Thus said Michael Torrie on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:54:42 MST: > Currency devaluation is largely a government policy. And deflation is > as bad for country as inflation.
Depends on how you define deflation. It was deflation that saved Germany's economy when hyperinflation was the norm in 1923. > While the dollar was indeed worth more compared to a basket of goods, > our economy is so large now that there's no amount of gold that could > cover the entire value of our economy. Any amount of currency will serve the purpose of a medium of exchange as well as any other amount will. It doesn't matter how much gold there is, as long as the amount is stable, but even then, are you of the opinion that money isn't subject to supply/demand? On the the proper amount of gold/money see: http://mises.org/money/2s8.asp There is a better discussion of what supply of money is best in chapter 5 of: http://mises.org/mysteryofbanking/mysteryofbanking.pdf > And apparently in a global economy, a gold standard would dramatically > increase the disparity between rich and poor. Again, how does fiat money help reduce the disparity between rich and poor? > It's no fault of a poor nation they don't happen to have any gold to > mine. What exactly does that have to do with wealth? If a country can't grow oranges, do you say that they are poor with respect to oranges? Or do you believe that Adam Smith (and many others) who have expounded on division of labor are wrong? > One of the miracles of our modern fiat currency system is that it > allows very poor nations to push off poverty simply through education! What if that very fiat money system actually causes an overabundance of educated individuals than the market really demands? Or is there no such thing as supply/demand when discussing education? > Besides all that, what makes gold valuable? It's subjective as mentioned before. But gold does have thousands of years of money history. What exactly does fiat have going for it? > If gold is just sitting in a bank somewhere, it's doing no one any > good. Usually money in a bank is loaned out is it not? That's of course doing nobody any good! Andy -- [-----------[system uptime]--------------------------------------------] 9:45pm up 3:45, 2 users, load average: 1.32, 1.16, 1.13 /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */