whatiscmr, glad you got something out of it. I had many posts on here explaining this in great detail, but they went bye-bye with the axe of the political forum. (edit:those old posts are still there. Found them in my history. This was a hot little thread for a while. I gave a lot of good links here:
http://www.sowal.com/bb/showthread.php/53004-The-American-Dream)
Some said I was long winded, some wanted to hear more, most remained silent or just wished I would go away. I will refrain from posting too much as I don't want to overstep any changes Kurt is trying to make politically, but please understand this isn't political.
Unfortunately, explaining what money really is doesn't fit into a cute soundbite or pithy comment. That's also part of the problem. Multi-tasking dilutes ones attention much the same way creating more debt/dollars dilutes your purchasing power. Inflation is a tax on the savers and the left vs right paradigm is a tax on intelligent discussion. You may win a battle here and there but you're losing the war of who controls the world's reserve currency. This isn't political though, it's math. Politricks keep the masses divided and under the illusion that what they think matters. Ron Paul has it right. Unfortunately, he too is cast aside in favor of who big money can control. All the more reason we should listen to him. Ah, it doesn't matter....a fiat currency collapse is inevitable.
Never in the history of the world has a fiat currency not collapsed. Average life span of fiat? 40 years. When did we become fiat? 1971. Hmmmm. Started with the gold confiscation in '34 making it illegal for US citizens to own gold until '74. But in 1971 Nixon closed the gold window because we were running out. That upset the Arabs who had been exchanging their reserve dollars for our gold because it was still convertible. We paid them for oil in the world's reserve currency, the Fed dollar. Then the dollar was suddenly non-convertible and fiat. So the Arabs said, "Who controls Bartertown?", and the oil embargo was on. Anyone remember this?
This is much bigger than just us. It's a global currency war. A race to outrun the inflation we have unleashed on the world these past 40 years. And the half-life of each monetary injection of debt to ease the debt is decreasing at an exponential rate. As any ponzi does. They work until they suddenly don't.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that fractional reserve lending allowed western nations to grow our standard of living. It most certainly did. But after WWII we were the world's largest creditor nation. Now we are the world's largest debtor, in history. Game over baby. Time to exit before the music stops. I recommend getting out of all paper and counter-party risk. By holding dollars and paper assets denominated in dollars, you are in effect co-signing for the fiscal responsibility of the US government.
So, take heart. You don't buy gold, you sell dollars. Gold is a 5,000 year old international currency which preserves today's purchasing power before tomorrow's inflation.
In this two part video, Mike Maloney does a good job of explaining how money works to a group of bankers in Russia last year.
[video]http://youtu.be/0Wrrzsrb-wg[/video]
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