# Do the US gold reserves still have any economic importance? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 24, 2018, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-us-gold-reserves-still-have-any-economic-importance/820162 "2018-08-24T02:51:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![etasyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9f8e36/32.png) [@etasyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etasyde)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-us-gold-reserves-still-have-any-economic-importance/820162/41 "2018-08-25T17:26:25Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Global research is not a legit site, it’s has no facts, just loony conspiracy theories. Feel free to ignore the opinion pieces (I poisoned my own well saying it wasn’t the best source), what mattered was the quotes from the emails. If you’re disputing that the quotations are invalid, then by all means there’s a huge list of sources that all corroborate the quoted emails, and if you’re arguing that _all_ of them are doctored (identically) or that this particular email is fake, well, I don’t think either of us can prove either case, so we either agree the emails exist and are authentic or we don’t. > [@](#): > > Procon is not a nutcase site, but there again here’s all it says: “_Was Iraq’s decision to change payment for its oil from dollars to euros a reason for the US to attack Iraq_?” with arguments on both sides. Nothing whatsoever about gold standard. I wasn’t being careful when formulating my statement about the US’ realpolitic position and wound up making a statement that on its face reads in a way I didn’t intend. Totally my bad. I spend a lot of time discussing how the US defends the petrodollar and wound up defaulting to my normal explanation - flipping to that explanation mid sentence in the context of the gold standard becomes inaccurate. A clearer statement would be along the lines of “The US crushes any attempt at circumventing the petrodollar, and the gold standard is certainly a threat. Examples of defending the petrodollar in an extreme fashion include etc etc, and examples of attacking the gold standard include etc etc.” It’s fair to point out my original statement was factually wrong, but it wasn’t the statement I intended to make (typing on a cell phone while distracted has that effect). I gave procon a link because it had a lot of various arguments (and I don’t care if there are arguments against, I’m not looking for singularly biased sources, just a good example of the arguments in favor and possible discussion thereof). If you dispute the arguments for Iraqi involvement, or you want me to defend any particular one of my own, I’d be happy to. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-us-gold-reserves-still-have-any-economic-importance/820162/42 "2018-08-25T19:49:24Z")
Note this oddity: 1. The “intrinsic” value of gold is low: orders of magnitude lower than its current price. 2. Going on a gold standard requires setting the value of gold much higher: many orders of magnitude higher than the current price. Someone who thinks that gold has an intrinsic value that makes it useful to back a currency is amazingly, astonishingly, beyond belief wrong. They completely miss these two contradictory points. All those differences in magnitudes add up to one thing: you’d have to make gold a _fiat_ valued commodity. Yep, there’s that f-word. Oh, forgot to make a comparison. Argentina has a lot going for it in terms of population stats, resources, etc. But it’s economy crumples once in a while. Compare to Chile, which is not in quite as good a natural situation. Chile’s [economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Chile) has been doing quite well for almost 30 years. Why? A rational, democratic government took over from a bunch of corrupt generals. It’s all about people being able to _trust_ the economy. From top to bottom. If you have idiots in charge of your economy it’s going to tank. Gold or no gold. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-us-gold-reserves-still-have-any-economic-importance/820162/43 "2018-08-25T20:29:09Z")
> [@etasyde](#): > > Probably a shock to you that I voted for Hillary. But apparently anything contained in leaked emails has no bearing on the goings on in government… …Now I said the source was annoying, but that was because you aren’t worth more than the 2 seconds it took to type “Gadaffi oil gold” into google and link you the first result. You can pick any of the thousands of pages, emails, and other analysis if you want to take the time, but don’t ask me to waste time on your disingenuous argument. Not worth 2 seconds for you to copy-paste and show what the hell you’re even talking about, but worth spending a minute composing insults. Got it. Instead of some simple effort to copy-paste and inform, you leave a disreputable cite hanging there like a turd. I’m willing to waste more than 2 seconds educating you about gold standard if you’re interested in learning. Let’s start with a simple question: _ **How do you feel about Bitcoins for a national or world-wide standard currency? It would seem to have similar features to gold for your purpose?** _ ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-us-gold-reserves-still-have-any-economic-importance/820162/44 "2018-08-25T21:15:01Z")
**MODERATING** I’m not going to wade through this thread to see “who started it” or to find every instance, but the level of snark in this thread needs to go way down. Make your points without insulting remarks about other posters. Further potshots will be subject to warnings. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![etasyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9f8e36/32.png) [@etasyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etasyde)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-us-gold-reserves-still-have-any-economic-importance/820162/45 "2018-08-25T23:09:59Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > _ **How do you feel about Bitcoins for a national or world-wide standard currency? It would seem to have similar features to gold for your purpose?** _ Which Bitcoin? Core is not useful as a currency because of it’s intrinsic scaling issues. It’s not possible to perform the requisite number of transactions to support an economy. I guess if you were using some king of side chain (and LN has serious problems) or if we ignore the technical difficulties facing core or the other Bitcoin variants and look only at the scarcity we could discuss it. But that’s a serious issue right out the gate, and not the only issue. For instance, in general, non anonymous transactions give a huge amount of power to state actors, namely the ability to freeze your funds. There is no cash alternative, so a particularly nasty government could “turn off your chip” so to speak. Cash may go extinct anyway, but a transition to crypto currency guarantees it. Bitcoin is also problematic when there are power outages or internet service disruptions (or just plain weak internet infrastructure). There’s also the technical difficulty of using it. Many people have trouble with computers, and trying to explain how to protect their cryptographic key, or setting up a reasonably high level of consumer safety (it’s too easy to loose all your funds) is a job without easy solutions. But, if we magic away all those problems (and the ones I haven’t mentioned), well, it is not necessary for sound money to be gold backed, and other finite resources could in theory be used as a substitute, even cryptographic ones. Gold simply has preferable characteristics. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-us-gold-reserves-still-have-any-economic-importance/820162.md?page=2)