Jeil, Ragnarök, C&C:

IMO fiat currency is just a transitional phase away from gold and eventually to some new standard (energy?), and is an epiphenomenon of the current price revolution (which should end at the start of the next High).

Originally Posted by catfishncod

Ha! And a gold standard isn't?! (subject to political manipulation

Sure, from time to time political manipulation has been effected on the
gold standard. Over the long term, it fails because gold atoms are made by supernovae, not people. At some point the manipulations have crashed and burned. The latest I can recall personally was Nixon's default in 1971. I like that one, since it only took 3 years for inflation to get going and the defaulter got booted out of office 3 years later. Serves him right. Ah yes, the hey hey, ho ho, Nixon's gotta go!

Which is why any sane money supply management system, gold-based or otherwise, endeavours to maintain a stable money supply, where "stable" is defined as "predictability of future values". This is a separate question from maintaining a deflationary, zero-inflation, or inflationary policy. The one has to do with short-term fluctuations, the other with long-term trends.

Gold/silver have a 5000 year history of fullfilling the function of money. "Stability" just another way of stating one of the properties of money. It has to be a store of value. Thus the questions don't bifurcate. The ideal situation is that 1 unit of money I earn at age 13 as a paper boy will translate over time and allow me to buy approx 1 unit's worth at age 93.
This is a big deal for me since the probability of me actually hitting 93 is quite good. So there's the perspective, I know of 8 Lost kin folks who crossed the saeculum for approx 5 turnings. so of course I want stability from that POV. I don't want to have a $100 bill and use it to buy a candy bar or something when I'm old.

And if credit unions joined the Fed, and banks were later converted to credit unions, isn't that pretty much what you would indeed have?

This would work just fine, as long as the current property of the Fed using treasuries as "backing" for a currency. This is just so stupid, this circular relationship that we have now. The US dollar is "backed" by US treasuries, which are denominated in dollars.Again, that's why some sort of element, again , it does not have to be gold, just something with a periodic talbe symbol is an OK thing. It could be copper or silver, for all I care. They all have value from the labor required to extract them from the earth.

Well, I'd be impressed to see a co-op build a railroad network. Or the telephone system. The modular design of wi-fi internet means that co-op could build municipal Internet service... but I don't think they would be good at building the fiber-optic cable network that connects wi-fi networks. I am watching with interest the recent experiments in online-mediated microlending. The key question is the efficiency with which capital accumulation for a certain purpose can occur. The advantage of a co-op is its greater democracy and responsiveness to both market and public concerns. Certain endeavours-- another good example is aerospace R&D -- require a more singular vision and a deliberate delay in responsiveness to the market (to allow the necessary development to occur).

I don't see why large scale projects done by a corporation could not be done by coops. Let's see, if you take the number of employee's working for Ma Bell and take Ma Bell private, then convert it to a coop, I see no problem.

Finally, I'm a moderate, and my conservative side says don't throw away a tool just because it can be dangerous. Fires burn and locomotives run people over, yet we keep using them.

I'll apply the above to the gold standard as well.

You're over-reacting to the Fed's over-reaction. As I understand Greenspan's thinking, he read the history books and understood that the Fed tightening of the credit supply after the '29 crash made things worse. So after the '00 crash he deliberately did the opposite and opened the credit spigots. Since no good deed goes unpunished, that caused the housing bust.

That's why there's recessions, they're like min 4T's. they clean up stupid things people have done.

I do not think the stock market's state is a result of the cheap credit alone, but is also due to the far worse bubble currently occurring in China.

Of course China's central bank is inflating because of all of the inbound dollars. They have to print yuan to keep the yuan from skyrocketing in value vs. the dollar.

Not as stealth as if it were being done privately...

Stealth is stealth. It's like those crazy mortgages with stealth cluster bomb interest rates. We have an Iraqi road worth of resets this year.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

It's like those crazy mortgages with stealth cluster bomb interest rates. We have an Iraqi road worth of resets this year.

Hey, whatever happened to "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here?"

Here's a handy visualization from Credit Suisse:



But don't worry, as Minyanville helpfully points out, mortgage problems will be isolated to just seven states...

Originally Posted by Finch

Hey, whatever happened to "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here?"

Here's a handy visualization from Credit Suisse:

Apparently the Fed thinks like generals. Always fighting the last war. Jamming interest rates down to 1% to keep the NASDAQ debacle from causing a recession / depression ? Now they're stuck. If they lower interest rates, China wouldn't be happy. Bye, Bye cheap wide screen TeeVees and such. If it raises interest rates or even leaves them like they are now, then all those resets go off. I'm just glad I'm not "helicoptor Ben" right now.

But don't worry, as Minyanville helpfully points out, mortgage problems will be isolated to just seven states...

Ah yes. I remember when the Fed said to hold hands and buy a $UV. Now let's all hold hands and chant "contagion".

As the sage of Omaha sez, "you don't know who's been swimming naked until the tide goes out."

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Has Russia recovered from what could be called an "inflationary depression" ?

Pretty much so. The ruble has been gaining against the dollar (and more or less stable against the Euro) for the better part of the last half-decade. And to the extent that the Euro has seen strengthening based on a flight-from-dollars, the ruble has been strengthening on its own merits. So yeah, financially it's pretty decent.

And you'd only need to spend maybe five minutes in any paved-road city in the country to see for yourself whether Russia has pulled out of a depression. The answer? "Quite some time ago".

I know Russia has lots of gold. It would be interesting to see if the Ruble gets some sort of implied backing at some point.

I strongly doubt it. Russian politicians are just as venal as any other ones anywhere else in the world. If anything were to arise here currency-wise it would be a de facto driven completely by a shift in usage in the public at large.

In the absence of that, Russia has right now a sort of de facto competing-currency system (I might point out, one of the very things advocated by us anti-fiat types). It's not, strictly speaking, legal; but you could say that about so very much here. Things can be found priced in dollars, Euro, rubles, yen (depending on how far east you are). Many places will accept payment at the customer's convenience either in whatever they have chosen to price or alternately in rubles at that day's rate. The constant competition between the various fiat currencies appears to make the system much more resistant to manipulation. I can pretty well guarantee that the first gold-standard currency to arise will very quickly find itself grafted into the Russian economy. But it probably won't be the ruble.

Originally Posted by catfishncod

Laugh it up, fuzzball, and see how well your system makes the same judgements before judging others too harshly. My natural suspicion is that a "free money market" would result in a private money monopoly or oligopoly without government oversight or transparency. What would you do to prevent such an occurrence?

I would organize my affairs so as to take advantage of whatever is the most worthwhile mode of action. As for whether that would control the situation -- you're begging the question. Economies cannot be controlled. At most they can be pushed around in a semi-futile attempt to get a desired output from a system far too vast and intractable to possibly even be grasped in its entirety.

I would point to the model of the local monetary situation around where I am. Competition between currencies keeps them [more] honest (that is, more responsive to the needs and desires of their consumers) in the same way that competition between brands of any other good. In fact, even during the non-fiat days, gold actively competed against silver as a currency. Where this competition was forcibly restricted (as, during the the days of the 'bimetallism' standards), even having a commodity-currency wasn't enough to keep the system responsive.

Pardon me? Exactly when and where did the governments of the Dritte Deutsche Reich or of the Nipponese Empire sue for peace?

Well, as to the first, I could point out that not only did Germany offer to surrender, they actually had surrendered before the atomic bomb was ready to use. For reference:
May 7, 1945
July 16, 1945

Then as to Japan, I could offer as a very bare beginning This old article (scroll down a bit to "JAPS ASKED PEACE IN JAN"). For the better part of six months the Japanese had been looking for a way to end things -- and this was well-known at the level of those who made the decision to nuke them anyway.

And I suppose the estimates of one million American and many million Japanese casualties in the invasion of the Japanese home islands, and the estimates of casulaties in the event of a blockade of the Japanese home islands, are not relevant data...

Relevant only as the post hoc justification load of total bullshit propaganda that they are/were. Japan was at the time clearly beaten and ready to surrender, and the decision-makers knew it.

Originally Posted by Finch

Hey, whatever happened to "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here?"

Here's a handy visualization from Credit Suisse:



But don't worry, as Minyanville helpfully points out, mortgage problems will be isolated to just seven states...

My take:

Subprime loans indicate that credit has been expanded as far as it can, probably to inflate the valuations of assets.

Some of us are wise enough to recognize that "easy credit" almost always indicates a bad deal. We have all seen used car dealerships that proclaim

"WE FINANCE EVERYONE" and "NOSOTROS FINANCIAMOS TODOS"

the latter indicating that the dealer doesn't care that the pigeon -- excuse me, customer -- doesn't understand the deal being made. The used car is sold at an inflated price at very high interest rates. Indeed it is best for the dealer that the customer fails to recognize that he is being ripped off.

Of someone pays for a wreck of a used car what some pay for a new car, that isn't quite as bad as buying a house with an ARM that allows the lender to raise the interest rate 1/2 percent every six months even without a default (like the payment being one day late) on a house probably at the peak of the price curve, and that a backing-out of the deal will be very difficult, especially if the housing market crashes. On a 30-year mortgage loan an 8% mortgage, the 'optional' increases in the interest rate will end up at 37%. Add to that some insurance policies that the lender adds on that can never pay the purchaser....

The subprime borrowers are the last people in the housing market -- and the ones with the most to lose. These days the wisest choice in real estate is to sell off what you have, rent the most spartan accommodations possible, park your money in the bank, and get a high-powered gun to protect yourself from predators deadlier than bears and big cats.

Only seven states, indeed -- shock, denial, bargaining, fear, anger, despair, and acceptance. Right out of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.

Odin

Jeil, Ragnarök, C&C:

IMO fiat currency is just a transitional phase away from gold and eventually to some new standard (energy?), and is an epiphenomenon of the current price revolution (which should end at the start of the next High).

Awesome. I'd love some coins made of thorium and uranium. A thorium/uranium standard is a great idea. Contrary to popular belief, the alpha emmisions are quite harmless and may even be beneficial due to the hormesis effect. Since they both have symbols on the periodic table, they work for me. Thorium is really good as well, since it harkens back to my Swedish ancestors. Sound money also makes for
"En affär är god, när båda parterna gör en god affär"

In English it means "A business is good, when both parties make a good bargain.". This is damn hard to do when the means of exchange is "gikk i dass!" (going to shit).

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

The latest I can recall personally was Nixon's default in 1971. I like that one, since it only took 3 years for inflation to get going and the defaulter got booted out of office 3 years later. Serves him right. Ah yes, the hey hey, ho ho, Nixon's gotta go!

You don't really believe Nixon was impeached for even indirect results of currency manipulation, do you? I'm ready to cite counterexamples from history...

Gold/silver have a 5000 year history of fullfilling the function of money.

Ah yes, the appeal to tradition, a key value of the Enlightenment on which our country is based--er...

The ideal situation is that 1 unit of money I earn at age 13 as a paper boy will translate over time and allow me to buy approx 1 unit's worth at age 93.

Well, that depends on what ye do with ye currency, doesn't it? The money I made at age 13 stays in CDs whose interest rate tracks well with inflation and compound back. Thus my money, while denominated less, actually maintains the same approximate purchasing power it did before.

You're right in one sense; inflation is a hidden tax on those who don't invest. Unlike you, I think that's a good thing. However, I don't like that people with low capital are effectively barred from investing (and thus are screwed by the system); I think that's a flaw that needs remedy. Would you prefer an explicit tax on letting your money sit around, along with an intrusive police to hunt down people who stick their money under mattresses? Or a world where the money supply drains to zero as people prefer holding money (to maintain or increase its value) rather than spending it, while the amount of money remains constant because insufficient amounts are being mined?

Oh wait--we already did that, in the Depression...

See, in another way, you're dead wrong, because if the money supply depends on a supernova from 4.5 billion years ago, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the actual wealth available in the economy. If the value assigned to money does not reflect what can be bought than the gold standard must fail -- and fail it did. The gold standard worked for so very long because the work and capital required to extract gold from the ground tracked well (within an order of magnitude) with the work and capital required for most other economic activities. The creaking and groaning on the gold standard started well back in the Renaissance when Spain started hauling gold and silver in mass amounts from America, but it didn't really go whango until the Industrial Revolution. Large-scale currency manipulation was then necessary to maintain either gold or silver standards, which went back and forth and sometimes were substituted. The "gold standard" so idealized by goldbugs actually only existed for one saeculum, 1870 to 1933, and it was already in trouble by 1900 -- and necessitated a central bank to manage the currency manipulations to stabilize it.

I know the problems associated with fiat currency, and I can't say I like it, but I'm still looking for a better system. Gold ain't it.

Again, that's why some sort of element, again , it does not have to be gold, just something with a periodic talbe symbol is an OK thing. It could be copper or silver, for all I care. They all have value from the labor required to extract them from the earth.

*snort* so now we are operating by the labor theory of value?

I don't see why large scale projects done by a corporation could not be done by coops. Let's see, if you take the number of employee's working for Ma Bell and take Ma Bell private, then convert it to a coop, I see no problem.

The issue has to do with currency amassment. If the money is controlled by coops you have to get a lot of people on board with a business plan, then keep it that way. This is the same "too many cooks" problem that deep-sixes a lot of large government projects as well. In a magic world where large committees all come to decisions quickly, equably, and generally correctly -- coops could do everything. Indeed, I think the Information Age has moved things closer to that ideal.. witness the open-source system of finding a "Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL)" and keeping an eye on his/her management of a large-scale, coop-like project. But I would like to have more supporting data on practical operations before instituting mass overhauls of the economy. Great Leaps Forward and Cultural Revolutions tend not to work very well...

I'll apply the above to the gold standard as well.

Find me an element whose availability tracks well to the growth of the economy and maybe we can talk.

Of course China's central bank is inflating because of all of the inbound dollars. They have to print yuan to keep the yuan from skyrocketing in value vs. the dollar.

Well, that's their fault for pegging their currency. We told them it was a stupid idea, they didn't listen, and they'll pay the price for running their presses. It's not *our* f-up.

Stealth is stealth.

Thank you, Ms. Rand. Now what's the most practical way to prevent stealth?

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Economies cannot be controlled.

I'm not trying to; I just want feedback loops that work.

I would point to the model of the local monetary situation around where I am. Competition between currencies keeps them [more] honest (that is, more responsive to the needs and desires of their consumers) in the same way that competition between brands of any other good. In fact, even during the non-fiat days, gold actively competed against silver as a currency. Where this competition was forcibly restricted (as, during the the days of the 'bimetallism' standards), even having a commodity-currency wasn't enough to keep the system responsive.

Yes. Fiat currencies that compete against each other are more stable than fiat currencies that can't be exchanged. When the Serbian currency went to hell everyone used deutsche marks. When the ruble was out of control everyone went to dollars. If the dollar really does hyperinflate, I'll go get a bundle of euros or Canadian dollars or something... and maybe some silver, too, just in case.
However, my additional point stands -- element-based currency would work better if its supply tracked with the demand generated by a growing economy.

..they actually had surrendered...

Fear of a German Bomb was the reason the Manhattan Project was started, not why it was used.

Then as to Japan, I could offer as a very bare beginning This old article (scroll down a bit to "JAPS ASKED PEACE IN JAN").

I assume then that you read the whole article?

Originally Posted by Chicago Tribune, August 19, 1945

No negotiations were begun on the basis of the bid, it was said, because it was feared that if any were undertaken the Jap war lords, who were presumed to be ignorant of the feelers, would visit swift punishment on those making the offer.

It was held possible that the war lords might even assassinate the Emperor and announce the son of heaven had fled the earth in a fury of indignation over the peace bid.

Were they wrong? From my understanding, post-analysis indicated otherwise; the Japanese High Command had realized even back in '44 that the war was lost but knew of no way to honorably submit given the previous statements given by the government -- and each faction feared that other faction(s) would sabotage peace proposals. The structure of the Japanese Imperial Government had more to do with the continuance of the war than American actions, Bomb or no Bomb.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Awesome. I'd love some coins made of thorium and uranium. A thorium/uranium standard is a great idea.

Would you have controls on banks and currency holdings to prevent proliferation, then? I will give you this; it actually tracks with military power and energy generation better than gold. Aren't uranium futures already traded on commodity exchanges?

Originally Posted by catfishncod

element-based currency would work better if its supply tracked with the demand generated by a growing economy.

Hence my suggestion of an energy standard. The energy supply generally increases (more electricity generation) as the economy grows.

Originally Posted by Odin

Hence my suggestion of an energy standard. The energy supply generally increases (more electricity generation) as the economy grows.

As I've said, the wiring is already in place. I can see UE/Ameren issuing cards (shudder)...

Originally Posted by Pink Splice

I can see UE/Ameren issuing cards (shudder)...

Who wha? Had to look that one up. Anyway, sure, kilowatt-hours... and then we could have green-certified kwH vs. dirty kwH, uranium certificates denominated in kwH to make elementbugs like Ragnarok happy... the petrodollar could become a literal reality. Hey, you all wanted a currency backed by something tangible. The whole thing could be regulated by a Fed that included credit unions.

Why do you shudder?

Originally Posted by catfishncod

Would you have controls on banks and currency holdings to prevent proliferation, then? I will give you this; it actually tracks with military power and energy generation better than gold. Aren't uranium futures already traded on commodity exchanges?

Proliferation is not an issue. Thorium is not fissile nor is run of the mill uranium.
Uranium has to be enriched to be a proliferation issue. If you want a sure file safeguard, just mint depleted uranium coins just to be sure, so there !

Originally Posted by catfishncod

Who wha? Had to look that one up. Anyway, sure, kilowatt-hours... and then we could have green-certified kwH vs. dirty kwH, uranium certificates denominated in kwH to make elementbugs like Ragnarok happy... the petrodollar could become a literal reality. Hey, you all wanted a currency backed by something tangible. The whole thing could be regulated by a Fed that included credit unions.

Why do you shudder?

catfishncod also wrote (in reference to Justin)
Laugh it up, fuzzball, and see how well your system makes the same judgements before judging others too harshly. My natural suspicion is that a "free money market" would result in a private money monopoly or oligopoly without government oversight or transparency. What would you do to prevent such an occurrence?

Thank you, Ms. Rand. Now what's the most practical way to prevent stealth?

Enough!!!! You hare hereby awarded the zilch award for being the ad-hom king of this thread.

Originally Posted by catfishncod

You don't really believe Nixon was impeached for even indirect results of currency manipulation, do you? I'm ready to cite counterexamples from history...

Of course it wasn't the primary reason, but since bad sour economic times make for sour moods, it was something that certainly can't be discounted in the broad scheme of things. The "Great Inflation" certainly made for a foul public mood. It stands to reason if the economy is doing OK, then things like Iran/Contra for Reagan and zippergate for Clinton don't excite the "throw the bums out" state of mind.

Ah yes, the appeal to tradition, a key value of the Enlightenment on which our country is based--er...

I just used one of your points of argument to augment mine is all.

Well, that depends on what ye do with ye currency, doesn't it? The money I made at age 13 stays in CDs whose interest rate tracks well with inflation and compound back. Thus my money, while denominated less, actually maintains the same approximate purchasing power it did before.

Not necessarily. When the Fed jammed interest rates down to 1%, real interest rates went negative. This causes a net loss on the part of savers.

You're right in one sense; inflation is a hidden tax on those who don't invest. Unlike you, I think that's a good thing.

This is where we part ways. As a proponent of the Austrian school, real savings, as opposed to printing up ones do get invested as a norm. It just follows the risk/reward curve. If you save via a CD based on the ideal gold standard, some of that money can be lent out to economic actors who wish to expand. Of course one would have to have a reserve requirement to keep the problem of fractional reserve banking under control. The rhetorical question is would I rather earn say 1% on a CD or 0% by mattress stuffing? I perfectly content on a real 1% rate of return on a safe "investment" like a CD.

However, I don't like that people with low capital are effectively barred from investing (and thus are screwed by the system);

Saving = investing.

I think that's a flaw that needs remedy. Would you prefer an explicit tax on letting your money sit around, along with an intrusive police to hunt down people who stick their money under mattresses? Or a world where the money supply drains to zero as people prefer holding money (to maintain or increase its value) rather than spending it, while the amount of money remains constant because insufficient amounts are being mined?

I see the above as a non issue. Folks have to eat, have shelter, and pay taxes, etc. The money supply can't go to 0. I just don't see that as human nature, just to hoard money and not take a trip with a bit extra or have a night out.

Oh wait--we already did that, in the Depression...

Nope. The proximate cause of the Great Depression was a crash in an asset bubble which was created by the friends at the Fed. One needs to not only think of money, but also credit as an actor. The expansion of credit via the Fed led to a stock market bubble. The problem with credit is the 100 house subdivision example I trot out. If credit is loose (both lenders and borrowers are eager to transact via mortgages (a credit instrument or IOW a claim on future purchasing power on the part of the borrower), a bubble can happen. In the 100 house subdivision, prices go up, lets say 10%/year for a while. For the sake of argument, the houses are all the same. It's year 6 and house prices have gone from $100,000 to $150,000. Now Joe loses his job and can't pay his mortgage. In parallel , within the US as a whole, the sub prime mess has caused a tightening of lending standards (lenders become gun shy.) The demand for houses then drops because fewer qualify. The mortgage company takes Joe's house and auctions it off for let's say $120,000 to Bob. John, meanwhile took out an ARM and it just reset. He can't afford the mortgage anymore. His house now goes off the auction block for $115,000. As this goes on, we can see what happens with credit. It can appear out of thin air. Robert sold his house before the current bust for top dollar, so he's in fine shape. It's the other 20 people who did likewise who get a haircut in asset values. So credit can just go poof! gone into thin air. That's pretty much the story with the Great Depression. Enough credit got wiped out that purchasing power got impaired.

See, in another way, you're dead wrong, because if the money supply depends on a supernova from 4.5 billion years ago, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the actual wealth available in the economy.

The above does not make sense. The purpose of money is to facilitate trade , be a store of value, etc. Wealth is a function of the productive capacity of an economy. Workforce education, factories, natural resources, etc. are what drive wealth.

If the value assigned to money does not reflect what can be bought than the gold standard must fail -- and fail it did. The gold standard worked for so very long because the work and capital required to extract gold from the ground tracked well (within an order of magnitude) with the work and capital required for most other economic activities.

Uh no. The effect would be deflation, but not the kind of deflation which asset bubbles cause. It's similar to the non monetary inflation oil is causing at present. Since oil is getting scarce , relative to most goods and services, and the fact that it's use is pretty much required, dictates a price rise on a general level.

The creaking and groaning on the gold standard started well back in the Renaissance when Spain started hauling gold and silver in mass amounts from America, but it didn't really go whango until the Industrial Revolution. Large-scale currency manipulation was then necessary to maintain either gold or silver standards, which went back and forth and sometimes were substituted. The "gold standard" so idealized by goldbugs actually only existed for one saeculum, 1870 to 1933, and it was already in trouble by 1900 -- and necessitated a central bank to manage the currency manipulations to stabilize it.

As per the above, this state of affairs does not compute. Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with deflation (where money over time gets one more goods and services over time). The interest rate would just go to near 0, with the deflation rate being the real interest rate plus whatever the market pays for a CD. The problems you described above have more to do with credit than money. It's pretty simple. If I think the economy and money value are going to be stable for the next 48 years, then I'd take a bit more risk and fund a coop which makes organic fertilizer. I'd base that premise that the rate of return on this would be something like 4%, which is a reasonable number for a 0 to negative inflation economy. Economic and social stability are both needed things to get the best wealth creation.

I know the problems associated with fiat currency, and I can't say I like it, but I'm still looking for a better system. Gold ain't it.

OK, you can keep the green stuff. I'll just keep chucking my extra fiat money for metals.

*snort* so now we are operating by the labor theory of value?

Huh? All I know is that labor does add value, like any other input to the production cycle. There's labor, there's investment, there's new ideas, there's raw materials, and of course a government to enforce some sort of monopoly of force to keep things in hand.

The issue has to do with currency amassment. If the money is controlled by coops you have to get a lot of people on board with a business plan, then keep it that way. This is the same "too many cooks" problem that deep-sixes a lot of large government projects as well. In a magic world where large committees all come to decisions quickly, equably, and generally correctly -- coops could do everything. Indeed, I think the Information Age has moved things closer to that ideal.. witness the open-source system of finding a "Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL)" and keeping an eye on his/her management of a large-scale, coop-like project. But I would like to have more supporting data on practical operations before instituting mass overhauls of the economy. Great Leaps Forward and Cultural Revolutions tend not to work very well...

OK. Since I'm at the Boom Cusp end, I'll let the Millies toss whatever cruft we dream up. That's their saecular job. I'm just doing mine So yeah, some of the dreams are probably cruft, but less so than my elders... Division of labor and all that shit.

Find me an element whose availability tracks well to the growth of the economy and maybe we can talk.

I've rattled off a few. I mentioned thorium/uranium as "energy money" for Odin. There's also the alloy idea. You take 1 element that's below the growth rate and allow it with one that's above and the alloy can be fashioned to match the long term growth rate. Now everyone should be happy. A set of elements for Odin to like and now an alloy for you to like.

Well, that's their fault for pegging their currency. We told them it was a stupid idea, they didn't listen, and they'll pay the price for running their presses. It's not *our* f-up.

Yes they will, but the old Ratt song of "Round and Round" just keeps playing in my head on that one.

Out on the streets, that's where we'll meet
You make the night, I always cross the line
Tightened our belts, abuse ourselves
Get in our way, we'll put you on your shelf
Another day, some other way
We're gonna go, but then we'll see you again
I've had enough, we've had enough
Cold in vain, she said

I knew right from the beginning
That you would end up winnin'
I knew right from the start
You'd put an arrow through my heart

Round and round
With love we'll find a way just give it time
Round and round
What comes around goes around
I'll tell you why

Dig

Lookin' at you, lookin' at me
The way you move, you know it's easy to see
The neon light's on me tonight
I've got a way, we're gonna prove it tonight
Like Romeo to Juliet
Time and time, I'm gonna make you mine
I've had enough, we've had enough
It's all the same, she said

I knew right from the beginning
That you would end up winnin'
I knew right from the start
You'd put an arrow through my heart

Round and round
With love we'll find a way just give it time
Round and round
What comes around goes around
I'll tell you why

Out on the streets, that's where we'll meet
You make the night, I always cross the line
Tightened our belts, abuse ourselves
Get in our way, we'll put you on your shelf

Round and round
With love we'll find a way just give it time
Round and round
What comes around goes around
I'll tell you why

Round and round
With love we'll find a way just give it time, time, time, time
Round and round
What comes around goes around
I'll tell you why, why, why, why
Round and round

Thank you, Ms. Rand. Now what's the most practical way to prevent stealth?

The appropriate reply to the above is in my proper prior post.
As for the "real" question , sans ad-hom, I would think 13 years in "jungle school" would make a lot of folks ready made watch dogs for this sort of thing.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Proliferation is not an issue. Thorium is not fissile nor is run of the mill uranium.
Uranium has to be enriched to be a proliferation issue. If you want a sure file safeguard, just mint depleted uranium coins just to be sure, so there!

Thorium is fissile but cannot produce a chain reaction. True, uranium must be enriched, but even depleted uranium can be used to breed plutonium, and there are non-trivial health concerns regarding long-term exposure to depleted uranium.

All this said, I would nonetheless support uranium certificates -- it would make the security arrangements we have to make already on uranium stockpiles 'more cost-effective. I just don't want them to be exclusive legal tender.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Enough!!!! You hare hereby awarded the zilch award for being the ad-hom king of this thread.

Ouch!!!! Ok, I deserve a slap for overuse and apologize. (There, that's something zilch would never say!)

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Of course it wasn't the primary reason...

Yes, I just wanted you to acknowledge that point.

I just used one of your points of argument to augment mine is all.

It's not quite the same. I just want to see the evidence for and against before making the switch. People thought the evidence available in 1933 fully justified the switch, and I would like to see some pilot trials to justify your assertion that deflationary policy is not linked to a rise in the Gini coefficient.

Not necessarily. When the Fed jammed interest rates down to 1%, real interest rates went negative. This causes a net loss on the part of savers.

For some... depends on your account. My CDs went to between 0.7%-1.6% at that point, so I had some positive and some negative interest.

I perfectly content on a real 1% rate of return on a safe "investment" like a CD.

So am I. And I'm happy to admit that my real rate of return on those CDs is indeed about 1% on average, depending on what rate I negotiate for at term. It's the "mattress stuffing" I'm trying to avoid here.

Saving = investing.

Mattress stuffing is saving, but it isn't investing. Even Jesus of Nazareth knew this -- Parable of the Talents. Book of Matthew, I believe.

I see the above as a non issue. Folks have to eat, have shelter, and pay taxes, etc. The money supply can't go to 0. I just don't see that as human nature, just to hoard money and not take a trip with a bit extra or have a night out.

Not on average, no; the hoarders are aberrations. Over the long term, though, if the odds are in their favor, they will wind up with the gold. It's the tyranny of time -- if 99% of people have reasonable short term plans and 1% have unreasonable long term plans, all other things being equal the 1% win simply because the 99% cancel each other out. There has to be a slight--but only slight--wind in the other direction.

That's pretty much the story with the Great Depression. Enough credit got wiped out that purchasing power got impaired.

That's what happened 1929-1931, I agree. The doozy was after that when the tarriff effects kicked in and the effects moved from credit to even the regular money supply.

The above does not make sense. The purpose of money is to facilitate trade , be a store of value, etc. Wealth is a function of the productive capacity of an economy. Workforce education, factories, natural resources, etc. are what drive wealth.

No argument there. Your statements and mine are mutually compatible. The issue lies with an as-yet-unvoiced third axiom, namely, that the store of value remains at constant value when the economy expands. If the economy expands yet M1 remains constant then people can only receive the share of wealth they are due from current holders of wealth, who can put whatever terms they wish. In effect every inventor, prospector, manufacturer, etc., is working for whoever holds the gold certificates, because the gold certificates rise in value while the owners do no useful work. That's the state of affairs that everyone except the upper class was protesting mightily in the late nineteenth. The only remedy available was an increase in credit to expand the money supply, but we all know it's a bad idea to extend credit too far; and that's where all the bank panics were coming from.

I repeat, and here summarize, that I'm looking for a system where:

a) the value of money invested in a bank/credit union/etc. stays relatively constant or earns slowly;
b) the value of money stuffed under a mattress drops slowly;
c) the value of money is predictable on long time scales and is not subject to political vagaries;
d) the value of money is backed by multiple durable goods whose backing fluctuates in a market manner.

Gold does not fulfill these criteria. The current greenbacks fulfill some but not all; in particular, the "basket of goods and services" used to indirectly "back" the dollar is determined by a committee rather than a market, which doesn't seem like a good long-term solution. The energy currency suggestions (including your uranium certificates) intrigue me; they might work better.

Uh no. The effect would be deflation, but not the kind of deflation which asset bubbles cause.

Nor did I suggest that it was due to an asset bubble. Deflation is still a bad idea, and we had (give or take) seventy years of it leading up to the Depression. It boosted the yield of the implosion, so to speak.

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with deflation.

See, I just can't agree with that statement. Just as inflation taken to its extreme is bad, so is deflation taken to its extreme. I want things kept close to zero, which a gold standard cannot do.

Economic and social stability are both needed things to get the best wealth creation.

Now that's a statement I can agree with.

OK, you can keep the green stuff. I'll just keep chucking my extra fiat money for metals.

It's a free country.

I've rattled off a few. I mentioned thorium/uranium as "energy money" for Odin. There's also the alloy idea. You take 1 element that's below the growth rate and allow it with one that's above and the alloy can be fashioned to match the long term growth rate. Now everyone should be happy. A set of elements for Odin to like and now an alloy for you to like.

And you have a market-based system to regulate the alloy content to prevent political debasement? I remind you that American coinage has been alloyed, and clad too, for about forty years now.

As for the "real" question , sans ad-hom, I would think 13 years in "jungle school" would make a lot of folks ready made watch dogs for this sort of thing.

Fine as long as Xers and Millies are in charge but what then? I'm not just thinking of today; Civics don't do that. I'm already thinking about the Next Third Turning and Next Fourth Turning and what's going to last this whole saeculum and beyond. All the really good stuff -- like the Constitution -- outlives the people who set it up. I've seen how things decayed in fairly exact proportion to the rate at which GI's retired and died; I'm not interested in leaving that sort of legacy to my kids and grandkids.

Originally Posted by catfishncod

Who wha? Had to look that one up. Anyway, sure, kilowatt-hours... and then we could have green-certified kwH vs. dirty kwH, uranium certificates denominated in kwH to make elementbugs like Ragnarok happy... the petrodollar could become a literal reality. Hey, you all wanted a currency backed by something tangible. The whole thing could be regulated by a Fed that included credit unions.

Why do you shudder?

UE/Ameren, and it's habit of leaving most of the STL region dark for weeks after one drop of rain falls.

Originally Posted by catfishncod

Thorium is fissile but cannot produce a chain reaction. True, uranium must be enriched, but even depleted uranium can be used to breed plutonium, and there are non-trivial health concerns regarding long-term exposure to depleted uranium.

I think the question of proliferation still needs to be put to bed. Anyone with a bit of chemistry can easily make all fairly pure metallic uranium one wants. All you need is a uranium mine or yellow cake (assorted uranium oxides. ) The only other ingredient needed is very reactive metal like lithium which will "steal" the oxygen from the uranium. IOW, the stuff's easier to make than meth. The process will work for thorium. Both are less reactive than lithium. If one is really desperate, then "pollution" from existing mines will work as well. You can use phosphates to precipitate dissolved uranium from acid drainage. Tailings can also be used, but of course those are a pain in the ass. There's no much uranium in those, so you have to use some sort of strong acid to leach some out. As for DU, the health issues could well be true. The reason is that if uranium metal is finely divided and goes airborne folks absorb it in the lungs and it gets transported all over the body. Uranium is a mild toxic in chemical sense and of course a radiologic toxic as well. The 2 attributes apply to thorium. With all of that a hunk of pure metal isn't going to go airborne like combat DU and if folks want more safety, the U/Th coins can be coated a hard metal like tungsten or molybdenum.

All this said, I would nonetheless support uranium certificates -- it would make the security arrangements we have to make already on uranium stockpiles 'more cost-effective. I just don't want them to be exclusive legal tender.

I'm pretty open to anything as "money". As long as the entity has the properties I mentioned, I'll be content. Fiat money just sucks , since it loses value a lot ( ~95% drop in one saeculum is just way above my tolerance level. Of course the other problem is legal tender laws, which create a defacto monopoly on the issueance of what is deamed "money".
A quick read of "this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" says it all. OK, these pieces of green paper are notes. Notes for what ?
I've already stated what the notes are and I think they're shit. I will not have the Federal Reserve mucking with my financial affairs with their fucking notes. Yeah, I know, more Joneser intransigence, but *FRAUDS are evil!

FRAUDS = Federal Reserve Audit Denomination Shit.

Ouch!!!! Ok, I deserve a slap for overuse and apologize. (There, that's something zilch would never say!)

True enough. I haven't seen zilch do a mea culpa I don't think it was a real slap either. It's just a carry over from a mailing list I moderate. I just followed the procedure I do over there. I give the person doing ad-homs a benefit of the doubt. At times folks will go off and do ad-homs and not know they are doing them. At first, I did what I did here, just pick the set of ad-homs and inform the person. The rationale is to stamp out a flame war before it gets started. (Most folks on the list don't want their inboxes full of invective, which makes logical sense. ) So the thing I did works 95% of the time. If folks persist in going forth, after the first notice, they get a warning. The final step is they get the boot. With that said, well yeah, I get a bit irate when I see it. Poor Millies, they'll probably push some Joneser buttons and get torched from time to time.

Yes, I just wanted you to acknowledge that point.

No problem.

It's not quite the same. I just want to see the evidence for and against before making the switch. People thought the evidence available in 1933 fully justified the switch, and I would like to see some pilot trials to justify your assertion that deflationary policy is not linked to a rise in the Gini coefficient.

For some... depends on your account. My CDs went to between 0.7%-1.6% at that point, so I had some positive and some negative interest.

So am I. And I'm happy to admit that my real rate of return on those CDs is indeed about 1% on average, depending on what rate I negotiate for at term. It's the "mattress stuffing" I'm trying to avoid here.

Mattress stuffing is saving, but it isn't investing. Even Jesus of Nazareth knew this -- Parable of the Talents. Book of Matthew, I believe.

Not on average, no; the hoarders are aberrations. Over the long term, though, if the odds are in their favor, they will wind up with the gold. It's the tyranny of time -- if 99% of people have reasonable short term plans and 1% have unreasonable long term plans, all other things being equal the 1% win simply because the 99% cancel each other out. There has to be a slight--but only slight--wind in the other direction.

That's what happened 1929-1931, I agree. The doozy was after that when the tarriff effects kicked in and the effects moved from credit to even the regular money supply.

No argument there. Your statements and mine are mutually compatible. The issue lies with an as-yet-unvoiced third axiom, namely, that the store of value remains at constant value when the economy expands. If the economy expands yet M1 remains constant then people can only receive the share of wealth they are due from current holders of wealth, who can put whatever terms they wish. In effect every inventor, prospector, manufacturer, etc., is working for whoever holds the gold certificates, because the gold certificates rise in value while the owners do no useful work. That's the state of affairs that everyone except the upper class was protesting mightily in the late nineteenth. The only remedy available was an increase in credit to expand the money supply, but we all know it's a bad idea to extend credit too far; and that's where all the bank panics were coming from.

I repeat, and here summarize, that I'm looking for a system where:

a) the value of money invested in a bank/credit union/etc. stays relatively constant or earns slowly;
b) the value of money stuffed under a mattress drops slowly;
c) the value of money is predictable on long time scales and is not subject to political vagaries;
d) the value of money is backed by multiple durable goods whose backing fluctuates in a market manner.

Gold does not fulfill these criteria. The current greenbacks fulfill some but not all; in particular, the "basket of goods and services" used to indirectly "back" the dollar is determined by a committee rather than a market, which doesn't seem like a good long-term solution. The energy currency suggestions (including your uranium certificates) intrigue me; they might work better.

Nor did I suggest that it was due to an asset bubble. Deflation is still a bad idea, and we had (give or take) seventy years of it leading up to the Depression. It boosted the yield of the implosion, so to speak.

See, I just can't agree with that statement. Just as inflation taken to its extreme is bad, so is deflation taken to its extreme. I want things kept close to zero, which a gold standard cannot do.

Now that's a statement I can agree with.

It's a free country.

And you have a market-based system to regulate the alloy content to prevent political debasement? I remind you that American coinage has been alloyed, and clad too, for about forty years now.

Fine as long as Xers and Millies are in charge but what then? I'm not just thinking of today; Civics don't do that. I'm already thinking about the Next Third Turning and Next Fourth Turning and what's going to last this whole saeculum and beyond. All the really good stuff -- like the Constitution -- outlives the people who set it up. I've seen how things decayed in fairly exact proportion to the rate at which GI's retired and died; I'm not interested in leaving that sort of legacy to my kids and grandkids.

Man, long post. I'll have to get to the rest of this after vacation. It's time for me to head back to Oklahoma for 2 weeks.

Enjoy the farm Rags. May you commune with the 'shrooms.

See ya bud.

http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1343

Survey shows just 3% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling the war in Iraq; 24% say the same for the President.

Gee, and I thought it was impossible for a poll to break the 5%/95% mark. But I guess with yesterday's hysterical "antics," anything is possible.

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1343

Survey shows just 3% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling the war in Iraq; 24% say the same for the President.

Gee, and I thought it was impossible for a poll to break the 5%/95% mark. But I guess with yesterday's hysterical "antics," anything is possible.

I just find it hysterical that folks point to the low ratings for Congress as some kind of evidence that they are held in such disregard as the President for the same reasons.

The large majority of Americans want a change of course in Iraq (some polls show beyond this Zogby's 60% to be up to 75%); and it is clear that desired change is not to escalate or surge the effort, but to somehow/someway back away from the occupation. To a large degree, this is why the ’06 election completely flipped the Congress from a majority Republican to a majority Democrat. What people are upset with now is the inability for this Congress to come through on that expectation set up with the Nov. 2006 elections.

You can try to lump all those Congressional members working to make the desired change with those standing defiantly in the way of that change into this monolithic entity called "The Congress." You might even believe that the American people are stupid enough to buy into that on some general level.

The problem for those hanging on to this ridiculous notion is that, come election time, each member who stood defiantly in the way of those in Congress trying to stand up to the President is going to have a laser light shown on what they did and answer for it. They won't be able to run from it or pooh-pooh it away -- the local body counts will prevent that. It will make the term "swift-boating" become a definition for a comparably kid-gloves way of dealing with one's political opponent.

Bottom line - in 2008, those low ratings for Congress will be transcribed to the vote counts for only those incumbents that blocked the People's will.

Originally Posted by playwrite

I just find it hysterical that folks point to the low ratings for Congress as some kind of evidence that they are held in such disregard as the President for the same reasons.

I just find it hysterical that some people can not see beyond their petty politics.

Pathetic.

Did you all hear the news? Peace Mom activist Cindy Sheehan has decided that she will run for Speaker Nancy Pelozi's seat in Congress because she feels that the latter has not responded in the manner the voters wished when they elected a Democrat congress last year. According to her not much has changed at all since Ms. Pelozi took the Speaker's chair.

To jeil: I found your comparison to events leading to the French revolution interesting because I had created a thread called "Bastille Revisted" and just posted on there today. In fact there is a situation brewing right here in Chicago in response to a police shooting, and protesters actually did try to storm the district police station. So you just might have something there.