tybs
had this on(one of the many live albums-can't recall which one) during a train ride through and around lake como many year's ago. Too bad I didn't have any pot!
Your Move, Gold Critics: Please Explain What Money Is
(that includes you too Cramer you fucking loser)
(Op-Ed-BTW it is nice to see these guys really starting to speak their mind's now-was not too recent they were laughed at
Owners of Bitcoin have endured a wild ride in recent years. While the coin could fetch $900 when 2017 began, one year later its value briefly moved above $20,000. At present, one Bitcoin exchanges for roughly $5,000.
The coin’s substantial volatility ably explains why, at least for now, it’s not seen as a worthy substitute for the dollar. It more realistically exhibits the floating dollar’s worst qualities, many times over.
Indeed, imagine entering into a transaction in which payment would be made in the cryptocurrency. I’ll pay you 10 Bitcoin to remodel my kitchen. Ok, but which Bitcoin? The 2017 version, or the much more valuable coin of 2018? How about I pay you 10 Bitcoin now, and 10 in April of 2020 to add on a room to my house? Assuming continued volatility, someone’s going to be very unhappy next April.
So while Bitcoin fails in the present as a dollar replacement, its volatility instructs. Who among us would comfortably enter into a transaction in which the medium of exchange facilitating the transaction is bouncing around in the most erratic of ways? The question is rhetorical.
Funny about the critics of gold is that they’re revealing their own misunderstandings in reacting so negatively, and their confusion extends well beyond an inability for them to comprehend money’s purpose. Seemingly lost on those who view the gold standard as the low-rent equivalent of a diner using the outside eating utensils to cut the entrée’s meat is that the Fed doesn’t oversee the dollar’s exchange rate as is. And it never has. That Fed officials rarely discuss the dollar’s exchange rate is seemingly lost on the naïve minds who fear Cain and Moore will – gasp – relink the dollar to gold. Sorry, but the dollar’s exchange rate has at least in the last 100 years been a Treasury/presidential function, and assuming anyone cares about the Constitution anymore, it began (Congress “coins money, regulates the value thereof") as a prerogative of Congress. Pethoukoukis, Rampell and the economists they aim to please have their history wrong in addition to not understanding money.
After that, not asked enough of gold-standard critics is what exactly has them so hysterical. If it’s about gold somehow limiting the supply of dollars, there’s no empirical evidence supporting what is an unserious claim. Figure that the supply of dollars (soure: Nathan Lewis, who will forget more about money in the time it takes to read this than Pethokoukis and Rampell will ever know) soared 163 times from 1785 to 1900 despite the greenback’s gold definition. The supply of dollars is production determined. Where there’s production there will always be copious "money" to facilitate exchange of same. Where there’s very little, there will be very little money. It’s not by coincidence that dollars are plentiful in Manhattan, but relatively scarce in the Bronx. Money supply doesn’t instigate as the monetary fabulists would have us believe, rather it’s an effect of production.
As for the operation of a gold standard system, lost on the myriad critics is that it wouldn’t even require any gold. Instead, what would be required is a commitment by Treasury to maintaining the dollar’s value in terms of a commodity least vulnerable to outside influences that result in volatility.
rest at link
(edited down-full article at link)
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-10/your-move-gold-critics-please-explain-what-money
Pier 39 and vaguely recall this 'event'
digits
https://www.secform4.com/