Long but interesting.

Mr. McDuffee, love to hear your opinion of this:

from http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/

Late last night I came up with my very own conspiracy theory. It seemed
a little odd at the time, but as I’ve continued to think it over, I’ve
not yet been able to poke any significant holes in it. Of course, it is
the kind of thing that an accountant turned science fiction author would
come up with.

Basically, I’m starting to think that certain factions within our
government actively want hyperinflation to occur as a surefire method of
instituting de-facto communism in America…

Crazy, right? I know, you’re thinking that surely Correia has gone off
the deep end and spouting off all sorts of doomsday nonsense, but hear
me out first.

As many of you know, I’m a history geek. Last year I wrote my first
alternative history novel set in 1932. Because I’m a stickler for
authenticity, I did an absurd amount of research. I read every book I
could get my hands on about what is normally called the interwar period.
I mostly concentrated on American history/culture but I also learned a
bit about the Weimar Republic.

The interesting factoids about the Weimar Republic that most of us
remember is that it was the home of hyperinflation (remember the
wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread) and eventually it also
gave us one of history’s greatest scumbags, Hitler. Other than that,
most Americans don’t really know much about the Weimar Republic.

Okay, but where did the hyperinflation come from? I’m going to greatly
simplify this because A. I’m a writer and accountant, not a historian,
go to Wikipedia and B. This is only for a background to draw a
comparison to what we’re doing right now.

The Weimar Republic (If I recall correctly, they actually called
themselves the Deutsch Reich) came about after WWI. The German Empire
had fallen apart, leadership fled, and for the next couple of years
there were several battles fought between different factions of
communists, socialists, and conservatives. (and when I say conservative
it isn’t what it means here and now. I mean conservative back toward the
empire, royalty, and all that entails). These were not polite political
discussions. These were a series of violent mini-revolts where various
cities would go off and declare themselves independent, like the Soviet
State of Munich. Then a bunch of communists and the “Freikorps” would
clash in the streets, then repeat a week later in a different city. It
was bad.

Eventually the Weimar Republic was formed from the different groups, and
immediately it had a whole new set of problems. The Germans signed the
treaty of Versailles, they gave up a bunch of territory, and even worse,
then took on a massive war debt and an agreement to basically pay the
allies for the biggest war in history.

So what does a government, which is already sitting on a very damaged
economy, do in order to pay this debt? They printed more money. Sounding
familiar yet?

It got worse. As the Weimar printed more money, their government got
more bloated, and ate up even more of their resources. (at one point a
chancellor laid off several hundred thousand government employees to try
and make ends meet). As their money inflated and became more useless,
France got tired of not getting paid, and being jerks, invaded and took
over the Ruhr, which was one of the most productive regions in Germany.
This caused a drop in production, and then everybody else went on strike.

Meanwhile, the money kept inflating to levels that people couldn’t even
understand. Back during the war, the Mark was something like 4 to 1
against the dollar. By the time they hit hyperinflation, they’d gone to
millions to 1, and by the end, it was literally trillions to a single
dollar. They would print new bills, and a few days later all they were
good for was note paper. This is where the stories about the wheelbarrow
full of money for bread comes from. To put this in perspective, this
would be like you filling the trunk of your car with twenty dollar bills
and then using all those trash bags full of money to buy some shoelaces
and a tube of toothpaste.

So basically Germany was totally screwed.

So how did they get out of it? Contrary to what most Americans think, it
wasn’t Hitler that came along and fixed Germany’s economic problems and
turned them into an industrial powerhouse war machine through the sheer
power of him being a complete ass. There was actually a time period in
the thirties that the Weimer knew as the Golden Years, because they’d
finally gotten much of their economy back under control.

They rebooted their currency. If I recall correctly, their new currency
was called the Rentenmark. They introduced the Rentenmark, and you could
trade in your trillions of crappy marks for one of them. It went back to
4-1 with the dollar. Now here’s the thing. You can’t just change the
name and have new currency. Your currency has to actually be based on
something. (kind of like how the dollar is based on good feelings and
rainbows).

They based it on land. It was the one asset that the government could go
and take over to use as a base asset, and land is always valuable
because they aren’t making any more of it. Congratulations land owners,
all your dirt belongs to us, but people were so desperate (and tired of
carrying buckets of silly money around) that it didn’t matter. They were
desperate, and desperate times called for desperate (and sometimes
stupid) measures. Using the new asset-backed Rentenmarks, Germany was
able to start paying their debts again and get on with a semblance of
normalcy, well at least until they elected a bunch of lunatics in snazzy
uniforms.

So why this long story? Because it is to compare with what we’re doing
ourselves. Right now the United States is on the path to hyperinflation.
CBO is predicting that by 2020, our debt will be 90% of our GDP. (EDIT:
As was pointed out in the comments, my information there was wrong.
We’ll hit 90% way way earlier than that, so it is even worse) Think
about that for a second. That would be like if you had a $50,000 a year
job, but you owed vicious thumb-breaking loan sharks $45,000 that was
still collecting interest. Our entitlements are bankrupting us. Even
before Health Control (because if you believe the government is going to
spend a trillion bucks and cut the deficit, you must sleep in a helmet)
we’re only a few years from all our tax dollars only being able to pay
for Medicare, Social Security, and interest on our debt. That’s it.

Now, what happens when you as an individual can’t pay your debts or pay
your bills on time? Your credit rating goes down. And when your credit
rating goes down, you can no longer get that low interest
Visa-Black-Platinum-Playboy card (with Sky Miles!) you can now only get
the Soup-Kitchen-Discover card at 280% interest. Many people don’t
realize it, but governments have credit ratings too. Right now we’ve got
a great one, based on ‘because we’re so awesome’. But we’re getting
really close to losing our good credit rating, (because awesome will
only get you so far before you actually have to pay the bills) when that
happens, all of those already really bad estimates about our future debt
are going to get far worse. How much worse? Have you ever played Fallout
3 on the Xbox? Kind of like that.

So while we’re on our way to Thunder Dome, the government is printing
dollars like crazy, faster than ever before, with no signs of letting
up. Inflation is coming. When the credit rating tanks and the
entitlements get worse (or the oil currency switches to something else)
hello, Master Blaster! We’re in deep trouble. We’re looking at
hyperinflation. Dollars worth nothing, burning them to keep warm would
be more efficient, kind of thing.

Yet the government, that surely has some smart people in it, continues
to increase our spending, increase our debt load, and do things that are
the exact opposite of fiscally responsible. It is almost as if they want
the system to collapse…

Then I remember the Weimar Republic. They had hyperinflation. How did
they get out of it? By rebooting the currency. What was the new currency
based on? Land. Land is an asset.

The government is gobbling up land out west like crazy. Every time we
discover a deposit of oil or coal out here, the government immediately
discovers a snail or a flower on it that might be endangered and grabs a
couple hundred thousand more acres. The government is trying to kick
18,000 people out of their homes in Colorado to put in a new “tank range”.

But that wouldn’t be enough. Think beyond land. Think assets.

Fanny May and Freddy Mac now hold something like 50% of the mortgages in
the US. The government has recently either directly taken over, or
regulated the living crap out of our auto industry, insurance industry,
banking and finance industry, and now health care…

The people of the Weimar were so desperate, that they would do anything
to get out of their economic crisis.

Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation here. Let’s say that in a decade
or so, our currency has collapsed. We owe far more than we produce.
Companies are failing. Because all of our tax dollars are used just to
pay for our debt, taxes have to be raised, which causes even more
unemployment and decreased production. Entitlements can’t be met. The
current economic crisis looks awesome in comparison, but there is no
possible way out, because our money is now worthless.

So… Reboot the currency. Make a new RentenDollar.

The media can even point out what a fantastic idea this is because
historically, it has worked before! The politicians will tell us that
this is the only way and we must act quickly! People are desperate and
will be told that “the private system has failed! Only government
intervention can save us now!” (gee, why does that sound soooo familiar?)

Sure, they caused the problem, but that isn’t what most people will
think, but as they’ve shown, they don’t really care what we think
anyway. They will not let a good crisis go to waste. There is only one
teensy downside to this reboot though…

See, the RentenDollar can’t be based on good feelings like the old
dollar, it must be based on ASSETS. And since the capitalist system has
failed, and the government has already got its fingers in all these
various companies, instead of just regulating these companies, why
shouldn’t the government just own them?

All those mortgages? They now belong to the government. Banks? Belong to
the government. Industrial production? Government. Medical. Government.
They’re assets, and they’re necessary to back our new currency.

You don’t like it? People are starving. There are riots in the streets.
Cities are burning. We have to act now! Won’t somebody think of the
children! There’s no time to read this 9,000 page bill! HURRY!

…And just like that, America has become a communist country. State
control and ownership of everything.

So, let’s poke some holes in my late night theory. Please, somebody tell
me how this is impossible. Maybe we’re not heading for an economic
collapse. Maybe we’re not going to have hyperinflation. If anybody has
any evidence of that, I’d love to hear it, because this is kind of
depressing.

Or, the other way that this idea could be silly and implausible is if
there was no possible way that elements within our government would want
to exercise total control over our lives… Yeah… that’s just absurd.

Ask yourself this one question. Do you believe that our current federal
government, if presented with the opportunity, would take over and
control everything? Yes or No.

Help me out here, guys. I’m not getting any warm feelings from this

The article is not interesting and the author is a hack.

There is a possibility that inflation could be used to repudiate the
debt, but in this instance, the author is basing his predictions
purely on his fantasy, and not on any kind of data or evidence.

There is many people with all kinds of opinions, and it is important
to quickly discard uninformed opinions.

i

On 2010-03-30, RBnDFW wrote:
Long but interesting.

Mr. McDuffee, love to hear your opinion of this:

from http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/

Late last night I came up with my very own conspiracy theory. It seemed
a little odd at the time, but as I?ve continued to think it over, I?ve
not yet been able to poke any significant holes in it. Of course, it is
the kind of thing that an accountant turned science fiction author would
come up with.

Basically, I?m starting to think that certain factions within our
government actively want hyperinflation to occur as a surefire method of
instituting de-facto communism in America?

Crazy, right? I know, you?re thinking that surely Correia has gone off
the deep end and spouting off all sorts of doomsday nonsense, but hear
me out first.

As many of you know, I?m a history geek. Last year I wrote my first
alternative history novel set in 1932. Because I?m a stickler for
authenticity, I did an absurd amount of research. I read every book I
could get my hands on about what is normally called the interwar period.
I mostly concentrated on American history/culture but I also learned a
bit about the Weimar Republic.

The interesting factoids about the Weimar Republic that most of us
remember is that it was the home of hyperinflation (remember the
wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread) and eventually it also
gave us one of history?s greatest scumbags, Hitler. Other than that,
most Americans don?t really know much about the Weimar Republic.

Okay, but where did the hyperinflation come from? I?m going to greatly
simplify this because A. I?m a writer and accountant, not a historian,
go to Wikipedia and B. This is only for a background to draw a
comparison to what we?re doing right now.

The Weimar Republic (If I recall correctly, they actually called
themselves the Deutsch Reich) came about after WWI. The German Empire
had fallen apart, leadership fled, and for the next couple of years
there were several battles fought between different factions of
communists, socialists, and conservatives. (and when I say conservative
it isn?t what it means here and now. I mean conservative back toward the
empire, royalty, and all that entails). These were not polite political
discussions. These were a series of violent mini-revolts where various
cities would go off and declare themselves independent, like the Soviet
State of Munich. Then a bunch of communists and the ?Freikorps? would
clash in the streets, then repeat a week later in a different city. It
was bad.

Eventually the Weimar Republic was formed from the different groups, and
immediately it had a whole new set of problems. The Germans signed the
treaty of Versailles, they gave up a bunch of territory, and even worse,
then took on a massive war debt and an agreement to basically pay the
allies for the biggest war in history.

So what does a government, which is already sitting on a very damaged
economy, do in order to pay this debt? They printed more money. Sounding
familiar yet?

It got worse. As the Weimar printed more money, their government got
more bloated, and ate up even more of their resources. (at one point a
chancellor laid off several hundred thousand government employees to try
and make ends meet). As their money inflated and became more useless,
France got tired of not getting paid, and being jerks, invaded and took
over the Ruhr, which was one of the most productive regions in Germany.
This caused a drop in production, and then everybody else went on strike.

Meanwhile, the money kept inflating to levels that people couldn?t even
understand. Back during the war, the Mark was something like 4 to 1
against the dollar. By the time they hit hyperinflation, they?d gone to
millions to 1, and by the end, it was literally trillions to a single
dollar. They would print new bills, and a few days later all they were
good for was note paper. This is where the stories about the wheelbarrow
full of money for bread comes from. To put this in perspective, this
would be like you filling the trunk of your car with twenty dollar bills
and then using all those trash bags full of money to buy some shoelaces
and a tube of toothpaste.

So basically Germany was totally screwed.

So how did they get out of it? Contrary to what most Americans think, it
wasn?t Hitler that came along and fixed Germany?s economic problems and
turned them into an industrial powerhouse war machine through the sheer
power of him being a complete ass. There was actually a time period in
the thirties that the Weimer knew as the Golden Years, because they?d
finally gotten much of their economy back under control.

They rebooted their currency. If I recall correctly, their new currency
was called the Rentenmark. They introduced the Rentenmark, and you could
trade in your trillions of crappy marks for one of them. It went back to
4-1 with the dollar. Now here?s the thing. You can?t just change the
name and have new currency. Your currency has to actually be based on
something. (kind of like how the dollar is based on good feelings and
rainbows).

They based it on land. It was the one asset that the government could go
and take over to use as a base asset, and land is always valuable
because they aren?t making any more of it. Congratulations land owners,
all your dirt belongs to us, but people were so desperate (and tired of
carrying buckets of silly money around) that it didn?t matter. They were
desperate, and desperate times called for desperate (and sometimes
stupid) measures. Using the new asset-backed Rentenmarks, Germany was
able to start paying their debts again and get on with a semblance of
normalcy, well at least until they elected a bunch of lunatics in snazzy
uniforms.

So why this long story? Because it is to compare with what we?re doing
ourselves. Right now the United States is on the path to hyperinflation.
CBO is predicting that by 2020, our debt will be 90% of our GDP. (EDIT:
As was pointed out in the comments, my information there was wrong.
We?ll hit 90% way way earlier than that, so it is even worse) Think
about that for a second. That would be like if you had a $50,000 a year
job, but you owed vicious thumb-breaking loan sharks $45,000 that was
still collecting interest. Our entitlements are bankrupting us. Even
before Health Control (because if you believe the government is going to
spend a trillion bucks and cut the deficit, you must sleep in a helmet)
we?re only a few years from all our tax dollars only being able to pay
for Medicare, Social Security, and interest on our debt. That?s it.

Now, what happens when you as an individual can?t pay your debts or pay
your bills on time? Your credit rating goes down. And when your credit
rating goes down, you can no longer get that low interest
Visa-Black-Platinum-Playboy card (with Sky Miles!) you can now only get
the Soup-Kitchen-Discover card at 280% interest. Many people don?t
realize it, but governments have credit ratings too. Right now we?ve got
a great one, based on ?because we?re so awesome?. But we?re getting
really close to losing our good credit rating, (because awesome will
only get you so far before you actually have to pay the bills) when that
happens, all of those already really bad estimates about our future debt
are going to get far worse. How much worse? Have you ever played Fallout
3 on the Xbox? Kind of like that.

So while we?re on our way to Thunder Dome, the government is printing
dollars like crazy, faster than ever before, with no signs of letting
up. Inflation is coming. When the credit rating tanks and the
entitlements get worse (or the oil currency switches to something else)
hello, Master Blaster! We?re in deep trouble. We?re looking at
hyperinflation. Dollars worth nothing, burning them to keep warm would
be more efficient, kind of thing.

Yet the government, that surely has some smart people in it, continues
to increase our spending, increase our debt load, and do things that are
the exact opposite of fiscally responsible. It is almost as if they want
the system to collapse?

Then I remember the Weimar Republic. They had hyperinflation. How did
they get out of it? By rebooting the currency. What was the new currency
based on? Land. Land is an asset.

The government is gobbling up land out west like crazy. Every time we
discover a deposit of oil or coal out here, the government immediately
discovers a snail or a flower on it that might be endangered and grabs a
couple hundred thousand more acres. The government is trying to kick
18,000 people out of their homes in Colorado to put in a new ?tank range?.

But that wouldn?t be enough. Think beyond land. Think assets.

Fanny May and Freddy Mac now hold something like 50% of the mortgages in
the US. The government has recently either directly taken over, or
regulated the living crap out of our auto industry, insurance industry,
banking and finance industry, and now health care?

The people of the Weimar were so desperate, that they would do anything
to get out of their economic crisis.

Let?s imagine a hypothetical situation here. Let?s say that in a decade
or so, our currency has collapsed. We owe far more than we produce.
Companies are failing. Because all of our tax dollars are used just to
pay for our debt, taxes have to be raised, which causes even more
unemployment and decreased production. Entitlements can?t be met. The
current economic crisis looks awesome in comparison, but there is no
possible way out, because our money is now worthless.

So? Reboot the currency. Make a new RentenDollar.

The media can even point out what a fantastic idea this is because
historically, it has worked before! The politicians will tell us that
this is the only way and we must act quickly! People are desperate and
will be told that ?the private system has failed! Only government
intervention can save us now!? (gee, why does that sound soooo familiar?)

Sure, they caused the problem, but that isn?t what most people will
think, but as they?ve shown, they don?t really care what we think
anyway. They will not let a good crisis go to waste. There is only one
teensy downside to this reboot though?

See, the RentenDollar can?t be based on good feelings like the old
dollar, it must be based on ASSETS. And since the capitalist system has
failed, and the government has already got its fingers in all these
various companies, instead of just regulating these companies, why
shouldn?t the government just own them?

All those mortgages? They now belong to the government. Banks? Belong to
the government. Industrial production? Government. Medical. Government.
They?re assets, and they?re necessary to back our new currency.

You don?t like it? People are starving. There are riots in the streets.
Cities are burning. We have to act now! Won?t somebody think of the
children! There?s no time to read this 9,000 page bill! HURRY!

?And just like that, America has become a communist country. State
control and ownership of everything.

So, let?s poke some holes in my late night theory. Please, somebody tell
me how this is impossible. Maybe we?re not heading for an economic
collapse. Maybe we?re not going to have hyperinflation. If anybody has
any evidence of that, I?d love to hear it, because this is kind of
depressing.

Or, the other way that this idea could be silly and implausible is if
there was no possible way that elements within our government would want
to exercise total control over our lives? Yeah? that?s just absurd.

Ask yourself this one question. Do you believe that our current federal
government, if presented with the opportunity, would take over and
control everything? Yes or No.

Help me out here, guys. I?m not getting any warm feelings from this

Rex, I am sorry if what I wrote came across as rude. I did not mean to
be rude. I just wanted to say that that blog post was written with
little evidence presented.

I am sorry.

i
On 2010-03-30, Ignoramus28422 wrote:
The article is not interesting and the author is a hack.

There is a possibility that inflation could be used to repudiate the
debt, but in this instance, the author is basing his predictions
purely on his fantasy, and not on any kind of data or evidence.

There is many people with all kinds of opinions, and it is important
to quickly discard uninformed opinions.

i

On 2010-03-30, RBnDFW wrote:
Long but interesting.

Mr. McDuffee, love to hear your opinion of this:

from http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/

Late last night I came up with my very own conspiracy theory. It seemed
a little odd at the time, but as I?ve continued to think it over, I?ve
not yet been able to poke any significant holes in it. Of course, it is
the kind of thing that an accountant turned science fiction author would
come up with.

Basically, I?m starting to think that certain factions within our
government actively want hyperinflation to occur as a surefire method of
instituting de-facto communism in America?

Crazy, right? I know, you?re thinking that surely Correia has gone off
the deep end and spouting off all sorts of doomsday nonsense, but hear
me out first.

As many of you know, I?m a history geek. Last year I wrote my first
alternative history novel set in 1932. Because I?m a stickler for
authenticity, I did an absurd amount of research. I read every book I
could get my hands on about what is normally called the interwar period.
I mostly concentrated on American history/culture but I also learned a
bit about the Weimar Republic.

The interesting factoids about the Weimar Republic that most of us
remember is that it was the home of hyperinflation (remember the
wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread) and eventually it also
gave us one of history?s greatest scumbags, Hitler. Other than that,
most Americans don?t really know much about the Weimar Republic.

Okay, but where did the hyperinflation come from? I?m going to greatly
simplify this because A. I?m a writer and accountant, not a historian,
go to Wikipedia and B. This is only for a background to draw a
comparison to what we?re doing right now.

The Weimar Republic (If I recall correctly, they actually called
themselves the Deutsch Reich) came about after WWI. The German Empire
had fallen apart, leadership fled, and for the next couple of years
there were several battles fought between different factions of
communists, socialists, and conservatives. (and when I say conservative
it isn?t what it means here and now. I mean conservative back toward the
empire, royalty, and all that entails). These were not polite political
discussions. These were a series of violent mini-revolts where various
cities would go off and declare themselves independent, like the Soviet
State of Munich. Then a bunch of communists and the ?Freikorps? would
clash in the streets, then repeat a week later in a different city. It
was bad.

Eventually the Weimar Republic was formed from the different groups, and
immediately it had a whole new set of problems. The Germans signed the
treaty of Versailles, they gave up a bunch of territory, and even worse,
then took on a massive war debt and an agreement to basically pay the
allies for the biggest war in history.

So what does a government, which is already sitting on a very damaged
economy, do in order to pay this debt? They printed more money. Sounding
familiar yet?

It got worse. As the Weimar printed more money, their government got
more bloated, and ate up even more of their resources. (at one point a
chancellor laid off several hundred thousand government employees to try
and make ends meet). As their money inflated and became more useless,
France got tired of not getting paid, and being jerks, invaded and took
over the Ruhr, which was one of the most productive regions in Germany.
This caused a drop in production, and then everybody else went on strike.

Meanwhile, the money kept inflating to levels that people couldn?t even
understand. Back during the war, the Mark was something like 4 to 1
against the dollar. By the time they hit hyperinflation, they?d gone to
millions to 1, and by the end, it was literally trillions to a single
dollar. They would print new bills, and a few days later all they were
good for was note paper. This is where the stories about the wheelbarrow
full of money for bread comes from. To put this in perspective, this
would be like you filling the trunk of your car with twenty dollar bills
and then using all those trash bags full of money to buy some shoelaces
and a tube of toothpaste.

So basically Germany was totally screwed.

So how did they get out of it? Contrary to what most Americans think, it
wasn?t Hitler that came along and fixed Germany?s economic problems and
turned them into an industrial powerhouse war machine through the sheer
power of him being a complete ass. There was actually a time period in
the thirties that the Weimer knew as the Golden Years, because they?d
finally gotten much of their economy back under control.

They rebooted their currency. If I recall correctly, their new currency
was called the Rentenmark. They introduced the Rentenmark, and you could
trade in your trillions of crappy marks for one of them. It went back to
4-1 with the dollar. Now here?s the thing. You can?t just change the
name and have new currency. Your currency has to actually be based on
something. (kind of like how the dollar is based on good feelings and
rainbows).

They based it on land. It was the one asset that the government could go
and take over to use as a base asset, and land is always valuable
because they aren?t making any more of it. Congratulations land owners,
all your dirt belongs to us, but people were so desperate (and tired of
carrying buckets of silly money around) that it didn?t matter. They were
desperate, and desperate times called for desperate (and sometimes
stupid) measures. Using the new asset-backed Rentenmarks, Germany was
able to start paying their debts again and get on with a semblance of
normalcy, well at least until they elected a bunch of lunatics in snazzy
uniforms.

So why this long story? Because it is to compare with what we?re doing
ourselves. Right now the United States is on the path to hyperinflation.
CBO is predicting that by 2020, our debt will be 90% of our GDP. (EDIT:
As was pointed out in the comments, my information there was wrong.
We?ll hit 90% way way earlier than that, so it is even worse) Think
about that for a second. That would be like if you had a $50,000 a year
job, but you owed vicious thumb-breaking loan sharks $45,000 that was
still collecting interest. Our entitlements are bankrupting us. Even
before Health Control (because if you believe the government is going to
spend a trillion bucks and cut the deficit, you must sleep in a helmet)
we?re only a few years from all our tax dollars only being able to pay
for Medicare, Social Security, and interest on our debt. That?s it.

Now, what happens when you as an individual can?t pay your debts or pay
your bills on time? Your credit rating goes down. And when your credit
rating goes down, you can no longer get that low interest
Visa-Black-Platinum-Playboy card (with Sky Miles!) you can now only get
the Soup-Kitchen-Discover card at 280% interest. Many people don?t
realize it, but governments have credit ratings too. Right now we?ve got
a great one, based on ?because we?re so awesome?. But we?re getting
really close to losing our good credit rating, (because awesome will
only get you so far before you actually have to pay the bills) when that
happens, all of those already really bad estimates about our future debt
are going to get far worse. How much worse? Have you ever played Fallout
3 on the Xbox? Kind of like that.

So while we?re on our way to Thunder Dome, the government is printing
dollars like crazy, faster than ever before, with no signs of letting
up. Inflation is coming. When the credit rating tanks and the
entitlements get worse (or the oil currency switches to something else)
hello, Master Blaster! We?re in deep trouble. We?re looking at
hyperinflation. Dollars worth nothing, burning them to keep warm would
be more efficient, kind of thing.

Yet the government, that surely has some smart people in it, continues
to increase our spending, increase our debt load, and do things that are
the exact opposite of fiscally responsible. It is almost as if they want
the system to collapse?

Then I remember the Weimar Republic. They had hyperinflation. How did
they get out of it? By rebooting the currency. What was the new currency
based on? Land. Land is an asset.

The government is gobbling up land out west like crazy. Every time we
discover a deposit of oil or coal out here, the government immediately
discovers a snail or a flower on it that might be endangered and grabs a
couple hundred thousand more acres. The government is trying to kick
18,000 people out of their homes in Colorado to put in a new ?tank range?.

But that wouldn?t be enough. Think beyond land. Think assets.

Fanny May and Freddy Mac now hold something like 50% of the mortgages in
the US. The government has recently either directly taken over, or
regulated the living crap out of our auto industry, insurance industry,
banking and finance industry, and now health care?

The people of the Weimar were so desperate, that they would do anything
to get out of their economic crisis.

Let?s imagine a hypothetical situation here. Let?s say that in a decade
or so, our currency has collapsed. We owe far more than we produce.
Companies are failing. Because all of our tax dollars are used just to
pay for our debt, taxes have to be raised, which causes even more
unemployment and decreased production. Entitlements can?t be met. The
current economic crisis looks awesome in comparison, but there is no
possible way out, because our money is now worthless.

So? Reboot the currency. Make a new RentenDollar.

The media can even point out what a fantastic idea this is because
historically, it has worked before! The politicians will tell us that
this is the only way and we must act quickly! People are desperate and
will be told that ?the private system has failed! Only government
intervention can save us now!? (gee, why does that sound soooo familiar?)

Sure, they caused the problem, but that isn?t what most people will
think, but as they?ve shown, they don?t really care what we think
anyway. They will not let a good crisis go to waste. There is only one
teensy downside to this reboot though?

See, the RentenDollar can?t be based on good feelings like the old
dollar, it must be based on ASSETS. And since the capitalist system has
failed, and the government has already got its fingers in all these
various companies, instead of just regulating these companies, why
shouldn?t the government just own them?

All those mortgages? They now belong to the government. Banks? Belong to
the government. Industrial production? Government. Medical. Government.
They?re assets, and they?re necessary to back our new currency.

You don?t like it? People are starving. There are riots in the streets.
Cities are burning. We have to act now! Won?t somebody think of the
children! There?s no time to read this 9,000 page bill! HURRY!

?And just like that, America has become a communist country. State
control and ownership of everything.

So, let?s poke some holes in my late night theory. Please, somebody tell
me how this is impossible. Maybe we?re not heading for an economic
collapse. Maybe we?re not going to have hyperinflation. If anybody has
any evidence of that, I?d love to hear it, because this is kind of
depressing.

Or, the other way that this idea could be silly and implausible is if
there was no possible way that elements within our government would want
to exercise total control over our lives? Yeah? that?s just absurd.

Ask yourself this one question. Do you believe that our current federal
government, if presented with the opportunity, would take over and
control everything? Yes or No.

Help me out here, guys. I?m not getting any warm feelings from this

"RBnDFW" wrote in message
...
Long but interesting.

Mr. McDuffee, love to hear your opinion of this:

from http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/

I'm sure George will supply you with his, but FWIW, here's mine: The guy is
ignorant of economics; he doesn't have even 1/4 of the relevant information
involved in his estimations. He doesn't appear to know what the relevant
information *is*.

He should stick to writing fantasy novels, or take a couple of years of
college-level economics. His conclusions are nonsense.

--
Ed Huntress

"Ignoramus28422" wrote in message
...
Rex, I am sorry if what I wrote came across as rude. I did not mean to
be rude. I just wanted to say that that blog post was written with
little evidence presented.

I am sorry.

i

You were right the first time. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

On 2010-03-30, Ignoramus28422 wrote:
The article is not interesting and the author is a hack.

There is a possibility that inflation could be used to repudiate the
debt, but in this instance, the author is basing his predictions
purely on his fantasy, and not on any kind of data or evidence.

There is many people with all kinds of opinions, and it is important
to quickly discard uninformed opinions.

i

Ignoramus28422 wrote:
Rex, I am sorry if what I wrote came across as rude. I did not mean to
be rude. I just wanted to say that that blog post was written with
little evidence presented.


No offense taken, Ig. I thought it thought-provoking.
You are right that there is no evidence, but then it's an opinion piece,
not a doctoral thesis.


I am sorry.

i
On 2010-03-30, Ignoramus28422 wrote:
The article is not interesting and the author is a hack.

There is a possibility that inflation could be used to repudiate the
debt, but in this instance, the author is basing his predictions
purely on his fantasy, and not on any kind of data or evidence.

There is many people with all kinds of opinions, and it is important
to quickly discard uninformed opinions.

i

On 2010-03-30, RBnDFW wrote:
Long but interesting.

Mr. McDuffee, love to hear your opinion of this:

from http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/

Late last night I came up with my very own conspiracy theory. It seemed
a little odd at the time, but as I?ve continued to think it over, I?ve
not yet been able to poke any significant holes in it. Of course, it is
the kind of thing that an accountant turned science fiction author would
come up with.

Basically, I?m starting to think that certain factions within our
government actively want hyperinflation to occur as a surefire method of
instituting de-facto communism in America?

Crazy, right? I know, you?re thinking that surely Correia has gone off
the deep end and spouting off all sorts of doomsday nonsense, but hear
me out first.

As many of you know, I?m a history geek. Last year I wrote my first
alternative history novel set in 1932. Because I?m a stickler for
authenticity, I did an absurd amount of research. I read every book I
could get my hands on about what is normally called the interwar period.
I mostly concentrated on American history/culture but I also learned a
bit about the Weimar Republic.

The interesting factoids about the Weimar Republic that most of us
remember is that it was the home of hyperinflation (remember the
wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread) and eventually it also
gave us one of history?s greatest scumbags, Hitler. Other than that,
most Americans don?t really know much about the Weimar Republic.

Okay, but where did the hyperinflation come from? I?m going to greatly
simplify this because A. I?m a writer and accountant, not a historian,
go to Wikipedia and B. This is only for a background to draw a
comparison to what we?re doing right now.

The Weimar Republic (If I recall correctly, they actually called
themselves the Deutsch Reich) came about after WWI. The German Empire
had fallen apart, leadership fled, and for the next couple of years
there were several battles fought between different factions of
communists, socialists, and conservatives. (and when I say conservative
it isn?t what it means here and now. I mean conservative back toward the
empire, royalty, and all that entails). These were not polite political
discussions. These were a series of violent mini-revolts where various
cities would go off and declare themselves independent, like the Soviet
State of Munich. Then a bunch of communists and the ?Freikorps? would
clash in the streets, then repeat a week later in a different city. It
was bad.

Eventually the Weimar Republic was formed from the different groups, and
immediately it had a whole new set of problems. The Germans signed the
treaty of Versailles, they gave up a bunch of territory, and even worse,
then took on a massive war debt and an agreement to basically pay the
allies for the biggest war in history.

So what does a government, which is already sitting on a very damaged
economy, do in order to pay this debt? They printed more money. Sounding
familiar yet?

It got worse. As the Weimar printed more money, their government got
more bloated, and ate up even more of their resources. (at one point a
chancellor laid off several hundred thousand government employees to try
and make ends meet). As their money inflated and became more useless,
France got tired of not getting paid, and being jerks, invaded and took
over the Ruhr, which was one of the most productive regions in Germany.
This caused a drop in production, and then everybody else went on strike.

Meanwhile, the money kept inflating to levels that people couldn?t even
understand. Back during the war, the Mark was something like 4 to 1
against the dollar. By the time they hit hyperinflation, they?d gone to
millions to 1, and by the end, it was literally trillions to a single
dollar. They would print new bills, and a few days later all they were
good for was note paper. This is where the stories about the wheelbarrow
full of money for bread comes from. To put this in perspective, this
would be like you filling the trunk of your car with twenty dollar bills
and then using all those trash bags full of money to buy some shoelaces
and a tube of toothpaste.

So basically Germany was totally screwed.

So how did they get out of it? Contrary to what most Americans think, it
wasn?t Hitler that came along and fixed Germany?s economic problems and
turned them into an industrial powerhouse war machine through the sheer
power of him being a complete ass. There was actually a time period in
the thirties that the Weimer knew as the Golden Years, because they?d
finally gotten much of their economy back under control.

They rebooted their currency. If I recall correctly, their new currency
was called the Rentenmark. They introduced the Rentenmark, and you could
trade in your trillions of crappy marks for one of them. It went back to
4-1 with the dollar. Now here?s the thing. You can?t just change the
name and have new currency. Your currency has to actually be based on
something. (kind of like how the dollar is based on good feelings and
rainbows).

They based it on land. It was the one asset that the government could go
and take over to use as a base asset, and land is always valuable
because they aren?t making any more of it. Congratulations land owners,
all your dirt belongs to us, but people were so desperate (and tired of
carrying buckets of silly money around) that it didn?t matter. They were
desperate, and desperate times called for desperate (and sometimes
stupid) measures. Using the new asset-backed Rentenmarks, Germany was
able to start paying their debts again and get on with a semblance of
normalcy, well at least until they elected a bunch of lunatics in snazzy
uniforms.

So why this long story? Because it is to compare with what we?re doing
ourselves. Right now the United States is on the path to hyperinflation.
CBO is predicting that by 2020, our debt will be 90% of our GDP. (EDIT:
As was pointed out in the comments, my information there was wrong.
We?ll hit 90% way way earlier than that, so it is even worse) Think
about that for a second. That would be like if you had a $50,000 a year
job, but you owed vicious thumb-breaking loan sharks $45,000 that was
still collecting interest. Our entitlements are bankrupting us. Even
before Health Control (because if you believe the government is going to
spend a trillion bucks and cut the deficit, you must sleep in a helmet)
we?re only a few years from all our tax dollars only being able to pay
for Medicare, Social Security, and interest on our debt. That?s it.

Now, what happens when you as an individual can?t pay your debts or pay
your bills on time? Your credit rating goes down. And when your credit
rating goes down, you can no longer get that low interest
Visa-Black-Platinum-Playboy card (with Sky Miles!) you can now only get
the Soup-Kitchen-Discover card at 280% interest. Many people don?t
realize it, but governments have credit ratings too. Right now we?ve got
a great one, based on ?because we?re so awesome?. But we?re getting
really close to losing our good credit rating, (because awesome will
only get you so far before you actually have to pay the bills) when that
happens, all of those already really bad estimates about our future debt
are going to get far worse. How much worse? Have you ever played Fallout
3 on the Xbox? Kind of like that.

So while we?re on our way to Thunder Dome, the government is printing
dollars like crazy, faster than ever before, with no signs of letting
up. Inflation is coming. When the credit rating tanks and the
entitlements get worse (or the oil currency switches to something else)
hello, Master Blaster! We?re in deep trouble. We?re looking at
hyperinflation. Dollars worth nothing, burning them to keep warm would
be more efficient, kind of thing.

Yet the government, that surely has some smart people in it, continues
to increase our spending, increase our debt load, and do things that are
the exact opposite of fiscally responsible. It is almost as if they want
the system to collapse?

Then I remember the Weimar Republic. They had hyperinflation. How did
they get out of it? By rebooting the currency. What was the new currency
based on? Land. Land is an asset.

The government is gobbling up land out west like crazy. Every time we
discover a deposit of oil or coal out here, the government immediately
discovers a snail or a flower on it that might be endangered and grabs a
couple hundred thousand more acres. The government is trying to kick
18,000 people out of their homes in Colorado to put in a new ?tank range?.

But that wouldn?t be enough. Think beyond land. Think assets.

Fanny May and Freddy Mac now hold something like 50% of the mortgages in
the US. The government has recently either directly taken over, or
regulated the living crap out of our auto industry, insurance industry,
banking and finance industry, and now health care?

The people of the Weimar were so desperate, that they would do anything
to get out of their economic crisis.

Let?s imagine a hypothetical situation here. Let?s say that in a decade
or so, our currency has collapsed. We owe far more than we produce.
Companies are failing. Because all of our tax dollars are used just to
pay for our debt, taxes have to be raised, which causes even more
unemployment and decreased production. Entitlements can?t be met. The
current economic crisis looks awesome in comparison, but there is no
possible way out, because our money is now worthless.

So? Reboot the currency. Make a new RentenDollar.

The media can even point out what a fantastic idea this is because
historically, it has worked before! The politicians will tell us that
this is the only way and we must act quickly! People are desperate and
will be told that ?the private system has failed! Only government
intervention can save us now!? (gee, why does that sound soooo familiar?)

Sure, they caused the problem, but that isn?t what most people will
think, but as they?ve shown, they don?t really care what we think
anyway. They will not let a good crisis go to waste. There is only one
teensy downside to this reboot though?

See, the RentenDollar can?t be based on good feelings like the old
dollar, it must be based on ASSETS. And since the capitalist system has
failed, and the government has already got its fingers in all these
various companies, instead of just regulating these companies, why
shouldn?t the government just own them?

All those mortgages? They now belong to the government. Banks? Belong to
the government. Industrial production? Government. Medical. Government.
They?re assets, and they?re necessary to back our new currency.

You don?t like it? People are starving. There are riots in the streets.
Cities are burning. We have to act now! Won?t somebody think of the
children! There?s no time to read this 9,000 page bill! HURRY!

?And just like that, America has become a communist country. State
control and ownership of everything.

So, let?s poke some holes in my late night theory. Please, somebody tell
me how this is impossible. Maybe we?re not heading for an economic
collapse. Maybe we?re not going to have hyperinflation. If anybody has
any evidence of that, I?d love to hear it, because this is kind of
depressing.

Or, the other way that this idea could be silly and implausible is if
there was no possible way that elements within our government would want
to exercise total control over our lives? Yeah? that?s just absurd.

Ask yourself this one question. Do you believe that our current federal
government, if presented with the opportunity, would take over and
control everything? Yes or No.

Help me out here, guys. I?m not getting any warm feelings from this

Ed Huntress wrote:
"RBnDFW" wrote in message
...
Long but interesting.

Mr. McDuffee, love to hear your opinion of this:

from http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/

I'm sure George will supply you with his, but FWIW, here's mine: The
guy is ignorant of economics; he doesn't have even 1/4 of the
relevant information involved in his estimations. He doesn't appear
to know what the relevant information *is*.

He should stick to writing fantasy novels, or take a couple of years
of college-level economics. His conclusions are nonsense.

Or both.
The best fiction is plausible and so has it's roots in fact.

--
John R. Carroll

You are not far off. My father watched it happen while living in
Austria, as a child. This instability allowed a national socialist
tyrant with personality problems to take control, plunge the world into
CHAOS, and send my family to death camps. YES it can happen here!!

Those who belittle your open thinking are practicing the religion of
Socialism or are blind to the dangers of forced wealth redistribution,
i.e. Socialism.

simon shabtai evan


RBnDFW wrote:
Long but interesting.

Mr. McDuffee, love to hear your opinion of this:

from http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/

Late last night I came up with my very own conspiracy theory. It seemed
a little odd at the time, but as I’ve continued to think it over, I’ve
not yet been able to poke any significant holes in it. Of course, it is
the kind of thing that an accountant turned science fiction author would
come up with.

Basically, I’m starting to think that certain factions within our
government actively want hyperinflation to occur as a surefire method of
instituting de-facto communism in America…

Crazy, right? I know, you’re thinking that surely Correia has gone off
the deep end and spouting off all sorts of doomsday nonsense, but hear
me out first.

As many of you know, I’m a history geek. Last year I wrote my first
alternative history novel set in 1932. Because I’m a stickler for
authenticity, I did an absurd amount of research. I read every book I
could get my hands on about what is normally called the interwar period.
I mostly concentrated on American history/culture but I also learned a
bit about the Weimar Republic.

The interesting factoids about the Weimar Republic that most of us
remember is that it was the home of hyperinflation (remember the
wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread) and eventually it also
gave us one of history’s greatest scumbags, Hitler. Other than that,
most Americans don’t really know much about the Weimar Republic.

Okay, but where did the hyperinflation come from? I’m going to greatly
simplify this because A. I’m a writer and accountant, not a historian,
go to Wikipedia and B. This is only for a background to draw a
comparison to what we’re doing right now.

The Weimar Republic (If I recall correctly, they actually called
themselves the Deutsch Reich) came about after WWI. The German Empire
had fallen apart, leadership fled, and for the next couple of years
there were several battles fought between different factions of
communists, socialists, and conservatives. (and when I say conservative
it isn’t what it means here and now. I mean conservative back toward the
empire, royalty, and all that entails). These were not polite political
discussions. These were a series of violent mini-revolts where various
cities would go off and declare themselves independent, like the Soviet
State of Munich. Then a bunch of communists and the “Freikorps” would
clash in the streets, then repeat a week later in a different city. It
was bad.

Eventually the Weimar Republic was formed from the different groups, and
immediately it had a whole new set of problems. The Germans signed the
treaty of Versailles, they gave up a bunch of territory, and even worse,
then took on a massive war debt and an agreement to basically pay the
allies for the biggest war in history.

So what does a government, which is already sitting on a very damaged
economy, do in order to pay this debt? They printed more money. Sounding
familiar yet?

It got worse. As the Weimar printed more money, their government got
more bloated, and ate up even more of their resources. (at one point a
chancellor laid off several hundred thousand government employees to try
and make ends meet). As their money inflated and became more useless,
France got tired of not getting paid, and being jerks, invaded and took
over the Ruhr, which was one of the most productive regions in Germany.
This caused a drop in production, and then everybody else went on strike.

Meanwhile, the money kept inflating to levels that people couldn’t even
understand. Back during the war, the Mark was something like 4 to 1
against the dollar. By the time they hit hyperinflation, they’d gone to
millions to 1, and by the end, it was literally trillions to a single
dollar. They would print new bills, and a few days later all they were
good for was note paper. This is where the stories about the wheelbarrow
full of money for bread comes from. To put this in perspective, this
would be like you filling the trunk of your car with twenty dollar bills
and then using all those trash bags full of money to buy some shoelaces
and a tube of toothpaste.

So basically Germany was totally screwed.

So how did they get out of it? Contrary to what most Americans think, it
wasn’t Hitler that came along and fixed Germany’s economic problems and
turned them into an industrial powerhouse war machine through the sheer
power of him being a complete ass. There was actually a time period in
the thirties that the Weimer knew as the Golden Years, because they’d
finally gotten much of their economy back under control.

They rebooted their currency. If I recall correctly, their new currency
was called the Rentenmark. They introduced the Rentenmark, and you could
trade in your trillions of crappy marks for one of them. It went back to
4-1 with the dollar. Now here’s the thing. You can’t just change the
name and have new currency. Your currency has to actually be based on
something. (kind of like how the dollar is based on good feelings and
rainbows).

They based it on land. It was the one asset that the government could go
and take over to use as a base asset, and land is always valuable
because they aren’t making any more of it. Congratulations land owners,
all your dirt belongs to us, but people were so desperate (and tired of
carrying buckets of silly money around) that it didn’t matter. They were
desperate, and desperate times called for desperate (and sometimes
stupid) measures. Using the new asset-backed Rentenmarks, Germany was
able to start paying their debts again and get on with a semblance of
normalcy, well at least until they elected a bunch of lunatics in snazzy
uniforms.

So why this long story? Because it is to compare with what we’re doing
ourselves. Right now the United States is on the path to hyperinflation.
CBO is predicting that by 2020, our debt will be 90% of our GDP. (EDIT:
As was pointed out in the comments, my information there was wrong.
We’ll hit 90% way way earlier than that, so it is even worse) Think
about that for a second. That would be like if you had a $50,000 a year
job, but you owed vicious thumb-breaking loan sharks $45,000 that was
still collecting interest. Our entitlements are bankrupting us. Even
before Health Control (because if you believe the government is going to
spend a trillion bucks and cut the deficit, you must sleep in a helmet)
we’re only a few years from all our tax dollars only being able to pay
for Medicare, Social Security, and interest on our debt. That’s it.

Now, what happens when you as an individual can’t pay your debts or pay
your bills on time? Your credit rating goes down. And when your credit
rating goes down, you can no longer get that low interest
Visa-Black-Platinum-Playboy card (with Sky Miles!) you can now only get
the Soup-Kitchen-Discover card at 280% interest. Many people don’t
realize it, but governments have credit ratings too. Right now we’ve got
a great one, based on ‘because we’re so awesome’. But we’re getting
really close to losing our good credit rating, (because awesome will
only get you so far before you actually have to pay the bills) when that
happens, all of those already really bad estimates about our future debt
are going to get far worse. How much worse? Have you ever played Fallout
3 on the Xbox? Kind of like that.

So while we’re on our way to Thunder Dome, the government is printing
dollars like crazy, faster than ever before, with no signs of letting
up. Inflation is coming. When the credit rating tanks and the
entitlements get worse (or the oil currency switches to something else)
hello, Master Blaster! We’re in deep trouble. We’re looking at
hyperinflation. Dollars worth nothing, burning them to keep warm would
be more efficient, kind of thing.

Yet the government, that surely has some smart people in it, continues
to increase our spending, increase our debt load, and do things that are
the exact opposite of fiscally responsible. It is almost as if they want
the system to collapse…

Then I remember the Weimar Republic. They had hyperinflation. How did
they get out of it? By rebooting the currency. What was the new currency
based on? Land. Land is an asset.

The government is gobbling up land out west like crazy. Every time we
discover a deposit of oil or coal out here, the government immediately
discovers a snail or a flower on it that might be endangered and grabs a
couple hundred thousand more acres. The government is trying to kick
18,000 people out of their homes in Colorado to put in a new “tank range”.

But that wouldn’t be enough. Think beyond land. Think assets.

Fanny May and Freddy Mac now hold something like 50% of the mortgages in
the US. The government has recently either directly taken over, or
regulated the living crap out of our auto industry, insurance industry,
banking and finance industry, and now health care…

The people of the Weimar were so desperate, that they would do anything
to get out of their economic crisis.

Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation here. Let’s say that in a decade
or so, our currency has collapsed. We owe far more than we produce.
Companies are failing. Because all of our tax dollars are used just to
pay for our debt, taxes have to be raised, which causes even more
unemployment and decreased production. Entitlements can’t be met. The
current economic crisis looks awesome in comparison, but there is no
possible way out, because our money is now worthless.

So… Reboot the currency. Make a new RentenDollar.

The media can even point out what a fantastic idea this is because
historically, it has worked before! The politicians will tell us that
this is the only way and we must act quickly! People are desperate and
will be told that “the private system has failed! Only government
intervention can save us now!” (gee, why does that sound soooo familiar?)

Sure, they caused the problem, but that isn’t what most people will
think, but as they’ve shown, they don’t really care what we think
anyway. They will not let a good crisis go to waste. There is only one
teensy downside to this reboot though…

See, the RentenDollar can’t be based on good feelings like the old
dollar, it must be based on ASSETS. And since the capitalist system has
failed, and the government has already got its fingers in all these
various companies, instead of just regulating these companies, why
shouldn’t the government just own them?

All those mortgages? They now belong to the government. Banks? Belong to
the government. Industrial production? Government. Medical. Government.
They’re assets, and they’re necessary to back our new currency.

You don’t like it? People are starving. There are riots in the streets.
Cities are burning. We have to act now! Won’t somebody think of the
children! There’s no time to read this 9,000 page bill! HURRY!

…And just like that, America has become a communist country. State
control and ownership of everything.

So, let’s poke some holes in my late night theory. Please, somebody tell
me how this is impossible. Maybe we’re not heading for an economic
collapse. Maybe we’re not going to have hyperinflation. If anybody has
any evidence of that, I’d love to hear it, because this is kind of
depressing.

Or, the other way that this idea could be silly and implausible is if
there was no possible way that elements within our government would want
to exercise total control over our lives… Yeah… that’s just absurd.

Ask yourself this one question. Do you believe that our current federal
government, if presented with the opportunity, would take over and
control everything? Yes or No.

Help me out here, guys. I’m not getting any warm feelings from this

In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Ignoramus28422" wrote in message
...
Rex, I am sorry if what I wrote came across as rude. I did not mean to
be rude. I just wanted to say that that blog post was written with
little evidence presented.

I am sorry.

i

You were right the first time. d8-)

In the Holy Words of Odin: "It's all fun and games until somebody loses
an eye."

"Shabtai" wrote in message
...
You are not far off. My father watched it happen while living in Austria,
as a child. This instability allowed a national socialist
tyrant with personality problems to take control, plunge the world into
CHAOS, and send my family to death camps. YES it can happen here!!

Those who belittle your open thinking are practicing the religion of
Socialism or are blind to the dangers of forced wealth redistribution,
i.e. Socialism.

simon shabtai evan




that's what we were saying during bush. watch out during the next election,
resurgence of the wackos preying on people's fear, some right wing wacko
bankrolled (recent supreme court decision) by corporate america will rise to
prominence.

b.w.

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:32:05 -0500, RBnDFW
wrote:
snip
So, let’s poke some holes in my late night theory. Please, somebody tell
me how this is impossible. Maybe we’re not heading for an economic
collapse. Maybe we’re not going to have hyperinflation. If anybody has
any evidence of that, I’d love to hear it, because this is kind of
depressing.
snip
===========
IMNSHO the problem is not some grand conspiracy but rather the
results of a series of largely opportunistic and expedient
political decisions based on ideology rather than facts/logic,
with the hindsight rationale "but it seemed like such a good idea
at the time."

One example of this is the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of
1933 by The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), also known as the
Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, (Pub.L. 106-102,
113 Stat. 1338, enacted November 12, 1999)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E...liley_Actwhich
which laid the foundations for much of the current economic
crisis. When the CFTC Modernization Act of 2000
http://www.stroock.com/SiteFiles/Pub134.pdf was enacted, largely
exempting derivatives from any control.oversight and removing
controls/oversight on commodity trading/traders including foreign
exchange, disaster was insured.

History appears to indicate that any state that exists for a
significant period of time always debases their currency, even
gold and silver based, until the value disappears entirely. More
or less concurrently the national economy shifts from "value
added" real production to "financial engineering," which is
largely imaginary. Thus, socio-economic collapse of a state
should not be seen as any sort of historical anomaly or the
results of a cabal, but rather it is the expected final stage of
a natural progression, much as death is the final stage for all
living things including human beings.

More than likely, many people in government are aware of this and
are "grasping at straws" through ever more intrusive regulation
of the individual (but seldom the large corporations), in what
has historically proven to be a futile attempt to delay the
inevitable. Indeed, it appears such desperate actions only
contribute to the problems in the last stages by dissipating
dwindling governmental resources on non productive activities and
further alienating its already disenchanted citizens/subjects.

for some insight see
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/fil..._Different.pdf
also available in expanded book format.


Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

"John Husvar" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Ignoramus28422" wrote in message
...
Rex, I am sorry if what I wrote came across as rude. I did not mean to
be rude. I just wanted to say that that blog post was written with
little evidence presented.

I am sorry.

i

You were right the first time. d8-)

In the Holy Words of Odin: "It's all fun and games until somebody loses
an eye."

It's so frustrating to try to answer something like that, and I'm sure that
Iggy felt that frustration. I really don't worry about it anymore. It's
better to just be frank about it.

For the record, the guy missed the ENTIRE monetary issue with
between-the-wars Germany. The world was on a gold standard then, and we had
taken all their gold. Between the Brits and the French (and us) we took just
about everything else that wasn't nailed down, too, as war reparations.

When the world monetary system is based on gold and you don't have any,
you're screwed. Germany was utterly, thoroughly screwed economically. They
printed something that amounted to worthless script in an attempt to prevent
an absolute meltdown. But there was no gold, so there was no money.

To pay reparations, they monetized the only thing they had left -- land.
There is NOTHING that would force such a thing now. Thank God we're off the
gold standard. We have a variety of other ways to control money, and the
world is doing pretty well with it, considering that we just had a very deep
recession.

So there are no meaningful parallels. That's true from a variety of angles.
For someone to conjure up a bunch of claims like those in that little essay,
in a situation in which it's obvious that the guy made not the slightest
attempt to study the monetary history, is sloppy and foolish.

--
Ed Huntress

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:32:05 -0500, RBnDFW wrote:

Long but interesting.

Mr. McDuffee, love to hear your opinion of this:

from http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/

Late last night I came up with my very own conspiracy theory. It seemed
a little odd at the time, but as I’ve continued to think it over, I’ve
not yet been able to poke any significant holes in it. Of course, it is
the kind of thing that an accountant turned science fiction author would
come up with.

Basically, I’m starting to think that certain factions within our
government actively want hyperinflation to occur as a surefire method of
instituting de-facto communism in America…

Crazy, right? I know, you’re thinking that surely Correia has gone off
the deep end and spouting off all sorts of doomsday nonsense, but hear
me out first.

As many of you know, I’m a history geek. Last year I wrote my first
alternative history novel set in 1932. Because I’m a stickler for
authenticity, I did an absurd amount of research. I read every book I
could get my hands on about what is normally called the interwar period.
I mostly concentrated on American history/culture but I also learned a
bit about the Weimar Republic.

The interesting factoids about the Weimar Republic that most of us
remember is that it was the home of hyperinflation (remember the
wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread) and eventually it also
gave us one of history’s greatest scumbags, Hitler. Other than that,
most Americans don’t really know much about the Weimar Republic.

Okay, but where did the hyperinflation come from? I’m going to greatly
simplify this because A. I’m a writer and accountant, not a historian,
go to Wikipedia and B. This is only for a background to draw a
comparison to what we’re doing right now.

The Weimar Republic (If I recall correctly, they actually called
themselves the Deutsch Reich) came about after WWI. The German Empire
had fallen apart, leadership fled, and for the next couple of years
there were several battles fought between different factions of
communists, socialists, and conservatives. (and when I say conservative
it isn’t what it means here and now. I mean conservative back toward the
empire, royalty, and all that entails). These were not polite political
discussions. These were a series of violent mini-revolts where various
cities would go off and declare themselves independent, like the Soviet
State of Munich. Then a bunch of communists and the “Freikorps” would
clash in the streets, then repeat a week later in a different city. It
was bad.

Eventually the Weimar Republic was formed from the different groups, and
immediately it had a whole new set of problems. The Germans signed the
treaty of Versailles, they gave up a bunch of territory, and even worse,
then took on a massive war debt and an agreement to basically pay the
allies for the biggest war in history.

So what does a government, which is already sitting on a very damaged
economy, do in order to pay this debt? They printed more money. Sounding
familiar yet?

It got worse. As the Weimar printed more money, their government got
more bloated, and ate up even more of their resources. (at one point a
chancellor laid off several hundred thousand government employees to try
and make ends meet). As their money inflated and became more useless,
France got tired of not getting paid, and being jerks, invaded and took
over the Ruhr, which was one of the most productive regions in Germany.
This caused a drop in production, and then everybody else went on strike.

Meanwhile, the money kept inflating to levels that people couldn’t even
understand. Back during the war, the Mark was something like 4 to 1
against the dollar. By the time they hit hyperinflation, they’d gone to
millions to 1, and by the end, it was literally trillions to a single
dollar. They would print new bills, and a few days later all they were
good for was note paper. This is where the stories about the wheelbarrow
full of money for bread comes from. To put this in perspective, this
would be like you filling the trunk of your car with twenty dollar bills
and then using all those trash bags full of money to buy some shoelaces
and a tube of toothpaste.

So basically Germany was totally screwed.

So how did they get out of it? Contrary to what most Americans think, it
wasn’t Hitler that came along and fixed Germany’s economic problems and
turned them into an industrial powerhouse war machine through the sheer
power of him being a complete ass. There was actually a time period in
the thirties that the Weimer knew as the Golden Years, because they’d
finally gotten much of their economy back under control.

They rebooted their currency. If I recall correctly, their new currency
was called the Rentenmark. They introduced the Rentenmark, and you could
trade in your trillions of crappy marks for one of them. It went back to
4-1 with the dollar. Now here’s the thing. You can’t just change the
name and have new currency. Your currency has to actually be based on
something. (kind of like how the dollar is based on good feelings and
rainbows).

They based it on land. It was the one asset that the government could go
and take over to use as a base asset, and land is always valuable
because they aren’t making any more of it. Congratulations land owners,
all your dirt belongs to us, but people were so desperate (and tired of
carrying buckets of silly money around) that it didn’t matter. They were
desperate, and desperate times called for desperate (and sometimes
stupid) measures. Using the new asset-backed Rentenmarks, Germany was
able to start paying their debts again and get on with a semblance of
normalcy, well at least until they elected a bunch of lunatics in snazzy
uniforms.

So why this long story? Because it is to compare with what we’re doing
ourselves. Right now the United States is on the path to hyperinflation.
CBO is predicting that by 2020, our debt will be 90% of our GDP. (EDIT:
As was pointed out in the comments, my information there was wrong.
We’ll hit 90% way way earlier than that, so it is even worse) Think
about that for a second. That would be like if you had a $50,000 a year
job, but you owed vicious thumb-breaking loan sharks $45,000 that was
still collecting interest. Our entitlements are bankrupting us. Even
before Health Control (because if you believe the government is going to
spend a trillion bucks and cut the deficit, you must sleep in a helmet)
we’re only a few years from all our tax dollars only being able to pay
for Medicare, Social Security, and interest on our debt. That’s it.

Now, what happens when you as an individual can’t pay your debts or pay
your bills on time? Your credit rating goes down. And when your credit
rating goes down, you can no longer get that low interest
Visa-Black-Platinum-Playboy card (with Sky Miles!) you can now only get
the Soup-Kitchen-Discover card at 280% interest. Many people don’t
realize it, but governments have credit ratings too. Right now we’ve got
a great one, based on ‘because we’re so awesome’. But we’re getting
really close to losing our good credit rating, (because awesome will
only get you so far before you actually have to pay the bills) when that
happens, all of those already really bad estimates about our future debt
are going to get far worse. How much worse? Have you ever played Fallout
3 on the Xbox? Kind of like that.

So while we’re on our way to Thunder Dome, the government is printing
dollars like crazy, faster than ever before, with no signs of letting
up. Inflation is coming. When the credit rating tanks and the
entitlements get worse (or the oil currency switches to something else)
hello, Master Blaster! We’re in deep trouble. We’re looking at
hyperinflation. Dollars worth nothing, burning them to keep warm would
be more efficient, kind of thing.

Yet the government, that surely has some smart people in it, continues
to increase our spending, increase our debt load, and do things that are
the exact opposite of fiscally responsible. It is almost as if they want
the system to collapse…

Then I remember the Weimar Republic. They had hyperinflation. How did
they get out of it? By rebooting the currency. What was the new currency
based on? Land. Land is an asset.

The government is gobbling up land out west like crazy. Every time we
discover a deposit of oil or coal out here, the government immediately
discovers a snail or a flower on it that might be endangered and grabs a
couple hundred thousand more acres. The government is trying to kick
18,000 people out of their homes in Colorado to put in a new “tank range”.

But that wouldn’t be enough. Think beyond land. Think assets.

Fanny May and Freddy Mac now hold something like 50% of the mortgages in
the US. The government has recently either directly taken over, or
regulated the living crap out of our auto industry, insurance industry,
banking and finance industry, and now health care…

The people of the Weimar were so desperate, that they would do anything
to get out of their economic crisis.

Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation here. Let’s say that in a decade
or so, our currency has collapsed. We owe far more than we produce.
Companies are failing. Because all of our tax dollars are used just to
pay for our debt, taxes have to be raised, which causes even more
unemployment and decreased production. Entitlements can’t be met. The
current economic crisis looks awesome in comparison, but there is no
possible way out, because our money is now worthless.

So… Reboot the currency. Make a new RentenDollar.

The media can even point out what a fantastic idea this is because
historically, it has worked before! The politicians will tell us that
this is the only way and we must act quickly! People are desperate and
will be told that “the private system has failed! Only government
intervention can save us now!” (gee, why does that sound soooo familiar?)

Sure, they caused the problem, but that isn’t what most people will
think, but as they’ve shown, they don’t really care what we think
anyway. They will not let a good crisis go to waste. There is only one
teensy downside to this reboot though…

See, the RentenDollar can’t be based on good feelings like the old
dollar, it must be based on ASSETS. And since the capitalist system has
failed, and the government has already got its fingers in all these
various companies, instead of just regulating these companies, why
shouldn’t the government just own them?

All those mortgages? They now belong to the government. Banks? Belong to
the government. Industrial production? Government. Medical. Government.
They’re assets, and they’re necessary to back our new currency.

You don’t like it? People are starving. There are riots in the streets.
Cities are burning. We have to act now! Won’t somebody think of the
children! There’s no time to read this 9,000 page bill! HURRY!

…And just like that, America has become a communist country. State
control and ownership of everything.

So, let’s poke some holes in my late night theory. Please, somebody tell
me how this is impossible. Maybe we’re not heading for an economic
collapse. Maybe we’re not going to have hyperinflation. If anybody has
any evidence of that, I’d love to hear it, because this is kind of
depressing.

Or, the other way that this idea could be silly and implausible is if
there was no possible way that elements within our government would want
to exercise total control over our lives… Yeah… that’s just absurd.

Ask yourself this one question. Do you believe that our current federal
government, if presented with the opportunity, would take over and
control everything? Yes or No.

Help me out here, guys. I’m not getting any warm feelings from this


You are a very imaginative man. And a very smart one.

That is indeed one of the possibilities of the near future. And a likely
one.


Gunner


"First Law of Leftist Debate
The more you present a leftist with factual evidence
that is counter to his preconceived world view and the
more difficult it becomes for him to refute it without
losing face the chance of him calling you a racist, bigot,
homophobe approaches infinity.

This is despite the thread you are in having not mentioned
race or sexual preference in any way that is relevant to
the subject." Grey Ghost

William Wixon wrote:
"Shabtai" wrote in message
...
You are not far off. My father watched it happen while living in Austria,
as a child. This instability allowed a national socialist
tyrant with personality problems to take control, plunge the world into
CHAOS, and send my family to death camps. YES it can happen here!!

Those who belittle your open thinking are practicing the religion of
Socialism or are blind to the dangers of forced wealth redistribution,
i.e. Socialism.

simon shabtai evan




that's what we were saying during bush. watch out during the next election,
resurgence of the wackos preying on people's fear, some right wing wacko
bankrolled (recent supreme court decision) by corporate america will rise to
prominence.

b.w.


Are you ignorant? You don't know history.

Right-wing? Left-wing? Hitler came in through the Democratic Socialist
Party!!!!!

Socialism, Marxism, etc will come through ANY party! It's an ideology
that does not care about parties. It only wants power.
You have to watch for it.

"Ed Huntress" wrote:

For the record, the guy missed the ENTIRE monetary issue with
between-the-wars Germany. The world was on a gold standard then, and we had
taken all their gold. Between the Brits and the French (and us) we took just
about everything else that wasn't nailed down, too, as war reparations.

When the world monetary system is based on gold and you don't have any,
you're screwed. Germany was utterly, thoroughly screwed economically. They
printed something that amounted to worthless script in an attempt to prevent
an absolute meltdown. But there was no gold, so there was no money.

To pay reparations, they monetized the only thing they had left -- land.
There is NOTHING that would force such a thing now. Thank God we're off the
gold standard. We have a variety of other ways to control money, and the
world is doing pretty well with it, considering that we just had a very deep
recession.


As it is we are borrowing money. Eventually it has to be repaid. With what?

I'm thinking of a senario where the next time there is a treasury auction, no one wants to
buy.

Wes

Wes wrote:
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

For the record, the guy missed the ENTIRE monetary issue with
between-the-wars Germany. The world was on a gold standard then, and
we had taken all their gold. Between the Brits and the French (and
us) we took just about everything else that wasn't nailed down, too,
as war reparations.

When the world monetary system is based on gold and you don't have
any, you're screwed. Germany was utterly, thoroughly screwed
economically. They printed something that amounted to worthless
script in an attempt to prevent an absolute meltdown. But there was
no gold, so there was no money.

To pay reparations, they monetized the only thing they had left --
land. There is NOTHING that would force such a thing now. Thank God
we're off the gold standard. We have a variety of other ways to
control money, and the world is doing pretty well with it,
considering that we just had a very deep recession.


As it is we are borrowing money. Eventually it has to be repaid.
With what?

The same thing used during the end of the Clinton years Wes.
You use the tax collections that exceed spending.


I'm thinking of a senario where the next time there is a treasury
auction, no one wants to buy.

That happened about five years ago more that once Wes.
Treasury auctions were undersubscribed numerous times.

--
John R. Carroll

At which point, our creditors would be left with worthless
promises. However, what are the odds that the US government
(or any employee thereof) would ever break a promise?

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..


"Wes" wrote in message
...

As it is we are borrowing money. Eventually it has to be
repaid. With what?

I'm thinking of a senario where the next time there is a
treasury auction, no one wants to
buy.

Wes

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

For the record, the guy missed the ENTIRE monetary issue with
between-the-wars Germany. The world was on a gold standard then, and we
had
taken all their gold. Between the Brits and the French (and us) we took
just
about everything else that wasn't nailed down, too, as war reparations.

When the world monetary system is based on gold and you don't have any,
you're screwed. Germany was utterly, thoroughly screwed economically. They
printed something that amounted to worthless script in an attempt to
prevent
an absolute meltdown. But there was no gold, so there was no money.

To pay reparations, they monetized the only thing they had left -- land.
There is NOTHING that would force such a thing now. Thank God we're off
the
gold standard. We have a variety of other ways to control money, and the
world is doing pretty well with it, considering that we just had a very
deep
recession.


As it is we are borrowing money. Eventually it has to be repaid. With
what?

I'm thinking of a senario where the next time there is a treasury auction,
no one wants to
buy.

Wes

Basically, what John said. Also, we were far deeper in debt after WWII than
we are now. The answer was to grow out of it, and to collect taxes so we
could pay it down. Growth was easier then. That's one part of the problem
now.

So the big goal is to get growth going. It's going to be hard to get enough
of it; the stimulus program is the only realistic thing government can do.
Business sure as hell won't do much on its own. You can cut taxes and lower
wages until you're blue, but they won't invest if they think there are no
buyers for their products. When a recession gets this deep, you really have
to stimulate the demand side.

With growth and sensible taxes, you pay the debt down. No growth, no chance.
No taxes, no chance.

In extremis, you let your currency deflate. Milton Friedman thought that it
was the natural and logical thing, and should not be resisted. Your economy
will still suck but you won't go bankrupt. And things won't collapse if you
do it carefully.

Again, because we're not on a gold standard and because our debts are almost
all denominated in our own currency, we're in relatively good shape. All of
that makes it more necessary, however, to handle these things responsibly.
"Responsibly" doesn't mean what it means in home economics, either.

--
Ed Huntress

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 05:29:55 -0500, Wes wrote:
snip
As it is we are borrowing money. Eventually it has to be repaid. With what?

I'm thinking of a senario where the next time there is a treasury auction, no one wants to
buy.
snip
========
See how Argentina does it.

Easy solution -- change the regulations so that people with IRAs
and 401ks must "invest" in government bonds. Also change banking
rules so that 5% of a banks capital must be in government
securities (for safety).

Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:13:03 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:
snip
Or both.
The best fiction is plausible and so has it's roots in fact.
snip

The "bait-n-switch" scam is alive and well. Anyone want to buy a
solid gold bar?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=arFjbsBO7BS8

Amazing that the CDO underwriters such as Merrilll-Lynch and
Goldman-Sachs [aka the vampire squid] could get a AAA rating for
their creations, and the CDO administrators could then switch the
collateral.

If I borrow money from the bank to buy a new car, and then sell
the new car and replace it with a junker, I stand a good chance
of going to jail. If I am a CDO administrator and replace the
good collateral, which earned the AAA ratings and possibly sold
the investors, with junk and the CDO stops paying interest and
the return of the principal is highly questionable -- its tough
darts investors [and bond insurers like AIG].

You can't make this stuff up....


Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

F. George McDuffee wrote:
On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 05:29:55 -0500, Wes wrote:
snip
As it is we are borrowing money. Eventually it has to be repaid. With what?

I'm thinking of a senario where the next time there is a treasury auction, no one wants to
buy.
snip
========
See how Argentina does it.

Easy solution -- change the regulations so that people with IRAs
and 401ks must "invest" in government bonds. Also change banking
rules so that 5% of a banks capital must be in government
securities (for safety).

Seems to be working real well for Argentina ;/

On 2010-03-30, RBnDFW wrote:
Ignoramus28422 wrote:
Rex, I am sorry if what I wrote came across as rude. I did not mean to
be rude. I just wanted to say that that blog post was written with
little evidence presented.


No offense taken, Ig. I thought it thought-provoking.
You are right that there is no evidence, but then it's an opinion piece,
not a doctoral thesis.

It is always a good idea to think about things lke these, to try to
discern if any trouble is brewing beyond the horizon.

i

You are a dyed in the wool liberal, I gather? What a shame.
The USA used to be populated with hard working people who
preferred to make their own decisions, and who preferred
freedom.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...


So the big goal is to get growth going. It's going to be
hard to get enough
of it; the stimulus program is the only realistic thing
government can do.
Business sure as hell won't do much on its own. You can cut
taxes and lower
wages until you're blue, but they won't invest if they think
there are no
buyers for their products. When a recession gets this deep,
you really have
to stimulate the demand side.

F. George McDuffee wrote:
On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:13:03 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:
snip
Or both.
The best fiction is plausible and so has it's roots in fact. snip

The "bait-n-switch" scam is alive and well. Anyone want to buy a
solid gold bar?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=arFjbsBO7BS8

Amazing that the CDO underwriters such as Merrilll-Lynch and
Goldman-Sachs [aka the vampire squid] could get a AAA rating for
their creations, and the CDO administrators could then switch the
collateral.

If I borrow money from the bank to buy a new car, and then sell
the new car and replace it with a junker, I stand a good chance
of going to jail. If I am a CDO administrator and replace the
good collateral, which earned the AAA ratings and possibly sold
the investors, with junk and the CDO stops paying interest and
the return of the principal is highly questionable -- its tough
darts investors [and bond insurers like AIG].

You can't make this stuff up....

Even more off the wall - CDS's are still the rage.
I was talking to a guy last weekend about how difficult it would be to
really put a value on anyone in the financial services busines these days
because of all of the CDS's, CDO's and SIV's lurking off balance sheet ant
he said, and I swear to God he actually did, "Well, at least they aren't
doing those anymore." You should have seen the look on his face as we had a
look at a ten day old prospectus.....


--
John R. Carroll

"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message
...
You are a dyed in the wool liberal, I gather? What a shame.
The USA used to be populated with hard working people who
preferred to make their own decisions, and who preferred
freedom.

No, I'm a centrist on many things and generally mainstream economically.
That is, my understanding of economics comes from real, mainstream
economists, and it leaves me slightly right of the current center on those
issues. I'm left of center on most social/cultural issues.

I'd feel better about people like youself making your own decisions if I
thought you knew what you were talking about half the time, Chris. As it is,
I think you're a decent guy who has a head full of oatmeal on national
economic issues.

--
Ed Huntress



--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...


So the big goal is to get growth going. It's going to be
hard to get enough
of it; the stimulus program is the only realistic thing
government can do.
Business sure as hell won't do much on its own. You can cut
taxes and lower
wages until you're blue, but they won't invest if they think
there are no
buyers for their products. When a recession gets this deep,
you really have
to stimulate the demand side.

"John R. Carroll" wrote:

To pay reparations, they monetized the only thing they had left --
land. There is NOTHING that would force such a thing now. Thank God
we're off the gold standard. We have a variety of other ways to
control money, and the world is doing pretty well with it,
considering that we just had a very deep recession.


As it is we are borrowing money. Eventually it has to be repaid.
With what?

The same thing used during the end of the Clinton years Wes.
You use the tax collections that exceed spending.

Okay that makes sense in the sort term.


I'm thinking of a senario where the next time there is a treasury
auction, no one wants to buy.

That happened about five years ago more that once Wes.
Treasury auctions were undersubscribed numerous times.

I didn't know that.

Thanks John,

Wes

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

Basically, what John said. Also, we were far deeper in debt after WWII
than
we are now. The answer was to grow out of it, and to collect taxes so we
could pay it down. Growth was easier then. That's one part of the problem
now.

John's answer made sense to me.
When a good portion of the world was bombed out, growth was a bit easier.
Now, that is a
tough nut. I've always thought the unrestrained immigration was an
attempt to increase
growth. But if the basic economics of increased population growth doesn't
work year over
year, it becomes yet another cheat or scam.

Unrestrained immigration was an "attempt" by poverty-stricken campesinos and
others to find a better life. I seriously doubt if anyone else involved in
the decisions had any volition in it at all.

Population growth is going to be a big factor in coming years. You'll notice
that some European countries now have negative population growth. We'll
learn a few things from them.



So the big goal is to get growth going. It's going to be hard to get
enough
of it; the stimulus program is the only realistic thing government can do.
Business sure as hell won't do much on its own. You can cut taxes and
lower
wages until you're blue, but they won't invest if they think there are no
buyers for their products. When a recession gets this deep, you really
have
to stimulate the demand side.

But what are we stimulating? I'm under the impression we are stimulating
state
governments by propping them up. So far 6.35B has been sent to my state.
Recovery.org
shows it directed at various state agencies. To bad we don't have a
department of
manufacturing. Engler left too soon.

Short-run jobs and consumption. Stimulating consumption with deficit
spending doesn't build an economy, but it can keep one that's in recession
from tanking completely. Then, once you have an upturn in employment, you
quickly try to get some investment going and work for sustainable growth.

It's difficult to stimulate real growth with deficit spending. At best, it
might turn a decline around, but the effect is a weak one. Stimulus is not
about creating long-term sustainable growth. It's about keeping money
turning over and keeping up the purchase of goods and services.

We're already out of the recession. But since employment typically lags the
upturn in GDP, you have to keep it up for a while or your recovery can wind
up stillborn. That's what happened in 1936.


As far as I know, none of it has been used to say help my company or other
companies buy a
machine or invest in a process to grow the business and increase
employment.

Why would you buy machines if you don't have new customers, or increased
sales to existing ones? And, if you have increased sales, why do you need to
get the government involved?

Why would the government help you employ people if you don't already have
work for them to do? And if you already have work for them to do, why
haven't you hired them already? d8-)


Seems to me the money is keeping the state from making deep cuts in number
of state
employees and their fringe benefits. Something that has happened in the
real world aka
that part that is the private sector. Is this Obama's version of 'trickle
down'?

They've cut $500,000,000 from education here in NJ over the past month. It
doesn't seem to be stopping them from cutting. Why isn't your government
cutting state employees or their benefits?




With growth and sensible taxes, you pay the debt down. No growth, no
chance.
No taxes, no chance.

I think growth would be easier to achieve if there was less government to
support.

Of course. What would you like to cut first? It has to be something
substantial or you're whistling Dixie. How about Social Security or
Medicare? How about the Defense Department? Education? We can make kids as
dumb as we want.

They're all huge expenses. Most of the rest is chicken feed.

Taxes,
well those are going to go up, whether I like it or not, the nation ran up
a big bill in
recent history.

If we had Reagan or Bush in office, they'd probably just keep cutting until
the country was bankrupt.


In extremis, you let your currency deflate. Milton Friedman thought that
it
was the natural and logical thing, and should not be resisted. Your
economy
will still suck but you won't go bankrupt. And things won't collapse if
you
do it carefully.

And that is the cruelest tax of all. It punishes those that have worked
and produced and
put away some of their earings to provide for them in their later years.

That's the way it goes. If you think you know a way to break the business
cycle and to prevent recessions, and the consequent need for deficit
spending, there are a lot of people who would like to hear from you.



Again, because we're not on a gold standard and because our debts are
almost
all denominated in our own currency, we're in relatively good shape. All
of
that makes it more necessary, however, to handle these things responsibly.
"Responsibly" doesn't mean what it means in home economics, either.

That raises another question, if our debtors force payment in a basket of
currencies,
where does that put us?

Right where we are now. They can't "force" it. We have contracts. As for new
contracts, there is no other currency that's likely to stand up better than
the dollar, and they know it. Otherwise, oil contracts would not be in
dollars.

IIRC some of the oil producing countries figure they are going to
get screwed taking US dollars.

Poor them. g They love to bitch, don't they?

The solution there is to stop burning so God-damned much oil.

--
Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote:

Basically, what John said. Also, we were far deeper in debt after WWII than
we are now. The answer was to grow out of it, and to collect taxes so we
could pay it down. Growth was easier then. That's one part of the problem
now.

John's answer made sense to me.
When a good portion of the world was bombed out, growth was a bit easier. Now, that is a
tough nut. I've always thought the unrestrained immigration was an attempt to increase
growth. But if the basic economics of increased population growth doesn't work year over
year, it becomes yet another cheat or scam.


So the big goal is to get growth going. It's going to be hard to get enough
of it; the stimulus program is the only realistic thing government can do.
Business sure as hell won't do much on its own. You can cut taxes and lower
wages until you're blue, but they won't invest if they think there are no
buyers for their products. When a recession gets this deep, you really have
to stimulate the demand side.

But what are we stimulating? I'm under the impression we are stimulating state
governments by propping them up. So far 6.35B has been sent to my state. Recovery.org
shows it directed at various state agencies. To bad we don't have a department of
manufacturing. Engler left too soon.

As far as I know, none of it has been used to say help my company or other companies buy a
machine or invest in a process to grow the business and increase employment.

Seems to me the money is keeping the state from making deep cuts in number of state
employees and their fringe benefits. Something that has happened in the real world aka
that part that is the private sector. Is this Obama's version of 'trickle down'?



With growth and sensible taxes, you pay the debt down. No growth, no chance.
No taxes, no chance.

I think growth would be easier to achieve if there was less government to support. Taxes,
well those are going to go up, whether I like it or not, the nation ran up a big bill in
recent history.

In extremis, you let your currency deflate. Milton Friedman thought that it
was the natural and logical thing, and should not be resisted. Your economy
will still suck but you won't go bankrupt. And things won't collapse if you
do it carefully.

And that is the cruelest tax of all. It punishes those that have worked and produced and
put away some of their earings to provide for them in their later years.


Again, because we're not on a gold standard and because our debts are almost
all denominated in our own currency, we're in relatively good shape. All of
that makes it more necessary, however, to handle these things responsibly.
"Responsibly" doesn't mean what it means in home economics, either.

That raises another question, if our debtors force payment in a basket of currencies,
where does that put us? IIRC some of the oil producing countries figure they are going to
get screwed taking US dollars.


Wes

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:50:37 -0400, "Stormin Mormon"
wrote:
snip
What a shame.
The USA used to be populated with hard working people who
preferred to make their own decisions, and who preferred
freedom.
snip
============
Those days are gone and THEY AIN'T COMMIN BACK!

"Free trade," Multi-lateral Investment Agreements, stealth
chains/rollups, domestic deregulation and transnational
corporations have done far more damage to the US economy and
socio-cultural-political environment than any slight increase in
CO2 is ever going to do to the physical environment.

While many people would still like to make their own decisions
and still prefer freedom, the socio-cultural and economic
changes/reality and rapid increases in the complexity of life are
continually reducing the benefits of these traits except possibly
in personal satisfaction, which won't pay the bills.

The truth of the matter is that your (and your community's) level
of socio-economic status, which in turn now largely determines
your level of "freedom," is now determined to a large extent by
forces outside your control, e.g. NAFTA/WTO, Goldman-Sachs, and
the possible PIIGS [default]. The few factors still within your
control, such as boozing/wenching/fighting on the job, are
negative factors only, in that these may well get you fired, but
the absence of these behaviors does not in anyway assure your
continued employment or advancement in your chosen trade or
profession, even with multiple employers.

Your complaints/observations are certainly valid, but the
assumption that these changes are due to governmental actions
does not appear to be correct. Rather the governmental actions
are simply responses to rapidly changing conditions such as
massive outsourcing, financial manipulation/fraud and
undocumented immigration. Most unfortunately, this results in
treating the most obvious symptoms in the order of the public
outrage rather addressing/correcting the root causes, thus
shoveling sand against the tide.


Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

"Stormin Mormon" wrote:

At which point, our creditors would be left with worthless
promises. However, what are the odds that the US government
(or any employee thereof) would ever break a promise?

I don't see us ever defaulting. I could see us pulling our military forces back from the
116 nations or so we are helping to defend and telling them, hey, we got to pay our bills.
Better man up and be ready to defend yourself.

I think we tend to be a super power because too many nations don't want to be a power and
we are suckers when it comes to defense.

The war in Iraq and Afhganistan makes it pretty darn clear. I'll grant that Iraq wasn't
the 'good war' but Afhganistan was supposed to be. Look how pitfull the support is of our
allies. Too many countries send small detachments that are not even allowed to enter into
combat.

I probably insulted a couple nations. UK, I wasn't talking about you.

Wes

"Ed Huntress" wrote:

John's answer made sense to me.
When a good portion of the world was bombed out, growth was a bit easier.
Now, that is a
tough nut. I've always thought the unrestrained immigration was an
attempt to increase
growth. But if the basic economics of increased population growth doesn't
work year over
year, it becomes yet another cheat or scam.

Unrestrained immigration was an "attempt" by poverty-stricken campesinos and
others to find a better life. I seriously doubt if anyone else involved in
the decisions had any volition in it at all.

The feds haven't been trying very hard to stop them from coming in.

Population growth is going to be a big factor in coming years. You'll notice
that some European countries now have negative population growth. We'll
learn a few things from them.

Japan is investing heavily into robotics. They want to maintain their mono culture in the
face of decreasing population growth.

Europe will be interesting. The took in a bunch of Muslims, as we took in Hispanics for
cheap work. I think we got a less problematical group that will assimilate eventually.



So the big goal is to get growth going. It's going to be hard to get
enough
of it; the stimulus program is the only realistic thing government can do.
Business sure as hell won't do much on its own. You can cut taxes and
lower
wages until you're blue, but they won't invest if they think there are no
buyers for their products. When a recession gets this deep, you really
have
to stimulate the demand side.

But what are we stimulating? I'm under the impression we are stimulating
state
governments by propping them up. So far 6.35B has been sent to my state.
Recovery.org
shows it directed at various state agencies. To bad we don't have a
department of
manufacturing. Engler left too soon.

Short-run jobs and consumption. Stimulating consumption with deficit
spending doesn't build an economy, but it can keep one that's in recession
from tanking completely. Then, once you have an upturn in employment, you
quickly try to get some investment going and work for sustainable growth.

It's difficult to stimulate real growth with deficit spending. At best, it
might turn a decline around, but the effect is a weak one. Stimulus is not
about creating long-term sustainable growth. It's about keeping money
turning over and keeping up the purchase of goods and services.

Okay, that makes sense.

We're already out of the recession. But since employment typically lags the
upturn in GDP, you have to keep it up for a while or your recovery can wind
up stillborn. That's what happened in 1936.


As far as I know, none of it has been used to say help my company or other
companies buy a
machine or invest in a process to grow the business and increase
employment.

Why would you buy machines if you don't have new customers, or increased
sales to existing ones? And, if you have increased sales, why do you need to
get the government involved?

There is a good question. We, meaning my employer, invest because we see that we can make
a profit. So how does government create real jobs? Real meaning not taxed funded jobs.


Why would the government help you employ people if you don't already have
work for them to do? And if you already have work for them to do, why
haven't you hired them already? d8-)


Seems to me the money is keeping the state from making deep cuts in number
of state
employees and their fringe benefits. Something that has happened in the
real world aka
that part that is the private sector. Is this Obama's version of 'trickle
down'?

They've cut $500,000,000 from education here in NJ over the past month. It
doesn't seem to be stopping them from cutting. Why isn't your government
cutting state employees or their benefits?

I'm trying to look into this. We have this wonderful Internet and search engines but some
things I really want to see seem to be out of my grasp.





With growth and sensible taxes, you pay the debt down. No growth, no
chance.
No taxes, no chance.

I think growth would be easier to achieve if there was less government to
support.

Of course. What would you like to cut first? It has to be something
substantial or you're whistling Dixie. How about Social Security or
Medicare? How about the Defense Department? Education? We can make kids as
dumb as we want.

Defense and Education.

I posted my thoughts on how we are getting rolled on defense by our allies in another part
of this thread.

Education, we don't need a federal department of education. Let the States deal with it
on their terms. You seem to have a lot of faith in the feds. I have a lot of faith in
the individual states. If one state is screwing up, it will soon look to how the other
states that are getting it right are doing it.


They're all huge expenses. Most of the rest is chicken feed.

Taxes,
well those are going to go up, whether I like it or not, the nation ran up
a big bill in
recent history.

If we had Reagan or Bush in office, they'd probably just keep cutting until
the country was bankrupt.

There are two thoughts on taxes. Laffer curve and the cow that keeps producing milk. Part
of tax cutting is an attempt to reduce the size of goverment. Unfortuantly, too many in
Congress accept deficit spending.



In extremis, you let your currency deflate. Milton Friedman thought that
it
was the natural and logical thing, and should not be resisted. Your
economy
will still suck but you won't go bankrupt. And things won't collapse if
you
do it carefully.

And that is the cruelest tax of all. It punishes those that have worked
and produced and
put away some of their earings to provide for them in their later years.

That's the way it goes. If you think you know a way to break the business
cycle and to prevent recessions, and the consequent need for deficit
spending, there are a lot of people who would like to hear from you.

Avoiding some of this stupid crap like the Nasdaq bubble, insane mortgages via fanie m and
fanie m would be start. Then there are the derivatives. I'm not a big government fan but
there was a place a bit of regulation would have paid off.





Again, because we're not on a gold standard and because our debts are
almost
all denominated in our own currency, we're in relatively good shape. All
of
that makes it more necessary, however, to handle these things responsibly.
"Responsibly" doesn't mean what it means in home economics, either.

That raises another question, if our debtors force payment in a basket of
currencies,
where does that put us?

Right where we are now. They can't "force" it. We have contracts. As for new
contracts, there is no other currency that's likely to stand up better than
the dollar, and they know it. Otherwise, oil contracts would not be in
dollars.

We have contracts for a time. Contracts expire and have to be renegotiated.


IIRC some of the oil producing countries figure they are going to
get screwed taking US dollars.

Poor them. g They love to bitch, don't they?

Get enough of them together and we squeel like a pig. I remember odd even.

The solution there is to stop burning so God-damned much oil.

I'm all for nuclear power. Get that right, you can do electric vehicals.

We can even put charging coils in interstates and main arteries to increase range of EV's
to make them acceptable.

Wes

On Mar 31, 8:14*pm, "John R. Carroll" wrote:


Everyone except us. We're the only game in town that makes dollars.

--
John R. Carroll

I was under the impression that worldwide, a Significant portion of
the (paper)dollars in circulation were counterfeit.
True or false?

Wes wrote:
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

John's answer made sense to me.
When a good portion of the world was bombed out, growth was a bit
easier. Now, that is a
tough nut. I've always thought the unrestrained immigration was an
attempt to increase
growth. But if the basic economics of increased population growth
doesn't work year over
year, it becomes yet another cheat or scam.

Unrestrained immigration was an "attempt" by poverty-stricken
campesinos and others to find a better life. I seriously doubt if
anyone else involved in the decisions had any volition in it at all.

The feds haven't been trying very hard to stop them from coming in.

The federal interest in illegal immigration is focused almost exclusively on
security and criminal issues Wes.
States rights - remember?
Our borders are, and have always been, porous.

So the big goal is to get growth going. It's going to be hard to
get enough
of it; the stimulus program is the only realistic thing government
can do. Business sure as hell won't do much on its own. You can
cut taxes and lower
wages until you're blue, but they won't invest if they think there
are no buyers for their products. When a recession gets this deep,
you really have
to stimulate the demand side.

But what are we stimulating? I'm under the impression we are
stimulating state
governments by propping them up. So far 6.35B has been sent to my
state. Recovery.org
shows it directed at various state agencies. To bad we don't have a
department of
manufacturing. Engler left too soon.

Every State employee or teacher that doesn't lose their job is one less
person on the dole and one more person buying things rather than disposing
of assets to survive. The reverse of that is a full on depression with
rampant deflation. Everyone, as an individual, ends up in fire sale mode and
prices collapse right along with income.


Short-run jobs and consumption. Stimulating consumption with deficit
spending doesn't build an economy, but it can keep one that's in
recession from tanking completely. Then, once you have an upturn in
employment, you quickly try to get some investment going and work
for sustainable growth.

It's difficult to stimulate real growth with deficit spending. At
best, it might turn a decline around, but the effect is a weak one.
Stimulus is not about creating long-term sustainable growth.

AAAAAHHHH - Not exactly.
At least there is another aspect to this. What you defecit spend ON can
create the foundation for future growth and this is an important
consideration.


As far as I know, none of it has been used to say help my company
or other companies buy a
machine or invest in a process to grow the business and increase
employment.

Were the economy to truly collapse, you wouldn't have a job Wes.
There would not be a market for anything your employer makes.
A lot of stimulus money went into insuring that there were customers for
your product.
The appropriate response would be gratitude both that this didn't happen and
that there were people around that, perfectly or not, took actions that
halted the slide. Pat yourself on the back G as a tax payer.


Seems to me the money is keeping the state from making deep cuts in
number of state
employees and their fringe benefits. Something that has happened
in the real world aka
that part that is the private sector. Is this Obama's version of
'trickle down'?

Not just his Wes and not trickle down. Michigan doesn't need another big
group geting benefit check from the local unemployment office. You also have
to look at just what the employees you'd like to get rid of do for you. Wich
services would you like to dispense with?

With growth and sensible taxes, you pay the debt down. No growth,
no chance.
No taxes, no chance.

I think growth would be easier to achieve if there was less
government to support.

The size and cost of government is only something you can evaluate in terms
of revenue.
Government, large or small, has got to be affordable. This is a case where
size truly doesn't matter in and of itself.


Of course. What would you like to cut first? It has to be something
substantial or you're whistling Dixie. How about Social Security or
Medicare? How about the Defense Department? Education? We can make
kids as dumb as we want.

Defense and Education.

I posted my thoughts on how we are getting rolled on defense by our
allies in another part of this thread.

Education, we don't need a federal department of education. Let the
States deal with it on their terms. You seem to have a lot of faith
in the feds. I have a lot of faith in the individual states. If one
state is screwing up, it will soon look to how the other states that
are getting it right are doing it.

Your faith in the States has no basis in either history or reality Wes.
What happens is that the poorest States spend nothing.
We end up with large numbers of uneducated red necks that can't participate
in our economy in a meaningful and beneficail way.
Why would anyone want to squander that resource?

Taxes,
well those are going to go up, whether I like it or not, the nation
ran up a big bill in
recent history.


They don't have to.

If we had Reagan or Bush in office, they'd probably just keep
cutting until the country was bankrupt.

There are two thoughts on taxes. Laffer curve and the cow that keeps
producing milk. Part of tax cutting is an attempt to reduce the size
of goverment. Unfortuantly, too many in Congress accept deficit
spending.



In extremis, you let your currency deflate. Milton Friedman
thought that it
was the natural and logical thing, and should not be resisted. Your
economy
will still suck but you won't go bankrupt. And things won't
collapse if you
do it carefully.

And that is the cruelest tax of all. It punishes those that have
worked and produced and
put away some of their earings to provide for them in their later
years.

Punishment?
We'd be a third world economy without many of the things taxes support.
Can you imagine an America without an Interstate Highway System Wes?
I can remember what that was like.


That's the way it goes. If you think you know a way to break the
business cycle and to prevent recessions, and the consequent need
for deficit spending, there are a lot of people who would like to
hear from you.

Avoiding some of this stupid crap like the Nasdaq bubble, insane
mortgages via fanie m and fanie m would be start. Then there are the
derivatives. I'm not a big government fan but there was a place a
bit of regulation would have paid off.

You don't understand how the mortgage industry or GSE's work if you think
they were a big part of the current problem Wes.






Again, because we're not on a gold standard and because our debts
are almost
all denominated in our own currency, we're in relatively good
shape. All of
that makes it more necessary, however, to handle these things
responsibly. "Responsibly" doesn't mean what it means in home
economics, either.

That raises another question, if our debtors force payment in a
basket of currencies,
where does that put us?

Right where we are now. They can't "force" it. We have contracts. As
for new contracts, there is no other currency that's likely to stand
up better than the dollar, and they know it. Otherwise, oil
contracts would not be in dollars.

We have contracts for a time. Contracts expire and have to be
renegotiated.

They can but when you say "force" you are talking about the present.
The world won't tolerate very much monkey business with the Dollar Wes.
One country flexing it's muscle would have little effect beyond screwing
everyone that had dollar denominated contracts or currency reserves.
Everyone except us. We're the only game in town that makes dollars.


--
John R. Carroll

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:14:27 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:
snip
They can but when you say "force" you are talking about the present.
The world won't tolerate very much monkey business with the Dollar Wes.
One country flexing it's muscle would have little effect beyond screwing
everyone that had dollar denominated contracts or currency reserves.
Everyone except us. We're the only game in town that makes dollars.
--
John R. Carroll
============
Rumors persist that one of the major reasons for the Iraq war was
that Saddam Hussein had begun to sell oil in Euros, Yen and Yuan.
This had the potential to put a knot in the pantyhose of several
very influential groups in the US including the currency
traders/speculators as well as greatly increasing the cooperation
and trade between Iraq and the EEC/PRC/Japan while cutting out
the US middle men/banks, so Saddam had to go [and Chavaz may be
next on the hit list for the same reason].
http://www.feasta.org/documents/papers/oil1.htm
http://www.oftwominds.com/journal10/...gold03-10.html
http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=11996

FWIW -- Iran will no longer accept the U.S. dollar in payment for
oil, and is phasing out all dollar denominated securities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_oil_bourse
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...n4057490.shtml


Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

On Mar 31, 6:49*pm, Wes wrote:


But what are we stimulating? *I'm under the impression we are stimulating state
governments by propping them up. *So far 6.35B has been sent to my state. *Recovery.org
shows it directed at various state agencies. *

It used to be that Government employees got paid less than employees
in private industry, but the jobs were more secure. Less likely to be
laid off in a government job. But now government jobs pay more, have
better benefits, and are still more secure. So we are propping up
those government jobs.

There is a good chance that there will be not be much job creation
except in the public sector. The private sector has found ways to
reduce the number of employees. Computers are still getting more
powerful while getting cheaper. So we now have more automated
telephone systems, movies that employ computer graphics instead of
actors, etc.


Dan





Seems to me the money is keeping the state from making deep cuts in number of state
employees and their fringe benefits. *Something that has happened in the real world aka
that part that is the private sector. *Is this Obama's version of 'trickle down'?



Wes

Cross-Slide wrote:
On Mar 31, 8:14 pm, "John R. Carroll" wrote:


Everyone except us. We're the only game in town that makes dollars.


I was under the impression that worldwide, a Significant portion of
the (paper)dollars in circulation were counterfeit.
True or false?

Most of the dollars in the world only exist on computers.

--
John R. Carroll

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...



They've cut $500,000,000 from education here in NJ over the past month. It
doesn't seem to be stopping them from cutting. Why isn't your government
cutting state employees or their benefits?

Correction and update: It's a cut of $820,000,000 to education; 1,300 state
workers laid off; and a reduction of almost $500,000,000 in aid to towns and
cities.

--
Ed Huntress

F. George McDuffee wrote:
On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:14:27 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:
snip
They can but when you say "force" you are talking about the present.
The world won't tolerate very much monkey business with the Dollar
Wes. One country flexing it's muscle would have little effect beyond
screwing everyone that had dollar denominated contracts or currency
reserves. Everyone except us. We're the only game in town that makes
dollars. --
John R. Carroll
============
Rumors persist that one of the major reasons for the Iraq war was
that Saddam Hussein had begun to sell oil in Euros, Yen and Yuan.

It wasn't a rumor George. At one of their meetings in 2001, OPEC had begun
looking at a proposal to denominate their sales in Euro's rather than
dollars. They could see that the Euro was appreciating and the Bush
administration specifically stated that they weren't going to support to
prop up the US dollar, which was falling at the time. OPEC took a terrible
beating - the dollar lost 40 percent of it's value in a relatively short
period.


FWIW -- Iran will no longer accept the U.S. dollar in payment for
oil, and is phasing out all dollar denominated securities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_oil_bourse
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...n4057490.shtml

They are not, however, encouraging anyone to follow their lead and the
amounts involved are trivial on their own.
Iran is seen by most of the world as a sort of retarded child at this point.

--
John R. Carroll

Wes wrote:
"Stormin Mormon" wrote:

At which point, our creditors would be left with worthless
promises. However, what are the odds that the US government
(or any employee thereof) would ever break a promise?

I don't see us ever defaulting.

Double digit inflation isn't much different than default if you are holding
long term debt issued at low rates - like today's.
It's a great way for us to wipe out our debt with cheapened dollars,
however, and that is why it's important for the Fed and the rest of our
government to be convincing in their arguments that they are serious about
fighting inflation when the time is right and that they know how to do so
and will.

--
John R. Carroll

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

John's answer made sense to me.
When a good portion of the world was bombed out, growth was a bit
easier.
Now, that is a
tough nut. I've always thought the unrestrained immigration was an
attempt to increase
growth. But if the basic economics of increased population growth
doesn't
work year over
year, it becomes yet another cheat or scam.

Unrestrained immigration was an "attempt" by poverty-stricken campesinos
and
others to find a better life. I seriously doubt if anyone else involved in
the decisions had any volition in it at all.

The feds haven't been trying very hard to stop them from coming in.

Why start trouble? There is nothing to be gained by it, politically. It will
take a government with guts to fix it, and it could wind up being another
one of those things, like the CRA of '64, that costs one party or the other
most of its power for a generation. Or two or three.


Population growth is going to be a big factor in coming years. You'll
notice
that some European countries now have negative population growth. We'll
learn a few things from them.

Japan is investing heavily into robotics. They want to maintain their
mono culture in the
face of decreasing population growth.

Europe will be interesting. The took in a bunch of Muslims, as we took in
Hispanics for
cheap work. I think we got a less problematical group that will
assimilate eventually.

I think we got the better deal. g There's a heck of a story in the
Telegraph this week telling how the Muslims in one district in London have
the entire government there intimidated.

Yet, my town is loaded with Muslims, mostly East Indian. One is my son's
best friend. The ones I know are great, generous, hard-working people. My
cardiologist's name is Muhammed, and he's a laugh a minute. g I really
don't get it.




So the big goal is to get growth going. It's going to be hard to get
enough
of it; the stimulus program is the only realistic thing government can
do.
Business sure as hell won't do much on its own. You can cut taxes and
lower
wages until you're blue, but they won't invest if they think there are
no
buyers for their products. When a recession gets this deep, you really
have
to stimulate the demand side.

But what are we stimulating? I'm under the impression we are
stimulating
state
governments by propping them up. So far 6.35B has been sent to my
state.
Recovery.org
shows it directed at various state agencies. To bad we don't have a
department of
manufacturing. Engler left too soon.

Short-run jobs and consumption. Stimulating consumption with deficit
spending doesn't build an economy, but it can keep one that's in recession
from tanking completely. Then, once you have an upturn in employment, you
quickly try to get some investment going and work for sustainable growth.

It's difficult to stimulate real growth with deficit spending. At best, it
might turn a decline around, but the effect is a weak one. Stimulus is not
about creating long-term sustainable growth. It's about keeping money
turning over and keeping up the purchase of goods and services.

Okay, that makes sense.

We're already out of the recession. But since employment typically lags
the
upturn in GDP, you have to keep it up for a while or your recovery can
wind
up stillborn. That's what happened in 1936.


As far as I know, none of it has been used to say help my company or
other
companies buy a
machine or invest in a process to grow the business and increase
employment.

Why would you buy machines if you don't have new customers, or increased
sales to existing ones? And, if you have increased sales, why do you need
to
get the government involved?

There is a good question. We, meaning my employer, invest because we see
that we can make
a profit. So how does government create real jobs? Real meaning not
taxed funded jobs.

You've opened another discussion. I will avoid it for now. g

This is a gross oversimplification, but, with some argument, I think that
mainstream economists today would mostly agree that you can't stop a slide
into recession by encouraging investment, because no one in his right mind
will increase his operating costs while his market is retracting. But the
things you can do to stimulate consumption are limited in their ability to
sustain growth. I think of them more as a push in the rear to get things
moving on their own. I see from John's message that I will have to argue
this point a bit with him. d8-)



Why would the government help you employ people if you don't already have
work for them to do? And if you already have work for them to do, why
haven't you hired them already? d8-)


Seems to me the money is keeping the state from making deep cuts in
number
of state
employees and their fringe benefits. Something that has happened in the
real world aka
that part that is the private sector. Is this Obama's version of
'trickle
down'?

They've cut $500,000,000 from education here in NJ over the past month. It
doesn't seem to be stopping them from cutting. Why isn't your government
cutting state employees or their benefits?

I'm trying to look into this. We have this wonderful Internet and search
engines but some
things I really want to see seem to be out of my grasp.





With growth and sensible taxes, you pay the debt down. No growth, no
chance.
No taxes, no chance.

I think growth would be easier to achieve if there was less government
to
support.

Of course. What would you like to cut first? It has to be something
substantial or you're whistling Dixie. How about Social Security or
Medicare? How about the Defense Department? Education? We can make kids as
dumb as we want.

Defense and Education.

Defense is always going to be politically tough, but I'll be right behind
you. As for cutting federal education contributions, all it will do is push
the costs onto the states. I really don't see that one having legs.

Of course, there's always a reason things can't be cut. It's great for bar
discussions, but I don't think anyone has any realistic answers. We're
already one of the two or three lowest-taxed countries in the developed
world, so we're up against a lot of contrary facts when we think we have a
solution, that everyone else must see it, but for nefarious reasons they
don't do anything about it. I don't think the reasons are so nefarious.


I posted my thoughts on how we are getting rolled on defense by our allies
in another part
of this thread.

Education, we don't need a federal department of education. Let the
States deal with it
on their terms. You seem to have a lot of faith in the feds. I have a
lot of faith in
the individual states. If one state is screwing up, it will soon look to
how the other
states that are getting it right are doing it.

I have almost no faith at all in the states. I agree with James Madison that
government becomes less competent as its geographic and population scope
become smaller. If they weren't propped up by the federal government, they'd
collapse like so many houses of cards.

And they're much more corrupt. The state governments are mostly either
corrupt as hell, buffoonish, or both.

Of course, my impression is colored by living in one of the leading states
in both corruption and incompetence, g but I think the evidence is very
widespread.



They're all huge expenses. Most of the rest is chicken feed.

Taxes,
well those are going to go up, whether I like it or not, the nation ran
up
a big bill in
recent history.

If we had Reagan or Bush in office, they'd probably just keep cutting
until
the country was bankrupt.

There are two thoughts on taxes. Laffer curve and the cow that keeps
producing milk. Part
of tax cutting is an attempt to reduce the size of goverment.
Unfortuantly, too many in
Congress accept deficit spending.

The Laffer curve is widely misunderstood. It's a curve that shows revenue
going up as you increase taxes, until you reach a point where taxes are
excessive, at which point revenues decline. No one knows where the peak
point is because the whole thing is a vast simplification, which doesn't
take such things as progressive tax rates into account. It's good for
illustrating a concept but it's all but useless as a guide for describing
real economies, except in the most general terms. Laffer has said this is in
so many words.

Laffer himself attributes the idea to John Meynard Keynes. Keynes also gave
us the theories behind deficit spending, and when it was appropriate. Thanks
to Reagan and his budget director, "Kill the Beast" Stockman, Democrats and
Republicans alike now think it's just a political issue. Witness Dick
Cheney, and his comment that "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."
Sheesh.




In extremis, you let your currency deflate. Milton Friedman thought that
it
was the natural and logical thing, and should not be resisted. Your
economy
will still suck but you won't go bankrupt. And things won't collapse if
you
do it carefully.

And that is the cruelest tax of all. It punishes those that have worked
and produced and
put away some of their earings to provide for them in their later years.

That's the way it goes. If you think you know a way to break the business
cycle and to prevent recessions, and the consequent need for deficit
spending, there are a lot of people who would like to hear from you.

Avoiding some of this stupid crap like the Nasdaq bubble, insane mortgages
via fanie m and
fanie m would be start. Then there are the derivatives. I'm not a big
government fan but
there was a place a bit of regulation would have paid off.

It sure would have.






Again, because we're not on a gold standard and because our debts are
almost
all denominated in our own currency, we're in relatively good shape. All
of
that makes it more necessary, however, to handle these things
responsibly.
"Responsibly" doesn't mean what it means in home economics, either.

That raises another question, if our debtors force payment in a basket
of
currencies,
where does that put us?

Right where we are now. They can't "force" it. We have contracts. As for
new
contracts, there is no other currency that's likely to stand up better
than
the dollar, and they know it. Otherwise, oil contracts would not be in
dollars.

We have contracts for a time. Contracts expire and have to be
renegotiated.


IIRC some of the oil producing countries figure they are going to
get screwed taking US dollars.

Poor them. g They love to bitch, don't they?

Get enough of them together and we squeel like a pig. I remember odd
even.

The solution there is to stop burning so God-damned much oil.

I'm all for nuclear power. Get that right, you can do electric vehicals.

We can even put charging coils in interstates and main arteries to
increase range of EV's
to make them acceptable.

I haven't heard about that one, but cheap electricity opens up a lot of
possibilities. I'm hopeful but wary.

--
Ed Huntress