BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

Via Visual Capitalist

Go to any large, high-density city like New York or San Francisco, and you’ll notice a difference in costs immediately.

The price you pay for groceries, dinner at the restaurant, filling up your tank, or even your daily coffee goes up substantially. With high-paying jobs, booming economies, limited space, and soaring levels of density, cities can be expensive.

Dollar Disparity

While this effect on costs is most evident in cities, it’s actually present throughout the country.

What you can buy for your paycheck varies wildly depending on where you are, greatly impacting purchasing power and the cost of living. Sometimes even a short one-hour drive can make a difference in some cases.

Today’s two maps come from TaxFoundation.org, and they look at regional differences in purchasing power, based on information from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

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WHAT NIXON WROUGHT

I’m sure glad Nixon only “temporarily” suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. When a politician or banker uses the word temporarily to describe some un-Constitutional act they are taking to protect you, be sure it’s permanent and you are getting screwed on behalf  of the establishment. Nixon closing the gold window in 1971 allowed him to continue the welfare/warfare state.

Bernanke temporarily reduced interest rates to 0% eight years ago to avert some sort of financial disaster (Wall Street banks reaping the consequences of their actions and going bankrupt). Rates are still essentially 0%, supposedly 7 years into an economic recovery. Obama and his minions temporarily were going to run huge budget deficits to jump start our economy with Keynesian magic. It’s seven years later and the budget deficit will exceed $600 billion this year and on path to exceed $1 trillion in the next few years. Temporarily is code for bend over citizens.

The de-linking of the dollar to gold allowed politicians to promise free shit to their constituents in order to buy votes, with no immediate consequences for their re-election campaigns. Politicians gone wild led to the national debt going from $370 billion in 1971 to $19.1 trillion today. It allowed these treasonous bastards to promise $200 trillion of goodies to the people, which they won’t honor.

It allowed Wall Street to peddle credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and home equity loans to the unwashed masses through the greatest propaganda program in history. They’ve lured generations of math challenged Americans into the debt slavery of low monthly payments for eternity. We now sit with $60 trillion of total debt and a faltering economy which will never generate enough wealth to pay off the debt.

We’ve passed the point of no return. The economic collapse is a forgone conclusion. It’s just a matter of how much longer the sociopathic establishment can keep the charade going. There are cracks appearing everywhere. Time is running out. Thank Trick Dick for his temporary suspension of dollar convertibility.


INFLATION BY DECADE

Remember the GOAL of the Federal Reserve is to ACHIEVE 2% inflation over time. So, their goal is to decrease your purchasing power by 18.3% every ten years. Even using their fake under-reported CPI, they have managed to decrease the dollar’s purchasing power by 91.8% since 1950. And you are wondering why you can’t get ahead?

Inflation by Decade

Via Bullion Buzz

The Relative Value of $100 in Every American State and County

Via Visual Capitalist

Money at Face Value

Not all money is equal. Even though the face value of money stays relatively constant, the purchasing power that is behind it can differ wildly.

We know this intuitively with our personal experiences with things like inflation, but it is also true depending on where you are spending it. In an expensive metropolitan area it may cost more for ordinary goods, while in a rural place it may buy more than you may expect. Today’s charts use information from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to look at data at the state and county level to see where money can get the most “bang for the buck” in purchasing most goods and services.

Hawaii and D.C. are Money Pits

Looking at the cost of living by state level (and including the District of Columbia), the most expensive places to live are: Hawaii, Washington D.C., New York, and New Jersey. California and Maryland are close behind.

In all of these places, on average, spending $100 will only get you about $85 of goods and services relative to the rest of the country.

Here it is mapped:

The Value of $100 by State
The best places to get bang for your buck? Each dollar goes further in the Midwest and the South. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, and South Dakota are among the cheapest states to live.

Continue reading “The Relative Value of $100 in Every American State and County”

LIES, DAMNED LIES & STATISTICS

The government released their monthly CPI report this week. Even though it came in at an annualized rate of 3.6%, they and their mouthpieces in the corporate mainstream media dutifully downplayed the uptrend. They can’t let the plebs know the truth. That might upend their economic recovery storyline and put a crimp into their artificial free money, zero interest rate, stock market rally. If they were to admit inflation is rising, the Fed would be forced to raise rates. That is unacceptable in our rigged .01% economy. There are banker bonuses, CEO stock options, corporate stock buyback earnings per share goals and captured politician elections at stake.

The corporate MSM immediately shifted the focus to the annual CPI figure of 0.1%. That’s right. Your government keepers expect you to believe the prices you pay to live your everyday life have been essentially flat in the last year. Anyone who lives in the real world, not the BLS Bizarro world of models, seasonal adjustments, hedonic adjustments, and substitution adjustments, knows this is a lie. The original concept of CPI was to measure the true cost of maintaining a constant standard of living. It should reflect your true inflation of out of pocket costs to live a daily existence in this country.

Instead, it has become a manipulated statistic using academic theories as a cover to systematically under-report the true level of inflation. The purpose has been to cut annual cost of living adjustments to Social Security and other government benefits, while over-estimating the true level of GDP. Artificially low inflation figures allow the mega-corporations who control the country to keep wage increases to workers low. Under-reporting the true level of inflation also allows the Federal Reserve to keep their discount rate far lower than it would be in an honest free market. The Wall Street banks, who own and control the Federal Reserve, are free to charge 18% on credit card balances while paying .25% to savers. The manipulation of the CPI benefits the vested interests, impoverishes the masses, and slowly but surely contributes to the destruction of our economic system.

A deep dive into Table 2 from the BLS reveals some truth and uncovers more lies. Their weighting of everyday living expenditures is warped and purposefully misleading. Let’s look at the annual increases in some food items we might consume in the course of a month, living in this empire of lies:

  • Ground Beef – 10.1%
  • Roast Beef – 11.8%
  • Steak – 11.1%
  • Eggs – 21.8%
  • Chicken – 3.7%
  • Coffee – 3.4%
  • Sugar – 4.2%
  • Candy – 4.6%
  • Snacks – 3.5%
  • Salt & Seasonings – 5.3%
  • Food Away From Home – 3.0%

Continue reading “LIES, DAMNED LIES & STATISTICS”

Will Gold Win Out Against the US Dollar?

Will Gold Win Out Against the US Dollar?

By Louis James

It is an essential impossibility to solve problems created by excess debt and artificial liquidity with more of the same. That’s our credo here at Casey Research, and the reason why we believe the gold price will turn around and not only go higher, but much, much higher.

While fellow investors around the world may not agree with gold-loving contrarians like us, they are buyers: gold is up in euros and almost everything else, except the dollar.

The dollar’s rise has been strong and seems all but unstoppable. But look at it in big-picture terms, as in the chart below, and ask yourself how sustainable the situation is.

I’m skeptical of reading too much into such charts. A peak like the one in the early 1980s would certainly take the USD much higher, and for several years to come. But still, this is an aberration. It’s not the new normal, but rather the new abnormal.

Continue reading “Will Gold Win Out Against the US Dollar?”

RENTERS R US

About that housing recovery. The U.S. population has grown by 8% since 2005, while the number of households has grown by 5%. In addition to the weak overall household growth, due to stagnant wages, massive student loan debt, and only Obama shit service jobs, there have been no new owner occupied households. The number of owner occupied households is down 1%, while the number of rental households has soared by 16%.

The home ownership rate is now at a two decade low and sits at the same level it did in 1970, before Nixon closed the gold window and unleashed a debt and inflation tsunami upon our nation. The Federal Reserve solution to every bubble they create is to print enough to create another bubble. They have expanded their balance sheet by almost 600% since 2008, and have succeeded in crushing the middle class, senior citizens, and young people who should be buying their first homes.

 

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High Tide for the Dollar: Revenge of the Sith

Guest Post by Jesse

I have certainly considered this scenario many times, of how the dollar regime might evolve,  and the one discussed below remains one possible outcome.

There is an intense international discussion going on about the future of the international currency system, and relations in general.  I have referred to this generally as the ‘currency wars’ for some time.

Most Americans have yet to notice this, due in no small part to the silence of the mainstream media.   If the US and the BRICs cannot engage in a rapprochement over the future of the international monetary system, and keep pushing a hard line for a US dollar hegemony, then of course the BRICs may pursue those discussions by other means.

One way to do this would be to revalue gold at let’s say $10,000 per ounce, and use it to partially back their own currency, or currencies.  Bill Holter does a good job of outlining that in the article excerpted below.  The details of how that one might play out is certainly open to much debate.

The counter to this is force, which the US has been employing much more aggressively and pre-emptively of late than it otherwise has done in the post-Cold War era.

I had assigned this somewhat unilateral devaluation of the Dollar to Gold outcome a low probability, thinking that the US and its allies, Britain, Japan, and parts of the EU, would continue supporting each other’s currencies and policies of foreign exchange valuations through non-transparent swaps and buying, in a managed devaluation amongst themselves of course. But I thought they would at least open the door to allowing the SDR to be reconstituted with a broader basket of currencies and metals not under NATO control.

The events of late in Ukraine make me wonder if the negotiations have not broken down because the hard liners in the Anglo-American cartel have prevailed over those who might favor accommodation and compromise. When the coup d’état occurred, with the US involvement becoming known, I had one of those ‘WTF’ moments many of us had when the US made a hard right turn and attacked Iraq, seemingly out of nowhere as a response to 911.   Wow, where did that come from?

Certainly it must be obvious that the neo-cons are back in force in Washington, although the neo-liberal economists in the Obama cabinet are certainly capable of carrying the financial side of that American Century outlook.

This is not to say that Russia and China are in the right, or are ‘good.’  They have positions and the Anglo-American financiers have positions.  One can certainly debate the relative merits, but for my own case I wish to try and understand what is happening, so that we may best adjust to it and understand what is happening and why.

And it would certainly be difficult to give high marks to the Anglo-American elites for taking care of those at home, and managing the domestic infrastructure and prosperity.  As we see so often throughout history, this appears to be the case of an oligarchy versus another oligarchy, as they grow restless within their domains.

Therefore I continue to believe that we will see change, rather than collapse.  Although if I were writing a book, or selling my site for clicks, the temptation for blaring headlines of doom might be stronger.   Things change, and periods of change always invoke dire predictions and phantoms of doom.

I am more concerned about a union amongst the oligarchs and the rise of a global governance that is anti-human, to be frank.   But even that is most likely an outlier I would like to think.  Of more real concern perhaps are the unsuspecting believers and the gullible who may be proudly riding the gospel of prosperity, and a fascination for the trappings but not the substance of devotion, into the maws of hell, with ‘Lord, Lord’ on their lips.  But that is another matter for a smaller audience, and a preoccupation for some of us here.

So grab something solid and hang on.  I don’t know enough to be able to predict how this will turn out, and  anyone who might be able to do so realizes that the fog of war is descending quickly.   Predictions and guesses are cheap, and will become even more plentiful as things progress.  But knowledge is the coin of the realm.

There could be rough waters ahead, mateys. But one can always hope that cooler and wiser and stronger heads will prevail.  This will play out slowly, until something happens, and then events may being to move rather quickly.  Pray for the best, and prepare for the worst.

“Next Tuesday, Vladimir Putin will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, I believe that the odds are quite high that an energy deal will be announced where Russia will supply China with oil and gas and that infrastructure (pipelines) will also be built to the express exclusion of the dollar. Please understand that this is not a deal where a few million barrels of oil are sent and then get settled for, no, this will be a very long term partnership which is why the infrastructure will be built.

My intent was to explain that China has imported 1,000′s of tons of gold over the last several years and that they (even though their system is very highly leveraged just as ours) have prepared themselves for what is coming.  ‘What is coming’ is that China will have just as many massive defaults as the U.S. will …but with a “small difference.” I believe that China will mark gold up to an arbitrary number of let’s say $10,000 per ounce which will do a number of things. First, this will make China’s holdings worth much much more which can and will be used as collateral to steady their debt markets. This collateral will serve to re liquefy the banks AND back their currency should they wish to (I believe they do).

Another added ‘benefit’ is that this will expose the fact that the West no longer has any gold. The dollar will go into a spiral because not just ‘one lunatic’ like Saddam Hussein is proposing to no longer use dollars. No, we are talking about 2 major oil producers and our largest trading partner who may just be the largest economy in the world having eclipsed us. Another little tidbit is that these 3 taken together were for years the absolute arch enemy of the U.S. and now they are forming a unified triad where Russia and Iran can say, ‘Hey, you told us not to use dollars anymore, we’re just doing what you’ve told us to do.’  Talk about forming ‘policy’ without looking 5 seconds into the future, our sanctions would be the definition of this.”

Bill Holter, They Don’t Need Us, We Need Them

Read the entire article here.

THE U.S. IS LIKE A SHIP WITH NO LIFEBOATS

Excellent article from Hugo Salinas Price about the debased dollar, gold and the suicidal bankers who will destroy the world.

The Dollar Cannot Be Devalued and Suicidal Bankers

Hugo Salinas Price

“If the U.S. inflates and devalues the dollar, gold will go much higher in price”  Jim Rickards. (See here).

The last dollar devaluation took place under President Roosevelt in 1934, when from being worth 1/20.67th of an ounce of gold in 1933, the dollar was devalued to 1/35th of an ounce of gold.

The last opportunity for devaluing the dollar took place in August 1971, when the dollar was still pegged at 1/35th of an ounce of gold. Nixon took the advice of Milton Friedman and made the worst mistake in history; Nixon did not devalue the dollar as he should have done, but simply took the US off the gold standard, such as it was, and thence forth the US refused to redeem dollars held by Central Banks around the world at any price.

Since August 15, 1971, the dollar can no longer be devalued.

Since the dollar is the reserve currency of all Central Banks in the world, all other currencies – the euro included – are only derivatives of the dollar. The proof of this statement is that the value of each and every currency in the world is calculated in dollars,

The world’s currencies are devalued or revalued against the dollar in the world’s currency markets every day of the year.

There is a “Dollar Index” which shows a value of the dollar against a basket of other currencies. However, the currencies selected for the basket are arbitrarily selected and some relatively important currencies are not included in the basket. Besides this, the movement of the dollar in the “Dollar Index” cannot signify either devaluation or revaluation of the dollar, because the currencies in the Index are themselves undergoing either depreciation or appreciation in dollar terms, due to their own national circumstances.

The US cannot declare an official devaluation of the dollar because there is nothing against which it may devalue, or rather, it does not wish to recognize the existence of gold as money, against which it might devalue.

In order for the US to devalue the dollar effectively, it would first be absolutely necessary for the US government to establish gold as the referent for its value. The US government would have to declare that the value of the dollar is equivalent to a given amount of gold, and solemnly promise that that value will be upheld and made good by offering to buy any amount of gold tendered to it, and pay for it in dollars at a price slightly below the officially established price of gold in dollars, as well as offering to sell any amount of gold paid for in dollars, at a price slightly above the officially established price of gold in dollars.

Once an official value of the dollar in gold were established, it would then once again be possible for the US government to renege on its promise and devalue the dollar by establishing a new and lower value of the dollar in gold. In other words, the dollar must first of all be freely convertible into gold at an official rate, before any devaluation can take place.

As things now stand, it is impossible to devalue the dollar.

A rising price of gold does not devalue the dollar, because there is no official link between gold and the dollar. The world’s monetary and financial systems have no link to gold. Gold can be any price without causing any effect upon those systems. We have seen gold at $1900 dollars per ounce, and things were running just as they were when gold was $300 dollars per ounce.

However, the rising price of gold is a huge embarrassment to the US government not because it devalues the dollar (it does not do this) but because it provokes a loss of confidence in the dollar. When the dollar is seen as falling in value against gold, its fall causes investors to exchange dollars and other currencies for gold as a means of protecting wealth. The rising price of gold is a blot on the prestige of the US dollar and the prestige of the US itself.

The price of gold in dollars is therefore under strict government control. This fact, once derided as ridiculous, is increasingly accepted as truth by those interested in monetary matters around the world. The means for controlling the price of gold lies in the massive sales of “paper gold” which take place to suppress its price, as so many investigators have amply documented.

US monetary policy considers that the dollar is here to stay forever, and that gold is no longer – and never again will be – the world’s ultimate money.

The governments of several nations around the world do not share the same conviction with regard to the permanence of the dollar. China invented irredeemable paper money – which is what the whole world uses today – some one thousand years ago, and several dynasties of Chinese emperors learned to their cost that paper money always degenerates into simple trash.

The Chinese government knows that the dollar will not be around forever. China is purchasing enormous amounts of gold to add to their huge pile of US Bonds in the reserves of the Bank of China; the government of China is more enlightened than the government of the US, because it is encouraging the Chinese to purchase gold and silver.

The US government tells the world that it possesses some 8,000 tonnes of gold; the fact that it cannot deliver physical gold held for Germany’s account belies the assurances regarding the physical gold stock of the US.

The situation for the US – and for the world – is dangerous: the US is like a ship with no lifeboats, because it is presumed to be unsinkable.

The US and its allies are allowing the Chinese and Asia in general, to take possession of huge amounts of gold every year, while the US, the UK and Europe are drained of gold by shipments to the East.

The US evidently believes that the dollar is here to stay and that gold is just a passing fancy. This is classic hubris or arrogance.

When serious problems for the dollar surface – as they surely will – and the US has little or no gold to fall back on, the US with its back to the wall may become a very dangerous entity in the world. Would it be possible for those running the US to loose their heads and decide for a suicidal nuclear war in response to a desperate economic situation? Does the destruction of the whole world matter to men about to take their own lives? Do suicidal bankers worry about the fate of the world?

DESTROYER OF THE DOLLAR

Ron Paul Says Bitcoin Could be the “Destroyer of the Dollar”

Personally, I wouldn’t put it that way. The dollar is being destroyed by the Federal Reserve. Bitcoin is merely a preferred conduit through which fed up citizens decide to express their displeasure with the incredibly corrupt corporatist-facist state being shoved down our throats by a handful of insane and greedy oligarchs. Interesting comments nonetheless. From CNN Money:

Imagine a world in which you can buy anything in secret. No banks. No fees. No worries inflation will make today’s money worth less tomorrow.

The digital currency Bitcoin promises all these things. And while it’s far from achieving any of them — its value is unstable and it’s rarely used — some have high hopes. 

“There will be alternatives to the dollar, and this might be one of them,” said former U.S. congressman Ron Paul. If people start using bitcoins en masse, “it’ll go down in history as the destroyer of the dollar,” Paul added.

It’s unlikely that Bitcoin would replace the dollar or other government-controlled currencies. But it could serve as a kind of universal alternative currency that is accepted everywhere around the globe. Concerned about the dollar’s inflation? Just move your cash to bitcoins and use them to pay your bills instead. Tired of hefty credit card fees? Bitcoin allows transactions that bypass banks.

“That’s the holy grail for people who believe in freer markets and currency,” said Adam Gurri, a libertarian economics writer in New York.

There are no middlemen charging fees to move money between users. You can transfer bitcoins — even infinitesimally small fractions of one — directly to others’ digital wallets.

But don’t expect governments and banks to let Bitcoin take over so easily. Financial institutions will lose business if people stop using their payment systems, and central banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve would lose their ability to help slow and speed up economic activity. Paul expects banks to lobby and authorities to crack down.

“Governments absolutely demand a monopoly on money and credit. They’re not going to give it up easily,” Paul warned. “They will come down hard.”

Interesting times…

Full article here.

In Liberty,
Mike