Elaine Meinel Supkis
Zimbabwe's hyperinflation has finally reached Weimarian levels: over 2 million per cent! Let's see them get to infinity. Infinity is now possible in the West due to computers that were first developed for one reason only: to crack Nazi codes and make the nuclear bombs. Then Univac was handed over to the astronomers in the mid-1950s. They love infinity. Today, we talk yet again about international economics, the US as central player in the tragic collapse of Western banking and the problems this is creating in the East. Sovereign wealth versus De-sovereignization via debt.
Zimbabwe inflation at 2,200,000%
Zimbabwe, once one of the richest countries in Africa, has descended into economic chaos largely blamed on the policies of President Robert Mugabe.
Mr Mugabe was re-elected last month in a controversial one-man race.
Most countries, once inflation races past 200%, usually give up chasing their own tails and do the right thing: they default on their debts, recall the old currency and issue a new currency. If they are an empire, they lose their imperial powers and dwindle, like China, Spain, the Ottoman Empire, the Roman Empire etc. Down history's tubes. Some like China and Russia, rise again and again from the economic ashes. Parts of Europe such as England or France do likewise and then there are those German Reichs. They, too rise again and again from economic hells.
The number of zero interests me a lot:
By the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, the Babylonians had a sophisticated sexagesimal positional numeral system. The lack of a positional value (or zero) was indicated by a space between sexagesimal numerals. By 300 BC, a punctuation symbol (two slanted wedges) was co-opted as a placeholder in the same Babylonian system. In a tablet unearthed at Kish (dating from about 700 BC), the scribe Bêl-bân-aplu wrote his zeroes with three hooks, rather than two slanted wedges.The Babylonian placeholder was not a true zero because it was not used alone. Nor was it used at the end of a number. Thus numbers like 2 and 120 (2×60), 3 and 180 (3×60), 4 and 240 (4×60), looked the same because the larger numbers lacked a final sexagesimal placeholder. Only context could differentiate them.
Records show that the ancient Greeks seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number. They asked themselves, "How can nothing be something?", leading to philosophical and, by the Medieval period, religious arguments about the nature and existence of zero and the vacuum. The paradoxes of Zeno of Elea depend in large part on the uncertain interpretation of zero.The Indian scholar Pingala (circa 5th-2nd century BC) used binary numbers in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), making it similar to Morse code.[7] [8] He and his contemporary Indian scholars used the Sanskrit word śūnya to refer to zero or void.[9]
The concept of infinity is actually a fairly recent vintage idea. Before infinity, the world's people believed that the Gods died every time the stars of the Zodiac rise in the east are different from previous years, the old gods are thrown out and they have 'children' who become the new gods. This emphatically includes gods like Jesus who had to be the son of a god, not a full human, in order to be the new celestial ruler. Ditto, Buddha. And other human interlopers.
Also, the concept of the Heavens was this dome overhead which enclosed the earth. This dome was solid, complete and perfect except for the business about the wrong stars rising in the east that plagues all religious belief systems. This dire uncertainty led to worries that the celestial sphere was NOT finite and enclosed but malicious and strange. To explore this, the concept of 'outer space' and 'infinity' grew relentlessly and logically. To the tremendous distress of religions based on the simpler, enclosed system.
The great thinkers who came up with and then debated the concept of infinity and nothingness created the concept of 'zero'. These people were nearly all really astronomers. There is no infinity on earth. But in the Heavens, it lurks on the edge of the Big Bang itself. For infinity is pre-Big Bang and is still there since it can exist even as the universe itself, exists and expands and changes. This is a scary concept even astronomers [my grandparents and parents were all great astronomers] who skirt all this by focusing mostly on the finite side of the universe, not the Outer Darkness parts.
Ah, when I talk about money, I mention that place. It isn't a place, it is a concept of infinity. It is where all things merge and vanish. It is zero. Zero has many functions. One is, by multiplying it with anything, that thing VANISHES! Go to the calculator and multiply any number by zero! IT VANISHES! This, dear readers, is real magic. Why would the act of adding nothing to something cause the something to vanish? Many a philosopher has knocked his brains out over this!
I did, as a child. It consumed some of my more idle hours. It drove me nuts. Then I was hit by the second lightning bolt. My first event was when I hid in my bed from the lightning and it came into the bedroom. The second time was much more annoying. There was this fierce lightning storm. I had to go to the bathroom. I didn't like being alone in thunderstorms since I was hit 6 years earlier. I was only 11 by then. So I said to my father, 'I am afraid to go to the bathroom.'
He said, 'Lightning can't hit you there because of the plumbing.' So I went in. When I turned on the light there, a huge lightning bolt slammed into the electrical box outside the bathroom window. The surge hit my hand by jumping the light switch and knocked me down. I crawled out of there, crying and furious at the same time.
So I had to figure this all out. What is lightning? Why does it wait like a malicious dog to bite me? Then using charts and graphs, I figured out, no kidding, that all things have to resolve themselves by either merging peacefully like in sex or violently like with the positive and negative polarities of lightning. And if you multiply 1+1 you get 2 because this is sex and if you multiply +1 and 0 it becomes 0 and if you multiply -1 and 0 you still get 0. So zero is akin to negative electrical poles. Positive electrical charges, when interfacing with negative, cause a massive explosion. If the poles are 'grounded' there is a harmless discharge.
The great forces in nature are these very concepts! Now let's go to money again: fiat money is a zero-based concept. Gold is a whole number concept. Gold is like sex: it can be multiplied in positive ways. Fiat money is based on NOTHING and seeks out wealth including gold, to make it WORTHLESS! HAHAHA. Yes, this is one novel way of explaining the magic of money and why this resembles lightning and why gods are very much involved in creating money in the Cave of Death. Money is an icon that reflects the destructive power of the great gods, old, young, past and future.
The use of zero was very limited up until the industrial revolution. Its capitalist ability to multiply everything has created a series of opportunities to use zeros. Also, modern banking, born in Venice and expanded upon over the centuries by central bankers working for madcap rulers has taken the zero concepts embodied within the new double bookkeeping/interest rate valuations systems like compound interest to dizzy heights.
My grandfather knew Einstein who worked with astronomers on the great E=Mc2 projects. Einstein famously noted that the most powerful force in nature is compound interest. And it is! Unlike nature, it can go to infinity! In other words, debts can be theoretically infinite. Thanks to the zero. The first central bank to literally try to go to infinity was the German bankers in the early 1920's. They discovered, no matter how fast they added zeros to their marks, the rate of REAL inflation outstripped this. This is simple: INFLATION IS A GOD. It is celestial. It is NOT of this Universe but is from the Outer Darkness which is the place outside and surrounding the expanding universe. Got that?
Good! Onwards into the hellish mind of a child raised by astronomers: The Germans failed to embody inflation faster than inflation no matter how fast they added zeros. Everything become worthless even faster forcing them to give up, thank the gods. Heh. Well, no one was so foolish as to try this a second time until this year. Congratulations, Zimabwe. You lost the race. The more you add zeros, the slower you are vis a vis the god of Inflation. She is actually Pegasus and can fly to the heavens in an eye blink, being magical.
+
At this absurd stage in the game, the answer was simple: As long as the government can keep printing money. On Wednesday, that plan fell apart. Giesecke & Devrient, which supplied the special paper for Zimbabwean dollars for decades, decided to cut its ties following pressure from officials in Germany, where it is based.Characteristically, the central bank expressed confidence, not dread, about the change of fortune. “The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe wishes to advise and assure the nation that this development will not disrupt the smooth flow of business,” Gideon Gono, the head of the bank, said in a statement. The “development will not have any impact to the economy.”
*snip*
As Moses Chikomba, who works in Harare, told The Times of London today, “We are all billionaires who can afford nothing. That is why I hate that old man.”And here’s another reason: at this moment, the government’s best bet may be to do nothing at all. Steve H. Hanke, a monetary expert at Johns Hopkins University, told The Wall Street Journal that fixing hyperinflation was as easy as not printing any more money.
The physical limitations of paper money forces despots and desperate bankers to cease and desist in trying to outrun a thoroughly magical and totally powerful god. They must give up. But the US has something far, far more dangerous. Back to Univac: we had exactly one computer which could aim for infinity back in the 1950's. I used to play on the floor of the office where Univac's print outs lived. The building was the only air conditioned building on the campus of the University of Chicago. The work of grinding out infinite numbers was so energy-consuming, the place would literally burn up if it wasn't cooled. Then, the ability to process numbers improved. When Texas Instruments came out with hand-held calculators, they gave one to my dad as a present when it first came off the production system.
'Wow! This can compute almost as good as Univac!' said my father, happily. Well, most of our banking system is NOT dollars that are printed. They are computerized numbers. Once, when little, I threw Door Kitty on the keyboard of the Kitt Peak's biggest computer system back then. We lived in the offices of Kitt Peak and my playground was under the desks. Spinning swivel chairs was great fun, too.
Well, the computer began to run to infinity to my mother's horror and I ran off, crying. I thought I was going to destroy the entire planet earth! Certainly, my father spanked me which was worse. Well, every once and a while, the gnomes running the banking systems throw cats like Iran Kitty, onto the keyboards and the numbers suddenly begin to move to infinity. And this end's today's lesson in 'Magic Money, Cats and Naughty Little Girls.'
Saudi council likely to recommend revaluation
Saudi Arabia and four other Gulf oil producers peg their currencies to the dollar, which tumbled to a record low against the euro yesterday, driving up import costs and stoking inflation in the world’s biggest oil-exporting region.An internal committee of the Shura Council, whose members are appointed by King Abdallah, wrote a report urging the world’s top oil exporter to revalue the riyal, Waleed Arab Hachem, the Shura council member who made the proposal, said.
“The committee that is doing the report asked me for a recommendation and I proposed a revaluation,” Hachem said. “It’s logical to keep the peg to the dollar but the peg is not sacred, (the riyal) should be revalued.”
As the US and Japan crank out more and more fake money, it is flooding into OPEC. And OPEC will eventually have to deal with this even if it means slowing down sales. For hitherto, they kept up with inflation but now it is outrunning them totally. They have to have restrictions on sales. This drives up the price of oil and increases inflation as the West refuses to pay for this via barter, instead, manufacturing zeros to add onto budget balances.
Pakistani Investors Stone Karachi Exchange as Stocks Plunge
(Bloomberg) -- Pakistan investors stormed out of the Karachi Stock Exchange, smashed windows and cursed regulators after the benchmark index fell for a 15th day, the worst losing streak in at least 18 years.``I have lost my life savings in the last 15 days and no one in the government or regulators came to help us,'' said Imran Inayat, 45, a protester and a former banker who retired early and said he lost 300,000 rupees ($4,175) on the market.
Police surrounded the exchange after hundreds of investors stoned the building and shouted anti-government slogans. They directed their ire at the government and Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, which this week removed a 1 percent daily limit on price declines. The measure was aimed at halting a slide that wiped out $30 billion of Pakistan's market value in three months, threatening to undo a 14-fold rally since 2001.
``There has been some level of mismanagement by the authorities,'' said Habib-ur-Rehman, who manages the equivalent of 6.5 billion rupees in Pakistani stocks and bonds at Atlas Asset Management Ltd. in Karachi. ``This may be due to their misperception that they can prevent the market from falling. Investors have to learn to bear losses as they do gains.''
No one ever expects to lose money. Yet the entire concept of money systems DEPENDS on people losing money! If everyone made money all the time, we would have....think carefully.....INFINITY! Since this is a finite planet, this is impossible. Ergo: people must lose money. The strong emotions of losers is also important: this moves forward history and world events. This is why all bubbles create revolutions, uprisings and wars. This is the reverse of creating stuff: now we wreck everything.
Note the retired banker who retired very young, his fury that the government didn't save him by making things go to infinity! He wants his loot! He can't imagine it has vanished! How could it just vanish? This inability to understand how wealth that is numbers can vanish in a flash. Gold, for example, can still exist even if we decide it is worthless, all it does is sit idle and wait for someone to change their minds.
This is true of all physical objects. Some gain tremendous value only to see people despise it later. Nude statues of gods in Greece were so valuable, the Romans killed people to steal them. Then, the Romans decided Jesus was a god so they destroyed or ignored or hated these very same statures which became rubble to lie idle in the deep soil. Then, in the 1500s, the Europeans began digging up these statues and declared them to be very valuable again! See? Wait long enough....things come back into value.
But dead stocks and bonds, dead paper money, it loses value, it is pretty much history. Gone. Kaput. Zero. Paper bonds and paper money is very, very cheap to print. It is assigned various values and then, when these are multiplied by zero, the value vanishes. There is nothing, nothing at all, left behind which is why we then use lawyers to try to sue someone to get something, somewhere.
If governments try to save these papers by printing more money we get hyperinflation and that is one god we cannot defeat by adding more zeros. It loves zeros. It IS zero! Ergo: it wins.
There's Nothing Sacrosanct About U.S. AAA Rating: Mark Gilbert
(Bloomberg) -- Over a plate of pasta on a January afternoon at Cecconi's restaurant in London, Pierre Naim outlined his plan to make money by betting that the U.S. government's financial reputation would crumble like Parmesan cheese.Naim, who has owned the Nassau, Bahamas-based hedge fund Rainbow Advisory Services for more than a decade, was considering credit-default swaps. He didn't need the U.S. to default. If his peers shared his view on Uncle Sam's creditworthiness, the derivatives would jump in value.
The swaps had traded infrequently at less than 2 basis points, making for a very cheap bet. Naim put a $50 million trade on at 12 basis points -- ``I was a bit late,'' he says. This week, concern the U.S. is becoming addicted to financial bailouts drove the swaps to 18 basis points. Naim still isn't selling.
As the US adds zeros to the budget deficit and as the US opens windows in the Federal Reserve where it hands out zeros to add to the bottom lines of all the collapsing investment houses and banks, we get hyperinflation. Always, it starts out very, very small and then, like its brother, the Derivatives Beast, it doubles in size every year. The Derivatives Beast is heading towards infinity. It already has swollen to over $1 quadrillion. This is $1,000,000,000,000,000. Now, if I were to hold down the zero key, I could make this $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to infinity. Easy as sticking a finger up the nose.
Sovereign funds cut exposure to weak dollar
Some of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds are seeking to scale back their exposure to the US dollar in a sign of global concern about the currency.One big sovereign fund in the Gulf has cut its dollar-denominated holdings from more than 80 per cent a year ago to less than 60 per cent, while China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) has been looking to strike deals with private equity firms in Europe as a part of a strategy to reduce its dollar holdings.
*snip*
The shift at China’s SAFE is significant because it holds the majority of the country’s $1,600bn in foreign currency reserves in dollar instruments and has lagged behind other governments, such as Singapore, in diversifying its currency exposure. SAFE has been holding talks with Europe-based private equity firms about putting billions of dollars into their latest funds, precisely because these funds are not dollar-denominated, say people familiar with the matter.By allocating money to Europe-based private equity firms, SAFE could diversify away from the dollar, at least at the margin, without spooking the currency markets and driving the dollar down in a disorderly manner.
In addition, SAFE is encouraging the private equity firms with which it has relationships to make investments in natural resources companies in markets outside the US – in part, to hedge its exposure to the dollar.
Booo! By Halloween, we will see lots of spooks scaring investors. The Chinese, the Arabs, all the pirates, everyone is trying to palm off everything to Uncle Sam so they can tip toe away and leave us holding the bag which will then be worth $0 since no one wants to buy it. World trade will collapse, of course. They worry about this. They feel, there is still some unsold assets and physical stuff in the US so they will let us limp along but they are now worried about the government free money hand outs which are very, very inflationary.
Note that these people are seeking 'SAFE' havens. This is IMPOSSIBLE. The hag we call 'inflation' can go through brick walls. Being the sister of Death, she can enter deep bank vaults. She can fly to the furthest corners of the earth which is easy since she is from the Outer Darkness which is greater than the entire universe! She cannot be stopped except by the infinity money makers giving up and surrendering to her. This means no more debts until the capital base is built up again.
By Stephen Schwarzman, the gnome that runs Blackstone: Reject sovereign wealth funds at your peril
Gao Xiqing, the president of China Investment Corporation, China’s sovereign wealth fund, spoke last week of his frustration that CIC’s attempts at investing outside China sometimes run into political opposition. He went on to add, in words that should act as a chilling wake-up call to many politicians and bankers: “Fortunately there are more than 200 countries in the world. And fortunately there are many countries who are happy with us.”I have known CIC since it bought a 9.4 per cent non-voting interest in Blackstone when we went public last year. The fact that its president publicly suggests that CIC may invest only where it feels welcome – a view I know many other SWFs share – has serious implications for the economic well-being of the US and other western countries where political opposition to SWF investments has mounted.
The dragon is getting annoyed. The Chinese dragon loves gold. For thousands of years, it demanded only gold for trade. It never wanted anything else in return. During those centuries, China was one of the biggest manufacturing powers on earth. The reversion to this state is a high priority item for the Chinese. The Jewish bankers helping them don't want this process to stop if they are getting their cut in the deal. I don't blame them. This is international finance at work. Which is the opposite of nationalist sovereignty.
China's Economic Growth Cools to Slowest Since 2005
(Bloomberg) -- China's economy grew at the slowest pace since 2005, handing more ammunition to Chinese officials calling for reduced gains by the yuan as the export outlook dims.Gross domestic product rose 10.1 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, down from 10.6 percent in the first, the statistics bureau said today in Beijing. Consumer prices rose 7.1 percent in June, slowing from 7.7 percent in May.
The yuan had the biggest drop in seven weeks.
The Chinese government is grinding its gears to try to stop inflation while still doing business with the inflation-mad West. But eventually, they will throw in the towel, close the borders to traders who are inflationary and resume the grim gold regime. This will mean the US will be locked out of global banking. We owe China a LOT of money and China can and will demand we hand over Fort Knox and the gold hoard in NYC's vaults. Or we can go to war, like so often happens when empires go bankrupt.
Actually, we will remove ourselves from Asia. China believes a loss of a trillion dollars, even $3 trillion, is worth if it means China is the new ruler of Asia. This is far, far cheaper than a war. The trick is to deal with Japan correctly. Japan might trigger a war out of fear if China plays its cards wrong. This is a high priority item with China, a series of treaties with Japan, especially defense treaties.
BlackRock Earnings Rise 23% as Fund Investors Seek Safe Haven
(Bloomberg) -- BlackRock Inc., the largest publicly traded U.S. asset manager, said second-quarter earnings rose 23 percent after attracting investors seeking to weather the crisis in the financial markets.Net income increased to $274 million, or $2.05 a share, from $222.2 million, or $1.69 a share, a year earlier, New York- based BlackRock said today in a statement. Revenue climbed 26 percent to $1.39 billion.
*snip*
BlackRock was picked March 24 by the Federal Reserve to oversee $30 billion of Bear Stearns Cos.' investments after the fifth-largest U.S. securities firm agreed to be acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. The company has also been called in by UBS AG to help manage a portfolio of mortgage assets. Still, the shares have slumped in the past month, in part on concerns that Merrill would sell its holdings.Merrill acquired its stake in BlackRock in 2006, as part of BlackRock's acquisition of Merrill's investment unit. Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group Inc. owns 34 percent of BlackRock.
Interesting, isn't it, how BlackRock is now a hot stock thanks to the Bear Stearns deal? That deal stank. It was wrong. It was a backroom, buddy-buddy deal rigged by Goldman Sachs which runs the Treasury and half of the Federal Reserve. JP Morgan being the other half. Stocks are soaring today in NYC due to confidence that the US taxpayers will be in hock for all these messes.
Cortefiel's LBO Loans Signal European Retail Defaults
(Bloomberg) -- If there is any doubt European shoppers are following their U.S. counterparts into a recession, look no further than retailers' debt.Chain stores, led by Madrid-based Cortefiel SA and Fat Face Ltd. in London, are the worst performers among the region's 140 billion euros ($220 billion) of leveraged-buyout loans, according to Markit Group Ltd. and Standard & Poor's data. The Spanish company's 1.4 billion euros of loans are trading at less than half of face value, the lowest for a European company that hasn't defaulted, data from Frankfurt-based Dresdner Kleinwort show.
``We're going into a consumer-led slowdown, which is just now starting to show its signs,'' said London-based Pilar Gomez- Bravo, who is in charge of credit funds for Europe at Lehman Brothers Asset Management. ``Retailers have yet to go through the worst part of the economic cycle.''
There are few regulations of course, but even these are hated by the gnome community that has united in efforts to undo all controls and barriers and to allow them to go to infinity since they need lots of loot to go after goddesses. And so it goes: the chase of the most wily and dangerous goddess of them all, Infinity. She can run circles around us in a flash. She can make gnomes dizzy as she flits just beyond reach, slowing down when they huff and puff and speeding up when they run as fast as they can.
Europe's currency grew in power as Japan and the US added zeros to their own banking system's books. But this power of the euro is illusory just like the US and Japanese currencies are fakes. 0 times +1=0.
Yonks ago, I remember I came across one of those convoluted trigonometric equations. It comprised tangents and cotangents, if I remember correctly. Anyway, if one went to the limit, using 90 (or was it zero?) degrees, you ended up with:
zero multiplied by infinity is equal to the square root of minus one, also denoted as j
Ommm…
PS: Elaine,
My previous post flagged a potentially serious mortgage default/repossession situation, if it's true. Something that may be of interest to you:
http://tinyurl.com/57qplu
Posted by: Bear of Little Brain | July 17, 2008 at 11:38 AM
HAHAHA. Yes, you go 'j' which is the first letter in the word 'joke' as in 'this joke is on you'. Or maybe it is Bernake's telephone number.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | July 17, 2008 at 11:45 AM
Great article. Thank-you. Good information on zero is hard to find. I found the book "Zero" to be fascinating. I think the only thing I disagreed with was this statement:
"Now, if I were to hold down the zero key, I could make this $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to infinity. Easy as sticking a finger up the nose."
I mean really - how long can you "hold down the zero key".
Peace,
Ken
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 11:59 AM
Even going exponentially infinity is never reached as long as someone is thinking about infinity.....and unless we are all dead, I suspect someone will always be thinking about infinity.
Peace,
Ken
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 12:06 PM
Oh I should add - awesome cartoon!
adding, multiplying, adding again then maybe subtracting - its all so much fun.
Math is fun.
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 12:21 PM
I put forth that shapes are primary and numbers are secondary.
Numbers derive from shapes.
Or at least any numbers that anyone can think about consciously.
Our brains are all about shape. Awesome incredible folding surface area. Our brains are amazing.
Peace,
Ken
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 12:24 PM
Oh, and I forgot one thing (or maybe more) but colors fit in somehow. Don't you just love all the colors?
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 12:56 PM
Sorry to do this, but I think what I really meant was "the senses". see, hear, touch, smell, taste and such. Hm.
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 12:58 PM
since nobody is talking, i'll throw a bit more out there....
mathamatical functions can be used to characterize shapes;
shapes are not formed randomly;
shapes must take into account balance;
SCALE MATTERS - Big Time.
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 01:46 PM
Don't they use the scale for some legal symbol bull-honkey! What a joke. The Law is supposed to do what the Law is supposed to do when there are criminals about. Criminal all around especially in DC and Texas and California, but don't get me wrong, these criminals are all over the place.
But we should never forget that scale matters. The scale of the crime is most important.
Convict, Convict, Convict.
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 01:48 PM
This one is great, Elaine. I love it when you write about numbers.
I am stuck on one paragraph:
"No one ever expects to lose money. Yet the entire concept of money systems DEPENDS on people losing money! If everyone made money all the time, we would have....think carefully.....INFINITY! Since this is a finite planet, this is impossible. Ergo: people must lose money."
So, do I have this right? We are actually existing on a zero-sum plane.
But when we introduce concepts like "zero manipulation" and "infinite compounding" it opens a tear in the fabric of the Universe -- through which evil monkeys fly in and turn our hubris to crap?
Is it one of those -- "It's not nice to fool with mother nature" paradoxes? A forbidden fruit that slams the gates of Eden shut in our faces?
Ah, and kudos for this passage (it really turned up the volume for me):
"Zero has many functions. One is, by multiplying it with anything, that thing VANISHES! Go to the calculator and multiply any number by zero! IT VANISHES! This, dear readers, is real magic. Why would the act of adding nothing to something cause the something to vanish?"
Long time no see.
Yr frend,
Pluto
Posted by: Pluto | July 17, 2008 at 02:34 PM
but was "nothing" ever really added to "something". She was just talking about multiplication.
nothing added to something = something.
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 03:04 PM
Multiplication just like numbers and just like zero is nothing but imagination.
Put some shapes on the table and then you have multiplication of a sorts. Or at least multiplication can be sensed to the fullest.
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 03:12 PM
Of course, all that is nothing more than my opinion.
My opinion indeed.
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 03:13 PM
Here is another opinion about zero and infinity - when you get close, volatility increases rapidly. Witness such volatility in the stock markets and other financial configurations. These volatitliy in not in the interest of the People, but it does let us know that something big is fixing to happen. Don't you think?
I know what I'm betting on.
Peace,
Ken
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 03:47 PM
Or alternative, calmer, cooler, more collective and thoughtful minds will figure out a way for ALL of us to keep on keeping on...
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 03:49 PM
Perhaps all it takes for us to "come together" is a bit of activation energy to get folks thinking. Perhaps this is how it was meant to be.
Who knows ---- but what decides!
action - reaction
you know
takes 2 to tango!
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 03:51 PM
Americans own no gold in Ft. Knox or elsewhere. None. Zip. The Central Bankers stole all our gold long since. The FED and IMF have it all.
So, naturally, the Central Bankers plan a return to the gold standard.
We can nationalize the FED, or wait for Armageddon.
Posted by: PLovering | July 17, 2008 at 04:00 PM
I support nationalizing the FED or better maybe - do away with the FED altogether. Turn the FED into nothing.
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 04:13 PM
Nothing - Zero - Nada - Zilch - Nicht - Not a damn thing - no value whatsoever -
If they stole it all, then they must give it back. There must be law for there to be balance.
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 04:22 PM
Sometimes I feel like I'm screaming at the wind. When I do this I know that it is time for me to shut up, so I will.
Posted by: Buffalo Ken | July 17, 2008 at 04:25 PM
They talk all the time about volatility. They know that if any graph suddenly shoots upwards or downwards, this is a sign of impending collapse or explosion. When we are tracking, say, US deficits of all sorts and US debts, ALL of the graphs are in the 'shoot to the stars' mode.
This is not good, it is a distress signal. Instead of stopping, the Fed and everyone just kept on going faster. This is where a religion that reflects banking reality is necessary. 'Oh, my children, we are sinning! We must make the graph go down, not up!' Heh. We could have ceremonies and prayers.
'Please, oh goddess of Inflation, we promise to not chase you. Please slow down!' Then we drink a big glass of divine wine or devilish beer. Right?
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | July 17, 2008 at 04:29 PM
PLovering:
That's my opinion, too. If GATA ever get their independent audit and the proof of irrefutable ownership is made public then, maybe, I'll change my mind.
And what about that gold that was in the process of being transferred out of the WTC on the morning of 9/11? Or maybe not all of it was. Jeff Zack, press secretary of the International Association of Firefighters, the NY firefighters' union, complaining about Giuliani's decision to stop searching for bodies and just dump everything and clear the site:
"The real reason was that the Bank of Nova Scotia's assets were buried in that rubble, the day they got those assets out of that pile, Rudy shut the pile down, said 'everybody off, we're going to full scoop and dump'... It was gold, it was silver, it was other assets, I've seen a lot of numbers too, I don't have an exact one so I don't wanna give it to you... Our firefighters were on the pile helping excavate the gold as well, our problem is that all Rudy cared about at the end of the day was the gold bricks, not the lives and the memories of those that were the true heroes that day."
And to think that creep thought he should be president.
Posted by: Bear of Little Brain | July 17, 2008 at 04:54 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ2nVL1-XFk
The stock market action of the past 48 hours is explained here. For fans of monkeys and the river dance, both.
Posted by: calvino | July 17, 2008 at 04:57 PM
Problem is Americans are like the puppy dog that has been whipped into subservience by it's master, and has no bite.
Doomed.
The masses are so quiet and never complain here, except whining on Internet, which gets one nowhere.
The only solution is a total crash, unfortunately.
I hope after the crash, people seek out their "leaders", and "central bankers", and kill them. Literally.
Posted by: JZ | July 17, 2008 at 05:09 PM
Unfortunately, JZ has a point; what WILL it take to get the masses moving so they demand change? The repubs and Dems are never going to surrender any of their powerbase volutarily. It will have to be rammed down their throats. The best route is to have a third and even a fourth party with a legitimate powerbase. Second would be to have a method of removing a President from office for reasons OTHER than 'high crimes and misdemeanors' (Bush has met this standard, but Pelosi and the Dems won't budge). This country needs an ability to throw a President out of office because he or she is a complete idiot, incompetent, corrupt or all of the above. Third we need to close the revolving door. Too many slimeballs like Donald Rumsfeld and Phil Gramm build fortunes on their inside contacts. Make this 'insider trading' a crime with a stiff, mandatory prison sentence. The whole sysytem as is reeks.
Posted by: Paul S | July 17, 2008 at 06:22 PM
Misdemeanors covers things like bribery, for example. Well, we have that in spades only we 'legalized' this by calling these things 'political party donations' which is mostly bunk. The vast majority of the money raised is by people who are rich, seeking favors, not honest citizens giving someone a few bucks.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | July 17, 2008 at 07:06 PM
Elaine,
There's a great scene in the movie The Hudsucker Proxy (you should see it if you haven't) wherein the projected price for the newly-invented Hula Hoop is shown to the head company accountant. The figure is 10 cents each (based on production costs plus a reasonable profit). The wise old head accountant puts a decimal point after the number one and adds a zero, then smiles. Voila! The Hula Hoop will cost $1.00.
FYI - The magic of compound interest is "white magic" when you're saving, because it can indeed theoretically rise to infinity (there was a good sci fi short story written about this fifty years ago called "The John Jones Dollar").
It is "black magic" when the compounding happens in a negative direction to the value of your currency through inflation, because theoretically that value can keep dropping forever (it can't go below zero, but it can drop an infinite number of times (each time with the value getting closer to zero).
Interestingly, in the case of interest paid on debt, the rate of return is normally simple interest, not compound interest (you only pay interest on principle due, you don't pay interest on interest due), and in a fully amortized situation (like a typical house or auto loan), the amount of interest you pay shrinks with every payment period (if you make your payments on time). Of course, the longer the life of the loan the more interest you will pay, but it couldn't (even theoretically) be infinite interest unless you arbitrarily introduce an exogenous factor to intentionally make it so (like insisting that the life of the loan itself last for an infinite amount of time - which no actual loans do).
Posted by: Michael | July 17, 2008 at 08:24 PM
Bear of Little Brain
The number of people whose lives will be foreshortened due to WTC pollution will dwarf the number of lives lost on 9/11.
Giuiliani may yet regret those pieces of eight.
Posted by: PLovering | July 17, 2008 at 08:56 PM
About interest on loans: Michael, when we had normal, old fashioned loans, they operated that way.
But the crisis today is due to the NEW loans which had payments that not only didn't cover the interest due at the beginning of a loan term, the interest payments that were not made due to the payments being artificially low, these missing payments were tacked onto the PRINCIPAL so the amount owed on the loan rose.
My daughter got in such a trap with Sears. She paid her bills for the appliances etc she got when she set up her first household.
Then discovered, when I told her I was paying off her credit bills, that the total she owed was $1,500 more than the price of the purchases! The debts were GROWING as she was paying! This is why I paid it all off. She has no debts today and owns two houses.
Lesson learned.
A friend of mine came crying to me several years ago because his dairy farm was deep in debt. He also got stuck with these open-ended loans which he thought, were harmless. It ballooned in 5 years, this loan on his farm that was for building a new barn, until it was worth the entire value of his farm! He wanted to kill himself.
I was aghast. We helped him sell his farm. Another friend got him a job at his own farm facility. He survived. Barely. But lost his farm to developers!
This stuff is so toxic, it should BE ILLEGAL. But it makes the lenders very, very rich so it is legal. It is true usury.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | July 18, 2008 at 09:42 AM
A pretty good read over at PopulistAmerica. Echos much of the thoughts found on your site.
Posted by: RobG | July 18, 2008 at 11:07 AM
Perhaps, Rob. Starting parties is very hard work. Note that within just 10 years, this started a massive internal war in the US with Lincoln being elected.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | July 18, 2008 at 11:30 AM
Elaine,
You're absolutely right, of course - I left out "negative amortization loans" because they aren't really loans (they are theft and obviously shouldn't be legal); this is one of the quickest forms of financial suicide for any sucker that obtains one.
Also, I have to admit there actually IS a form of infinite loan interest - namely the accumulated fiscal debt of the U.S. No one in the world has the slightest fantasy that this debt will ever be paid off - in fact everyone appears to assume it will keep GROWING forever (meaning that the total amount of interest due will indeed be infinite). Just to make it worse, on top of already having spent trillions that we aren't going to pay back, and spending hundreds of billions more each current year that we aren't going to pay back, our "everyone must be healthy and live forever" medical fantasies have created an explosion of endless growth in our unfunded Medicare liabilities. Of course, we all know that paper dollars will be printed sufficient to make all those debts payable on the account books, so America parties on.
Posted by: Michael | July 18, 2008 at 07:52 PM
You said it all very well, Michael.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | July 18, 2008 at 08:49 PM