I want to see the oz $ where it belongs, 10,20,30 $ then we can be good little socialists go on the dole and bludge and have a great life
30 is way too cheap to bludge effectively. Make it 10,000+ and then I'll bludge overseas and won't be a burden on medicare.
Do you plan to be at the hospital/doctors most days in your old age ? live hard and fast & disgracefully wear your body out and drop dead with a smile on your face . No point going to the hospital/doctors to many sick people there . And be nice to your mum
I've twisted my ankle a couple of times while base jumping and broke my finger once while playing Connect 4.
I hope you still went to work the next work day, and not bludged at home playing computer You have to wonder how the human race has suvived for so long ?
Gold is a competitor to the RBA's product (dollars). A lot, and I mean A LOT, would need to change for the RBA to buy gold.
I hope you were playing connect 4 whilst BASE jumping. Edit: back OT though. The only way we can artificially manipulate is to expand the money supply faster than our FX trading partners. Wether they do that through US style QE or printing and buying up gold is a different story all together. Personally I would like to see the current status quo curbed so that the RBA was doing so and restricting the banking sector from inflating the money supply.
Why does everyone worry about strong currencies? should it not be a positive if our currency is overvalued. Just stop exporting to those who can no longer afford it. Peruse new markets that can afford the goods. If no one can afford them don't sell. Especially when you export so many raw nonrenewable resources. Why devalue your dollar so a foreign company can digg up all your minerals and sell them overseas at bargain prices?
That's not an issue, a strong currency is a good thing. Bad for a few exporters, but increased purchasing power for everyone. A strong currency being bad is a Keynesian myth. Printing money is inflation. A central bank shouldn't be printing money, but assuming they do, they would be better off buying gold over other paper assets/bonds.
Welcome to the forum, jarrydg. The issue is about relative weakness and strength. Australia is geared for manufacturing and exports at a certain level of currency value relative to other nations. Then when foreign nations start devaluing their currency and artificially increasing the value of the Australian dollar by their own money printing , they are effectively stealing the market for our export industries by artificially making our products more expensive. Stealing income, stealing profits and stealing jobs. This currency manipulation is an artefact of using arbitrary paper fiat currencies and contrary to what you say, is very much an issue. The Swiss central bank have been printing money and buying the AUD to reduce aggregate demand and hence value of the Swiss Franc, because they want to peg their currency against the Euro. They are printing money to reduce demand for their currency, while driving up the demand and value of the Aussie currency. Other countries are undertaking similar measures to "manage" the value of their respective currencies. My suggestion is that the RBA print an equal amount of currency to neutralise the effect of this foreign currency manipulation and sell it into the internation forex market and buy gold. In this way, it addresses the foreign currency manipulation without passing our problem on to anyone else, unlike Switzerland exporting their problems here to Australia. I agree that a strong currency is a good thing, btw. It's great for affordability of day to day stapples and for travelling, but it aint so good when manufacturers are forced off-shore to compete and jobs are lost, because then there is no income to enjoy the benefits of a strong currency. I also agree that there is no fundamental necessity for Central Banks and their rate setting and money printing. But, they are there and manipulating away every single day. And ther is no assumption.
Were seeing the same "problem" here in NZ the same business sections of the paper have stories of how to help our exporters by decreasing our dolar value. Then the next story is about retail business owners expect prices to rise despite the high dollar. The justification that they have kept margins so low with such low consumer confidence they cant afford to stay open if they dont put prices up. Does this mean were done? People cant afford to keep consuming and propping up the retail sector even with overvalued currencies. Supply and semand tells us this is only going to get worse with rising prices, and thats what theyre predicting without devaluing our dollar. Devalue the dollar and its just going to happen quicker. I wonder where theyre planning on sending all these exports?
The problem is that people have become used to inflation and their wages going up over time. What's actually happening when a country reduces the value of it's currency is that the government is reducing people's wages, stealthily, so that they will not earn as much. If we didn't have the inflation, there mostly wouldn't be increases in wages and in some cases there would be naturally calls for wage cuts. The thing is, the rise in the value of the money would more than offset any loss in nominal wages in this scenario. But because of long-term inflation expectations the system has been built up to disallow actual wage cuts to stay competitive. Who is going to accept less money when their money is being constantly devalued? The entire system over time has been built on the expectations of higher nominal prices, whether it be higher house prices, higher wages or higher prices for almost everything that is bought. The thing is, it is obvious now that there is a limit to credit creation and hence inflation. And not getting rid of gold, nor controlling interest rates or just about any amount of stimulus will ultimately remove that hard limit enforced by nature. And ultimately it just becomes a race to the bottom. Fiat of course means "by decree" and it is that aspect of currencies that is the problem, not that they are paper and not linked to gold. Gold may be a short-term solution, but ultimately it will be dropped again by govts when it becomes inconvenient, as it always is, and we will be back to the same problems again except they will probably be even worse due to increased scale over time.
"The cure for higher prices is, higher prices" Debt based consumption as a global basis for trade is simply and fundamentally flawed, as it requires ever increasing mountains of debt to expand or, as we are seeing now when debt saturation is being reached, to even maintain economic activity levels. In a fiat currency system, this just unleashes the central planners to force desired outcomes and everything becomes unbalanced and runs out of control in a dystopian nightmare. As we are seeing in Europe, China, the USA, and Japan. And we will see here too. Not because of who you vote for, but who you don't. The people that manage the currency with their monetary policies. So unless we depart into an alternate universe where debts don't matter, China's top politburo princelings can keep building empty cities and the USA can just disregard all debt limits and keep spending like there is no tomorrow on global militarism, and Europe can just paper over all its bankrupt nations, then we are going to experience crisis in all fiat currencies regardless. I would rather we are prepared as a nation, for life in the next paradigm. Which requires wealth for toil beyond Monopoly money currency. If we don't start accruing gold for that event, like China is doing and like Russia, India, South Korea, Mexico, Venuzuela, etc. are doing then we will not have any accumulated wealth / savings when we need to use them. We'll just have a redundant RBA Governor and redundant RBA board, to go along with a redundant Treasurer with an empty Treasury.
Bang on Gino the debt saturation point..... Whats next in the grand plan? Why are we not budding up with China or countries with savings in reserve? seems bizarre to let the US park their navy in the NT and but expensive useless planes so were flying the same as the yanks. Really seems like were choosing the wrong mates, wheres Kevin Rudd and his Mandarin skills when we need him?
There's nothing wrong with debt-based consumption as long as it is market determined. Interest rates should be set by the market. When you can just keep reducing people's interest rate, there is no incentive for them not to keep getting into more and more debt as they know they will always be bailed out by having their rate pushed down. I think it's more important that people themselves understand the system and take preparations themselves. History shows that people who depend on governments are the ones who get in trouble when inevitably government's can't meet their ever mounting obligations. To that end, I think it's best if people themselves buy some gold (and/or silver). And that's one of the reasons I'm here, to help people find their own way through. History shows that having faith in govts is folly. As for a redundant RBA, bring it on, I say. We are heading that way anyway, where it's market operations become less and less effective. Logical when you think about it. We can't run back to the past however much we may want to. The more wealth a govt has , the more it spends and then the more it has to take from people to continue the spending. We don't want a wealthy well-funded govt. It drains wealth from society.
:lol: Jim Rickards says Australia and South Korea should take advantage of their strong currencies by printing money and buying gold. From t=23m54s [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QLD2IGvKlQ[/youtube]
