FuckyWucky [none/use name]

Pro-stealing art without attribution

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: March 21st, 2023

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  • Still don’t see the point of gold here other than may be sanctions evasion. The exporting nations have to accumulate Dollars first to buy gold.

    And central banks buy gold off budget unlike most spending which has to be debated and appropriated by the legislature.

    Central banks hoard it and pump up the price. If a central bank bought up real estate and didn’t even rent it out, it’ll raise questions from the public on why cb is hoarding homes. Yet no one cares when it’s gold. People even call gold hoarding to be prudent.

    Heck, even copper buying by a central bank using its infinite local currency capacity or using limited foreign currency reserves would be scrutinised heavily. Yet gold is fine. Palladium has similar properties to gold, why not hoard palladium?

    China will accept palladium as collateral and give you Yuan for it. You ultimately pay in Yuan or similar currencies if you are a sanctioned country.

    And gold itself is marked in $ terms in the books so the more gold CBs lock up the higher the % due to valuation effect even though nothing was created.















  • If fuel is supplied through state enterprises, the state can essentially set prices and recapitalize from budget as needed.

    The supply shock then manifests as the currency weakening and other imports becoming pricier. This works as long as the country has sufficient foreign currency sources (exports, capital flows, remittances).

    Foreign currency reserves can help outbid other countries too for existing oil without affecting exchange rate.

    Unfortunately, even in countries where oil corps are owned by the state (e.g. India), the state is unwilling to allow these enterprises to run losses in local currency (“sound” finance). Good to see Malaysia is holding the line for now.

    The state can do this even without nationalizing but theres greater risk of fraud, arbitrage if private sector is involved.

    Though at the aggregate subsidies doesnt create more oil, countries outbid one another, if all countries do this, oil prices get pushed up in Dollar terms too.

    I’ll say it’s a good thing the US isnt doing this since its one of the largest consumers and US in particular can outbid countries without worrying about exchange rates, large countries should let fuel prices go up slowly and compress demand instead of keeping it fixed.