...if you could somehow gather every scrap of gold that man has ever mined into one place, you could only build about one-third of the Washington Monument...
and Platinum?
...all of the platinum in the entire world would easily fit in the average home.
Economists differ widely in their view of government's proper role in determining the supply, demand, and intrinsic value of money. Many libertarians hold the gold standard and abolition of fractional reserve banking practices as ideals. Ideals they may be, but fanciful ones that have no real hope of coming to pass. Still, discussion on currency and government intervention is critically important, as it has played a part in the decline or collapse of many societies, including Rome, Germany's Weimar Republic, and Zimbabwe. History seems to suggest that one of the greatest threats to a state's survival is an unchecked central power with the ability to devalue its currency. If true, the recent actions of the Federal Reserve and policies enacted under both the Bush and Obama administrations should be of deep concern.
2 comments:
Olympic-sized swimming pool or 1/3 of the Washington Monument, either way, that ain't much of the stuff.
One solution to currency devaluation is to use much of the economic stimulus package to fund alchemy research. There are a bunch of skilled technicians that are un- or underemployed in the wake of Detroit's woes. We could set up a government agency to "make" more gold - after all, Detroit isn't that far from Oak Ridge, TN if you think about it.
Also, an Olympic swimming pool has a minimum volume of 660k gallons, or 88k ft^3.
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