Liberals Beginning To Face ‘Financial Armageddon’

“They will die trying to yank my shirt off.
Large words, my friend. They will take your shirt, and the only one to die will be you if you refuse to give it to them. Or, you will be a news story, but you will die in the end.”

Ohhhh I am so scared......... Just line up with all the sheeple and submit submit submit. Or are one of the shirt takers?

You might want to research Caterpillar’s equipment sources. as far as I know they’ve been bringing excavators in from abroad for quite some time. Perhaps they have a split product line with same models being built overseas.

http://www.forkliftaction.com/news/newsdisplay.aspx?nwid=6075

FWIW, John Deere’s excavators are built by Hitachi. Many of the engines in the Cat generator sets are rebranded Perkins engines. They’ll have a Cat engine number but any dealer will tell you the engines are Perkins.

Liberals Beginning To Face ‘Financial Armageddon’

“In retrospect, lighting the match was a mistake. But I was only trying to retrieve my bankroll.”

This is because paper money is already terribly deflated, even at low denomination only 1/20th of our daily retail needs. If the FED wanted to hugely inflate the currency so that something that today costs $1, would then cost $100, it would literally have to print as many $100 bills as we currently have $1 bills, which would take years. Otherwise, nobody would have any $100 bills, and paper money would hyper-deflate!

At current rate of printing, yes. I would hate to see what could be done when the rubber meets the road.

If they were considering something as grave as monetizing the debt, they may have already started so that when it does become official, the physical paper can be placed relatively quickly, in a vain attempt to keep pace with a hyperinflated digital dollar. It may not work, but paper dollars would still be devalued.

Also, consider a move away from Cash and towards debit. Things such as food stamps have become digital, Direct deposit of checks, etc. In theory, they could demonetize paper and coins and move into a all digital currency. Something about desperate times, desperate measures. I don't think that would happen but I won't overlook it.

(There was deflation in the Great Depression, in which the saying was, “You could buy a pound of hamburger for a nickel, but nobody had any nickels.”)

All too true, but our money was backed by Gold at the time. They couldn't inflate their way out of it, unless to mine more Gold, or confiscate it as they tried to do.

The digital, paper divide is an interesting concept which I had not thought about before. Although ultimately I believe the dollar, both paper and electronic will be devalued, although maybe one less so than the other.

Use your imagination. Everybody I'm talking about was a government employee in the DC area. This is a high cost area, and government salaries barely meet the requirements.

Still, savings rates are high.

Until 1987 federal employees had no employer related savings options. After that time if they transferred to FERS they had the equivalent of a 401(k) program. (Of note, IRA limits were far lower then).

After a while a 401(k) operation was created for remaining CSRS employees (but with no employer contribution, so this was all out of the employee's pocket).

Given that government offers an age 55 retirement option, let's say a guy was 50 in 1987. He would have had 5 years savings opportunity until 1992. Most of that was occupied by a flat market. Wouldn't have mattered where he put his bucks. If he played it safe "5 years before retirement", he'd had an account not worth having.

On the other hand, if he'd played it risky and tossed all his money into the "C" fund, he'd have managed to quadruple his money through the simple expedient of working 5 more years.

(That assumes compounding through reinvestment of divideds).

Move that forward a decade and it's the same thing. Government employees had limited options within the framework of the government sponsored savings plan. At the same time, those plans were enhanced over time and finally offered employees a chance to invest in stock index funds.

Investing in T-bills was not as profitable as the stock index funds.

Now here's a trick for you. We used to be limited to making "sales" on the last day of the month. You would then be able to move your money to a cash account with market interest rates, or government securities, or bonds.

Talk about risk ~ you had to let them know 15 days ahead of the date of sale!

When I retired you could do same-day buys and sells of various index fund options, bonds, t-bills, cash, annuities, etc.

It was a system under development, and it required a keen eye to see where it was headed ~ plus some prescience about market moves.

Federales in the Thift Fund system were probably harmed less by the recent downterm than those dealing directly with private sector investment companies.

Given the inordinately long lifespans of your typical federal slacker, seems to me that it has been demonstrably better for them to invest in the stock market than in other options. For them, retirement does not equal death!

My point was you need many fewer such people today than you needed a decade ago. Way back in WWII you needed buildings filled to the brim with mathematicians to deal with what we consider relatively simple algorithms these days ~

Fewer and fewer people can do more and more research about more and more things in less and less time.

Kodak is going down because, alas, the technology they were based on crashed and burned!

You raise several good points. To start with, paper money is already nightmarish in its printing, alongside of the other critical printing demands on the USBEP. Only two locations print, Washington D.C. and Fort Worth. Right now a lot of their staff must be utterly exhausted. To even try and double production would be a huge undertaking, and still only provide 10% of our national needs.

Years ago, the Iranians did a real good job printing high quality counterfeit US dollars. The Treasury was so happy to have someone else helping that it about sent them a dozen roses and a box of chocolates as a thank you. It backfired horribly on the Iranians in a dozen different ways, putting US dollars where they were in critical demand on the far side of the world, devaluing the Iranian currency, etc., etc., etc. They made maybe $300M, after costs, which was a fraction of their monthly oil income.

Such is the Twilight Zone world of printing.

At the end of prohibition, the $1000 bill was demonitized, because it was the favored currency of the alcohol trade. Not too long ago, somebody proposed demonitizing the $100 bill, and the management of the USBEP about had a stroke.

So no matter how you slice it, in a credit crunch, there would be no choice but to move most transactions to debit. And no doubt, that is the only sane way of doing things. However, since the 1970s, futurists have speculated on the elimination of paper money and coinage, and reached the conclusion that it is not economically possible.

There are just too many transactions that are not, and cannot be debitized. It is like trying to outlaw barter, which in essence is the bottom of the pyramid. All transactions are barter. Since direct barter is less efficient, an acceptable currency is devised as a barter IOU. The next level of the pyramid. Everything else is built on that.

But all currencies are based on faith. Unless the faith is mutual, barter cannot happen. Notice that the strongest statement the US can make, even about its currency, is that it is valid for all “debts”, public and private. Even this recognizes that it cannot control barter. Forcing the seller to sell and the buyer to buy.

But “above” paper currency and coins, on the pyramid, there is not even that demand. Nobody has to take any other instrument or delivery system for debts. Retailers can refuse trade before barter, and insist on cash after barter. Credit, debit, checks, and anything else can be refused.

The only stories I’ve been getting are those who have lived beyond their means.

A lot of us who were living UNDER our means, but now due to the Harry Reid, Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd plans coming to fruition are in the ditch. We just aren't bitching.

“young people are going to have far few opportunities”

My primary concern.

You’re losing me here. No money and no out of the usual power in the future that I can see = no master plan.