Leveller

 

If someone bought gold in 1980 at $850/oz and in 2005 it was $400 and oz, have they hedged against inflation? Have they hedged against it today? Is buying gold today a good way to hedge inflation at over $1000/oz?

As the currency isn't tied to the gold standard, then gold itself becomes a commodity to be traded in a currency that holds the varying value.

As the dollar loses value, i.e. it has been at a historically low level for the last couple of years, gold increases in price against the dollar as it is a more stable investment.

What I believe it indicates is that Gold is a more desirable commodity to hold today that the dollar, as the dollar has been devalued and due to uncertainty of what will happen economically (on the back of the latest $1.4 trillion deficit news) gold represents a much more certain investment.

Using a good whether it be gold or anything else to hedge against inflation is not the point I'm getting at, as soon as you remove the tie between the currency and whatever you deem as standard, the "price" of the item will fluctuate as the value of the currency itself varies, the value of the item remains the same, the item becomes subject to price inflation although it's value remains the same. It's the currency devaluation that is the issue, not that the item itself is any more or less valuable.

I'm probably not explaining what I have in my mind terribly well, it's been a long time since economics class and a pretty full week

May have been quoted before, but worth reading

I understand your point that gold only has value because historically it does, that's partially true, but the point being that this is precisely why it's a great tool for use, it's a finite resource and near on indestructible.

I think we're agreed that neither of us have the solution when it comes to a recognized global standard for currencies, it's quite easy to argue on both sides.

I don't believe that there is any doubt that capitalism at it's core is sustainable and ultimately fair, equitable, meritocratic and ideal, the idea that there should be private ownership of the means of production for profit, paid labor and prices being set by demand and supply seems entirely logical.

What I don't believe is sustainable is the capitalist financial markets as they had become.

 

And who mines the most gold? Africa and Russia. I don't want those two countries to have such an influence on our country.

 

Africa's not a country, and Russia isn't even in the top 5, both Indonesia and Peru produce more.

The three largest gold producing companies are Canadian, South African and American in order of size. From a country standpoint, China's largest, followed by South Africa, the US, then Australia. As it stands, if China continues mining at current rates, they will have exhausted their known gold resources in 5-10 years. But more than 30% of the world's gold comes from countries who each represent less than 3% of the global output.

You suggest that if the production of gold goes up, inflation occurs: doesn't the government randomly injecting x billion dollars into the market have exactly the same effect? The only difference being, at least there's a tangible value when you have something like the gold standard.

Only two posts ago, you say:

"How are we trying to get out of the this recession? cash for clunkers? dumb. Print currency and sell debts? no. You cannot export American dollars by purchasing foreign goods to get America out of a recession"

Then in your last post:

"and printing more money could no longer be used to stabilize the economy in times of a recession. Great depression?"

The issue with not having money tied to something of value, is that money itself ends up with no intrinsic value. You should be able to exchange your money for something of equal value that is a finite and limited resource, if money is just arbitrarily produced to "stimulate" the economy out of a recession or for any other reason, it creates false wealth and we find ourselves in exactly the situation we're in.

(You could say that homes or property seemed to become some kind of new gold standard, but their value was monetarily artificially high, based on what could be truly afforded and that's how we got where we are).

The intrinsic value of gold is maintained today by virtue of the fact that most central banks still use on it as a medium of hedging against fluctuations in the dollar (because gold is a limited and finite resource that will have value far beyond that of the dollar or any artificial currency), and retain it in reserves hedged against their own loans.

I'm not saying returning to the gold standard is the solution, but I don't believe it should be dismissed so easily when money currently seems to be created from thin air on the whim of those who are looking for votes. If governments and people as a whole traded in something of a finite and fixed value, you'd see significantly more prudent financial decisions being made.

As far as I remember he was doing a law degree, and was a bit of a nut with a P90..

hdmi to vga adapter right? you can find them for really cheap

 

ebay

 

 

that particular cable is also hdtv adaptable to

 

naw, i already have a hdmi port on my monitor so I can plug it straight in...

 

what I was lookin for was that I want to use it as my windows media player and play blu-rays thru der instead of a seperate blu-ray drive...

 

EDIT*** FOUND THE SOLUTION [after searchin and search around] link, http://www.ehow.com/how_5108527_use-windows-media-player-ps.html

it makes your ps3 your windows media player, exactly what I was lookin for lol

From what I can see that's just media sharing off your PC in the same way a 360 will play video, music, pictures etc. from your PC over the network.

I think I'm correct in saying that it does not work in reverse, your PC will function as a server with your PS3 being the player, you can't stream the other way...

Interesting read, although I suspect the author spent too long either in or excessively close to a microwave while wearing their tinfoil hat.

I'm pretty sure the heating effects of microwaves were first discovered by the allies during the second world war by accident, when they were doing research into new types of radar, or at least that's what I was taught in Physics lessons a few years ago...

Microwaves aren't banned in Russia, they were for about 10 years in the early 80s.

I'm also fairly sure microwave energy is non-ionizing (or non carcinogenic), but I can't find anything that suggests it's effects on food are any worse than grilling it.

Degrading food, I've always been told that cooking any food lowers it's content of vitamins etc., particularly boiling.

I particularly love this line:

"1. A breakdown of the human "life-energy field" in those who were exposed to microwave ovens while in operation, with side-effects to the human energy field of increasingly longer duration;"

I'm really impressed that they were able to scientifically measure the effect of microwaves on people's aura.

The continual quoting of Russian research during the time the iron curtain was up actually puts pictures in my mind of them building microwave ovens the size of houses and testing them out on people (which wouldn't surprise me).

I'm sure there's some validity in a couple of the arguments, but no comparisons are provided for reference and the whole thing seems quite alarmist.

We don't use our microwave very much at all, popcorn once a week perhaps, and I would agree that if you ate a 100% microwaved food diet it probably wouldn't do you any good, but that's more than likely the nature of the food you're cooking/lifestyle you're leading than the actual effects of microwaving it.

I saw that it was available and started the download, same experience as above, canceled it after 20 minutes.

Keep meaning to check, but I'm pretty sure I'm listed as LevellerGC

I don't see anything to cast doubt on those numbers, but frankly the haunting "muslim" music and tone of the speaker say a lot about the purpose of the video. It seems to me like it's trying to create a religious issue, sorry if it's not, but that's entirely how it seems to me.

31% of the UK will be Muslim, ok, and? does that mean the UK's going to be worse place? I lived there for 28 years and was recently home after a 4 year break, did make a difference, no, I somewhat doubt that it's going to make a huge difference accept for church congregations over the next 20 years, the weather will still be testing, sales tax will continue to be a minimum of 17%, a pint of beer will still be expensive...

Interesting video though and worth watching, strange it doesn't touch on the growth of the worlds population outside the Western World, I honestly would have thought that to be a bigger issue, but hey ho....

Been on vacation since June 4th but got back yesterday, quite looking forward to getting back into this, seems like a few of my friends I bumped into are playing it as well..

Yeah, I've enjoyed playing this a lot, but would like to play with more folks, I'm signed up as Levellergc and have 3 characters, i'm guessing with the main signup name you can find people if they're online?

From what I can tell x-fire is registering it, so that may be the easiest way.

Tell me this:

 

Why is it that when world leaders in countries with national (socialized) health care have health issues of their own, they most frequently come HERE to get their treatment?

Because according the CIA website the US is ranked 50th in the world for life expectancy behind pretty much every country offering socialized healthcare in Europe, the far East and even Canada?

I'm not going to deny that the US excels when it comes to speciality care, at a price, but to look at the 1 girl who had her heart surgery cancelled 3 times (again without all the background information) and compare that to the 50 (?) million in the US who are uninsured/do not have appropriate medical coverage doesn't really seem like a solid argument to me.

If I had a child born with half a heart, there's no where I'd rather be than in the US, I'd like to think that I could afford the treatment necessary to get the best service and give my child the best chance imaginable, but at the same time, I'd not have to consider the cost elsewhere (and before the question of quality is raised when you have to pay, the US ranks mid 20s globally for infant mortality).

in bruges is awesome. if you like it, check out shaun of the dead.

And Hot Fuzz....

I don't want to turn this into a Brit fest, but you can now get Spaced on DVD over here, it was the original series by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and if you enjoyed Shaun and Hot Fuzz, it's really worth seeing.

I'm on it and enjoying it, quite simplistic, but I'm loving the customizations. It's very much like a cross between BF:1942 and TF2, great fun.

ZD you do your own cause more damage than good when you come in here and demonstrate how you dismiss fact because it doesn't agree with your agenda

 

You have that backwards. There hasn't been any fact posted in here; a single reference to a Wikipedia article that are changed and edited by anonymous people on the internet is not a credible source by itself. Not when the supposed innocent detainee admits to helping a terrorist fugitive with money and a place to live.

 

Would you prefer me to dig out the link to the Reuters article I mentioned in my previous post rather than just state what I read?

Reuters link end of page 1 start of page 2 detailing the 3 classifications

Breakdown of Guantanamo detainee transfers

One particular one from the above link:

"On 12 October 2006, DOD announced that it had that it had transferred 16 detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Afghanistan, and one detainee to Morocco. As a result of the transfer, approximately 110 detainees remained at Guantanamo whom the U.S. government had determined eligible for transfer or release through a comprehensive series of review processes. As a result of the transfer, approximately 335 detainees had departed Guantanamo for other countries."

So in October 2006 the DoD clearly identified that there were 110 detainees who were deemed eligible for transfer or release, the criteria for which people were being detained obviously wasn't flawless so to state that they are "all terrorists" or "99% evil" is an obvious innacuracy and fear mongering.

I'm not a believer that they should be brought into the US and supported here either, but I'm certainly not going to try and cover every single one of them with the same blanket description when it is obviously flawed.

If you would like to read an independent white paper put together in December 2008 which attempts to provide a breakdown of the remaining detainees (I say attempts as there is no publically available 100% record of who exactly is being held there), you can find it here. But in summary:

"That said, the public record does permit certain tentative conclusions and clearly contradicts

the more extreme claims of both opponents and defenders of American detention policy.

Clearly, a significant number of Guantánamo detainees are, by their own statements, not

“innocent†of terrorist ties. They have varying levels of connection to and agency on behalf of

Al Qaeda and other enemy groups. What’s more, administration critics err when they belittle as

trivial the severity of government allegations against detainees, which in many cases do portray

(correctly or incorrectly) dangerous terrorist operatives. At the same time, the public record

simply will not support statements broadly identifying the Guantánamo population as

composed chiefly of dangerous terrorists. In numerous instances, such as the Uighurs and

others the government has already cleared for release, this is clearly untrue; in other cases, the

facts are very much disputed; in still others, they are grossly underdeveloped, at least in the

public arena, and simply defy responsible evaluation. Seven years after the first detainees began

arriving at Guantánamo, it is finally possible, within a narrow margin of error, to identify

whom the government holds and offer a breakdown of that current population reflecting both

the government’s allegations and what most detainees have said about themselves. Pending

further information releases, litigation, and review, however, one can only describe the

population in the most general terms and with extreme caution."

I am sure you will pick out the words "extreme caution" and that many are by their own admission not innocent of terrorist ties.

But there is clearly also more than one other group, groups who would have been repatriated some time ago if the US had a better relationship with Yemen, and further groups from other nations and where the incarceration has been erronious.

I will admit that in its analysis this white paper clearly identifies that a portion of the population does pose a terrorist threat, and it may be a more significant proportion of those still in gitmo than the other sources would provide (i.e. those I used in my previous post), however, not one credible source will try to claim 99% or all of them pose a terrorist threat.

I'm fairly sure that it was a Reuters news article I read recently which provided some background to how the prisoners will be treated "post-gitmo".

I think they were broken in to 3 groups:

Those who were not arrested on the battlefield, (the vast majority) who may have been handed over by Pakistani/Afghan/Egyptian etc. authorities on suspicion of a link to terrorism/a terrorist organization and who were being held based on speculation or circumstance would be reviewed for release.

Those who were part of Al-Queda, the Taliban or provided support to them would could continue to be held indefinitely pending trial.

Those who were deemed high risk, i.e. actually captured on the battlefield, which represents less than 30% of those currently being held would continue to be held indefinitely.

The reality is there are people there who should never see the light of day again, but there are people (actually the majority of detainees) who have been imprisoned for nearly a decade based on speculation and circumstance with no trial as there is no evidence against them other than said speculation and circumstance.

I'm all for the death penalty, but not if every person arrested on suspicion of murder is put to death within 24 hours because they are a suspect.

My immediate thoughts on the closure of Gitmo are that it's a bad thing, however, I am not going to speculate that it's going to be handled badly, incorrectly or without due attention to human rights for those wrongly imprisoned without seeing some kind of detailed plan of what is going to happen. Everything else is pure speculation, Obama defamation and fear mongering.

I'm no fan of Obama, I'm opposed to the majority of what he's done, but ZD you do your own cause more damage than good when you come in here and demonstrate how you dismiss fact because it doesn't agree with your agenda and continue to try and shout down every single person who may disagree with your point of view on any topic trying to label them as a commie, a lefty, an America hater etc.

I haven't played much of anything recently, but I did quite fancy playing some TF2 over the last couple of days and tried to join our server to see if I could other people to join, however, it is apparently running an older protocol (14) to the current client I have....

I'm sure that's not encouraging people to join and have no idea how long that has been the case.

Whats the deal with these cars? Are parts hard to find? Is it a more difficult car to finance once something breaks down and you are hurting for the parts? I can't say I know much about these cars but more specifically the 9-3. Looks like a decent car for my money. Not really looking for optional cars here just the answer to my first three questions. Thanks bros.

Saabs have a bit of a "academic" reputation in Europe as they (and volvos) were always driven by teachers, architects and the like who would own them until they died.

However, I bought a 9-3 a few years ago that I picked up relatively cheaply to make some money on, I was driving it home and every time I put the power down the steering wheel shook, it wasn't pulling to either side and it wasn't a wheel balance issue. I thought it was very odd and spoke to three separate dealers and an independent specialist who all told me, "yeah, they'll do that under power, nothing wrong with it".

They may well have ironed out this inbuilt fault since then (it was an early second generation car, turbo convertible, so probably a 2004-5), it was and I believe still is a shared platform with the G6/Malibu/Saturn Aura, but I have no experience of them here in the US and my ownership was pretty short. But I would say that it got a great deal of interest and sold pretty quickly so I can only assume they're quite desireable or the price was right.

AGAIN

 

 

They can still receive the salary they are accustomed to. Its just anything over 500,000 will be stock shares. I'm not sure of the rules regarding the sales of those shares, there might be a waiting period before they can sell them, but they will still be able to receive full compensation for their work. the incentive then is to improve the stock value of the company which in turn will increase the income of the CEO. This is mearly an attempt to make sure that money given to a company gos to proping up the company, not the CEO.

What you're describing is a not uncommon compensation package (dotcom bubble), but it's definitely not a salary.

I'm pretty sure the time frame discussed for stock sales was "not until after the banks have repaid the government loans", although the salary caps can't be applied retroactively to anyone who has already received a bailout of some sort which seems odd and a bit of a cop out if the intention is truly to ensure the bailout monies are used in the right way and not set a precedent for other areas of the economy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not happy to see my tax dollars paying for someone's third or fourth vacation home, but at the same time I see something intrinsically wrong and threatening about the government telling an essentially private business how to pay its executives and if they're no longer a "private business" put the decision to the shareholders, wouldn't that be the US taxpayers and not Washington?

You could state that the government is acting to protect the people’s money, but I didn’t see a referendum about whether the $700 million should have been provided and I’m sure there won’t be one about the proposed trillion dollar free for all that’s coming.

I’m not going to suggest that in this respect the democrats are any worse than the last republican government, but there’s a definite line between the government working “for†the people and them thinking they “are†the people.

They have a lifestyle they are accustomed to... The CEO and the republicans who are against the cap, do not want to give up that lifestyle or cause them to give up that lifestyle.. That's all there is to it.

Partially true, I think the bigger issue is the precedent this sets.

500K is a lot of money, no two ways about it, but as Shaft said people's outgoings are often a reflection of their income.

The biggest problem I can see is that setting this cap actively discourages the best CEOs from desiring to work in this sector. 500K is a great deal of money for most people, but CEO pay is often much higher in other sectors of the economy.

I often use the UK as an example, primarily as there are quite a few similarities in terms of economics and culture. However during both the 1950's and 1970's in the UK, the labour (read democtrat) government raised top levels of taxation in order to fund social projects, cut tax rates for mid-low income earners etc. the net effect was that the top taxation rate in the UK climbed to 83% which combined with a "surcharge" for investment income meant many CEOs and "the rich" were paying 98% tax on anything over the equivalent of $35,000 income.

It's effectively the same impact as putting a cap on paychecks (unfortunately I fear that after the trillion dollar handout that's on its way, taxation may take a similar turn here in the US), the end result was a record level of exodus from the UK of top earners, talent and investment who in more cases than not moved to the US, Australia, Canada etc.

I know this isn't the "stimulus package" thread, but I do like the general direction of investment in infrastructure, despite how similar it is to Stalin and Khruschev's 5 year plans and the great Reichsautobahn projects germany introduced between the world wars.

What concerns me is that I've had a fairly good read through most of the local cities projects/requests for funds and it does read as a free for all.

My city for example:

$50,000 for fingerprint software for the police

$120,000 for an armored vehicle for the police

$200,000 for a mobile command vehicle for the police

$10,500,000 to widen a road (which they are already doing, I guess just trying to make the most of a handout)......

The city of Dallas has a clear plan in place, every project they've put in there, they've simply divided the number by $100,000 and that's the number of jobs it's going to create, if this has been standard practise across the country, it'll be interesting to see just how many new government jobs this is really going to create in the next 3 years.

As a last resort, I'm pretty sure you can download a 60 day free trial of Office 2007 from microsoft direct.

Link

Also, 1934 is recorded as the hottest day on record. Yet this is the start of the industrial revolution for the most part.

The Industrial revolution is widely recognized as having kicked off with the first steam engine in the late 18th Century, it's also arguable that most of the damage was done in the first 100-150 years of industrialization when coal was the number 1 fossil fuel being used in industry and for transportation, not in the period post 1920.

If we are seeing a decline in temperatures that are sustained over a longer period than the 5-10 years in the graph you used ZD (which any statistician could argue was an anomoly based on longer term measurements, even only as far back as 100 years), does that suggest that the post WWII industries have been cleaner and less damaging and we're now seeing the results of that? Or is it all a complete myth invented by folks looking to stay employed?

Good but biased article on the industrial revolution's impact from Ecology.

Ricoh's "green" view

I've tried to pick examples, one from a "greenie", Ecology and the other from a commercial enterprise, Ricoh. While both of these are obviously focussed around pollution, Ricoh's is really the only of the pair that focus on "climate change".

Honestly, how I'm looking at it, I cannot be pursuaded by graphs or otherwise that man is not damaging his environment (land, sea and air) beyond recognition. I cannot believe that the collosal population growth in the last 300 years and demand for/usage of natural resources has had no effect. I cannot believe that the billions of tonnes of pollutants we've been pushing into the air for the last 250 years have had no impact on the world in which we live, in fact it has been proven that they have with rises in CO2 levels and the extinction of entire species.

Should mankind be doing something to stem the tide of damage we're doing to the Earth, yes in my opinion. Is looking over our shoulder and saying, "well, they do it more than us" the answer, no.

As correctly stated earlier, the United States is a wonderful country and recognized as an economic, industrial and military powerhouse, surely it should lead by example, not take the approach that until they do something we won't.

As an aside ZD, you quote China several times as being the number 1 polluter, yes they have lax regulations and are the worst in the world, but have you recently been shopping (Walmart is an ideal example) and seen who a large portion of their production is going to and being consumed by?? Does the western world hold no accountability for some of the pollution of third world nations if they are the no.1 consumer of their industrial output?

Do I have a solution, no, not on a large scale, but I'm not going to bury my head in the sand and claim one specific item is a myth based on data that fits my argument simply because I don't want to change how I live or believe I could possibly be doing any harm.

I hope you're feeling better.

Maybe I've missed all of it, I went looking for custom maps night earlier, and have done so pretty much on the hour every hour since 7 cst, then guessed I'd missed it, so went looking for TF2, but I can't find anyone.

Has there been an IP change?

Maybe I've missed all of it, I went looking for custom maps night earlier, and have done so pretty much on the hour every hour since 7 cst, then guessed I'd missed it, so went looking for TF2, but I can't find anyone

If you're definitely going to be buying new I would definitely look at "potential" residual costs when you look to change it in 3-6 years time and running costs based on where you are age and life wise.

But from an advice standpoint, you should really look at picking up something 1-3 years old with low mileage, you should be able to get some great deals at the moment. I recently bought a 5 month old BMW from the dealer at about 25-30% off the new price with less than 5,000 miles on the clock. It's a great time to push on sticker prices, particularly on used inventory.

I'd agree with Shoot around refinement, but having said that, if I hadn't had some of the terrible cars I had in the past I wouldn't appreciate the cars I have today in quite the same way.