"and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Shantih.
Monday, November 3, 2014
DEBT JUBILEE
".........forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors"
"and the first shall be last and the last, first"
"and the fiftieth year will be a Jubilee when the slave is freed, a man's debts are forgiven, and he returns to his own land (or clan)"
Debt forgiveness by the creditor is an admirable act. Forgiveness is virtuous, but only when approved by the lender. A third party, like a government, that intervenes in a contract is meddling and not so virtuous. It is in fact a crime. Legally we use bankruptcy to adjudicate for those that can't pay and it is theoretically as fair as we can make it. To proclaim debt forgiveness or Jubilee is wrong in principle. When we cancel debts it eliminates the credit which in fact is our money. The digits in our bank account are a promise that can only be honored if it is possible to do so. I can make the car payment only if the bank, where my digits reside, allows me to. MY willingness to do so is not the issue. If the bank doesn't have money, neither do I.
Suppose we go ahead and set a date for Jubilee; make it....... tomorrow. I am not aware of a Jubilee -ever having been tried. There may have been one within a small ethnic group but on a nation-state scale, I doubt it. Frankly I wonder how it worked in ancient Palestine. Who calls a Jubilee? What debts are included? How could it be done? If we forgave ALL debts, would you "win" or "lose"? I think it interesting to contemplate because our overburdened financial system is unlikely to be able to make good on all the claims outstanding. So, are you a debtor or a creditor? I rather suspect that most of us are both. If all of these claims were to disappear, what then happens? My bank account could go away, my car loan, my mortgage.
If all debts are forgiven, what exactly is it that we "own"? Can I live in my house? Is it mine? Let us suppose that everything under our immediate control is ours--our house, furniture, car, and land. But If my mortgage goes away so too does my bank account. My retirement savings. In short, we all have what we physically possess. No credit cards work. There would still be cash, as in green pieces of paper but what would the value be? Where do you go to get more? How do we buy food with no money? What do we do at our jobs? When we don't get paid, is it worth doing?
So if we do not have bank accounts but need to buy things, barter could be an unwieldy substitute, so money will develop. I don't know what we will use but we will use something to trade. Sugar, silver, cows. I have a lot of good books and have read them. Would you like to trade a steak for them? Would green paper notes (cash) actually mean anything? I wonder. We have always used them but I think cash in this scenario would be trash rather quickly. How long do you think? Two hours, three weeks, six months? No one would have any idea what anything was worth. Could you trade a sack of rice for a Porsche? Maybe. The government would have to come up with a plan. They just had 20 Trillion dollars of Treasury obligations forgiven and are feeling a lot richer but now nobody can pay their taxes. What about pension obligations, annuity payments, SS? Are they debts?
Let's not involve the lawyers yet. We are just asking questions. So all contracts reset. The purpose of a contract is to specify the terms of a promise but if we have just invalidated all contracts, the entire legal system is undermined. There is nothing to adjudicate. We don't have a "system" anymore. So Jubilee means its time to call a Constitutional Convention because everything that went before is no longer relevant. Can a complex society hit the reset button? Perhaps the President, all cheerful and playful, goes on TV for a national broadcast not to say we have a national emergency but to say we have a national opportunity. Tomorrow is anarchy day. Think carefully about what that means. You can go wild in the streets but there could be consequences. The police may not care in your city. They might very much care and they have a lot more organization and guns than you do. Let's all be adults, it's serious now. Sure you have "interests". So does everyone else. Let's encourage some homegrown leaders, get together, and see what the new terms of political society will be. All debts are off.
A thoroughgoing Jubilee is therefore almost impossible. Could all our leaders abdicate in mass? We quit. Our problems are too grave. It's time for you pathetic citizens to start acting like citizens rather than crybabies. It is time to create a system that works for everyone and not just for the elites. Our leaders will feel that they have failed. And that's OK. They have failed. We need new ones with new ideas.
The problem of a monetary re-arrangement is getting from here to there. Somehow one wishes for it just because of the clarity....
Saturday, May 3, 2014
The Whip Hand
The Whip Hand
Why do tigers jump through
flaming rings? They are not afraid of
the little man with the chair and the whip but they are in a cage and if they
eat him their days are numbered. And if
we complain about the cage or the man with the whip, then, like slaves, we will
surely feel the lash. If we persevere in
our intransigence, we will be disciplined.
Those are my thoughts on
monetary reality. Use the legal tender,
pay what is asked of you, and if you rock the boat then like Tim Robbins in
Shawshank, you could be cast down with the sodomites.
No one has threatened me with
anything. As far as I know, I am a free
man. I enjoy doing my duty—I work, I pay
taxes and I don’t lie or cheat but I would like to point out that for the noble
and honorable among us, the fix is in.
Opportunity is currently looking for a scapegoat and if your savings or pension
promises are the only source of protein, well, the long knives are after their
feast.
Who deserves anything? Aren’t
we all sinners and fall short of the glory of God? Well sure but what does that
have to do with money? What you think you deserve you will probably not get. You
might have been planning for a Florida golf retirement after a lifetime of toil and you need a
certain amount of money for that.
Perhaps too a cruise or a trip to France. But
that was all an image in your head, something like a desert mirage. A lot of
people are angling for the same thing and there is not enough “money” to
provide it. Who after all is going to do
the work while we “retire”? So if it is time to get serious about politics,
what exactly should we ask of our overseers?
A note to myself, I see that the authorities are “unsure” about the
constitutionality of eliminating American terrorists on American soil. A drone
attack on a Pakistani warlord is one thing but if neighbor Crazy Bill is the
target or I squeak too much, then that’s a different matter. Rand Paul
filibusters the Senate to protest the new CIA-chief who cannot categorically
deny that drones could be used on American citizen terrorists, however that is
defined. Police work used to involve
“arrests” (with warrants) and trials (by
jury?) but what exactly constitutes treason against the State? Is my “hope and change” subject to
misinterpretation?
Let me spell it out. The State has gradually, due to careless
decisions, worked itself into a box. It
has enjoyed dispensing the favors of royalty, it has enjoyed the trappings of
legitimacy, and it is nearing the end of
its useful life. The State wants to
determine what is done and what has importance.
The rest of us are along for the ride and will be paying the bill. The State “means” well which is to say it has
an ethic of public service as long as they get to call the shots. Freedom is defined as the opportunity to do
what you are told or pay the consequences. The nub of the problem is that we
CANNOT have real Freedom if manipulation of the value of the money is allowed. If
careful stewards were to try their best to maintain and support the dual
functions of money, both as a medium of exchange AND as a store of value, then
perhaps their scrupulousness would permit our freedom. But if the government says a dollar is what the
government says it is (in short political money), then all our work and saving
is measured by a scale that can be changed at any time. The power to usurp is gradually exercised,
financial repression is instituted and eventually tends toward absolute
control. It ultimately takes more and
more money to make everyone do what they are told.
Political money can be given
or taken away. Big banks with
unfortunate losses have been subsidized with “asset purchases” by the holders
of the Aladdin’s lamp of monetary largess.
Underwater homeowners are relieved of their home and large hedge funds
acquire them to rent or re-sell at a better price. Political money goes to who needs it to keep
power. The hot spring of money printing
supports the crowding, teeming LIFE that the cold outer darkness freezes
out. If the question is how little you
can pay a man and still get work out of him it is wise to remember that they do
shoot horses when the maintenance costs get high. I may be stupid enough to work for a carrot
but I am not stupid enough to continue to plod after a carrot on a stick
dangling 3 inches off my nose. So who to vote for in this multiple theatre of
charades?
The rightful definition of a citizen is a
participant in the choices that the government needs to make. Money and votes
are a citizens two tools to impact TPTB.
The last refuge is “doing your own thing”. Opting out. Voting has long since become meaningless. The duty is flogged mercilessly but barely half the electorate makes it to a major decision. When the vote is local--the voting participation falls below 20%. And if the government can create all the money it wants or needs, why do I need to pay taxes? The government looks bad creating its own money and our overseers need "buy in" to the system that allows them to gain control of incentives and permit their oversight. Everybody needs to be on their little treadmills generating wherewithal(taxes) and allegiance (loyalty) to the State. Are we free? Any thoughtful observer when asked about freedom necessarily must mention obligation. As in rights have responsibilities. We have this idea that our freedom allows us to consent to the oversight of the state but practically the state assumes it. There is no other state so you have consented to this one.
Well, I don’t need any more monopoly money
for my pretend retirement. I am trying
to figure out the “best” investments in an environment where the rules can be changed at any time. Many countries' citizens have coped with their governments malfeasance by using dollars as a store of value: Argentina, Venezuela, Ukraine, Nigeria, and others. Now we Americans have a similar but more difficult problem--there is not another fiat currency that is any BETTER than ours. How to navigate safely over the cataract
that is coming is a knotty problem. I'll speak about that later. The world we have is not where we are
going. I would have to say the hippies
of the 60’s were a little early. All of
their utopias blew up on the failures of human nature especially when
confronted with the blandishments of a wanton culture. And we are still living the dream but are
getting closer to awakening. In the 70’s
I was grabbed by the ideas of the neo-Malthusians: Ehrlich and Lester Brown. I internalized the concerns of limits to
growth, propounded the lessons of Earth Day, railed against militarism in
Vietnam, admired Seymour Melman in his argument for a 75% reduction in the
Defense Department to invest in social capital rather than destruction, and
contemplated alternative development strategies to bring greater justice to
desperately poor 4th world countries. As a world community, we needed some
sacrifice by the rich to create the conditions for the poor. In my mind Reagan’s jingoism blew all that
out the window. We were in it for
us. We Americans were the exceptional free people and had a God
given right to grow as rich as possible and everybody else could come along if
they could. The neo-Malthusians have been around a long time and are
just the sort of do-gooder scolds you can really believe in but a funny thing
happened on the road to Apocalypse Now—we learned how to print money and
sprinkle it on every asset so that now we could no more say what a horse is
worth than why a dollar buys anything at all.
And as for my kids and their choices: they are walking in two worlds—the world of
their parents and grandparents and the collapsing future. There is the world of progress and a belief in a technological
future but I think they need to be prepared for a resource constrained future of contraction and a slow slide to
de-industrialization. What will it be? Onward and upward or systemic and cascading failures due to resource limits, population pressures, and financial criminality. The rich got theirs but we middle class sods are pack mules on the Oregon trail to nowhere.
What can the young people do? They are ready to work but leadership needs to put them to their task. College is a dangerous investment. Fun, but costly and potentially lethal. Those loans cannot be shucked in bankruptcy and what about the real return? I still think it wise to go to college even
though there are precious few jobs worth pursuing. You could chase aeronautical engineering, or
architecture, or genomic counseling and still end up thousands of dollars in debt and 10th
in line for an interview. So though I would
recommend going to college, you need to think, really think (and talk to class-mates)
about the future. Read a lot of great
books, make a lot of intelligent friends, get a “peer group” you trust, and
then sally forth into the blast furnace of reality. Don’t spend too much and don’t party too
much. Learn what is worth knowing and
then get busy—no one said adulthood was easy.
That’s why in the insect world it’s the last stage.
We really don’t know what kind of mixed up
social order we are going to brew up as the high priced escapades become
unaffordable and only the 1% are in a hurry to catch a plane. Is the capital we have at all useful? What are we going to do with a tanning salon,
or a big box outlet with empty shelves-repurpose it as a homeless shelter with
hammocks? What is the average miles travelled for every item in Walmart—8,000?
Or what about your neighborhood grocery store – 1,000 miles?
Does any of this work with gas going up or becoming as expensive here as it is in Europe? Perhaps it might be a few years before that
uncomfortable day but remind me again of the date that fracking will make the
USA a net EXPORTER of fuel? We still IMPORT 50% of our energy. I believe
our last year as a net energy EXPORTER was in the mid-50’s.
We have some mighty careless leadership. My own belief is that they are grabbing what they can and want to tiptoe around all the problems until they crash on the unsuspecting. Please, don't let IT happen on my watch. Just like the dumbfounded Bush--"this sucker could go down". Yes, Virginia. IT could happen. But even if the interlocking global world financial system doesn't pancake like a World Trade Center tower, it is on the Darwin short list. Big changes are coming and we will see who or what holds "the whip hand".
Friday, May 2, 2014
Some Reflections About Debt and Gold
Several FACTS about gold are
not often considered.
1)
If each American had a 1 ounce gold coin that
would be 316 million ounces. There are 32,150 troy ounces in a metric ton. Do the math. That is 9,829 T of
gold. The US government is supposed to hold
8,500 T of gold in Fort Knox and at the NY Fed.
The entire world supply ever mined is about 175,000 T. All gold holdings by all national governments(central
banks, IMF, etc.) worldwide are about 35,000
T. About 2,800 T is mined every
year. So if everybody in America had ONE
gold coin it would take more than 3x what is mined every year to get them TWO......
2)
In 1920 a 1 ounce gold coin was equal to $20
and having TEN would not be uncommon. Any
person could go into any bank and exchange a $20 bill for a one ounce gold
coin.
3)
It is estimated
that there are 9 million financial asset millionaires in the USA today. If half of them put 10% of their savings into
gold it would be a minimum of $450 billion.
With 1 ton of gold worth approx $42 million, their gold would be approx
10,000 T or more than US government holdings.
There are millionaires in a lot
of other countries too….
4)
The Federal
Reserve “emits” $85 billion every month to purchase MBS and Treasury
bonds. That is approx equal to one
year’s total world production of gold.
Which is easier? To find, mine,
and refine $85 billion worth of gold or push a button to ‘acquire’ a financial
“asset”?
5)
If a dollar is
worth a dollar, what is gold worth?
The government likes
political money because they can create it as needed. That puts those of us who need to work to
earn it in something of a quandary. The government’s position is that for the greater
good it can create whatever money is necessary. They have developed a pretense
of accounting by talking about “The Debt” but there is actually no “accounting”
if debts can be created and then paid back with MORE debt. Just
as there is no “debt” associated with a counterfeiter that produces perfect
hundred dollar bills , there is then no
difference in “good”(trustworthy) or
“bad”(counterfeit) money.
Printing whatever money is
necessary to pay expenses and then requiring everyone to use that money is the
antithesis of “sound” money. It is
legalized counterfeiting. The government
can create bonds and sell them or hold them itself and then cancel them at
will. It is a right pocket left pocket
scam. Who can protest? Once you have
accepted that it is the right of the State to issue as much money as it needs
to do what it must, what control, besides a pitiful little vote every 4 years,
is possible? The whole concept of money
itself dissolves into irrelevance. What
you hold and what you work for is a political construct determined at every
moment by the power that can issue it at will.
Why, in fact, do we pay taxes if the government can create whatever
money it needs?
The “Debt” is actually a
moral partnership between the government and the people. The moral part comes in when considering how
the new money is to be used and how the Debt is to be paid back. Many analysts have commented that the current
debt is too large to be paid back and it is inevitably going to be defaulted on
or inflated away. I think that likely. If it is cancelled or defaulted on, then,
through the money power, the government has the full and complete power to do whatever it wants irrespective of citizen’s votes. It can create National Security State,
American Empire, Nanny State, or it can just pay itself whatever it wants. It
can pay newspapers to write nice stories.
The result is that we “citizens” are all beggars for crumbs from the Kings’
Table.
Debt could be considered “the
negative” of the positive that is known as money. Practically speaking we consider money a unit
of comparative value. A dollar is defined by its purchasing power. It is not
based on anything. It has a customary
value that is understood to change gradually. I do not think people consider how immoral
debt cancellation by the State is. A
person goes bankrupt and fails his creditor but a government that goes bankrupt
fails the entire citizenry. How can a
State fail its people? When it
mismanages so stupendously that it must cheat them to remain in power. Here have a dollar—it’s not worth anything.
The government defines what money will be – a dollar- and defines what it will
be worth. Does it reserve the right to
change these determinations at any time if repaying its obligations is
difficult? The Fed could theoretically expand the balance sheet to $10 T. Then cancel it. Of course the Fed would then be insolvent but
would the Treasury? No. The Treasury could create another Fed or take
the money creation role in house. Old
bonds held by others would be redeemed with new bonds and the Treasury would
lose the income from the old cancelled bonds but what does a counterfeiter care
if people burn the money he issues them?
Debt cancellation sounds like
a good thing but it is a flagrant injustice.
It certainly seems so to me who
have saved what I have. What loyalty does the government deserve if it is busy
picking favorites to benefit? Let’s consider an alternative scenario that would
benefit me but not as much as some others:
why don’t we cancel everyone’s mortgage?
We have just made some Americans $5T richer. But then we require the government to pay its
debts and balance its books. WWG(Government)D? The same lousy options it has
now would still be facing the government:
it could change some of its future promises, trim some current expenses,
and increase taxes on its suddenly wealthier citizens. Its huge debt would
still be there and our government representatives would still have to work out which of the poor
options available to them would be chosen.
But of course some would have
already benefited. So cui bono? The
specific debt holders that are forgiven.
Everyone else pays.
A counterfeiter does not need
or care about “accounts”. He produces
all that he can get away with. Why does the
government not allow counterfeiters to make people ‘richer’? At that critical point—it is all about the
power. I make the money, I call the
shots, you do what you are told. That is
how it works. In this model, the concept
of freedom extends only to consumer choices not the social contract we live
under. That is where we are fellow
citizens, do we like it?
Why is honest money like gold
or silver not playing a larger role in our current monetary arrangements? People
don’t understand the problem and they do not WANT to understand it. Essentially,
gold is inconveniently rare, they don’t have any, and have no reason to prefer
dollars (that they don’t have enough of) to gold(that they can’t actually BUY
anything with). If you ask most people,
who is responsible for deciding how much money needs to be printed for
everybody to use? The answer will be,
the government. If you ask them how does
the government know how much to print, they will answer, that is their job and
why they have all those economists and departments full of civil servants. If you ask them can the government print as
much money as it wants? They will say yes. I ask, so YOU cannot print
money or it is 10 years in the slammer as a counterfeiter, but the government
CAN print as much as it likes and buy whatever it likes? Do you feel there is a problem with this
system? No, they say, it is complicated
and the government knows best.
This makes for a very long
and involved process of education. What
percent of the population actually thinks the government has the right and OUGHT to have the right to print
all the money it wants and spend it on whatever it wants? I think it is at
least 75%. To them, it is like a “perk”
of being a government official. A
majority of people unwilling to think or become informed citizens would
necessarily reduce the value of gold and silver as money. People are satisfied with how things work, even
if they have to work 3 jobs and don’t themselves have any money. It’s OK that some rich people get to fly
private planes to Tahiti because they know the government official that makes
up the money. If they could get a job
like that, they would do it for their friends too. Is this where we are? 75% of the populace completely clueless
about the benefits of a money that functions as money i.e. a store of value? What will it take for a majority of people to
become aware that their interests are being ignored and desire to do something
about it? Why don’t people engage more
with politics? I can answer that
question, all those meetings that lead to no substantial changes are
boring. Politics would have to be REAL
for people to put any time or effort into it.
The entire society works
because people think they have an idea of what money is. What if they realize they everything they buy
and work for is determined by what the government says it is worth? There is no “number” for financial
security. Financial security only exists
under rules of the game that are going to have to change . If everybody’s money is someone else’s debt
then it is surely the case that someone is not going to be paid. How will this be determined? Let me ask another question. Should you “save” money if it is government
policy to reduce it’s value? It is axiomatic that prudent people save for
a rainy day but what exactly are they “saving”?
They are saving the government the aggravation of balancing its books by
stealing current income and repaying with false promises. Does the government “know” it is going to
default? Who is the government? The Treasury Secretary will say growth in the
economy will repay all debts just as a person in hoc will say their raise next
year will pay off their credit cards. If
the economy does not “grow” it is already bankrupt. So to what end working and saving? The quicker people remove their money from
systemic risk the better they will feel when the System implodes.
So how can the government keep
the unsustainable rocking along? Boil
all the frogs in different pots slowly….
Squeeze everybody and pay the army and the police....
Thursday, May 1, 2014
God, Gold, and Fairy Tales
I would prefer to talk with God, the words crackling out of the burning bush, rather than store a tennis court-sized cube of gold in my back yard. So, A conversation with God or all the Gold in the World? What would YOU rather have? Let's just think about how many people would really like to talk to God and how many would rather have all the gold in the world. I say 50-50 but everyone's a lawyer now so we must frame the question carefully. Many Christians already claim to speak with God so presumably they would take the gold. Atheists might insist on a real conversation, like Abraham or Moses had, or they would take the gold too. I would be afraid the conversation could turn banal (due to my own stupidity) and I might regret not taking the money. So do you think people are desperately spiritual and 90% would talk with God or are there more cynics out there, God? meh--Show me the money. Do you think most would rather have the cash? I propose this question speculatively since the answer would be illustrative.
Is gold money or is it just a pretty hunk of metal? Gold WAS money but most people have been talked out of considering it so. Today gold (or silver) could be money but money is what most people will take in payment for something else they want. Anything can be a unit of account (there is a presumptive wheat price for television sets) but the key is medium of exchange and store of value. But today you cannot use gold at the store so it is NOT a good medium of exchange. Paper money is shriveling fast and so is a poor store of value. Gold might be better because of its scarcity BUT it first has to be certified as a medium of exchange. If trading it is not allowed, then its natural value has been modified by state action. If government says, "Use dollars" or I'll put you in prison like Bernard von NotHaus, then most are going to be compliant. What if we insisted that taxes be paid in government money but otherwise freedom was the watchword--there would be an exchange rate between gold and other currencies. Is that what we have today? Can't you take dollars and buy all the gold you want? I believe the answer is yes. So is the current exchange rate between gold and dollars accurate? Or is it manipulated to make dollars look better than gold? Gold is a commodity that gains and loses value with respect to dollars and is taxed on that change. We pay capital gains like on anything else if it goes up. We are legally obligated to value everything in relationship to dollars, so changes in the value of the dollars themselves is merely a 'cost' to using it. It loses some value every year. Each of us has a different dollar "decay rate" and I calculated mine at 9.5%. The CPI or the GDP deflator are government statistics that show a smaller dollar loss but they may be biased. Their average may not be your average. Calculate your own. I did the following: I took a one year old Costco receipt with 25 items I buy periodically and found the new prices. No prices had fallen, a case of Yuengling beer was still exactly the same, $18.97 and everything else was more. 9.5% on average more. In July I get my Blue Cross/Blue Shield premium increase notice for my family policy. Last year it was up 10%. I received my daughter's college tuition bill in August--increase 8.4%. State Farm wants 7% more for its premiums. In October the Utility Company went up by 6%. I have a fixed mortgage and didn't buy a car so depending on how I weight my expenses, that will determine my personal inflation (or dollar decay) rate.
Since gold is NOT MONEY it can be regulated. A law can be passed that you cannot own it, buy it or sell it and so its moneyness may be adversely affected. Gold today is an uncomfortable reminder of what money used to be. It is currently a money only for precious metal wingnuts.
What is cash? When financial advisors say to "hold cash" I mentally picture placing suitcases of small bills in the back of my closet or stuffing banknotes in the mattress. I do not envision digits in a bank account. A bank account is a loan to the bank. Bankers dress up a big vault with a brick veneer building and open the vault so you can see how thick the door is and they put a lot of people with suits scattered around in cubicles but your money is not there. It has been loaned to someone and you can have some of your money now and the rest of your money next Wednesday if no one else is asking. If it is in a Cash Account at some brokerage(Schwab or e-trade) they have swept it into some vehicle they can loan on and they could tell you to get lost, find a lawyer, we have other uses for your money. John Corzine anyone? So cash to me is a little nebulous.
Personally I love fairly tales. They say it all about money. Consider the story of the goose that laid the golden egg. Richly human. A sure thing if there ever was one and the dude kills the goose to get all the eggs--right now! Could he do math? Was he a Piaget simpleton--like not even 5 years old? Couldn't he see that AT THE MOST there were six or seven eggs in there and the damn goose could lay eggs for years! No I guess he couldn't do any volumetric analysis or simple math and so he cuts the duck open. I think that is exactly what we have done to the environment--I am not going to get into global warming, pollution, peak everything, and other environmental disasters but I would like to point out that there are approximately 2,000 wild bengal tigers and 7 billion people in the world now. I am worried about us becoming more numerous that honeybees. ( I don't think we will ever catch ants.)
Take Rumpletiltskin. Perhaps a handbook for women or maybe just a reflection on money. Be very careful of ALL the men in your life--they may be stupid or exploitative. Who wouldn't have sympathy for the miller's daughter? Big blowhard dad goes bragging about what a swell daughter he has and ends up almost getting her killed pushing her on a savvy prince. The prince doesn't care about HER but about her TALENTS and so she has to put out to be queen. (Where have we heard this story?) The prince is a complete jerk--requires the girl to prove her competence 3 times. And then she's GLAD to marry him! Guys--always looking for the sure thing. And then there's the troll. The little man knows he's a troll and could never find a wife BUT what about a kid? So he deals for the child. Women plays him as well as could be expected and then ends up having to pull out all the stops to retain the child she should never have promised but had to or she would have been strung up or back in Palookaville baking bread at 3:00AM with a brood of hateful children. The little man has a kind and gentle streak and a hateful streak but is amazingly stupid living in a hut in the forest when he could spin straw into gold. In fairy tales everybody's an alchemist--think nothing of producing all the gold they need, like rubbing Aladdin's lamp, and getting a camel train of jewels as big as oranges. What did they think was going to happen to the scarcity value of their talent? They think themselves blessed by the gods and end up living happily ever after. Happily ever after is where the stories should start.
But I like the Midas story too. What did King Midas think would happen to the value of gold if he could create it by just touching something? Did he consider that to make the most valuable things-common-might reduce its value? Does Ben Bernanke worry about these things? Is money good because it is all around, like air, making people do valuable things like work? Can you make too much of it and people suddenly realize there is no point in working? I think the answer is yes. Lets agree we CAN have too little of it. So in a depression no one has any money but is it not true that there is a lot that needs doing? How do you get people busy at what needs doing? Pharoah I suppose said, "hey, you, tote this stone to the top of the pyramid." but our handlers are more subtle-do whatever you like and send me half. That would be fine EXCEPT they have so many big important projects being elites they have gotten to where they need more than half. They need it all. So the top 1% have almost half the money and the bottom 50% have only 1% of the money. Whoops...
Karl Marx has been out of favor so long it is hard to remember what he wrote but I think the big principles were something like the rising accumulation of capital in the hands of the owners and the gradual impoverishment of the Industrial Reserve Army (called workers). Something like we have now. If we get a dictatorship of the proletariat out of obese SSI recipients I would be flabbergasted. So who will inherit the earth? Those with money or those that can do without it?
Is gold money or is it just a pretty hunk of metal? Gold WAS money but most people have been talked out of considering it so. Today gold (or silver) could be money but money is what most people will take in payment for something else they want. Anything can be a unit of account (there is a presumptive wheat price for television sets) but the key is medium of exchange and store of value. But today you cannot use gold at the store so it is NOT a good medium of exchange. Paper money is shriveling fast and so is a poor store of value. Gold might be better because of its scarcity BUT it first has to be certified as a medium of exchange. If trading it is not allowed, then its natural value has been modified by state action. If government says, "Use dollars" or I'll put you in prison like Bernard von NotHaus, then most are going to be compliant. What if we insisted that taxes be paid in government money but otherwise freedom was the watchword--there would be an exchange rate between gold and other currencies. Is that what we have today? Can't you take dollars and buy all the gold you want? I believe the answer is yes. So is the current exchange rate between gold and dollars accurate? Or is it manipulated to make dollars look better than gold? Gold is a commodity that gains and loses value with respect to dollars and is taxed on that change. We pay capital gains like on anything else if it goes up. We are legally obligated to value everything in relationship to dollars, so changes in the value of the dollars themselves is merely a 'cost' to using it. It loses some value every year. Each of us has a different dollar "decay rate" and I calculated mine at 9.5%. The CPI or the GDP deflator are government statistics that show a smaller dollar loss but they may be biased. Their average may not be your average. Calculate your own. I did the following: I took a one year old Costco receipt with 25 items I buy periodically and found the new prices. No prices had fallen, a case of Yuengling beer was still exactly the same, $18.97 and everything else was more. 9.5% on average more. In July I get my Blue Cross/Blue Shield premium increase notice for my family policy. Last year it was up 10%. I received my daughter's college tuition bill in August--increase 8.4%. State Farm wants 7% more for its premiums. In October the Utility Company went up by 6%. I have a fixed mortgage and didn't buy a car so depending on how I weight my expenses, that will determine my personal inflation (or dollar decay) rate.
Since gold is NOT MONEY it can be regulated. A law can be passed that you cannot own it, buy it or sell it and so its moneyness may be adversely affected. Gold today is an uncomfortable reminder of what money used to be. It is currently a money only for precious metal wingnuts.
What is cash? When financial advisors say to "hold cash" I mentally picture placing suitcases of small bills in the back of my closet or stuffing banknotes in the mattress. I do not envision digits in a bank account. A bank account is a loan to the bank. Bankers dress up a big vault with a brick veneer building and open the vault so you can see how thick the door is and they put a lot of people with suits scattered around in cubicles but your money is not there. It has been loaned to someone and you can have some of your money now and the rest of your money next Wednesday if no one else is asking. If it is in a Cash Account at some brokerage(Schwab or e-trade) they have swept it into some vehicle they can loan on and they could tell you to get lost, find a lawyer, we have other uses for your money. John Corzine anyone? So cash to me is a little nebulous.
Personally I love fairly tales. They say it all about money. Consider the story of the goose that laid the golden egg. Richly human. A sure thing if there ever was one and the dude kills the goose to get all the eggs--right now! Could he do math? Was he a Piaget simpleton--like not even 5 years old? Couldn't he see that AT THE MOST there were six or seven eggs in there and the damn goose could lay eggs for years! No I guess he couldn't do any volumetric analysis or simple math and so he cuts the duck open. I think that is exactly what we have done to the environment--I am not going to get into global warming, pollution, peak everything, and other environmental disasters but I would like to point out that there are approximately 2,000 wild bengal tigers and 7 billion people in the world now. I am worried about us becoming more numerous that honeybees. ( I don't think we will ever catch ants.)
Take Rumpletiltskin. Perhaps a handbook for women or maybe just a reflection on money. Be very careful of ALL the men in your life--they may be stupid or exploitative. Who wouldn't have sympathy for the miller's daughter? Big blowhard dad goes bragging about what a swell daughter he has and ends up almost getting her killed pushing her on a savvy prince. The prince doesn't care about HER but about her TALENTS and so she has to put out to be queen. (Where have we heard this story?) The prince is a complete jerk--requires the girl to prove her competence 3 times. And then she's GLAD to marry him! Guys--always looking for the sure thing. And then there's the troll. The little man knows he's a troll and could never find a wife BUT what about a kid? So he deals for the child. Women plays him as well as could be expected and then ends up having to pull out all the stops to retain the child she should never have promised but had to or she would have been strung up or back in Palookaville baking bread at 3:00AM with a brood of hateful children. The little man has a kind and gentle streak and a hateful streak but is amazingly stupid living in a hut in the forest when he could spin straw into gold. In fairy tales everybody's an alchemist--think nothing of producing all the gold they need, like rubbing Aladdin's lamp, and getting a camel train of jewels as big as oranges. What did they think was going to happen to the scarcity value of their talent? They think themselves blessed by the gods and end up living happily ever after. Happily ever after is where the stories should start.
But I like the Midas story too. What did King Midas think would happen to the value of gold if he could create it by just touching something? Did he consider that to make the most valuable things-common-might reduce its value? Does Ben Bernanke worry about these things? Is money good because it is all around, like air, making people do valuable things like work? Can you make too much of it and people suddenly realize there is no point in working? I think the answer is yes. Lets agree we CAN have too little of it. So in a depression no one has any money but is it not true that there is a lot that needs doing? How do you get people busy at what needs doing? Pharoah I suppose said, "hey, you, tote this stone to the top of the pyramid." but our handlers are more subtle-do whatever you like and send me half. That would be fine EXCEPT they have so many big important projects being elites they have gotten to where they need more than half. They need it all. So the top 1% have almost half the money and the bottom 50% have only 1% of the money. Whoops...
Karl Marx has been out of favor so long it is hard to remember what he wrote but I think the big principles were something like the rising accumulation of capital in the hands of the owners and the gradual impoverishment of the Industrial Reserve Army (called workers). Something like we have now. If we get a dictatorship of the proletariat out of obese SSI recipients I would be flabbergasted. So who will inherit the earth? Those with money or those that can do without it?
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