beowulf

For a small carry check out the Springfield XDs. It's a very small single stack .45 ACP hand gun that's slim and easy to carry.

It seems to me that the baby boomers benefited from the housing bubble if they sold before it burst, not so much now or if they took out a housing equity loan and are under water. You can always find someone who is benefiting from inflation. But I think the long term results are over all negative. So much for seeing the cubs play, heading back to my dads house.

I am in agreement with you on this.

It wouldn't be the first time I have been called stupid!

Inflation helped your debt at the expense of those that are less able to deal with decrease of the purchasing power of the dollar. Btw I am in Chicago today going to sit in the rain and watch the cubs play. Will be in IL till Sunday.

The point for QE is to have more money supply in the economy. Let's say you have 2 tickets for babysitting and I have 2 tickets too. You use your 2 tickets and I go on to babysit twice for you. I now have 4 tickets. I am keeping the 4 tickets for a "rainy day" (aka SAVING). What happens to our economy? My motivation to keep them is higher than to spend them. We are now in a recession and other people who would want to get these tickets are not getting any. That is unless someone (the central bank) issues more of these. QE makes the economy rolling (and by extension the middle and lower class). Inflation inflates DEBT as well (which helps the lower and middle class). Cheers! Shc I understand why they did the QE's and Operation Twist. I don't think they worked at all and QE 3 is not going to have the desired effect and will just make things worse. I don't think inflation helps the middle and lower classes much at all if any. I think it hurts them a lot. The decreased purchasing power is why it hurts them more. Food and other necessities become more expensive. Savings is not a bad thing as you seem to think per Keynesian economics. I think the Austrian economic view of savings makes much more sense. Look it up as I really don't have the time to try and write it out here for you.

Gold isn't perfect. I never claimed that. There are advantages to having a gold standard. Attempting to manipulate the economy by trying to 'peg' it's value doesn't work and I don't think is a desirable thing to do. It's not a moot point. The whole point of having a gold standard is to reduce the ability of the Gov to increase the money supply and try to control interest rates. Under a gold standard the value of gold was fairly stable over time. I don't consider a fiat currency to be stable when it is constantly devaluing. Deflation is not always a bad think. Price deflation of goods is often a good thing like the drop in computer prices. I think inflation is much much worse. I think the Gov is currently under estimating inflation and soon we will see much more noticably higher inflation. The Fed is currently pay interest on bank reserves to try and control inflation. I don't think that will work for very long.

The problem with a fiat currency is its continuous issuance of credit to keep going. It always leads to an over issuance of credit and continual devaluation of the currency. The dollar will never trend upward in value. At some point it will reach a value of essentially 0.

Whether money is electronic or physical increasing the monetary base has the same effect of devaluation. It doesn't matter if you lower the gold content of a coin or do QE it in the end is the same problem. The difference with a gold standard is that it's harder for the gov to inflate. Inflation hurts the middle and lower classes the most because they are less able to invest to protect their purchasing power.

You can let that put you off if you so wish, but that video is not specific to Austrian economics. It's always good to look at both sides of the argument and decide for yourself. I find some of the criticisms of Austrian economics to be valid, but most are not.

FYI, the US Gov did try to set the value of gold at $35 dollars an ounce and that is one of the reasons why Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard per the Bretton Woods agreement. At $35 an ounce gold was under valued.

No, not really. They try to control it but in the end they fail. I really recommend watching that video that I posted. It really does a good job of showing why gold holds it's value and what money really is. I know it's a long speech but it's well worth it and very informative.

Here is a chart of the M2 money supply from the Fed. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/

True, but it's not really possible for any one country to control all of the mines. Gold hold it's value very well and it was not arbitrarily decided as a store of value or money. It has unique properties that has made it consistently a better form of money then any other. Also in comparison, the M2 is currently about $10 trillion dollars now. The money supply is increasing at an insane rate. Here is a very good speech on "What is money?" It's not nearly as simple of a topic as one might think. http://youtu.be/vowbrq_g5NM

Another interesting fact is that most of the money that is created isn't created by the Fed, and I am not referring to actual physical money. It's created by the banks loaning the money into existence. That is due to fractional reserve banking.

Mining doesn't generate any where near as much gold as printing generates fiat currency. What people consider inflation ie the CPI is just a symptom of inflation of the monetary base. Consider this a 1950's quarter would buy more gasoline today then it did in 1950. Since 1933 the dollar has lost over 95% of it's purchasing power. I am sure anyone can figure out why a 1950's quarter would hold it's value so well. When I said impossible, I meant impossible for the Gov to just inflate like they do with fiat currency. The Gov currently doesn't own any mines, as far as I know. I could be wrong on that.

I don't think that is accurate. It's much harder to inflate the money supply with a gold standard. Actually pretty much impossible. That is one of the reasons why the Gov doesn't like it.

Huh? There was a lot of shady things done by the Republican party to suppress Ron Paul. If there was an honest count of the delegates it's very likely that Ron Paul would have won enough delegate or even a majority. This is very poorly reported on, but it can be found on Youtube.

Do you have any idea of the pros and cons of the gold standard?

They are desperate to hold on to their mythology. It's unfortunate that so many people are brain washed from infancy to believe.

The President is just taking care of his biggest donors.

I don't think they were ever politically independent. One of the books that I am currently reading is "A History of the Federal Reserve vol 1" by Allan Meltzer The Federal Reserve was created by the big bankers and their politicians to serve the interest of the big bankers. I think the full consequences of the Fed's QE's and Operation Twist along with the near zero interest rate policy have yet to be fully felt and hold really bad results in the future.

I think it's going to get worse. It makes you wonder what they are hiding.

Unfortunately it's not expected to pass the Senate.

The concept of peak oil as I understood it was when it becomes increasingly more difficult and costly to pump the oil out of the ground and has nothing to do with the quantity of oil.