold, thereby conspiring to keep it out of the American economy?

    I think you are getting sidetracked into a weird argument that central banks maintain the same operations under a commodity currency as they do under a fiat currency. This is simply wrong.

    Seems to me that this entire thread has been sidetracked from the original post which, rather than taking a position for or against any currency policy, was simply making the observation that it's a massive scam to sell gold for impulse buyers at far above market value. The people who accept this offer are nitwits. I hope that we can agree on that much at least, quite apart from our other disagreements about fiscal policy.

    It really all comes down to whether or not you think this statement is a good economic strategy to follow. I would oppose this. I don't think its a good idea at all. A boom is simply when short-run output exceeds long run potential sustainable output. Its a malinvestment of resources. You don't really want booms. And when they happen, they are corrected through busts.

    Another mistake I think you're making is in treating the total supply of society's wealth as a constant over time. One of the reasons we have a stock market is to take advantage of the concept that wealth is not a zero-sum game, but increases over time as we come up with new technologies and innovations that extend human life spans and the quality of those lives. As such "boom" isn't necessarily always a short term spurt in growth.

    And you had economic commentators like Paul Krugman, who in a multitude of instances between 2001 and 2005 advocated lower interest rates to drive up housing spending in an attempt to combat the bursting of the NASDAQ.

    Dude, WTF? I wrote an entire post to you solely focused on pointing out that Krugman was not advocating using the economy to stimulate a housing bubble. He was criticizing it. Not only did you not acknowledge this post, but now you're repeating the same claim without any indication that you noticed I responded at all. Quit that.

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  17. ROBERT ! Shut your trap for a little bit and READ what is going on in the world; and talk to people like me; (who still remember closets full of money in the communist days and so worthless one would need a wheel barrow full to buy a loaf of bread !!!)

    GOLD was KING and YES, Doomsday is coming very soon now, so let's buy some gold to feed our kids while we hunker down and lay low; as we watch the worldwide economic collapse and Christ soon to follow; at which point we need NOT run for our lives, for we were fairly comfortable in our homes; reading our Bibles while making the occassional trip to barter for goods with our gold, my friend !!!

    Until you've lived through CRAP CASH times, do not pontificate on the evil of being a good steward of what little brains God has given us; and since gold is "acceptable" worldwide and throughout the ages, only a FOOL or government infiltrator would dare speak against any form of acquisition of the most recognized barter chip that a man can have when the shit hits the fan !

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  18. TONE!

    HA!

    Also, to everyone, I would point out that over the past year, the price of gold has risen by about 80 percent (roughly). Had our currency been tied to gold, I there would have been massive inflation. Because our currency is not tied to anything though, we have been able to prevent any inflation (we will also, when the price of gold comes streaking down in a few months to year be able to prevent the deflation, which would have happened if we were tied to gold)

    The point was made by someone that we still have booms and busts, but bigger than before. I do not think this is supported by any historical evidence. The 1800s in American economic history were fraught with huge booms and busts.

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  19. I think you have missed Krugman's position.

    May 2001

    "I, like many others, was frustrated at the smallish cut at the last Federal Open Market Committee meeting: I was pretty sure that Alan Greenspan had the tools to prevent a disastrous recession, but worried that he might be getting behind the curve. However, let's give credit where credit is due: Mr. Greenspan has cut rates since then. And while some of us may have been urging him to move even faster, the Fed's four interest-rate cuts since the slowdown became apparent represent an unusually aggressive response by historical standards. It's still not clear that Mr. Greenspan has caught up with the curve -- let's have at least one more rate cut, please -- but the interest-rate cuts do, cross your fingers, seem to be having an effect."

    July 2001


    Dobbs - The consumer is still very much in this economy. Can he or she -- or I should say he and she, can they bring back this economy?

    Krugman - Well, as far as the arithmetic goes, yes, it is possible. Will the Fed cut interest rates enough? Will long-term rates fall enough to get the consumer, get the housing sector there in time? We don't know"


    August 2001

    "Consumers, who already have low savings and high debt, probably can't contribute much. But housing, which is highly sensitive to interest rates, could help lead a recovery.... But there has been a peculiar disconnect between Fed policy and the financial variables that affect housing and trade. Housing demand depends on long-term rather than short-term interest rates -- and though the Fed has cut short rates from 6.5 to 3.75 percent since the beginning of the year, the 10-year rate is slightly higher than it was on Jan. 1.... Sooner or later, of course, investors will realize that 2001 isn't 1998. When they do, mortgage rates and the dollar will come way down, and the conditions for a recovery led by housing and exports will be in place.

    October 2001

    "In time this overhang will be worked off. Meanwhile, economic policy should encourage other spending to offset the temporary slump in business investment. Low interest rates, which promote spending on housing and other durable goods, are the main answer."

    July 2002

    "Given the definitely iffy economic outlook, shouldn't Mr. Greenspan be thinking seriously about another interest rate cut? True, rates are already very low. But if there's one thing we've learned from Japan's experience, it is that when you face the risk of a deflationary trap -- still not the most likely scenario, but not as unlikely as it seemed a few months ago -- it makes no sense to ''save your ammunition,'' holding interest rate cuts in reserve. The time to fight deflation is before it has time to get built into the nation's psychology. True, the Fed has been concerned that another cut would panic the markets. But now that the markets have panicked on their own, there's nothing to lose."

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  20. Steve6:10 PM

    First off, in international exchange, in the long run inflows equal outflows. You export so you can import. Foreign countries dont sell us goods so they can hang on to currency. They sell us goods so they can use the currency to buy goods from us. And vice versa. And there isnt much historical evidence of any nation manipulating gold, other than suspending conversions during war.

    Second, while it is correct that the potential for such a senerio remains if only a single country adopts a commodity currency, I dont think anyone is arguing anything other than an international standard.


    Yes, I agree that the vending machines are people taking advantage of clueless impulse buyers. It likely apeals to the same crowd who falls for Liberty Dollar

    Another mistake I think you're making is in treating the total supply of society's wealth as a constant over time.

    Why would you think I am making such a mistake? You are thinking I am forgetting about Y = ALαKβ. Which I am not. Though I dont see what that has to do with this, since we are not talking about long-run economic growth. That has nothing to do with monetary policy. We are discussing Ỹ = (Y-Ȳ)/ Ȳ. Short run economic model

    One of the reasons we have a stock market is to take advantage of the concept that wealth is not a zero-sum game, but increases over time as we come up with new technologies and innovations that extend human life spans and the quality of those lives.

    Well, the stock market is for business investment, but otherwise this is correct. Remember, Y = ALαKβ. The key part of this is "A", the total factor productivity, which is the technological advance.

    As such "boom" isn't necessarily always a short term spurt in growth.

    Um, thats sort of what it is by definition. . .

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  21. Anonymous8:22 AM

    I notice that in the FT.com article about the german vending machines they mention that they're outfitting the machines with cameras to deter money laundering.

    Is that a real issue with things like this? Would buying those Liberty dollars be a effective way of laundering someone else's, definitely not mine I swear, ill-gotten gains?

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