The first two lack dignity

And the last is just too close to the truth

Uh Huh

........................= X

..... It is a Mystery .....

whats with the dots?

Sigh

How come I never got an endearing nickname?

Lot's of Crustys and Saltys and Brothers about but I am left with just these forlorn initials looking like they're wondering what they are going to be when they grow up.

what = namaste'?

rj = thanks

aurator -

Wish I was on the mark at $400, but it will work out.

?Algie?

= X

Your handle seems to stand for equality

Prove your worth, they will take note

All here are eager for kindred spirits

But can smell a panderer from a mile away

This is not an easy place to break into

But once you do, you have found family

Yes

PS

Don’t look for panderer in your Webster’s, it will not be found.

It is an ugly and ungainly word, but I can’t think of one that fits better.

Awaaaaaaaaay........................tofirstdeliverynoticeonthejunecontract

last night i = just x

then aurator made me = rj

then gollum and others made me = 0

although their math was flawed

how do you break into this clique?

i have lurked for a year and feel i know everybody pretty good

and i feel i have some perspective to offer

but a new guy has his work cut out for him, yes?

The storm is in another hemisphere, just off Easter Island.

Most people think of the West Coast as, well…. West. Around here, though, the ocean is south. These unseen and faraway storms can bring the most bodacious waves even though the sky above is calm and clear. Today is a day such as that.

The Wedge in Newport is where a ¼ mile stone jetty juts into the sea at cross purposes to the prevailing wave pattern. Rather than ride along the Jetty, certain swells hit the rock at an oblique angle, bounce back, and merge with it's own flank to become a point of water that curls in on itself. Because of this unique property, the break there is 5 - 10 feet higher than anywhere else in So Cal experiencing the same swell.

This is bodyboard water, with fins and guts and reckless abandon, and little suited to surfers of other ilk; excepting those with quick cut precision on a short board. The break is all wrong for a surfboard. The damn point ( the Wedge ) sometimes gives enough of a right curl, but it is just as likely to send you into the rocks and the nuerosurgery ward if you fall down the wrong side of the wave. Bodyboarders can bail quickly and their speed is slower than a surfboard; this explains the present day existence of many a bodyboarder who should have been bashed into oblivion a decade and a half ago but are still plying the viscous uncertainties of The Wedge.

The swell was big but not as big as the El Nino driven storms of the last several months. Most waves broke at about 10 feet with occasional sets of 15. The salt spray is still on my sunglasses as I type these words and I can taste salt on my lips.

There are more beautiful places on earth, but none I saw today, and none that I call home.

Yes

Interesting idea.

Wonder if anyone had problems with their pacemaker during the precursor to a quake. Of course, during the quake, heart attacks from the quake effect would be impossible to separate from a pacer problem.

htxp://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/top_stories/story.html?s=z/reuters/9

80531/news/stories/testimony_1.html

( just splice together, and remove the x, replace with t )

Now -- what if Kenneth Starr has done his homework this time, and there is more than just Monica Lewinsky to talk about? The ChinaMissleSatGate and release of classified encryptation data to John Huang certainly does not help his case.

Do you think BC will petition for asylum while he is in China? At least if he stays there the Chinese nuclear missles will not be pointed at him.

I have an idea. We have gold coins in use as 'money' even if it is not officially condoned by the US Government.

Why doesn't the government mint a silver bullion coin that can be used as money? Every day its price could be officially determined in US dollars -- with computers this is a trivial matter. Then Gresham's law would not apply, as the coin would be worth the spot silver bullion price, and hence there would be less incentive to hoard it. Restaurants and other places of business could decide whether or not they wished to use the coin -- sort of like what happens with credit cards right now.

Of course, this idea would be disturbing to the US government, as the value of the silver coin would fluctuate considerably. But -- so does the US dollar, doesn't it? But -- only for the international market. We locals do not have the luxury of being able to use dollars at the 'spot' price. Perhaps minting a silver coin might give the US an incentive to 'fix' the price of silver again -- what heresy! Of course, using silver coins is like using cash -- and the US government wants to get rid of the cash if they could. Harder to follow transactions.

We can buy and sell foreign currencies at the 'spot' price, so why not silver coins?

These were the 10 worst gold funds in a truly lousy week.

............................. %chg ,, nav

FDPMX Fidelity Sel Prec Mtls -7.3 10.19

PIGDX Pioneer Gold A . -7.6 4.72

PPMCX PIMCO Adv Prc Mtls C . -7.6 5.68

RYPMX Rydex Prec Metals . -7.7 5.26

GOLDX Gabelli Gold . -7.9 6.31

INIVX Van Eck Intl Inv GoldA -8.1 7.52

BGEIX Amer Cent Global Gold. -8.1 6.43

EKWBX Evergreen Prec Mtls B. -8.4 13.09

STIVX Lexington Strat Invest -8.6 1.27

USERX US Global Gold Shrs . -10.0 0.45

http://www.eaglewing.com/compare.htm

This means that an accidental nuke would probably kick gold up big time. New paradign, etc.

One said that it was temporary and Russia would let interest rates go high enough to rescue the ruble. IMF to the rescue, etc.

Second said that they only had $14b in reserves, including 4b in bullion, and it would be gone quickly. Then, collapse.

Take your pick of two experts, but if it gets bad enough to sell the 4b, I would expect gold to drop.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-05/30/069l-053098-idx.html

Of course, some rally bad international news might trash the US markets anytime. All that is needed is a blockage of a major oil route somewhere -- middle east, or possibly SEAsia ( Indonesia ) .

Loved your y2k post. I should have known why the government is not going to finish the job -- they make too many rules, so the private computer companies refuse the risk of doing the programming. Most private US companies will be well prepared.

On the other hand, significantly increased demand for silver may not come for years. It will begin with a few military prototypes ( Nautilus version ) . I'm not so sure the 50% power plant weight reduction in a Naval ship is that much of a benefit, given the increased vulnerability of such a power plant. How does one repair one of these? Do you carry a spare? How does an operating motor react to a direct missle hit? Might be alot of fireworks.

The mention of homopolar motors is also of interest. This is not a typical electric motor. I need to read up on this -- I think this is a very low voltage, high current device. I think M. Faraday invented it. Remember Red October?

Now, there may be sort of elf ( ultra low frequency ) electromagnetic emission just before the quake, but I know little about that.

I've been re-reading as you suggested, and I quite agree we are in the condition of slavery. I shall leave the safety of my accounting-model-double-entry idea, and wander with you into the deep end of the pool. ( I hope you do not drown me :- ) )

Alberich suggested the discussion was too ivory-tower. I'd like to pose a few questions if I may to put the discussion more on terra firma ( I'm sure you like this basis :- ) ) .

1 ) What is the difference between currency and money?

2 ) Money per your definition has 3 attributes:

1-Medium of exchange

2-Unit of Account

3-Store of Value

You further assert that capital must have substance, ie land, gold etc, and make a convincing argument for gold as money. ( no question here, just a repostulation. )

3 ) Golem makes clear statement about use vs ownership

4 ) DaveW offers that US money is backed by US Assets

5 ) Mozel points out that there is NO BACKING of USA assets to debt. ( Functional disconnect ) ( In fact AFAIK, there is not even an accounting of assets in the USA )

6 ) Studio.R quips that US taxpaying citizenry is biggest asset to true owner.

7 ) Mozel points out that there are different titles Allodial ( Not in my American Heritage 3rd ) .

8 ) Mozel also points out that unless you have title ( Allodial Title ) you are in effect a user.

It seems to me, that this issue hinges on the right to own land. Some American Indians, and others hold the belief that we do not own the land, the land owns us. To this point of view, would not the concept of ownership of land be just another legalized fiction?

At some point, this becomes an exercise in philosophy. It begs the question of what is real? If you say that LAND is real, then money is a representation of land, then money ( ie gold ) is not really land, but is a representation of it. If gold is an abstraction, then isn't it just as much a legalized fiction as a piece of paper ( notwithstanding its intrinsic value ) ?

Alberich, sorry. I tried to find terra firma, but, I'm afraid I'm swimming in the deep end of the pool here, and I can't see it at the moment.

Mozel. I'm intrigued by the concept of different *kinds* of title, or ownership. It seems to me that the solution to the riddle is in the understand of these different titles, how they came into being ( I assume they were legally created ) , and what the purposes of each is.

I too appreciate very much your depth here, and your willingness to pilot a weaker craft in deep water.

CompGeek.

Yes -- I noticed the incredibly low cash position ( 5% or less ) in mutual funds, and the lack of zip going into memorial day, typically a time of exuberance. It may not be coincidence that BC's image is a bit more tarnished, too. The commodity price drop may be an early sign that the US economy is flagging. US lumber prices have dropped dramatically in that last week or so. And last but not least, bearish news is starting to pick up in the US papers/magazines.

My guess is that South America is on the brink -- a collapse there will pull down all the world's markets for a time -- and we may have a US market rally for a time after this due to 'flight to safety'.

It will be interesting to watch the Oldman in action now. Hope all is well for you.

A draft for COBOL probrammers will not work. First, how will the 'powers that be' find out? I probably did a little COBOL myself, though what I did years ago was Fortran - I may still have the old IBM cards somewhere. Secondly, you can draft an unwilling soldier, although that is not ideal. But -- can you imagine an unwilling programmer? My guess is that would be worse than not drafting any COBOL programmers. Complex intellectual activies cannot be easily forced. They must be done willingly. So -- the government will either do very little, or spend the money.

There is one other highly significant point that I should mention. I also follow the CRB spot on a daily basis. One day I plotted the data back the last 20 years, only to find out that the 3% inflationary trend is gone, even over the same time period as my monthly older data. It seems that even the CRB spot has been altered somehow to indicate nearly zero average inflation for the last two years. I knew the CPI had been 'cooked' but this did surprise me that the CRB spot was altered also.

I know we still have significant inflation -- about 3-5% yearly. All you need to do is buy something. But -- try to find this in the official indices. So -- our leaders become more sophisticated over the years, and are better at 'cooking the books' than they were in the 60's and 70's.

It all comes down to perception. If the general public believes that there is no inflation, there can be no wage/price spiral, even if the inflation is really there. Of course, just with the stock market, this only works on faith. And faith has a nasty habit of shifting abruptly.

So -- what's the point? There probably is a continued core R&D effort still going on in Russia, funded directly by technology sales, probably semi-independent of the 'official' Russian government. This is that the Chinese are doing, so why not the Russians too? This explains the underground base military activity, and the resources for space exploration.

We in the Western World need to make sure that we are not hoodwinked into bailing out the Russian government, when hidden resources are available that they can use. They know that our Western leaders would panic if it looked like all of those nuclear weapons might wind up in the hands of extremists. I am not saying that this is an intentional action to deceive us, because Russia is no longer the monolithic entity that it once was. But this also means that we should have our eyes open so that we don't get caught with our pants down. Given the weakness of our current leaders this is a real possibility.

Have you been able to find anything to confirm the flood of silver to Switzerland from Russia? I personally doubt the truth of this rumor, unless it can be verified. I would certainly like to know what the Russians got in exchange for their silver.

There is another possibility. Russian gold and silver might be sent to Switzerland for safekeeping.

http://www.btimes.co.za/98/0531/news/news4.htm

As I said, I have become comfortable with my understanding

within the accounting domain ( where one thing is ALWAYS 2 things at the same time ) . I am willing to unlearn that if it does not track the physical system we are trying to examine. I appreciate the inquiry with you. I don't think I ever had a clear explanation of monetization or currency creation in school. Perhaps it was just presented as a given. You and I are about examining that given as not-so-given. Thank you.

I'll pick up tomorrow. Good night Friend.

It depends on your frame of reference, it would seem to me.

For example, since we are dealing with a representational game called money, where money represents labor, capital, debt, etc, and

since there is a longstanding representational model in existance called accounting which is basically, a closed system of sorts, in that model, we can determine the rules.

When I invest a dollar in my company. The one dollar is *simultaneously* an asset ( the dollar is in my bank account ) , and equity ( my increased share in the company.

When I heard the Fed tell me that the creation of a dollar was simultanous with an equal debt to a member bank, I understood the accounting domain they were referring to. I think, in this domain, it can be true that one dollar can be both money and a debt.

I once heard a comedian talk about Macrobiotics, and the yin and yang of it. I can't remember the whole spiel, but it had the following flavor, An apple! Ah Hah! It's Yin, right, because it's a fruit! But no, it's Yang, because it's compact. But no, it's yin because it's sweet, but no, it's yang because its from a tree, but no, it's yin because it grows above the ground.... etc. It went on for about 15 minutes.

Point is, If you want to have a representational model in which the rules are that something can only be one thing and one thing only, and that excludes being any other thing, then I think that the accounting model is not the correct model to use, and will prove to be less useful in our discussions.

I think the problem in understanding this issue for me was resolved ( whether rightly or wrongly is yet to be determined :- ) ) when I realized that the FRN was *both* money and debt.

True, it is debt, and your comments about rights to labor are accurate, when the owner of debt is a Fed Reserve Member Bank. But it is *also* simultaneously money, by fiat, and is legal tender for all debts public and private.

I could well imagine, that the Coca-cola corporation, if they had been put in the position to create a money supply, instead of the member banks, might have said, Gee, lets monetize Coca-cola bottle caps. In order to get any money into the system, they would have to by a lotta coke eh what?

To expand the subject a bit, just *how* does American Express get away with printing their purple money? I've never been able to figure that one out! Why couldn't anyone with sufficient capital pull off the same stunt?

I asked them How does a dollar get created?

The answer was, A dollar is created by the recognition of a equal and offsetting credit to a member bank.

That was it.

In effect, the debt has been monetized.

You can monetize anything.

You could monetize one square inch of the US Federal Highway System = $1.00. It would then be backed by a fairly illiquid :- ) asset, but an asset, nonetheless. It can be backed by debt as well ( and is ) .

If we can't have a redeemable asset monetization ( ie PM's ) , and we can't have an illiquid asset monetization ( Federal Highway ) , then I would rather see a simple non-monetized fiat currency ( ie, It is a dollar because we said it was a dollar ) , rather than what we have, which is monetized debt.

If you think about it enough, you come to the conclusion that the national debt can never be paid, because it is the basis of the money of the country. The chains are there from the inception, as I see it.

does that mean i am 0?

i just got here

it happened so fast

leverage = risk

so leverage is for players only

the small should not play with the big

equations make me feel so small

we have broken new ground tonight

therefore:

= what, yes?

cancels out the infinities

beautiful isnt it?

i have no punctuation skills

it is an embarrassment

what = rg?

= what it is

to confuse me gollum?

lets let x = x and let it be

gollum, that $ = $ ?

i agree

Do you see the much-discussed digital dollar as being an even greater threat by userers than our present system of currency and, if so, how is the threat posed by them even greater? I believe I saw a post recently ( not sure if it was yours ) warning about the dangers of the digitization of money.

aurator: NZ certainly looks beautiful. When I was in grad school, one of my British classmates tried to talk me into applying to the PhD statistics program in NZ. Came within a hair's breadth of actually doing it.

What are taxes like there? And re: your question about x=x . . . yes indeedy.

ru saying b=4?

algie ( if not = the green kind )

makes you = my mate

is my slip showing?

let x=x=x

pop will go pop

pop = pop

i can tell you the collour of the hair of the mother of the guy who took the picture of the fuel cell vehicle on p 29 of JM's Platinum 1998

can rj do that?

i am not qualified to answer

i am he

english is my first language

but our trees are not so mighty

i am rj

yes

is kg of beef = kilogram or keg?

let x=x

I'm not trying to be confrontational. Please don't interpret it that way. I've read many of your posts and think they are well-written and very thought-provoking. But I don't have a background in this stuff, can't figure it out for myself, and have been wondering about how federal restrictions on bank lending affect your argument, if at all. Thanks.

there is lots of talk about point of view and how all are welcome

but rj did not say it was f* views, but his attacking ways

i have read this site for a year so i do know this page

when truth gets bent, i will unbend it

let x=x

it was a large room full of people of all kinds

and they all arrived at the same building

at more or less the same time and they were all free

and they were all asking themselves the same question

who's behind that curtain?

let x = x