our fiat currency

FIX IT AGAIN, TONY

most currencies in the world today are fiat currencies. this simply means that currency is just a promissary note from a government.
wew've gotten away from the gold standard. you cant take it and present it for gold or oil or grapes. the value of currency is nothing more than appraisal of the output and spending habits of a particular government. that's why they move around.
the problem with greece is that across the european union, some of the countries economic outlooks, spending, and taxation are out of whack. so is ours, but we can print our own money.
european union members cant.

money, including that in your pocket(if you have any) is a good, almost like any other. it derives its value by its scarcity. when there is more of it, it becomes less valuable.

one of the classic economic treatises is that in a prisoner of war camp, cigarettes essentially became money. the minute the camp was taken over by the allies, the first thing the prisoners got was food and cigarettes. cigarettes, which had been the currency of exchange, were shot as a commodity of exchange.

i see nothing but huge problems ahead. i see more people going out of business than i did a year ago. i hear of more people going broke recently than i ever have.people who have managed to hang in there in a lot of these businesses are starting to throw in the towel. our problems are much deeper than they appear.

investors memories are too too short. they dont worry about a thing as long as the market goes up.

if we have learned anything the past 5 or 6 years, it's that the market does not know all. bear stearns was selling for almost 35 dollars a share 2 days before it went belly up. the market didnt have a clue; why would it now?

the market today seems to be in disconnect. roubini, who predicted our last crash long before anyone else now states that the u.s. and china are on a collision course. it may not be a horrendous collision course, but the chinese market has been down for the last few days. roubini now feels that the market isnt discounting this obvious collision course.

most investors are saying "the market's up; who cares?"

what's happened to the market the last 5 years should tell us that the market doesnt know all. to think otherwise is foolish, in my opinion.
there are morebankrupt school districts than ever. social security is in the red 6years early. people, like me, saw hard times coming and retired at 62. seeming millions of other folks are doing what i did.
"business is improving", but tax receipts are way down. ask any auditor. is the government 'cooking' the books. it would seem so.

did you notice that the number of jobs used for calculating unemployment has decreasd 7 MILLION the last 5 years? where did they go? it sure makes the percentages look better.

a lot of people are expecting a cyclical upturn in the economy during the next 3 to 5 years. are they wrong? see me in 3 to 5 years.
to me it will be like being 20 yars under water and somebody shoves you up 4 yards. you're still way under water. yesterday the housing numbers were a new record low.

there no way that taxes wont have to be raised by an enormous amount. the burden has to shift. we cant be doing $1.5 trillion deficits the next 5 years without any attempt to curb spending(and there wont be. mark my words), without a calamitous impact on the u.s. dollar.

if you and i had a business, there is a personal holding company tax so that we would have to pay out retained earnings. apple, berkshire hathaway, and ibm, and several others are enormous holding companies for buffett, steve jobs, etc. these companies are sitting on huge reserves of cash, which the stockholders shoul be getting. if they are going to be imune to taxation, i dont know you and i can be asked for more taxes. apple has 28 BILLION dollars in reserves and elected not to pay shareholders special dividends.
merck, a big drug company, not the biggest, has $10 billion in cash. $10 billion is there for what. talk about concentrated industries sitting around holding capital(to be used to become more concentrated). microsoft has $35 billion in cash, from a market cap of about 270 billion,which they pay no taxes on.

-more on money next saturday-