Debt Rattle February 23 2017

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

Jack Delano Colored drivers entrance, U.S. 1, NY Avenue, Washington, DC 1940   • The Absolute Dominance Of The US Economy, In One Chart (MW) • Tr
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle February 23 2017]

[ExponentialAbsurdity]

Something that is starting to really fascinate me is how all these economic pressures can continue without collapse or some kind of long term resolution. How long has Greece had economic trouble but no matter how much it gets written about nothing changes. Spain, Italy and other EU countries, the same thing. It’s like a pressure cooker that just keeps having a tad bit more pressure applied. You figure it will explode at some point, but in this case it just gets to be a bigger more intense set of problems.

[John Day]

What will the next Bretton Woods decide?
When?
Tennessee is pushing a convention of the States to put a balanced-budget amendment in the Constitution. Conventions of the States are a dangerous wild-card, but the time will probably soon call for that. This would essentially end the current mutated global financial arrangement. Will the States be convened when the crash happens?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-22/how-tennessee-could-be-about-start-constitutional-crisis

[Dr. Diablo]

Although technically correct, Smith is missing the point. Gold doesn’t back the reserve currency, gold IS the reserve currency. We’ve 100 years forgotten, but it’s not “$35 dollars for an ounce of gold”, it’s the US$ = 1/35th ounce. If the gold price goes up, it goes up against what? The dollar IS gold. They are the same thing. An old dollar under the classic (not broken post WWI model) standard said on the face, “redeemable in gold on demand at the United States Treasury”. It was a warehouse receipt. Because the Treasury had the gold. So your warehouse receipt changed compared to the box it referenced? People go in the box to add and remove weight? No.

Back to his example, so the dollar, or quatloo, or gold moves up against what? Presumably other currencies that are NOT backed by actual gold, are fractionally reserved, etc. So whose problem is that? Slobovia, who is responsible, referencing only assets they own, or the rest-of-world, who act like pirates? Not to say large nations won’t try to rock the gold price to steal Slobovia’s wealth, (or invade, like Syria, Libya, Ukraine) because they always did throughout history, but that’s not a flaw in the gold standard, that’s a flaw in mankind, and the reason gold standards eventually break.

Does a gold standard slow economies to a non-bubble, or as in the Middle Ages, even an infinitely sustainable pace? Yes. But wouldn’t the lack of bubbles and a system that would not collapse without compounding growth infinitely accelerating be a good thing? Something to recommend it when millions are dying of boom-bust and at our resource limits? That the present system would fail if we receded from insanity to sustainability only highlights that the existing system is the failure, not the gold system, and also that regardless of our feelings on gold, it will inevitably fail. If so, why villianize a system that proved to work? Is it to support a system that clearly doesn’t? Or a system like Bitcoin that only theoretically will?

[Birdshak]

Humans are clever, aren’t they, to be able to represent reality with some tokens, whether shiny gold ones or green ones? Then they fret incessantly over which token is best, losing sight of the underlying truths to which the tokens refer. I propose a fat hen trade for three loaves of bread. How say you all?

[Joe Clarkson]

Aloha Birdshak,

Since the calories per pound of chicken are just about equal to calories per pound of bread, a fair exchange might be for equal weights of either. But a pound of bread has a lot more labor in it than a pound of undressed chicken. On the other hand, it takes a lot of work to propagate chickens too. I think your trade is just about right, since a dressed fat hen should weigh about three or four pounds. If I were the chicken farmer, I might ask for five loaves, easily settle for four and grudgingly accept three.

Now if you can only get governments at all levels to take their taxes in either bread or chickens you will have accomplished something wonderful.

[Author]

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