Bring Back Paper Savings Bonds

[Ad Orientem]

#1 manufacturing capacity

Really?  Not China?  Or Japan?  It sure seems like everything is made in China these days which is why quality has declined so much over the past 18 years.  Hedonic adjustments my ass.

A lot of consumer junk is manufactured in those places, but when you add up the cars, missiles, airplanes and heavy equipment, the U.S. is #1, though China is not far behind.

#1 overall natural resource deposits and production infrastructure...

Really?  Not Canada?  When are we going to annex it as the 51st state?

When you look at oil, gas, coal, gold, timber, and the whole natural resource space, and you look at the U.S. offshore Gulf of Mexico activities, the U.S. is very productive and always has been.

If one is inclined to talk about untapped and probably yet to be fully discovered natural resources I would say #1 right now is probably Russia.  That country is huge (it spans 16 time zones) and it is one of the most sparsely populated in the world. Just think of all the timber in Siberia alone. And Russia is a geologist's dream. Much of it has never been surveyed.

[AdamA]

It's called "How to Play Piano Despite Years of Lessons: What Music Is and How to Make It at Home."  It's surprisingly simple.  It won't make you sound like Oscar Peterson, but you'll be able to play pretty arrangements of your favorite songs with relative ease.

Thanks.  I never took a piano lesson (I learned trumpet in school), but the books look very interesting.  Maybe there is hope.

The name of the first one is misleading.  You don't need to have had piano lessons.  It's good to able to read the treble clef, though.

[hoost]

Think of a safe deposit box as a place where your assets can sleep soundly without too many disruptions.

What do you know about safe deposit boxes in economic "doomsday" scenarios?  I'm thinking of the experiences that were had in Argentina and Iceland.  Were people ever denied access to their boxes or anything like that?

I have some great news for you: Most American's own almost nothing of value that would be worth putting in a safe deposit box in the first place.  What this means is that the potential bang for the buck from messing around with safe deposit box confiscations on a large scale would appear to make the effort unappealing to the U.S. government. 

What might a person have in a safe deposit box that the U.S. government would be interested in?  Obviously, if a person has committed a crime the contents could be of interest, as it might include stolen property or evidence.  Assume, however, that we aren't dealing with a criminal, we are just dealing with a person who has worked hard and saved a little money and chosen to purchase something of value and store it in a safe deposit box.  If it's gold, the U.S. government already has plenty of that.  I don't know why it would be interested in confiscating more from private citizens when all it really needs to do to achieve the same result is add an extra 25% tax on all gold transactions and it would kill the gold market almost overnight and then the U.S. government could simply buy all the gold it wanted at depressed prices, which would be vastly more efficient than rummaging through thousands of safe deposit boxes hoping to find a few coins here and there.

When thinking about economic doomsday scenarios in general, how likely is it that an Argentina or Iceland-type event would ever hit the U.S.?  The U.S. won't always enjoy its current position, but right now it's #1 in the world.  When you're #1, you don't have to worry about a lot of things that countries like Argentina and Iceland have to worry about.  Think about it: #1 currency, #1 economy, #1 military, #1 bond market, #1 manufacturing capacity, #1 overall natural resource deposits and production infrastructure...this country has a lot of problems but when you are that far ahead of much of the rest of the world it helps dampen the fallout from many bad events.  Take 2008, for example--the rest of the world gripes about the U.S., but when fear started really gripping investors they piled into the U.S. dollar and treasuries.  I think that people like Peter Schiff don't fully appreciate this dimension of the U.S.'s position in the world.

I also think that there are a lot of Republicans in the House who were sent there precisely because their constituents were concerned about things like safe deposit box confiscations and other similar actions, and thus I think these people would be firmly against any such efforts, which would probably be enough to derail it.  Unlike the scant media attention that is being given to informal capital controls that are making it harder and harder for U.S. citizens to take their wealth our of the country, I am pretty sure that the media would love covering federal agents drilling open safe deposit boxes in small towns across the country as Ma and Pa Kettle stood outside the bank hoping that their 1926 marriage license wasn't confiscated along with their stamp collection and silver dollars that they had hoped to give to their grandchildren one day. 

Think about how much the media would love showing film of federal agents knocking an old lady down in front of a small town credit union after she inadvertently got in their way as they carried the confiscated contents of safe deposit boxes out to their thug-mobile.  Imagine the old lady on the ground with a footprint from a government boot on her back as reporters stuck microphones in her face.  She might say something like: "We never had much, but we thought that what little we did have would be safe here.  Can one of you help me get up please?"

Sorry, I should have been more specific in my previous post.  I was thinking more along the lines of some sort of bank holiday.  If there would be a bank holiday for whatever reason, can you still get into a deposit box or are you locked out of it until the bank reopens?  If this has happened in the past, how long are they usually in effect?  I don't have a deposit box yet and haven't really looked into it.  Just curious.

Also with regards to capital controls, that seems like a good reason to be thinking about these types of questions.  The same people who are instituting the capital controls to keep money in the US are talking about building border fences to "keep people out".

I'm not worried about the govt opening up safety deposit boxes, the cost/benefit isn't there.  But if I can't get into my box when I need it, that would be a problem for me and I would want to have alternate arrangements in place in the meantime.

[MediumTex]

Sorry, I should have been more specific in my previous post.  I was thinking more along the lines of some sort of bank holiday.  If there would be a bank holiday for whatever reason, can you still get into a deposit box or are you locked out of it until the bank reopens?  If this has happened in the past, how long are they usually in effect?  I don't have a deposit box yet and haven't really looked into it.  Just curious.

Also with regards to capital controls, that seems like a good reason to be thinking about these types of questions.  The same people who are instituting the capital controls to keep money in the US are talking about building border fences to "keep people out".

I'm not worried about the govt opening up safety deposit boxes, the cost/benefit isn't there.  But if I can't get into my box when I need it, that would be a problem for me and I would want to have alternate arrangements in place in the meantime.

If there was a bank holiday presumably you couldn't do any business in the bank for that period, including accessing your safe deposit box.

Considering, however, that Roosevelt's 1933 theft of citizens' money through the mechanism of a bank holiday was a more or less one time event in modern times in the U.S., I'm not overly concerned about the potential for this sort of event.  If, however, it did happen, we're probably talking about not having access to your safe deposit box for one or two days, just like you you wouldn't have access over a long weekend with a Monday holiday.

[hoost]

Sorry, I should have been more specific in my previous post.  I was thinking more along the lines of some sort of bank holiday.  If there would be a bank holiday for whatever reason, can you still get into a deposit box or are you locked out of it until the bank reopens?  If this has happened in the past, how long are they usually in effect?  I don't have a deposit box yet and haven't really looked into it.  Just curious.

Also with regards to capital controls, that seems like a good reason to be thinking about these types of questions.  The same people who are instituting the capital controls to keep money in the US are talking about building border fences to "keep people out".

I'm not worried about the govt opening up safety deposit boxes, the cost/benefit isn't there.  But if I can't get into my box when I need it, that would be a problem for me and I would want to have alternate arrangements in place in the meantime.

If there was a bank holiday presumably you couldn't do any business in the bank for that period, including accessing your safe deposit box.

Considering, however, that Roosevelt's 1933 theft of citizens' money through the mechanism of a bank holiday was a more or less one time event in modern times in the U.S., I'm not overly concerned about the potential for this sort of event.  If, however, it did happen, we're probably talking about not having access to your safe deposit box for one or two days, just like you you wouldn't have access over a long weekend with a Monday holiday.

Okay, that's kind of what I imagined; I prefer to be prepared for/expect the worst.  Just because something seems unlikely doesn't mean it's impossible (2008).  Seems like a natural disaster such as a hurricane (I live in Houston) would potentially keep you away from your box for a longer time period than a bank holiday, so that would be a basis for cash to keep on hand vs in a box.

[MediumTex]

Sorry, I should have been more specific in my previous post.  I was thinking more along the lines of some sort of bank holiday.  If there would be a bank holiday for whatever reason, can you still get into a deposit box or are you locked out of it until the bank reopens?  If this has happened in the past, how long are they usually in effect?  I don't have a deposit box yet and haven't really looked into it.  Just curious.

Also with regards to capital controls, that seems like a good reason to be thinking about these types of questions.  The same people who are instituting the capital controls to keep money in the US are talking about building border fences to "keep people out".

I'm not worried about the govt opening up safety deposit boxes, the cost/benefit isn't there.  But if I can't get into my box when I need it, that would be a problem for me and I would want to have alternate arrangements in place in the meantime.

If there was a bank holiday presumably you couldn't do any business in the bank for that period, including accessing your safe deposit box.

Considering, however, that Roosevelt's 1933 theft of citizens' money through the mechanism of a bank holiday was a more or less one time event in modern times in the U.S., I'm not overly concerned about the potential for this sort of event.  If, however, it did happen, we're probably talking about not having access to your safe deposit box for one or two days, just like you you wouldn't have access over a long weekend with a Monday holiday.

Okay, that's kind of what I imagined; I prefer to be prepared for/expect the worst.  Just because something seems unlikely doesn't mean it's impossible (2008).  Seems like a natural disaster such as a hurricane (I live in Houston) would potentially keep you away from your box for a longer time period than a bank holiday, so that would be a basis for cash to keep on hand vs in a box.

If you rent a box, you might request one that is as far off the floor as possible to help mitigate flood risk.

[hoost]

If there was a bank holiday presumably you couldn't do any business in the bank for that period, including accessing your safe deposit box.

Considering, however, that Roosevelt's 1933 theft of citizens' money through the mechanism of a bank holiday was a more or less one time event in modern times in the U.S., I'm not overly concerned about the potential for this sort of event.  If, however, it did happen, we're probably talking about not having access to your safe deposit box for one or two days, just like you you wouldn't have access over a long weekend with a Monday holiday.

Okay, that's kind of what I imagined; I prefer to be prepared for/expect the worst.  Just because something seems unlikely doesn't mean it's impossible (2008).  Seems like a natural disaster such as a hurricane (I live in Houston) would potentially keep you away from your box for a longer time period than a bank holiday, so that would be a basis for cash to keep on hand vs in a box.

If you rent a box, you might request one that is as far off the floor as possible to help mitigate flood risk.

That's good advice.  I will do that; and I guess also make sure I'm at a bank on the northwest side of town (farthest from the coast).