The dollar is NOT going to collapse...YOU need to wake up

[Ozwest]

Stagflation.

Study. Use the seventies as your starting point.
​

 

[InPaulWeTrust]

Fair enough, the Romans really defeated themselves, and I agree the Byzantines simply took over.

So for my education, you are saying it was the Visigoths that sacked Rome?

Yes, the Goths invaded and sacked Rome.

I agree with you, the Romans also eventually defeated themselves by expanding too quickly, militaristically, by taxing its citizens while embarking on new conquests. Debasing their currency as they needed more for war, and eventually they crumbled under their own hubris which led to the weakening of the state. This opened the way for the sacking of Rome.

Sounds like Britain about 1400 years later, and the US as of recently, however I don't think the Goths will sack Washington DC, the market forces will though.

 

[theoakman]

With all this talk about Roman History. It's really irrelevant who ransacked them. The point to really pay attention to is that they bankrupted themselves well before they got ransacked.

 

[jkm1864]

Yes I think its going as planned. The economy will crash and then the government will wipe out all debt and savings by creating a new currency. The people will say help us big gubermint and then it will have more power. You're logic is faulty and You assume people in high places are honest like us and think like us. I have to disagree I think they are corrupt people that just think about themselves and whats best for themselves. If betraying the american people to further their interests I believe they would do it in a heart beat. Why do you think all these free trade deals were completed to help the american people or to line their pockets?

 

[theoakman]

Yes I think its going as planned. The economy will crash and then the government will wipe out all debt and savings by creating a new currency. The people will say help us big gubermint and then it will have more power. You're logic is faulty and You assume people in high places are honest like us and think like us. I have to disagree I think they are corrupt people that just think about themselves and whats best for themselves. If betraying the american people to further their interests I believe they would do it in a heart beat. Why do you think all these free trade deals were completed to help the american people or to line their pockets?

that's not possible. When the currency collapses, the government is officially bankrupt and they will be forced to downsize and eliminate their meaningless jobs. If they want to issue a new currency, it will have to be sound. The government can't be this size with a sound currency. It's physically impossible. The ultimate thing we have to worry about is foreign countries funding our government directly (as opposed to indirectly, which is the case right now). If that happens, we have the ultimate puppet government under the control of China, Russia, and every other economically strong nation.

 

[Ozwest]

that's not possible. When the currency collapses, the government is officially bankrupt and they will be forced to downsize and eliminate their meaningless jobs. If they want to issue a new currency, it will have to be sound. The government can't be this size with a sound currency. It's physically impossible. The ultimate thing we have to worry about is foreign countries funding our government directly (as opposed to indirectly, which is the case right now). If that happens, we have the ultimate puppet government under the control of China, Russia, and every other economically strong nation.

The government downsize!

They won't allow rip-off financial institutions to downsize.

Got a plan B.

 

[Ozwest]

Please give me one example when government has genuinely down-sized itself.

Without Revolutionary antics...

 

[Ozwest]

When the economy collapses, the government up-sizes.

Study history.

Mussolini is a good place to start.

 

[theoakman]

Please give me one example when government has genuinely down-sized itself.

Without Revolutionary antics...

Soviet Union?

 

[theoakman]

When the economy collapses, the government up-sizes.

Study history.

Mussolini is a good place to start.

no, when the economy collapses, dictators have a habit of grabbing power. If we a get a Mussolini in power, he will downsize the government. There will be no department of homeland security. There will be no FDA. There will be no EPA. There will be no FCC. I'm not saying he won't expand certain facits to further his power.

I'm talking in terms of spending, the government will go down. We have tons of useless government jobs that serve no function. They disappear in an economy collapse simply because, the government is bankrupt.

 

[Trance Dance Master]

You're not understanding my post...we AREN'T going to see a collapse of our currency any time soon...20 years or so from now maybe...but not now

Nobody can predict how fast people can change their minds about something. Ron Paul did a poor job of predicting how well his presidential campaign was going to go. He wasn't prepared for the rapid increase in demand for sound money enough to have been planning his 2008 campaign for 20 years.

 

[CUnknown]

High taxes may have also doomed the Roman empire, isn't that funny? They charged such high taxes (to support their empire) that many of the people and the powerful groups in the empire (such as the budding Catholic church) didn't care whether they were conquered by the Goths or not. Hey, the Goths don't tax as much! Sweet!

Taxes were a big problem for them... they would have whole years where they didn't charge taxes so the people wouldn't rebel.

 

[theoakman]

High taxes may have also doomed the Roman empire, isn't that funny? They charged such high taxes (to support their empire) that many of the people and the powerful groups in the empire (such as the budding Catholic church) didn't care whether they were conquered by the Goths or not. Hey, the Goths don't tax as much! Sweet!

Taxes were a big problem for them... they would have whole years where they didn't charge taxes so the people wouldn't rebel.

Rome did the same thing the US did. They outsourced all their labor to the poor people of the suburbs. Eventually, they went broke. By the end of it, the countryside had all the wealth the people in the city of Rome were in debt. So much so that the country abandoned shipping food into Rome entirely. This led to a lot of Rome moving out to the countryside so they could work on farms and produce their own food. Rome fell, for monetary reasons. Everything else was a result of bad monetary policy.

Any nation or empire that becomes the richest in the world stops working and is complacent to squander the wealth away. Rome did it. Spain did it. The UK did it. Now we did it.

 

[cheapseats]

The entire U.S. economy will no more collapse on the hijinx of George Bush than the entire Hilton empire will collapse on the hijinx of Paris Hilton.

If A.I.G. is too big to fail, the United States is also tall enough for the ride.

The Biggest Boys don't fail, they reorganize.

This mess? Constitutes a Buying Opportunity.

Think Mergers & Acquisitions.

*

I am sure the Romans felt very much the same way, right up to the point that the Byzantines marched into the capital.

*

I have for two solid years been drawing the attention of anyone who will listen to me to the parallel predicaments. Alas, I have learned that the Large-But-Not-So-Great Majority doesn't care, doesn't wanna know, doesn't wanna hear it until they are directly impacted. You are as aware as I am that rather more people are sitting up and taking notice. Halving someone's retirement allotment will do that.

Thomas Cahill

How the Irish Saved Civilization



pg.11 "On the last, cold day of December in the dying year we count as 406, the river Rhine froze solid, providing the natural bridge that hundreds of thousands of hungry men, women and children had been waiting for. They were the barbari--to the Romans an undistinguished, matted mass of Others, not terrifying, just troublemakers, annoyances, things one would rather not have to deal with--non-Romans. To themselves, they were, presumably, something more, but as the illiterate leave few records, we can only surmise their opinion of themselves.

Neither the weary, disciplined Roman soldiers, ranked along the west bank, nor the anxious, helter-skelter tribes amassing on the east bank could have been giving much thought to their place in history. But this moment of slack, this relative calm before the pandemonium to follow, gives us the chance to study the actors on both sides of the river and to look backward on what has been and forward to what will be.


pg. 26: "By the fifth century, in the years before the complete collapse of Roman government, the imperial approach to taxation had produced a caste as hopeless as any in history. Their rapacious exactions, taken wherever and whenever they could, were the direct result of their desperation about their own increasingly unpayable tax bills. As these nerved-up outcasts commenced to prey on whoever was weaker than they, the rich became even richer. The great landowners ate up the little ones, the tax base shrank still further, and the middle classes, never encouraged by the Roman state, began to disappear from the face of the earth. Nor would they return till the appearance of the Italian mercantile families of the high Middle Ages."

pg. 29: "...Though it is difficult to imagine the Pax Romana lasting as long as it did without the increasing militarization of the Imperium Romanum, the Romans themselves were never happy about their army. It suggested dictatorship, rather than those good old republican values, and they preferred to avert their eyes, keeping themselves carefully ignorant of the army's essential contribution to their well-being. With the moral decay of republican resolve, the army became more and more a reserve of non-Romans, half-Romanized barbarian mercenaries and servants sent in the stead of freemen who couldn't be bothered. In the last days of the empire, men commonly mutilated themselves to escape service, though such a crime was--in theory--punishable by torture and death. Military levies, sent to the great estates, met such resistance that influential landowners were allowed to send money, instead of men, to the army. In 409, faced with an increasingly undefended frontier, the emperor announced the impossible: henceforth, slaves would be permitted, even encouraged, to enlist, and for their service they would receive a bounty and their freedom. By this point, it was sometimes difficult to tell the Romans from the barbarians--at least along the frontier."


pg. 29: "There are, no doubt, lessons here for the contemporary reader. The changing character of the native population, brought about through unremarked pressures on porous borders; the creation of an increasingly unwieldy and rigid bureaucracy, whose own survival becomes its overriding goal; the despising of the military and the avoidance of service by established families, while its offices present unprecedented opportunity for marginal men to whom its ranks had once been closed; the lip service paid to values long dead; the pretense that we still are what we once were; the increasing concentrations of the populace into richer and poorer by way of a corrupt tax system, and the desperation that inevitably follows; the aggrandizement of executive power at the expense of the legislature; ineffectual legislation promulgated with great show; the moral vocation of the man at the top to maintain order at all costs, while growing blind to the cruel dilemmas of ordinary life--these are all themes with which our world is familiar, nor are they the God-given property of any party or political point of view, even though we often act as if they were. At least, the emperor could not heap his economic burdens on posterity by creating long-term public debt, for floating capital had not yet been conceptualized..."

*

...the Romans really defeated themselves...

*

...the Romans also eventually defeated themselves...

*

It's really irrelevant who ransacked them. The point to really pay attention to is that they bankrupted themselves...

*

It IS, however, relevant who ransacks us. And that is a key difference between our "collapse" and Rome's fall. When the barbarians descended and crossed that river? We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn...burn motherfucker, burn.

The captains went down with the ship.

Our Top Bananas not only did the ransacking, they're poised to flee the coop. They can go live fantabulous lives anywhere on earth. Big difference.

And we're just sort of standing down and letting them proceed...giving them a wider berth, actually. I am recalling a wonderful book called, I think, March of Folly. If that book had one more episode, I swear this would be it.

But COLLAPSE collapse...worldwide mayhem? I think not. The Aristocracy would find that very disagreeable...the next thing you know, 24-hour room service cannot be had without worrying that the riff-raff help will pilfer your jewels.

 

[steve005]

There is an end game. This trend will not go on forever.

+1

 

[jonahtrainer]

When the economy collapses, the government up-sizes.

Study history.

Mussolini is a good place to start.

When the economy collapses because of a currency crisis the critical question is posed: Repression or Regeneration? There are examples of both (US Revolution of 1776, France 1796 v. Weimar Germany, Mussolini, etc.).

And the US$ has collapsed and is collapsing. Major signposts are available for all to see at 1933, 1971, 1980, 1998 and currently.

 

[Max Stirner]

I can't think of someone who's been more bearish than Gary North, and even he predicts a slowdown, and not outright recession-

"As this sense of the inevitable increases, people's willingness to invest in the stock market and the bond market will decline. Capital will become more expensive for private entrepreneurs. I don't think the rate of economic growth will reverse on a permanent basis, or even on a five-year basis, but it will be reduced. Our lives will be worse off as a result."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north659.html

Also, I'd ask everyone to wonder aloud if they'd be saying the exact same things about the economic decline of the late 60's and through the 70's. You would have been premature then, why not now?

Much like the original poster I'm a big Ron Paul supporter and a long term bear on the U.S. economy. It's driven by unsustainable consumption, huge amounts of credit, and artificial liquidity and all that, yes it's unsustainable and as a 20 year old I imagine I'll be privy to a great deal of economic decline in my time here on Earth.

That said, everybody remember when gold was over $1000? Remember when oil was pushing $150? They're not anymore, although sometime in the future they no doubt will be with inflation. Examples like the bursting of the recent commodity bubble are lessons to us that while the long term (decades) thesis asserted by Dr. Paul and many people here is correct, that the short term (months/years) results can be wildly different.

Bears shouldn't be making precipitous apocalyptic statements based on the current crisis, unless you think there'll be no bounceback from the other weeks staggering decline.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

I can't think of someone who's been more bearish than Gary North, and even he predicts a slowdown, and not outright recession-

"As this sense of the inevitable increases, people's willingness to invest in the stock market and the bond market will decline. Capital will become more expensive for private entrepreneurs. I don't think the rate of economic growth will reverse on a permanent basis, or even on a five-year basis, but it will be reduced. Our lives will be worse off as a result."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north659.html

Also, I'd ask everyone to wonder aloud if they'd be saying the exact same things about the economic decline of the late 60's and through the 70's. You would have been premature then, why not now?

Much like the original poster I'm a big Ron Paul supporter and a long term bear on the U.S. economy. It's driven by unsustainable consumption, huge amounts of credit, and artificial liquidity and all that, yes it's unsustainable and as a 20 year old I imagine I'll be privy to a great deal of economic decline in my time here on Earth.

That said, everybody remember when gold was over $1000? Remember when oil was pushing $150? They're not anymore, although sometime in the future they no doubt will be with inflation. Examples like the bursting of the recent commodity bubble are lessons to us that while the long term (decades) thesis asserted by Dr. Paul and many people here is correct, that the short term (months/years) results can be wildly different.

Bears shouldn't be making precipitous apocalyptic statements based on the current crisis, unless you think there'll be no bounceback from the other weeks staggering decline.

Me, personally, because I see an unprecedented consolidation of power and government growth. I have but 27 years to fall back on, plus my reading of history and econ. I call 'em as I see 'em.

 

[Kevin7D]

Sooner or later

http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/business/currency/news.php?q=1223496207

Oct. 7, 2008

Brazil and Argentina have launched a new payment system in their bilateral trade, doing away with the US dollar as a medium of exchange

Some people on here are saying maybe 20+ years before the rest of the world wakes up to our increasingly worthless currency. It's going to be more sooner than later. I think we're going to see a lot more of what moostraks posted and this in the next few years:

"The front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said that Asian and European countries should banish the U.S. dollar from their direct trade relations for a start, relying only on their own currencies."

http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSTRE49N1XX20081024

 

[Dr.3D]

Some people on here are saying maybe 20+ years before the rest of the world wakes up to our increasingly worthless currency. It's going to be more sooner than later. I think we're going to see a lot more of what moostraks posted and this in the next few years:

"The front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said that Asian and European countries should banish the U.S. dollar from their direct trade relations for a start, relying only on their own currencies."

http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSTRE49N1XX20081024

I tend to agree with you Kevin7D, people don't seem to understand the seriousness of the situation we are now in. Actually, I expect a serious event by July of 2009. We don't have that long to watch and wait as that time approaches. Time will tell. I just hope those who doubt will still get themselves prepared for the event even if it doesn't happen.

Oh and by the way.... welcome to the Ron Paul forums.