a den of vipers and thieves"

Looks interesting - although I was not able to understand and read everything.

Might take a closer look at it later.

Most interesting was to me the hint to 1913.

The greatest problem I see (that comes to my mind) is that in the early years of the last century (and even before tht) it was place that

Jews = Bankers

thus giving Germans maybe even another reasin to exterminate the millions of European Jews.

But anti-semitic thoughts weren't an exclusive thing for Germany : They were going on within whole Europe around that time !
I can even imagine anti-semitic thoughts in the U.S. and even elsewhere !

Now, that thought of "Jews = Bankers" is gone now, with the result of "Banksters" bing rather a class now, instead of a society/people.

I wonder into what this will grow now ...

Besides, we have a similar problem now with Lawyers ...

Is this advocating a return to the gold standard?

Thrasher said:

Is this advocating a return to the gold standard?

Click to expand...

More of a history lesson I think. I can not speak for the author but this is 3 in a 5 part series and his last paragraph hints of an inevitability.

"I’ve now completed three parts of the five part series, documenting the downfall of the great American Empire. Part four, Outlaw Josey Wales, will scrutinize the looting of America by a small group of powerful, connected, super rich men lurking in the shadows, but pulling the strings on our puppet politicians. Lastly, Unforgiven will detail the impending collapse of our economic system and the retribution that will be handed out to the guilty.

The smell of revolution is in the air."

What do you see as the pros and cons of a gold standard?

I think the main con is that it over constrains the ability for a government to assert monetary policy. The good thing is that it controls inflation to some extent.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Looks interesting - although I was not able to understand and read everything.

Might take a closer look at it later.

Most interesting was to me the hint to 1913.

The greatest problem I see (that comes to my mind) is that in the early years of the last century (and even before tht) it was place that

Jews = Bankers

thus giving Germans maybe even another reasin to exterminate the millions of European Jews.

But anti-semitic thoughts weren't an exclusive thing for Germany : They were going on within whole Europe around that time !
I can even imagine anti-semitic thoughts in the U.S. and even elsewhere !

Now, that thought of "Jews = Bankers" is gone now, with the result of "Banksters" bing rather a class now, instead of a society/people.

I wonder into what this will grow now …

Besides, we have a similar problem now with Lawyers …

Click to expand...

People hated Jews for centuries before and will for centuries to come.
Whether rich or poor. Jews are a small minority and are easily picked on by the majority for whatever they see fit.

It's the same with most minorities in the world except that Jews seem to be hated everywhere in the world. (not by everyone, I'm saying everywhere)

By the way Jews were not the bankers only in the early 20th century. A big part of the big banks, including the Federal Reserve have been headed by Jews up until now.

Except that now you can add multimedia companies to the things Jews own or 'control'. Facebook, Google, HP are the biggest examples I know of.

You'd think everyone would want to be Jewish, no ?

Jews held together and, generally, had the ability to do business in a smart way - or at least a strong tradition leaning towards such capacity. I assume that's still the case?

So, given how human beings work - they were a natural target for those who didn't have basic needs met.

One of our first impulses is to want what we can't have, and when that something is also what we need - it gets to be VERY powerful.

So, when faced with people who prefer not to share - which is unfortunately also natural in a world with limited resources - I find it exceedingly easy to understand the reaction against Jews.

Obviously, I don't condone it in any way - I'm just saying what happened during WW2 was fully according to human nature.

The reason it came to such extremes when it did, before and during WW2, is that people were desperate enough not to care who came to power, and the people wanting power were not smart enough to understand the far-reaching consequences of letting Hitler hold the strings. He appealed to the desperate, and he made good on many of his promises.

Sharing is part of Judaism. I know of very few Jews who do not donate to charities or help out in communities and such things are highly regarded.
One such example would be someone who was not very rich, nor very religious. He was much more religious than I am, but that's not hard to do. I forgot what he did for a living, but it's safe to say he wasn't rich, not by Belgium's standards.
His actions however were richer than most people's I've seen in my life. In his spare time, what he would do, would not be hang out drinking, or watching tv and so on... He would go to a hospital, to the children's wing and read books to them. He would go to children with cancer and children with other terminal or almost terminal diseases and read to them. He was respected by everyone in the Jewish communities as well as the staff at the hospitals. He wasn't a grand rabbi or a politician, but his funeral was attended by hundreds of people to pay their respects to him.

It's not a capacity for business that makes Jews get further sometimes, it is however a capacity to work together and make the person next to you come up with you.

Most people only care about their own career and their own families and their own houses. When my brother was looking for jobs however, what happened is that everyone who knew of him started to help and he got several job offers this way. I'm talking about people he himself has barely had contact with...

It really isn't some kind of inherent skill or talent for business dealings. What it is, is a learnt way of wanting to help each other through good and bad. This kind of thing however would never have happened if Jews had become a big and powerful nation in the past able to fight the Babylonians and Romans and so on... At some point Jews would have gone and be like the Romans and Babylonians of the time.

Instead Jews keep getting persecuted, which makes Jews stick to their beliefs and traditions evermore. This includes sticking to each other, which then makes Jews get more powerful and then hated again, and then killed again. It's a vicious cycle, but it's been happening for the millenia now.

I agree that it is just natural for people to follow. It's a shame that people cannot think for themselves though and just follow the rest like ants. If everyone had their own minds, then this probably would not have happened.

I'm not saying Jews don't share - and I was speaking in a past tense. That's because I don't really follow the news of the world.

I do know a bit about WW2 and the widespread poverty just around that time, especially in post-WW1 Germany.

As Jews were holding together in a world where the perception was that you had to hold on to what you had, it's only natural that they didn't distribute their wealth among the rest of the people.

Also, I mentioned "tradition" - because I'm fully aware of how human beings aren't born with a financial sense. But it does require a certain education and a certain experience - which they happened to excel at.

Just the way it goes.

Jews are human beings and we're all alike - and if you take a look at the world, you'll find the VAST majority of wealth and resources are held by the TINY minority.

That's human nature, and Jews don't have a particularly sharing nature that goes beyond it.

I used to be a strong supporter of jews before, but the Israel situation and other things kind of changed that.

GothicGothicness said:

I used to be a strong supporter of jews before, but the Israel situation and other things kind of changed that.

Click to expand...

But that's a very wrong way to look at it. Not all Jews are in support of Israel and not all Jews condone all of Israel's actions even though they are happy the state exists.

So now it's not money or lack thereof that makes people hate Jews, but a country which isn't even close to their own country and because of that Jews get hurt elsewhere in the world still.

Even in Antwerp someone threw in something on fire in a Jewish house because of Israel. How is that even considered normal ?
You don't hear of Pakistanis in England throwing molotov cocktails at Indians' houses in England!!! But hurting Jews is seen as acceptable. It is something that "just happens"...

DArtagnan said:

I'm not saying Jews don't share - and I was speaking in a past tense. That's because I don't really follow the news of the world.

I do know a bit about WW2 and the widespread poverty just around that time, especially in post-WW1 Germany.

As Jews were holding together in a world where the perception was that you had to hold on to what you had, it's only natural that they didn't distribute their wealth among the rest of the people.

Also, I mentioned "tradition" - because I'm fully aware of how human beings aren't born with a financial sense. But it does require a certain education and a certain experience - which they happened to excel at.

Just the way it goes.

Jews are human beings and we're all alike - and if you take a look at the world, you'll find the VAST majority of wealth and resources are held by the TINY minority.

That's human nature, and Jews don't have a particularly sharing nature that goes beyond it.

Click to expand...

But that's the thing. Jews do share, but it's usually amongst themselves. This has become very natural because giving to people who are probably going to kick you out of the country or harass you at some point doesn't make sense.

A majority of resources have always been held by a minority, sharing does not mean giving everything you own to the state and redistributing it. Sharing means giving part of what you own to others.

Religious Christians give 10% tithes to the Church.
Jews give 10% of what they earn to other people or charitable organisations.

This is beyond human nature of wanting to keep everything for themselves. At work in the UK I once tried organizing a giving spree to a cancer charity, the goal was to get £500 in 6 months time. After 3 months, less than £100 had been donated. This is in a workplace of over 100 people.

Even if everyone just gave £1 it should have been more than that...

Be wary of what much of the media reports about Israel. It is frequently HEAVILY slanted and there is much ommission. When you get 'inside' information from people who actually live there (not all of them Jews) you get a vastly different perspective!!

Or if you visit there yourself you can see the oppression.

I'd be paranoid too if I was an israeli. I'm sure most people would behave the same given the circumstances. Their tolerance for killing is a bit disturbing though. Just the other day there were dozen killed in a palestinian border protest. The israeli used machineguns as crowd control when the crowd breached the border. Barely gets a notice now. Same with palestinian bombings. I think the world is beyond over-saturated with news of this conflict.

That was FAR more than a simple border protest, but unless you check out certain sites on the net (to see what was behind it) you would never discover the truth from the news media!! It's sole aim was to embarrass and provoke Israel as part of its attempt to totally destroy the nation.

I mentioned they crossed the border, so they were obviously not peaceful protesters. I only commented on the use of machineguns for crowd control. There was also hundreds wounded.

zero hedge makes good points now and then, but he gets way to obsessed over certain things. One thing is inflation, like in this piece. He, and many like him, take the stance that inflation is in and of itself evil and a tool for the confiscation of wealth by those in power.

While, I can't disagree 100% of that, these guys always miss out on the most important point of the Fed's (and other central banks) inflation policy, which is essentially that a small amount of consistent inflation is a good thing.

And for once, the Fed is right. The reason is not the inflation part of that statement, it's the consistent part. It's virtually impossible to keep the value of currency stagnant over any long term period. At best you get fluctuations above and below a constant (similar to the US in the 19th century).

And when you have inconsistency, the cost of borrowing goes up. Further, if you have inflation for a while, then deflation for a while, anyone with debt gets absolutely destroyed during the deflationary period. Small businesses (the number one wealth creator in the US) get particularly hit hard as they tend to run at very thin margins. Pundits like mr. zero hedge say 'then default!', completely ignoring the fact that when they default, any residual equity they have is likely gone and with their credit shot, they'll likely be unable to get funding again.

So while high inflation is extremely bad too, as it destroys the value of cash and fixed savings, the risk posed by the inconsistency people like him would like to see is every bit as dangerous.

Also, in this particularly post discussing dual parent incomes, he completely ignores the rampant materialism in the US that accounts for a lot of that 'necessity.' In 1964, we didn't have cable, cell phones (and not just one, but now one for every family member), fast food on every corner, most families had one TV IF THAT, internet, etc.

If he wanted to be intellectually honest (a rarity on zero hedge), he'd compare the amount of wages spent on actual necessities in 1964 against what it is today. While there may have been a decline in the real wages of workers, it would not be anywhere near what his graph looks like.