Michael Hudson rightfully states gold is politically controlled. Politics has always been controlled by the affluent; therefore, the price of gold has always been determined by the ruling elite. It is in their interest to claim it has immense value despite the fact its only practical uses are it's a pretty good electrical conductor and it makes pretty jewelry. (There are plenty of cost-effective materials to do the same at a lower price.) Just because gold has historically been highly esteemed doesn't make it right. Historically, folks believed the earth was flat and that if God wanted us to fly, we would have been created with wings.
Price of gold nowadays is also determined by how much the people in India love to buy gold jewelry. The real question is why does the government of the United States have so much money tied up in gold. Actually it is a trivial amount valued at about $300 billion that apparently serves our activistic desire for our money to be backed by something more than mere trust.
i am not sure any money is "tied up" with gold. gold in a vault in Ft Knox is no longer money...has no effect on the price of things or the ability of the government to pay for your Social Security for example
and those atavists know that the value of gold is backed up by their trust that if the Muskox destroys America they can take their gold to another country that will no longer accept American dollars (which no longer have any value because they are just bits and bites in a computer that Musk controls).
i'm not so sure historically folks believed any such thing, some old greek measured the circumference a couple of thousand years ago. the things that you learn in school ain't necessarily so.
oh...thatflat earththing is a story they tell to second graders to spice up the Columbus story. Columbus knew the world was round. More importantly, so did Queen Isabella, who pawned her gold and jools to finance the trip. She would not have done that if she thought Christopho was going to fall off the edge. History does not tell us if any polls were taken in Genoa or Madrid to determine if the earth was round or flat.
i don'tknow about the Fed deciding. they set interest rates to encourage or discourage spending and investment. Theoretically congress decides. Musk and Trump have changed all that.
William Mitchell, a founder of MMT, says that MMT is policy neutral. that means the money created can be spent on military or welfare or anywhere.
do you think it is just coincidental that the left wing supports MMT and the right thinks that is a joke. Do you think it is coincidental that Bernie Sanders hired stephanie Kelton?
no. the deficit lie has been played by the right to scream we can't afford it when the dems want to spend money on the people's welfare (not "welfare), and not worryabout the deficit when they want to cut taxes, the left of course wants to raise taxes so they can pay for programs to help th people who vote for them. I love Bernie but I don'r always think his programs or strategies are wise. Are you asking me this because you think I don't like MMT? If so, you haven't been listening.
deficit would be in most cases inflationary unless the fed was very accommodating. Interest rates are extremely high now for example to accommodate the huge federal deficit. Without the fed cooperating deficits would be much more difficult
i don't know that deficit would be inflationary if the money was borrowed and spent on projects that increased productivity. or just printed and spent on productivity. as Mitchell points out there is a difference between debt to buy a house and debt to vacation in vegas. i am not sure it would be inflationary even then, as the money would increase production of whatever it is they sell in Vegas. i don't think interst rates are etremely high now,
MMT does not say debt does not matter. They will acknowledge that debt can cause inflation. their idea is that the Congress will spend money where they want it spent more than the fed will.
MMT may not say debt does not matter, but most of the people who talk about MMT think it does, and appear to think it means MMT will, for example, pay for their Social Security, which I don't think it can or should.
i do not know what 3 para refers to. and calling it gibberish is not an argument, or a fact, it is an emotional expression, something like a sneeze in "truth value."
here is a list of productivity investments made by the Obama administration because they have no understanding whatsoever of productivity arising from the competitive private market place not from a comical bureaucrat taking wild guesses like a two-year-old;Washington Post Marc Theisson
● Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.
● ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, “We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.”
Worse, according to CBS News the company is “under investigation for insider trading,” and Karner has been subpoenaed “for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company.”
● Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP). The Obama administration gave NGP a $98.5 million taxpayer loan guarantee in 2010. The New York Times reported last October that the company is in “financial turmoil” and that “[a]fter a series of technical missteps that are draining Nevada Geothermal’s cash reserves, its own auditor concluded in a filing released last week that there was ‘significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.’ ”
● First Solar. The Obama administration provided First Solar with more than $3 billion in loan guarantees for power plants in Arizona and California. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report last week, the company “fell to a record low in Nasdaq Stock Market trading May 4 after reporting $401 million in restructuring costs tied to firing 30 percent of its workforce.”
● Abound Solar, Inc. The Obama administration gave Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee to build photovoltaic panel factories. According to Forbes, in February the company halted production and laid off 180 employees.
● Beacon Power. The Obama administration gave Beacon — a green-energy storage company — a $43 million loan guarantee. According to CBS News, at the time of the loan, “Standard and Poor’s had confidentially given the project a dismal outlook of ‘CCC-plus.’ ” In the fall of 2011, Beacon received a delisting notice from Nasdaq and filed for bankruptcy.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. A company called SunPower got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, and as of January, the company owed more than it was worth. Brightsource got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee and posted a string of net losses totaling $177 million. And, of course, let’s not forget Solyndra — the solar panel manufacturer that received $535 million in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees and went bankrupt, leaving taxpayers on the hook.
I think it is probably just great PR to bring the American people into government and show them it is their government . It is just like declassifying all the papers on the JFK assassination which they are doing too . It is about transparency. When I grew up there was a mayor who ran on the promise of removing his office door so everyone could always see what was going on in his office. There is a long tradition of this in America. For the record ,Steve Mnuchin who was Trump's secretary of the treasury during his first term did go to Fort Knox and did verify that all the gold was there . He has been reporting as such all week. Trump must be furious that Mnuchin is interfering with his shameless exercise but then again I'm sure Trump realizes that he has a larger audience and so on balance figures it will be a worthwhile exercise.
I don't doubt that it also appeals to Elon Musk(recently seen on stage with a chainsaw ) who must appreciate the value of some good old-fashioned , shameless PR too given that Tesla still sells for 155 times earnings thanks in large part to his successful efforts at PR over the years .
i peeked at your substack. (I have no idea if that is the correct word.) From my experience anyone who thinks they know about reason or logic or critical thinking doesn't.
closest we can come is to learn as much as we can, think as hard as we can, publish where other people can critique...and repeat. eventually experience will tell us if we came close.
I have enough troubles with typos without spellcheck "fixing" perfectly good words and ignoring obvious fingre fumbles. (sic)
I'd check their pockets before they are allowed to leave.
In related news, Newshour's "economic correspondent" took us on trip to the Treasury where he showed us the Social Security Trust Fund was "only" a bunch of worhtless paper in a file cabinet. No gold or jools or even stacks of Benjamins!
Newshour is a "high end newssource". Such is the country we live in. Such are the people we are.
It fits their story that the "Deep State" has been hiding waste and fraud from Americans and they're on the job diligently sniffing it out wherever it's hiding. The Feds say there's X gold in Fort Knox but is it really there? The truth is more like the opposite: they're looking for every way possible to loot the government and public wealth but such is the upside-down America we live in now. People like to point to this or that data point illustrating the sorry state of civic education. Try a winning plurality of the electorate believing Trump could, or would even if he could, lower prices and the cost of living for working people?!
Check the price of gold. It’s possible that it will surge at least in the short term, and Trump and Elon would have had prior knowledge of it.
In addition, even though the U.S. is no longer on the gold standard, the perception that America’s gold reserves are compromised could raise concerns about economic mismanagement or dishonesty in federal institutions. It could boost alternative financial systems (e.g., Bitcoin, central bank digital currencies, or commodity-backed financial instruments) which are goals of the crypto bros.
Oh come on, do we have a failure of imagination going on. I’m sure Trump has already renovated a bathroom at Mar-a-Lardo to store it all in at no cost to taxpayers.
Could this be in preparation for establishing a virtual currency backed by gold and giving all of us a few bitcoins worth as Trump hauls off the gold to Mara Logo?
To what point? Do they know that only half the gold we possess is there? Do they plan to count all the bars? Do they know that the U.S. went off the gold standard in 1971? Our money is backed up by…our money?
As I said earlier this week, Trump might try to change back to the gold standard by EO. He’s just that stupid.
Regardless of the Lens topic of the moment, the fact is, only a relatively few of our 336+million citizens have heard of MMT . At this critical moment in our history, it seems time for the MMT founding group and all believers to focus on getting MMT basics to the masses.Some way nationally to get founders on CNN,MSNBC,FOX etc, and to organize volunteers in every state to contact local news outlets.
Just a thought from a proud ,blue collar 90 year old , who at least knows "common sense"
Perhaps FFOTUS continues to mentally decline at an alarming rate as he seeks ridiculous answers to asinine questions! How about he tackle that whole inflation issue…oh right, he knows nothing about that either. Great job fellow Americans for electing a felon to our highest office…hope you enjoy the shit-show. FFOTUS has truly shown himself to be a disgraceful human. MMT for DNC platform!
Michael Hudson rightfully states gold is politically controlled. Politics has always been controlled by the affluent; therefore, the price of gold has always been determined by the ruling elite. It is in their interest to claim it has immense value despite the fact its only practical uses are it's a pretty good electrical conductor and it makes pretty jewelry. (There are plenty of cost-effective materials to do the same at a lower price.) Just because gold has historically been highly esteemed doesn't make it right. Historically, folks believed the earth was flat and that if God wanted us to fly, we would have been created with wings.
Price of gold nowadays is also determined by how much the people in India love to buy gold jewelry. The real question is why does the government of the United States have so much money tied up in gold. Actually it is a trivial amount valued at about $300 billion that apparently serves our activistic desire for our money to be backed by something more than mere trust.
atavistic?
there are people who know how to take gold to another country and turn it back into groceries and real estate if Musk comes to shove.
what?
Ted
i am not sure any money is "tied up" with gold. gold in a vault in Ft Knox is no longer money...has no effect on the price of things or the ability of the government to pay for your Social Security for example
and those atavists know that the value of gold is backed up by their trust that if the Muskox destroys America they can take their gold to another country that will no longer accept American dollars (which no longer have any value because they are just bits and bites in a computer that Musk controls).
what??
Ted
it's an MMT kind of thing.
i'm not so sure historically folks believed any such thing, some old greek measured the circumference a couple of thousand years ago. the things that you learn in school ain't necessarily so.
??
Eratosthenes, about 300 BC
btw the things that you're liable to read on the internet ain't necessarily so either. some of the articles on Eratosthenes garbage things up.
oh...thatflat earththing is a story they tell to second graders to spice up the Columbus story. Columbus knew the world was round. More importantly, so did Queen Isabella, who pawned her gold and jools to finance the trip. She would not have done that if she thought Christopho was going to fall off the edge. History does not tell us if any polls were taken in Genoa or Madrid to determine if the earth was round or flat.
The main problem with MMT is that it transfers monetary authority from the federal reserve to the Congress.
that is something like what i have been trying to ask. but isn't it congress who now decides how much debt to take on?
Congress says "debt will destroy the country and burden our children." MMT says "debt doesn't matter." (seems to say).
I say MMT says "government spends money into existence" which i say means that money not spent is not money.
I don't claim any of these things is God's Truth.
congress and president and the electorate and fed decide on deficit our question is who should decide
i don'tknow about the Fed deciding. they set interest rates to encourage or discourage spending and investment. Theoretically congress decides. Musk and Trump have changed all that.
William Mitchell, a founder of MMT, says that MMT is policy neutral. that means the money created can be spent on military or welfare or anywhere.
do you think it is just coincidental that the left wing supports MMT and the right thinks that is a joke. Do you think it is coincidental that Bernie Sanders hired stephanie Kelton?
no. the deficit lie has been played by the right to scream we can't afford it when the dems want to spend money on the people's welfare (not "welfare), and not worryabout the deficit when they want to cut taxes, the left of course wants to raise taxes so they can pay for programs to help th people who vote for them. I love Bernie but I don'r always think his programs or strategies are wise. Are you asking me this because you think I don't like MMT? If so, you haven't been listening.
deficit would be in most cases inflationary unless the fed was very accommodating. Interest rates are extremely high now for example to accommodate the huge federal deficit. Without the fed cooperating deficits would be much more difficult
i don't know that deficit would be inflationary if the money was borrowed and spent on projects that increased productivity. or just printed and spent on productivity. as Mitchell points out there is a difference between debt to buy a house and debt to vacation in vegas. i am not sure it would be inflationary even then, as the money would increase production of whatever it is they sell in Vegas. i don't think interst rates are etremely high now,
can you explain your theory in more detail?
MMT does not say debt does not matter. They will acknowledge that debt can cause inflation. their idea is that the Congress will spend money where they want it spent more than the fed will.
MMT may not say debt does not matter, but most of the people who talk about MMT think it does, and appear to think it means MMT will, for example, pay for their Social Security, which I don't think it can or should.
The whole idea is that MMT would pay for everything so sleazy politicians would not have to beg for money from voters pockets.
3 para is gibberish
i do not know what 3 para refers to. and calling it gibberish is not an argument, or a fact, it is an emotional expression, something like a sneeze in "truth value."
It is telling you that it is so non-sensible there is no understanding what it or responding to it. It is just gibberish
here is a list of productivity investments made by the Obama administration because they have no understanding whatsoever of productivity arising from the competitive private market place not from a comical bureaucrat taking wild guesses like a two-year-old;Washington Post Marc Theisson
● Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.
● ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, “We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.”
Worse, according to CBS News the company is “under investigation for insider trading,” and Karner has been subpoenaed “for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company.”
● Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP). The Obama administration gave NGP a $98.5 million taxpayer loan guarantee in 2010. The New York Times reported last October that the company is in “financial turmoil” and that “[a]fter a series of technical missteps that are draining Nevada Geothermal’s cash reserves, its own auditor concluded in a filing released last week that there was ‘significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.’ ”
● First Solar. The Obama administration provided First Solar with more than $3 billion in loan guarantees for power plants in Arizona and California. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report last week, the company “fell to a record low in Nasdaq Stock Market trading May 4 after reporting $401 million in restructuring costs tied to firing 30 percent of its workforce.”
● Abound Solar, Inc. The Obama administration gave Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee to build photovoltaic panel factories. According to Forbes, in February the company halted production and laid off 180 employees.
● Beacon Power. The Obama administration gave Beacon — a green-energy storage company — a $43 million loan guarantee. According to CBS News, at the time of the loan, “Standard and Poor’s had confidentially given the project a dismal outlook of ‘CCC-plus.’ ” In the fall of 2011, Beacon received a delisting notice from Nasdaq and filed for bankruptcy.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. A company called SunPower got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, and as of January, the company owed more than it was worth. Brightsource got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee and posted a string of net losses totaling $177 million. And, of course, let’s not forget Solyndra — the solar panel manufacturer that received $535 million in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees and went bankrupt, leaving taxpayers on the hook.
When DOGE adopts #XBRL as a reporting technology... and the CIA and DOD black budgets are audited
Hopefully America won't show up to watch. Boom.
I think it is probably just great PR to bring the American people into government and show them it is their government . It is just like declassifying all the papers on the JFK assassination which they are doing too . It is about transparency. When I grew up there was a mayor who ran on the promise of removing his office door so everyone could always see what was going on in his office. There is a long tradition of this in America. For the record ,Steve Mnuchin who was Trump's secretary of the treasury during his first term did go to Fort Knox and did verify that all the gold was there . He has been reporting as such all week. Trump must be furious that Mnuchin is interfering with his shameless exercise but then again I'm sure Trump realizes that he has a larger audience and so on balance figures it will be a worthwhile exercise.
I don't doubt that it also appeals to Elon Musk(recently seen on stage with a chainsaw ) who must appreciate the value of some good old-fashioned , shameless PR too given that Tesla still sells for 155 times earnings thanks in large part to his successful efforts at PR over the years .
Maybe they'll find Odd Job's hat.
It’s still in there somewhere!
I for one would love to see a livestream of the doors opened and a walkthrough and yes I watched Geraldo’s Capone Vault show. 🙁
Joseph
i peeked at your substack. (I have no idea if that is the correct word.) From my experience anyone who thinks they know about reason or logic or critical thinking doesn't.
closest we can come is to learn as much as we can, think as hard as we can, publish where other people can critique...and repeat. eventually experience will tell us if we came close.
I have enough troubles with typos without spellcheck "fixing" perfectly good words and ignoring obvious fingre fumbles. (sic)
I'd check their pockets before they are allowed to leave.
In related news, Newshour's "economic correspondent" took us on trip to the Treasury where he showed us the Social Security Trust Fund was "only" a bunch of worhtless paper in a file cabinet. No gold or jools or even stacks of Benjamins!
Newshour is a "high end newssource". Such is the country we live in. Such are the people we are.
Maybe these two malignant narcissists think we are still on the gold standard and want reassurances that their ill gotten $Billions are covered.
It fits their story that the "Deep State" has been hiding waste and fraud from Americans and they're on the job diligently sniffing it out wherever it's hiding. The Feds say there's X gold in Fort Knox but is it really there? The truth is more like the opposite: they're looking for every way possible to loot the government and public wealth but such is the upside-down America we live in now. People like to point to this or that data point illustrating the sorry state of civic education. Try a winning plurality of the electorate believing Trump could, or would even if he could, lower prices and the cost of living for working people?!
Unless I see a livestream with my own eyes, I’d say there was zero gold in Ft. Knox…
livestream?
you mean like the moon landing?
Exactly!
In 2017, Steve Mnuchin and Mitch McConnell both visited Fort Knox. There was gold.
McConnell? Ha…
Check the price of gold. It’s possible that it will surge at least in the short term, and Trump and Elon would have had prior knowledge of it.
In addition, even though the U.S. is no longer on the gold standard, the perception that America’s gold reserves are compromised could raise concerns about economic mismanagement or dishonesty in federal institutions. It could boost alternative financial systems (e.g., Bitcoin, central bank digital currencies, or commodity-backed financial instruments) which are goals of the crypto bros.
Oh come on, do we have a failure of imagination going on. I’m sure Trump has already renovated a bathroom at Mar-a-Lardo to store it all in at no cost to taxpayers.
Could this be in preparation for establishing a virtual currency backed by gold and giving all of us a few bitcoins worth as Trump hauls off the gold to Mara Logo?
To what point? Do they know that only half the gold we possess is there? Do they plan to count all the bars? Do they know that the U.S. went off the gold standard in 1971? Our money is backed up by…our money?
As I said earlier this week, Trump might try to change back to the gold standard by EO. He’s just that stupid.
Regardless of the Lens topic of the moment, the fact is, only a relatively few of our 336+million citizens have heard of MMT . At this critical moment in our history, it seems time for the MMT founding group and all believers to focus on getting MMT basics to the masses.Some way nationally to get founders on CNN,MSNBC,FOX etc, and to organize volunteers in every state to contact local news outlets.
Just a thought from a proud ,blue collar 90 year old , who at least knows "common sense"
proposals worth considering.GOOD LUCK ALL!!
Ronald
present company excepted, half of those 336 million people are children and the other half are senile...oh, wait! that leaves just you and me.
Perhaps FFOTUS continues to mentally decline at an alarming rate as he seeks ridiculous answers to asinine questions! How about he tackle that whole inflation issue…oh right, he knows nothing about that either. Great job fellow Americans for electing a felon to our highest office…hope you enjoy the shit-show. FFOTUS has truly shown himself to be a disgraceful human. MMT for DNC platform!