Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

[The Toecutter]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IceP...ayer_embedded#

[Biggie]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

Man the dollar already aint worth ****. I spend so much money every weekend I decide to go off base, it's redunkulous.

[Kire]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

So what's the answer, buy gold?

[Armored]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

Ron Paul's been saying the end of America is coming for years now and it hasn't happened.

[Biggie]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

Terr's been saying the end of America is coming for years now and it hasn't happened.

fix'd

[The Toecutter]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

Ron Paul's been saying the end of America is coming for years now and it hasn't happened.

It is definately in progress, even if it is not complete.

*There are currently 19 million homes vacant in the U.S. and growing during a so-called "recovery" while the government uses its peoples' money to try to artificially prop up housing costs on behalf of the banks knowing full well that a large part of the problem is that Americans can't afford the homes available.
*The total "distressed inventory" of homes exceeds 12%, meaning that it is statistically likely that 12% of the current occupied homes will be foreclosed upon this year(See this chart).
*Deficit spending is now more than 12% of America's GDP. This is unsustainable and probably not possible to fix given the size of it at this point. If current trends continue, deficit spending will account for 100% of GDP by 2025.
*Social Security, the FDIC, Medicare/Medicaid, and other government safegaurds are either bankrupt or close to it.
*41 of 50 states in the U.S. risk bankruptcy due to budget shortfalls, along with a large number of municipal governments.
*A recent survey by the Pew Research Center claims that more than 70% of Americans do not trust their government, an all time high.
*During this so-called "recovery", the BLS U6 unemployment has remained at the lower end of Great Depression levels and has not declined a significant amount from its peak last year(remaining between ~16%-17%).
*Wealth distribution has approached similarities to that seen just before the start of the Great Depression, with the welathiest 1% of Americans owning almost half of all wealth in the U.S.
*America is still engaging in fruitless(unless you're an arms race tycoon or an oil man) resource wars that it can't afford.
*While in recent months the American dollar has appreciated against the Euro, the amount of goods that it can purchase has still declined sharply. Food inflation has recently reached records not ever seen before in U.S. history, and costs of rent and energy have also increased dramatically from their 2009 lows.
*US wages, adjusted for inflation rate, are declining rapidly.
*The Federal Reserve, for more than a year, have been the largest buyer of US treasuries, and the banks that have been bailed out with our money have also been buying U.S. treasurues... this is how the M1 money supply can be transferred to the M3 with disasterous consequences.
*Banks are going bankrupt at a rate that is twice as high as in 2009, during a so-called "recovery" (see this chart).
*1 in 8 Americans are currently receiving Food Stamps, almost 40 million people, more than any other time in U.S. history. According to the Supplimental Nutrition Assistance Program, 1 of 3 people who are eligible to receive them aren't.
*Despite the slowing of the economy, which caused a sudden decrease in fuel prices, fuel prices are now on the way upwards again, with more shortages of the likes seen in 2008 possible this year. Peak oil has occured, but the oil production plateau has continued thus far. The DOE is warning of significant declines by 2011.

Buying gold/silver certainly wouldn't be a bad idea. It's a hedge against the prospect of hyperinflation. There are many parallels between the current case of the U.S., and the Weimar republic before they had hyperinflation. The following article explains the parallels in layman's terms:

http://www.fgmr.com/hyperinflation-l...in-moment.html

“When prices are going up faster than the money supply, the people begin to experience a severe shortage of money, for they now face a shortage of cash balances relative to the much higher price levels. Total cash balances are no longer sufficient to carry transactions at the higher price.”

As the Globe & Mail observes, these circumstances prevail today. Prices of goods and services are rising, but as it warns, the quantity of dollars in circulation is “shrinking, after taking into account inflation.” This “shortage of money” is being widely misinterpreted as deflation, which is exactly what happened in Weimar Germany shortly before the Reichsmark was swooped up in its hyperinflationary whirlwind.

Rothbard provides his usual brilliant insight to explain what happens once the “Havenstein moment’ is reached. There are two alternatives.

“If the government tightens its own belt and stops printing (or otherwise creating) new money, then inflationary expectations will eventually be reversed, and prices will fall once more – thus relieving the money shortage by lowering prices. But if government follows its own inherent inclination to counterfeit and appeases the clamor by printing more money so as to allow the public’s cash balances to ‘catch up’ to prices, then the country is off to the races. Money and prices will follow each other upward in an ever-accelerating spiral, until finally prices ‘run away’…[i.e., hyperinflate]”

Weimar Germany took the second alternative.

But yes, this nation is collapsing much similarly to Greece, albeit it hasn't progressed as much yet.

[IamPinhead]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

It is definately in progress, even if it is not complete.
But yes, this nation is collapsing much similarly to Greece, albeit it hasn't progressed as much yet.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Econ...spx?Symbol=USD
America won't collapse any time soon. Every country goes through a rut. I know it's cool for everybody to hate their own country (it's back in fashion after people came off the drugs in the 60's and 70's), but honestly America is the big kid on the block with his dad's rifle. It's also easy to say that "Well, America is in a **** hole now and won't get out of it any time soon."
What happened to the Great Depression? We came out of it a rising nation, becoming the most powerful in the entire world. The reason we can act as self-righteous world police is because we are so powerful. We, as a nation, go through roller coasters. That's to be expected, but what makes us American is our ability to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and kick the problem in the ass. I might sound like a hopeless Patriot, but give us our due, Cutter.

[The Toecutter]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

I don't particularly hate my country, but the direction it is heading in is something I despise.

That being said, during the Great Depression, the U.S. had plenty of resources and a large industrial base for which it could grow its economy with(and did so by participating in a war with the intent of growing the economy, and dismantling money savers such as mass transit to get Americans to spend more money on transit against their will, starting a costly drug war that violates our rights but provides jobs to law enforcement, among other measures).

U.S. oil production peaked in 1971, and today, we import about 2/3 of the oil we use. Our industrial base has been outsourced and we are now a service economy; manufacturing in the U.S. is at levels not seen since the 1940s, but with a much higher population than then. Our resources have also declined, even our soil from the heavy use of industrial farming practices and monoculture. Our currency has nothing to back it but the faith that it has value, thanks to Nizxon succeeding in decoupling our dollar from the gold standard.

America is going to have to pull itself up by the bootstraps while it is crippled...

So far, our politicians have decided to try a different approach, mainly stealing from U.S. citizens through the tax system and re-distributing it to failed enterprises owned by the very wealthy... which will do nothing but delay our problems. Eventually these problems will have to be confronted, and the longer they have to grow, the worse the collapse will be when these problems finally are confronted.

If you really want to save America, the best places to start would be by wiping away personal debt(which is too high to ever be repaid), reducing government overhead as much as possible, returning the creation of currency to congress, and by getting independent from oil as much as possible. Even just one of these measures left unaddressed will eventually collapse this country.

[IamPinhead]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

grow its economy with(and did so by participating in a war with the intent of growing the economy

Hitler Who?

independence from oil

We've been using oil for hundreds of years now. It's going to be a hard habit to break, but currently our best bet is solar energy. Yes, it is currently too inefficient to be of any true use. But they've being working in Koln, Germany in order to increase the efficiency by changing the chemical make up of the photo-voltaic cells. The power option in which I place most of my favor is Nuclear Fusion. It will take a couple decades for the team working in the U.K. (or Florida, either way it's an international group if I'm correct) to make it truly cost and energy effective, but once it's perfected we'll only need hard water to solve our energy problems. There is another, most current solution, which is to actually return the CO2 and other pollutants to the ground, effectively repeating the fossil-fuel cycle. That's obviously a temporary fixer, but it's not taking away our independence from oil.
Our best bet is to make it an incentive not to use oil (gradually of course), such as increasing the environmental safety of alternative-fuel transportation and decreasing the overall industrial requirement for it. I mean, the most current example that should show an example of oil's pitfall is the whole Gulf business. This Cracked article should explain that in better detail than I can:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/a-probab...nfamous-moron/
And as for America pulling itself up crippled, all the better. Bring it on. Our country is not about to fall because of our economy and this oil business. These problems are tough, but I say tough ****. That's what we do, Cutter. We kick ass, take names, and then call those names back and say "You want some more, punk?"
What we need now is for the government to decrease the currency in circulation and try to instate demand-pull inflation. Our progressive tax isn't strict enough; Americans comprise a little over half of the top ten wealthiest people in the entire world. I'm not saying we could get rid of our external debt this way (12 trillion), but that's still a good example of the excess of wealth in our country. If we raise the progressive tax enough, revenue won't be so hard to come by. Our biggest problem in the realm of debt is credit irresponsibility. It's too easy to come by loans, and considering the tight monetary policy we should be using (how well did loose policy work, I forget, we need to start not throwing money all over the place.
On the subject of the gold standard, what you're forgetting is the instability of gold prices. We need something much more solid than that, and despite our fiat money system, we have the second most purchasing power in the world behind the European Union. The dollar wouldn't be so depreciated if we had some scarcity for it.

[Magus]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

wtf am i reading

[Sampson]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

On the subject of the gold standard, what you're forgetting is the instability of gold prices. We need something much more solid than that, and despite our fiat money system, we have the second most purchasing power in the world behind the European Union. The dollar wouldn't be so depreciated if we had some scarcity for it.

Gold prices are not unstable.

That's like putting on weight and then claiming the measurement of a pound is "unstable". The value of gold does not change, the value of paper in relation to gold does.

But yeah, Pinhead, the majority of your posts in this topic can simply be summarized with : "America, **** yeah!" That's not really an adequate argument.

[Sejon]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

Pinhead calling Terr "Cutter" really had me confused.

Anyway, I'm hoping that Europe will be able to sort itself out, especially as I'll be living right next door in the UK in a couple of months. I'm very much an EU-hopeful, particularly because its supranational existence runs counter to the insidious "modern-day tribalism" that is nationalism -- I think it's admirable that all these European countries who have bleak, war-torn pasts, and presumably have every right to hate each other's guts due to centuries-old grudges, are making an effort to join together and put aside their differences at the cost of yielding a fair share of their sovereign powers.

...But for the first time ever, I find myself being thankful that the UK hasn't been a part of the single currency, at least for now. Not that the sterling's doing stunningly well, but the euro-zone's been such a roller-coaster as of late. It's just been non-stop doomsaying since Greece's true debt numbers were finally revealed, and all this fear that Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Ireland (what's with all the Catholic-majority countries? Excepting Greece, of course) might follow suit and yadda-yadda. This likely could have been avoided had they all had tighter fiscal union to begin with, but the EU has to struggle to make for such a case.

It'll be interesting to see how things develop, as it's been made increasingly clear that either the euro-zone will become tighter and more unified, or it'll fall apart.

[Denmo]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

wall of text

*braces for Terr's monolith of a reply with citations, articles, and bulleted lists*

[Czechs Mex]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

Gold prices are not unstable.

That's like putting on weight and then claiming the measurement of a pound is "unstable". The value of gold does not change, the value of paper in relation to gold does.

But yeah, Pinhead, the majority of your posts in this topic can simply be summarized with : "America, **** yeah!" That's not really an adequate argument.

I dunno, couldn't the price of gold still be unstable, in terms of its value in relation to other goods? For example, if JPSInnovations™ invents some perfect substitute to gold at a fraction of the cost, isn't my stockpile of gold now essentially worthless? More generally, consumer preferences dictate the value of gold, and those can change. So it seems misleading to say the value of gold is unchanging by definition, as your "pounds" example implies.

So I guess what has to first be argued is why gold is more stable than fiat currency (probably not hard to do) and any other alternative. And this is all assuming that your objective in choosing a currency is to maximize stability, but in reality there could be other important dimensions as well (presumably there is SOME advantage to a fiat currency over the gold standard).

[Cutter De Blanc]

Re: Ron Paul warns that collapse of Greece "...is just the beginning."

And as for America pulling itself up crippled, all the better. Bring it on. Our country is not about to fall because of our economy and this oil business. These problems are tough, but I say tough ****. That's what we do, Cutter. We kick ass, take names, and then call those names back and say "You want some more, punk?"

waaaat

I don't think America will collapse