Yes! We're #1!

Yes, and...? What's it's proper value versus the Euro? What's your theory on that, Rifleman?

The dollar was overvalued for decades. That's part of what led to our current-accounts deficit. I'd be happy to see it slide a bit further.

-- Ed Huntress

Well, there's "I love yankin yanks chains , they have no sense of humor , and hat makes it all the more funny." You seem to find it all so funny, so it's either a joke or you're insane.

Is this as good as it gets for you, Myal? Is bashing yanks your entire social life? You seem to spend a lot of time at it.

-- Ed Huntress

And where is it all now? You're sitting at your computer, trying to find someone to bash with those English words, because that's about all you have left to do. It's all gone away, hasn't it?

That's "Puerto Rico," tommy. It's not English.

-- Ed Huntress

You and Myal make quite a team. Which one of you is the pimp?

-- Ed Huntress

...ooh, look, it's a big one...'big as a sea cucumber...but, but...it's been lying on the beach for years and it hasn't moved...it's dehydrated...

-- Ed Huntress

ROTFL

now , think hard ed Didnt I tell ya that you wouldnt know a pisstake if you walked into one ??

yup , its ed , back for more ..

If you had the brain and the will to look you would find that both Myal and myself were long term supporters and admirers of America, right up to the point the US became the enemy of freedom and justice when it invaded iraq the second time, But then man y people once thought amereica was their friend, especially the south vietnamese, manual noriega, saddam hussian etcand they learned the painful way never to let a yank get behind you when things are tough.

Where its always been right across the world, 160 plus countries

You're sitting at your computer, trying to find

Only attacking those who deserve it dear lady

because that's about all you have

Not really, but its so pleasant watching Americans humiliate themselves.

I stand corrected on the name of the only part of the American Empire, And you areusing MY language to communicate from your third world nation, do remember that.

That's not such a bad thing, if your basic economic problem is a big current-account deficit. Cheap oil isn't doing us any favors in the long run.

The thing I like most about it is that it's driving the French and German finance ministers into a fit. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

Is that anything like a piss head? Because I've just run into a couple of them.

-- Ed Huntress

ed you are a stereotypical yank ... tho I admire your attempt to compare vastly superior cultures to yourself ...

its not going to do you any good

you will never grasp they why of it

I take you on current face value, Rifleman, something you seem to favor in your reversal of support -- assuming that it's true.

What have you done lately? Spew endless streams of sophomoric invective. If you had the brain and the will to look at your own history you'd find that there is no way that a sole superpower can avoid universal resentment by the rest of the world, and worse, because you will be hated for inaction as well as for action. And there is no action, no matter how well-intentioned or no matter how successful, that will not engender the hatred of everyone who feels the frustration of impotence.

To label the US as the "enemy of freedom and justice" is absurd on its face and assumes that there was freedom and justice in Iraq before we invaded, which is only true if you favor the freedom to be tortured and maimed, and the justice of having your balls cut off for opposing the political order. It's the kind of thing we expect the most powerless and resentful to resort to when they're at the extremes of their emotional capabilities -- an Islamist sheik, for example, or a communist ideologue.

The war in Iraq is a stupid and destructive one, begun by neocon ideologues who had a mountain of theory but almost no common sense nor experience with world diplomacy. Our president, before he was elected, had never even been out of the country except to Mexico. A combination of religious ideology and a collection of theories developed by the original pro-Israel neocons led to the foolish conclusion that everybody is just like us, deep down, and that they'll throw roses and cheers when we liberate them from their oppressors. Silly men -- they thought about their ideas too much and observed the actual world-as-it-is too little.

Your bitter invective is not an intelligent or mature response to it. I don't blame you for being pissed off at what's going on -- many, probably most of us are pissed off about it, too. Now we're in a hole and there's no easy way to get out. But the frustration of being powerless to do anything about it is a destructive force in itself. It's not doing you any favors, for example.

-- Ed Huntress

(snips)

No.

And his great-grandfather's great-grandfather would have killed to have had the economic problems his great- grandfather had.

No, it is impossible to have a true gold standard, in which the money is either gold or paper 100% backed by gold, and fractional reserve banking. Fractional reserve banking is the process by which bankers lend out money on deposit to others while promising to repay it to their depositors on demand. This cannot be done, without fraud, in a true gold standard. (It can be done under a fiat money regime, because the issuer of the currency can simply gin up as much more of it as is needed to meet the demands of distrustful depositors.) The various "gold standards" countries have had were not true gold standards, because they did allow such banking fraud. And, of course, bank runs were common when people became aware of a bank's lack of real money on its premises -- thus making the promised repayment on demand obviously impossible.

You are describing economic improvement. As good, if not better, economic improvement occurred while the U.S. and western Europe lived with the various hard money regimes during the 19th century. Fiat money did not create or facilitate that economic improvement. If fiat money has been responsible for our economic improvement, no such improvement could have occurred during the 19th century. But it did.

I would guess that one of his complaints is that the Federal Reserve, instead of maintaining the value of the dollar, has managed to lose 95% of it.

Is that supposed to be a coherent argument or question? I'm pretty sure Winston has no plow horses, and I'm pretty sure you're aware of that too.

The result that the value of the dollar has greatly declined was quite predictable, and was predicted by every "gold bug."

"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value -- zero." -- Voltaire

I don't know that Voltaire was a gold bug, but he knew something about the inevitable result of fiat money.

We have become richer despite the lack of a gold standard -- not because of that lack. We became richer at as fast, if not faster, a pace during the 19th century, while our prices were actually declining.

-- Robert Sturgeon Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency.

What you're calling a "true" gold standard wasn't even true through most of the 19th century. Banks have granted loans without full backing in many periods before we dropped the gold standard.

This is an argument that goes 'way beyond what we can discuss here, but the basic problem with the fully convertible gold standard is that the slightest economic problem is likely to lead to deflation and a deflationary spiral. In fact, the natural state of an economy with a 100% gold standard and a growing population is deflation. Almost all economists recognize this as a far greater danger than inflation. Think of it as a dead-man's spiral.

Tell us about a country with a true, 100%-convertible gold standard in modern times that didn't suffer repeated speculative attacks on its gold reserves.

You're talking about a total of 40 years, from 1870 to 1910, and it was accompanied by a severe downward spiral in wages and growing inequalities in wealth.

Most economic theorists of the 19th century, except for Marx, said that deflation would attack capital first, before hitting wages. Marx said it would attack wages first and they would not recover when the deflation ended. Marx proved to be right, which is why we have unions today, and why communism gave the world so much trouble for over half a century.

What "fiat" money does is give central banks (or governments) the ability to moderate recessions, once they become good at handling it. It was well-managed fiat money that kept the stock crash of 1987 from becoming a repeat of the numerous recessions and depressions of the 19th century, as well as the Great Depression.

Why is that a complaint, if, at the same time, incomes increased several times faster than inflation? That is, unless Winston keeps his money buried in coffee cans in his back yard.

Winston is talking about plowhorse economics. There is no example in modern times to support his position, or yours. There are only plowhorse analogies.

OTOH, Winston seems to be upset about the crisis in subpar mortgages. That's what happens when you let those finance guys run around without a leash. They run amok.

So what?

Good for Voltaire. We'll see if you and he are right. For now, don't use your dollar bills for fire-starters.

Ah, but there was so much that was economically revolutionary in the 19th century, including a little thing called the Industrial Revolution. If you think you can connect gold standards with rates of growth in a causative way, it will be interesting to hear about it.

That is, beyond replacing ignorance and volatility with moderate stability. Gold standards can stabilize an otherwise disorderly economy. But it's the stability of the dead. Without the enormous economic driver of the Industrial Revolution, gold standards probably would have continued to be associated with moribund economies.

-- Ed Huntress

We know them when we see them, all right.

-- Ed Huntress

But now you're the cuckolds, with all of your former concubines engaged with more promising suitors.

Now, there's a good example of somebody with an emotional problem. You could get help for that, Rifleman, although it might be chronic and incurable.

It's a sad way to lead a life. But it's probably all you have left.

Do you have a patent on it, personally? It isn't something you borrowed from Germanic tribes, the French, the Romans, and a few others, by any chance?

-- Ed Huntress