Friday, April 22, 2011

Silver price in AUD pays homage to Good Friday

Happy Easter all,

How fitting on the supposed day Jesus got sold short for 30 pieces of silver that the AUD price of silver goes up $30/kg.

30 pieces of silver is worth today ~ AUD $230 or in Roman times 30 days base pay. A silver Denarius weighed 4.5g from about 211BC onwards after being debased from 6.8g.

Compared to the Australian base pay of ~ $600/week, or $2600/month or 11 times more than the $230.

To quote Marx "the value of a commodity is related to the labour needed to produce or obtain that commodity"

So if Marx is right on this point silver in AUD terms is 11 times cheaper now than in the time of Jesus. This is very significant considering the Roman empire controlled the major silver mines of the time, in Spain, and could enforce low standards of OH&S, on mostly slave labourers in the mines, silver was still 11 times more expensive than today!

So adjusting the current silver price for this 2,000yr price dislocation we come to a price of AUD $477/oz or USD $512/oz (amazingly $500/oz silver is what Max Keiser was recently calling for to bring peace to the financial markets and to stop the wars ~ divine inspiration perhaps?)

Wikipedia references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denarius

The Bible refers to the denarius as a day's wage for a common labourer (Matthew 20:2 [1]; John 12:5 [2]).The value of the denarius is referred to, though perhaps not literally, in the Bible at Revelation 6:6: "And I heard something like a voice in the centre of the four living creatures saying, 'A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius [Latin Vulgate: bilibris tritici denario et tres bilibres hordei denario, δηναρίου in the original Greek]; and do not damage the oil and the wine.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

The labour theories of value (LTV) are economic theories of value which argue that the value of a commodity is related to the labour needed to produce or obtain that commodity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autov%C3%ADa_A-66

The Autovía A-66 is a major highway in western Spain. It also forms part of the European Route E803. The road is an upgrade of the N-630 which is being undertaken section by section. The route roughly corresponds to the ancient Roman 'Silver Route' from the mines of northern Spain to the Mediterranean.

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