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#11
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PING: oly
On Apr 18, 4:32*pm, "mazorj" wrote:
"oly" wrote in message ... ... The greatest currency debasements in history arose from the needs to finance World War I, World War II and Vietnam. True, but I wouldn't stop there. *At this point, you can't ignore the cumulative effects of our adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan on the soundness of the dollar. On another level, Soviet expenditures in the Cold War and Afghanistan probably sapped the ruble more than enough to qualify as a contributing factor in the fall of the USSR. The cost of war in blood, treasure, and the pursuit of happiness is orders of magnitude beyond the ken of most people. *Even when we do learn it as a hard-knocks lesson in hindsight, every nation in the "civilized" world seems to forget it every generation or two. To tie this back to coin relevance: *Devaluation of any currency makes the lowest denominations more and more superfluous. *The mill is long gone, as are the half-cent, 2- and 3-cent pieces. *These used to have useful places in monetary transactions. *Now, people are asking "Of what use, sir, is the penny?" *Furthermore, the recent slide in demand for new higher-denomination coinage has forced the Mint to reduce its output of what used to be their core business in business strikes. Needless to say, all of this does not bode well for, and is detrimental to the interests of collectors. *IMO we are best served under the conditions of a sound economy and a stable dollar. I tend to agree that it is almost incomprehensible why there has not been more inflation in the U.S.A. as of early 2010. But perhaps the vast military spending and financial industry bailouts have been more than offset by the collapse in house and commercial real estate prices and the unwillingness of lenders to advance new monies to borrowers at a sufficient pace to spur prices. oly |
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#12
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PING: oly
oly wrote:
On Apr 18, 4:32 pm, "mazorj" wrote: "oly" wrote in message ... ... The greatest currency debasements in history arose from the needs to finance World War I, World War II and Vietnam. True, but I wouldn't stop there. At this point, you can't ignore the cumulative effects of our adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan on the soundness of the dollar. On another level, Soviet expenditures in the Cold War and Afghanistan probably sapped the ruble more than enough to qualify as a contributing factor in the fall of the USSR. The cost of war in blood, treasure, and the pursuit of happiness is orders of magnitude beyond the ken of most people. Even when we do learn it as a hard-knocks lesson in hindsight, every nation in the "civilized" world seems to forget it every generation or two. To tie this back to coin relevance: Devaluation of any currency makes the lowest denominations more and more superfluous. The mill is long gone, as are the half-cent, 2- and 3-cent pieces. These used to have useful places in monetary transactions. Now, people are asking "Of what use, sir, is the penny?" Furthermore, the recent slide in demand for new higher-denomination coinage has forced the Mint to reduce its output of what used to be their core business in business strikes. Needless to say, all of this does not bode well for, and is detrimental to the interests of collectors. IMO we are best served under the conditions of a sound economy and a stable dollar. I tend to agree that it is almost incomprehensible why there has not been more inflation in the U.S.A. as of early 2010. But perhaps the vast military spending and financial industry bailouts have been more than offset by the collapse in house and commercial real estate prices and the unwillingness of lenders to advance new monies to borrowers at a sufficient pace to spur prices. I seem to remember a discussion of this on a talking heads show. The consensus was that the inflation of 1979-80 was the delayed result of accumulated, unbudgeted Vietnam War expenditures. I certainly hope that your assessment above is accurate. By the way, I'm not going to try to find it, but you made a prediction early in 2009 about how many banks would fail by the end of the year. How did that all shake out, high, low, or fairly accurate? James the Moneychanger |
#13
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PING: oly
On Apr 18, 4:41*pm, "Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote:
oly wrote: On Apr 18, 4:32 pm, "mazorj" wrote: "oly" wrote in message .... ... The greatest currency debasements in history arose from the needs to finance World War I, World War II and Vietnam. True, but I wouldn't stop there. At this point, you can't ignore the cumulative effects of our adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan on the soundness of the dollar. On another level, Soviet expenditures in the Cold War and Afghanistan probably sapped the ruble more than enough to qualify as a contributing factor in the fall of the USSR. The cost of war in blood, treasure, and the pursuit of happiness is orders of magnitude beyond the ken of most people. Even when we do learn it as a hard-knocks lesson in hindsight, every nation in the "civilized" world seems to forget it every generation or two. To tie this back to coin relevance: Devaluation of any currency makes the lowest denominations more and more superfluous. The mill is long gone, as are the half-cent, 2- and 3-cent pieces. These used to have useful places in monetary transactions. Now, people are asking "Of what use, sir, is the penny?" Furthermore, the recent slide in demand for new higher-denomination coinage has forced the Mint to reduce its output of what used to be their core business in business strikes. Needless to say, all of this does not bode well for, and is detrimental to the interests of collectors. IMO we are best served under the conditions of a sound economy and a stable dollar. I tend to agree that it is almost incomprehensible why there has not been more inflation in the U.S.A. as of early 2010. *But perhaps the vast military spending and financial industry bailouts have been more than offset by the collapse in house and commercial real estate prices and the unwillingness of lenders to advance new monies to borrowers at a sufficient pace to spur prices. I seem to remember a discussion of this on a talking heads show. *The consensus was that the inflation of 1979-80 was the delayed result of accumulated, unbudgeted Vietnam War expenditures. *I certainly hope that your assessment above is accurate. By the way, I'm not going to try to find it, but you made a prediction early in 2009 about how many banks would fail by the end of the year. *How did that all shake out, high, low, or fairly accurate? James the Moneychanger- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - The inflation that you recall as condensed into the Carter years was really a steady, mounting phenomena from 1966 to 1984 or so. For instance, Nixon instituted "price controls" in 1971. I don't recall and can't find my bank failure prediction easily either. Actually, there were 140 bank failures in 2009. Asset-wise, total assets in failed banks in 2009 was totally off-the-charts because of the failure of giant-sized Washington Mutual. If anyone can find what I posted, I would be interested. Professionally, I was told an official prediction of 250 bank failures in 2010, and I thought that sounded plausible. However, as of 4/19/2010, we are maybe 50 banks or so behind that pace. There remains a shortage of trained bank examiners and qualified bank liquidation personnel. The makes it impossible to go as fast as desirable in evaluating and closing problem shops. oly |
#14
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PING: oly
oly wrote:
The inflation that you recall as condensed into the Carter years was really a steady, mounting phenomena from 1966 to 1984 or so. For instance, Nixon instituted "price controls" in 1971. I don't recall and can't find my bank failure prediction easily either. Actually, there were 140 bank failures in 2009. Asset-wise, total assets in failed banks in 2009 was totally off-the-charts because of the failure of giant-sized Washington Mutual. If anyone can find what I posted, I would be interested. Professionally, I was told an official prediction of 250 bank failures in 2010, and I thought that sounded plausible. However, as of 4/19/2010, we are maybe 50 banks or so behind that pace. There remains a shortage of trained bank examiners and qualified bank liquidation personnel. The makes it impossible to go as fast as desirable in evaluating and closing problem shops. Actually, it was on 2/21/09 that Arizona Coin Collector posted the following: "I have been tracking the number of U.S. BANKS that have failed and was taken over by FDIC for 2009. As of 02/20/09, a total of 14 banks have failed this year. http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/2009/index.html For all of the year 2008, 25-banks failed. I am guessing a 100 banks fail in 2009 at the current rate." A discussion involving me, you, and others then ensued. From my review of this thread, I didn't find that you had made any predictions. James the Archivist |
#15
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PING: oly
In a recent message Peter wrote:
On Apr 18, 7:59*am, oly wrote: There would be no means to "converge" unless the intrinsic values of the coins of the two countries were exactly the same. Well, yes. That was a part of my point. Both countries used the groat (4 pence). It was the Scots that were using less silver in the coin. I am guessing that in a united kingdom, there would be pressure that the same coin should have somewhat similar properties. When James VI of Scotland became King of England also as James I, the two countries remained separate despite having a single monarch. It was not until the Act of Union in the reign of Anne that the decision was made to have a common currency, and the Edinburgh Mint worked hard to produce UK type coins to replace the old Scottish currency. -- Tony Clayton Coins of the UK : http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk Sent using RISCOS using VirtualAcorn-SA running on a PC .... He's not dead, Jim, he's just metabolically challenged. |
#16
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PING: oly
"oly" wrote in message ... On Apr 18, 4:32 pm, "mazorj" wrote: .... To tie this back to coin relevance: Devaluation of any currency makes the lowest denominations more and more superfluous. The mill is long gone, as are the half-cent, 2- and 3-cent pieces. These used to have useful places in monetary transactions. Now, people are asking "Of what use, sir, is the penny?" Furthermore, the recent slide in demand for new higher-denomination coinage has forced the Mint to reduce its output of what used to be their core business in business strikes. Needless to say, all of this does not bode well for, and is detrimental to the interests of collectors. IMO we are best served under the conditions of a sound economy and a stable dollar. I tend to agree that it is almost incomprehensible why there has not been more inflation in the U.S.A. as of early 2010. But perhaps the vast military spending and financial industry bailouts have been more than offset by the collapse in house and commercial real estate prices and the unwillingness of lenders to advance new monies to borrowers at a sufficient pace to spur prices. oly To the extent that economics is "the dismal science," the first part is patently clear to anyone who has delved into it. But like all the other behavioral disciplines, it's "science" component only goes so far. After that, it depends on the art of the practitioner. Even then, economists are at the point where the earliest (al)chemists were centuries ago. They could accurately measure chemical characteristics before and after reactions; but they had no idea what was going on in the process, and they were limited to crude depictions of physical analogs such as atoms being little solid balls of matter. So even after the economists have drawn all the graphs and tables and iterated all their equations, like the ancient chemist's test beaker, a national economy still is a mysterious black box. Events and data go in one end, behavior comes out the other. Remember stagflation, where two supposedly offsetting events (a stagnant economy and inflation) left economists scratching their heads? That wasn't in the traditional models, but that's what we got from the black box. Explanations and revisions of theory came well after the fact. Ditto for the lack of inflation and a continuing strong dollar at a time when you might expect the opposite. IMO you're right, the Great Recession and the financial sector meldowns and other forces have been a major damper on inflation and a sinking dollar. (And let's not forget the damping effect of troop deployment on unemployment rates.) So at some point we will face the seemingly contradictory situation that with recovery will come certain bad things like pent-up inflation and erosion of the dollar and a bump in unemploment. The crucial question will be whether those effects can be held to a "soft landing" or will they flare into the cataclysmic Weimar scenario that you are wont to remind us of. All we can do for now is stare at the black box and wait to see what emerges. Nominal numismatic reference: If we end up with a Weimar scenario, forget new coinage. It'll take a bank box of presibux to buy a candy bar. That Weimar loaf of bread will require an armored car delivery. Common U.S. coins will be sold by the pound to give budding young numismatists and collectors in other countries something cheap to sift through. Except for self-serving congressional mandates for commems and odd-ball designs, the Mint's entire production will shift to meet the skyrocketing demand for bullion coins. (Although we shouldn't totally rule out the possibility of a few runs of base metal coins in the $1,000 - $100,000 range.) Hoard all PM specimens and spend all your common modern business strikes while you can still buy something with them. And a note (so to speak) to investors - stock up on the stock of whatever companies supply Uncle Sam with the special paper and presses and high-tech security gimmicks used in printing currency. As currency printing goes into 24/7 overdrive, their value might even stay a step ahead of the hyper-inflation. |
#17
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PING: oly
On Apr 19, 1:19*pm, Tony Clayton wrote:
In a recent message Peter wrote: On Apr 18, 7:59*am, oly wrote: There would be no means to "converge" unless the intrinsic values of the coins of the two countries were exactly the same. Well, yes. *That was a part of my point. *Both countries used the groat (4 pence). *It was the Scots that were using less silver in the coin. *I am guessing that in a united kingdom, there would be pressure that the same coin should have somewhat similar properties. When James VI of Scotland became King of England also as James I, the two countries remained separate despite having a single monarch. It was not until the Act of Union in the reign of Anne that the decision was made to have a common currency, and the Edinburgh Mint worked hard to produce UK type coins to replace the old Scottish currency. -- Tony Clayton * * * * * Coins of the UK * * *:http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk Sent using RISCOS using VirtualAcorn-SA running on a PC ... He's not dead, Jim, he's just metabolically challenged. I think we know well enough about the historical part - the question is more along the lines of what constituted "money" in those days, compared to today. The order of the State could not force the valuation and circulation of a coin at a much higher tariff than its intrinsic value in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thus the two systems could not "converge" unless the coins were physically the same. Today, the fabric of the coin is typically divorced from its value. The State can and does order the token coin's acceptance in the marketplace. It is important to note that the State couldn't do that, that people resisted such fiat three and four centuries ago - if James I had arbitrarily ordered that Scottish coins be accepted at the same value as the English coins, all the English coins would have disappered overnight and only the base(baser) coins would have been left in circulation. But I think we've been over the topic of the evolution of the "United Kingdom" fairly recently. oly |
#18
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PING: oly
On Apr 19, 3:19*pm, Tony Clayton wrote:
In a recent message Peter wrote: On Apr 18, 7:59*am, oly wrote: There would be no means to "converge" unless the intrinsic values of the coins of the two countries were exactly the same. Well, yes. *That was a part of my point. *Both countries used the groat (4 pence). *It was the Scots that were using less silver in the coin. *I am guessing that in a united kingdom, there would be pressure that the same coin should have somewhat similar properties. When James VI of Scotland became King of England also as James I, the two countries remained separate despite having a single monarch. It was not until the Act of Union in the reign of Anne that the decision was made to have a common currency, and the Edinburgh Mint worked hard to produce UK type coins to replace the old Scottish currency. -- Tony Clayton * * * * * Coins of the UK * * *:http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk Sent using RISCOS using VirtualAcorn-SA running on a PC ... He's not dead, Jim, he's just metabolically challenged. Oops, yes. |
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