Newly Updated Sept. 27th, 29th, 2009.
A/ Introduction
Man's mind, brain, and body -- taken together, and/or taken apart for teaching and learning purposes -- consists of a myriad of different types of opposite desires and restraints that can be differentiated, classified, grouped into what can be called 'multiple bi-polarities' where choices need to be made -- choices of extremism or choices of greater or lesser moderate balance.
Pathology for the most part tends to be associated with extremism. Extreme righteousness. Extreme narcissism. Extreme self-denial and/or self-control.
In this regard, pathology on the psychological level shouldn't be viewed too much different than pathology on the biochemical level where pathology tends to be associated with such things as: high blood-sugar levels (diabetes0, low blood-sugar levels (hypoglycemia), too acidic, too alkaline, hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, too much fat, not enough fat, too much protein, not enough protein, too many carbohydrates, not enough carbohydrates, too much potassium, not enough potassium, too much iron, not enough iron...and on and on we could go...
For the most part, 'health tends to follow the moderate, middle path', 'The Golden Mean'.
Not always. There is a 'Nietzschean existential factor' that we need to take fully into account. Call this 'the will to self-empowerment' or the 'will to excellence'.
If I want to be a great writer or a great philosopher or a great psychologist, there is a certain 'obsessional' factor here that requires my studying and practicing what I preach and teach for literally countless thousands and thousands of hours. This includes studying great writers and philosophers and psychologists. This goes for any field I or you choose to enter in which we wish to 'strive to be the best we possibly can be' in our particular field(s) of choice.
Thus, a certain element of 'healthy extremism' is involved in 'the will to excel'. However, even here one needs to watch that one's wish and will to excel does not so consume our life that we end up losing our spouse, our family, our friends in the process. Again, even in the will to excel, at some point we need to reconsider the issue of 'balance' and ask ourselves, for example, what is the cost I am paying for my 'workaholism' which may be connected to my 'will to excel'.
Thus, we 'swim' -- and sometimes we 'drown' -- in this swimming pool full of dichotomies, paradoxes, bipolarities and oftentimes, underlying hypocrisies or 'dissociated, disconnected, alienated ego-states' in the personality that may not be properly integrated into the rest of the personality, into the 'whole of the personality', if you will.
The goal of most dialectic bi-polar psychotherapies -- Psychoanalysis, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Transactional Analysis -- including this DGB approach here, is to help bring about more 'wholistic multi-dialectic, multi-bi-polar, integration' both inside and outside of the personality.
-- dgb, Sept. 27th, 29th, 2009.
Evolution -- is 'multiple-bi-polar-dialectic-evolution'. Everything comes about either from 'power over' or from 'integrative union'. Where destruction or anhiliation is not the goal, the second type of evolution among men -- integrative union -- usually works much better with far less human tragedy, traumacy, 'insurgency', and casualties. Not all of the time but most of the time -- dgb, Sept. 27th, 2009.
Physical and psycho-pathology are differentiated -- but similar -- in that they both need to be located on a continuum of a multitude of swinging pendulums of health, balance ('The Golden Mean', 'The Middle Path' -- Aristotle) vs. extremism, extreme swings of the pendulum -- and the resulting physical and/or psycho-pathology that comes with extremism over the edge and, at its worst, into the darkest abyss of humanity, non-humanity, and/or ultimately self-destruction and death.
-- dgb, Sept. 27th, 29th, 2009.
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B/ Other Psychological Models of The Personality and Their Influence
Let us try this again for the upteenth time -- as I once again battle the dichotomoy of simplicity vs. complexity -- and aim to get the DGB model of the personality down to something of reasonable size, clarity, and understandability. Okham's Razor. (All else being equal, the simplest theory is usually the best one.) KISS: KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID.
Having said this, I am trying to integrate a lot of different psychological models here that all have significant value -- to integrate 'the best of the best' if you will.
Synonyms for 'Personality' or 'Personality Structure' in this Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology domain will be: 'Ego', 'Psyche', 'Self', and 'Character Structure'.
View the personality as being like a 'government' or a 'corporation' (preferably egalitarian, democratic, multi-dialectic, and balanced) with numerous different 'departments' (or 'compartments') that have separate functions that are all designed to come together to fulfill the overall function of the government/corporation/personality. In this respect, the personality -- with its different 'ego-states' that I will name and describe, can also be metaphorically compared to the different 'organs' of the body, each having its own separate functions, but each 'working towards the combined good and health of the whole personality/body'.
Some of the other personality models that are out there and which I will simply skim over quickly without giving full justice to, are:
1. The Gestalt Model (Fritz Perls): a '2 Compartment Model': a) 'Topdog'; b) 'Underdog';
2. The Adlerian Model (Alfred Adler): arguably a '3 Compartment Model': a) 'Inferiority Feeling' ('Self-Esteem Deficiency', 'One Down Position', 'Minus Position', 'Insecurity Feeling', 'Unstability Feeling'); b) 'Superiority Feeling' ('Leadership Position', 'One Up Position', 'Superiority Position', 'Fictional Final Goal', 'Lifestyle Goal'); c) 'Means of Moving From a Minus Position to a Plus Position, from a) to b)' ('Compensation', 'Lifestyle Complex', 'Superiority Striving')
3. The Classic Freudian Model: a '3 compartment model': a) 'The Id': biological drives: such as: hunger-food, thirst-water, sexual tension-release, aggression-release, shelter, heat, some might argue stability, rootedness (Erich Fromm), creativity-destructiveness (Erich Fromm), love-hate (Erich Fromm), transcendence (Erich Fromm)...DGB extrapolations: power, money, greed, narcissism, selfishness, revenge, dance, celebration, oral-obsessive-compulsions, addictions...; b) 'The Superego': social conscience, ethical conscience, justice, fairness, reason, righteousness, rejection, 'anal-retentiveness', 'punctuality', 'cleanliness', 'neatness', sadism, dominance, arrogance, 'righteous-narcissism', abandonment, betrayal, discipline, punishment, 'guilt-giver', 'approval-demanding', 'co-operation-demanding', 'acceptance-demanding', 'The Internal Object'; c) 'The Ego': 'The Subjective Sense of Self', 'Me', co-operation-seeking, approval-seeking, pleasing, rebellious, mediating between the Id and the Superego, conflict-resolving, problem-solving, reality-based, reality-interpreting, analyzing, postponing Id gratification, compromising, bending, choosing, caught in the middle between a rock and a hard place (between the Id and the Superego -- two dialectically opposed system of 'wants and needs and gratifications' vs. 'shoulds, and should nots, responsibilities, obligations, social promises, ethics, social values, morals, laws, customs, demands...
4. The Jungian Model (Carl Jung): arguably a '6 compartment model': includes a) 'The Persona' ('The Social Ego' -- 'The Face We Show Society'), b) 'The Shadow' ('The Dark Side of the Personality, , 'Darth Vader' 'The Alter-Ego', 'Mr. or Ms. Hyde), c) 'The Personal Unconscious', d)'The Collective Unconscious', e) 'The (Potential) Self...and a more or less 'assumed' f) 'Central, Integrative, Potentially Healthy Ego'...
5. The Object Relations Model(s) (Freud, Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip...)
Melanie Klein was the biggest neo-Psychoanalytic force here
adding such concepts to Psychoanalysis as: 'External Objects', 'Internal Objects', 'The Depressive Position', 'The Paranoid-Schizoid Position...
Ronald Fairbairn also had a model that was quite interesting which included: a) 'the exciting object'; b) 'the rejecting object'; c) 'the morally idealized and anti-libidinal parent'; d) 'the infantile, libidinal ego'; e) 'the infantile, anti-libidinal ego'; and f) 'the central ego' identifying with the morally idealized parents. Fairbairn's model is a '6 department or compartment model' of the personality. (Harry Guntrip, Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and The Self, 1971,73, p. 98)
6. The Transactional Analysis Model (Eric Berne): Built mainly from an 'Object Relations' perspective of the personality -- and simplified for the 'lay public' -- Berne created a model that looks something like this: a) 'The Nurturing (Encouraging-positive, spoiling-negative) Parent(-Ego); b) 'The Critical, Controlling (Structuring-positive, oppressive-negative) Parent(-Ego)'; c) 'The Adult-(Ego); d) 'The Adapted (Co-operative, Compliant) Child; e) 'The Free (Spontaneous-positive, Immature-negative) Child. That would make this a '5 department or compartment model'.
From these 6 'classic personality theories and models', I have derived and created the following DGB '16 Ego-States model' (which keeps changing, evolving...).
Beyond the 6 classic personality models listed above, this model below also shows the influence of Western Philosophy and Greek Mythology -- as opened up to me by my study of Perls and Gestalt Therapy, Carl Jung and Jungian Psychology (the 'archetypes' and 'mythological gods') and Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy' (1872).
This can also be viewed as a psychological -- and abbreviated -- version of Hegel's Hotel -- internalized.
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C/ A DGB Multiple-Bi-Polar Model of The Personality (Psyche)
This model can be viewed as having '3 vertical floors' -- similar to the Transactional Analysis idea of 'Parent' (thesis), 'Child (anti-thesis), and 'Adult' (synthesis). Or an extended, extrapolated version of Gestalt Therapy: 'Topdog' (thesis), 'Underdog' (anti-thesis), and 'Middledog (synthesis). Or an extended, extrapolated version of Classic Psychoanalysis: 'Superego' (thesis), 'Id' (anti-thesis), and 'Ego' (synthesis). Or a Jungian version of 'Persona' (thesis), 'Shadow' (anti-thesis), and 'Integrative Persona-Shadow-Self' (synthesis). Or an extended, extrapolated version of the Chinese philosophical model: 'yang' (masculinism, testosterone, aggressive-assertiveness-narcissism, thesis); 'yin' (feminism, estrogen, humanistic-sensitivity-empathy-altruism, anti-thesis), 'yin-yang' (integrative health and balance, 'physical, psychological, mental, creative, and conceptual copulation, cross-fertilization, bio and psychological diversity...' synthesis).
A/ The Topdog (Parent-Authority) Level
1. The Nurturing-Supportive Topdog Ego (Short Form: The NSTE)
Mythologically, the projected Greek Gods that are most relevant are 'Gaia' (Goddess of the Earth) and 'Hera' (Goddess of Hearth and Family). Within the family, this part of the personality tends to be most influenced ideally by the 'unconditional love' of the mother which provides a life-long stability factor to the personality. Pathologically speaking, the extreme here is 'pampering', 'spoiling', 'overprotecting'...
2. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Topdog Ego (Short Form: The NHTE)
Concerned with power, egotism, control, dominance, and the underlying biochemical factor of pleasure, sensuality, sex, and sexuality. Pathology enters the picture, the more that 'domination' and/or 'sadism' become overly obsessive factors...
3. The Righteous-Disapproving (Rejecting) Topdog Ego (The RDTE)
Stereotypically and mythologically viewed as a 'paternalistic/father' influence on the personality. Concerned with 'doing things right', 'not making a mistake', 'not being wrong', 'not messing up', 'discipline and self-discipline', and ideally speaking, 'being the best we can be at what we do'. Pathological elements enter the picture in the form of 'over-control' and 'over-self-control', and even more so in the form of 'anal-sadistic-rejecting' elements of the personality.
B/ The 'Chief Executive Officer' of the Personality, and 'Closest Advisors To The Throne' Level
4. The Central Mediating and Executive Ego (Other Names: The Dialectic-(Democratic and/or Autocratic) Ego, Zeus' Ego, Heraclitus' Ego, Lao Tse's Ego, Aristole's Ego, Hegel's Ego) (Short Form: The CMEE)
Makes the final decision on all mediating and executive decisions in the personality. Pathology enters the picture when The Central Ego is not fully aware and/or in control and is dominated by one or more underlying and overpowering, extreme ego-states in the personality, and/or is not 'properly balanced by offsetting ego-states in the personality, and/or is not properly trained in 'healthy, balanced perspectives and approaches' to the study and practice of epistemology, ethics, and a balance between narcissism and altruism, humanism and existentialism, liberalism and conservatism...
5. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic-Survival Ego (Other Names: The Dionysian Ego, The Hobbesian Ego, The Machiavellian Ego, The Schopenhauerian Ego) (Short Form: The NHSE)
The specialized and focused, survival-seeking and narcissistic-pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding, ego-state in the personality.
6. The Rational-Enlightenment (Truth-and-Justice) Ego (Other Names: Apollo's Ego, Bacon's Ego, Diderot's Ego, The Reasonable Ego) (Short Form: The REE)
7. The Romantic-Sensual-Spiritual Ego (Other Names: Aphrodite's Ego, Cupid's Ego, Spinoza's Ego, Goethe's Ego, Rousseau's Ego) (Short Form: The RSSE)
8. The Humanistic-Compassionate Ego (Other Names: The Compassionate Ego, The Altruistic Ego, The Oral-Receptive Ego, Mother Teresa's Ego, The Liberal Ego) (Short Form: The HCE)
9. The Existential-(Self-Accountable) Ego (Other Names: Kierkegaard's Ego, Nietzsche's Ego, Sartre's Ego, The Will to Excel Ego, The Will To Be and Become Ego, The Contactful Ego, The Essence-and-Existence Ego...) (Short Form: The ESAE)
C/ The Underdog (Child-Employee) Level
10. The Approval-Seeking Underdog Ego (Short Form: The ASUE)
Wanting to be co-operative, wanting to please, wanting approval, wanting to be right, wanting to avoid conflict...a combination of 'healthy co-operation' and/or 'unhealthy disapproval-avoiding'...
11. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Underdog Ego (Short Form: The NHUE)
Pleasure-seeking, egotism-seeking, power-seeking -- from a 'one-down, underdog' position...
12. The Rebellious-Deconstructive Underdog Ego (Short Form: The RDUE)
The 'deconstructive-rebellious' ego-state in the personality -- most easily associated with 'the rebellious child'...anarchy, destruction, and self-destruction are its more pathological elements..
D/ Subconscious Ego-States
13. The Dream (Fantasy, and Nightmare) Making Ego (Short Form: The DME)
The 'Dream and Fantasy Making Ego' in the Personality woven into dreams, nightmares, symbolism, art, literature, creativity, and destruction in its more pathological elements...
14. The Personal Subconscious and Transference Template (Short Form: The PSTT)
Home to all of our most significant memories, encounters, relationships, traumacies, tragedies, narcissistic fixations, peak moments, worst moments -- and the 'transferences' that we weave into these experiences that in turn 'guide us into the future'...
15. The Mythological Subconscious and Archetype Template (The MSAT)
The mythological and creative symbolism that we carry with us from birth to death that comes from our most ancient evolutionary roots...
16. The Potential Self Blueprint-Template (for The Evolution of The Personality) (Short Form: The PSBT)
Those talents and skills that we bring with us from birth that seem to lead us in a particular direction, ideally in a direction that seems to 'fulfill our destiny and the blueprint of our unique, individual personality.
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Obviously, I am biased, and everything is subject to change, to the continuing evolution of my own thoughts and ideas, affected by those who influence me, and which I express through Hegel's Hotel.
However, right now, I like the model. Indeed, I can't see it changing too much. I think that I have cut it down to a manageable and understandable model. I think it has many different pragmatic, theoretical, reality-based, and pragmatic-therapeutic applications.
We will discuss some of the more concrete details and applications of this model as we continue to move along.
-- dgb, Aug. 5th, 2009, updated Sept. 27th, 29th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic, Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still In Process...
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Sunday, September 27, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
U.S. commander says Afghan war needs more troops
U.S. commander says Afghan war needs more troops
Mon Sep 21, 7:14 PM
By Peter Graff and Matt Spetalnick
KABUL/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Afghan war will be lost unless more troops are sent to pursue a radically revised strategy, the top U.S. and NATO commander said in a confidential assessment that offers stark choices for President Barack Obama.
In the assessment, sent to Washington last month and leaked on Monday, Army General Stanley McChrystal said failure to reverse "insurgent momentum" in the near term risked an outcome where "defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."
Obama continued to hold off on troop decisions, saying he would be asking tough questions of his national security team.
"We're not going to make any decisions on further troop deployments until we know what exactly is our strategy," he said in an interview on the "Late Show with David Letterman" television show, which was taped in New York on Monday.
Opinion polls show Americans and their European NATO allies turning against the nearly 8-year-old war.
A request for more troops faces resistance from within Obama's Democratic Party, which controls Congress, but refusing to give McChrystal what he wants would open Obama to criticism from Republicans who say he should act quickly.
Democratic Senator Jim Webb said of the assessment, "We have reached a turning point in Afghanistan as to whether we are going to formally adopt nation-building as a policy."
House of Representatives Republican leader John Boehner said he was troubled by reports Obama was delaying action on a troop decision.
"It's time for the president to clarify where he stands on the strategy he has articulated, because the longer we wait the more we put our troops at risk," said Boehner.
REDACTED BY PENTAGON
A copy of the 66-page assessment was obtained by The Washington Post and published on its website with some parts removed at the request of the government for security reasons.
"Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it," McChrystal wrote.
"Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure."
McChrystal, who commands more than 100,000 Western troops, two-thirds of them American, has drafted a separate request spelling out how many more he needs but has not sent it to the Pentagon, which says it is considering how he should submit it.
McChrystal's spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Tadd Sholtis, said while McChrystal did not believe he could defeat Afghanistan's insurgency without more troops, he could carry out a mission with different goals if Obama ordered it.
"The assessment is based on his understanding of the mission as it was presented to him. If there's a change in strategy, then the resources piece changes," he said. He said McChrystal had no intention of resigning if Obama denies his request.
GRIM PICTURE
In his assessment, McChrystal painted a grim picture of the war so far, saying "the overall situation is deteriorating" and calling for a "revolutionary" shift putting more emphasis on protecting Afghans than on killing insurgents.
"Our objective must be the population," he wrote. "The objective is the will of the people, our conventional warfare culture is part of the problem. The Afghans must ultimately defeat the insurgency."
In a methodical critique of the war's conduct over the past eight years, he said NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, troops often lacked basic understanding of Afghan society. He also strongly criticized the Afghan government as having lost the faith of the country's people.
"The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government," McChrystal said.
Among the failures: Afghan prisons had been allowed to become sanctuaries where al Qaeda and Taliban fighters recruit more followers and plan attacks.
Even the West's multibillion-dollar development aid programs came in for blunt criticism: "Too often these projects enrich power brokers, corrupt officials."
In the weeks since the assessment was written, Afghanistan has held a disputed election, which makes it more difficult to persuade Western countries to send additional troops.
European allies, whose governments support the war often over public opposition at home, have begun openly wavering.
Britain has suffered its worst combat casualties in a generation, German troops called in an air strike that killed scores of people, and six Italian soldiers were killed last week by a bomb, all events that sapped European support.
Thousands of Italians packed the streets of Rome on Monday for a state funeral for the soldiers, amid mounting calls for Italy to pull its troops out.
NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the military alliance would stay "as long as it takes to finish our job" and it was premature to present any timetable for withdrawal.
"I think that a fair presentation of his (McChrystal's) assessment is that failure is a possibility but that success is achievable," he told Al Jazeera International. "I fully agree with him, we have to do more but not just more of the same." (Additional reporting by JoAnne Allen, Andrew Gray in Washington and Deepa Babington in Rome; Editing by Simon Denyer and Peter Cooney)
Mon Sep 21, 7:14 PM
By Peter Graff and Matt Spetalnick
KABUL/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Afghan war will be lost unless more troops are sent to pursue a radically revised strategy, the top U.S. and NATO commander said in a confidential assessment that offers stark choices for President Barack Obama.
In the assessment, sent to Washington last month and leaked on Monday, Army General Stanley McChrystal said failure to reverse "insurgent momentum" in the near term risked an outcome where "defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."
Obama continued to hold off on troop decisions, saying he would be asking tough questions of his national security team.
"We're not going to make any decisions on further troop deployments until we know what exactly is our strategy," he said in an interview on the "Late Show with David Letterman" television show, which was taped in New York on Monday.
Opinion polls show Americans and their European NATO allies turning against the nearly 8-year-old war.
A request for more troops faces resistance from within Obama's Democratic Party, which controls Congress, but refusing to give McChrystal what he wants would open Obama to criticism from Republicans who say he should act quickly.
Democratic Senator Jim Webb said of the assessment, "We have reached a turning point in Afghanistan as to whether we are going to formally adopt nation-building as a policy."
House of Representatives Republican leader John Boehner said he was troubled by reports Obama was delaying action on a troop decision.
"It's time for the president to clarify where he stands on the strategy he has articulated, because the longer we wait the more we put our troops at risk," said Boehner.
REDACTED BY PENTAGON
A copy of the 66-page assessment was obtained by The Washington Post and published on its website with some parts removed at the request of the government for security reasons.
"Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it," McChrystal wrote.
"Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure."
McChrystal, who commands more than 100,000 Western troops, two-thirds of them American, has drafted a separate request spelling out how many more he needs but has not sent it to the Pentagon, which says it is considering how he should submit it.
McChrystal's spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Tadd Sholtis, said while McChrystal did not believe he could defeat Afghanistan's insurgency without more troops, he could carry out a mission with different goals if Obama ordered it.
"The assessment is based on his understanding of the mission as it was presented to him. If there's a change in strategy, then the resources piece changes," he said. He said McChrystal had no intention of resigning if Obama denies his request.
GRIM PICTURE
In his assessment, McChrystal painted a grim picture of the war so far, saying "the overall situation is deteriorating" and calling for a "revolutionary" shift putting more emphasis on protecting Afghans than on killing insurgents.
"Our objective must be the population," he wrote. "The objective is the will of the people, our conventional warfare culture is part of the problem. The Afghans must ultimately defeat the insurgency."
In a methodical critique of the war's conduct over the past eight years, he said NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, troops often lacked basic understanding of Afghan society. He also strongly criticized the Afghan government as having lost the faith of the country's people.
"The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government," McChrystal said.
Among the failures: Afghan prisons had been allowed to become sanctuaries where al Qaeda and Taliban fighters recruit more followers and plan attacks.
Even the West's multibillion-dollar development aid programs came in for blunt criticism: "Too often these projects enrich power brokers, corrupt officials."
In the weeks since the assessment was written, Afghanistan has held a disputed election, which makes it more difficult to persuade Western countries to send additional troops.
European allies, whose governments support the war often over public opposition at home, have begun openly wavering.
Britain has suffered its worst combat casualties in a generation, German troops called in an air strike that killed scores of people, and six Italian soldiers were killed last week by a bomb, all events that sapped European support.
Thousands of Italians packed the streets of Rome on Monday for a state funeral for the soldiers, amid mounting calls for Italy to pull its troops out.
NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the military alliance would stay "as long as it takes to finish our job" and it was premature to present any timetable for withdrawal.
"I think that a fair presentation of his (McChrystal's) assessment is that failure is a possibility but that success is achievable," he told Al Jazeera International. "I fully agree with him, we have to do more but not just more of the same." (Additional reporting by JoAnne Allen, Andrew Gray in Washington and Deepa Babington in Rome; Editing by Simon Denyer and Peter Cooney)
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
President Obama: A DGB Evaluation of Obama's Strengths, Difficulties, and Challenges in His First Year of Office
Just finished...Sept. 16th-17th, 2009.
Just finished...Sept. 16th-17th, 2009.
President Obama kind of reminds me of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Trudeau was very charismatic, very idealistic, had 'socialist leanings' -- probably more so than Obama -- and Trudeau, at least at the beginning, inspired so much hope and optimism that his following actually reached 'fanatical' proportions to the point where it became labelled as 'Trudeaumania'. Similarly, to what we saw in Obama's pre-election campaign which could have easily -- if it wasn't already -- been labelled as 'Obamamania'.
The issue with Trudeau -- as it is currently with Obama -- is the money. The people of the United States of America are worried about the money. They are rightly asking the question: Where is all the money going to come from to pay for all these 'noble deeds'?
And so far we have seen where it is coming from. It is coming from a huge escalation on the already stupendous or horrendous American national debt which, in effect, means somewhere down the line -- on the collective backs of the American taxpayers.
Like a person in debt, and with an unbalanced budget, who keeps piling more and more debt onto his or her personal credit cards, with more and more accumulative interest -- one day that personal (and public) debt has to be addressed and answered for. Or someone else is going to put the 'hammer' down and call you on all that debt.
Acting as if the debt doesn't exist, seemingly pretending it doesn't exist, and trying to make it look like you are 'running a healthy budget in the black' -- when you are most certainly not, indeed, blatantly the opposite -- can be viewed as a form of 'economic denial'. An 'ostrich with its head in the sand' approach to skyrocketing public, national debt.
It seems obviously apparent to me that the American people -- perhaps exasperated by the anti-Democrat-rhetoric of The Republican Party -- are becoming increasing anxious and indeed angry about this skyrocketing national debt. Rightly so -- it is a big problem, that will keep getting bigger until it is finally concretely addressed, which doesn't mean piling more and more money on the National Credit Card. This may make someone rich but it won't be the individual tax-paying American people. Coupled with this, there has to be a growing concern for 'foreign loan sponsors' -- like China -- who it would seem is loaning the American Government more and more money.
Now I don't profess to have any kind of specialized knowledge in economics but here is what I remember by father teaching me about American Economics 101. There used to be a time when all American money was backed by American gold (held in Fort Knox).
However, there came a time, somewhere in American History (someone knowledgeable in the details of this aspect of American history might be able to fill me in more here) where some American President and Government decided to start printing American money without the 'solid backing of corresponding gold bars from Fort Knox'. The result here would seemingly be the 'deflation' of the value of the American dollar as there would be nothing of 'physical gold value' to back the printing of this money. It would be like giving a credit card to a person who didn't have the income capability of paying for, and balancing, the credit limit of the credit card.
Perhaps things work differently today. Perhaps American money that is printed and distributed -- and added to the National Debt -- is borrowed from countries like China. Obviously, there would seem to be an inherent danger here as well -- the danger of potentially more and more foreign ownership of America -- and American companies -- in lieu of money owed a country like China. There are different ways of 'taking over a country' -- and taking over a country's economy, dollar by dollar, would certainly seem to be one very good -- or bad, depending on your perspective -- way of doing it. Canada used to be petrified about America taking over Canada's economy, dollar by dollar. Well perhaps, today America has good reason to fear for the possibility of a country like China taking over its economy, dollar by dollar, loan by loan.
No President of recent history -- meaning at least President Bush Jr. and President Obama -- seem to want to tackle the problem of the skyrocketing American National Debt. With understandable -- if not sufficient -- political reason. When the American Government pulls the plug on government spending and/or raises government taxes, neither of these solutions to the rising national debt problem is likely going to go over too well with the American public, many of whom, in the middle of a bad recession, are already fighting tooth and nail for their very economic survival.
Everyone would love to own a credit card that keeps giving you more and more money to spend -- and no 'due date' by which you ever have to pay this money back.
No recent President of America (meaning again, Bush and Obama) seems to want to give any 'due date' at which point all this rising American debt load is finally going to be addressed and expenses are going to be cut, and/or taxes raised.
Perhaps if this recession ever ends, and unemployed American workers actually do start going back to work, then the resulting 'expanding workforce tax base' will have sufficiently increased such that 'no extra load' will have to be added to the American people as a whole. Or more likely, this is probably at least partly 'wishful thinking' and somewhere, sometime, down the line here, there is going to be the need for an 'American National Crunchdown' where either government expenses are either going to have to be radically reduced and/or taxes significantly raised.
In the 1980s, after both Trudeau and Mulroney had both lavishly spent government-taxpayers' money (Mulroney learned very well from Trudeau on how a 'Liberal-Socialist-Minded Politician' can spend government money lavishly, and/or idealistically, to appease and please the lower classes, and also to help them out, while at the same time appeasing and pleasing Capitalist Corporations with lavish spending in their direction as well including Mulroney's own personal lavish spending and ensuring his own post-political-economic 'pension plan'...), then to 'compensate' for all this lavish Government spending, Mulroney introduced the infamous 'Goods and Services Tax (GST)' which dramatically increased government coffers much to the chagrin of the people bearing the brunt of this new tax system -- the Canadian people.
Soon to be Prime Minister Jean Chretien ran a Liberal election campaign -- and won -- promising the Canadian people that he would get rid of the much hated 'GST' but by the time he got into office for a short period of time he began to fully realize what a government 'cash-cow' the GST was -- and he never, in his 10 years in office, got rid of it. Neither has any Prime Minister after Chretien (meaning Martin and Harper). It would seem that no Canadian Prime Minister wants to get rid of the GST tax-cash cow that the Canadian people have come to passively and fatalistically accept on the heels of the combined over-spending of both Trudeau and, even worse, Mulroney.
At least Trudeau's overspending was based on idealistic-altruistic political ideology. Mulroney's ideology was -- in this author's editorial opinion -- almost completely narcissistically motivated. He learned from Trudeau that 'liberal generosity' had its 'narcissistic benefit' in terms of keeping the support of 'Liberal, Socialist-Minded voters' while at the same time his lavish Corporate spending also maintained the support of more 'Conservative-Capitalist' power-people and like-minded voters.
In a couple of different ways, Obama -- in the way he has acted as President, as opposed to the 'over-idealized' politician on the pre-election campaign trail -- reminds me of both Trudeau and Mulroney. Trudeau mainly -- particularly, in terms of character and political ideology.
But in some ways -- and he would hate to hear this, I am sure -- Obama has reminded me of both Mulroney and Bush in his political actions as well. There does seem to have been an element of 'Narcissistic Capitalist-Corporate Collusion' as well. And this is probably the last thing the American people -- especially his hardcore 'Democrat voters' -- wanted to see from Obama. A 'Bush-re-run'.
So let me see if I can focus in on my criticisms of President Obama's political actions to date:
1. There has been too much of 'a rush for political action' particularly when the actions executed (and/or in the process of being executed) involve(d) a colossal increase in the American debt load;
2. There have been -- to my knowledge -- two questionable 'stimulus packages' that have been very 'Bush-like'. Almost 'clone-repetitions' of what Bush did -- and with similar consequences.
a) Putting literally billions of dollars back in the hands of the people, the CEOs, who created the banking-mortgage scandal and financial collapse in the first place. In effect, this was like putting even more money back in the hands of the robbers who robbed the bank in the first place. How smart was that? You put billions of dollars back in the hands of unethical people and you naively actually expect them to this time 'behave ethically' and/or on the basis of 'guilt and moderation'. Not likely going to happen. And it didn't happen. The bankers-and-mortgage-loan people did exactly the same thing again as they did the first time -- went on 'lavish spa trips' and took lavish, multi-million dollar bonuses. The American people had to collectively shake their heads on this one.
Where were the legislative counter-control measures? No spas. No bonuses. Either behavior would spawn either a criminal prosecution of a 'new law to this same effect' and/or spawn a 'demand for the recall of all the money given to the company'.
Indeed, I think many people are asking the question: why was the money even given back to these people in the first place? Reward the banks and the bank owners who didn't participate in this type of corporate behavior the first and second time around; not the banks and bankers who not once but twice, maybe even three times, invaded and essentially robbed public coffers.
Obama -- essentially falling into this same trap again, either by accident, or on purpose -- struck a very 'Bush-like Corporate-Schmoozing-Chord' in the already very sensitive and traumatically damaged collective American psyche. And multi-billions of dollars of taxpayers' money seemingly went flying out of the public coffers and into the private hands of a collective few 'power-people' who had no interest in the general welfare of the American people -- whatsoever. Why?
b) Add to the economic, business, and unemployment woes and anxieties of the American people, the current controversy around President Obamas wish to implement his universal health care plan -- and potentially more billions of dollars leaving public coffers and further increasing the American National debt load -- and you have the potential for significant national emotional volatility -- perhaps even a Boston Tea Party-like national emotional volatility. It is hardly the type of underlying national emotional feeling that you want to try to pass your American Universal Health Care Plan-Dream over top of. National chaos and, in effect, rhetorically at least, civil war could be released from its underlying emotional volcano of intense anxious, even panic-stricken -- and compensatory angry -- feeling.
I would not want to pass such a bill under such an underlying feeling of national unrest and division.
Slow down President Obama. Dont try to force a bill through the Senate that maybe the bulk of the American people collectively do not want right now.
Timing is everything in politics and history -- and maybe trying to pass what could amount to a very expensive health bill in the midst of a very deep recession is not a good time to try to pass such a bill.
Maybe the American people want you to address their economic problems first; their health problems second or third. (There is still the more than little matter of two rather pricey and traumatic wars still going on in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan right now too.)
c) Regarding the two wars in the Middle East: Has there really been any significant change in war policy since President Obama took office. Yes, there has been a transfer of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan (and seemingly more violence in Iraq since many of the troops left). But what is the progress in Afghanistan? Or has there been any? Will there ever be any? Can Americans expect to be locked up in the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Taliban War for 3, 5, or 10 more years?
And can the Americans really expect their economy to significantly improve while they continue to be locked up in either or both of these two wars?
Does the famous Dwight Eisenhower speech about the military-industrial complex still have any relevance today?
Is the American Government in any way tied up to the idea of wars being narcissistically manufactured just to appease the American Military-Industrial Complex while at the same time offering up righteous explanations and justifications for wars that may be created or manufactured for narcissistic political-economic and or corporate-economic reasons -- not legitimate reasons of self-defense?
Finally, is there any credibility behind the so-called facts in this fantasy interview that is circulating on the internet between Charlie Sheen and The President? Or is just a page-full of conspiracy-hogwash? What theory do you believe? The standard, orthodox Government(s) explanation? Or the theory of a government conspiracy and cover-up?
These are the questions that I will leave you with today as I move on with my day to do other things -- like find a job that will support me again after i just lost my last cushy, middle class $50-60,000 job. It is hard to fully and emotionally understand the full depth of what a recession really means until you are on the outside looking in rather than on the inside looking out. Jobs and money that used to be easy to come by 10 years ago is not so easy to come by today. Or at least that has been my experience so far. Obviously, I need to both focus and broaden my search.
Right now I am on the outside of what used to be economic stability.
And that is a very anxiety-provoking -- indeed, panicky -- place to be.
It necessitates door-to-door action; not writing essays that dont pay my bills.
So on that note, I will leave you for the day, put on my suit, and see if i can muster up a new job.
Essays can wait; bills can't.
Economics precedes and supersedes self-actualization.
Perhaps that is a corollary of Sartres famous statement: Existence precedes essence.
It certainly has a Marxian ring to it.
Paraphrasing Marx: Narcissistic political and economic ideology precedes -- and, operating from the Shadows of Human Selfishness and Greed, both underlies and, probably more often than not, supersedes and blocks out of the sunlight completely -- ethical idealism.
Say it aint so, Dave!
I wish I could but I cant.
Because I think it generally is so.
Robbing the ethical idealism out of both,
Capitalism and Socialism alternatively and together,
Likewise with Liberalism and Conservatism,
Religion and Atheism,
Wherever men and women travel,
And accumulate power,
The greater the power,
The greater the group -- and individual -- narcissism.
Follow the trail of the money,
Huge money,
And traveling not far behind,
Is human greed and narcissism.
I dont think this is totally what Adam Smith or Ayn Rand had in mind by Capitalism although even Adam Smith, I believe said, that he didnt trust businessmen. I will have to dig for the exact quote. Thomas Jefferson -- rightly so -- said that he didnt trust bankers.
Can it be any different?
The only way I can see it being any different is if there was complete monetary transparency around the intake and outgoing of all government and or corporate monetary funds. Corrupt, greedy, narcissistic business people like to work in the dark, move their money around in the dark, so no one can see what they are doing. Throw the light on the situation -- throw the corrupt politician or businessman into a lighted room, a transparent room -- and he cant function the way he wants to function. Which is basically to steal under the cover of darkness.
Light up the dark rooms that they operate in. Throw the floodlights on them. And then we will know who is transferring money where.
Visions of Mulroney receiving a suitcase of cash money, doing business -- after he had left office -- with an international lobbyist who was still looking for a lucrative Canadian government contract, and still looking at Mulroney as a government influence-peddler.
Mulroney didnt like it too much when the Canadian floodlights froze on this particular economic transaction between him and the European businessman.
Quite frankly, I enjoyed watching him squirm.
Similarly, with Conrad Black who didn't look too good being caught leaving one of his offices in the middle of the night with a box of papers/files in his arms.
That might have been the deciding piece of evidence in his case. If he wasn't guilty, then why was he doing that? I like Black more than I like Mulroney but corporate narcissism needs to show some boundaries, some restraint -- some ethics and integrity. Nobody is above the law -- or at least, nobody should be above the law.
Not even ex-prime-ministers, Senators, Governors, Corporate Power-Leaders, bankers, lobbyists...
There are a few businessmen on Wall Street -- and perhaps even in the American Government -- who I would have wished for the same -- or more than -- what Black got.
Some power-people -- maybe many power-people both inside and outside of the government may have gotten off of the Sub-Prime Mortgage Scandal, The Hedge Fund Phenomenon, and the Wall Street Financial collapse -- far too easily, some even with gold-plated goodbye packages.
Too bad.
I still believe in the humanistic spirit and good intentions of President Obama.
But there are some areas of operation that he has slipped up in -- and perhaps lost some of the trust and respect of the American people -- that he may need to go back and re-analyze what went wrong as well as perhaps modify and/or slow down the speed of his forward master game plan.
1. The ideal of 'universal health care' is a good, humanistic social ideal. People without medical insurance, or who can't afford medical insurance, and with serious health problems, should not be faced with the choice between personal and/or family bankruptcy and not getting proper or sufficient medical treatment. It is unrealistic to expect a person -- or even a husband and wife team -- who is/are making $10 to $20 an hour to pay for a 'necessary service' for very long that may cost $200 per hour and/or a serious medical operation that may cost upwards of 3 or 400,000 dollars. Either the operation is not going to happen or many lower to middle class families are going to financially collapse under this type of economic weight load.
Up here in Canada, my son was born premature by about 2 and a half months. He weighed less than 2 pounds. But Woman's College Hospital in Toronto took care of him in an incubator with his mother and I checking in on him every day for the one or two months that he stayed in the hospital. With all due respect, if Canada didn't have universal health care, I hate to think what would have happened to my life and his. The consequences could have been medically and/or economically horrific. Today, my son is a happy, healthy, smart young man -- almost 25 years old and strong as a horse, in a dangerous profession, a graduated and working Arborist, scaling to the tops of the tallest Elm and Maple trees that would make me quake in my boots just looking at the height of them. He has a healthy 6 year old daughter, and a fine future ahead of him.
Still, Obama has to watch the money. I don't think Americans in general think that President Obama is paying sufficient attention to the public til and the skyrocketing public debt load. I heard on CNN last night that 7 preceding Presidents have all tried to put through Universal Health Care -- and failed. Not to mention Senator Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.
America is locked up in two very expensive wars, has gone through a financial collapse on Wall Street, a collapsing car industry, and the worst recession that they have experienced probably since The Great Depression.
All of this makes it horrible timing for President Obama to try to push through this very costly Universal Health Bill -- regardless of the way it looks in its various potential renditions.
If there had been no war in Iraq, then it probably could have been paid for by now. But things today are the way they are, and nothing can be changed about that.
On top of that, President Obama is trying to push this health bill through on the heels of two multi-billion dollar 'economic stimuli packages' (which came on the heels of one multi-billion dollar stimulus-package by Bush -- with Obama partly involved in that too.)
All of this is to say what I have already said: that the timing on trying to push through this universal health bill -- or some modification of it -- is really, really bad.
I think the people of America want President Obama to address the economy first and foremost -- and that doesn't mean adding billions and billions of dollars of more debt load onto the American taxpayer. Somebody is going to have to pay for it eventually -- and if not this generation of Americans -- it is a terrible legacy to leave the next series of generations of American kids and grandkids.
How many billions and billions of dollars can you keep adding to the public debt and still keep trying to hide the fact that America isn't already essentially bankrupt?
President Obama is a very smart man -- too smart to act as a politician with unlimited public funds at his disposal (Trudeau, Mulroney and many, many other politicians have tried it before him: 'We will just put it on the tab!')
Perhaps the first three steps in this whole medical problem is to:
1. Analyze and address the problem of 'pharmaceutical gouging'.
2. Make sure that hospitals and doctors are not gouging patients either.
3. Analyze and address the possible -- or more likely very real -- problem of 'insurance colluding and gouging'. (I have seen it in the taxi industry with commercial car insurance monopolies and/or collusion which is also affected by mechanics and/or body shops that can -- and do -- also gouge both drivers and insurance companies.)
In politics, timing is everything. And speed of action is not always a good 'political' thing as it can make citizens who are already reeling in economic stress very emotionally volatile as they flip between 'almost panic-stricken fear' and 'compensating anger to rage'.
'President Obama, one more time, I think you have picked a very, very bad time to try to push through your health bill as fast as you are trying to push it through. This is not -- as some have made it out to be about racism (except on the extremist Republican fringes).'
More aptly and more simply,
It is about economics.
-- dgb, Sept. 16th-17th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still In Process...
....................................................................
United States Bullion Depository
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coordinates: 37.882983°N 85.965099°W
The United States Bullion Depository.
The United States Bullion Depository, commonly called Fort Knox, is a fortified vault building located near Fort Knox, Kentucky, which is used to store a large portion of United States official gold reserves and, occasionally, other precious items belonging or entrusted to the federal government.
The United States Bullion Depository holds about 4,603 tons (4 176 metric tonnes) of gold bullion (147.4 million troy ounces[1]). It is second in the United States only to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's underground vault in Manhattan, which holds about 5,000 metric tonnes of gold in trust for many foreign nations, central banks and official international organizations.
Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Construction and security
3 Gold and coin holdings
4 In popular culture
4.1 Cinema
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
[edit]History
Before the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1932, gold coins had circulated freely in the United States as legal money, and gold bullion was owned by banks and other private entities. In early 1933, as part of the New Deal, the U.S. Congress enacted a package of laws which removed gold from circulation as money, and which made private ownership of gold in the U.S. (except for coins in collections or jewelry such as wedding rings) illegal. All gold in circulation was seized by the government in exchange for dollars at the fixed rate of $20.67 per ounce. Owners of gold bullion in the U.S. were also required to trade it for other forms of money. All of this left the government of the United States with a large amount of gold metal, and no place to store it.
Seal of the U.S. Mint
In 1936, the U.S. Treasury Department began construction of the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, on land transferred from the military. The Gold Vault was completed in December 1936 at a cost of $560,000, or about $7.5 million in 2007 dollars. The site is located on what is now Bullion Boulevard at the intersection of Gold Vault Road.
The first gold shipments were made from January to July 1937. The majority of the United States' gold reserves were gradually shipped to the site, including old bullion and more newly made bars made from melted gold coins. Some intact coins were stored, as well. The transfer needed 500 rail cars and was sent by registered mail, protected by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
During World War II, the repository held the original U.S. Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. It also held the reserves of several European countries and several key documents from Western history; for example, it held the Crown of St. Stephen, part of the Hungarian crown jewels, given to American soldiers to prevent them from falling into Soviet hands. The repository also held one of four known copies (exemplifications) of Magna Carta, which had been sent for display at the 1939 New York World Fair, and when war broke out, was kept in America for the duration.
[edit]Construction and security
Below the fortress-like structure lies the gold vault, which is lined with granite walls and is protected by a blast-proof door that weighs 22 tons. No single person is entrusted with the entire combination to the vault. Various members of the Depository staff must dial separate combinations known only to them. Beyond the main vault door, smaller internal cells provide further protection.[2]
The facility is ringed with several fences and is under armed guard by officers of the United States Mint Police. The Depository premises are within the site of Fort Knox, a United States Army post, allowing the Army to provide additional protection. The Depository is protected by numerous layers of physical security, alarms, video cameras, armed guards, and the Army units based at Fort Knox, including Apache helicopter gunships of 4/229 Aviation based at Godman Army Airfield, the 16th Cavalry Regiment, training battalions of the United States Army Armor School, and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Infantry Division, totaling over 30,000 soldiers, with associated tanks, armored personnel carriers, attack helicopters, and artillery.
[edit]Gold and coin holdings
Gold holdings peaked during World War II at 649.6 million troy ounces (20,205 metric tons). Current holdings are around 147.3 million ounces[1] (4,570 t) in around 368,000 standard 400 troy ounce (12.4 kg or 27.4 lb avoirdupois) gold bars. At April 2008 rates of $913 an ounce it is worth roughly $134 billion, while the World War II total of 649.6 million troy ounces would be worth approximately $593 billion.[3]
The depository also holds monetary gold coins. It also holds several specimens of Sacagawea Dollar coins made out of 22kt (91.6% pure) gold from blanks that are used to strike the $25 half-ounce American Gold Eagle bullion pieces made for an unknown project. The 1933 Double Eagle was also a temporary resident after transfer from 7 World Trade Center in July 2001, until its sale in July 2002 for $7.59 million. Sometime in 2004, 10 additional allegedly stolen 1933 Double Eagles were transported to Fort Knox for safekeeping.
Not all the gold bars held in the depository are of exactly the same composition. The mint gold bars are nearly pure gold. Bars made from melted gold coins, however, called "coin bars," are the same composition as the original coins. Unlike many .999 fine gold bullion coins minted in modern times for holding-purposes today, the coin alloy for pre-1932 U.S. coins, which were intended for circulation, was a much tougher and wear-resistant .900 fine alloy (balance copper) derived historically from 22-carat crown gold (a similar alloy consisting of .917 gold and the balance copper, used to mint gold sovereigns).
All of the gold in the depository, if pure, could form a cube 19.7 feet (6 m) on a side—a volume of 216 m³. In comparison, all the gold ever mined in the world would form a cube 64.3 feet (19.6 m) on a side, with a volume of approximately 7500 m³.[4]
The United States holds more gold bullion than any other country, with about 2.37 times that of the next leading country, Germany.
[edit]In popular culture
The bullion depository has become a symbol of an impregnable vault, leading to phrases such as "locked up tighter than Fort Knox" or "safer than Fort Knox".
[edit]Cinema
The 1937 RKO Lee Tracy film Behind the Headlines climaxes in a plan to steal gold bars en route from Washington D.C. to Fort Knox.
The 1951 Bud Abbott & Lou Costello film Comin' Round the Mountain has the two using a treasure map to find a stash of gold. When they finally reach the gold at the end of the film, they find themselves in the middle of Fort Knox and are immediately arrested.
The 1951 Warner Bros. short 14 Carrot Rabbit featuring Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam follows a similar routine, with Sam being led away by guards at the end. Bugs is also under suspicion, but slips away on a large boat.
The popular 1959 Ian Fleming-written James Bond novel Goldfinger, and the 1964 movie of the same name, are about a criminal plot called "Operation Grand Slam" to break in to the U.S. Bullion Depository. In the book, Auric Goldfinger's plan is to steal the gold. In the movie, it is to render the gold contained in the Depository radioactive and useless with a nuclear device, crippling the economy and driving up the price of the gold Goldfinger already has. The movie was set before the U.S. dollar ceased to be backed by gold in 1971.[5]
[edit]See also
Federal Reserve System
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
List of attractions and events in Louisville, Kentucky
Official gold reserves
Nixon Shock - U.S. President Richard Nixon took the United States off the Gold Standard, stopping the direct convertibility of United States dollars to gold.
[edit]References
^ a b "About the Mint". Retrieved 2008-10-06.
^ U.S. Treasury - Fact Sheet on the Fort Knox Bullion Depository
^ Schoen, John W. (April 30, 2007). "How come the dollar keeps falling?". MSNBC. Retrieved 2008-10-06.
^ World Gold Council -FAQs
^ Goldfinger (1964)
[edit]External links
Factsheet from United States Mint
Just finished...Sept. 16th-17th, 2009.
President Obama kind of reminds me of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Trudeau was very charismatic, very idealistic, had 'socialist leanings' -- probably more so than Obama -- and Trudeau, at least at the beginning, inspired so much hope and optimism that his following actually reached 'fanatical' proportions to the point where it became labelled as 'Trudeaumania'. Similarly, to what we saw in Obama's pre-election campaign which could have easily -- if it wasn't already -- been labelled as 'Obamamania'.
The issue with Trudeau -- as it is currently with Obama -- is the money. The people of the United States of America are worried about the money. They are rightly asking the question: Where is all the money going to come from to pay for all these 'noble deeds'?
And so far we have seen where it is coming from. It is coming from a huge escalation on the already stupendous or horrendous American national debt which, in effect, means somewhere down the line -- on the collective backs of the American taxpayers.
Like a person in debt, and with an unbalanced budget, who keeps piling more and more debt onto his or her personal credit cards, with more and more accumulative interest -- one day that personal (and public) debt has to be addressed and answered for. Or someone else is going to put the 'hammer' down and call you on all that debt.
Acting as if the debt doesn't exist, seemingly pretending it doesn't exist, and trying to make it look like you are 'running a healthy budget in the black' -- when you are most certainly not, indeed, blatantly the opposite -- can be viewed as a form of 'economic denial'. An 'ostrich with its head in the sand' approach to skyrocketing public, national debt.
It seems obviously apparent to me that the American people -- perhaps exasperated by the anti-Democrat-rhetoric of The Republican Party -- are becoming increasing anxious and indeed angry about this skyrocketing national debt. Rightly so -- it is a big problem, that will keep getting bigger until it is finally concretely addressed, which doesn't mean piling more and more money on the National Credit Card. This may make someone rich but it won't be the individual tax-paying American people. Coupled with this, there has to be a growing concern for 'foreign loan sponsors' -- like China -- who it would seem is loaning the American Government more and more money.
Now I don't profess to have any kind of specialized knowledge in economics but here is what I remember by father teaching me about American Economics 101. There used to be a time when all American money was backed by American gold (held in Fort Knox).
However, there came a time, somewhere in American History (someone knowledgeable in the details of this aspect of American history might be able to fill me in more here) where some American President and Government decided to start printing American money without the 'solid backing of corresponding gold bars from Fort Knox'. The result here would seemingly be the 'deflation' of the value of the American dollar as there would be nothing of 'physical gold value' to back the printing of this money. It would be like giving a credit card to a person who didn't have the income capability of paying for, and balancing, the credit limit of the credit card.
Perhaps things work differently today. Perhaps American money that is printed and distributed -- and added to the National Debt -- is borrowed from countries like China. Obviously, there would seem to be an inherent danger here as well -- the danger of potentially more and more foreign ownership of America -- and American companies -- in lieu of money owed a country like China. There are different ways of 'taking over a country' -- and taking over a country's economy, dollar by dollar, would certainly seem to be one very good -- or bad, depending on your perspective -- way of doing it. Canada used to be petrified about America taking over Canada's economy, dollar by dollar. Well perhaps, today America has good reason to fear for the possibility of a country like China taking over its economy, dollar by dollar, loan by loan.
No President of recent history -- meaning at least President Bush Jr. and President Obama -- seem to want to tackle the problem of the skyrocketing American National Debt. With understandable -- if not sufficient -- political reason. When the American Government pulls the plug on government spending and/or raises government taxes, neither of these solutions to the rising national debt problem is likely going to go over too well with the American public, many of whom, in the middle of a bad recession, are already fighting tooth and nail for their very economic survival.
Everyone would love to own a credit card that keeps giving you more and more money to spend -- and no 'due date' by which you ever have to pay this money back.
No recent President of America (meaning again, Bush and Obama) seems to want to give any 'due date' at which point all this rising American debt load is finally going to be addressed and expenses are going to be cut, and/or taxes raised.
Perhaps if this recession ever ends, and unemployed American workers actually do start going back to work, then the resulting 'expanding workforce tax base' will have sufficiently increased such that 'no extra load' will have to be added to the American people as a whole. Or more likely, this is probably at least partly 'wishful thinking' and somewhere, sometime, down the line here, there is going to be the need for an 'American National Crunchdown' where either government expenses are either going to have to be radically reduced and/or taxes significantly raised.
In the 1980s, after both Trudeau and Mulroney had both lavishly spent government-taxpayers' money (Mulroney learned very well from Trudeau on how a 'Liberal-Socialist-Minded Politician' can spend government money lavishly, and/or idealistically, to appease and please the lower classes, and also to help them out, while at the same time appeasing and pleasing Capitalist Corporations with lavish spending in their direction as well including Mulroney's own personal lavish spending and ensuring his own post-political-economic 'pension plan'...), then to 'compensate' for all this lavish Government spending, Mulroney introduced the infamous 'Goods and Services Tax (GST)' which dramatically increased government coffers much to the chagrin of the people bearing the brunt of this new tax system -- the Canadian people.
Soon to be Prime Minister Jean Chretien ran a Liberal election campaign -- and won -- promising the Canadian people that he would get rid of the much hated 'GST' but by the time he got into office for a short period of time he began to fully realize what a government 'cash-cow' the GST was -- and he never, in his 10 years in office, got rid of it. Neither has any Prime Minister after Chretien (meaning Martin and Harper). It would seem that no Canadian Prime Minister wants to get rid of the GST tax-cash cow that the Canadian people have come to passively and fatalistically accept on the heels of the combined over-spending of both Trudeau and, even worse, Mulroney.
At least Trudeau's overspending was based on idealistic-altruistic political ideology. Mulroney's ideology was -- in this author's editorial opinion -- almost completely narcissistically motivated. He learned from Trudeau that 'liberal generosity' had its 'narcissistic benefit' in terms of keeping the support of 'Liberal, Socialist-Minded voters' while at the same time his lavish Corporate spending also maintained the support of more 'Conservative-Capitalist' power-people and like-minded voters.
In a couple of different ways, Obama -- in the way he has acted as President, as opposed to the 'over-idealized' politician on the pre-election campaign trail -- reminds me of both Trudeau and Mulroney. Trudeau mainly -- particularly, in terms of character and political ideology.
But in some ways -- and he would hate to hear this, I am sure -- Obama has reminded me of both Mulroney and Bush in his political actions as well. There does seem to have been an element of 'Narcissistic Capitalist-Corporate Collusion' as well. And this is probably the last thing the American people -- especially his hardcore 'Democrat voters' -- wanted to see from Obama. A 'Bush-re-run'.
So let me see if I can focus in on my criticisms of President Obama's political actions to date:
1. There has been too much of 'a rush for political action' particularly when the actions executed (and/or in the process of being executed) involve(d) a colossal increase in the American debt load;
2. There have been -- to my knowledge -- two questionable 'stimulus packages' that have been very 'Bush-like'. Almost 'clone-repetitions' of what Bush did -- and with similar consequences.
a) Putting literally billions of dollars back in the hands of the people, the CEOs, who created the banking-mortgage scandal and financial collapse in the first place. In effect, this was like putting even more money back in the hands of the robbers who robbed the bank in the first place. How smart was that? You put billions of dollars back in the hands of unethical people and you naively actually expect them to this time 'behave ethically' and/or on the basis of 'guilt and moderation'. Not likely going to happen. And it didn't happen. The bankers-and-mortgage-loan people did exactly the same thing again as they did the first time -- went on 'lavish spa trips' and took lavish, multi-million dollar bonuses. The American people had to collectively shake their heads on this one.
Where were the legislative counter-control measures? No spas. No bonuses. Either behavior would spawn either a criminal prosecution of a 'new law to this same effect' and/or spawn a 'demand for the recall of all the money given to the company'.
Indeed, I think many people are asking the question: why was the money even given back to these people in the first place? Reward the banks and the bank owners who didn't participate in this type of corporate behavior the first and second time around; not the banks and bankers who not once but twice, maybe even three times, invaded and essentially robbed public coffers.
Obama -- essentially falling into this same trap again, either by accident, or on purpose -- struck a very 'Bush-like Corporate-Schmoozing-Chord' in the already very sensitive and traumatically damaged collective American psyche. And multi-billions of dollars of taxpayers' money seemingly went flying out of the public coffers and into the private hands of a collective few 'power-people' who had no interest in the general welfare of the American people -- whatsoever. Why?
b) Add to the economic, business, and unemployment woes and anxieties of the American people, the current controversy around President Obamas wish to implement his universal health care plan -- and potentially more billions of dollars leaving public coffers and further increasing the American National debt load -- and you have the potential for significant national emotional volatility -- perhaps even a Boston Tea Party-like national emotional volatility. It is hardly the type of underlying national emotional feeling that you want to try to pass your American Universal Health Care Plan-Dream over top of. National chaos and, in effect, rhetorically at least, civil war could be released from its underlying emotional volcano of intense anxious, even panic-stricken -- and compensatory angry -- feeling.
I would not want to pass such a bill under such an underlying feeling of national unrest and division.
Slow down President Obama. Dont try to force a bill through the Senate that maybe the bulk of the American people collectively do not want right now.
Timing is everything in politics and history -- and maybe trying to pass what could amount to a very expensive health bill in the midst of a very deep recession is not a good time to try to pass such a bill.
Maybe the American people want you to address their economic problems first; their health problems second or third. (There is still the more than little matter of two rather pricey and traumatic wars still going on in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan right now too.)
c) Regarding the two wars in the Middle East: Has there really been any significant change in war policy since President Obama took office. Yes, there has been a transfer of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan (and seemingly more violence in Iraq since many of the troops left). But what is the progress in Afghanistan? Or has there been any? Will there ever be any? Can Americans expect to be locked up in the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Taliban War for 3, 5, or 10 more years?
And can the Americans really expect their economy to significantly improve while they continue to be locked up in either or both of these two wars?
Does the famous Dwight Eisenhower speech about the military-industrial complex still have any relevance today?
Is the American Government in any way tied up to the idea of wars being narcissistically manufactured just to appease the American Military-Industrial Complex while at the same time offering up righteous explanations and justifications for wars that may be created or manufactured for narcissistic political-economic and or corporate-economic reasons -- not legitimate reasons of self-defense?
Finally, is there any credibility behind the so-called facts in this fantasy interview that is circulating on the internet between Charlie Sheen and The President? Or is just a page-full of conspiracy-hogwash? What theory do you believe? The standard, orthodox Government(s) explanation? Or the theory of a government conspiracy and cover-up?
These are the questions that I will leave you with today as I move on with my day to do other things -- like find a job that will support me again after i just lost my last cushy, middle class $50-60,000 job. It is hard to fully and emotionally understand the full depth of what a recession really means until you are on the outside looking in rather than on the inside looking out. Jobs and money that used to be easy to come by 10 years ago is not so easy to come by today. Or at least that has been my experience so far. Obviously, I need to both focus and broaden my search.
Right now I am on the outside of what used to be economic stability.
And that is a very anxiety-provoking -- indeed, panicky -- place to be.
It necessitates door-to-door action; not writing essays that dont pay my bills.
So on that note, I will leave you for the day, put on my suit, and see if i can muster up a new job.
Essays can wait; bills can't.
Economics precedes and supersedes self-actualization.
Perhaps that is a corollary of Sartres famous statement: Existence precedes essence.
It certainly has a Marxian ring to it.
Paraphrasing Marx: Narcissistic political and economic ideology precedes -- and, operating from the Shadows of Human Selfishness and Greed, both underlies and, probably more often than not, supersedes and blocks out of the sunlight completely -- ethical idealism.
Say it aint so, Dave!
I wish I could but I cant.
Because I think it generally is so.
Robbing the ethical idealism out of both,
Capitalism and Socialism alternatively and together,
Likewise with Liberalism and Conservatism,
Religion and Atheism,
Wherever men and women travel,
And accumulate power,
The greater the power,
The greater the group -- and individual -- narcissism.
Follow the trail of the money,
Huge money,
And traveling not far behind,
Is human greed and narcissism.
I dont think this is totally what Adam Smith or Ayn Rand had in mind by Capitalism although even Adam Smith, I believe said, that he didnt trust businessmen. I will have to dig for the exact quote. Thomas Jefferson -- rightly so -- said that he didnt trust bankers.
Can it be any different?
The only way I can see it being any different is if there was complete monetary transparency around the intake and outgoing of all government and or corporate monetary funds. Corrupt, greedy, narcissistic business people like to work in the dark, move their money around in the dark, so no one can see what they are doing. Throw the light on the situation -- throw the corrupt politician or businessman into a lighted room, a transparent room -- and he cant function the way he wants to function. Which is basically to steal under the cover of darkness.
Light up the dark rooms that they operate in. Throw the floodlights on them. And then we will know who is transferring money where.
Visions of Mulroney receiving a suitcase of cash money, doing business -- after he had left office -- with an international lobbyist who was still looking for a lucrative Canadian government contract, and still looking at Mulroney as a government influence-peddler.
Mulroney didnt like it too much when the Canadian floodlights froze on this particular economic transaction between him and the European businessman.
Quite frankly, I enjoyed watching him squirm.
Similarly, with Conrad Black who didn't look too good being caught leaving one of his offices in the middle of the night with a box of papers/files in his arms.
That might have been the deciding piece of evidence in his case. If he wasn't guilty, then why was he doing that? I like Black more than I like Mulroney but corporate narcissism needs to show some boundaries, some restraint -- some ethics and integrity. Nobody is above the law -- or at least, nobody should be above the law.
Not even ex-prime-ministers, Senators, Governors, Corporate Power-Leaders, bankers, lobbyists...
There are a few businessmen on Wall Street -- and perhaps even in the American Government -- who I would have wished for the same -- or more than -- what Black got.
Some power-people -- maybe many power-people both inside and outside of the government may have gotten off of the Sub-Prime Mortgage Scandal, The Hedge Fund Phenomenon, and the Wall Street Financial collapse -- far too easily, some even with gold-plated goodbye packages.
Too bad.
I still believe in the humanistic spirit and good intentions of President Obama.
But there are some areas of operation that he has slipped up in -- and perhaps lost some of the trust and respect of the American people -- that he may need to go back and re-analyze what went wrong as well as perhaps modify and/or slow down the speed of his forward master game plan.
1. The ideal of 'universal health care' is a good, humanistic social ideal. People without medical insurance, or who can't afford medical insurance, and with serious health problems, should not be faced with the choice between personal and/or family bankruptcy and not getting proper or sufficient medical treatment. It is unrealistic to expect a person -- or even a husband and wife team -- who is/are making $10 to $20 an hour to pay for a 'necessary service' for very long that may cost $200 per hour and/or a serious medical operation that may cost upwards of 3 or 400,000 dollars. Either the operation is not going to happen or many lower to middle class families are going to financially collapse under this type of economic weight load.
Up here in Canada, my son was born premature by about 2 and a half months. He weighed less than 2 pounds. But Woman's College Hospital in Toronto took care of him in an incubator with his mother and I checking in on him every day for the one or two months that he stayed in the hospital. With all due respect, if Canada didn't have universal health care, I hate to think what would have happened to my life and his. The consequences could have been medically and/or economically horrific. Today, my son is a happy, healthy, smart young man -- almost 25 years old and strong as a horse, in a dangerous profession, a graduated and working Arborist, scaling to the tops of the tallest Elm and Maple trees that would make me quake in my boots just looking at the height of them. He has a healthy 6 year old daughter, and a fine future ahead of him.
Still, Obama has to watch the money. I don't think Americans in general think that President Obama is paying sufficient attention to the public til and the skyrocketing public debt load. I heard on CNN last night that 7 preceding Presidents have all tried to put through Universal Health Care -- and failed. Not to mention Senator Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.
America is locked up in two very expensive wars, has gone through a financial collapse on Wall Street, a collapsing car industry, and the worst recession that they have experienced probably since The Great Depression.
All of this makes it horrible timing for President Obama to try to push through this very costly Universal Health Bill -- regardless of the way it looks in its various potential renditions.
If there had been no war in Iraq, then it probably could have been paid for by now. But things today are the way they are, and nothing can be changed about that.
On top of that, President Obama is trying to push this health bill through on the heels of two multi-billion dollar 'economic stimuli packages' (which came on the heels of one multi-billion dollar stimulus-package by Bush -- with Obama partly involved in that too.)
All of this is to say what I have already said: that the timing on trying to push through this universal health bill -- or some modification of it -- is really, really bad.
I think the people of America want President Obama to address the economy first and foremost -- and that doesn't mean adding billions and billions of dollars of more debt load onto the American taxpayer. Somebody is going to have to pay for it eventually -- and if not this generation of Americans -- it is a terrible legacy to leave the next series of generations of American kids and grandkids.
How many billions and billions of dollars can you keep adding to the public debt and still keep trying to hide the fact that America isn't already essentially bankrupt?
President Obama is a very smart man -- too smart to act as a politician with unlimited public funds at his disposal (Trudeau, Mulroney and many, many other politicians have tried it before him: 'We will just put it on the tab!')
Perhaps the first three steps in this whole medical problem is to:
1. Analyze and address the problem of 'pharmaceutical gouging'.
2. Make sure that hospitals and doctors are not gouging patients either.
3. Analyze and address the possible -- or more likely very real -- problem of 'insurance colluding and gouging'. (I have seen it in the taxi industry with commercial car insurance monopolies and/or collusion which is also affected by mechanics and/or body shops that can -- and do -- also gouge both drivers and insurance companies.)
In politics, timing is everything. And speed of action is not always a good 'political' thing as it can make citizens who are already reeling in economic stress very emotionally volatile as they flip between 'almost panic-stricken fear' and 'compensating anger to rage'.
'President Obama, one more time, I think you have picked a very, very bad time to try to push through your health bill as fast as you are trying to push it through. This is not -- as some have made it out to be about racism (except on the extremist Republican fringes).'
More aptly and more simply,
It is about economics.
-- dgb, Sept. 16th-17th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still In Process...
....................................................................
United States Bullion Depository
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coordinates: 37.882983°N 85.965099°W
The United States Bullion Depository.
The United States Bullion Depository, commonly called Fort Knox, is a fortified vault building located near Fort Knox, Kentucky, which is used to store a large portion of United States official gold reserves and, occasionally, other precious items belonging or entrusted to the federal government.
The United States Bullion Depository holds about 4,603 tons (4 176 metric tonnes) of gold bullion (147.4 million troy ounces[1]). It is second in the United States only to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's underground vault in Manhattan, which holds about 5,000 metric tonnes of gold in trust for many foreign nations, central banks and official international organizations.
Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Construction and security
3 Gold and coin holdings
4 In popular culture
4.1 Cinema
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
[edit]History
Before the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1932, gold coins had circulated freely in the United States as legal money, and gold bullion was owned by banks and other private entities. In early 1933, as part of the New Deal, the U.S. Congress enacted a package of laws which removed gold from circulation as money, and which made private ownership of gold in the U.S. (except for coins in collections or jewelry such as wedding rings) illegal. All gold in circulation was seized by the government in exchange for dollars at the fixed rate of $20.67 per ounce. Owners of gold bullion in the U.S. were also required to trade it for other forms of money. All of this left the government of the United States with a large amount of gold metal, and no place to store it.
Seal of the U.S. Mint
In 1936, the U.S. Treasury Department began construction of the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, on land transferred from the military. The Gold Vault was completed in December 1936 at a cost of $560,000, or about $7.5 million in 2007 dollars. The site is located on what is now Bullion Boulevard at the intersection of Gold Vault Road.
The first gold shipments were made from January to July 1937. The majority of the United States' gold reserves were gradually shipped to the site, including old bullion and more newly made bars made from melted gold coins. Some intact coins were stored, as well. The transfer needed 500 rail cars and was sent by registered mail, protected by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
During World War II, the repository held the original U.S. Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. It also held the reserves of several European countries and several key documents from Western history; for example, it held the Crown of St. Stephen, part of the Hungarian crown jewels, given to American soldiers to prevent them from falling into Soviet hands. The repository also held one of four known copies (exemplifications) of Magna Carta, which had been sent for display at the 1939 New York World Fair, and when war broke out, was kept in America for the duration.
[edit]Construction and security
Below the fortress-like structure lies the gold vault, which is lined with granite walls and is protected by a blast-proof door that weighs 22 tons. No single person is entrusted with the entire combination to the vault. Various members of the Depository staff must dial separate combinations known only to them. Beyond the main vault door, smaller internal cells provide further protection.[2]
The facility is ringed with several fences and is under armed guard by officers of the United States Mint Police. The Depository premises are within the site of Fort Knox, a United States Army post, allowing the Army to provide additional protection. The Depository is protected by numerous layers of physical security, alarms, video cameras, armed guards, and the Army units based at Fort Knox, including Apache helicopter gunships of 4/229 Aviation based at Godman Army Airfield, the 16th Cavalry Regiment, training battalions of the United States Army Armor School, and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Infantry Division, totaling over 30,000 soldiers, with associated tanks, armored personnel carriers, attack helicopters, and artillery.
[edit]Gold and coin holdings
Gold holdings peaked during World War II at 649.6 million troy ounces (20,205 metric tons). Current holdings are around 147.3 million ounces[1] (4,570 t) in around 368,000 standard 400 troy ounce (12.4 kg or 27.4 lb avoirdupois) gold bars. At April 2008 rates of $913 an ounce it is worth roughly $134 billion, while the World War II total of 649.6 million troy ounces would be worth approximately $593 billion.[3]
The depository also holds monetary gold coins. It also holds several specimens of Sacagawea Dollar coins made out of 22kt (91.6% pure) gold from blanks that are used to strike the $25 half-ounce American Gold Eagle bullion pieces made for an unknown project. The 1933 Double Eagle was also a temporary resident after transfer from 7 World Trade Center in July 2001, until its sale in July 2002 for $7.59 million. Sometime in 2004, 10 additional allegedly stolen 1933 Double Eagles were transported to Fort Knox for safekeeping.
Not all the gold bars held in the depository are of exactly the same composition. The mint gold bars are nearly pure gold. Bars made from melted gold coins, however, called "coin bars," are the same composition as the original coins. Unlike many .999 fine gold bullion coins minted in modern times for holding-purposes today, the coin alloy for pre-1932 U.S. coins, which were intended for circulation, was a much tougher and wear-resistant .900 fine alloy (balance copper) derived historically from 22-carat crown gold (a similar alloy consisting of .917 gold and the balance copper, used to mint gold sovereigns).
All of the gold in the depository, if pure, could form a cube 19.7 feet (6 m) on a side—a volume of 216 m³. In comparison, all the gold ever mined in the world would form a cube 64.3 feet (19.6 m) on a side, with a volume of approximately 7500 m³.[4]
The United States holds more gold bullion than any other country, with about 2.37 times that of the next leading country, Germany.
[edit]In popular culture
The bullion depository has become a symbol of an impregnable vault, leading to phrases such as "locked up tighter than Fort Knox" or "safer than Fort Knox".
[edit]Cinema
The 1937 RKO Lee Tracy film Behind the Headlines climaxes in a plan to steal gold bars en route from Washington D.C. to Fort Knox.
The 1951 Bud Abbott & Lou Costello film Comin' Round the Mountain has the two using a treasure map to find a stash of gold. When they finally reach the gold at the end of the film, they find themselves in the middle of Fort Knox and are immediately arrested.
The 1951 Warner Bros. short 14 Carrot Rabbit featuring Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam follows a similar routine, with Sam being led away by guards at the end. Bugs is also under suspicion, but slips away on a large boat.
The popular 1959 Ian Fleming-written James Bond novel Goldfinger, and the 1964 movie of the same name, are about a criminal plot called "Operation Grand Slam" to break in to the U.S. Bullion Depository. In the book, Auric Goldfinger's plan is to steal the gold. In the movie, it is to render the gold contained in the Depository radioactive and useless with a nuclear device, crippling the economy and driving up the price of the gold Goldfinger already has. The movie was set before the U.S. dollar ceased to be backed by gold in 1971.[5]
[edit]See also
Federal Reserve System
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
List of attractions and events in Louisville, Kentucky
Official gold reserves
Nixon Shock - U.S. President Richard Nixon took the United States off the Gold Standard, stopping the direct convertibility of United States dollars to gold.
[edit]References
^ a b "About the Mint". Retrieved 2008-10-06.
^ U.S. Treasury - Fact Sheet on the Fort Knox Bullion Depository
^ Schoen, John W. (April 30, 2007). "How come the dollar keeps falling?". MSNBC. Retrieved 2008-10-06.
^ World Gold Council -FAQs
^ Goldfinger (1964)
[edit]External links
Factsheet from United States Mint
To My Readers...
I haven't had a lot of time lately to keep up with this blog site as I have been building others in the area of psychology, psychoanalysis, and 'central ego functioning' (epistemology, narcissism, ethics, choice of action) instead.
However, one of my readers asked if I might be interested in passing this information on regarding online courses in American History.
I am happy to do this...and perhaps, under the 'fresh stimulation' of this request, will even write an article on American Politics this morning.
Let's title it this: President Obama: A DGB Evaluation of His Strengths, Difficulties, and Challenges in The White House in His First Year in Office
.............................................................................
Hi,
I'm writing to let you know that we posted an article, "100+ Excellent Open Courses on American History, Politics, and Culture".
(http://www.onlinedegreeshub.com/blog/2009/100-excellent-open-courses-on-american-history-politics-and-culture/).
I just thought I'd share it with you in case you thought it would appeal to your readers.
Thanks for time!
Amber Johnson
....................................................................................
However, one of my readers asked if I might be interested in passing this information on regarding online courses in American History.
I am happy to do this...and perhaps, under the 'fresh stimulation' of this request, will even write an article on American Politics this morning.
Let's title it this: President Obama: A DGB Evaluation of His Strengths, Difficulties, and Challenges in The White House in His First Year in Office
.............................................................................
Hi,
I'm writing to let you know that we posted an article, "100+ Excellent Open Courses on American History, Politics, and Culture".
(http://www.onlinedegreeshub.com/blog/2009/100-excellent-open-courses-on-american-history-politics-and-culture/).
I just thought I'd share it with you in case you thought it would appeal to your readers.
Thanks for time!
Amber Johnson
....................................................................................
Monday, September 14, 2009
Investors mark anniversary of Lehman Brothers collapse and start of downturn
Investors mark anniversary of Lehman Brothers collapse and start of downturn
By David Friend, THE CANADIAN PRESS
2009-09-13 12:29:00
Crude oil turns lower after strong week, moves below US$70 a barrel
World stocks advance amid hopes for China economy
Canadian dollar opens at 92.94 cents US, up 0.24 of a cent
Are you affected by the global market meltdown?
TORONTO - Investors will be looking backwards to go forward this week on the stock markets, as they mark the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which signalled the start of the rapid economic downturn.
And while many might still be nursing their wounds, a reflection on the past could inspire further optimism.
"It could've turned out much worse, especially when you look at where we were in December and January," suggested Doug Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns.
"Investors are just becoming more convinced that the global economy is recovering faster than anyone could have believed possible."
It has been a volatile trek for the markets since Lehman's filing on Sept. 15, 2008, but Porter suggested that investors have been pushing forward and becoming "increasingly emboldened," so much so that he thinks they might buck the usual fall trend of market pessimism.
"That seasonal factor is really not going to come into play this year," he said.
"Typically one of the reasons why the market faces pressure in September... (is because) investors and portfolio managers take a serious look at next year's prospects and often those prospects are downgraded."
Porter said this year economic and earnings forecasts will more likely be upgraded for 2010 instead of scaled back.
CIBC World Markets economist Meny Grauman said the week will provide investors with further confirmation that the end of the summer also marked an end to the recession.
This week, inflation numbers on both sides of the border are expected to be a key motivator for economic reassurance.
"We are lighter than consensus on our call for August retail sales, but it is clear that the success of the 'cash-for-clunkers' program still gave spending a nice temporary lift," Grauman wrote in a note about the expectation for U.S. results.
"Year-over-year CPI should remain negative, but is starting to head higher again as we pass the anniversary of high oil, while core inflation remains stable."
Last week, Toronto's S&P/TSX composite index ended Friday ahead 236 points for the week at 11,253.23.
Wall Street launched its own climb with the Dow Jones pulling off its best week in a month to close Friday at 9,605.41.
Friday also brought the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks and reflection on Wall Street also served a reminder of how little progress the stock market has made since then because of the steep slide that began two years ago.
On Sept. 10, 2001, the Dow ended at 9,605.51.
By David Friend, THE CANADIAN PRESS
2009-09-13 12:29:00
Crude oil turns lower after strong week, moves below US$70 a barrel
World stocks advance amid hopes for China economy
Canadian dollar opens at 92.94 cents US, up 0.24 of a cent
Are you affected by the global market meltdown?
TORONTO - Investors will be looking backwards to go forward this week on the stock markets, as they mark the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which signalled the start of the rapid economic downturn.
And while many might still be nursing their wounds, a reflection on the past could inspire further optimism.
"It could've turned out much worse, especially when you look at where we were in December and January," suggested Doug Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns.
"Investors are just becoming more convinced that the global economy is recovering faster than anyone could have believed possible."
It has been a volatile trek for the markets since Lehman's filing on Sept. 15, 2008, but Porter suggested that investors have been pushing forward and becoming "increasingly emboldened," so much so that he thinks they might buck the usual fall trend of market pessimism.
"That seasonal factor is really not going to come into play this year," he said.
"Typically one of the reasons why the market faces pressure in September... (is because) investors and portfolio managers take a serious look at next year's prospects and often those prospects are downgraded."
Porter said this year economic and earnings forecasts will more likely be upgraded for 2010 instead of scaled back.
CIBC World Markets economist Meny Grauman said the week will provide investors with further confirmation that the end of the summer also marked an end to the recession.
This week, inflation numbers on both sides of the border are expected to be a key motivator for economic reassurance.
"We are lighter than consensus on our call for August retail sales, but it is clear that the success of the 'cash-for-clunkers' program still gave spending a nice temporary lift," Grauman wrote in a note about the expectation for U.S. results.
"Year-over-year CPI should remain negative, but is starting to head higher again as we pass the anniversary of high oil, while core inflation remains stable."
Last week, Toronto's S&P/TSX composite index ended Friday ahead 236 points for the week at 11,253.23.
Wall Street launched its own climb with the Dow Jones pulling off its best week in a month to close Friday at 9,605.41.
Friday also brought the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks and reflection on Wall Street also served a reminder of how little progress the stock market has made since then because of the steep slide that began two years ago.
On Sept. 10, 2001, the Dow ended at 9,605.51.
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