The U.S. national debt reached $20 trillion for the first time ever last Friday after President Trump signed a bipartisan bill temporarily raising the nation's debt limit for three months.
While at Camp David, Mr. Trump, with the stroke of his presidential pen, increased the statutory debt last Friday by approximately $318 billion, according to the Treasury Department. Before the bill's completion, the U.S. debt was sitting around $19.84 trillion.
The legislation allowed the Treasury Department to start borrowing again immediately after several months of using "extraordinary measures" to avoid a financial default. The bill passed last Thursday 80-17 in the Senate and in the House 316-90 on Friday. Around $15 billion in emergency funding for Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts was attached to the borrowing measure.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-debt-hits-historic-20-trillion-mark/
[That works out to just shy of $62,000 per American. --Ed.]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 15 2017, @05:05PM (6 children)
-1 Stupid.
What makes gold worth anything? Nothing more than people generally agreeing it does. It's no different than BitCoin. Gold is not a genuinely useful material, except for a few specialized applications (e.g., corrosion protection on electrical connectors, which only requires a coating a few atoms thick). A bag of rice is honestly more useful than a bar of gold, because you can cook it and eat it.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday September 15 2017, @05:17PM (4 children)
I will agree that gold and bitcoin have at least one valuable property in common: they are difficult to mass produce and/or poof into existence by self-serving politicians.
So, when the money- and power-drunk politicians go on yet another bender, they can further devalue the "not a genuinely useful material" paper dollars, but they can't touch Real Money.
Don't you get it? The reason everyone chases money so hard is that it is (relatively) scarce. Remove that attribute (gradually) and it (gradually) loses its worth.
Any kind of money worth having (for long) is a proof-of-work token. "But some people get dollars without working for them." Exactly!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 15 2017, @05:32PM (3 children)
Oh yes they can! Some things governments on gold standards have done to devalue the currency:
- Reduce the amount of gold per currency. For example, Roman coins got lighter as emperors became more desperate.
- Change the weights used so that a "pound" is no longer what a "pound" used to be.
- Mix other metals in with what appears to be a gold coin or gold bar.
- Add another metal into the monetary system, e.g. silver.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday September 15 2017, @08:53PM (2 children)
Currency is not gold. Currency may or may not be fraudulent. Coins too may be counterfeit. But as I said, government cannot devalue the gold.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @10:50PM
Ha! They sure can! They may not be able to change the physical laws of the universe (gold atoms) but they sure can control the valuation of their monopoly money.
(Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:21PM
Gold has an intrinsic value - shiny jewelry, gold fingers on circuit boards and other industrial uses.
But gold also has value as a currency (medium of exchange).
For a very long time, it's value as a currency has been much greater than it's intrinsic value.
While they can't devalue gold's intrinsic value, governments can (and have) interfered with gold's value as a currency - for example, they can make it illegal to own it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Friday September 15 2017, @09:23PM
Yup, money only has worth because of agreement:
when the shit hits and you can't get online and won't for years and you find it hard to get to town for your weekly grocery shop,
--bitcoin won't be worth anything (until things get 'fixed' anyways), i'm sure most people would agree. "I have 400 bitcoins: will you sell me that bag of rice?", will get you laughed at.
--I have 400 US dollars. I want a bag of rice. Can we come to any agreement that those bills still have worth? If so, we can make a deal. If not, no amount of bills will solve your problem.
Shit, people collect Barbie dolls thinking some day they'll be able to retire and sell them for vast amounts of money: but if no one agrees they have value, they ain't worth sh*t.
Same with the T Y babies (quite a few years back... wow, time moves): people were collecting them like they WERE bags of rice, then people stopped seeing worth in them and collectors couldn't frigging GIVE them away.
It's all agreement. Right now, i wonder how much anyone would pay for my body to eat it... probably not as much as they would 'pay' if there were no other food around, lol.
Agreement makes worth.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---