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Ahem… Chokeflation
Posted: 17 May 2012 02:30 PM   [ Ignore ]
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Salve,

To all of our Italian friends out there. Or Ciao, I suppose, depending on where you are at in that great, storied nation. Hello to all the rest of you out there in Litmock land as well. Yesterday I had an opportunity for the first time in about 12 years, almost to the day, to buy baby formula. I bought it for my youngest son Liam. As luck would have it, Liam eats the exact same formula as his big brother Ray used to, who I bought that formula for 12 years ago. Sadly, the purchase price provided a startling contrast to what this formula cost me just over a decade ago. This got me to thinking about where my country is today and what this world we live in is headed towards in the future.

12 years ago a 23.2 ounce can of this Gerber formula cost me $10.99. Yesterday, the same Gerber formula cost me $24.99, before taxes, which are also higher than they were 12 years ago. Do they put gold in Gerber baby formula these days? Is gold even good for babies? If this is the case, I think I need to start mining in his diapers to cut some costs, but I do not think this is the case.

Speaking of gold, in April of 2000, gold was about $272 an ounce, way down from it’s $800 high in 1980. Today, gold is being traded at $1573 per ounce as I write this, also down from its high of nearly $2000 per ounce last year.

When I shopped for formula 12 years ago I filled my car up with gas, which cost me $1.35 per gallon. Today a gallon of gas costs $3.87 at the Rutters near my home. That day when I shopped I also bought milk and bread. The milk cost me $2.65 a gallon. A loaf of bread cost me .69. Yesterday I also bought milk and bread. I could not afford a gallon of milk at $4.19, so I bought a half gallon at $2.29. The bread cost me $1.49. In every instance, except for milk, prices have risen over 100% in 12 years. The cost of milk has risen well over 50%. Gold, a clear indicator of inflation, has risen over 500%. We’re talking since 2000, not since World War II or 1950.

Yet the government tells me inflation is holding at 2% or so. On what? By no math I’ve ever seen, can you get the prices we have today in 12 years at 2-3% inflation. Now I understand why they’re always teaching “new math” in government run schools. So that when the government tells you that 2+2=entitlements and a welfare state, it makes sense to you, and you say “uhmkay” as drivel drips down your chin while you stand in the bread line waiting for the bread to run out.

12 years ago I made approximately what I make now. A little more, actually. It’s no wonder I, and everyone else I know, am or are always broke. I don’t know anyone today who is better off, fiscally, than they were 4 years ago, let alone 12 years ago. And on top of this, The Fed, by their own admission, under government mandate, has printed at least $1.7 trillion dollars over the past few years with their Quantitative Easing campaigns such as operations Tarp and Twist. More paper in the market means MORE inflation, and who knows how much more, because no one really knows how much money The Fed actually printed. See, they won’t let anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances, look at their books. Ever. Not even Congress, and many, like Ron Paul, have asked to see those books on a number of occasions, but nope, we just have to take their word for it. Because, you know, governments, politicians and their agencies (even the “independent” ones that work at their behest) are always so honest.

NOT.

Anyway, how bad are things going to be 4 years from now? Or in 12 years if, God forbid, I have to buy formula again? The government says there is no inflation problem and we’re not in danger of stagflation. They’re right for once. We’re well past stagflation. We’re deep in chokeflation mode. The economic virus we have suffered from the past few years is now spreading around the Globe like a plague, and for some nations, like Greece, Ireland, Spain, Iceland, et al, this fiscal plague could be fatal. It’s a scary, scary thought, and we, as a people, need to do something about it. Not wait for governments to fix the problem. They’ve been “fixing” it for years. That’s why we’re where we are today. We started with a leaky faucet, the government tried to fix the plumbing, and now we have no water because our pipes are vomiting it all out into the streets. It’s time we start a forum on how to fix this mess before they blow up the house trying to plug in some power tools.

On a happy note, my Baltimore Orioles are in 1st place in May. 12 years ago they lost like 100 games. Got to keep a positive outlook, focus on the good things, you know. Anyway, food for thought.

Till later,

Sayonara.

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Posted: 17 May 2012 03:15 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]
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Guess what? You’re lucky! Most prices for food here in France have gone up about 600% since we changed from the franc to the euro! Unfortunately, we don’t make 600% more, though…  Weird too, we sell our carrots for example to countries that are 5000 miles away, only to buy the ones that these same distant countries grow…

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Posted: 17 May 2012 03:19 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]
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Doesn’t make much sense, does it, Blur, to pay more for forced trade? You could walk down the street and buy the carrots directly from the farmer for very little, but we have to have that “stimulated growth” for the good of us all, don’t we? The only thing that’s growing from all of these policies are prices of goods that we need. And as you point out, salaries are not growing in accordance. I feel for you my friend, I know as bad as it is here, it’s worse in many, many places, and I wish you luck. My question is, with all this stimulated growth and global economy growth, where, exactly, is it getting better for people, except maybe in Capitol buildings and in the hub of governments maybe?

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Posted: 17 May 2012 04:48 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]
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From Green Fingered Skinner, and a very valid point:

Hope this cheers you “UP”  -Art


RELATED QUOTES


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http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/t?s=fb&lang=en-US&region=us


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Facebook Inc. is selling 180 million of its shares in its initial public
stock offering. Another 241. 2 million are coming from existing
stockholders, including the company’s earliest investors and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg.

Even after the IPO, Zuckerberg remains Facebook’s single largest
shareholder. And he will control the company with 56 percent of its voting
stock.

The IPO sold at $38 per share, generating $6.8 billion for Facebook and $9.2
billion, collectively, for existing stockholders.

Here’s a look at existing Facebook Inc. shareholders and how much money they
have gained from the IPO.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Number of shares being offered: 30.2 million

Value: $1.15 billion

- James Breyer and Accel Partners, where he’s a partner

Year invested in Facebook: 2005

Number of shares being offered: 49 million

Value: $1.86 billion

- Peter Thiel, managing partner at The Founders Fund and PayPal co-founder

Year invested in Facebook: 2004

Number of shares being offered: 16.8 million

Value: $640 million

- DST Global Ltd. and affiliates, a London-based, Russian-founded investment
firm focused on Internet companies and founded by Yuri Milner

Year invested in Facebook: 2009 and late 2010

Number of shares being offered: 45.7 million

Value: $1.74 billion

- Goldman Sachs and affiliates, investment bank and one of the IPO’s
underwriters

Year invested in Facebook: 2011

Number of shares being offered: 28.7 million

Value: $1.09 billion

- Elevation Partners, private equity firm focused on media and technology
and affiliates

Number of shares being offered: 4.6 million

Value: $176 million

- Greylock Partners, Silicon Valley venture capital firm and affiliates

Year invested in Facebook: 2006

Number of shares being offered: 7.6 million

Value: $289 million

- Mail.ru Group Ltd., Russian Internet company

Year invested in Facebook: 2009

Number of shares being offered: 19.6 million

Value: $745 million

- Mark Pincus, Zynga Inc. CEO

Year invested in Facebook: 2004

Number of shares being offered: 1 million

Value: $38 million

- Meritech Capital Partners, venture capital firm focused on late-stage
investments

Number of shares being offered: 7 million

Value: $266 million

- Microsoft Corp.

Year invested in Facebook: 2007

Number of shares being offered: 6.6 million

Value: $249 million

- Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn Corp. and affiliates

Year invested in Facebook: 2004

Number of shares being offered: 942,784

Value: $36 million

- Tiger Global Management, New York-based investment firm

Number of shares being offered: 23.4 million

Value: $889 million

- Other, smaller stockholders are offering another 70,504 shares.

Value: $2.7 million

Source: Facebook’s regulatory filings and Associated Press calculations

 

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Posted: 17 May 2012 07:10 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]
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In order to get votes, many politicians promise to provide for those who might vote for them.  Larken Rose explains how they make it appear that they are providing for others as well as what’s really going on.

So I’ve been puzzling over how to deal with the apparently quite large ratio of those who support these political practices to those who oppose them.  The main problem, I think, is that providing for others is a great thing on its face.  It is something that mobsters do more and more as their harmful, immoral, and destructive behaviors prove successful.  Old mobsters get respect and honor from the communities in which they “serve” because the brutality underpinning their wealth and ability is well hidden in layers of underlings.  I don’t think governments are much different.  I can only continue promoting voluntaryism and do my best to continue enriching myself and others through that philosophy of liberty.

Most people don’t know any better than to support these politicians, but they can learn.  They CAN, but only if they are exposed to the information.  That requires a gargantuan marketing effort because, uh… well, YOUR government doesn’t expose you to propaganda, does it?  Of course not.  Propaganda, brainwashing, indoctrination, and demagoguery only happen to people in other countries.  So reaching people in your own country with such important information should be really easy.  Spread the word!

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Posted: 17 May 2012 07:23 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]
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That is why I want to start a universal forum on the topic. I’d like it to go viral, so we can get opinions, openly, on how to tackle the elephant in the room. If we expect politicians to do it, who are too busy accumulating votes by any means necessary in any way they can, then we, as a species, like the dinosaur, are doomed. It’s beyond time for people to speak up.

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Posted: 18 May 2012 12:27 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 6 ]
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Regarding the facebook IPO, I thought it might be worthwhile to point out the number of them required to match what the federal reserve created out of thin air according to the limited audit: 16 trillion is about 150 facebooks. FB took several years to create it’s value.

Spread the word!

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Posted: 18 May 2012 02:52 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 7 ]
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Bah, governments or politicians don’t have power today, only “Finance” does. Either a country has a triple A notation or it’s doomed. Having placed MONEY as the number 1 value, we are now being eaten up by the monster we created ourselves. Europe is agonizing first so changes to the System should come from there.  No, I don’t think our species is doomed, our consumer society is.

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Posted: 18 May 2012 05:11 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 8 ]
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I’m getting really, really, really, really old now, and I have yet to see prices on anything go down… except… gasoline!  Once in awhile!  WOW!  (of course, then it goes up… wars are fought… but at least it has gone down in my lifetime, even for a short time.)

I agree that our species isn’t doomed but that our consumer society is. 

The world has become too small to export problems to.

Remember that big party when everybody got really drunk and felt absolutely horrible for ages, some people never recovered, a lot of people missed work on Monday and lost their jobs? 

I think that the last 100 years or thereabouts has been that party. 

Forum on all this would be fun.

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Posted: 18 May 2012 05:51 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 9 ]
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The problem with gasolene is that you can’t make a good soup with it! Buy all you can anyway, the price should go way up very soon (Libya, Iran…), and that way at least you’ll be able to drive your car to some nice quiet place where you can chew on a cactus or something.smile

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Posted: 18 May 2012 06:28 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 10 ]
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Or trade a bar of gold for a chicken.

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Posted: 18 May 2012 06:33 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 11 ]
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I really appreciate all of these insightful comments and want more of a conversation. Julia and Blur, you are correct, the species isn’t doomed, except for that Mayan thing (HAHA), but the economy is. Tell me more of your thoughts. I’d love to hear from more of you, like Dean Drinkel and especially Dr. George and Mike Covey and Cap’N Veg. There are many great minds here, like Prometheus, that could give us insight from other parts of the world. I’m serious about this forum and I’d like to get enough input to run a serious press release on this think tank and get our thoughts heard.

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Posted: 19 May 2012 12:53 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 12 ]
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All joking aside, when I bought my first car, I could fill it up for like $9.75. I mean from dry to full, it never cost me ten bucks to fill it up. Granted, it was a Suzuki Swift with a 3 cylinder engine and 12’’ tires. But still. Now it costs me $50 dollars to fill my Subaru up, which is like $75 Canadian.

Seriously, those security cameras aren’t for the public. That’s the government stealing up your ass, while stealing more stuff. And if that doesn’t make sense to you, you’ve obviously never been through the border. Meh.

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Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Editing your stuff: Because an apostrophe is often all that stands between writers who know their shit and writers who know they’re shit.

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Posted: 19 May 2012 02:23 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 13 ]
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deminizer - 18 May 2012 06:28 PM

Or trade a bar of gold for a chicken.

Well, if it’s a real chicken - I mean not one of those strange things that never saw the light of day, it’s probably worth that much already.

 

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Posted: 20 May 2012 01:02 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 14 ]
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Society is about the division of labor, and the division of labor is all about producing so that we can consume - Say’s Law.  What creates the situation that many people call the “consumer society” is the ability to consume without producing, through credit and money creation.  Because of the Bretton Woods agreement the US$ became the world’s reserve currency, originally redeemable in gold by foreign governments (US redeemability ended in 1933 during FDR’s first term).  In 1971 Nixon ended Bretton Woods by closing the gold window and making the US$ a completely fiat currency, but it was still the reserve currency in a world of fiat currencies.  Because of this fact, printing a dollar is like turning a piece of lead - or paper - into gold, making it possible for the US to put big numbers on pieces of paper that could then be exported to other countries and exchanged for cars, TVs, computers, etc.  There is no trade deficit as dollars are exported to make up the apparent gap.  When the US$ loses its reserve currency status, there will be a severe downward revision in the American standard of living as foreign countries sell their dollar holdings (bonds and cash balances) and cease to treat the dollar as worth more than the paper it is printed on.  I have expected this outcome since the late sixties as that is when I learned about people who expected it from far earlier, like Henry Hazlitt.  In principle there is no doubt about the destination, but the timing is unknowable (that is axiomatic in Austrian school economics).

Probably, the most sensible thing you can do is to make sure that the people around you understand what is going on.  My personal view is that there is no hope here - that we are fast closing in on a situation like that of Germany in 1932; and the insanity has been so deeply embedded in the psyche of our fellow citizens (through so-called free, universal public education) that we will soon be confronted by the choice between what Ludwig von Mises called socialism of the German model or socialism of the Russian model.  If you and the people close to you know that this choice is really no choice, you have a chance of choosing a course of survival together.  If not, they will most likely adhere to one of these “options,” and you will find yourself alone.  We can hope that the founding principles of our country maintain enough sway that violence against those of us who disagree will be rare, and that the option of leaving, even if it requires substantial financial loss, will still exist.

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Posted: 20 May 2012 03:56 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 15 ]
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@Newbie: “that this choice is really no choice”

What would be YOUR choice? Please develop. Thank you!

PS: To avoid confusion and just in case some of you Americans ignore this, in France (for example) the French “Socialist” party is pretty much the equivalent of your American “Democrat” party.  Terms do not always have the same meaning everywhere: for example when we talk about “libéral, néo-libéral or ultra-libéral” here in France, the word “liberal” has nothing to do with the Canadian meaning of it.  In France, an “ultra-libéral” wants no regulations at all for markets, believing they will auto-regulate by themselves. 

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