Welcome to another Iraq Currency Watch podcast. This episode is called The Gold Delusion. We will take the time to see what our economic leaders say about gold. Once you hear what they have to say then you will understand the gold delusion much better. We cover a number of topics besides gold in this podcast. This is the first podcast containing audio clips and sound bites from outside sources. We will also take a trip down memory lane and discuss the contents of the new book which is now available. A few other surprises await too. The direction of Iraq Currency Watch is discussed as we outline goals and reveal things about our archives. So click play and enjoy.
Disclaimer
The podcast player may not display if you are using Apple’s Safari browser, but it will display in every other browser. This is a problem that is unique to the Safari browser. At this time we provide no support for this problem.
This page loads fine in every other browser and all aspects of the page are visible. Therefore we recommend that you view this site using a different browser. Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and the new Microsoft Edge browser all work well with this site and the Podcasts.
We recommend that you download one of these browsers for your Apple computer and use it in place of Safari. This is an issue with Safari. It is not a WordPress or an ICW issue.
Recorded March 18th 2016
Podcast Notes
Before you take the time to leave a comment about your position on gold click on this link below and read up on the subject. If I respond to your comment I may reference some things in this article.
Check out the new book. Click the link below and get your copy. Scroll to the bottom of the article and click on the download link.
Iraq Currency Watch 
Hey Guys,
Good WSJ article on gold. Yet another area where the claimed controversy exists only among the layman in the issue at hand. Among those who have spent at least a great deal of, if not their entire professional life studying the issue in question there is no grand controversy (not to say that there are not still unknowns). I’d say the same situation exists with climate change, evolution, and the age of the earth.
I will offer one little critique. I note you slipped in a line about the economy growing slowly due to government regulation and Obamacare. I would disagree, but the point is that this was in a section where you are relaying subjects where there was an overwhelming consensus among economists. But on current economic issues there is a much wider divergence of views certainly including, but far from limited to, those that you mention. So I think you want to be careful about differentiating when you are relaying what is a clear consensus among experts, and when you are offering your opinion (which I suspect you did mostly just in passing here, so I’m guessing just a case of wandering a bit off script so no worries, but something to guard against :-).
NMPFA (is pussy-footin one word or two? ) pretty funny.
Is gold an asset or money? I’d come down on the asset side. But since its universally valued and highly malleable, its an asset that can be used for a medium of value exchange. Such a system is limited if using an asset as the medium (as the WSJ points out about the gold std), thus the birth of money, but both are means of exchanging value without having to set up a huge barter chain.
We don’t use diamonds for a medium of value exchange as they are not malleable so its hard to maintain a set of denominations and they are not perfectly additive (two .5oz gold bars are exactly the same value as one 1oz bar, but two 1 carrot diamonds are not necessarily the same value as one 2 carrot stone, not to mention color and clarity and they are difficult to stack, etc). So I’m not sure what Bernanke meant by “tradition” when he was asked this, but I think that tradition developed due to practicality.
LikeLike
Yeah I thought Sarah’s comment was pretty funny. It was the most comical thing about the whole press conference and there was a lot of material to choose from. My guess is that pussy footin is two words but I really don’t know for sure. You would think that after all my time living in Oklahoma I would be able to speak fluent red neck by now.
To be clear the whole commentary on gold is my opinion except where I state things like the world’s gold reserve supply for backing currency is 17.4 percent. There is a lot of difference in opinion on many of the statements I made in this commentary among economists. I was not trying to convey a census that all economists share.
but that’s OK if we disagree on some small points. In fact, I think that is a healthy thing. I too fall on the asset side of things for gold. On that we agree. I think investing in anything out of fear or hype is always a bad idea.
LikeLike