Monday 29 September 2014

How would you destroy $6m of gold?

Guest post by Terry Verhoeven

imageIn a marketing gimmick, the Bank of New Zealand has placed $6 million of shredded cash inside a model house and placed it on display in Aotea Square 

The idea is to illustrate how much money is being wasted by New Zealand homeowners in unnecessary interest payments, an amount that can supposedly be saved if all mortgage payers were to change to a BNZ Tailored Home Loan.

The first thing that people who are not concrete-bound in their thinking are going to conclude from the display is not how BNZ can save them money, but how well it demonstrates that fiat money has no real value backing it.

The NZ Mint should seize the opportunity to perform its own marketing stunt and place its own model house on display, but with four-thousand kilos (i.e., $6 million worth) of 'shredded' gold coins inside, placed next to BNZ's one with the shredded paper money, with their own big sign out front asking: "Where is the stored value in your hard-earned money"?

The difference might become obvious even to the most concrete-bound.

[Pic by Interest.Co.NZ]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

PC

This is good.

If those guys put shredded gold into that house as per your suggestion, I'll take half, give you half and recycle mine into ingot (I can borrow a smelter furnace for the purpose). Then I'll demonstrate just how sustainability works (as in my deliverable quality ingot will sustain value for a lot longer than any fiat paper, shredded or otherwise).

I am generous. As it was all your idea, if you give me your shredded gold I'll smelt that for you (for the cost of the hydrocarbons for the furnace) and you can be into recycling and sustainability too. Then, on the basis of the NZ$6-mill valuation, I'll pay them that in cash and we two trouser an easy NZ$190-million or so between us 50/50.

This IS good.

Amit

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.