SC - "when the economy is bad, it can literally lead to increased rates of death... tanking the economy doesn’t stop the pain, it just shifts it around to places where it might be more difficult to see. (We obviously saw this during covid!)"
Now you understand why economics is called the dismal science, and falsity in econometrics along with central bank policy, is a deleterious joke being played on the public for decades. None of this is by happenstance Mr Mulder.
M. Sim, should I read this book? I know you might not have an opinion to give or time even to read this long review by John Tamny, whom I cannot decide if I like!
Well, I was referring to the live video of him boarding/de-planing. It sure didn't look like him.
Yeah, it can't be just his voice. That's no proof at all.
Seriously, I'm getting a little scared. This non-showing is absolutely un-precedented. Would they really try to hide his passing? Would they think they could hide it until the election?!
The real meaning of economy doesn't even have to do with money, it's just that monetary exchange mediums are more practical than outright barter.
Economy means "the careful useage of available resources, without using them up", loosely translated from its original ancient greek. Making a monetary profit by trading money for money, or money for odds of a share in company gaining in monetary worth, and so on, aren't - in the original sense - real economy.
The real term for that is profiteering, something which hurts the real economy and therefore people.
Something I think make the economy fake, is that producing money has increasingly been the point of economy for two centuries or so; producing "more good" (in the Aristotelian sense) and maing a profit from doing it in a good way is becoming a rare beast indeed.
Consider what makes more good - growing food (f.e.) so that there's no lack of it, and making a profit selling it without gouging or artificial scarcity, yet striving for minimal surplus waste
or
Putting up money for what in effect is a bet that the money will increase in value.
While it would be difficult to put money on the potatoe-standard, getting back to the worth of currency being tied to real, tangible and physical things would certainly improve matters for the majority of people.
One thing we all need to keep in mind in discussions of sound money policy, the problems we face are systemic, deeply entrenched and long lived. A return to truly sound money will help a lot, but there are other issues that cannot be solved entirely with sound money alone. Our energy predicament being the most pressing problem, and one that is far too complex to do justice in a single substack comment. Essentially, sound money does not change physics, though it does enable much better policy and outcomes.
Sound money is very important at all times, but it won't do a damn thing to 1) rein in govt. over-spending, and 2) drive out the Fascist money-changers.
I don’t understand bitcoin at all & I didn’t hear Paul come out in favor of it. Did I miss it?
As to a CBDC & Trump, if he does that in addition to his disastrous (but in his mind) wonderful handling of WuFlu…. It’s 1 thing if people can choose that; it would be another if it was forced on everyone.
I think the rich and powerful will interpret "Crowdstrike" the opposite way:
"Hey! Listen! It's that easy to just shut off all e-services for the plebs! We need to control that! Otherwise, 'the terrorists' will be a 'threat to our democracy'."
Call me Ee-yore, but I feel it in my water, it'd be a far more likely conclusion for them.
I would have thought the recent crash would have made it obvious to even the dullest of wits that ongoing plans for CBDC are ludicrous, but as w/ all things WuFlu, it’s full speed ahead (eventually, anyway - I know CBDC is being introduced as “pilot” programs in some places but we all know where it will eventually lead for all of us).
Nixon took the US off the gold standard, true, but the deterioration of the USD and convertibility to gold began with FDR in April 1933 when Treasury effectively outlawed private ownership of gold bullion and certificates, completely removing gold-USD convertibility for private citizens. They all but forcibly confiscated privately held gold at a lower than market value, then declared by fiat the price per ounce at a higher value, a massive theft.
I've been interested in Bitcoin since about 2014 when Max Kaiser started talking about it. At the time buying it outside the US was a major challenge, so I basically just watched from the sidelines. Oh well. That's what you get for being lazy.
As a medium of exchange and facilitator of smart contracts and related tech, I think Ethereum is a better bet for technical and political reasons. It had immediate corporate backing (possible red flag I know) and the supply increases at a fixed rate, which I think is permanent and unchangeable, not sure about the unchangeable part. This is what 'monetarist' Milton Friedman advocated for back in the 70s, maybe earlier. A fixed rate of increase for the money supply allowing everything else to adjust to the permanently fixed rate. It's never really been tried at scale.
Most of the other cryptos are effectively derivatives of Bitcoin as far as I can see.
Thank you, M. Sim. I've been waiting for you to write on this subject. I know you have before, but I would like you to re-visit regularly, both for developments and education (of stores of value in general, monetary history, how bonds work,...).
Second, CBDC must be avoided at all costs (pun intended and *not* funny!). It is *much* worse than fiat currency, which at least cannot be hidden, except through ignorance.
Third, this cannot be repeated enough: price inflation *is* reserve currency de-valuation. The Fed (the State) cannot avoid this down-played contradiction, except through the People's ignorance. And don't get me started on "full employment" crap, as if the State creates jobs and therefore wealth.
Fourth, black swans are no longer rare, eh. The Peeps need to see the POTUS, and soon.
I’m just learning about bitcoin and do own some-it’s seems to me that when you can easily buy things with it, it will have to increase in value. Slowly we are seeing bitcoin ETFs and even a couple credit cards accepting it as payment, I think?
To me, the 'game changer' will be a debit card that a merchant will swipe and not even know it's btc. Suddenly, btc is accepted everywhere and is as easy as the technology people already know.
Listening to Ron Paul describe money as a "unit of account" really struck a chord. "Debt based currency" makes the focus about the people running up the bill.
"A unit of account" makes it more clear that it is about services already rendered. This is a more effective framing, it seems to me.
I'm a dirty red Canadian socialist and I love Ron Paul. I don't agree with a lot of his politics (except his foreign policy I agree hard with most of his politics on that) but I respect an individual of principle and Ron Paul is a man of principle.
I've a feeling the prices of these things are suppressed in multiple ways, but crypto could be holding it down as well, as both are bets against the dollar.
And both are alternative investments to stocks and bonds. This moderating effect (i.e. less market volatility) is an under-appreciated bonus to crypto availability.
More choice, better collective judgments of market value, and better resilience in markets for capital allocation.
Jeez, it's a win-win-win.
Still, don't put yer eggs in even close to one basket, digital or "real"!!
There are various well-known methods of suppressing PM prices, most of which are tacitly sanctioned by the central banks and their loathsome ilk; for example, naked shorts of PM in the US is perfectly legal, the only class of commodity where it is not forbidden (though it happens all the time for other commodities due to lack of vigorous enforcement). Bitcoin ETFs and futures markets provide a means of manipulating the price. It might be more difficult to do since the transactions are more transparent and there are a million geeks watching 24/7.
I haven't read much about how bitcoin began (I'm not sure if there's much to read), but it's not a coincidence that it happened at the tail of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. And the bitcoin market matured as quantitative easing and financial repression was a constant Fed policy, for most of the 2010s.
On Jan. 3, 2009, the genesis block (or block zero) for Bitcoin was mined by Satoshi (over seven days). In this initial transaction, also referred to as a generation transaction, or “coinbase,” Satoshi famously included the following message:
“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”
This message was a clear signal of Bitcoin’s intentions. As the world was experiencing the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression, a new vision for a monetary system separate from the state was born.
Off topic but ... Seymour Hersh reports that Obama told Biden that Harris was ready to invoke the 25th amendment if Biden didn't withdraw his candidacy.
As others have noted, Obama's an old-fashioned Chicago-style pol running the party behind the scenes.
He's the boss man engineering the party's various grifts. The spirit of Hizzoner hovers over the Democrats.
I see the Democratic party now as an updated version of the old New Deal coalition of corrupt big-city machines in the North and corrupt courthouse rings in the South.
Now you have big Northern cities run by corrupt coalitions consisting of municipal bureaucracies that buy votes of victim groups, with wealthy donors who led the coup to topple their own president because he might lose and bring their gravy train to a halt.
The biggest change is the Republican party now represents the workers and their "middle" class, the ones working hard to improve their and their family's lot in life.
The 2016 election of the un-capturable DJT kicked the neo-con Statist cancer out, and they joined the Left ( the one-party police-state Democrat party).
SC - "when the economy is bad, it can literally lead to increased rates of death... tanking the economy doesn’t stop the pain, it just shifts it around to places where it might be more difficult to see. (We obviously saw this during covid!)"
Now you understand why economics is called the dismal science, and falsity in econometrics along with central bank policy, is a deleterious joke being played on the public for decades. None of this is by happenstance Mr Mulder.
SC have you seen that if you try to google "Attempted Assassination of"
The name Donald Trump, which is the latest attempt at a leader, doesn't appear.
I heard if you googs "president don", there's no reference to Trump, at least in the drop down before hitting go.
I ain't gonna. Don't want it in my search history!
Google tipping the scales as normal. I shouldn't be shocked tbh.
I saw it but haven't tried it.......seems a little nuts.
I tired it last night before bed as it was the first time I had seen it and his name didn’t appear for me.
M. Sim, should I read this book? I know you might not have an opinion to give or time even to read this long review by John Tamny, whom I cannot decide if I like!
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2024/07/25/book_review_nathaniel_ellisons_essential_crypto_confidential_1047061.html
If you're interested in the guy or the topic, it seems like a good enough use of time
Darn.
Okay, if I get to it, I'll send my review.
Hey, was last Wednesday the last time we actually saw the POTUS?
Yeah and that was pre-recorded, right? It's been all body doubles since, no doubt because of the attempt on DJT gives them plausible cover.
Well, I was referring to the live video of him boarding/de-planing. It sure didn't look like him.
Yeah, it can't be just his voice. That's no proof at all.
Seriously, I'm getting a little scared. This non-showing is absolutely un-precedented. Would they really try to hide his passing? Would they think they could hide it until the election?!
The real meaning of economy doesn't even have to do with money, it's just that monetary exchange mediums are more practical than outright barter.
Economy means "the careful useage of available resources, without using them up", loosely translated from its original ancient greek. Making a monetary profit by trading money for money, or money for odds of a share in company gaining in monetary worth, and so on, aren't - in the original sense - real economy.
The real term for that is profiteering, something which hurts the real economy and therefore people.
Something I think make the economy fake, is that producing money has increasingly been the point of economy for two centuries or so; producing "more good" (in the Aristotelian sense) and maing a profit from doing it in a good way is becoming a rare beast indeed.
Consider what makes more good - growing food (f.e.) so that there's no lack of it, and making a profit selling it without gouging or artificial scarcity, yet striving for minimal surplus waste
or
Putting up money for what in effect is a bet that the money will increase in value.
While it would be difficult to put money on the potatoe-standard, getting back to the worth of currency being tied to real, tangible and physical things would certainly improve matters for the majority of people.
One thing we all need to keep in mind in discussions of sound money policy, the problems we face are systemic, deeply entrenched and long lived. A return to truly sound money will help a lot, but there are other issues that cannot be solved entirely with sound money alone. Our energy predicament being the most pressing problem, and one that is far too complex to do justice in a single substack comment. Essentially, sound money does not change physics, though it does enable much better policy and outcomes.
Exactly right.
Sound money is very important at all times, but it won't do a damn thing to 1) rein in govt. over-spending, and 2) drive out the Fascist money-changers.
I don’t understand bitcoin at all & I didn’t hear Paul come out in favor of it. Did I miss it?
As to a CBDC & Trump, if he does that in addition to his disastrous (but in his mind) wonderful handling of WuFlu…. It’s 1 thing if people can choose that; it would be another if it was forced on everyone.
Spot on.
I think DJT will be much better advised and more willing to listen.
For sure, if he goes either CBDC or lockdown again, he's gonna catch hell, and a helluva lot of it. Populist narcissists don't like that!
Paul has long been a proponent of competing currencies, although he's been less enthusiastic about Bitcoin specifically than I might have imagined.
Hopefully the cloudstrike crash from last week will remind everybody why we need cash.
I think the rich and powerful will interpret "Crowdstrike" the opposite way:
"Hey! Listen! It's that easy to just shut off all e-services for the plebs! We need to control that! Otherwise, 'the terrorists' will be a 'threat to our democracy'."
Call me Ee-yore, but I feel it in my water, it'd be a far more likely conclusion for them.
💯
It's a certainty, imo.
I would have thought the recent crash would have made it obvious to even the dullest of wits that ongoing plans for CBDC are ludicrous, but as w/ all things WuFlu, it’s full speed ahead (eventually, anyway - I know CBDC is being introduced as “pilot” programs in some places but we all know where it will eventually lead for all of us).
This is a post yesterday by someone who was there at the conference--including a long bullet list summarizing Trump's points: https://davidshane.substack.com/p/quick-report-from-donald-trumps-speech
Thanks for this, Arne!
Almost perfectly aligns with my notes!
Nixon took the US off the gold standard, true, but the deterioration of the USD and convertibility to gold began with FDR in April 1933 when Treasury effectively outlawed private ownership of gold bullion and certificates, completely removing gold-USD convertibility for private citizens. They all but forcibly confiscated privately held gold at a lower than market value, then declared by fiat the price per ounce at a higher value, a massive theft.
I've been interested in Bitcoin since about 2014 when Max Kaiser started talking about it. At the time buying it outside the US was a major challenge, so I basically just watched from the sidelines. Oh well. That's what you get for being lazy.
As a medium of exchange and facilitator of smart contracts and related tech, I think Ethereum is a better bet for technical and political reasons. It had immediate corporate backing (possible red flag I know) and the supply increases at a fixed rate, which I think is permanent and unchangeable, not sure about the unchangeable part. This is what 'monetarist' Milton Friedman advocated for back in the 70s, maybe earlier. A fixed rate of increase for the money supply allowing everything else to adjust to the permanently fixed rate. It's never really been tried at scale.
Most of the other cryptos are effectively derivatives of Bitcoin as far as I can see.
Yep.
Thank you, M. Sim. I've been waiting for you to write on this subject. I know you have before, but I would like you to re-visit regularly, both for developments and education (of stores of value in general, monetary history, how bonds work,...).
Second, CBDC must be avoided at all costs (pun intended and *not* funny!). It is *much* worse than fiat currency, which at least cannot be hidden, except through ignorance.
Third, this cannot be repeated enough: price inflation *is* reserve currency de-valuation. The Fed (the State) cannot avoid this down-played contradiction, except through the People's ignorance. And don't get me started on "full employment" crap, as if the State creates jobs and therefore wealth.
Fourth, black swans are no longer rare, eh. The Peeps need to see the POTUS, and soon.
I’m just learning about bitcoin and do own some-it’s seems to me that when you can easily buy things with it, it will have to increase in value. Slowly we are seeing bitcoin ETFs and even a couple credit cards accepting it as payment, I think?
To me, the 'game changer' will be a debit card that a merchant will swipe and not even know it's btc. Suddenly, btc is accepted everywhere and is as easy as the technology people already know.
Was there any talk at the conference of changing the tax laws that treat bitcoin as a commodity?
Excellent question.
We *might* want it left as commodity. The U.S. treasury is not sure, and my bias is to disagree with them!
As long as the buying and selling of bitcoin creates capital gains and losses I dont see it becoming a domestic currency in the US.
I think revenue is the main reason right now the feds classify as commodity.
Yes! What I was trying to articulate exactly!
M. Sim is very good at that.
(Don't tell him I plagiarize often...)
😁
Btw, you were clear as a bell, too. (Just to be clear myself!)
FREEEEEEEE ROSS
Listening to Ron Paul describe money as a "unit of account" really struck a chord. "Debt based currency" makes the focus about the people running up the bill.
"A unit of account" makes it more clear that it is about services already rendered. This is a more effective framing, it seems to me.
I'm a dirty red Canadian socialist and I love Ron Paul. I don't agree with a lot of his politics (except his foreign policy I agree hard with most of his politics on that) but I respect an individual of principle and Ron Paul is a man of principle.
Plenty of room for your type in the big tent of libertarianism. I think you'll find yourself right at home, M. Richmond!
Are you dirty from working the soil? Or maybe like me, by marrying up and hot?
Hahaha I'm dirty from both tbh.
Something else to wonder about: where would the price of gold and silver be today if bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies didn't exist?
I've a feeling the prices of these things are suppressed in multiple ways, but crypto could be holding it down as well, as both are bets against the dollar.
And both are alternative investments to stocks and bonds. This moderating effect (i.e. less market volatility) is an under-appreciated bonus to crypto availability.
More choice, better collective judgments of market value, and better resilience in markets for capital allocation.
Jeez, it's a win-win-win.
Still, don't put yer eggs in even close to one basket, digital or "real"!!
There are various well-known methods of suppressing PM prices, most of which are tacitly sanctioned by the central banks and their loathsome ilk; for example, naked shorts of PM in the US is perfectly legal, the only class of commodity where it is not forbidden (though it happens all the time for other commodities due to lack of vigorous enforcement). Bitcoin ETFs and futures markets provide a means of manipulating the price. It might be more difficult to do since the transactions are more transparent and there are a million geeks watching 24/7.
The solution to institutional shorts are individual investors and, of course, the long run in "real" underlying value.
There's that "value" concept again, and its *exactly* the same one from above/below.
I haven't read much about how bitcoin began (I'm not sure if there's much to read), but it's not a coincidence that it happened at the tail of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. And the bitcoin market matured as quantitative easing and financial repression was a constant Fed policy, for most of the 2010s.
Well said.
Some decent history: https://cointelegraph.com/learn/the-history-of-bitcoin-when-did-bitcoin-start
------------
On Jan. 3, 2009, the genesis block (or block zero) for Bitcoin was mined by Satoshi (over seven days). In this initial transaction, also referred to as a generation transaction, or “coinbase,” Satoshi famously included the following message:
“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”
This message was a clear signal of Bitcoin’s intentions. As the world was experiencing the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression, a new vision for a monetary system separate from the state was born.
Off topic but ... Seymour Hersh reports that Obama told Biden that Harris was ready to invoke the 25th amendment if Biden didn't withdraw his candidacy.
As others have noted, Obama's an old-fashioned Chicago-style pol running the party behind the scenes.
He's the boss man engineering the party's various grifts. The spirit of Hizzoner hovers over the Democrats.
I've long said that the group behind Biden is the old Obama team -- now with more neocons!
And the fawning over Biden makes it clear that was part of the deal. As the Beastie Boys said:
It's not a tough decision, as you can see
I can blow you away, or you can ride with me.
It's the twin neo's that form the "uni-party".
I prefer the terms State and Statist.
I see the Democratic party now as an updated version of the old New Deal coalition of corrupt big-city machines in the North and corrupt courthouse rings in the South.
Now you have big Northern cities run by corrupt coalitions consisting of municipal bureaucracies that buy votes of victim groups, with wealthy donors who led the coup to topple their own president because he might lose and bring their gravy train to a halt.
The biggest change is the Republican party now represents the workers and their "middle" class, the ones working hard to improve their and their family's lot in life.
The 2016 election of the un-capturable DJT kicked the neo-con Statist cancer out, and they joined the Left ( the one-party police-state Democrat party).
When I look at Mitch McConnell I don't see a working class hero.
Who? ;-)