SmitEvo;261581 wrote:
Yes...shine them in the post whore section please.

ok...

bubba;261578 wrote:
yes a masta, can i shine your shoes sir?

Yes...shine them in the post whore section please.

SmitEvo;261574 wrote:
I can point at whoever I want......even post whores.

yes a masta, can i shine your shoes sir?

bubba;261571 wrote:
Y are u pointing at me... i just said thanks for the term and definition...

I can point at whoever I want......even post whores.

SmitEvo;261570 wrote:
^ Sound more like a problem than a solution. Back our money and use less expansionary credit spending and see which way the the economy will go...

Y are u pointing at me... i just said thanks for the term and definition...

money that has value (that is larger than the paper and ink used to print it ) only because someone says it does.

TJ: what you suggest might be accurate if you limit it to M1 money supply, but M1 is almost irrelevant. When you put $500 into savings at a bank and the bank turns around and re-lends it, but tells you you've still got $500, that is how money gets created out of thin air, and it is inflationary, and it's the core problem with fractional reserve banking. Private banks have the power to inflate the currency, just the same way that actually printing more cash inflates the money supply.

The entire nation collectively deciding that homes should be worth 2-3x as much, and then everyone making borrowing, lending, and re-investment decisions based on that also inflates the money supply. Note that mortgage backed securities and other instruments are only counted in what is called the "M3" money supply, which the federal government stopped publishing several years back, and which bright folks like Ron paul were of course livid about.

You might want to read "What has Government Done to our Money", by Murray Rothbard, if you haven't already.

When Ron Paul says fractional reserve banking is a problem, it's not just the Fed he's talking about. The laws in this country say that bankers get to make their money by keeping part of yours and inflating the rest, so that you and your neighbors both have less actual purchasing power than before. All fractional reserve banks are, by any honest accounting, legally insolvent. This only plays out when bank runs happen.

Of course, last time we had lots of bank runs, the Feds (that would be FDR, our 1st great socialist) declared a bank holidy and intimidated people out of trying to get their money out of insolvent banks they didn't trust. The Federal government and the member bank system both profit egregiously from their mutual inflationary practices. People attepmting to use the dollar as a store of value are the ones who get raped by inflation.

Inflation is reasonably systematic in our economy at this point. Fractional reserve banking is the core of the inflationary cycle. Uncle Sam could shut off the printing press and inflation would continue to happen. Infact, M1 was controlled at a relatively fixed level via the Fed for some time now. Obviously inflation has continued and will continue, almost irrespective of what the Fed does or does not do.

SmitEvo;261552 wrote:
:icon_scratch: WTF?

Our money isnt back by such and such dollars equals such and such gold, etc. Like you had said... Its basically backed by our ppl believing that a dollar (some fancy piece of paper) is actually worth something... Sorry i'm totally spacing out what the term is for the system we use

bubba;261551 wrote:
Well it's backed on our faith in that it's worth something.... which is pretty fucking stupid...

:icon_scratch: WTF?

SmitEvo;261549 wrote:
Lol....n00b. I guarantee most of our money is not backed by anything...

Well it's backed on our faith in that it's worth something.... which is pretty fucking stupid...

Trafik Jamz;261332 wrote:
Money is created by selling treasury bonds and the like. These bonds are sold on the open market as a commodity (much like gold, copper, wheat, etc...) So it doesn't just appear out of thin air, but it's certainly not perfect by any means.

Lol....n00b. I guarantee most of our money is not backed by anything...

D S ohM;261423 wrote:
and use grapefruits as targets.

I'd rather use a dsm, but some ppl have a sandy vag...

bubba;261393 wrote:
guns are a fun investment... u can not only make money, but can shoot critters for food, provide home defense, shoot targets, and cap a bitch or two...

and use grapefruits as targets.

torbs;261087 wrote:
Any bets that Chuck's favorite news source is NBC?

The repubs in the senate couldnt do anything bc of the "Three blind mice"...Those three piss me off like none other...

I don't think I've ever watched NBC on a regular basis...surprisingly I watch Fox and CNN (to get each side of a given topic)

As for those three...they saw something that they felt would work. Maybe it will/maybe it won't. If it does work as intended, will you be a big enough man to admit it did? If it doesn't, I'll be right with you in saying it didn't.

integra_gsr98;261083 wrote:
Chuck:

Explain to me how printing money to try and make this problem go away is going to fix anything?
Also explain to me how the additional $400 tax credit is going to help anybody out?
Or how when Dorgan comes back to ND and meets an overwhelming majority of people AGAINST the stimulus bill yet he still votes for it along his bullshit party lines? Explain to me how this blanket partisanship is going to fix this nation. It was a bullshit democratic spending bill and you know this.

I don't doubt that it is a STRONGLY democrat spending bill. The democrats think we need to spend money on infrastructure (and a bunch of other stupid shit that I DON'T agree with) to stimulate the economy. In their minds we tried the cut taxes and see what happens approach for the last 8 years and saw what happened....the economy slumped (I know there are TONS of other factors, but everyone has blinders on as to what they all are...each of them contributed in my mind)

Money is created by selling treasury bonds and the like. These bonds are sold on the open market as a commodity (much like gold, copper, wheat, etc...) So it doesn't just appear out of thin air, but it's certainly not perfect by any means.

I still think that the Republican (and Democratic) party needs a new strategy though...there has to be some sort of common ground that can be agreed upon by the two parties to try and figure a way out of this mess....can we agree on that?

However, that was the (non-)event that compelled me to go practice shooting for the first time in my life.

Prior to the fall of 99, I had never shot any weapon more ominous than an air pellet gun before (and that was a friends). I met up with a friend of an older relative on his farm and practiced shooting a 12ga at some clays, and shot at some cans and jars with a .357 revovler. I found that I was an acceptable shot with either, and understood the operation of both weapons. I felt that was the appropriate amount of preparation at the time.

Y2k came and passed without major incident, and so I never rekindled any interest in firearms.

It should be noted that in the case of Y2k, the potential disaster was necessarily going to be temporary in nature. Some of the services that society depended on were at risk of temporary suspension. But the relevant thing to realize about Y2k is that embedded software was simply automating tasks that had been done by less clever automation, or by hand previously. Cities had water, electricity, and phone systems prior to the emergence of ubiqoutous embedded controllers. Hospitals still used paper charts.

Life would have been interrupted, but it would still look like life as we know it. Water, electrical, and phone outages are all things that society stays familiar with because they all happen to us now and then. The "catastrophe" would have been temporary, and as it was entirely a technical problem, we would ahve been on top of it quickly, with affected systems being restored using rudimentary workarounds first, and then corrected software being deployed sometime thereafter. Any breakdown of law and order would have been temporary. Society as a whole would be more focused with getting their water turned back on so life could resume as normal.

This is different. What does society look like when people are shovelling dollar bills into their furnace because they're worth more as heating fuel? (And lest you think this is something I made up, go read about pre-war Germany). And what happens if that's the best heating fuel because natural gas is too expensive for the gas company to keep pumping into people's homes? What happens to people in big cities that come from 3 generations of city-slickers and have no idea where food comes from if not the fully-stocked grocery store?

A lot of old people that lived through the depression have extra fridges in their basement, and their basements are filled to the brim with canned goods. They're not crazy. They lived through some shitty times. Not everyone did.

There's no harm in being prepared for a collapse that doesn't come. I hope that everyone is laughing at me in 5 years when this all blows over, and nobody came to take your guns, and nobody had to shoot anyone over a warm place to sleep or the last loaf of bread. If the worst thing that comes out of all of this is that I look like an over-reactive idiot, I'll take that. Plenty of people think I'm an over-reactive idiot anyway

The alternative... any scenario where anything I say actually pans out as being good advice.... is really, really unpleasant to contemplate.

I still live in town, so I'm not both-feet-in on this whole "we're fucked" boat. If collapse happens, it won't be over nite. The leadtime on getting guns has already gotten really long, so that's where it makes sense to start investing if you haven't already. There are inflection points, and I don't know what they are yet, where it will make sense (at least to me) to consider divesting property in/near town, in furthering ones self-sustainability, etc. We've already got huge garden plans for this spring. Since we're food snobs, that experience (and hopefully food source) will be a good call either way. It's something that I hope always remains a luxury, never turning into a necessity.

Here's an interesting read, if you have some time:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259
I don't agree fully with the guy, but it's something to chew on.

thrash;261089 wrote:
i keep telling you guys, take on all the debt you can. buy guns and coined gold and silver that you keep in your possession (as opposed to gold-shares that are held elsewhere). buy food, buy gasoline in 55 gal drums, and buy plenty of sta-bil.

Go into all the debt you can, because in an inflationary economy, the real-value of your debt goes to zero at exactly the same rate as your savings. Trading fiat money now for real goods (like guns and ammo) is going to be a winner.

The government has said that it is going to keep punishing people that save money. If you aren't spending like a drunken sailor, you're not doing your part. With the TARP and the new bailout bill, IIRC the FY09 budget shortfall is 15% of GDP.. more than 2x it's ever been in the history of the USA.

Rather than deflation, rather than contraction, the government is going to aggressively persue inflation. That means saving is dumb and taking on debt is prudent.

Besides, as long as you don't appear white and wealthy, your debt will be forgiven one way or another. Any debt you roll into a house is no problem.

http://Gunbroker.com has lots and lots of built AR-15s, AR-10s, Romak-3s, etc. http://ClassicArms.us has Romak-3's and Saiga-12s. Any debt you take on today to buy guns is probably going to pay. There are three possibilities:

• That One and his cronies manage to make all this shit illegal, but society doesn't collapse: your investment is HUGELY profitable on the black market, or, you can go out in style when the feds knock on your door
• That one and his cronies manage to finish wrecking the economy and society crumbles: sweet, every man for himself, you're good to go
• That one and his cronies don't manage to make cool guns illegal, and somehow the republicans kick That One to the curb in 2012. The economy naturally recovers in the 2010/2011 timeframe, 1 year later than it would have since the stupid stimulus bill passed and slowed the recovery down. Now you have all of these expensive guns that you don't really need. Call this the "break even" case, but you're euphoric since 1) society didn't collapse 2) you have all these sweet guns

Either way, buying guns is awesome, and the government is dumb.

when Y2k happened were you all stocked up too? lmao

thrash;261089 wrote:
http://Gunbroker.com has lots and lots of built AR-15s, AR-10s, Romak-3s, etc. http://ClassicArms.us has Romak-3's and Saiga-12s. Any debt you take on today to buy guns is probably going to pay. There are three possibilities:

• That One and his cronies manage to make all this shit illegal, but society doesn't collapse: your investment is HUGELY profitable on the black market, or, you can go out in style when the feds knock on your door
• That one and his cronies manage to finish wrecking the economy and society crumbles: sweet, every man for himself, you're good to go
• That one and his cronies don't manage to make cool guns illegal, and somehow the republicans kick That One to the curb in 2012. The economy naturally recovers in the 2010/2011 timeframe, 1 year later than it would have since the stupid stimulus bill passed and slowed the recovery down. Now you have all of these expensive guns that you don't really need. Call this the "break even" case, but you're euphoric since 1) society didn't collapse 2) you have all these sweet guns

Either way, buying guns is awesome, and the government is dumb.

Very very true...

Many of the guns in our collection over the years have doubled, tripled and even more in price... We bought our Colt (6700) Comp H-bar before the "asault weapons" ban for $900... day after the ban our wholesale cost on them was $2300... Just like we used to sell Russian SKS back in the day for $110 for hardwood stock and $130 for lamiated and chinese ones went for <$100... Now I dont even see russian ones, and if u do they are crazy priced, and chinese ones go for $200+