The Gold Standard Paved the Way For Fiat Money
...And Easy War

This article on Alternet, "9 Signs That We May Be Living Through Another Depression" by Joshua Holland cites the Long Depression of the 19th Century as a similar period to ours. It is interesting to note that the "Long Depression" of the latter part of the nineteenth century from about 1873 to 1896 is very congruent with the period in which bimetallism (the original monetary system of the United States) was slowly supplanted by the strict gold standard, a process encouraged by the Bank of England all over the world during this time.

This stagnant period made it obvious that the strict gold standard was incompatible with a healthy growing economy, something the ancients of any sizable society had previously learned. Mankind had indeed been pinned to a "cross of gold."

However, the solution imposed on the world for this problem was the imposition of fiat money controlled by central banks. It can be argued that this "solution" led to the massive and then endemic wars and preparation for war of the twentieth and twenty-first century. War is not cheap, especially modern war that requires expensive sophisticated weapons and standing armies, and the requirement for gold to fund war had always been a challenge and a limiter for the most ambitious king. Fiat money is created in the gleam of a banker's eye. Solicting investment in war became so much less of a challenge for the governments of the twentieth century.

There are still those who believe that a return to the gold standard will solve all our problems.

Nothing could be further from the truth.
The gold standard created our problems.
When money is a scarce commodity there cannot be much money.
When there is little money there is little commerce. 


I will make man scarcer than pure gold, more rare than the gold of Ophir. ISAIAH 13:12

Note: Joshua Holland also cites Paul Krugman's calling up the similarities between today and the "Long Depression" in this June 27, 2010 column, "The Third Depression." 


The Didn't We Know This All Along? Department


Fukushima radiation was a lot worse than stated.

"The Japanese government has more than doubled the estimate for the amount of radiation released by the Fukushima nuclear plant crippled by the earthquake and tsunami.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), a government nuclear watchdog, also said at a briefing in Tokyo today that it believed reactor cores at some of the units at the complex melted much more quickly than the plant operator had previously suggested."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1394902/Japan-nuclear-crisis-More-Fukushima-radiation-released-thought.html#ixzz1OagKDxtA

The Book of Thel, William Blake 

Sunday Morning EDT/

Sunday Evening Japan Time

Spiraling Down the Damn Drain

Update

Let's glance at the situation in Japan. 

It's been a while since we have done that, but as has been observed here all along. 

Things are bad. 

They are getting worse. 

They are still not letting much information out.

Failure To See The Forest For the Trees

Fukushima prefect is home to a flourishing moribund forest products industry. Several managed woodlands are in danger of falling into a state which will make them difficult to use in the near future Digital Journal reports. 

Approximately 341,000 acres (138,000 hectares) in Fukushima Prefecture are under the jurisdiction of five forestry cooperatives, based on information from the Fukushima Prefectural Government and an association of prefecture forestry cooperatives. Located in 11 municipalities, the woodlands are either part of a no-entry zone or required evacuation areas in coming weeks, based on government orders.
“If we can't go in to thin the trees for a year or longer, the underbrush will grow and the saplings that have been newly planted will suffer from lack of sunlight,” said Hiroshi Sagara, a forestry cooperative chief, the Mainichi Daily News (MDN) reports. “The forest will fall into disrepair and trees will fail to grow well.”

An untidy forest must be especially galling and unnerving to the Japanese. 

A small country with limited natural resources must manage well what it has. 

I live on nine acres of Maine woodland which I have begun to maintain in a manner which encourages orderly and healthy growth. It brings great satisfaction to stroll through the more maintained areas. 

Wild and unkempt is not necessarily good.

Yea, you shall leave in joy and be led home secure.

Before you, mount and hill shall shout aloud,

And all the trees in the field shall clap their hands.

Instead of the  brier, a cypress shall rise;

Instead of the nettle, a myrtle shall rise.

These shall stand as a testimony to the Lord,

As an everlasting sign that shall not perish. ISAIAH 55.12-13

Tanks For The Memories

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

-Ambrose Bierce

TEPCO, it seems, according to reports,  is now committed to storing highly radioactive water ad infinitum. 

370 water storage tanks capable of holding a total 40,000 tons of water have been ordered by the corrupt and failing corporation in an attempt to prevent radiation from further contaminating the environment. 

TEPCO is reporting that they expect to lose $7 billion this year, not counting expected disaster compensation for the millions of victims of their incompetence. 

Filthy water cannot be washed. ~African Proverb


Yet they shall attempt to wash the filthy water using a French process. An estimated 15 million gallons of radioactive water remain on site in storage and in the ruined plants with more being created all the time in the attempts to calm down the meltdowns and incineration processes going on in the reactors and cooling bins.

Chico Harlan in the Washington Post tells us:

A potential turning point comes roughly two weeks from now, when Tepco plans to begin a treatment process in which water is sucked from the basement rooms and fed into a special tank, then treated with chemicals that eliminate its radioactivity. The process creates a byproduct of radioactive sludge, which is generally mixed with bitumen, poured into drums, then sealed and buried. The water itself can either be cycled back into reactors or discarded into the ocean.

The treatment system is being set up by Areva, a French company that uses the technology at its La Hague nuclear reprocessing plant, off the Normandy coast. Since 1997, Greenpeace — after taking water samples from La Hague’s discharge pipe — has made repeated claims that the supposedly decontaminated water in fact contains radioactivity levels above the regulatory limit.

The process “is not 100 percent, but it’s better than nothing,” Lochbaum said. “The alternative: you let the water simply evaporate and radioactivity carries to all parts far and wide.”

Mary taught me to go merry go round!
We're all going merry go round!
C'mon, c'mon let's merry go, merry go, merry go round! Boop boop boop!
Merry go, merry go, merry go round! Boop boop boop!
Merry go, merry go, merry go round!
I say let's merry go, merry go, merry go round!
I say let's merry go, merry go, merry go . . .
- Wild Man Fischer

Japanese Prime Minister and corporate flunky Naoto Kan will be stepping down this summer, reports the Wall Street Journal, so he can be replaced by another corporate flunky whose soiled and vile dirty laundry  hasn't yet been exposed to the public. Party Chairman Katsuya Okada  refuses to give a date for Kan's departure  because that would make him a lame duck!

It is no wonder that so many beautiful spirits have refused to be born into this world. 

I do believe I've had enough.

Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize. ~Saul Bellow

An IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) preliminary report blames the Fukushima Daiichi disaster on inadequate preparedness for tsunamis. The tsunami wall around the complex was 5.7 meters high. The wave that devastated the plant complex was 14 meters high. It is sadly amusing that the land that gave us the word "tsunami" was so unprepared for a real tsunami.

Last week the Japanese government revised exposure limits for children to radiation by a factor of twenty times  previously permitted, causing a furor among parents, which caused the government to back down on this policy. 

If these events haven't caused the obedient Japanese people to rise up and slaughter their venal politicians and greedy corporate men, then nothing will. 

Export of green tea from areas near Fukushima has been banned by the Japanese Government. I ask my strict libertarian friends:  Is this action is a proper function of government?

 She wanderd in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, listning

Dolours & lamentations; waiting oft beside a dewy grave,
She stood in silence, listning to the voices of the ground,
Till to her own grave plot she came, & there she sat down,
And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit:

"Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?
Or the glistning Eye to the poison of a smile?
Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn,
Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?
Or an Eye of gifts & graces, show'ring fruits and coined gold?
Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?
Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?
Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror, trembling, and affright?
Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy?
Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?"

The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek
Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har.

- Final lines, The Book of Thel, William Blake

The Book of Thel, Thel Leaning over the "Matron Clay" and the Worm