Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Who Wants to be a Millionaire

Peter Souleles, Sydney, Australia:

On Friday, the price of gold closed at $1,359.80. With a million dollars you could therefore buy only 735 oz or 1.5% of what you could buy in 1929. In other words the dollar has lost 98.5% of its value since 1929 in comparison to gold. I think this is why US currency has the words, "In God we Trust" printed on it because to trust in the printed dollar would be lunacy.

An alternative exercise would be to calculate who the real millionaires are in 2010. Taking the 1929 amount of 48,473 oz as the mark of a true millionaire, we find that only someone with at least $65,913,585 can be considered for the title.

Do you want to try your luck with silver? Well in 1929 the average price of silver was 48.8c. Therefore a million dollars would buy you 2,049,180oz. The closing price of silver on Friday was $24.75 which would require you to have $50,717,205 to be considered the equivalent of a 1929 silver millionaire. The dollar has lost therefore about 98% of its value since 1929 in silver terms.....read in full

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