Quote:


— Joseph Stiglitz

The greatest crisis facing America is the obscene level of wealth and income inequality. While the rich get richer, the middle class continues to disappear. We have more people living in poverty than ever before. In recent years, 95 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent.

There are countless signs that our culture is sick with greed, and if it isn't cured soon it will prove fatal for America. CEO's now make 273 times what the average worker makes. The average CEO's salary reached a new record high of $9.7 million in 2012. America is rotting from within while the rich smile and gloat.

What is being considered wealth here, is ultimately the proceeds of crime derived through access to and participation in corrupt system. The market or economy is the administration of spoils gained through organised crime and military conquest. While they may have good intentions, most wealthy people are benefitting from the proceeds of crime and affiliation with criminal networks.

aquascoot wrote on Jun 30^th, 2014 at 11:59am:


What does that even mean?

Adask's law:

It’s nearly three years since gold peaked at $1900/ounce.  Today, it’s about $1,270.  Since the A.D. 2011, $1900 peak, the price of gold has fallen 33%.

This prolonged fall has been incomprehensible to me.  I can understand a “correction”.  I can understand that gold might fall, say, 30%.  But I’d expect that after gold fell 30%, “fundamentals” would quickly cause gold to rebound to ever-higher levels.

However, I could not understand (until now) why gold would linger at current low levels despite all the fundamentals that I believe should be pushing gold ever higher–even now.

For example, one “fundamental” (at least, to my mind) is the fact that our government needs inflation to repudiate part of the enormous national debt and thereby allow government to repay its debts with “cheaper” dollars. That’s why the price of gold (though manipulated) was allowed to rise 20% per year for most of a decade before the A.D. 2011 peak.  The “manipulation” didn’t push gold down, per se, but it prevented it from rising as quickly as it might have.  The rising price of gold confirmed that inflation was present, the fiat dollar was losing value, and the national debt was being partially repudiated.

Given government’s “fundamental” need to repudiate at least part of the national debt by means of inflation, it made sense to me that government would allow the price of gold to rise at, say, 20% per year–but not 30% or 50%.

But then gov-co knocked gold down from $1,900 to today’s $1,270 and has held it at these low levels.  That’s evidence of growing value of the fiat dollar.  That’s evidence of deflation which is anathema to economic growth.

Holding the price of gold down contributes to an increase in the value of the fiat dollar and therefore an increase in the purchasing power of the national debt.  Holding the price of gold down contributes to deflation which causes economic decline.

So, it’s made no sense to me that the government has depressed the price of gold for most of three years.  Doing so appeared to me to be contrary to government’s own interests.

Worse, it’s been supposed that the downward manipulation of gold prices may have been achieved by government secretly selling some or most of the 8,200 tons of gold allegedly held in the US Treasury into the commodities markets at low, low, prices.  Why sell the US Treasury’s gold?  To maintain the illusion that the fiat dollar still have strong purchasing power and value.  They sold the gold to protect the dollar.

I considered those suspicions and marveled that government could be so damn dumb that they’d sell off America’s gold treasury at artificially reduced prices in order to temporarily protect and sustain the perceived value of the intrinsically-worthless fiat dollar.  Gov-co appeared to be literally giving our gold away to temporarily support the fiat dollar.  Didn’t they know that, inevitably, the markets would consume every damn gram of gold held in the US Treasury?  Didn’t they understand that the fiat dollar was inevitably doomed to die?  And why were they selling “our” gold to foreign entities (like China?) rather than, at least, to the American people?

On reflection, I realize that the previous questions weren’t evidence of the government’s ignorance, but rather, of mine.

Of course (if they are truly selling off the US Treasury’s gold), the government knows that soon that Treasury will soon be empty.  Of course, they know.

So, why are the selling US gold?

Because that just might be exactly what they want–a US Treasury devoid of gold.

Why?

Clearly, government knows that the fiat dollar (like every other fiat currency) must eventually collapse in value.  Maybe this year.  Maybe five years from now.  But, inevitably, the fiat dollar must die.

I presume government also knows that once the fiat dollar dies, the American people will go through so much economic trauma that they’ll be actually forced to learn what the terms “fiat dollar” and “fiat currency” mean.  (Imagine!  An economic depression so severe that Americans are forced actually learn something!  Scary thought, hmm?)

Once Americans associate the term “fiat dollars” with economic trauma, they’ll be extremely reluctant to agree to replace today’s “fiat dollar” with another new-and-improved “fiat currency”.  Instead, there’ll be a significant public demand for a new, gold-backed currency.   The Powers That Be might not be able to resist that public demand in the arena of public opinion.  If public demand were sufficiently strong, we might actually get a gold-based currency.

But if America’s public demand for a gold-based currency couldn’t be defeated politically, the entire, global, fiat-currency system would probably be destroyed.   That fiat currency system is the foundation for big government and the New World Order.  If the world goes back to a gold-based monetary system, big government and the New World Order will die.

From the New World Order’s perspective, if the United States couldn’t reestablish a gold-based currency, it’s also unlikely that any other nation (including China) could do so, except at a fantastic price of, say, $50,000/ounce, for physical gold.

Winston Smith wrote on Jun 30^th, 2014 at 12:00pm:


oh winnie, it means you don't like the system , but, guess what, its the only game in town, so you had better start playing

BatteriesNotIncluded wrote on Jun 30^th, 2014 at 12:04pm:



as I said, who you know and what they think about you are as bankable as $$$.
sociologically, we probably are responding to a genetic drive to see our children succeed.
so if you own a house, why not own a couple more for the kids.
many small business people put their kids into the family business (OFTEN WITH DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES). this would be responding to a genetic drive to see your spawn prosper but if you didn't use your "intelligence" to prepare them for this role, you simply aren't intelligent.
again, its not what you know its who you know. if you don't "know" your own kids, you haven't understood the importance of human relationships to business success, human success and social intelligence.

aquascoot wrote on Jun 30^th, 2014 at 12:25pm:


So you agree that system is corrupt to the core?

Are you a criminal aquascoot?