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Trillion Dollar Coin



 
 
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  #41  
Old January 22nd 13, 05:23 AM posted to rec.collecting.coins
Bremick
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 641
Default Trillion Dollar Coin

"oly" wrote in message
...

snips

While the present system of passing out Social Security benefits will likely
go on for a long time to come, the purchasing power of every financial thing
presently expressed in fiat U.S. Dollars is likely to plummet. Plummet real
soon.

Why do you think people with discretionary earnings are soaking up gold and
silver coins like there is no tommorrow??? Probably because there IS NO
tommorrow for paper money and there goes the purchasing power of a Social
Security check.

Unless you are already 80 years old, you will most likely live to see a U.S.
dollar with a purchasing power of one-fifth or less of what we have today.

Long-term savings in paper money, bank deposits and bonds and the like are a
chimaera and a trap.

oly
-------
Oly, we've been experiencing this gradual purchasing power loss for
generations now, and people haven't been the worse for it. That loss hasn't
been in a vacuum, since wages have risen accordingly. When I started at $6K
a year, a home could be bought for $10K and a new full-size car at $2-3K.
That proportion has pretty much held through today. The numbers change, but
the salary vs COL relationship hasn't changed that drastically.

I agree that the purchasing power of a SS check doesn't keep pace with the
true increase in COL, but then it was never meant to provide the retiree
with a living wage. Lately, the price of gold and silver hasn't kept up
with rising prices either. The external factors that used to cause them to
advance or decline don't seem to be that predictable anymore. Gold seems
scared to death to go back above $1700 and silver may take several years to
get back to that $40 level. They seem to retreat at slightest uncertainty.
I see silver stuck in the $30's through this year, but then I don't do TV
commercials. Meanwhile, the COL keeps going up.

Ads
  #42  
Old January 23rd 13, 01:23 PM posted to rec.collecting.coins
oly
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3,111
Default Trillion Dollar Coin

On Jan 21, 10:23*pm, "bremick" wrote:
"oly" *wrote in message

...

snips

While the present system of passing out Social Security benefits will likely
go on for a long time to come, the purchasing power of every financial thing
presently expressed in fiat U.S. Dollars is likely to plummet. *Plummet real
soon.

Why do you think people with discretionary earnings are soaking up gold and
silver coins like there is no tommorrow??? *Probably because there IS NO
tommorrow for paper money and there goes the purchasing power of a Social
Security check.

Unless you are already 80 years old, you will most likely live to see a U..S.
dollar with a purchasing power of one-fifth or less of what we have today..

Long-term savings in paper money, bank deposits and bonds and the like are a
chimaera and a trap.

oly
-------
* * Oly, we've been experiencing this gradual purchasing power loss for
generations now, and people haven't been the worse for it. *That loss hasn't
been in a vacuum, since wages have risen accordingly. *When I started at $6K
a year, a home could be bought for $10K and a new full-size car at $2-3K.
That proportion has pretty much held through today. *The numbers change, but
the salary vs COL relationship hasn't changed that drastically.

I agree that the purchasing power of a SS check doesn't keep pace with the
true increase in COL, but then it was never meant to provide the retiree
with a living wage. *Lately, the price of gold and silver hasn't kept up
with rising prices either. *The external factors that used to cause them to
advance or decline don't seem to be that predictable anymore. *Gold seems
scared to death to go back above $1700 and silver may take several years to
get back to that $40 level. *They seem to retreat at slightest uncertainty.
I see silver stuck in the $30's through this year, but then I don't do TV
commercials. *Meanwhile, the COL keeps going up.


It took me a while to collect my thoughts on this one.

(1) Actually, much of the inflation since the Second World War came in
two rather long time frames, from 1946 to 1951 and then from 1967 to
1982. There was also some pretty strong inflation in the late '80s
and early '90s but not to the same degree as the two earlier
periods.

The immediate postwar inflation was pretty predictable, as people who
stayed at home and worked in anything related to the War effort got
paid pretty well and had nothing to spend it on until after the War
was over. Most people attribute the 1960s inflation to LBJ's
simulataneous guns and butter and and social welfare policies; Nixon's
damn lies exacerbated everything and Ford was an usurper and Carter
was (and is) a giant doink.

see link:

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com...flation-rates/

The point of mentioning this is that U.S. inflationary experience has
not aleays been gradual, not at all - it has been concentrated in a
very few years and holding financial assets just before these bursts
of inflation is very very tough on the traditional saver.

(2) Of course, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has greatly changed
their method of calculating inflation since the last Bush 41/ Clinton
42 eras. They now assume if tuna is too expensive, that Grandma will
substitute with a can of Friskies, and that is for her own
consumption, mind you, and go frig whatever the cat eats. They make
these substitutions to their indexes practically ad infinitum to tamp
down the resulting inflation numbers.

(3) If you follow things like commodity contract margin requirements,
you likely know that the insiders at the U.S. exchanges have made it
tougher for the paper speculators in precious metal (especially
silver). People who trade the paper gold and paper silver have to put
up bigger downpayments to carry their contract positions. Reportedly
some of the biggest banks in the U.S. financial system have been
"short" in the silver markets on a vast scale. Their speculations
have not been happy for them and they cannot liquidate those positions
in anything like a short period of time. People who can explain all
this much better than me include John Emery (Sprott Financial) and Ted
Butler and others. Google them. Even now, there is a big disconnect
between paper commodity prices of precious metals and the availability
of physical coins and bars (especially in silver; gold is less
volatile but the people in the Far East are sucking up a lot of
western gold too).

So, for these and many other reasons, you simply can't convince me
that Gold and Silver have limited futures in terms of price
appreciation and, particularly in the case of silver, much greater
purchasing power in the future.

(4) I don't think that it is worth the while to write a lot on it, but
I would also suggest that traditional inflation measures (and some
other statistics) don't mean too much today, because the Federal
Reserve Bank has "screwed up the American pricing system". By buying
up so many good and crappy financial assets in the last five years or
so, prices in the U.S. have become messed up and today prices don't
send "real" or accurate signals about what is expensive and what is
cheap. Accordingly, investors and consumers can't make informed
decisions anymore or at least not as good decisions as in the past.
This is a very esoteric idea and line of thought (not original to me)
but the pricing system is essential for capitalism to maximize wealth
and the pricing system doesn't seem to be working so well right now.
If the FRB stopped interferring, perhaps things would correct and
precious metal might move to different prices than they are today.

Finally, (5) I would suggest that your premise that gradual inflation
is O.K. is a false hope or false comfort. Inflation is intentional.
National Treasuries and their related central banks debase their
currencies intentionally. It is a form of a stealth tax in which no
citizen has a vote or a voice. It is a tax which mocks people who
would save for their futures and the futures of their descendants. Do
you care to be stolen from slowly, or do you care to be stolen from
quickly??? That choice offers me no comfort.

I will straight out tell you; financially, the worst is still ahead
for the U.S.A. and is NOT behind us. This will generally hurt the
hobby of numismatics and help bullion accumulators, but even people
who invest in rare coins will do better than traditional savers and
people relying on traditional financial products and fixed pensions
and the like.

Sauve qui peut... baybee.

oly

  #43  
Old January 23rd 13, 03:22 PM posted to rec.collecting.coins
Bremick
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 641
Default Trillion Dollar Coin

"oly" wrote in message
...

On Jan 21, 10:23 pm, "bremick" wrote:
"oly" wrote in message

...

snips

While the present system of passing out Social Security benefits will
likely
go on for a long time to come, the purchasing power of every financial
thing
presently expressed in fiat U.S. Dollars is likely to plummet. Plummet
real
soon.

Why do you think people with discretionary earnings are soaking up gold
and
silver coins like there is no tommorrow??? Probably because there IS NO
tommorrow for paper money and there goes the purchasing power of a Social
Security check.

Unless you are already 80 years old, you will most likely live to see a
U.S.
dollar with a purchasing power of one-fifth or less of what we have today.

Long-term savings in paper money, bank deposits and bonds and the like are
a
chimaera and a trap.

oly
-------
Oly, we've been experiencing this gradual purchasing power loss for
generations now, and people haven't been the worse for it. That loss
hasn't
been in a vacuum, since wages have risen accordingly. When I started at
$6K
a year, a home could be bought for $10K and a new full-size car at $2-3K.
That proportion has pretty much held through today. The numbers change,
but
the salary vs COL relationship hasn't changed that drastically.

I agree that the purchasing power of a SS check doesn't keep pace with the
true increase in COL, but then it was never meant to provide the retiree
with a living wage. Lately, the price of gold and silver hasn't kept up
with rising prices either. The external factors that used to cause them
to
advance or decline don't seem to be that predictable anymore. Gold seems
scared to death to go back above $1700 and silver may take several years
to
get back to that $40 level. They seem to retreat at slightest
uncertainty.
I see silver stuck in the $30's through this year, but then I don't do TV
commercials. Meanwhile, the COL keeps going up.


It took me a while to collect my thoughts on this one.

(1) Actually, much of the inflation since the Second World War came in
two rather long time frames, from 1946 to 1951 and then from 1967 to
1982. There was also some pretty strong inflation in the late '80s
and early '90s but not to the same degree as the two earlier
periods.

The immediate postwar inflation was pretty predictable, as people who
stayed at home and worked in anything related to the War effort got
paid pretty well and had nothing to spend it on until after the War
was over. Most people attribute the 1960s inflation to LBJ's
simulataneous guns and butter and and social welfare policies; Nixon's
damn lies exacerbated everything and Ford was an usurper and Carter
was (and is) a giant doink.

see link:

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com...flation-rates/

The point of mentioning this is that U.S. inflationary experience has
not aleays been gradual, not at all - it has been concentrated in a
very few years and holding financial assets just before these bursts
of inflation is very very tough on the traditional saver.

(2) Of course, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has greatly changed
their method of calculating inflation since the last Bush 41/ Clinton
42 eras. They now assume if tuna is too expensive, that Grandma will
substitute with a can of Friskies, and that is for her own
consumption, mind you, and go frig whatever the cat eats. They make
these substitutions to their indexes practically ad infinitum to tamp
down the resulting inflation numbers.

(3) If you follow things like commodity contract margin requirements,
you likely know that the insiders at the U.S. exchanges have made it
tougher for the paper speculators in precious metal (especially
silver). People who trade the paper gold and paper silver have to put
up bigger downpayments to carry their contract positions. Reportedly
some of the biggest banks in the U.S. financial system have been
"short" in the silver markets on a vast scale. Their speculations
have not been happy for them and they cannot liquidate those positions
in anything like a short period of time. People who can explain all
this much better than me include John Emery (Sprott Financial) and Ted
Butler and others. Google them. Even now, there is a big disconnect
between paper commodity prices of precious metals and the availability
of physical coins and bars (especially in silver; gold is less
volatile but the people in the Far East are sucking up a lot of
western gold too).

So, for these and many other reasons, you simply can't convince me
that Gold and Silver have limited futures in terms of price
appreciation and, particularly in the case of silver, much greater
purchasing power in the future.

(4) I don't think that it is worth the while to write a lot on it, but
I would also suggest that traditional inflation measures (and some
other statistics) don't mean too much today, because the Federal
Reserve Bank has "screwed up the American pricing system". By buying
up so many good and crappy financial assets in the last five years or
so, prices in the U.S. have become messed up and today prices don't
send "real" or accurate signals about what is expensive and what is
cheap. Accordingly, investors and consumers can't make informed
decisions anymore or at least not as good decisions as in the past.
This is a very esoteric idea and line of thought (not original to me)
but the pricing system is essential for capitalism to maximize wealth
and the pricing system doesn't seem to be working so well right now.
If the FRB stopped interferring, perhaps things would correct and
precious metal might move to different prices than they are today.

Finally, (5) I would suggest that your premise that gradual inflation
is O.K. is a false hope or false comfort. Inflation is intentional.
National Treasuries and their related central banks debase their
currencies intentionally. It is a form of a stealth tax in which no
citizen has a vote or a voice. It is a tax which mocks people who
would save for their futures and the futures of their descendants. Do
you care to be stolen from slowly, or do you care to be stolen from
quickly??? That choice offers me no comfort.

I will straight out tell you; financially, the worst is still ahead
for the U.S.A. and is NOT behind us. This will generally hurt the
hobby of numismatics and help bullion accumulators, but even people
who invest in rare coins will do better than traditional savers and
people relying on traditional financial products and fixed pensions
and the like.

Sauve qui peut... baybee.

oly
---------------

I didn't say, or mean to say, that I thought gradual inflation is okay. I
do think it's just something we will have to live with over time, as we
always have. I don't care when the inflation "spurts" came, or what caused
them. Over time the numbers just have gone up. From the penny loaf of
bread in Washington's time when people may have earned a shilling a day to
today's fifty cent "nickel" candy bar with a minimum wage at $7-$8.00. But
I, too, believe we're in so deep now that it's hard to picture how we'd ever
become solvent again as a country.

I think the tone of the hobby will evolve in the next twenty years as
traditional coins and bills become less relevant in our commercial lives,
and maybe even disappear. True collectors then will concentrate their focus
on the past while others will take pleasure in the inevitable Mint-issued
bullion products. High roller collectors still will be able to pounce on
those six and seven figure rarities and then auction them at a profit, and
pundits will continue to cite those sales as indicative of a "healthy
hobby". Meanwhile, anyone researching affordable coins as an investment
might also do some research in the stock market at the same time. My actual
market profits over the years have been much greater than my paper profits
form my coin collection. But I still enjoy the coins more.




  #44  
Old January 23rd 13, 03:52 PM posted to rec.collecting.coins
oly
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3,111
Default Trillion Dollar Coin

On Jan 23, 8:22*am, "bremick" wrote:
"oly" *wrote in message

...

On Jan 21, 10:23 pm, "bremick" wrote:





"oly" *wrote in message


...


snips


While the present system of passing out Social Security benefits will
likely
go on for a long time to come, the purchasing power of every financial
thing
presently expressed in fiat U.S. Dollars is likely to plummet. *Plummet
real
soon.


Why do you think people with discretionary earnings are soaking up gold
and
silver coins like there is no tommorrow??? *Probably because there IS NO
tommorrow for paper money and there goes the purchasing power of a Social
Security check.


Unless you are already 80 years old, you will most likely live to see a
U.S.
dollar with a purchasing power of one-fifth or less of what we have today.


Long-term savings in paper money, bank deposits and bonds and the like are
a
chimaera and a trap.


oly
-------
* * Oly, we've been experiencing this gradual purchasing power loss for
generations now, and people haven't been the worse for it. *That loss
hasn't
been in a vacuum, since wages have risen accordingly. *When I started at
$6K
a year, a home could be bought for $10K and a new full-size car at $2-3K.
That proportion has pretty much held through today. *The numbers change,
but
the salary vs COL relationship hasn't changed that drastically.


I agree that the purchasing power of a SS check doesn't keep pace with the
true increase in COL, but then it was never meant to provide the retiree
with a living wage. *Lately, the price of gold and silver hasn't kept up
with rising prices either. *The external factors that used to cause them
to
advance or decline don't seem to be that predictable anymore. *Gold seems
scared to death to go back above $1700 and silver may take several years
to
get back to that $40 level. *They seem to retreat at slightest
uncertainty.
I see silver stuck in the $30's through this year, but then I don't do TV
commercials. *Meanwhile, the COL keeps going up.


It took me a while to collect my thoughts on this one.

(1) Actually, much of the inflation since the Second World War came in
two rather long time frames, from 1946 to 1951 and then from 1967 to
1982. *There was also some pretty strong inflation in the late '80s
and early '90s but not to the same degree as the two earlier
periods.

The immediate postwar inflation was pretty predictable, as people who
stayed at home and worked in anything related to the War effort got
paid pretty well and had nothing to spend it on until after the War
was over. *Most people attribute the 1960s inflation to LBJ's
simulataneous guns and butter and and social welfare policies; Nixon's
@#!*% lies exacerbated everything and Ford was an usurper and Carter
was (and is) a giant doink.

see link:

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com...al-inflation-r...

The point of mentioning this is that U.S. inflationary experience has
not aleays been gradual, not at all - it has been concentrated in a
very few years and holding financial assets just before these bursts
of inflation is very very tough on the traditional saver.

(2) Of course, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has greatly changed
their method of calculating inflation since the last Bush 41/ Clinton
42 eras. *They now assume if tuna is too expensive, that Grandma will
substitute with a can of Friskies, and that is for her own
consumption, mind you, and go frig whatever the cat eats. *They make
these substitutions to their indexes practically ad infinitum to tamp
down the resulting inflation numbers.

(3) If you follow things like commodity contract margin requirements,
you likely know that the insiders at the U.S. exchanges have made it
tougher for the paper speculators in precious metal (especially
silver). *People who trade the paper gold and paper silver have to put
up bigger downpayments to carry their contract positions. *Reportedly
some of the biggest banks in the U.S. financial system have been
"short" in the silver markets on a vast scale. *Their speculations
have not been happy for them and they cannot liquidate those positions
in anything like a short period of time. *People who can explain all
this much better than me include John Emery (Sprott Financial) and Ted
Butler and others. *Google them. *Even now, there is a big disconnect
between paper commodity prices of precious metals and the availability
of physical coins and bars (especially in silver; gold is less
volatile but the people in the Far East are sucking up a lot of
western gold too).

So, for these and many other reasons, you simply can't convince me
that Gold and Silver have limited futures in terms of price
appreciation and, particularly in the case of silver, much greater
purchasing power in the future.

(4) I don't think that it is worth the while to write a lot on it, but
I would also suggest that traditional inflation measures (and some
other statistics) don't mean too much today, because the Federal
Reserve Bank has "screwed up the American pricing system". *By buying
up so many good and crappy financial assets in the last five years or
so, prices in the U.S. have become messed up and today prices don't
send "real" or accurate signals about what is expensive and what is
cheap. *Accordingly, investors and consumers can't make informed
decisions anymore or at least not as good decisions as in the past.
This is a very esoteric idea and line of thought (not original to me)
but the pricing system is essential for capitalism to maximize wealth
and the pricing system doesn't seem to be working so well right now.
If the FRB stopped interferring, perhaps things would correct and
precious metal might move to different prices than they are today.

Finally, (5) I would suggest that your premise that gradual inflation
is O.K. is a false hope or false comfort. *Inflation is intentional.
National Treasuries and their related central banks debase their
currencies intentionally. *It is a form of a stealth tax in which no
citizen has a vote or a voice. *It is a tax which mocks people who
would save for their futures and the futures of their descendants. *Do
you care to be stolen from slowly, or do you care to be stolen from
quickly??? *That choice offers me no comfort.

I will straight out tell you; financially, the worst is still ahead
for the U.S.A. and is NOT behind us. *This will generally hurt the
hobby of numismatics and help bullion accumulators, but even people
who invest in rare coins will do better than traditional savers and
people relying on traditional financial products and fixed pensions
and the like.

Sauve qui peut... baybee.

oly
---------------

I didn't say, or mean to say, that I thought gradual inflation is okay. *I
do think it's just something we will have to live with over time, as we
always have. *I don't care when the inflation "spurts" came, or what caused
them. *Over time the numbers just have gone up. *From the penny loaf of
bread in Washington's time when people may have earned a shilling a day to
today's fifty cent "nickel" candy bar with a minimum wage at $7-$8.00. *But
I, too, believe we're in so deep now that it's hard to picture how we'd ever
become solvent again as a country.

I think the tone of the hobby will evolve in the next twenty years as
traditional coins and bills become less relevant in our commercial lives,
and maybe even disappear. *True collectors then will concentrate their focus
on the past while others will take pleasure in the inevitable Mint-issued
bullion products. *High roller collectors still will be able to pounce on
those six and seven figure rarities and then auction them at a profit, and
pundits will continue to cite those sales as indicative of a "healthy
hobby". *Meanwhile, anyone researching affordable coins as an investment
might also do some research in the stock market at the same time. *My actual
market profits over the years have been much greater than my paper profits
form my coin collection. *But I still enjoy the coins more.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


Actually, the rise in the price of silver from much less than $20 to
$49 and then back to the low $30s has had a tremendous negtaive impact
on the availability and affordability of the U.S. silver coins that
many people start with when they enter the hobby. Even for me, I find
that the availability of many common world silver crowns is much less
than two or three years ago, and when I find them the prices can be
shocking. It will be a long-term negative for the entry of new
collectors with average incomes.

I don't much like the U.S. stock market (on lots of levels or from
lots of angles), although if my premise about strong inflation/
currency depreciation is correct, equities will benefit sooner or
later (or at least that's what reading history suggests). I'd suggest
that very few individual investors are doing much trading at the
present time.

oly
  #45  
Old January 27th 13, 09:29 PM posted to rec.collecting.coins
Frank Galikanokus
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 291
Default Trillion Dollar Coin

bremick wrote:

"Frank Galikanokus" wrote in message ...

oly wrote:

On Tuesday, January 15, 2013 4:16:53 PM UTC-6, Frank Galikanokus wrote:
Jerry Dennis wrote: On Jan 11, 1:34 pm, Frank Galikanokus
wrote: Jerry Dennis wrote:
On Jan 10, 6:02 pm, Frank Galikanokus
wrote: oly wrote: On Jan 8, 9:56 pm, "bremick"
wrote: "oly" wrote in message
...
On Jan 8, 8:17 pm, "bremick" wrote:
"Frank Galikanokus" wrote in
... oly wrote:
On Jan 5, 10:11 pm, "bremick" wrote:
"Jerry Dennis" wrote in message
...
No link to this rumor, but it was on TV on The
Five last night, and Huffington Post ran a blurb on
its web site. Seems the

feds are seriously considering issuing a platinum coin
worth a trillion dollars to avoid the debt ceiling.
I did a little math on the deal using the current $100

Platinum Eagle as a base. Using the ratios for 1 oz.
PAEs, it would take 10 billion troy oz., or just over
342,857.142 86 tons (US), for a single trillion dollar
eagle. Kind of makes the 2007 Canadian $1,000,000
Maple Leaf (100 kg) and the 2012 Austrailian $1,000,000
Kangaroo (1000 kg) seem like chump change. Jerry
---------- Would it actually be money

if it isn't intended for circulation? I'm thinking of
those 1933 Saints here. If so, what would that really
accomplish? I'm sure there probably were a bunch of legal experts
involved if the govt

ever seriously considered it. Could it be legally "worth"
a trillion if it simply said so on it with a

Congressional blessing? Or would it
require a trillion worth of platinum? Sadly, this government
seems to be reduced to weirdness

rather than common sense to reduce our debt. I think
the idea (which is just an accounting trick) would be to take
a simple one ounce platinum blank and stamp it "one trillion
dollars". There is no need to attempt to make

the intrinsic value of such a coin anywhere close to its
"face". The Traesury Secretary would have the very few of
these coins which were required to be made up sent to some
vault in New York City or Washington D.C.
Congressional approval probably doesn't mean squat.
But there is simply no point to minting such a coin; the
Federal Reserve Bank effectively does this
every day with their computers and gee, they
don't do a sum of one trillion dollars more than two or
three times per year. In Weimar
Germany in 1922-23, they didn't use any more paper to print
a million mark note than they did to print the
Imperial pre-war one hundred mark note (indeed
they used a smaller price of paper). Wrap
your head around this thought: "Money" means nothing anymore.
Work, careers, business skills, effort means
nothing anymore. The money cheaters can create
more "money" in a computer keystroke than you
or I could "earn" by ten thousand lifetimes of "work".
oly I agree!
So what are we going to do about the millionaires and

billionaires and their tools that
are trashing our economy and threatening our freedom?

JAM -------- I say let's vote them out of
Congress!!- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -
I think that the old comic strip "Pogo" (Walt Kelly) quote

went something like "We have met the enemy and it is us" and
that it applies here. Lots and lots of people
get more from "the System" than they ever put in. My poor old
paternal grandparents clearly did towards the end of their
lives. My parents did too (but they were very successful and
they did put in quite a lot first, up-front). I am now angling to
game "the System" for myself. Being personally honest about what you
tell yourself about yourself is still rather important. Sauve

qui peut, baayy-beeee.
oly ------- For every person who is
fortunate and healthy enough to "game the system", there
are two or three who pass away well before recouping what they put
in. On the other hand, there are some who work for a
only couple years but incur a disability and then
collect for the rest of their lives. I'd prefer to stay
healthy and take my chances. Good luck to you as you enter a new
phase of you life. Bruce- Hide quoted
text - - Show quoted text - And if I'm
being ****y, I'll take issue with your demographics and
return of retirement contributions. Most people who have been
presently been retired for two decades got their own
contributions back within three years or less. Presently,
more recent retirees are looking at five to seven years
before they start playing on the house's money. There are
NOT

two or three people dying early for every one that actually
reaches retirement age. NOT the case at all. If that was true,
the crap debt would not be piling up the way it is. Maybe
Timmy should mint about a dozen of them trillion dollar
platinums. oly Social Security does not
contribute to the national debt. JAM- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text - Actually, it does. FICA taxes are

collected. The tax money is then used to purchase Treasury Bonds.
Treasury Bonds are, in reality, IOU's to Social Security. The taxes
used to purchase the Treasury Bonds are then deposited into the
General Fund, which Congress loves because they get to spend it,
thus adding to the national debt. The Social Security Act is one of
the biggest Ponzi schemes ever perpetrated on the American people.
Jerry Where did you get this information, fox?
Your statement that SS is a Ponzi scheme is bull**** and proves your
lack of knowledge on the subject. JAM- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text - Easy, Frank. I'm not going to get into a
****ing contest with you. Everything I mentioned is on the Social
Security Administration's web site. www.ssa.gov. The deductions of
that information is my own, and blatantly obvious. If there really was
a fund, as you mentioned to oly, and there was no way for Congress to
get its greedy hands on it, Social Security would still be viable.
Jerry Yep, you are clue less. JAM


Old ****ers like you are eating your grandchildren and great granchildren
alive and can't even be intellectually honest about it.

You are taking out many many many multiples of anything you ever possibly
put into "The System".

oly


I've ben putting into the system since I volunteered for military
service when I was 18.

So we are supposed to toss the previous generations on the scrap heap?
Are we supposed to do away with any hope of current generations for a
better future?

There is plenty to go around if we can stop the trickling up of the
nations wealth in to the hands of the wealthy elite that threaten our
freedom.

JAM
----------

Just curious. What would you do if you found your income was "trickling up"
to a level where you would be considered wealthy? Give it to the poor?
Argue that you weren't elite, it's those OTHER rich guys? I can't imagine a
single wealthy elite who threatens my freedom. Don't fall through that
flimsy soap box.

The current working generations have dozens more options to prepare for
their retirement than we did when I started working. We had Social Security
and maybe a pension, if we were lucky. There were no IRA's, 401k's, or
convenient day trading on your smart phone. Congress could easily raise
the SS ages a notch as well as the highest wage for withholding with little
impact on today's 20-30 year olds when they retire. Thirty or 40 years from
now, anyone who retires and still counts on SS payments for survival will
have to blame themselves for not planning better.


Sometimes, when I buy a couple of numbers on the mega millions, I think
about what I would do with all that money.

I'd spend it all. I'd give it all away to family, friends and worthy
groups and individuals.

Or maybe I could found a financial and political dynasty. Yano, like
they have done throughout history, until the America Revolution and
Constitution showed the world a better way.

What good would it do to be worth millions or billions when you die?

JAM
  #46  
Old January 27th 13, 11:57 PM posted to rec.collecting.coins
oly
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3,111
Default Trillion Dollar Coin

On Sunday, January 27, 2013 2:29:56 PM UTC-6, Frank Galikanokus wrote:
bremick wrote: "Frank Galikanokus" wrote in message ... oly wrote: On Tuesday, January 15, 2013 4:16:53 PM UTC-6, Frank Galikanokus wrote: Jerry Dennis wrote: On Jan 11, 1:34 pm, Frank Galikanokus wrote: Jerry Dennis wrote: On Jan 10, 6:02 pm, Frank Galikanokus wrote: oly wrote: On Jan 8, 9:56 pm, "bremick" wrote: "oly" wrote in message ... On Jan 8, 8:17 pm, "bremick" wrote: "Frank Galikanokus" wrote in .... oly wrote: On Jan 5, 10:11 pm, "bremick" wrote: "Jerry Dennis" wrote in message ... No link to this rumor, but it was on TV on The Five last night, and Huffington Post ran a blurb on its web site. Seems the feds are seriously considering issuing a platinum coin worth a trillion dollars to avoid the debt ceiling. I did a little math on the deal using the current $100 Platinum Eagle as a base. Using the ratios for 1 oz. PAEs, it would take 10 billion troy oz., or just over 342,857.142 86 tons (US), for a single trillion dollar eagle. Kind of makes the 2007 Canadian $1,000,000 Maple Leaf (100 kg) and the 2012 Austrailian $1,000,000 Kangaroo (1000 kg) seem like chump change. Jerry ---------- Would it actually be money if it isn't intended for circulation? I'm thinking of those 1933 Saints here. If so, what would that really accomplish? I'm sure there probably were a bunch of legal experts involved if the govt ever seriously considered it. Could it be legally "worth" a trillion if it simply said so on it with a Congressional blessing? Or would it require a trillion worth of platinum? Sadly, this government seems to be reduced to weirdness rather than common sense to reduce our debt. I think the idea (which is just an accounting trick) would be to take a simple one ounce platinum blank and stamp it "one trillion dollars". There is no need to attempt to make the intrinsic value of such a coin anywhere close to its "face". The Traesury Secretary would have the very few of these coins which were required to be made up sent to some vault in New York City or Washington D.C. Congressional approval probably doesn't mean squat. But there is simply no point to minting such a coin; the Federal Reserve Bank effectively does this every day with their computers and gee, they don't do a sum of one trillion dollars more than two or three times per year. In Weimar Germany in 1922-23, they didn't use any more paper to print a million mark note than they did to print the Imperial pre-war one hundred mark note (indeed they used a smaller price of paper). Wrap your head around this thought: "Money" means nothing anymore. Work, careers, business skills, effort means nothing anymore. The money cheaters can create more "money" in a computer keystroke than you or I could "earn" by ten thousand lifetimes of "work". oly I agree! So what are we going to do about the millionaires and billionaires and their tools that are trashing our economy and threatening our freedom? JAM -------- I say let's vote them out of Congress!!- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I think that the old comic strip "Pogo" (Walt Kelly) quote went something like "We have met the enemy and it is us" and that it applies here. Lots and lots of people get more from "the System" than they ever put in. My poor old paternal grandparents clearly did towards the end of their lives. My parents did too (but they were very successful and they did put in quite a lot first, up-front). I am now angling to game "the System" for myself. Being personally honest about what you tell yourself about yourself is still rather important. Sauve qui peut, baayy-beeee. oly ------- For every person who is fortunate and healthy enough to "game the system", there are two or three who pass away well before recouping what they put in. On the other hand, there are some who work for a only couple years but incur a disability and then collect for the rest of their lives. I'd prefer to stay healthy and take my chances. Good luck to you as you enter a new phase of you life. Bruce- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - And if I'm being ****y, I'll take issue with your demographics and return of retirement contributions. Most people who have been presently been retired for two decades got their own contributions back within three years or less. Presently, more recent retirees are looking at five to seven years before they start playing on the house's money. There are NOT two or three people dying early for every one that actually reaches retirement age. NOT the case at all. If that was true, the crap debt would not be piling up the way it is. Maybe Timmy should mint about a dozen of them trillion dollar platinums. oly Social Security does not contribute to the national debt. JAM- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Actually, it does. FICA taxes are collected.. The tax money is then used to purchase Treasury Bonds. Treasury Bonds are, in reality, IOU's to Social Security. The taxes used to purchase the Treasury Bonds are then deposited into the General Fund, which Congress loves because they get to spend it, thus adding to the national debt. The Social Security Act is one of the biggest Ponzi schemes ever perpetrated on the American people. Jerry Where did you get this information, fox? Your statement that SS is a Ponzi scheme is bull**** and proves your lack of knowledge on the subject. JAM- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Easy, Frank. I'm not going to get into a ****ing contest with you. Everything I mentioned is on the Social Security Administration's web site. www.ssa.gov. The deductions of that information is my own, and blatantly obvious. If there really was a fund, as you mentioned to oly, and there was no way for Congress to get its greedy hands on it, Social Security would still be viable. Jerry Yep, you are clue less. JAM Old ****ers like you are eating your grandchildren and great granchildren alive and can't even be intellectually honest about it. You are taking out many many many multiples of anything you ever possibly put into "The System".. oly I've ben putting into the system since I volunteered for military service when I was 18. So we are supposed to toss the previous generations on the scrap heap? Are we supposed to do away with any hope of current generations for a better future? There is plenty to go around if we can stop the trickling up of the nations wealth in to the hands of the wealthy elite that threaten our freedom. JAM ---------- Just curious. What would you do if you found your income was "trickling up" to a level where you would be considered wealthy? Give it to the poor? Argue that you weren't elite, it's those OTHER rich guys? I can't imagine a single wealthy elite who threatens my freedom. Don't fall through that flimsy soap box. The current working generations have dozens more options to prepare for their retirement than we did when I started working. We had Social Security and maybe a pension, if we were lucky. There were no IRA's, 401k's, or convenient day trading on your smart phone. Congress could easily raise the SS ages a notch as well as the highest wage for withholding with little impact on today's 20-30 year olds when they retire. Thirty or 40 years from now, anyone who retires and still counts on SS payments for survival will have to blame themselves for not planning better. Sometimes, when I buy a couple of numbers on the mega millions, I think about what I would do with all that money. I'd spend it all. I'd give it all away to family, friends and worthy groups and individuals. Or maybe I could found a financial and political dynasty. Yano, like they have done throughout history, until the America Revolution and Constitution showed the world a better way. What good would it do to be worth millions or billions when you die? JAM


Yesterday, I came into the (mostly) dregs of a "collection" that was formed from the early 1970s to 1998. A lot of it was Franklin Mint (thank God for all the sterling silver) and the collector kept a great deal of the original FM paperwork and all the little "gifts" that the FM would send you if you paid about $10 a year to be in their collectors club. The stuff brought back a lot of memories for me. There were also a lot of clad U.S. proof sets 1974 through 1998 (many many dregs here) and then thankfully again, quite a few modern U.S. commemorative silver dollars. The collector who put it all together has been dead more than ten or twelve years; I didn't personally know him or his descendants.

So, I asked myself, searchingly, what was the point of all this collecting??? The collection that I saw was hardly memorable (but, there was a hint dropped that there might be some foreign coins to see at a later date). It would not have provided a super hedge against inflation and the chance for a profit wasn't great either (well, the family did have four or five modern gold commemoratives in the lot, including some tens, and IMHO they wisely decided to keep these). If the fellow was happy with all this "stuff", well yes, that counts but thank goodness he didn't try to dispose of the stuff in his later life, he could not have been too happy with the metals prices of the late 1990s. It is better today, but still not enough to beat the cumulative decline in the purchasing power of the dollar over thirty of forty years.

And I asked myself, is there any more purpose to what I am doing with my accumulation of coins than what this fellow did??? Do I need to focus better???
If I owned some nice Swedish plate money or if I owned a nice Charles II five guineas (or better yet, more than one), would that make me happier than the dross that I already have???

If I won big money on the Lottery, would it be better to have nice apartments in Springfield, London, Key West and Seattle??? Would it be better to rent some insincere affection to fill in the hours instead of fighting with the wife over idiocies twenty-four hours-a-day, at least five days a week???

The big thing about life is the ticking of the time clock. The pursuit of money (or old coins or books or other "things") is kind of trap-like.

Saturday was just a kind of reflective day.

oly


  #47  
Old January 28th 13, 01:31 AM posted to rec.collecting.coins
Bremick
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 641
Default Trillion Dollar Coin

"Frank Galikanokus" wrote in message ...

bremick wrote:

"Frank Galikanokus" wrote in message ...

oly wrote:

On Tuesday, January 15, 2013 4:16:53 PM UTC-6, Frank Galikanokus wrote:
Jerry Dennis wrote: On Jan 11, 1:34 pm, Frank Galikanokus
wrote: Jerry Dennis wrote:

On Jan 10, 6:02 pm, Frank Galikanokus

wrote: oly wrote: On Jan 8, 9:56 pm,
"bremick"
wrote: "oly" wrote in message


...
On Jan 8, 8:17 pm, "bremick" wrote:

"Frank Galikanokus" wrote in
... oly wrote:

On Jan 5, 10:11 pm, "bremick" wrote:

"Jerry Dennis" wrote in message

...
No link to this rumor, but it was on TV on The
Five last night, and Huffington Post ran a blurb on
its web site. Seems the

feds are seriously considering issuing a platinum coin
worth a trillion dollars to avoid the debt ceiling.

I did a little math on the deal using the current

$100
Platinum Eagle as a base. Using the ratios for 1 oz.
PAEs, it would take 10 billion troy oz., or just over
342,857.142 86 tons (US), for a single trillion dollar
eagle. Kind of makes the 2007 Canadian $1,000,000
Maple Leaf (100 kg) and the 2012 Austrailian
$1,000,000
Kangaroo (1000 kg) seem like chump change. Jerry

---------- Would it actually be

money
if it isn't intended for circulation? I'm thinking of
those 1933 Saints here. If so, what would that really
accomplish? I'm sure there probably were a bunch of legal experts

involved if the govt

ever seriously considered it. Could it be legally "worth"

a trillion if it simply said so on it with a

Congressional blessing? Or would it
require a trillion worth of platinum? Sadly, this government

seems to be reduced to

weirdness
rather than common sense to reduce our debt. I think
the idea (which is just an accounting trick) would be to take

a simple one ounce platinum blank and stamp it "one trillion

dollars". There is no need to attempt to make

the intrinsic value of such a coin anywhere close to its
"face". The Traesury Secretary would have the very few
of
these coins which were required to be made up sent to some

vault in New York City or Washington D.C.
Congressional approval probably doesn't mean squat.
But there is simply no point to minting such a coin; the
Federal Reserve Bank effectively does this
every day with their computers and gee, they
don't do a sum of one trillion dollars more than two or

three times per year. In
Weimar
Germany in 1922-23, they didn't use any more paper to print

a million mark note than they did to print
the
Imperial pre-war one hundred mark note
(indeed
they used a smaller price of paper).
Wrap
your head around this thought: "Money" means nothing
anymore.
Work, careers, business skills, effort
means
nothing anymore. The money cheaters can
create
more "money" in a computer keystroke than
you
or I could "earn" by ten thousand lifetimes of "work".

oly I agree!

So what are we going to do about the millionaires and

billionaires and their tools that

are trashing our economy and threatening our freedom?

JAM -------- I say let's vote them out
of
Congress!!- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -

I think that the old comic strip "Pogo" (Walt Kelly) quote

went something like "We have met the enemy and it is us" and
that it applies here. Lots and lots of
people
get more from "the System" than they ever put in. My poor
old
paternal grandparents clearly did towards the end of their
lives. My parents did too (but they were very successful and
they did put in quite a lot first, up-front). I am now angling to

game "the System" for myself. Being personally honest about what

you
tell yourself about yourself is still rather important. Sauve

qui peut, baayy-beeee.
oly ------- For every person who is
fortunate and healthy enough to "game the system",
there
are two or three who pass away well before recouping what they put
in. On the other hand, there are some who work for a
only couple years but incur a disability and then
collect for the rest of their lives. I'd prefer to
stay
healthy and take my chances. Good luck to you as you enter a new
phase of you life. Bruce- Hide quoted
text - - Show quoted text - And if
I'm
being ****y, I'll take issue with your demographics and
return of retirement contributions. Most people who have been

presently been retired for two decades got their own
contributions back within three years or less.
Presently,
more recent retirees are looking at five to seven years
before they start playing on the house's money. There
are
NOT

two or three people dying early for every one that actually
reaches retirement age. NOT the case at all. If that was true,
the crap debt would not be piling up the way it is. Maybe
Timmy should mint about a dozen of them trillion dollar
platinums. oly Social Security does not
contribute to the national debt. JAM- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text - Actually, it does. FICA taxes are

collected. The tax money is then used to purchase Treasury Bonds.
Treasury Bonds are, in reality, IOU's to Social Security. The
taxes
used to purchase the Treasury Bonds are then deposited into the
General Fund, which Congress loves because they get to spend it,
thus adding to the national debt. The Social Security Act is one
of
the biggest Ponzi schemes ever perpetrated on the American people.

Jerry Where did you get this information, fox?
Your statement that SS is a Ponzi scheme is bull**** and proves your
lack of knowledge on the subject. JAM- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text - Easy, Frank. I'm not going to get into
a
****ing contest with you. Everything I mentioned is on the Social
Security Administration's web site. www.ssa.gov. The deductions of
that information is my own, and blatantly obvious. If there really
was
a fund, as you mentioned to oly, and there was no way for Congress
to
get its greedy hands on it, Social Security would still be viable.

Jerry Yep, you are clue less. JAM


Old ****ers like you are eating your grandchildren and great
granchildren
alive and can't even be intellectually honest about it.

You are taking out many many many multiples of anything you ever
possibly
put into "The System".

oly


I've ben putting into the system since I volunteered for military
service when I was 18.

So we are supposed to toss the previous generations on the scrap heap?
Are we supposed to do away with any hope of current generations for a
better future?

There is plenty to go around if we can stop the trickling up of the
nations wealth in to the hands of the wealthy elite that threaten our
freedom.

JAM
----------

Just curious. What would you do if you found your income was "trickling
up"
to a level where you would be considered wealthy? Give it to the poor?
Argue that you weren't elite, it's those OTHER rich guys? I can't imagine
a
single wealthy elite who threatens my freedom. Don't fall through that
flimsy soap box.

The current working generations have dozens more options to prepare for
their retirement than we did when I started working. We had Social
Security
and maybe a pension, if we were lucky. There were no IRA's, 401k's, or
convenient day trading on your smart phone. Congress could easily raise
the SS ages a notch as well as the highest wage for withholding with
little
impact on today's 20-30 year olds when they retire. Thirty or 40 years
from
now, anyone who retires and still counts on SS payments for survival will
have to blame themselves for not planning better.


Sometimes, when I buy a couple of numbers on the mega millions, I think
about what I would do with all that money.

I'd spend it all. I'd give it all away to family, friends and worthy
groups and individuals.

Or maybe I could found a financial and political dynasty. Yano, like
they have done throughout history, until the America Revolution and
Constitution showed the world a better way.

What good would it do to be worth millions or billions when you die?

JAM
----------------

You might ask your wife and kids.

  #48  
Old January 28th 13, 01:40 AM posted to rec.collecting.coins
Bremick
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 641
Default Trillion Dollar Coin

"oly" wrote in message
...

On Sunday, January 27, 2013 2:29:56 PM UTC-6, Frank Galikanokus wrote:
bremick wrote: "Frank Galikanokus" wrote in message
... oly wrote: On Tuesday,
January 15, 2013 4:16:53 PM UTC-6, Frank Galikanokus wrote: Jerry
Dennis wrote: On Jan 11, 1:34 pm, Frank Galikanokus
wrote: Jerry Dennis wrote:
On Jan 10, 6:02 pm, Frank Galikanokus
wrote: oly wrote: On Jan 8, 9:56 pm,

"bremick" wrote: "oly" wrote in message

...
On Jan 8, 8:17 pm, "bremick" wrote:
"Frank Galikanokus" wrote in

... oly wrote:
On Jan 5, 10:11 pm, "bremick" wrote:
"Jerry Dennis" wrote in message

...
No link to this rumor, but it was on TV on The
Five last night, and Huffington Post ran a blurb

on its web site. Seems the feds are seriously
considering issuing a platinum coin worth a trillion dollars
to avoid the debt ceiling. I did a

little math on the deal using the current $100 Platinum Eagle
as a base. Using the ratios for 1 oz. PAEs, it would take 10

billion troy oz., or just over 342,857.142 86 tons
(US), for a single trillion dollar eagle.
Kind of makes the 2007 Canadian $1,000,000 Maple Leaf (100

kg) and the 2012 Austrailian $1,000,000 Kangaroo
(1000 kg) seem like chump change. Jerry
---------- Would it actually be money

if it isn't intended for circulation? I'm thinking of
those 1933 Saints here. If so, what would that really
accomplish? I'm sure there probably were a bunch of legal experts
involved if the govt ever

seriously considered it. Could it be legally "worth"
a trillion if it simply said so on it with a
Congressional blessing? Or would it
require a trillion worth of platinum? Sadly, this government
seems to be reduced to

weirdness rather than common sense to reduce our debt.
I think the idea (which is just an accounting trick) would be to

take a simple one ounce platinum blank and stamp it
"one trillion dollars". There is
no need to attempt to make the intrinsic value of such a coin
anywhere close to its "face". The Traesury Secretary would

have the very few of these coins which were required
to be made up sent to some vault in New York City or
Washington D.C. Congressional approval probably
doesn't mean squat. But there is simply no point
to minting such a coin; the Federal
Reserve Bank effectively does this every day with their
computers and gee, they don't do a sum of
one trillion dollars more than two or
three times per year. In Weimar
Germany in 1922-23, they didn't use any more paper to print
a million mark note than they did to print the
Imperial pre-war one hundred mark note (indeed
they used a smaller price of paper). Wrap
your head around this thought: "Money" means nothing

anymore. Work, careers, business skills,
effort means nothing anymore. The money
cheaters can create more "money" in a computer keystroke
than you or I could "earn" by ten thousand
lifetimes of "work". oly
I agree! So what are we going to do

about the millionaires and billionaires and their
tools that are trashing our economy and

threatening our freedom? JAM --------
I say let's vote them out of Congress!!- Hide quoted

text - - Show quoted text - I think
that the old comic strip "Pogo" (Walt Kelly) quote went
something like "We have met the enemy and it is us" and that it
applies here. Lots and lots of people get more

from "the System" than they ever put in. My poor old
paternal grandparents clearly did towards the end of their
lives. My parents did too (but they were very successful and
they did put in quite a lot first, up-front). I am now angling to
game "the System" for myself. Being personally honest about what

you tell yourself about yourself is still rather
important. Sauve qui peut, baayy-beeee.
oly ------- For every person who is
fortunate and healthy enough to "game the system", there
are two or three who pass away well before recouping what they put
in. On the other hand, there are some who work for a
only couple years but incur a disability and then
collect for the rest of their lives. I'd prefer to stay
healthy and take my chances. Good luck to you as you enter a new
phase of you life. Bruce- Hide

quoted text - - Show quoted text -
And if I'm being ****y, I'll take issue with your demographics
and return of retirement contributions. Most people
who have been presently been retired for two decades
got their own contributions back within three years or
less. Presently, more recent retirees are looking at
five to seven years before they start playing on the
house's money. There are NOT two or three people dying early
for every one that actually reaches retirement age. NOT the
case at all. If that was true, the crap debt would not be
piling up the way it is. Maybe Timmy should mint about a
dozen of them trillion dollar platinums. oly
Social Security does not contribute to the national debt.
JAM- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -
Actually, it does. FICA taxes are collected. The tax money is

then used to purchase Treasury Bonds. Treasury Bonds are, in
reality, IOU's to Social Security. The taxes used to purchase
the Treasury Bonds are then deposited into the General Fund,
which Congress loves because they get to spend it, thus adding
to the national debt. The Social Security Act is one of the
biggest Ponzi schemes ever perpetrated on the American people.
Jerry Where did you get this information, fox?

Your statement that SS is a Ponzi scheme is bull**** and proves your
lack of knowledge on the subject. JAM- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text - Easy, Frank. I'm not going to get into

a ****ing contest with you. Everything I mentioned is on the
Social Security Administration's web site. www.ssa.gov. The
deductions of that information is my own, and blatantly obvious.
If there really was a fund, as you mentioned to oly, and there was
no way for Congress to get its greedy hands on it, Social Security
would still be viable. Jerry Yep, you are clue less. JAM
Old ****ers like you are eating your grandchildren and great granchildren
alive and can't even be intellectually honest about it. You

are taking out many many many multiples of anything you ever possibly
put into "The System". oly I've ben putting into the system
since I volunteered for military service when I was 18. So we are
supposed to toss the previous generations on the scrap heap? Are we
supposed to do away with any hope of current generations for a better
future? There is plenty to go around if we can stop the trickling up
of the nations wealth in to the hands of the wealthy elite that threaten
our freedom. JAM ---------- Just curious. What would you do if
you found your income was "trickling up" to a level where you would be
considered wealthy? Give it to the poor? Argue that you weren't elite,
it's those OTHER rich guys? I can't imagine a single wealthy elite who
threatens my freedom. Don't fall through that flimsy soap box. The
current working generations have dozens more options to prepare for
their retirement than we did when I started working. We had Social
Security and maybe a pension, if we were lucky. There were no IRA's,
401k's, or convenient day trading on your smart phone. Congress could
easily raise the SS ages a notch as well as the highest wage for
withholding with little impact on today's 20-30 year olds when they
retire. Thirty or 40 years from now, anyone who retires and still counts
on SS payments for survival will have to blame themselves for not
planning better. Sometimes, when I buy a couple of numbers on the mega
millions, I think about what I would do with all that money. I'd spend it
all. I'd give it all away to family, friends and worthy groups and
individuals. Or maybe I could found a financial and political dynasty.
Yano, like they have done throughout history, until the America Revolution
and Constitution showed the world a better way. What good would it do to
be worth millions or billions when you die? JAM


Yesterday, I came into the (mostly) dregs of a "collection" that was formed
from the early 1970s to 1998. A lot of it was Franklin Mint (thank God for
all the sterling silver) and the collector kept a great deal of the original
FM paperwork and all the little "gifts" that the FM would send you if you
paid about $10 a year to be in their collectors club. The stuff brought
back a lot of memories for me. There were also a lot of clad U.S. proof
sets 1974 through 1998 (many many dregs here) and then thankfully again,
quite a few modern U.S. commemorative silver dollars. The collector who put
it all together has been dead more than ten or twelve years; I didn't
personally know him or his descendants.

So, I asked myself, searchingly, what was the point of all this
collecting??? The collection that I saw was hardly memorable (but, there was
a hint dropped that there might be some foreign coins to see at a later
date). It would not have provided a super hedge against inflation and the
chance for a profit wasn't great either (well, the family did have four or
five modern gold commemoratives in the lot, including some tens, and IMHO
they wisely decided to keep these). If the fellow was happy with all this
"stuff", well yes, that counts but thank goodness he didn't try to dispose
of the stuff in his later life, he could not have been too happy with the
metals prices of the late 1990s. It is better today, but still not enough
to beat the cumulative decline in the purchasing power of the dollar over
thirty of forty years.

And I asked myself, is there any more purpose to what I am doing with my
accumulation of coins than what this fellow did??? Do I need to focus
better???
If I owned some nice Swedish plate money or if I owned a nice Charles II
five guineas (or better yet, more than one), would that make me happier than
the dross that I already have???

If I won big money on the Lottery, would it be better to have nice
apartments in Springfield, London, Key West and Seattle??? Would it be
better to rent some insincere affection to fill in the hours instead of
fighting with the wife over idiocies twenty-four hours-a-day, at least five
days a week???

The big thing about life is the ticking of the time clock. The pursuit of
money (or old coins or books or other "things") is kind of trap-like.

Saturday was just a kind of reflective day.

oly
----------

Wait until you begin that retirement, Oly, and you don't need the pleasant
diversion from the rat race anymore that coin or "thing" collecting had
given you. That's when your attitude might really evolve.

I know I'll never win any big lottery because I never buy any tickets.
Saving my money for something. I just can't remember what.


  #49  
Old January 30th 13, 06:56 PM posted to rec.collecting.coins
Frank Galikanokus
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 291
Default Trillion Dollar Coin

oly wrote:

On Sunday, January 27, 2013 2:29:56 PM UTC-6, Frank Galikanokus wrote:
bremick wrote: "Frank Galikanokus" wrote in message ... oly wrote: On Tuesday, January 15, 2013 4:16:53 PM UTC-6, Frank Galikanokus wrote: Jerry Dennis wrote: On Jan 11, 1:34 pm, Frank Galikanokus wrote: Jerry Dennis wrote: On Jan 10, 6:02 pm, Frank Galikanokus wrote: oly wrote: On Jan 8, 9:56 pm, "bremick" wrote: "oly" wrote in message ... On Jan 8, 8:17 pm, "bremick" wrote: "Frank Galikanokus" wrote in ... oly wrote: On Jan 5, 10:11 pm, "bremick" wrote: "Jerry Dennis" wrote in message
... No link to this rumor, but it was on TV on The Five last night, and Huffington Post ran a blurb on its web site. Seems the feds are seriously considering issuing a platinum coin worth a trillion dollars to avoid the debt ceiling. I did a little math on the deal using the current $100 Platinum Eagle as a base. Using the ratios for 1 oz. PAEs, it would take 10 billion troy oz., or just over 342,857.142 86 tons (US), for a single trillion dollar eagle. Kind of makes the 2007 Canadian $1,000,000 Maple Leaf (100 kg) and the 2012 Austrailian $1,000,000 Kangaroo (1000 kg) seem like chump change. Jerry ----------
Would it actually be money if it isn't intended for circulation? I'm thinking of those 1933 Saints here. If so, what would that really accomplish? I'm sure there probably were a bunch of legal experts involved if the govt ever seriously considered it. Could it be legally "worth" a trillion if it simply said so on it with a Congressional blessing? Or would it require a trillion worth of platinum? Sadly, this government seems to be reduced to weirdness rather than common sense to reduce our debt. I think the idea (which is just an accounting trick) would be to take a simple one ounce platinum blank and stamp it "one trillion dollars". There is no

need to attempt to make the intrinsic value of such a coin anywhere close to its "face". The Traesury Secretary would have the very few of these coins which were required to be made up sent to some vault in New York City or Washington D.C. Congressional approval probably doesn't mean squat. But there is simply no point to minting such a coin; the Federal Reserve Bank effectively does this every day with their computers and gee, they don't do a sum of one trillion dollars more than two or three times per year. In Weimar Germany in 1922-23, they didn't use any more paper to print a million mark note than they did to print the Imperial pre-war one hundred mark note
(indeed they used a smaller price of paper). Wrap your head around this thought: "Money" means nothing anymore. Work, careers, business skills, effort means nothing anymore. The money cheaters can create more "money" in a computer keystroke than you or I could "earn" by ten thousand lifetimes of "work". oly I agree! So what are we going to do about the millionaires and billionaires and their tools that are trashing our economy and threatening our freedom? JAM -------- I say let's vote them out of Congress!!- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I think that the old comic strip "Pogo" (Walt
Kelly) quote went something like "We have met the enemy and it is us" and that it applies here. Lots and lots of people get more from "the System" than they ever put in. My poor old paternal grandparents clearly did towards the end of their lives. My parents did too (but they were very successful and they did put in quite a lot first, up-front). I am now angling to game "the System" for myself. Being personally honest about what you tell yourself about yourself is still rather important. Sauve qui peut, baayy-beeee. oly ------- For every person who is fortunate and healthy enough to "game the system", there are two or three who pass away well before recouping what they put in. On the other hand, there are some who work for a
only couple years but incur a disability and then collect for the rest of their lives. I'd prefer to stay healthy and take my chances. Good luck to you as you enter a new phase of you life. Bruce- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - And if I'm being ****y, I'll take issue with your demographics and return of retirement contributions. Most people who have been presently been retired for two decades got their own contributions back within three years or less. Presently, more recent retirees are looking at five to seven years before they start playing on the house's money. There are NOT two or three people dying early for every one that actually reaches retirement age. NOT the case at all. If that was true, the
crap debt would not be piling up the way it is. Maybe Timmy should mint about a dozen of them trillion dollar platinums. oly Social Security does not contribute to the national debt. JAM- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Actually, it does. FICA taxes are collected. The tax money is then used to purchase Treasury Bonds. Treasury Bonds are, in reality, IOU's to Social Security. The taxes used to purchase the Treasury Bonds are then deposited into the General Fund, which Congress loves because they get to spend it, thus adding to the national debt. The Social Security Act is one of the biggest Ponzi schemes ever perpetrated on the American people. Jerry Where did you get this information, fox? Your statement that SS is a Ponzi scheme is bull**** and proves your lack of knowledge on
the subject. JAM- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Easy, Frank. I'm not going to get into a ****ing contest with you. Everything I mentioned is on the Social Security Administration's web site. www.ssa.gov. The deductions of that information is my own, and blatantly obvious. If there really was a fund, as you mentioned to oly, and there was no way for Congress to get its greedy hands on it, Social Security would still be viable. Jerry Yep, you are clue less. JAM Old ****ers like you are eating your grandchildren and great granchildren alive and can't even be intellectually honest about it. You are taking out many many many multiples of anything you ever possibly put into "The System". oly I've ben putting into the system since I volunteered for military service when I was 18. So we are supposed to toss the previous generations on the scrap heap? Are we

supposed to do away with any hope of current generations for a better future? There is plenty to go around if we can stop the trickling up of the nations wealth in to the hands of the wealthy elite that threaten our freedom. JAM ---------- Just curious. What would you do if you found your income was "trickling up" to a level where you would be considered wealthy? Give it to the poor? Argue that you weren't elite, it's those OTHER rich guys? I can't imagine a single wealthy elite who threatens my freedom. Don't fall through that flimsy soap box. The current working generations have dozens more options to prepare for their retirement than we did when I started working. We had Social Security and maybe a pension, if we were lucky. There were no IRA's, 401k's, or convenient day trading on your smart phone. Congress could easily raise the SS ages a notch as well as the highest wage for withholding with little impact on today's 20-30 year olds
when they retire. Thirty or 40 years from now, anyone who retires and still counts on SS payments for survival will have to blame themselves for not planning better. Sometimes, when I buy a couple of numbers on the mega millions, I think about what I would do with all that money. I'd spend it all. I'd give it all away to family, friends and worthy groups and individuals. Or maybe I could found a financial and political dynasty. Yano, like they have done throughout history, until the America Revolution and Constitution showed the world a better way. What good would it do to be worth millions or billions when you die? JAM

Yesterday, I came into the (mostly) dregs of a "collection" that was formed from the early 1970s to 1998. A lot of it was Franklin Mint (thank God for all the sterling silver) and the collector kept a great deal of the original FM paperwork and all the little "gifts" that the FM would send you if you paid about $10 a year to be in their collectors club. The stuff brought back a lot of memories for me. There were also a lot of clad U.S. proof sets 1974 through 1998 (many many dregs here) and then thankfully again, quite a few modern U.S. commemorative silver dollars. The collector who put it all together has been dead more than ten or twelve years; I didn't personally know him or his descendants.

So, I asked myself, searchingly, what was the point of all this collecting??? The collection that I saw was hardly memorable (but, there was a hint dropped that there might be some foreign coins to see at a later date). It would not have provided a super hedge against inflation and the chance for a profit wasn't great either (well, the family did have four or five modern gold commemoratives in the lot, including some tens, and IMHO they wisely decided to keep these). If the fellow was happy with all this "stuff", well yes, that counts but thank goodness he didn't try to dispose of the stuff in his later life, he could not have been too happy with the metals prices of the late 1990s. It is better today, but still not enough to beat the cumulative decline in the purchasing power of the dollar over thirty of forty years.

And I asked myself, is there any more purpose to what I am doing with my accumulation of coins than what this fellow did??? Do I need to focus better???
If I owned some nice Swedish plate money or if I owned a nice Charles II five guineas (or better yet, more than one), would that make me happier than the dross that I already have???

If I won big money on the Lottery, would it be better to have nice apartments in Springfield, London, Key West and Seattle??? Would it be better to rent some insincere affection to fill in the hours instead of fighting with the wife over idiocies twenty-four hours-a-day, at least five days a week???

The big thing about life is the ticking of the time clock. The pursuit of money (or old coins or books or other "things") is kind of trap-like.

Saturday was just a kind of reflective day.

oly


Yes, that is the thing, you can always earn more money but you will never get even one
more tick of the clock.

JAM
 




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