MONEY: Return to a gold standard

Friday, November 10, 2006

http://bbs.freetalklive.com/index.php?topic=9717.15

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http://www.mises.org/story/2369

Return to a gold standard — or hell, a silver standard or a platinum standard or …

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I read this thread and two thoughts came to mind, actually three.

(1) The german hyper inflation that led to the rise of hitler. It could happen here. Politicians tax, borrow, and spend. (Sound familiar) the Fed runs the printing press. And runs it and runs it. I knew a Jewish family that send their wealth to Switzerland and the US in the form of diamond, postage stamps, and jewelry. Some of them got out; most didn’t. The old gent told me that, and his wife confirmed, that she would come by his office and take any money he collected that morning and go buy something. Anything. Because by nightfall it would be worthless. The hyper inflation was catastrophic. he would do the same thing on his way home with the afternoon’s collections. By the morning it too would be worthless. The country quickly devolved into barter, valuables, and metals. quite scary.

(2) If the us debt becomes to onerous. The Gubamint could just walk away from it. “Oh green funny pieces of paper? You should take that to the Federal Reserve Bank. We don’t have anything to do with it!” Repudiation would have some interesting consequences. If you think that the world is mad at us now, then wait till we pull the rug out from under them. The Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, and Europeans would find themselves sitting on worthless paper. It would be interesting to see it happen.

(3) There’s a “law” in Economics, (Not like a government law, but more like the Law of Gravity), that says something like “In an inflationary economy, bad money drives out good. In a deflationary one, the reverse is true.” Hyperinflation, or demonetization of a fiat currency, will imho act like a deflation (the ultimate kind). AND, if people stop taking FRBies, then money will be redefined QUICKLY into coins, “medallions”, or stuff like that.

I think we can roll back fiat currency if we educate, if we personally refuse FRBies when we can, and if we can “save” in metal backed stuff.

For example, I personally: nag people about “dead presidents” and “pretty green pieces of paper”. I like Mises’ line “only a government can take valuable paper and make it worthless by printing on it”.

For example, I REFUSE to take the dollar “gold” coin. It really annoys the cashiers who want to palm if off on me because it doesn’t fit in their draw.

For example, I make small buys of gold and silver bullion coins as “savings”. If the world goes to “hell in a hand basket”. I’ll have things of value “buried” at home.

1 Comment | MONEY | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

XPfails – luggable – WDSYNC mucks up

Friday, November 10, 2006

In doing my weekly backup to my WDPASSPORT (Sams Club 44$ a while ago), it partially locked up the box. Hmmm. Reboot clears it. Argh!

Leave a Comment » | LUGGABLE | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

RANT: Montezuma’s revenge … but I haven’t been anywhere?

Friday, November 10, 2006

Took last night off from life. Due to Montezuma! Now I haven’t been anywhere near South America; nor, have I even thought of South America, so why is he exacting his revenge on me? Aghh.

Maybe I have given myself an ulcer with trying to keep too many “plates” twirling. Hmmm?

Oh well, today will be better.

Especially since the NuJerzee taxpayers have something to show for all the money they have pumped into the pigeon hole labeled “State U”.

(Every real state has to have one right? Don’t want our distinguished Congress critters to be looked down on as rubes by their fellow fascists. Do we?)

Anyway, the Rutgers semi-professionals beat the Louisville semi-professionals in an exciting football game last night. As befits an educated and cultural elite group (in their own minds), there was no violence in the streets “celebrating” “their” victory.

(Never understood how buying a ticket to watch some men, who have sweated their butts off, who have practiced “a lot”, and who  have sacrificed a lot, when those men win, how does your ticket, your tuition bill, or your tax bill, make that”your victory”?)

In the grand scale of things, I’d have rather they announced a cure for <insert your favorite disease: aids, breast cancer, montezuma’s revenge>. But I guess you have to take joy where you find it.

And, no, I’m not jealous because there’s no Jasper football. There is Jasper Rugby! Now that’s a real man’s game. No equipment. No “scholarships”. Nothing professional about it. Just played for the joy of sport.

Isn’t that what student athletics and amateur is  supposed to mean?

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Posted by reinkefj

LIBERTY: The gold standard prevents big government

Thursday, November 9, 2006

http://www.mises.org/story/2369

Financing the Empire
By Mark Thornton
Posted on 11/9/2006

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A gold standard also helps prevent governments from starting useless spending programs, creating expensive bureaucracies, running budget deficits, and waging unnecessary wars. It can even help smooth out and even eliminate the business cycle. Economic science and history all point to the advantages of market-based money and the disadvantages of government-controlled systems.

***End Quote***

To regain our liberty, we must get back to the gold standard.

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Posted by reinkefj

PRODUCTIVITY: Blogger in chief?

Thursday, November 9, 2006

November 13, 2006
Fortune Magazine
Page 51

Blogger in Chief
Jonathan Schwartz, 41
CEO Sum Microsystems

>10% of Sun employees blog … including general counsel

So there’s probably nothing illegal about blogging with some common sense.

>read what people thinking without walking around

Sounds like status reports.

> “Always worry about what people aren’t telling you”

Good advice.

> Ditch the desktop

A recommendation to be expected from the “Computer is the Network” company. And, what does one do when the net’s not there.

>Forget balance

True. For hunters, there’s no balance. For farmers, there’s balance, sequence, and order.

==

n.b.: There was no way to find this printed page on the net. Or at least I couldn’t find it. I would have thought that, if I went to “November 13, 2006 Fortune Page 51”.fortune.com, I’d have gotten it. Hmm?

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Posted by reinkefj

XPfails – luggable – general slowdown

Thursday, November 9, 2006

Last night, rather early this morning, luggable came down with a case of the blahs. It seemed like everything went at a crawl. I had tapped on a link in an email (LOOKOUT?) and the FOX took forever to get to it. So, being the bright IT Guru I am, I nuke everything in sight that I thought was expendable. No improvement. So I hit the big red easy button (ALT-CNT-DEL) and SHUTDOWN. For some reason there is a difference between SHUTDOWN and RESTART. SHUTDOWN, I guess, does a real start from scratch AOT a quick restart, no scratch. Back up and running.

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Posted by reinkefj

FUN: Tourist SHOULD win a “darwin”

Thursday, November 9, 2006

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/
2006/11/09/1162661802875.html

http://tinyurl.com/yzo2ap

 

Outcry at stupid Stefaan’s croc shock
Jamie Pandaram and Jano Gibson
November 9, 2006 – 5:06PM

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The two-metre croc will live out its days in a farm as a breeding crocodile after biting 24-year-old Belgian tourist Stefaan Vanthournout’s leg when he tried to get its attention by wading into a creek and slapping the water with a stick.

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http://www.darwinawards.com/

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The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who, uh, remove themselves from it…

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As a pro-life libertarian, I deplore any loss of human life. But when people freely do “dumb things”, and bad things result, I say “say la v”! Certainly, punishing things, animals, people is irrational. In this case, I’d allow all the dumb tourists to feed themselves to the crocs. As Judge Judy says, “beauty fades; dumb is forever”. My concern is that this tourist’s next stupidity might have an innocent victim.

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Posted by reinkefj

LIBERTY: Need to change the political landscape

Thursday, November 9, 2006

http://www.lewrockwell.com/
manion/manion67.html

http://tinyurl.com/w3b4u

NOTA – Bene!
by Christopher Manion

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In the realm of practical wisdom, the most obvious and even desirable candidate missing from every ballot is “NOTA” – None Of The Above.

Since the early 1990s, both major parties have strived (successfully) to make it virtually impossible for competitors to run on a third-party ticket. That circumstance has, no doubt, led to the concentration of corruption in the GOP that has accelerated so markedly in recent years.

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Voting is an exercise in futility. The Libertarains elected some dog catchers. We need to change the landscape. The movie Gettysburg has one of the generals saying “it’s good ground”. FMPOV the political landscape in AMRIKA is not “good ground” for us little l libertarians to wage a winning campaign. So, we have to reframe the debate.

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Posted by reinkefj

LIBERTY: Have we lost the republic?

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Libertarians are always alert for “everything but the one thing”. It’s those “one things” that kill liberty. Cause everyone has their own one pet thing. Libertarians say “liberty for everyone, everytime, everywhere, no exceptions”. ;-) The big L libertarian political party has only one criteria. Everyone agrees “Never to initiate force to achieve political or social goals”. A pretty powerful principle.

The dead old white guys gave were Classical Liberals. Individual Freedom over the Conservative supporting King and Country. The DofI, Constitution, and BoR are all right out of the Classical Liberal playbook. We drift or “improve” at our peril.

We have lost the republic!

(A Republic is a representative system of government where there are strict limits on the government and everyone has their rights recognized.)

There have been failings. The DOWG themselves failed to “solve” slavery. The Civil War was a “tariff” war in disguise in which we lost the United STATES of America, and became the USA. The Socialists of the 20’s brought us “gubamint skools”, to import the German “cannon fodder and willing workers” philosophy to America, and made us stupid. FDR brought us socialism as a relief to the Great Depression which was cause by the Congress’ Smoot Hawley tariff. We lost the gold standard under FDR when he uncoupled government spending from taxes (i.e., unleashed the printing press fiat currency). We have an series of “presidents”, that have acted more like idiot kings: committing troops to stupid undeclared wars; meddled in the affairs of other sovereign countries, and pushed forth the democratic “advance auction of stolen goods” and “two wolves and a lamb” deciding what’s for dinner. Recently, the Military Commissions Act (The end of Habeas Corpus) and the Warner 2006 Defense Budget Act (President designates enemy combatants) have fundamentally changed the USA into AMRIKA. The next step is the North America Union of Canada, Mexico, and everything in between.

Remember Ben Franklin!

http://www.bartleby.com/73/1593.html

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

JOBSEARCH: Unemployment “insurance” makes no sense.

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

http://www.jibberjobber.com/blog/archives/192#respond

Carnival Entry from Peter Clayton – TotalPictures.com
November 7th, 2006

Peter is the man with the microphone. Peter Clayton doesn’t have a “blog” – he has a podcast site.

***Begin Quote***

Sixth. File for unemployment benefits immediately!

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With all due respect, I list this as a waste of time. For other than the factory hands, it’s just not a good use of time.

For example, in one of my transitions, filing for the unemployment benefits in NY by a NJ resident required FOUR in-person visits and repeated under oath certifications that no activity was engaged in that MIGHT be considered “consulting, contracting, or collecting other economic benefit EVEN IF NO TAXABLE INCOME is earned or money is exchanged”. Sheesh! Who writes this stuff?

On another transition (I’ve been “out” seven times in XXXX years! Let’s call it several decades. I’m planning to be “earning” until I FINALLY land … in my grave. That’s the only time you can stop preparing, worrying, and networking!), I took thirteen hours to collect two checks for a total of $800! (I followed the outplacement counselor’s advice and did it. By the time, I collected my second check, I had a new and better job. I TOLD the counselor what I thought of his advice. He said I was “lucky”. I’d call it “focused”. Your Mileage May Vary!)

I think you just have to write this money off as “government theft”. To chase it, takes your eyes off the prize to begin again generating value, and retaining some of that value for yourself.

imho

/RANT ON/

I personally think that, like extended warranties, if someone came to you with the Government’s Unemployment Insurance, you’d laugh them out of town. First of all, ask any insurance underwriter, they will tell you that it is not an “insurable risk”. It’s unavoidable (i.e., happens to everyone) and avoidable (i.e., your personal conduct can influence the outcome). It’s not beyond your control. It’s not random. And, insurance spreads out risk across a pool and levels the cost, so why would someone be in that pool with you.

This is a government scam. It creates a tax that can masquerade as “insurance”. They get a pot of money to employ and reward themselves, their relatives, their friends, and most importantly their campaign contributors. All at the expense of the people who can afford it least. We don’t get a chance to look under the covers at income and out go, but if we use gut feeling then 75% of the “premiums” extracted are wasted. Also, it makes everyone a “welfare queen”.

It is especially despicable to force the working poor to pay such a tax. They’d be better off getting ALL their money. They can make their own decisions as to what is best for them.

If it was an insurable risk, needed, and demanded, why don’t we see insurance companies, banks, brokerages, and credit unions offer such insurance?

/RANT OFF/

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Posted by reinkefj

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