Have the monkeys blown it?

The anticipation and chronicle of the woes soon to befall humankind. If you don't wish to know about bad things about to happen to you then you probably don't want to be here. Otherwise, I recommend you read any numbered topics, like Peak Oil, in sequence. If you comment I suggest you use a nickname, I'd appreciate you being consistent in what you call yourself.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Efficient Money

"The US government currently borrows $5,000 a year on behalf of each US family, which it dares not tax for electoral reasons. This is the source of the budget deficit.That uncollected money remains in the hands of the family, which currently prefers buying foreign goods and spends $5,000 on them, producing the trade deficit. The foreign supplier sends the $5,000 back to the US by buying government bonds and American businesses. This money from abroad is the source of the fine-sounding US capital inflow."

It struck me as the most concisely accurate description of current US economics I'd seen so had to share it with you. From here: http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/tustain/2005/1205.html

I'll leave you and the theoretical economists to work out how many times that $5,000 'works' in the US economy but it's at least twice - once in the family budget (or is that in the Federal spend?) and once in foreign reinvestment back into the USA. If you begin to feel dizzy, sit down and congratulate yourself for beginning to understand. But in this high stakes game of fiscal musical chairs when the music stops we'll all fall down.

The article is by a goldbug, I'm not one of them ( I have a bit of a problem with the concepts of 'money' and 'property', though less than my problem with monotheism) but I'd bet that gold will more than double its current price of $500 within less than a handful of years - the printing presses of the US Fed make it almost inevitable. The article has some nice snippets of info too, for example: "Gold is famously useless in almost everything except that it cannot be made, and is reliably difficult to find. Even now if all the gold ever produced on Earth were formed into a single cube its edge would be less than 20 metres - 2 metres shorter than a tennis court. Annually mined production grows that cube by about 12 centimetres a year, and more than each year's production is used up by jewellers such that now 75% of that cube is fabricated in an art form worth several times its bullion value. "

I'm going to have lots more to say on the US and global economics later but I have a few more Peak Oil missives to post before I wander down that thorny lane. Hopefully I'll get a round tuit before my economic expectations come to pass - you would be wise to hope that takes a decade and yet remains true ;) . Meanwhile I strongly recommend this place:
http://www.financialsense.com/index.html
as the best resource online for attempting to inform people about what is really happening economically. I especially look forward to listening to their Saturday morning MP3 files. Though its balance is (realistically) less than optimistic, the site is HUGE and gives many differing views a chance to express themselves. It has true integrity.

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