Phat Unplugged

I can perhaps answer your question if you answer two of mine.1) How was FDR able to arbitrarily raise the value of Gold from $20.00 an ounce to $35.00 an ounce?2) What would keep Trump from raising the bookkeeping value of government Gold from $42.00 an ounce to the going market rate or even many times higher?

Im not advocating a return to a gold standard. Im merely pointing out the fragility of fiat currencies as to being able to hold their value. The latest ideas involve backing a currency with a basket of hard assets. What else would you back it with? People?

You've done nothing but that for months. No shit! Who knew? Currencies are traded commodities, they go down as well as up. You can't back currencies with anything other than trust. And trust in currencies is built on the strength of the country's economy.Trump is about to demonstrate what happens when you fuck that up.

No. Show you understand something and answer the question.--Percy

Respond to my explanation of why it is not a problem.--Percy

The full faith and credit of the United States backs the dollar. How big a basket do you need to put every asset of the nation in?Right now you have every asset of the nation pledged to backing the dollar. That does not stop at USofA government owned but includes every asset of our society - every commercial building, every home, every toothbrush. Yes, even the innovation and productivity of our people, present and future. Perception is such a large part of economic reality and the value in the world.We the people, we the society that is the United States of America, we put our full faith and credit, meaning we pledge our national honor as well as the monetary assets of our whole society, to back the efficacy of the dollar.The world chooses to value our pledge, value our society and use our dollar as the world's preferred store of value. And you want to destroy this. You want to harm our world by harming our nation's reputation in the world. You want the nation, and thus the world, to fail. You are evil, Phat.

The US dollar is backed by the entire US economy, including hard assets. The reason people trade in hard assets is to earn fiat currency.If I offered to trade you a widget for your fiat currency with the stipulation that you could only ever trade that widget for another widget and never for fiat currency, would you do the trade?

of course not. See the "50 billion for condoms in gaze" lie. If he really wanted to audit government spending he'd have hired accountants not tech bois.

DOGE is also trying to take credit for contracts that were canceled years ago.

quote:

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Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is taking credit for cancelling contracts that have long been dead, according to a new report.

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Musk's team claimed they had canceled a Coast Guard contract between the maritime department and a company that provides entities administrative assistance. According to DOGE, killing the contract saved the US taxpayers $53.7 million, the New York Times reports.

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However, the contract was worth only $144,000, was completed in 2005 and has not been active for two decades, the paper says.

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The decades-old contract is reportedly not the only one DOGE has mistakenly taken credit for stopping either. Even after the pseudo-agency attempted to clean up its "wall of receipts" on its website, the New York Times found that DOGE had actually added new mistakes to the page.
DOGE is claiming credit for ‘canceling’ contracts that were ended decades ago

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The full rundown is behind the NYT paywall.

Phat, earlier:

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I still don't think your assertion that the debt is not a problem relative to GDP is practical nor logical.

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By increasing the value of the Gold. It's been done before. Of course, this would be the same as decreasing the value of the fiat and stock and bond values relative to gold.. But it seems as if that is already happening of its own accord. The arbiitary value of anything can be reset. No. I want us to stop adding to the debt. You look at the "debt" as a giant savings account in which it is ok to have it grow larger based on need. It is you who insist that we all participate.Lately, I've been reading up on Modern Monetary Theory. I never really understood the theory and am still quite wary of it. Few Republicans are behind it.Here is what I learned: Investopedia: What is MMT?​

MMT is not Monetary Theory as economists define them. MMT is an extreme school of economics that tries to act within Friedman's framework but ignores many of the levers Monetary policy relies on.From the same source: Who Was Milton Friedman and What Is Monetarism?Friedman, as economics professor at Uni of Chicago, helped develop and institute monetary policy in the USofA and the world. He is a Nobel Laureate for his work in the subject.This writeup gives you some sub-resources (academic rabbit holes) that will give you more insight into why US monetary policy is so vital to this world.As deep as you can, follow them. You will learn that playing with national and international economics ain't so easy as some of your less learned and more conservative echo chamber sources are showing you.

It's been done before, you say? Really. Where and when? What YouTube video told you this? After all the warnings we've given you about your extreme susceptibility to snake oil salesmen, why did you believe them?An example about using gold as a standard: Back around 2022 Zimbabwe began tying their currency to a basket of commodities, including gold, and experienced single-month inflation rates of as high as 40%. Their economy is getting by because much of the populace has switched from the Zimbabwean ZIG to the U.S. dollar.Please try again to answer the question: How is a mere $23 trillion in gold going to back currency and asset values ten to twenty times greater?--Percy

It was only done when we were on the gold standard. It can't be done when gold is freely traded in a commodity market. If we were to suddenly peg the dollar to some arbitrary amount of gold we would instantly lose 90 to 95% of our nation's wealth.Again, why do you keep chasing this pipe dream? Debt can be a tool to prevent massive depressions, but it should be spent down in times of plenty. The problem is no politician has the political will to tax the rich in a way that could actually pay down the debt, nor the willingness to cut massive budgets like the defense budget. Instead, we get meaningless cuts based on culture war nonsense.

And the amount of increase was far smaller than what Phat is considering. One of the mandated increases in the U.S. back in the 1930's was something like from $32/ounce to $35/ounce. Phat wants to increase the value of gold from it's current value around $3000 per ounce to somewhere between $30,000 and $60,000 per ounce.I'm sure all current owners of gold would just love it if their $100,000 gold investment suddenly became worth a million or two dollars. All gold dealers would be delighted if their in-stock inventory suddenly increased in value by ten to twenty times.--Percy

What Phat doesn't realize is this isn't increasing the value of gold, but is decreasing the value of the dollar. If it costs $3k to buy an ounce today, and that same ounce costs $30k tomorrow this means the value of the dollar dropped by 90% in a day.