Tuesday, December 9, 2014

"BUY GOLD" ADVICE IS AARON BULL*S$T IDOL WORSHIP

Elsewhere today, I read yet another satisfy the Israelites story whereby a contemporary Aaron pushes buying gold, specifically unallocated gold held outside the USA.

Right now, in true terms, gold trades at 14.8% below it's long run price since Nixon ended the US$35 dollar for gold exchange rate in 1971 ($116.66 vs $99.36).



The Great Greenspan-Bernanke Inflation is the main reason why gold rose from the December 2001 low to credit peak of March 2008. The banking crisis and uncertainty aftermath from the credit collapse of December 2008 to the peak of September 2011 is other reason why gold rose. In the first run, True Gold hit $157.04. In the latter run, True Gold hit $196.09.




Many of Aaron's gold idol worshipers say all must bow to the gold idol and own gold as sort of insurance because sooner or later, the Zombie Bankers' Apocalypse is going to happen. Without doubt, if a Zombie Bankers' Apocalypse were to come, everything would come to a halt, including production of all products. Likely, then, you couldn't buy anything anyway.

So why hoard gold if a Zombie Bankers' Apocalypse is going to happen? Why not hoard Levi's jeans?

If credit disappears, so do prices. Worse, all products will disappear.

Within days, most likely from looting, all supermarkets will be cleaned out. There won't be any re-stocking of shelves. There won't be any electricity for any refrigeration.

There won't be any fuel for trains and so no trains will run to carry crops. There won't be any futures markets to form prices insuring against glut or shortage.

Everything will stop. Gold will be as useless as everything else for a long time to come. Anyone would be better off with stacks of Levis in various sizes with which to barter.

And why would anyone own gold outside the USA? Likely, if a Zombie Bankers' Apocalypse were to come, there would be no way to leave behind the USA.

You along with everyone else will be stuck here. You might get lucky to get into Canada. However, there would be no chance you could ever get to Australia or Singapore, two popular places where many store their gold.

If a Zombie Bankers' Apocalypse were to come, if you owned an ounce or two of gold, you would be rich and at least well enough to have a running start against everyone who owned none.

Were a Zombie Bankers' Apocalypse to happen, when prices were to come back because production and credit were to come back, every day products would sell at pennies. A couple of ounces of gold would buy much.

As well, those who claim gold as insurance do not understand insurance at all. Insurance requires insurers. Insurers are parties other than you who specialize in compensation against loss by splitting losses into fractional duties against which losers have rights. In this way, insurers broker fractional duties.

If you have property (right of ownership) in gold, you don't have insurance. You wouldn't say that you have insurance because you have property (right of ownership) in a television.

If someone acquires property (right of ownership) in gold, whether they take possession of it or not — landlords have property in apartment houses but never take possession — that someone has a thing, which might or might not become an asset, which can be sold at street prices for something else.

It's flat out bad financial advice to tell anyone to own gold, much less own it outside of one's respective country and away from one's easy access.

Much smarter advice would be to own land in another country, land that can be farmed readily, preferably in a country that shall adhere to Anglo-Norman jurisprudence. Even smarter advice would be to buy that farm land and move there now while one can still freely move out of the USA.

Even telling someone to own a sea-worthy, blue ocean sailboat would be far better advice.

Gold preppers are as bad as all other mind-disorder suffering hoarding preppers. If a societal apocalypse were to come, among the first to be attacked and likely killed are hoarders. Bands of rovers will scour everywhere looking for stashes of products, outgunning the lone wolf hoarder. By sheer superiority of numbers bands of rovers will win any struggle for hoarded food, water, clothing, bathroom tissue and so on.

In the era of floating exchange rates and fiduciary, legal tender cash, there isn't a case for gold under the usual course of commercial activity. As I have shown elsewhere, the true price of gold tracks the true prime rate and its magnitude of tracking depends upon the state of bank credit.

Anyone who would have bought gold after Q3 1980 until Q1 2001 would have taken a bath, with the first washing done from Q3 1980 until Q2 1986. After a head fake through Q4 1987, gold buyers continued to lose buying power every year until the end of Q1 2001.

Only twice since the era began has gold risen, once to dizzying heights and more recently to a much smaller degree. The first rise, the spectacular one, happened because the true prime interest rate when through the roof, between the first quarter of 1977 to the fourth quarter of 1980.

The second rise, between Q1 2001 to Q3 2011, happened in two waves. The first wave happened because of a once in two life times massive inflation of bank credit (the true definition of inflation), the Greenspan-Bernanke Great Inflation, the largest credit bubble in the history of mankind. Excessive-credit fueled speculation billowed that wave between December 2001 to March 2008.

The second wave to the top happened from the banking crisis and the uncertainty aftermath from the credit collapse between December 2008 to the peak of September 2011. In the first run, True Gold hit $157.04. In the latter run, True Gold hit $196.09.

Everyone can be almost assured they will never experience in their lifetime another inflation as the Greenspan-Bernanke Inflation. And if ever there comes a massive rise in the true prime rate, there will be enough time to buy gold.

The only ones you see pumping gold are those with commercial interests in selling gold and the fools who believe them.

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Wednesday, April 16, 2014

GOLD. YAY OR NAY?

Since gold doesn't pay a dividend nor coupon, it is not investment. No one can buy gold low for yield. Thus, gold is a speculation play, a bet on a forthcoming price rise high enough to beat alternatives.




As a speculation play, you need to ask yourself which way could the price go, up or down?

If right now were a time of peak prosperity, the likelihood of a downturn would be greater than if you were living at a time of recession or depression. In times rising toward peak prosperity, likely, the price of gold would be low relative to other speculation vehicles.

As the advance toward prosperity gets driven by credit growth, many enticing opportunities would pull speculative buying power toward these opportunities and away from gold. Yet, in peak prosperity, all of the good, credit-worthy ventures have been acquired. All that remains are those ventures with the greatest likelihood of loss.

If right now were a time of doubt and mistrust, with many corporate and personal bankruptcies underway and the growth in such rising, likely, the  price of gold would be rising relative to other speculation vehicles.

So ask yourself, what are the times right now? Is the 2008-09 credit crisis over? Even with what seems slow growth in trade today, is growth going to pick up or slow further?

It's likely the price of gold reflects the pull away from gold of all the alternative speculation plays from the world over.

In highly speculative times with abundant credit, the ratio of X (which I shall not reveal what it is) to the price of gold runs over 4.




DateGoldRatio
7/20/1999
$252.8
4.31
10/27/2000
$263.8
4.11
2/20/2001
$256.25
4.22


When gold seems priced about right, the ratio of X to the price of gold runs a bit more than 2.


DateGoldRatio
12/31/1975$140.252.09
12/29/1990$392.752.13
10/24/2008$712.52.04
6/28/2013$1192 2.11

When gold seems priced beyond what can be sustained, the ratio of X to the price of gold runs around 1 or below.


DateGoldRatio
12/28/1979$5120.76
12/30/1980$589.750.70
9/6/2011$18951.11


Today, the ratio of X to Gold is 2.04. Gold seems to be priced about right given all of the alternatives, given that growth likely is ahead and given that a time of prosperity has not arrived since peak credit of 2007 and the credit crisis of 2008.

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Wednesday, April 9, 2014

MIKE "MISH" SHEDLOCK VS ROBERT "THE SHILL" SHILLER; ALSO, THE REALITY OF PROFIT, PROSPERITY, DOOM, AND CRISES





Today I read that Ph.D. economist Robert Shiller who works at Ivy League Yale believes the average work week in manufacturing is an trustworthy indicator of recessions. Shiller is best known for the Case-Shiller residential realty index. 

The chart looks quite a bit like any stock index chart. Whenever the average hours failed to hit a new high following an interim low, recession soon followed. From a look at the chart, the time to recession seems to have come no later than two years from the failed peak.




Without doubt, the average hours worked in manufacturing is not an indicator related to trade expansions, trade recessions or trade depressions. An average of 42 hours worked a week signals nothing.

All trade crises arise from lost confidence in forthcoming profit. By lost confidence it is meant that bankers no longer believe they can get paid.

Without banking and bank credit, there could not be any crises and attendant panics. Many have posited many theories in effort to explain the causes of crises and panics. At the root of all crises leading to reckonings is the undue expansion of credit for which no profit shall be forthcoming.

As I explained in WHY IS THE ECONOMY SO HORRIBLE? BECAUSE ACADEMIA ECONOMICS IS FAKE, trade, which is what any "economy" is all about depends on two factors — property and profit. Without profit from effort, anyone would lack buying power to buy anything else. Without property, no one can trade. 

Though credit is indispensable to advance trade, often, credit becomes priced too cheap and thus too easily acquired. What results is inflation until a bubble bursts and panic arises.

Before crisis and subsequent panic, there must be prosperity. Employment, the state of hiring workers, shows most reliably the presence or absence of prosperity. Signs of prosperity include high prices, high wages, everyone being optimistic, people spending with ease. 

The march toward crisis arises when the profit squeeze hits. The further into prosperity, when profit margins in all lines of business narrow, many no longer can afford to accept losses from others. Thus, avenues of credit to such unworthy ones get closed disabling them from the means to service debt. 

In prosperity leading to crisis, production of new property as wealth traded by purchase and sale slows while estimates of future prices rise for extant property that could become wealth.

As the number of new firms and new securities listed increases, the danger of a crisis followed by a panic increases. When politicians award big municipal boondoggles at an increasing rate, the peak has come. When orders rush in, competitors work overtime, prices rise, these are the siren sounds of pending doom.

Signs of doom include the following. The riskiest stocks sell at the highest prices. Bankers-to-consumers and bankers-to-firms interest rates have risen. Bond prices have fallen. Bond yields haven risen consistently. Commercial paper yields have risen consistently. Commodity prices have risen consistently.

Prices of merchandise continues to rise because excess consumer credit puts buying power in the hands of consumers while available merchandise falls. This fall in merchandise arises from the credit squeeze hitting sellers.

Crisis is the pivot point between Prosperity and Reckoning. It is when all those who have undertaken too much credit for trade find themselves lacking income to service debt and ongoing operation from extant capital structure.

The further credit gets stretched, the worse is the break when it comes. Through the agency of credit, a great number of duties payable in cash get created. If the call for liquidation of outstanding credit becomes widespread, panic follows.

During a crisis, enterprise-undertaking adventurers pressure bankers to accommodate with easy credit.

When it becomes necessary to adjust the whole industrial machinery to a level of capitalization for net profits to yield ample return, the name for such adjustment is reckoning. Forced liquidation results in declining prices of assets and reveals ever more who can fail to meet debt obligation outstanding. When speculative gains from a credit expansion fail to meet the demands of credit liquidation reckoning, a period of trade depression arises.

Every crisis has the panic part. Panic is the scramble for the exits. Panic is the rush to exit credit positions. Crisis is the storm. Panic is the scuttling.

The word shill entered into English in 1916 meaning one who acts as a decoy for a gambler, auctioneer. 

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Wednesday, March 26, 2014

BITCOIN IS SOFTWARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT. BITCOIN IS NOT LEGAL TENDER CASH.


Bitcoin is software. The law which governs property in software is copyright. In essence, Bitcoin is no different than musical works of the Beatles, which is the right way to look at Bitcoin.

Bitcoin trades for legal tender cash and bank credits, which can be converted into legal tender cash. Works of copyright also trade for legal tender cash and bank credits.


Speculating in copyright is a normal part of trade. 
Speculation in Bitcoin amounts to speculation in copyright.  

In Anglo-American 
jurisprudence, property means right of ownership and never the thing owned. Property means the right to possess, the right to give away, the right to destroy, the right to recover upon theft.

In trade, people buy and sell property. They don't buy and sell  things. When you buy milk from the market with cash, you buy the right to own the milk and part of that right is possession.

Yet, there are many times when people buy property, or right of ownership and never take possession. Few ever take possession of their stock certificates when they buy property in a firm as parceled in stock. Landlords never take possession of their rental property. Their tenants do.

Without doubt, Bitcoin is not "a peer-to-peer electronic cash system."  Bitcoins aren't "electronic cash" nor are Bitcoins cash at all. 

Cash requires bank credits. Cash is paper that evidences bank credits. Cash arises as an artifact of banking. 

Whether legal tender or not, cash is denominated bank notes circulating as evidence of deposits. Deposits are bank credits. Denomination means named multiples of the unit of bank credits, such as a ten dollar bill, a twenty dollar bill or a one-hundred dollar bill.

Today, Americans have cash. Specifically, Americans have legal tender cash. So too do Canadians have legal tender cash, the Brits, all those of the Eurozone, the Japanese, and so on. Legal tender cash is centralized bank notes circulating in perpetuity. Seemingly, legal tender cash does the work of money, but never is cash actual money. 

Money is coined metal by weight and fineness. The Romans said so. It's their word. Even the U.S. Constitution supports that concept. 

When money existed, money gave its possessor currency. Money doesn't exist and hasn't for many decades.  

Always, money can exist without banking and government. Cash only can exist with banking and banks. Never can cash exist without banking and banks. Not only does legal tender cash need banking, but also legal tender cash needs government.



Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital protocol for transferring property of copyright. Any specific Bitcoin is an arrangement of electromagnetic impressions — bits in a pattern — on a recording medium. Each Bitcoin is software with built-in digital copy protection that prohibits duplication.  

In essence, that is all any specific Bitcoin is. Any Bitcoin, identified by its blockchain, is little more than a work of art. 

As such, any specific Bitcoin identified by its blockchain falls under copyright. The copyright in Bitcoin gives anyone exclusive right to prevent duplication of a specific work of Bitcoin as designated by its blockchain.

Copyright gives the owner of a specific bitcoin, property in that bitcoin, or the right of ownership. Anyone who owns bitcoin can make copies of that bitcoin for himself in various digital storage media. However, when someone sells their copyright in bitcoin in a purchase and sale, the ability to use any copies gets lost owing to the Bitcoin blockchain protocol.  

Currency means bearer negotiability. It doesn't mean cash. Bearer negotiability means the property (right of ownership) goes with possession. No need exists to prove title.

So when you buy milk at the Quik-E-Mart with cash, you don't first prove to the cashier that you own the cash. The cashier readily takes your cash and lets you walk out the store with the milk.

In a purchase and sale of cash for milk, the agents of the owners of the market buy property in cash and sell property in milk. You sell your property in cash and buy property in milk.



With Bitcoin, even though people seemingly are anonymous, the software everyone must use to manage transaction between two parties of trades with Bitcoins exists to proves title in Bitcoins. That is what the block chain mechanism of challenge and proof is all about.

Bitcoin lacks currency, because title must get proven of every Bitcoin in a trade. If Bitcoin gave any possessor currency, property in Bitcoin, that is the right of ownership, would go with possession. No one would need prove he owns a specific Bitcoin before trading it away in a purchase and sale. 

Cash gives anyone currency, which is another way of saying bearer negotiability, precisely because no one needs to prove title to cash before selling cash and buying something with it in a purchase and sale. 

Prepaid anonymous debit cards are the closest thing to electronic cash. All cash is evidence of bank deposits. Both cash and deposits are liabilities of bankers. Ask bankers. The smart ones will tell you what I have told you.

Bitcoin is more akin to "prisoner's money." Mostly, Bitcoin gets used to trade contraband in extra-legal purchases and sales. Basically, Bitcoin exists to facilitate heroin dealing where deals get made anonymously through the Internet while delivery gets made through legitimate package delivery services, such as UPS, Fedex, USPS, DHL, Canada Post and the like. 

Many have been tricked by the metaphor used to explain Bitcoin, being fooled, nay, suckered into believing Bitcoin is banking-free cash, which is an impossibility, and into believing Bitcoin is money, also an impossibility, as money is coined metal by weight and fineness. 

When people trade bitcoin for drugs and drugs for bitcoins, people are bartering. Such bartering is the same as trading a digital movie with copy protection for drugs and drugs for a movie with digital copy protection. 

Bitcoin requires banking because no one would want to accept Bitcoin as payment unless also being able to sell Bitcoins for legal tender cash or bank credits of an established banking system. Without others willing to sell cash or bank credits and buy Bitcoins, Bitcoins would be useless. 

Bitcoins are as dependent upon banks and banking as any other copyrighted product put on offer for trade in purchases and sales for cash and credit.

At day's end, if ever before a legitmate court, Bitcoin shall end up being ruled as incorporeal, immaterial chattels jura in re propria.

So you can truly understand Bitcoin, check out FROM BITCOIN TO SHITCOIN IN ONLY A FEW DAYS.


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Monday, March 17, 2014

THE UNREALITY OF SAVINGS, INCOME INEQUALITY AND ECONOMICS

Recently, I came across an interesting piece about academic Michael Pettis, which exposed Pettis' false beliefs about savings and income inequality. Pettis spews gobbly-gook. There is no such thing as savings. There is no such thing as income inequality.





Savings is mere rhetoric. People don't put savings in a savings bank or any other kind of bank. Depositors buy bank credits and sell cash, other bank credits or debt in property trades each known as a purchase and sale. 

In a purchase and sale, selling cash or perhaps other bank credits and buying an interest-bearing account, a bank customer becomes a capitalist who buys a share of future bank profits, which gets called interest. It's mere deceptive rhetoric to call such a capitalist "a saver" or one "who has savings" even when the bank customer capitalist is a wage earner. 

Depositors get deposits as evidence of their right of action against bankers when in a purchase and sale, selling their cash, other bank credits or debt. Bankers become owners of said cash, bank credits from other bankers and debt bought in a purchase and sale from depositors. 

Bankers and other capitalists deal in property with confidence in forthcoming profits, transmuting property that lacks saleability into property that does, enabling the adventurer-entrepreneur to transmute property as capital of production into property as wealth for trade. 

There is no such thing as "savings." There is only profit and loss. 

People work to get profits. People don't work and produce to make savings. To believe that people work for savings rather than profits is to reject reality. 

Anyone produces property in hopes of the gain of profit in a purchase and sale. Property always means the right of ownership and never what is owned. 

People trade property in stuff because before people can enjoy stuff, they must own it. People pursue profits to buy chattel, services and rights of action. Without profits there can be no purchase of another thing. Cash and bank credits are means to ends. 
  
Profits provide buying power because people seek buying power to buy the things they want from the surpluses they produce owing to efficiency. Otherwise, people would live at bare subsistence content to make little of a few things they need to survive. Under such a state, trade would not exist, nor would credit.  

People trade their property in chattel, services and rights of action (credit). People don't trade biens (goods) as the Physiocrats called them nor do they trade utilities as the Mill from Bentham utilitarians called them. 

Pettis errs again when he claims income inquality exists and is causal for anything. Income inquality does not exist and thus cannot be causal.

In THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INCOME INEQUALITY, I use Robert Downey, Jr., to reveal that truth. If someone earns more than another, that is so because those paying for the one earning more pay higher bids than those who pay others less. 

Comparing the wages between a brain surgeon and a fast-food drive-thru cashier is deceptive, false comparison.

In both BUT IT IS FOR INEQUALITY! AT WHAT POINT DO PEOPLE STOP EXPONENTIALLY DOUBLING DOWN ON STUPIDITY?, and SPREADING WEALTH, INCOME INEQUALITY AND OTHER MANURE, I reveal crony politics keeps people poor through minimun wage and welfare subsidy and how it is impossible to spread wealth. 

Whether as individuals or in tandem for a firm, people work to get profits. And to get those profits, people work to make property in surplus. 

In trade, all get governed by infrangible, inescapable law of trade, the Law of Prices. All get constrained by the Axiom of Profit. The Law of Prices holds the winning bids of purchase and sale in the face of what is on offer set the price. The Axiom of Profit holds the sum of sales must at least equal the cost of production, otherwise the producer goes to run.

For workers, profit gets measured by the difference of wages less living expenses. For firms, profits gets measured by the difference of sales less outlays. For a given productivity of property made at surplus, if living expenses and outlays rise faster than wages and outlays, profit falls.


If living expenses rise above wages, workers live at loss. If outlays rise above sales, firms operate at loss. 

Prices have been rising owing to reckless cash accretion and reckless cash accretion has arisen owing to quantitative easing. 

Since cash are bank credits circulating in perpetuity, with cash anyone only can pay taxes, buy goods or buy bank credits. Residual bank credits become reserve against more bank credits traded in a purchase and sale. 

When bank credits grow faster than output, prices rise. Individuals caught in such a profit squeeze cannot buy vacations in the Bahamas, music lessons, dinners eaten at upscale restaurants, tailored suits and so on.

In YOU LIVE AT THE MERCY OF A CLOWN-CAR DRIVEN BY MEN AND WOMEN OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE, I reveal how those at the Federal Reserve continue to err because they believe in economics rather than trade. 

Pettis is quite wrong when he babbles that there can be excess thrift as well as insufficient thrift. That is akin to saying there can be degrees of prosperity. 

Pettis fails to understand what thrift means, conflating thrift with savings. In THE WEALTHY PEOPLE EFFECT AND WHAT IT TRULY SHOULD MEAN TO YOU, I explain the word thrift as a Middle English word from about 1300 meaning "thriving, prosperity" and comes from the Old Norse meaning the same. 

In prosperity, anyone who wants to work can find work. Profit abounds. Wages increase faster than living expenses. Sales increase faster than outlays. The creation of property grows at an increasing rate.

Pettis errs again when he quotes Eccles who spews silliness about distribution. 

The whole mythology of production and distribution comes from the Physiocrats and their effort to support false claims that only farmers and the land produces while all other classes are unproductive and thus should be the ones upon whom taxes should be borne.

It's no wonder why Pettis doesn't get reality. Pettis parrots much of what gets taught by academicians and their economics mythology. Academia economics mythology fails to comport to reality. 

Academia economics, regardless of neoclassical school, fails to deal with the phenomena of trade — property and profits. Instead, academia economics focuses upon utility and scarcity, both of which have nothing to do with commerce, which is also called trade.

Trade, which is the purchase and sale of property as wealth made from property put to production, which is capital, to produce property in surplus, is the only reality. 

Here are three more must-reads on Bizarro Theater to help you disabuse yourselves from the unreality of economics and income inequality:

  1. GREEDY CAPITALIST COMPLAINS ABOUT UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE EXPENSE AND QUITS HIS BUSINESS
  2. WILE E. COYOTE, CAMPGROUND BUSINESSMAN SUPER GENIUS
  3. LIVING IN THE AGE OF IDIOCRACY

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