Interest rate is 5% now, and going up. So it takes 14 years, not 24 years, to double your money.
I understand the rest of your points. It is a good deal for the government – they lend us money, and then keep printing money so they can pay us back with inflated dollars.
I read that the US has secretly been selling off its gold reserves, and that not too much is held in bank vaults anymore.
There seems to be some behind-the-curtain stuff going on with the government and gold. They probably want us all to keep thinking of it as a scary, unknown. The government doesn’t want us all to fear inflation and hoard gold. The economy and banking system (fractional reserve) work only as long as confidence is high. That is one of the most important components of the economy: trust in the Fed, trust in the banks. Without that, the system cannot work. Imagine if everyone realized that their money is not really in the bank,but lent out to people who bought overvalued homes. Consumer rush to the banks to get their money out, and of course w/ the fractional reserve system, only a few % of the deposit is actually there. Voila, the whole system collapses.
So the government must paint rosy employement and inflation reports, speak about the flexible economy, downplay the importance of gold (whose rise is linked to inflation and loss of confidence in the Dollar). This is necessary to keep optimism and trust in the system. And there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as it keeps working.
But if we all think it will stop working, we can’t be misled by government data.
