Before continuing our exploration of what is money, a quick look at the news. For the second day in a row the news and related commentary receives and “Oh my” from your author. From TIME’s Curious Capitalist post we get the thoughts on a recent speculation:
Will the Federal Reserve Cause a Civil War?
Fellow taxpayer, do you believe that a meeting of the FED could ignite a civil war? Your author has his doubts. For one, in such a conflict, who would side with the FED? Second, a waging a war, on any scale, is not an action powerful enough to solve a problem on the scale that the FED and other world central banks have caused. There is but one way rid society of this cancer which is delightfully and completely peaceful: A return to the use of sound money and its corollary, free banking.
With that said, we must move on with our pondering of what is money, or as we may now rightly ask, what is “sound” money (here is a hint, it is money that cannot be created at whim!)
Please follow these links to see previous episodes in this series:
What is Money? - Part I
What is Money? – Part II
As you can see, our quest to define money has taken us farther and perhaps troubled us further than many would have imagined. Should this come as a surprise? The subject of money is generally taken lightly because to ponder it deeply is, well, troubling. However in pondering it, we find we are in good company.
Jesus, during his ministry, talked about money more than any other subject EXCEPT for the Kingdom of God.
Robert H. Hemphill, formerly of the, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said this about money:
"Money is the most important subject intellectual persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and its defects remedied very soon."The famous economist John Maynard Keynes made a dramatic statement about the consequences of debasing a currency (i.e. printing money) which he eloquently calls “debauching:”
"Lenin is certainly right. There is no subtler or more severe means of overturning the existing basis of society (destroy capitalism) than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."A great collection of famous money quotes (of which these are just two) can be found here - http://silverstockreport.com/quotes.htm -. For those of you who haven’t read anything by him before, Jason Hommel is perhaps the biggest Silver bull on the planet. He has written volumes on the Silver Market, Bible Prophecy, Capitalism, Freedom, and Money. His writings can be found at his website, which I highly encourage you to visit, is here - http://silverstockreport.com/ -. Thank you Jason!
After having my faith in paper currency shaken in Barcelona, we moved to Portland and I landed a job. For the first time I could remember, I actually had a surplus to save on a regular basis. But this was 2006 and somehow I was uncomfortable about the stock market and home ownership as wise investments at the time. I was also skeptical at the prospect of simply keeping our savings in a bank account as the image of shredded dollar bills in the jar haunted me. What to do? This dilemma, which is common to man, drove me to search for what is now the obvious answer. Stay tuned.
Stay Fresh!
David Mint
Key Indicators for Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Copper Price per Lb: $3.84
Oil Price per Barrel: $82.15
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.55%
FED Target Rate : 0.19%
Gold Price per Oz: $1,339
Unemployment Rate: 9.6%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 11,164
M1 Monetary Base: $1,460,900,000,000
M2 Monetary Base: $7,960,300,000,000
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