Gumshan!

The malicious little monster spoilsport in me would very much like to see a major gold strike occur just so I can watch the faces of all the idiots hoarding what is pretty much the most useless commodity on the planet.

Come to think of it, it does look like drought-stricken Texas

This comes at a time, after watching a mere ten minutes of the Republican debates last night, when I decided that there just aren't enough purple-assed baboons representing us in Washington DC. The entire field of candidates looked a lot like the monolith scene early in the movie 2001. In fact, someone ought to just hand Rick Perry the thighbone of a tapir right now and solidify his 2012 Presidential Image.  

It was hard to top any or all of those capering simian antics, but I think special mention has to go out to Crazy Grandpa Ron Paul. (Actually, special mention should also go out to the recent Kentucky appearances of his son, Rand Paul, for Best Imitation of an Egg-Eating Snake due to the amazing unlatching of his jawbone in order to suck on the giant cocks of the coal industry. Well done, Rand, and there are plenty of polluters tired of federal regulations that will line up for your special talents as Senatorial Fellator Extraordinaire far, far into the future. You are a credit to cocksuckers everywhere).

Anyway back to Crazy Grandpa. At one point, he mentioned how he can buy a gallon of gasoline with one thin dime! He sounds crazy doesn't he, especially when he gets that wanna-fuck-me-a-goat glint in his eye, or maybe its wanna-sacrifice-me-a-goat-and-then-maybe-do-a-rain-dance glint, but in any case, the fact is, he's right! Of course, it has to be a very special dime, a dime made mostly of silver, such as a pre-1965 silver Roosevelt dime, back when it was 90% silver. More accurately the period 1946-1964, which is where Ron Paul spends some of his time. (The rest of his time is spent sometime back in the mid or late 19th century when the biggest economic debate in Congress was whether to use gold or silver).

A quick spot-check suggests the melt-value of one of those shiny  shiny thin dimes is around $3.06. Okay, so not buying a full gallon what with taxes. And then, if we are to believe the Milken Institute via John Huntsman - and why not? - what with military deployments, keeping the sea lanes open, refining, storage, distribution, etc., the price is close to $13 a gallon. So, maybe five dimes to buy a gallon of gas. (I'm excluding the environmental costs, as those are, in a kind-of-socialist-but-we-ain't-gonna-call-it-that way, spread out amongst all of us in a share-the-wealth communal toxic poop disposal system).

(And one should also point out to the Northern Wendigo Lady, Michelle Bachmann, that the US of A is currently experiencing an OIL GLUT due to the flood of oil out of the Canadian tar sands and the fields up in North Dakota, but there aren't enough refineries to handle it and create gasoline, which would thus lower the price, and which NO AMOUNT of extra offshore drilling or any of that other ignorant stupid shit she's been spouting we'll make a half a mouse turd's worth of difference in the price. God DAMN it.)

Anyway, let's get back to that undiscovered mountain of gold I'd like to see appear. Old crazy grandpa, in all of his talk of going back to the gold standard, fails to realize the whole fucking point of getting off the gold standard to begin with.

Fiat currency, aka, paper money. It's greatest strength, and greatest weakness is that determining how much to print determines it's worth. True, you can overprint. Best example? Paper money first started to be used in Song Dynasty China. Then the Mongols invaded, and set up the Yuan Dynasty. Not exactly the most sophisticated thinkers, the Mongols noticed that, hey, people will trade us shit for these little pieces of printed paper... let's print a whole shitload of them and buy stuff! Result? The first recorded instance of hyperinflation.  

Cowry shells. Commodity currency. Way back when, lots of nations from the Red Sea to the China used them as an item of exchange, as money. It's not as dumb as it sounds. Sea shells, unlike metal coins, are hard to counterfeit. Then, all of a sudden, the Europeans appeared, and shipped in vast amounts of cowry shells they discovered in the Maldives. A financial system that had been around for centuries suddenly and permanently collapsed.

Gold. The problem with money based on gold, or silver, is that the price fluctuates. As a result, unlike fiat currency, you have no control over the external pressures. Go on the gold standard, that golden thaler you carry about is worth a dollar this hour, 85 cents in the afternoon, 1.75 next morning. As long as there is not enough of it, price goes up. Find too much...

Other big problems: counterfeiting, dilution (by adding base metals to your coin), hoarding, dumping, all sorts of problems that fiat currency - despite having its own problems - did away with forever.

Unless you are the current crop of conservatives, who not only want to stop time, but get in the time machine and go back to a simpler time, when things were good and pure and clean and... people were four feet tall and lived to the ripe old age of 28. The Golden Age!

What? What!?

(Gumshan is the English mispronounciation of the Cantonese "Gan Saam", which means "Gold Mountain").