Harry Potter has 45 million Galleons, 560 thousand Sickles, and DEEZ KNUTS.

 

Maybe the goblins manage a brothel on the side and that's where they get their money from. And they hired Fleur with that in mind...? Yep, that's gotta be it. Those kinky goblin bastards.

 

Regarding whether or not Gringotts gives out loans, didn't Ludo Bagman get into a shitload of trouble with the goblins in GoF because he borrowed a lot of gold and didn't pay anything back?

I think it was from Fred and George's point of view when they were trying to get the money Bagman owed them from the World Cup bet and they see him getting harrassed by a bunch of goblins.

 

Gringotts has a full time security force made of wizards. They responded to the break in of the Lestrange vault during deathly hollows and Gringotts even advertises it's wizarding positions to kids at Hogwarts during OOTP.
Not to mention there is only so much gold, or any precious metals for that, in the world, in an economy based on gold you'd think there is only so much wealth to be had which means eventually the wizarding world will come to a sort of economic halt. What happens then? Or has it already happened and the wizarding world is simply just shuffling money around between families and nations with residuals trickling down to the lower classes.

 

Nope, he lost the bet with them and paid them back with Leprechaun gold, which disappeared after few hours. He also did so with the Weasley twins.

 

I didn't say anything about them giving a cut of the profit. Harry's profit != cut of the twins' profit. He gets his profit in free joke items instead. As I said, it's a bit of a stretch, but it does work in a way.

Private ownership does not necessarily mean that only a single person owns the company. It can be a group of private citizens that own it. Besides, taking the dictionary definition of "invest," we can see that ANY business at all could be classified as an investment, as are loans and purchases of artifacts:

Granted on the Lovegood thing though.

Not all businesses are stores. There are the companies that build the booms and companies that manufacture stuff like butterbeer and firewhiskey, probably companies that make robes, companies that publish books, and then there are all the owl-order businesses. And for pretty much any business there is a supplier. While I can see it being difficult to start up a new store, it would be fairly easy for an innovative person to create a successful new supplier business, as long as they can find a way to offer their items cheaper than the competition.

Who knows? Either way, it's still investment.

What we know about the financial system:
Gringotts is a collection of safe deposit boxes
Gringotts apparently makes its money from treasure hunting and currency exchange
Loans are offered (Ludo Bagman borrows money from the goblins)

What we know about businesses:
There are many wizarding businesses (shops, newspapers, manufacturers, owl-order businesses)
Some of the shops (specifically Ollivander's) have apparently been around a (really) long time

What we know about Harry's fortune:
His father inherited enough money to live comfortably without having a well-paying job. This inheritance was passed on to Harry
Harry inherited an unspecified amount of gold from Sirius
Harry has a sizable amount of gold in his vault, enough that he feels embarrassed after seeing the Weasleys' vault (though pretty much any amount of gold would embarrass him in that situation)

Let me know if I've missed anything.

Everything else that has been said is guesswork.

*Edit*

I don't have a copy of GOF with me, but I'm pretty sure that there's a line about Bagman borrowing "loads of gold off the goblins"

 

the lexicon says that Ludo borrowed gold from goblins to recoup financially and he just ended up betting the money he borrowed.

 

Under your extremely broad definition of investment, maybe.

However, this simply requires me to use different words to get the same point across.

Harry does not own any percentage of WWW. He receives no share of the profits as dividends. He gave WWW a gift, which the owners of WWW apparently intend to pay back, but may never do so (especially as Harry probably wouldn't accept it). He also gets free access to their stock as a reciprocal gift.

Also one thing to consider: I never read GoF as Ludo borrowing money from Gringotts. The impression that I got was that it was more a kind of goblin Mafia - loan sharks.

 

Seeing as how this thread is completely idiotic, would it be possible for some admin to just lock up this thread?

 

I read a fic the other night in which Harry had 60 billion galleons.

Now, ridiculousness of the number aside, they did manage to explain how he managed to get so many, and while ludicrous, the idea was pretty cool.

The fic was horrible though. It was one of those 'harry inexplicably moves to america' fics, and at least the author had the basic comprehension that when Harry moves and takes all his money with him, the british wizarding economy is going to collapse.

Now, to be honest, that's not something I've seen before- usually Harry just inexplicably has scads and oodles of money, and so does everyone else, and it just explodes in a conflageration of fanwank.

 

FYI, when I said "Who knows? Either way it's an investment," I was talking about Goblins loaning vs. wizards loaning rather than WWW. I've already acknowledged that calling WWW an investment is a bit of a stretch now that its been established that Harry was not made a partner.

Also, out of curiosity, since you're saying that my definition of investment is too broad, what's yours? Just to clarify, my definition is the same as the dictionary's: putting money into something (antiques, a business, loans, etc) in the hope of profit.

Which is why I used "goblins" instead of "Gringotts"; it's never made clear in canon.

The argument isn't about whether Gringotts can loan money. It's about the existence of investments in the wizarding world. "Investments" were originally proposed as a way for Harry to have a significant amount of money and an explanation for why JKR said that James inherited enough that he didn't need a well-paying job.

My argument for the existence of investments is twofold:
1. There is canon evidence for loans (Ludo Bagman), which are a form of investment.
2. A flat amount of money would have to be enormous in order to sustain a man and his family for life, even if supplemented by a small annual income from a job. There would need to be another source of income to maintain the fortune and ensure that support would continue throughout James's lifetime. More evidence of this comes from the Malfoys. Lucius does not appear to have any other job besides Hogwarts governor, and it is unclear as to whether this position is paid (and if it is, I can't imagine that it would pay a lot). Yet he manages to throw all sorts of enormous sums of cash around throughout the entire series without any apparent hesitation.
tl;dr: investments are logical

*edit* Woot! 100th post!

 

Money =/= wealth.

If wealth increases while the quantity of money remain the same, all that happens is that the demand for money increases which causes the price level to fall. There is nothing implying that a fixed quantity of money means a fixed quantity of wealth.

 

My definition is that it's a complex topic upon which whole books can be written and cannot be summarised in a nice tidy sentence.

"Wizards loan, loans are investments, thus there is investment in the wizarding world" is nothing but a semantic argument. All it means is that there is something we can call investment. It does not, however, mean that the wizarding world automatically gets a stock market, complex financial mechanisms, monetary policy, proper banks, or anything that the word "investment" might imply in the Muggle world.

That there is common place borrowing in the wizarding world (which I'm not sure if the existence of a single loan can display, especially as that loan was presented as rather clandestine) does not, simply because we call it an investment, mean that other kinds of investment exist.

So it's perfectly possible (and here's where it gets back to the original topic) that Harry still has no shares in any businesses, even if the wizarding world has loans. Which was the whole point of the argument in the first place - an attempt to show that its possible for Harry to have an income from owning businesses etc.

 

Maybe it's just me, but I can't see canon Harry managing stocks - even if they do exist. He barely did his homework and he doesn't care for wealth, so why would he even bother?

 

I point you back to my second post:

I'm not arguing for a full on stock market or complex financial system. Instead, I think it is wholly possible (and even likely - see the second piece of my argument in my previous post) that wealthy wizarding families might have several business partnerships as a source of income.

But the flip side is true as well: it is possible that Harry does have an income from owning businesses. In this case, you can't use a lack of evidence in canon to support your claim because the financial sector is all but unexplored in the books.

And now we've pretty much reached the end of this argument. Taure is trying to prove a negative and I'm speculating, neither of which is going to come up with a hard answer.

 

I couldn't see canon Harry defeating Pettigrew, much less the Dark Lord.

 

Your posts brighten my day.

 

I'm pretty sure stocks and shares the way people are thinking of is a muggle concept... I could be wrong, but considering nothing of the sort's been mentioned in the books and what we know of the wizarding world as its been decribed I think its safe to say that they won't have anything nearly as complex as the stuff described in fanon.

This shit wouldn't even be an issue if Harry had just palmed the Philosopher's stone like he was supposed to.