Free Republic

SALT LAKE CITY — For $1,000 you could become a multimillionaire. That's the promise of an old investment scheme that just won't die. Many people promote the Iraq dinar as an investment with minimal risk and huge yield. But don't believe it. Real financial experts warn if you spend your U.S. dollars on dinars, you'll never see your money again. John Maskrid describes his ranch in Kane County as 327 acres of splendor. It's on the market, and John says many prospective buyers have scoped out his property. That includes at least three people who've told him they're about to...

Sharing this for those Freepers concerned about the dollar. It's actually strong compared to the euro and yen, but that's only cuz the Central Bankers there have opted to use more fire power against the weak dollar and make their currencies even WEAKER. What does this mean for those of us with real skin in the game, as in money in the markets?

8 Currencies That Could Tank As Commodities Collapse Joe Weisenthal May 21, 2013, 7:20 AM A big story this year has been the decline in commodities. That's bad news for countries and currencies that are closely tied to commodities. In a note, Sebastien Galy has a quick rundown of what currencies are associated with what commodities: * Aussie Dollar : aluminum, coal & wheat * Canadian Dollar : oil and wheat * South African Rand : coal & platinum * Chilean Peso : copper * Mexican Peso: oil & silver * Russian Rubel: oil, nickel, platinum, wheat * Brazilian Real:...

The US Department of Homeland Security seized a payment processing account Tuesday belonging to Mt. Gox, the largest international Bitcoin trader, claiming the monetary exchange service falsified financial documents. The American government has previously made it clear that officials are watching Bitcoin, a decentralized economic currency that international regulators have not yet been able to control. Many of those who favor Bitcoin use Dwolla, an Iowa-based startup that allows customers to transfer their dollars into Bitcoins. Unfortunately for those consumers, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warrant Tuesday effectively shutting down Dwolla’s ability to process Bitcoin payments, as reported...

Morgan Stanley Explains Why The US Dollar Is The Hottest Currency In The World Again Joe Weisenthal May 16, 2013, 8:55 PM . The US Dollar is HOT. Here's a chart of the trade-weighted dollar index. You can see it rallied in 2012, and has gone nuclear in 2013. So what gives? Dollar strength is the topic of this evening's Morgan Stanley FX Pulse. The basic gist is: It's about weakening yen, strengthening data, increasing US yields relative to the rest of the world (which makes the dollar inherently more valuable), weakening euro, and more hawkish tones from Fed folks....

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

Obama has done it. He has brought America down. It only took him just over four years. The Republicans could have stopped him. They didn’t. How did the nihilistic left succeed in destroying America? Simple. They learned just a little of the capitalism they hate, and they drove your nation into outright bankruptcy. And here is what the GOP has to say about it: just about nothing. The once-mighty United States is now the most indebted nation on Earth. In round numbers, here are just some of the vital statistics as the patient dies: National debt: $17 trillion, or $50,000...

Former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill will be featured on a British banknote set to begin circulation in 2016, the Bank of England said. A portrait of Churchill, adapted from a Dec. 30, 1941, photograph taken by Yousuf Karsh, and his famous declaration "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat" will be featured on the five-pound banknote, the BBC reported Friday. Churchill will replace social reformer Elizabeth Fry on the banknote. Bank of England Gov. Sir Mervyn King announced the new banknote from Churchill's former home of Chartwell, in Westerham, Kent. "Our banknotes acknowledge the...

Uncertainty increased in global markets as investor fear grows. Recent Central Bank aggressive moves (Fed, Bank of Japan and South Korea) send a signal of global economic weakness. It didn’t help that former ECB executive board member Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi said that “policy makers led by President Mario Draghi will act to weaken the euro.” Is this the ECB’s return fire in the new currency war? US stock market indices are down today, particularly the NASDAQ index. And Europe is down over 2%. Real estate investment trusts (REITS) also tanked today. The volatility index VIX climbed today. Sovereign yields are up...

In the last two days gold has plunged so deep that it’s being called the worst drop — at least in percentage terms — in 30 years. That brings us back to the early Reagan period, when falling gold was regarded as a good thing. ... The reality is that all those quantitative easing reserves from the Fed never circulated through the economy. Most of them are on deposit at the central bank. And because everyone is still risk-averse, the demand for cash is so high that the turnover, or velocity, of money keeps falling. Last I looked, the M2...

Local sources tell me this: Counterfeit bills turned in to the Fed used to number 1-2 per YEAR. At this date (April 12, 2013 - Friday), the count turned in to the Fed was already at 10 and we are only at April 15, 2013.

WASHINGTON, DC (Worthy News)– The Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing the U.S. Treasury Department to remove "In God We Trust" from all its currency. A nonprofit organization that represents atheists and agnostics, the FFRF claims the motto is "offensive" to the nonreligious. In February, the FFRF and 19 plaintiffs filed a civil suit in New York claiming the motto violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution; they also claim it forces atheists, agnostics and secular skeptics to impart a religious message they all decry whenever using U.S. currency, resulting in a false declaration of their own religious...

Bitcoin is a type of "virtual currency" developed by an Opensource organization. Using them requires downloading some software and synchronizing the databases, a very lengthy process, taking perhaps a day or more. AFAIK from what I read, when Bitcoin was started, the "value" of a bitcoin was about 5 cents. Current quotes for the value of a bitcoin come in at around $135 USD. So I am intensely curious to know if any FReepers have ever successfully acquired a wallet, synchronized their DB's, and started acquiring/earning/spending bitcoins!

Fiat Currency Collapse Politics / Fiat CurrencyApril 02, 2013 - 11:34 PM GMTLance Burnham Lance Burnham writes: If all fiat currencies in history eventually collapse, how do we see it coming? Could it happen to the US dollar? How do you survive something like that? America is the only real superpower, but in history superpowers do not collapse from outside forces, they collapse from within. One has to ask themselves, how could that happen, and are any of the signs there? I think spiralling debt, political dysfunction, economic malaise, income inequality, and participation in wars of great cost witout any...

During this period in American history when the economy, business, trade and currency have taken pivotal positions in the Nation’s psyche, the country is led by what may well be the most economically uninterested Administration it has ever elected. Loudly professing to fight for the vast middle class, the Obama Administration’s actions are taking the Nation galloping toward the destruction of middle-class incomes, toward upwardly spiralling middle-class taxes, toward bloated government, and toward overwhelming debt. As the expansive middle-class heads off to work at its one or two jobs each day, it has the right to expect its leadership to...

Last November, in an act of sheer monetary desperation, the ECB issued an exhaustive, and quite ridiculous, pamphlet titled "Virtual Currency Schemes" in which it mocked and warned about the "ponziness" of such electronic currencies as BitCoin. Why a central bank would stoop so "low" to even acknowledge what no "self-respecting" (sic) PhD-clad economist would even discuss, drunk and slurring, at cocktail parties, remains a mystery to this day. However, that it did so over fears the official artificial currency of the insolvent continent, the EUR, may be becoming even more "ponzi" than the BitCoins the ECB was warning about,...

David Kotok On Europe: 'This Place Is In Trouble' David Kotok, Cumberland AdvisorsMarch 20, 2013"Just 20 months ago the three largest banks in Cyprus passed the European ‘stress tests’ with flying colors," reports Ron DeLegge of ETFguide. The latest estimates are 16 billion euros needed, and that number is rising daily. This will get worse. When we planned this trip to Paris and Dubai, we had no idea that the Eurogroup would launch an unprecedented attack on bank depositors, banks, central banks, and the banking system of the entire Eurozone. But they did. We boarded flights from Sarasota to New...

Is the U.S. Becoming a Banana Republic Politics / US PoliticsMarch 05, 2013 - 02:40 PM GMT By: Michael Pento It is sad to say there are just two reasons why the U.S. is not yet a banana republic. The first reason is that the US dollar has not yet lost its world’s reserve currency status, which is helping to keep interest rates at record low levels. If the dollar, yen and euro were not involved in a currency war, the dollar’s intrinsic decline would become much more evident, causing domestic inflation to soar, and our bond market to immediately...

As China enters the "Year of the Snake," Singapore stands as a beacon of sound currency in a world gone mad. China's renminbi remains pegged to the US dollar, while even steadfast Switzerland has followed the US, UK, EU, and Japan into an impoverishing strategy of currency debasement. Singapore, alone, has been able to sustain genuine economic growth in the context of a strong national currency. The Currency Snakes In most major economies, a corrective recession has become politically unacceptable. In order to conceal negative real economic growth, politicians and their central bankers have resorted to the irresponsible policy of...

Check Out Today's Incredible Spike In FEAR Joe WeisenthalFebruary 25, 2013If you wanted to digest it all in one chart, it might be this one: A chart of the VIX -- aka "The Fear Index" -- which measures how much people are trying to buy protection against a big downside drop using options. It went ballistic today. This is raw fear, as people buy protection against a big drop.Via Stockcharts.com

All this chatter about a so-called global currency war is utter nonsense. All that is happening is the Japanese are wisely taking steps to increase liquidity and depreciate their vastly overpriced yen. They are doing this in order to avoid deeper and deeper deflation. That deflation will sink the Japanese economy for years to come if remedial actions are not taken. Among all the big economies, none needs quantitative easing more than Japan’s. All the Japanese have done so far is make cheap loans to banks, but with no concerted QE. But QE is coming this spring, when Prime Minster...

The euro may well be on the road to a chaotic collapse, taking some of the world’s biggest banks with it. A currency war may break out between Japan, the U.S. and Europe. Printing money has run out of steam, but there is still little sign of the global economy returning to the kind of growth rates it saw before the credit crunch. But in the long term what they should perhaps be most worried about is losing their monopoly on issuing money. A new breed of virtual currencies are starting to emerge — and some of the giants of...

All this chatter about a so-called global currency war is utter nonsense. All that is happening is the Japanese are wisely taking steps to increase liquidity and depreciate their vastly overpriced yen. They are doing this in order to avoid deeper and deeper deflation. That deflation will sink the Japanese economy for years to come if remedial actions are not taken. Among all the big economies, none needs quantitative easing more than Japan’s. All the Japanese have done so far is make cheap loans to banks, but with no concerted QE. But QE is coming this spring, when Prime Minster...

On Feb. 10, the world was shocked to hear that Pope Benedict would step down from his Papal office on Feb. 28, and become the first leader of the Catholic church to resign from office in over 500 years. However, speculation for his replacement is already under way, and the front runner to become the next Pope has strong ties to the creation of a global economic system, as well as being a prime candidate to an ancient Catholic prophecy suggesting he would help lead the world into a new order. “The front runner to be the next pope...

Economics: Venezuela has devalued its currency, joining Iran, Argentina and others whose wars on math brought the same result. Some call this a "restorative." It's not. It's what happens when big government hits a wall. Venezuela's monster 47% devaluation from 4.3 to 6.3 bolivars to the dollar, reportedly ordered by President Hugo Chavez from his hospital bed in Cuba, marks the reckoning for his regime's big-spending ways in Venezuela's low-growth economy. It was about as predictable as a crash from a runaway train, given his mad-lunatic war on economics — his lethal combination of welfare spending, destruction of the private...

Selling snake oil and issuing unbacked paper currency are not so different. They’re both wildly successful ploys for the guys pulling the strings. And they’re both complete scams that depend solely on the confidence of a willing, ignorant public. But once the confidence begins to erode, the fraud unravels very, very quickly, and the perpetrators resort to desperate measures in order to keep the party going. In the case of fiat currency, governments in terminal decline resort to a very limited, highly predictable playbook in which they try to control… everything… imposing capital controls, exchange controls, wage controls, price controls,...

Venezuela Devalues Its Currency Matthew BoeslerFebruary 8, 2013, 3:43 PMVenezuela just undertook a massive currency devaluation, re-pegging the bolivar to a value of 6.3 per U.S. dollar from its previous official exchange rate of 4.3 bolivars per dollar. The government also announced that it would shutter the Venezuelan currency exchange system known as SITME. Given the currency devaluation underway in other economies around the world right now – perhaps most notably in Japan – a few are calling this Venezuela's foray into the global "currency war" between countries trying to devalue their currencies in order to increase export competitiveness. However,...

While the rest of the developed world is scrambling here and there, politely prodding its central bankers to destroy their relative currencies, all the while naming said devaluation assorted names, "quantitative easing" being the most popular, here comes Venezuela and shows the banana republics of the developed world what lobbing a nuclear bomb into a currency war knife fight looks like: VENEZUELA DEVALUES FROM 4.30 TO 6.30 BOLIVARS VENEZUELA NEW CURRENCY BODY TO MANAGE DOLLAR INFLOWS CARACAS CONSUMER PRICES ROSE 3.3% IN JAN. And that, ladies and gents of Caracas, is how you just lost 46% of your purchasing power,...

It was the first devaluation to be announced by Chavez's government since 2010, and it brought down the official value of the bolivar by 46.5 percent against the dollar. By boosting the bolivar value of Venezuela's dollar-denominated oil sales, the change is expected to help alleviate a difficult budget outlook for the government, which has turned increasingly to borrowing to meet its spending obligations.

Distribution of the Canadian penny ends Monday, but with about six billion of them in circulation it’s not clear how long the little coins will stay in use. The penny is being retired because it actually costs 1.6 cents to produce and the federal government believes it can save $11 million a year by getting rid of the coins. While the last penny was actually produced by the Royal Canadian Mint on May 4 and they’re not going to be distributed any more, Mint spokeswoman Christine Aquino said pennies remain legal tender and can still be used for purchases or...

United States the Biggest Money Printing Loser Interest-Rates / US Interest RatesFebruary 02, 2013 - 10:46 AM GMT By: Peter Schiff In Switzerland, it's not just the clocks that are cuckoo. Over the past four years Swiss politicians and central bankers have gone on an unprecedented buying spree of foreign exchange reserves. In 2012, their cache swelled to as much as $420 billion worth of various currencies, primarily the euro. This figure is a seven-fold increase since 2008 and equates to 70% of the country's annual GDP. The sum translates to $200,000 per family of four, enough to keep the...

Buying Silver At $100 And The Rebirth Of Counterfeiting Commodities / Gold and Silver 2013January 19,2013 By: Dr Jeff Lewis The debate about buying silver rounds, “junk silver” or silver Eagles goes on and on. Although better prices may be available on silver rounds, investors continue to worry about the “China scare” and rumors of counterfeit silver coins. Also, the confiscation* of fiat money purchasing power via inflation will happen long before counterfeit makes an impact, so getting more metal for the money makes the most sense at this time. *(Confiscation of actual metal is separate issue we cover elsewhere)....

Yesterday Jean-Claude Juncker, who presides over meetings of European finance ministers, complained that the euro’s value has become “dangerously high.” The comments took many by surprise; it’s when the currency has been strongest that investors have shown the most faith in the euro’s continued survival. The euro hit $1.34 on Monday—its highest value since February 2011. But ironically, this renewed faith in the euro currency comes at the worst possible time for the euro-zone economy. Although policymakers finally appear to be making a concerted slog towards union, the years of political turmoil have severely stunted investment in the euro zone,...

The Fed disguised In 1913 Congress abdicated its Constitutional responsibility over currency on behalf of the people when it created the monster called The Federal Reserve System. In creating a private joint stock entity, Congress not only surrendered jurisdiction over the dollar, it also relinquished control, oversight, and authority over the institution intended to manage the citizens’ currency. Decisions hastily made in environments of illiteracy, panic, and fear, and driven by energies with ulterior motives, rarely turn out well for those who succumb. Section 2A of The Fed’s Monetary Policy Objectives states, "The Board of Governors of the Federal...

The most perfect monetary system humans have yet created was the world gold standard system of the late 19th century, roughly 1870-1914. We don’t have to hypothesize too much about what a new world gold standard system could look like. We can just look at what has already been done. Contrary to popular belief, people generally did not conduct commerce with gold coins. Yes, gold coins existed, but people mostly used paper banknotes and bank transfers, just as they do today. In 1910, gold coins comprised $591 million out of total currency (base money) of $3,149 million in the United...

Here's What's Behind The Collapse Of The Japanese Yen — The Biggest Economic Story In The World Joe WeisenthalDec. 27, 2012, 7:26 PM Earlier we joked that lost in all of the Fiscal Cliff shuffle was the fact that the yen has been getting clobbered. SocGen's FX guru Kit Juckes jokingly responded that far from getting "lost" the yen carnage was actually the only game in town. Indeed this is really the huge story in global markets right now. In addition to being a major shift in one of the world's biggest and strongest currencies, it affects all sorts of...

Japan's finance minister said Friday that U.S. authorities should seek a strong dollar, making the most straightforward call yet from Tokyo's new leadership on Washington to help correct the yen's strength against the U.S. currency. Taro Aso, citing the U.S. currency's level being still below where it stood versus the yen when he served as prime minister in 2008-2009, said: "The U.S. ought to work toward making the dollar strong." He also played down the notion that the recent efforts by the new administration led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to weaken the yen could spark a devastating global race...

As we rapidly approach Christmas and the Holiday Season, it will be interesting to see what happens to checking account and credit card balances after it is over. It is interesting to note the surge in demand deposits at commercial banks since the end of 2008. A similar measure, Total Checkable Deposits (TCDSL), has also surged. Between anemic GDP growth and the rapid growth in bank deposits (at incredibly low deposit rates), it is no wonder that M2 Money Velocity is dead. Of course, the crash of the housing market and the loss of consumer confidence in the economy may...

Welcome to Zimbabwe.  This is not a parody -- it is an actual report from the Washington Post:   Some economists and legal scholars have suggested that the “platinum coin option� is one way to defuse a crisis if Congress can’t or won’t lift the debt ceiling soon. At least in theory. The U.S. government is, after all, facing a real problem. The Treasury Department will hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by next February at the latest. Unless Congress reaches an agreement to raise that borrowing limit, the government will no longer be able to borrow enough money...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Ever since the Reagan years, America has played a singularly important role in the global economy as its largest net borrower. Thanks to the shale energy revolution, that’s beginning to change. The implications for the dollar are profound. The U.S. is on track to become the world’s largest oil producer in eight years and the biggest producer of gas in five, according to the International Energy Agency, which projects energy self sufficiency in 25 years. That remarkable turnaround not only shifts the U.S. relationship with the Middle East but, as economists at RBC Capital Markets predicted...

[Snipped pretty severely to meet posting guidelines.] Congressional auditors say doing away with dollar bills entirely and replacing them with dollar coins could save taxpayers some $4.4 billion over the next 30 years. At a House subcommittee hearing Thursday, the focus was on two approaches: —Moving to less expensive combinations of metals like steel, aluminum and zinc. —Gradually taking dollar bills out the economy and replacing them with coins. Equipment would have to be bought or overhauled and more coins would have to be produced upfront to replace bills as they are taken out of circulation. Rep. Lacy Clay, D-Mo.,...

Obama Treasury Dept. declares China is not manipulating currencyBy Vicki Needham - 11/27/12 05:11 PM ET The Obama administration is coming under criticism from Sen. Charles Schumer for declaring that China is not a currency manipulator. Following Tuesday's release of a report that again finds China is not keeping the value of its currency artificially low to cut the price of its exports to the United States, Schumer criticized the administration for avoiding penalties against China. "This report all but admits China’s currency is being manipulated, but stops short of saying so explicitly," Schumer, a close ally of Obama's, said...

[Note: This editorial published on Nov 10, 2012] We are now rushing down a course that is going to create incredible economic hardships for millions of Americans. The increase in the amount of debt that has been added to our economy is astronomical. And there is no end in sight. We now have over $16 trillion of debt, and with Obama’s policies it will be almost impossible to reverse that course. Debt is the problem. Big debt is a big problem. There are only four ways to tackle it: increase taxes to bring in more dollars, reduce spending to save...

"...began distributing the grain for free. The result was a sharp increase in the influx of rural poor into Rome... ...The expansion of the dole is an important reason for the rise of Roman taxes... ...the demand for revenue led to debasement of the coinage. Revenue was needed to pay the increasing costs of defense and a growing bureaucracy. However, rather than raise taxes, Nero and subsequent emperors preferred to debase the currency by reducing the precious metal content of coins. This was, of course, a form of taxation; in this case, a tax on cash balances... ...The war against...

It seems as though the Twinkie may be a new type of currency as you can break them down into smaller denominations, they are finite and collectible. I went on Ebay to see about buying some. I saw some of the bids were up to the $20.00 level. This is from an ACTUAL LISTING: "My son and I cornered the market on these Twinkies at our local grocery store and purchased all of the remaining Twinkies off the shelves this Friday (November 16th 2012). This is a full, unopened box of Twinkies. Many will buy the last remaining Twinkies to...

By 2015 hard commodity prices will have collapsed Posted by Michael on September 16, 2012 in Commodities For the past two years, as regular readers know, I have been bearish on hard commodities. Prices may have dropped substantially from their peaks during this time, but I don’t think the bear market is over. I think we still have a very long way to go. There are four reasons why I expect prices to drop a lot more.　First, during the last decade commodity producers were caught by surprise by the surge in demand. Their belated response was to ramp up production...

A currency disappearing in value and hyperinflation as a result. Not surprisingly, people don't like it very much when they go to sleep with their money being worth one amount and then wake up the next morning to find their money worth a lot less. New York Times: The first outbreak of public anger over Iran's collapsing currency and other economic maladies jolted the heart of the capital on Wednesday, with the riot police violently clamping down on black-market money changers, hundreds of citizens marching to demand relief and merchants in the sprawling bazaar closing their shops in protest. Iran's...

A Rare Occurrence In The Saudi Currency Market Tells You That Trouble Is Brewing In The Middle East Matthew BoeslerOctober 3,2012An important shift is developing in Saudi Arabian currency derivatives markets as Iran becomes engulfed in populist protests amid hyperinflationary pressures and armed conflict breaks out between Turkey and Syria, heightening concerns about tensions in the Middle East. The 12-month forward rate on the Saudi Arabian riyal – or the difference between how many riyals traders think a dollar will be able to buy a year from now versus how many riyals a dollar can buy today – has been...

Via The Lede and Business Insider, which has an eye-popping graph showing what’s happening to the rial right now. We've all got debate fee-vah tonight but I want to put this on your radar screen in case things start to spiral in Tehran. The point of nuclear sanctions was to put Iran's economy in a vise so that public discontent would force the regime to either back down on uranium enrichment or risk destabilization from within. Here's a destabilizing tremor now: Clashes and at least one spontaneous protest erupted in Tehran on Wednesday over the plunging value of Iran’s currency,...

The Fed Plays All Its Cards, Road Map for Currency Debasement Currencies / US DollarOct 03, 2012 - 02:09 AM By: Peter Schiff There never really could be much doubt that the current experiment in competitive global currency debasement would end in anything less than a total war. There was always a chance that one or more of the principal players would snap out of it, change course and save their citizenry from a never ending cycle of devaluation. But developments since September 13, when the U.S. Federal Reserve finally laid all its cards on the table and went "all...