Putting discussion of paper currency out of the picture, precious metals are rising spectacularly compared to CPI and PPI.
Marx seems to have thought this issue important enough to stick it fairly early into Capital Volume 1. He says precious metals are the same as any other commodity, they just have certain properties that make it a good currency (uniformity, easy to break into different units, long lasting, small volume etc.) One point Marx makes very clear is that gold derives absolutely no value from its use as a currency or store of value. To my eyes, and with inflation so low, it looks to me like there is a precious metals bubble right now though. Of course, the economy is different now than it was in the mid-19th century, I tend to put see this new development in the framework of a component of the model Monthly Review has developed over the years. I would be interested to hear, in this time of low inflation, what people think about the long run-up of precious metals prices. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
