end of america?

[haunted]

Yeah, the currency in Mass. stuck out to me too(I even remembered the name and just googled it):

http://www.berkshares.org/

That is their website, for the "Berkshire region of Mass." Looking at it a little more, this seems like the list of places in which this currency is accepted: http://www.berkshares.org/directory/dir_list1.htm ...... Look at it some, I haven't thoroughly checked it out. additional info: http://neweconomicsinstitute.org/content/local-currencies

From what I remember he listed the reasoning for Mexico not accepting the US dollar, THEN said that it also had to do with blah blah which I didn't take too seriously either.

[The Happy Friar]

The local currency made national TV news not long ago.  linky.

If he gave you all the answers in the video I'd take it more seriously.   Great people who sell information give it away & pay if you want it in print or for another service.  IE if he gave you the pdf doc's of everything & then said "you can subscribe to my newsletter for $XX" it would seem more serious.  He should already know that (from his normalcy principle) most people wouldn't believe him anyway, so giving it away would swarm the world with crash-safe people.

The biggest (and worst?) thing I see for the local currency thing is if THEY start devaluing the dollar.  IE they say "$1 USD buys $2 of our currency".  Then, in that area, you've got a worthless USD.

He's right about parts of the country accepting different currency's at different rates.  Used to be in Canada you'd see "USD at par" even though it was worth a lot more.  Now I'm seeing that more in Canadian tourist areas, except it's "Canadian accepted at par".  Never happened when I was a kid & $1 USD was worth ~$1.30 Canadian. 

Foc's right about the silver/gold thing too: the guy is assuming we'd be able to access our gold/silver.  If the govt collapses that would be near impossible.  It's not like the EU where another country our stuff is in is only a 1/2 day drive away. 

[quadz]

I also get a funny feeling about some of these links..

"UPDATE: Because we get a ton of emails from Stansberry victims, we’re offering everyone special pricing to show you not everyone in the stock picking business is evil. If you’ve been abused emotionally and financially, please contact me and we’ll tell you all about how we can help!"

Yeah, I kind of LOL'd at that.  Even the self-proclaimed good guys come off as smarmy.

The main points that Stansberry makes in the video are very convincing to me. Primarily, he points out that the world's currency is the US dollar and the our government are the only ones who can print money. Oil is only measured by US dollars, so any country has to buy US dollars first in order to buy oil.

Well, who controls the exchange rate between currencies?  If we devalue the dollar, countries with other currencies should expect to obtain more dollars per unit of their money, so...  It's not clear to me why our printing money would mess up everyone else's exchange rate, apart from perhaps the apparently few countries whose exchange rates are "pegged" to the US dollar:

Kind of an interesting map here illustrating which countries have a fixed exchange rate based on another currency {US dollar, Euro, etc.}

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

And since we don't have to buy US dollars like any other country for oil, we can just print them out. China, Russia, and several Euro countries should be pissed, and rightfully so. Look at their gas prices...... 2-3x more than ours.

This doesn't make sense to me.

Quoting from: http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/news/international/usgas_price/

Price comparisons are not all created equal. Comparing gas prices across nations is always difficult. For starters, the AIRINC numbers don't take into account different salaries in different countries, or the different exchange rates. The dollar has lost considerable ground to the euro recently. Because oil is priced in dollars, rising oil prices aren't as hard on people paying with currencies which are stronger than the dollar, as they can essentially buy more oil with their money as the dollar falls in value.
[...]
Gas price: It's all about government policy. Gasoline costs roughly the same to make no matter where in the world it's produced, according to John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute. The difference in retail costs, he said, is that some governments subsidize gas while others tax it heavily.
In many oil producing nations gas is absurdly cheap. In Venezuela it's 12 cents a gallon. In Saudi Arabia it's 45.

The governments there forego the money from selling that oil on the open market - instead using the money to make their people happy and encourage their nations' development.

Subsidies, many analysts say, are encouraging rampant demand in these countries, pushing up the price of oil worldwide.

In the United States, the federal tax on gas is about 18 cents a gallon, pretty low by international standards.

Quoting from: http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=669

Drivers in 11 European countries are now paying an average of more than $6 a gallon for gasoline, according to Britain's AA Motoring Trust. "We have always looked upon you Americans with a lot of envy" about gas prices, said David Williams of the trust, an independent research group that advocates for British motorists.

European governments have long used gasoline taxes not only as an important source of revenue, but as a policy tool to drive down oil consumption and reduce pollution.

Williams said taxes account for about 66 percent of the pump price in Britain - so of the current average price per gallon of $6.48, about $4.27 goes to the government.

U.S. drivers pay an average of about 46 cents per gallon in combined state, federal and local taxes, according to the Tax Foundation, an independent organization in Washington.

It does not seem to be the exchange rate that's affecting gas prices in these countries.

This on top of us already being in a huge debt, as in approaching the point where we can't even afford the interest on our loans, seems like a problem to me.

I agree about the debt problem.

On the other hand I watched an interview with {some economist or other} awhile back, who I thought made complleing points about the intertwined Chinese and U.S. economies.  China has little to gain and much to lose if our economy collapses.  All the debt they hold from the U.S. is completely useless unless we're able to make the interest payments.  Further, our economies are said to be tightly linked via their import/export relationship.  Looks like we consume about 1/4 of China's world exports.  If our economy tanks, it should affect them heavily too.  As such, the stability of both our economies would be in each other's mutual interest.


Regards,

quadz

[Sgt. Dick]

I happen to be taking a couple of wealth management and retirement planning courses offered through my employer.  
The instructor has made some interesting points about the economy some of which I have verified some I have not yet.

Inflation - inflation is currently hovering around 2 percent and has been relatively low since the early 1980's when it peaked at 13.5 percent.  my instructor predicts that inflation will rise significantly in the coming years for these reasons.

1 - Most companies have cut back about as far as they can, they have become lean and very efficient.  They produce just enough to meet the demand.  If demand increases, companies will be reluctant to increase employment to meet demand until they feel the demand will be sustained, so production will lag behind demand.  If demand in higher than the supply, the cost goes up.

2 - The dollar is weak which gives us less buying power.  With deficits at record levels economic recovery and increased production will be very slow and difficult.

The last time we had double digit inflation, we had high unemployment, record deficits, and  a weak dollar.  Sounds a lot like what we have today.  The government has been pumping money into the economy but it can't do that forever.

[X'tyfe]

This is just like that guy who went on TV talking about his book that the US is withholding cures to Cancer and AIDS and such. Knowing how dirty and corrupt the US is, it most certainly must be true. With how the US health care system is, why the hell would they ever want to cure it if they could make so much money just from trying to extend the lives of these people?

The world is fucking sick man and it will end bloody in the end. No point in panicking and trying to stop it because you can't. This is human nature and the more you try to resist it the worse it gets. As much as I want to see the US burn, it would do more harm than good for the world if it did.

[quadz]

 

[soh]

 

 ... I'm beginning to think wonder which caveman was smarter

[|iR|Focalor]

In relation to the video and the little cartoon strip that Quadz posted:

He says that guns and ammo is not a good investment. Actually, if shit gets THAT BAD in the US, yeah, a gun will be a great thing to have. Remember Katrina? In some cases, people were killing one another over fucking television sets... IN THE MIDDLE OF A FLOOD! The world really isn't quite as complicated as people insist on making it. People complicate life so that they can take advantage of your confusion. It's rather simple. If the economy grinds to an abrupt halt and worldwide pandemonium erupts, you will want to have food and water and shelter. Other people will not have food and water and shelter. They will be forced to either ASK you for it, or TAKE IT from you. Here's where the gun comes in. If they try to take your shit, you kill them. If you don't have any shit and you want their shit, you kill them for it. This is the simple event that has started every war in the history of the world. It may seem incredibly uncivilized to suggest that humans have a natural inclination for this behavior, but remember that man is really no different from any creature that doesn't wear clothes and shits outdoors. There is no god in the sky that created us completely different from other organisms. We age, we reproduce, we die just like the rest of them. We are NOT special. Despite the fact that we've conditioned our species as a social being to regard homicide as a bad thing, it's still very much a natural instinct. If you want to truly protect the lives of your family in a time when the whole world is losing it's fucking mind, arming yourself for physical conflict is what you really should do.

[|iR|Focalor]

http://www.berkshares.org/

http://doodoolicio.us/index.php?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.berkshares.org%2F

[soh]

ughh

[[BTF]adam]

Nicki Minaj will save the economy!

[Th0m@s29]

I do not think it is correct.

[Arm0r]

I do not think it is correct.

and the award for most general statement this decade goes to.

[fdrjk]

I do not think it is correct.

[reaper]

Someone explain to me why it's been a good idea to keep sending jobs overseas and keep bringing in massive amounts of people when there isn't enough jobs to begin with.

One respose I've heard before this "recession" was that there's not enough people who know how to do x type of work.  In reality that means the labor is cheaper elsewhere, and we can't figure out something??

So now we're a service nation, we generally don't produce goods, but we'll repair generators or whatever, so they send the repairing generator jobs overseas.  That might not be the best example since US probably makes some generators, but what is up with that?