Debt Rattle January 2 2021

 

Home Forums The Automatic Earth Forum Debt Rattle January 2 2021

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  • #67606
    WES
    Participant

    John Day:

    Sadly, I am afraid the mood at the OK Corral on January 6th will more likely resemble that of a funeral.

    With the Uniparty’s “No Standing” courts pulling the rug out from under all of the legal challenges and ignoring actual evidence, people are slowly realizing the fraudulent 2020 election is now a done deal.

    These people are trying to come to grips with the fact American elections have always been rigged. It is a very hard pill to swallow as these people still held some “hope”.

    January 6th will be people trying to deal with the lost of any future “hope”.

    When I was working in a Siberian coal mine, back in 1983, what struck me the hardest, was the total lack of “hope” that I could see in people’s eyes. The Russian solution was to drink vodkas to try and temporarily escape their hopeless world.

    #67607
    WES
    Participant

    John Day:

    Getting malaria while working in Africa really sucked!

    What I found most interesting is that the local expats did not take malaria medication unless they got malaria!

    They said it wasn’t wise to take malaria medication for long periods of time (years) because it was too hard on the kidneys.

    But at the same time none would venture out into the bush nor would they go outside at night. They all retreated into their well screened homes before dark. If they did leave, at night, they went straight to their cars.

    #67608
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    V. Arnold: ” I did the Dengue Fever thing about 10 years ago”

    That might have a silver lining.

    Study suggests dengue may provide some immunity against COVID-19 (Reuters)

    Places with lower coronavirus infection rates and slower case growth were locations that had suffered intense dengue outbreaks this year or last, Nicolelis found.

    “This striking finding raises the intriguing possibility of an immunological cross-reactivity between dengue’s Flavivirus serotypes and SARS-CoV-2,” the study said, referring to dengue virus antibodies and the novel coronavirus.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil-study-exclu/exclusive-study-suggests-dengue-may-provide-some-immunity-against-covid-19-idUSKCN26C27E

    #67609
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Study suggests dengue may provide some immunity against COVID-19 (Reuters)

    Thanks for that information, Doc Robinson. Very interesting to say the least.
    Lets hope it’s accurate…

    #67610
    Geppetto
    Participant

    Well, If you had bought BTC on Nov 3, 2016 @ $690 and had the resolve of a disciplined investor/trader you would probably have an opinion more in line with Dr. D. Just sayin’.

    And speaking of resolve you may want to peruse this little diddy:

    https://interfax.com/newsroom/exclusive-interviews/70696/

    #67611
    Geppetto
    Participant

    Also….I wouldn’t dare to predict the future, but, have learned to *ride* the waves. You can earn interest at Coinbase via DeFi. 6%

    Again, just sayin’. Just make sure you are pointed in the right direction when you pee in the wind. Taleb’s picking up pennies in front of the steamroller scenario is a good one.

    🙂

    #67612
    straightwalker
    Participant

    @Dr D
    Thanks for your take on trading bitcoin; it syncs up with my limited experience. If you are going to trade against the pros who have unlimited capital and inside advantages, you’d better do it with extreme humility and take what you can get.

    @madamski

    Investing is a voyage of self discovery: you must lean on your strengths (patience, research, people skills, decisiveness, courage, etc. etc. whatever they are) and stay in your groove. This is usually learned, if at all, the hard way. Gold is excellent for the long haul. Its cash price is completely manipulated by the big guys and gals, but in the long run it dependably holds its purchasing power. And is beautiful to look at or work into jewelry. As currency, it has drawbacks.
    Bitcoin is presently in a tulip like price surge, but I don’t think it is a fraud. It is an audacious application, the first face, of the block chain, an invention made possible by the computer, the internet, cryptography, and decades of software advances. Block chains store data irreversibly. They can be public, where anyone can access the data, or private, where you have to have the keys to the building. In either case, data entered can not be changed in any way. Can not.
    O.K., voting, accounting, scientific data, contracts, words…the information in block chains is trustworthy, indefinitely, as long as the block chain exists. Block chains are also referred to as “distributed ledgers.” The computers which maintain a block chain each have a total copy of all of its data. The internet allows these computers to be anywhere in the world. A world wide block chain like bitcoin can not be shut down by the U.S. government.
    O.K., so the bitcoin block chain contains every bitcoin transaction ever made in each of the computers that maintains it. No one owns the block chain. It is designed to allow peer to peer transactions without intervention. If you own bitcoin you can give it to someone else, trade it for something, save it (hopefully) as a store of value (intended to increase in value as there will never be more than 21 million bitcoins). It is a first, a deflationary currency that can be subdivided indefinitely.
    You get the idea. It is not a fraud or ponzi scheme. It is an experiment, a brave new world experiment.
    Sorry to go on and on. Others know much more than I. If you set up a bitcoin wallet, I’ll send you a satoshi (one hundred millionth of a bitcoin) from my tiny stash.

    #67613
    ₿oogaloo
    Participant

    My thoughts on Bitcoin are a lot like my thoughts on gold: Everyone should have some. It doesn’t matter what price you get in. There is no need to buy a lot, no need to take a big risk — this is an asymmetrical bet with huge upside against little downside. The day will come when the USD loses reserve currency status. Nobody knows when that day will come, or what the trigger will be. But when it happens, everything in the world will be revalued overnight, and a new asset will take over as the reserve asset. In the long run, I expect that gold will be the big winner. But Bitcoin may have an important role to play on the journey to that destination. At present, Bitcoin cannot be manipulated through the futures market the same way that gold can be, which makes it unique. Governments may be able to manipulate it by buying up a large reserve, but that would run the price to the stratosphere. In the sense that it is beyond manipulation, it is the only way to vote against the status quo financial system. Bitcoin is immune to sanctions, so it is the only way to vote against Empire. There is $300Trillion is assets sloshing around the financial system. If only 1% of that ends up in Bitcoin, that still puts us 6x higher than the current market cap of $500Billion. And if the USD loses reserve status, Bitcoin has the potential to go to the moon and never come back. Same with gold. That is why it makes sense to own a little of both. The physicality and indestructability of gold is both a strength and a weakness. It can be a problem if you are trying to cross borders. It can be a problem if you are the leader of a small country opposed to Empire and you are worried about the US Army coming to seize your gold. It can be a problem if your gold is parked in England or New York, and the Empire changes the rules and refuses to recognize a duly elected government. It can be a problem if you are an institution like a pension fund that does not have a vault for secure storage. Of course there are risks to Bitcoin — including the risk of legislation to make it illegal, or the risk of losing the keys, or the risks of a competitor like Etherium, or the risk of huge volatility swings while this nonexistent asset finds its niche in the international financial ecosystem. But now that Bitcoin is winning over more institutional investors, the risks of being banned are waning, the risks of competition are waning, and the upside greatly outweighs the downside — especially in a world trending towards negative interest rates. As for me, I bought my first gold coins in 2009. I bought my first Bitcoin at the beginning of November. And I have decided that no matter what happens — whether they shoot to the moon or trend towards zero — I will not sell any gold or Bitcoin until after the USD loses reserve currency status. I sleep a lot better at night now that I have a slice of this nonexistent asset.

    #67614
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    You get the idea. It is not a fraud or ponzi scheme. It is an experiment, a brave new world experiment.

    That is an interesting point of view/opinion; which may have some validity, but, it’s one which I do not share, my pov/opinion is different.
    I found this article interesting but certainly not definitive.
    https://cointelegraph.com/news/defining-bitcoin-money-currency-or-store-of-value
    I have a lot of trouble accepting BTC as a “store of value” in the same way as defined by gold.
    Living in Asia, I see gold used all the time in commerce.
    I think it is a mistake to view gold as an investment as opposed to a store of value; investments tend towards short term thinking (months/weeks); where-as gold tends towards the long term (years/decades).
    In that vein, when buying gold, its price is not a factor for me/us for the above mentioned reasons.
    Anyhoo, my 2 cents worth/opinion…

    #67615
    straightwalker
    Participant

    @v arnold
    I agree with you about gold. I wish I had some.
    I love it when people disagree with me, by the way; it’s my best chance to maybe learn something.
    I didn’t get malaria or dengue in Thailand, mostly cuz I walked around in Chiang Mai for a year and didn’t get much into the boonies. Wimp award. Loved the Thais.

    #67616
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    straightwalker
    Loved the Thais.

    Yes! They’re terrific indeed…cheers…

    #67627
    John Day
    Participant

    Oh, I am chagrined to find that what I liked so well about that oil essay was copied and pasted from Jim Kunstler.
    It is excellent, and long.

    #67633
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    That blockchain currency was not necessarily started as a fraud doesn’t mean it has or will remain honest. The fact that it requires an enormous amorphous ephemeral structure like the internet makes it a silly wish from the start. One does not create durable lasting value via an enormous amorphous ephemeral structure.

    I see it as a fanciful deification of our magical trust in money. Also, while I do not doubt that its inventers and early adopters intended it as honest currency, and don’t see it as a fraud, they were deluding themselves. The problem has never been “stable currency” or such. The problem has always been the relationship between available material resources (including human beings) and the markers they use to symbolize stored value.

    Money has always been a concept symbolized by some kind of material marker, be it cowrie shells, iron bars, gold dubloons, greenback dollars, or bank checks. Now we have a vast mathematical vortex of mathematically choreographed electrons called bitcoins that requires a huge amount of material and energy just to remain solvent.

    In the end, I see it as about the same as Pythagorean numerology.

    “According to Aristotle, the Pythagoreans used mathematics for solely mystical reasons, devoid of practical application. They believed that all things were made of numbers. The number one (the monad) represented the origin of all things and the number two (the dyad) represented matter. The number three was an “ideal number” because it had a beginning, middle, and end and was the smallest number of points that could be used to define a plane triangle, which they revered as a symbol of the god Apollo.The number four signified the four seasons and the four elements.The number seven was also sacred because it was the number of planets and the number of strings on a lyre, and because Apollo’s birthday was celebrated on the seventh day of each month. They believed that odd numbers were masculine, that even numbers were feminine, and that the number five represented marriage, because it was the sum of two and three.

    “Ten was regarded as the “perfect number” and the Pythagoreans honored it by never gathering in groups larger than ten. Pythagoras was credited with devising the tetractys, the triangular figure of four rows which add up to the perfect number, ten. The Pythagoreans regarded the tetractys as a symbol of utmost mystical importance. Iamblichus, in his Life of Pythagoras, states that the tetractys was “so admirable, and so divinised by those who understood [it],” that Pythagoras’s students would swear oaths by it. Andrew Gregory concludes that the tradition linking Pythagoras to the tetractys is probably genuine.”

    Currency holds accurate validity, as a genuine symbol by which material resources can be exchanged in a sufficiently fair virtual manner*, only insomuch as there is an accurate census of how much stuff exists versus how many markers of value exist. *(that’s a complex notion, jah? in fact, it’s magical thinking, but magical thinking has its value. mathematics are just an uncommonly symmetrical form of symbolic magical thinking)

    The very fact that one can invest in bitcoin — or any currency — in order for today’s dollar-worth of bitcoin to become two dollars-worth tomorrow is proof of their vulnerability to corruption: markers do not increase the amount of stuff they can buy.

    Any currency that can represent the value of, say, an entire town, is bullshit. All modern currency is bullshit, and while bitcoin’s initial concept was to create a symbolic store of value that can’t be corrupted, the very idea of “buying money” renders it a fever dream. This isn’t to say that, for example, Boogaloo’s enhanced sense of security via bitcoin is foolish: his logic is sound. He knows it’s a game among many other games. I think he is wise in this matter.

    We have all been rasied in a thoroughly financialized society. People trust money more than just about anything except maybe their closest friends, their spouse, and their dog. God-fearing Xtians work 40 hours a week for Mammon and 5-10 hours at most for God… unless they’re paid ministry.

    Money rules us. We don’t rule it. We don’t own the internet. No one owns their bitcoins. It’s an illusion. A highly profitable illusion if you understand how rapidly Taleb’s Steamroller can accelerate and decelerate, and are able to read the signals indicating the imminence of either event. But nonetheless, an illusion. That very few people understand. That is by nature ruled by its predominant investors since it is, after all, merely a money market, which have ever been the spawning ground of evil.

    The Root of Modern Evil

    In Monopoly, people buy stuff in order to make money. Boardwalk is considered good only because it earns the most money not because the Jersey Shore is a swell place. Money uber alles.

    The Babylonian Woe

    Davis Astle writes difficult prose but it’s worth navigating, imo, if one wants to get one’s head around why the Prince of Peace went apeshit on the money-changers. If anyone knows of an image of this event that shows a bit of blood, I’d be grateful to see it. A scourge can do nasty things to a human body.

    “I love it when people disagree with me, by the way; it’s my best chance to maybe learn something.”

    Just cuz I’m gay doesn’t mean I don’t admire a real man. *swoon*

    #67634
    Noirette
    Participant

    madamski, yes to Thatcher using arms against ‘coal’ (coal-miners..) She had a degree in chemistry or related and from what I have read of her sayings she understood the ‘emissions’ thing well. Of course she had some short-term aims, but she also saw herself as a ‘leader’ and ‘tech advancements’ and ‘moving on to better’ etc. as energy advancement is solidly ingrained in the GB pol. class since say 1850…Ex. around 1914 or so The Royal Navy switched from coal to oil (Winnie.) N. Sea oil boomed / became more profitable / more was discovered – extracted (leaving out details) after the 70s oil ‘crisis’ and Thatcher was PM at the time of its high production.

    The idea that natural gas is cleaner than oil (correct in a way) was, and is, also very strong. Now, renewables are the all rage, see for ex. Merkel and her handling of ‘energie’ – she obviously thinks she is on the front-line of ‘newness’ or pretends to be so and prefers to support certain ‘green’ industries (subsidies etc.) while doing everything to sell cars worldwide.

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