Made in???????

[Bubstr]

You have your own preconceived idea of what I think, so you are beyond help. Best of luck to you.

I had no preconceived impression of you. Words have weight. You own your words and in this case the links. I really don't think you could help anyone. Good luck to you.

[LITE-INN]

You don't get it. If you can't, won't spend it, it will not buy Jack. It's worth nothing till you find a buyer and make a transaction.

Something completely separate from hoarding money or gold. We are not on a gold standard. This is a fiat money system. The only backing is a promise to pay. If your a gold bug, make sure you invest in real physical gold or silver and not a certificate that says you own it. There is more paper than there is gold. At least then, when the gold bubble bursts or the government declares it illegal for trade, you can look at it shine. Yes our government has done that in the 30s and set their own price to pay you for it at $35 an ounce and made it illegal to keep it unless it was jewelry.

http://www.moneymatters101.com/money/usmoney.asp and its not our govt that sets its a world market

[LITE-INN]

Intelligence

An excerpt from Rich Dad's Conspiracy Of The Rich by Robert Kiyosaki.

Money evolved as human society grew more sophisticated and required a more sophisticated means of transacting business.

The following section describes in very simple terms the evolutionary stages of money--how it evolved from real money to magic money.

1. Barter: One of the first monetary systems was barter. Barter is simply trading a product or a service for other products and services. For example, if a farmer had a chicken and needed shoes, the farmer could trade chickens for shoes. The obvious problem with barter is that it is slow, tedious, and time-consuming. It is hard to measure relative values. For example, what if the cobbler did not want a chicken? Or if he did, how many chickens were his shoes really worth? A faster more efficient means of exchange was needed, so money evolved.

On a side note, however, if the economy continues to slide downward and money remains tight, you will see barter increase. One good thing about barter is that it is hard for the government to tax barter transactions. The tax department does not accept chickens.

2. Commodities: To speed up the process of exchange, groups of people came to agree on tangible items that represented value. Seashells were some of the first forms of commodity money. So were stones, colored gems, beads, cattle, goats, gold, and silver. Rather than trade chickens for the shoes, the chicken farmer might simply give the cobbler six colored gems for the shoes. The use of commodities sped up the process of exchange. more business could be done in less time.

Today, gold and silver remain the commodities that are internationally accepted as money. This is the lesson I learned in Vietnam. Paper money was national, but gold was international, accepted as money even behind enemy lines.

3. Receipt money: To keep precious metals and gems safe, wealthy people would turn their gold, silver, and gems over for safekeeping to people they trusted. That person would then issue the wealthy person a receipt for his or her precious metals and gems. This was the start of banking.

Receipt money was one of the first financial derivatives. Again, the word derivative means "derived from something else"--just as orange juice is derived from an orange and an egg is derived from a chicken. As money evolved from a tangible item of value into a derivative of value, a receipt, the speed of business increased.

In ancient times, when a merchant traveled across the desert from one market to the next, he would not carry gold or silver for fear of being robbed along the way. Instead, he carried with him a receipt for gold, silver, or gems in storage. The receipt was a derivative of valuables he owned and held in storage. If he purchased products at his faraway destination, he would then pay for his products with the receipt--a derivative of tangible value.

The seller would then take the receipt and deposit it in his bank. Rather than transfer gold, silver, and gems back across the desert to the other bank, the two bankers in the two cities would simply balance or reconcile the trading accounts between buyer and seller with debits and credits against receipts. This was the start of the modern-day banking and monetary system. Once again, money evolved and the speed of business increased. Today, modern forms of receipt money are known as checks, bank drafts, wire transfers, and debit cards. The core business of banking was best described by the third Lord Rothschild as "facilitating the movement of money from point A, where it is, to point B, where it is needed."

4. Fractional reserve receipt money: As wealth increased through trade, bankers' vaults became filled with precious commodities such as gold, silver and gems. Bankers soon realized that their customers had little use for the gold, silver, and gems themselves. Receipts were much more convenient for transacting business. Receipts were much lighter, safer, and easier to carry. To make more money, bankers transitioned from storing wealth to lending wealth. When a customer came in wanting to borrow money, the banker simply issued another receipt with interest. In other words, bankers realized that they did not need their own money to make money. Bankers began effectively printing money.

With more money in circulation, people felt richer. There was no problem with this expanded money supply as long as everyone didn't want his or her gold, silver, or gems back at the same time. In modern terms, economists would say, "The economy grew because the money supply expanded."

5. Fiat money: When President Nixon severed the U.S. dollar from the gold standard in 1971, the United States no longer needed gold, silver, or gems, or anything else in its vaults to create money.

Technically, prior to 1971, the U.S. dollar was a derivative of gold. After 1971, the U.S. dollar became a derivative of debt. Severing the dollar from gold was bank robbery of ungodly proportions.

Fiat money is simply money backed by government's good and credit. If anyone messes with the government and central bank's monopoly on money, the government has the power to put that group or person in jail for fraud and counterfeiting. Fiat money means all bills payable to the government, such as taxes, must be paid in that nation's currency. You cannot pay your taxes with chickens.

For a more detailed look at the origins of money, how money is controlled and distributed by the government, and how you are affected by the way money is manipulated by the rich and powerful, read more from the book Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich by Robert T. Kiyosaki.

we should go back to the gold standard our govt owes so much to china ans we are losing our A + ratings also

[LITE-INN]

e U.S. debt was more than $14.3 trillion during the so-called debt crisis of 2011, when the level of borrowing reached its statutory limit and the president warned of a potential default if the cap wasn't raised.

See also: 5 Presidents Who Raised the Debt Ceiling

So who owns all that U.S. debt?

About 32 cents for every dollar of U.S. debt, or $4.6 trillion, is owned by the federal government in trust funds, for Social Security and other programs such as retirement accounts, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury.
China and U.S. Debt

The largest portion of U.S. debt, 68 cents for every dollar or about $10 trillion, is owned by individual investors, corporations, state and local governments and, yes, even foreign governments such as China that hold Treasury bills, notes and bonds.

Foreign governments hold about 46 percent of all U.S. debt held by the public, more than $4.5 trillion. The largest foreign holder of U.S. debt is China, which owns more about $1.2 trillion in bills, notes and bonds, according to the Treasury.

In total, China owns about 8 percent of publicly held U.S. debt. Of all the holders of U.S. debt China is the third-largest, behind only the Social Security Trust Fund's holdings of nearly $3 trillion and the Federal Reserve's nearly $2 trillion holdings in Treasury investments, purchased as part of its quantitative easing program to boost the economy.
Criticism of China Owning U.S. Debt

To put China's ownership of U.S. debt in perspective, its holding of $1.2 trillion is even larger than the amount owned by American households. U.S. citizens hold only about $959 billion in U.S. debt, according to the Federal Reserve.

Other large foreign holders of U.S. debt include Japan, which owns $912 billion; the United Kingdom, which owns $347 billion; Brazil, which holds $211 billion; Taiwan, which holds $153 billion; and Hong Kong, which owns $122 billion.

See also: Debt Ceiling History

Some Republicans have expressed concern over the amount of U.S. debt owned by China. Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, a 2012 presidential hopeful, joked that when it came to the debt "Hu's your daddy," a reference to Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Despite such joking, the truth is the bulk of the $14.3 trillion U.S. debt - $9.8 trillion in all - is owned by the American people and its government.

[Clayton_Wetter]

Bubstr, I can't quit figure you out. I lean to the Libertarian side myself. But what I do see is that Libertarians have a wide range in opinions. Which seem to keep them from uniting into a legitimate party.

[LITE-INN]

good explantion

Here’s the quandary that the U.S. economy is in: The Fed’s quantitative easing policy– creating more liquidity so that banks can lend more – aims at helping the economy “borrow its way out of debt.” But banks are not lending more, for the simple reason that a third of U.S. real estate already is in negative equity, while small and medium-sized businesses (which have created most of the new jobs in America for the past few decades) have seen their preferred collateral (real estate and sales orders) shrink. How can banks be expected to lend more to re-inflate the economy’s asset prices while wages and consumer prices continue to drift down? The “real” economy as a whole therefore must shrink.

What has made the argument over Fed policy so important in recent weeks is a series of exchanges between Republicans and Democrats. The deteriorating situation prompted a group of Republican economists and political strategists to publish an open letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke criticizing the Fed’s policy of Quantitative Easing (QE2), flooding the economy with liquidity spilling over into foreign exchange markets to push the dollar’s exchange rate down.[1] True enough, as far as this criticism goes. But it only scratches the surface.

Enter Paul Krugman, one of the most progressive defenders of Democratic Party policy. His New York Times op-eds usually rebut Republican advocacy for Wall Street and corporate interests. But he also indulges in China bashing. To “blame the foreigner” rather than the system is normally a right-wing response, yet he blames China simply for trying to save itself from being victimized by the Wall Street policies he normally criticizes when labor is the prey. By blaming China, he not only lets the Federal Reserve Board and its Wall Street constituency off the hook, he blames virtually the entire world that confronted Mr. Obama’s financial nationalism with a united front in Seoul two weeks ago when he and his entourage received an almost unanimous slap in the face at the Group of 20 meetings.

Sadly, Prof. Krugman’s “Axis of Depression” column on Friday, November 19, showed the extent to which his preferred solutions do not to beyond merely marginalist tinkering. His op-ed endorsed the Fed’s attempt at quantitative easing (QE2) to re-inflate the real estate bubble by flooding the markets with enough credit to lower interest rates. He credits the Fed with seeking to “create jobs,” not mainly to bail out banks that hold mortgages on properties in negative equity.

The reality is that re-inflating real estate prices will not make it easier for wage earners and homebuyers to make ends meet. Lowering interest rates will re-inflate real estate prices (“wealth creation” Alan-Greenspan style), raising the degree to which new homebuyers must go into debt to obtain housing. We. And the more debt service that is paid, the less is available to spend on goods and services (the “real” economy). Employment will shrink in a financial spiral of economic austerity.

Unfortunately, most economists are brainwashed with the trivializing formula MV=PT. The idea is that more money (M) increases “prices” (P) – presumably consumer prices and wages. (One can ignore velocity, “V,” which is merely a tautological residual.) “T” is “transactions,” for GDP, sometimes called “O” for Output.

Some 99.9% of money and credit is not spent on consumer goods (the “T” in MV = PT). Every day more than an entire year’s GDP passes through the New York Clearing House and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for bank loans, stocks and bonds, packaged mortgages, derivatives and other financial assets and bets. So the effect of the Fed’s Quantitative Easing (monetary inflation) is to inflate asset prices, not consumer prices and other commodity prices.

This is the key dynamic of today’s finance capitalism. It loads down economies with debt – and when debt service exceeds the surplus out of which to pay it, the central bank tries to “inflate its way out of debt” by creating enough new credit (“money”) to make real estate, stocks and bonds worth more –enough more for debtors to borrow the interest due. This is the deus ex machina, the external influx of credit enabling financialized economies to operate as Ponzi schemes. The dynamic is encouraged by taxing speculative (“capital”) gains at a lower rate than wages and profits. So why should investors finance tangible capital investment when they can ride the wave of asset-price inflation. The Bubble Economy turns into speculative “wealth creation.”

Can it work? How long will gullible investors bet on a pyramid scheme growing at an impossibly exponential rate, enjoying fictitious “wealth creation” as bankers load the economy down with debt? How long will people think that the economy is really growing when banks lend to an economy overseen by regulatory agencies staffed by ideological deregulators?
\
The bankers’ ideal is for the entire surplus over and above bare subsistence to be paid in the form of interest and fees – all disposable personal income, corporate cash flow and real estate rent. So when the Fed’s QE lowers mortgage interest rates, will this enable homeowners to pay less – or will it simply increase the capitalization rate of existing rental value?

The Fed’s cover story is that QE benefits homebuyers by reducing the debt they must take on. But if this were true, their gain would be the banks’ loss – and the bankers are the Fed’s main constituency. To the Federal Reserve, the economic “problem” is that falling (that is, more affordable) housing prices are killing the balance sheets of banks. So the Fed’s real goal is to re-inflate the real estate bubble (while spurring a stock market bubble as well, if it can).

A Wall Street Journal op-ed by Andy Kessler (also published on Friday, Nov. 19, the date of Prof. Krugman’s op-ed in The New York Times) pointed this out – but also recognized that the Fed would create a public relations disaster if it came right out and explained that its motivation in QE2 was to reverse the fall in property prices. “Mr. Bernanke would create a panic if he stated publicly that, if not for his magic dollar dust, real estate would fall off a cliff,” and admitted that bank balance sheets still suffer from “toxic real estate loans and derivatives.” But the degree to which reported bank solvency is largely fictitious is reflected in the fact that the stock market value for the Bank of America (which brought Countrywide Finance) is only half its reported book value, while that of Citibank is off by 20%.[2]

Foreclosure is of course bad for homeowners, but it is even worse for banks, because of the financial pyramid of credit erected on the past decade’s worth of junk mortgages. The problem with Prof. Krugman’s analysis is his assumption that QE – intended to re-inflate the real estate bubble – is good for employment and indeed even for a renewal of U.S. competitiveness, not its antithesis. By focusing on trade and labor, he implies that the dollar is weakening only because of the trade deficit, not because of military spending and capital flight. And he assumes that re-inflating the real estate bubble – the Fed’s explicit aim – will make U.S. exports more competitive rather than less so! Most seriously, he asserts, “the core reason for the attack on the Fed is self-interest, pure and simple. China and German want America to stay uncompetitive.”[3]

This is not what I have been told in China and Germany. They simply want to avoid having instability disrupt their trade and domestic production, and to avoid having to take a loss on their international reserves held (mainly from inertia stemming from World Wars I and II when the United States increased its share of the world’s gold to 80% by 1950). The U.S. Treasury would like U.S. banks and speculators to make an easy $500 billion at the expense of China’s central bank on slick speculative currency trading. The Fed would like to see the U.S. economy revive by looting other economies.

It’s not going to happen. The plunging-dollar standard of international finance is being wound down as fast as other countries are able to replace the dollar with currency swaps among themselves, led by the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). South Africa has just joined these countries as a fifth member, and oil exporters from Nigeria to Venezuela and Iran are associating themselves in the attempt to make the international monetary system less unfair and less exploitative. Prof. Krugman’s fellow Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz has provided (seemingly ironically, also in a Wall Street Journal op-ed): “That money is supposed to reignite the American economy but instead goes around the world looking for economies that actually seem to be functioning well and wreaking havoc there.”[4]

The Fed and Congress have told China to revalue its currency, the renminbi, upward by 20%. This would oblige the Chinese government and its central bank to absorb a loss of half a trillion dollars – over $500 billion – on the $2.6 trillion of foreign reserves it has built up. These reserves are not merely from exports, much less exports to the United States. They are capital flight by U.S. money managers, Wall Street arbitragers, international speculators and others seeking to buy up Chinese assets. And they are the result of U.S. military spending in its bases in Asia and elsewhere – dollars that recipient countries turn around and spend in China.

[Bubstr]

Bubstr, I can't quit figure you out. I lean to the Libertarian side myself. But what I do see is that Libertarians have a wide range in opinions. Which seem to keep them from uniting into a legitimate party.

That is very true, Libertarians are individuals that not only want individual freedoms but have the ability to think as an individual. This may be bad for forming a cohesive party but better than being a Republocrate and mindlessly follow ridiculous party banter. I'm probably harder on republicans than democrats because I used to be an Eisenhower republican and my party deserted me with their crony capitalism and complete disregard for the weakest of our country and especially the Christian right that wants everyone to have freedom, but only as prescribed by them. They like to legislate morality and that just don't work. Look at Prohibition.

[LITE-INN]

That is very true, Libertarians are individuals that not only want individual freedoms but have the ability to think as an individual. This may be bad for forming a cohesive party but better than being a Republocrate and mindlessly follow ridiculous party banter. I'm probably harder on republicans than democrats because I used to be an Eisenhower republican and my party deserted me with their crony capitalism and complete disregard for the weakest of our country and especially the Christian right that wants everyone to have freedom, but only as prescribed by them. They like to legislate morality and that just don't work. Look at Prohibition.

and what has the democrats done for you

[kidrock]

and what has the democrats done for you

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1118179

[kidrock]

and what has the democrats done for you

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/14/156663/-What-Have-Liberals-and-Democrats-Ever-Done-For-Us

[Clayton_Wetter]

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=104x1118179

Oh come on! That site is a crock!

[Clayton_Wetter]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1...er-Done-For-Us

Another crock site!

What happened to your both parties arguement? At least we have more confirmation that you are a total Democrat supporter. Too bad your partiy fell to Progressive Commies, but you are still loyal anyway. lol

[kidrock]

Another crock site!

What happened to your both parties arguement? At least we have more confirmation that you are a total Democrat supporter. Too bad your partiy fell to Progressive Commies, but you are still loyal anyway. lol

You might be able to say it's a crock site but, you can not deny what the Democrats have done for us. Oh no both parties have ruined this country you can be rest assured that.

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http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=104x1118179

those are some kinda handout and you know it but really what have done but raise taxes on the slobs that are working

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nah not bias lmfao

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Kos