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Thin Ice
I’m not surprised that the halo effect of political changes in Italy and Greece had a very short half-life. Why would it? Nothing has changed.
I’m not surprised that the contagion has worked its way to France. After all, the ECB intervention policy insures that France becomes a target. “If you can't sell Italy, sell France”, is the market’s response.
But I’m absolutely blown out by the pace of things. France’s bonds are being devalued on a daily basis. Italy has been functionally shut out of the new issue market. Market liquidity has dried up. What were once routine transactions are now difficult to price. E100mm bond transactions for France and Italy were normal; today E25mm is a market amount.
What is becoming scarily clear is that there is no more announcements coming that are going to make a difference. All the news is out on expanding the EFSF. The only thing that could reverse this tide is an agreement to “federalize” the debts of Europe. This would leave Germany (massively) on the hook. There is zero chance of this happening.
The central question that the market will ask and answer in the next few weeks is whether France can withstand the onslaught. The ECB will not intervene in the French market. Will debt capital continue to move out of France? Two charts. One says France is probably okay. The other says we are headed for a hard landing.
These numbers (CIA) are a year old but they tell the story. Italy had $2.1T of public sector debt (119% of GDP) while France had only $1.8T of debt (82% of GDP). Looking at this it’s understandable why Italy is in trouble. But it does not explain why France should have a problem. This chart is the reason that there could be an issue:
On this basis France has double the debt of Italy. I call this the Money Center Bank Syndrome. The banks have debt outside their borders (they have assets too). This debt is getting sucked into the French government bond market as world investors trim exposure to the country (“If you can’t reduce exposure to the banks, sell government bonds”).
Italy and France have an average debt maturity of ~7 years. There is a total of $3T. The market value of this stock of debt has fallen by about $200b since October 1st. This is not a loss that will be recorded on anyone’s books (except the likes of MFG) but it does cause a strain on funding as the repo value has fallen.
Remember that all night conference by the EU deciders on October 26th? Central to that meeting was the commitment that the EU banks would undergo a recapitalization of E106b ($150b) by June 30 2012. The EU banks have had their assets impaired by at least that amount in just the past two months.
That all night meeting was just a joke! Anyone who trusts these people are making a mistake.
The Merkozy’s of Europe will be making “calming” statements over the next few days. We are dangerously close to a death spiral, and they know it. But they have nothing on their shelf but words. I don’t think this will prove to be enough.
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simple as that? you on the corner, cutting silver into little pieces?? are you fucking kidding me? The theory is great, it will protect your wealth, but you're conveniently mixing or assuming that it all ends in tears and BOOM, PM is all you need to survive, simple.
In economics this problem is called the double coincidence of wants/needs. That was why they had to invent a MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE. But, in order for a medium of exchange to work as money it has to have the same value for everyone and hold it's value over time. As a unit of account they had to invent double entry bookkeeping, and as a store of value they had to promote stability in prices. If it does not meet all of those three criteria then it simply is not money and barter again becomes the economic law. In a barter situation PM's are just another thing that can be bartered, but their value will be a lot lower than they are now. The only way PM's can be money is if a government requires them to be legal tender then enforces laws about proper accounting and debasement of the metals.
But the whole argument is kind of moot anyway since when fiat dies the economy as we know it will die right along with it. Ironic that it will be those packrat hoarders that will end up being the rich ones eh?
No, he cant print more, TPTB can revalue it though, or even take it off him, its very simple actually. Back to square one, its not the means of exchange but who controls it/you; the fiat/gold argument is just an abstract sideshow. Lesson over... that one was on the house BTW.
Obviously you don't have a slightest clue of the fiat/gold argument if you think that gold will rise in value at the same rate as all other goods.
You might be right there, its probably safe to assume the gold market would overshoot in the initial phase of a hyperinflationary episode, but im sure they would dot the i's and cross the t's eventually. I suppose its all down to timing, as always.
The "overshoot" will be when governments again fool the masses that they are holding a currency fully backed by gold when in reality they are printing more gold certificates than the gold they hold, thus taking value from actual gold. Who knows when that time will be..it is impossible to tell. But it is in human nature to want to control the money..so it will happen again.
The "you can't eat gold" argument is a poor argument. If I'm a doctor and you're a potato farmer and you need my services but I don't what potatoes, then how do I get paid? That is the problem with a barter economy. One solution is maybe I want shoes and the shoemaker wants potatoes, so you get shoes for your potatoes and then give me shoes for my services..but that is a lot of work. It's a lot easier if there's a generally accepted medium of exchange to solve the problem of lack of coincidence of wants, which is why there is always a role for money. So the question you have to ask yourself is "when fiat disappears, what will be used as money?" Yes, holding a high amount of value in a small space is an important role of money because nobody wants to bring a ton of iron to the grocery store. And yes, I would rather not work all day just to collect a money that will go rotten in a week. It's also important for money to be divisible and homogeneous and for it to be scarce because if money is abundant, then it loses its value. Gold and silver make a great money because of there natural scarcity. Gold supply grows at only about 1.5% / yr. and there's about 15X more silver than gold in the earth. There nothing else that is limited in abundance like the metals (maybe accept platinum and palladium except they are much rarer than gold). Maybe diamonds and precious gems can be a store of value but the problem is they are not homogenous like silver and gold so their value cannot be easily measured. When you open your eyes and see what it takes to be money, you can see that the only real options are silver and gold.
The scarcity of gold and silver does indeed make for an excellent medium of exchange in a world of coins and local-merchants -- but remember: fixed rate paper currencies did much the same.
In the US we used to have silver-certificates -- exchangable for a fixed amount of silver. Why did we get rid of them? Because you couldn't inflate them away when it was convenient.
But the reality is that electronic representations of currencies are here to stay.
No we're not going to start sending gold-coins to Amazon.
No we're not going to start "mailing coins in" to order things from catalogs.
But we probably will have paper and electronic currencies that are convertible AT A FIXED RATE for hard currencies or commodities. (ie: A new bill that is worth exactly 1 gram of gold).
And this is the important point: As long as we're going to accept that currencies can have fixed-rate *representational* value (ie: Paper or electronic 1's and 0's exchangeable for some exact measure of physical) then just about any universally demanded commodity will do: Sugar, Rice, Oil, etc.
So while the thesis of "You can't eat it" is indeed silly -- so is the notion that gold and silver represent the only universally accepted mediums of exchange which derive value from scarcity.
Hey wait a minute, I thought you could dig it out of the ground for $5?
DaddyO
If gold is only a 'relic' as many suggest, why do central banks and sovereigns bother to hold stores of it? Just collectors, or what?
Come on, we all know the answer to that one: TRADITION!
And it always helps to add a show tune, from a musical about Bernanke's "chosen people":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw
Thank you, SJ, for being more gracious in your reply than was I to this particular fool.
I'm sorry, but when faced with the insanely idiotic "you can't eat gold" non-argument for the 23,884th time, I lose it.
I don't know why it's such a difficult concept that ham sandwiches aren't much good to eat or much good for trading for energy or whatever when they're rotten. PMs don't spoil. They need no preservatives. And a society needs an honest medium of exchange.
Fiat pieces of paper work as a medium of exchange if one could be sure that the people controlling them were always honest. History has shown that this is not always the case. Now is one of those times.
So he should keep his wealth in rotten ham sandwiches if he prefers. I prefer PMs instead. They smell better.
It's amazing how many people care enough to be a member of this site and read the articles that zerohedge puts out but still don't understand that when fiat crashes, all of that wealth doesn't just disappear because the wealth isn't the fiat, it's the goods that the fiat buys and all of that purchasing power that fiat had will be transferred into something else because the goods will still exist.
+1 - Wealth and value are foreign concepts to the modern progressive (read: retarded) mind.
But really, what do you expect when the common perception is that eggs come from those funny little cartons at the store, and Ham sandwiches maintain inherent trade value because someone is always hungry, somewhere...
I mean, UPS and Fedex make the global ham sandwich currency trade completely practical and feasible, right?
If Rod Serling were still with us this just about the point where he'd say:
"This.... is the Twilight Zone, bitchez...."
Classic (bitchez)!
God you are a fucking and unabashed idiot.
Why do you, like so many other center-thinking sheep, implicitly posit the false dichotomy that financial and monetary matters must either remain more or less exactly as they are today, or else it is Armageddon meets Mad Max meets "The Road"? Always, sheeple like yourself (who have bought into the banksters' self-serving propaganda hook, line and sinker) like to suggest that if and when the current financial and monetary systems fail, we will all be digging in the dirt for grubs and worms and fighting off cannibalistic zombie hordes (so why bother holding gold anyway?, i.e., "you can't eat it"). Such doom-mongering is utterly specious and disingenuous, and totally ignorant of even recent historical parallels in which societies did in deed NOT collapse into Dark Ages misery and subsistence survival even as their (fiat) currencies did.
You clearly have NO knowledge, or even conception, of the vast history of money, finance and commerce, in which gold (and silver) have played a key and pivotal role for literally thousands of years. You also demonstrate a wild ignorance of free market principles.
But this one is the gem: "there are so many ways to make gold worthless". The depth of cluelessness and/or disingenuosity displayed here is so profound, I am left literally speechless; I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Now, please go back to commenting on YouTube, where your intellectual equals wait for your return.
akak -- While you're not wrong -- you're also delusional about how right you are. Personally -- I think gold is going to the moon.
BUT: There are well presented theses on both sides of this argument -- and to dogmatically align oneself with only one side is to reveal either a lack of understanding and trading experience, or a rigidity born of self-interest (ie: talking one's book).
Yes, gold is and always will be a currency. BUT: No, gold has not (and has never) been a non-volatile store of value (or even close to one). Good lord man, look at a chart -- and tell me you see low volatility.
For you to say that Tide's comment "There are so many ways to make gold worthless" is "clueless" or "disingenuous" is actually *also* to ignore the history of gold. Which is the very thing you're accusing others of. Historically, there can be no argument: Governments have smashed gold's value *very* successfully over the medium term. Will they eventually lose? Yes (thank God), but they can cause max-pain for longs in the meantime.
All commodities (and all stores of value) can be manipulated to vast extremes over the short term. Yes, ultimately value reverts to its relative mean. And that means that over the long term gold will always be a relatively safe investment that defies centrally-planned economic idiocy. But that reversion can *AND HAS* taken decades at a time. Believe me, I know about being wrong on metals -- and time can eat your account alive. Markets can remain irrational (or in this case, manipulated) longer than you can stay solvent.
I personally believe the day for gold is at hand, and that our politicians are so self-obsessed, arrogant and unaware of economic fundamentals that they will trigger a cascade of fear and send gold to the moon. But unlike you -- I recognize the implicit risks in that trade. You apparently do not. Your arguments are rigid, dogmatic and as I said above -- either consciously dismissing of the very valid points (and equally valid historic data) which lie in opposition to your position, or you are just plain ignorant of how markets actually work over the medium-term in a world of oligarchs, managed economies and crony capitalism.
Popo,
I appreciate your well-written thoughts here, but must correct you on a couple of important points which you raised.
While, as an observer of the gold market for over 35 years now, I cannot deny that a measure of volatility does indeed exist in the price AND value of gold, two points must be added to that observation. Firstly, you clearly misinterpreted my comments above as suggesting that gold's value is not volatile over time, when in fact all that I was trying to point out is that gold has never been worthless at any time or place in recorded history (well, maybe in the lifeboats of the Titanic), as Tidefighter claimed --- much less was ever driven into such a state by the actions of any government. Secondly, it must be acknowledged that until the early to mid 20th century, gold's value did vary and change over time, but only slowly and within a relatively narrow range, NOTHING like it has been swinging around since 1971. This modern "volatility in gold", I would aver, is almost nothing of the sort --- it is much more a reflection of, as well as a product of, the inherent instability in our (first-ever) worldwide fiat monetary system(s). As such, once that instability is (hopefully) removed by a return to sound money, those rapid and extreme fluctuations in gold could be similarly expected to radically diminish, even if they never disappear.
In short, I believe that your disagreements with my positions in fact do not exist, and to the extent that you apparently think that we differ in our fundamental outlooks, I feel that you have merely misread my positions, or read into my comments beliefs that I simply do not hold.
Hey! I comment on YouTube sometimes.
Akak, there is no use arguing with a guy who knows absolutely nothing about monetary history. Yes, he is an idiot.
Tidefighter, you could be less of an idiot if you would read say, Adam Fergusson's When Money Dies. But I think you're comfortable in your ignorance.
For now.
Thank you for demonstrating your complete and total ignorance of several thousand years of financial and monetary history. We can now dismiss any of your further kneejerk pro-Establishment ramblings as the blatherings of an irrelevant and ignorant idiot.
"Currency = food + energy" constitutes a barter economy, which cannot even remotely sustain regional, much less national or global, commerce and trade. Hence the need for a universally-accepted medium of exchange, i.e., money, i.e. gold and silver. Plus, I am fascinated by your idea that one can barter "energy", rather than fuel. How many pounds of heat, or kilowatts, are you going to offer me for my loaf of bread or bag of corn --- and how exactly are you going to trade them?
Really, this is such basic stuff that it is insulting to even have to address it here. Do you need me to teach you your ABCs and the multiplication tables while we're at it?
Hey Mr. A,
This idiot is starting to sound like our Leo. If you keep at him, perhaps he'll combuts and we can decide if we are going to piss on him to put him out... or just watch.
: )
If that is the case, maybe we simply need to take him out to lunch ...
I read your posts. Is it possible for you to be civil and make your point without personal attack? So energy is local [bartering] and cannot be traded globally? Food is local [bartering] and cannot be traded globally? And...these are your fundamentals for precious metal stacking? You need to elevate your thinking beyond the primer level. Sorry to disgruntle your stacking for when SHTF. If CB's can pull of a $200-$300 rip, what makes you think taxpayer money cannot be used to send it to $100?
Do you think the other CB's weren't involved in the flash crash? What planet do you live on?
This is fight club. Quit yer crying and don't be such a pussy tidefighter . Akak's response to your drivel is spot on.
Hey Tidy,
Mr. A. is being charitable towards you. Trust me.
Go read Dying of Money by Jans Parsons... then come back and try to make some sense.
You are very much a hypocrite as you were the first to drop a personal attack. Anywho, what planet do you live on? Do you think central planners are gods? There is this thing called the market which is more powerful than any law, printing machine, or military. When copter ben really starts dumping his computer generated fiat, the value of USDs will plummet. And eggs do not make a good money.
That is my concern - "the markets" are nothing more than corporate/central bankers who stand to lose everything.
"The market" should have shitballed this thing decades ago, but no, "the market" is under the full control of the corporate/central bankers with algos running amok in the stock exchanges and outright fraud/shredding in the other locations.
Waiting for Godot comes to mind.
They can manipulate and acheive short term victories, but there is no way they have totalized control. Don't give them that kind of credit. GIVE THEM NOTHING, in every way you can manifest it.
It is kind of like pollution unfortunately. They can get away with it for a while, but the longer they do it (manipulate, extend and pretend) the worse it will be when the market's/earth's answer adjusts with an obdurate vengance. Just like we can pollute the planet for only so long, they can corrupt the market for only so long. THERE WILL BE A PRICE TO PAY AND THE PRICE WILL BE STEEPER THAN ANY OF THEM CAN IMAGINE. This is not a wishful post, nor is it a blind faith based kind of thing. Mother nature is a bitch (I love her). The market is a manifestation of mother nature herself. There are patterns and laws bigger than our constitution, or those who would seek to cheat the laws set down by men and women.
Fuck Gidot. Live life to the fullest, knowing that an ugly snapback is in the cards for you and I, and/or our kids. No way to call the timing.
We were always going to die. So is earth. What the so called elite is up to is laughable. They piss me off, but ultimately they are pathetic.
Bravo, MsC! Resistance is not futile!
Utterly fantastic post, MeCreant! Bravo!
+1000
"Is it possible for you to be civil and make your point without personal attack?"
I'll take this one-
The answer is no. This is fight club. The ownus for conforming to the culture is on you, not everyone else.
You will find that many of the commenters on Zerohedge are brilliant people who don't have time to sugar coat every bitter pill that we as a society have no choice but to swallow...
Cynicism is a tool we use to make you understand that your logical brain is not functioning correctly, or that your level of knowledge or expertise in a particular subject is inferior and requires additional study and/or development.
Take the beatings and use them as motivation to go study and toughen yourself up, then come back
There is no greater token of respect than to get green arrows from people who truly understand just what it is going to take to put this ass-fucked species of ours back on the correct evolutionary development path.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Fight Club! Akak actually sounded reasonable to me. I guess my bruises are healing.
Oh it's late and my ribs hurt from laughing out loud so much, thanks I needed that it's been one of those days!!
DaddyO
I literally LOL'ed!
You may constantly make a mess of my garbage, but please don't ever leave for good.
"ass-fucked"
Where you at the Fed window again? Those bankers are quick!!!
Yes because when purchase a home I will give the seller thousands of pounds of a potatoes... or a few gold coins.
Food and energy CAN be currency but there is nothing like gold and silver. How do you expect to meaurse and distrubute fuel when shopping at a farmers market? I rather have 5gram bars of silver to buy items.
"How do you expect to meaurse and distrubute fuel when shopping at a farmers market?"
Uhmmm, the same way I buy Kerosene every year? You take a 5 gallon can to the large tank at the fuel center in Hico. They fill it to the "FULL" line marked on the outside. You pay them for five gallons of K-1 Water-Clear Kerosene and then transport it home in the bed of your truck. Seems like a simple enough system to me. There are containers with known volumes to be found everywhere.
I do agree that food/energy/building supplies will make excellent barter tools, but as mentioned before - only for a small sphere of influence. That is how the concept of money came about. An item is found that has value and/or worth for people over a broad area, and then they set the exchange rate for it locally. Gold has been used as an adornment for years, but subsistence economies have little need for it - unless they know they can trade it to a colony that has already met it's basic needs and has a surplus to trade it for. If large areas are not meeting their basic needs, then another form of "money" will arise. Heck, it could even be hay. The mastering of drying grain shoots and grass to act as a feed source for animals used in propulsion and consumption has been seen as a major step forward in our evolution. A large round bale is rather difficult to fit in your wallet though.
No, it is not, not when I am faced with monumental and arrogant ignorance, or with disingenuous arguments implicitly supportive of the corrupt and sociopathic power elites, and their corrupted and failing financial and monetary status-quo paradigms.
It is your ignorance combined with your smug arrogance that enrages me --- and which mark you as the kind of typical American that I so despise.
Can you please repeat that in English?
And this has what to do with the subject of holding gold and silver as financial insurance against the coming collapse of the worldwide governmental debt bubble and fiat monetary system?
Your "arguments" are specious, ignorant and disjointed, --- and that is being charitable.
TF and Akak: Go to your separate corners and stop trying to slash and burn each other's thesis, you both have good points to make and none of us can see the future, if someone says they can then run do not walk away from them because they are both wrong and lying.
Though if I had to side with one of you it would be Akak, when the collapse does come fiat will die and you two are just arguing over what will replace it. In the immediate aftermath it will have to be barter because so few people in the economy actually hold any PM's. And if you think people will sit around for months without groceries or fuels waiting for the government to come up with a new paradigm you are sadly wrong. It will not be PM's either since those with food and fuel will demand a price in PM's you simply will not pay, it is one thing to say that you think your ounce of gold is worth more than the $1750 we saw on spot price today, it is another when you have to pay an ounce for a cabbage because your family is starving and that is the best you can do.
I am thinking that TPTB have a plan, one we will not like but will accept out of survival. The end of freedom, dropping all pretense to rights, but though life will be misery it will be life. You say you have weapons and will fight? I will stand with you, die with you, but we slept when we should have been acting long ago. We have already lost and when the collapse comes it will be made clear. I say early December, but if I am off by a month oh well.
I see a best case scenario of a breakup of the USA along the lines of the Soviets, and a break of of the EU as well. Then the rise there of a nationalist right wing anti muslim. In Russia money was unavailable and what was available was worthless. You needed foreign hard currency to eat or else barter. It took ten years for the government to emerge and is still a fetus compared to mature economies, they still have a lot of problems, I doubt they will ever really be a market economy with a vibrant middle class.
You make good points BTR. Although as some have stated, those who think they will be saved from the collapse of fiat currency and the possible BarterTown scenario by owning gold and silver simply have not prepared properly, or sufficiently, for such an event. Many view gold and silver NOT as a possible means of exchange during some quasi-Mad Max interlude, but as a means of carrying their savings THROUGH such a period, and into the re-established (if relative) prosperity to follow.
And even if it costs one ounce of gold to buy that one head of cabbage, would it be better to have that one ounce of gold now in order to be able to make such an exchange in the future, or left holding nothing to barter with at all?
Your points are good and if history is any guide, PM's offer a means of transitioning into what lies ahead on the otherside.
Weimar is a classic example of wealth transfer and growth. Near the end of the collapse, those with PM's were able to buy up land which became the next store of wealth.
Hence PM's were just the interim medium of exchange that allowed those prepared and nimble enough to move into the next chapter.
DaddyO
Weimar and the 15 years thereafter were a classic example of what happens when a group, that managed to acquire much of the PMs, buys up the most obvious source of wealth, land. The Nazi Powers That Be took their wealth away from them and killed them. Those land owners "couldn't leave" because they would lose their real estate. This lesson is too soon forgotten.
Ditto. Read my story above
I see you're still fighting the good fight, akak. You can now see why I just gave up on the poor souls. They deserve a reasoned explanation and nothing else. I simply got tired of writing the same old crap time after time. After a lather was worked up on replies to MasterBates aka Johnny Bravo, I quit. Let 'em eat dirt.... who gives a shit.
Love ya man!
Thank you, my masked procyonic friend and comrade at arms. Any praise coming from you is high praise indeed. I've been missing you around here, along with a number of the other ZH old-timers.
I think that some of these guys only think gold in the US. The story that I shared with Zerohedgers a few times needs to be read by the new visitors.
I wrote this true story in May 2010 on Zero Hedge
<<<While I was traveling in the Sinai dessert, I stopped at a town to buy gold jewelry. A Bedouin family traveling with Camels was buying 22K gold wire. (Semi-circle profile 1.4" wide.) At the end of the bargaining, the store owner cut the wire into several 6-7 inches long pieces and crudely created bracelets. The Bedouin wife dressed in long black garb lifted her long sleeves and slipped the bracelets into her arms. To my amazement it looked like she had bracelets going al the way up to her underarms.
The owner explained to me later that they were traveling between Egypt, Israel, Gaza, Jordan and other countries. No trust in paper money and counterfeit bills. Any time they make money on trading, they buy more gold wire, anytime they need money, they go to the gold market of whichever country they are in and sell bracelets.">>>
The point my friends is that this has been going on even at good times. In the US this images are not believable. But it will happen. During the depression, basement deals on real estate with silver as the exchange medium took place by the have's. Those who had non income producing real estate that needed money to survive sold it for less than the price of the land. They would not accept anything else but PM's
Guys like Tide fighter and others may end up being nice people but they are either misguided, idealistic, or plain wrong in their thinking. Unless of course they are trolls of the bankster clan.
Rocky do not loose your fervor, you need to teach and educate.
PM's hands down are the best wealth preservation. forget about medium of exchange, forget about not being edible. I will not be who I am now if my dad did not have British sovereigns during Europe's dark days. I did help my grandma strting the fireplace and made toast on a makeshift toaster (a wire stand at 60 degree angle in the fireplace burning useless currency. Some don't get it unless they experience it.
Thanks for reposting. I hope I don't sound corny (okay, I do, so what?), I found this to be beautiful. Gold is fiat (decree). Just true. Gold is tradition. Fact. Gold is also logical because it is rare and hard to destroy. Your post drips with truth and history. Primitive is the wrong word. Gold is fundamental. So is toast! I feel the pulse of life itself, vibrant, simple, and profound. Gold is civilization, before refridgeration, air conditioning.
Again, I feel a little embarassed saying all this, but I felt this from your post. Thanks again.
ditto. (missing rock-rac and other ZH old-timers) welcome home Rockie. Stop back more often.
The fact is that the vast majority of the global supply of monetary metal lies far beyond the reaches of the average person. Basically, in my opinion, or as a matter of fact to some, the chunk that matters is held in trust, out of circulation by the administrators of the system which is owned by those above those you and I know as TPTB.
If/when the financial system becomes denominated in monetary metal, we should expect it to be forcefully ushered in along with the deaths of unthinkable numbers of those populating the lower and middle "classes" by virtue of the inaccessibilty to the presumed new iteration of the gold/silver standard.
Without a doubt, something is going to break, eventually, and it's going to be fantastically ugly and beyond our current comprehension.
To me, knowing what little I do know, I can't really comprehend the thought that those at the pinnacle have anything less than full control of the wheel. The system is functioning beautifully, the transfer of wealth incessantly continues along with a full head of steam. The losers will continue to focus on Hank Paulson, Barry-O and all the other usual scapegoats as the villians while the real brains will continue to plan a system so brilliant as to escape the attention of all but the most sensitively perceptive minds, who will in turn understand the glitch and how to operate honorably within it while the masses continue the love affair with ignorance and bliss.