why do I feel like I am in 1930 from a past life? Yes, it's only in American people are not in the street. I think it's due to the chemicals in the fat burgers.

The total inventory out there today is around 55 tons. When Alexander the Great defeated Persia,he captured 14 tons, half of the known gold except for China. So 2340 years, only doubles gold inventory. When miners in Peru tear apart the jungle, they may mine an ounce a day. Gold is fundamentally scarce.

The Wealth of Nations has a long discussion on gold. Smith made the point that all currencies follow the 'money price of gold' in an endless sea-saw. Jefferson said that this nation must make a choice between a National Bank and a paper currency to do both is to court 'ruin'.

When Nixon closed the Gold Window he could not keep up with the deliberate runs by the French. In a few months, he would impose wage and price controls. In a 1975, you could buy coins and bullion again. The biggest lie governments and central banks tell, is that they will manage gold prices.

 Full Disclosure: I have owned a gold producer mutual fund since 2003 when my favorite Vice President told the Secretary of Treasury,"Deficits don't matter." The converse of that statement is that the dollar is garbage.

I do not believe in Gold Standards because of way Hanna and the Republican Party took the U.S. off silver.

has it passed, failed, deal been struck?

This one almost got past me.

Shares of Moody’s Investors Service fell nearly 7 percent, to $21.77, following news the ratings company is being investigated for possibly misleading regulators. Moody’s disclosed Friday that it might face a Securities and Exchange Commission administrative charge it misled regulators when it applied for its license in 2007...
The investigation grows out of a separate issue, Moody’s ratings of European investments. In 2008, Moody’s acknowledged a computer error led to incorrect ratings on 11 fixed-income investments worth $1 billion. Moody’s also said employees failed to fix the errors immediately after discovering them. The SEC said Moody’s might have provided false statements in its license application based on the erroneous ratings.

With the elections approaching, the regulators and politicians are suddenly interested in investigating Wall Street. Coincidence?

They are voting on a host of amendments now. Vitter was defeated, but devil in details, need to get an update. So, while we do not have a real audit/rein in the Fed, we do have a one time audit, but Bloomberg with their FOIA, won already to get most of that info.

Looks like Moody's just dumped all over the bailout plan.

(Reuters) - Moody's Investors Service, in an unusual move regarding its sovereign ratings process, said on Monday it may downgrade its ratings on Portugal, and Greece's rating could fall to as low as junk.

Great “movie”. Thanks. For some reason I always miss Frontline. I appreciate you bringing them to my attention.

As to this one in particular, I absolutely believe that College Inc., and the ‘higher education system generally, truly are “to big to fail” from the point of view of the political/economic oligarchs. We have seen this past week how a relatively few workers “reentering” the workforce can cause the unemployment rate to increase. What would happen if a significant percent of college students dropped out of college and entered the workforce. The unemployment rate could easily go well past Depression levels. The student loan program keeps the workforce size down while providing students with a nominally comfortable standard of living.

I took a community college course recently and I was impressed with the numbers of cars, computers, ipods, clothes, recreation money, etc. they had. I became intrigued and did some non-random surveying and checking of published enrollment numbers. It seems the majority (perhaps overwhelming) were in vocational programs and many students were enrolled in a second Associated Degree program after finishing one (e.g. first Food Service and then Tourism). There are no full-time life-time career-tracking jobs, so they work part-time in retailing or restaurants, collect student loans and live at home with parents.

All to the advantage of the oligarchy class! If these young people got serious about getting ‘suburban middle-class family-supporting jobs’ like their parents and grandparents had in the post-war boom years, then there would be a revolution on a scale that would shock Marx and Lenin.

Indeed, if Marx were here I think he would say: “ ‘It ain’t over until it’s over’. You thought that the fall of the Soviet Union proved me wrong? Well I say the fall of the Soviet Union proved Lenin wrong. But as to my philosophy of history, ‘the match is on’.”

Marijuana is older than mankind . It has been used for thousands of years by many societies the world over . I prefer to smoke it at the end of the day , and after all my responsibilities have been taken of. I find it to be more relaxing than alcohol and with less negative side effects .

When I wrote about the silver market manipulations I had almost no hope that the regulators would follow up on it.
Perhaps the corruption of the situation is so obvious that they were forced to make an effort, if only to keep giving the false impression that there is some justification of their existence.