[Posted August 7th, 2009]
Trust is a complex thing: we all want to trust someone or something but we evolved as a species by tricking each other and anything else we can trick so we have very powerful paranoia feelings at the same time, we want to have faith in something. Trust in currencies based on paper is falling. So people are returning ad hoc, to the older gold system. Congress members are dismayed to discover their sleepy town hall meetings are now filled with yelling, enraged voters of various sorts. So they are not holding meetings. This is so stupid. I see the mainstream cutting back on debates and meetings because they want one-way communications where they give orders and we obey. Yet, hyper-paranoiac thinking is not the cure, either. We are in a vortex of emotions that grips our minds and causes chaos, not learning.
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Gold: Royal Mint doubles production of gold coins to meet surge in demand – Telegraph
Output climbed to 16,910 ounces from 8,030 ounces a year earlier, according to data obtained by Bloomberg News under a Freedom of Information Act request. First-half production jumped 86pc to 45,406 ounces, the figures show. .
Demand for physical gold as a store of value and hedge against inflation has increased as governments spend trillions of dollars to combat the worst recession since World War II. Bullion holdings in gold-backed exchange-traded products rose to records in the second quarter. Gold is trading about 7pc lower than the record $1,032.70 an ounce reached in March 2008. “There’s still interest in gold as a safe-haven asset,” said Stephen Briggs, an analyst at RBS Global Banking and Markets in London. “This whole sector will capture people who don’t have access to the futures market.” .
Individual investors typically buy gold coins, bars or shares in exchange-traded products. Holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest exchange-traded fund backed by bullion, were 1,120.55 metric tons on June 30, up 74pc from a year earlier. Investment in the fund, which reached a record 1,134.03 tons on June 1, was little changed from the first quarter.
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Output of official gold coins has doubled in one year? This news doesn’t surprise me. But note that the headlines says, ‘Surge in demand’ and not ‘Demand doubles.’ There is a certain amount of unease about gold reports in the media. That is, it conflicts with the ‘good times are coming thanks to bail out’ news. So the matter is elided or avoided rather than ruthlessly examined.
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It is obvious that something has gone wrong and that fixing it is a temporary thing, not systematic or in depth fixes. These fixes are patches on a worn tire, not a new set of rims. The above article mentions people not having access to futures markets. This is a profound misreading of the intentions and desires of people buying gold coins.
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The truth is, they have no TRUST in ‘futures markets’. Unlike organizations like Goldman Sachs that plays the gold futures markets, the people seeking coins want to handle and hold the physical gold because they anticipate profound problems with not just their own currencies but problems with ANY paper currencies! This is why they are not holding and handling say, yen or yuan or pounds or euros or dollars. These things are now seen as untrustworthy and even of potentially no future value.
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The loss of faith in the entire monetary/financial/government systems is not something governments can afford to ignore. Nor can governments ignore rising fear and anger about how we do business or who runs things.
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Town halls gone wild – Yahoo! News
Screaming constituents, protesters dragged out by the cops, congressmen fearful for their safety — welcome to the new town-hall-style meeting, the once-staid forum that is rapidly turning into a house of horrors for members of Congress.
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On the eve of the August recess, members are reporting meetings that have gone terribly awry, marked by angry, sign-carrying mobs anddisruptive behavior. In at least one case, a congressman has stopped holding town hall events because the situation has spiraled so far out of control.
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“I had felt they would be pointless,” Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) told POLITICO, referring to his recent decision to temporarily suspend the events in his Long Island district. “There is no point in meeting with my constituents and [to] listen to them and have them listen to you if what is basically an unruly mob prevents you from having an intelligent conversation.”
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In Bishop’s case, his decision came on the heels of a June 22 event he held in Setauket, N.Y., in which protesters dominated the meeting by shouting criticisms at the congressman for his positions on energy policy, health care and the bailout of the auto industry.
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Congress is corrupt. Alas, the mobs who are screaming at the Congressional representatives are not assailing them about reforming our political system. It is a good thing that demonstrators are yelling about the bailing out of the biggest banking houses. There is still a long ways to go from organizing demonstrations and ideological developments with which one can build a political movement that can truly contest for power.
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That is, a movement has to have shape and form. Fox TV has tried to take over the tea bag movement and tried to use it to attack only Democrats. If the tea bag movement remains mainly anti-Democratic, it will simply be co-opted and used as a thug force rather than as a reform force. This is a great danger to the honestly angry people who have gone public with their anger.
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Now, we saw clearly, when Senator Kerry stood idle while a polite but persistent student questioned him about all these things but was silenced by being tasered repeatedly by cops. The politicians thought they had silenced loud demonstrators with this demonstration of state powers. Ask questions and you get tasered.
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But since then, people have figured out that our Congress has no desire to listen to any of us so individuals demanding answers are now replaced by MOBS demanding answers. And instead of reaching out more, Congress is now pulling back into a shell. No surprise.
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I have had to face down angry shouting in the past. I used to make speeches in places that are difficult, to say the least. And expect problems due to this. So when they arise, I am actually pleased, not angry. First step in dealing with a large and loud group is to ask them if they have any spokespersons. Usually, people choose someone to represent them. Then, you applaud the choice and ask them to come on stage and sit down and have a real discussion.
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Usually, people calm down and we then can review what are the issues. I had to deal with Al Sharpton’s group all the time and this is how I did it. It was amazing how quickly things are disarmed when this approach is used. The Congress members should practice this art form. It is not hard to do. The minute you say, ‘I understand your feelings’ is one step forwards only if it is followed by, ‘Please tell everyone what you think. I want to hear your ideas.’
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Then there can be a discussion. But the desire for a discussion is missing here. Congress wants us to give them money and votes and then to go away. One problem with our Congress being the same size in 2009 as it was in 1800 is how our individual votes have nearly vanished in power. That is, back in days of yore, each representative worked for far fewer voters. They got to know these voters as individuals, one by one. Today, they represent thousands and thousands of voters and therefore, meet virtually none of them while in office. In 1800 there was less than a million voters in the entire US. Today, there are over 70 million potential voters.
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As representation has plunged, voting participation has fallen, too. Many people see no point in voting. As rage grows over the lack of interface with our own Congress, this leaves demonstrations and other things as the only tools one can use. I remember when we did this same thing to Congressional representatives back during the Vietnam War, for example. In some places, antiwar demonstrators assail Representatives and Senators in this same way. Hammered on the right and the left, these ‘elected’ officials are in retreat. They want ‘meetings’ where nothing useful is discussed.
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Like during the Great Depression, both the left and the right will contest these things with the middle, more and more. Instead of being angry with demonstrators or avoiding them, Congress should be anxious to see more of these demonstrators. Of course, this is the LAST thing they want to do. They want us to shut up and go away. We have evolved into a system that has alienated many voters. People who scrapped together pennies they need for survival in order to put their own party into power are now seeing how little their elected representatives really care about them.
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Antiwar voters, for example, worked hard for Obama only to see him turn into a warmonger who is doubling and tripling our wars, making things even worse than under Bush! The cynicism and disgust this is creating on both the left and the right is going to ultimately cause an uprising like we see in Iran. Iran, like so many other dynamic political systems, roils with energy and hope for the future. We need this sort of energy here, to confront Congress, our media and the political system.
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Now, readers may think I am stupid because all week long, I have been begging people to beware of hyper-conspiracy thinking. This is because that sort of reflexive thinking style is undynamic (all things end up being the same thing) and it leads to despair, not energetic actions. Not to mention, it prevents careful analysis of disparate events and systems. System analysis is a very difficult process. It is very easy to fall into various ideological or psychological traps. An analyst must keep their heads and see all things at once so one doesn’t fall into reflexively explaining things the same way, all the time, even if the explanations are totally at odds with each other (for example, claiming that the ‘elites’ are deliberately spreading noxious viral flu germs and then simultaneously claiming that vaccinations are bad for our health and will kill us…how on earth are the ‘elites’ going to protect themselves if their flu shots are deadly to themselves???).
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The anger of the voters is very real and we are still in a democracy even though it has broken down, and to call off town hall meetings because people are angry is a stupid and cowardly thing for our ‘elected’ leaders to do. Another sign that Congress has ceased to operate as a means of public expression. I used to say, when leading demonstrators into meetings, ‘We would prefer to talk to you but not have you talk down to us or not talk about what we want to talk about.’ That is, if the town hall meeting were to happen, the conversation has to be about things we want to talk about, not what the politician wanted to talk about. So I support these demonstrators who are very noisy. May they be loud as possible until we get some real changes.
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Incidentally, supporters of these politicians are free to show up and be partisan at these town hall meetings. If they don’t care to show up, this is yet another sign, the politician is losing public support.
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The New York Time’s Failure of Understanding by Jacob G. Hornberger
In a July 29 editorial entitled “The Military Is Not the Police,” the New York Times stated, “It was disturbing to learn the other day just how close the last administration came to violating laws barring the military from engaging in law enforcement when President George W. Bush considered sending troops into a Buffalo suburb in 2002 to arrest terrorism suspects…. More needs to be done to ensure that the military is not illegally deployed in this country.”
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Unfortunately, the Times fails to understand the critical point: After 9/11 the president acquired the power to treat terrorism as either an act of war or a criminal offense, at his option.
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Thus, the likely reason the president ended up using law-enforcement personnel to arrest the Lackawanna Six was because in this particular case, he was opting to treat them as criminal defendants.
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But what the Times obviously doesn’t get is that if the president had chosen to treat the Lackawanna Six as enemy combatants in the global war on terrorism, then he would have had the authority to send the army to attack their position, kill them, take the survivors into military custody, whisk them away to a military dungeon, and keep them incarcerated until the end of the war. That’s the way war works!
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The US is a police state. We have draconian laws about personal matters such as drug consumption. Rich people like Michael Jackson, for example, have access to many drugs and are not arrested while masses of lesser people fall prey to addictions and are not rescued but rather, imprisoned. We know that people like to escape the woes of this world via various means. The state attempts at using force to control this is very expensive and nearly totally futile. For example, in Saudi Arabia, it is illegal to drink alcohol. So of course, this is what the populace does in excess whenever possible.
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Controlling what we eat, drink or our sex lives is an invasion of private space. I am not for forcing everyone to do anything, even getting vaccinations: if a segment of the population wants to die of disease, they may. They can die of drugs, have wild sex lives that mess themselves up, etc. This is our freedom of choice. On the other hand, the government has a vested interest in protecting children from all this. You can’t give any sorts of drugs or withhold medical intervention from children. Children have no choices, they are forced to live in whatever hell their own parents create for them.
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Frankly, balancing the freedoms we should be allowed in private and public control of our private lives is a critical issue that shifts over time, from one extreme to the other. Balancing all this is very, very tricky. Throughout history, the debate has raged about what is private and what is public. Our Founding Fathers debated this a great, great deal. This includes the issue of slavery which is a public issue for some and a private ownership issue for others. The Revolutionaries decided to shelve the entire debate about slavery and this was a tragic mistake. It still haunts us.
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South Korean police storm sit-in factory – Asia, World – The Independent
Helicopter-borne police commandos fought a pitched battle with militant strikers at an ailing South Korean automaker today, seizing all but one key building at its chaotic factory and increasing pressure on hundreds of protesters to give up.
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The dramatic raid at Ssangyong Motor Co.’s Pyeongtaek factory came after commandos overran other buildings the day before in an effort to end a standoff that has threatened South Korea’s fifth-largest automaker with insolvency.
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Ssangyong has been in court-approved bankruptcy protection since February amid falling sales and mounting red ink. Troubles have deepened in the past two months with hundreds of dismissed workers occupying the factory’s paint shop — said to be packed with flammable materials such as thinner— to protest massive layoffs.
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The police stormed the factory and there were fires and lots of mayhem. Korean workers and peasants fight very vigorously. They contest with the government over nearly everything. They are very loud and rude. And this is a sign of life! The police work for the State and the State works for the wealthy. But look at the difference between Japan and Korea! The South Koreans are loud, persistent and will fight tooth and nail while the Japanese go home and commit suicide when faced with identical conditions.
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When we had a contested election in 2000, to my shock, there were no demonstrations in DC warning the courts and the government to count the votes carefully. When the Supreme Court ruled that we really had no right to vote for President, there should have been riots. Instead, there was dead silence. That was a tragic mistake. Iranians rioted. We did not. Iran, incidentally, is held up as a fine example by our own media which hates it when we fight back, at home. Note the article about the ending of the town hall meetings: the article interviewed the Congress critters but no demonstrators! Typical, isn’t it?
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The Associated Press: Gunman at Pa. health club was bitter over women
George Sodini went to a sprawling L.A. Fitness Club on Tuesday night, turned out the lights on the “Latin impact” dance-aerobics class for women, and opened fire with three guns, spraying dozens of bullets before committing suicide.
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“He just had a lot of hatred in him and (was) hell-bent on committing this act, and no one was going to stop him,” Allegheny County Police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said Wednesday.
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His 4,610-word Web diary appeared to be a nine-month chronology of his plans to end his misery with a shocking act of carnage at his gym. He couldn’t understand why women ignored him, despite his best efforts to look nice. He wrote that he hadn’t had a girlfriend since 1984, hadn’t slept with a woman in 19 years.
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“Women just don’t like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one. Not one of them finds me attractive,” the 48-year-old computer programmer lamented.
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Week after week, we get news of massacres done by nut cases. These psychopaths are out of control. Many of them are right wingers who are racist or anti-semitic or hate women. When a private individual holding various ideological positions goes out and shoots people dead, they are now operating in the public. Displaced fear and hate is very common. People don’t coldly analyze things, they usually react emotionally. This guy, for example, couldn’t make a family because he had serious mental health problems. Instead of going to a doctor for help, he decided to act on his assumptions that women should be punished for his inability to attract mates.
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There are many political forces that want to suppress women’s rights. Women have to resist these forces and widen our political powers. Yet, when women get in power, they often cease doing this. We see this all the time. For example, women in Congress are not fighting for civil rights for women in say, Saudi Arabia. Instead, women Congress members support the continuation of suppression of rights in Saudi Arabia for geopolitical advantages for the US.
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Brains of psychopaths are different, British researchers find – Times Online
Psychopathy is a disorder in which people struggle to control their impulses, and behave manipulatively, aggressively, dishonestly or exploitatively towards others. They rarely show remorse for their actions. . It is strongly associated with criminal behaviour and recidivism, and psychopaths are thought to make up about 15 per cent of the UK prison population. Criminals who are psychopaths commit 50 per cent more offences than those who do not have the disorder. The origins of the condition are unknown, though genetic and social explanations have been proposed. It is generally diagnosed through psychiatric assessment and questionnaires.
. In the new research, a team led by Professor Declan Murphy, Michael Craig and Marco Catani, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London, compared the brain anatomy of pscyhopaths to that of ordinary people using a new scanning technique called diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI). They recruited nine men who had been diagnosed as psychopaths, through mental health services, including people who had convictions for attempted murder, manslaughter, multiple rapes and false imprisonment. None was currently serving a prison sentence. Their brains were scanned using DT-MRI, and the results compared with those obtained for normal volunteers of a similar age and IQ. The results are published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. . The team found that a white-matter tract called the uncinate fasciculus (UF), which connects parts of the brain called the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), differed significantly between the psychopaths and the control group. People who had been diagnosed with more extreme psychopathy showed greater degrees of abnormality in this tract. . Dr Craig said the results were interesting because of the function of the two brain regions connected by the UF. The amygdala is involved in emotional responses such as fear, disgust and pleasure, while the OFC is involved in higher decision-making.
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There are degrees of psychopathy. Actually, there is no such thing as a human that doesn’t have pathological impulses. We are the Killer Apes. We are proud of inventing stone/stick weapons that worked better than just sticks or just stones. Once we armed ourselves, we butchered any and all things in our vicinity. Our brains evolved around the idea of being able to kill at will. So the impulse to murder is extremely high in ourselves. We even butcher our own babies if they annoy us too much. We read about this all the time in the news, how enraged parents kill their own children for whatever reason.
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We vacillate between trying to think rationally and going insane due to rising emotions. Psychopaths manipulate our emotions especially the emotions attached to fight or flight: fear. The human brain shuts down when the hormones connected to fight or flight are released. These hormones surge through our bodies and make many organic changes and since one has to be reflexive, all ‘thinking’ ceases. Everything runs on autopilot.
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In antisocial psychopaths, the forebrain thinks a great deal but is gripped by the constant rage/fear emotional systems so all thoughts are attempts at justifying feeling rage/fear all the time. So we get the peculiar logic of insane systems. Dictators are very prone to this. They are, nearly by definition, insane with paranoia. The closer to the top, the more paranoid people become. Paranoia can travel through an entire culture or economic system. This sense of paranoia can rise and fall and can be manipulated by many different sources or people. In bad economic times, paranoia rises to pathological levels in general populations. We see this in political movements which is why the third world writhes with this sort of thing due to being in nearly a constant Great Depression economic state.
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A belief that all lights in the sky that are not readily identifiable are aliens from outer space, spying on us, is a form of paranoid thinking, for example. When a guy thinks women hate him because they are conspiring to hate him is paranoia. Fighting off paranoia is very difficult. When we look at systems, we see conspiracies that are very real but we also see phantom conspiracies at the same time. This is why it is nearly impossible for people to figure out what is going on: our brains betray us at every turn due to how we evolved.
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One of the most powerful tools of organizers is to inspire hope for change. Which is why the Obama team focused on these themes. Of course, the rage we see today is due to no changes and little hope for changes. The pro-Obama supporters who feel let down are still not demonstrating. But they will, the disgust with this let down of leadership is rising rapidly. While on the right, there is seething rage. Which is very unfocused since it clings to the idea that someone like that loser, Palin, is actually heroic and smart and will fix messes she and her pals created.
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Will a real leader show up? This is a pressing question. One, our media doesn’t want to know the answer.
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[Posted August 7th, 2009]
Jagdish Khaitan, A men in Uttar Pradesh India is going to open a coin museum. This numismatist from Gorakhpur boasts of a coin collection with hundreds of coins from different eras in Indian history and from abroad. Khaitan’s collection covers a lot from the interesting numismatic history of India. His collection features coins from the time of Mughal emperors such as Akbar, Humayun, and Shah Jahan, and from the time of Sher Shah Suri, Mohammed Tuglaq, Alauddin Khilji of the Delhi Sultanate. He also has coins from around a 100 countries, big and small, from all over the world.
This is what I found about Mughal coinage history from RBI Monetary Museum website:
Technically, the Mughal period in India commenced in 1526 AD when Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodhi, the Sultan of Delhi and ended in 1857 AD when the British deposed and exiled Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor after the great uprising. The later emperors after Shah Alam II were little more than figureheads.
 The most significant monetary contribution of the Mughals was to bring about uniformity and consolidation of the system of coinage throughout the Empire. The system lasted long after the Mughal Empire was effectively no more. The system of tri-metalism which came to characterise Mughal coinage was largely the creation, not of the Mughals but of Sher Shah Suri (1540 to 1545 AD), an Afghan, who ruled for a brief time in Delhi. Sher Shah issued a coin of silver which was termed the Rupiya. This weighed 178 grains and was the precursor of the modern rupee. It remained largely unchanged till the early 20th Century. Together with the silver Rupiya were issued gold coins called the Mohur weighing 169 grains and copper coins called Dam.
Where coin designs and minting techniques were concerned, Mughal Coinage reflected originality and innovative skills. Mughal coin designs came to maturity during the reign of the Grand Mughal, Akbar. Innovations like ornamentation of the background of the die with floral scroll work were introduced. Jehangir took a personal interest in his coinage. The surviving gigantic coins, are amongst the largest issued in the world. The Zodiacal signs, portraits and literary verses and the excellent calligraphy that came to characterise his coins took Mughal Coinage to new heights.
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Uttar Pradesh numismatist mulls over a coin museum
Daily India.com
From ANI
Gorakhpur (UP), July 31: Jagdish Khaitan, a numismatist from Gorakhpur boasts of a coin collection with hundreds of coins from different eras in Indian history and from abroad.
With a collection growing each day, he is going to open a coin museum. 7-year-old numismatist has been relentlessly collecting coins since 1956, when he went as a student to the Benaras Hindu University and was influenced by fellow students collecting stamps.
Khaitan’s collection covers a lot from the interesting numismatic history of India. His collection features coins from the time of Mughal emperors such as Akbar, Humayun, and Shah Jahan, and from the time of Sher Shah Suri, Mohammed Tuglaq, Alauddin Khilji of the Delhi Sultanate. He also has coins from around a 100 countries, big and small, from all over the world.
    
"I have coins belonging to the ancient, medieval and modern times. I also have coins from the Delhi Sultanate, Mughal period, various states of India, and various countries of the world. I have coins from almost 100 countries," he said.
Bought, bartered, from old shops, coin exchangers, Khaitan has gone through various odds to make his unique collection.
Sometimes inviting ridicule from his family for spending too much time with his coins, or just losing himself in search of a coin, Khaitan takes it all in his stride. By Pawan Kumar(ANI) Source: DailyIndia.com, RBI Monetary Museum
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I wish I have coins belong to the ancient and medieval times like Khaitan. Some friend offer me his ancient coin collection long time ago but I really don’t know how to check their value and authenticity. I also wish Kaitan Coin Museum dreams will be fulfill one day. Its not that hard to open a coin museum, I guess. The hard part is to make sure your coins are not missing or stolen by your visitor. One of my numismatist friend is going to India this month. Any of you have been going to India? Every romantic couples would like to visit Taj Mahal once, right?
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[Posted August 7th, 2009]
by Murray N Rothbard
The Freeman (September 1995)
Money is a crucial command post of any economy, and therefore of any society. Society rests upon a network of voluntary exchanges, also known as the "free-market economy"; these exchanges imply a division of labor in society, in which producers of eggs, nails, horses, lumber, and immaterial services such as teaching, medical care, and concerts, exchange their goods for the goods of others. At each step of the way, every participant in exchange benefits immeasurably, for if everyone were forced to be self-sufficient, those few who managed to survive would be reduced to a pitiful standard of living.
Direct exchange of goods and services, also known as "barter", is hopelessly unproductive beyond the most primitive level, and indeed every "primitive" tribe soon found its way to the discovery of the tremendous benefits of arriving, on the market, at one particularly marketable commodity, one in general demand, to use as a "medium" of "indirect exchange". If a particular commodity is in widespread use as a medium in a society, then that general medium of exchange is called "money".
The money-commodity becomes one term in every single one of the innumerable exchanges in the market economy. I sell my services as a teacher for money; I use that money to buy groceries, typewriters, or travel accommodations; and these producers in turn use the money to pay their workers, to buy equipment and inventory, and pay rent for their buildings. Hence the ever-present temptation for one or more groups to seize control of the vital money-supply function.
Many useful goods have been chosen as moneys in human societies. Salt in Africa, sugar in the Caribbean, fish in colonial New England, tobacco in the colonial Chesapeake Bay region, cowrie shells, iron hoes, and many other commodities have been used as moneys. Not only do these moneys serve as media of exchange; they enable individuals and business firms to engage in the "calculation" necessary to any advanced economy. Moneys are traded and reckoned in terms of a currency unit, almost always units of weight. Tobacco, for example, was reckoned in pound weights. Prices of other goods and services could be figured in terms of pounds of tobacco; a certain horse might be worth eighty pounds on the market. A business firm could then calculate its profit or loss for the previous month; it could figure that its income for the past month was 1,000 pounds and its expenditures 800 pounds, netting it a 200 pound profit.
Gold or Government Paper
Throughout history, two commodities have been able to outcompete all other goods and be chosen on the market as money - two precious metals, gold and silver (with copper coming in when one of the other precious metals was not available). Gold and silver abounded in what we can call "moneyable" qualities, qualities that rendered them superior to all other commodities. They are in rare enough supply that their value will be stable, and of high value per unit weight; hence pieces of gold or silver will be easily portable, and usable in day-to-day transactions; they are rare enough too, so that there is little likelihood of sudden discoveries or increases in supply. They are durable so that they can last virtually forever, and so they provide a safe "store of value" for the future. And gold and silver are divisible, so that they can be divided into small pieces without losing their value; unlike diamonds, for example, they are homogeneous, so that one ounce of gold will be of equal value to any other.
The universal and ancient use of gold and silver as moneys was pointed out by the first great monetary theorist, the eminent fourteenth-century French scholastic Jean Buridan, and then in all discussions of money down to money and banking textbooks until the Western governments abolished the gold standard in the early 1930s. Franklin D Roosevelt joined in this deed by taking the United States off gold in 1933.
There is no aspect of the free-market economy that has suffered more scorn and contempt from "modern" economists, whether frankly statist Keynesians or allegedly "free market" Chicagoites, than has gold. Gold, not long ago hailed as the basic staple and groundwork of any sound monetary system, is now regularly denounced as a "fetish" or, as in the case of Keynes, as a "barbarous relic". Well, gold is indeed a "relic" of barbarism in one sense; no "barbarian" worth his salt would ever have accepted the phony paper and bank credit that we modern sophisticates have been bamboozled into using as money.
But "gold bugs" are not fetishists; we don’t fit the standard image of misers running their fingers through their hoard of gold coins while cackling in sinister fashion. The great thing about gold is that it, and only it, is money supplied by the free market, by the people at work. For the stark choice before us always is: gold (or silver), or government. Gold is market money, a commodity which must be supplied by being dug out of the ground and then processed; but government, on the contrary, supplies virtually costless paper money or bank checks out of thin air.
We know, in the first place, that all government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer. Would we prefer to have shoes produced by competitive private firms on the free market, or by a giant monopoly of the federal government? The function of supplying money could be handled no better by government. But the situation in money is far worse than for shoes or any other commodity. If the government produces shoes, at least they might be worn, even though they might be high-priced, fit badly, and not satisfy consumer wants.
Money is different from all other commodities: other things being equal, more shoes, or more discoveries of oil or copper benefit society, since they help alleviate natural scarcity. But once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed. Since the only use of money is for exchange and reckoning, more dollars or pounds or marks in circulation cannot confer a social benefit: they will simply dilute the exchange value of every existing dollar or pound or mark. So it is a great boon that gold or silver are scarce and are costly to increase in supply.
But if government manages to establish paper tickets or bank credit as money, as equivalent to gold grams or ounces, then the government, as dominant money-supplier, becomes free to create money costlessly and at will. As a result, this "inflation" of the money supply destroys the value of the dollar or pound, drives up prices, cripples economic calculation, and hobbles and seriously damages the workings of the market economy.
The natural tendency of government, once in charge of money, is to inflate and to destroy the value of the currency. To understand this truth, we must examine the nature of government and of the creation of money. Throughout history, governments have been chronically short of revenue. The reason should be clear: unlike you and me, governments do not produce useful goods and services that they can sell on the market; governments, rather than producing and selling services, live parasitically off the market and off society. Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation. In older and saner times, indeed, the king was able to obtain sufficient revenue from the products of his own private lands and forests, as well as through highway tolls. For the State to achieve regularized, peacetime taxation was a struggle of centuries. And even after taxation was established, the kings realized that they could not easily impose new taxes or higher rates on old levies; if they did so, revolution was very apt to break out.
Controlling the Money Supply
If taxation is permanently short of the style of expenditures desired by the State, how can it make up the difference? By getting control of the money supply, or, to put it bluntly, by counterfeiting. On the market economy, we can only obtain good money by selling a good or service in exchange for gold, or by receiving a gift; the only other way to get money is to engage in the costly process of digging gold out of the ground. The counterfeiter, on the other hand, is a thief who attempts to profit by forgery, for example, by painting a piece of brass to look like a gold coin. If his counterfeit is detected immediately, he does no real harm, but to the extent his counterfeit goes undetected, the counterfeiter is able to steal not only from the producers whose goods he buys. For the counterfeiter, by introducing fake money into the economy, is able to steal from everyone by robbing every person of the value of his currency. By diluting the value of each ounce or dollar of genuine money, the counterfeiter’s theft is more sinister and more truly subversive than that of the highwayman; for he robs everyone in society, and the robbery is stealthy and hidden, so that the cause-and-effect relation is camouflaged.
Recently, we saw the scare headline: "Iranian Government Tries to Destroy US Economy by Counterfeiting $100 Bills". Whether the ayatollahs had such grandiose goals in mind is dubious; counterfeiters don’t need a grand rationale for grabbing resources by printing money. But all counterfeiting is indeed subversive and destructive, as well as inflationary.
But in that case, what are we to say when the government seizes control of the money supply, abolishes gold as money, and establishes its own printed tickets as the only money? In other words, what are we to say when the government becomes the legalized, monopoly counterfeiter?
Not only has the counterfeit been detected, but the Grand Counterfeiter, in the United States the Federal Reserve System, instead of being reviled as a massive thief and destroyer, is hailed and celebrated as the wise manipulator and governor of our "macroeconomy", the agency on which we rely for keeping us out of recessions and inflations, and which we count on to determine interest rates, capital prices, and employment. Instead of being habitually pelted with tomatoes and rotten eggs, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, whoever he may be, whether the imposing Paul Volcker or the owlish Alan Greenspan, is universally hailed as Mr Indispensable to the economic and financial system.
Indeed, the best way to penetrate the mysteries of the modern monetary and banking system is to realize that the government and its central bank act precisely as would a Grand Counterfeiter, with very similar social and economic effects. Many years ago, the New Yorker magazine, in the days when its cartoons were still funny, published a cartoon of a group of counterfeiters looking eagerly at their printing press as the first $10 bill came rolling off the press. "Boy", said one of the team, "retail spending in the neighborhood is sure in for a shot in the arm".
And it was. As the counterfeiters print new money, spending goes up on whatever the counterfeiters wish to purchase: personal retail goods for themselves, as well as loans and other "general welfare" purposes in the case of the government. But the resulting "prosperity" is phony; all that happens is that more money bids away existing resources, so that prices rise. Furthermore, the counterfeiters and the early recipients of the new money bid away resources from the poor suckers who are down at the end of the line to receive the new money, or who never even receive it at all.
New money injected into the economy has an inevitable ripple effect; early receivers of the new money spend more and bid up prices, while later receivers or those on fixed incomes find the prices of the goods they must buy unaccountably rising, while their own incomes lag behind or remain the same. Monetary inflation, in other words, not only raises prices and destroys the value of the currency unit; it also acts as a giant system of expropriation of the late receivers by the counterfeiters themselves and by the other early receivers. Monetary expansion is a massive scheme of hidden redistribution.
When the government is the counterfeiter, the counterfeiting process not only can be "detected"; it proclaims itself openly as monetary statesmanship for the public weal. Monetary expansion then becomes a giant scheme of hidden taxation, the tax falling on fixed income groups, on those groups remote from government spending and subsidy, and on thrifty savers who are naive enough and trusting enough to hold on to their money, to have faith in the value of the currency.
Spending and going into debt are encouraged; thrift and hard work discouraged and penalized. Not only that: the groups that benefit are the special interest groups who are politically close to the government and can exert pressure to have the new money spent on them so that their incomes can rise faster than the price inflation. Government contractors, politically connected businesses, unions, and other pressure groups will benefit at the expense of the unaware and unorganized public.
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/taking-money-back-part-i/
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/index.html
Topic: Gold Coins, coin collecting, coin prices |
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[Posted August 7th, 2009]
How to Buy (Buying) Silver A Comprehensive Guide
I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old. My grandparents would take care of my brother and me for the Summer up in Northern Vermont. During one of our stays my grandparents decided to pack everything up (all of their material posessions) that they didn’t want and try to sell them at a local flea market that was nestled on a nearby mountain. One morning we packed up all their old antique furniture, old electronics, and other collectors items and set off to try to sell everything. We got there early (around 6am), unpacked everything, and the day began. Being young and cute, many of our products quickly sold with me manning the tables and pushing our wares. Around noon, the traffic slowed down and I decided to venture out to the other tables to see what was available. I had some cash – the cash my grandparents promised me for helping them with the sale – and so decided to make some strategic purchases. The first thing I noticed was a great big glass display case of coins at a nearby table. There was a large round silver coin, essentially a giant penny made of silver that I absolutely had my heart set on.
Being a coin collector I immediately asked the vendor “how much for that silver coin?”
“That coin there is $15,” he replied.
“Shit!” I thought in my head I don’t have $15… I only have $5! How am I going to do this. I asked the man if the price was negotiable, if he was willing to take $10. “Sure, for you little man, I’ll sell it for $10.” Okay, I was half-way there. I told him I would be back with the money.
I scoured surrounding tables and eventually found, and bartered down, a nice set of antique dishware for my available $5. I then took the goods back to my table and was able to promptly sell it for $10. I had doubled my money from $5 to $10 in the course of 30 minutes, and I then took my new found riches to vendor next door and purchased the giant silver penny for $15. To this day I still have my silver!
And that is how you buy silver!
Okay, so you aren’t 6 years old. And you don’t have the opportunity to purchase Silver in the mountains of Vermont at a hooky flea market. What are you to do? Thankfully there are a number of resources to quell your desire for silver. Many currently in the market believe that Gold, although it will still rise, possibly even exponentially, does not have the meteoric capacity that silver has. At roughly $13.50 an ounce spot price for silver, it is a much more easily assesible metal and it’s lower denominations may come in handy should the world’s fiat currencies completely lose their value .
Where to Buy Silver
I’m a bit biased, working (and purchasing) on the web for so long I understand the power of the digital market place. In a local community a vendor may deal with dozens of competitors, online there are hundreds if not thousands of retailers competing for a slice of the pie (albeit a larger pie) and so prices online tend to be a lot less expensive when it comes to certain items. Additionally, the efficiency that computers lend themselves to mean orders can be easily processed, shipped, and distributed with little or no over head. So where do you buy silver?
Online!
For example, we offer the ability to purchase three types of silver:
Silver Rounds – Silver Rounds resemble most other coins, but they are not issued by the mint of any country and are therefore not recognized as legal tender. They are privately minted and may have any number of designs. These, like the giant penny I purchased, are solely valued based on their weight and value of the underlying silver. For this reason these are usually the least expensive of the 3 options. You are not paying any kind of premium for the location of the mint, and their ability to be used as legal tender.
American Silver Eagle – Minted from 1988 to the present the design on the obverse of these coins was taken from the classic “Walking Liberty” design by which had originally been used on the half-dollar coin of the United States from 1916 to 1947, while the reverse portrays a heraldic eagle. This is the official silver bullion coin of the United States and has several highly collectible mintings. This is probably one of the most recognizable coins (be it silver of gold) in the world.
Canadian Maple Leaf – Resembling both it’s silver and gold counterparts, the Canadian Silver Maple Leaf program began in 1988. It features the same obverse and reverse as the other Maple Leaf designs, but certain versions have slight variations. These include: proof (1989 only), privy marks, colored maple leaf (has a different design than regular maple leaf) and the holographic enhancement 5 coin set.
Things to Look Out For When Buying Silver
Shipping & Storage – What kind of shipping and/or storage options are offered. Regardless of where you purchase these are key questions. Additionally shipping prices, much like the brokerage and trading transactions for stocks affect your bottomline. The more you pay for shipping, the less your potential gain in value should the silver move up. Keep a keen eye on these factors as well as shipping insurance.
Quality & Age – If you are buying newly minted silver coins (less than 25 years old) or silver bullion you don’t have a lot to worry about, but get reassurance from the company you go with on the quality of the silver being provided. Finally, if the coins are investment/collectors coins, make sure to verify grading before finalizing the purchase.
Topic: Gold Coins, coin collecting, coin prices, silver coins |
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[Posted August 7th, 2009]
Nowadays, the best possible way to buy gold coin and gold bullion is to buy online which is quite easy and is delivered right at your doorstep. Now, there are aurum advisors online resources for gold coin and gold bullion. They are GoldCoinsGain.com. Nowhere else will you find such easily accessible information on just about every physical gold topic under the sun. From there, you can see many types of gold coin and gold bullion.
There are some options for gold IRA investment:
• Bullion Bars - actual, physical gold bars, these can cost ten grand, depending on the price of an ounce of gold.
• Coins - again, an actual physical entity, but only some kinds of gold coins can be held in an IRA gold. They can’t be collectible, and they don’t need to be proof. More details on gold coins can be found on the web - but make sure they’re not rare or collectible if they will be held in an IRA.
• Gold Exchange - Trade Funds - derivatives that track the up and down of gold ounce value.
• Gold Certificates- essentially a document proving that your IRA owns X amount of bullion held somewhere.
For those who need to know how to put gold in an IRA, they are taking possession of your IRA gold is qualified as a distribution. Under that circumstance, the IRS requires that a possible penalty and the appropriate taxes be paid. To avoid the penalty and taxes you want to have your gold stored at a depository through the IRA custodian we provide. Beside on that, we also must to know how to put gold in my IRA. You have to be careful when you buy some gold coin and gold bullion.
Mostly, Investors are placing physical gold in IRA’s. With the global economic environment growing more and more uncertain, gold has become the first alternative for IRA, gold 401k, gold 403b, and pension plans.
So, just remember GoldCoinsGain.com when you need to buy gold coin and gold bullion!!
Topic: Gold Coins, coin collecting, coin prices |
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[Posted August 2nd, 2009]
Have you ever see coin been used to create a fine arts. This beautiful arts compile by Threndhunter magazine in their website. If you’re coin collector like me, it is an amazing thing what people do with their coin collection. Threndhunter magazine show 12 coins creation by an artist from around the world. This show how money can be used for things other than spending. From tools made of money and money sculptures to coin operated lighting and portable micro safes, there seems to be a lot of ways coins can be used that don’t involve spending. Here is some of the creations that I like.
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Niso Maman coins sculptures
 Niso Maman is a renowned Israeli sculptor often referred to as a modern day Rodin. He captures the curves of the human body through sharp, metal materials. It is his use of contrast between form and medium that makes Maman’s work stand out. His torso sculpture made entirely of coins retains a uniquely human feel, and looks as though a real woman lies beneath the sculpture.
“Niso’s sculptures speak of understated motion and grace,” Onnesimo says. “The three dimensional harmony of Niso’s sculptures have resulted in works of astounding emotion which remain unique in the art world.”
If you have an appreciation for fine art, or simply love the human form, Niso Maman is your man. ————————————————————————————————-
Tools made of Money
Instead of stashing her relatively useless pennies in a jar in the closet, Stacey Lee Webber is creating sculptures from them. In this collection, titled “The Craftsmen Series,” Webber has formed her coins into antique looking hammers, saws and screwdrivers. The details are amazing; check out the saw blade, I think it would actually cut wood.
Stacey Lee has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently resides in Chicago.
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Wear your investment
Wear your riches on your sleeve. Japan’s largest bullion house showed off a gleaming gown which is covered with hundreds of gold coins. The 8 kilos (18 pounds) dress was created by Tanaka Kikinzoku Jewellery K.K. using 325 Austrian gold coins issued to commemorate the Vienna Philharmonic and is valued at 30 million yen ($275,000). The bullion house does not plan to sell the gown, but it said it would entertain any serious offers. Two men’s jackets also using gold coins, together valued at about 127 million yen, were created.
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Money sculpture
Effectively showcasing the physical beauty of money, these beautiful sculptures created using coins and banknotes are the work of London-based artist Justine Smith. On her personal website, Smith describes her work as an exploration of our relationship with money and our response to it—politically, morally and socially.
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Penny Jewelry
The recession makes people rethink all of their spending, and no matter how pretty jewelry is, our spending on it takes a hit as well. Designers and DIYers alike have all considered this change and started creating penny jewelry. Stacey Lee Webber, Nina Gibson, Kessef, and Lucky Accessories have all created versions of the look, with necklaces, bracelets and even cuff links made from shiny pennies, as spotted by Trend de la Creme. DIYers with some talents with metal can easily recreate the look for less, making it a great recession look. So ravage your change drawer and make some penny jewelry!
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Furniture made of coins
Chair worth $750 sells for $29,000. How does that happen? When you take 1500 half-dollar coins and make 7000 welds to form the money into a curvaceous 50 cent piece of furniture. There is no form supporting the coins. Think Ole Fitty new about this? The chair weigh 58 pounds. The minimal frame and legs are stainless.
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Pennies as Floor Tiles
The Standard Grill in The Standard Hotel New York has a distinct flooring system, as it is covered in coins. The floor is literally tiled in thousands of copper pennies, adding a unique vibe to the place. I don’t think having a floor covered in coins is very hygienic for a restaurant, but it certainly looks cool! I wonder how much it cost?
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I like the Pennies as the floor tiles. I am imagining now how my house will be with Malaysia 1 sen as a tiles. I think the cost would be most cheaper then other kind of tiles in the market nowadays but the only problem is how to clean it? Sorry if I am talking about fine art in my blog for today. I just love to see this creation by other people using money as their medium. I know one Shop in Malaysia create a ring from a coin. Will be sharing a story about that shop later if I am lucky enough to take picture of their creation. So which one of this fine arts do you like the most? Do you have something similar in your collection?
Topic: Gold Coins, silver coins |
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[Posted August 2nd, 2009]
By David Liechty
In 1863, Congress authorized the Treasury to receive “deposits of gold coin and bullion” in exchange for “certificates” payable on demand, having quasi-legal-tender status (§5, 12 Stat. at 711) (Act of 3 March 1863, ch. 73, 12 Stat. 709 ). Consistent with the spirit of the times, Congress allowed the Treasury to issue gold certificates in excess of physical holdings by 20% (id.). These fractional-reserve gold certificates were discontinued in 1875, but non-fractional-reserve certificates were authorized in 1882 and 1900.
In the 1878 Bland-Allison Act, Congress authorized issue of silver certificates, as well, in exchange for deposited coin (Act of 28 February 1878, ch. 20, §3, 20 Stat. 25, 26 ), and in the Silver Purchase Act of 1890, Congress required the Treasury to purchase silver bullion directly using silver certificates (Act of 14 July 1890, ch. 708, §§1-3, 26 Stat. 289, 289). These certificates were originally redeemable in either silver or gold coin, at the Treasury’s discretion, but in the Coinage Act of 1900, redemption was restricted to gold (Act of 14 March 1900, ch. 41, §7, 31 Stat. 45, 47).
Fourteen years after the start of the Civil War and suspension of specie payment, and ten years after the end of the war, Congress passed the Resumption of Specie Payments Act of 1875 (Act of 14 January 1875, ch. 15, 18 Stat. 296). In this act, Congress directed the Secretary of the Treasury to resume “rede[mption], in coin, [of outstanding] United States legal-tender notes”, but set the date for resumption to begin at January 1, 1879. When Greenbacks eventually became redeemable, their value increased until it was nearly at par with silver coin, which then came back into circulation.
Coinage during this period became a battle ground between competing political and commercial interests. In the Coinage Act of 1873 (Act of 12 February 1873 ch. 131, 17 Stat. 424 ), Congress shifted “the unit of value” from the silver dollar to the “one-dollar [gold] piece”, introduced a heavier silver “trade-dollar”, discontinued coinage of the 1837 “standard” silver dollar, and maintained free coinage for gold while requiring payment for the full cost of silver coinage. This scheme did not last long, however, with Congress dropping the legal-tender status of the “trade-dollar” in 1876 (J. Res. No. 17, 22 July 1876, §2, 19 Stat. 215, 215), and again authorizing a “standard” silver dollar in the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 (Act of 28 February 1878, ch. 20, 20 Stat. 25). The “trade-dollar” was abandoned altogether in 1887.
The Silver Purchase Act of 1890 directed Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver using certificates as outlined above, but coinage of this silver was limited to the amount needed to actually redeem presented certificates (§3, 26 Stat. at 289). In another 1890 act, Congress “prohibited” the gold “dollar” created as the “unit of value” in 1873 and withdrew it from circulation (Act of 26 September 1890, ch. 945, 26 Stat. 485). In 1893, Congress repealed the 1890 silver bullion purchase (Act of 1 November 1893, ch. 8, 28 Stat. 4), and in 1898 it directed Treasury to coin the bullion already purchased and introduce it into circulation (Act of 13 June 1898, ch. 448, §64, 30 Stat. 448, 467).
The statutory “unit of value” pendulum swung back to gold in the Coinage Act of 1900. Congress reestablished the 1873 “one-dollar [gold] piece” as the “standard unit of value”, and required that all other “forms of money issued or coined by the United States shall be maintained at a parity of value with this standard” (Act of 14 March 1900, ch. 41, §1, 31 Stat. 45, 45). This established the “gold standard.” As indicated above, this act made notes issued under the 1890 Act, previously payable in either gold or silver coin, payable in gold coin only, and it also authorized a general exchange of previously-issued bonds, payable in gold or silver, for bonds payable in gold only (§2, §11, 31 Stat. at 45, 48).
Maintaining silver coin “at a parity” with gold coin of specified value, in this case equal to the 1837 “standard” silver dollar, resulted in an arguably constitutional dual-metallic system, rather than the monometallic “gold standard” at which its supporters aimed (see Edwin Vieira, Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution (2002) at 527-529).
David Liechty is an attorney who is currently studying for a Phd in Constitution Studies. He is interning with Solari this summer.
See Parts (I), (II), (III), (IV),(V), (VI) and (VII)
Topic: Gold Coins, coin collecting, coin prices, silver coins |
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