Now that gold can be “split” using real time valuations of weight vs currency valuations, allocated gold title can be distributed from A to B in an instant, anywhere, even if you only want to buy a stick of gum.

Store of value with instant seamless liquidity ! SWEET !

Will it be top-down ? Don’t count on it. The script isn’t written that way. Demand must assert its rightful power in the balancing act between supply and demand. We’ve been supply driven long enough, going right back to when the “apple was shoved in our faces”.

The end of an age and the beginning of a new one. Rejoice in that !

The key to all this is, as you say, that we can continue (?) to speak freely and share ideas. My feeling is that this freedom will not continue forever. That could be a problem in the foreseeable future. We’ll just have to see what transpires. Whatever, the comments by Michail Khazin are probably correct

Your math is a little off. If 300,000,000 people each had an average of $50,000 in debt, it would take $1,500,000,000,000 for the U.S. government to “bail everyone out.” That is 1.5 trillion dollars, not $15 billion. Or, one-thousand and five-hundred billion. You’re off by a factor of 100, a pretty large error at this level.

The Federal Reserve has increased its balance sheet by over $1.2 trillion, and that number is likely to swell. The derivatives that are acknowledged are in the $60 trillion range, and most of these seem to be blowing up, so there will be more and more “credit” created by the Fed and the U.S. Treasury to deal with these problems.

As several writers have pointed out, the burdgening financial fiasco is well beyond U.S. consumers simply having overspent. This is not to excuse anyone who irresponsibly spent more than they could afford, but consumer excess alone does not account for the collapse of the world financial system as we know it. Even if the government stepped in and bought out $1 tirllion or even $2 trillion in subprime and other mortgages at face value, th crisis would still be with us.

The synthetic instruments created by Wall Street geniuses (and many were, from a strict IQ point of view) resulted in a Ponzi scheme in which trillions of dollars of paper obligations were created with only a tiny fraction of real assets to back them up. As these dominos begin to fall, tens or trillions of paper “wealth” will vanish, and all the houses in America will not be sufficient collateral to replace these losses. Unwitting investors (including some of the most sophisticated pension plans in the world) bought or sold insurance on claims on insurance on claims on bonds or other assets, with many of these instruments representing ten to twenty times the value of the original asset or debt being insured. In many cases, no one even knows who ultimately owns the underlying asset or debt. It is chaos.

This never should have happened. Many elements play into this:

1) A Congress which abrogated its responsiblities under the Constitution (power to create money) and authorized the creation of the oxymoronic Federal Reserve.
2) The Federal Reserve for inflating various asset bubles with easy credit and artificially low interest rates, and its ridiculous advice to Congress against regulating the derivatives market. This last position by Alan Greenspan alone was a horrible disservice to America and the world.
3) The speical interest groups representing big money interests who lobbied Congress for laws (or lack of laws and regulation) that allowed these big money interests to plunder the countries wealth and truly “redistribute” wealth into their hands.
4) The SEC, for being lax when it could have been enforcing better regulation, and for giving in to the big investment banking houses and allowing them to go from 12:1 leverage to as much as 40:1 leverage (leverage which would not have worked without the low interest rate policies of the Fed and/or the essentially free money from Japan).
5) The rating agencies who violated common sense and their fiduciary duty by agreeing to rate pools of subprime debt as “AAA” or other non-junk ratings. True, they used historical default rates on mortgages when coming up with ratings for various tranches of debt in these pools, but used historical data which even a non-economist would know was not applicable. E.G., historical default rates on mortages that were issued with real down payments and based on fixed rates and real incomes could not be used to predict the default rates of no-money down, teaser rate mortages with re-sets based on no documentation.
6) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who cooked their books and were allowed to continue operating while their executives took home huge bonuses and luxurious perks.
7) The Wall Street investment bankers who cooked up these exotic instruments that even many of them cannot explain today. These were elaborate speculations, and not investments. Goldman Sachs created and sold many of these, sold them to investors who are now facing massive losses, and at the same time GS bet that these same derivative products they sold others would blow up. GS made a fortune while others were losing their shirts (but hey, it was different parts of the firm that sold while others bet against what they sold, so they are not culpable, right?), and as soon as the unravling got so big that even GS was getting into trouble, it cried “help” and the Treasury/Fed allowed it to become a bank holding company so that it could borrow at low rates from the Fed.
Incestuous relationships between the big money interests on Wall Street and the government. Let’s see: Hank Paulson leaves Goldman Sachs to become Secretary of the Treasury, and with a little known law, is allowed to sell over $500,000,000 (that’s a half of a billoin dollars) with no federal tax obligation (nice perk – saved him about $100 million). Then AIG gets in trouble, and the Treasury (Paulson) tells Congress that we (the lead to the slaughter taxpayers) need to lend AIG $85 billion or it will sink. Coincidentally, AIG owes GS $20 billion, which it repays to GS after it taps the taxpayer loan. OF the five big investement banking firms that were allowed to increase their leverage by the SEC (see #4 above), only two survived, one of which is Goldman Sachs (Bear Stearns and Lehman Borthers went bankrupt, Merrill Lynch is being bought by Bank of America). JP Morgan (which essentially got Bear Stearns’ assets for nothing) is still standing, and it has the biggest book of derivatives out there. Oh, it also is one of the owners of the Federal Reserve, and it too was allowed to become a bank holding company.
9) Government agencies that collaborated in misleading the public by issuing artificially constructed statistics, understating inflation (keep COLA down), understating unemployment, and overstating GDP. Investement and savings decisions based on this purposely false data were bound to be misjudged.
10) Corporations that strove to maximize short term share performance to enhance top executives bonuses, with little regard for building asset configurations of long term value. This was exacerbated by compensation schemes that paid ridiculously large bonuses in the (real or artificial) “good times’ while rarely penalizing these executives in the bad times. Greed ruled the day, and we now rue the day that greed has created. We are the only so called “democratic” country where CEOs earn 350 times the salary of the average worker in their companies. Thirty years ago it was more like 35 times (and is closer to that in most European countris and Japan). We, as a society, have made “rock stars” out of many CEOs, and allow them to be compensated as such. As much as I would love to earn a base salar of $20 million or ever $2 million a year, no one needs that much money to live a comfortable life.
11) The mortage lending companies who came into exisitence and crated the exotic mortages that got us into this housing mess: no money down, 125% financing, 2% teaser rates for two years, interest only loans, “pay what you want loans” with ever increasing principal, etc. In the old days, the banks loan money for mortgages only to people who were judged to be good credit risks: down payments of 20%, stable employment history, mortage payments not exceeding 30% of income, etc. The banks held the mortgages, so they wanted to make certain the lons were good. The Wall Street genius, looking at what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were doing, got the idea that they could package pools of mortgages into mortgage backed bonds, and sell these mortgages to investors, earning fees from doing so. Suddenly, there was a demand for pools of mortages that could be packaged and sold by the investment bankers. Along some the mortgage lending companies to meet the demand. They were not banks: they borrowed money (often from investment banks, who were borrowing cheaply from Japan or elsewhere), used this money to fund mortgages, then sold packages of these mortgages to the investment banks who would package them into bonds and sell these to investors (other government, pension funds, mutual funds, etc.). The mortgage lending companies did not make their money from holding mortgages (as the banks once did), but from loan generation fees: the more mortgages they issued, the more money they made. The incenitive was not to lend to sound borrowers, but to lend as much (or other people’s money) as possible to as many as possible. Ergo the exotic mortgages they created to get more people into the housing (read: mortgage) market. This then lead to unscrupulous practices, including “liar loans” and fraudulent documentation by brokers. One problem, though” many of these mortgage lenders agreed to buy back some of these mortages if they went bad: oops. Now, the guys running these big mortage lenders (like Countrywide) couldn’t be so stupid that they didn’t see that this was a musical chairs game. What they counted on was having a chair when the music stopped. While they waited, however, they got as much as hundreds of millions in bonuses and from stock salse, selling stock before their companies collapsed when the music stopped. Guess what? None of them have been forced to give back the personal wealth they got from this wonderful game they palyed: only their other stockholders and the American public are getting screwes as a result of their questionable management.
12) A certain percentage of American consumers. While this may be a relatively small contributor to the problems we face today, many Americans have lost their sense of personal rsponsibility and are quick to blame others for their excesses. If we all lived within our means, saved before we made major purchases, and only bought homes with down payments and fixed payments we could meet with our current incomes, the economy would be a lot smaller but we wouldn’t be in as bad a mess as we’re in. Too many people were willing to consume today with the belief that they could pay for it tomorrow. Too many people viewed their houses as “ATMs,” taking money out to spend whenever they could. Two generations ago people looked forward to “mortgage burning parties” when they had fully paid off the debt on their homes. The goal was to have a debt free place to live in retirement. That concept is so alien today that it is painful to look at how bereft of common sense (and sensible spending habits) we’ve become as a nation. The great prosperity of the last twenty or so years was an illusion built on a foundation of debt: take away home equity loans and credit card debt and most people would have lead lives with far fewer material possessions (and much less stess).

Fascism is defined as the merging of large corporate interests with the government. America has become a fascist state. Anyone who believes that “the people” actually have a say in how the country is run is being naive. There are only a few real voices who stand on principle in Congress, and they have the ability to influence almost nothing. (Yes, I agree with others that Rep. Ron Paul is among these.)

I do think that the U.S. and the world is facing a financial castrophe that will lead to severely reduced standards of living. largely at the expense of the lower and middle classes. The suepr rich will end up richer as they pick up assets at depressed prices. The fe big banking interests left standing will own more and more of the world’s assets.

I do believe will come through is, poore and ideally, a bit wiser. I am concerned that as these problems unfold fully, there may be social unrest and even the imposition of martial law, stripping away the illusion of being a free society.

Despite all of the above, I believe that the U.S. is an incredibly resilient country, and our genius as a people has been our ability to innovate and to suck it up and tough it out when we must. We are soon to be at that point.

I wish I had answers to this crisis, but I don’t. I believe that we need to go through it, endure it, and learn from it. We need to return to the thinking of our grandparents, and realize that we are responsible for ourselves, and consequently must adjust our saving and spending habits accordingly. We must get back to believing that debt is to be avoided whenever possible, whether as individuals or as a nation. We must learn to live with what we need, and not what we want. We must vote out every member of Congress who fails to protect the interests of the average American, and keep doing this until the message is finally driven home to our elected officials. Last, we must remember that we are all in this togther, and help each other out whenever we can.

My sincere best wishes to everyone on this forum. As long as we can continue to speak freely and share ideas, all is not lost.

I would just like to tell people one other thing about debts. All states have what they call “statute of limitations”. That means if you have a credit card debt or a bill for health care or many other kinds of debts, after a certain amount of time, they can no longer come after you to pay up. In many states the statute of limitations on credit card debt is 6 years. That means that if you do not make a payment or use the card for 6 years, the debt is then canceled. However if you make just one payment, or just one purchase, the time is re-started. That’s why many credit card compaines will try to get any kind of a payment out of you so that the statute of limitations does not run out.

Please go and google “statute of limitations +your state” and find out for yourself as each state has different rules and I am certainly not a lawyer and this should not be taken as legal advice, heck I am not even sure I spelled “statute” right.

Also, if you have a lot of debts and are sick of all the calls, if you write them a letter and tell them they have to stop calling you…they have to stop, that’s the law.

Personally, I had a lot of unpaid credit card debts after I suffered a serious back injury. These people were really mean and annoying, and if I did not get the mean buzzards, I got someone from India I could not understand. I turned the tables on these asses. I never swore or anything, but I would tell them I would send a payment the next day, and of course I never did, and then when they would call and get nasty over that, I told them I forgot all about what I told them…the old Alzheimer’s routine. I tired to drive them nuts, and enjoyed it. I figured if I kept them occupied, they would leave others alone. The people who try to collect these debts are mentally deranged to begin with, I have no respect for them at all.

I feel credit cards are a big ripoff, and I simply refuse to pay. I do not have a job where they can garnish wages, and I have health problems, so ….so far they have not tried to sue me for unpaid debts, of course my credit report is really bad. 30 per cent interest, is that even legal? how can they do that? Then, they charge late fees, on the late fees! And and what about over the limit fees? A guy I knew failed to pay a 100.00 on a credit card, he moved and forgot all about that stupid card. A year later he got a letter from the credit card company, and he owed over a 1000.00 dollars!! All over the limit and and late fees on the 100.00 and the same fees on those fees over and over again!! total horse shit, no wonder our economy is in shambles, and THESE are the people who are getting a bail out from the government! I am seeing RED!

I think credit reports should be abolished, they are an invasion of privacy and contain all kinds of false info, which never gets changed either, even when you tell them about it. Consumers simply have no rights. We need to ban together and simply refuse to pay credit card debt, it should all be declared illegal. And…many many people lost their homes, because of the credit card debt they exchanged for a 2nd mortgage on their homes, don’t tell me that this was not by design.

ALEX, YOU NEED TO DO A MOVIE ABOUT CREDIT CARD DEBT AND HOW IT IS BY DESIGN TO BRING US DOWN. The people who do not believe the 911 conspiracy will certainly believe the credit card conspiracy, because they are suffering from it.

Stay away from the places that say they will reduce your credit card ddebts and get your out of the red. These places are backed by the credit card companies, and in the end they are just another big rip off, but now they have access to your checking account. They are CROOKS! they belong in jail. When will the American consumer get a break, we are VICTIMS of a very well planned financial take over.

The only thing I do understand is how big business financially raped America. They picked up entire factories and simply moved to a place in the world where slave labor still exists. They have no loyalty to this country at all, the country that made them to begin with. They were greedy and did not want to pay American workers a living wage. Now they are gone, but we may have the last laugh yet. Because so many of these companies are gone, many Americans no longer have a job, or simply, can no longer afford what these big businesses are selling. Once the American consumer goes down the tubes, these companies will go down the tubes with them, and they deserve it, and they should not be bailed out by anyone.

http://video.google.com/videop.....ey+masters