Debt Rattle July 27 2020

 

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  • #61529

    Opening of Golden Gate Bridge May 27 1937   • $1,200 Stimulus Check, Eviction Moratorium, and Reduced Unemployment Aid (ZH) • Gold Soars To All-T
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle July 27 2020]

    #61530
    ₿oogaloo
    Participant

    So the discussion of gold has carried over from the last thread. Consensus seems ot be that USD will continue as the reserve currency for the foreseeable future. And then Patricia asks the money question:

    “Why does there have to be a reserve currency particularly when that currency is used as a weapon as the US$ is now?”

    Indeed. Why does there need to be a reserve currency? Reserve status gives “exorbitant privilege” but also erodes the underlying economic structure of the reserve issuer. Nobody wants reserve status now. China does not want to give up its mercantilist model. The EU (Germany) will not agree to run permanent trade deficits. So what if the next international system does not have a reserve currency at all? What if, instead, we move to a system with a reserve asset that floats against all currencies? What if that asset is gold? Not a return to a gold standard — because no government needs to make its currency convertible according to a fixed exchange standard — and no government ever will. Under such a system, countries will no longer need to accummulate huge foreign currency reserves — the reserves will be primarily gold. Trade can be conducted in any currency — the USD can continue this role without being the world’s reserve currency. The biggest difference between this model and the current system is that foreign governments will no longer have a need to accummulate USD reserves to defend their currencies. It seems like a win-win for everyone except the elite parasites who need exorbitant privilege to go on indefinitely.

    This seems to be to be the most likley model for the next system. The USD system will come to an end, but EUR and CNY will not step into it shoes. The next system won’t look anything like the current system.

    #61534
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    Sweet artemisia (a plant) is being tested for covid. It has been used in Chinese medicine for 2000 years and has been used for a long time against malaria. It is not completely clear to me if they are isolating one most effective compound in the plant for this application. If they are, this reduces the challenge represented by the plant to the disease being treated, and the countdown begins to the time when the disease develops resistance. Artemisia is also a herbal cancer therapy. Regular artemisia is popping up all around my orchard – a very pretty, pungent silver -leafed plant.
    https://www.kentucky.com/news/coronavirus/article244030112.html

    #61535
    lasttwo
    Participant

    I am just curious. We have had chickens in the past and had planned to get them again after building a new less predator friendly coop. We also purchased a couple of goslings to deter predators. The coop is done but there are no chickens available. I had to pre purchase production chickens for October delivery. There is no hay or straw available this time last year there were 30+ ads. The guy who sells wood chips for animal bedding is weeks out on orders. The shelves at the hardware store are 30% empty. are others seeing the same thing? I guess what it means is people are getting prepared for a long siege.

    #61536

    Good to see you back, sumac.carol.
    Two “weeds” came up from our dirt delivery this spring- sweet artemisia and joe pye. They are competing with the tomatillos, but I don’t have the heart to yank them yet.

    This, from over at Off-G today:
    “It has frequently been observed that terror can rule absolutely only over people who are isolated against each other and that therefore one of the primary concerns of tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about. Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it always is its result. This isolation is, as it were, pretotalitarian; its hallmark is impotence insofar as power always comes from people acting together, acting in concert; isolated people are powerless by definition.”
    Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

    #61538
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    @lasttwo: you don’t say where you are located, so it may be situational. Here in the Pacific Northwest, Willamette Valley specifically, farm ag supplies seem to be relatively normal: chicks, feed, and bedding are available in farm supply stores like Wilco. Actually, I would say that the chick situation is better than normal; there are chicks available in the store now in those steel stock tanks with heat lamps over them, and I think that in the past chick availability was a seasonal spring-only phenomena. I did notice that there were missing items in the fastener section of the local Home Depot, however, as I was purchasing supplies to make a rat-resistant chicken feed storage box.

    #61542
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    Lucky to get sweet artemisia! Joe Pye aka gravel root – pretty flowers and in bloom about now. I have never dug the roots to make kidney cleanse but I understand this is one of its claims to fame.
    On the agriculture front in my area abattoir bookings are in short supply, due to covid closures of the big meat processing plants in Canada (a grand total of 3). Bookings around here are filled up until February 2021. Earlier in the season you could not get seed potatoes from the farm supply stores and my regular supplier had crop failure – I ended up planting last year’s leftover potatoes. On the fruit tree front, the major online fruit tree suppliers in Ontario and Quebec are sold out of just about everything. We grow many types of fruit at our place on a small scale (haskaps, black raspberries, table grapes, pears, elderberry, hazelnuts, chums eyc) all organic. My take on everyone buying trees? What they will gain is an education on how much work and how challenging it is to grow fruit, or veges for that matter. People have no idea. One little experiment- we decided not to net one row of our haskaps (it took me 3 days to net the other rows). The result? We got zero haskaps from the un-netted row – birds are them all. The netted rows have us a beautiful crop. Education always costs you something.

    #61556
    lasttwo
    Participant

    Thank you Rotortillerman. We are in NS Canada. no one has had chicken wire fence for months.

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