Likewise, meaning it's also my sister's birthday. Hope you had some good beers with good friends, Charlie.
]]>That's like mistaking Sea Devils for Silurians....
]]>At the time, gold was about $1700 per ounce, and the current price is $400 lower. And the story refers to a 10-oz bar. There's a scattering of other stories. There are tests that can spot the fakes, using such things as ultrasound.
What's interesting is that gold started a slow rise with the American land wars in Asia, but the rate of increase roughly doubled when Barack Obama was elected for the first term. There were some big swings in 2011 and 2012, and a really big drop after Barack Obama was elected for a second term.
I expect the Conspiracy theorists are coming up with a few ideas to explain that, and fake bullion bars will be part of it.
]]>Gold is popular in different cultures for different reasons. In the US, it's largely popular among older, less well educated people who have difficulty handling abstractions, and one of the abstractions they find hard to swallow is the idea of paper money as a viable medium of exchange. To be fair, there were huge currency issues in the US prior to the stabilization of the current system -- notably before, during and immediately after the Slaveowners' Treasonous Rebellion -- but that's under control and the post-1945 situation with the dollar as de facto global reserve currency is unrecognizably different. However, there's an entire industry built around pandering to these people's fear of "fiat currency" by trying to sell them gold at an ever-inflating price.
Barack Obama is the first non-white president of the United States. As such, to the aging white racist contingent he might as well be a sign of the apocalypse. They're deeply disturbed by what he symbolizes: a young multiethnic America where the old racial (or racist) rules don't apply. To the sort of people whose instinctive response to trouble on the horizon is to shuffle their savings into gold, ammunition, and canned goods, he's a deeply disturbing phenomenon. And to the parasites who feed on the elderly or insular, insecure racists he's a marketing god-send. Run a Barack Hussein (Secret Muslim) Obama sock-puppet up the flag-pole, make with the booga-booga scare spiel, and then offer to sell them gold bullion and guns. It's been a profitable side-line for more than one of the right wing talk radio hosts, and it sent the price of gold (in the US) through the roof. A major banking crisis and a couple of wars didn't hurt, either.
But Obama isn't the anti-Christ, and he's in his second term, meaning he'll be out of the oval office within a few years. The wars are being ramped down, too. The banking crisis has been papered over. The incentives to buy gold are dwindling, for now, and meanwhile it spiked to an all-time high: the only obvious way for it to go is down.
At least, until Hilary Rodham Clinton makes her run on the White House.
]]>Add to that a fair degree of even fairly level-headed people not trusting the banks, hedge funds and the like around then and you've got a pretty case for a volatile gold market without getting into mad conspiracies.
I'm sure that won't stop the conspiracy theorists though.
]]>And what did the banks do to get me to trust them anyway? Charge me ridiculous fees, change the fees every fee months, hit me with new fees... (Actually, my bank is OK, mostly, otherwise I would have gone already. But the stories I've heard about the bigger banks...)
The only reason I've still got a bank account (and haven't pushed all my money into credit unions or similar), is that it's much more convenient at the moment (and they aren't so bad). When I'm actually in a position to think straight on the issue for a couple of months, I'll probably move.
]]>I'm not sure $1,000,000 is the right dividing line - I'm not sure it's the wrong one mind - where banks stop being about providing a service of facilitating transactions that ordinary folk might recognise (although they do that too, when the need arises I'm sure, if celeb A buys celeb B a fancy gold and diamond encrusted toy, or celeb C buys a luxury yacht or whatever) and seem to do their own things that are basically akin to financial black arts. And suddenly you're getting into risk-reward scenarios in a way that EPOS transactions for $250 max really don't. Is it really a surprise that they all fell over? On any given day, sure, but sometime..?
]]>A new dystopian novel in the classic mode takes the form of a dictionary of madness is a bit of a snark on the subject, but does have some relevance to the perceptions of how diagnosis works.
]]>But it raises the question of just how the gold market works. How have the swivel-eyed-loons been able to buy enough to shift the markets by so much? Gold has uses in industry, and I suspect a big chunk of the cause might be that. Mobile phones are reputedly a richer source of gold than the ore from South African mines.
If, for instance, the US market doesn't encourage recycling of defunct electronics, does that push gold prices up?
]]>But you do have The Rhesus Chart to come a bit sooner - hey, it's got cover art now.
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