The Global Minotaur: The Crash of 2008 and the Euro-Zone Crisis in Historical Perspective

The Money Series:
The Global Minotaur: The Crash of 2008 and the Euro-Zone Crisis in
Historical Perspective
Yanis Varoufakis & Justin Fox; Chair: Mark Mazower
Wednesday, 9 November, 6:15pm
Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro Center

The Heyman Center for the Humanities
Columbia University

www.heymancenter.org

Category:

Education

Tags:

• education
• columbia

[Crossover521]

@Sapocati

mhm thats a nice description to explain that value is a subjective matter!

No,im not a teacher :) Im an economics student though

[Sapocati]

@Crossover521 I assumed you must be an economics teacher by your explaination, I dont think you were wrong, I was just trying to take your concept further. Spain became a world superpower by finding Silver in Potosi, on the West coast of S. America, they were able to under-cut the Portugese by having a shorter route to China. The Chinese deemed silver to have some sort of magic powers, then suddenly it went out of fashion, and that was the begining of the end of Spain's empire.

[Crossover521]

@Sapocati I think Economics arent tricky to explain,but they are damn tricky to predict and thats exactly because of human psychology.And as the markets are becoming more complex in terms of participants and the "financial devices" available to them predictability becomes even more difficult.

[Crossover521]

@Sapocati You are right.Though i may be wrong but i think that in the markets,such as the commodities ones,when someone buys lets say 5000$ worth of gold thats just some kind of an illusion.By illusion i mean no gold is shipped to the buyer (although it can if he asks for i guess).Its just digitized.So its more like a betting place.we could even have done the same for the moon if there was a way for someone to originally claim ownership at the beginning while no gold would have to be shipped

[Sapocati]

@Sapocati I think Economics can be tricky to explain well, because there is a big element of human psycology involved, eg Maslow's Hierachy Of Needs. Think of how anxious people are to own the latest I-phone, with more capacity than they will probably ever use, now imagine the day when there is no longer any food in supermarket shelves, very suddenly the 'need' to own an I-phone just fades away.

[Sapocati]

@Crossover521 I have bad memory for languages, spelling, peoples names, but I never forget first Economics lesson in school, Teacher said the same thing as u. Moon a gd example, bcause it illustrates NEED side of equation, even high gold price would not cover travel cost, but world need 2 move goods+people could at fraction of 1744. Gold production on a commercial scale is v. expensive...Platinum much more so, some say, costs 1680 to produce, surely a sign of crazy economic times.

[Crossover521]

@Sapocati by the way i just looked up the platinum market

Gold is at 1744

Platinum at 1619

pretty similar compared to silver being at 33.80

[Crossover521]

@Sapocati for example if platinum does have better qualities then it is wrong for us to have greater demand for gold than platinum,still this cant affect the price at all.

[Crossover521]

@Sapocati my example was probably wrong.Forget the moon.It was an example to imagine a condition where gold wouldnt be that scarce.Imagine we could dig really deep and at a certain level this layer was pure gold all over earth.Then what would happen?my assumtion is that people are not aware that platinum has better qualities? (i didnt know,never cared).The point is all goods have the values our demand gives them in relation with their scarcity,even when we have more demand for the wrong things

[Sapocati]

@Sapocati P.s I think the Moon would be an ideal place to dispose waste, radioactive and highly toxic matirial...Yet all we can think of is of what riches might be there. Our decendants will wounder at the stupidity of defacating in the same place we live and eat. We are yet to evolve out of the small village mentality, and start to become global citizens.