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Hard data on the purchasing power of PM vs goods and services


SenorSantiago26

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Hello , I am new the the forum. I tried searching some of the tags I included in this post into the website search engine. The search did not seem to turn up what I was looking for. 

I have attempted to do research on Google and some other web browsers regarding the subject but I seem to be fed with a continuous stream of recycled or limited information. 

I am interested in learning more about the purchasing power of precious metals, most notably silver. Not necessarily the currency denomination assigned to their weights, although I understand that is how we conceptualize it at this time. I'm seeking both additional information on a historical basis in mankind's recorded history, and in a more recent sense in places like Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

 More specifically, what does a silver dime or silver quarter buy in these places? What might we expect in the future regarding gasoline, flour, coffee, ECT?

I am seeking this information to both help myself and help me help family and friends during the coming financial meltdown. Sources would be appreciated.

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You mean an American silver dime and quarter? The answer is almost certainly that they buy nothing. Hardly anyone in America knows about old junk silver coins, so I'd expect near zero knowledge in other countries.

For silver in general to be worth anything in a crisis lots of people would have to have some, and lots of people would have to know how to value it. Neither is true right now – hardly anyone has silver or knows much about silver. We're a small minority, unfortunately.

In recent crises, cash has been king. See Puerto Rico and Iraq. Cash meets the criteria above. People have it, and know how to value it.

Economist George Selgin has an interesting paper on "synthetic commodity money" that you might be interested in. In it he talks about the Iraqi Swiss Dinar, an obsolete currency that was widely used during the war, in part because no more was being printed so its supply was fixed, it couldn't be inflated, etc.

If you want metal for a crisis, gold is much more widely valued than silver. But cash will be king.

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33 minutes ago, HawkHybrid said:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkeMqUNw87c

(lessons from venezuela - belangp)

 

consider choosing gold.

 

HH

Sobering stuff, if we use Venezuela as a direct example, storing 20% of your cash as gold, gold purchasing power increases by 5x during hyper inflation, using your gold you have the exact amount of buying power you had before the hyper inflation. All this assuming you use gold to buy things and not turn it into cash. The price of silver in Venezuelan Bolivar must have risen in this time too, any figures available?

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