Posted on 05/17/2011 12:21:08 PM PDT by statestreet
Congratulations, you’ve just come up with the strategy to repeat the oligarchs of Russia picking up VAST national resources for pennies on the dollar.
The federal government’s lands ultimately belong to the states.
“Better check your history...your name betrays you”
LOL
That person is a real Ron Paul fan, obviously - so no changing his/her mind there.
You want to do things that have more than one GOOD result.
Gold does nothing for the people.
Corn for fuel is an example of a negative energy solution...produces moe bad than good.
“We need to elect folks who didn’t major major in “Torturing the Language” in college.”
It’s called Legalese. This crap is crafted by lawyers.
Better idea would be to sell Federal real estate. I realize it’s a down market, and much of the land is low-value desert. However, there is a LOT of it.
Here’s what I would do:
First - if there’s oil, gas, coal - SELL IT - no question - and DRILL!!
Secondly, if it’s just vacant land, sell it to any AMERICAN INDIVIDUAL OR ENTITY. I’m even OK with offering some type of price incentive to encourage fast sale in exchange for some various type of commitment to use the land for things that would create jobs.
We could sell 80% of federal land over a time period long enough so as not to crash the real estate market, but, since the land is so spread out it may not affect it much anyway.
So then... a corrupt government is elected by a corrupt people?..
As for the American people, they have been increasingly corrupted by the promise of being 'cared for' by those whom they re-elect time and again.
As I said, We The People should be at the top of the power pile, but indifference, ignorance, and misdirection by the educational establishment and media have contributed to foster a populace largely ignorant of its rights and one which has largely abdicated its responsibilities as well.
While there are those among us who might deserve better than what the masses vote for, even here there are those who miss no opportunity to decry the efforts of those who seek Constitutional compliance from those who hold office in our government.
It's pretty hard to maintain a Republic under those circumstances, when even the allegedly most 'conservative' are willing to fight against demanding accountability.
I wouldn't count on China. That bubble is going to pop, and their "House of Cards" economy is going to crater.
[ It’s pretty hard to maintain a Republic under those circumstances, when even the allegedly most ‘conservative’ are willing to fight against demanding accountability. ]
Thats why poliical partys are becoming OBSOLETE...
And why the TpCaucus is becoming the power in Federal and some State governments..
AND its growing... in power scope and impact..
Coburn bitch slapps the Senate—>> http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/clip.php?appid=599986131
The debt limit has been reached and they are still spending. Why would anyone think this gangster government would be prevented from doing something just because it's a violation of law and of the constitution.
That kind of thinking is old fashioned and outmoded.
i, for one, am done working for 0bama and crew
i didn’t sign any contract where i agreed to work my life supporting their ability to maintain power and wealth.
f*ck off 0bama
The biggest reason political parties are becoming obsolete is that their labels stand for little, if anything. Platforms used to be a stand on issues that individual candidates would be expected to adhere to. Now, it's a al carte. So a Republican in Massachussets stands for one thing that may be to the left of a Democrat in flyover country--and they get away with it. It's the single biggest reason donations to central party funds are down, that you might end up supporting someone you would not support otherwise.
Similarly, the party has been smug in that they will get votes just because they aren't the opposition.
Vice versa from the other side.
Either way, after paying a little lip service and running ads to get aelected, it is as if no one in DC feels any need to listen to their electorate, with a few exceptions.
And why the TpCaucus is becoming the power in Federal and some State governments..
The TEA party movement has a following from those who want a voice in their government, who want to exercise their power on a government which they feel is no longer operating in their best interests, nor the best interests of the Republic. Sure, it has grown, and will continue to do so so long as it is not converted into a top-down organization. If that happens, it, too will go the way of the whigs.
Anyone who has earned a paycheck and balanced a checkbook on a non-government job is likely to be dissatisfied with the nonsense in DC, and at State and local levels as well.
““Bad money drives out good.””
That’s Gresham’s Law, but it has nothing to do with the gold standard. It describes what happens when a government compels two coinage issues of differing quality to be treated as if they are equal. The undervalued coins will be hoarded and the overvalued coins will continue to circulate.
“if we return to a gold standard without enough gold to back up most of that currency, it will get “exchanged” out of existence fast.”
And what do you think “enough gold” amounts to? When Alexander Hamilton made the dollar exchangeable for gold there was very little gold in the Treasury to back up the outstanding currency issue. Instead of the Treasury’s gold stock being “exchanged out of existence” the Continental Dollar was quickly bid up to par with gold. The gold standard doesn’t require every dollar to be backed by a deposit of gold, it does require the ability to exchange dollars for gold at a fixed price upon demand.
The USA could save billions a year just by establishing whistle blower laws that generously reward and protect those on the inside in government, and those on the outside in private business. The waste and fraud needs ferreted out from those individuals on welfare to individual physicians and big pharma that rips off Medicare. Then send those at the highest level to prison as criminals, instead of slapping their wrist with civil fines, often against shareholders with no admission of guilt. To change behavior we need to make examples and take a hard line.
Only if the EPA and other government bully agencies allow them to produce that product.
Sell them the land and let them alone to do with it what they wish. That is the heart and soul of property rights.
When Hamilton made the dollar exchangeable for gold there was not another currency for which even dollars were a limited exchangeable backing.
Today, most “money” is in fact outright debt. Remember M3? abandoned because it gave the scary truth of how over-leveraged our money supply is? For every paper dollar, there are 15-20 claims on that dollar. The cash in your bank account isn’t currency, it’s debt; the money you pay your taxes with isn’t currency (save for a few people, I stopped paying taxes in cash ~10 years ago), it’s debt; that $75 tank of gas you filled up this morning wasn’t paid with currency (safe bet on my part), it’s debt; etc.
Our debt-driven virtual-currency society uses cash - physical cash - as the “reserve”, for which the popular “currency” can be exchanged for. Assuming a generous 10-to-1 ratio for byte-bucks to greenbacks, and assuming a return to the gold-backed dollar at a similar 10-to-1 greenback to gold ratio, you’re looking at a hundred-to-one ratio of practical plastic dollars to real gold exchange. Should a mere 1% of our financial society decide to exchange the ethereal numbers in their bank account webpage for real money - and I think you can see the preference of saving real currency-backing gold over a couple bytes on a cloud computer - ALL that gold in Fort Knox disappears.
Good money: durable, verifiable, physical gold.
Bad money: a promise by a machine, displayed on a glowing screen.
“it does require the ability to exchange dollars for gold at a fixed price upon demand.” Bingo. 150,000 people - that’s 0.05% of the population - demand $10,000 in gold, and it’s all gone before the dollar is “quickly bid up to par with gold”.
“When Hamilton made the dollar exchangeable for gold there was not another currency for which even dollars were a limited exchangeable backing.”
I can’t decipher what you mean by that. The money then circulating in America consisted of Spanish pieces of eight, British pounds, shillings and pence, and paper issues of each of the 13 colonies plus the Continental dollar.
“Today, most “money” is in fact outright debt.”
That’s hardly new. Welcome to the world of banking. The majority of the money supply except for the monetary base has always been based on debt. Prior to 1913 American banks issued their own private currency which circulated alongside Treasury issues. During the National Bank era that ran from 1863 to 1913 banks were required to back up their currency issue with Treasury debt.
“The cash in your bank account isn’t currency, it’s debt; the money you pay your taxes with isn’t currency (save for a few people, I stopped paying taxes in cash ~10 years ago), it’s debt; that $75 tank of gas you filled up this morning wasn’t paid with currency (safe bet on my part), it’s debt; etc.”
Whoever told you that is confused. We have been using a fiat currency since the days of LBJ and Nixon, when the last links to silver and gold were removed. The Fed adjusts the level of the monetary base by buying and selling Treasuries but that doesn’t make the currency we use “debt”.
“Should a mere 1% of our financial society decide to exchange the ethereal numbers in their bank account webpage for real money - and I think you can see the preference of saving real currency-backing gold over a couple bytes on a cloud computer - ALL that gold in Fort Knox disappears.”
The amount of gold backing the American dollar in 1970 when Bretton Woods was still in effect was half of one percent.
“I can’t decipher what you mean by that.”
I mean the real “currency” now is not the dollar, to wit paper presidential portrait, it is the credit card. The idea of “plastic money”, indulging an instant loan for a trivial amount, is quite new. (Not to be confused with classic loans, for which one would apply and put up collateral for. I remember the advent of the Visa as some kind of breakthrough, and the shock of paying for fries at McDonalds with one. It’s new.) I mean the paper hard-currency dollar _is_ the backing for our new plastic/virtual currency, and there are a limited quantity of real dollars backing it.
The 2008 financial crisis, for which some very high powered bank executives were basically told “come here, shut up, and do what you’re told” resulting in $1-2T in instant loans (under Bush to boot), staved off a run on real currency which would have hit a financial stalemate and caused financial meltdown once all the M1 money was exhausted - which it would have within days.
Point? The dollar is, in fact, the backing standard value-holder for a new currency - and that arrangement very nearly collapsed this country. Putting the dollar itself on a gold standard (which, BTW, I advocate save only for not seeing where we’ll get enough of the stuff) will face the same problems.
“The amount of gold backing the American dollar in 1970 when Bretton Woods was still in effect was half of one percent.”
Yup. Our current insanity of plastic/virtual debt-based money has the same problem - and darned near had a catastrophic Chernobyl-level meltdown just 2.5 years ago. An argument may be made that Nixon pulling us off the gold standard was done for the same reason as the trillion-plus-dollar “bailout”: there just wasn’t enough in that equation to balance things, so when it went out of whack something had to give.
“The Fed adjusts the level of the monetary base by buying and selling Treasuries but that doesn’t make the currency we use “debt”.”
Baloney. The Fed takes a $0 balance sheet, and pulls a stunt modeled after particle physics: $0 = $1T cash + -$1T debt, issues $1T in bonds for which $1T is borrowed, voila the feds have another trillion to spend. After a time, the two are put back together, and the money & debt vanish. Meanwhile, the Mint pounds out a paltry fraction of that (which is still an impressive amount) in raw fiat money to facilitate the transfers of that debt currency.
I realize there will be an imbalance between the backing value and the certificates representing it (though there shouldn’t be). I also realize that we’ve layered a new currency upon the “dollar” as backing. I also realize that unless these are fair 1:1 ratios, or near enough as to make no practical difference, we risk a “run” on the backing value, which is why we had the ‘08 national financial crisis, and why Nixon took us off the gold standard.
Enough of us (say, around 150,000) know this problem well enough that to return to a gold standard would compel us to exchange a moderate amount (say, averaging $10,000 each) of our existing dollars for the new exchangeable gold - pulling what is now $1,500,000,000 of shiny yellow stuff out of Fort Knox, leaving none left. Well, assuming there is any there (ya know, wouldn’t be surprised if exactly that “run on gold” happened just before, when was it, 1973? someone knew what was about to happen, and you think they didn’t compel a very large withdraw?).
“I mean the paper hard-currency dollar _is_ the backing for our new plastic/virtual currency, and there are a limited quantity of real dollars backing it.”
Paper money by definition isn’t hard currency. We had hard currency when silver and/or gold were part of the monetary system. That hasn’t been the case since Johnson demonetized silver and Nixon abrogated the last of Bretton Woods.
Credit card “money” is a loan made to you by the bank issuing your credit card. There is money backing your credit card transaction, it is the bank’s dollar reserves.
“resulting in $1-2T in instant loans (under Bush to boot), staved off a run on real currency which would have hit a financial stalemate and caused financial meltdown once all the M1 money was exhausted - which it would have within days.”
This had nothing to do with M1 money. It did concern M2 money in the form of money market mutual funds. The Bush “instant loans” were made to backstop the money market mutual funds. These are used by thousands of businesses to park their money in lieu of checking or savings accounts and they are expected to carry no risk. Some funds held high rated paper that blew up with the first break of the housing bubble. If the money markets froze, which was a real possibility, businesses would have been unable to access their money to meet payrolls and pay their bills. This would have been devastating to the real economy.
“Baloney. The Fed takes a $0 balance sheet, and pulls a stunt modeled after particle physics: $0 = $1T cash + -$1T debt, issues $1T in bonds for which $1T is borrowed, voila the feds have another trillion to spend”
That’s a nice story but it bears no relation to the real world. For one thing the Fed issues no bonds at all, it buys and sells Treasury paper.
If the Fed wants to inject money into the banking system it purchases Treasuries from a bank and credits that bank with a cash balance. That’s how the Fed “prints money”. If the Fed wants to drain cash from the banking system it sells Treasury bonds from its own holdings, and this serves to soak up money that banks could otherwise use for loans.
“An argument may be made that Nixon pulling us off the gold standard was done for the same reason as the trillion-plus-dollar “bailout”: there just wasn’t enough in that equation to balance things, so when it went out of whack something had to give.”
Nixon, like Johnson and Kennedy before him, wasn’t willing to put the American economy into recession to deal with the dollar problem, a problem known as the Triffin Dilemma. Breaking the last link to gold was the easy way out for Nixon but it lit the inflation of the 70s and may be at the root of the sequential bubbles that we have been experiencing ever since.
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