If you're like me, you're concerned about our national debt. You're concerned that our debt is the highest it has ever been. You're concerned that it has gone over $12,000,000,000,000. That's a lot of zeros. So, the main question is, how should we remove this debt? There are those who say we should sell our gold. After all, what's it doing for us? Just sitting around in a stockpile. So, shouldn't we sell our gold for the $288 billion that it's worth? Does anyone have a better idea? I think I do.

JUST ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE!!!

If anyone with intelligence has read this article over on Parade.com/gold they've more than likely noted a small flaw in its reasoning. We USE gold to BACK our money! Sure, gold used to be our currency and now we use paper and coins, but the only reason that is worth anything more than the materials used to make it (and in the case of the penny, it isn't even worth that much) is because of the gold it represents!

How would you like it if the government told you that you could have some gold any time you wanted to collect it, with an I.O.U. or something, and then sent the gold to another country? They don't have any gold now, so what exactly is that I.O.U. worth? Not a thing, because the promised gold is gone. This is the exact reason why “selling” our gold is the dumbest thing any government can do. It's been known to happen at times, specifically for paying the national debt, but where the debt is now we'd be throwing a stick at a brick wall and hoping to crumble it.

How dense must someone be to think selling our gold ~~for “money”~~ is a good idea? ~~What exactly would our money be backed by? Silver? Gas would jump to $50 a gallon if not more.~~ Simply mentioning selling our gold would show a significant lack in intelligence on the government's part.

Parade.com and all others who think this way need to pull their heads out of the ground and look past the small green I.O.U. in their hands. It's only paper, and worth so much more with the backing intact. While I do believe we should do away with our money, this isn't the way it should be done. Regardless how much gold we have or how much of it we're entitled to, the gold is needed for our current trade.

After all, it's a very good stick.

NOTE:

It has come to my attention that Gold is no longer the backing force of our currency, Silver is, and has been since 1933. Since I wasn't alive then and no one informed me, you can't really blame me for this foul up. Everywhere I screwed up has been crossed out above.

Thank you, Johannes, for bringing this to my attention. It's a rather serious failing on my part. ^_^;;;

However, knowing that US Dollars are backed by Silver isn't a very comforting thought. In my eyes, the value of the dollar just dropped significantly. I always looked at it as a certain amount of gold that I'm entitled to. Instead it is a certain amount of silver, which in today's market is worth almost 70% less than gold. For every $100 I have held, it's been worth around $30 in my eyes. This would also explain why our gold is worth so much in terms of dollars (floating around $900 since the 80's) as the dollar is worth significantly less.

This really deserves it's own rant, but I'm about 70 years too late to do that. Perhaps I should send a memo to the past and yell at the people in charge then for letting this whole money thing get way out of hand.

NOTE2:

Didn't realize I was that far out of touch with our currency. Seems we are using a "Federal" Reserve Bank for our money now, making it even worse as it is technically backed by nothing.

You'll note, though, that I am very accurate in my blog, if a little behind the times.

Tags: Economy, Error, Rant

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Comment by Eric Fox on June 2, 2010 at 4:25pm: @ Anubis

Yeah, kinda pointless to post that as I already mentioned we were backed by nothing.

Also, I covered the global economic collapse in another blog, should you wish to check it out.

Comment by Anubis on June 2, 2010 at 2:51pm: ***not backed by any thing...

((Spelling fail...))

-Anubis

Comment by Anubis on June 2, 2010 at 2:50pm: The US dollar is not backed by nay thing. It is completely arbitrary, and we officially said good by to the gold standard in 1971, if we were still on it we wouldn't be printing trillions. If China decided to sell our debt tonight, our dollar would be worth damn near nothing by morning.

And when ((Don't think 'If' any more)) The dollar crashes, we are going to want to have all the Gold we can.

-Anubis

Comment by Larry Bailey on April 4, 2010 at 7:10pm: But who backs the US Federal Reserve? It's not the US government, it's not the Gold Reserve, it's the World Bank

Comment by Eric Fox on March 2, 2010 at 11:05am: Made another small note in the blog. I'm also thinking of adding to the original content to show some of the uses for gold that outweigh its "value" in trade. Suggestions?

@ Moxie
While it's true I did do some research on Wikipedia, I never mentioned it anywhere in my blog, so how did you come to the conclusion that this was my only source of information?

In any case, Wikipedia is able to be edited by anyone, but it is also scanned constantly for "troll" posts that are obviously made in error or to purposefully mislead. They also request citations to back the claims of the editors. After reading through the article as well as the citations, one can get full knowledge of the article and decide if it is true or not, especially when researching elsewhere as well.

Comment by Spiff Slalom on March 2, 2010 at 5:48am: The US Dollar is not backed by Silver, and hasn't been since 1964. It is backed by nothing but promises. A silver certificate is worth more than face value because it is a collectors item. They have not been redeemable for silver at a bank since August 16, 1968.

Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress has the power to regulate the value of money, and section 10 states that only gold & silver are legal tender. The Congress in 1913 abdicated their responsibility by the creation of the mis-named Federal Reserve Bank... it is privately held, not federal, and it has no real reserves... when it needs money, it just pulls it out of a Dark and Unsanitary Place by creating some ledger entries. Part of the Fed's charter is to maintain the value of the dollar... And since the dollar is now worth about $.04 in purchasing power compared to the dollar of 1913, they have failed hugely and should be dissolved.

Comment by Mme Moxie on March 2, 2010 at 2:18am: Just a small note. While Wikipedia can be very useful, never use it as a final research or conclusion. Remember, Wikipedia many, many times is very inaccurate. Why? Because, the people who write all the information, don't always have their facts straight.

Your comment about the dollar not being worth as much or actually one dollar, is correct, right now. This devaluation of the dollar has happened many times, during my lifetime and will continue for as long as we use this method of exchange for currency. The devaluation of the dollar is what the economists use as a means to establish recession, inflation, so on and so forth. This holds true for all countries and their basic unit of currency, whatever they use the peso, franc, pound, yen and etc.

Comment by Mme Moxie on March 2, 2010 at 2:04am: Something is 'ringing a bell' with me, not sure where this is coming from, either. But, all the gold that the US has 'stored' at Fort Knox, isn't that considered collateral?! Yes, we do silver has our standard for paper currency, but, now all of our paper currency states Federal Reserve, not a Silver Certificate. Isn't that why any paper currency that does state Silver Certificate is worth a lot more, than it's stated value? Somewhere along the way, things have changed. What I am not sure about, did that change take place when the World Bank came into play or not?

Bottom line, anyone who suggests that we use our gold reserve to lower the national debt, really doesn't understand much of anything about the Global Economy or how the Global Financial system works.

Comment by Larry Bailey on March 1, 2010 at 11:04pm: I was under the impression the World Bank backed the US dollar not silver, gold has not been used for many years, but to sell it would be stupid as then there are NO assets left to fall back on

Comment by Eric Fox on March 1, 2010 at 12:29pm: Just read through a Wikipedia article about it, and it's worse than I thought. We're already using Silver for our currency. The Dollar is worth even less than I thought. On the plus side, it does mean our Gold going away won't harm it very much, but it's still stupid to through a $200 billion ball at a $12 trillion brick wall and think it will even cause a dent.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Johannes

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