True or not? (US Dollar about to collapse)

[Aethian]

Still, if the premise of the article is "a global conspiracy is about to take over," which is the case here, you can pretty safely assume it's garbage.

I was trying to make kaycivine feel better for getting freaked out from the initial post.

[HYHYBT]

Sorry; you're right.

[kaycivine]

I was trying to make kaycivine feel better for getting freaked out from the initial post.

I was only...20 percent freaked out. But so many friends of mine were taking this so seriously, and they're USUALLY smarter than this....but I keep hearing stuff about how our economy and I was honestly confused.

I suck at this kind of thing. ><

[Hyena Dandy]

No, Kayc, you were just wrong. You didn't come here yelling how the world is falling apart. You were confused by something, and you said "Hey, this seems a bit paranoid to me, but maybe it's true," and asked us.

And then, when you were given relevant evidence otherwise, you said "Oh, okay" instead of calling everyone sheeple.

Maturity and intelligence aren't shown by never being fooled, they're shown by admitting it when you are.

[mikoyan29]

Usually when I see something compared to the SS in an article, unless we are talking about something from like the Soviet Union or China, I tend to dismiss the article.

[Nekojin]

When people start talking about, "moving back to the gold standard," I just tune them out. The vast majority simply don't know what they're talking about and are just parroting something they've heard. Especially if they talk about "getting away from fiat currencies" or compaining about fiat currencies.

There is no way to implement a fully-backed currency with gold. It's not possible. There isn't enough gold to do it. The value of all of the gold in the world is around 7 trillion dollars, by current valuation. The 2012 US Government Budget is nearly 4 billion dollars, while the entire US GDP is over 15 trillion dollars. It just can't be done. And if you allowed for anything less than one-to-one backing, you're making a fiat currency.

As for the claim about the dollar being about to collapse, there's significant stability in being the country whose currency is the de facto trade currency. Our debt is held in our dollars, which we can create or destroy pretty much at will. While this can have some ramifications, it's safe to say that we're not on the brink of an economic collapse any time soon.

[HYHYBT]

Judging by how much sense they make, I suspect a lot of people who rail against fiat currency think it has something to do with Italian cars.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

That's a term I've never run across - what does it mean to sterilize the gold reserves? I assume it has nothing do do with the biological sense of the word (as in surgical tools being sterilized).

Wolfie- Sorry, I just honestly missed this but I ought to answer it. Sterilization occurs any time the central bank does not adjust the money supply to reflect what is backing it. In the depression, it was common for strong countries to have an inflow of gold as people acquired it due to panic. What should have happened to keep a country on the gold standard was an increase in money supply. If every country does this, exchange rates ideally stay the same.

What actually happened with sterilization was that countries would not increase or decrease their money supplies accordingly. Assets like the US Dollar became so overvalued that (at a time when American manufacturing was a thing) it further tanked trade during the depression.

Long story short, just like with fiat currencies, because the trading of gold back and forth can artificially grow and shrink economies what "should" happen was often ignored by central bankers which ended up adding to instability.