Guest AssMaster Posted June 12, 2003 Report Posted June 12, 2003 Do you subscribe to the theory that there will need to be some "cover event" for the extinction of the financial and banking system of the US so that the real owners of the world will not be blamed and the fractional reserve banking system can be restarted again without anyone being the wiser? Some posit that the cover event would be a world war or even some terrorist event on the main financial centers in New York - vaporizing everyone's paper assets. Any thoughts?
mjkst27 Posted June 12, 2003 Report Posted June 12, 2003 Do you subscribe to the theory that there will need to be some "cover event" for the extinction of the financial and banking system of the US so that the real owners of the world will not be blamed and the fractional reserve banking system can be restarted again without anyone being the wiser? Some posit that the cover event would be a world war or even some terrorist event on the main financial centers in New York - vaporizing everyone's paper assets. Any thoughts? Logically there would have to be such an event. But what's it gonna take now? Enron, WorldCom, LTCM, 911 all could have potentially been the trigger, but Greeny bailed em all out. The markets have learned that these events are associated with market bottoms. I don't want to imagine what sort of event it would take to convince Greens to let it go.
Guest Posted June 13, 2003 Report Posted June 13, 2003 Another possibility may be that those in power have understood that a forthcoming financial meltdown has been in the works for quite awhile, but rather than being localized in one or two smaller countries (which can be dealt with) - this time, the risk involves most if not all of the major financial centers of the world combined. A financial catastrophe of this scale along with the resultant widespread public unrest could seriously threaten even their lofty positions of power and control. My guess is that the big boyz fear that the game may have progressed beyond their control and are doing everything they can to keep the financial boat floating, because to do otherwise would ensure their own downfall along with everything else. I imagine the image of potentially hundreds of millions of disenfranchised modern day Madame DeFarges keeps them all hard at work pulling the financial oars and bailing as fast as they can in an effort to postpone - The End.
Yoshaviah Posted June 15, 2003 Report Posted June 15, 2003 Do you subscribe to the theory that there will need to be some "cover event" for the extinction of the financial and banking system of the US so that the real owners of the world will not be blamed and the fractional reserve banking system can be restarted again without anyone being the wiser? Some posit that the cover event would be a world war or even some terrorist event on the main financial centers in New York - vaporizing everyone's paper assets. Any thoughts? North Korea is a hot spot right now. If the US takes out NK's reactor like Israel took out Iran's there will be a reaction for sure. All that radioactive material floating over the island of Japan is certain to raise a few eyebrows. In order to justify such an attack it might be necessary for a terrorist group to get hold of a nuclear device that could be traced to NK and then get caught with it coming into the US. All this could be arranged without too much trouble. Then again they just might set one off anyway, or maybe two - the small one from the CIA, and the real big one they buy on the black market.
Yoshaviah Posted June 16, 2003 Report Posted June 16, 2003 Ah ha! PAPER: N. Korea exports missiles to Iran by air SUN Jun 15 2003 23:51:37 ET SEOUL, June 16 (Kyodo) _ North Korea transported containers believed to be carrying missiles to Iran by air six times over about two months from April, a Seoul daily reported Monday. The JoonAng Ilbo quoted South Korean and U.S. intelligence sources as saying U.S. intelligence satellite data indicate an Iranian Il-76 transport plane made direct flights with the containers from Pyongyang's Sunan airport to Iran six times from April to June 10. After analyzing information obtained through various channels, South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities tentatively concluded that disassembled warheads and Rodong missiles -- the same type sold to Pakistan in 1998 -- were inside the containers, the paper said. They believe North Korea has changed the way it exports missiles after a North Korean vessel carrying missiles was seized on its way to Yemen last December, it said.
3Martinis Posted June 25, 2003 Report Posted June 25, 2003 http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/b...n/2003/0623.htm In the 3rd century A.D., the excesses of the Roman court, including the military adventures abroad (sound familiar?), could only be paid for by inflating the money supply through coin debasement. Taxation could not do the job alone. The most common coin was the ?Antoninianus?, which, when it first came into circulation in 215 A.D. represented one day?s pay for a Roman soldier. Within 50 years, successive usurpers to the title of Emperor had reduced the silver content of the Antoninianus from its original pure silver content, to ?billion?, by which time the coin only bought a loaf of bread. Billion is the term used for copper which contains only about 5% silver. In order to give the illusion that the money was still ?good?, the mint masters hit upon a clever idea used by silversmiths: the billion coins were heated in a furnace to oxidize the copper component on the surface of the coins. This copper oxide was then stripped away in an acid bath. After a few rounds of heating and pickling in acid the silver would be brought to the surface of the coin in a thin rind, and give the coin a brilliant silvery appearance. No slouches these Romans! After a year of wear the thin rind would be worn away as it was from this coin (left). Near the end of the 3rd century some regional mints were coining over a million Antoninianus a year. They had to. Merchants had wised up to the fact the money was virtually worthless and so prices were skyrocketing. Huge amounts of coins needed to be minted to keep up with the demand by the populace. If the cost of bread went from say 1 Antoninianus to 100, it?s obvious that more coins were needed to buy out the bakery by lunchtime. Eventually, even the pretence of a silver content was dropped and the Antoninianus was issued in bronze. Prices of bread and wine soon went beyond the reach of the average citizen. Draconian wage and price controls were introduced, but it only resulted in driving the economy underground where primitive barter started to take over. The situation got so bad that Romans talked about letting the Goths invade ? at least their money was good! The runaway inflation was only stopped when the Antoninianus was finally discontinued by Diocletian, and the money reformed in 294 A.D. The debasing of money is always a sign of a government in trouble. But with the total abandonment of precious metals for a wholly fiat currency ? that is, one that is in no way tied in value to or redeemable in precious metal ? all fiscal restraint goes out the window and governments are free to inflate the currency at will. Inflation remains the most insidious of taxes ? many people don?t realize that commodities are not really increasing in price; rather, the purchasing power of their currency is dropping. I swear ta God sometimes I feel like the loneliest guy in the world. Absolutly nobody, not a soul, that I personally know (beyond the confines of cyber space that is) has even the first idea about how money/debt are created and why. Hyper's end game will be the equivalent of an invisible asteroid to them. I've tried to explain the fiat basics before, but the glazed look would put a fresh Krispy Kreme donut to shame, so why bother anymore. I'll email the odd article or essay, but I doubt anybody reads them. I'm not talking about stuff like Nolands 'Where We Are' article, just simple basic stuff on money creation or histories of money debasement/collapse. Nobody seems to have even a slight bit of curiosity. Just once...ONCE... I'd love to hear somebody say "tell me more". My wife gets it enough that I can do things with our finances that don't seem logical when everybody else is doing something completely different, and she doesn't ask why we aren't doing what X and Y down the street are doing. She understands what can (probably will) happen and why, but doesn't necessarily share my zeal for tracking developments. There's a plan and defensive measures for all the steps down the ladder from recession to depression to all out collapse. Who the hell knows what's coming, we're prepared for the worst, yet if it holds together somewhere along the way we'll stay at that rung on the ladder until some form of all clear is evident, or further motion is required. Theoretically anyway. Maybe the bottom of my ladder is a pipedream paradise compared to what actually happens. I don't know. Hell, maybe we're all totally screwed. I'll be standing in a shop or on a busy street and it will just hit me how useless it all seems. I'll be suddenly sad..... deep sad. How many people could be crushed unawares.... I want to pull people aside and ask if they know how money works, how much debt do they have on cards, how many car loans do you have ...you have to start paying that down and get rid of it, get yourself out of debt, how many kids do you have, how old are they, what would happen to your finances if interest rates rose, if your house value dropped, if you lost your job, how much do you have in reserve, in what form, are you still waiting for the market to make your money back, have you been holding P/E 50 stocks since the late 90's, exactly who do you expect to sell that thing to at a profit when you you and everybody else is selling in the retirement wave, how long could you last in your house and feed your kids if you lost your income stream, do you understand how credit works, do you understand why it's so easy to get money, do you know why it takes two people working to make ends meet, do you know what inflation is ........... But of course I can't do that. Will I end up on street corners with a long beard and 'end is nigh' placards ? No, I've got a little girl to protect and enough sanity to know the end may or may not be nigh, but something similair in spirit is in the pipeline and it's causes and effects have been documented and repeated throughout history. It must be a human nature thing. Logically we should learn from the mistakes and avoid them in the future. The human capacity to glaze over like the proverbial donut at the first sign of increasing comfort with less effort must be genetically ingrained. I completely understand how inevitable this is. After all, it has never failed to not fail. Debasement/Inflation is rampant, and the fallacy and history of the process has been hijacked from the public consciousness. Debasing of the currency is inflation; Inflation is not rising prices. Inflation has been transmogrified from an undesirable trend into a natural and expected part of monetary policy and life in general. Prices do not rise, money loses value. A house costs 10 times what it did in 1970 because the currency has lost 90% of its value, not because the price went up. The more they create and add, the further they debase. Add in fractional reserve banking and the fact that it is debt based with interest attached, and there is your tried and true recipe for a Ponzi scheme financial catastrophe on a gargantuan scale. And every single freakin government on the planet is participating. Ska Rood. I'm alone at work with this, alone amongst freinds and family, alone in an elevator, alone in a football stadium (unless a stoolie is hidden there somewhere). Sites like Capital Stool are the only pipeline to common sense to be found in what has truly become bizarro world. The level of discourse, theory, information sharing and debate is extraordinary here. Sometimes I just wish I could put my feet up by the fire at the end of the day, crack a bottle of fine single malt, have drink or two and yammer with somebody about economic developments and actually have them understand what the &%&$* we're both talking about. I'm alone. Anybody else feel like the only cookie in a bag of crackers sometimes ? What a frickin world.............. Stool Roolz.
Butterfield 8 Posted June 25, 2003 Report Posted June 25, 2003 Yes, yes and yes. I saved your letter to read to my family, who regard me, indulgently, as a lunatic.
mjkst27 Posted June 25, 2003 Report Posted June 25, 2003 Anybody else feel like the only cookie in a bag of crackers sometimes ? 3M - yup! What I really hate are those "tweeners" who sort of have an aptitude for (conventional) economics and finance. These are the people who confuse "bull vs. bear" with "optimist vs. pessimist". Ugh! They sneer "why are you so pessimistic?" and then strut away convinced I am afflicted with early-onset mental problems. Nice post! 27
mjkst27 Posted June 25, 2003 Report Posted June 25, 2003 Sheep are smarter...I'm surrounded by robots. I found a site based in Canada and posted some stuff and the resident economic expert basicly said I made it all up... I'm a commie, a tinfoil hatter... or What does fractional reserve banking have to do with anything?
Guest yobob1 Posted June 25, 2003 Report Posted June 25, 2003 Anybody else feel like the only cookie in a bag of crackers sometimes ? All the time. Been in the cracker box for about 4 years now. I'm still fresh in my cellophane wrapper, but the crackers are getting real stale. Spoke to a successful home builder, which is a lot like a successful dot.com investor in 1999 - unless he screws the doors shut he can't miss. He doesn't have a clue that outside the residential construction sphere that shit if falling apart. Nothing but rainbows and puppy dogs as far as the eye can see for him. On the other hand my real estate contact noted yesterday that there were 5 houses for every buyer. Our date with destiny is months away now. Feverishly working on making a better tinfoil hat.
odyssey-x Posted June 25, 2003 Report Posted June 25, 2003 OK HyperTiger buddy I am buying your whole end of the fiat money system thing but what IS the alternative. If we go gold backed we'll still have booms and busts just like we had in the 1800s. Going back to my Fish and Wheat economy example Now Joe eats 10 fish only and sells the remaining 10 fish split between Sally for .2637 gold pieces (Her total money she'll get back from Mark / 12) and to Mark for .1699 Gold Pieces (His income from his spread /12 ) which makes Joe .2637+.01415= .2779 gold pieces which is enough to pay his debt and eat. At the end of the year Sally gets her $3.1648 back from mark and asset wise winds up flat for the year but with a helluva lot more fish and a gold horde that is worth a lot more in terms of fish than it was at the beginning of the year. I was thinking that the way we could avoid any money creation would be that the interest that was paid to the banker and the principal paid back to the saver was in fact commodity money. So the .2637 and .01415 gold pieces paid back to Sally and Mark were instead certificates for .2637 gold pieces worth of Fish or .01415 gold pieces worth of fish. It would actually be a certain weight or measure of fish at the current market price when the loan was made. Now if Sally and Mark didn't want to take care of the marketing they could just tell Joe to give them the first .2637 and .01415 gold pieces revenue from any fish he sells to whomever. Otherwise they would be stuck with the fish tickets and would have to barter them or sell them to a commodities market. Voilla. No new money creation and this way lending would only go into creating greater supply of demanded goods. The problems only arrize when you need to get back gold on an investment of gold. You do not lend gold and plant it and it grows more gold. You lend gold and people use it to support consumption while they are constructing capital which returns other things like fish. Ok so what do we all think? This concept actually has a LITTLE in common with Islamic banking which is kind of scary because Islamic banking has never done Islamic countries any good. Of course that could be the baby in the bath water of Islamic economics. Interestingly enough our fractional reserve system discriminates against the risk averse by destroying non-invested money via inflation and helping those who go into debt by continuously lowering their interest rates.
tpark Posted June 25, 2003 Report Posted June 25, 2003 Where I am in Calgary it is 100% full tilt economic boom times... In 98 I said enough to servicing debt and in the process of convincing my wife that the jig is up wipe your mind clean of the silly dreams or we are doomed...She didn't believe me so I used unconventional measures to speed up time and show her what the end would look like...I got out of jail 24 hours later... But It worked and it's taken since then to deprogram her...I still don't talk much about the future in detail...I just give her updates... I would have thought that Calgarians would have been keenly aware of the boom/bust cycle. At one time you could see pickup trucks roaming around with bumper stickers stating "Please God, let the boom come again, and I promise I won't piss it away this time". As far as friends and family go, they are aware of my bearish bent, and they appear to humor me I don't know if they really share my bearish ideas though. Family members are debt free, except for me - I still have the house to pay off Where do you go to buy your silver bars? Do you get them from some place like Kitco, or do you get them at the securities window at the downtown Scotiabank? Also, who do you use for forex when buying?
Butterfield 8 Posted June 25, 2003 Report Posted June 25, 2003 Hyper - European banks ( some at least ) have higher reserves and better government backed deposit insurance , although all less than the US 100k- most countries covering 30 to 50k per depositor. You are assuming this will be global. But I can tell you that the wealthiest one per cent of Americans keep their spare millions in Switzerland, and with one phone call or an encrypted email can move into gold and silver. What I am saying is that the so-called smart money foresees what you foresee, and they have prepared for it. No doubt Greenspan is one of their best customers.
Butterfield 8 Posted June 26, 2003 Report Posted June 26, 2003 right. okay. so does it go like this? : all banks close. all people in industrialized countries are unemployed because there is no way to pay them, since all banks have closed. all commerce stops. having cash would not help because there would be no way to spend it on necessary items . Reasonable people in organized communities revert to a barter system. Farmers barter produce for batteries. No mortgage payments or car payments are made, since the banks are closed. all savings are wiped out and all debt is wiped out. Or like this? : a slowmotion bleeding where a few banks then a few more and a few more go under from bad loans. Savings are inflated away. Debtors are homeless , crime is uncontrollable and the wealthy who stashed their gold at the Perth mint make out just fine. Sorry to be so thick. Just can't envision it.
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