[POLL] IF Ron Paul looses out in the Primaries, Who would be the next best candidate?

Remember Jimmy getting on TV and telling everyone to wear sweaters?

 

Yeah, how could I forget, that and no Christmas lights in 79 and 80... Amazing thing is, for all the conservation he did, from solar panels at the White House, to governmentally controlled thermostats in every government building, he still managed to spiral the economy into the brink of disaster.. Go figure.

 

Nixon inherited the mess that was the post-Bretton Woods agreement monetary system, and the failures of the Nixon administration in Vietnam to be fiscally conservative.

It's a systemic failure, not confined to the liberals, or the conservatives, Bush, Carter, etc.

The system has been built specifically to allow the government to spend more than we have, and despite American entrepreneurship, ingenuity, and productivity, we're now starting to see the limits of that system. If we weren't "the world's reserve currency", we'd probably already have gone through a massive upheaval. But it's coming, because the only way to rescue the system in the late 70s and early 80s was to raise interest rates, and hide monetary inflation from foreign trading partners.

It's a big, big problem, and if you can't imagine how people made it through the Carter era, then you need to read up on the Great Depression, where it was many times worse.

 

The Carter era was worse, however the US economy was stronger and able to absorb more of the shock.. Much like 9/11 which was a larger blow to the stock market than the crash of 29', our economy was more robust and able to absorb and bounce back from that blow as well.

 

I disagree. The FED did not try to pump up the economy initially in the Depression. It had little to do with the strength of the economy.

The Crash preceded the Depression, but it wasn't the cause for it's duration.

The 9/11 recovery was sped up by quick and easy credit, specifically towards the housing sector.

Don't use the stock market as an indicator of the economy, it gives off a lot of false information, exacerbated by artificially low interest rates and heavy leverage.

 

Worse is a relative term.. Your points, I agree with them all.. The recovery is what was worse, and what I am referring to.. Not so much the conditions. A lot was learned from the Great Depression, including the Stock Market Crash.. Stops were put in place, and fixes were enacted to bolster the economy, if not artificially as you mentioned enough to keep it from completely collapsing... It is those stops, and other measures that took a situations that for all other intense purposes could be gauged as WORSE, and kept them from creating a trickle down effect of continued worse throughout the entire economy.

The stock market is a perfect indicator... It can go up an down based on a current event completely unrelated to the monetary system. It is a good way of indicating what tone of the economy is like, or will be like.. Often times the market knows there is a problem before we do... Hell, the market knew things were getting better..

Sometimes it does not... Ultimately the best indication is going to be two consecutive quarters where there is a drop in the GDP.... We'll see that coming sooner rather than later in the market..

 

Thank you for the polite and excellent reply.

My concern with using GDP as an indicator, is that M3 has become a larger percentage of GDP over time. M1 has actually decreased in favor of M3, with M2 holding relatively constant.

When your GDP is fueled by consumption, that's one thing. When it's fueled by consumption enabled by debt, that's a dangerous thing.

Honestly, I prefer to watch the dollar. It can tell you a lot about the health of an economy.

 

That's exactly what I was thinking. There's hope for him yet.

 

Only partially.. I think you need to look at the dollar, and other factors, including GDP. On the global side of things, I really think you cannot discount the fact that the Euro has been initially artificially inflated to a point where it's "created out of thin air" value weighs heavily against the dollar in an artificial sense.

I suppose if we just magically created a new Amero we will call it for Canada, the US and Mexico, you'd see something similar...

Now, aside from comparing the Euro against the Dollar, why not look at other currencies around the world... You begin to see a much different deficit int either direction. I think the perception of a dollar worth 50% of its values is a bit deceiving when no one yet can tell me "50% as compared to what"?

If you look at things being relative, one could argue that even if the dollar is 50% less than it was, many are making 150% more than they were previously.. So is their dollar really worth less? Especially when you can buy a lot of products about 50% less than you could with that 100% dollar?

To me, it's all relative... You have an artificial currency that has been created in Europe that is one of the driving forces in changing the reality of monetary value.

Is it 100% to blame? Hell no.. Is it 50% to blame? Probably..

 

It's not just the Euro though. You're seeing commodities also gaining, and other currencies.

Australia, 2001 - 2006
2001 1.9346 Australian Dollar
2002 1.8392 Australian Dollar
2003 1.5328 Australian Dollar
2004 1.3578 Australian Dollar
2005 1.3111 Australian Dollar
2006 1.3271 Australian Dollar

Current : 1.13989



Canada, 2001 - 2006
2001 1.5487 Canadian Dollar
2002 1.5704 Canadian Dollar
2003 1.4008 Canadian Dollar
2004 1.3017 Canadian Dollar
2005 1.2115 Canadian Dollar
2006 1.1340 Canadian Dollar

Current : 1.02789



Switzerland, 2001 - 2006
2001 1.6891 Franc
2002 1.5567 Franc
2003 1.3450 Franc
2004 1.2428 Franc
2005 1.2459 Franc
2006 1.2532 Franc

Current : 1.10203