Gold...Is Gold

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I'm working on my Master's Degree, and I had to give a presentation on "the history of a chosen resource."  My professor knows some of my libertarian outlook, and where I work, and practically dared me to pick gold.  

Challenge accepted.


 This was the final slide in my class presentation last night.  It shows the price of gold since 1800.

 I humorously and facetiously pointed out the "huge spike" caused by the Civil War, and the equally huge one caused by the Great Depression, before focusing on the real spike.  Something profound and basic had to have happened to change this otherwise flat graph to an exponential progression; I jokingly asked what could possibly have happened around the time of the Nixon administration to have caused it?

 "Gold is gold," I said.  "Gold doesn't double in power every eighteen months.  Gold doesn't release a new model with sunroof and bucket seats.  Gold doesn't crash the asking price by getting caught taking the secretary to Jamaica instead of the wife.

 "Gold is the baseline against which other things are measured.  If something changed, and caused the measure of gold to skyrocket like this...it's not the gold that's different."

 No clue yet what kind of grade I got...

 -=ad=-

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