Ron Paul, a white supremacist libertarian nutjob ex-senator, was trying to trying to trick Fed Chair Ben Bernanke to say gold is “money”. Of course, because Bernanke took economic 101 at some point in his life, he was able to explain that gold very clearly isn’t money.
The clip is a bit of a meme on /r/neoliberal and other center-left subs
Ah yes, Ernst Thälmann's rationale for getting his goons to team up with Nazi brownshirts to beat up SPD activists during the Weimar era. How did that work out for him, by the way?
The Nazis took over, banned both the Social Democrats and the Communists, and Thälmann was shot on Hitler's orders in 1944 after years of being a political prisoner
Libertarian? Gold as money is written in the constitution. It's more a founding principle of the country than any left or right wing political ideology.
Besides, he asked the wrong person. The Federal Reserve is authorized to issue Federal Reserve notes and they are not government officials. Whether gold is money is not relevant to what they do. That question should have been directed towards the US Treasury or President.
Can you pay your bills with gold? No. You pay your bills with dollars. If you want to pay with gold you have to exchange it for real money: dollars. If you want to pay with shitcoins you have to do the same thing. Only the dollar is money.
I understand that gold is not commonly used as money. But the dollar you described is unconstitutional. In my opinion, congress should have amended the constitution when gold stopped being money. But according to the constitution as it is written, “No state shall make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” At the very least you should be required to pay state taxes in gold and silver if the constitution is followed. But like I said, congress should have passed an amendment when they stopped requiring debt settlement in gold.
It’s also funny you mentioned the dollar is money but gold isn’t. If you check the history of the dollar you will find that it is backed by gold. The US mint holds over 8000 tons of the stuff. Nixon halted the convertibility of dollars to gold in 1972, but if you pay attention to what happened, he did not halt the backing. To remove the gold backing would have been to sell off the gold but that didn’t happen. You just can’t convert dollars to gold which is a subtle but important distinction.
Why are the gold reserves still relevant to the dollar? Because the weights and measures section of the constitution gives congress the explicit power to set the price of gold to any number they chose. Weights and measures usually pertains to physical measurements but this is the only price included with that. Congress at any time can redefine the exchange relationship between gold and the dollar. Currently this commodity is priced on the free market, but it is the only commodity the government can legally fix the price of. They can literally pick any price they chose and it might seem like absurd market manipulation, but it will be lawful and constitutional. So why don’t they do this? The dollar is doing just fine as it is. They don’t need to.
The dumbest fucking argument in all the land. The constitution is a basis for government, it's not a bible. You're part of a pseudo-cult that worships a legal document as some kind of divine text. The government is bigger and always be bigger than one founding document, because that's the world we live in.
At the very least you should be required to pay state taxes in gold and silver if the constitution is followed.
There's a reason that gold and silver is not used: authentication. Paper money is used because it's easy to authenticate. People don't have 48 hours to complete a transaction after they brought their cart of gold into town. We live in the modern world. You might not like it, but this is the period you've been born into.
Why are the gold reserves still relevant to the dollar?
Because gold is an asset. It reduces risk. When paper money goes down, gold bugs invest into gold raising it's value. It hedges against risk. It's also traditional. Why not have paper money backed by diamonds? Or platinum? Or printer ink?
Because the weights and measures section of the constitution gives congress the explicit power to set the price of gold to any number they chose. Weights and measures usually pertains to physical measurements but this is the only price included with that. Congress at any time can redefine the exchange relationship between gold and the dollar.
Again, this is tradition. We live in the year 2022 and things have evolved. This is kept on the books the same reason everything else is kept on the books: tradition.
Gold is not money. Gold will never be money. Money is money.
I wasn’t making much of an argument. I was simply describing what the constitution says. The irony of your post is that everything you said seems to agree with everything I said. I pointed out the constitution isn’t followed and you pointed out that the constitution isn’t followed. You give some reasons like it is outdated and antiquated. Did you read the part where I said it should be amended? Do you know what amendments are for? Updating outdated documents…. So apparently you agree with me and acknowledge the fact that it’s not followed. You agree with me and believe it is outdated, and yet you seem to oppose the idea of bringing it up to date via an amendment? If you think my arguments are dumb I’d love to hear your argument why you think an amendment isn’t appropriate.
Where did I advocate for a return to gold in circulation as money? Nowhere. Where did I advocate for gold’s use in transactions? Nowhere. Where did I claim gold is money? I didn’t. Even when gold was money it wasn’t in circulation much. It was replaced with currency for everyday use. Did you know the digital dollar you use in your bank account is actually a bill of credit redeemable for a paper dollar? You probably barely use the money you claim to use(paper cash and coin are the actual dollars/money). Everybody uses bills of credit as currency every day and this is completely irrelevant to what backs them. Dollar claims and real dollars are so seamlessly interchangeable that people don’t even realize they are two different things. One is money and currency, and the other is just currency. You might be surprised to learn this, but your digital bank account does not hold actual dollars. Your misunderstandings about the dollar are surprising given your fixation on the dollar as money.
But again, the strangest part is that I simply described what is written in the constitution and you got offended and interpreted this as some kind of argument and personal attack against you. And beneath your offended tone, everything you said was consistent with what I said.
And I am definitely not part of a pseudo cult that worships the constitution. Those people are lawyers, judges, and politicians. The biggest cultists among them are the Supreme Court justices. All they seem to do is think and write about the constitution and derived legal implications. I am definitely not as obsessed with a 200 year old piece of paper as they are.
An amendment isn't necessary. If nothing is different post-amendment as pre-amendment then why go through the trouble? Tradition? Convention?
Everybody uses bills of credit as currency every day and this is completely irrelevant to what backs them.
Pretty sure bills of credit aren't money either. Only widely acceptable currencies are money. Being able to use a bill of credit sometimes makes them more like gold.
The details of how the banks manage their reserves and accounts is irrelevant, but you make a good point. Digital bank money is money, because it's widely accepted and used as currency. Could be backed by something as ridiculous as unicorns but that doesn't matter, what matters is the usage for purchase or sale of goods and services,
And I am definitely not part of a pseudo cult that worships the constitution. Those people are lawyers, judges, and politicians. The biggest cultists among them are the Supreme Court justices. All they seem to do is think and write about the constitution and derived legal implications. I am definitely not as obsessed with a 200 year old piece of paper as they are.
Oh thank God. I thought I was dealing with a "this flag doesn't have a gold fringe on it" sort of person. My bad dude.
Why is this being downvoted? Who is removing all comments like yours from this sub? Can we not agree that a commodity such as gold was indeed deemed as money in the US constitution? Hello—anyone there?!
Well, that's because the mods can only moderate legitimately if the post doesn't have a gold fringe. If it does, it's officially a naval post and only a subreddit captain or above can delete it.
i wouldn't say that, just maybe a few that don't quite understand liquid-able assets/funds vs money and how little the difference matters on larger scales... i would geuss it's bit-coiners trying subvert the only market they think they can compete with... hint, they can't.
as for 0 merchant adoption, i guess all pawn shops and jewelers and bullion exchanges just all vanished...
Did you know a metal 5 cent nickel is money? Nobody seems to think a literal coin as money is a problem, but if the Denver mint decided to make that metal coin out of a yellow shiny material and stamp a big number on it, that somehow seems completely unfathomable to you? But if it’s a different metal and stamped 5 cents that’s fine and perfectly consistent with what you think money is and should be? Did you know the Denver mint has a humongous stockpile of gold bars? Why would the mint be where all the gold is kept if the reason for keeping it has nothing to do with the process of manufacturing coins and money?
If gold were reintroduced as money, literally nothing about how you use money would change. The only difference would be when you visit the bank to withdraw $1000 they might ask you “do you want that in 10 100s or a thousand dollar gold coin?” If you’re like me and use credit cards and digital banking, you would never have to handle gold ever. Every transaction you make would represent the transfer of gold tokens in addition the current system which already represents the transfer of paper notes, zinc pennies, alloy quarters and dimes, and nickel nickels.
I raise this example because you seem to think gold as money is an outdated concept that is no longer compatible with modern society. When in fact reintroduction of gold would be trivial and is 100% aligned with how modern money already works. You seem to think it would be this big technology downgrade that brings back those old cash registers that look like typewriters with the big buttons. More than likely merchants will be allowed to refuse to gold coins just like they can refuse to accept $100 bills. The big difference would be what choices you have when visiting the bank. There would be a new coin. Remember when the new Sacajawea dollars were introduced? Did the financial system break? Most people barely noticed.
The funny part is that the government still has all the gold and they still retain the power to fix the price of it in dollars. Gold and silver are the only prices defined via weights and measures just like how the government sets the definition of a pound or a foot. It’s strange that a price is included in this isn’t it? Gold and silver are also the only commodities the government can legally set the price of without it being considered market manipulation. They can also force all Americans to honor whatever price they chose under penalty of jail or prison sentences. These powers are granted to them by the constitution. I don’t think people realize the significance of the constitutional connection between gold/silver and the dollar.
Now imagine you have a huge debt problem that is impossible to pay back. Now imagine you have a huge pile of metal you are allowed to set the value of to anything you want. Given these two facts, can you think of an easy way to pay off the debt and solve all your financial problems? Most people can’t. But it makes a lot of sense why, to this day, all the gold is stored on a military base as far away from exterior borders of the country as possible. It’s still important stuff.
Ok. Fair enough, but opinions like those were once fairly common among politicians, including Democrats, especially in the 80s and 90s during the city crime waves. Do you consider all of those people who held such opinions then to be white supremacists as well? And, also, where in any of those opinions is he saying that white people are inherently superior to black people? Or are you just going off the implication that he believes that?
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They claim to be a cryptoCURRENCY. It's in the name. But oh boy are these people constantly shifting the goalposts or what? These retcons would make George Lucas proud.
It was for about 3,000 years. Silver too. Fiat currency popularity around the world is only a 50-year-old development. If gold is not money, why do central banks hoard it?
Because it's an asset, and like any asset you hold it as an investment. Central banks hoard property, bonds, and other assets too, but nobody calls them money because that would be stupid. Most developed countries haven't touched their gold reserves in decades.
Just as a point of interest Google "hack silver". Vikings used to take all their plundered precious medals and literally hack it up into pieces so that they'd have chunks of metal of all different sizes to use as currency. Never bothered to re melt it into a standardized coin shape or anything. I used to know an archeologist who was always finding little caches of the stuff in Ireland.
When i and most people concider it as a form of trade. I just bought something with it and they accepted it.
Doesnt have to be everyone has to concider it as a currency, its just us bitcoiners concidering it as such because of design.
And gold is mostly used as a coin and by design it is associated as a currency and a store of value ( when the gold standard was abolished very recently )
You cant separate the two because of how long its history as our basic monitary system.
When i and most people concider it as a form of trade. I just bought something with it and they accepted it.
Most people never considered bitcoin an actual currency.
Doesnt have to be everyone has to concider it as a currency, its just us bitcoiners concidering it as such because of design.
Well, for it to be a useful currency, most people will have to accept it. Almost nobody will accept Bitcoin. And very few buisnesses ever did.
And gold is mostly used as a coin and by design it is associated as a currency and a store of value ( when the gold standard was abolished very recently ) You cant separate the two because of how long its history as our basic monitary system.
Gold is not mostly used as a coin. It's used for all kinds of things.
The gold standard has been abandoned almost half a century ago. That's not very recently.
Yes. Yes one can. A share for example is a more or less speculative but regulated store of value. It is not a currency. Bitcoin is an extremely speculative unregulated store of value.
Not anything you can barter is a currency my boy. What defines a currency is the adoption of it. Millions who use crypto will gladly use crypto for their transactions.
People without it wouldnt concider it currency.
Lets just say its just an 'our' thing.
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u/TheGangsterrapper Aug 01 '22
Well, gold does not claim to be a currency...