If gold standard were enacted today - what would they value gold at?

that's why we're all here. unfortunately... we account for only about 2% of the population and most people are more concerned with short-term rewards vs. long-term fixes.
 
Supply and demand will determine the value of gold, just as it does today. Of course, if we press gold back into widespread use as a medium of exchange, demand will go way, way up and there indeed won't be much used in computers or anything else.

And there will be bi-metal-ism. I sincerely doubt every country will universally go to gold. And while including gold in an alloy would indeed solve the problem of making a quarter gram of the stuff big enough so it doesn't slip through the stitching of your pants pocket, it sure would be a waste of a pretty thing. So, some kind of reserve bank would have to be established and even the coinage would represent a share of that reserve of gold, or some other metal would be needed which would be easier to handle.
 
acptulsa said:
Supply and demand will determine the value of gold, just as it does today. Of course, if we press gold back into widespread use as a medium of exchange, demand will go way, way up and there indeed won't be much used in computers or anything else.

And there will be bi-metal-ism. I sincerely doubt every country will universally go to gold. And while including gold in an alloy would indeed solve the problem of making a quarter gram of the stuff big enough so it doesn't slip through the stitching of your pants pocket, it sure would be a waste of a pretty thing. So, some kind of reserve bank would have to be established and even the coinage would represent a share of that reserve of gold, or some other metal would be needed which would be easier to handle.
Click to expand...

That's how we got where we are now. It's best to keep banks out of the equation. Banks have notoriously been famous for printing more receipts for gold or silver than they actually have. Let the coins be minted and in the hands of the populous. As more coins are needed, more can be minted from supplies mined. Letting a bank come up with more by just running a printing press doesn't solve the problem and only makes it go back to how it is now. Banks shouldn't be needed for anything but for people to store their savings in and perhaps make loans. Paper money (receipts) should be prohibited as they always lead to runs on the banks.
 
Bimetallism from different countries is not a problem because a U.S. dollar =/= a Spanish dollar. Value conversion would be required.

Dual standards (two precise definitions) for the U.S. dollar is messed up.
A gold coin valued at $10 and a silver coin valued at $1 doesn't work because the prices of the metals are fixed to each other by the definition of our dollar. If we still used Alexander Hamilton's two definitions of the dollar, that gold eagle with a face value of $10 = ~$790 FRNs today and the silver dollar $1 = ~$25 FRNs which means that $790 = $25.

However, you could have a gold coin valued at an eagle and a silver coin valued at a dollar and each would be clearly defined.
For example, $50 = 1 Eagle today, but tomorrow $50 may only buy .9 Eagles depending on the market, etc.
 
Last edited:
cbc58 said:
THEY can do whatever they want... and have. THEY make the rules.
Click to expand...

Perhaps, but they can do it much more easily with almost any asset than with gold. Any assets held "for" you by banks, credit unions, stock brokers, 401k/IRA managers, and so on are history with nothing more than the stroke of a pen. Your house is there for the taking. You can flee with your vehicle but it is hard to hide.

So tell me, what asset is harder for government to confiscate than gold?
 
I have a question. There are a lot of dollars all over the place. If we went on the gold standard, some body in India or China or Japan would take a couple hundred dollars and try to convert it into gold, claiming said gold standard. What would happen if only American passport holders could convert dollars to gold IN America? The Chinese couldn't come to America wanting gold. But some American, might take the dollars from the Chinese to get gold. What would happen in this situation? Would some sort of black market be created? I guess the Chinese would hire an American to convert their dollars to gold for them. The reason I ask is to some how keep America's gold in America.

I guess there's ways around everything.
 
american.swan said:
I have a question. There are a lot of dollars all over the place. If we went on the gold standard, some body in India or China or Japan would take a couple hundred dollars and try to convert it into gold, claiming said gold standard. What would happen if only American passport holders could convert dollars to gold IN America? The Chinese couldn't come to America wanting gold. But some American, might take the dollars from the Chinese to get gold. What would happen in this situation? Would some sort of black market be created? I guess the Chinese would hire an American to convert their dollars to gold for them. The reason I ask is to some how keep America's gold in America.

I guess there's ways around everything.
Click to expand...
With competing currencies, those with the fiat currency could buy the other non fiat currencies and thus have their gold or silver or whatever currency they decided they liked. They would be wise to just buy gold and silver right now and get rid of that soon to be worthless paper.
 
Acala said:
Perhaps, but they can do it much more easily with almost any asset than with gold. Any assets held "for" you by banks, credit unions, stock brokers, 401k/IRA managers, and so on are history with nothing more than the stroke of a pen. Your house is there for the taking. You can flee with your vehicle but it is hard to hide.

So tell me, what asset is harder for government to confiscate than gold?
Click to expand...

I'd rather give up my gold than my house or my food. So... gold is easier if that were the choice. You seem to think that people will want to hold onto it - and some will - but others will gladly give it up to eat or quench thier thirst... but that's another argument.

I think this movement needs to figure out how to address the question of "if not the fiat money system - what then?".. because people are going to want an answer other than "a sound money system". They want specifics.
 
Last edited:
yeah.. but they are going to want to know what that means - in specific detail as it relates to them. if it means that their dollars automatically become worth 1/6th of what they own - you can kiss the election goodbye. people want to be given things not have it taken away from them.

saying "gold standard", as it's been discussed here, really isn't all that simple. imagine trying to put it into practice.
 
Ron Paul addresses your concern, and it is a major obstacle for sure.
http://mises.org/daily/2826

"Most people understand very little about economics or monetary theory. When they see supposed experts in disagreement, the status quo wins by default, because nobody with the power to change it has the courage of conviction. The majority of voters see the debate among experts and hesitate to support any leaders with comprehensive reform schemes. This is why all efforts to rebuild a gold monetary system have met with frustration and stalemate in the past." - Ron Paul
Click to expand...
 
Some reports have stated that 1oz of gold could be exchange for approximately one (1) year median salary around 1903. Today in the US the median salary is somewhere between 50 and 55k per year. Therefore 1oz of gold has a precedent of being valued at $50,000 dollars an ounce. 1 oz of Silver historically trades anywhere from 16 to 1 to 12 to 1 ration to the value of gold. In times of high demand that ratio could conceivably compress to almost 8 to 1.

In a blowoff phase of the coming correction those numbers might actually be 20-50% conservative. These are todays values, not accounting for any coming hyper inflation.

Copper will be the new money as it will be the only commodity readily avaliable enough to circulate as currency. However gold and silver will still be currency.
 
Last edited:
Ron Paul

http://mises.org/daily/2826
Agenda for Monetary Reform

"The genius of Ludwig von Mises was his profound insight into the free-market process, the science of catallactics. The most important thing I have learned from his work is that the achievement of a new gold standard in our society will have to come from the free market itself. This is why I believe the first step must be a new troy-ounce gold coinage, even without any legal tender qualities or special tax treatment. As we have found in recent banking deregulation, the market develops new procedures and techniques in the monetary and financial system, and Congress follows with repeal of old, restrictive laws. This is the political and economic dynamic process that we also can harness to restore gold to its proper monetary role."

All the government needs to do is to get out of the way. The political and economic agenda for monetary reform, therefore, consists of the following steps:

  1. Congress must adopt the legislation recommended by the Gold Commission to bring a new US gold coinage into circulation, denominated only in troy-ounce units and fractions thereof.

  2. Advocates of the remonetization of gold must work both in the political arena and in the marketplace to get as many of these new coins into the possession of the public as possible. Politically, this means resisting taxation or any regulations on the utility of the new gold coins for purposes of exchange either for other goods and services or for dollars. As Ludwig von Mises demonstrated in his Theory of Money and Credit,[10] it is the marketability of a good that gives it a monetary character. The more easily recognized and marketable the new gold coinage becomes, the more it will be recognized as genuine pieces of money.

  3. The fact that the troy ounce of gold is well defined and the paper dollar has no fixed referent at all should be made the focus of continued education and debate, just as we are now doing. The continuing academic work by students of Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises in monetary and financial theory is vitally important, particularly to expose the fallacies of centralized macroeconomic planning and the failure of "managed money." The acquiescence of the economics profession, which is today disdainful of gold, will have to be secured. Serious academic work will stimulate interest in a new Gold Commission, which would be able to focus this research in economic theory on the political issue of monetary reform. It is essential to move the center of monetary debate from the question of how the central bank should perform monetary management to the more general question of managed money versus market-process money.

  4. The objective would remain to persuade a majority of Congress to enact a new par value for the US dollar in terms of gold. When every American family is familiar with gold coins and understands the intrinsic defects in a managed paper standard, a majority in Congress can be persuaded by the demands of voters to enact a new par value for the US dollar and to establish the conversion agency described by Mises.
Click to expand...
 
Travlyr said:
Elementary math should be a requirement for being the Treasury Secretary. But the proof is in their work. It started with Alexander Hamilton's bimetallism and continues to this day. Why establish face values on precious metal coins if they don't mean anything? What's up with that?

1 oz of silver - face value = $1 ~ $30 FRNs, Or $1 = $30
1 oz of palladium - face value = $25 ~ $750, Or $25 = $750
1 oz of gold - face value = $50 ~ $1400 FRNs, Or $50 = $1400
1 oz of platinum - face value = $100 ~ $1700 FRNs, Or $100 = $1700
Click to expand...

So how would interest work in such a scenario.

10oz of gold repaid in 11oz of gold... I could technically loose wealth in such a scenario should gold depreciate in value.
 
LibForestPaul said:
So how would interest work in such a scenario.

10oz of gold repaid in 11oz of gold... I could technically loose wealth in such a scenario should gold depreciate in value.
Click to expand...

He was just showing how the U.S. mint stamps a $1 face value on a coin that is worth more than $30 and how it stamps $50 on a coin that is worth more than $1400.
 
Jordan said:
If anything, my post shows how unworkable a gold standard really is. At a price of $800 per gram, gold's usefulness will include only its use in currency, since it would be too expensive to use in production, and I'm sure all the jewelry/dental demand would damn near evaporate as well.

My laptop has +/- one gram of gold in it. I paid less than $500 for it. If we were to use gold as currency, and give it a value of $800 per gram, I'd have to pay $1300 for the same laptop tomorrow. That's absolutely unreasonable.

There is no reason to price out real, physical production for currency.
Click to expand...

All you are demonstrating with your posts is how unworkable the fiat inflationary bubble is. You are in fact arguing for a perpetuation of the fraud inherent in a fractional reserve system when you say the Gold standard is unworkable. You are basically saying an honest money and monetary system free of fraud is unworkable.

Moving back to the gold standard would reveal just how absurd and fraudulent the dollar has become. As bad as the truth may seem, a continuation of a fraudulent system is much worse as it allows for continuing malinvestment and makes it difficult to plan in the market place.

The gold standard is not broken it's the crookend and fraudulent dollar that is broken.
 
Stary Hickory said:
All you are demonstrating with your posts is how unworkable the fiat inflationary bubble is. You are in fact arguing for a perpetuation of the fraud inherent in a fractional reserve system when you say the Gold standard is unworkable. You are basically saying an honest money and monetary system free of fraud is unworkable.

Moving back to the gold standard would reveal just how absurd and fraudulent the dollar has become. As bad as the truth may seem, a continuation of a fraudulent system is much worse as it allows for continuing malinvestment and makes it difficult to plan in the market place.

The gold standard is not broken it's the crookend and fraudulent dollar that is broken.
Click to expand...

Or it shows how gold is such a very small part of total output.

Best case scenario (today's prices, highest output ever) is $120B a year....out of $58 trillion of productivity. .2% of all goods and services produced each year.
 
All you are demonstrating with your posts is how unworkable the fiat inflationary bubble is. You are in fact arguing for a perpetuation of the fraud inherent in a fractional reserve system when you say the Gold standard is unworkable. You are basically saying an honest money and monetary system free of fraud is unworkable.

Moving back to the gold standard would reveal just how absurd and fraudulent the dollar has become. As bad as the truth may seem, a continuation of a fraudulent system is much worse as it allows for continuing malinvestment and makes it difficult to plan in the market place.

The gold standard is not broken it's the crookend and fraudulent dollar that is broken.
Click to expand...

I own some gold and silver. With that said - I can't see any way that you can move back to a gold standard without confiscating all gold away from private parties - or making it illegal to own. People may hide it in the ground or walls of their house or whatever, but it's going to get confiscated. There can never, ever be a free market system as we would want to see. The only way to accomplish that is to totally dismantle everything and start from scratch... and that's not likely to happen given the populations reliance on govt. All this liberty talk is just that - talk, unless people break away from the system and become totally self-reliant, self sufficient and tell govt. to take a hike and act on it.
 
It starts first with fear. Everything is about fear.

You know, there's a ton of people here who could have everything they wanted right now. They could've had the house out in the middle of nowhere, the solar panel roof and the 500 foot water well, and acres upon acres of food you have to slave for.

But no. Fear paper, fear the paper markets, fear it all. Physicals, man, physicals. God damn, this subforum should be full of multi-millionaires had they just played the paper. E-mini futures, options on ETFs, whatever, doesn't matter. Half the people here have rammed thousands (some tens of thousands!) into the physicals market and that money would be hundreds of thousands in paper (which can still be traded for metals, land, food, guns, whatever the libertarians want!). I haven't even gotten to leveraged products or the natural leverage of commodity producers. Sheesh.

Play the game. Don't let your ideology get in the way of money.
 
bad news

cbc58 said:
yeah.. but they are going to want to know what that means - in specific detail as it relates to them. if it means that their dollars automatically become worth 1/6th of what they own - you can kiss the election goodbye. people want to be given things not have it taken away from them.

saying "gold standard", as it's been discussed here, really isn't all that simple. imagine trying to put it into practice.
Click to expand...

I've got bad news for you - the dollar is doomed. It is going to lose ALL its value. It is inevitable now, regardless of what we do with gold. Allowing people the option to lawfully move away from the doomed fiat dollar and instead to use gold, silver, or whatever is the best way to create an alternative to a fatally flawed system. The ship is sinking. All we are talking about is allowing people to build better liferafts.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top