My claim is only that there are assets valued in dollars that do not lose value at the same rate as inflation. If you have 1% inflation, we agree that every dollar you own loses 1% in purchasing power, as per your example. I showed you a simple example where a dollar valued asset would keep its value.
I can come up with examples that actually gain in buying power, but why bother? You already admitted the point.
now on to Par.
Par has nothing to do with valuing a security for purposes of calculating bank capital or loanable cash.
If a bond is worth $900, it doesn't matter if par was $1000, $10,000 or $1,000,000.
Then as I explained before, they repackage such and they change the underlying value.
Your original claim was "Corporate bonds are valued at 1000 per while Municpals are valued at 5000 per and Federal are valued at 10,000 per"
I thought you were claiming a municipal bond allows 5 times the loans as a corporate bond of the same value? If that's not your point, I'm not sure what it is.
Ummm OK except that is not what you claimed at all and we both know it. You claimed:
"My share is valued in dollars and still buys the same tank of gas therefore, by your own example, suffered no loss."
It doesn't, in fact your share valued at $40.40 has costs and tax implications associated with it and to purchase the same amount of goods (ergo a tank of gas) as U.S. legal tender it must transfer ownership which triggers those associated costs and taxes and thus you end up with less money in which to buy your tank of gas.
"I can come up with examples that actually gain in buying power..."
I am sure you can being now that you have been proved wrong on your first example but then by doing such you further destroy your claim of "purchasing power is not reduced by inflation" on assets other than cash. Because if your claim was true then you wouldn't end up with less money when you converted to legal tender.
So the bottom line is for any stock or bond asset to acheive parity with inflation it must increae in value greater that the rate of inflation or suffer loss of principal when converted to legal tender.
As far as PAR goes it is a term with differing values and you asked for a definition and a link.
Par is also a term that denotes present value which can be (and usually is) different then starting value. My point was and still is that the FED allows such instruments to be repackaged and sold and thus by doing so they change the underlying PAR value of the instrument (be it Stocks, Bonds, Mortgages etc.) This is the shell game no one pays attention to.
Its like allowing the Casinos to put a "2" in front of the "5" on a 5 Dollar Chip and repackaging it into a 25 Dollar chip. No more actual physical Cash is in the Casino at the time of the repackaging but the chips are supposedly worth more.