Money is supposed to be representative of all the goods and services that the country has produced in an entire year.
A “buck” is referred to as a “buck” because in the early days of American money, a dollar was worth about one deer. Many trading posts didn’t trust American money for good reason: Benjamin Franklin intentionally devalued America’s first currency as a way to finance the revolutionary war. Continue reading
February 24, 2011 – Nothing seems to arouse passions – pro and con – quite like suggestions that gold should once again play a role in our money. “Only gold is money,” says one side. “It’s a barbarous relic,” says the other. Let’s turn down the heat a bit and look into some propositions about gold. That should lead us to some reasonable ideas about whether or how gold might return. Continue reading
In discussing the Mises Institute’s June 24th full-page Wall Street Journal ad entitled “Who Needs the Fed?” on talk radio recently most of the interviewers naturally expressed skepticism over whether the Fed could ever actually be abolished and a gold-and-silver standard reinstituted. It reminded me of something Murray Rothbard said about this. If the government had monopolized say, shoe production a hundred years ago and someone suggested the privatization of shoe production, there would be cries of: “Who will make shoes? The government has always made shoes!”
Well, America has not always had a central bank and in fact, the three precursors of the Fed — the Bank of North America, the First Bank of the United States, and the Second Bank of the United States — were all abolished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
It happened then, and it can happen again. Continue reading
Do you remember how painful the Great Recession was? 2008 and the years immediately following were definitely a very dark chapter in our history, but a new study has actually found that the percentage of Americans that worry they won’t be able to pay their bills is actually higher today than it was back then.
Slowly but surely, our economic strength has been fading and our standard of living has been falling. Unfortunately, now we have reached a point where a very large portion of the U.S. population is really struggling. According to a CNN poll that was just released, almost 40 percent of all U.S. adults “say they worry most or all of the time that their family’s income won’t be enough to meet expenses”…
Many Americans regularly worry they won’t be able to make ends meet. Continue reading
Well, here’s an interesting historical repeat. Apparently, it took the Roman Empire about 200 years to reduce the value of its currency, the silver Denarius, by 95%. As shown in the chart below, the silver content of the Roman currency had been nearly 100% at the peak of the Empire in 65 AD, but by 268 AD the coin had been clipped and debased so thoroughly that it was comprised of less than 5% silver. Continue reading
Cryptocurrency, which has exploded in popularity in recent years, is digital ‘money’ which lies beyond the control of central banks and governments.
The global market is worth about £1.3 trillion and around five million adults in the UK have invested.
But now a study suggests that those who own online currency – such as Bitcoin – are more likely to have ‘Dark Tetrad‘ (a set of interrelated negative personality features: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism) personality traits. Continue reading
As I am sure you are aware, we have entered tumultuous times. In this article we are going to consider the Big Picture and what it means to us as investors.
The core of the problem facing the financial system is debt saturation and this is much more of a problem for the western world than for the East for the reason that the West, especially the US, has eviscerated its productive capacity – in the US most production has been moved overseas to places like China which works fine until the day arrives when they are no longer prepared to accept piles of intrinsically worthless paper in exchange for goods and services. Continue reading
I’m not much into the economic area. It’s far from being my long suit. But I caught an item on the news this morning that grabbed my attention. It talked about how, in our present day, most young couples cannot afford to buy a home. With Biden’s inflationary policies running amok the American dream of owning your own home and setting roots down in your own community is now “out of reach.” I noted, awhile back, another news item I saw about how most young folks in the 25 year old age bracket are still living with their parents instead of getting out on their own. It’s lots cheaper. Continue reading
The magazine was DISCOVER, October 1998.
The entire magazine was devoted to the scientific study of money including a historical, and anthropological view. Continue reading
Senator Elizabeth Warren gave another speech on taxes a few days ago proving, yet again, that she is Coming for YOUR money!
But I am here to skim even more from you!
It’s always thinly veiled behind the refrain of making “the rich” (as defined in her sole discretion) pay their “fair share” (also defined in her sole discretion).
Frankly she’s been shrieking this refrain since before she even became a Senator. Yet for more than a decade she’s never once made her position clear. If anything, she keeps moving the goalposts.
Warren famously started by slamming billionaires, i.e. the top 0.1%. She then cast a wider net to the wealthiest 1%.
Later she derided the top 5%, claiming those evildoers should not be eligible for student loan forgiveness… or even Medicare! Continue reading
