Economy and Money

Over the weekend, I just read a great book by Harry Brown entitled Money - 99% of All You Need to Know About Money and the Effect on the Economy. It is a very simple manuscript, written in easy to understand language, but it shows the powerful mistakes we have made as a country, and world, through our own mistakes and those of our leaders.

One poignant part was the effect that our government has on the money supply. The book's description is much more eloquent, but the gist is that when a government prints money, it is essentially counterfeiting. We would go to jail, but it just keeps on going. I hope we all know what happens when money is just printed like it is being done. The value of that money goes down. It's great that you might get the stimulus check and be able to use it, but it's value has gone down.

Along the same lines, I found an interesting clip about the problem with our money supply and the fact that we are not tied to the gold standard any more, and haven't been since 1971. That is really when the problems began. Not with Bush, Clinton, Bush, or Obama. The finger needs to be pointed at history and Nixon. The problem is that we can not possibly get back to the gold standard without some serious tightening, because of the gold supply. Our country has the most bullion in the vault, but not enough to erase the $10 trillion dollars we owe.

I'm going to try to post the video link.


Anyway, I don't think that we have seen the end of this mess, and it seems like everything we do is just digging a deeper hole. Now I hear folks about just giving things a chance, and I'm willing and optimistic, but history does repeat itself, and common sense tells us that if you have too many apples to sell and no one is buying them, that you have to reduce the cost of the apples.