Historically, many of the previous monies that were issued were effectively fiat money that happened to be stamped on to gold. The gold was basically an extra step in the currencies' counterfeit prevention process, not the driver of their value. That is 100% ignorant of monetary history.  You are s...

Anyone have any thoughts on a good book about the Great Depression or financial history of the US? Not "good" as in "novel" but good as in great collection of historical facts with some narrative and a lot of references: Not just the U.S. but much/most of it is western economic ...

Historically, many of the previous monies that were issued were effectively fiat money that happened to be stamped on to gold. The gold was basically an extra step in the currencies' counterfeit prevention process, not the driver of their value. That is 100% ignorant of monetary history.  You are s...

Our point is that this goal has proved to be a miserable failure. When the government ties its own hands, it can simply undo the binds anytime it wishes. So you are saying that because gov't breaks its promises, the gold standard failed?  That's asinine. And every time the U.S. abandoned the gold/s...

For what it's worth, the Wikipedia article on those little receptacle testers seems to have similar advice to what you are saying... Whew!  ;D With the meter, look for low (but not zero) resistance and volts between neutral and ground. (Zero ohms is a sure sign of a bootleg job.) Be VERY careful wi...

So, it sounds you're are saying I can test an outlet by having one probe in the hot and the other probe testing for a voltage comparison between the 3rd hole and the neutral (compare Hot/Neutral vs. Hot/Ground and look for a measurable difference when a load is on the circuit). Correct? One of the ...

Non-PP portfolios are also seeing some downside. http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=117958 How do people stick in the same investments after years of back and forth prices? No doubt up is more happy. While accumulating, since I abandoned funds, I can sort of console myself with...

Got it. So, how does one test the difference between a real ground and a neutral on a digital multimeter? I'm guessing one can run a real ground out the window and see if there's a difference between the neutral line and the ground hole. Or, perhaps comparing two 3rd ground holes versus a 3rd hole ...

Gold/silver commodity currencies have never failed.  They have been ended by direct and willful action just like the U.S. government ended ours. Perhaps it's semantic, but you wouldn't call that failure? Maybe it's not a totally destructive event like fiat hyperinflation, but one of the frequently-...

^^  +1 !

We have NO commodity-based currencies so far as I know that exist today.  If it was really the architect for a robust, productive, free nation, one would think we'd see far, far more of it. We have seen far, far more of it.  As for now, why?  I'd never think that it would spontaneously appear or be...

The high impedance connection of the earthing mat should protect the people from electrical system problems ONLY to the extent that the mat will not make such problems worse. The outlet ground testers are questionable. The style pictured earlier in this thread are typically trivially easy to fake ou...

the deflation of the money stock will be short lived because it cannot go on to infinity as individuals cannot postpone consumption forever. Yet in later writings suggesting a return to the gold standard he talks about linking gold to a certain present dollar value instead of a lower dollar value t...

Good to know. So, it sounds like the optional grounding rod — led outside the window and inserted directly into the ground — is the best bet. And it sounds like getting an electrician to verify a 3rd-hole outlet-ground is the next-best thing (assuming you own your house and random electricians aren...

Are you sure most of the failures of monetary systems of the past weren't moreso failures of the underlying government/society?  Whether it be losing a war and owing massive war debts, massive corruption (way beyond what we think is bad here), or some other complete collapse of productive capacity?...

Mosler did go quickly.  It helped that I merely skimmed the bio section at the end. His descriptive is good if rather repetitive.  Unfortunately it is all mixed thruout with proscriptive that is nothing more than a banker's utopian wet dream.  Never the less, I'll run with it. The proscriptive appen...

Oh boy, here we go again!  ;D I'd start with http://pragcap.com/understand-the-modern-monetary-system/understanding-modern-monetary-system Mosler's book is also good, but a bit much for a first introduction. Roche is purportedly describing how things are.  Yet mostly he talks in broad strokes and w...

RuralEngineer wrote: That's messed up Jan. The forums wouldn't be the same without our liberal brethren.

Besides, there's little more funny than a serious communist.

(Guess I'll go see if Fidel has written/said anything new lately, I could use a little comedic relief...)

I use Thunderbird, and it does not display remote content by default.  You can click a button to view the remote content when viewing a message, or to always show remote content from a particular sender. GMail is similar. Another approach used by mail senders is to also offer links to special offers...

That S&P 500 "collective investment trust" (or whatever it was) actually does not look too bad. Check out the prospectus on VTI.  Has very similar language.  Might even go further. I'm just unsure (and so is the industry, it seems) what about a CIT might make it OK, good or bad.  In th...

Professionals Managing Your Portfolio

when the PP is described as a conservative portfolio, that's compared to stock picking, or speculation in currencies or precious metals. Because it's not all that conservative compared to CDs, savings accounts, TIPS, or short-term nominal bonds. If that's your frame of reference for safety, the PP ...

I understood Marc's statement just fine. Sorry, I probably wasn't sufficiently clear in my post. What I'm really wondering is if the above-ground supply of gold is really growing geometrically at a rate of 2% per year. I'm skeptical of that claim. I don't know the actual rate, but 2% seems slightly...

I just turned on an automatic weekly investment into gold How do you do automatic gold investments?  That is the only part of my portfolio I haven't sorted out yet on how to automate. In my case my PP is in a tax deferred IRA with ShareBuilder so I simply schedule my investment plan to invest a spe...

percentages of the 25% of the total invested in equities (9% + 3% + 3% + 1.67% + 1.67% + 1.67% + 5% = 25%). Has anyone compared PERM's results to index funds/ETFs in these proportions? Oh.  I had misread Ad Orientum's earlier remark as saying PERM had 30% equities when he actually was saying PRPFX ...