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The Death of Paper Money - 7/26/2010 12:10:42 PM

pahunkboy

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What a vivid and chilling account of the past- hopefully we never go thru it.

======================================

As it happens, another book from the 1970s entitled "When Money Dies: the Nightmare of The Weimar Hyper-Inflation" has just been reprinted. Written by former Tory MEP Adam Fergusson -- endorsed by Warren Buffett as a must-read -- it is a vivid account drawn from the diaries of those who lived through the turmoil in Germany, Austria, and Hungary as the empires were broken up. Near civil war between town and country was a pervasive feature of this break-down in social order.

Large mobs of half-starved and vindictive townsmen descended on villages to seize food from farmers accused of hoarding. The diary of one young woman described the scene at her cousin’s farm. "In the cart I saw three slaughtered pigs. The cowshed was drenched in blood. One cow had been slaughtered where it stood and the meat torn from its bones. The monsters had slit the udder of the finest milch cow, so that she had to be put out of her misery immediately. In the granary, a rag soaked with petrol was still smouldering to show what these beasts had intended," she wrote.

Grand pianos became a currency or sorts as pauperized members of the civil service elites traded the symbols of their old status for a sack of potatoes and a side of bacon. There is a harrowing moment when each middle-class families first starts to undertand that its gilt-edged securities and War Loan will never recover. Irreversible ruin lies ahead.

Elderly couples gassed themselves in their apartments. Foreigners with dollars, pounds, Swiss francs, or Czech crowns lived in opulence. They were hated. "Times made us cynical.

Everybody saw an enemy in everybody else," said Erna von Pustau, daughter of a Hamburg fish merchant. Great numbers of people failed to see it coming. "My relations and friends were stupid. They didn’t understand what inflation meant. Our solicitors were no better. My mother’s bank manager gave her appalling advice," said one well-connected woman. "You used to see the appearance of their flats gradually changing.

One remembered where there used to be a picture or a carpet, or a secretaire. Eventually their rooms would be almost empty. Some of them begged -- not in the streets -- but by making casual visits. One knew too well what they had come for." Corruption became rampant. People were stripped of their coat and shoes at knife-point on the street.

The winners were those who -- by luck or design -- had borrowed heavily from banks to buy hard assets, or industrial conglomerates that had issued debentures. There was a great transfer of wealth from saver to debtor, though the Reichstag later passed a law linking old contracts to the gold price. Creditors clawed back something./snip
for the article go here -->
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/7909432/The-Death-of-Paper-Money.html

< Message edited by pahunkboy -- 7/26/2010 12:11:38 PM >

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RE: The Death of Paper Money - 7/26/2010 3:18:11 PM

gungadin09

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Darn! i was all getting all excited to read about "the death of a paper monkey".

pam

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RE: The Death of Paper Money - 7/26/2010 3:23:12 PM

pahunkboy

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this part is compelling-

Reichstag later passed a law linking old contracts to the gold price. Creditors clawed back something/snip

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RE: The Death of Paper Money - 7/27/2010 12:55:58 AM

Termyn8or

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I am 49 and have been reading for about 46 years. You gave me enough, thank you. I do not have the time nor could I stand the eyestrain to read a long treatise on this matter. It seems that you are referring to pre WW2 Germany here.

This makes sense to me. To trade those fickle dollars for something real is smart right now. We all know what is going to happen unless you are as dumb as a post. The difference between what is going to happen here and what happened in Germany back then is that they had a competent leader. Everyone may hate him, that is their perogative, but none can claim he was incompetent or disloyal to his country. I wish we could say that today.

While the Germans returned to work and rebuilt their economy, we destroyed ours. The difference is that they didn't give up their industry. They knew that something had to go out so they could pull in some money, to make more than they spend. This little piece of reality has not seemed to catch on in the US obviously. Eveerybody wanted to be a banker.

While the Krauts cobbled, we borrowed. What we are seeing today is the end result. We have not only failed, but removed the primary method of recovery from our country. That is the major difference. The olman saw it, and he and I bought alot of tools and machinery and I am just about to screw the banks out of that money. I do not intend to sell much, I will sell some but I still want the ability to make something. I am not an expert at machining, but I can do it.

I heard stories about Germans needing a wheelbarrel full of money to buy a postage stamp, as well as the joke about the wheelbarrel getting stolen, and the thieves actually left the money sitting right there. But what you have to realize about that era in Germany is that this was caused by the extremely heavy war reparations exacted from those people after WW1, which Hitler did not start incidentally. What I heard is tht the French were the most pricky about it, but it surely wasn't just them. They asked for too much and set the stage for Hitler to gain power.

Hitler whipped up the peoples' spirit and they cobbled like they never cobbled before. He offered hope, like - Germany for the Germans. Later he got enchanted with the idea of reassembling and running the old Austrio-Hungarian empire. Something like that. He was not only a great leader but an inventor as well. The popular support was among the strongest ever seen in history.

What he did ws to take a people and lead them on the path upward, something "leaders" of today are totally unable to concieve. It had nothing to do with the gold standard, it had to do with productivity. Money coming in. It is a simple concept really, but seems so hard for people to grasp these days, especially rich people. And rich people run this country. Hitler was a broke motherfucker and in jail before his rise to power.

Take thaty political correctness and shove it up your ass, he was a very competent leader, and but for a few mistakes could have been seen in history as virtuous as Jesus Christ. If not for those couple of things.

But our situation here is different. We now import over half our food, after having been known as the breadbasket of the world. And that is simple. Our steel industry was once no pariel(sp), we had a love affair with cars, which we used to make, by ourselves with no help )parts) fom anyone else. We also invented TV, and color TV. We put a Man on the moon with pocket change. This is what we once were.

And we defeated them. We were bad to the bone, the backbone that is. Even before the advent of nuclear warheds, the General in Japan told the Emperor that "We have awoken a sleeping giant". We were bad to the bone without being able to run a pushbutton war. We had strength, stamina and spirit. We loved our country and it loved us back. We were happy, healthy and tough.

Now we are a weak bunch of sheep, with half of us living off the public money, draining to death the few who actually knopw how to make money. Half of us are on some sort of drug, enriching people who have no care about our needs or well being. We are controlled more tightly than even in some communist countries. Our food and waters are polluted and killing us as well. All the while they laugh all the way to the bank.

What's more, even if all the industry magically reappeared in thi8s country, there is noone to work there. Nobody wants to get their hands dirty. Nobody wants a real job, all they want is a check because we have largely lost the work ethic required to impel people to be productive. And even if we could restore that, there is noplace to do it.

The fact is we've been living on borrowed money since at least 1933. It was OK as long as we were productive and could afford to pay the bills. But that is no longer the case, so what is next ? We are headed toward third world status despit our military superiority. The olman said that he foresaw us being a nation of warriors, because taking will be the only way we can get what we need. That fucking bag of ashes keeps getting smarter as time goes on because I am beginning to see the same thing. I think he was right.

But he also noted that operating in this manner was one of the chief causes of the fall of the Roman empire. In fact in the 1960s thereabout came out a book call The Modern Romans which pointed many of the similarities of the modern US and old Rome. It predicted what would happen, and it did. Just like the predictions of the ZPG groups. It is coming to pass before our eyes and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.

So doing away with paper money doesn't really mean much. To me, when I have to pay up for weed or something I'll have to take the dude's olady shopping and spend my "credits" like they had in the old Star Trek series. There will always be an underground economy as long as the need exists. I have actually written a personal check for drugs. It was a very long time ago, but if I had balls I would have put something interesting in the "memo" field :-)

The only half decent advice I can come up with now, that appl;ies to everyone no matter your socio-economic status is to consider money to be perishable. Like milk in the fridge. Like popsicles in the trunk of your car in July.

Mark my words. If the market wasn't so bad because there are so few able to buy, I would be sitting on a fortune in tools and machinery. As it stands now a guy has to come from Michigan to look at the lathe I am trying to sell. It is a very long bed but hasn't much of a swing. It was bought for machining long bore rifle barrels. I don't need that because if I get into it I want to make concealable weapons, not five feet long.

Wanna trade that load of groceries for a killing machine ? That is where I am going with this. And if big business breaks down we will need alot more. Make our own biodeisel for electricity, finding gasoline will be no fun. Everything we take for granted will be gone.

I don't like painting such a gloomy picture of the future, but just wait until you see it. These things are inevitable. I have thought it though a thousand ways and I don't see how we can recover. And the place I used to work, if I said it can't be fixed, they leaned the hard way that it really can't be fixed.

So get ready for the primitive life, it is coming. Even if you have money, eventually thing you want will simply become unavailable. But then we will all be in this together. Hopefully we will find competent leaders to bring back our proserity and convenieces. But that is what it will take.

"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got till it's gone"

Joani Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi"

And don't forget they "Paved paradise and put up a parking lot".

Anyone have any ideas ? I don't, every which way I turn I find a possible solution impractical. I welcome anything you got on the subject.

T

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RE: The Death of Paper Money - 7/27/2010 7:32:48 AM

pahunkboy

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Term,

you make some good points. I do think you will have some advantage as we go forward. Anyone that can fix broken stuff - and has tools - has something to work with.

I am so out of whack again. I don't sleep well-- not over this - just aging- I guess.

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RE: The Death of Paper Money - 7/27/2010 9:00:51 AM

Termyn8or

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Hunky, everyone is out of whack. Some of us see ghosts, by that I mean we are getting so suspicious of our scumbags that we will accept supposed truths that are not true. Others on the other hand have faith in our scumbags to fix this problem, and lucky for them they do not yet realize that it cannot be fixed.

There is no way in hell the USD can be propped up much longer.

Let me tell you something else to help your ass into the disintegration chamber. Engineering has taken a turn. I can fix things ? Don't be so sure. If you knew what I know about engineering you might see the trend. Most things first of all are designed for one purpose and now they strive to design these things so they cannot be used for anything else, and have little or no scrap value. What's more companies want you to be dependent upon them to maintain and repair the useless junk they built. I can see it plain as day. What's more is I see evidence that this is not brought on totally by being cheap. They actually spend more money to assure their products are equipped with planned obsolescence.

This has been going on for some time now. I don't want to go into TVs right now except to say I am getting close to throwing in the towel, but let's take an issue that can hit closer to home for many to illustrate the point. I have a 1995 GMC Jimmy, Vortec, 4WD. Now if the computer goes in that car I need the VIN and actual mileage to replace it. That means I can't just go to the boneyard and pick one up for fifty bucks. That means I have to get a new one, and whoever I buy it from needs a machine that costs over ten grand just to program it.

Similar things are happening to brownwares (TVs etc.). More and more problems are software based and you need a computer interface to correct the problem that can cost as much as ten new units. What servicecenter is going to pay that ?

In short this country is becoming the world's largest fucking dumpster. The lack of any effective consumer protection that they have in most of the civilised world has made it open season on the US citizen. They can sell things for thousands of dollars here and have absolutely no product support whatsoever. There are already a few class action lawsuits going on, but you won't hear about it on the TV. Even if the piece of shit works.

Humky, just let people call you crazy, because that is the norm. I am almost sorry that I learned all this shit and literally what keeps me sane is knowing that I CAN end it all right here and now. I WON'T, but I can. That and the fact that I was taught quite well that I was born with nothing and the world owes me nothing. So if we end up with nothing we haven't really lost. Really, without those two points I would be totally insane by now.

The fact of the matter is that everything built today for common consumption is junk. Even houses. Chinese drywall corroding steel studs, and you can't even pound a nail in the wall because all you will find is styrofoam. But the place is airtight to make it energy efficient, to the point now you have to worry about radon gas seeping out the basement walls.

EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING is fucking junk. It will become very difficult if not impossible to repair anything in short order. And without industry the only way to make it is to repair things. But the interestests of technicians etc., vs those of the manufacturers are diametrically opposed. The way they see it is every time I fix something it amounts to one sale lost for them.

A quick example is change for that sake alone. I can take two plasma TVs and switch a board in them. Because the manufacturer changed the usage of one pin on one plug it will cause the destruction of both boards as well as other boards in the set. Note in this case these units appear to be identical, and might even be the same model number.

In doing these things they are assuring their own future earnings and well being at our expense. All perfectly legal of course, at least here. I don't give a fuck about people who want to call me a conspiracy theorist or some sort of crackpot. They couldn't recognize the signs of this if it was staring them right in the face. Know why ? Because the education system has been destroyed. They say it is more advanced but I see that now it is focussed so much on memorization that there is little time for independent thought. Why does a fifth grader need to know about the mating habits of a fucking aardvark ?

The way I learned was to discard the useless information which would only serve to cloud my reasoning.

Then they poison your ass from the day you are born, and later you find you need that red or blue pill. Then you get to live longer, if you can call it that. Those electric wheelchairs are about the hottest selling item in the country these days. Sure you live longer, but only to suffer longer. Drug companies are also ecstatic. But now we know the market will only bear the high prices here in the US, as more and more people flock to other countries to fill the prescriptions, or bust a scrip, whichever vernacular suits you. "They" were talking about making it illegal but I think they backed down from that. But give it a couple of years, they'll get it done for their buddies sooner or later. They are just a bit behind schedule.

You might have wondered why otherwise sane people will bury themselves drinking or abusing drugs but wonder no more. I have just told you why. When I walk in the door after work on a Friday night political discussion is verboten. I want the fan on the amp running at full blast. I want a beer and a joint. I think I am damn lucky that I don't want more, like coke, heroin or arsenic.

There is no silver bullet and the pun is intended 100%. The only thing that will matter is food, fuel and water. As much as I hate to say this, watch the movie Road Warrior. It'll give you an idea of how life is going to change. Are we ready ? I am not, at least in my opinion. You might as well melt your stack and make a weapon out of it, because not only will the precious metals become worthless, there will be nothing to buy.

And that's as optimistic as I can be.

T

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