I told him so… March 28, 2009
Posted by docgrubb in economics, economy, politics.add a comment
Here is a copy of an email I sent to then-President Bush in October. I’m posting it here primarily because even pessimist me is surprised at how quickly the last sentence of the next-to-last paragraph is coming to pass.
Don’t Blame Me… March 26, 2009
Posted by docgrubb in economics, politics, religion.add a comment
(I’ll warn any beforehand – this post might ramble or diverge on various tangents.)
The WSJ had a piece two Saturdays ago, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120916539836346183.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks , which reviewed part of our current energy conundrum and also how ‘pols will be pols’, we can count on it. This post is not about energy or climate, but I’ll use my online comment/response to that article to introduce my actual topic:
“No one could get elected…on a platform that called explicitly for increased energy prices.” You can say that again. And more broadly: no one could get elected advocating any austerity or sacrifice. We haven’t heard any since Churchill’s “blood, sweat, and tears”, and he was already in-office at the time. This is perhaps the fundamental flaw of democracy, and it is related to the “bread and circuses” tenet learned from another failed republic. Only an autocrat can say “no” to a populace. Franklin’s response to the folks on the street was, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Well, we haven’t kept it, we’re in the process of losing it, and the proof is in our incomprehensibly large deficits and debts, our current credit crisis, the absurd government response to it (the “stimulus” rebate), our personal fiscal over-extension, and the imploding U.S. dollar, which is the policy of dollar hegemony rebounding to crush us. And more’s the pity. For an undisciplined people will inherit a tyrant. The “choice” (if there ever is one) comes down to which kind of tyrant – the traditional Monarch, restrained by common law and a powerful ecclesiastical structure, or the twentieth century-brand dictator, restrained by nothing other than his number of thugs and gulags. I’ll take the former. But how on earth do we go back?”
Yes, I consider myself a monarchist. As acquaintances know, I have a bumper sticker that reads: “Don’t blame me – I’m a monarchist”. And as my brother and wife and a friend or two know, I’m off my rocker enough that I mean no joke. Well, perhaps a little, as the unsuspecting expect a second line of ”I voted for Kerry”, or something similar. But I want my line two to say, in effect, that we’re in a mess because we cannot, as Voltaire and probably Hamilton (and likely many fleeing Tories) feared, rule ourselves. As for universal suffrage, I won’t even go there in this public medium – ask me in person. Anyway, maybe it’s easy to defend such a system today – without the abuses of the ancien regime burned on my psyche. And maybe, like a liberal who’s been mugged, I too would revert – but only to a small “r” republican – if I were so burned. But I’ll take my chances, as I’m unlikely ever to have to eat my words, especially as it’s so improbable I’ll ever be under a king, as opposed to a dictator.
Not to pick on John McCain (he’s the least pandering of the three candidates, and something of a budget hawk), but in the same week as the above article, he was giving newsmen their copy, and the rest of us proof of democracy’s flaw, when he whined about the poor response to Hurricane Katrina. Here’s why. Even a benevolent monarch with a treasury flush with revenue might, at his most generous, make the following offer after the disaster: ”We can help you rebuild you houses on higher ground, or we can rebuild the levies and leave the houses wholly up to you, but we can’t do both. Take your pick.” But where is our “representative” government? Trying to recollect many millions of dollars that were ‘inappropriately’ dispensed, and now fending off a trial lawyers’ suit about unsafe formaldehyde levels in the gov’t’s mobile housing units!
Then McCain did further pandering, advocating a ‘gas-tax holiday’ for the summer. This is where my and liberals’ (at least the green kind) sympathies overlap – we don’t think Americans need any further spoiling. I watched in dismay the other day at patients who arrived before our office opened. They idled their Cadillac SUV waiting for us to unlock. But it wasn’t hot out – it was an early May morning, with very pleasant air about; it literally couldn’t have been any nicer. And I’m sure they even had power windows to help them lower them – too lazy or stupid to enjoy fresh air and save a non-renewable resource. It reminded me of a similar instance from the lower class, about a year ago, when I watched wh*te-tr*sh (don’t want to offend those less judgmental than myself) idling at a Burger King drive-through in their muffler-challenged hulk, waiting for their swill-wrapped-in-landfill, wasting my grandchildrens’ petrol. It was then it dawned on me (again): maybe Americans have too much freedom. Remove Nature’s restraint imposed by want, removed via an artificial affluence, and voil`a : waste, and no surprise. There’s just no one telling the profligate or the stupid what NOT to do. Part of this is due to the demise of social condemnation (a victim of tolerance), where fear of reproof from social equals or superiors was a great check on unapproved behavior. Another cause is artificial affluence, made possible by… no, just scroll down and read “Conspiracy Theory” below. But do I want a gov’t, like the Soviets, telling us what to do, where to live, &c.? Not at all. But where is some balance? Maybe in Europe’s past?
But I’m rambling, and showing my bitterness. Not an Obaman, class-warfare bitterness, but a bitterness over our squandering of this most excellent experiment in self-rule the ages have ever witnessed. But my tangents are articles (or books) unto themselves, so I’ll return to monarchy, for, soon enough, when the whole thing crashes around us, everyone will have their own disillusionment with democracy. (Will they realize that, between the enacting of the 17th Amendment, the ignoring of the 10th, universal suffrage, the modern habit of direct ballot referendums, and the human-nature-ignoring,-doomed-to-failure abandonment of the gold standard, to be sure, we never gave true republicanism a chance in the modern era?)
How can I defend something as preposterous as monarchism? Well, my quick response when time is limited, and which doesn’t hold up to much examination, is the following. In a monarchy, when something is wrong or unjust, you only have to convince one fool to change his mind. In a democracy one has to convince anywhere from twenty million to two hundred million fools to change theirs. This latter is a horribly expensive and daunting task, and is also an impossible one if the fools also happen to be apathetic. Now please don’t leave comments about the errors in this argument, for I already know them. I told you this is my quick and lazy answer.
A more sound argument is a religious one. I remind small-d democrats that monarchism just happens to be the last form of human government that God granted His approval of, if somewhat begrudgingly, and with warnings. This story is found in I Samuel 8. The verdict was given in verse 22: ”The LORD answered, “Listen to them, and give them a king.” Although godly men founded the US, and mayhap God even directed their constitutional draftings, yet not since Samuel has He given a direct approval of a form of government. And I can’t help but contemplate, that, had I been alive in 1776, I would have sided with Tories and trundled off to Canada.
My newest, yet-to-apply custom bumper sitcker reads: “De-moc-ra-cy – n. the right of the people to crown their own fools.” All the words of this post above the Samuel citation was composed last summer before the election. On re-reading, I had invested too much to waste it, so I’m finishing it off, but without up-dating the foregoing. But the intervening election has confirmed even more the sentiments of my sticker.
And my conviction about monarchism.
From Marx to Bernanke October 11, 2008
Posted by docgrubb in economy.4 comments
Regarding America’s fate, perhaps Karl Marx was prescient. But if so, it was for the wrong reasons. He and his increasingly vile political progeny predicted that the capitalist West would destroy itself from within, without any need of external enemies. And we may be witnessing such a self-destruction in the current economic meltdown. Yet in all the brouhaha over this cataclysm, very few commentators (blogosphere excepted) discern its true origin, or place its blame squarely where it belongs.
So let me hasten to add that this blame certainly does not rest upon any intrinsic shortcomings of capitalism. In that sense Marx was wrong, for capitalism – its contractual transfers big and small, its supply and demand rule, its consistency with human nature, the logic of barter – will never and can never perish from this earth, notwithstanding all efforts by past or future Stalin’s and Mao’s. As a pure system, nothing is as fair, as stable, as efficient, as moral, as uplifting, or as natural to our natures as is capitalism. Yet we are witnessing the ruination of the West, and so we must comprehend how this ruination has been wrought by a very distorted form of capitalism, an impostor, and not by the beautiful lady herself. And, like ne’er-do-wells impersonating doctors, so this 80 year old impostor is inflicting great harm. As will be apparent, we have not had real capitalism since Calvin Coolidge. No doubt Greenspan, Bernanke, and Paulson all claim to be capitalists. But remember the following. In explaining disappointments with the Church, many have claimed that the problem with Christianity is indeed Christians. And Mencken said that “the trouble with communism is the communists”. Perhaps Americans are presently re-learning that the problem with capitalism is the capitalists. Or those who fancy themselves such.
On Tuesday of this week, an “artist” distributed 10,000 fake “Zero Dollars” in front of Wall Street in protest of failed economic policies. What she may not realize is that the dollar’s value has theoretically been zero for generations. Roosevelt revoked the domestic gold-standard in the early ’30’s. Not quite 40 years later, Nixon halted the international convertibility of our currency. Nowhere on our modern bills do the words “gold’, “silver”, or “pay to the bearer on demand” appear. So the continued acceptance of these notes in payment, i.e. their whole worth, is based solely on trust. But that trust has been abused sorely at the hands of financiers and central bankers. And, yes, it has been abused unwittingly by nigh on two generations of American consumers.
Most past economists and all honest present economists have agreed that a metal-backed, convertible currency is the only sure way to protect the savings of workers or ‘the little guy’ from the malfeasance of government manipulation of fiat currencies. And as in all such cases, our government has been unable to resist the temptation. (The most excellent explanation for what has happened was delivered by Rep. Ron Paul before Congress on Sept. 5, 2003: “Paper Money and Tyranny” [available at www.house.gov/paul - click on 'Speeches and Statements', then scroll down to date]. This should be required reading for all voters.) A dollar in 1999 had the purchasing power which just six cents had in 1910. Our dollar of 2008 even less. To most adults, this is just an unquestioned piece of cultural lore. But it did not have to be thus. Prices under ancient Rome remained stable for three centuries until debasement (not fiat paper) brought about inflation.
Keep in mind, however, that our government has gone far beyond mere slight-of-hand taxation (via inflating a fiat currency) of its own citizens. It has extended the ploy to the entire world with the help of dollar hegemony. (Again, others have elucidated this subject well, so in the interest of brevity, I refer readers to their search engines.) The world has, up to now, accepted our zero dollars either out of coercion or lack of alternatives, but those days are closing fast. And what we have are trillions of dollars in foreign hands with impending massive inflation as those dollars are dumped in a global collapse of confidence.
But we find ourselves here not solely because of bad governance. Over the past three decades we American consumers have learned only too well from our government tutor. Lacking the natural check on spending imposed by the need to redeem our currency to foreign creditors, we soon developed escalating trade imbalances. As long as they kept accepting our paper, we kept buying their goods and thereby mindlessly exporting our jobs. Soon they were loaning us the very money we used to buy from them. We developed a culture of debt, allowing us to live far beyond our means. Collectively, we were the heedless teenager in possession of a Mastercard, spending her dad into bankruptcy while his guard was down. In contrast, trade and public spending under a gold standard is more akin to the original American Express card – obligations must be paid off periodically (or even in advance). One cannot accumulate gargantuan debt. The teenager could still cause problems for dad, but she’s unlikely to bankrupt him.
The foregoing process is entirely analogous to 16th century Spain. The unearned riches imported from the coffers of New World civilizations allowed Spain to spend and keep spending, importing manufactured goods and material from neighboring Europe instead of developing their own commercial and industrial base at home. Consequently, Spain missed out on the Industrial Revolution, and remained an economic backwater until quite recently. Unearned wealth always harms and usually corrupts, both individuals (e.g. lottery winners) as well as nation-states. The fiat US dollar, seemingly inexhaustible since the abandonment of Bretton Woods, has served that same role of false wealth for our postmodern era. And this American public, deceived by politicians, uninformed by a media shirking its investigative mandate, and untaught by an academia more content to rewrite history than to teach it, has blithely participated in this gluttonous financial chicanery.
Yes, the proximate cause (trigger, really) of this unfolding meltdown is the mortgage crisis. And this we have courtesy of Barney Frank, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Obama’s ACORN, and their collective PC folly that home ownership is a right and not something to be earned. But the foundational cause is that ancient, yet ever-ascendant humanism which holds that Man knows better than God: “This fruit doesn’t look dangerous; License, not submission, brings fulfillment; Government, not Providence, can be our safety net; Paper, not Nature’s gold, will be our money”, (and will conveniently enrich those who control it). The list is endless.
Now comes the day of reckoning. The piper waits, but we’re unable to pay. The house of cards has fallen. We’ve been dancing with a harlot dressed like a bride, but now the veil is lifted. Pick whatever metaphor you please – almost all of them apply. Ron Paul was a lone voice crying in the wilderness. No one listened, and now it is too late. Even if he were elected Chief Executive, and Congress did everything he directed, it would not remedy our situation. (Perhaps our suffering would be ameliorated.) We need to bite the bullet and take our hits. The $700 billion bailout is more of the same money-is-cheap, something-for-nothing mindset that got us into this jam. It is the use of horrible monetary policy to fix the results of horrible monetary policy. Our misguided leaders vainly hope to rescue the economy with such tactics, much as the bygone colonial doctor “treated” his anemic patient using blood-letting. Rather than exacerbate the harm, they should confess their folly, resign, and go home. The rest of us should fast and pray.
Looking for silver linings… September 16, 2008
Posted by docgrubb in economics.add a comment
Well, what an appropriate day to start this post. What I and oodles of real bloggers have written about, economic melt-down, seems to have bubbled over this Black Monday. No doubt the foregoing fall in commodities and rally of the dollar had been manipulated by the hidden powers-that-be. But you can only manipulate a system so many times and so many ways. When your restructurings, hedges, default swaps, leveraging, derivatives, creative debt collateralization, and currency manipulations are all pushed to exhaustion, the dishonest charade has to crumble. God will not be mocked, and Nature, like even Jurassic Park teaches, cannot be cheated. So the rally had to be temporary. The central bankers have their hidden Aces and one-eyed Jacks, but they are not omnipotent.
But the coming collapse, no matter how misery-inducing, cannot be a thoroughly or an utterly negative development. This author/philosoblogger, http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/ , has at times emphasized observing or taking advantage of the positives in economic downturns or worse. So I’ve thought, why not make a list of what would be the positive outcomes of economic ruin? I have many ideas, but I’ll just start the list, and invite any reader to add to it via the comments. Happy thinking…it’s free, afterall.
Number 1. Global warming will become a moot point as fossil fuel prices (or non-distribution) put them out of reach of the average Joe.
2. Farmland will stop being gobbled up by subdivision development.
3. If malnutrition can be avoided, then public health might actually improve as folks take to their bicycles. Obesity disappears.
4. The production of garbage will plummet.
5. Teenagers will learn that there is a real world out there, not just the virtual. Indeed, that the former is dominant (whad’ya know?). They will learn skills beyond text-messaging.
6. The great Insecurity will help us (including me) rediscover prayer.
7.
Dollar Hegemony: the bigger they come, the harder they fall May 14, 2008
Posted by docgrubb in economics, politics.1 comment so far
(This is the unabridged version of my Cincinnati Enquirer submission. If you read it there, skip this!)
Recently, at the end of a banking transaction, I asked the young man if he would check my account and see if my “inflation-stimulus check” had been deposited yet. (I need new eye-glasses.) He didn’t seem to get the joke, and, given his age, I guess that’s excusable, since economics wasn’t taught even way back when I was a victim of public education, let alone now. But what’s not excusable is for our national leaders, our highest elected officials, to be ignorant of basic economics.
I’ve watched the reaction of pundits to the stimulus bill since debate and implementation. And I haven’t heard any of them mention the closest correlative to this legislation. It was in 1972. McGovern was running against Nixon, and one of the campaign proposals he floated was to give every American citizen two thousand dollars. The details are sparse, as I was eleven years old at the time. But America was smarter then, even eleven year-olds, and the plan was derided as economically unsound, as inflation would be the inevitable outcome. And at least enough inflation to totally negate any personal budgetary gain. Everyone but McGovern could figure that one out.
But that was then. Now, in our greed, no one wants to ask any questions, even easy ones. And the politicians don’t ask, they just want us to believe they’re actually doing something, a senatorial, fasces-adorned form of shuffling-the-papers-when-the-boss-walks-by. So I’ll ask, and show what fools they take us to be. If giving every taxpayer (and many non-payers) $600 is good for the economy, why not make it six thousand? Or, better yet, six million? Well, you know the answer, and I bet even McGovern has an inkling by now.
Truth be told, neither they nor we are complete fools. (One, Ron Paul, even faces reality.) Some pols must know that, in the end, after the printing presses and inflation, these checks are just a borrowing of a little future prosperity, from ourselves or our children, to enjoy now. And this is the m. o. of modern America anyway. But if not fools, then they are connivers, for in passing a bill they know will accomplish nothing, they hope to distract us, at least till after the election, from the calamity awaiting our economy: the collapse of the policy of dollar hegemony. (Yes, you can google it: dollar hegemony. Just sit down before you start to read.) Because this disastrous policy allowed it, foreign powers now hold over 8 trillion in U.S. dollars, accumulated courtesy of our self-indulgence manifested in burgeoning trade deficits and borrowing to finance our federal debt. Dollar hegemony has been the dam holding back the liquidation or dumping of all these dollars onto the market ( in exchange for something real), but cracks, major cracks, are in the dam. And when the leaking becomes a flood, hyperinflation of an Argentine or Weimar magnitude will predictably ensue. However, I do concede that by that time the inflation caused by a ‘mere’ $100 billion diversion will just be an eddy in the tsunami sweeping away the American Dream.
490, and Beyond April 10, 2008
Posted by docgrubb in christianity, religion.add a comment
Our pastor is working his way through Mark’s gospel on Sunday mornings. This past Lord’s Day homily was on chapter 11, verse 25: “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” A hard saying that – that the unforgiving risk being unforgiven. But this post will not try to repeat his excellent message. This post is not even about the subject of forgiveness directly. A later one might be, but not this one.
One of the pastor’s subsequent citations was Matthew 18:22. I’ll start with v. 21: “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’
22 Jesus answered, ‘ I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.’ “ Then Christ goes on to relate the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. Now, I shall not attempt to exegete these verses. But I will share what, later on, struck me most about this exchange between Peter and Christ. Quite simply, it was this: verse 22 might well be the shortest argument available that Christ was indeed who He claimed to be, the Son of God. Who else could dream up such an outlandish maxim? A wholly non-human concept, he commands the offended to forgive repeatedly, even, apparently, for the same recurring offense. And He doesn’t mean up to 490 times, but beyond. For, as commentators note, these numbers signify completeness multiplied, or times without number. This is consistent only with a God-like characteristic or attribute, not a human inclination. If the disciples or apostles or their cohorts were conspiring to invent a religion, or to “make all this up”, they would never in a thousand years come up with something so revolutionary or unimaginable as this: to forgive your oppressor with….abandon.
Consider Matthew, the author, or rather reporter, of these verses. He was a tax collector for the occupying Roman authorities. Integrity-wise, he was, before he met Jesus, the modern equivalent of the used-car salesman. Would he have come up with this maxim, and offered it to his co-conspirators? If you believe that, or believe it possible of any of his fellows – fishermen, tent-makers, and the like – then you are more credulous by far than any Christian who believes in miracles, resurrection, and heaven. For it is far simpler to believe that a God who makes quasars and supernovae can also handle loaves and fishes than it is to believe that a motley band of ancient mideastern peasants so aptly (yet fictitiously) painted the personality of the Divine.
Let me further illustrate by offering a comparision. I am no expert on the Koran. But I found this excerpt today, and I’ll mainly let it speak for itself. Referring to those who would slander even charitable believers: 009.080 ”Whether thou ask for their forgiveness, or not, (their sin is unforgivable): if thou ask seventy times for their forgiveness, God will not forgive them: because they have rejected God and His Apostle: and God guideth not those who are perversely rebellious.” The way I read this is, even if you ask Allah seventy times to forgive those who have slandered righteous men, he will not. Here the human appears to be more merciful than Deity, interceding for slanderers, but being rebuffed. This is totally opposite the Biblical version, where God implores His creation, man, to be as forgiving as He is. The polarity is very striking. “He hid not His face from shame and spitting”. And yet for those mockers: “Father, forgive them…”
The Bad Thief April 1, 2008
Posted by docgrubb in christianity, religion.add a comment
“But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold.”
A couple of weeks ago I headed to church on Palm Sunday in what was the latter stages of one of my spiritual “funks” (possibly my third this year, and I don’t call them that inwardly – I don’t know that I call them anything). These funks are, quite frankly, the result of self-pity, that old sin which any evangelist worth his salt will tell you is straight from Hell. I can be cruising or even climbing in my faith, when, out of the blue or as a result of a disheartening conflict or setback, I begin, like Eve, to lend an ear to the old archliar, rehashing all the apparent injustices surrounding me or the (to my mind) unnecessary trials God has sent my way, and before long he has me bitter enough to shake all confidence in God, and forthwith I give God the cold-shoulder. During the descent into a funk, before ‘communication is broken off’, I may ask the Truth why He needs to make every area of my life – relationships, marriage, finances, health – into a trial. Can’t one or two accomplish His goals? “All day long I have been plagued.” Or, temporally, why must trials overlap one another – can’t a break be on the agenda now and then? “I have been punished every morning.” Or, at my worst and most unreasonable, why trials at all – do earthly fathers engineer tests for our children?
Then come the deeper stages. “When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.” Reader, have you ‘been there; done that’ ?
Then, invariably, Someone shows up: Love-That-Will-Not-Let-Me-Go. That Palm Sunday morning I listened with slowly thawing heart. The pastor reviewed how those fickle Passover crowds shouted ‘Hosanna’, anticipating a military solution to Roman oppression. Their own sin and its remedy were not on their radar screen. And likely neither was the sobering concept that the occupation itself was the consequence of their fathers’ sins, as Assyria and Babylon were in times past. But like all sons of Adam, these crowds wanted relief from the consequences without dealing with the root cause. They and we may not only be complacent about our sin, but may even cherish it. We certainly don’t want to talk about it, and spare us any spiritual mirrors that might reveal our true condition. We want rescued, but we don’t want to change. So when these crowds saw the Nazarene in chains, and no one even coming to his defense, their worldly, selfish hopes were dashed, and they turned on him en masse. When He did not do what they expected, they abandoned Him.
The pastor then explained that we do the same thing. And here I paraphrase him: we expect God to fix this or that – the troubled marriage, the ruined finances, the broken health – and when He doesn’t, we lose heart at best, or grow bitter at worst. We err because we lose perspective, that is, the fact that He has already done the most gracious thing possible for us – the rescue of our souls from the eternal consequences of our law-breaking and rebellion. As the hymnist wrote, “That Christ has regarded my helpless estate, And hath shed His own blood for my soul.”
When the pastor spoke his three examples – marriage, finances, health – it was as if he, or rather God, were speaking to me personally. “Yes, I’m talking to you.” “Shannon, quit being an ingrate.” “Shannon, don’t be like the Jerusalem crowds.” Previously, “when I tried to understand all this”, these trials, injustices, all consequences of the Fall, “it was oppressive to me.” Until LTWNLMG shows up again. “Till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I under- stood… You guide me with Your counsel… …it is good to be near God.” Christ came to save us from our real peril: eternal separation from our own Creator. Everything else is inconsequential, or even a part of the saving and refining: “yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation.” Even my comfort or that modern god ‘happiness’.
But even as the shouts arose favoring Barrabas, Christ was not finished with being accused of failure, He was hardly finished with humiliation. Nails and thorns were not the final pains, but human words. In the throes of bearing the consequences of the Fall to the full, in the midst of repairing the ruins, in reconciling creation to God as the real Second Adam, Christ did not satisfy the demands of the bad thief: “Save yourself and us! “ The bad thief was unrepentant for his sins. But his error went beyond that. It may have superseded unbelief itself. For even if his mocks had a kernel of belief within them, he would not accept a God who would not fix the here and now, the immediate peril. “If you are God, do what I say. Otherwise, you ain’t God, and I won’t believe in you.”
We are all ‘bad thiefs’ from time to time. Our hope comes in listening to the rebukes of our good thieves (in my case the pastor) and in grasping the grace from LTWNLMG when He sends it our way.
(All scripture quotes from Psalm 73)
Several days old, a tardy tribute to WFBjr., and just for fun March 20, 2008
Posted by docgrubb in politics.add a comment
OK, so I changed my mind. Someone’s… March 15, 2008
Posted by docgrubb in economics.1 comment so far
…still reading this. (Probably wordpressers pushing the “go to random blog” button.) Anyhows…
Re: prior post, “Conspiracy…”, looks more and more mainstream. Gold has broken $1000 (actually gold has met the dollar on its way down). See this article from the NY Sun (looks like even the Fed is resorting to ‘creative’ collateral, just like the mortgage companies were doing with high risk clients):
http://www.nysun.com/article/72928
Do I advise you credit-card-maxed-out, mortgage and tuition-paying blokes to buy gold? Actually, no. I think the gov’t will soon have no option but to pull another Roosevelt on us, and outlaw private gold – they’ll recall it all in order to scramble up some reserves, then create a totally new dollar and demonetize the old dollar – effectively, as a nation, pulling a Chapter 11 on the rest of the world, to sneak out from under the multi-trillion debt we owe them. So…gold is a gamble, not because the barbarous relic will ever be valueless (like I’ve told my wife, the only way that can happen is if the Unified Field Theory gets solved. Only then might real alchemy become a possibility, and lead turned into gold. But by then economics as we know it wouldn’t matter anymore. If quantum and relativity theory led to Hiroshima, can you imagine where a UFT would lead? But I think we’re safe – I can’t imagine any new Einsteins out there), but because our gov’t is not beneath pulling a Roosevelt again – heck, the precedent’s been set already, and by such a darling man.
So you’ll have to think of some other commodity that might resist inflation. Just don’t hang onto your greenbacks – they make lousy tissues, and don’t even burn very well. I guess if washed repeatedly until soft, they might be able to be pieced into a quilt or something. And don’t forget the firearms.
no more posts. if you want conversation, i’m usually game for a pint. March 8, 2008
Posted by docgrubb in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
