"I don't remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world," Volcker said.
I have, amongst my stuff someplace, a German 200 Mark coin from the early 1920s; it is made of aluminum. It's the same size as another, later, coin in my collection, a 5 Reichsmark piece. The latter is made of silver.
Hey, did you hear? There's a new coinage proposal being floated in the US:
Those pennies and nickels in your pocket cost more to manufacture than they are worth. That's why the Obama administration wants to use cheaper materials -- possibly an aluminum alloy -- to make the coins.No news on whether the new C-notes indeed have an adhesive backing...
(H/T to SurvivalBlog.)
Nice to know we're living in a world where the wookies and the gold bugs are right.
ReplyDeleteBut what do you expect with these "elites" at the wheel.
I heard they're re-doing Ben Franklin as a bulbous octopus, the bastards couldn't shine his shoes.
ReplyDeleteWe've already done essentially the same thing in the 80's with pennies--they are no longer copper alloy, they are copper plated zinc. You can melt a new penny on your stove.
ReplyDeleteA better solution is to dump the penny and round--the nickel has about the same buying power as the penny of my childhood.
"Please, please, please! AH HA HA HA!"
ReplyDeleteAluminum isn't all that cheap either.
Sevesteen, they're already doing that overseas on military bases. Everything is rounded to the nearest $.05 so they don't have to ship pennies out to the barbarian lands to make change for our troops in the BX/PX and Commissary.
ReplyDeleteThe only place you get pennies overseas is in the military post office, where they're required by law to give exact change.
That was my experience twelve years ago. They might be rounding to the nearest $0.10 by now.
I am old enough to remember my father and a former stockbroker talking about a 93 percent drop in the Dow between 1929 and 1938.
ReplyDeleteAt current value, the Dow's 14,000 record high should have been close to 22,000, and the low would be just under 1,600. And we should all know where we have been, and are going.
Looking at the stock market, the economy, and unemployment for the last three years, we are about at the same point we were in 1932.
Maybe the decline is a little faster this time around. But we still have a long way to fall.
Stranger
I don't know if the new C-notes have adhesive backing or not, but when they start printing them on something soft and absorbent, I'll really start worrying.
ReplyDelete"Soft and absorbent" would enhance utility...
ReplyDeleteToday's economic harvest derives from seeds sown in the 1930s and cultivated in the 1960s. Between congressional "compassion" and monetary policy, this harvest has been inevitable.
Trouble is, the crop is mostly cockleburrs and ragweed.
Art
From my time in Korea, I have several hundred 1-won coins. About as small as my little fingernail, made of aluminium. They make cute little gaming pieces, and are worth about as much as nothing.
ReplyDeleteIn India, they had to phase out steel coins. It was good business meting them down and making razor blades out of them...
ReplyDeleteNice to know we're living in a world where the wookies and the gold bugs are right.
ReplyDeleteWhen was it otherwise?
tirno's got a point. Perhaps the real canary in the nickel-coin coal mine will be when they stop shipping nickels over to the Exchanges overseas.
ReplyDeleteAs an occasional reader of SurvivalBlog I have been scoring rolls of nickels when I do my regular banking. I'll stop when I fill a .30 can.
I was in elementary school when we took the silver out of dimes and larger coins; as noted above, this economy was germinated in the 30's and fertilized in the 60's.
Aboard ship the word was "Stand by for heavy rolls as the ship comes about"; we'll be very lucky if this economy rights itself...
Tirno: Last time I was in La Maddalena was in 2003, and the combined NEX/Commissary there was still rounding to the nearest nickel.
ReplyDeleteI kept track for a few months whilst stationed in Scotland (where the NEX used pennies but the Commissary didn't); my running total was never more than a dime off in either direction.
I think changing to this practice nationwide would be a very good idea.
It would be a lot less tragic if we hadn't tried this nonsense already.
ReplyDeleteJenny for the win!
ReplyDeleteYou know my advice. If you want to hold cash don't hold hundreds. Hold singles. That way you get 100 times more ass wipes for the same money.
ReplyDeleteI'm on a plan similar to what you described a while back- stock up on non-perishables and things that could end up scarce. Think post Katrina, any flood USA or the ice storms in the northeast. I have a 100,000 Reichmark note that a great aunt brought back from Germany at the end of WWII that drives home the reality we're racing towards
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, I just saw that picture of the guy wallpapering his house with money when I looked up the Wiemar Republic's inflation on Wikipedia today. We're right on the brink!
ReplyDeleteHeck, they've already started saving money on the engraving. Ever take a good look at some of the new coins? They look like Chuck E. Cheese tokens.
ReplyDelete