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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RJA_ who wrote (69786)	6/25/2008 7:17:45 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

A good thesis to which I subscribe: <The world has essentially been taxed by the US to pay for its empire, military, and social programs by accepting fiat currency with value de jure. China used it to build their manufacturing base, the Saudis for defense... but is it really good for most of the world to pay that tax? > It isn't in my interests to pay that tax, but neither is it in my interests to pay all the other taxes to USA and other companies for their products and services. But I pay the price if the competition isn't as good, which it hasn't been. Sure, gold could be the new currency, [albeit an atavistic "new", going back to barbarian times], but that would mean it would be worth about $10,000 an ounce if it replaced currencies other than the US$. That would be a problem because it would set off an absurd gold economy, with people spending huge efforts digging up more of the stuff and filtering the oceans, instead of doing something useful. It would be like Easter Islanders with their moais, which was a way of keeping young men busy, but not actually useful. en.wikipedia.org Digging gold would be hugely capital intensive and it's not as though young men don't have useful work to do already. You couldn't just send 1,000,000 of them out into the wilds with shovels, telling them to bring back gold. The tax on US$ is only about 5% historically, which is a typical sort of royalty which we pay for things like CDMA, medicines and other useful things we need. But I agree that it's still a cost to be avoided, which is why I am busy developing my new cybercurrency, the Qi. I have a prototype in the shed and it does 60 mpg already and I haven't even fitted a turbo-charger yet. It's weightless, can carry 10 billion people, works in real-time, is secure and reliable. Not only will we avoid the tax extracted by the Federal Reserve, we'll also avoid the even worse exchange rate taxes we pay to banks to swap from one currency to another. Since interest rates will be lower, we'll pay less tax on savings too. People wanting gold as money is like generals wanting to fight the previous war using techniques like onagers, battlements and spears. Meanwhile, I see General Ashkenazi [what a great name] is meeting with the boss of the USA military system fairly urgently. telegraph.co.uk I'm on General Ashkenazi's side. Also on King George II's side. I'm not in favour of President Amendiejihad and his war against Jews. If the Straits of Hormuz are closed [which is very likely because ship insurers won't want to carry the risk and mariners might find it dodgy too], that will cause the price of oil to zoom higher. That should make for interesting times. Mqurice