BS: Obama caught in blatant lying

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: beardedbruce
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 06:47 PM

Forgive me , Lord, for what I am about to say:





Little Hawk, you are absolutely correct.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 06:57 PM

(smile)

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: robomatic
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 07:04 PM

Gold and silver have a lot of intrinsic value electrically. Silver is the best conductor of all the elements (leaving out that newfangled cold temperature superconducting stuff) and gold is the best contactor, so good that it actually gets used in a lot of electronics, just a couple of atoms worth of depth does the trick. I remember when you could wipe all the gold from the contacts with a sweep of a pencil eraser.

It's a shame they get used for currency when otherwise they're so useful.

And I'm not gonna make a point that gold leaf figures as a dessert coating amongst the well heeled of some cultures.

Robo who wonders if one can crap glitter.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 07:11 PM

You're absolutely right. I would have mentioned those practical uses of gold and silver, but I figured I'd said enough already.

The gold and silver leaf used in some Asian deserts is consumed in very small quantities, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. I've eaten that stuff once or twice when visiting Pakistani friends. It didn't seem to have any noticeable after-effects. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 07:22 PM

Well, lots of other stuff has intrinsic value, too... Why not just pick one of those???

(Well, Boberdz... We do... That is why a pound of silver costs more than a pound of sand... Both have value but one more than the other...)

What's that got to do with peggin' the value of currency to something arbitrary just because that arbitrary choice has some level of intrinsic value???

Nothin', at all... Currency standards are hogwash, primitive and tribal... They might have served the apes in 2001, A Space Oddessey but they are way past thier shelf life in a modern world...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 07:39 PM

Traditionally, if something real has been selected as a direct exchange for a unit of "money", then it was something that wasn't too easy to get, usually, but that people either needed or at least wanted. This explains why people don't use sand for money. Or grass. Or shit. ;-) It's too easy to find, and nobody much wants it.

You could definitely use water for units of money in a desert area, and it would work great. People in many parts of the ancient world used salt as money for the same reason...it was hard for them to get salt, and they needed it in their diet for health reasons. There was a huge trade in salt at that time, and caravans brought it from places like the Dead Sea to areas where the people could not easily obtain it.

The reasons people generally like gold and silver...as opposed to mud, grass, shit, flies, ordinary common stones, etc. are so obvious that there's no need explaining them.

People also like diamonds and other gemstones because they are rather rare and hard to get (And the diamond industry makes sure it stays that way!) and they look beautiful when polished. They may not be "useful", but they look lovely, and that is a use in itself. Even crows will steal shiny objects like that and put them in their nests, so it is not human beings alone who appreciate a supposedly "useless" item merely for its appearance.

Life is not a matter of "utility" or physical suvival alone! It also has an aesthetic side that is quite important in establising happiness in people. As soon as people have the survival part reasonably well in hand (at least for the moment), they start giving plenty of thought to all kinds of other values in life. Things like gold and silver jewellry help satisfy some of those other values.

There is a inner desire for perfection that drives people, and it goes way beyond just surviving. It gives us our concepts of beauty, grace, dignity, style, purity, and most of the other subtle values that make life worth living.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 08:15 PM

Well, gol danged... Why not four leaf clover??? People like them, too an' they are rare... And they is purdy, too... So I say, hey, why not have the value of printed moneys all tied to four leaf clovers...

No, no... Not four leaf clovers... Hey, LH, ya' ever see a Columbian Boa Constrictor... The way that the sun relects of its scales is like a milluion little prisms... I mean, beutiful, graceful, very stylish and pure... And, unlike, diamonds or gold, it is alive...

Hey, I'm for makin' Columbian boa constrictors the standard for all currencies...

I mean, this entire thing of assigning this universal value to stuff is really strange when you boil it down... They say that one man's trash is another's treasure... You know, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder... I kinda like that... It's romantic in the most classical and historical sense... But when one tribe assigns some object or substance so pure in it's beauty and wants the rest of the world to accept that object of substance as this universal basis of currency this is not unlike the apes (no, not chimps) in Space Odessy worshippin' first rocks and bones that could be used to harm and then to metal, which they didn't understand...

I mean, there is no rational basis in having currency backed by anything unless whatever you back it with is backed by... which is backed by... I mean, this silly thinkin'...

Want proof, LH???

BB agrees with you!!!

I rest my case...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 08:35 PM

Yeah, yeah... ;-) I think you're just being obstinate for the fun of it, Bobert.

I spent quite a bit of time looking for four leaf clovers when I was a kid...they were considered more valuable than the 3 leaf variety, naturally. And when I found one, I would press it in the pages of a book.

I agree about the Colombian Boa Constrictors...gorgeous! And you will find that they are quite pricy if you go to an exotic pet store. The reason they aren't used as an exchange for money is...

# 1 - A lot of people are afraid of snakes
# 2 - It isn't practical. Every try to put 15 or 20 Boas in your back pocket or your briefcase? Doesn't work! And they need to be fed and housed. Nope. Stupid idea...

But if you were a Plains Indian, then horses were way better than currency....

Bobert, do you realize that if I was a bank owner, I could instantly create $30 million in debt owing to ME by lending $30 million to some huge corporation? I could do that without really HAVING the $30 million in the first place! And I could charge interest too.

Can you do that? Can I? No. Because we are not a "bank". And no one would believe we had that $30 million unless it showed up first at the bank! But the bank IS the bank. If they lend $30 million, then no one doubts that it's there...even if it isn't. And the moment the corporation owes that $30 million to the bank...the bank is covered, and they just became richer by $30 million plus interest. And if the corporation goes belly-up and the bank is BIG enough, then the government will borrow MORE money from the banks and lend it to the big bank so it won't fail. They do this supposedly to "protect the public". ;-)

Guess who ends up paying the government's new debts to the banks whom they borrowed the bailout money from to keep the banks from failing when their pyramid scheme went KABLOOEY?

You and I do...through our taxes.

You see where this is going? The public always eventually pays the overall debt.

You see how you can create new money through others' debts if you are a bank?

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 08:55 PM

Yeah, LH... Yer on to me... Sorry, I'm just havin' a borin' kinda day and figured if I can't find someone here in the Mudpuddle to mess with then what am I to do seein' as the P-Vine has hid that jug of shine from me??? Now ya' know why I am a bluesman...

But yer right... Banks can lend money (not gold, not four leaf clovers or even snakes) to one another and bet with other folks that the the banks they lent it to won't repay the loan and then middle men come in and act as betting brokers and siphon off a big slice which then gets kicked back to all their banking friends... That's purdy much what is going on and then someone on the NPR radio says that these brokers "made" the money??? WTF??? Are they in the counterfiet business, 'er what??? They didn't make the money... They stole the money all legal and then the workin' stiffs have to chip in to repay the banks for the money that these hoodlums stole and...

...the beat goes on...

When credit defualt swaps are made illegal we will be takin' the first step toward correcting what is wrong with banking 'cuase all you have now is banks lending to each other like guys sittin' at a poker table and other rich folks sitting around "making" (ha) money bettin' on which back is going to repay which other band and which banks aren't...

Talk about silly??? This is sillier than the gold (or boa) standard...

B~

p.s. Poor ol' Obama ain't been able squeeze in a decent blatent lie between all this silly stuff...

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 11:30 PM

I guess my point was that if our societal structures collapsed, neither gold nor silver would be of much benefit to anyone. If a rich person had accumulated a massive amount in his or her treasury, it wouldn't do them a bit of good if the society that decided to agree about what its exchange value was no longer existed. At that point, food, water, shelter, land to grow food on, needed skills and knowledge, and physical labor would be the only things that had real value. People have to agree that things like gold and silver have exchange value. It's all a matter of what people agree to do. With the system we have now, people agree that trust in the monetary system is the only thing that the exchange depends on, so it has an agreed upon value. If the system collapsed, none of what we use as money would have any exchange value, but neither would gold or silver.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: GUEST,Kendall
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 07:08 AM

What has all this to do with O'Bama?

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Bobert
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 08:42 AM

Oh, I see that Barak is Irish this mornin... lol...

Really nothin, Capt'n... Just a side bar on Economics 201... Seems that LH, against all logic, thinks like Lyndon LaRouche on having a gold standard... Or some kinda standard... Hey, I hear he's into rocks so why not rocks???

Then Carol and I, who each passed Econ 201, are pointing out having a standard is like, ahhhhhh, wierd thinkin'...

Butg then again, it is Little Hawk and he does have some not-so-logical thinking on some things... Not many, mind you... But lets just say that he didn't have perfect attendence in school and leave it at that... *grin*...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 01:23 PM

It doesn't have much to do with Obama other than that he and George Bush both caved in to the banks, as usual. But I would not have expected anything different, so I'm not particularly shocked or anything.

What's so radical, Bobert, about proposing that paper money be restored to a certificate that is exchangable in precious metals...as it was back when we had Silver Certificates instead of Federal Reserve Notes? Remember?

I could take a paper dollar to the bank in 1960 and get a silver dollar for it! That was when the dollar still had some real value. You know what one of those silver dollars costs now in paper dollars?

You know what happened to paper money in Germany in the 20s? It became virtually worthless. One man had a gold coin that he had inherited, and he bought a large hotel with it at the height of the German economic crisis. Gold is real. Federal Reserve Notes and other such paper currency that is not legally redeemable in a guaranteed amount of some precious metal are not...they are Monopoly money.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 02:12 PM

I'm not in total disagreement with what LH is saying, Bobert. I just have some differences on some of the details.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 02:18 PM

Those old "Liberty" silver dollars were beautiful, by the way. I had a whole bunch of them. You could just go to the bank, give them a $20 bill, and walk home with 20 gorgeous old silver dollars from the 30s and 40s. Man, were those ever nice coins. I sure wish I had them now, cos they are worth a lot these days.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 04:15 PM

LH,

"with 20 gorgeous old silver dollars from the 30s and 40s"

No.

The last silver dollars in the US were the Peace type, from 1921 to 1935. They were going to make them again in 1964, and Denver made a few hundred thousand which were then melted back down.

The previous dollar was the Morgan from 1878 to 1904, then 1921.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Bobert
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 05:06 PM

Okay, LH... For one thing, coins are expensive to make... Do you realize that a danged penny cost 1.6 cents to make??? But if you were happy if the US minted a coin for every dollar in existence then you'd spend more than than a trillion dollars just to make you happy... With the stuff that we allready need to do don'tch think that would be silly??? And that is just the minting... Now throw in the transporting and storage of hundreds of tons of metal and yer now ralkin' about another trillion dollars... Oh yeah, ya' gotta pay a couple trillion to mint, move and store a few hundred tons of metal coins so if you insist on havin' it your way then yer gonna have to add a couple trillion more coinns to pay for the original coins and then, and then...

No, this insistence on yer part has some psyhological basis prolly related to yer toilet training 'er yer mom taking away yer teddy gear too early... I donno... I ain't no psychologist 'er nutin' but I have heard yer arguemnts before from the LaRouchies that used to infest the town where I had my business, Leesburg, Va... Yeah, they was all over that gold 'er silver standard too as if it was the magic bullet to solvin' all the world's problems...

Of course it's all just smoke and mirrors, gold/silver standard or not... Now back it with cannibus and you might get soemwhere with me but gold??? Nah... Silver??? Nah... Plastic??? Bad fir the environment... Copper??? Gotten too expensive... Pot metal??? Too heavy... Lead??? Kids would eat the coins and die... What else is there??? Hmmmmmmm??? Aluminum??? Then we'd have no beer cans... Can't have that... What else??? Kriponite??? Maybe....

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 06:28 PM

Teddy gear sounds kinky.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Greg F.
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 07:10 PM

Do you realize that a danged penny cost 1.6 cents to make???

Yeah, but it costs a great deal more than that to keep the U.S. one dollar bill in circulation.

If the U.S. would issue a $1.00 coin as standard currency & drop the paperdollar bill entirely, they'd save millions of dollars annually.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 07:15 PM

"If the U.S. would issue a $1.00 coin as standard currency & drop the paperdollar bill entirely, they'd save millions of dollars annually. "


Since 2000, they have been trying (Sacawagea and presidential series "gold" coins, made of a manganese brass alloy ). There HAS been a dollar coin, and they are trying to get them used- a dollar bill lasts 17 months, while a dollar coin lasts about 17 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Peter T.
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 08:16 PM

Gee, William Jennings Bryan lives.

Money is only what people believe in, and as long as they are deluded into believing in the United States -- and its capacity to keep going -- paper money will do: it is only as good as the belief in the governments that issue it. The idea that a gold standard or any other such standard will keep governments in line is a very old fantasy.   John Kenneth Galbraith (in his very funny book on money) makes the interesting point that America was built on a series of bank collapses and bubbles, and that is what made it so entrepreneurial -- in the ruins of all the risks, new things came along that fueled the next phase. Other countries (like Canada) were much more boring, and their banks were much less prone to invest in crazy schemes, which is why Canada is so low on the global innovation and research and development tables.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Greg F.
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 08:33 PM

There HAS been a dollar coin, and they are trying to get them used...

Thing is, if they ever expect to get the coin into general circulation, thay have to withdraw the $1.00 paper bill. Not exactly rocket science- just stop replacing the paper bills and/or - as they've done in the past with other paper currency- declare it not legal tender after a certain date.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Bobert
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 08:34 PM

Exactly my point, Peter T...

LH has this very romantic notion that if it was backed by metal that everyone would be happy and sing on key???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 01:07 AM

Oh, stop being so silly... ;-)

I am saying that the paper dollar had a much more solid and real and stable value back when it was a "Silver Certificate" than it does now as a Federal Reserve Note...because it was backed up then by reserves of precious metals and redeemable in same. It's now backed up by nothing but a promise and it's redeemable in nothing but itself. A good scheme if you are a legalized counterfeiter...which is what the Federal Reserve is.

I am NOT saying that all the trillions of present dollars supposedly out there (most of which are not paper bills, but just appear on some balance sheet or digital record) should have coins minted to back them up! Good God....there isn't that much gold and silver in the entire world.

There is a vast amount of utterly fictional money out there in play, and there's no way it can all be backed up, because it's a pipedream that was invented to generate debt and interest charges.

One would have to start over with a whole new currency...tremendously reduced in total numbers of "dollars" or whatever you called them from the present inflationary bubble.

I feel like I'm attempting to talk about dogs and cats here and the people I'm talking to are imagining that I'm talking about gods and tacks... ;-)

What happened to communication? Damned if I know. Maybe I'll just find some good books on the subject to recommend to you guys and give up trying to explain to you myself what the heck I'm talking about...

By the way, Canada has already eliminated both the paper dollar bill AND the paper 2 dollar bill, and replaced them both with $1 and $2 coins. It seems to work fine here. The country did not collapse. I believe it was done because it's cheaper in the long run to use the coins than it is to keep replacing the worn out paper bills. Coins last a long time. Bills don't.

(That's just a side issue to what I've been talking about. I mention it for its own interest's sake.)

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Bobert
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 07:30 AM

Well, dogs an' tacks, LH!!!

You mean, you want a reset??? Well, sheet fire, boy... I'm all for that... We could use a reset in anumber of areas... Like conflict resolution... Like cars without no style... I kinda likes the mini-skirt days, mah seff... You think you could get them back in while yer fiddlin' with a new currency???

But seriously, I think the Euro is a major step forward... I wouldn't be opposed to am international currency... Then the games that are played with currency value manipulatioons couldn't occur...

As for backing??? Brick of cannibus works fine for me... Plus is't natural and organic...

Seriously, there ain't nothin' that we could back it with that wouldn't seem silly unless it was something you could come up with that has no use whats-so-ever so that we aren't like having to shut down all the computers 'cause we need somethin' in' um to back currency... Good luck at fininding that...

But I agree... Sniff... That the good ol' days when a 35 bucks wouldget you an ounce of gold... I also liked them bigass fins on the Imperials and DeSotos...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 01:23 PM

You know what I think I'll do? I'll start a thread on banks and money and we can yak about it there. After all, it all started long before Obama, and will no doubt be continuing long after Obama, so I think it should have its own thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Riginslinger
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 07:38 PM

His lips were moving this morning!

Subject: RE: BS: Obama caught in blatant lying
From: Bobert
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 07:40 PM

Yeah, ya' noticed that Obama had flat out quit is blatent lieing ways and it's all because of us... Hey, lets give the man some room, ya' hear???

Yeah, we need a banking thread... No, we don't... We need a mini-shirt and big-fins-on-cars thread...