Home | Community | Message Board

Magic Mushrooms Zamnesia
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   North Spore North Spore Mushroom Grow Kits & Cultivation Supplies   Original Sensible Seeds Bulk Cannabis Seeds   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals

Jump to first unread post Pages: < Back | 1 | 2  [ show all ]
Offlineashfiken
TotalCrazyasshole
Male User Gallery
Registered: 09/06/06
Posts: 3,072
Loc: SCranton
Last seen: 15 hours, 39 minutes
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: coda]
    #7761912 - 12/15/07 02:05 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

have you just now realized all this wc? its been pretty obvious for those intelligent enough to see for a bit... while going back to the gold standard will not work at this point for many reasons coda most of what wiccan said is legit. if you havent invested in gold and silver yet than dont bother it truly wont make much. if you want my honest opinion it would be more wise to invest in the euro or yen(my ideal) but the best idea not to get fucked by the us govt is to leave the country or we can have a revolution against the capitalist money grubbers who run this country. personally money and material things i dont give a damn about but we are getting fucked. and just some extra info it doesnot matter who you vote for the govt will put the candidate they want in in. if you didn t already kno this for at least 10-15 years there has been computer programs that can change ballots to a 51-49% side in whatever direction they see fit. stop trusting the media its all the same bs. people on this forum seem to be much less informed than it thought.


--------------------
hmm...

"I'm naked and fearless... And my fear is naked."

"life isn't worth living without the threat of death"

"I got my plans in a ziploc bag, let's see how unproductive we can be"

"nobody lives their lives fully except for bull fighters"

My Trade List


Edited by ashfiken (12/15/07 02:07 PM)


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineBrugman
antisobrietarian
Male


Registered: 05/16/01
Posts: 15,887
Loc: the land up over Flag
Last seen: 10 years, 9 months
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: coda]
    #7762177 - 12/15/07 03:23 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

coda said:
Wiccan, i hate to say it, but what you posted is almost pure nonsense. Phred has it right with what he posted. Also im pretty sure the government just doesn't print money when it wants to raise the amount of money in circulation. AFAIK to increase or decrease the money supply the government buys or sells bonds. It's been a while since i had to dip into macro econ, but, if that dusty section of my brain is remembering right we don't just print money to increase supply.




But they do, they do print money to increase the supply.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinecoda
Banjo Goiter
Male


Registered: 03/20/01
Posts: 8,750
Last seen: 10 months, 3 days
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: Brugman]
    #7762322 - 12/15/07 04:08 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

sure, they CAN print money to raise the supply, but they dont. Printing more money just devalues the actual currency further.

since i don't have my econ texts handy i did a little searching on wiki (ya i know, not the best source, but it works in a pinch)

"When a central bank is "easing", it triggers an increase in money supply by purchasing government securities on the open market thus increasing available funds for private banks to loan through fractional reserve banking (the issue of new money through loans) and thus grows the money supply. When the central bank is "tightening", it slows the process of private bank issue by selling securities on the open market and pulling money (that could be loaned) out of the private banking sector. It reduces or increases the supply of short term government debt, and inversely increases or reduces the supply of lending funds and thereby the ability of private banks to issue new money through debt."


--------------------
To get really high is to forget yourself. And to forget yourself is to see everything else. And to see everything else is to become an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe. And I think every human being should be a conscious tool of the universe. . . .

-JG

i really am glad you came back to us instead of taking the other path. *hug*

-A_S (RIP your final words to me will never be forgotten)



Don't fuck with the laughing jesus.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlineg00ru
lit pants tit licker
Male User Gallery


Registered: 08/09/07
Posts: 21,088
Loc: georgia, us
Last seen: 5 years, 1 month
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: coda]
    #7762570 - 12/15/07 05:19 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

I don't know who to trust.

I think my conclusion is basically that we're all fucked.


--------------------
check out my music!
drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleAsante
Mage
Male User Gallery

Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 86,795
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: Phred]
    #7762954 - 12/15/07 07:18 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

You confuse differences in relative values of various national currencies with inflation. The two phenomena are not equivalent.





Nope, they are not identical but they are related.

Quote:

Here's an exercise in reality for any of you Americans -- go to a library (I guess this could be done online, but it's a hell of a lot easier to do at a library with archived hard copies of the local newspaper) with a list of a hundred things you bought in 2007 -- normal stuff like a pair of Levis 501 jeans, a quart of milk, a pound of chicken, a Taco Bell "Taco Grande", a new (not used) Toyota Corolla, a Stanley claw hammer, a ticket to a movie, a bottle of Coke, a new ink cartridge for your printer, a 9,000 BTU air conditioner for your bedroom, a set of sheets with pillowcases for your bed, a pair of white Reebok Tennis Classics... you get the idea.

Look through the archived newspapers for ads for those same products in 2002, then compare what you paid in 2007 with what you would have paid in 2002. You will find that despite Wiccan_Seeker's claims to the countrary, the two numbers are much closer together than he says they will be. Say you added up all the stuff you bought in 2007 and it came to US $16,666.67 for the year. In order for his claim to be accurate, your total for 2002 would have to be US $10,000. Was it? Not hardly. It was probably more than US $14,000.





Thats a nice reality check. I always recommend doing your own research. But have you? Have you actually in reality gone to the library and looked up the price differences? Or is the $14.000 just an estimate of what you feel it should be like?


Quote:

True, over the long run you will likely not lose much (if anything) to the devaluation of paper currency [when investing in precious metals], but you for sure will be far, far behind the guys buying index funds. Like at least two to three times behind.





Here you assume that gold and silver aren't undervalued. Many experts however disagree with you. Some of them say that the ounce of silver you now buy at $14 is undervalued and ought to fetch $30-40. If it corrects for that as well as inflation, that could be a nice profit.

Another difference is that you seem to accept the inflation values like they are presented to you.

Below I attached a sourced article by shadowstats.com with a particular section underlined. Read that first. If it strikes you as odd, read the entire article.

It can be quite an eye opener. Umm, if you let it, ofcourse.


----------



-------------------------------------------------------------------


3. Consumer Price Index (UPDATE) - Oct. 1, 2004

"GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC REPORTS: THINGS YOU'VE SUSPECTED BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK!"

A Series Authored by Walter J. "John" Williams

"The Consumer Price Index" (Part Four in a Series of Five)

October 1, 2006 Update

(September 22, 2004 Original)

_____


Foreword

This installment has been updated from the original 2004 version to incorporate additional research on earlier changes to the CPI. The source for most of the information in this installment is the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which generally has been very open about its methodologies and changes to same. The BLS Web site: www.bls.gov contains descriptions of the CPI and its related methodologies. Other sources include my own analyses of the CPI data and methodological changes over the last 30 years as well as interviews with individuals involved in inflation reporting.
______


Payments to Social Security Recipients Should be Double Current Levels

Inflation, as reported by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is understated by roughly 7% per year. This is due to recent redefinitions of the series as well as to flawed methodologies, particularly adjustments to price measures for quality changes. The concentration of this installment on the quality of government economic reports will be first on CPI series redefinition and the damages done to those dependent on accurate cost-of-living estimates, and on pending further redefinition and economic damage.

The CPI was designed to help businesses, individuals and the government adjust their financial planning and considerations for the impact of inflation. The CPI worked reasonably well for those purposes into the early-1980s. In recent decades, however, the reporting system increasingly succumbed to pressures from miscreant politicians, who were and are intent upon stealing income from social security recipients, without ever taking the issue of reduced entitlement payments before the public or Congress for approval.

In particular, changes made in CPI methodology during the Clinton Administration understated inflation significantly, and, through a cumulative effect with earlier changes that began in the late-Carter and early Reagan Administrations have reduced current social security payments by roughly half from where they would have been otherwise. That means Social Security checks today would be about double had the various changes not been made. In like manner, anyone involved in commerce, who relies on receiving payments adjusted for the CPI, has been similarly damaged. On the other side, if you are making payments based on the CPI (i.e., the federal government), you are making out like a bandit.

In the original version of this background article, I noted that Social Security payments should 43% higher, but that was back in September 2004 and only adjusted for CPI changes that took place after 1993. The current estimate adjusts for methodology gimmicks introduced since 1980.

Elements of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) had their roots in the mid-1880s, when the Bureau of Labor, later known as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), was asked by Congress to measure the impact of new tariffs on prices. It was another three decades, however, before price indices would be combined into something resembling today's CPI, a measure used then for setting wage increases for World War I shipbuilders. Although published regularly since 1921, the CPI did not come into broad acceptance and use until after World War II, when it was included in auto union contracts as a cost-of-living adjustment for wages.

The CPI found its way not only into other union agreements, but also into most commercial contracts that required consideration of cost/price changes or inflation. The CPI also was used to adjust Social Security payments annually for changes in the cost of living, and therein lay the eventual downfall to the credibility of CPI reporting.

Let Them Eat Hamburger

In the early 1990s, press reports began surfacing as to how the CPI really was significantly overstating inflation. If only the CPI inflation rate could be reduced, it was argued, then entitlements, such as social security, would not increase as much each year, and that would help to bring the budget deficit under control. Behind this movement were financial luminaries Michael Boskin, then chief economist to the first Bush Administration, and Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Although the ensuing political furor killed consideration of Congressionally mandated changes in the CPI, the BLS quietly stepped forward and began changing the system, anyway, early in the Clinton Administration.

Up until the Boskin/Greenspan agendum surfaced, the CPI was measured using the costs of a fixed basket of goods, a fairly simple and straightforward concept. The identical basket of goods would be priced at prevailing market costs for each period, and the period-to-period change in the cost of that market basket represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a constant standard of living.

The Boskin/Greenspan argument was that when steak got too expensive, the consumer would substitute hamburger for the steak, and that the inflation measure should reflect the costs tied to buying hamburger versus steak, instead of steak versus steak. Of course, replacing hamburger for steak in the calculations would reduce the inflation rate, but it represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a declining standard of living. Cost of living was being replaced by the cost of survival. The old system told you how much you had to increase your income in order to keep buying steak. The new system promised you hamburger, and then dog food, perhaps, after that.

The Boskin/Greenspan concept violated the intent and common usage of the inflation index. The CPI was considered sacrosanct within the Department of Labor, given the number of contractual relationships that were anchored to it. The CPI was one number that never was to be revised, given its widespread usage.

Shortly after Clinton took control of the White House, however, attitudes changed. The BLS initially did not institute a new CPI measurement using a variable-basket of goods that allowed substitution of hamburger for steak, but rather tried to approximate the effect by changing the weighting of goods in the CPI fixed basket. Over a period of several years, straight arithmetic weighting of the CPI components was shifted to a geometric weighting. The Boskin/Greenspan benefit of a geometric weighting was that it automatically gave a lower weighting to CPI components that were rising in price, and a higher weighting to those items dropping in price.

Once the system had been shifted fully to geometric weighting, the net effect was to reduce reported CPI on an annual, or year-over-year basis, by 2.7% from what it would have been based on the traditional weighting methodology. The results have been dramatic. The compounding effect since the early-1990s has reduced annual cost of living adjustments in social security by more than a third.

The BLS publishes estimates of the effects of major methodological changes over time on the reported inflation rate (see the "Reporting Focus" section of the October 2005 Shadow Government Statistics newsletter -- available to the public in the Archives of www.shadowstats.com). Changes estimated by the BLS show roughly a 4% understatement in current annual CPI inflation versus what would have been reported using the original methodology. Adding the roughly 3% lost to geometric weighting -- most of which not included in the BLS estimates -- takes the current total CPI understatement to roughly 7%.

There now are three major CPI measures published by the BLS, CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) and the Chained CPI-U (C-CPI-U). The CPI-U is the popularly followed inflation measure reported in the financial media. It was introduced in 1978 as a more-broadly-based version of the then existing CPI, which was renamed CPI-W. The CPI-W is used in calculating Social Security benefits. These two series tend to move together and are based on frequent price sampling, which is supposed to yield something close to an average monthly price measure by component.

The C-CPI-U was introduced during the second Bush Administration as an alternate CPI measure. Unlike the theoretical approximation of geometric weighting to a variable, substitution-prone market basket, the C-CPI-U is a direct measure of the substitution effect. The difference in reporting is that August 2006 year-to-year inflation rates for the CPI-U and the C-CPI-U were 3.8% and 3.4%, respectively. Hence current inflation still has a 0.4% notch to be taken out of it through methodological manipulation. The C-CPI-U would not have been introduced unless there were plans to replace the current series, eventually.

Traditional inflation rates can be estimated by adding 7.0% to the CPI-U annual growth rate (3.8% +7.0% = 10.8% as of August 2006) or by adding 7.4% to the C-CPI-U rate (3.4% + 7.4% = 10.8% as of August 2006). Graphs of alternate CPI measures can be found as follows. The CPI adjusted solely for the impact of the shift to geometric weighting is shown in the graph on the home page of www.shadowstats.com. The CPI adjusted for both the geometric weighting and earlier methodological changes is shown on the Alternate Data page, which is available as a tab at the top of the home page.

Hedonic Thrills of Using Federally Mandated Gasoline Additives

Aside from the changed weighting, the average person also tends to sense higher inflation than is reported by the BLS, because of hedonics, as in hedonism. Hedonics adjusts the prices of goods for the increased pleasure the consumer derives from them. That new washing machine you bought did not cost you 20% more than it would have cost you last year, because you got an offsetting 20% increase in the pleasure you derive from pushing its new electronic control buttons instead of turning that old noisy dial, according to the BLS.

When gasoline rises 10 cents per gallon because of a federally mandated gasoline additive, the increased gasoline cost does not contribute to inflation. Instead, the 10 cents is eliminated from the CPI because of the offsetting hedonic thrills the consumer gets from breathing cleaner air. The same principle applies to federally mandated safety features in automobiles. I have not attempted to quantify the effects of questionable quality adjustments to the CPI, but they are substantial.

Then there is "intervention analysis" in the seasonal adjustment process, when a commodity, like gasoline, goes through violent price swings. Intervention analysis is done to tone down the volatility. As a result, somehow, rising gasoline prices never seem to get fully reflected in the CPI, but the declining prices sure do.

How Can So Many Financial Pundits Live Without Consuming Food and Energy?

The Pollyannas on Wall Street like to play games with the CPI, too. The concept of looking at the "core" rate of inflation-net of food and energy-was developed as a way of removing short-term (as in a month or two) volatility from inflation when energy and/or food prices turned volatile. Since food and energy account for about 23% of consumer spending (as weighted in the CPI), however, related inflation cannot be ignored for long. Nonetheless, it is common to hear financial pundits cite annual "core" inflation as a way of showing how contained inflation is. Such comments are moronic and such commentators are due the appropriate respect.

Too-Low Inflation Reporting Yields Too-High GDP Growth

As is discussed in the final installment on GDP, part of the problem with GDP reporting is the way inflation is handled. Although the CPI is not used in the GDP calculation, there are relationships with the price deflators used in converting GDP data and growth to inflation-adjusted numbers. The more inflation is understated, the higher the inflation-adjusted rate of GDP growth that gets reported.


Source: shadowstats.com


--------------------
Omnicyclion.org
higher knowledge starts here


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleAsante
Mage
Male User Gallery

Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 86,795
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: coda]
    #7762983 - 12/15/07 07:27 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Umm Coda, did you actually read the quote you fed me?  :wink:


Quote:

When a central bank is "easing", it triggers an increase in money supply by purchasing government securities on the open market thus increasing available funds for private banks to loan through fractional reserve banking (the issue of new money through loans) and thus grows the money supply.





What are they purchasing with? How should I read "the issue of new money through loans"?

They print a surplus of money and circulate it, then they take it back with an interest. It's groovy being on the top of the foodchain.


--------------------
Omnicyclion.org
higher knowledge starts here


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleAsante
Mage
Male User Gallery

Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 86,795
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: Asante]
    #7763029 - 12/15/07 07:47 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Lets just listen what mr Ron Paul has to say about the Federal Reserve and true inflation rates. It starts off relatively bland and gets evermore interesting up until his last words.

The Federal Reserve taking measures that give rise to inflation, them hollowing out the dollar, newly created credit, manipulation of inflation statistics.. He says it all and more.

Its important to know beforehand that a "fiat currency" he speaks of is a currency that is unbacked (such as the current dollar), as opposed by the dollar of old that was backed by gold and silver.

You don't have to vote for the man but hear him out.





--------------------
Omnicyclion.org
higher knowledge starts here


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinecoda
Banjo Goiter
Male


Registered: 03/20/01
Posts: 8,750
Last seen: 10 months, 3 days
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: Asante]
    #7764188 - 12/16/07 12:06 AM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Umm Coda, did you actually read the quote you fed me?




yes, i did, but right now im too drunk to respond intelligently. However i'm pretty damn sure the government just doesn't print money to buy these loans. Take a look at US history and the confederate(?) dollar(goddamn too drunk to even remember if that's the true name of this money). You can't just print and print money, in the end all it's counterproductive and all it does is further devalue the currency. I'm pretty damn sure the gov't and the banks don't need to print money to buy these securities, most of these things are done through EFT's and no actual paper money passes through the banks or government's hands. In a way it's like using the fed to control the supply of money, lower rates to entice investment and raise rates to entice savings. No money gets passed, no money gets printed, but the supply of money increases or decreases.

Fuck, i dont even know why im pressing reply. Note to self: try and not talk about econ after a 1/2 gal of beer and a 5-6 shots of the goose.


--------------------
To get really high is to forget yourself. And to forget yourself is to see everything else. And to see everything else is to become an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe. And I think every human being should be a conscious tool of the universe. . . .

-JG

i really am glad you came back to us instead of taking the other path. *hug*

-A_S (RIP your final words to me will never be forgotten)



Don't fuck with the laughing jesus.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleAsante
Mage
Male User Gallery

Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 86,795
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: coda]
    #7764695 - 12/16/07 09:30 AM (16 years, 1 month ago)

They print new money all the time to replace dirty bills that are going out of circulation. On top of that they print a small surplus to allow for economic growth. On top of that they print a surplus to drive inflation, to avoid a costly deflation.

But they're way overshooting the mark, thats what I'm saying. According to the article I C&P a few posts up, and according to Ron Paul below it, actual real inflation is very much understated. The article goes as far as saying you can add a full 7% to the CPI based rate officially supplied to arrive at the figure using the traditional measure of inflation.

You're reasoning that the Federal Reserve cannot possibly be doing that because it would be bad for the economy. When the fog clears I'd like you to investigate, not what The Fed should be doing, but what it's actually doing. Remember it's not just silly ole me making this outrageous claim, congressman Ron Paul is saying it as well, officially, on the record.


Enjoy your booze, there's a time to be sober and a time to be loaded! Make sure to add some glasses of water before going to bed to ease the hangover.


--------------------
Omnicyclion.org
higher knowledge starts here


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflinePhred
Fred's son
Male

Registered: 10/18/00
Posts: 12,949
Loc: Dominican Republic
Last seen: 9 years, 18 days
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: Asante]
    #7764970 - 12/16/07 10:59 AM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Wiccan_Seeker writes:

Quote:

Nope, they are not identical but they are related.




Incorrect.

In today's global economy, virtually every economic aspect of virtually every Western country (plus China and India) will have some effect on the economies of other Western countries -- i.e. the prices of some goods and services in the US might rise a bit due to economic policies adopted in China or Japan. But a rise in the price of a specific good or service is not inflation.

Quote:

Thats a nice reality check. I always recommend doing your own research. But have you? Have you actually in reality gone to the library and looked up the price differences? Or is the $14.000 just an estimate of what you feel it should be like?




Let me turn that around, Wiccan. Have you actually looked up the price differences? No, you haven't. All you've done is some mathematical calculations which bear no relevance either to the correct economic theory or to actual reality. I can guaran-damn-tee you that a Toyota Camry which sold for US $20,000 in 2002 doesn't sell for US $33,000 today. Not anywhere fucking close to that, in fact. Nor does a pair of Levis jeans which sold for US $35 in 2002 sell for US $58 today. Or a Stanley hammer that went for US $8.50 in 2002 go for US $14 today. Or a pound of chicken that sold for US $.89 per pound in 2002 sell for US $1.49 today. Or....

...but you get the idea. As for my figure of US $14,000, a quick Google search will lead you to several "inflation calculator" widgets programmed by different folks, all of which agree pretty closely with each other.

But the readers of this thread don't even need to do that much to recognize your figures as absurdly inaccurate, they just need their memories. The only thing I can think of that I buy on a regular basis which has increased in the last five years by the amount you claim is gasoline. Almost everything else I buy is either the same price it was five years ago or -- in the case of electronics -- has dropped in price. Yes, it is true that in the case of some foodstuffs I may be paying more in June of 2007 for say, chicken than I paid in April of 2002, but then in October of 2007 I might end up paying less. On the whole, though, I'm sure I'm paying somehwat more for food in total than I was 5 years ago. But 2/3 more? Not even close. Not anywhere near that.

Quote:

Here you assume that gold and silver aren't undervalued. Many experts however disagree with you. Some of them say that the ounce of silver you now buy at $14 is undervalued and ought to fetch $30-40. If it corrects for that as well as inflation, that could be a nice profit.




The irony of this is that I made my first big score in the silver boom in the late 70s, when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market. I bought in on the very first day in history when the price of silver jumped by a dollar, and sold out six weeks later on the day after it peaked (at around US $48). I quadrupled my money, and I've been following gold and silver prices ever since, hoping to repeat that coup. So I'm not some neophyte at this. You, however, are.

It's the simplest thing in the world to pull up a chart of gold and silver prices going back twenty or thirty years. What's the first thing you notice? Why, it's that for almost two decades their prices were virtually flat. Gold which was selling for 375 an ounce in 1979 was still selling for 375 an ounce twenty five years later! Yeah, there were some minor ups and downs over that time period, but compare the graphs for gold or silver with the Dow Jones graph for the same period. Kinda opens your eyes up, doesn't it?

I will agree that gold (and probably silver) were undervalued for a long time -- for a VERY long time -- but that didn't help anyone who had been buying it since say 1980 as a hedge against inflation, then watched it sit right where it was in 1980 for the next twenty years. It is really only in the last few years that enough people finally agreed that precious metals were undervalued to actually do something about it and bid the prices up to today's levels. Can the prices of precious metals go higher than they are today? Sure. But they can go lower, too. The fact of the matter (as any halfway competent economic adviser will tell you) is that with the economies of so many countries today doing so well for so long, almost no one will choose to hold precious metals and barely keep even with inflation (and often not even that much -- see gold graphs from 1980 to 2000) when they can be increasing their net worth substantially through other investment vehicles.

So yeah... those lucky enough to have bought precious metals in the last couple of years will have done about as well as those invested in the stock market. But that's the first time in almost three decades that this was the case.

Quote:

Below I attached a sourced article by shadowstats.com with a particular section underlined. Read that first. If it strikes you as odd, read the entire article.




I read it. Big whoop. This is nothing new. People have been arguing about the best way to record increases in the CPI since... well, since forever. This guy is a bit hysterical, and I doubt very much there's anyone else out there who holds as extreme a view as he does, but let's for the sake of argument say he's 100% right. He isn't, by the way... some of his arguments are pretty stupid, but let's not bother debunking them for now. Too time consuming. Let's accept his bogus figures at face value and assume that since the 1990s the CPI has been underestimated by his stated figure of 7%.

That still doesn't make your off the wall numbers anywhere close to true. If in fact the CPI in say 1993 rose not by 1.98%, but by 2.12% (the extra 7% this goof claims) and in 1994 it rose not by 2.02% but by 2.16%, so what? That tiny tiny extra amount is barely noticeable over a five year stretch. That is not to say it is meaningless -- over several decades it is significant indeed. But over five years it's nothing.

Hey, if you want to buy precious metals, knock yourself out. I myself bought several thousand bucks worth of a precious metals based mutual fund three years ago, and I've done well with it. But for a long term, no brainer, minimal risk investment strategy you can't beat index funds. Inflation or no inflation.

To get back to the original reason I jumped into this thread, though --

No, there is no freaking way in the world that the US dollar of today has had its worth reduced by inflation to just 60 per cent of what it was worth five years ago. 85 per cent... maybe.





Phred


--------------------


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinecoda
Banjo Goiter
Male


Registered: 03/20/01
Posts: 8,750
Last seen: 10 months, 3 days
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: Phred]
    #7765622 - 12/16/07 01:42 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Enjoy your booze, there's a time to be sober and a time to be loaded! Make sure to add some glasses of water before going to bed to ease the hangover.




Boy, i did enjoy it last night, i don't often drink like that but it was my moms birthday party, my first time home since the summer, and my cousin brought up a few growlers from the brewpub he works at.  I think it was the rocks glass with 2 cubes of ice and greygoose almost to the top that did it tho :wink:  I did the water thing, but, when you don't sleep at all it's hard to avoid those hangovers.  Don't think i managed some sleep til 10 or 11 this am, my brain is still foggy right now lol.

Quote:

They print new money all the time to replace dirty bills that are going out of circulation. On top of that they print a small surplus to allow for economic growth. On top of that they print a surplus to drive inflation, to avoid a costly deflation.




Sure, i understand this, of course our government will print money to replace old money, and yes they may add some paper money into circulation, but overall i don't believe they are printing too much.

Overall it's hard for me to say "i trust our government knows what it's doing", in fact it's even pretty hard to type something like that because overall i don't really trust our government.  As much as i can say our banking system is tightly controlled there will always be a counterpoint to it, in the end it turns into a lot of he said she said shit.  I can say that our system is tightly monitored, the people in control carefully selected and watched, and a strict set of standards are in place to avoid abuse of the system.  However, you could say that there are ways around every rule, a way to engineer someone into a position of control, etc etc.

However i do hold some faith in the system, besides political incompetency our banking system has been pretty damn solid since the depression era and our economy has seen the ups and downs it should be seeing.  How does it go, every 7 years theres a recession followed by a year or two of boom?  I can't remember exactly but our economy has been fluctuating pretty normally for the most part.

I dunno, im still a bit fuzzy right now so i'm probably not making much sense so ill just stop.  I really wish i had my macro notes with me because my prof was just amazing and i learned a lot in that class.  Trouble is i have a hard time remembering it because it was so long ago.


--------------------
To get really high is to forget yourself. And to forget yourself is to see everything else. And to see everything else is to become an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe. And I think every human being should be a conscious tool of the universe. . . .

-JG

i really am glad you came back to us instead of taking the other path. *hug*

-A_S (RIP your final words to me will never be forgotten)



Don't fuck with the laughing jesus.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineSuperNovanika85
SuperNova goes POP
 User Gallery


Registered: 11/12/11
Posts: 126
Last seen: 1 year, 2 months
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: Asante]
    #15362700 - 11/12/11 11:10 PM (12 years, 2 months ago)

I love Ron Paul. It's true, we have to manage our money wisely and go survival mode- we can't rely on scumbags any more- they cannot promise anything.

I'm planning to live off the grid with my soulmate- own a piece of land without property and land tax- do my plannings of a yurt, build it ourselves with a couple helping hands- have a little farm and Bam- did my part!


--------------------
Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.




Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleLuddite
I watch Fox News
 User Gallery

Registered: 03/23/06
Posts: 2,946
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: SuperNovanika85]
    #15363529 - 11/13/11 06:17 AM (12 years, 2 months ago)



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlineloco801
The lone ranger
Male User Gallery


Registered: 09/21/08
Posts: 991
Loc: NW Washington
Last seen: 1 month, 7 days
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: Luddite]
    #15387136 - 11/18/11 02:55 AM (12 years, 2 months ago)

I stand with Wiccan on this one. With everything going on in this crazy world who knows what's gonna happen. Can you believe a can of coffee is now 10 dollars?

Buying houses and cars are great things to either make money off or at least break even. You just need to know what you're doing.


--------------------
:mushroom2:Species found::mushroom2:
P. azurescens
P. cyanescens
P. semilanceata
P. pelliculosa
P. stuntzii
G. luteofolius
Pan. cinctulus


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineSuperNovanika85
SuperNova goes POP
 User Gallery


Registered: 11/12/11
Posts: 126
Last seen: 1 year, 2 months
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: loco801]
    #15387704 - 11/18/11 09:23 AM (12 years, 2 months ago)

A CAN OF COFFEE IS 10 BUCKS? Yeesh!


--------------------
Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.




Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinesilverspore
Stranger
Registered: 10/05/11
Posts: 2
Last seen: 12 years, 2 months
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: SuperNovanika85]
    #15388966 - 11/18/11 01:49 PM (12 years, 2 months ago)

Wiccan_Seeker, something with your post struck a chord with me and after reading you post and some of the replies I decided to commit some thoughts of my own.

I became interested in economics maybe four years ago. Back then, I was determined to create a FX trading bot. I developed a distributed genetic algorithm and spent countless of hours on that project. Naturally the project was a complete failure, but never the less I learned many valuable things. Reading plenty about it, I learned about high frequency trading (HFT) and slowly I begun to understand why it was so difficult to succeed in writing a trading bot of my own.

Probably the best way to earn money by means of trading, is by doing arbitrage. The faster your algos and your connection is, the better. Probably the best is to become a market maker and soak up the wealth through the spread.

It is pretty clear to me, that all of this has nothing to do with investment. Not in the traditional sense any way. It is in essence pure trading. It is about catching the next moving vehicle, transferring the purchasing power and escaping the dreadful death by inflation. This is what all the big once seem to be doing. They do other things as well such as interest rate arbitrage and they leverage to the hilt. Rinse and repeat, until it is game over.

With zero interest rates, bond yields flattened and sovereign defaults on the board; how do you play your pieces?

The risk associated with sovereign debt, certainly puts the notion of third party risk to the front of my mind. Sell-off in stock markets due to crashing currencies is plausible. Sell-off in precious metals to cover margins is plausible. Precious metals wealth confiscation through taxation is plausible.

Okay, I mean, this is like really difficult questions. How the hell do you compete with HFT arbitrage algos, market makers screwing you over and how do you protect against a run on the bank? How do you protect your purchasing power from the government?

And then when I think about all the things that I have learned and how difficult it is for me to come up with good trading plans, then I think about how extremely difficult it must be for those who do not even know what is going on. They do not even understand that they have to start to ask themselves these kinds of questions.

I mean, I talk to my friends and family and I am like... "For f-king sake, wake up for god sake". But they do not even seem to understand what inflation is all about, or what artificial flattening of the yield curve implies for once own savings. I mean...

...and that it how they will get away with it. People do not simply get it. So I guess that is why what Wiccan wrote, stroke a chord with me. He is like giving a damn and actually trying to wake people up and explaining what will be happening.

If you are seriously interested in what will happen. Educate yourself about financial repression, currency wars and sovereign debt crises.

If you have the stomach for it, read about the impending energy crisis too.

Personally I use simple technical analysis to look for opening positions with appropriate risk reward, in fundamentally sound energy stocks in geopolitical stable countries, FX and of course precious metals. Also, learning about proper money management is a must.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineYrat
Hello

Registered: 11/08/07
Posts: 2,312
Last seen: 2 years, 10 months
Re: Americans -- You are being robbed on an EPIC scale [Re: silverspore]
    #15389191 - 11/18/11 02:35 PM (12 years, 2 months ago)

:thumbup:


--------------------
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
to one who is striking at the root."
-Henry David Thoreau
Strike The Root


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: < Back | 1 | 2  [ show all ]

Shop: Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   North Spore North Spore Mushroom Grow Kits & Cultivation Supplies   Original Sensible Seeds Bulk Cannabis Seeds   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Cryptocurrency: A Discussion on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Related Projects
( 1 2 3 4 ... 500 501 )
geokillsA 250,333 10,002 01/27/24 05:04 PM
by geokills
* STOCKS - An Intro Tutorial & Ongoing Discussion
( 1 2 3 4 ... 289 290 )
geokillsA 296,586 5,796 01/22/24 08:56 PM
by geokills
* Shit coin investment thread, low volume high risk high reward coins
( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 all )
sh4d0ws 5,356 164 11/23/21 07:50 PM
by budmanman

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: geokills, automan
7,701 topic views. 0 members, 2 guests and 2 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.024 seconds spending 0.005 seconds on 14 queries.