On 8 Aug 2004 10:30:15 -0700, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Gary Coffman says...

There isn't nearly enough gold in Fort Knox to cover the debt.

Right, but it's easy and it's a start.

At current market price, the gold in Fort Knox is worth
$58,920,000,000, which is only 0.8% of the national debt.
So it would be a start, but a *small* start.

The trouble is, when you flood the market with that
gold, doesn't the price go down?

Possibly, but if selling the gold caused confidence in the
dollar to fall, it might cause the price of gold to rise. In
fact, the current rise in the price of gold is because of
lack of confidence in the US dollar.

Likewise, if you start dumping federal lands onto
the market, isn't *that* going to depress the
market?

Remember that the 3 main factors which determine real
estate values are location, location, and location. The feds
own land in some *very* high rent districts, like Manhattan.
They even own some in Westchester county.

Besides, in toto we're only talking about 120,000,000 acres
going on the market. (It wouldn't all necessarily go on the
market at once either.) That's a small fraction of normal real
estate turnover.

Gary