Gold explained

[Into the Night]

The true horror of the economy manipulates gold prices.

Gold prices are not determined by any economy.

Numbers on a screen, that I can use to buy goods and services.

Gold is a commodity, not "numbers on a screen". Few people have facilities to accept gold as payment for goods and services. A few do, though.
Silver is a more practical day to day currency, if one were to use precious metals for currency (like what is constitutionally declared in the United States).

An ounce of any metal is still an ounce. Compared to the rapidly depreciating fiat dollar, gold is currently worth $3342 of those! (Source: Kitco quoting London Spot Price)

 

[Into the Night]

and the ptb will not let it rise to reflect the true worthlessness of the money.

They are certainly trying, but they are losing their ability to manipulate it. They can only flood the market with 'paper' gold, not the real thing.

 

[Into the Night]

I know I am making a lot of money off the rise of gold,

Then you lied, Wally.

but I question the worth of gold.

Why?

Money can be used to pay taxes, and to buy goods and services from other people who might want to pay taxes.

So? You can always convert any gold or silver required to the local currency to pay your taxes.

Money is infinitely fungible.

A nothing statement, Wally. ALL currencies (including gold or silver) are only used due to the faith in that currency. The fiat dollar is no exception.
It that faith fails, that currency use goes with it.

Gold is non-corrosive,

Gold can corrode, but is not usually considered 'non-corrosive'.

conductive,

Like all metals. Gold is better than many, but not better than copper.

shiny,

Like all metals.

and kind of pretty;

A subjective statement.

these are hardly things of amazing worth in the modern world.

You just denied the entire jewelry industry, the home care industry, the landscaping industry, etc.

And gold is so heavy

An ounce is an ounce, Wally. It still weighs one ounce.

and difficult to exchange.

Gold is easily exchanged. So is silver. Anyone that has the facilities to check it's purity will accept gold and silver. It's not hard to procure that equipment either. I have such equipment, and I do accept gold or silver as payment.

It is difficult to use in commerce.

Not by me. Like I said, you can conduct commerce with gold and silver quite easily, and at one time in this country, we did just that.
Gold and silver are also quite compatible with modern credit systems. The only difference is the currency backing the transaction.

 

[Into the Night]

Actually, you are using that out of context. I did not actually say I have a whole lot of money.

Don't try to deny your own posts, Wally. It NEVER WORKS!

I said I had a whole lot of money in a Roth IRA. If you have a $1,000 in your wallet, you have a whole lot of money in your wallet, but you do not have a whole lot of money.

Pivot fallacy. Don't try to deny your own posts, Wally.

There are over 3,000 billionaires in the world, but only one known Roth billionaire. Getting money in a Roth is very difficult, so somewhat unusual.

While in normal times, this would be great for me, these days it is a little worrisome. A Roth is very tied to the USA, and trump is doing a lot of destruction to the USA.

The USA is not being destroyed, Wally.

I do not work for Uber Eats,

Get fired?

and do not start work at 5:00PM.

So you got fired.

Again, knowing the truth, I know when you are lying about what I said.

Denying your own posts never works, Wally.

The computer systems are crunching risks until 6:30, so I do not start work until 6:30... When I do have to go to work which is getting rarer these days. I am working more on other projects from home.

Paradox. Irrational. You cannot argue both sides of a paradox, Wally.

 

[Into the Night]

A year or 2 ago I told you war would cause oil to go up to $130 a barrel, so if you think the US will bomb Iran, now is a good time to buy oil.

The United States doesn't buy oil from Iran.

 

[Into the Night]

Oil is at $64 to $65 a barrel now, so we have a long way to go.

$62 now.

Bush, and Bush's wars did take it up to $147.27.

Never happened. The highest oil got at that time was $28.07.

Oil spiked up to $111.06 during the economic depression during the Obama years. When Trump ended that depression, oil dropped to $43.67.
It spiked AGAIN during the economic depression during the Biden years to $101.93. It is currently dropping again now that Trump is ending the current economic depression.

Source: Light Sweet Crude prices 1976-2025.

That was in a time when the huge oil companies could push up the price more. There are a lot of smaller producers now.

Price is determined by price discovery, Wally.

trump allowed oil to go negative.

Oil never went 'negative', Wally.

I got a bunch of panicked messages from a few friends saying oil was below $10, and I should buy. I slept through them, because I was tired. When I woke up and heard the messages, I rushed to my computer, only to see oil had gone negative. I did not even know that was possible.

Oil was never below $10. The lowest price it's been since 1976 is $12.80.

It wiped out a lot of people.

Oil didn't wipe out anyone, Wally.

This might be a good time to buy oil futures, but I have seen that trump will allow the markets to collapse, and even go negative.

Oil doesn't go negative, Wally.

That is making me worried to invest in oil futures.

Good. You'll lose again!

 

[Into the Night]

OPEC is putting the hurt on US oil and gas companies. How much does the price of oil have to be for the Permian Basin oilfields to break even? Minus their subsidies.

OPEC does not put any 'hurt' on the US.
1. The United States doesn't buy oil from OPEC.
2. OPEC does not control the oil market. They found this out the hard way once!

 

[Into the Night]

I do not keep completely up on the oil market, but from my understanding:
The cost of the last barrel of oil in the USA is usually given as in the low 50's. I think that has changed, and the cost of investment has gone up severely. I believe the cost of the last barrel of oil is really in the low 60's. A lot of our oil production has been cheaper due to the low cost of financing investment in the USA. That former low cost is rising.

OPEC has in the past hurt small oil companies, but companies like ExxonMobile are insulated. If oil prices go up, they have huge investments in oil production, and do well. If oil prices go down, they have huge investments in gasoline production, and do well.

There is only one person who has ever really hurt ExxonMobile, and that is trump. trump devastated the American oil industry with his oil price shock.

Oil is not gasoline, Wally. Redefinition fallacy.

 

[Into the Night]

Gold is a commodity. It's no different than steel (iron), silver, copper, tomatoes, or lumber for that matter. The price is set by two things:

Demand for use in end products
Speculation on trading markets.

Gold is widely used in industrial practices usually as a plating. Gold in its pure form is very malleable and not nearly as useful as it is when alloyed.

Gold is used to make jewelry, in gold plating (typically circuit board contacts where abrasion and corrosion can be a problem), fine wire (also used in packaging chips), as a catalyst in certain chemical reactions, gold leaf used to cover statues and other objects, aerospace for it's infrared reflective properties (typically used as a foil or gold leaf), and is also made into coins and bars.

About 11% of the gold obtained today is used in something other than coins and bars.

The price is set by one and only one factor: price discovery, which is the same factor for all commodities. Yes, demand and supply are factors affecting this.

 

[goat]

OPEC does not put any 'hurt' on the US.
1. The United States doesn't buy oil from OPEC.
2. OPEC does not control the oil market. They found this out the hard way once!

Your arrested development is equal to Dutch. You may as well join the Bowel movement and get sent a pic of Owl's 70yo flappies.

 

[Into the Night]

TA answered your question on gold.

He doesn't know the first thing about it. That's all he demonstrated.

I will add that banksters are touting crypto and CBDC as the new gold.

Nope. They use fiat dollars, as directed by the Federal Reserve.
Cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and others can be used as a currency, but they are not based on gold. They are based on limitations imposed by the blockchain encryption. New coins MUST conform to that encryption and are slow and difficult to 'mine'. Such blockchain systems only allow a certain number of coins total. Fractional coins are typically used for transactions.

Cryptocurrency has a few major disadvantages:
* They require access to the internet to conduct a transaction. (Gold doesn't!)
* They require technical expertise that most people don't have to use the digital 'wallets' safely.
* Losing the password on a 'wallet' or losing the 'wallet' permanently removes the coins therein from the blockchain, and you permanently lose that much currency.
* As transactions are conducted, the blockchain gets longer and longer, and the entire thing must be copied from machine to machine to verify transactions. There is no protocol to mitigate this. It's similar to the 'hosts' problem before DNS. Unfortunately, a distributed database like DNS allows easy forgery of transactions or even Coins. A Coin looks like it transferred, when in fact will get rejected once the entire blockchain is scanned.

While people like Elon Musk likes cryptocurrency, I just don't see it replacing the fiat dollar.
I see a return to gold and silver, if anything. Transactions can be conducted without the internet, using easily obtainable equipment for checking purity. It is very compatible with today's credit systems, backing by gold rather than by a fiat currency. Loans, credit cards, and all of that can still work with gold and silver as currency.

The fiat dollar IS failing. It's not failing as fast as other nations (like Japan!), bit it IS failing. It's a worldwide race to the bottom. The world has never been here before.

The US will eventually ditch the dollar and default on our debt. We've been talking about this for years.

If the debt defaults, the federal government goes with it. I doubt that will happen. The debt will continue to be serviced. The fiat dollar is certainly on it's last legs though. Moving to a different currency means nothing to the debt.

Someone has to pay the US navy to protect oil tankers. Trump gave the pentagon a $1 trillion budget on the books. That doesn't include the other $1 trillion of taxpayer money that goes to USAID and NGOs run by the CIA.

Any currency of choice can easily be converted into the local currency to pay taxes.

The global economy is in big trouble

There is no such thing as a 'global economy'. The Earth has many economies, some doing well, others not so well.

so expect the US to make use of this crisis

Trump is ending the crisis caused by Democrats.

by expanding on the wars we instigated.

War is ruinous to any country waging them. It is a waste of wealth. War destroys wealth.

Not many here seem to care about all the international laws the US ignores.

Void argument fallacy.

 

[Into the Night]

Almost no gold is consumed.

About 11% is used for something other than coins and bars.

It is mostly just stored in one form or another. Lumber is mostly consumed.

Lumber is not a precious metal, Wally.

 

[Damocles]

I told you, when everything is going down at once, even stuff that shouldn't, the issue is reactionary rather than inflationary....

These people were reacting, and they were not sure what was going to happen. And once it starts going down, foolish people continue to sell because they want to "mitigate losses". I was purchasing. And told y'all to purchase some gold because it was going down too, even though it shouldn't. It went back up nicely (It did not triple though).

 

[Into the Night]

That is the taxpayers, not the oil companies in particular. The huge trump deficit is not weighing on oil prices.

Trump does not control spending. Congress does (the House).

 

[Into the Night]

Your arrested development is equal to Dutch.

I am not Sybil, goat.

You may as well join the Bowel movement and get sent a pic of Owl's 70yo flappies.

I am not Phanty, goat.

 

[Into the Night]

I told you, when everything is going down at once, even stuff that shouldn't, the issue is reactionary rather than inflationary....

These people were reacting, and they were not sure what was going to happen. And once it starts going down, foolish people continue to sell because they want to "mitigate losses". I was purchasing. And told y'all to purchase some gold because it was going down too, even though it shouldn't. It went back up nicely (It did not triple though).

Rather depends on when you bought the gold. It HAS tripled in price since I bought it.

 

[Damocles]

Rather depends on when you bought the gold. It HAS tripled in price since I bought it.

When it was going down rather than up recently it never got to a level it could triple... I was speaking to the OP.

I bought most of my gold in early 2000s... It has more than tripled, but that was not what I was talking about. The OP bragged about buying when "righties thought it was going up but it was really going down"... The only time I know of that somewhat happening was in the early months of this year, and it surely has not tripled anybody's money in that timeframe.

 

[goat]

When it was going down rather than up recently it never got to a level it could triple... I was speaking to the OP.

I bought most of my gold in early 2000s... It has more than tripled, but that was not what I was talking about. The OP bragged about buying when "righties thought it was going up but it was really going down"... The only time I know of that somewhat happening was in the early months of this year, and it surely has not tripled anybody's money in that timeframe.

Gold should be at $4000 an once but the US is keeping it down to save the dollar. Physical gold is money that benefits those holding it, whereas the dollar is fiat currency in decline. This is economics 101.

My concern is the US will crash gold with the hope of saving the dollar.

 

[Damocles]

Gold should be at $4000 an once but the US is keeping it down to save the dollar. Physical gold is money that benefits those holding it, whereas the dollar is fiat currency in decline. This is economics 101.

My concern is the US will crash gold with the hope of saving the dollar.

You cannot crash something with intrinsic value.

 

[goat]

You cannot crash something with intrinsic value.

US national debt has been kicking dollar default down the road for a very long time. There is no legitimate reason for gold to be held under $4000 an oz simply to convince the world the dollar is a better investment.

It's a clear sign the US is desperate and willing to do anything to control the global economy.