The next big question on the federal debt limit could be whether to start selling the government’s holdings of gold at Fort Knox — and at least one presidential contender, Ron Paul, has told The New York Sun he thinks it would be a good move.
The question has been ricocheting around the policy circles today. An analyst at the Heritage Foundation, Ron Utt, told the Washington Post that the gold holdings of the government are “just sort of sitting there.” He added: “Given the high price it is now, and the tremendous debt problem we now have, by all means, sell at the peak.”
His comment came in the wake of not only the government having reached the statutory debt limit of $14.29 trillion but also the release of a report by the Heritage Foundation of a report on asset sales. The report outlined how a “partial sales of federal properties, real estate, mineral rights, the electromagnetic spectrum, and energy-generation facilities” might garner the federal treasury $260 billion over the course of the next 15 years.
From Wikipedia:
More than half the refineries that existed in 1981 are now closed due to low utilization rates and accelerating mergers.[18] As a result of these closures total US refinery capacity fell between 1981 to 1995, though the operating capacity stayed fairly constant in that time period at around 15,000,000 barrels per day (2,400,000 m3/d).[19] Increases in facility size and improvements in efficiencies have offset much of the lost physical capacity of the industry.
Closed due to low utilization?! How odd. I’m sure Reagan’s EPA was to blame.
Warning don’t drink milk while reading Taxed Enough Already Dude spouting off ridiculous falsehoods and creating a vision of reality that doesn’t quite exist now I have milk coming out of my nose.
on topic No don’t sell the gold once it’s gone it’s gone.
#46 & 47: Hey, Alfred. Before spouting crap you might want to get your facts straight.
Obama/the government isn’t “building” an oil refinery. The US Export Bank is lending the money to a Columbian oil company. Why? From this article comes the answer.
And for the record you so like to screw with (#21), I’m opposed to selling the gold.
To continue, if no one here wants to build an oil refinery (not something the government itself would do anyway), why not loan it to other countries to build them, especially if we can get US companies to build it (and make money) while strapping the foreign country with debt they can’t repay, etc, etc allow us to gain more control over the country.
Pure example of the Economic Hitman principle.
@46
Looks like you are going on about some thing you heard out of context on a angry white guy radio or TV show.
The Export-Import Bank of the United States LOANS out money to create and sustain U.S. jobs over the last five years they have made a $3.4 billion profit for U.S. taxpayers. This refinery project if approved should create or sustain over 15,000 American jobs for a total of four years and give us a return on our money. It doesn’t need the Presidents signature to happen, so its not Obama “Obama building a refinery” and it IS focused on stimulating the U.S. economy.
BTW who and where is that U.S. refinery project you thing should be funded? being a domestic project the Ex-Im Bank would not be involved.
Do you have any ideas in your head that don’t come from angry white guy radio or TV shows?
Sorry to repeat some of Dave’s answer I was researching the facts on mine while he posted his. I don’t do angry white guy radio or TV shows this was new to me.
TDud finds sudden interest in the topic at hand when spanked by other commenters. News at 11.
Selling federal land and airwave spectrum makes no sense. It’s a one time windfall. Those assets should be LEASED. Verizon, ATT et al should re-bid for their spectrum at regular intervals. Same with oil, gas, ranching, logging, etc. Lease the land and make users re-bid for the rights periodically. That’s capitalism at its best.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SdRuZeKB3NM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Ooops, that was the wrong one.
Here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Gt0NJHQaPD8&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Not really on topic, but fun: http://youtube.com/watch?v=yipV_pK6HXw&feature=youtube_gdata_player
@Enough Already Dude
#52 Ok, detail precisely how building a refinery in Columbia, …creates 15,000 jobs in the us…:
From the purchases of equipment and services from over 150 large and small U.S. engineering/design, equipment supply, contracting and process license firms.(from Ex-Im Bank’s web site) yYou should check it out before you post in public.
“It is absurd…and proves you will believe anything…as long as its “progressive.”
progressive ? The Ex-Im Bank has been around since 1934 and doing just this sort of thing. Many Republican and Democratic Presidents have held office during this time. Its not even part of the budget it funds itself with the repayments from old loans and the fees from new ones. Stop just feeding from the Fox/Rush tit the absurdity of what they try to sell when they have nothing with any meat, well its just junk food.
Obama is not involved, they make a profit for the U.S., they do help create or sustain American jobs, No one in the U.S. is trying to build a refinery that cant get funded. This is just a straw man invented to stir up the haters.
I’m sorry Enough Already Dude clearly you can’t read and comprehend
Please get some help.
It seems like you are just enacting Monty Python’s Argument Sketch.
Vulgarity is not welcome on here, I can only hope it’s the LAST act of a desperate poster.
#62 TeaDud “Un-uh! Does not!”
Very compelling counter argument.
#65, sorry, that’s 63 TDud
apologies to Mr. Palin and Mr. Cleese
Criticize things: Ah, Is this the right room for an argument?
Enough Already Dude: I told you once.
Criticize things: No you haven’t.
Enough Already Dude: Yes I have.
Criticize things: When?
Enough Already Dude: Just now.
Criticize things: No you didn’t.
Enough Already Dude: Yes I did.
Criticize things: You didn’t
Enough Already Dude: I did!
Criticize things: You didn’t!
Enough Already Dude: I’m telling you I did!
Criticize things: You did not!!
Criticize things: Oh look, this isn’t an argument.
Enough Already Dude: Yes it is.
Criticize things: No it isn’t. It’s just contradiction.
Enough Already Dude: No it isn’t.
Criticize things: It is!
Enough Already Dude: It is not.
Criticize things: Look, you just contradicted me.
Enough Already Dude: I did not.
Criticize things: Oh you did!!
Enough Already Dude: No, no, no.
Criticize things: You did just then.
Enough Already Dude: Nonsense!
Criticize things: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
Everyone but The Dude: Oh, this is futile!
The gold has great value as a medium of exchange. Our paper money and government bonds are loosing their value as a medium of exchange.
Trading a valuable commodity for stacks of ink stained paper does not compute to me when we may have to go back on the gold standard assuming we have any gold to us to back our replacement currency.
The one thing that is certain about any paper currency is that the value of the paper can fall all the way to zero. Our money floats and is worth no more than the market will pay and I don’t have much hope of it regaining any value. Before you call me crazy check out what a $20 gold piece is worth in paper now.
Who says gold is worth anything? No me.
Paper money is worth nothing, I agree, but you can give it to a bank, and get it back out.
Gold requires a security force, or at least a safe deposit box. I’m not keeping six figures worth of gold at home, that would freak me out.
Gold sucks. And you’d not know whether it was really gold or some elaborate fake.
Don’t sell the gold. That would depress the market and we would get less than peak.
Sell Utah instead. Government property there is probably worth more and the Chinese would likely buy it.
tcc3, I don’t think the EPA, or any other government agency causes opening and closures of refineries. However, it is a convenient tool of governments and industry to manage problems at arms length. Starting in the early 80’s oil companies wanted to consolidate their holdings and increase their bottom lines. Those of us who worked in the industry back then remember oil price slumps for the better part of 20 years.
Oil and governments traded regulation for support. Governments said we don’t want you closing refineries because oil is $8 per barrel. Industry said make it easy for us to improve our refinery operations and increase our bottom line. Various regulatory measures helped make this work including tax exemptions, tariffs and rate base changes, and regulatory intervention such as the EPA.
That was then, this is now. Refinery capacity is still pretty high except that it isn’t caused by low prices but lower production. Even drilling the shit out of NA basins won’t replace the loss of capacity over the next 20 years. Maybe peak oil hasn’t hit world wide but it has hit America. The north may be an exception.
The only bright spot is the Athabasca tar sands. The down side is that it is ugly oil and the refinement will occur upstream.
To sum: no new refineries in the 80/90’s due to low prices. No new refineries in the 2000’s due to lack of production under any scenario over the next 20 years. Regulatory bodies like the EPA just help grease the wheels.
Alfie, you’re a moron and your computer sucks.
#73 Yes, foobar I realize that. Sorry my sarcasm didn’t come through.
I just like to point out the inconsistency of tdud’s lunacy. Hes now so far off the deep, hes had to redefine Nixon as a progressive. Can Reagan be far behind?
So an institution whose purpose is to loan money loans some money. Big whoop. It has _nothing_ to do with why no new refineries have been built in the U.S.
No refineries have been built in the U.S. because the oil companies _don’t_want_ to build any more refineries in the U.S. Why should they? Keeping refinery capacity at its current level, or even a little lower, keeps the selling price high, which leads to the current historic high profits.
Petroleum is fungible. A little extra refinery capacity in the Western hemisphere will put some downward pressure on prices in the whole hemisphere.
The idea of getting rid of he EPA is just out-and-out insanity. How old are you? Do you not remember what it was like before? I remember driving through Gary, Indiana in November of 1969 — a traumatic experience. Even in the middle of the night you could see from the lights on the freeway that the very air was _brown_. Everyone’s throats and eyes were burning. It was like those places you hear about in the Soviet Union where the road signs urged everyone to close all windows, turn off all ventilation and drive as fast as possible. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.
That said, and in spite of most of T.E.A.D.’s arguments devolving to name-calling, there is actually one thing he said that I agree with! (I know, who’d have thought it possible?)
#14
“[…] But before we open up our oil and mineral reserves, we must discard decades of corruption giving away leases and rights to mine, for nothing, and get better than our fair share for the people. […]”
The Mining Act of 1872 and similar policies since then seriously need to be completely overhauled. They amount to a _huge_ subsidy of the extraction industries and it needs to stop.
@ the Dude
“This discussion illustrates the difference between the producers, and consumers…those who grab opportunity, those who don’t see opportunity.”
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Without consumers theirs no need for producers and most people are both producers, and consumers so that is a non sequitur.
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“We have locked up our wealth, commodity prices are through the roof, before alternatives arise rendering our oil and mineral wealth worthless, we need to drill baby drill, mine baby mine”
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Nonsense these commodities will only be worth more in the future. Your faith is science and technology is laudable but not to worry future generations of Americans will be very happy we left them something. Why do you want to rob our children of this mineral wealth and these fossil fuels? They will have better technology to recover it safely and use it more efficiently. It would be wise for our country to save some for later. Same with our Knox gold, save it.
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“Screw the cross eyed cockroach, and kangeroo rat…you folks love Darwin so much, its time to let the fittest survive…”
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More vulgarity your mom must be proud.
Oh sorry Darwin never said that. He did say many enlightened things. Clarence Darrow seemed to sum up his thoughts on this subject well during the Scopes Monkey Trial “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.” hmmm Conservatives fear change think about it.
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“Defund the EPA, it was Nixon’s worst mistake, an evil progressive plot tricky Dicky played on the people”
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Go to a major industrial city in Russia India or China take a deep breath have a cool drink of tap water visit there oncology wards and get back to me. My guess is you don’t get out much.
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“Make the losing attorney pay the legal fees of those who sues, 50 50 split…with the attorney responsible for it all if his client can’t pay”
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A Judge can do that now get a better lawyer.
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“Restore private property, return eminent domain to prior configuration.”
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The US Constitution and Bush’s Executive Order 13406 from 6/23/06 seems reasonable you must have a local beef, or are Native American in the case of the latter you have a point.
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“Defund progressive schools with their goonion teachers, lets bully them for a change and show them what democracy looks like…perhaps they will find real jobs…”
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If you have a problem with your local schools run for school board convince the rest of the elected officials on the board the error of there ways and make change for the better. If your community is not convinced of your righteousness and you can’t deal with that maybe a democracy is just not right for you. Consider a Parochial school for your children move to Iran I don’t know. I learned to handle disappointment when I don’t get my way you might try that.
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“And their stupidity. To argue building refineries in Columbia is boosting the American economy, is to argue shipping jobs overseas, boosts the American economy.”
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It’s not my argument it’s the Ex-Im Banks statement, I take them at their word and since they make a profit with their loans and are (off budget) I don’t really care much. If you know of a better place for the U.S. Export Credit Agency to lend to that will pay them back with interest and create U.S. jobs let them know I’m sure they would love to here from some so informed as you.
This is just a straw man you were told to go after by the right wind pundits. Not much meat in that scrap you should find better pundits.
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.(the princess bride) Sorry I can’t follow the rest of your ramblings without some motion sickness meds.
Cut the military budget, eliminate the federal reserve.
Problem solved, that will be $50 please.
children
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And we will/have spend thousands giving them food shelter roads an education ect. as they will for there children who will and so on.
Empire America has fallen we are like Zimbabwe!
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If you think so leave get out while the getting good. My bet 97% of Africans would love to have our wealth instead of theirs.
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Nano tech has the potential… now is the time to sell…MUST sell it… collapse bad climbing out of a hellhole yhaaa!
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Gesh how do you live with yourself take a pill.
Science has had the next best thing just around the corner for almost as long as people have been saying armageddon is just around the corner only difference science occasionally delivers. Traditional minerals will still hold value oil particularly so those beautiful complex molecules can be made to do so many thing one day future generations will cringe to know we would just burn it. . Glad you would be all for the Government helping support the R&D of these new technologies so we hold the patents.
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The wealth is locked up at the top not the bottom.
Solution get the top to free up the wealth get set the bottom to work so you can move to the middle class to spend and make it all better.
Did you know the web a Search Engine? look this stuff up for yourself.
Still better than just contradiction.
BING!
That’s it. Good morning.
Sorry the five minutes is up.
tcc3, no apology needed. The fault was entirely mine.