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I do not really care if they drill from crummy sludge oil in Alaska. I do not even really care if the Caribou like it or not. Nobody vacations in ANWR and nobody but an oil driller would go near the freezing place. It is probably the closest thing to Hell you will find on Earth.
That said, if you cons have ideas about drilling off the coast of Florida or Georgia, you had better start trading in your pickups for Toyotas or Hybrids because it ain't gonna happen! There are millions of people that live along these coast and millions of more of us that go to the beaches there often and if you think for even a second that we would stand by and watch an oil well being built there, you have another thought coming! It AIN'T gonna happen!
Our idea of a weekend at the beach does not include swimming in an oil slick or watching dead birds roll up on the beach. Somebody pass that message on to Hannity please!
Yes medical waste is much more preferable! Guess what it is going to happen ! It will just be China instead of us! Oil Derricks are great for the sea life!
Many hedge funds had to make redemptions by selling positions on affluent companies because of their toxic subprime leveraging. Gold's value is suppressed partly for this reason as held positions have to be liquidiated to meet margin calls. I argue that it cannot afford to KEEP the peg.
Hedge funds are on their own. Just ask them. Otherwise, China and various other significant economies are indeed basically importing monetary and economic policies through their pegs to the dollar that they might not have chosen on their own. But no less than the US, none of these lives anymore in anything other than a global economy. They cannot afford to assume that there's us and then there's them anymore than we can. One primary concern for these economies just now is that the weakness of the US economy (which many expect will move toward recovery after the election) will spread to Europe before improvements here can start to set in. That would leave them in a much more difficult spot. They are far more likely therefore to live with what they've got than to attempt to strike out on their own. If global growth rates were to stabilize at acceptably positive levels, pressures to move toward higher interest rates and stronger currencies might emerge. But that doesn't appear to be in the offing anytime soon.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
The manufacturing engine in China is so efficient, a rise in currency only stands to benefit them, period.
You think more highly of this engine than most Chinese. Whether upward or downward, currency moves are always a mix of plusses and minuses.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
Any argument FOR inflation, IMHO, is the result of a programmed mind.
Right. What's your take on deflation?
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
Prices have a natural tendency to fall due to increase of producitivity, not rise.
That depends on the investment costs involved in accomplishing increases in productivity. The latter do not simply fall out of the sky.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
But Americans (as well as others) have been programmed to believe that money is a perishable good. Fiat currency certainly has an effect of poisoning the mind.
Well, something is getting to some people, but I don't expect it's actually fiat currency. Perhaps the proliferation of internet financial-guru wannabe's is the explanation.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
But China has been waiting so long to enjoy the fruits of its labor, there can be no way for their economy to go but up when they don't have to spend money shipping stuff for overindebted Americans to purchase. That oil going into transporting goods gets to be preserved for their own citizens to consume and enjoy.
Shipping isn't a big factor unless there's a war on the seas, and patience is still a virtue in China. Meanwhile, their economy cannot yet stand the strain of consumerism, as noted earlier.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
China will have both ends of the spectrum. Production AND consumption, along with healthy trade with Australia and other countries. That's all a country really needs. Property rights and low regulation. Democracy is a "nice to have".
The population of Australia is about 21 million. The US is close to 15 times that. China may eventually achieve a balanced modern economy, so long as it does not bog down in its own inefficiencies in the meantime. At best, that outcome remains several decades away.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
China has taken many steps towards going "greener" if one only looks at the investment in alternative energy earning triple digit growth.
What would you say is an approximate dollar cost for the steps remaining simply in order to get out of an environmental free-fall? How would diverting funds into consumerism help raise any of those?
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
Inflation is running double digits in both China and Saudi Arabia. It is so bad now that they are relying on price controls. Their people will settle down a lot more when their currency appreciates in value.
Source for those numbers? Not sure how Saudi Arabia sneaks into the picture, but their inflation rates have been similar to our own. In China they are higher, but not by much. Four to six percent there versus three to five percent here. Otherwise, people tend not to appreciate a strong currency so much when they don't actually have any currency because they don't have any job.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
Messrs Clinton/Bush/Greenspan/Bernanke are entirely responsible for this mess by now allowing a real recession to hit after dot bomb, and instead artificially setting a 1% rate and enabling the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time in the real estate market.
Piffle. The weeding and pruning in the then nascient dot-com industry occurred in 1997-98 as the brick-and-mortar boys started to learn lessons from their B2B applications and realized that they could easily leverage that platform onto the consumer side. What people try to write off as a dot-com bubble bursting was a natural and sensible apprehension over a future that might be driven by the very questionable economic policies of one George W Bush, along with the accumulating baggage of widespread fraud that had gone undetected in a world left lacking in basic oversight and regulatory capacity as the result of various and ill-advised initiatives of laissez-faire free market capitalism types.
Actually, I was just speaking of any citations in political science journals which would make your argument. But, I'm sure the truly enlightened like yourself do not require such nonsense make one's case.
Maybe read something NOT published by the Federalist Society...
Interesting that those who wish to make an argument for their case often refer to the other side as "whackjobs".
A rose by any other name...
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
It's also interesting that every president before Nixon is by your definition a whackjob for maintaining a gold standard. I guess Nixon was a genius for closing the gold window so we can feel the enjoyment of having free money dropped from helicopters to buy overpriced real estate.
Nixon didn't think up the idea, and it was never up to the US to make the call in any case. It was FDR who took gold out of private hands. It was under Truman that the conventions of Bretton Woods came into effect. Nixon happened to be on the job (sort of) when the unhitching to gold or any other simple commodity was completed. Interesting to note that some 37 years later, there is not a single government or central bank that operates on the gold standard.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
Yes, shadowstats shows a 15-20% money supply growth. The owner of the data also is using the term "worthless" to describe the dollar eventually, but right now it's just "worth less" (two words). He's also not a gold bug. Fancy that?
ShadowStats? This is where people who can't find any ActualStats go to find something that might support their crumbled arguments.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
It's hilarious that the suppression of M3 was to "save money on producing the data"
You didn't really answer the question on this one. How was M3 different from M2 and why would those differences be significant?
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
Interesting that the idea of trusting a politician or other vested interests with a printing press is somehow less whackjob-ish than using a form whose growth cannot be easily manipulated.
And yet when I go into 7-11 and ask for a pack of Marlboro Lights and hand the cleark a ten dollar bill, I invariably get my pack of cigarettes and change back to boot. Useful things, these ten dollar bills.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
A metal that tarnishes and decomposes isn't exactly a good quality in money. It's mallable state helps to reshape the money into different forms for exchange.
Seriously...these are your arguments? Paper stomps all over gold in the area physical attributes and ease of manufacture.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
You're right. I should be more focused on getting my HDTV to produce those reports you asked for.
Maybe read something NOT published by the Federalist Society...
Ah, more evidence that the thickness of one's sarcasm is directly proportional to the thickness of their skull.
Actually, I would kindly ask the same request. See, in order to be respected, one has to cite their evidence. For example, the "internet" financial gurus you claim I listen to actually appear regularly on Fox business, Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC, NBC, or BBC. They are anything but "internet" financial gurus.
Nixon didn't think up the idea, and it was never up to the US to make the call in any case. It was FDR who took gold out of private hands. It was under Truman that the conventions of Bretton Woods came into effect. Nixon happened to be on the job (sort of) when the unhitching to gold or any other simple commodity was completed. Interesting to note that some 37 years later, there is not a single government or central bank that operates on the gold standard.
Yeah, I know about the criminal acts of the government to steal people's gold. 'Nuff said.
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ShadowStats? This is where people who can't find any ActualStats go to find something that might support their crumbled arguments.
Nah, the head has been consulting for Fortune 500 companies for 25 years before running his own firm. He appeared on CNN recently. Before you remove the bug up your butt, wanna complain about his weight too?
Sigh...you can tell a lot about someone's educational level based on how quickly they are to pre-judge something based on a one word description of it.
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You didn't really answer the question on this one. How was M3 different from M2 and why would those differences be significant?
M3 is only the broadest measure of money according to Wikipedia. But then again, I'm sure there's a good rebuttal for that
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And yet when I go into 7-11 and ask for a pack of Marlboro Lights and hand the cleark a ten dollar bill, I invariably get my pack of cigarettes and change back to boot. Useful things, these ten dollar bills.
I wouldn't know. I hold dollars as long as I hold fresh fish on a 100 degree day. But from what I hear that ten dollar bill is decreasing in usefulness precipitously. But, that's just inflation caused by China. Wage inflation, commodity inflation, speculation inflation. Anything BUT monetary inflation.
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Seriously...these are your arguments? Paper stomps all over gold in the area physical attributes and ease of manufacture.
Ease of manufacture? 'Nuff said.
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Given up on the bushel of soybeans already?
I think so. That HDTV report producer still has me scratching my head. I searched everywhere and can't find it. It's going to take me some time.
If oil hadn't been discovered until 1969, we wouldn't be in this situation either.
Everyone would have thought of that. But some would then have thought further about the pro's and con's of our drilling for anything and realized that the slower we can go with our own oil, the better off we will be in the long run. Not too many of these whiner "The price of gasoline is killing me!" types have taken that step. Ever hear the story about the seed corn and what you aren't supposed to do with it?
saganista, I am sorry to say for you, but happy for the rest of us, you are completely wrong on just about everything you are posting. You have absolutely no facts to back up your arguments, that are actually quite comical.
By the way, you comment about oil being all used up or spoken for takes the cake. There are billions and billions are barrels just discovered in Wyoming and they are not yet spoken for or used up.
Ah, more evidence that the thickness of one's sarcasm is directly proportional to the thickness of their skull.
Your pronouns are in disagreement.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
Actually, I would kindly ask the same request. See, in order to be respected, one has to cite their evidence. For example, the "internet" financial gurus you claim I listen to actually appear regularly on Fox business, Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC, NBC, or BBC. They are anything but "internet" financial gurus.
These are their credentials? Thirty-second apperances on bozo TV networks? Which they got through notoriety gained from being internet financial-guru wannabe's? Well, pardon me, then. Some come to have influence among those who are on the inside. Some come to have influence only among those who are on the outside looking in. Something to bear in mind...
iSigh...you can tell a lot about someone's educational level based on how quickly they are to pre-judge something based on a one word description of it.
Additional evidence of confidence entirely misplaced.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
M3 is only the broadest measure of money according to Wikipedia. But then again, I'm sure there's a good rebuttal for that
To re-repeat the question: What is the difference bewteen M2 and M3 and why is that difference of any significance? It is becoming more than obvious that you don't have an answer to these questions and are simply repeating what you have been told by your friendly neighborhood internet financial-guru wannabe. Your original claim was for the attachment of some dire and nefarious purpose or other to the fact that the Fed no longer publishes the measure previously known as M3. So, connect the dots...
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
I wouldn't know. I hold dollars as long as I hold fresh fish on a 100 degree day.
Might have been a useful strategy in early 2002.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
But from what I hear that ten dollar bill is decreasing in usefulness precipitously.
Well, if you were a typical consumer and considered the annual rate of 3.1% to be precipitous, then yes.
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Originally Posted by ViewFromThePeak
But, that's just inflation caused by China. Wage inflation, commodity inflation, speculation inflation. Anything BUT monetary inflation.
saganista, I am sorry to say for you, but happy for the rest of us, you are completely wrong on just about everything you are posting. You have absolutely no facts to back up your arguments, that are actually quite comical.
Well, we are all happy then, as I can easily content myself with the fact that none of the people who pay me to research and analyze these very types of things for them (thereby allowing me to earn a rather substantial living) seems to agree with you.
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Originally Posted by #1NascarFan
By the way, you comment about oil being all used up or spoken for takes the cake. There are billions and billions are barrels just discovered in Wyoming and they are not yet spoken for or used up.
Oil was discovered in Wyoming in 1833. Since it is extremely expensive to extract and refine in comparison to oil available from other sources, you are correct in assuming that only a very small part of it has so far been used up. All of it, however, is already spoken for as against the prioritized demands of the next 50-75 years. Extracting, refining, and burning it up for so trivial a purpose as providing transportation energy is not in the cards...
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