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Money isn't real, folks. It is a fiction, and today even more virtual, because 90+% of the money exists only as digital bits stored in NonStop systems.

I know because I was one of a few who built those systems, then sold them to the banks, the credit companies, and the stocks/commodities exchanges.

Now I'll tell you a secret. That money is perfectly secure, as long as everybody has confidence in it. The world will end when you lose that confidence.

You Doomers and your doubts are what will end the good times for all of us.

KaiserJeep wrote:You Doomers and your doubts are what will end the good times for all of us.

You're confusing the people warning of danger with the danger itself.

Cheers!

Are some of you going to shoot the messengers because of the message. Lets face it, money as Kaiser himself confessed is now almost totally virtual and hanging by the thread of confidence. Well, what happens as more and more people realize that what is happening now is but one gigantic swindle. When QE is just for those "Too Big to Fail", when your money keeps losing purchasing power, when the stock market continues upward even as the prospects for millions continues downward. Because that is what is happening. And it is getting much worse as a key energy source that fuels economic activity is seizing up and rapidly degenerating. I speak of Oil. So, you think when all logic and sense points to an Economic System in the throes of decline and dysfunction, people are suppose to remain confident in the medium of exchange that this Economic System traffics in? When "growth" is based on speculative bubbles of irrational exuberance because no longer can growth happen organically and in a healthy way. Because that is what all those charts and graphs are really showing. And all some of you can say is hush, your predictions of doom have been wrong previously so happy times MUST continue. Do you really think people are blind to their own circumstances and that of their neighbors and the world at large to such a degree as to continue to have faith in an Economic System that is showing signs of rapid decline. At some point people will look at reality because they must or is plain as day. NOT because someone like me or a few others here told them too.

Economic systems don't fail because people lose confidence. People lose confidence because economic systems are out of balance. Using extraordinary measures to force systems back into balance only creates the illusion that the system is in balance. These attempts to thwart the organic evolutionary rise and fall of economies (as in massive debts on one side of the balance sheet) eventually fail, sometimes spectacularly.



.... but people will pretend as long as they can.

I meant exactly what I said. The virtual money stored in computers has real value today, it can be spent, exchanged for real estate, food, water, energy, etc. - all because you have total confidence that those digital bits represent value.

If you or somebody else were to realize that there is really nothing there - just a pattern of bits in a computer memory is the literal reality we are talking about - and you were successful in convincing everyone else of the real facts, then BANG the world will end.

So please don't publish any more FUD, at least not until I have had a few more years to feather my nest.

I mean, you were not under the impression that money was real, were you? It's only a way of keeping score in the game of life.

Don't worry Kaiser, few people visit this site and even less would take seriously Internet Savants like us. And NO, I never thought money was anything more than worthless paper and an accounting tool. But I do remember as I think you and others here, when the Greenback was backed by Gold. When companies and consumers borrowed on last resort not first option. When, the Markets were somewhat reflecting the state of the Economy. All that is gone, and we are left with mirages and smoke and mirrors. And profound corruption as it seems the well connected and knowledgable realize the Game is almost up. Witness the bunkers being purchased by the wealthy and those in the know. So, yes nothing left to do for us all than too live for today and for yourself and your loved ones. I am doing the same.

KaiserJeep wrote: .........

So please don't publish any more FUD, at least not until I have had a few more years to feather my nest.

I mean, you were not under the impression that money was real, were you? It's only a way of keeping score in the game of life.

Gosh, KJ. Let us know when you get your ducks in a row.

So much for economic growth

Importantly, the entire revision is almost entirely due to a change in the inflation rate. On a nominal basis, there was virtually no real change at all. In other words, stronger economic growth came from a mathematical adjustment rather than increases in actual economic activity.

http://realinvestmentadvice.com/weekend ... e-reality/

KaiserJeep wrote:I meant exactly what I said. The virtual money stored in computers has real value today, it can be spent, exchanged for real estate, food, water, energy, etc. - all because you have total confidence that those digital bits represent value.

If you or somebody else were to realize that there is really nothing there - just a pattern of bits in a computer memory is the literal reality we are talking about - and you were successful in convincing everyone else of the real facts, then BANG the world will end.

Once we went off the goal standard we were completely on a fiat standard. At that point, what does it matter what the fiat is represented by? Whether digital bits, paper conforming to a printing standard, coins made of low-value metal, etc. -- the money was ONLY worth much of anything because people had confidence in it.

At least if money were 100% backed by gold, then if confidence blew up in, say, the clowns in the beltway and their ability to run things -- that gold would have a market value around the world. As it is, fiat is fiat.

Since the US can print money, it's not like it can't pay its debts. It's just a question of how quickly the money gets inflated away.

Nothing has really changed with this since Nixon abandoned the gold standard. You can't eat a stack of dollar bills (and expect to get meaningful nutrition). I guess you could use if for very expensive firewood.

Since you mentioned it, gold or other precious metals have no more value than printed pictures on paper. I would not swap food or water or liquor or anything of real value for precious metals, anymore than paper currency. Just because precious metal coins predate printed currency means nothing.

baha wrote:

KaiserJeep wrote:You Doomers and your doubts are what will end the good times for all of us.

KJ, If that were true you would be toast by now. I have been wishing for the economic reset for 10 years. I even found a whole website of like minded folks so we could all think "DOOM" together

No luck...But I haven't given up yet

So, now you want to shoot the messenger because the message is inconvenient

KaiserJeep wrote:The world will end when you lose that confidence.

Actually the world kinda hiccuped in '08 and it wasn't because "we" did anything. And, it had nothing to do with currency either.

All the gold in the world in a pile would be about $8 Trillion worth
all the currency in the world amounts to about $37 trillion
add all the bits and bytes for total of $90T
For reference, all the debt of all the people and governments in the world is a little over $200T
But the real "money" is derivatives—side bets— somewhere between $500 Trillion and 1.2 QUADRILLION

The reason the world economy locked up for a little while there is the bankers, having been freed from the evil regulators, got a little too cute and made one too many side bets. Having their skirts lifted they thought the gig was up, the music had stopped, all the markers were being called in, and they freaked and quit taking each others chits.

So wax eloquent about fiat money vs metals vs bits or crypts, your world hinges on the same thing it always has, the regulations restricting the patrons of the pinstripe casino.
.

KaiserJeep wrote:Since you mentioned it, gold or other precious metals have no more value than printed pictures on paper. I would not swap food or water or liquor or anything of real value for precious metals, anymore than paper currency. Just because precious metal coins predate printed currency means nothing.

Gold is portable and basically indestructible for practical purposes like storage. If the US dollar blows up, I'd sure as hell rather have a meaningful amount of gold and silver coins to trade than only paper or digital dollars.

There is a reason paper money is called fiat and gold and silver are not.

Just because you can't eat gold doesn't mean it has no value. Would you eat ammunition or the gun that fires it? Would you eat a good pair of boots? And yet those have value.

Outcast_Searcher wrote:Just because you can't eat gold doesn't mean it has no value. Would you eat ammunition or the gun that fires it? Would you eat a good pair of boots? And yet those have value.

I think the point is a pair of boots has intrinsic value, they protect your feet.

Gold has no intrinsic value to the avg.joe aside from decoration.

Pops wrote:

Outcast_Searcher wrote:Just because you can't eat gold doesn't mean it has no value. Would you eat ammunition or the gun that fires it? Would you eat a good pair of boots? And yet those have value.

I think the point is a pair of boots has intrinsic value, they protect your feet.

Gold has no intrinsic value to the avg.joe aside from decoration.

OK. Fair enough. Now, does portability and extreme durability over time have any intrinsic value?

Not if you need a meal or a drink RIGHT NOW. But if you want something to trade after paper currencies aren't trusted (or are trusted far less), then I think it does. Maybe that's my bias, as I tend to try to look decades ahead, vs. just at today or the next 5 minutes.

Fractional reserve banking is like capitalism, it has its problems but nobody has yet to put out a system that works better in this day and age. It may be possible a better system exists however it's biggest opponents would be the people behind central banking. They would probably stop it from ever happening.

Outcast_Searcher wrote:Not if you need a meal or a drink RIGHT NOW. But if you want something to trade after paper currencies aren't trusted (or are trusted far less), then I think it does. Maybe that's my bias, as I tend to try to look decades ahead, vs. just at today or the next 5 minutes.

Yeah, you are quite the logical visionary amongst the doomers, lol.

My thought isn't to hold a warehouse full of Red Wings any more than a coffee can of double eagles. More to say any arbitrary store of wealth is dependent on the "market" so make suce you have the pork and beans covered first.

Gold is fine, as long as you do have something to eat just don't expect to trade gold for eats.

So, what is going to happen to the vast wealth of the super rich once economic conditions really deteriorate? I think the super rich have already indicated that they lack confidence in "their" wealth by cashing in some of it to purchase fancy state of the art bunkers and formulating other means to survive/prosper in the coming turbulent times

https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/surviv ... f6cddd0cc1
The Rich are plotting to leave us all behind

There’s nothing wrong with madly optimistic appraisals of how technology might benefit human society. But the current drive for a post-human utopia is something else. It’s less a vision for the wholesale migration of humanity to a new a state of being than a quest to transcend all that is human: the body, interdependence, compassion, vulnerability, and complexity. As technology philosophers have been pointing out for years, now, the transhumanist vision too easily reduces all of reality to data, concluding that “humans are nothing but information-processing objects.”

It’s a reduction of human evolution to a video game that someone wins by finding the escape hatch and then letting a few of his BFFs come along for the ride. Will it be Musk, Bezos, Thiel…Zuckerberg? These billionaires are the presumptive winners of the digital economy — the same survival-of-the-fittest business landscape that’s fueling most of this speculation to begin with.

Quite sensibly they are stocking up on the necessities of life, which is what a bunker is for - a place to keep and protect the stuff you need to live.

That does not include gold. I mean, I believe that it has value today when civilization exists. Gold is attractive and easily plated onto other metals to form a protective coating.

After TSHTF, smug people sitting on a pile of gold will starve on their golden thrones. I'm not going to trade you food or water or ammunition or building supplies or anything else for useless gold metal. Gold is a currency and all forms of currency are worthless in a barter economy. They will instantly devalue to zero and stay that way forever.

Don't be a fool. ALL currency has zero intrinsic value. Gold will have value for at least five minutes beyond greenbacks, before everybody decides that all currencies are totally worthless. After that happens, you will actually regret that you didn't keep paper currency instead, which has some minimal value as a kindling to start a wood fire.

If you want to preserve wealth, buy arable land, put a fence around it, and build the afore-mentioned bunker plus a sniper tower that covers it all. You don't need any more land than that which can be covered by a well aimed rifle shot from that tower, because other people will take that excess land away because you can't protect it. Perhaps you were going to hire security guards on horseback to protect the old Doomstead, and pay them gold? They will pay themselves with your stash of food and water and guns, after they kill you - but they won't touch useless gold.

For <insert diety name>'s sake, believing in currency of any form is to believe that Doom will partially destroy our civilization, and then stop, and after TEOTWAWKI, you can then BUY THE THINGS YOU NEED. Rank foolishness.