I have quoted from Bastiat before, and will again. Here below is something from his “Harmonies of Political Economy”, the full text of which can be found here.
Canadian MoneySaver Article
I was honoured in having Canadian MoneySaver publish some of my thoughts on money in their October 2012 edition. They were also good enough to provide me a PDF of the article:
OCT12_MoneyandCurrency_Bacque Continue reading “Canadian MoneySaver Article”
On certainty
One of the great motive forces in man’s action is the desire to reduce uncertainty. Almost everything we do can be viewed as “insurance”. We eat now in case we are unable to eat later. We build a roof over our head on a sunny day so that we might be dry in case it rains. We save money for the same reason.
Truth is not a four-letter word
A man claiming to be Truth arrives at the temple, and wishes to meet the Dalai Lama.
Announced, Truth enters, sits, and the two sit long, in silence, examining each other.
Truth eventually breaks the silence, and says: “I am here.”
The Dalai Lama asks: “What took you so long?”
Truth responds: “I did not know what I was, nor where I was to be found.”
Dalai Lama: “Do you know now?”
Truth: “I cannot know.”
Dalai Lama: “Welcome, Truth” Continue reading “Truth is not a four-letter word”
Gold standards that work
In previous posts I talked about how we discovered money, and about the failed Bretton Woods gold standard. One must ask: is it possible to have gold as our money, yet still use paper or digital currency? The answer is yes.
Bacq 2 Bretton Woods
I hope if you are reading this, you understand that we didn’t invent money, we discovered it, and that gold is money, or more correctly, currency. We should really reserve “money” to describe the idea alone, and “currency” for what we use to trade.
We have all lived in a time when things other than gold are used as money, i.e. our fiat currencies. When I was born and through my childhood, gold was still very much in use, and that “gold is money” was common knowledge. Continue reading “Bacq 2 Bretton Woods”
Why gold, why tree?
Seeing as we still have the site up, I thought it might be a good idea to try and find all the old passwords etc, find my way in, and try to recall how to create a post here. Done. Now, do I have anything to say? Um, well yes. Lets start with some jokes…
What’s up with SLV?
I have written about money and perhaps even a bit about precious metals manipulation here before (check in the “economics” section), but I just saw something worthy of note, I think, as I also saw it yesterday, but was unable to capture the evidence.
Today, I caught it before it disappeared. First, whether you already believe it or not, in the spirit of any good audience, please willingly suspend disbelief, and humour me in my thinking that the precious metals markets are so heavily unbalanced and manipulated that it is almost silly to still keep calling them “markets” at all. It is more like a show being put on to keep the unsuspecting entertained, but more importantly, afraid of buying real metal. Some people might have the secret-decoder 3-D glasses, though, and I will here try to share my dim spectacles with you.
Below is a screen-shot of a TD “Active Trader” streaming quote and trading platform, and in the top right is a 1-minute (per “candlestick”) chart of the SLV ETF taken this morning, February 2 2011. Focus on the “inverted hammer” with the giant white “shadow” poking up to $27.82 that occurs at about 12:32 pm, at the very right of the chart, which occurred during a single minute with a share volume of over 220 thousand shares traded. It means that at least one of those shares traded hands at $27.82, or about a 30-cent premium over the current “market price” (click to enlarge).
The visualization of progress
Here is a fascinating view of the last two hundred years of global economic activity. As Dennis Gartman might say, we do indeed seem to be moving from the bottom left to the top right, from poor and unhealthy towards rich and healthy. Whither the next step?
Nigel Farage strikes again!
This guy knows how to spout truth about the EU! I couldn’t agree more about the poor Irish, who have been suckered by the bankers. If they, like Iceland, defaulted and restructured around a new Irish currency instead of lining up at the EU trough, they (and everyone else!) would be much better off.