Tag: money

SEE YOU ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Written in December 2019. Reposted in honor of the 50th anniversary of the album

And if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon

 Brain Damage, Pink Floyd


Image result for see you on the dark side of the moon"

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon

Brain Damage, Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd’s 1973 Dark Side of the Moon album is considered one of the greatest albums of all-time. It stayed on the Billboard 200 charts for 937 weeks. Roger Waters concept was for an album that dealt with things that “make people mad”. The Dark Side of the Moon’s themes include war, conflict, greed, the passage of time, death, and insanity, the latter inspired in part by former band member Syd Barrett’s worsening mental state.

The five tracks on each side reflect various stages of human life, beginning and ending with a heartbeat, exploring the nature of the human experience, and empathy. The themes of this album are timeless and are as germane today as they were forty-six years ago, if not more relevant. The country and world are awash in conflict, driven by the greed of evil men. Decent, law abiding, hard-working, critical thinking Americans see the world going insane as the passage of time leads towards the death of an American empire.

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Money—How to Get It and Keep It

Guest Post by Doug Casey

Money

Even if you are already wealthy, some thought on this topic is worthwhile. What would you do if some act of God or of government, a catastrophic lawsuit, or a really serious misjudgment took you back to square one?

One thing about a real depression is that everybody loses. As Richard Russell has quipped, the winners are those who lose the least.

As far as I’m concerned, the Greater Depression is not just another cyclical downturn. You may find that although you’re far ahead of your neighbors (you own precious metals, you’ve diversified internationally, and you don’t believe much of what you hear from official sources), you’re still not as prepared as you’d like.

I think a good plan would be to approach the problem in four steps: Liquidate, Consolidate, Create, and Speculate.

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SPIRITS IN THE MATERIAL WORLD

Image result for spirits in the material world

There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitution
There is no bloody revolution

The Police – Spirits in the Material World

As I was driving home from work last week, an almost forty-year-old song began emanating from my radio. I’ve always appreciated the music of The Police, but was never a huge fan. Spirits in the Material World was a relatively minor hit from their 1981 Ghost in the Machine multi-platinum album. I’ve probably heard it hundreds of times over the last four decades, but the lyrics struck me as particularly apropos at the end of a week where lunatic left-wing politicians staged a battle royale of ineptitude, invective, and idiotic solutions, in front of a perplexed public in a Vegas casino. Sting wrote the lyrics to this song in 1981 at the outset of the Reagan presidency. It is less than 3 minutes in length, but says much about humanity and the world we inhabit.

The interpretation of Sting’s (Gordon Sumner) lyrics depends upon your position in the generational kaleidoscope of history. As a boomer, Sting came of age during the 1960s and 70s. He was thirty years old in 1981 as the Second Turning (Awakening) was winding down and Reagan’s Morning in America was about to launch the Third Turning (Unraveling) in 1984.

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The Uncertainty Of Money

Guest Post by The Zman

Imagine a world in which governments do business with one another only in gold, as in physical gold. They can issue promissory notes to one another, but it has to be backed by verified stores of gold. Governments, however, do not use gold for paying employees or contracting work with private business. In the case of employees, government pays in script, the value of which is set by the government. The vendors, on the other hand, are paid with silver, as in real silver coin or silver notes.

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In Money We Trust?

Guest Post by John Stossel

In Money We Trust?

Look at the dollar bills in your wallet. They say they are “legal tender for all debts.”

But are they? What makes them valuable? What makes them worth anything?

Each bill says, “In God We Trust.” But God won’t guarantee their value.

The $20 bill depicts the White House. Congress is on $50s. But neither guarantees the value of our dollars.

I wouldn’t trust them if they did. I don’t trust politicians, generally, but I especially don’t trust them with money. Since President Richard Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard, the dollar has lost 80 percent of its value.

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MONEY,MONEY, MONEY

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The One True Thing

Guest Post by Chris Martenson

Until you see clearly how the rules of society work, you will be trapped within a system of control.

What you mistake for reality is instead a fabricated simulation, designed to keep you trapped right where the system wants you.

Your social conditioning, education, and family structures program you with a set of beliefs, values and norms — often unexamined — that “properly” align you in such a way that you focus your life and labor on keeping the existing social hierarchy in place and that you never deeply question this arrangement.

Put visually, your culture is in the shape of a pyramid. And what keeps you pinned to your particular layer is your belief system.

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Doug Casey on Money – How to Get It and Keep It

By Doug Casey

Even if you are already wealthy, some thought on this topic is worthwhile. What would you do if some act of God or of government, a catastrophic lawsuit, or a really serious misjudgment took you back to square one? One thing about a real depression is that everybody loses. As Richard Russell has quipped, the winners are those who lose the least.

As far as I’m concerned, the Greater Depression is looming, not just another cyclical downturn. You may find that although you’re far ahead of your neighbors (you own precious metals, you’ve diversified internationally, and you don’t believe much of what you hear from official sources), you’re still not as prepared as you’d like.

I think a good plan would be to approach the problem in four steps: Liquidate, Consolidate, Create, and Speculate.

Continue reading “Doug Casey on Money – How to Get It and Keep It”

Doug Casey on Why Gold Is Money

Guest Post by Doug Casey

It’s an unfortunate historical anomaly that people think about the paper in their wallets as money. The dollar is, technically, a currency. A currency is a government substitute for money. But gold is money.

Now, why do I say that?

Historically, many things have been used as money. Cattle have been used as money in many societies, including Roman society. That’s where we get the word “pecuniary” from: the Latin word for a single head of cattle is pecus. Salt has been used as money, also in ancient Rome, and that’s where the word “salary” comes from; the Latin for salt is sal (or salis). The North American Indians used seashells. Cigarettes were used during WWII. So, money is simply a medium of exchange and a store of value.

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

“If modernity is characterized by a loss of the sense of the real, this fact is connected to what has happened to money in the twentieth century. Everything threatens to become unreal once money ceases to be real.

Money is one of the primary measures of value in any society, perhaps the primary one, the principal repository of value. As such, money is a central source of stability, continuity, and cohesion in any community. Hence to tamper with the basic money supply is to tamper with a community’s sense of value.”

Paul Cantor, Literature and the Economics of Liberty

“One of the most nefarious consequences of dishonest money is to destroy our ability and willingness to act responsibly in the light of our own judgments. It has led us to replace common sense by compliance. We have substituted the law for what is moral and what is right. We have substituted audit checklists for an auditor’s judgment about what is true and fair. And we have substituted phony mathematics for the judgment we once possessed in understanding the nature of value and that of risk.”

Anthony Deden, Investment Value in an Age of Booms and Busts

ENOUGH OF YOUR BITCHIN

Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer

So let me see if I understand the parameters of this problem:

Money is infinite since it is created out of thin air by the machinations of the Federal Reserve.

Shouldn’t the pie be infinite as well? This is a pie=money metaphor, isn’t it?

If the pie/money supply is shrinking, then wouldn’t the share the 1% hold be shrinking at the same rate as the shrinking pie/money supply the 99% control?

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Doug Casey on Why Debt Is Not Money

Guest Post by Doug Casey

Gold’s main use, contrary to the belief of some, isn’t in jewelry or dentistry—although those uses are important. Its main use has almost always been as money. But gold’s ancillary uses are growing in importance because, given its physical characteristics, it’s a high-tech metal. It’s one of the most resistant to chemical reaction, one of the most ductile, the most malleable of all the elements, and it’s an exceptional electrical conductor.

There are lots of other advantages to gold as money. It’s by far the most private kind of money; gold coins, unlike paper currency, don’t even carry serial numbers. That makes it truly untraceable. At current prices, it’s more portable than cash, even in the form of $100 bills. It doesn’t retain traces of drugs, as does currency, which makes it less liable to arbitrary confiscation. Although efforts have been made to counterfeit gold bars, with tungsten filler and such, it’s much easier to authenticate than currency.

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War & Economics – Just Follow the Money

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

military_desert_figure_combat_150_clr_11582The Pentagon was unable to reconcile over $2 trillion in accounts and Rumsfeld promised an investigation the day before 9/11. The plane that struck the Pentagon magically honed in on the room with all the records. Now that number is over $6 trillion. They even lost track of $12 billion in cash sent to Iraq. Then they rigged a missile-defense test so that an interceptor could easily hone in on a target. They have lied to begin EVERY single war (see: “Cycles of War”). This is by no means a coincidence.

War is first and foremost a profitable racket. Even Lyndon Johnson admitted the Vietnamese never attacked us to start that war. He commented that for all he knew they were shooting at whales that night. This is how they line their pockets and wash their hands in the blood of our boys who are told the same sort of lies as the terrorist organizations. OK, they are not expecting a herd of virgins, but they are told that they are fighting for God and country. During World War II, Japanese kamikaze pilots were told the Emperor was God and they would be the divine wind that protected Japan — so they should crash planes into the ships at Pearl Harbor.

Just follow the money. When Trump said no more “nation building,” the military called him dangerous because they might not be able to start wars by playing with their toys.