ATMs That Dispense Gold Bars Coming To America 482
tetrahedrassface writes "As the US economic woes continue unabated, a German company is bringing gold-bearing ATMs to Mainstreet America. The machines accept credit cards, and will dispense 1 gram, 5 gram, 10 gram and 1 ounce units, as well as various gold coins. The company hopes to install 35 bullion machines in the United States this year, and will hopefully have several hundred up and running by next year. The machines will be decorated like giant gold ingots and be over two meters tall. Physical gold has both pros and cons, but from a safety standpoint would it be fine to have a couple of ounces in your pocket while walking around the mall? The giant, gold-dispensing ATMs will monitor the market conditions for gold every 10 minutes in order to reflect spot price changes as they occur." We already covered similar machines installed in travel hubs across Germany.
I see a hack waiting to happen... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I see a hack waiting to happen... (Score:1, Interesting)
How would it be illegal? It's a vending machine. It sells a material which has many uses in industrial applications, art and decoration.
Re:35 bullion? (Score:3, Interesting)
Will they dispense other kinds of bullion other than 35?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullion#Bullion
Gold bullion would be coins made of gold. Therefor, 35 bullion machines would be 35 machines that dispense coins minted from precious metals.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess filling consumer demand while reducing consumer costs and making a profit is evil in your world. Might I suggest you move to North Korea? I guarantee no-one is making any evil profits there.
Re:Already here (Score:2, Interesting)
For initialisms and abbreviations, an apostrophe is usually acceptable for the non-possessive plural but is generally now considered deprecated; it is more widely used where confusion may otherwise result: A's and B's.
Re:Gold in your pocket is safe. (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in a state with a large number of concealed carry permits. Forceful robberies are becoming less common.
Re:Arbitrage? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If we buy one with the magic chocolate ticket (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes, because the economic crunches brought about by the hoarding of resources in a metallic standard economy are so favourable. Inflation is not a bug, it's a feature: it makes it so the upper class can't hoard too much.
Tool.
Re:Cue the crying (Score:5, Interesting)
What you're missing is that Glenn Beck's radio show is sponsored by a competitor "Goldline International" and he gets significant money for doing regular TV and radio ads for them. He used to be listed as a "paid spokesman" for their product until someone notified Fox with regard to his regular rants on his Fox News Channel program about how everyone should buy gold. Since that is against Fox's policies, the gold peddler changed all the adverts to say he is a "radio sponsor" and Fox ignored the issue, which shows how much they actually care about the integrity of their programming.
Unless it also ACCEPTS gold bars... (Score:4, Interesting)
...I'm not interested.
All the goldbugs keep telling me that gold is money, regardless of what economists say or what governments decree. So if gold is money, why won't these machines work either way?
Your choice, put in fiat money and get a gold bar, or put in a gold bar and get some crisp green U. S. of A. "Cyberbit Certificates" (or whatever it is that backs the currency nowadays).
I'm sure the technical problems could be solved--it only accepts gold bars slabbed in polycarbonate with a barcode on them, or something. Methinks the real reason is that it would exposed the bid/asked spread.
Re:If we buy one with the magic chocolate ticket (Score:2, Interesting)
One need not be "liberal" to find Mr. Beck to be a shitjugglingly insane moron and a blight on the nation's airwaves. The fact that you are apparently a fan of his speaks volumes about which of us is in need of "wising up."
You can't eat gold. (Score:5, Interesting)
Gold is only useful if you can hang on to it and survive the years between total collapse and the rebuilding of a new world.
Generally, gold is seized by whatever autocrats and strong-men are vying for power in the interim. In any case, during the hungry years, nobody has any use for gold.
But what's interesting this time around is that we're entering an age where canned goods are stable and good for years. We've never been through a societal collapse which has had access to high-quality, preserved goods.
Whatever. Skill sets are more important in the long run. Can you farm or make useful things? What value do you personally hold? Do people like you?
-FL
Re:Cue the crying (Score:3, Interesting)
The point is that, agree with him or not, a lot of people listen to Beck and do/agree with most of what he says.
Convincing people to buy gold because the economy could collapse while simultaneously being a paid spokesman for a company that buys gold and melts it is a bit asshatish...don't you think?
WTF!? (Score:1, Interesting)
Seriously, WTF?! The economy in this country is in its worst state since the Great Depression, an OFFICIAL unemployment figure around 10%, the top 2% are making off like freaking thieves at the expense of the rest of us, and oh, by the way, bitching the entire time about having their taxes increase to 34% once the tax dodge ^H^H^H^H^H cuts expire....and now vending machines for gold, obviously only for those who can afford it?
What. The. Unholy. F'ng. Hell!?
Y'know, this is WAAY out of control, I have a nice thought, and it's only a thought, I don't expect it seriously. Why don't the rest of us just do the decent thing for the rest of humanity, and ourselves and declare a "cap a fatcat" day? At the rate things are going, we could freaking eat the bastards, and still call it a public service.
Re:Cue the crying (Score:5, Interesting)
Humanity won't end, but this gold bubble will, and these ATMs are the surest possible sign.
Remember those round-the-clock commercials for mortgages, and the reality shows about flipping houses, the last year or two before the mortgage bust that wrecked the economy? This is that, but for gold. When half the teenagers in shopping malls adopt your investment strategy, it is time to sell.
Now, I have to give the gold standard guys some credit, they said it would go up, and it did, bigtime. But you only profit from getting in on time if you also get out on time, and IMHO that could be any day now.
Re:Cue the crying (Score:2, Interesting)
Convincing people to buy gold because the economy could collapse while simultaneously being a paid spokesman for a company that buys gold and melts it is a bit asshatish...don't you think?
Goldline sells gold, it doesn't buy and melt it. And considering what the price of gold has done, it seems that in this particular instance Beck has given excellent advice.
Re:If we buy one with the magic chocolate ticket (Score:2, Interesting)
Inflation is not a bug, it's a feature: it makes it so the upper class can't hoard too much.
Inflation destroys those with fixed incomes and at the lower end of the income scale the most as the majority of their incomes go to food and fuel, which are conveniently left out of the "core inflation" measure.
Meanwhile, the wealthy can invest in commodities which weather the inflation.
Re:Cue the crying (Score:3, Interesting)
The point is that ethical news organizations -- which Fox News, credible or not in doing so, pretends to be -- don't allow employees who are also paid advocates for a product or cause to address that cause through the news organization without disclosing that interest.
Re:I see a hack waiting to happen... (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't imagine a legit coin dealer / jeweler buying a couple ingots that have been carefully defaced in that way. Admittedly it would make the cops job much harder.
Unless you are going to try and source the gold through measuring radiation or minor trace elements (Which is not cheap or easy), gold bars are gold bars.
I have/had a couple ingots that I made from melting down old bits of broken jewelry. Twisted necklaces, broken settings, old dead water damaged watches, basic wedding bands.
Hire a trusted company to perform an analysis on the content, and you can find a buyer.
We did the same thing with Lead, and Aluminum. Though in general Lead and Aluminum people will simply purchase on your word as they are fairly obvious. The only things like lead and aluminum are much more expensive metals.
With the amount of crap that people throw away, I'm tempted to go back into the junk business. You just have to build up a network of scrap buyers, keep track of the market, and know which auction houses to go to when.
A large yard is helpful, since you can store stuff until your preferred time to sell it. It's weird how seasonal furniture is.
Analysis is too simplistic (Score:4, Interesting)
Gold is useful if the currency of your country collapses in value prior to your purchase and the world economy is still strong enough to buy your gold.
Economic collapse is not an all-or-nothing event, sometimes the economy in a limited number of countries collapses. An example of this would be Argentina in 1999.
Re:Cue the crying (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it's amazing how Beck's 'excellent advice' is neatly bracketed by conmen who are willing to con people by having a con that appears to be exactly what he recommends, but is not.
And I should point out that investing in a market that's at the highest it's ever been is not, technically speaking, a 'good idea'.
It is, in technical jargon, 'fucking goddamn stupid'.
But, hey, we've need a new bubble now that the rich can't defraud people by having them 'invest' in housing anymore. With the economic downturn, the rich are starting to feel the pinch, and really appreciate the morons willing to buy their gold from them at absurd prices.
Re:Arbitrage? (Score:3, Interesting)
If they had had this vending machine technology in the 1920s, they would have been rolling out stock certificate vending machines in 1929.
Gold does not pay dividends. Gold does not have buy-backs. Gold can't be rented out for cash flow. It is traded purely on speculation. And like all speculative bubbles, it will crash. If history is any guide, the crash will come shortly after the mainstream press starts highlighting it, and the common schmucks start buying in.
Fox News is our mainstream press. Vending machines with 1g pellets make it available to those schmucks.
In the next year or two, I expect gold to get cut in half. It could rip before the tear, so I have closed all my long and short positions in the stuff. Stay the hell away from it: that's my advice.
Re:Cue the crying (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If we buy one with the magic chocolate ticket (Score:3, Interesting)
Most economic growth has come from technological growth. Most of technology throughout history has been about finding ways to use mechanical energy to replace human labor. Until the "information revolution", that was the only useful definition of "technology", really.
And we have far more leisure hours for a given standard of living. People choose to divert leisure hours to improving their standard of living. For example, it's now quite reasonable to have both parents working and still have a reasonably clean house. This simply was not the case 100 yeras ago (excepting servents for this discussion). Heck, if you're willling to accept a 19th century standard of living, you could probably manage it without a job at all - my brother did that for a little while (living sort of off the grid) until the boredom became too much.
None of which has anything to do with inflation.