^^ obligatory anti-"first" link ^^

If elected, just make me Ambassador to Electric Ladyland. That's all I ask.

Heck, if you're going to a gold standard in your election campaign then this old poster seems ideal.

Maybe we can get Pining to super-impose your head and a yellow hat into this pic.

we have about as much of a chance of going back to the gold standard as turd becoming pres.

buy facebook stock.  that's what all the cool kids are doin.

But I'm not seeing it on kitco... at least, nothing dramatic today...

"Today the lease rates on silver have plummeted and thus a raid tomorrow is probably
a forgone conclusion.  They need to force the silver longs to pitch away their contracts."

- http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/2012/02/greece-bailout-yes-or-nothe-usa-...

Kitco Lease Rates for silver:

So what's he talking about?  Am I just clueless?  I see they've been steadily dropping since beginning february, but I see no large dip today?

ETA: I think he just used the wrong words, he was clearly referring to Saturday's GATA article noting lease rates had "plunged into negative territory" in the last few weeks.  Which is true and obvious from teh chart...

But can you have the picture corrected so it doesn't say "others"...the grammar just doesn't work, lol.  And hopefully Mr. Paul isn't considered a fool...can you make him head of the Fed so that he can destroy it as soon as possible?

Turd 2012 and beyond!!!

Turd, If you want to read about a good way to implement a "new" gold standard.  You got to read FOFOA.blogspot.com.

http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2011/01/reference-point-gold-update-1.html

The World Bank President has actually mentioned this reference point gold.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d77d01f8-ee90-11df-9db0-00144feab49a.html#axzz1mJOCOYZp

Ain't going to happen. The world will see world war 3 before that happens. You can mark my words on that. I know that sounds rather end of the world like....but trust me. These pieces of shit would rather watch the world die before they ever let that happen. Just, because they can.

I rewrote that in a last minute rush and totally missed the error... my bad. Oh well, maybe TF can make me Sekretary of Educashion!

The U.S. and all of the countries in the dollar index simultaneously devalued their currencies 25% ?

Would the dollar remain at 79.12 (currently), or would it go down 25%?

I'm probably wrong, but wouldn't it remain the same since all of the currencies would move down by the same amount?

I know inflation would go thru the roof.    Anyway....just something I was thinking about.

Love that Santa, smart man, but wish somebody could be his personal editor.  Simple english always works better, especially when dealing with complex ideas.

wtf!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/speed-freak-killers-victims_n_1...

OBummer May Oust Troops Involuntarily to Meet Reductions in Budget Plan

The Defense Department may have to force soldiers, Marines or other members of the military out of the services for the first time since the aftermath of the Cold War to achieve the spending reductions in its budget proposal.

The Pentagon plans to cut 67,100 soldiers from active and reserve Army units and the Army National Guard in the five years starting Oct. 1, as well as 15,200 from the active and reserve ranks of the Marine Corps as part of an effort to save $487 billion over a decade, according to the budget sent to Congress today. The Navy and Air Force would lose fewer people -- 8,600 and 1,700 respectively -- because of their role in a strategic shift toward the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East.

The military will first try buying out contracts or offering bonuses for people to leave, while working to keep those with valuable specialties such as cyber warfare and acquisitions, according to Travis Sharp, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington policy group, who attended a Pentagon briefing for analysts last month.

“I was surprised that they were going to complete the reductions to the Army and the Marine Corps in just five years,” Sharp said in an interview before the budget was released. “What they told us is that they will try to use those types of positive incentives to the greatest extent possible, but that involuntary separations would probably still be necessary.” <Article>

___________________________________________________________________________

Welfare for Illegal Aliens, but let's cut the military while we're still fighting wars and plan on starting new ones.....

If the government was serious about cutting, then, Yes, it would have to reduce the military significantly, but this is all a ploy and its so obvious.... like the military/industrial complex will let them wind down the hundreds of billions going into their coffers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020479530457722099074319926...

"But investors headed for the exits in recent days, with a particularly sharp selloff Friday, on fears that Greek politicians might scupper austerity measures demanded by international bodies as a condition of a bailout. Now that Greece's parliament has approved the package, the market's fear of a disorderly default or a Greek withdrawal from the euro zone has receded, at least temporarily—although more tests lie ahead in gaining bailout approval from the euro zone."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-13/euro-u-s-futures-fall-after-moo...

This argues the contrary.  We'll see in the morning.

Sounds a lot like a layoff to me--especially if you signed up because you could not land a good job in the civilian economy. 

I don't have any problem with a reduction of military forces and taking those costs out of the budget..... The problem is that Our Government is still out there warmongering and actively fighting.  You don't starve your forces when they are in the heat of battle.  I just wish they would do it smartly......  

I guess that it is good that this budget proposal won't really ever see the light of Congress or the Senate....not during this election year.....

It bugs me that they aren't taking this seriously and because they aren't.... they just throwing things around that are just a ploy so they can say these cuts were their intention during the campaign run for the 2nd term of "Our Dear Leader."

Should go well with the gold standard...

Hello,

I would recommend everyone spend the time to read this whole paper, takes awhile but well worth it.

Note, it is from 1996. Its wealth of information was at times hard to digest, but in the end  taught me about money, the mechanics of free market capitalism, and why gold will naturally reassert itself as money.  

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/whither-gold

Velocity makes alot of sense. And he is historically correct as far as what worked.    The gold standard which goes back to China in 600 bc and adopted by many countries based on an agreed upon standard all eventually debased the money supply.   Often they went to a silver standard, but neither one guaranteed a stable money supply for two reasons.   Goverments are able to debase any money standard including gold and silver due to debt spending to pay for their appetite for power and domination.  

Here is an excerpt from Douglas Rushkoff author of Life Inc. (http://hilobrow.com/2011/11/04/douglas-rushkoff/ ) A book I highly recommend.  

Douglas Rushkoff: The corporation is the result of two innovations: the creation of centralized currency, and the creation of the chartered monopoly. In the late 1300s the upper classes — the aristocrats, the people who had been feudal lords — were becoming less wealthy relative to real people. As the merchant class and people in towns were producing and doing, the relative wealth of the aristocracy was going down, and this was a problem; the aristocrats wanted to continue the system that had been working for them for the last 500 years wherein they didn’t have to “do” anything to be rich. So they hit upon the idea of passively investing in other people’s industries.

Suppose I am the monarch. I want to make money through your shipping company; how do I get you to let me invest? Well, I use what power I have as a monarch to write up a charter, which means I give you a monopoly in a certain area, and you give me 30% of the shares in the company. The chosen merchant avoids competition and gains protection from bankruptcy, while the king receives loyalty, because the merchants’ monopolies are based on keeping him in power. He doesn’t mind if a few of the merchant class are as rich as he is, as long as he is able to get still richer as a result.

But this was not the promotion of free-market capitalism. It was the promotion of monopoly, non-market capitalism. It was locking into place a set of players and a set of systems that had nothing to do with the free market. And it changed the bias of these merchants away from innovation; in other words, from “how do I innovate and maintain my competitive edge” to “how do I extract wealth from the realm that I now control?”

PN: Then they’ll tend to be conservative because they’ll want to maintain what they have and not risk losing it.

DR: Conservative in that sense, but rapacious in another. Say I’m now in charge of the Colonies. What I want to do is extract their wealth; I want to prevent the people who live in the Colonies from creating any value for themselves. If the colonists are going to grow cotton, that’s fine, but they’re going to use my seeds, my agricultural tools, they’re going to use everything from me. If you are a farmer you’re allowed to grow the cotton but you have to sell it to me at my prices. You’re not allowed to make fabric out of that cotton! Fabricating is creating value. And then you’re going to — what? You’re going to make it into clothes? Those are clothes you could have bought from me! No, no, no, you must give all the cotton to me, I’ll put it on my ship and bring it back to England, then the king’s other chartered monopoly, the clothes manufacturer, will make it into clothes, and then I’ll ship them back and sell them to you — at a profit.

PN: So it’s all export crops?

DR: So for about three centuries, the middle and merchant classes were doing really well. Towns that had been in shambles since the fall of the Roman Empire and had lived under strict feudalism were finally coming into their own. This all hinged on the use of local currencies — grain receipts — through which people transacted. They were what we would now call “demurrage” currencies that were earned into existence. Towns ended up creating more value than they knew what to do with. They started investing in their infrastructure and their windmills and their water wheels; and also in their future in the form of cathedrals and other tourist attractions.

PN: They didn’t get money from Rome to fund their cathedrals?

DR: They did not. The Vatican and central Rome did not build the cathedrals. The funds came from local currency, which was very different than money as we use it now. It was based on grain, which lost value over time. The grain would slowly rot or get eaten by rats or cost money to store, so the money needed to be spent as quickly as possible before it became devalued. And when people spend and spend and spend a lot of money, you end up with an economy that grows very quickly.

Now unlike a capitalist economy where money is hoarded, with local currency, money is moving. The same dollar can end up being the salary for three people rather than just one. There was so much money circulating that they had to figure out what to do with it, how to reinvest it. Saving money was not an option, you couldn’t just stick it in the bank and have it grow because it would not grow there, it would shrink. So they paid the workers really well and they shortened the work week to four and in some cases three days per week. And they invested in the future by way of infrastructure — they started to build cathedrals. They couldn’t build them all at once, but they took the long view — with three generations of investment they could build an entire cathedral, and their great-grandchildren could live in a rich town! That’s how the great cathedrals were built, like Chartres. Some historians actually term the late Middle Ages “The Age of Cathedrals.”

They were the best-fed people in the history of Europe; women in England were taller than they are today, and men were taller than they have been at any point in time until the 1970s or 80s (with the recent growth spurt largely the result of hormones in the food supply). Life expectancy of course was still lower; they lacked modern medicine, but people were actually healthier and stronger and better back then, in ways that we don’t admit.

That was right before the corporation and the original chartered monopolies were created, before central currency was created and local currencies were outlawed. When everything gets moved into the center, things began to change.

PN: It seems like the Dark Ages were not perhaps so “dark.”

DR: Yes, I think that’s disinformation. I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist about these things, but I think the reason why we celebrate the Renaissance as a high point of western culture is really a marketing campaign. It was a way for Renaissance monarchs and nation-states, and the industrial age powers that followed, to recast the end of one of the most vibrant human civilizations we’ve had, as a dark, plague-ridden, horrible time.

Historically, the plague arrived after the invention of the chartered corporation, and after central currency was mandated. Central currency became law, and 40 years later you get the plague. People got that poor that quickly. They were no longer allowed to use the land. It shifted from an abundance model to a scarcity model; from an economy based on annual grain production to one based on gold released by the king.

That’s a totally different way of understanding money. Land was no longer a thing the peasants could grow stuff on, land became an investment, land became an asset class for the wealthy. Once it became an asset class they started Partitioning and Enclosure, which meant people weren’t allowed to grow stuff on it, so subsistence farming was no longer a viable lifestyle. If you can’t do subsistence farming you must find a job, so then you go into the city and volunteer to do unskilled labor in a proto-factory for some guy who wants the least-skilled, cheapest labor possible. You move your whole family to where the work is, into the squalor, where conditions are overcrowded and impoverished — the perfect breeding ground for plague and death.

I'd also point out that those of you who are attempting to grow your own foods and are concerned about the availability of seeds and monsanto.  Please note the last two paragraphs of the interview I just posted by Douglas Rushcoff.  It seems the same tactic is being used to control resources.  The elite just takes it out of an old playbook. 

A very nice coin and only 500 being made.  Too bad the premium over spot is $15.55 per ounce.  Would really be a nice addition to the stack.

http://www.apmex.com/Product/63850/2012_10_Kilo_3215_oz_Silver_Australian_Year_of_the_Dragon.aspx

Ben's Song for the world

It's only Words and Words are all i have

To take your money away

Thanks Green Lantern for the post.

Douglas Rushkoff author of Life Inc.

Looks like a book worth finding and reading; your excerpt explains much in a realistic way as to what we're seeing today with food and seeds and control. So sad. It just doesn't have to be this way.

Haven't been around today, so I'm not up to speed.

But I saw this just now, and I haven't seen anything this funny for ages.

So I thought I would share.

I laughed and laughed - I laughed so hard I cried.  Can you imagine?

Coming to a neighborhood near you.   ALL IS WELL!!!!!!!! 

Enjoy and keep stacking 

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/46366874/ns/business-real_estate/#.TznPBFwS2Ag

We don't want the etc., etc., etc.,.... or the Ag dept either for that matter!