Wheel in the Sky keeps on Turning

--- On Wed, 9/17/08, StormRider wrote:
> John,
> I wonder if we are now watching, re Wall Street, the
> beginning of
> the actual collapse in the wake of the preliminary
> shudders.
> - StormRider



Yes, I think you might be right. I have been watching for these things for a very long time and though I have seen the collapse of hedge funds and bailouts and things such as the savings and loan crisis (wonder whatever happened to the Keating 5), this seems more final.

The main difference seems like the level of discussion in the general public. A week or so ago, I saw an older American man telling an older local man, why the dollar was doomed, why the euro was significant.

This was outside a hardware store here in Central America. I politely asked him if he know how I could buy Euros in quantity. He didn't know either. We have been boxed in.

What I did was slightly rude, I interjected myself into a private conversation. But nothing could make the old mans explanation to the other man more clear than to have a slightly alarmed younger gringo begging for advice on how to get out of the Dollar.

For a few minutes we discussed the sensibility of switching our respective savings into Pesos. It is probably the right thing to do, but it seems so very sad that the Peso is now a stronger currency than the Dollar.

An understanding of how the US economy comes apart is no longer esoteric speculations by precious metals investors. With modern economies that are based so much on virtual products and a religious like faith in the value of currencies, this spread of information is the actual destruction.

In ancient Sumerian myth, Enki wrote a poem explaining how language worked. This poem had the magical effect of destroying the usefulness of language. In our time, a really understandable text on how the world economy works, if read widely, would destroy the working of the world economy.

This is happening, the knowledge seeps out. People are wanting to know why their pension fund just lost 40% of its value. They are learning how this system works. Things that have been hidden for 36 years (Johnson+Nixon gold) are being uncovered. Things that have been hidden for 75 years (FDR privatizing US currency) are about to be uncovered. There is a chance that things hidden from view for thousands of years (currency substitutes for wealth) may be uncovered.

The decoupling of price for silver has apparently happened. Regular people are complaining that while the spot price of silver has dropped, they can not buy it at that price, they have to pay more.

I just checked ajpm at http://www.ajpm.com/htbin/silver.cgi
For hundred oz silver bars they quote a buy price but no longer are quoting a sell price. Perhaps it is just a "temporary supply disruption".

Copper wire and pipe has just quadrupled in price, apparently the world over.

The way that we lived was unsustainable. The way that we lived is over now. May whatever gods exist have more mercy on us than we have had on all the little brown people who have been paying us tribute (Bretton Woods) for 63 years.