Can't eat gold

Quote from dumb_mother:

gold = sun worship
silver = moon worship

if you want to ask why gold has been money for millenia you have to go back to our real roots.

right now people are just starting to recognize gold as a currency again, silver doesn't get nearly the respect. what do you think silver will be worth when we start describing it as money again? my guess is a sub 5:1 silver:gold ratio will hit in the next 20 years at some point, so if you are truly a long term gold bull, do yourself a favor and get some silver instead until the ratio drops like a rock.

Basis for this supposition? The old fixed ratio was 15 or 16:1, and was dropped when silver became too abundant. Why would that change now?
 
Quote from Businessman:

Gold is very pretty and will always have value as bling, especially among Indian farmers and their wives.

Gold is in an uptrend, it has only reached these levels and is still being brought at these price levels because of the greater fool theory. There could still be plenty more upside until the fools run out.

The chances of the world adopting gold as a currency, for whatever reason, in our lifetime is very small.

Yes, South Korea's central bank purchased 25 tonnes of gold a few weeks back because the stuff looks pretty on Korean wives.

Gold is not a currency, but it is money.
 
Quote from sle:

Do you think if you would have buried an ounce of gold 50 years ago, it would buy you more or less real estate in Manhattan today? :confused:

Again (and I am sure someone wrote this before me) gold is a commodity. As commodities go, it might be perceived as a way to store wealth but overall it has very little intrinsic value. Also, don't forget that gold is not being consumed, but rather overall gold in "circulation" increases 2% a year due to mining.

I am not saying gold is a bad investment, I am just saying that one should have other investments in their portfolio.

Well, according to <a href="http://web.mit.edu/CRE/research/papers/WP90wheatonbaranski.pdf">this paper</a> Manhattan commercial real estate has on average not appreciated any faster than inflation. Over the past 50 years the official inflation has reduced the value of the dollar by a factor of 7.4. In 1960 gold was pegged to the dollar at $35 an ounce. $35 * 7.4 = $259. Gold is now over $1700. So gold has done much better than Manhattan real estate.

Glad you asked.
 
Quote from Lights:

For the umpeenth time, Gold isn't a currency. Gold COINS have been currency in the past. but Gold as a commodity is not money as paper pulp isn't and so isn't copper and zinc which they strike into pennies and quarters!

Gold is a commodity and a store of wealth to carry over across death and war. If food didn't spoil, it'd be a store of wealth as well. Any commodity is as long as it doesn't spoil
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Good points;
i also think they have proved , golden Twinkies keep for many decades:D

Good time to sell gold; however uptrend probably has further to go.You can eat /enjoy silver king corn or golden corn;
but expiry date is rather short.:cool:
 
Quote from sle:



PS. and you are wrong about the manhattan real estate, it appreciated way more then gold, even accounting for the recent decline.

Prove it. What was the price of Manhattan real estate in 1961 then? And remember...you are saying "way more" not even "slightly more" So an apartment better have cost less than $5k in 1961 for your assumption to be correct.

Median home price is $840k as of early this year. Might be less now but $840k is a good start.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/04/real_estate/Manhattan_market_prices/index.htm
 
Quote from peilthetraveler:

Prove it. What was the price of Manhattan real estate in 1961 then? And remember...you are saying "way more" not even "slightly more" So an apartment better have cost less than $5k in 1961 for your assumption to be correct.

Median home price is $840k as of early this year. Might be less now but $840k is a good start.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/04/real_estate/Manhattan_market_prices/index.htm

I'm reasonably certain that the assertion is false, based on a price appreciation of specific, known properties in other high-appreciation areas over the past 50 years (e.g., Los Angeles, metropolitan Boston). But I don't have readily available analogous pricing data for NYC. Does anyone know where historical aggregate numbers are available?
 
Quote from tortoise:

I'm reasonably certain that the assertion is false, based on a price appreciation of specific, known properties in other high-appreciation areas over the past 50 years (e.g., Los Angeles, metropolitan Boston). But I don't have readily available analogous pricing data for NYC. Does anyone know where historical aggregate numbers are available?

I already linked to a study of the appreciation of commercial Manhattan real estate. Gold was a better bet by far over 50 years. I doubt that residential real estate is much different.
 
ok, but gold is at an all time high and real esatate and stocks are off their highs.

check gold vs stocks at march 2000.

or gold vs real estate at around 2006

but at any rate, if you bury gold in your back yard, it will buy just about as much when you dig it up as it did when you buried it.
 
but now a good one would be,

when they let the dollar float, IBM was considered both a hot stock and a good conservative dividend paying stock.

check out how much gold 100 shares of IBM would have bought the day it started trading at $35

or visey versey

I suppose a better would be gold vs the DJ over the last 50 yrs.

either way, you cant' eat any of it.

and by the way, you can't eat most of the corn they grow in the cornbelt, it's all for ethenol and livestock feed and corn syrup.

Down south you very rarely see corn, but you can get grits everywhere.

Go up to Illinois and look out the window and all you see is corn, but they have no grits.
 
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