The whole topic revolves around increased need for gold bars to stimulate growth. May I submit that the lack of gold bars are in part, due to the price of the smelter ?
It is going to take some time before smelting GB becomes a profitable venture mainly due to the cost of the smelter.
In my case, I sold, traded, party'ed and EJ'ed my way to build a forge that could produce me a GB at current market prices.
There is nothing left to invest to get my GB cost down to where selling on the market becomes a viable way to profit.
I suppose I could try to get a loan of 100,000,000 and raise up my forge 3 lvls but still, my problem is I do not earn enough gc to feed it, and make my loan payments and with a volatile GB market, very easy to lose your shirt and over extend oneself.
I have not worked out the numbers to the decimal but until I have enough profit on the sale of a GB to make smithing and transport worthwhile, the smith only runs when I need it to avoid purchasing GB. When I get my next 40 mil saved up, perhaps I'll invest in the smith again but atm, the smith has a lot of work to do to earn its current gc outlay.
Perhaps not enough time has passed to accurately predict the need/availability for GB yet.