Why Its Pointless To Argue With Global Warming Believers 2041

But they *don't* do that. They borrow money from the private sector or from foreign governments. Which they could also do with gold-backed currency. I'm not sure why it would make you feel better if the US government owed a lot of gold to other enbreasties instead of a lot of paper dollars.

And as I keep pointing out, the current levels of inflation are not a significant problem. They're arguably preferable to a flat value, and certainly preferable to almost any deflationary scenario.

This makes no sense. I can loan out $50 in gold and demand $100 back next Tuesday without waiting for the gold supply to expand. It's only necessary to wait for the gold supply to expand if there literally isn't enough gold in the world to cover the interest on the loan.

So, once again, we see that gold-backed currency can be used as an extremely crude tool to prevent blatantly stupid actions that nobody is engaging in anyway. How useful.

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What deal?

I see. So the idea that maybe the price of oil is going up because people think the supply will become more constrained or demand will be higher in the future... that's just impossible?

I have no idea why you're quoting Wikipedia at me.

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Personal borrowing is, in fact, abused quite badly in the the US, but business borrowing is essential to economic expansion. Companies operating in countries that don't allow borrowing have to jump through all kinds of crazy hoops and structure expansion in convoluted ways to get around the restrictions.

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-- "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." -- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005