Anyhow, rants aside, it got me to thinking about extinction and what might be going away soon. Did you see today's stock market FRiend? Have you followecd the situation in Cyprus, Greece and most of Europe? How's that 401K working out for you? The value of your house goes down and the taxes go up.
This week I've been playing with some Relative Worth calculators on the Internet and though they vary widely from one commodity to another, the average inflation rate since 1955 (the year I was born) until now is 766.3 percent. That means it now takes between $8.66 up to $36.40 to match the value of a 1955 dollar (and don't even look at the price of gold). The rate is skyrocketing as the Fed prints and pumps more dollars into the system to prop it up and as our debt and deficits rise we are in a downward spiral that seems irreversable. Money may not be going extinct, but the relative worth of that money and what it can buy is plunging and out of control.
Studying the Weimar Republic several stories struck me. Paper money became so worthless that people burned it to stay warm because it was cheeper than wood or fuel. By the end you needed a wheelbarrow to deposit a days wage in the bank. One story sums it up in horrorfying sadness. A man turned his back on his wheelbarrow of cash only to find a thief had dumped his worthless money on the ground and stolen the wheelbarrow.
Will it happen here? Does history repeat itself? Does a bear sit in the woods?
Tonight, Drumbo salutes Money, the want of which is the root of all evil, but can a Free Republic survive without it?
~ Barrett Strong ~
