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Exactly! That's why the idea of using gold as THE currency is so ludicrous. Gold looks good on paper, but can't work in practice because of who owns the above ground and below ground supplies of the metal.

If the market sets, the price, then its NOT a gold-backed currency. It's only a gold-backed currency if every citizen is assured that $1 of their currency is always and forever backed by exactly X ozt of gold. A floating price of gold means that the $ can freely inflate or deflate which is...

Excellent post! Thank you. I totally agree that the price of gold is an amalgam of the extraction costs, investment value of gold as an alternative store of value, the decorative value of gold for jewelry, and the business value of gold in industrial processes. The price of gold will...

Yes, the team needs good leadership and cohesion. Some teams will fail for the reasons you state, but the teams that don't will grow stronger (and probably attract new members, too). The economics of marauding does not favor the loner. If each lone survivalist stores a year's worth of...

You can't have a gold-based currency AND let the price of gold float -- that's a complete contradiction. The essence of a gold-backed currency is that a fixed number of currency units are backed by a fixed quantity of gold. Let the price float and currency units can be created out of thin air...

Self-sufficiency may be necessary, but it's not sufficient. You also need team-work. One person with guns and ammo isn't going to defeat 10 people with guns and ammo. And 10 people with guns and ammo aren't going to defeat 100 people with guns an ammo. The people that survive will be the...

Yes, and that "adding another zero" just makes gold another fiat currency! Who decides how many zeros to add and what stops them from adding or removing zeros as they see fit? If government sets the price of gold at $100,000/ozt, that's just as much a fiat decision as any with the current USD...

First, the situation is not as bad as you think because that $20-$50 trillion in CDS is only the notional, not the actual value of these things. The notional means that CDS provide insurance against defaults on $20-$50 trillion in debt instruments including mortgages, corporate bonds, municipal...

Look into HSA (Health Savings Accounts) which lets you put pre-tax money into an IRA-like vehicle in combination with a high-deductible (low-cost) plan. Although the intention is that you would use the HSA to cover unreimbursed medical expenses each year, nothing in the IRS code requires...

I did not say "more important." I said "more valuable" in the bigger scheme of things. Brake pads on a car are extremely important, but they are not extremely valuable. Food and most industrial products are becoming low-cost commodities that require a decreasing percentage of the household...

They aren't Many companies that hold CDS and loans would declare bankruptcy.. The cut in interest rates would create a steep sell-off in bonds (would you keep your money in a bank that only paid 4% but had a 6% chance of defaulting?) Without CDS protection, bonds would sell-off especially...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an anachronism in an age when physical goods industries account for such a small percentage of the economies of most Western nations. I know some think we should return to our manufacturing roots, but that's the past. I'd bet a lot of people in the 19th...

Excellent article. It makes clear that this is no crisis of confidence or psychological problem with consumers or investors. The accumulated (and still-accumulating) debt of households, companies, and governments cannot be sustained. The residential and commercial real estate that backs...

You want to run a real-time global economy of 6.6 billion people with only 4.6 billion ozt of physical gold? Good luck! BTW, gold-backed economies have bubble and crashes, too.

Given that the neanderthals went extinct, they don't provide very convincing evidence of "works best." And in a global competitive marketplace, I'd bet that any country that has half it's talent (i.e., women) tied behind its back will lose.

The 20% = bull market logic is a just plain wrong. Look at the chart again. The Crash of 1929 had six "bull markets" on the way to the bottom.

I was intrigued by this so a poked around. Looks like a Second-Life in 3-D concept (with less emphasis on "Life" and more emphasis on 3-D). They seem to have no traffic and no buzz as yet, just vague claims to offer the "next level in internet management and digital living." It smells like...

http://www.google.com/search?rls=en-us&q=Vzillion&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

What do you mean? The monthly CPI declined in Oct, Nov and Dec 2008 ( http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm ). The Dec 2008 deflation of CPI was the worst since 1954. But the bigger issue is all the declines in asset prices such as houses and equities which induce the "don't buy now...

Exactly! It's not that American's aren't spending enough right now, it's that spent too much money they didn't really have a few years back. "Stimulus" and "confidence" aren't going to restore the American economy because a good chunk of the borrow-and-spend economy simply shouldn't exist...