The best government money can buy

I've often wondered why, exactly, I'm not represented by my representatives. Not only do these makers of laws not actually write the laws they pass, they often don't even read them. Apparently, they don't need to read them. They are mere pawns of those who pay well to get laws passed in their favor--writing the bills is just icing on the cake. It's symbiotic, so I'm not sure we'll see this system go away any time soon.

This linking up of the new blood with the old system is covered by this CNN article and called "education". Gotta love that. If calling something what it is will make waves, call it something as near the opposite as you can get.

You want representation? Show me the money.

Careful what you say...

In early October, I made an off-hand comment to a friend that the Dow Jones Industrial Average might fall into the 6,000 range (about half its value at the time). Well, it's looking like I'm no longer very far from that number. Nice.

I have difficulty in finding optimism for the situation, too. What's going right? The treasury is clearly out of control, as are our central banks. What might have been a recession will almost certainly now be a depression--with global consequences. How will the U.S. fare? I don't know. What do we manufacture and export anymore? We import almost everything (something with which I'm quite closely familiar, since over90% of my designs are manufactured in China). Lots of currency flowing outward, lots being printed from inside. This may result in momentary deflation, but I can't shake the idea that "printing" one third of our GDP in a couple of months can only lead to staggering inflation in the near future.

The bottom line is that we no longer have a standard of value for our currency. It's based on--what?--faith? Not a very robust means of determining value these days. Gold stocks sell for less than $800, whereas real, physical gold can hardly be obtained at whatever price you like (the old $20 U.S. gold pieces are selling at over $1,000 each).

Might be time to get to know some Amish folks...

4.3 TRILLION of something--guess what?

That's a big number, eh? This is the number of dollars recently doled out by our most benevolent mother, as reported at CNBC. How is mother paying for this? Well, I don't think she is, but she is able to "print" dollars at will, so who cares, right? I do. Ultimately, anyone holding or earning money is paying for this.

My big question is how am I being represented in all this? (Isn't it about time we had another big tea party?) Wouldn't it be odd if the folks responsible for making laws actually followed some of them? Maybe start with the constitution, and throw away anything in conflict with that document as a start.

Oh, well, who is John Galt? As Dennis said in Monty Python's Holy Grail, "You don't vote for king". No, Dennis, you don't. You also don't vote for the secretary of treasury or anyone running a central bank.