Why The Permanent Portfolio?

[Libertarian666]

Based on the value of gold this is correct. However the US Dollar is no longer on the gold standard and hasn't been since the early 1930's. As a free floating currency the value of pre-WWI dollars is estimated roughly 25x face value today. But there are quite a number of factors when calculating inflation. Austrians generally limit themselves to the value of gold.

The differences come down in part to economics and and since there is a vast gulf between Austrians and more or less every other school it's a debate that cannot be resolved definitively.

I wasn't referring to an index. What I meant is that if you had put away $2000, in the form of 100 $20 double eagles (or equivalent in other legal tender gold coin) in 1913 and kept them until today (or your grandchildren did), they would be worth about $140,000 2013 dollars.

[smurff]

I wasn't referring to an index. What I meant is that if you had put away $2000, in the form of 100 $20 double eagles (or equivalent in other legal tender gold coin) in 1913 and kept them until today (or your grandchildren did), they would be worth about $140,000 2013 dollars.

And if you had them graded and they were MS-63 or higher, they could be worth 4 to 5 times that amount, depending on rarity and rating.  You could get a Netjets Marquis card for with them and have enough left over for shopping.

[Libertarian666]

I wasn't referring to an index. What I meant is that if you had put away $2000, in the form of 100 $20 double eagles (or equivalent in other legal tender gold coin) in 1913 and kept them until today (or your grandchildren did), they would be worth about $140,000 2013 dollars.

And if you had them graded and they were MS-63 or higher, they could be worth 4 to 5 times that amount, depending on rarity and rating.  You could get a Netjets Marquis card for with them and have enough left over for shopping.

Yes, but that's something that no one could have foreseen. Since the historical record of governments the world over contained many examples of inflation prior to 1913, it would not have been an unreasonable notion that the US government would follow suit at some point.

[murphy_p_t]

I wasn't referring to an index. What I meant is that if you had put away $2000, in the form of 100 $20 double eagles (or equivalent in other legal tender gold coin) in 1913 and kept them until today (or your grandchildren did), they would be worth about $140,000 2013 dollars.

And if you had them graded and they were MS-63 or higher, they could be worth 4 to 5 times that amount, depending on rarity and rating.  You could get a Netjets Marquis card for with them and have enough left over for shopping.

Yes, but that's something that no one could have foreseen. Since the historical record of governments the world over contained many examples of inflation prior to 1913, it would not have been an unreasonable notion that the US government would follow suit at some point.

Do you have any examples where there was a similar inflation AND a maintained link to a fixed unit of precious metal?

[Libertarian666]

And if you had them graded and they were MS-63 or higher, they could be worth 4 to 5 times that amount, depending on rarity and rating.  You could get a Netjets Marquis card for with them and have enough left over for shopping.

Yes, but that's something that no one could have foreseen. Since the historical record of governments the world over contained many examples of inflation prior to 1913, it would not have been an unreasonable notion that the US government would follow suit at some point.

Do you have any examples where there was a similar inflation AND a maintained link to a fixed unit of precious metal?

No, because the "link" would have been severed by a run into metal when the inflation really got going. Which is exactly what happened in the US with silver coinage in the 1960's and gold redemption by foreign dollar holders in the late 1960's and early 1970's.

Of course, in 1913 everyone expected that the developed world would return to (relative) monetary sanity soon, but unfortunately that was not to be the case.