Saturday, November 15, 2014
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Monday, November 10, 2014
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Is Gold Money? Alan Greenspan Gives SHOCKING Interview at CFR
For some reason, the Council of Foreign Relations, where ex-Fed-Chief Alan Greenspan spoke last week, decided the following discussion should be left out of the official transcript. We can perhaps understand why... as Gillian Tett concludes, "comments like that will be turning you into a rock star amongst the gold bug community."
TETT: Do you think that gold is currently a good investment?
GREENSPAN: Yes... Remember what we're looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency. No fiat currency, including the dollar, can macth it.
Which is missing from the official CFR transcript...
GREENSPAN: ...remember, we had that first tapering discussion, we got a very strong market response. And then we reassured everybody to have no -- remember, tapering is still (audio gap) of an agreement that the central banks have made -- European central banks, I believe -- about allocating their gold sales which occurred when gold prices were falling down (audio gap) has been renewed this year with a statement that gold serves a very important place in monetary reserves.* * *
And the question is, why do central banks put money into an asset which has no rate of return, but cost of storage and insurance and everything else like that, why are they doing that? If you look at the data with a very few exceptions, all of the developed countries have gold reserves. Why?
TETT: I imagine right now, it's because of a question mark hanging over the value of fiat currency, the credibility going forward.
GREENSPAN: Well, that's what I'm getting at. Every time you get some really serious questions, the 50 percent of the gold price determination begins to move.
TETT: Right.
GREENSPAN: And I think it is fascinating and -- I don't know, is Benn Steil in the audience?
TETT: Yes.
GREENSPAN: There he is, OK. Before you read my book, go read Benn's book. The reason is, you'll find it fascinating on exactly this issue, because here you have the ultimate test at the Mount Washington Hotel in 1944 of the real intellectual debate between the -- those who wanted to an international fiat currency which was embodied in John Maynard Keynes' construct of a banker, and he was there in 1944, holding forth with all of his prestige, but couldn't counter the fact that the United States dollar was convertible into gold and that was the major draw. Everyone wanted America's gold. And I think that Benn really described that in extraordinarily useful terms, as far as I can see. Anyway, thank you.
TETT: Right. Well, I'm sure with comments like that, that will be turning you into a rock star amongst the gold bug community.
As a reminder, here is Ben Bernanke putting people straight on Gold...
As we noted at the time,
Ron Paul asks the Bernanke if he thought gold was money. Bernanke almost swallows his tongue, stares blankly for a few seconds and then says, “no.”
Paul then asks why banks hold gold on their balance sheet? Why not diamonds? Bernanke says, “tradition, I suppose.”
So let me get this straight, banks hold billions of dollars of an asset that pays no interest or dividends on their balance sheet for reasons of "tradition". nothing to do with anything else, just tradition. uh, yea. That must be it.
Friday, November 7, 2014
Thursday, November 6, 2014
It's Left vs Right - Anyone clinging to that fantasy is delusional - #UniteBlue #UniteRight
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Please don't claim anything changes if one party or the other is in the majority. Anyone clinging to that fantasy is delusional.
If you really think it matters which political party controls the U.S. Senate, please answer these questions. Don't worry, they're not that difficult:
1. Will U.S. foreign policy in the Mideast change from being an incoherent pastiche of endless war and Imperial meddling? Please answer with a straight face. We all know the answer is that it doesn't matter who controls the Senate, Presidency or House of Representatives, nothing will change.
2. Will basic civil liberties be returned to the citizenry? You know, like the cops are no longer allowed to steal your cash when they stop you for a broken tail light and claim the cash was going to be used for a drug deal.
Or some limits on domestic spying by Central State agencies. You know, basic civil liberties as defined by the Bill of Rights and the U.S. constitution.
Don't make me laugh--you know darned well that it doesn't matter who controls the Senate, Presidency or House of Representatives, nothing will change.
3. Will the predatory, parasitic policies of the Federal Reserve that virtually everyone from the Wall Street Journal to what little remains of the authentic Left understands has greatly increased income and wealth inequality be reined in? Please don't claim either party has any will or interest in limiting the Fed's rapacious financialization. There is absolutely no evidence to support such a claim--it is pure wishful thinking.
4. Will the steaming pile of profiteering, corruption, waste, fraud and ineptitude that is Sickcare in the U.S. be truly reformed so its costs drop by 50% to match what every other developed democracy spends per person on universal healthcare? It doesn't matter if ObamaCare is repealed or not; that monstrosity was simply another layer of bureaucratic waste on an already hopelessly dysfunctional system.
If you answer "yes," please run a body scan on yourself to detect the biochips that were implanted while you voted Demopublican.
5. Will the influence of Big Money be well and truly banned from politics? If you answer yes, please pick up your tin-foil hat at the door.
6. Will the incentives in the Status Quo be reset to punish rapacious financialization and gaming the system and reward productive investment and labor? Before you answer, check out who's buttering the Senators' bread. Hint: Wall Street does not qualify as productive unless we're talking about the production of life-draining parasites. Virtually none of the vast armies of skimmers and scammers, from those pursuing bogus disability claims to lobbyist leeches, will suffer any consequence.
Moral hazard is the Status Quo's Prime Directive.
7. Will anything be done to dismantle the Neofeudal Debt-Serfdom known as student loans? You are delusional if you think either party has any interest in limiting the predation of an academic Upper Caste that came to do good and stayed to do well.
8. Will any prudent assessment be made of unaffordable weapons systems like the F-35 Lightning--$1.5 trillion and counting for aircraft that will soon be matched by drones that cost a fraction of the F-35's $200 million a piece price tag? No way--parts of those insanely costly jets are made in dozens of states, so the pork is well-distributed. Never mind the plane is lemon, built to fight the wars of the past. It's jobs, Baby--that's all that counts. Never mind the $1.5 trillion--we can always borrow another couple trillion--the Fed promised us.
Do you really think the Senate controlled by either party will ask why the F-35's price tag dropped to $120 million from $200 million? That's easy--the revised estimate left out the engine and avionics. They'll be added back in after the Senate approves open-ended funding.
If none of these key dynamics will change, you got nothing. Please
don't claim anything changes if one party or the other is in the
majority. Anyone clinging to that fantasy is delusional.
If you doubt this, please take the above quiz again.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Saturday, November 1, 2014
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