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From Kevin Bambrough of Sprott Asset Management (pdf)
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fuck you, racist defender of an apartheid State.
You are a sad fuck.
Have fun when the looting starts and your lilly white world crashes and burns around you.
Racist fucktard.
You are here defending a racist, apartheid State. That makes you a racist.
Now kindly go fuck yourself. I hope that the looting starts, it's time to put people like you in piles to be burned.
Which state is that? Arizona? Texas?
I don't defend neither. Go back to your trailer park and put on your KKK grand master pajamas trav.
Everyone here knows you are the racist fucktard.
Gold bug for 12 years (bitchez).
Didn't GW Bush get into "faith-based" projects?
Another analysis weighing in on the issue of leveraged consumerism. Nobody would dare disagree. However nobody has a working alternative to addiction. And nobody would dare to propose one.
Lotsa Luck
GW's 'faith' was the same political tool as Obama's 'hope'
bad pdf link
axl
Think about it. Would YOU give away stuff that you made with your own sweat, in exchange for pieces of paper from a foreign superpower with a serious bi-polar disorder? We have had it so good for so long it is ridiculous. When we exported all our manufacturing jobs overseas, first it was Japan that gave us goods for lower prices - then our welcome wore out there, and it was Korea - I remember the first time I went to Circut City in the early 90's, and learned that Korea was making all the VCRs. Now it is China. I have a hard time finding anything I currently buy that is NOT made in China, including US flags and Starbucks coffe cups. And all of this stuff is purchased with IOU's that are doomed to destruction. We are the empire that is not an empire, traveling the globe to "liberate" countries so we can brainwash them into Keynsian economics, so we can exploit them in some way. USA - the king of fiat, the king of nothing.
So the joke's on them? Could the countries you mention have had that level of success without the West giving the technology, the means, the market? WE would be much better off without THEM and since this Globalization experiment is coming to an end; WE will soon find out just how much better.
Of course, there are a lot of sides to this issue, and other nations did get a lot of technology in the process. Ultimately, the joke is on all of us. On them, because they will being holding worthless dollars, and on us, because we used our reserve currency status foolishly, and addicted ourselves to endless credit streams, destroying our moral fibre and creativity as a nation. WE DO NOT EVEN HAVE A MANNED SPACE PROGRAM ANYMORE. 42 years ago, I watched Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon, using what is now stoneage technology. We could do so much MORE now, and we are doing so much LESS. I work in Los Angeles. The same motels in Downey where aerospace employees used to fill the rooms, are now filled with drug addicts and hookers. Its really cool, seeing syringes litter the floor of a hotel lobbey that has a tile mosaic of the lunar lander on the wall. THAT IS THE PRICE WE HAVE PAID.
I don't believe moral decay is the result of 'easy money'. Far too many factors to consider but, it is true, VERY hard times are ahead. You are correct, however, that we are obsolescing ourselves. But that will pass as Globalization/Socialism fails and there is a return to local economies. Resource competition and the demise of the dollar ensures that; and none too soon as far as I'm concerned. I only hope we can avoid mass conflict of the WW variety.
I have farmland in the moon to sell you if you actually believed the whole "lunar landing" fiasco.
But hey, most sheeple believe paper is money so why the fuck not try to fool them with a staged landing!
Farmland on the moon is the trade of a millenia!
Neil Armstrong got to the moon thanks to Germans and also his incredible skills as a pilot. Neil saved two missions from disaster thanks to his skills. The other was Gemini 8. Fvkking TV brainwashed the masses into idiots & sheep like it still does today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong#Gemini_8
You imply that technology is good. I beg to differ. Well, I view it as totally neutral. It's worked in our grow-or-die system, but it'll fail miserably in the sustain-or-die system that's our future.
At its core NASA is no more than pure escapism. It is driven by fanatics just as modern religions are, and for the same reason: to leave this planet (after we've multiplied it to death). And of course, its origins were militarily based: command and control from above (gee, just like modern religions!).
Meanwhile back on planet earth, 2/3 of the world's population lives on $3/day or less. Yeah, let's hear about "THE PRICE THAT WE HAVE PAID," shall we?
The surface of a planet is NOT the correct place for an expanding technological civilization!
Are you suggesting that we migrate into earth's hollow core?
/sarc
The Atlanteans who live there would kick our asses if we even dared try.
"Yeah, let's hear about "THE PRICE THAT WE HAVE PAID," shall we?"
As far as the starving people of the world are concerned, in 1969, the first year we landed on the moon, the NASA budget was 4.2 billion dollars. Since 2/3 of the earth's population at that time was about 3 billion people, that is about $1.50 a YEAR difference for the starving children (not per day, but per year), if we scrapped the space program and redistributed all the money. Like 1/2 a cent a day. Yeah, that is QUITE A PRICE we paid to put a man on the moon, isn't it? It would be nice to do the math before assuming that our space program was exacting some horrible price from the impoverished earthlings left behind.
Clearly you have a horse in the NASA race, and are therefore outfitted with the appropriate blinders.
My POINT is to note that the entire PREMISE of NASA is stupid.
But, what about that "man on the moon," just what the fuck did it REALLY do? Fucking NOTHING, NADA! Are we there? No. Are there any real reasons for returning? No.
It was a circus side-show to distract the masses while NASA helped push militarism out into space.
If YOU want to see a monkey, er, man, back on the moon then how about YOU pay for that ticket (to the show)?
Let's see how rah-rah you are when that satellite-guided drone strafes your ass. Oh, but it was COOL!
i don't know seer, Hubble is pretty fuckin cool.
The dinosaurs had a space program, but the budget was cut.
This planet has been scoured of life in the past, and it will be again.
For me, this decides the issue of whether government should be in the business of developing technologies to preserve the human race or not. Government exists to perform tasks that otherwise wouldn't get done, like build bridges and steal from peasants and stuff. If they divert a little of that stolen wealth to develop the means to detect and divert what we know is coming, I see the value in that.
Technology gives people an example of what is possible; good and bad. Technology is perfectly natural; monkeys can use tool,, crowes make tools, beavers make dams, birds build homes, humans blow things the fuck up. Perfectly natural.
Space may be the final frontier but it's filmed in a Hollywood basement.
"WE DO NOT EVEN HAVE A MANNED SPACE PROGRAM ANYMORE."
You write it like it's a bad thing... We garnered most of the useable data in the first few manned flights. The rest were, for the most part, a waste of tax revenue. A NASA PR campaign to get bigger budgets so that more people could travel into space so that NASA could could get bigger budgets and send ever more people into space... rinse repeat...
Far more can be learned from the unmanned probes that travel where no man could survive the harsh conditions and very long travel times. Of course, they are not glamorous as were manned exploration... but the expansion of knowledge if far faster and greater.
The German Scientists were right from jump street. Send some monkeys into space and remotely record what happens to them...
Leave the monkeys alone.
I disagree that history teaches where this always ends, and we will have hyperinflation or crushing deflation. There is a middle path.
Yes, in Weimar Germany, for example, things reached a tipping point and there was no political will to fix things, but I see that will being exhibited today in the purchase of gold by central banks and goverrnments, all over the world, all at the same time, and yet the climb in gold prices have been relatively tame. You can't tell me that doesn't exhibit a coordinated plan.
The central banks are moving towards their version of a "gold standard." They will not wait for the world to go down in flames because then they might lose their power. This time it IS different, because it is a global economy and they have been very successful in kicking the can. Why else would you spend $16 trillion USDs to bail out foreign banks unless you thought the money spent was worth the extra time purchased, or it won't be real money very much longer, or both? GOLD bitchez. This time IS different, but not because there is a happy ending. This time is different because the conspiracy is global, and the conspirators have no intention of being unseated by letting the USD go to zero so you can pay off your mortgage with the price of a cup of coffee.
They will push the reset button when rioting gets too intense, when war looms, when gold goes vertical, or when the COMEX explodes. Until then they will kick the can,
The dark truth of what is not different this time:
What we got out of the old fiat system was 7 billion mouths to feed and an unsustainable system that feeds them. That situation is not going away without the people going away, and history teaches us how that always ends.
The one thing that you can depend on is that as moral decay spreads nihilist tendencies will appear. Fyodor Dostoyevsky's description of the Karamazovs already seems to apply everywhere today. The super-rich, celebs, and political class with their pedophilia, hedonism, perversions, and addictions are pointing the way at the top. The tatooed, punked out flash mobs lead the way at the bottom. Don't depend on reasoned or rational leadership at the top or intelligent actions at the bottom. Stay middle class, buy PMs, and keep your family and friends near and dear.
"They will not wait for the world to go down in flames because then they might lose their power."
Yes, that's their motivation. The final result, however, can only contradict this desire. They exist through/by growth, and when it's not available They won't exist. Well, OK, in terms of sheer numbers...
Moon landings are not important. Diversity is what matters. Nothing can stand in its way. Obama just issued an order effectively freezing federal government hiring of white people. He wants increased diversity despite the fact that blacks are significantly overrepresented in the federal payroll. Look this shit up.
We are 365black now, NASA will get shitcanned because it is in crisis due to lack of black scientists. It doesn't matter how far standards have to be lowered to get agencies like the USCG or USAF or SOCOM to survive their crises of lack of diversity.
Bipolar again trav?
You accuse a middle east nation of being an "apartheid state", yet you are fully against racial diversity.
Why the fuck did you vote for Odumber then?
It's idiots like you who believed all the "Hope and Change" shit who should be deported.
you accuse me of racism and yet defend a racist, apartheid State?
Who the fuck said I voted for Odumbshit?
Even without China there would still be a massive oil based trade deficit ... you wouldn't be better off with less oil.
Does anyone know what the ( leading edge) approach is on a G550?
1.3*VSO
my time for your company...love you sweetie!
We take it all and convert it into a giant Made in Asia pile of plastic junk.
I'll keep my wooden Fenders and Gibsons and vintage LPs Tnx.
NOS Vacuum tubes made in America. Worth their weight. More.
A few years ago Telefunken pulled out all the vacuum tube production equipment they had mothballed many years earlier and put it back into production.
A visionary engineer refused orders to cut it up and sell it as scrap. He found space in a warehouse and carefully stored it knowing that audiophiles would
pay exorbitant prices for clean audio reproduction sound equipment. He was correct and lived long enough to see it put back to use and was paid well
for having done it.
http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/telefunken_introducing_new_ela_m_260_...
Exasperated. Sunday is my mark!
My rant:
The problem is obvious. Wanna- be Bee keepers fucking with nature. You GODDAMN Leftist punk mutherfuckers are in WAY over your measly heads. I've got a minor suggestion for your dumb ass: Make yourself useful? STealing will work until it doesn't anymore.
Label me a partisan dumb ass if it helps you excuse that pathetic boner you would so like to show off (pervert).
FUCK YOU COMMIE. KIss my mutherfucking American ass.
It is still in play.
@PoorGrogaman
Thanks for your comments regarding farmland. As one who is looking at farmland in Saskatchewan they're helpful.
Here's the problem with farmland:
1) The admonition is "get a local farmer who knows what he's doing to farm it". Which is a nice hands offy concept that will appeal to people with money looking for a hiding place. But what it also represents is getting a guy who knows how to grow crops with diesel powered 450 horsepower tractors, powered/pressurized irrigation and oil based insecticide. Without oil, he'll be just as worthless as you in that field.
2) You can't stand against 10,000 uzi armed gang bangers streaming out from a city. If you have farmland, they know where it is. They'll be coming to take what you have. Always remember, the quaint notion of "joining with neighbors and friends to defend our town" pits a handful of 50 yr old, overweight, poor eyesight guys with guns against the cream of the crop (those with the gumption to get up and go rather than wait for government to bring them food) 10% streaming out of cities of 8 million. That's 800K people.
3) EVERYTHING, repeat, everything breaks. Spare parts usually come from 1500 miles away. If you think you're going to be a subsistance farmer, plan on being it with oxen and a wooden frame plow, lots of rain, huge fields for hay to feed the oxen in winter, lots of rain, a life with no refrigeration for drugs, lots of rain, and huge forests around for wood for your fires. This is FOREVER, people. Not surviving 48 hrs until the power comes back on.
Holes everywhere...
First, not ALL farmers raise crops. Second, the hordes of uzi-packing mobs is the stuff of Hollywood.
Grazing livestock requires little in the way of oil. While this is close to being sustainable (relying primarily on the conversion of sunlight into meat), it's still not close enough- only a hunter-gatherer subsistence is close (and even then this lifestyle means population swings that folks today couldn't stomach).
Hungry mobs are likely going to die hungry. Further, when all the current year's crops are pillaged and the farmers piked, then what? This kind of scenario has a very short lifespan.
"a life with no refrigeration for drugs"
Refrigeration doesn't require modern refrigerators:
http://www.helium.com/items/1897066-refregeratrion-electricity-food-food...
thanks for the link seer, as i sit near my fridge hearing that high-pitched hum fry my brain.
gangbangers have no interest in forcibly taking land. They will get the government, as occured in Rhodesia or S. Africa, to simply give them the land as if that will convey its wealth to them. Then, they will ignore the productive capacity and sell all the machinery, pipes, anything metal, the wiring in the fucking houses, for scrap and burn it on drugs and liquor.
But this will move us towards more diversity of land ownership which is a good thing. In a contest between starvation and poverty, and diversity, diversity MUST win. It is all-important and the only thing that matters. The Mao Luther King statue should be taller. MLK is the most significant person who ever lived. He invented dreams.
If shit goes this way, you'd better HOPE there is anarchy because the political machinery will INEXORABLY move toward a feudal empire of the politically connected. The armed gangs roving the countryside is a more favorable outcome than a functioning government confiscating everything to give it to a failed race.
Where's your little heckler? He must be slipping.
So, the trade deficit is...
A heist job? Wow, that's an interesting way to see it.
American business= legalized stealing
To me its nothing different than showing a gun to a convineance store clark and ask for money.
Test Bitchez
If you think you can capture it all on a balance sheet, this piece is dead-on.
Unfortunately, there's a very great and unrepresented "cost" of the policies of the past 50 years. We've dismantled much of our production and transportation infrastructure, and pawned the majority of our skilled/educated labor force.
If you add in the losses represented by sacking the citizens, "we" didn't really do quite as well in our trade for massive quantities of oil and cheap manufactured goods.
Another way to think of it: we spent 50 years subsidizing the infrastructure-development and education of all our industrial competitors in exchange for low-interest loans, and the balloon payments are just about to start coming due.
(Oops.)
"We've dismantled much of our production and transportation infrastructure, and pawned the majority of our skilled/educated labor force."
Bring back the manufacturing of TVs? Hummers?
As far as that "skilled/educated" labor force, "ours?" I thought that this was for the corporations, which, I also thought, weren't necessarily viewed in high regard by folks here.
None of it would have held up in the future, not with declining energy and natural resources.
I see it as getting a jump on adjusting to the future. Liquidate out of crap. Trade the natives beads for meaningful stuff...
You can really wonder if this is indeed such a great trade. The Spanish empire experienced the same thing when the conquistadores plundered the new world of gold and silver in 15th and 16th century. As they tried to spend it back in Spain, prices went up and imports took over. It ended up lots of goods and service being imported, but production capacity was lost. In the end education was no longer necesarry, everyone with any ambition went to work for the military and knowledge to produce got lost.
But plunder is not sustainable, the surviving plundered do not keep digging gold from the ground in order to have it plundered. So the military ran into its limits, their huge navy fleet, the armada sank and a decline of the Spanish empire began, that in my opinion still has not ended. The Spanish gvt went through several bankruptices and is about to see one again.
The rise and fall of empires. The story of growth. And why is it that we never seem to learn?
The time span seems too big and reality is deterministic, which means that because they control how people are raised and educated, they can more or less control perfectly what ideas they will hold as grown ups.
But even on a shorter time span: most people do no longer even recognize fascism, if the fascists do not not use exactly the same colors, guestures, language, way of talking and persecute the same minorities, they would not recognize it if it sat on them. I think most of the movies made about fascism are meant to narrow it down further and further and hide its real principle.
Both tax slaves and emperors have evolved, the same language an rethoric Hitler used, would not work anymore. I think however that in the very long term freedom will win. The emperors already use language an clothing that is like that of the slaves. Only their means are still laws, theft and violence, while that of the slaves is trade and production. But without a material difference between them and the slaves, they will not be able to defend their privilige.
Sometimes even the language stays the same though. Inflation during the Roman empire decline (301 AD) Diocletion issued the 'edict of maximum prices' after he inflated the money supply.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices
Language:evil greedy bussinesman are raising prices to steal your whealth, let me put a sword on their nose to help you.
The rise and fall of Spain as a gold and silver stealing colonial power coincided with the rise and rise of Holland as a great commercial and trade center. Holland ended up one of the richest countries in the world as Spain declined.
Ironically, this all started with Holland being a possession of Spain and ended as Holland being an independent republic.
Even more ironically, the people of Holland did not want to break away from the Spanish crown. They were driven to it by the mismanagement of the governors appointed by the King of Spain.
they didn't PLUNDER much of shit. The gold that came back came primarily from MINING OPERATIONS that the natives had no fucking clue whatsoever how to effect.
This is like how Rhodesia was a net food exporter because a successful minority race appeared that had mastered the hard work of organized agriculture. Now that this minority has been dispossessed of the land, the failed majority is in charge and we see utter economic collapse.
"The dollar may be our currency but it's your problem"
John Connally, Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury, giving the middle finger to foreign bond holders in 1973.
Wascally Wabbit Indeed!
The Greatest Trade for whom? The jury is still out!
I agree.
Having to run a trade deficit in order to maintain the viability of a word reserve currency is a double edged sword. Triffin's dillemma is really a curse.
It has sucked the life out of our industry.
It wasn't as one-sided as all that. People high up on both sides found it mutually beneficial to this very day. When this is no longer the case things will change.
Exactly! It'll occur when internal dissent becomes too heated. First, however, new monsters abroad will be created and internal dissent will be stomped (disable social media communications, cell phones, web sites etc.). Eventually this fails and the hangings in town square win out...
Sprott's a "Canadian Resource Cowboy"
Not unlike the "Texas Oil Cowboys" from the 70's & 80's
Much more going on in Canuck-ville this time around and this trend has legs
Some investors, like China, simply have too much paper to unload ... they're buying plenty of gold, but they they have little choice other than spreading the paper around. Some of the arguments Sprott makes also simply don't apply to China ... "One, farmlands—like any other bit of real estate—is dependent on credit." China doesn't need credit.
IMO the whole "lets run business on credit to maximize ROI" model is going to go the way of the dodo any way, it's from a time of economic growth well in excess of what we are ever going to see again. The future is rentseeking, you don't run the farm on credit ... you own it lock stock and barrel and run it on income and pocket the profit, even if it represents negligible ROI. If industrial farming becomes unprofitable you let it be farmed by subsistence farmers and take a percentage of their meager crops, worked well enough in the middle ages.
The right time to go into rent seeking mode full speed and in which countries, taxation can easily undermine the effectiveness of feudalism, is open to discussion of course ... democracy has to be dismantled a little bit more.
Good overview. It all comes down to what's necessary, and that's that we have no other choice than to back away from improbable growth (projections), which is really what credit is based on, and turn toward "subsistence." After all, "subsistence" really just means "sustainability," and sustainability means survivable. Our current growth/credit paradigm is clearly not survivable.
tag'm and bag'm. Sounds like propaganada and the gold ship is going to sink soon. You all remember silver. Oh wait, this is different. It is until the big wigs pull the carpet on us after they hit their target price, which noone knows. I own physical, so I'm no troll, it's just that this parabolic move has me concerned. Just like back in 08'.
And the "target price" is based in, wait for it... FIAT! Sinking FIAT! Yeah, That's smart!
Just because you own "physical" and you aren't a troll doesn't mean that you have a firm grasp on the situation. Just saying...
For historical accuracy, the US did not acquire the land in the Louisiana Purchase. They bought St Louis, New Orleans, The right to navigate the rivers the French had explored AND the right to treat with native americans to buy land IF the indians wanted to sell. The vast majority of the land was in the hands of the various plains indian groups.
The US government (Polk) created the concept of "Manifest Destiny" backed by troops to create treaties to buy land, then renege on the payments and take it by force. What began in the Southeast under Madison and continued through Jackson was expanded across the Continental US.
Justice Marshall wrote three decisions in favor of the native americans and they were ignored.
It was not a great trade, it was theft, the abrogation of law for the rich and murder to ensure the profits of land speculators and the government, whom made there revenues from land sales.
The US government has always been about criminality draped in majesty, patriotism and God's will. Why would the exchange of worthless fiat be any different? We traded glass beads for the riches and resources of the world.
Here's the question: What are the constants that exists across all the centuries? Money(and the ones that control it-bankers) and government (controlled organizations used by a small minority to abuse the majority).
Now, the only way to change millenia of history is to change the mechanisms by which it has operated. Otherwise, the discussion is moot. The incessant whine of those intelligent enough to understand, but unable to take part.
But, but--that's not what I was taught in school!? What's up with that?
For those interested, I recommend the book, "Savages and Scoundrels". Bob, thanks for the chuckle.
why should ANYONE CARE?
The injuns were doing NOTHING with the land. They were thieves and squatters.
If the white man hadn't taken it, you wouldn't be posting this drivel bullshit on your fucking couch in your climate-controlled room on your fucking computer.
Go back to the land, live with parasites and curable diseases. The average life expectancy of an injun was what, 35 years? THAT is the people you would entrust with land?
Look, I know it really sucks that the races aren't all equal, that some are successful races and some are failures. This is simply darwinist evolution, ok? The same as how various species of plants and animals systematically exterminate each other. This is how mammals came to be and vertebrates before them. It is a part of the cycle of life. We cannot hold back progress to placate the egos of members of failed races. They must be pushed aside.
Trav, you need to find your happy place. My post addressed accuracy, not whether it was right or not. Your values emphasize quantity over quality, you think that if you are part of something superior, it will mean you are superior. This is the definition of white trash.
The Greeks lived on the land and lived well into their seventies, well educated, well fed and had the leisure to enjoy philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and art.
No one is equal, but the best societies guarantee that all are equal before the law. You need to set your sights a little higher if you think America is the height of civilization.
The Greeks mastered the written word, mathematics, and the wheel. They had large cities and built architectural monuments which still stand. The injuns did what exactly?
The Greeks weren't a bunch of nomads roaming around and extincting indigenous species.
The rest of your post is just trash.
Trav, soon we shall all see the day when you are on your knees begging for scraps of food from a non-aryan who prefered to hold a "primitive relic" instead of holding the latest state of the art financial instruments of debt created by eurobankers.
You'd better brush up your skills at scrubbing toilets, or you'll get no food from the "injuns".
Infinite justice will find you.
Native Americans learned how to live in peace with their environment, something we are incapable of doing. They had a culture that honored intergrity and personal character, something we are incapable of doing. They failed to pollute their water, poison their air and feed poisoned foods to their people, something we are incapable of doing.
You have set the bar based on your own standards, standards many would determine to be beneath their contempt. You extol the virtues of a society built on destruction, death and slavery. You worship technology.
Your life is filled with emptiness, you attempt to protect yourself by agrandizing the accomplishments of others, regardless of whether they are worthy of merit. You tear down what you cannot appreciate nor understand and consider yourself wise.
All your intelligence is wasted because you cannot grasp the essentials of humanity. When it comes to the development of your heart and soul, you are an imbecile. You have no skills. Thus, you're disconnected and alone, finding acceptance in equally stunted emotional wrecks. Desperately grasping to a sense of power found in the achievements of greater souls you cannot recognize nor understand their complexity. Life eludes you and so, you strike out in frustration.
Life is a journey Trav, one that starts with a single step in the mocassin tracks of another.
Bloody Hell Tyler
You're going to be declared an economic terrorist over in Canada; their CDS widened by 5 bps. What does Rosie have to say about the canucks he lives there, doesn't he? I thought he said things were in pretty good shape on a relative basis.
Look ...
You can either have the 'debt slave' argument or the 'world's best trade' but not both at the same time.
Sprott's trade is not the world's best but the world's worst.
'Paper' isn't paper its a promise of 'progress'. What are people rioting/revolting over all around the world? They don't want gold or silver they want flat screen tvs and performance sedans ... they want progress.
People in these countries have nothing to sell other than their restraint, their willingness to not destroy the government(s).
What the dollar represents is what it can buy: everything: Disney and Hollywood, good pot and hot hookers, American politicians and millions of tons of corn (don't believe me look it up). Dollars represent every good made on planet earth, when Sprott sez the dollars are traded for cars what he really sez is the dollars ARE cars in another form.
What gold and silver represent are the past: the post- peak oil past where people have abandoned a bankrupt progress fantasy, Soon enough this will happen but millions of Chinese building their version of Ontario, California across their entire country does not suggest this taking place any time tomorrow.
I can get behind you on these points...
A little late Sprott
Should have done the article before Private Equity (08-2009) acquired “REAL ASSETS” then flipped to political correct Sovereign Wealth Funds.
Now you’re saying compete with SWF’s dumping paper and the rest of the world dollar holders as they run for the exit. Now countries have currency controls and resource investment restrictions as the paper exit is closing. A little late, the trade was 08 09.
Tell me what’s next as the paper exit gets squeezed and politically/military situation heats up.
In a strange way, I find it encouraging that so much of our trade deficit is related to oil and auto imports. Why? Because we can substantially change this if we really want to without radical new discoveries, major sacrifice, or overhauls of our entire social system. All we have to do is get over our entitlement mindset that tells us we have a God given right, indeed a need (for status, for safety, for the children) to drive a bigger, more powerful vehicle than the last buyer anywhere, anytime we get the whim to do so. When it comes to cars and petro fuel, our consumption behavior on the margin is simply inefficient, unproductive, and unnecessary. Most people could reduce their gasoline consumption by 10% just by planning their driving needs better in advance. In other words, they just have to think about it for a few seconds. I know, I’ve already done it, and it didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would. Now if I could just convince 100 million of my neighbors to do the same, gasoline would be $1.80 per gallon again in a week.
Now if I could just convince 100 million of my neighbors to do the same, gasoline would be $1.80 per gallon again in a week.
Just elect Bachman and you'll get it, don't even need to cut back! :-)
But... no one has control over the price as long as fiat keeps getting inflated. A price is pretty meaningless, it's about affordability.
You might want to check out Jevons Paradox as to whether efficiency can really resolve our problems.
Energy IS power, and the US (as well as other power-hungry countries) cannot feed its incessant need to consume ever-increasing amounts (per-capita consumption may go down, but it's total consumption that matters in the BIG equation).
I'm sure the first comment in reply to you mentioned Jevon's Paradox. You'd be wise to make peace with it
1. A trade deficit is a different issue than holding US bonds.
2. China is holding bonds in order to finance their currency peg and keep their imports cheap. This allows them to bootstrap industrial capacity.
2. Thats the problem with Triffin's Dilemma, when your currency is also WRC. Thats why Keynes suggested the Bancor, and the World Bank is floating trial ballons for the SDR.
yep, triffin's dilemma is why we must run a trade deficit and the world should thank us for putting ourselves in such a bind.
However I am tired of having the world's reserve currency. The bancor or the SDR would be a better choice. The fun is only
during the initial phases of owning a world reserve currency. In the latter phases it sucks the life out of industry and always
ends in ruin for the sovereign with the world reserve currency.
We might have had it pretty good for a while in the USA with the world reserve currency. However Triffin's dillemma is actually a curse. The longer we run deficits the longer we can maintain a world reserve currency. The cost is that we lose our industry and our jobs. When this is all over at some point, ten years or fifty years from now, we will have the worst of both worlds. We will be left with no industry and no world reserve currency.
Indeed. Too bad there's no "we" in "elites."
WTF? The rating tool is back in our comment boxes . . . doesn't work yet, though.
There's no need to be confused, it makes sense to me.
ZH, while excellent, is not a huge mainstream website. They did an upgrade right at the same time as S&P decided to grow a pair (sort of) and drew a lot of traffic to this site. I have no doubt that a server upgrade was needed before the upgrade could be run with the increased traffic. Nobody likes to create new code, and then immediately abandon it. I expect it will settle in with the new version.
Or, maybe they're just messing with us. Doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
What is Indian IT telling of EU and US economy?
Armageddon!!!
http://capital3x.com/?p=104
Good contribution from Bamborough/Sprott as ever. Jim Rickards aired this concept earlier when he compared US Bonds to opium in the Chinese opium wars - the British did not want to pay for Chinese silk & tea in silver and forced them to accept opium instead.
At least all parties utilized real physical stuff...
British Serfdom collapsed after the Black Plague culled the skilled farmers. Feudals had to pay the going rate to farm-hands, instead of demanding the services for free. Thus gave rise to Yeomen (freemen), synonymous with skilled craftsmen.
We're seeing a parallel of this developing in Latin America and potentially Africa, as the cost/degradation of Agriculture in the West increases.
no, we really aren't seeing anything of the kind in Africa until/unless the black death comes there and culls the population.
Fuck you.
Death to American Pig Kulaks - how dare they travel!
So basically we, as a country, are counterfeiters. We use paper with pictures to get real goods and then tell the suppliers to go fuck themselves. Great plan. Too bad we used this brilliant recipe to import oil, which we literally set on fire . . . reminds me of times when I was kid and Dad used to tell me that I was wasting my money by spending it all on fireworks.
Note to the macroeconomy . . . .
It would be really great if we had traded all that worthless paper for natural resources and stockpiled them: Gold, iron ore (or refined steel and other metals), copper, etc.
I recall reading that back in the early 70s one of the Forbes clan said that the US should look to consume others' oil before it consumes its own. The reality is that the US STILL has oodles of natural resources; problem is the levels of consumption: we'd exhaust them in short order at our current levels of consumption, hence the need to blast all drill-baby-drill dumbasses who proclaim energy independence by exhausting our resources (strategy as Dr. Albert Bartlett calls it "strength through exhaustion").
Nothing, however, is going to hold up to the paradigm of perpetual growth (on a finite planet).
Only checked in 'cause I thought the headline read: "Sprott Describes The Greatest BABE Of All Time" !
Anyway here's my vote:
http://www.grouchyoldcripple.com/archives/004948.html
This was vendor/consumer credit. What does the US have to show for it?
Overpriced and we bought the extended warranty too.
In this economy even the winners don't sound happy.
but doesn't it all just flow back into our casinos?? vegas, A.C., wall street... etc
a great article, thx 4 sharing :-)
Best trade ever is Bernanke buying bonds in QE! and QE 2 right before one of biggest bond rallies ever.
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1117092998001/as-good-as-gold
Pax Americana?
Aquaculture is real interesting and a small operation can provide a good crop of veggies and fish. They use tilapia in a barrell and use the fish waste water to feed (nitrogen)growing vegetables which cleans the water. Feed is duckweed you can grow in a small pool. Just need indoor area/greenhouse or live in a warmer climate and a small pump that can be run by solar/wind/battery/generator in absence of traditional electric power. You don't need a big farm to do it to yield enough food for a family.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng&feature=related