Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

The first state out the door is the winner. Others will follow. This is a Mormon publication. Most people don't know it, but the Mormon church owns a lot of businesses. My guess is they know exactly what they are doing. One possibility would be for the business people in the church to establish depositories and issue gold or silver based debit cards that are convertible at any debit/credit card terminal in the state. It's not even necessary to establish a currency in order to do this.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7001 ... riefs.html

Possible gold standard for state

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah might be one step closer to its own gold standard after the Senate approved a bill Thursday that would require the state to recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender.

"Our hope is to help stabilize the currency within our own state long term," said Senate Majority Leader Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City.

HB317, passing 17-7, makes the exchange of federally issued gold and silver coins an option for businesses and individuals, though it does not mandate it. The bill also requires gold and silver coins to be valued at their current market value.

The Senate approved sending the measure to the Tax Review Commission and Revenue and Taxation Interim Committee to study establishing an alternative currency system backed by silver and gold.

But some lawmakers are skeptical of what the measure, which has passed the House and now moves to Gov. Gary Herbert for his action, implies.

"We had better be careful before we fully embrace this," said Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem. The bill is not a "get-out-of-jail-free card" when it comes to federal regulation, he said.

Gold and silver users would have to file federally required transaction reports, Jenkins said.

[OLD1953]

I'll just point out that manipulation of gold markets is constantly discussed in all the gold trade journals and let it go with the question of "who wants to use a money base that is easily manipulated and has an actual starting point on the exchange not much larger than many personal fortunes?". (Dependent on prices on a given day OFC.) Soros would just love it. Buy five billions in futures, watch the gold move into the hands of people who cheer about their increasing value of money, dump the futures, get the gold back as prices plummet, buy futures, etc., which is exactly what the gold journals speculate is happening right now. First one to say "SEC WILL PREVENT THAT", given that this is a move to get away from "FEDERAL INTERVENTION", gets a raspberry. It's illogical to assume federal protection when you are trying to remove federal influence. I see a lot of that.

In other news, this:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41969508/
will doubtless get a bunch of play. Apart from being false to fact in intent (Social Security is not a handout or giveaway or paid for from tax dollars in the general fund, which is implied by not stating the facts), lets look at the reality instead of the imaginary.

The reality is as follows, there is not a single repetitive job on the planet that cannot be done by a computer at this time. Many jobs that require limited creativity will be done or assisted by computers in the near term of ten years or less. Those are facts, not fantasy, not science fiction, and they are the facts of this year, not last year, not the last decade and not some distant point in the future, either.

Given those facts, what is the impact on society? One thing is obvious, insofar as "jobs" go, "jobs" being defined as "work performed in an industrial setting to create innumerable identical objects", there are not going to be any for human beings. Given that many human related jobs (HR dept, payroll, etc) are DEPENDENT on those "jobs" for their existence, it becomes painfully obvious that easily 3/4 of the current working population is not needed for any sort of production. Foisting the problem off on China is a temporary measure, yes, for the moment, Chinese labor is cheaper than computers, but that's already coming to an end. As production moves back to the US (already happening, Google it, especially GE) we will NOT see the expected increase in factory jobs, but a much smaller increase in higher paying jobs that are essentially systems analysis/administration or robot tending.

So what's the choices for the people that aren't in the upper 1/3 of the bell curve? Most simply do not have the temperament to run a small business, and the notion isn't viable anyhow, you cannot have 100,000 dry cleaners in the same city, there simply isn't enough demand for service jobs to fill the gaps here. The service job niche is overfilled in most places inside the USA. If you let surplus population starve, they'll riot and do tremendous damage, besides which is the fact that every other country in the world will be facing the same issues, and you'll need those people if you go to all out war. Welfare for all is not an attractive choice to Americans, but I'm not seeing much in the way of the alternative here sans a total restructuring of society. (Dead easy to come up with solutions if you pull off all the rules and customs, but kind of worthless in terms of reality, as reality decides things by a process that pays little attention to the way things should be according to academics. And academics don't have a very good record at designing societies anyhow, too much of the angel factor tends to creep in.)

And THAT is the real trend for the economy in the USA and world wide. It is not "long term" any more either, unless you define long term as "longer than a year" like so many businesses and government do. It's here it's now and what are we going to do about it? Figure that out, invest accordingly, and you'll be the winner, otherwise, you'll be bucking the underlying trend, and that never works over the long term.

[vincecate]

The first state out the door is the winner. Others will follow. This is a Mormon publication. Most people don't know it, but the Mormon church owns a lot of businesses. My guess is they know exactly what they are doing.

I expect at least those pushing it understand. I could not find anyone sure if the Governor will sign into law or not.

A side point. It might be good to put Utah on the list of possibly good places to ride through the coming mess. It is not densely populated. It is about 60% Mormon and a large fraction of these have 1 year supply of food. If during a crisis states closed borders, Utah might have more stored food per person than others. And having gold and silver count as legal money so you might be able to legally avoid some taxes on inflated paper dollars counts as a plus in my book. Not that I am leaving Anguilla ...

[vincecate]

Japanese Nuke plant troubles may impact the future of Nuclear power and so maybe the future of oil prices. Nuclear is a possible way to get energy to run the grid and power electric cars. But if Japan's troubles cause people to fear Nuclear power even more it may result in even less movement on that front (not that the US has licensed a new plant in 30 years).

There is a slight chance that someone notes that the radiation in the exhaust of an average coal plant is more than what has been released in Japan and the fear of Nuclear power is actually reduced by this event, but that seems unlikely.

Anyway, if this impacts the future of Nuclear power, then it could impact oil, which could impact the world economy.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... lear-waste

[Lily]

Vince - you'd want to be careful about water in Utah above all else. They're already preparing to sieze water supplies for military usage in the inevitable coming shortage:
http://le.utah.gov/~2011/bills/sbillamd/sb0102.htm

Anywhere you can't live independantly will be dangerous, and you can't live independantly if you don't have control over your own water supply.

Old1953 - you're dead on about automation decreasing the number of jobs in the economy and making people obsolete. The system can't possibily produce enough jobs to support everyone, and welfare lasts only as long as the Federal government can pretend to be solvent, which won't be much longer, and starvation, uh, doesn't seem like a good option. But you're missing a critical point. Actually, two.

Point One - even outside of innovative or creative tasks, there are still a few 'simple' tasks that humans are better at than machines. For instance, I dare anyone to try and replace an organic farmer or gardener with a machine! The tasks involved are too complex, nonlinear and contingent for machines to handle, and that will likely be the case for another several decades at least.

Point Two - we have enough productive land in this country for every single person to have enough land to grow enough food to feed themselves and their families. Modern technologies and ancient knowledge are available that could easily permit comfortable, cheap, off-grid, digitally-connected dwellings with sustainable, local food and fuel production resources for anyone who cared to construct them, but most of the land is either under Federal control and used for nothing or under private control and too expensive for citizens to obtain, and many of the technologies and much of the knowledge needed is deliberately surpressed or marginalized.

But there's plenty of land - between a third and a half of the land in most Western states is owned by the Federal Government and essentially not used. There is no reason at all that shouldn't be opened up for sustainable, low-impact homesteads. It's not that the American Frontier filled up or went away - it's still there, we just quit colonizing it and moved to the suburbs instead!

The 'surplus population' doesn't need cities, welfare, or 'service' jobs. We just need freedom and healthy land to live on. That's it.

The changes we'd have to make in our current social arrangements to accomplish this are pretty 'radical', but so what? The current American political discourse is so out of touch with reality that the only things considered politically pragmatic are nonsense evasions that accomplish nothing and contribute to the coming disaster. If we're going to get out of this, we'll have to dramatically alter what constitutes the political 'mainstream.' But I think that's less difficult than many people think, because the system is falling apart intellectually and spiritually as well as physically and financially! A LOT of people are really hungry for real change, and more people are willing to consider options they'd have dismissed before things got this bad. People drastically underestimate the liklihood of a 'Black Swan' Jasmine-style social revolution in the United States. It's a good thing, too, since that's our only hope.

So I guess that's "what we're going to do about it" for me, anyway.

However, even if the revolution gets off the ground things are going to be pretty dark for a long time. If, as seems likely, the great masses of people can't escape the dying, stinking, starving cities in time to avoid the onrushing catastrophe, don't bother investing money with the expectation of getting it back. You'll lose no matter how clever and rich you are. Buy bullets, land, and chickens instead.

[at99sy]

In other news, this:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41969508/
will doubtless get a bunch of play. Apart from being false to fact in intent (Social Security is not a handout or giveaway or paid for from tax dollars in the general fund, which is implied by not stating the facts), lets look at the reality instead of the imaginary.

I disagree with your statement above about SS not being a handout, http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/OASDIbenies.html look at this link to the SS beneficiary data chart. Almost 11 Million people in the country are getting "Disabled workers and dependents" benefits. Many if not most of the people getting the disability check are not deserving of them. People with legitimate disabilities have great difficulty getting assistance. People who are willing to live like parasites have no trouble though and can work the system like magicians. The simple fact is 55 million people in the country are getting SS checks EVERY MONTH! I use the term "people" since a great many of them are not American citizens, nor did they every pay a single cent into thefund.

My brother after 25 years in the construction industry has blown out hips, six fused vertebrates in his spine and can't get more than a 10% disability rating. He was told he should sell his home and live at a homeless shelter for a couple of months then he would qualify for everything. While a family(6) from Guatemala whose son was the only one who spoke English got food stamps, free housing and everything else they needed.

The simple facts are that we have fewer people producing anything in this country and more and more sucking the country dry every day. If the government stopped or was forced to stop paying unemployment and SS and welfare checks for a couple of weeks or months we would have the same anarchy in the streets that much of the world is experiencing right now. The Feds are buying friends and loyal followers with these $$. But at some point it will end abruptly and fiercely. One need look no farther back than in the hours and days post-Katrina. Civilization broke down completely due to the fact that most of the people wh o stayed behind were waiting on the government to tell them what to do and to save them.

I do agree with your assessment of the gold standards and Federal involvement/manipulation. It won't work with the corruption that is ubiquitous in our society today.

Food prices are skyrocketing in my area and have risen about 25% in the past month on many produce items and Meat last night looked like it was up dramatically from last month as well.

Nothing happening folks just keep moving, all is well in the kingdom, We're F'd.

sy

[vincecate]

I seriously doubt this. There will always be some kind of fish as long as the sun is growing algae in the ocean, and this is not going to stop. It might be we eat shark, or sardines, but there will be fish.

Doubt it all you want; it's a fact. As of this moment we have already decimated shark populations in the world's oceans - the population of sharks in the wild has been reduced by **90%** since the 50s.

You really, really should take the time to watch this documentary.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/end-of-l ... hout-fish/
Unless our behavior radically changes, *all* major world fish stocks will be essentially completely depleted by 2050, and most will progressively and sharply deteriorate long before then.

It is a good documentary. Thanks. It says, "the stocks of fish which we now eat will have collapsed by the middle of the century". Note they also point out that as you kill off the top end predators the population of their prey explodes. Sometimes these prey are things humans can eat (lobsters, shrimp, smaller fish) and sometimes not things we like (jellyfish). It may be that by 2050 most of the fish left in the wild are poisonous to humans. The ocean is a classic case of "tragedy of the commons" and bad things will happen. But I bet that the number of pounds of living stuff eating algae in the ocean is not down all that much. Nature will evolve so that the algae is still eaten, just maybe not by things humans like to eat. I don't really see any conflict with my views and that documentary. It does not really say, "all fish" will collapse, just ones we now eat.

Again, this is not one of my top worries for the next 3 years, even if I was living out on the ocean.

[OLD1953]

Population in the US is over 70 per square mile, and that includes a LOT of mountain and desert. No, we do not have enough arable land, even counting old style hill farms, for even 1/2 the current population to survive as low tech subsistence farmers. World wide, it's about ten percent of the current population could survive as subsistence farmers. And that's stretching it.

[vincecate]

But there's plenty of land - between a third and a half of the land in most Western states is owned by the Federal Government and essentially not used. There is no reason at all that shouldn't be opened up for sustainable, low-impact homesteads. It's not that the American Frontier filled up or went away - it's still there, we just quit colonizing it and moved to the suburbs instead!

In other countries "squatters" have just started using government land and eventually been given rights to it. As things get worse in the US I bet we see the same thing there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting

[Higgenbotham]

I'll just point out that manipulation of gold markets is constantly discussed in all the gold trade journals and let it go with the question of "who wants to use a money base that is easily manipulated and has an actual starting point on the exchange not much larger than many personal fortunes?". (Dependent on prices on a given day OFC.) Soros would just love it. Buy five billions in futures, watch the gold move into the hands of people who cheer about their increasing value of money, dump the futures, get the gold back as prices plummet, buy futures, etc., which is exactly what the gold journals speculate is happening right now. First one to say "SEC WILL PREVENT THAT", given that this is a move to get away from "FEDERAL INTERVENTION", gets a raspberry. It's illogical to assume federal protection when you are trying to remove federal influence. I see a lot of that.

This was primary between let's say the time the Berlin Wall fell and the time Lehman collapsed. There is stil manipulation going on, but it's not primary to the price movement. The US has lost control of the gold price. One piece of evidence: Bernanke never mentioned gold until recently, but now he repeatedly states that gold is irrelevant, people don't want to buy gold, etc. China is still the largest holder of US dollar reserves on the planet even though the Fed is trying to catch up. China has the ability to stabilize the gold price immediately by declaring that they will pay X amount per ounce guaranteed under any conditions no matter what New York does to the futures price. If prices rise above X, China can then counter the Fed debasement by selling gold into the market and driving the price down.

If you let surplus population starve, they'll riot and do tremendous damage, besides which is the fact that every other country in the world will be facing the same issues, and you'll need those people if you go to all out war. Welfare for all is not an attractive choice to Americans, but I'm not seeing much in the way of the alternative here sans a total restructuring of society. (Dead easy to come up with solutions if you pull off all the rules and customs, but kind of worthless in terms of reality, as reality decides things by a process that pays little attention to the way things should be according to academics. And academics don't have a very good record at designing societies anyhow, too much of the angel factor tends to creep in.

During the blue collar recession of the early 80's a group called "The Order" spontaneously emerged and created a lot of havoc. At its height, the FBI had half its agents occupied on the case. These 15 or 20 men of average intelligence had none of the tools available that today's revolutionaries have at their disposal. When the FBI busted the ring, they found detailed and accurate plans to take down the telephone system and poison water supplies.

Food stamps aren't going satisfy people and the authorities aren't going to be able to control them by force Soviet style - those days are gone.