Well in the USA prior to 1972, gold was tied to cash. It wasn't a free-market commodity. That's not true.  It was most definitely a free-market commodity. Gold was traded as a commodity both in New York and London for dollars, and while it trended around and near $35 it was not stuck on $35. simple...

As for me, I just finished a delicious burger.  It was beef, but cooked to the edge of well done (not a touch of red) because I did not know the cow it came from.

With a generous slice of sharp cheddar.  Last week it was a generous tablespoon of crumbled blue cheese and bacon.

Mmm.

there will never be any agreement. Some people simply prefer order to freedom, while others chafe under even reasonable rules. Exactly. It's really too bad that we can't naturally separate and group ourselves with others like us. But the ones that like government would force their young into an arm...

There's really nothing difficult to understand about VA's; its more fear of the unknown than reality.  Just read a prospectus and you'll learn most everything (thanks to government regulations, I'm sure).  But I want to point out that using a VA doesn't automatically equate to having to annuitize. ...

Looks massively bubbly to me too, especially in the last hours. Perhaps the new buyers don't remember the correction in 2011, or care. But even after any corrections, it looks to me like bitcoin is here to stay. That means we have an international, non-fiat currency and we have 100% reserve banking...

We have some bitcoin holders on this board. One recently claimed to have a year's salary in bitcoins. This is very strange. It all sounded too strange to believe, but I figured I was just getting old. Back down to about one year's gross again.  :) Frankly, I don't trust the exchanges enough, nor is...

The IRA contribution max is $17,500.  If you do that for 40 years, you'll have $700,000 in contributions. Where in the world did you get that number?  Maybe looking at less than 1/2 of the 401(k) rules? The 401(k) max personal contrib is $17,500 with a bump up adder of $5500 but the employer can ad...

None.  Even if there was a good supply of services that took bitcoin, the fact that they have to pay taxes in USD means that price levels in bitcoin will adjust given changes in the BTCUSD.  The only way it can avoid that is to maintain a close economy by wholesale tax evasion. USD is not the only ...

1.  The paper is not a law.  Nor an agreement to be turned into a law. The paper is a proposal for action, explicitly intended to comply with the law.  That is why it is important to note what the paper says about the law, and what it does not say. 2.  If and when you do read a legal document, the ...

And as for "the scientific method", that requires theories be testable, which means falsifiable.  That means NO economic or investing theory is based on the scientific method. I wouldn't go that far.  Backtesting is a great tool to falsify many economic and investing theories touted as tr...

my question was that given no Fed and little or no government intervention (i.e. Kshartle's idealized scenario) what would happen when we reached the zero lower bound and the amount the various ecomonic actors in the economy desired to save (even earning 0%) was greater than the amount other econom...

But interest rates can only fall to zero so long as there is such a thing as physical money (when I say "physical money" I'm not even talking about gold...even physical paper money will do the trick) because no one will lend money out at a negative nominal rate when they can just sit in p...

If they're wrong, their peers will eagerly take them to task for it.  After all, the facts are what they are.  It's the scientific method... That is not true. If they disagree with the commonly accepted notions their peers will eagerly take them to task for it, regardless of the facts. For example,...

melveyr wrote: When aggregated, the indexing population always beats the active population. That is true regardless of market efficiency.

Totally true.

And totally worthless.

Slotine wrote: Long distance trade becomes haphazard with long bouts of liquidity crises as independent banks ...

This sounds just like the poor communists, "but who will decide how much bread to make?"

And is equally frightening.

None.  Even if there was a good supply of services that took bitcoin, the fact that they have to pay taxes in USD means that price levels in bitcoin will adjust given changes in the BTCUSD.  The only way it can avoid that is to maintain a close economy by wholesale tax evasion. No floor, but USD is...

Oh I don't know... maybe because they took for granted that people reading it would know 12 USC § 1821.  You miss the entire point of the FDIC & BoE paper. The U.K. law regarding deposit insurance is as clear as is the U.S. law, yet the paper was explicit that the U.K. insured deposits would be...

Many of the people "observing" and reporting while visiting in the fine country of Chavez have since talked about how they voluntarily would choose to not report on things because they knew they would be kicked out and instead they chose to keep quiet so they could continue to observe.  S...

My point is that there are a zillion and one ways to attempt to perserve and grow your wealth outside of putting greenbacks in a cardboard box for 30 years and then discovering to your dismay that an ice cream cone costs $1.50 rather than a nickel. Which is why I was very specific about "targe...

I think with the creation of IRAs and 401(k)s and the like, reason 1 is not needed any longer.  Those accounts in a traditional brokerage give you far more flexiblity and even a 401(k) is seldom any worse (and in fact could be exactly the same... see group annuity contracts).  The alternatives are s...

Some thoughts... While you can take your contributions out of the Roth at any time, you probably do not want to.  If you take them out, you cannot replace them.  (All you can do is your normal annual contribution, which you said was already max'ed out.) I also did a 4x25 in my IRA.  But that only st...

I don't know much about Hugo Chavez, but I do know he is said to have made a personal fortune worth billions during his reign.  Not exactly what I would call a champion of Socialism. But very typical of the leaders and powerful figures in socialist economies.  Lots of news from China the last coupl...

Chavez ... technically was not a dictator because he was democratically elected. And by most accounts those elections were fair. Going back to the news reports that he lets out of the country... Many of the people "observing" and reporting while visiting in the fine country of Chavez have...

I thought the FDIC & BoE paper was interesting in that it was very explicit that the U.K. insurance program would protect insured amounts for depositors but skim the uninsured amounts.  It said nothing about FDIC insured amounts vs. uninsured amounts. Then in a later section (para47 I think it w...

Interesting fact, by the way: when X-rays were first discovered, people used to have themselves subjected to it for hair removal . The practice was quietly abandoned after certain unpleasant side effects began to manifest along with the efficient removal of that unwanted hair... :o And fluoroscopes...