Gold. GOLD!!!!! Gooooollllllllllddddddd!!!!!!!!

Kite High

Well-Known Member
I auctioned mine in MS...google it for some good indications on value...mine are in pristine shape and this matters GREATLY in valuation

and why did "she" do this?
 

Dr Kynes

Well-Known Member
The dollar isn't an investment you're supposed to hold on to for 100 years; it's just a means of trading present value. The only cash people should have sitting around is what they need to live in the present and an emergency fund; all other cash should be invested, whether in physical or financial assets.
Money is intended to be a portable storable means of saving value and making transactions.

if i sell my motorcycle in san francisco for $1500 in gold in san francisco, get on a plane to japan and try to buy a roughly equally valued motorcycle in Tokyo, i can make that happen.

if i save that gold for 2 years and then try to buy a similar motorcycle in tokyo, ill get a better bike than expected. thanks fiat currency.

that same transaction in any fiat currency is unlikely to go smoothly, since over 2 years those $1500 bucks would have dropped like a stone in real purchasing power and thus the bike i bought in 1989 (for $300 bucks) will now cost me close to 1800 for the same fucking bike.

how much did your parent's first new car cost? how much does a similar new car cost now?
how much did a 2 br 1 ba house cost in 1990? how much does it cost now?
how much did a loaf of bread cost in 1990? how much now?
are you making 4x more money now than you were in 1990? or better yet, is the guy doing the job you had in 1990 making 4x more than you are now?

the dollar is worth LESS now than it ever has in history. it buys LESS SHIT, and wages have not kept pace. the dollar doesnt save and store value any more. it is useless as a money, and only works as a currency.
 

heckler73

Well-Known Member
Money is intended to be a portable storable means of saving value and making transactions.
...
the dollar is worth LESS now than it ever has in history. it buys LESS SHIT, and wages have not kept pace. the dollar doesnt save and store value any more. it is useless as a money, and only works as a currency.
Money is an agreement amongst a community to use something as a medium of exchange. You are describing functions of money.
What is value in this context?

I feel you hit the nail on the head without realizing it. Why do you think wages have not kept pace? And whose wages are you talking about?
 

tokeprep

Well-Known Member
Money is intended to be a portable storable means of saving value and making transactions.
Says who, you? Money is just a means of transacting.

if i sell my motorcycle in san francisco for $1500 in gold in san francisco, get on a plane to japan and try to buy a roughly equally valued motorcycle in Tokyo, i can make that happen.

if i save that gold for 2 years and then try to buy a similar motorcycle in tokyo, ill get a better bike than expected. thanks fiat currency.

that same transaction in any fiat currency is unlikely to go smoothly, since over 2 years those $1500 bucks would have dropped like a stone in real purchasing power and thus the bike i bought in 1989 (for $300 bucks) will now cost me close to 1800 for the same fucking bike.
The purpose of fiat currency is not to store value. The inflation rates for the past two years were 1.7% and 1.5%. Over those 2 years, your $1500 lost what, $50 in purchasing power? And that's assuming you held saved money as cash, which wasn't smart. You could have beaten the inflation rate in a CD; you could have beaten the inflation rate in the stock market; you could have beaten the inflation rate collecting dividends; you could have beaten the inflation rate by purchasing commodities like gold. That's exactly what people do.

how much did your parent's first new car cost? how much does a similar new car cost now?
how much did a 2 br 1 ba house cost in 1990? how much does it cost now?
how much did a loaf of bread cost in 1990? how much now?
are you making 4x more money now than you were in 1990? or better yet, is the guy doing the job you had in 1990 making 4x more than you are now?

the dollar is worth LESS now than it ever has in history. it buys LESS SHIT, and wages have not kept pace. the dollar doesnt save and store value any more. it is useless as a money, and only works as a currency.
You're repeating all of this nonsense again? $1 in 1990 had the same purchasing power as $1.78 today. The median wage in 1990 was about $28,000; the median wage today is about $50,000. $50,000/28,000 = 1.79. Wages kept pace with inflation, even or better for every quintile, as you know from our last inflation discussion.

The average new car in 1990 cost about $17,000; the average dealer incentive was $1,000, so $16,000. The average new car in 2012 cost about $30,000; the average dealer incentive was $2500, so $27,500. In real terms, a new car is $1000 less expensive than in 1990. If you had bought one in 2011, it would have been $2000 less expensive in real terms.

The median home price in 1990 was about $125,000. The median home price in 2012 was under $200,000--so housing actually got cheaper in real terms, by tens of thousands of dollars.

Bread is the only winner in your selection. The average price of a loaf of bread was 70 cents in 1990, $1.25 in 2013 dollars. The average price in 2012 was $1.41.

Now, let's work this out together. Let's say I pay $3,000 a year for the car and $18,000 a year for the house, and that I buy two loaves of bread per week for $150 over the year. In real terms over 1990, did I win or lose in the basket you put together? Yeah,I'm paying more for bread, but I'm paying substantially less for other goods. You don't need to make four times what people made in 1990, you just need to make 1.78 times as much. The median person does; every quintile does.

The dollar is worth less now than in 1990, yes, in the sense that it takes 1.78 times as many dollars to have equivalent purchasing power. But no, you're wrong, it doesn't buy less, because wages have kept pace with inflation, and that's a simple fact. That you keep repeating this "FOUR TIMES INCREASE!" nonsense when it's so blatantly false casts doubt on every contention about inflation you make. If you don't like inflation, fine, rant about it, but once you've deviated from reality and created your own facts your voice becomes hushed and meaningless.
 

ChesusRice

Well-Known Member
I auctioned mine in MS...google it for some good indications on value...mine are in pristine shape and this matters GREATLY in valuation

and why did "she" do this?
It's a joke. She reallty did buy me some newly printed confederate money. She bought it at the Gettysburg Museum where they specialize in seperating dollars from student tour groups.
 

Dr Kynes

Well-Known Member
Says who, you? Money is just a means of transacting.
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Functions-of-Money.topicArticleId-9789,articleId-9745.html

The purpose of fiat currency is not to store value.
the IMF, World Bank, the Brettton Woods Agreement signatories, every bank that ever was, every moneylender who ever clinked two coins together, every market that ever existed, every person who ever sold a thing and then hoped to buy another thing the next day, next week or next year, etc...

The inflation rates for the past two years were 1.7% and 1.5%.
the inflation rate deliberately excludes fuel, food, housing, energy, etc etc. it is a means of measuring how well the makers of manufactured goods are doing, not a measure of how poorly the currency is retaining it's value.


Over those 2 years, your $1500 lost what, $50 in purchasing power? And that's assuming you held saved money as cash, which wasn't smart. You could have beaten the inflation rate in a CD; you could have beaten the inflation rate in the stock market; you could have beaten the inflation rate collecting dividends; you could have beaten the inflation rate by purchasing commodities like gold. That's exactly what people do.
]

so, US currency has no ability to store value, and this is good. the "inflation rate" is an accurate measure of how well the currency is keeping pace with investements, and any money not working for you is working against you...

somebody went to a "Rich Dad Poor Dad" seminar and totally took notes.

do you also take believe what you hear when you listen to campfire stories, fairy tales, religious sermons, political speeches, campaign promises and when you watch Benny Hinn do his faith healing routine?

i got some bad news for ya bro...



You're repeating all of this nonsense again? $1 in 1990 had the same purchasing power as $1.78 today. The median wage in 1990 was about $28,000; the median wage today is about $50,000. $50,000/28,000 = 1.79. Wages kept pace with inflation, even or better for every quintile, as you know from our last inflation discussion.
when your song isnt selling, maybe you need to change the tune?

nahhhhh!! just get Ja Rule to sing the hook on the remix.

The average new car in 1990 cost about $17,000; the average dealer incentive was $1,000, so $16,000. The average new car in 2012 cost about $30,000; the average dealer incentive was $2500, so $27,500. In real terms, a new car is $1000 less expensive than in 1990. If you had bought one in 2011, it would have been $2000 less expensive in real terms.
so what youre saying is... the price you pay for a car is irrelevant, only the car salesman's pitch is important...

1990 Honda Accord DX : MSRP $12,145
~http://www.edmunds.com/honda/accord/history.html

2013 Honda Accord DX: MSRP $23,350.
~http://www.edmunds.com/honda/accord/

so in real terms, the same make and model now costs nearly double what it did in 1990.


ohh i see. you must mean the OTHER kind of inflation.

The median home price in 1990 was about $125,000. The median home price in 2012 was under $200,000--so housing actually got cheaper in real terms, by tens of thousands of dollars.
now see, theres where youre just spouting nonsense. Zillow has a "price history" and you can look at what a single house sold for in the past and what it sells for now. go ahead, check it out. the same house usually sells for 3-5X what it sold for in the late 80's or early 90's. youll be able to find sintkers, like burnt out husks, forclosed crackhouses, etc, so save that drama. a move in ready house sold first in 1984 for $107k is now $299K and it's just the first house i picked in sacramento (which is a seriously depressed market, one of the top 3 "investment opportunity markets" in the country

Bread is the only winner in your selection. The average price of a loaf of bread was 70 cents in 1990, $1.25 in 2013 dollars. The average price in 2012 was $1.41.
whole wheat bread in the early 90's cost ~$.99 now it pushes $4.50 same bread same store.

Now, let's work this out together. Let's say I pay $3,000 a year for the car and $18,000 a year for the house, and that I buy two loaves of bread per week for $150 over the year. In real terms over 1990, did I win or lose in the basket you put together? Yeah,I'm paying more for bread, but I'm paying substantially less for other goods. You don't need to make four times what people made in 1990, you just need to make 1.78 times as much. The median person does; every quintile does.

The dollar is worth less now than in 1990, yes, in the sense that it takes 1.78 times as many dollars to have equivalent purchasing power. But no, you're wrong, it doesn't buy less, because wages have kept pace with inflation, and that's a simple fact. That you keep repeating this "FOUR TIMES INCREASE!" nonsense when it's so blatantly false casts doubt on every contention about inflation you make. If you don't like inflation, fine, rant about it, but once you've deviated from reality and created your own facts your voice becomes hushed and meaningless.
hushed and meaningless my ass. you can spit all the stats you liike, facts dont lie. everything costs 2-5x more now than the same shit did in the late 80's and early 90's because our currency is worth LES now than it was then. and wages have not increased at the same pace.
 

Canna Sylvan

Well-Known Member
Doc,

How about sales tax has increased from 5.75% to over 8.75% in many places?

Or the fact my Philco tv from the 70s looks just as shitty nearly 40 years later. How long does a landline compared to a cell phone you're forced to "upgrade" or "broke?" A phone I had just 4 years ago only works in Mexico as an illegal's tool to sneak in, iDen Walkie Talkie. CDMA only phones, FTW! See, even illegals are taking a hitch on top of the coyote fee.

What about getting granny an iPad so you can go Facetime with her grandchildren, where before she was living with your family decades ago. But we're now enlightened and put her ass in a retirement home.

I could go on. But point is, where is that in the CPI? Well? Yet liberal bitches like Buck will more than gladly point out Obama Phones are a necessity to pay more,over just regular Universal Lifeline landline, cause where's the payphones.

Oh, did you hear, besides being the only president to suspend Whitehouse tours, which didn't even happen during the Great Depression, is happening even though the dollar is stellar according to Tokeprep. Here it comes, Obama Phone is being considered by the administration for the chopping block too.
The hell? Snap!
 

tokeprep

Well-Known Member
Your own definition is clearly talking about a temporary store of value, which should be especially clear since it goes on to warn about inflation eroding purchasing power. There's nothing here about money needing to hold its real value for extended periods of time.

the IMF, World Bank, the Brettton Woods Agreement signatories, every bank that ever was, every moneylender who ever clinked two coins together, every market that ever existed, every person who ever sold a thing and then hoped to buy another thing the next day, next week or next year, etc...
What about them?

the inflation rate deliberately excludes fuel, food, housing, energy, etc etc. it is a means of measuring how well the makers of manufactured goods are doing, not a measure of how poorly the currency is retaining it's value.
Really? Which inflation rate are you talking about? You seem to be talking about Core CPI, which is just one of the numbers BLS calculates; Core CPI excludes energy and food. But the other CPI numbers include everything, and that's where I got my numbers. My inflation rate excludes nothing.

so what youre saying is... the price you pay for a car is irrelevant, only the car salesman's pitch is important...

1990 Honda Accord DX : MSRP $12,145
~http://www.edmunds.com/honda/accord/history.html

2013 Honda Accord DX: MSRP $23,350.
~http://www.edmunds.com/honda/accord/

so in real terms, the same make and model now costs nearly double what it did in 1990.


ohh i see. you must mean the OTHER kind of inflation.
See, Kynes, I compared the price of an average car between the two periods. You're committing a logical fallacy by finding the price of one specific model of car from one specific maker that supposedly proves your case about inflation.

But it doesn't even matter because your attempt at a logical fallacy doesn't even make your point. Subtract the average dealer incentive from the MSRP and that Honda Accord costs the same or less than it did in 1990. Did you not bother to work the math out before you posted? Here, I'll do it for you: $12,145 x 1.78 = $21,618. Now, $23,350 - $2,500 average dealer incentive = $20,850. $21,618 - $20,850 = $768. So your Honda Accord, in real terms, costs less than it did in 1990.

Edit: I realize I didn't subtract the average dealer incentive of $1,000 in 1990 from the 1990 price. Doing that, the car is $232 more expensive in 2013. Of course, Honda was a discount car in 1990, wasn't it? And now it's not--it's on par with any domestic car--which undermines this comparison even further. That's why the average price in both periods is probably the best aggregate measurement.

now see, theres where youre just spouting nonsense. Zillow has a "price history" and you can look at what a single house sold for in the past and what it sells for now. go ahead, check it out. the same house usually sells for 3-5X what it sold for in the late 80's or early 90's. youll be able to find sintkers, like burnt out husks, forclosed crackhouses, etc, so save that drama. a move in ready house sold first in 1984 for $107k is now $299K and it's just the first house i picked in sacramento (which is a seriously depressed market, one of the top 3 "investment opportunity markets" in the country
Once again you're committing a logical fallacy. I took median home prices and you're talking about using Zillow to find specific houses that have sold for many times what they sold for in 1990. Your Zillow data is not as representative as the national median home sales price.

The simple and easily discerned fact is that the national median home sales price was about $125,000 in 1990 and under $200,000 in 2012. No one cares about your unrepresentative Zillow numbers that say nothing about inflation on the national scale.

whole wheat bread in the early 90's cost ~$.99 now it pushes $4.50 same bread same store.
Now see, I buy whole wheat bread every week, and I only pay about $2.50. So what the fuck are you talking about? Your $4.50 price is not at all representative of reality.

I have seen premium bread selling for $4.5, but that bread (if it existed in 1990) wasn't 99 cents in 1990. And it certainly isn't representative of the price of whole wheat bread regardless.

hushed and meaningless my ass. you can spit all the stats you liike, facts dont lie. everything costs 2-5x more now than the same shit did in the late 80's and early 90's because our currency is worth LES now than it was then. and wages have not increased at the same pace.
Facts don't lie, you're right. Everyone reading this thread has seen me display facts and statistical reality against your baseless assertions grounded in anecdotal experience. We can all look up the median and average prices and do the math ourselves, and that reveals that everything you're pushing is fanciful nonsense.
 

tokeprep

Well-Known Member
Oh, did you hear, besides being the only president to suspend Whitehouse tours, which didn't even happen during the Great Depression, is happening even though the dollar is stellar according to Tokeprep. Here it comes, Obama Phone is being considered by the administration for the chopping block too.
The hell? Snap!
I don't think the dollar is stellar. We could easily do a lot to improve our economy and reduce our deficits/debt, and that would be to our benefit.

But everything economic is relative. The simple truth is that, relatively speaking, the United States is still the best bet of any bet in the world. Europe? Total disaster right now, with the next crisis probably just waiting to surface. China? It's looking soft and a lot of people don't trust the data. Japan? Well, Japan's been Japan for 20 years now. All of this leaves some play room in US monetary policy, and that's exactly why they're playing.

The first mistake of economics is assuming that people always make rational decisions, since they obviously don't. Another mistake is to believe that people, in aggregate, will rationally consider the money supply and make economic decisions with that reality in mind. They don't. Doubling the number of dollars in circulation doesn't mean that inflation will be 100%--empirically it just doesn't work that way. Indeed, many economists are presently expressing concerns about deflation, not inflation. Some people think the Fed has been particularly aggressive precisely because inflation is so low. I don't think we're in the midst of a crisis, though.
 

Balzac89

Undercover Mod
I don't think the dollar is stellar. We could easily do a lot to improve our economy and reduce our deficits/debt, and that would be to our benefit.

But everything economic is relative. The simple truth is that, relatively speaking, the United States is still the best bet of any bet in the world. Europe? Total disaster right now, with the next crisis probably just waiting to surface. China? It's looking soft and a lot of people don't trust the data. Japan? Well, Japan's been Japan for 20 years now. All of this leaves some play room in US monetary policy, and that's exactly why they're playing.

The first mistake of economics is assuming that people always make rational decisions, since they obviously don't. Another mistake is to believe that people, in aggregate, will rationally consider the money supply and make economic decisions with that reality in mind. They don't. Doubling the number of dollars in circulation doesn't mean that inflation will be 100%--empirically it just doesn't work that way. Indeed, many economists are presently expressing concerns about deflation, not inflation. Some people think the Fed has been particularly aggressive precisely because inflation is so low. I don't think we're in the midst of a crisis, though.
The primary emotions that run the "free" are irrational fear and greed. Mostly greed.
 

NoDrama

Well-Known Member
Says who, you? Money is just a means of transacting.



The purpose of fiat currency is not to store value. The inflation rates for the past two years were 1.7% and 1.5%. Over those 2 years, your $1500 lost what, $50 in purchasing power? And that's assuming you held saved money as cash, which wasn't smart. You could have beaten the inflation rate in a CD; you could have beaten the inflation rate in the stock market; you could have beaten the inflation rate collecting dividends; you could have beaten the inflation rate by purchasing commodities like gold. That's exactly what people do.



You're repeating all of this nonsense again? $1 in 1990 had the same purchasing power as $1.78 today. The median wage in 1990 was about $28,000; the median wage today is about $50,000. $50,000/28,000 = 1.79. Wages kept pace with inflation, even or better for every quintile, as you know from our last inflation discussion.

The average new car in 1990 cost about $17,000; the average dealer incentive was $1,000, so $16,000. The average new car in 2012 cost about $30,000; the average dealer incentive was $2500, so $27,500. In real terms, a new car is $1000 less expensive than in 1990. If you had bought one in 2011, it would have been $2000 less expensive in real terms.

The median home price in 1990 was about $125,000. The median home price in 2012 was under $200,000--so housing actually got cheaper in real terms, by tens of thousands of dollars.

Bread is the only winner in your selection. The average price of a loaf of bread was 70 cents in 1990, $1.25 in 2013 dollars. The average price in 2012 was $1.41.

Now, let's work this out together. Let's say I pay $3,000 a year for the car and $18,000 a year for the house, and that I buy two loaves of bread per week for $150 over the year. In real terms over 1990, did I win or lose in the basket you put together? Yeah,I'm paying more for bread, but I'm paying substantially less for other goods. You don't need to make four times what people made in 1990, you just need to make 1.78 times as much. The median person does; every quintile does.

The dollar is worth less now than in 1990, yes, in the sense that it takes 1.78 times as many dollars to have equivalent purchasing power. But no, you're wrong, it doesn't buy less, because wages have kept pace with inflation, and that's a simple fact. That you keep repeating this "FOUR TIMES INCREASE!" nonsense when it's so blatantly false casts doubt on every contention about inflation you make. If you don't like inflation, fine, rant about it, but once you've deviated from reality and created your own facts your voice becomes hushed and meaningless.
You would be correct if you were only using the numbers the government gives you, but you cannot compare anything of today with anything before 2006 because ALL the formulas used to come up with inflation numbers were all rejiggered to a new formula.

If they were using the same mathematical formulas from the Reagan Era, we would be at 25% unemployment and at 12-16% inflation.

Impossible to compare ANYTHING, it is not proper because you aren't quantifying things the same way anymore.
 

Canna Sylvan

Well-Known Member
Goldman Sachs paid $550 million for mortgage fraud "reparations" that are fines but those who got cheated never got their money back. Will it get fined for its gold fraud?

This isn't free market capitalism, but what happens when we strive for communist equality using socialism.

Goldman Sachs pays the government. Yet its unfazed. Maybe it made a deal. Which party does Goldman Sachs give most of its contributions again? Which party is Cheesy in the OP mocking?

These aren't the droids you're looking for.
 

MuyLocoNC

Well-Known Member
I went to three of my regular haunts to buy some silver today. Couple of coin shops and pawn shops up in Raleigh. Left with the cash still in my pocket. They didn't even have any of the silver coinage. Apparently it really is just the paper that is being dumped. I've NEVER walked out of a coin shop without a couple ounces.
 

Balzac89

Undercover Mod
I went to three of my regular haunts to buy some silver today. Couple of coin shops and pawn shops up in Raleigh. Left with the cash still in my pocket. They didn't even have any of the silver coinage. Apparently it really is just the paper that is being dumped. I've NEVER walked out of a coin shop without a couple ounces.
Same thing happened to me a few weeks ago so i ordered Silver Bars online, they just came in today!
 

NoDrama

Well-Known Member
We have an actual exchange nearby, but even they are having trouble sourcing physical silver. All other sources are completely dry. There were lines out the door of people wanting to buy silver and gold last week.
 
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