Why are these metals so precious?

reply to post by R3KR


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Originally posted by stellawayten

Originally posted by surf911
reply to post by stellawayten

 

CAUSE GOLDS MAIN PURPOSE FOR THE PAST 3000+ YEARS HAS NOT BEEN FOR DECORATION BUT USED AS CURRENCY!!!!!!!

If you didnt listen to the stupid media feeding you BS all day and studied some history you would knwo that.

why are you being so rude?

anyway... in reply to your post, gold isn't the only thing that can be divided and the US doesn't even use gold anymore for backing money.

*removed personal attack*

Where did I state that gold was the only thing that can be divided?? Show me where.

"US doesn't even use gold anymore for backing money" WOW!! *removed another one couched in sarcasm* maybe if i hadnt stated the following your arguement would make sense :"US dollar, unbacked by gold, has been around since the 70s" Your repeating what Ive already stating and making it seem like your presenting new information.


In your next post you state that other metals can be used instead of gold and silver. Name another metal that can be used. This metal must be limited supply but abundant enough so everyone in the world can use it. Platinum, not enough of it. Copper, not valuable enough...would weigh too much to carry around. So tell me another metal besides gold and silver.

You argue that gold is no longer used as money. True, but its only been like that for just over 30 years. Before then all paper currencies were either backed by gold or back by the US dollar which was backed by gold. Gold doomers believe were living on a ticking time bomb because this is simply the X thousandth time we as a society are trying to live on a fiat monetary system. Fiat monetary systems have NEVER EVER worked in the past.

The most recent is and happening right now is Zimbabwe where the inflation is close to 1000%. Before that we had the collapse of the Venezuelan economy cause once again by a fiat currency and runaway inflation. Then there is Germany Weimar where people started burning their money for fire. Workers were paid during lunch on a daily basis and wives would spend the money right away. Even in the good ol' USA if you know Confederate history they uncontrollable inflation.

There is a reason why our founding fathers wrote in the constitution that no state will emit Bills of Credit(ie. FIAT PAPER MONEY LIKE WE HAVE NOW) or make anything BUT GOLD AND SILVER Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts. Obviously judging by your previous posts you sound like an extremely *nice person* and I dont need to tell you that the way law is interpreting by judges doesnt necessarily reflect what our founding fathers original intentions were.

[edit on 24-10-2007 by surf911]

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[edit on 24-10-2007 by Duzey]

reply to post by surf911



Relax. I don't understand why you're so angry at her, or feel the need to call her names and insult her intelligence. Nobody on this planet knows everything, including you. Just because you know things she doesn't, it doesn't give you a right to treat her with disrespect for not knowing those things.

Yes we do use gold. Ever heard of Ft. Knox? To answer your question (Why Gold?) I will start where the person you called rude left off. He was obviously right and I believe the reason that he was being rude is that you are being lazy. Your question is a basic question that you can read the friggen encyclopedia to get the answer from. You simply do not want to do the work of reading the proper information.

I feel that he was right in being rude to you because this forum is a place to discus events and information that cannot be readily found in encyclopedias. To me, your post is inappropriate to the purpose of this forum. However, I will say that yes, there is a conspiracy about gold, but it’s not what you think it is.

Gold is and was used as a currency. If you think that it still isn’t used as money today then you are wrong. Gold has been used as the method of currency between countries for as long as gold has been discovered.

Gold is inert for the most part; it is not toxic to the human body. Same goes for silver. Gold is not readily found everywhere and is difficult to obtain in any sufficient quantity. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations will teach you that the real price of any good is the labor required to produce or obtain it. This means that Gold’s value will always be relatively standard because it is a mineral that must be mined from the earth. This gives it an inherently high relative cost to weight ratio. Gold does not grow on trees and so its value will not suddenly go down or up based on weather or other forces of nature. Gold has lasting value in this regard; its cost to obtain is relatively fixed in relation to obtaining other natural products.

The conspiracy about gold is that its price is only related to currency values and monetary exchange. Nothing could be further from the truth because while gold has inherent trading value as a commodity, its primary use is for the jewelry market and not that of the currency market. 50 percent of the price of gold is determined by the demand for jewelry. When financial advisors tell you to buy gold it is often right before gold will fall in value due to a lagging economy. As I write this, gold is very high historically and people are constantly still saying, “Buy Gold”. The conspiracy is that they know full well that 50 percent of Gold’s demand is in the jewelry market and that the jewelry market is about to take a major hit.

The housing sector has fallen and after that goes the automotive sector and then the home appliance sector and then so on down the line. The smaller the ticket item then the longer it will take for a lagging economy to affect its general sales. Jewelry is on average lower than the price of a car or large home appliance and so when the economy starts to affect these larger ticket items untrained investors will flee first to gold not realizing that gold is generally about to take a major hit soon as well. Once the retail stores post lower than expected earning after Christmas then you will see gold prices fall dramatically unless there is some major destabilizing political even that will take up the slack in gold prices due to its ties with currencies instead of its man price in the jewelry market.

Look at a chart of historical gold prices and you will see that after a major market correct and the beginnings of a recession gold prices generally fall, not rise. This is when the market is pricing in the slow jewelry sales back into the price of gold after the Christmas season proves a slow down in the economy.

So, the jist of all this is that you most likely should not buy gold during this time period until after the Christmas season proves whether or not Jewelry sales are affected by the slowing housing market. As well, financial advisors often tell clients to buy something when the company that they work for is trying to sell it in large quantity. If anything reaches a historically high price level and your financial advisor tells you to buy into it then you should be wary and perhaps avoid his recommendation. Most likely he is trying to get you to buy something that the firm is trying to sell in order for the firm to lock in profits before a sell off.

The reason gold holds such an allure to mankind is that it is the FIRST metal we were able to make use of. Gold can be found in its metallic state naturally. It was available to pick up off of the ground for many years in many places. It was easily worked and didnt corrode , so it could be passed on and made into new things.
At various times in history many other items and substances have had a higher " value" than gold. Iron, copper, and bronze at one time were all worth more than gold. Today, I buy plastics, that are worth almost as much as gold. In some of the high mountain valleys of California's Gold country, gold was so plentiful you could find it just laying around on the ground, but since it was of no use to the indians they just let it lie there till the white man showed up.
As plentiful as it is, it is very rare, I read somewhere once, that all of the gold ever gathered by mankind if put into one place, it would only make a cube 200yrd on a side, thats not very much.
And by the way it is very shiny, and we like to collect shiny things, it is part of our nature.

reply to post by Hot_Wings


No one has the "right" to be rude. It is a "choice". A response to a certain situation. If pursued with vigor, you will do nothing but attract it yourself.

( See how I did this w/o being rude to you? )

Back on topic. . .

Here's a metaphoric example of what historically backs up a country's currency;



It's also how you keep your gold safe. . .

2PacSade-

so the only alternative reason for golds importance is that it is for aliens? i have to say i'm disappointed. I really thought that there would be more theories than this.

reply to post by stellawayten


Well, there is also the alchemical/allegorical interpretation. That is one fat, honking can of worms right there, but here's a very brief introduction to the subject.

"In medieval times, gold was often seen as beneficial for the health, in the belief that something that rare and beautiful could not be anything but healthy. Even some modern esotericists and forms of alternative medicine assign metallic gold a healing power. Some gold salts do have anti-inflammatory properties and are used as pharmaceuticals in the treatment of arthritis and other similar conditions. However, only salts and radioisotopes of gold are of pharmacological value, as elemental (metallic) gold is inert to all chemicals it encounters inside the body."

-from the wikipedia article on gold

yeah, that reminds me... i believe i saw someone on this board post they they are ingesting gold on a daily basis. It has been awhile since I read it so I don't remember what thread it was in.

Originally posted by Hot_Wings
I feel that he was right in being rude to you because this forum is a place to discus events and information that cannot be readily found in encyclopedias. To me, your post is inappropriate to the purpose of this forum.

Well, it was obviously a good enough contribution to ATS that you felt inclined to answer.

Being rude isn’t how play here on ATS. Now I admit that I have been very rude at times, never for no reason.

If you think someone’s post is stupid then don’t respond to it. If you do respond, try to keep from polluting the site with your rude mouth.. er ... fingers.

Things that are rare tend to be worth a lot regardless of how useful they actually are.

Why? Because a lot of people love having rare things. It makes them happy.

That is really all there is too it.

ugh.... if that really is all there is to it then it makes me sick! i can't stand the shallowness of people.

[edit on 10/24/2007 by stellawayten]

Originally posted by surf911
It just conveys that you havent taken economics 101 and dont understand basic demand/supply. Do some research. Its not that hard to type it into google.

I wonder why people bother to reply to a post only to mock the person asking it... whatever...

I think we all understand supply and demand, but the original question was WHY is it in demand? Ive always wondered myself. Great post!

I guess I'll add a touch more knowledge here. Gold is expensive to mine. The break even point for mines can run as much as $450 an ounce.

The Gold Standard was just plain stupid is why we abandoned it many years ago. The Country with the most Gold was the richest. Stuuuuuupid idea! Now it is a combination of factors the most important of which is productivity. A Nations Productivity is weighed against the amount of Currency in circulation to determine its value. The more productive its Citizens are, unless too much currency is put into the system, the more valuable the money. Countries who do not produce products and services have currency with little value. It is in fact a direct measure of the monetary value of a Nations Workforce. I know, I know this is over simplified.

reply to post by Blaine91555


I very much agree with this post. There's a lot of goldbugs on this forum, I don't think they've looked deeply into how volatile the economy was back when gold was the actual legal tender of the United States. And it really sucked for international trade, too. You basically had to take another country's word for it that they had enough gold to back up the money they gave you, often times they didn't, and you were really boned if anyone ever discovered there wasn't enough gold in that country's vaults.

Gold is being used as a magical spell to distract our attention from the cold financial facts of life. Gold can be hoarded and used to fluctuate market prices by creating scarcity in a corrupted system. It is the financial system that has failed to create equity and fairness by design

The fiat money system is fine. One of the most successful money systems in history was a "split stick". It confirmed fair and equitable trading because you kept one half of the sick and the other half was held by the administrators.

The administrators could not divide their half and lend it out for interest

The end user could trade his half freely for goods and services. The stick always had the same "trade in" value with the administrators, but could be traded based upon what each trader valued most to be equitable( ox,house ,food)

Any money or trading system is corrupted by fiduciary ventures. When a holder of wealth can make more wealth by speculating interest and by trading fractions of real wealth(fractional reserve trading), then they can by actually working to produce any goods or services, the system becomes corrupt.

Interest must be repaid at the expense of real wealth over time. Similar to the entropy factor in a thermo dynamic system of energy, the priciple of interest will eventually erode the the value of the trading instrument through inflation, which will then be borrowed against to keep the economic cycle turning, which creates more interest ad infinum.

Eventually the quality of goods and service must be reduced to maintain profits in a collapsing system(hello China). This collapse will lead to less and less real buying power wages for the human labor element.(us)

This devaluing of the trading instrument offers the labor force no choice but to borrow more(credit cards) to maintain their quality of life, which in turn leads to more inflation an less quality of life.

Then deflation (no money to buy goods, no matter the price) will lead to a depression of the quality of life to eventual extinction or revolt.

Of course this inevitability has been staved off by constant indoctrination of new labor, new investors in the system,..and finally by bringing in otherwise non participators into the system via economic manipulation (ie. cheap Malaysian labor)..but this too will expire.

The only hope for the "system" itself is to shorten the life spans and memories of the labor force, while increasing birthrates of new investors who will not remember the quality of life they should expect. They will just be trained to work in the system like its a natural human selection to live in perpetual labor, well we do have video games anti depressants and MPEGS

Kind of depressing, i guess that why they don't talk about it on the news much,...all though the bankers/aliens/ruling elite seem to be doing well ????

reply to post by uberarcanist


OBVIOUSLY the aliens did this because they cannot create better mining tech .. because when somone tries.. they mysteriously "disappear"... and so they FORCE humans to mine the gold in UNSAFE conditions because... the aliens dont want to die OF COURSE!!!

but honestly...

Gold=Pretty so people want it
Gold=Rare.. so it cant be given to everyone
High demand + Low Quantity = High Price... High SChool Economics FTW (for the win) lol

Originally posted by surf911

Originally posted by stellawayten

Originally posted by surf911
reply to post by stellawayten

 

CAUSE GOLDS MAIN PURPOSE FOR THE PAST 3000+ YEARS HAS NOT BEEN FOR DECORATION BUT USED AS CURRENCY!!!!!!!

If you didnt listen to the stupid media feeding you BS all day and studied some history you would knwo that.

Why is gold so precious? Gold has been precious since the dawn of time we use it for decoration income and sumtimes fillings for teeth. Yes oil should be more important which it is n thats exactly why we are friends with canada and mexico cause we need more oil and they have it. Basically gold and oil have been needed since the beginning years of the United States.

For the op, no question is a stupid question because if you knew the answer you wouldn't have asked. The only stupid question is the one that didn't get asked.

I have noticed that no one so far has touched upon the fact that gold is quite useful in industry. From electronics to aerospace, gold is much more useful than as a item to adorn yourself with.

It protects our astronauts from harmful solar radiation while outside the shuttle. It is used on the canopies of our fighters for similar reasons and for electrical connections. It is far more than just a shiny pretty metal used for jewelry or as a means of currency.

I don't buy into the alien theory either...pfffft, that is saying man isn't smart enough to figure it out himself. Just my opinion

Lots of answers in this thread intermixed, but I always thought it's value was maintained in the same way Daylight Savings Time was, well after it's value was leveled.

Gold I always myself thought was cool because the atoms where only made in supernovae. But I also knew these other facts;

Gold is mailable, easily formed and worked and that was valuable to early ages before metal technology was fully developed.

Golds visual beauty when polished made it an ideal ornamental metal.

Gold will not corrode and retains it's luster indefinitely.

Gold is an outstanding conductor of electrical and for the previous reason suited to electronics where corrosion and oxidation impede conductive properties.


Gold has properties of atomic density that make good shields from cosmic ray and radioactive particles. Used in space for protecting people (see face shields since Moon missions) and hardening electronics. Also it is a good reflector of infrared and is coated on polyester film for the orbital facilities protection for the space programs.

Gold has many medical uses starting with dental science since 700 BC. and they even make it radioactive for use in cancer and rheumatoid arthritis treatments. It is a beta emitter when injected as a colloidal it can be tracked easily for various diagnostics. Being non-reactive it has many more uses medically also for parts and fittings for prosthetics.

It is said it is the most useful and versatile metal known. So that, with tradition as tender and all that should give a hint why it has any value at all.

I was fascinated with the stories of the Anunnaki or Nefilim (forget which) as alien overlords of ancient times wanting to collect it with slave labor here to disperse the gold in some form ( powder, vapor?) around their planet to protect it from solar radiation or such.

Not so much fascinated for the story as much as the idea. Solar wind would blow it away eventually, but I thought how cool an idea that would be for the future when the Sun would become too intense in either radiant heat or particle emissions. If it fell to Earth it would be inert.

Can't speak to the alien aspect much. I do wonder why an advanced civilization first used slave labor, and two, needed humans when a machine could be made to mine and separate gold from ore. I would assume they could be that advanced being able to cross space from another planet. I do see the logic in that if the alien occupation actually transpired with early humans that the slave cultures would covet that which their superiors valued too.

Maybe it is time to switch our gold value for wealth counted instead on our contributions to bettering life for society and everyone. A rich person would be a good and giving person. Who's ready for that?

BTW, you know how worthless diamonds are, right? Even kings buy emeralds or rubies before they consider diamonds. It is a common misconception that diamonds are as rare as they say. The creeps that control the diamond markets can afford great commercials to re-inspire the masses to buy more however. Sheeple love them!

I still like gold for it's beauty and the Supernovae connection as I am in to the physics of space and time.

GMM