Quote from: hugolp on September 30, 2011, 09:09:41 AM

Btw, the mainstream media has not commented on this piece of news: The Russian central bank has started to offer gold backed loans: http://af.reuters.com/article/metalsNews/idAFL5E7JQ0Q020110826

I haven't seen anything about China's gold-backed bank accounts, either. This makes it easy for anyone with one of these accounts to effectively use gold as a transactional medium - instant conversion from gold savings to a spending currency and vice versa - with banks getting transaction fees, obviously.

Quote from: hugolp on September 30, 2011, 04:42:54 PM

1. Stagflation: There is not going to be growth (real growth, GDP could improve) and meaningful reduction of unemployment, while at the same time prices are going to go up. Keynesians are still in denial about stagflation. They keep repeating that salaries can not go up as long as unemployment is high, and therefore prices can not go up either.

... salaries and prices are already going up while unemployment is high and it will accelerate.

I can't help but interject here. Nominal prices can rise despite growing inflation because a smaller number of people are participating in the active economy. This is the same reason that unemployment appears to remain under 10% - fewer people are qualifying for the politician-defined term "unemployed" even as a greater percentage of the entire population aren't working. This doesn't require QE to happen; gov't meddling in other ways is more than enough.

Nominal depictions versus real performance. It's like trading in your luxury sports car for an economy model because times are difficult, but you notice that the new car's speedometer starts at 100km/h. Suddenly, you're speeding every time you get behind the wheel - by all measures taken from that speedometer, it's exciting because you've been breaking records across the board. In reality, if you look out the window you'd see you aren't actually going any faster and everyone else is laughing at you for being so gullible.