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(Yesterday's Discussion.)
melda laure (7/1/06; 23:37:25MT - usagold.com msg#: 145712)
vinyamar, tis a long way from here. Ethanol or Vodka?
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/rapier/2006/0623.html
Independence hard won on a blood-soaked field of victory.
Let us not discuss the weather, for it is now cursed by men who abuse powers beyond their understanding. At least Jon Corzine seems to have some spine (it wont last!)
Sir Pan, Welcome! Though to be explicit, we do not owe you those millions, rather you already own them and we wont allow you to "spend" them until they are worthless. Such is the curse of the age, a kinder gentler curse than the age of feudalism: smooth as silk, sweet as honey; bitter in the end.
In these days of total disinformation, the truth is both scarce and precious. And it it also a radical act to seek it. Pray you do not pay the price of Hurin for your impertinent courage.
Aure Entuluva,
Auta Lome.
ps. How will increased ethanol production impact an already tight grains supply? Perhaps it is time to buy some physical yellow corn as well as yellow metal.
melda laure (7/1/06; 23:19:11MT - usagold.com msg#: 145711)
Cold showers for Bernanke.
http://64.29.208.119/archive_comm_article.asp?category=Guest+Commentary&content_idx=55711
Sir GF, I hope the freedom hasn't gone to your head? (smile). I am rather astonished, sir TIH, is the end finally at hand? The stern lecture the president just received at the hands of the supreme court may yet get its ripost from Puting on the 18th. I hear now that his holiness, Bin Laden (or whatever title he administers on his person) is now asking for donations to the war on iraqi schoolgirls. The news didn't mention whether dollars were an acceptable donation or only gold and euros. I shall have to look up an untranslated transcript to find out. Perhaps if the war on dollar hegemony is at hand, the war on terror can take a pause.
Well, we will see, yes, how long the markdowns last. Though if friday's action was any hint, the answer is "not much longer".
What does general relativity have to do with finance? Hmmm, the 10 dimensional field tensor, or is it the 16-valued einstein-cartan-evans field tensor? Is money a conserved quantity? Or do we live in an inflationary universe? And if the late chairman, Greenspan, can not tally the tale, then what hope have you, mere mortals, to see through the deceits of the enemy?
According to Sir Corrigan, Greenspan has enjoyed his baths, and it is now time to drain the tub for cleaner waters. Pray, avert thine eyes, 'tis not a fair sight.
GOLD FINGER (7/1/06; 22:13:35MT - usagold.com msg#: 145710)
Just wait!
Greetings,
Looks like many are still feeling good about the high cost of petroleum. It's reported that over 40 million will be traveling this so called "independence" weekend here in the USA! Most are also reported to be driving to their destinations. Seems odd to me that with fuel outrageously high (here in the USA 3-bucks a usgal = HIGH!) that so many feel good about long-distance traveling.
Better it would be if everyone would prepare for other forecasts/disasters and not such an independence day retreat? (yoda speaks) Am I usually this pessimistic?? Maybe... But, it just seem that way when I get to expressing my self.
Why such a downer then when after all I am living the so called "American Dream" and the POG is UP? I just sense a personal uneasiness about so many issues. Almost like a big storm is brewing!! Anyone else feeling this?
INDEPENDENCE???
I DO NOT THINK SO!!
Predictions of higher fuel in my opinion will continue to rise with all the demand and even possible weather interruptions and other obstacles to boot~
Until we can finally say we are free from oil dependency and the cartel that controls it we might as well prepare for the worse.
Is it wrong to get caught up in the holiday hoopla all the time?
From what I see wisdom would speak, prepare for possible challenging times:
-Get food,water and even fuel storage.
-Have an emergency fund and escape plan.
-Save your wealth and purchase GOLD!! I am moving all my extra liquid assets to Physical GOLD and land.
-Pay off all your indebtedness.
-Reduce your dependence on OIL consumption.
Free of Debit!
Free of bad habits!!
MOST OF ALL WE NEED TO FREE GOLD!!
Have a thrilling summer and independence day!
Buy Buy
A NEW NATIONAL HOLIDAY FOR ALL COUNTRIES WOULD BE A DAY OF NO OIL...ok Petro!
spikedog (7/1/06; 19:45:11MT - usagold.com msg#: 145709)
TIH and socialism
Irony seems to be at work here. One may argue that the USA is on the downhill slide because of its socialist policy (dollar hegemony) - from each (third world country) according to his ability to us (USA) according to our need.
How long after their empire zeniths did Rome, Britain, (or other historical favorite) take to come to grips with their respective demises? Why should the USA be any different?
Nice 'Atlas Shrugged' reference and full marks on your well-researched posits and rebuttals.
IMVHO, No harm, no foul on your part.
So, on this Independence Day weekend, I will be hoisting a pint to the founding statesmen who have created the best system of government the world has seen to date - not to the current crop of self-indulgent hacks. And I will also hoist another one (it's a long weekend) to the latest chapter in man's quest for freedom - FREEGOLD!
Wishing everyone on the forum independence and wealth.
spikedog
Topaz (7/1/06; 19:08:34MT - usagold.com msg#: 145708)
TIH.
I was on the Nile a coupla years ago in July ...Hot as bro!
Keep up the good work Sir Hand, I41 learn lots from your unique offertory.
The Invisible Hand (7/1/06; 18:27:54MT - usagold.com msg#: 145707)
River in Egypt
If this Forum is not in denial,
why is then that upon the prediction of immediate (within three weeks) collapse of the dollar of the US of A,
I get accused by Madam/Sir Golden Lionheart
of being a socialist?
Because the US of A is kaput?
A/FOA/TG were fun as long we would not be forced to accept their conclusions.
Now, their conclusion come true.
Houston, we've got a problem!
Fortunately, we can always talk about the weather.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062901940.html
Weather Threatens Shuttle Launch
Washington Post, United States - Jun 29, 2006
Friday, June 30, 2006; Page A19
SNIP
CAPE CANAVERAL, June 29 -- Space shuttle Discovery began the second day of its three-day countdown Thursday with a clean bill of engineering health, but NASA planners cautioned that afternoon thunderstorms, a regular feature of central Florida in July, pose a significant threat to Saturday's launch.
Here's how the BBC put it:
http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?scope=all&edition=i&q=shuttle+weather&go.x=29&go.y=11
US space agency Nasa has called off the launch of space shuttle Discovery because of poor weather conditions.
1 Jul 2006
J-Bullion (7/1/06; 17:51:19MT - usagold.com msg#: 145706)
truth hurts??
The truth always goes through the same pattern
1. denial
2. anger
3. acceptance
4. action
Just about everyone who is buying gold, etc. understands the situation, and has come to terms with the truth about the dollar and are already taking action. You are speaking to the choir. But if it helps you feel better to rant, feel free.
The Invisible Hand (7/1/06; 17:48:50MT - usagold.com msg#: 145705)
Here's why!
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1810488,00.html
Britain off the list when IMF assembles the new world order
High-level talks on global trade problems show the irrelevance of the G8 , says Heather Stewart
Sunday July 2, 2006
The Observer
SNIP
Twenty years ago, formal financial pacts were the rich world's weapon for heading off violent movements in foreign exchange markets and restoring calm. After a fresh wave of globalisation, and a firm ideological turn away from government intervention in the markets, this approach is out of fashion.
The Invisible Hand (7/1/06; 14:57:42MT - usagold.com msg#: 145704)
Bombing Iran for the IOB?
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/3740/1/194
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/7/prweb405868.htm
Not one of the Amerikan Kommentatators has heard of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to which Iran will be admitted as a full member on July 18, 2006, i.e the day aafter the summit of G8 leaders in St Petersburg on 15-17 July.
As Vladimir Putin told the June 2002 St Petersburg meeting of the SCO
http://www.shaps.hawaii.edu/fp/russia/sco_20020610_5.html
the SCO is already being spoken of as an international structure with high potential, which is capable of giving an answer to the challenge of our times. I think we should endorse the initiative of the heads of the foreign affairs agencies for organizing a mechanism of foreign policy coordination.
July 18, the greenback will be gone.
the bombing of Iran will have no more object/sense.
Let the TRUTH prevail!
Truth hurts, doesn't it? Does that explain why the Forum is so quiet this week-end? Wait four more hours for the British Sunday papers.
The Invisible Hand (7/1/06; 14:30:30MT - usagold.com msg#: 145703)
TRUTH - the worst evil of socialism is that it rewards misery and punishes virtue
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/philosophy/nav04.cfm?nav04=38830&nav03=12617&nav02=12335&nav01=12326
PHILOSOPHER AS THEATES
Diogenes Laertes, "Lives of Eminent Philosophers", Pythagoras, Bk. VIII, 8
"When Leon the tyrant of Phlius asked Pythagoras who he was, he said, "a philosopher," and that he compared life to the Great Games, where some went to compete for the prize and others went with wares to sell, but the best as spectators; for similarly, in life, some grow up with servile natures, greedy for fame and gain, but the philosopher seeks for truth."
DESIRE TO KNOW
Aristotle, "Metaphysics", 980a
"All men by nature desire to know. [Pantes anthropoi tou eidenai oregontai phusei]. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above "all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer sight to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need
In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand described a car company that adopted this creed as its governing philosophy, and then fell into bankruptcy as the least productive workers used up the funds tending to their menial needs while the most productive workers were denied simple "luxuries" such as a phonograph player or a college education for their children.
http://www.liberty.li/forum/archive/index.php/t-313.html
excerpt from Ayn Rand, 1957, Atlas Shrugged, pp. 607-616
"there was something that happened at the plant where I worked for twenty years [The Twentieth Century Motor Company]. It was when the old man died and his heirs took over. [ ] They let us vote on it too, and everybody -- almost everybody -- voted for it [ ]. The plan was that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need. [ ] they made it sound like that anyone who'd oppose the plan was a child-killer at heart and less than a human being. [ ] Do you know how it worked, that plan, and what it did to people? Try pouring water into a tank where there is a pipe at the bottom draining it out faster than you pour it in and each bucket you bring breaks the pipe an inch wider, and the harder you work the more is demanded of you, and you stand slinging buckets forty hours a week, then forty-eight, then fifty-six -- for your neighbor's supper -- for his wife's operation -- for his child's measles -- for his mother's wheelchair -- for his uncle's shirt -- for his nephew's schooling -- for the baby next door -- for the baby to be born -- for anyone anywhere around you -- it's theirs to receive, from diapers to dentures -- and yours to work, [ ] with nothing to show for it but your sweat, with nothing in sight for you but their pleasure, for the whole of your life, without rest, without hope, without end [ ] From each according to his ability, to each according to his need [ ] It took just one meeting to discover that we had become beggars --rotten, whining, sniveling beggars, all of us, because no man could claim his pay as his rightful earning, he had no rights and no earnings, his work didn't belong to him, it belonged to "the family," and they owed him nothing in return, and the only claim he had on them was his "need" -- so he had to beg in public for relief from his needs, like any lousy moocher, listing all his troubles and miseries, down to his patched drawers and his wife's head colds, hoping that "the family" would throw him the alms. He had to claim miseries, because its miseries, not work, that had become the coin of the realm -- so it turned into a contest among six thousand panhandlers, each claiming that his need was worse than his brothers... what sort of men kept quiet, feeling shame, and what sort got away with the jackpot? [ ] What was it that they'd always told us about the vicious competition of the profit system, where men had to compete for who'd do a better job than his fellows? Vicious wasn't it? Well, they should have seen what it was like when we all had to compete with one another for who'd do the worst job possible. There is no surer way to destroy a man than to force him into a spot where he has to aim at not doing his best, where he has to struggle to do a bad job day after day. [ ] Amusement was the first thing they dropped. Aren't you always supposed to be ashamed to object when anybody asks you to give up anything, if it's something that gave you pleasure? [ ] There was a man who'd worked hard, all his life, because he'd always wanted to send his son through college. Well, the boy graduated from high school in the second year of the plan -- but "the family" wouldn't give the father any "allowance" for the college. They said his son couldn't go to college, until we had enough to send everybody's son to college -- and we first had to send everybody's children through high school, and we didn't even have enough for that. The father died the following year, in a knife fight with somebody in a saloon, a fight over nothing in particular -- such fights were beginning to happen among us all the time. Then there was an old guy, a widower with no family, who had one hobby: phonograph records -- "personal luxury", they called it. But at that same meeting, Millie Bush, somebody's daughter, a mean ugly little eight-year-old, was voted a pair of gold braces for her buck teeth -- this was "medical need," because the staff psychologist had said that the poor girl would get an inferiority complex if her teeth weren't straightened out. The old guy who loved music, turned to drink instead. [ ] But the shiftless and the irresponsible had a field day of it. They bred babies, they got girls into trouble, they dragged in every worthless relative they had from all over the country, every unmarried pregnant sister, for an extra disability allowance, they got more sickness than any doctor could disprove, they ruined their clothing, their furniture, their homes -- what the hell, "the family" was paying for it! They found more ways of getting in "need" than the rest of us could ever imagine -- they developed a special skill for it, which was the only ability they showed. [ ] Yet this was the moral law that the professors and leaders and thinkers had wanted to establish all over the earth. If this is what it did to a single town, where we all knew on another, do you care to think what it would do on a world scale? [ ]To work -- with no chance of an extra ration, till the Cambodians have been fed and the Patagonians have been sent to college. To work -- on a blank check held by every creature born, by men whom you'll never see, whose needs you will never know, whose ability or laziness or sloppiness or fraud you have no way to learn and no right to question -- just to work and work and work -- and leave it up to the Ivys and the Geralds of the world to decide whose stomach will consume the effort, the dreams and days of your life. And this is the moral law to accept? This -- a moral ideal? [ ] Our agony took four years, from our first meeting to our last, and it ended the only way it could end: in bankruptcy. Ivy Starnes made a short, nasty, snippy little speech in which she said that the plan failed because the rest of the country had not accepted it, that a single community could not succeed in the midst of a selfish, greedy world ..."
http://education.yahoo.com/homework_help/cliffsnotes/atlas_shrugged/63.html
Commentary
The story that the hobo tells about the Twentieth Century Motor Company is important for several reasons. First, Rand uses it to demonstrate the consequences of communism in practice. The primary question raised by a communist system is how an individual's needs can be determined. If a group permits each individual to determine his or her own needs, the group faces the daunting task of having to satisfy every person's desires. The problem is not necessarily that people are unscrupulous; the problem is that in such a case, there is no way to achieve objectivity. Does a man need a car or merely desire it? Does a woman require her house to be painted, or is a new coat of paint desirable but nonessential? Does a man need those books or musical recordings that he loves, which add so much meaning to his life? Who should answer such questions, and by what standard could they judge?
Questions of need cannot be answered objectively. Need is a vague and undefinable term in this context. At the Twentieth Century Motor Company, the group voted to decide the needs of each individual, just as the group decided the projected output of each worker based on ability. As a result, each individual was enslaved to the group; his income was determined by his ability to beg rather than by his productive effort. No worker could feel the pride that comes from earning money as a direct result of hard work.
When income is severed from production, incentive necessarily wanes and productivity declines. When the factory's output dropped, the group determined that some people were not working in accordance with their ability. The group sentenced those people to work overtime without pay, of course, because income is based on need. Not surprisingly, the employees soon started to hate each other and to hide all signs of ability. As a logical consequence, declining production condemned the factory to bankruptcy.
Rand indicates that the worst evil of this communist ideal is that it rewards misery and punishes virtue. It ties a man's income to the number and severity of misfortunes that he and his family experience. It turns his productive ability into a curse, condemning him to ceaselessly toil for the satisfaction of his neighbor's unending desires. The more ability an individual shows, the more he is sentenced to unremitting slavery for the needy, with no gain for his effort. Rand insists that this is the antithesis of a proper moral code, which celebrates the creation of abundance and rewards it by tying income directly to production. Man's life on earth is made possible by virtue of his productivity, not his suffering. Justice and the ability to live successfully require that productive ability be the standard of determining a man's income, not his needs or pain.
The second and more important impact of the story told by Jeff Allen regards John Galt. Dagny now has reason to suspect that there may be a literal John Galt, who is responsible for stopping the motors and draining the brains of the world. If the hobo's story is true, then the destroyer Dagny fears may be this John Galt, who vowed years ago to stop the motor of the world. Dagny has an important clue in her quest to hunt down the destroyer.
The Invisible Hand:
Golden Lionheart,
I do NOT believe in "From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs"
I believe in TRUTH and its consequent JUSTICE.
http://radicalacademy.com/cgi-bin/eboard30/index.cgi?board=Main&message=3146
USAGOLD / Centennial Precious Metals, Inc. (7/1/06; 12:02:32MT - usagold.com msg#: 145702)
USAGOLD puts a world of gold at your fingertips...
http://www.usagold.com/buy-gold-coins.html
Golden Lionheart (7/1/06; 00:09:59MT - usagold.com msg#: 145701)
Freegold
@ The Invisible Hand.
I take it you do believe in "From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs" ??
ViewYesterday's Discussion.
