Precious Metal coinage -even non precious metals like bronze in the past- are money based on labor that has already been performed and stored as the metal the coin is made from.
Fiat money, money by decree, is based on an overriding authority that enforces its value against labor.
Bank Note money -money issued by a bank as a loan to its borrower- is money based on the future performance of labor to give it value. This is what we and most of the world are using today with the Fed and various central banks issuing interest bearing notes in place of either PM or Fiat money.
BEA LEVER
December 16, 2015 9:23 am
The root of all evil
Something I have less of all the time because of the IRS
Picking a year or two when we worked overseas and traveled a lot here’s how bad it was. Our wages were paid in US dollars direct deposit into our US bank account.
In Russia, in the early 2000 years, things were priced in Y.E. (a Russki abbreviation for Currency Unit) – any vendor could set any value for a currency unit, there was no Y.E. value standardization. So the local currency was the Russian ruble, our pay was in USD, and the selling price was in the very liquid Y.E. – Nobody knew what anything cost. I just tried to avoid buying things as it was all too fucking confusing. Just no. I still have no idea what happened to my earnings at that time. Everything was just a mystery.
We were temporarily assigned to work in Azerbaijan from Russia. We were still being paid in USD but now we were buying things in Azeri manat. Except the manat was pegged to the Russian ruble and the manat was in the flux process of a currency overhaul revaluation. There were TWO legitimate versions of the manat currency in circulation, the old and the new, which had several zeros lopped off the end. The old manat were 10% of the value of new manat, and cash machines would spit out a combination of both currency types to meet the desired withdrawal amount. – Try that on for size when your’re trying to live within your means – in a country where you don’t speak the language. :-O
Approximately the same years I visited the UK. At that time the pound sterling was equal to $2.06! More than twice the value of a dollar! I was dirt poor in the UK and could hardly afford a beer or a subway ticket. In the EU at that same time my earned dollar was worth barely more than half a Euro, the Euro was at $1.60.
Then we moved to China. My dollar bought me 14 quai. (nobody calls them renimbi), 14 quai would buy 4 beers or two packs of cigarettes. Two people could eat dinner in Beijing for $5. So there the currency exchange was good but the quality of life was purely miserable, and we left.
We came back to America earning dollars and spending dollars, all one basket (my god you have no idea how much easier that makes things).
Currencies are more problematic than most people realize.
For the majority of our stay in Russia the ruble hovered around 30RR to the dollar for years, quite stable. Within recent days the RR has surge beyond 70 to the dollar! The RR has lost half its value just in the last couple of years/days
This shit is just totally beyond cracked-out crazy. The instability of currencies in the last ten to fifteen years is incomprehensible.
Just my brainmired take on how easy it is to get lost in this shit till you have no idea how much anything costs anywhere.
Here’s a question: what did the dinosaurs use as money? Okay, flippant question. But me must first the stage that money is a a purely human construct. There is no hard physics, chemistry, geology or cosmology involved. It is ALL sociology.
So let us look at the most basic human level and it becomes clear that money can be defined in one simple word: money is an AGREEMENT. Nothing more, nothing less. Any type of money ever used has only had value because enough people agreed that is did. Period.
The ONLY difference between fiat currency and hard (PM) currency, is the ease with which the parties involved (and it is always the big players–govt and banks) can cheat the agreement.
Roy
December 16, 2015 11:36 am
“Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”
Cree prophecy
robert h siddell jr
December 16, 2015 12:03 pm
Currency is like a leaky gas tank; you think you have enough for the journey but it runs out too soon because of Banksters. I’m so old that I remember The Good Old days of10 cent hamburgers and cokes and $1.00 per hour as a good wage. But lately the Elite are sucking up the money at Warped Speed like Black Holes that will reach a Critical Mass like two trains crashing head on in a tunnel; the Youth and Middle Class are coming hard one way trying to escape Economic Slavery but TPTB are coming full throttle the other looking for future war profits and an Egalitarian Draft. This will be a spectacle for the history books.
OutLookingIn
December 16, 2015 12:37 pm
What is money? Certainly NOT a paper dollar bill. That is currency.
REAL MONEY IS physical gold. Always has been. Always will be. Sometimes, silver too.
Another thing – all this blah, blah, blah, about the Fed raising rates 1/4 of 1% or 0.25%
is actually meaningless. Won’t make a “Tinkers Damned” bit of difference.
Just like two guys on the sinking Titanic arguing about whether their deck chairs should be up against the bulkhead, or six inches away from it! Meaningless.
Administrator
Author
December 16, 2015 1:02 pm
“…authorizing Congress at all to emit an unfunded paper as a sign of value, a resource which, though useful in the infancy of this country, and indispensable in the commencement of the revolution, ought not to continue a formal part of the constitution, nor ever, here after, to be employed, being, in its nature, pregnant with abuses, and liable to be made the engine of imposition and fraud, holding out temptations equally pernicious to the integrity of government and to the morals of the people.”
Alexander Hamilton
bb
December 16, 2015 4:12 pm
DRUD ,your another clueless Meathead. Listen people , real money is what God says it is….Gold and Silver.
Money is the devil.
Nah, currency is the devil
Money is labor.
Precious Metal coinage -even non precious metals like bronze in the past- are money based on labor that has already been performed and stored as the metal the coin is made from.
Fiat money, money by decree, is based on an overriding authority that enforces its value against labor.
Bank Note money -money issued by a bank as a loan to its borrower- is money based on the future performance of labor to give it value. This is what we and most of the world are using today with the Fed and various central banks issuing interest bearing notes in place of either PM or Fiat money.
The root of all evil
Something I have less of all the time because of the IRS
Worthless toilet paper (FRN’s)
MONEY AS DEBT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_x626joik0
Money=a tool of enslavement.
“Gold is money and everything else is credit”.
JP Morgan
Picking a year or two when we worked overseas and traveled a lot here’s how bad it was. Our wages were paid in US dollars direct deposit into our US bank account.
In Russia, in the early 2000 years, things were priced in Y.E. (a Russki abbreviation for Currency Unit) – any vendor could set any value for a currency unit, there was no Y.E. value standardization. So the local currency was the Russian ruble, our pay was in USD, and the selling price was in the very liquid Y.E. – Nobody knew what anything cost. I just tried to avoid buying things as it was all too fucking confusing. Just no. I still have no idea what happened to my earnings at that time. Everything was just a mystery.
We were temporarily assigned to work in Azerbaijan from Russia. We were still being paid in USD but now we were buying things in Azeri manat. Except the manat was pegged to the Russian ruble and the manat was in the flux process of a currency overhaul revaluation. There were TWO legitimate versions of the manat currency in circulation, the old and the new, which had several zeros lopped off the end. The old manat were 10% of the value of new manat, and cash machines would spit out a combination of both currency types to meet the desired withdrawal amount. – Try that on for size when your’re trying to live within your means – in a country where you don’t speak the language. :-O
Approximately the same years I visited the UK. At that time the pound sterling was equal to $2.06! More than twice the value of a dollar! I was dirt poor in the UK and could hardly afford a beer or a subway ticket. In the EU at that same time my earned dollar was worth barely more than half a Euro, the Euro was at $1.60.
Then we moved to China. My dollar bought me 14 quai. (nobody calls them renimbi), 14 quai would buy 4 beers or two packs of cigarettes. Two people could eat dinner in Beijing for $5. So there the currency exchange was good but the quality of life was purely miserable, and we left.
We came back to America earning dollars and spending dollars, all one basket (my god you have no idea how much easier that makes things).
Currencies are more problematic than most people realize.
For the majority of our stay in Russia the ruble hovered around 30RR to the dollar for years, quite stable. Within recent days the RR has surge beyond 70 to the dollar! The RR has lost half its value just in the last couple of years/days
This shit is just totally beyond cracked-out crazy. The instability of currencies in the last ten to fifteen years is incomprehensible.
Just my brainmired take on how easy it is to get lost in this shit till you have no idea how much anything costs anywhere.
Big Banks Caught Using Credit Default Swaps To Destroy Nations: http://etfdailynews.com/2015/12/15/big-banks-caught-using-credit-default-swaps-to-destroy-nations/
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You all miss what money really, fundamentally is.
Here’s a question: what did the dinosaurs use as money? Okay, flippant question. But me must first the stage that money is a a purely human construct. There is no hard physics, chemistry, geology or cosmology involved. It is ALL sociology.
So let us look at the most basic human level and it becomes clear that money can be defined in one simple word: money is an AGREEMENT. Nothing more, nothing less. Any type of money ever used has only had value because enough people agreed that is did. Period.
The ONLY difference between fiat currency and hard (PM) currency, is the ease with which the parties involved (and it is always the big players–govt and banks) can cheat the agreement.
“Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”
Cree prophecy
Currency is like a leaky gas tank; you think you have enough for the journey but it runs out too soon because of Banksters. I’m so old that I remember The Good Old days of10 cent hamburgers and cokes and $1.00 per hour as a good wage. But lately the Elite are sucking up the money at Warped Speed like Black Holes that will reach a Critical Mass like two trains crashing head on in a tunnel; the Youth and Middle Class are coming hard one way trying to escape Economic Slavery but TPTB are coming full throttle the other looking for future war profits and an Egalitarian Draft. This will be a spectacle for the history books.
What is money? Certainly NOT a paper dollar bill. That is currency.
REAL MONEY IS physical gold. Always has been. Always will be. Sometimes, silver too.
Another thing – all this blah, blah, blah, about the Fed raising rates 1/4 of 1% or 0.25%
is actually meaningless. Won’t make a “Tinkers Damned” bit of difference.
Just like two guys on the sinking Titanic arguing about whether their deck chairs should be up against the bulkhead, or six inches away from it! Meaningless.
“…authorizing Congress at all to emit an unfunded paper as a sign of value, a resource which, though useful in the infancy of this country, and indispensable in the commencement of the revolution, ought not to continue a formal part of the constitution, nor ever, here after, to be employed, being, in its nature, pregnant with abuses, and liable to be made the engine of imposition and fraud, holding out temptations equally pernicious to the integrity of government and to the morals of the people.”
Alexander Hamilton
DRUD ,your another clueless Meathead. Listen people , real money is what God says it is….Gold and Silver.