> China's trillions of US Treasuries - those are claims that the US economy cannot and will not service
The biggest holder of US debt is...the US. But ok, what choice did China have? If they kept the money at home, it would have collapsed the economy, investing in US treasuries at an effective -3% was the best they could achieve and have some degree of safety. Whatever you think of the US economy, foreigners still have a lot of faith in it. Only libertarians and republicans running for office think this faith is misplaced.
Now, who gets wiped out in a US default? We do the most, actually, but maybe the Chinese and Japanese hurt a bit also. No one is expecting that to happen, and US debt levels are not particularly high compared to the rest of the world.
> Physical, unambiguously owned metal is the insurance, the vehicle that will transition you through to the otherside.
You can't take gold with you to heaven. Ah, you meant the otherside of a collapse. If the economy completely collapses, no one is producing anything of value that they can spare for trade; your metals are still worthless. The law of supply and demand remains, and you just get screwed on supply.
If you really believe in metals, however, I strongly recommend that you move to Australia if you aren't there already. They have the largest reserves, take whatever we have out of the ground now and multiply it by 10. You can just become a miner and become rich, because of course, we can eat gold can't we?
ok - won't get into US default / debt argument as we are too far apart on that. I'll just say that it is a lot more than 'no one' expecting and preparing for a failure there. It is not a mainstream view - though mainstream didn't predict the GFC either.
Yes I meant the otherside of a currency failure. They are not as rare as you imply.
If the economy collapses completely then a lot of people will die...likely me included...as I am not a farmer. So I am assuming the economy will not collapse completely. Things will muddle through. Some will fair better than others depending on their understanding of the real nature of money, trade and its history.
We can't eat gold no...but I presume most of your assets are non edible too?
PS: It wasn't me that downvoted your last comment.
If I bought land, I could develop it and make it productive, I could also invest in science to grow more food, or whatever. If we want to hedge against economic collapse, I could invest in assets that are likely to survive the collapse, or better yet, are useful in helping a recovery along. So machinery, tools, a factory, a bakery? Or just upgrade my skills a bit.
But gold just sits there and does nothing, you are at the mercy of how others value it, since it doesn't have any productive value otherwise. Just like money actually.
The fact that gold is so useless is what makes it so perfect as a sink for deferred wealth.
Savers do not infringe on anyone else. If savers decided to hoard farm land...then farm produce would go up. Bakeries...same effect. Note I'm not arguing against investment but there is a difference between investment and saving. Saving is trying to maintain purchasing power that you have earned today and want to spend in the future. Investment is the deployment of your capital at some risk in order to possibly earn a return. Your prescriptions are all investments. I'm not a skilled businessman/investor - I'm a coder that just wants to defer my purchasing power that I earned today
.
What the savers currently do is hoard currency. The thirst for currency encourages and enables large amounts of debt to be written (as debt is the largest producer of currency via bank loans) which leads to cheap credit which leads to malinvestment.
In my comment history you will see a rather long entry I reposted from ZeroHedge. It's worth a read if you want to understand this argument some more.
> The fact that gold is so useless is what makes it so perfect as a sink for deferred wealth. Savers do not infringe on anyone else. If savers decided to hoard farm land...then farm produce would go up.
True, this is also why the Chinese continue to lend to us at basically a negative interest rate. Turns out gold doesn't really work that well for sovereigns (though China is #1 or #2 in gold mining).
> What the savers currently do is hoard currency.
Or they buy treasury notes, which is a bit better on returns (but not much).
> which leads to cheap credit which leads to malinvestment.
Definitely that's what we've seen so far. In that case, we are only arguing about the validity of gold as a store of value vs. other investments (including straight currency holds). There is nothing particularly special about gold, the only difference is that mining companies can decide the rate of inflation vs. governments (but Australia...).
BitCoin is much more fair in this case as the rate of mining is basically fixed by complexity. There is not much difference between accepting someone's bitcoin vs. their gold, in either case its about trust that you can exchange the currency down the line for something else.
The biggest holder of US debt is...the US. But ok, what choice did China have? If they kept the money at home, it would have collapsed the economy, investing in US treasuries at an effective -3% was the best they could achieve and have some degree of safety. Whatever you think of the US economy, foreigners still have a lot of faith in it. Only libertarians and republicans running for office think this faith is misplaced.
Now, who gets wiped out in a US default? We do the most, actually, but maybe the Chinese and Japanese hurt a bit also. No one is expecting that to happen, and US debt levels are not particularly high compared to the rest of the world.
> Physical, unambiguously owned metal is the insurance, the vehicle that will transition you through to the otherside.
You can't take gold with you to heaven. Ah, you meant the otherside of a collapse. If the economy completely collapses, no one is producing anything of value that they can spare for trade; your metals are still worthless. The law of supply and demand remains, and you just get screwed on supply.
If you really believe in metals, however, I strongly recommend that you move to Australia if you aren't there already. They have the largest reserves, take whatever we have out of the ground now and multiply it by 10. You can just become a miner and become rich, because of course, we can eat gold can't we?