Thread: What is Obama's new jobs bill and what will it do?

The definition of a bubble is when an assets price has mindlessly exceeded even optimistic intrinsic valuation. For housing, it's when home are more expensive than the time adjusted value of all future cash flows (aka rent). For a stock, it's the time-adjusted value of the company's future earnings.

For gold, the intrinsic value is minuscule since it has almost no industrial application and it's value is rooted in senseless tradition and shininess. And yet gold continues to soar higher.

It's a bubble by definition.

Originally Posted by Atmoscheer

It's a bubble by definition.

Currently, yes, it is a bubble. Not arguing there at all. But you said it was a 2000 year old bubble, and I'm saying it's more like a 60 year old bubble.

The intrinsic value as technological use or jewelry doesn't have anything to do with that, it is what people are willing to trade for it that makes gold, or dildos for that matter or anything else, a viable option for currency. It just happens that gold has been used throughout time because it best represents what we want in our money - relatively finite, pretty rare, portable and durable.

What you need to look at and consider is that gold DOES have value in the market place, and has for a very long time. In the early 1900s you could buy X amount of rice in an open market with an ounce of gold no problem, and in fact I bet in a private market you would still have no problem buying a sack of 100 lbs of rice for an ounce of gold (The seller would of course have the sweet end of that deal considering current spot prices) And that is even with the currency being illegal to use. (Yes, illegal). The size of that sack of rice you could buy for a price under current valuations would be much larger today than it used to be. Now consider the dollar and that same sack of rice. Back in the early 1900s, for $5 you could buy a fucking huge sack of rice. For $5 now you're lucky to get a 5 or 10 lb bag. The value of the dollar, and thus the buyer power, has decreased over time through inflation.

Thanks atmoscheer for leading me to completely derail this thread with crazy gold talk, but we both know you meant to do that. I think you have a secret boner for gold since you love hearing me talk about it so much. My apologies to MPR