This whole thing is starting to resemble a french-farce(pun intended). I've been saying all along there is NO DEAL--it's all a big smokescreen and mirrors sideshow--just like the US election is becoming. IOW, it's a DISTRACTION people. I say let the whole ******n system implode. The sooner we pull the big-top down on this carnival sideshow, the better.

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This whole thing is starting to resemble a french-farce(pun intended).

It has been a farce my entire adult life. Hell, it has been a farce since FDR, two generations prior. After the fuse was lit during the War Between the ****ing STATES 1861-1865. So when KD writes, "You must do so even though it is difficult and even though the nation goes through an economic depression," I think, "Oh hell."

Even if I fall headlong into the gaping maw of the beast that gets let loose, oh well. Gotta die sometime. But I can guarantee one thing. That me, laughing my ass off at the world-wide servings of just deserts, will be audible all the way down to its belly.

I've heard anecdotal claims that when countries devalue currency and issue new money, they don't bother to mint new coin.

So if you had coin, it's value may jump a hundred-fold or more.

Unfortunately my google-fu is weak. But it seems if you could reasonably predict such an event, a basement full of coins could make you quite wealthy.

Bilge

My money is on covert printing, or as it's commonly called, sovereign debt (issued when it's known it cannot be repaid). The default, not backed by any collateral, puts the inflated money into the system PERMANENTLY. Deflation or inflation, it's still inflation. That's what we have here ALREADY. Nothing backing the currency except paper and promises that cannot be kept.

The starting narration from Rounders:

"Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker."

So who is the sucker?

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Unfortunately my google-fu is weak. But it seems if you could reasonably predict such an event, a basement full of coins could make you quite wealthy.

From Simon Lack:

"Kyle Bass will go down as one of the earliest to recognize and position for that. His worldview is dire, and it’s apparently prompted him to take some strange precautions such as acquiring $1 million nickels (20 million coins) because their 6.8 cents value as scrap metal exceeds their monetary worth."

@Ktrosper

AGREED

When the USA was founded, a simple principle was applied: If you own dirt, then you have a vote. Conversely, if you do not own dirt, then you have no vote: Our founding fathers knew very well the dangers of the FSA, and all these obtuse mechanization of society we are contemplating today, and stopped that bull****.

Something, somewhere, somehow, WENT TERRIBLY WRONG.

We let it happen by giving the FSA a vote!

Now we go back to basics: Got dirt?

Elkad:

I think what you are hearing is a bit off. I believe when Argentina defaulted they printed new money and exchanged it for the old money. They just said that the old coins now have a value of 1/x where x is the factor that they devalued by. Then, they replaced the old coins over time with new ones.

Sandor:

I think what you are pointing out is a different animal. Kyle Bass is basically playing a liquid metal hedge. Sort of the best of both worlds in that he has a metal hedge and he has money at the same time. Of course, there would need to be a change in the law before Bass could legally melt down his coins and take advantage of his hedge. FWIW, ahile back I did some calculations and I think 25K of nickels weighs around 5500 lbs if I remember correctly.

Don't try to store that in a house with a wooden floor :)


Flap

Flappingeagle wrote..

Of course, there would need to be a change in the law before Bass could legally melt down his coins and take advantage of his hedge.

Aye, there's the rub. It's just another example of Karl's adage that you can't win a bet on the end of the world.

I find it highly unlikely that .gov will ever allow legally scrapping US coinage, so the only way those nickels will ever be worth more than $.05 (save those that are collectible) is if there's no .gov around to enforce the law - in which case they would no longer have a face value. Of course the metal will have potential utility in the aftermath of a collapse, much mores than paper FRNS, but still far below that of, say, $1M of fertile real estate at current prices.

And if Flap's numbers are accurate, Bass's alleged stash would weigh about 1800 tons, or roughly the equivalent of 360 elephants...

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When the USA was founded, a simple principle was applied: If you own dirt, then you have a vote. Conversely, if you do not own dirt, then you have no vote: Our founding fathers knew very well the dangers of the FSA, and all these obtuse mechanization of society we are contemplating today, and stopped that bull****.

Indeed.

And dirt in the New World was obtained by granting it to royal favorites by royal decree.

The lesson here, it seems to me, is that all you have to do to get rid of the FSA is to give them dirt.

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Of course the metal will have potential utility in the aftermath of a collapse, much mores than paper FRNS, but still far below that of, say, $1M of fertile real estate at current prices.

Think it through. Will that farmland really be worth a million dollars if diesel is 8 bucks a gallon, if available and will the irrigation pumps run to make **** grow? What about if commodities go parabolic in the face of endless QE?

Or could that nickel be melted for gun barrels?

Corzine stole over a billion, and he is a free man.

Bass's play is an endgame play. And he appears to be a patient man to me.

Geschrei wrote..

I find it highly unlikely that .gov will ever allow legally scrapping US coinage,

Didn't a whole lot of US silver dimes and quarters get melted-down back around 1980?

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Didn't a whole lot of US silver dimes and quarters get melted-down back around 1980?

They did, but they were silver, not an amalgom of metals that would have to be smelted and processed to get the valuable metals seperated from the crap. The silver coins could be melted down in your garage or basesment, poured into forms, and were just silver ingots.

Nickels, on the other hand, would require some other processing to manage to get a sellable ingot.

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The lesson here, it seems to me, is that all you have to do to get rid of the FSA is to give them dirt.

I wouldn't mind a nice homesteading act.

"Will that farmland really be worth a million dollars if diesel is 8 bucks a gallon, if available and will the irrigation pumps run to make **** grow? "

Probably, people will have to get off their butts and do the work with their hands.

It can be done. I see it every day. You'll lose weight, too.

This seems apropos for this thread.

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The Gods of the Copybook Headings

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place.
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four --
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man --
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began --
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire --
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

-Kipling

Absolutely the greatest poem ever written, IMO...

Who benefits from bailouts - that's where you find the motive for the bailouts, and the reason for the likelihood that they will continue until some threshold of collapse is reached?

If Greece will default with or without a bailout, and Greece is in economic turmoil with or without a bailout, and the EU is in economic straits with or without bailouts (and other countries in the EU will expect to be bailed out as well), and the people voting for bailouts know all of this, why do the bailouts occur? Surely, someone will be the beneficiary?

The beneficiary? The Rally Monkey...

Beezlebub is the benficiary.

Kipling - from the vantage point of 1919, he predicted the next century.

Greece passes a budget that cuts only $4.35 billion and that somehow green lights another massive loan, this time $171 billion ($145 billion only last May), more than half their GDP? I really don't get that.

When with this farce be over?

Riots spread as Greek lawmakers OK austerity bill

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46358793/ns/....

4 billion! And the funny here is that it will never happen.

They need the money to fix all the damage done tonight!

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NO ONE can exercise fiscal responsibility and get elected against someone practicing fiscal irresponsibility. It just WILL NOT happen.

Not true. Three successive majorities in Canada were based precisely on that topic...similar story in Sweden I think....it's all a matter of the people facing into the truth together...in the more 'socialist' western countries this has had to happen sooner than in other countries.