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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bearcub who wrote (37892)	7/27/1999 8:27:00 PM
From: PaulM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116796

Hi Bearcub. The Goldmith as Early Banker Story is True. Check out these (fascinating) links... From PEI... "....goldsmiths were renowned for their secure vaults....Eventually, goldsmiths realized it could be very profitable to store someone's gold for a fee. A receipt was given for the amount of gold which was to be stored. It was not long before these receipts were being used as collateral and often payment in gold was passing around in the form of receipts... .... By now, the goldsmith was issuing more receipts for gold on loan than there actually existed in his vault. Like so many financiers to follow, the goldsmith didn't know when to quit...It had appeared as if there was more gold than goods.... When the townspeople found out what the goldsmith had done, the paper gold receipts became totally worthless.... pei-intl.com For a less dispassionate, more conspiratorial bent norfed.org dnai.com Bearcub, also, when you put money in a savings account that earns interest, you (should) know that you're agreeing to a similar "Ponzi scheme," because the bank can't be paying you that interest without doing something with your money. By the same token, if I place gold in an "unallocated" account that earns interest, I should understand that the bullion house is doing something with that gold in order to pay me interest. That was the parallel I was trying to draw. (Of course, there's a big difference between the a CB's ability to maintain a paper Ponzi scheme versus a gold Ponzi scheme.)