Maybe a bit off topic too, but I would very much like to hear viewpoints on this:
Situation in Iceland is that mortgage debts are cancelled by the government: see link below

Click to view link

What would be the reaction of the IMF? Suppose every government would do this? What would happen to the economy and the banks?

Maybe a good topic for an article in this very sound Daily Bell?

Reply from The Daily Bell

Thanks.

"Ron Pauls' STATED position is that he backs competing currencies,... " DB

Too bad he (and others) don't practice their STATED positions... Von NautHaus (Liberty Dollar) is still awaiting sentencing for... . of all things counterfeiting US Coin,,, all the while his COUNTERFEIT COINS are still being sold on EBAY for "Genuine Federal Reserve Notes".

Yep,,, a whole courtroom devoid of any honest money advocates. Case Closed.

Reply from The Daily Bell

Ron Paul didn't arrest, nor prosecute, Von Nauthaus.

Don't understand your point.

'You have to learn to stick to the topic, Abu'

-------------------

Funny you would say that, memehunter. When last I looked YOU clogged dozens of threads with hundreds of contradictory straw man arguments and sham battles, busily trying to muddy the waters.

This seems to be your entire purpose, in my view.

They are going to help "innocent bystanders". That's funny.

Here's some IMF propaganda. The IMF wants to collect money from the developing countries to help,,,, the developing countries. They say that it won't be used to bail out Europe.

Click to view link

My thinking exactly DB.
Creat a problem to find a solution.

"Money for nothing and your Debt for free" just popped into my head.
Great song, worth listening to with the new lyrics. :-)

In Australia, Aboriginals no longer receive cash, they have a plastic card to buy what they want.

In Ireland your cell phone, TV licence and I am told, internet is paid for.

People Must stay connected, it's an essential part of modern life.
Danger bells start ringing when "They" give me something for nothing.

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/social_welfare/social_welfare_payments/extra_social_welfare_benefits/household_benefits_package.html

In general people (98%) don't care where or how money happens just so long as they can continue.

Do "They" really need to reduce us to poverty to achieve control ???

If the majority don't care about economics, fiat currency or privacy then it must be the minority 2% who have to have their minds changed.

Are some of those 2% building a safe haven to weather the storm ???

Click to view link

.. the answer ... Click to view link

Viet-Nam seems opposed to gold.
Click to view link
I can see where a gold barter system would lock out the banks. There is even a humorous element to all this.
"the Vietnamese government are running a national campaign to persuade citizens to move their privately held gold into the custody of the banks"
Why does that sound counter productive?


As far as what the elites are thinking, it appears that they are far behind the times.
Martin Armstrong;
"The theories the Federal Reserve has are antiquated. They're based on the domestic economy and even on the old gold standard. These are theories based on things that don't even exist anymore. Look at the universities. They don't even teach hedging at the London School of Economics. It's amazing."
Click to view link

One central point to all of this is: the idea that SDRs will be readily accepted after this horrendous crash. FOFOA has a good article on "Moneyness".
Click to view link
I have serious doubts that the SDR will fly.

You make a very good point, Nithsdale.

I also believe that digital currencies are here to stay, which is why I'm skeptical about a return to any "old-fashioned" gold standard, private or public. FOFOA foresees a clear separation between the means of exchange/unit of account function of currency, which is indeed evolving in the direction you described (increasingly more digital and relying less on physical tokens such as actual dollar bills), and the store of value function, for which physical gold should continue to have an important role.

You are mired in old obsolete terms when it comes to "money". No one prints it now, it is all digitalized, entered in countless apps and transmitted to pay for everything. The problem with our society is that so many still think in terms of dollar bills, gold and silver when it is all an illusion... just an entry on a balance sheet and there is no one to even check that! If the goods move, payment is noted and it all moves on to the next transaction. Everyone accepts this, including you all and soon you won't even have to have a card with a signature... you can use your mobile miniature device now afixed to you as you move. Just flash it and you have bought it! What magic we have created and for so many! It is so our day and time!

Get with it Boys and Girls. You are being left behind by old misconceptions. Mme Lagarde is here to just claim a large piece of this entry task, hers dealing with intragovernmental and cronyism corporate exchange. It must be registered for the IMF to get credit. It has nothing to do with cash. Like Amway showed, the pyramid is the perfect model for society so long as society grows. When mishaps occur well, Governments step in and create even more phantom imputs and the game goes on!

Merlin is alive and well and his legendary magic is great for us all!

Much easier to control a single currency than 150 of them. This alone is enough to get even competing elitists joining forces. After all, it may be just a fun game of monopoly for them... And, we're just the pawns they move around the board.

Clearly the elites are invested in this current economic system and will do everything in their power to preserve it. Thus I believe if the currencies falter NEW currencies will be presented. They may or may not be based on a gold standard. If they are based on such a standard, how closely will it be monitored? Certainly this system requires debt expansion to sustain itself and any new system by these elites would be the same in structure. It is all artificial and so long as people get their tokens to obtain food and shelter who knows how long the game will go on?

Hmmm! Seems so fiendishly devious that it makes one wonder if the whole grand scheme wasn't inspired by Satan himself! Not that un-regenerated mankind really needs any help mind you!

DB: But all this avoids the central issue which is why the elites prefer fiat money to, say, a gold standard.

Again, the DB answers for Abu. I'm not surprised anymore, simply pointing it out...

My point is that SOME (I can also use uppercase letters) elites have promoted and are still promoting gold-based currencies. That's all. Simple, no?

Therefore, it follows that this is inaccurate: "the elites are opposed to gold at every level (except for themselves)".

DB: You can't answer that because to do so you'd have to abandon your contention that Austrian economics is a kind of Satanic Church and that the elites sponsored Austrian economists like von Mises in order to create gold ownership for all. Doesn't make much sense to us.

I have answered it above. I don't necessarily think that the elites want to "create gold ownership for all". I think those in favor of a gold standard are happy to let people own some coins to generate some public support for a gold standard, but in general they keep most of the physical gold and let "paper gold" circulate.

Reply from The Daily Bell

Oh, come on. This is going to end up in your (now 10 points long) famous mis-statements queue. Which "elite" pray tell is promoting privately circulating, market-based precious metals (as money).

This ought to be good.

You have to learn to stick to the topic, Abu. Is it accurate to say that "the elites are opposed to gold at every level (except for themselves)"?

Give me an honest and truthful answer, and I will answer the rest of your post. Deal?

Reply from The Daily Bell

Of course it is accurate, on numerous levels. Note, we didn't "write gold ownership." We wrote GOLD. For instance, the elites would allow others to own gold so long as it advances THEIR designs. Thus, they are willing to put up with a FORMAL gold standard because that is the best THEY can do at the time. Some control is better than none. But all this avoids the central issue which is why the elites prefer fiat money to, say, a gold standard.

You can't answer that because to do so you'd have to abandon your contention that Austrian economics is a kind of Satanic Church and that the elites sponsored Austrian economists like von Mises in order to create gold ownership for all. Doesn't make much sense to us.

"Clearly, it is inaccurate to claim that "the elites are opposed to gold at every level". There would be other ways of presenting the issue that would be more accurate."

-----------

Yeah, like writing: "The elites are opposed to gold at every level (except for themselves)" ... as the DB did.

You already had better attempts to 'recycle' quotes through your Orwellian word chopper, dude.

The elites hate gold pretty much as some CEO's/majority owners of processed/genetically modified food corporations hate organic farming. They KNOW that organic farming, like gold, is the 'real thing' - that's why they use it for themselves, while they, at the same time, try to spoil it for everyone else. Monsanto even banned GM-food in it's canteens, ironically. Same thing with medicine.

By the way, memehunter, if the elite indeed sponsored Austrian Economics and Libertarianism to promote their designs, how come that one can hardly find even a few significant and overall sympathetic mainstream media stories about Austrian Economics and/or Libertarianism in ANY western country FOR DECADES? In particular BEFORE the Internet rediscovered and spread the message, and made it almost inevitable to at least 'deal' with it in one way or another.

Again, your ENTIRE approach rests on the claim that 'the transnational plutarchy that currently rules the world' (your words) via mercantilism, directed history and evermore worldwide centralization, would indeed BENEFIT from what you call 'extreme individualism', i.e., the freedom of every human being to live, associate and trade as he sees fit, as long as he doesn't harm others - while, at the same time, you are not able to provide a single shred of evidence for your outlandish claims. NOT ONE.

You failed to demonstrate, even theoretically, let alone PROVE, that the elite could/would make use of decentralized, small communities and the lack of governmental monopoly-violence and monopoly fiat-money to further what 'they' desire most: CONTROL

Hence, not only have you been debunked several times now, mostly YOU HAVE DEBUNKED YOURSELF.

DB: There are perhaps 150 monopoly fiat central banks in the world today. There were only a handful in the early 1900s. If the elites loved gold so much, surely they would have stayed on a formal (and manipulable) gold standard (according to your arguments) instead of trying to destroy both gold and silver as money (which they did).

M: I would say that this is debatable. Several European nations attempted to stay on/return to the gold standard (or a diluted "gold exchange standard") after WWI but it did not work out in the end. See here for more historical background:

Peak Exorbitant Privilege:
Click to view link

In any case, this issue may be debatable but it does not change my main point that at least some elites seem to be in favor of a gold standard.

DB: 2. And if the elites had such control of gold in the early 1800s when the US was on a gold and silver standard, surely they would been able to take over the nation without going to the trouble of creating a Civil War. Obviously, their "Money Power" did NOT give them such control, though you continue to argue it did and does. (See Bischoff's rebuttal to you as well.)

M: Ingo has rebutted many things, so I am not sure which comment you have in mind. I also don't remember arguing at length about the Civil War, except that I find Migchels' views about Lincoln more convincing than those of the DB elves. Please specify which comments you have in mind, then I can offer a proper reply.

DB: 3. Mises was not "funded" by the elites, certainly not in the sense you seem to mean. He begged for scraps from the table and then was eventually cut by the Rockefeller funds and not refunded. His works were in no way "mainstreamed" as Hayek's were. You have a better argument with Rand or Hayek, but you are obsessed with Mises who developed both the business cycle theory and elaborated on the principles of human action and was irascibly independent. In your mind all these people are apparently one big lump. They are not.

M: The point here is that Mises promoted a gold standard and was supported by some elites. Do not forget the Volker Fund and the American Jewish League against Communism (Mises was sponsored by Fertig, a member of the AJLAC board), itself sponsored by Kohlberg (a stand-in for Baruch, who was himself an agent of the Rothschild).

More here: Old Rothschild- and Rockefeller hands controlled the Libertarian-Communist dialectic

Click to view link

We can reasonably assume that these people would have stopped funding Mises if they disagreed fundamentally with his views on the gold standard, or that they would have instructed him to promote different views.

In the case of Ron Paul, again we find some elites sponsoring/working with a top politician who promotes a gold standard (even in the context of competing currencies).

Clearly, it is inaccurate to claim that "the elites are opposed to gold at every level". There would be other ways of presenting the issue that would be more accurate.

The ongoing speculation of the DB, having a SDR replacing the FRN as the world's reserve currency, never seems to address the fundamental problem with the whole concept. Mainly, that a fiat SDR based on "basket of currencies," is still based on a basket of failing fiat currencies. Given that simple fact, whay would anyone think an SDR would last ten minutes longer than an FRN or euro?

Reply from The Daily Bell

We are not responsible for the elites thinking on this point - we are merely reporting on it.

We expected that there would be a move toward a formal gold standard by now, but we see little evidence of that within the mainstream press currently ... which leads us to believe it would be a secondary plan at best ....

"The elites are opposed to gold at every level (except for themselves)."

How long are you going to keep repeating this canard? It is clear that at least some elites are not opposed to gold or gold-based currencies. Hence the elite funding of gold standard proponents like Mises or Ron Paul (who is sponsored by Bilderberger Peter Thiel and co-authored a book "The Case for Gold" with power elite member Lewis Lehrman).

"They hate the idea in fact that the common man owns either gold or silver."

This may be true for some elites, but I suspect that those that promote a gold standard are aware that, in order to get public support for their ideas, it is in their own interest to let the public own a few gold coins.

Reply from The Daily Bell

Canard(s)?

1. There are perhaps 150 monopoly fiat central banks in the world today. There were only a handful in the early 1900s. If the elites loved gold so much, surely they would have stayed on a formal (and manipulable) gold standard (according to your arguments) instead of trying to destroy both gold and silver as money (which they did).

2. And if the elites had such control of gold in the early 1800s when the US was on a gold and silver standard, surely they would been able to take over the nation without going to the trouble of creating a Civil War. Obviously, their "Money Power" did NOT give them such control, though you continue to argue it did and does. (See Bischoff's rebuttal to you as well.)

3. Mises was not "funded" by the elites, certainly not in the sense you seem to mean. He begged for scraps from the table and then was eventually cut by the Rockefeller funds and not refunded. His works were in no way "mainstreamed" as Hayek's were. You have a better argument with Rand or Hayek, but you are obsessed with Mises who developed both the business cycle theory and elaborated on the principles of human action and was irascibly independent. In your mind all these people are apparently one big lump. They are not.

4.Theil contributed about ten percent of Ron Paul's campaign funds maybe less, as we understand it. That certainly doesn't put him in Ron Paul's "pocket."

5. Lerhman was a member of the 1980s gold committee and contrary to your stated insinuation, Ron Paul had little or no choice in working with him to write a "minority report." You make it sound like Paul chose him out of millions. And Lerhman believes in a formal gold standard. Ron Pauls' STATED position is that he backs competing currencies, as do we. We believe within such a context, gold and silver would find a "place at the table."

We make emendations and retractions all the time. But there is nothing in what we have written here that is a "canard" from what we can tell - to use your injudicious terminology.

It is easy to make arguments linking Austrians to a kind of Satanic Church, as you apparently wished to do. We recently linked Jesus Christ to Genghis Kahn as a kind of spoof of this, and many took it seriously! You can see that article here:

Click to view link

instead of the Euro, we should develop the "effort unit" or "EU" as a system of currency
it would be valued on the general amount of effort put forth to earn it

various job salaries would be paid based on how many effort units would be earned in a 40 hour week, or salaried positions could be offered in terms of effort units per year

this gcould be globalized, and you could have an International Effort Unit

perhaps the UN could run the program and you could have the UN International Effort Unit (UNIEU)

of course, there is a risk that the general public could begin calling the Effort Unit the "FU" instead of the "EU"

in which case, one would speak of the UNIFU