Money is an interesting concept, because like energy it has no structure — it is a mere number. It’s really “capital” that takes inputs to “produce” outputs, that creates the mathematical structure of money. It’s the debt capital, equity capital, physical capital, human capital, and social capital that are the functions that create money. On Unz, people blast away at the Fed, but if you know mathematical controls, you’ll know these integrated functions require proper controls. If this digital money cannot support this, the Fed, or the next Central Bank that controls the world’s reserve currency will shut it down.

I can imagine the dijjywan catching on like wildfire all over the ASEAN countries. For instance almost one-quarter of Malays are ethnic Chinese.

Late in the 20th century, Edward Luttwak coined the term “geo-economics.”

It might not stick, but what Luttwak was describing was using economic means to wage war. Instead of boring, old fashioned methods of war like big bombs, missiles, armies, and so on, you just have the fact that you can cut half the world’s supply of things like steel or car parts when they annoy you.

In this way, who makes most of the world’s goods might just end up making most of the world’s rules. Any army that depends on Chinese spark plugs will have hard time getting there to invade it.

Both parties and all the eggheads opposed “protectionism” from Reagan on when anyone questioned firing millions of workers and going for cheaper labor anywhere. Hey, what can go wrong?

We may all find out.

FRED REED SAYS:

“Armed robbery and theft will become almost impossible. I could put a pistol to your head and demand your money, but you would have to transfer it to my own phone.”

No, armed robbery and theft won’t become impossible. Instead it will evolve and probably become more vicious. But, alarmingly, theft of money may also become easier and safer for the robber.

The cryptocurrency robber puts a gun to a victim’s head in Paris and tells him to transfer the “money” to a burner phone that happens to be located in, say, Nigeria.

Some Third World countries are good places to transfer ill-gotten gains to. When foreign currency flows into them, the authorities don’t mind the origin. By the time the Paris police contact the Nigerian authorities in an attempt to trace the recipient phone, the cryptocurrency has been moved elsewhere and the device destroyed.

As regards my theory that cryptocurrency will make robbery safer for the perpetrators: The theorised robber in Paris can flee the scene without having to carry a bag of swag with him. He won’t have the expense of a money launderer. He can nip across Europe and commit a series of robberies, and each and every time have the cryptocurrency instanously sent to Nigeria, where it will be as safe as a house on fire.

Cryptocurrency may be a rising tide that lifts all ships and boats equally. Or it might just lift robbers a little higher than the rest.

But this tide will lift Governments higher than everyone else. The authorities won’t mind cryptocurrency making life easier for armed robbers. Because these currencies are first and foremost about information, which is about power.

Knowing every purchase and sale a person makes will enable the authorities to know the most minute details of that person’s life.

There will be absolutely nothing that rulers will not know about their subjects when they are all using cryptocurrency instead of regular cash or cheques. Artificial Intelligence will easily track every citizen’s every move and create a complete profile on each and every one.

The AI will know more about each citizen than they know themselves. Worse, the AI will be able to predict each and every citizen’s future move. Knowing the past gives very good indication of the future, and you can multiply that millions of times when super intelligent AI is doing the analysing.

Cryptocurrency will make possible the ultimate police state.

It probably won’t be long until AI is designating certain individuals to be persona non grata and sending instructions to hospitals to sterilise any children they have.

Revelation 13:17

“So that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.”

If it can kill off swift, USD is kaput.

You can bet your ass that USA will do everything possible to stop it.

Have the best guns & you’ll just get whatever you want- product, women, land, ….

Genghis knew that.

US knows that.

It should above all be a boon to Africa –

– easy to obtain by non-exportable services
(= prostitution to Chinese construction workers)
– phonebanking infrastructure is well established and widely accepted
– hedge against currency debasement
– (somewhat) check on corruption
– (large) boost to inner-African int´l trade

US interests in that direction are marginal;
but yes, if it can circumvent SWIFT …

The author confused himself by conflating digital currency with digital transactions. No country ever will base its national currency on the digital currency system. The state needs the flexibility of manipulating money supply. The digital currency has no such flexibility. Otoh eliminating cash and doing everything via digital transactions is possible.

Interesting article by one of the Fred Reed’s apparent Mexican co-residents, using the name ‘Rio Grandito’, ‘Mexican Leftists Fear Biden More than Trump’, and beginning with this charming photo of a ‘patriotic Mexican girl’ and Mexico’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador or ‘AMLO’:

In poorer Mexico, with its often religious, often traditional and family-loving people, leftists reject and do not even have time for all this ‘woke’ bolshite like fake leftist Americans. But we can see the internal USA war coming.

Mexico’s endemic political turbulence has sharpened the wits of its leftist intellectuals, amongst whom is Mexico’s fine President AMLO, a democratic, socialist, but very libertarian figure. AMLO privately considers it likely that Trump was cheated of his victory, having many pro-Trump Hispanic voters inside the USA. Many Mexican leftists agree.

Recognising portents from their own history, many Mexican leftists see the USA as now being pushed into a civil war scenario by the belligerence and arrogance of the USA Democratic party of Biden-Harris. They see a horrible potential for totalitarian tyranny by this fraudulent ‘Left’.

All gov’ts are pushing for the introduction of THEIR digital currency. The average person will be told of all the wonderful things it will do, like the convenience it offers, crippling those dastardly drug pushers (CIA), etc and they will buy it hook line and sinker. They really have little choice.

I want to know what prevents the digital currency from being perverted with an ever expanding (inflationary) supply when it’s in the best interests of the gov’t that controls that currency to forever cheapen it reducing the average persons purchasing power.

In the final analysis, only the gov’t wins with a digital currency; the people lose big time. The drug business is in response to ridiculous laws that make substances illegal. Without those laws, there would be no illicit drug trade with drug lords. The law created the illicit drug trade. The law created the fiat money system as the low tech enslavement where your saving forever diminish in purchasing power over time. This new version will have that same “feature” because that’s not a bug as far as gov’t is concerned, AND if you visit a place like UNZ.COM, they’ll empty your digital wallet, all legal like because they’ll invent a new laws that says it legal.

With digital currency as the only option to trade, humanity is under complete control of the scum in the political class. I’m not optimistic.

Willy Bill the dealer steps from the jungle and pays Carlos for flying, which creates a record of time, place, amount, identity of both, and trips an alarm at FinCin in Washington. In the drug racket, this sort of thing is suboptimal. Money laundering would become the Achilles heel of the drug racket.

Nah, that would collapse several large banks and put a damper on The Company’s flexibility. FinCen would probably be obliged to turn a blind eye to a dijjyNarCoin.

A wan-wallet with no rake-off would have interesting consequences for the credit-card companies, such as bankrupting them.

I’m not so sure Team Biden would turn its back on their friends in the bankcard business, so poor folk without a bank account would get their bennies and wages (if any) credited to their Treasury Direct account, accessible via a debit card with MC & VISA taking their requisite tolls. This will make collecting national sales taxes far easier.

As for enforcing sanctions, DC has decided piracy on the high seas is easier.

The 2nd part of your comment, ForeverGone, took the words right of of my fingers. I’ll give Mr. Reed credit for writing one paragraph on this, the most important aspect of Government-Run digital currency, which does come straight out of Revelation. Peak Stupidity reviewed a book named We Have Been Harmonized about modern China under Totalitarianism with “TECH” characteristics – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. The portions about the Orwellian state of modern China (just over the last 5 years or so) ought to scare the BeJesus out of you.

I agree with commenter Utu below, that the money supply is different from the currency. I can’t see any modern-day government not wanting to have the ability to create more money at will. There’s a key distinction between government-run vs. other digital currencies. You gotta figure that government has a way to make more of it on command, while Bitcoin, etc. don’t work that way. (Re: the latter, I worry more that some mathematician somewhere will crack, or already has cracked, the blockchain code – he’ll make a lot of money first, then at some point it’ll be just too much for him, and he’ll have to reveal it to the world out of pride.)

There’s various ways America ought to have (too late now, for the most part) emulated China: Controlling your freaking borders and not giving away your manufacturing and human capital are examples. Joining the End Times straight out of Revelation is not something I put high priority on.

Them is [sic] some thoughts. I don’t know whether they are good thoughts.

There are a lot of things you don’t know. These thoughts are better than some of the more moronic ones I’ve seen in your columns lately, so relatively speaking, they are good thoughts, sure.

Emperor Biden confiscates all digital currency private ownership to lockbox safeguard US assets.

Redistribution dolement is being studied. FEMA will support population in the interim. Sign up for aid when electricity is restored

I quibble at the “means of exchange” being conflated with the “store of value,” but I fault US (and probably the rest of the world…) education. We’re accustomed to physical money, and thinking of “my money” sitting (where? My bank is in Texas where I’ve never lived, and followed me transparently to China where I did, readily convertible to 100RMB notes or WeChat currency) in “my bank account.”

The only thing “money in my bank account” means is that the bank agrees they owe me a certain amount of money. Nowadays it’s a digital record, with backups, so I’ve read, in the Caymen’s and somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific should we all agree to nuke each other to death, presumably so the cockroaches can rebuild the economy.

VAT, Sales Taxes, and similar are all charged by the seller . . it’s off-the-shelf software, and except in the US it’s baked into the price because we’re NUTS here in Southern Ontario.

So from working with WeChat and AliPay etc, it seems the “win” is a one-stop shop and dropping the requirement of a bank. I would expect China eventually to charge a nominal remuneration…so long as they charge less than AliPay, Venmo, WeChat…. they’ll win.

It has been said that mankind’s destiny is the stars…but there’s no guarantee we’ll speak English out there.

Armed robbers these days are more interested in stealing your phone than your wallet.

People will always find something to use for cash. Just look at jails and prisons. They use tobacco, candy and even mackerel (google it.) Hell, in the ghetto, the use Tide laundry detergent. (Again, google it.)

You are never going to impose a cashless society.

Umm, letting anyone have total control of your money and access to your money seems a real shitty idea.

“ The cryptocurrency robber puts a gun to a victim’s head in Paris and tells him to transfer the “money� to a burner phone that happens to be located in, say, Nigeria.�
I’ve been trying to find details on the mechanism for transferring dijjywan and some are kind of vague on the question of what exactly is meant by verified user. It looks plausible that robbery scenario might be tough to carry out, and for disturbing reasons. It appears the system can only work between parties who are known, and are verified to the government. That’s part of the reason for this currency, the Chinese government wants to track every transaction, who are the parties, how much it was for, and where they are. Maybe a transfer to a burner phone simply won’t go through?

That’s a negative.

The only reason the United States was in the game in the 20th century was that we were the industrial power par excellance.

It was not our military — ask any US ally what they thought of that. It was because one industrial complex in and near Youngstown, Ohio made more steel than Germany and Russia combined. This area made one-sixth of the finished steel in the world back then. Elsewhere in the US the same capabilities obtained.

Now China is in the same position. They do not have to be brilliant. The US never was. We just had a producivity level unmatched at the time. As China has now.

In 40 years of free trade chatter, we threw it all away

Like Britain before us, brute industrial strength propelled international supremacy. Now both are second rate powers. Not good, as Trump might say, not good at all.

Ah-men (and ah-wimmin)!

It´s about time someone pointed that out. The losses of the “Greatest Generation”
for all of WWII were about a third of the combined loss at Stalingrad alone.

Quantum leap in productivity -> world domination -> reserve currency and spending like a drunken sailor -> Triffin´s Paradox comes and bites you in the ass i.e. the erosion of industrial capacity is the inevitable result.

Little Britain was bankrupted by the Navy – thanks to the petrodollar the US spree went on for a bit longer (and the erosion is deeper).

You’re the one confused. Any country can create as much funny money, digital or otherwise, as they want. It doesn’t have to be based on a restricted supply like Bitcoin on a blockchain. It can be completely open ended from the supply side. It’s just an accounting system.

What prevents any gov’t from expanding a digital money supply? You’re confusing block chain and mining with what is most likely just an accounting system.

It’s infinitely more flexible that paper currency and just as flexible as Fed currency and fractional reserve created digital currency.

Never at any time in human history has gold been considered worthless. And they can’t print gold.

What prevents any gov’t from expanding a digital money supply?

Nothing, when they control it (as in China). Something like bitcoin is not under any government’s control. If you are saying they can just make up Treasury Bonds and loan them out for bitcoin, just as they do for US dollars, then I agree. They could do that.

When people don’t go for that, they can’t just ctrl-P (figuratively) more bitcoin, as they can do with US dollars, though, right? They can “mine” it, same as anyone else, but that runs into limiting returns, per the math, as we faithfully understand said math, anyway.

That’s why I see some of these digital currencies as closer to sound money than the dollar. However, silver and gold are the best. They are just not nearly as good for long-distance transactions as the crypto currencies are.

I’m having trouble following your logic.

We’re talking about some gov’t digital currency. Forget Bitcoin. Forget gov’t paper. Forget block chain. Block chain mining is way too slow to be of any value in a high transaction rate economy.

A credit card is digital currency. If the Fed Gov took over Visa and named it DigitalDollar, they’d have the world wide necessary infrastructure to declare that as the US’s digital currency backed by absolutely nothing. There is no limit on how much currency they could create. They would no longer need the Federal Reserve, which is where this is heading anyway. The Treasury and the Federal Reserve are so close now that soon the Treasury will nationalize the Fed and digitally print with abandon by just removing the phony middleman. The Fed is monetizing most of the deficit spending because the bond market isn’t taking up enough.

Everyone seems to think that the banks are somehow sacred. I don’t think so. The Fed Gov will nationalize the banks when they’re good and ready and just use their existing digital infrastructure to effectively eliminate the central banks and the major banks for profit. The US debt can never be paid off, so canceling the interest makes sense by just MMTing whatever they need.

And not just Revelations. The Tower of Babel is a thinly veiled warning about the dangers of unification and consolidation as a whole. Or you could just go back as far as Tolkien: “one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”

Anything that becomes universally shared and depended upon has the potential to be manipulated for universal enslavement. Look at what they’ve managed to do via merely the dollar, not to mention the lingua francas in science and academia. I doubt cryptocurrency will be permitted until someone figures out ways to reliably centrally control it.

diggidollar ? Don’t we already have it ? Its called plastic. or direct deposit. or direct payment.

you have not yet bought from an on-line merchant with plastic who expanded your purchase several times ? and how did you seek justice ?

with diggidollar the government or police court confiscates from your account. Isn’t that how it works ?

Yeah… I think the whole benefit of digital currency isn’t so much ease as anonymity (kinda like the internet before plebs decided to waste bandwidth taking pictures of their breakfast like as if anyone cares).

Heck a large portion of bitcoins tremendous value is wealthy Indian and Chinese businessmen trying to get their money out of a countries that seems to have a hard-on about knowing and taxing everything.

If the NSA tomorrow said that it was the official/real developer of BitCoin and will guarantee its global stability with the sheer might of the US military it’s price would tank overnight. No one likes government oversight.

That’s what governments do. Stand in a mans way.

Does anyone even make silver or gold coinage any more?

I’m confused.

If the government dissolved the Fed and issued digital currency using existing credit card infrastructure, private banking would become moot.

Where would that leave the parasite guild?

Why would the parasite guild allow their monopoly to be hijacked by the government it controls.

My Visa example wasn’t meant to define a likely outcome although it would work.

Things have progressed to the point the parasites no longer need the banks as they are now putting the finishing touches on a much more powerful platform with armed thugs at the ready. The gloves are coming off and it will be in your face totalitarianism. The CEO’s, bank president, etc are part of the cabal that intends to become slave masters. Their millions of employees are road kill along with the rest of the middle class. Feudalism 2.0 has begun.

TPTsB knew that the fiat money system would eventually come to an end and 2008/9 was the point where they realized it was time to move up the food chain. Private banks are essentially bankrupt now and the only thing floating them is free currency from the Fed. The world’s outstanding debts are way beyond repayment so the banking system was and is a dead man walking. As the dollar steadily becomes worthless, they needed a new vehicle for control and are ready to let the old corrupt system go in favor of a much more powerful new corrupt system.

The parasite guild IS the gov’t now in control. New boss same as the old boss but with improved tools.

I was thinking the parasites would issue Fed digital money which would allow them to control everything and skim to their heart’s content.

And they would keep the empty shell of the Federal Government hold the police agencies and to further confuse and control the peasants.

The gov’t will shut down something made only of numbers, which arguably aren’t even real?

Oh, yeah. The US mint still makes those gold “$50” 1 oz. coins and the silver “$1” 1 oz coins, that you have to give 1,850 or 25.40 of those green pieces of paper for, respectively, not counting the premium (mark-up). People buy them up as fast as they can make ’em. There are no coins made of Plutonium, Kid.

For Bill on Roatan, we may be talking past each other a bit. I need to mull over what you are saying and/or find a different way of explaining what I mean.

For once, an Evil Jew loses.

Video Link

Another Red Chinese Infomercial 死 謊 死 謊

Courtesy of “they paid our air fare and hotel costs” —Fred ‘Ching-Chong’ Reed.

Much as Joshua A. Norton who lost his fortune in an attempt to corner the rice market in the 1800’s and in poverty then declared himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, here witness our latest self-made mattress Fred Reed who after losing his credibility in an attempt to corner his own rice market by means of shilling for Red China, now lies like any good mattress, anyplace anywhere.

Fled….FLED!! You come back Changpo village…we go river again, make fun dead bodies !!!

Livestock, racing horses, and pets are routinely microchipped, allowing connection to a database when scanned. So exactly why wouldn’t the kindly folks in charge microchip you i.e. connect you to a social credit database, and allow scanning for payment of purchases, location, identification? Scanners will be as plentiful as video cameras, monitoring most human activity. Fluffy and Spot got microchipped, and so will you for very similar reasons. It will be voluntary of course………just like a driver’s license and tax returns are voluntary.

Question. Me being a money dunce, I’m guessing what you mean is that in a digital currency mode because identities of all holders of that currency including each amount is known to the government, those holders have nothing to conceal and everything to gain by having the government regularly confirm the outstanding sum total/balance. For want of that, their purchasing power is apparently a question of dilution, and the government knows that under those conditions they’d have no way around accountability. . . . . ?

Reed has found a new country to love. His love letters to a totalitarian regime are just as assinine as his extolling the virtues of his beloved cholos in his adopted country. Just as the only great thing coming from Mehico is the taco, China is nothing to love.

Yeah dumbass they are going to go digital currency and then they can completely control the population. I am sure President Xiden will be on board with it as well as the hideous tech bastards we have in this shithole country.

You did make a point about rattling the saber at China that is valid though.. as a comment says above… a country that get’s its spark plugs from China isn’t going to be able to invade it..

Go back to Mexico loving Reed. At least the little gold tooth bastards are harmless…

There are no coins made of Plutonium, Kid.

There are buttons made of plutonium. Ingots too…

Good luck getting your hands on them. They’re a little hard to come by…

There are some coins made of platinum, and they’re only 1,300 pieces of green paper. Seems like a deal when compared to palladium or gold. Remember when platinum was more expensive than gold and palladium was cheaper than both?

Some years back, when palladium was still like $450 an ounce, I read an interesting article that predicted a palladium shortage. Some analysts figured out that Chinese people buying cars would put pressure on the palladium supply because of all those catalytic converters that would be needed. I wish I would have acted on that tip.

I wish I had foresight as clear as hindsight.

☮

Fact: by losing the Trump economy that lays the golden egg which is regularly sent home to Mexico each week via Western Union, the braceros, chilangos and campesinos here in Texas see the writing on the wall, what with the Biden transition.

as for yours

– Mexico will be greatly affected, and will be a haven for escaping Americans

ahh… yes AND no. Biden’s new regime will ultimately rejuvenate Mexico as a haven for escaping Mexicans. As the joke is told around the gulf, “To avoid the mosquitos, you hold your bed sheet open, let them all to join you, then jump out, tuck them all in, and sleep safely on the floor” All things considered, Biden here will make it just like Mexico. Mexican v. Mexican, or “How cheap will you work?” They didn’ leave Mexico simply to come work in Mexico.

Thus will be glad to sleep on the floor if only on the promise that Biden makes it worse for the Mexicans here than in Mexico.

The Digital Yuan (DY) is a great leap forward for China and China only. Any other country using it is giving up its own sovereignty. Totally moronic. If they’re smart, every country should have their own digital currency.

Most measurement of economic activities (GDP, growth rate, etc…) are imperfect outdated guesstimates. Not so if you have the entire economy running on a digital currency like the DY. You can get up-to-the-minute live data on anything you want to know about the economy. Are we in a recession? Do we have to wait 6 months later to figure it out? Or you can immediately detect people’s usual spending patterns and know right away?

The precision of control is both scary for individual liberty and a bureaucrat’s wet dream (imagine the ability to see every economic transactions between named parties).
The government can even do your tax for you since they know about all your incomes and your expenses. In fact, they know you more than you know yourself. No doubt, with their ability to see your balance sheet, your online activities, and your GPS movement, their AI might perfected a Minority-Report type of precognition and able to predict whether you are about to commit a crime or not. And this is real world doable technology and not some bullshit psychic technology invented in Minority Report. A bureaucrat will show up to your door faster than you even begin to think about it (pre-crime judged by an AI, a scary thought).

Of course, there will always be a segment of the population that want to get around this system (even in China). I mean, if you’re a famous politician, how do you pay for an escort in Vegas or take a bribe without your wife or your political enemies find out about it? There will be an underground digital currency running in parallel with the official one. Will it be bitcoin or something else, it’s hard to say at the moment.

The punitive stone age banking system of the West has outlived its usefulness. The solutions will come from East Asia no doubt.

Armed robbery and theft will become almost impossible.

Well, yes, but the real danger lurks elsewhere. Banks and governments will dispose of your money as they please. Barter will come back with a vengeance and utter chaos will likely ensue, sooner than most of us think.

If not, life will be sheer hell.

It will be a real, workaday yuan, not a speculative cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. It will use a digital wallet via a cellphone app, and will not require an internet connection.

A workaday Yuan that can be ‘printed’ by a trustee is NOT cryptocurrency – it is an electronic currency, but not the trustless ideal of satoshi.

And given the seignorage happening around the planet for the last decade+, this switch to electronic money (that can still be printed), will not lead to structural changes that can gain faith with the users of this fiat money.

Nano (not BTC), will still win, regardless. The middleman’s reign is almost over.

“Cryptocurrency will make possible the ultimate police state.”
ABSOLUTELY.
Cash is freedom. Electric currency CAN be anonymous, if we demand it (you buy “credits” over the counter like buying a “gift card”. No need for any party to “know” any other party”).
Fred’s concern with drug dealers is nice if quaint. The real criminals are in the DOW, NASDAQ etc whose $$ shananigans would make the average Columbian drug lord blush.

“I’m not so sure Team Biden would turn its back on their friends in the bankcard business,”
Dig that!
Biden isn’t the Ho from Delaware for nothing. Dear old Joe knows exactly the pleasures of a MC & Visa giving him a thourogh “seeing to”.

These outcomes can be avoided.
Don’t try to become “imperial”. Lead by example. Be benevolent. Be first among equals.
AND.
Never, ever let the FIRE sector dogs off their short leash.

“The obvious, and entirely justified, objection to the dijjywan is that it would be transparent to, and controllable by, the People’s Bank of China. ”

“It’s real simple Fred. To whit: “The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic” H.L.Mencken

So Fred, are you “The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas”, [like most here], or not, or is it only somewhat objectionable because China’s gonna do it?

Regards, onebornfree

This all sounds like a chinese fire drill to me.

There are no coins made of Plutonium, Kid.

LOL. I see what you did there.

I’m grateful Mr. Unz doesn’t charge us to read the comment sections. I’d pay it.

A number of cars in the local area have had their cats taken off with a sawzall lately, Adam. Maybe we’ll just be using catalytic converters themselves as currency after the SHTF.

(It’s platinum in them, not palladium, right, unless I’m not keeping up with the newer stuff?)

Interesting article.

“By adopting the Chinese dijjymoney as a national currency (or somebody else’s when available) said country would have a stable, grownup currency. “- WRONG! Tying yourself to a foreign currency is a sure way to crush an economy. Ask the Greeks, or the Argentinians… there is no way to rebalance trade through floating rates.

But the biggest issue of all: a Digital currency does not just allow central authorities to track everything you do: it allows then to CONTROL everything you do. You can’t buy that! You can’t buy that!

And if you become an unperson – perhaps by uttering politically incorrect thoughts – you can be cut off and banned from society more completely than anyone in the Middle Ages excommunicated by the Catholic church. Good luck.

As for no transaction fees: are you mad? Do you not think that governments will layer all manner of taxes and fees and these transactions? It will let them get really creative. Oh, maybe white people will have to pay higher taxes than people of color. People will have to pay higher taxes for steak than chicken. Maybe they will be rationed for meat. You get the idea.

Oh, and as far as the big credit card companies: I am sure that in the United States at least, digital money will be “privatized”. And we will have the kind of fees that we have with our privatized health insurance system. No, the credit card companies will not go bankrupt. I mean, did the big banks go bankrupt when they lost all that money on speculative bets, and in theory, they should have? Hahaha!

We will miss real physical money when it’s gone.

Why is Fred spelling dijjywan in this very retarded way, with two “j” when the word digital its written with a single “g”?

Is this some kind of American inside joke?

“The possibility for social control is immense since, if you should be a bad boy, the PBOC could disappear your money. Note, though, that this will be true of all dijjymoney from whatever country.”

A HUUUGE PROBLEM…

“As a wild thought, might some international entity want to establish a planetary digital currency? We live in wild times.”

ISRAEL!

P. S. I believe in the end that’s what the ZOG ruled world will do and hopefully, they’ll take their cut to go away from our lives.

Correction. Ghengis Khan ‘knows’ that. He is alive and well: Has been ‘chosen’ by the ruler of this world Earth.
You’re welcome.

I would put everything I own into a digital currency if it would do one thing no currency has been able to do since 1913, maintain a constant value.

And Trump will be President.
Pie in the sky.
More hopium for a drug addled conservative America.

But how do thieves get into the stolen phone without a password? (Asking for a friend)

Meanwhile, armed robbery by your Government will become trivially easy…Your digital “money” will just disappear….Fred’s trust in government has become childlike….

This would be tough on the cartel in D.C., what with them being the biggest drug runners of all, and I doubt that the various tribal lords in the Underworld (west Africa is a prime example) of which is the CIA’s bulk of clientele will except anything other than what they can hold in their hand–and it ain’t a device where the lights can go out moments after the exchange is made.

Fred, as usual, did a swell job at explaining the ups and downs.

Money is an interesting concept, because like energy it has no structure — it is a mere number.

This is a mistaken concept.

Money appears naturally (organically) in any society once exchange begins because of all the problems inherent in direct exchange (barter). What ends up as “money” starts out as a commodity (a real thing). The commodity that is “most saleable” becomes money. In other words, the commodity that is mostly likely to satisfy the need for indirect exchange because everyone knows that everyone else will accept it as real payment for real goods.

Obviously, there are physical characteristics (inherent in the nature of the thing) that make certain commodities more useful as money. That is why the precious metals always emerge(d) as money. It’s inherent in the nature of precious metals: e.g., relative scarcity, divisibility, uniformity, storability, durability, ease of transport, etc.

Once a commodity becomes the medium of exchange (money), substitutes will then appear due to efficiencies and convenience. That is how “money that has no structure” appears, such as paper money, checking accounts, debit cards, electronic transfer of digits, etc. These money substitutes did not start out as MONEY, they started out as substitutes for the REAL MONEY (the real thing with structure).

The move from real (or “hard” or “natural”) money to fiat paper money cannot be explained without the legal protections it has been granted, and the legally protected privileges granted to those who are allowed to produce it. The move to an all digital currency will carry us even further away from this natural process.

By the way, an interesting debate is of the three functions of money (medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value), which one is primary? In other words, which one comes first, and the others follow? Or which one, when removed, destroys the utility of the other two?

Obviously, the unit of account depends directly on the other two, so the real question is: Which is primary: the medium of exchange or the store of value?

If you were given a choice between two boxes:
A contains $100,000 of Federal Reserve Notes
B contains $100,000 of gold coins (at the current market rate).

Now add two conditions:
1. You have to spend it within 48 hours.
2. You cannot spend it for 10 years.

Everybody’s answers to 1 and 2 would be the same. No one needs a degree to answer correctly because it is common sense. It is obviously meant to highlight the distinction between money as a medium of exchange and as a store of value.

But what if the conditions were removed? Over time, the choices made by people, using common sense, would answer the question of which is primary. I think it is the store of value, because gold is real and has structure (to return to the original reason for this comment).

Cheers!

“I doubt cryptocurrency will be permitted until someone figures out ways to reliably centrally control it.”

Gotcha– You’ve reduced yourself to the logical equivalent of a dog catching its own tail and chewing it off.

Years ago I bought a parts car for $600 to fix my crumpled but otherwise nice e34, which I bought for almost nothing after it was crashed. I needed the hood, fenders, radiator support, head lights, the front clip and some miscellaneous nuts, bolts and etc.. The first night I listed the leftover parts on craigslist some guy from Atlanta called and wanted the converter. He offered me $150. I thought he needed it for his car, so I carefully removed it so it could be installed on his car. He came out that night and bought it. The next day someone else called and offered me $250. He told me he’d buy as many as I could supply him with. I’m not surprised people are stealing them with a sawzall.

A couple years later my car developed a hole in the converter. It was quite loud and it ran like a dog. It was $1500 for the OEM part. So, I bought an aftermarket one for about $100 and took it to the muffler shop for some fabricating/welding. The gentleman at the shop told me there was no way he could use that aftermarket part. It just wouldn’t work. He asked where I lived, and more specifically if there was emissions testing in my county. Conveniently there is no inspection or emissions testing here, so for $100 he put a straight pipe in for me. The car breathes better without the converter and gets about 10% better fuel economy. (33 on the highway) It is a little louder without it, but has a nice sound. With all the pollution it would take to make a new converter from new or recycled metals, I’m not sure it isn’t better for the environment for me to run without it. (I only put about 5000 miles a year on that car.) The better gas mileage makes a difference for the environment too. It’s certainly easier on my wallet.

The catalyst component of a catalytic converter is usually platinum , along with palladium , and rhodium. There are between 3-7 grams of platinum group metals in a standard catalytic converter. I doubt they use much rhodium due to price and scarcity. I’m under the impression that they could make the catalytic converters out of any platinum group metal, though I may be wrong. I assumed, incorrectly, that when palladium became more expensive than platinum that they would switch production. A quick interweb search tells me that diesel cars use platinum and gasoline cars use a combination of platinum and palladium. A different webpage tells me that “Gasoline powered vehicle catalytic converters use all three of the aforementioned rare-earth metals. Diesel powered vehicle catalytic converters use only platinum and rhodium. As a side note, PGMs are also in heavy demand in the electronics industries.” There are three other platinum group metals. Ruthenium ($330.00/oz), Osmium ($400/oz?) and Iridium ($3,700/oz). I don’t know if some of these cheaper, more plentiful metals could be used in converters instead of the more expensive, harder to acquire metals?

If there is rhodium in the converter that would make them more valuable, and more lucrative for thieves with a battery powered sawzall. Rhodium is hovering around $16,000 an oz. When the SHTF converters might make good currency, but you can’t eat them.

☮

Thanks for the really interesting article! The Chinese are really methodically putting this in place and I think it will be widely implemented throughout China by the Chinese Winter Olympics. And I am sure that China will move to integrate it into the Belt and Road countries such as Russia, Indochina and countries in Central Asia and the Middle East. Not going through SWIFT will be an enormous move away from the hegemony of the US$.

I would love to see it expanded to be used for other currencies and to people using it in other countries. Why not China export the system to Iran for it to adopt the system for use within Iran, controllable by the Iranian government, but also for money transfers between Iran and China, etc.

Ultimately, this could be an earth-shaking move by China. I am sure they are getting a lot of good advice from US financial experts like Michael Hudson on how to set this up. He is a professor at a university in Wuhan, I think.

I think we heard and read all this before, it’s all so familiar like back when bitcoin was heavily promoted to terroris, hmm racis, white supr, gun nut, no hmmm patriots and anyone who wanted to “hide” their transactions while storing their money in a bank in Zimbabwe(?). Now let’s buy the Chinese Governments version?
Not to mention how rich you could get

“A Norwegian man who bought $27 worth of bitcoins in 2009 and forgot about them discovered their value had since shot up – to $980,000 at today’s price.”
https://www.coindesk.com/bought-bitcoin-2009-now-worth-983000

“2011
Based on bitcoin’s open-source code, other cryptocurrencies started to emerge.[44]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group, started accepting bitcoins in January 2011,[45] then stopped accepting them in June 2011, citing concerns about a lack of legal precedent about new currency systems.[46] The EFF’s decision was reversed on 17 May 2013 when they resumed accepting bitcoin.[47]

In June 2011, WikiLeaks[48] and other organizations began to accept bitcoins for donations.

2012
In January 2012, bitcoin was featured as the main subject within a fictionalized trial on the CBS legal drama The Good Wife in the third-season episode “Bitcoin for Dummies”. The host of CNBC’s Mad Money, Jim Cramer, played himself in a courtroom scene where he testifies that he doesn’t consider bitcoin a true currency, saying, “There’s no central bank to regulate it; it’s digital and functions completely peer to peer”.[49]

In September 2012, the Bitcoin Foundation was launched to “accelerate the global growth of bitcoin through standardization, protection, and promotion of the open source protocol”. The founders were Gavin Andresen, Jon Matonis, Patrick Murck, Charlie Shrem, and Peter Vessenes.[50]

In October 2012, BitPay reported having over 1,000 merchants accepting bitcoin under its payment processing service.[51] In November 2012, WordPress started accepting bitcoins.[52]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bitcoin

They promoted bitcoin heavily to Libertarians, Ron Paul supporters, republicans, those Tea Party folks.and Gun Nuts.

Obama Calls Tea Partiers ‘Tea-Baggers’

“Watch your mouth, Mr. President! Writing in ABC’s “Political Punch,” Senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper reports that despite his campaign promise of a post-partisan era, even Barack Obama isn’t above occasional name-calling. Reading through Jonathan Alter’s new book on President Obama’s first year, “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” Tapper comes across a November 30, 2009 interview in which Obama declared that the unanimous vote of House Republicans against the stimulus bills “set the tenor for the whole year … That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans.” Obama’s use of the term “tea-bagger,” often deployed mockingly by news outlets, surprises Tapper. “Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations,” he reports.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/obama-calls-tea-partiers-tea-baggers/340942/

As with paper currency, there will be no transaction fees. This will make it popular with merchants, though not with Visa and Mastercard. These charge a percentage of the purchase price of merchandise.

Understanding the global nominal financial system is like playing five-dimensional-chess at the Madhatter’s Tea Party. You have to start by observing actual process – and in no circumstances is it advisable to put any reliance on what they call or label things, except as evidence of a criminal offence.

It may appear that the merchant is paying a percentage of the purchase price to Visa and MasterCard, but it is in substance a concealed-credit-charge that is determined as a percentage of the credit advanced (actually reinsured).

Visa and MasterCard are clearinghouses for the banks that issue their cards within their respective systems. Ignoring the sales-tax aspect for the moment, based on a $1,000 voucher or PIN-authorized payment order, the merchant’s bank will receive and record it as a $1,000 cash-equivalent financial asset, but will only credit the merchant with $970 based on an average nominal 3% discount.

The merchant does not pay any fees to the credit/charge-card-issuers (except as a pretext in a small number of cases, and which is technically money-laundering). Under the terms of the Merchant Agreement, in exchange for access, the merchant must agree to give an undisclosed 3% price discount to the card-user so that the card-user’s bank can collect a 3% concealed-credit-charge from the card-user’s “full payment” at the end of the statement / grace-period (but without the card-user’s knowledge-in-fact).

The merchant’s bank credits $970 to the merchant, and then sells the $1,000 voucher / payment-order to Visa International for a credit of $984.75, and the merchant’s bank immediately gains the $14.75 differential as earned interest income.

Visa International then sells the payment order to the card-user’s bank for $985.25 and makes an instant 50 cents on the pass-through.

Then at the end of the nominal statement / grace-period when the card-user pays their “full balance” the card-user’s bank recovers its $985.25 credit to Visa International, and which leaves a $14.75 residual for itself.

But if the card-user does not pay, then they have to reverse everything because if the card-user does not pay then the system never receives the nominal merchant fee at all. The normal distribution reported to nominal government investigation committees has been that 8% of the total fee goes to the clearinghouse, with the merchant’s bank and the card-user’s bank splitting the 92% difference at 46% each.

I have not been following the dynamics of it for the past year, but prior to the coronavirus-phenomenon the aggregate amount of these concealed credit charges worldwide – just in respect of credit / charge-cards, was about the USD-equivalent of $2 billion per day or $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) roughly every 18 months.

About 10% of the total or about $200 million per day is a direct rake-off from VAT and other government sales-taxes that are run through these accounts. Many banks throughout the world make more money skimming the sales-tax revenue than they pay in income taxes.

So if you were the entrenched-money-power and you owned this greatest-free-money-gravy-train in the history of the world – with an imputed-market-cap-value of at least $20 trillion, do you think you would be paying attention to a phenomenon with the potential to put you out of business overnight?

I enjoy Fred’s articles. They are very entertaining. Unfortunately if history has taught us anything it is this:
1. Governments never do anything in the interest of the common man
2. Anything the Government does whether perceived as good or bad, the citizens find a way around it to suit themselves.

We can look at prohibition. Not from any lack of effort on the part of the Revenooers booze flowed into the US like a river.

When Canada raised the taxes on cigarettes Indians on the border dumped their bicycles and bought Mercedes. Bic lighters were tossed and cigars were lit with $100 bills.

Take the DEA. Here are some shocking news regarding the War on Drugs:
-March: DEA seizes 4 tons. Drug cartels severely damaged
-May: DEA seizes a submersible with 15 tons. Cartels reeling !
-June: DEA seizes a cargo ship with 11000 tons. Cartels finished.
-July: Boeing 737 crashes with 20,000 tons blah blah

Lets look at the street price of cocaine. From March to July the street price crashes indicating supply is greater than demand.

As an aside does the Hair Sniffer really believe seizing guns is going to make any difference ? There will be an international trade accross the borders similar to booze and drugs. Mexico has a gun ban but with the correct contacts and some US dollars (no Yuan please) one can get an AK, a thousand rounds and chest rig.

Now to the Yuan in whatever form. The US dollar is so pervasive it will take a long time if ever for anyone to have any confidence in some Chinese currency digital or otherwise. Go to some off the beaten track in the world and try to pay your bill with Yuan. its either the US dollar, local currency or jail. Transactions that require discretion will be conducted in gold or diamonds etc.

And if I hold a gun to your head and demand your digital money, you are going to give it up. Like today, fraud is conducted electronically and few people are caught much less convicted.

So I say to Xi or Chi or whatever. Good luck in your plan for currency domination in this world full of slippery characters. Anyone who wants to can evade and turn to their advantage any rule or regulation the politicians dream up.

The most powerful military in the World by some voodoo magic

Who lost two wars in East Asia?

Vietnam war and Korean war

———————————————-

Countries that are best prepared to fight the pandemic

Americans live in a bubble. Their cognitive ability is influenced by the media. If you see a nice chart with the American flag on top, it’s all “feel good” list.

Once the reality hits, that’s when Americans will be fleeing on their asses.

I will take the $100K in gold coins. When I need to buy something I will convert what I need to cash and make my purchase.

I heard that when the US government paid Sadr in Iraq to have him call off his militia, they printed skids of US dollars. The US Army had to be careful counting out the notes as they were so new they stuck together. I was also told it became such a hassle that if the notes were bundled in $20,000 batches and the payout was $19,500 they just gave the recipient the whole bundle.

The US dollar has lost a lot of value what with the Fed’s printing presses running on three shifts a day.

It is notable and perhaps not widely known that those Vietnamese who fled to the US with gold suffered no hardship at the transition. Those who jumped off the ship with paper notes probably had to hang them in their toilets.

People dont look at the experiences of others and learn. They wait until they get hit and then wonder what happened.

To each his own but it is wise in these trying times to have some metal and diamonds stashed, just in case !

Are you confusing digital currency like DigitYuan and digital currency like Bitcoin?

the only solution is barter in a controlled area

I second your observation.

There are old boomers here who got confused with the digital currency and bitcoin. They can’t wrap their heads around with hash table, currency mining and now confused with MasterCard and Bitcoin.

Great analysis and very factual. That is why I always pay cash, ask for a discount and in addition ask the merchant if he could include the sales tax in the discounted charge. No need to be crass right ?

I have yet to meet the small business owner who is averse to such a simple and straightforward transaction. If I do, then I move on to his competitors, fellows who are old fashioned and abhor receivables management and bank reconciliations.

You are also spot on. The credit card companies dont care one way or the other who defaults. The suckers paying 25% interest on outstanding balances plus the skim make the writeoffs look like bubble gum change.

Its a massive shell game and rip off and the common guy needs to understand that the game is skewed against him when he whips out the good ole card.

Is African prostitution to Chinese construction workers really a thing? Not to be crude, but men with familiarity with dimensional lumber should know something about the dimensions of their lumber and when there’s sure to be too much slop in the groove.

GAMESTOP – ART OF THE SCAM

Video Link

My reply to you didn’t link back to this comment. See #64 for details…

☮

I’m an old boomer, but I’m also a professional software developer and white hat hacker. I understand the technology and what is and what is not possible. High volume block chain isn’t possible or affordable for the amount of energy it takes to mine for the US economy’s transaction volume.

The whole crypto craze is being allowed to continue to condition the population to accept any gov’t digital currency as the new whiz bang approach. I’m of the opinion that once the Fed Gov has their DigiDollar, it will strangle the rest into insignificance inside US territory. They want the control and won’t stand for any leaks that would allow the population any recourse. Other countries will do the same because they all want a captive market to sheer the sheep with impunity. Crypto is just the modern tulip.

The Treasury and the Federal Reserve are so close now that soon the Treasury will nationalize the Fed

don’t forget the third link of Satan’s trifecta; Goldman Sachs

The Fed Gov will nationalize the banks when they’re good and ready and just use their existing digital infrastructure to effectively eliminate the central banks and the major banks for profit. The US debt can never be paid off, so canceling the interest makes sense by just MMTing whatever they need.

You make it sound like the Fed Gov is somehow independent of the central banks, and looking to free itself from their monetary grip, when I think the opposite is true.

Canceling the interest is the opposite of what the whole thing is set up to do, which is to make us all, governments and individuals, slaves to debt. Slaves to the owners of the Fed.

Why would the slave owner (the Fed) allow his slaves (U.S. government and indebted citizens) to reverse the relationship? Our president and the federal gov. don’t fart unless they have permission from the Fed. Out of which the buckets to the slop trough are poured.

If you hold the bucket, and can decide to tip it or not, then all the piggies squealing for more $lop, are going to look to you as their savoir and master, and solicit your indulgence, not the other way around.

There are no more Andrew Jacksons. The closest thing we had was Ron Paul, and he was shut out.

Feudalism 2.0 has begun.

true

The parasite guild IS the gov’t now in control. New boss same as the old boss but with improved tools.

yes, and interesting..

But I don’t think they’re going to use a Visa type of credit system to keep the slavery going.

I suspect that they’re very much going to use a new cyber-type of currency, but one that is completely at their power to inflate or deflate as they see fit, and otherwise control in everyway, like they do now with Patriot Act type of controls on banking, to keep the ‘terrorists’ and ‘drug dealers’ from access to funds.

Only now, the ‘terrorists’ have morphed into a new type of threat, and a cyber currency, controlled in absolute terms by the PTB, will work perfectly to control and quell the looming threat of ‘domestic terrorism’.

Whatever they’re working on, my bet is that they’re three steps ahead of us all.

As they sabre rattle at China, my thinking is that they’re only doing so, because China, (unlike the American or any other electorate or citizenry or Western government), actually does posses a competitive threat to their schemes.

At least somebody does.

There are no coins made of Plutonium, Kid.

Oh but if there were……

Mr. Globalist,

You and I know that Mr. Hudson is, indeed, an expert, but let us hope that Mr. Hudson sits this one out because I am sure that he is aware that the move to digital currency will guarantee our total enslavement. The dollar problem can be solved by Uncle Sam being knocked on his ass. Then the rest of us can go about our lives as usual–on top of, and under the ground.

Respectfully

The old paradigm of the bankers controlling the gov’t is being displaced by the gov’t consuming the bankers because they no longer need them when they can control the population via an absolute monopoly on all transactions enforced by computers. The gov’t doesn’t care about interest when they make up whatever they want and have a few million deposited in their personal account from the next batch of digits. The whole Federal Reserve scheme was a place holder for what is happening right now.

I believe you’re under the impression that a crypto currency is some exotic beast. It’s not. A Visa card represents a currency just fine, has the ability to transact in huge volumes and all the infrastructure is already in place and tested over decades. People confuse the crypto currency with the block chain and mining that is being used to form the accounting system for it. One doesn’t need that computer, time and electricity intensive accounting system is the older form that Visa uses, for example, is used instead. In any event, block chain mining is incapable of scaling to what the US economy requires by, my guess, 6 to 8 orders of magnitude; a complete impossibility.

My Visa case is just an example. My guess is that the Fed Gov will simply become THE bank and everyone will have an account. All transactions into or out of that account will be known for tax, investigative, tyrannical and other purposes. Regional processing centers will handle the transaction load and provide backup. This isn’t rocket surgery.

More facebook globalists

““We Pay.â€� I said, “We what?â€� I said, “Here’s a credit card.â€� She said no chance, and we had a back and forth. I had never seen kind of, you know, a negotiating merchant for clothing refuse cash. My friend explained to me that there was a new system in China that was taking off on these QR codes … on their versions of Amazon and Facebook.

HANNAH LANG: This is Aaron Klein, a fellow at Brookings and the policy director of the Center on Regulation and Markets. And what he was experiencing firsthand was the explosive growth of cashless payments in China over the course of the last decade.

BLOOMBERG: China is among the growing number of countries showing that payments can happen cheaply and easily without banks or credit cards. In contrast, U.S. consumers still rely on banks for most of their purchases.”
https://www.americanbanker.com/podcast/a-fed-digital-currency-looks-inevitable-so-do-the-problems

“Fed says it is developing an experimental digital currency
Last Updated: Aug. 15, 2020 at 9:55 a.m. ET
First Published: Aug. 13, 2020 at 4:58 p.m. ET
By Greg Robb
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-says-it-is-developing-an-experimental-digital-currency-11597352302

“Facebook, Inc. (FB) is hoping to launch its cryptocurrency next year. David Marcus, head of Facebook Financial, or F2, told audiences at the Singapore FinTech festival that he hoped the company could participate in changing the financial services industry by launching Diem, Facebook’s proposed digital currency for use on its social network, and Novi, the accompanying wallet for its Libra blockchain, on its platform.
The platform’s launch is contingent on Facebook obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals to operate across multiple jurisdictions. Currently, the Libra association is awaiting permission from Swiss regulators to launch a dollar-backed stablecoin.”
https://www.investopedia.com/facebook-fb-hopes-to-launch-digital-currency-in-2021-5090528

Jobs do not “move” overseas, people make relationships that change and wither over time. All the “protection” in the world is vastly outweighed by every other advantage to the opposite, and every DISADVANTAGE imposed by the likes of Reagan and Co. They are the perfect “steam valve” to channel some extra energy into a ditch of dead ends and endless mumblings about “the economy”.

The consistent principle of freedom should have lead to the abolition of ALL taxes, and all other charges too, besides patents, copyrights and land titles. This makes ‘America’ far more competitive than some little prop called “protection” at the national ports, a relic of 18th century statecraft and economic measures. Technology was going to eliminate most of these “jerbs” anyway.

The whole point is to do away with VISA and all those “processing centers” with customer service or anything else. Money is easily reduced to a digital token without “mining”, like solving a complex formula in order to generate the token. There is still going to be central control and money issued at the flick of a button, but the human element can be reduced to the nodes which track the system.

It’s just a question of who has the authority to issue new money, instead of imposing a math puzzle to determine the outcome. Bitcoin uses the puzzle solving mechanism to limit the issuance of new currency, but the central bank digital token is just replacing the printing press for cash.

I generally agree with you with one exception. All those processing centers will still be needed. Transactions don’t go away, and each one requires processing.

The credit card companies have developed the necessary infrastructure to handle huge loads with minimal latency. They are the model if one doesn’t want to rely on a mathematics “mining” to verify transactions. The Block Chain is a trust less environment but at a large cost. Visa, for example, is a trust environment with a small cost, but large profit for them. Once the gov’t takes over that cost is just overhead like keeping the lights on and fees for merchants are likely to disappear because they don’t need a profit model since they manufacture digits at zero cost.

Kudos to you then.

The reason I found it puzzling is because every time someone said digital currency, they are confused with the hard currency becoming digital and digital crypto-currency like bitcoin or ethereum becoming mainstream.

The only link between the digital currency and the cryptocurrency is the exchange rate.

I would add that crytocurrency is not a tulip mania. It’s only about time whether or not people will take it as a means of barter exchange.

S Korea remains free and has become a prosperous nation. That’s a win, baby.

The US defeated the Vietnamese who crawled to the peace table begging for peace. 2 years after the US withdrew, they violated the terms of the agreement and defeated S Vietnam. Had the US stayed, the South would not have been defeated.

Even Reagan was opposed to “protectionism” for after all his failed policies was the outsourcing of jobs as he brayed come to Washington and let us show you how to outsource the jobs and increase your profits, which you can put into the off-shore accounts we created for you after all your special and no one should expect that you should pay taxes and the die was cast>>>

BitCoin, Etherium, etc are NEVER going to be allowed to become mainstream even if people wanted it. The gov’t hates the competition. The whole reason for national digital currencies is to eliminate competition via the underground economy and to extract 100% compliance with all theft laws, I mean tax laws. These crypto currencies can’t possibly become mainstream for technical reason because they can’t handle the transaction volume that a mainstream currency requires.

You and I differ on the tulip mania part. Spending 30,000 on a pile of digits that are created for a few dollar worth of electricity is just the Fed scam all over again. The only thing BitCoin, etc is good for is to move funds across borders. Buy in country A, move to country B and sell them to get the local currency. No small scale merchant is going to accept BitCoin for transaction merely due to its volatility and their point of sale system won’t cooperate either. The larger ones might if they think they can make a market with their volume, but I doubt Amazon, for example, is interested.

The old paradigm of the bankers controlling the gov’t is being displaced by the gov’t consuming the bankers because they no longer need them

they didn’t need them to begin with.

America fought wars with England to be free of central banking/fiat currency tyranny. That’s why our Constitution [RIP] explicitly stated that it was for congress to ‘coin our money and regulate its value’. Not a central banking cabal.

So (once America was established) there was no need for a central bank. It was always a scam to loot the American people and impose their will upon the nation.

‘let me print the money, and I care not who makes the laws’, or something like that.

If it were possible to go back to government control over our currency, then that’s something I’d be all for. Congress is made up of a few hundred people who we know and can see, elected (sort of) by the citizenry, rather than some obscure goblins in the dank catacombs of London’s financial sector.

Once the creature from Jekyll’s island held the reins of power, we’ve had nothing but wars and mass lootings of the Treasury and economy. Culminating in the latest waves of mass lootings and Eternal Wars for Israel.

I believe you’re under the impression that a crypto currency is some exotic beast.

Since I’ve never taken the time to fully understand Bitcoin, I’ve kind of considered that one as an exotic beast, at least until I understand how it works. But as for ‘crypto currency’, that’s more or less how I see the dollar today, in most transactions. When the boyz at the Fed decide they’re going to loan 0ut a few trillion in secret deals, they don’t actually print the money, they simply hit a few keys on their computer keyboard, and voila, the trillions are electronically conjured into existence in the cyber world.

But I hardly think the banksters are ever going to allow something as Cambrian and unmanageable as a government (not directly controlled by them) to be in the driver’s seat of power.

That’s what Putin did in Russia, and it took them completely by surprise. If they’d have seen that one coming, I’d bet any amount of money a certain Vlad would have had a plane accident, or fell down some steps to his tragic and premature demise.

But in either case, whether it’s a banking cabal, or a modern government, of the kind we now have in Western “democracies”, it’s all going to boil down to control and power-drunk scumfucks imposing their pettiness, (and worse) on the rest of us.

You were smart to get out.

Rural Guy…a few questions which rural people should know but no one does!
1. Which comes first money or wealth?
2. you speak of controls have you ever heard of Agricultural Parity?
3. Did you know Agricultural Parity means everybody works with a 100 cent dollar starting with farmers?
3. Did you know that farmers according to USDA only getting $0.31 dollar in 2020
4. Did you know that Parity is the Law?
5. Did you know that the law was only full implemented at being of World War II?
6. Did you know Parity was the Earned Income basis for the Post War Boom?
7. Did you know that Parity was dropped so GM could sell more cars on credit and to push globalist cheap food policies?

Thanks

If it were possible to go back to government control over our currency, then that’s something I’d be all for.

I don’t think you really mean that given the rest of your prose. No gov’t should have anything to do with money. Period. The concept of currency as distinct from money was part of the Federal Reserve Scam.

When the Constitution was created, the tech wasn’t there to check gold and silver for purity and weight. At that time, it might have made sense to have a trusted authority do the job. Today, the tech is available and there’s no need for gov’t to coin money or be responsible for its value. We all know how that turned out because the gov’t mafia can’t be trusted in the long run.

Miners should provide ore to smelter. Smelters should provide purified metal to PRIVATE mints and coinage and bars should be cast stamped only with their weight and purity. These units of weight and purity could be the underpinnings of a system of actual real money, not bullshit currency that every gov’t wants to issue to cheat their citizenry. Prices all around the world should be in weight of metal, not some made up Dollar, Euro, Yen or other intermediary that only offers arbitrage and other scams to again enrich the middlemen.

Along with this, the fraud of fractional reserve banking needs to disappear. Banking should become a broker relationship where those with money find a broker to locate someone that wants it at an interest rate determined by the lender, not some cabal. The lender locks up his wealth for a predetermined time so the borrower can use it. Terms are also part of the negotiation. There is absolutely no need for fractional reserve banking. It was a scam that only benefited the bankers.

“Tell me your password or I’m going to shoot you in the knee.”

this statement is my exception:

transactions don’t go away, and each one requires processing

The transaction process is built into the wallet functions that hold digital tokens. it really is just like cash when the system works. it’s digital cash instead of paper cash.

The process is to hand the cash over from one device to another. That’s what it will feel like, and you will hold cash on your device and online.

This doesn’t give the gov’t the control they seek. They don’t want same as cash transactions. They want traceable transactions and that requires a record of every transaction in THEIR system. They don’t care about your convenience if it means they lose the control to turn off your access to trade if you’ve been a bad boy.

If you think they want to give you a replacement for cash, think again. They are instituting totalitarianism.

Exactly. Bitcoin is a beta test proffered to the unwitting public by the banksters.

And as it happens, it turns out to be a great trading tool for them! They will allow Bitcoin to exist as long as it serves their purposes. When it gets in the way of other plans, it will be gone.

A year or two ago, there was an article I read that stated a high level guy at Goldman Sachs was claiming to be the mysterious Satoshi that came up with Bitcoin. I never got to see a followup. It is interesting that the mastermind has kept quiet about his invention.

You could usefully listen to this: 34 minutes of your next drive?

https://www.corbettreport.com/central-bank-digital-currencies-and-the-global-monetary-reset/

The real scary thing is that if digital currencies become universal any individual can simply be economically cancelled.

The digital tokens are traceable like a giant cash ledger, so it’s always 100% open, that’s how blockchains work, because all the pieces together make one complete picture.. Privacy means scrambling the transactions like an internet anonymize, but the metadata is there regardless.

You are correct except that drugs are totally approved by government. During the pandemic alcohol sales have gone up by seven times, and smoking pot is no longer prosecuted by the authorities because it makes it easier to control such people during the transition phase.

Just look at the hundreds upon hundreds of drug adverts posted on Craigslist every day. Every illegal drug you can imagine together with quite a few traditionally ‘prescription only’ pharmaceutical medicines are apparently sold this way. If the authorities disapproved of this they’d close Craigslist yesterday if not last week.

Cryptocurrency is what the World Economic Forum (WEF) are promoting for the world. Fred needs to read up on the WEF. The US, just like every other nation, will just be full of serfs that own nothing and pay most of their income in taxation if Bill Gates and Claus Schwab and their Great Reset come to fruition.

Fred seems to be very ill informed to offer this article for publication. Maybe the publisher is being a bit generous for old time’s sake.

The best we could hope for is that the Bancor concept, rejected at Breton Woods, is adopted for international trade and that gold, silver and copper are readopted as ordinary every day currencies. Without a revolution this will never happen.

Yes, fractional reserve banking (without even reserves) is a fraud and a monstrous farce. Enriching the most dishonorable uber-criminals on the planet at the direct expense of everyone else.

And I’m all for money based on precious metals. If not coins minted from them, when feasible.

But the main thing is removing the banksters from the equation, and allowing our Treasury (or private mints, if certified) to mint all coins and currency, removing the parasite from the process.

Why the f-k do we borrow our money from banksters, who ‘print it with our U.S. Mint, and then loan it to us at interest? It’s insane!

But alas, it isn’t going to change, because they hold the bucket of slop to the slop trough, and so the politicians lick their bankster hands, while slurping the $lop.

Also, btw, someone told me he saw credible evidence that Bitcoin was created by the CIA.

Don’t know if that’s true.

Consider the Satoshi story. It’s ridiculous!

What does it matter if bit coin is encyrpted if you need a Cell Phone or Internet Provider to access this. The powers that be will just cut off your access to your providers if you do not comply with their Social Justice score??? Search engine cell phone service providers china See https://www.tefljobsworld.com/country-guides-and-advice/asia/china/cell-phone-service-in-china-getting-a-local-number/#sthash.AQxs5vd3.dpbs Seems there will always be a “they” some where that allows you to have the digital wallet in the first place??? Also you would only have access to your credits if the Communications Links are functioning properly, if the 3g and 5G stations are up and radiating properly, your end unit cell phone or computer is functioning, has power, communications, is linked via network to the receiving end of the transaction the servers and AI and supercomputers at the other end of the transaction. Your digital wallet is data in a computer somewhere. In china were are all the server farms….. When Servers, serve their AI supercomputers and Rule the World.

I’ve mentioned it several times already, but I’ll do it once again.

Block chain tech is so slow as to be unsuitable for large volume transactions. Generating the math also requires a large investment in electricity. Block chain doesn’t scale well and absolutely can’t be used at a country level or even a state or city level.

Besides, the gov’t trusts itself to screw you, so they don’t need any safeguards against themselves. A high speed accounting system will serve their purposes well and they exist, fully tested and scaled.

You’re beating a dead horse.

I’m not. That was my point. There’s s difference between the currency UNITS (dollar, bitcoin, yuan, etc.) and the TYPE of money (digital controlled/created by government, precious metals, etc.). Then there’s the FORM of payment (Visa card, pieces of green paper, bits on a computer, etc.) I think that’s where the confusion lies. Some of that is probably with me, I admit.

We’ll get it straight by the end of this thread, right?

I appreciate the story and info, Mr. Smith. My mechanic friend ended up with one parts cars due to a deer, but he goes and tows in some others. The parts in a $600 wreck can be worth many thousands.

Here’s another advantage in not having that cat-converter: If you don’t drive the car for a while, you can fill it with 100 octane low-lead avgas. It’s the blue stuff. It doesn’t have all of the crap they put in gasoline that starts to gum up things after a few months. You can start it up 2 years later on that fuel. The lead would destroy a catalytic converter right away, though.

The crypto part of cryptocurrency stands for cryptography which is a mathematically intensive operation to produce a hash of the original data and a key that can reconstitute it with the key only available to a responsible party.

Cryptocurrency as used by most people is really anything that smells like using your smartphone instead of a credit card. The public and even most politicians are ignorant of the tech that underpins a real crypto anything. It’s a misuse of the term in cases where the politicians throw it around because they simply don’t know what they’re talking about.

The serfs, as you put it, already don’t own their homes because most have a mortgage. Their cars are leased or on a payment plan and of a duration longer than many vehicles will last. Real estate taxes declares that no one owns their home because if you don’t pay your taxes, the home is gone. In essence, you are renting from the gov’t even if the property is paid off. Don’t pay your city, state, federal taxes, and you are stripped of all your possessions.

Face it – the gov’t owns you right now. What’s coming is just a tightening of the screws.

I think when you said cryptocurrency is just a tulip, that’s when I think it’s a bit of a stretch on the analogy. Tulip was grown personally and it offers nothing. It also degrades over time. Crypto on the other hand was designed specifically to reflect the idea of rarity like gold.

These crypto currencies can’t possibly become mainstream for technical reason because they can’t handle the transaction volume that a mainstream currency requires.

I second your argument. When I said time will tell whether or not it becomes mainstream is because I actually don’t know what will happen in next 50 years.

When someone said Chinese Yuan will be in SDR baskets in 1980, I will be laughing my ass off.

The Federal Reserve is a creature of the Banks. They own all the Federal reserve shares, National Banks are required to own some. The much vaunted prerogative of the President to chose the Chairman of the Fed is the freedom to chose from 5 people chosen by the banks. The Federal Reserve, btw now has its own armed Police Force whose primary duty is to protect These people
https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/org_nydirectors.html

and similar.

Your faith in the US treasury is unwarranted. They will dance to the tune of the political class and create as much fraudulent currency as they want. The Romans clipped coins and then went to plating base metal with silver and gold.

As long as it’s the governments coinage, they will debase it one way or another over time. That’s why it needs to be private coinage from all over the world, all denominated in weight and purity of metal, not some dead politician on its face and some arbitrary currency value stamped on it.

“Medium of Exchange,” “Unit of Account/Value,” “Store of Value,” and “Standard of Deferred Payment” are the classical four “functions” of money. Notice that economists call these “functions.” The reason is that money, in the language of mathematics is a scalar (often a Real), whereas the functions themselves have “structure” such as algebraic structure, topological structure, group structure, analytical structure, etc. Some of the more interesting functions are “functionals”: they map from the structure to a scalar. That usually arises from an invariancy in the system, such as constancy of energy, constancy of volume/area (a symplectic map), a homomorphism, etc. When value is preserved (store of value), it can be viewed as an invariancy in this mathematical structure. So, to properly see money, you need to build a mathematical model, showing its spaces, algebras, topology, group properties of its operators, etc. The forms of capital that I mention have different types of structure. If we merely describe money anthromorphically, we form very vague and useless notions of money.

Just a figger of speech – but I think it´s an important point;
trade in $$$ enriches only a tiny extractive “elite” (usually subcontinental) while dijjywan would filter down … that´s the reason the US used MPC (“monopoly money”) in Vietnam – to not finance Charlie.
IOW a convertible currency that can be earned in-country (fuck the means) would invigorate markets.

(and given the way they are reaming the US, doubts about their pipi size might backfire 😛 )

I asked my Chinese friend “How is it going?” He replied “can not complain”

What China does is simply to prove “only white man can invent and only white man can succeed” is a fallacy and a lie manufactured thru the thin air and about to be poked and collapsed.

The sad thing is the white man only can bitch with staled ideological mumbling while standing on a track staring at a fully loaded train running toward him.

When the SHTF converters might make good currency, but you can’t eat them.

Ha, I forgot to remark about this line. Yeah, we hear that about anything including real money. “Gold? You can’t eat it.” “Uhhh, yeah, you can’t eat 100 dollar bills either, though, I’ll admit they’d go down better than a Gold Panda.” So, I guess it’ll be 16 oz cans of Chef Boyardee then.

I know when Australia was minting silver fifty cent pieces for use decades ago, people started hoarding them because the silver value was worth more than fifty cents. Today you can sell them for anything up to fifteen dollars each. So obviously circulating coins of noble metal will not solve any currency problem, probably only exacerbating them.

Isn’t the yuan already in the SDR basket? [email�protected]

The tulip comparison wasn’t bad. As long as the rich and powerful believed in the wealth of the tulip trade, all was well. But once the next best thing came along then the bubble burst. We’ve seen the bubble burst time after time. Everyone was hoping the 2008 financial meltdown was going to be the last one for a long time. Australia first went to polymer banknotes in 1988. If the notes last longer without being replaced sooner, then printing costs are reduced. They also carry improved anti-counterfeiting technology. I can’t see the US wanting to buy into plastic notes at this late stage. Clearly the next big jump is cyber-money. So I think it would be more profitable to takeover the companies that are involved in electronic funds and transfers. And produce an American electronic coin. Or maybe they are looking forwards to beyond cryptocurrency, and jump straight to there, so gaining a head start on the opposition.

I asked my Chinese friend “Do you have elections?”He replied “Yes, evely day”

This is a great comment. I particularly like the thought experiment re: store of value versus medium of exchange. Going to use that.

Block chain tech is so slow as to be unsuitable for large volume transactions.

This is changing fast. Have you read up on ETH 2? According to it’s roadmap it can handle 100.000 transactions per second within a year or two. And ETH is currently the second largest crypto, already carrying most of the new defy craze so it’s highly likely to succeed.

Proof of work (mining) is on it’s way out and different methods arising, solving speed and energy issues, like ETH 2 proof of stake. Bitcoin could end up as the single POW crypto since it seems to be taking a place alongside gold. And could work fine as such even if it’s transaction volume is very low.

It wouldn’t surprise me if we could choose from several decentralized blockchains capable of handling enormous transaction volumes within 2-3 years. Enough for the entire planet.

A friend I know, I’ll call him Leo Libidinous, doesn’t want his wife to know where he spends his money. He worries that with diggy, one angry day his wife might demand to inspect his phone — open-up that diggy app. I suggested to Leo that entrepreneurs X, Y, and Z would rename their businesses as being, say, sports books, and Leo would admit to his wife that he is, alas, a gambler. But then the wife would ask, don’t you ever WIN any bets — why always $200 losses? And suppose the police open-up Leo’s app? Suppose Leo’s geeky son does?

In theory you can use your Nigerian phone idea…
In theory you can buy gizmos off the internet that let you steal any car after watching the instruction video…
But in the real world car theft (as opposed to car jacking) is as common as cattle rustling or cut pursing.

(Para) “These Hedge Fund C**TS…are the worst people you’d ever be around…complete D**K HEADS with no skill whatsoever…destroying other peoples’ livelihoods. This C**NT wakes up and $13B is gone…hahahahahhaahhahhahahahhaha”

LOL!

Great story.

I’m aware of another technology, that I won’t name, that can replace block chain and does have the necessary security and low latency required for high transaction volumes and is available right now. But it doesn’t matter.

Most people here are looking at this issue from the wrong end of the telescope. You have to look at it from what the gov’t wants, not what you may want. The gov’t wants their dollar to survive and for you to be unable to avoid using it in trade. The crypto currencies are designed to be outside gov’t control, or anyone’s control.

Right now, the trade in crypto amounts to speculators betting on the price of tulips forever going up. The amount of actual business to business trade or business to consumer trade in crypto is near zero. It’s in the gov’ts best interests to get rid of their competitors in the faux money business meaning that crypto will probably be legally crippled at some point (think gun laws). The dollar and credit cards are universally used. Nothing is going to unseat that momentum even though I wish it were otherwise.

Gov’t digital currency doesn’t have to have all the positive benefits crypto offers. In fact, the gov’t hates the benefits crypto offers. The gov’t want to be able to inspect every aspect of your life. For the average person, trading in their credit card for NFC capable smartphone transactions suffices from the convenience standpoint and uses the current credit card infrastructure for processing. As a business owner, I handle NFC transactions daily, mostly from Canadian and foreign customers. US customers are still stuck using plastic for the most part.

The aim is to get rid of paper currency from the gov’ts perspective and to maintain their stranglehold on the concept of money. Crypto is detrimental to their wishes, and they currently have the control and aren’t about to relinquish it. Get real.

Fred, you silly boomer, you don’t even know how to take donations via WeChat/Alipay or UnionPay or BitCoin. And here you are getting excited about something that is a hybrid of both! I get the feeling you wont be cutting up your Visa/Mastercard anytime soon despite all your tall talk

a lot of jargon here but your comment is basically nonsensical…essentially, money has to be based on something real….in any case, equations would be helpful, otherwise your jargon is just a lot of hot air

I was refuting a single point you have made over and over in this comment section:

Block chain tech is so slow as to be unsuitable for large volume transactions.

Simply not true anymore, being solved as we speak.

I rarely comment on this. But just to give you some directions, here in Unz because of uncensorship, we have a slew of many types of comments. Some are educated, and been a professional in their lives. There are a few professor type here as well.

Your comment adds nothing and intended to use the Chinese inherent nature of their lingual tone being unable to distinctly pronounce “r” and “l”. This is not genetic defect. This is the transformation of tongue during their formative years at younger age.

However every time I see this kind of comments, you’re not only destroying the reputation of Gentiles, but also making a fool out of yourself by going the waist below, which means you have nothing to offer to the discussion and take a cheap shot.

This lingual trait is not confined to Chinese in particular, but more so for all East Asians.

Ask a German to pronounce “Squirrel” and see how they respond.

The comment you’re replying to is, in fact adds a political tone to the dialogue.

“Can not complain”

I have seen this kind of jokes for Nazi and NKorea.

The quality of the comments here are so low… It seems like no one seems to understand what money is today… Well, what can I expect from UR!

Money today is debt. It have nothing to do what you read in economic textbooks. 99.9 of all money exist as debt ( may be 70% now now with so much QE). Money is created from thin air when someone or the government borrows from a bank. Whether that is from the Fed or its member banks. If all debts are repaid today, money ( and society) will cease to exist.

Money today are meant to be borrow and spent immediately. It is not a store of value.

Money, as it is, is a claim on future productivity and resources. As I said, most money exist in the form of debt so it is a claim that the rich holds on the future labour and service of the debtors. ( or the 99%) It is debt peonage. When you take on a 30 year mortagage, you are binding yourself to the rich for 30 years.

Thus, money, in its modern incarnation, is a ledger\book-keeping system keeping track of who owes who.

This is why the Fed is so bent on creating inflation, it inflates away those claims since most of debt can’t be repaid in current dollar. QE is also a way to take the debt burden of debtors and there will be a debt jubliee at some point.

If you dig into monetary history, no one really designed this system. It evolved into this fiat mess when the Goldsmiths start giving bills of exchange and gold certificate and that’s got exchange like paper money today cuz it is too inconvenient to exchange large amount of physical gold. It was almost an accident that arise from the quirk of commodity money.

The hyperinflation we have seen in the stocks is an escape away from debt peonage to other means of production since the proles is going to default on those debt via inflation or devalation.

Firstly, there’s a difference between is and is being. But that really doesn’t matter. I already mentioned there’s a different technology already available to put transaction speeds into the acceptable range and also mentioned that doesn’t matter either.

It takes on average 5 minutes to put a block on the block chain via the proof of work mining process. There are many transactions per block, but those transactions are in limbo before the block is put on the chain. This can all be shortened to acceptable times but it doesn’t matter in what the gov’ts of the world all want. They want control and a currency system that is inescapable for their tax cattle.

They don’t want crypto, gold, barter or any other form of competition. They want 100% compliance with THEIR currency for all transactions and they are in a perfect position to get what they want.

If, today, they announced a deal with Visa, Mastercard and American Express, along with a new law that obsoletes paper money in 3 months, they would be announcing to the world the end of the paper dollar and the creation of the DigiDollar. No new technology needed. No new infrastructure needed.

All merchants and all individuals that want to transact would be forced to use this new DigiDollar. NFC would be rolled out nationwide by the CC companies and people would be using their smartphones instead of plastic. Bank runs are impossible, hoarding under the mattress is impossible and stimulating the economy by forcing the cattle to spend is easily accomplished with negative interest rates and new and improved fees for money lying around in accounts.

Converting crypto to DigiDollars might even be prohibited just as owning gold was once prohibited. Now try buying a loaf of bread with your cryptocoin.

If you can refute that easily achievable scenario, then post your idea and make sure you include how crypto anything fits in.

Game, Set, Match—- Roatan Bill.

That’s why it needs to be private coinage from all over the world, all denominated in weight and purity of metal, not some dead politician on its face and some arbitrary currency value stamped on it.

fine with me

but instead, I think you’re probably right about the trend towards political control of a looming digital currency.

maybe the best bet is cans of tuna and shotgun shells, for all we know.

Parts can indeed be worth a whole lot. Parting out that parts car reduced the cost of repairing my project car. I sent parts all over the world. A gentleman in New Zealand bought the blower resistor. It’s called the sword…

I sold a box of computer modules to a guy in Tennessee for $300. I sent the oil pan to a girl in Aspen and I sent the fuel tank to Wisconsin in the luggage bin under a greyhound. (It was too big for the mail.) I mailed something off to Kempton Park South Africa, though I do not remember what it was. I stripped that car down to nothing. It was fun.

That’s quite interesting about the low lead avgas. I’d image you might have to clean your o2 sensors a little more often as the lead might clog them up a little quicker. This guy here has been experimenting with it in a S38B36 engine. He says his engine runs smoother with 30% avgas.

https://www.m5board.com/threads/experimenting-with-100ll-avgas.212699/

☮

The opposite is true Anon. Thinking is primitive and crude without mathematics. A human visual picture of a falling rock might seem practical, but without forming a mathematical model of dynamics, you can’t develop airplanes, missiles, satellites, ships, etc. A visual picture of germs, viruses, planets, and stars might seem practical, but you can’t see much without using mathematics to create microscopes and telescopes. What you see in a distant star makes little sense without a good mathematical model. Your whole life is pervaded with devices that were developed with mathematics: televisions, computers, cell phones, the microprocessors in your car. It’s the primitive and emotional view of the world that is not practical.

Economics is no different. Econophysics has transformed it, to use the rigorous language of mathematics. That “jargon” that I used is the basis of much of the linear/nonlinear dynamics used in econophysics.

Panicfest (or something) caused some odd shortages at our little walmart. (I still can’t find linen flavored lysol.) I stocked up on cans of salmon, smoked oysters and kippered herring, lots of bone broth, ribeye, beans, rice, pasta and cat food. The pantry and freezer are stocked.

☮

You’ll have to pay about 80% more to more than double some times for the Avgas though, Adam, and get to the airport with a couple of 5 G cans. Right now, you can get it for $3.50 to $4.50 at small airports.

Yeah, it’s probably not worth it unless you have an “expired” barrel lying around. I’m also not sure what the lead might (or might not) do to the fuel injectors. The big Walmart in Cleveland sells ethanol free gas for just a small premium over ethanol laced gas. The gentleman farmer friend of mine that I mentioned oh so long ago buys it for the shop. It’s worth the difference to me if I’m out that way.

☮

You left out the most important part. Chinas’ digi-currency will be backed by GOLD.
Unless they cave to the anglo-zionists banks. If they do the digi-currency will be a worthless novelty like bitcoin will eventually become. China recently invited the big banks to come in and provide credit to Chinese people. How will this impact the Chinese monitary system?
You must have lots of leisure time to write an article you admittedly know nothing about. Isn’t there enough conjecture in the world? Why don’t you talk to Michael Hudson?

National currency is ultimately backed by the taxing powers of the country that issues it, reserve currency in addition by something tangible with a widespread use eg gold, silver, oil ..

Bitcoin has no such backing, it’s a monopoly money, it can never become a currency in a sense of ‘store of value’, as a means of exchange, perhaps, but only the stupid would avail himself of it.

Watch this for how gov’t actors have already shut down businesses they don’t like, and that’s under the current scheme. Can you imagine what they can do when they outlaw cash?

Video Link

As a Christian myself although not a good example of a Christian, I feel the racial jokes are not good. All people should be judged by their righteous conduct toward other people. See the other Unz article ….. A Domestic Terrorism Law? War on Dissent Will Proceed Full Speed Ahead…. I asked my American friend “How is it going?� He replied “can not complain�. Point being worldwide we are more and more in a Technocratic control grid. Americans are spoiled, we do not have much awareness of people suffering in other countries throughout the world. Other peoples live their ongoing apocalypse on a daily basis in Third World Countries, for example the poor subclasses in India, the Palestinians in Israel. Bill Gates and such pretend they want to help these people, when Gates and such are really adding to their misery. Soon Americans will have our own apocalypse??? Important to remember Finance Capitalism ( as opposed to a true Free Market Capitalism ) and Communism were both creations of the same dark forces. I think the stock market as a whole is a swindle, is based on pretend assets which only exist on paper and gambling cheats. Book suggestions China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston Lords of the Rim by Sterling Seagrave God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan by Jonathan D. Spence Twilight in the Forbidden City (1934) Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston also The Autobiography of the Last Emperor of China. Read Revelation in the Bible. Previously I thought the evil forces would only go after Christians, but yes they do want to destroy all the peoples of the world. Also people are people and I am sure the Chinese have lots of jokes about us White Devils. This is interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_women_writers

Tell me. What is the best way to survive all this?

Get away from the crazies that start violence. That can be the left loonies or the right Rambo types. My use of weaponry is only in self defense and if the situation calls for it, I have no problem using lethal force. Twice in my life, 3 days apart, I put a pistol to thieves heads that I surprised. They are alive today only because I feared the justice system more.

Get at least a pistol and a pile of ammo. You had better know how to use it. I’ve got a small arsenal and reloading equipment.

Get away from high density population centers. They rely on JIT (Just In Time) deliveries of just about everything and disruptions are almost a certainty. Conventional wisdom has it that 3 days without food or water and you have riots.

Food looks like it’s going to be a real issue going forward. Countries are starting to limit exports of the basic staples and weather last year caused poor harvest in large parts of the world, so stocks are low. The Chinese are buying up everything they can find. We are in the beginning of a solar minimum and possibly a grand solar minimum which shifts food production towards the equator. The lock down bullshit has already crippled food production and that can only get worse.

Video Link
I’ve got at least a year’s worth of dry/canned/frozen goods and a huge propane tank to run a tiny generator for the freezers. The freezers will keep food below zero for almost 3 days without electricity. Ask me how I know. I’ve got 5gal buckets full of rice, pasta, beans, lentils with O2 scavenging packets to soak up the oxygen. Because one of my businesses is food related I have a commercial vacuum sealing machine for smaller portions of the dry items. I have access to well water and multiple filtration systems plus a 100G storage tank of already processed clean water and pressure tanks and pumps.

I’ve got 2 years worth of toilet paper, paper towels, etc due to my businesses that are largely shut down.

I’ve got MIG, TIG and Stick welding equipment and have built things I’ve needed over the years. I design everything in BricsCAD, an AutoCAD clone. I probably have a dozen computers and many years ago owned a computer store where I hand built custom machines for clients, so I know my way around the internals. I wrote the point of sale system we use in our businesses and can code up anything I might need or want.

I’ve got tools for woodworking (coarse and furniture grade), metal working, painting (compressors, spray guns), plumbing, electrical (I’m an EE), etc. The only thing I don’t touch has been A/C and refrigeration.

Part of the reason I move to the Caribbean was because I hate the cold and don’t want to freeze when the lights go out. Most people’s heating relies on electronic controls even if the fuel is natural gas, oil or propane. No electricity means no heat.

I’ve got literally pounds of Covid related meds (HCQ, Ivermectin, Zinc, Vitamin C, D, multi, etc). Where I live, most stuff is over the counter and cheap as dirt.

That’s what I’ve done.

and beginning with this charming photo of a ‘patriotic Mexican girl’

AY CARAMBA!

Your survival preparation is impressive. But, will Roatan be safe? I’ve been thinking about another home somewhere down there. When I toured Routan, I thought the highly-dense island vulnerable, even though it has much income from tourism dollars. Unlike Panama, Costa Rica, and mainland Honduras, which are poorer, it doesn’t have their self sufficient agriculture. In an economic collapse though, I’d rather deal with laid-back Central Americans or Routans, than the home-grown crazies in the United States.

Thanks Sir Rothchinald for giving us a lecture in shekel-ology 101. Given your Abrahamic ancestry, I will take you at your word, at least on this issue.

lol

It does, doesn’t it ?

But not, unfortunately, to those intelligent, educated, worldly-wise American politicians who are very happy after more than 80 years of financial weakness and repeated economic disaster to continue to cede total control to the (((crooks and psychopaths))) at the “Federal Reserve” who are carefully and deliberately destroying the nation – and eventually all of us along with it.

LOL

I’d have paid to read your gag too !

The Romans clipped coins and then went to plating base metal with silver and gold

That was… umm… Jewish merchants in Europe in the Middle Ages, in fact.

I am sure the Chinese have lots of jokes about us White Devils

Yes, I’m sure they do.

So… let me get this straight, since you are, you say, a “Christian”, if not good:

It’s wrong – bad – offensive – unlawful – etc.. for someone to make a cheap and harmless, VERY old lame universal schoolboy gag about the Chinese western pronunciation… BUT… it’s ok for Chinese – and everyone else I assume – to come out with their own tasteless – and Racist – jokes about Whites ?

Is that your idea of universal Christian peace, justice, harmony, whatever… for all ?

Maybe you and your kind – hypocritical, one-sided social justice warriors – should grow up a little and live in the real world, friend.

Highly off topic, but Fred needs to git back stateside and work with his blood kinfolk a little.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/woman-strangled-sister-s-boyfriend-after-injecting-him-with-meth-then-her-sister-married-their-dad/ar-BB1ddHjb?ocid=msedgntp

The following shows how Roman coins were debased over time.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/currency-and-the-collapse-of-the-roman-empire/

Money needs faith, money needs confidence and ability to change and transform into physical.

If Rev stands for reverend, then you’re spouting bullshit as is the domain of the religious con artists.

Real money, as opposed to currency, requires no faith as I can hold it in my hand and know it is a scarce element of the earth that always retains some value as the market dictates with mining, refining and minting costs to provide it a base. Currency, on the other hand, is a creation out of nothing (god like) and given an artificial value for something that is inherently near worthless – paper or the digital equivalent.

Money does require a certain confidence in its weight and purity. Private mints can provide that confidence to the public. Should one decide to cheat, they will be found out and go out of business, so even if the temptation exists, doing so is suicide.

Real money, as opposed to currency, is physical in the non trivial sense. Paper currency is also physical, but has a value enforce via the barrel of a gun and is therefore a fraud much like religion.

RoatanBill :
“The Romans clipped coins and then went to plating base metal with silver and gold”

Dave Bowman :
“That was… umm… Jewish merchants in Europe in the Middle Ages, in fact.”

RoatanBill :
“The following shows how Roman coins were debased over time.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/currency-and-the-collapse-of-the-roman-empire/”

That page about Roman coins contains nothing about “clipping” or “plating” what-so-ever.

But RoatanBill cannot admit error.

https://tinyurl.com/y5y4fptl

Rev. Spooner is right. What is missing here, I think, is that hard currency is easier to have faith in than fiat money. Fiat money works as long as there is faith it can be converted into something tangible, like gold, silver, platinum. Other things like financial securities, bottles of beer, automobiles also have value. The problem is, the value of those things change over time. Vehicles depreciate, financial securities are affected by the strength of the company the stocks represent, precious metals vary depending on demand. Hard currency has a value which is fixed to something, like Gold.
What Gold is worth can change, but a hard currency can always be converted to what it represents.

I went to this link and got this

Error 404!
The page you requested does not exist or has moved.

Yes, ethnic humour is NOT cool.

Probably, I am being stupid, but I do not see how it can be a “Store of Value” if it is not also a “Medium of Exchange”. Perhaps someone can enlighten me?

There was a news item in Xinhua News a week or two ago, that some old people who did not have cellphones or did not understand payment with cellphones, had been unable to buy things they wanted because they had only cash. The law had been changed to make it illegal to refuse cash as payment.

Sorry, I don’t understand. I mean, I get the metaphor but not how it applies?

So true. The jingoists always seem to think that it was the brilliance of arms while forgetting that the US industrial machine could out mass produce anything that the enemies could.

“Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics. Professionals talk about logistics and sustainability in warfare� Robert Hilliard Barrow

I’m sorry you misunderstood. I meant fiat currency that’s not backed by gold but past history and stability.

The people who would impose this kind of financial system cannot secure the contents of a PDF file.

Money only works on the basis of long-term trust.

You do the math.

The Fed announced today that it is considering installing a crypto currency as well. Of course, we will all be traded electronic “credits” for turning in our so called “dollars”. The Webster dictionary defines a “Dollar” as one troy ounce of fine silver. How can that be? One ounce of silver today was on spot for just over twenty-seven dollars. Are we not suppose to notice such things? The same dictionary defines a “Note” (as in Federal Reserve Note) as an “IOU”. Say what?? Yeah, check for yourself. Anyway, the exchange of crypto currency credits for paper money will be conveniently blamed on that poor old undeserving COVID-19 virus. Yeah….nasty stuff! Handled by many different people every day. YUK! You don’t really want that stuff, do you? Actually, no we don’t, but marbles are not a practical option. What else do you have to offer? I heard that in Havana, Cuba, socialism has worked out so well for them that you can now buy a lady for the night in exchange for a tube of Crest toothpaste. I wouldn’t know, but I bought a case today, and called my travel agent. Bon voyage!