The English language is a rich language full of flowery phrases. Some have become so common, their meaning is obvious. One of these phrases is:”As good as gold”. According to historians who study the origins of languages, the phrase was first used in 1845 in ‘The Lost Heir’ a book penned by Thomas Hood. This might be the case or it might not be entirely true. How can anyone really be sure that the first person to come up with a bunch of words that make up a phrase. The saying is used to compare the value of something relative to gold.
The phrase has more of an economic meaning. The word ‘good’ can be juxtaposed as ‘genuine valuable’. Gold has held on to the reputation of having genuine value for millennia. This is because when you buy gold Melbourne you can always be sure that it is a solid investment and a highly liquid financial commodity. It is easier to convert gold into actual cash than it is to convert other commodities into cash. This is because the value of gold is universal. Genuine, investment-grade gold is a reliable financial commodity.
Applying the phrase ‘As good as gold’ to banking and economics. Gold as a precious metal has intrinsic value. This metal can be used instead of real money to complete financial transactions. In terms of the financial world, paper money is really given its value is arbitrary. Fiat currencies are valued by some people declaring them to be worth something. Gold reserves will always remain valuable, and the monetary system cannot decide the value of gold. The strength of currencies varies from one country to another for various reasons. The U.S dollar is always used as a reference. Global currencies are always weighed against the U.S dollar, so when the greenback experiences a slump, other currencies could benefit however that is all relative. Fiat money has limits that gold doesn’t have and its value is the same globally. Things were different back when the gold standard was around. The value of paper money was tied to gold which meant government central banks. However, central banks did not suddenly stop buying gold when the gold standard was scrapped. Most held gold in reserve in various vaults across the globe. In fact, central banks are the biggest buyers of gold products.
When considering the meaning of the phrase ‘As good as gold’ and the gold standard, it represents using gold as the standard of measuring the value of any country’s currency. In the olden days, people traded by using the barter system, and gold was mainly used for big purchases. Because of the scarcity of gold, trading in gold could not have been sustainable, at some point we would have hit a point where there simply wasn’t enough gold to go around. People still buy gold Melbourne because in reality, there will come a time when there isn’t enough gold to around and when that happens, you will wish you had bought some bullion whilst the prices were still hovering under $2,000 an ounce.
The gold standard was used by the US and most European countries. Britain stopped using the gold standard in 1931 and the U.S followed in 1971. Even though the powers that be would have liked to convince everyone that paper currency was as good as gold, it soon became clear that these two had different values. One has tangible value and the other doesn’t. Even with the scrapping of the gold standard, gold was still a popular store of wealth, something paper currency could never be. In a literal sense, nothing can ever be as good as gold regardless of what you may have been told so never settle for anything but the real thing.
Can there ever be anything ”as good as gold”?
