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I saw this insightful comment and will post it here.

How about this! If we took the power away from a bunch of secret bank mobsters to PRINT MONEY and instead backed it with gold or some other finite, precious commodity, the dollar would retain its value.

I'm sick and tired of this implicit tax that I have just because I *HOLD* a dollar. Read Greenspan's "Gold and Economic Freedom" essay. Once it's started, that money which is printed out can only be repaid by printing more money. This is the shabby key to the (corporate/social) welfare state that exists today.

The reference is here: http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html

I'm actually ok with fiat currency. It allows for adjusting the money supply for various reasons. The problem I have is with debt-backed fiat currency like teh Federal Reserve gives us. The USA basically borrows all of its money from the Fed. Why should a nation borrow all of its money, when it could print it itself? The US treasury could print money and spend it into existence, rather than us borrowing it into existence.

It's not a perfect system. But neither is the gold standard. I think reasonable people can disagree, but I haven't found anyone who agrees that we should borrow all our money. Of course, most people don't realize we borrow all of our money. Hence why I chose the sig I did.

I saw this insightful comment and will post it here.

How about this! If we took the power away from a bunch of secret bank mobsters to PRINT MONEY and instead backed it with gold or some other finite, precious commodity, the dollar would retain its value.

I'm sick and tired of this implicit tax that I have just because I *HOLD* a dollar. Read Greenspan's "Gold and Economic Freedom" essay. Once it's started, that money which is printed out can only be repaid by printing more money. This is the shabby key to the (corporate/social) welfare state that exists today.

The reference is here: http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html

Extremely simple explanation for global warming is *sunspots*:

http://www.321gold.com/editorials/hoye/hoye040909.pdf

NASA s latest report (March 2009) on sunspots is that there will be a massive ramp up of activity in 2010. It does not look that way to me nor the above author. Still another year or so is required to truly show the statistical trend.

Real science will prevail.

You borrowed $314 billion from foreign investors, and my buddy from Cuba will love this one, because you have borrowed $52.5 billion from Communist China. You have borrowed $122 billion from Japan. We now owe $1.3 trillion to foreign nations and investors, including $122 billion to Communist China. Tell me you are proud of that. Tell me the Republican majority is proud that we owe $122 billion to China and that $50 billion a year of American tax dollars go to pay interest on what we owe just to foreigners like the Communist Chinese.

Now in 2006, politicians are spending quicker than ever and the amount of debt China holds has gone up a bit

Currently, China is holding $769 billion, the vast majority of its foreign exchange reserves.

So for politicians rambling on about how US corporations are falling into line to please the Chinese, the fact that in order to keep these loans coming in the Government must be friendly to this communist country and still not recognize the democratic Taiwan.

There are bigger structural problems in the USA right now - an alarming statistic is that the average american household has $8k - $10k in credit card debt. This is incredible.

As dada21 already stated, this is the result of inflation. If you account for inflation, gold prices would have to rise to over $1266 per ounce to be at an 25 year high. More pondering on the subject.

They already are.

Ashtray outperforming 401k: http://www.321gold.com/editorials/nevalainen/neval ainen011006.html

Copper is at $2.1373 / lb today, meaning:

100 pre-1982 pennies (95% copper, 3.11 grams of copper, ignore the zinc as it is a small amount) are worth $1.39

(1982 is when they switched to the 95% zinc we have today.)

now if only I had a machine to sort out the pre and post-'82 pennies...

Here's retelling of some of Feynman's anecdotes about safecraking at Los Alamos.

Feynman's book is a very good read, and yes, he did complain about their security problems.