IPFS News Link • Gold and Silver
What That Giant Asteroid of Gold Would Really Do to the Economy
• https://fee.org, David YoungbergIn Greek mythology, Psyche was a woman of such beauty that she inspired jealousy in the love goddess Venus. The 19th-century Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis named a massive asteroid after her. How appropriate that it turns out that 16 Psyche, one of the biggest asteroids in the asteroid belt, is made out of a metal famous for inspiring lust: gold.
Unlike gold discoveries of the past, there's no rush to harvest Psyche. NASA wants to send a probe only to study it, prompting several articles to erroneously breathe a sigh of relief. According to one:
….if we carried [Psyche] back to Earth, it would destroy commodity prices and cause the world's economy – worth $75.5 trillion – to collapse.
No one tries to explain how cheap gold would cause an economic collapse, and for good reason: it wouldn't.