19 Comments
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INGRID C DURDEN's avatar

will anticipate the rise of the price of cheese by buying a large quantity before the elections! (another cheese lover here)

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Tardigrade's avatar

I can make my own cheese. Is that like printing my own money?

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Rat's avatar

Rather the opposite even in a static equilibrium, without considering the possible effects of cheesemaking on money velocity.

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Tardigrade's avatar

If we can make our own cheese, we don't need no steenking money.

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Rat's avatar

Full autarky probably has been impossible for about two centuries now but partial is still possible and desirable.

What it does for money velocity is hard to tell. Up to 19th century peasants often spent money on the same day – go to the market, sell A, buy B, go home. Modern farmers on the other hand turn around money slower than city folks, I reckon.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Good to know my aspirations are autarkical.

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Michael Koopman's avatar

Stinking cheesy too.

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Theodore Atkinson's avatar

People should be investing in chickens, potatoes and edible perennials. Gold's nice, but so is a french fry and an egg when you're hungry. No one's gonna like their grocery bill looking like the Bitcoin price.

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Tricheco's avatar

Hot money sloshing around and chasing ephemeral returns is a problem. Disrupted supply chains, though, are much worse at the ordinary consumer level. We're still paying the price for the Lockdown Left's moral panic. The embargoes they subsequently added are not helping.

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Rat's avatar

I seriously expect [worldwide] inflation to get worse after the U.S. election. Whether the timing is a coincidence, or there's a nefarious plan behind it, I cannot tell.

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Tricheco's avatar

I expect you're right. Everything coming out of the USA suggests a desperate effort to reelect Dementia Hitler. As part of that, they're eviscerating and cannibalising the [global] real economy in a crackpot realist spiral.

I tend to doubt a coherent, overarching nefarious plan, but that doesn't rule out lots of smaller ones. In fact, I think it makes them more likely. It's going to be a rough ride.

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the long warred's avatar

Rat

The derivatives are $695T notional and $19.8T market value.

Notional = Debts

The derivatives are where they off shore vehicled the debts.

That and Fantasy football speculation, mostly debt.

Bank of International Settlements.

https://data.bis.org/topics/OTC_DER/tables-and-dashboards/BIS,DER_D5_1,1.0

The rest of the debts are trifling.

But don’t worry, I have turnips and horseradish when the cheese runs out.

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Rat's avatar

If your grandpa planted horseradish, your grandchildren will have it, nothing short of nuclear weapons can exterminate it.

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the long warred's avatar

Correct: Horseradish eternal.

I planted the horseradish.

2 long rows.

About a year in the ground now, might be ready.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Somehow I ran across this today. Not only is it relevant, it involves livestock. And now I finally understand futures markets.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190122134609/http://www.juliangough.com:80/the-great-hargeisa-goat-bubble

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Rat's avatar

It seems likely you ran across it in the last paragraph of this very post. ;)

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Tardigrade's avatar

Thanks for pointing out my geriatric decrepitude and failing short term memory 😂

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the long warred's avatar

The best way out of this mess is to finish the logic of the petrodollar and go to energy money.

The Kilowatt dime, the 10 Kilowatt dollar.

This allows us to grow and generate our way out of this mess and restores value to money, metals cannot do that… the debts are far too large.

Anyone can generate electricity, of course and we can’t get enough of it.

All other energy forms can quite be converted to Watts. Including calories.

Something similar happened with technology; in 1984 AT&Ts monopoly was broken up, and the cost of transmission plummeted, first visible in long distance calls. Long distance calls were expensive and rare, it was for the holidays. International calls once a year. A call outside your area code would be $10+ or more dollars a minute, International calls ran into the hundreds$ per call.

Moreover technology exploded in every direction, the internet isn’t possible even in infancy at the pre 1984 rates. Only government and universities had networks, or large businesses. Many technologies sitting on the shelf came off the shelf, creativity exploded.

But you notice still… can we ever have enough bandwidth?

The clincher however is energy is connected to everything and our Fiat inflation has eroded our wages and purchasing power because the energy cost hasn’t been bent down, indeed it’s energy costs where inflation eats everyone. It’s time to bend that cost curve down.

Imagine if your electric bill was as cheap as your voice calling bill? Long distance call costs went from $5-30$ a minute to a flat monthly rate. Whatever you’re paying now monthly at any plan was the cost of one call.

Not to mention all the BTC miners and other strivers and hustlers could strive for something of value.

The way to control inflation or deflation in this scenario is simply Seigniorage.

There’s approved digital energy coin, and there is not.

Business to business can go back to full bills of lading, infrastructure would explode- just as computers then the internet expanded telecommunications. Name a company that doesn’t need electricity, no matter its size.

BTW - Anyone who tells you by the way that the value of money is in its scarcity is tricking you, and ignoring the history of money and current policy.

The only reason the Gold Standard worked for England is they were looting India - again and again in history metallic money depended utterly on mines.

South Africa’s fate was sealed when Nixon took us off the Gold Standard.

Energy on the other hand comes in many forms and is all around us.

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The Shadow Band's avatar

a simple skill

will i

imply

to laugh

out loud loud

cuz we all

gonna die - lol

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