[e-gold-list] tons of gold

[Bob]

Jim Davidson wrote:
> 
> Dear Bob,
> 
> > Those 2 items being normally expressed in tons.
> 
> Yes, they are.  The e-gold inventory is expressed in ounces.
> Conversion is as follows: 50,742.69 ounces divided by 12 to
> get pounds troy (12 ounces troy to the pound troy) = 4228.557
> pounds troy.

> I wonder what figures you believe accurately express the
> "central bank holdings" for, e.g., the US Treasury or
> the Federal Reserve?  I'm somewhat doubtful of their claims.

I don't pay a lot of attention to those figures as the US 
numbers are quite phony, and other central banks come up
with surprise announcements sometimes so that everybody has
to make an adjustment to their guesses.

If a central bank only has half of what they say they do,
then some other entity(s) has the other half. So total known
gold amounts are the better thing to track, at least for me.
They hardly change except for about a 2% average increase/yr
over the long long run.

165,000 ton seems like a good "about" figure for gold in 
the world, from what I've read.

times 2000 lbs/ton = 330,000,000 lbs
times 12 oz/lb = 3,960,000,000 ozs
times $400/oz = $1,58400,000,000 

Call it $1.6 trillion worth of gold in the world.
This number is close to what I've read a number of times.

That's a very small number compared to bonds in the world,
or equities in the world, or, how about an estimate for 
derivatives by the BIS (I think it was) which was around
$170 trillion, + or - 5 or 10 trillion if I remember right.

Compared to estimates of totals of different types of wealth
in the world, $1.6 trill ain't nothin. And I'm not considering 
derivatives as wealth. They're just bombs. They are passing
on risk to who? To each other? In which case they don't 
pass on risk if they are taking it on again from somebody else.
To a single entity that can take all the risk and still stay 
standing? There's no entity in the world big enough for that.
Just more fraud.

There's going to be some really big downsides to really big
gold and silver prices. It ain't going to be pretty.

bob

"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely
overthrow the
  liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While
the people are
  virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue
then will be
  ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal
invader." 
   -- Samuel Adams



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[e-gold-list] Re: The Gold Casino Share Price Chart and DGC Industry Stat Charts

[Bob]

The Gold Economy wrote:

> TGE has also started a new weekly column that will show the latest digital
> currency statistics charts every Monday morning.

Pretty good charts. I can take in the big picture fast.

Any chance of having a tally in tons, in text, at the bottom 
of the graphs so a comparison (in my mind) can be made to 
cental bank holdings and the worlds known above ground inventories?
Those 2 items being normally expressed in tons.

Bob



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[e-gold-list] ?

[Bob]

Sidd,

At:
http://pecunix.com/money.refined...ref.pgpkey
"-END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-"
is normally display on a separate line.
In the bowser view it's not.

If I go to 'view source' in my browser, I see that
"-BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-"
is separated from the key block, or on a line of
code above a spaced line. This isn't normal for
keys on browser pages that are importable into PGP.

""

This I've never seen. Anyways, the keys won't import into my
PGP program. I forget the code for making a PGP key copyable
from a .html page. Nowadays, I just paste a public key into 
a .txt file and send it to the server.

Just another thing to add to your list.

Bob





-- 
 http://www.construction.com/

Construction.com's PGP public key is here:
http://www.construction.com/assets/DH-DSSkey.txt
Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] Affordable advertising

[Bob]

Submit your e-gold web site free of charge at
http://www.ecurrencylinks.com
Affordable banner advertising (from $1/day). Free $9 sign-up bonus for
everyone!
BOB.


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[e-gold-list] Re: wow ... gold taking off again

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> notice, again - very unusually - an actual move in gold is happening
> in the overseas markets (Sydney/HK!)
> 
> (Bob  - if this is a 'real move', if it is trading much higher than
> where it left the scene in NY last time, we'll see that reliable
> thing again where the NY pit trades it right down to yesterdays ie NY
> close, before they let it run up again.  We don't want no steenking
> gaps!)
> 
> The overnite traders are awfully brave to do anything on their own,
> we'll see what happens...

It could be:

>From Jim Sinclair

Sunday, November 09, 2003, 3:00:00 AM EST
> Gold is appreciating nicely in Asia at this time, raising the probability that it 
> will better $400 this week. There is inviting evidence that the current buyers 
> represent the commercial interests that are identified as COT. The short cover may 
> well have started.
> 
> Look for closing strength in the US session to confirm that the shorts are running 
> for cover. Clearly, such a development can easily take gold well into the $400’s. 

Bob



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[e-gold-list] Jim Sinclair

[Bob]

Sunday, November 09, 2003, 9:05:00 PM EST

COT Trots Out Trojan For Last Time?

 Author: Jim Sinclair

Inadvertently, I believe, but still detrimental to the Gold Community at
large, is the latest Trojan horse to be rolled out of the COT stable.
 

It appeared in a Gold Eagle article by Sol Palha who quotes Forbes as
saying, “The Journal’s coverage of tax matters focuses on a provision to
allow US multinationals a one year window to repatriate profits from
abroad at a reduced tax rate of 5.25% instead of the current 35% rate.
The bill will also eliminate a tax exemption for Americans working
abroad.”

The article goes on to interpret this tax loophole as a means of bulling
the dollar higher into the 2004 election. After carefully laying the
foundation for his follow-up recommendation, Palha advises his clients
to sell gold and gold shares.

I already answered this issue in detail in last week’s article, “Jim
Answers Richard Russell’s Question.” However, because I am receiving
“Emergency” communications from terrified Gold Community members, I will
again give you the skinny on what this really is and its potential
impact on gold.

This tax legislation is a purely pork barrel effort designed to benefit
select recipients before the 2004 election. (Nothing really new here!).
However, this particular effort is being seriously misinterpreted by the
writer and is not significantly dollar positive or gold negative in the
least. Here’s why”

* The amount of funds that can be affected by this legislation are
estimated at $150 billion to $300 billion. 
* These funds would trade in the inter-bank market for currency.
* Money repatriated in a legal tax laundry loophole can be
expatriated the next day, zeroing the slight impact the trade might
have. 
* The size of the inter-bank market for currency is estimated by the
Saint Louis Federal Reserve at one trillion dollars per day. So what is
the big deal about even $300 billion over 365 days?
* The writer may not know it, but tax treaties exist between the US
and almost every major economy in the world. Under these tax treaties,
double taxation is significantly modified by making the taxes paid to
one nation deductible from US taxes. Because of this, the effective rate
in this type of a situation is far from 35%.

So the arithmetic of this legislation is intriguing as it is with any
other legislation proposed by this administration. It leads me to
believe that some US Fat Cats are getting a gift in this pork barrel tax
bill that will allow them to repatriate funds that in fact might not be
taxed at all but is needed here in the US.

Keep in mind that the Grand Cayman Islands has a Zero tax rate so funds
there have been taxed but at the zero rate. My financial detective sense
of “follow the politically favored money” makes this special interest
pork barrel tax bill smell like a tax laundering mechanism.

One thing this tax bill is NOT is dollar bullish and gold bearish. So
forget the nonsense making the rounds in the Gold Community and get
ready for the real play in gold that’s coming soon to a theatre near
you.

Beware of the self-styled “gold experts” with no experience in foreign
exchange markets or any other market for that matter. Intellectual
knowledge is dangerous when it’s laid upon the real world of trading.

Analytical knowledge is good but those that have it in many cases simply
do not understand the mechanics of markets and often get lost because of
their inexperience. Generally half- experienced geniuses become
half-assed advisors.



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[e-gold-list] "Ya, baby!"

[Bob]

Jim Davidson wrote:
> 
> Dear Bob,
> 
> Hi.  Interesting cross post.  I wonder if goldmember will
> accept my posting?

Na. But you can signup here:
http://www.mobilesilver.com/
Nothing off topic. You can let 'er rip. Easy archives.

and it stayed strange, but in a sweet way.
Gold got knocked down $4 at the opening but an hour and a half
later completely recovered. Went up another 2. Got knocked down
2. Hour and a half later, complete recovery and then some. Went
out almost at the days high with a gain of 2 1/2 for the day. 
I can't remember that type of action. Bullish or what?

Silver, at about 3:00 am gets knocked down almost $5. Hour and a
half, complete recovery. At the NY open, shoots up almost $6,
doing the opposite of gold. Gets knocked down $7. Makes complete
recovery in about hour and a half. A little back and forth.
Near the close, up 5 and holds for a gain of 10 for the day. 
Not even a hint of selling at the close. It was close but 
yesterday and today silver held at the bottom of its triangle 
by the skin of its teeth. Bullish or what?

I can't remember this type multi complete recovery action,
in both metals, nor even one, in the same day. Not even 
when Paul O'Neil was in charge of the Treasury and gold 
was going up. Must have got his butt fired 'cause he didn't 
use the ESF.

This is cartel fingernails slipping type action. A sad day
for Snow. The iron laws of economics are setting in even
harder. And the dollar is down a dollar. That's a good 
sized move.

Think I'll go out and have me some wood cooked meat and
pasta with wine, lemon and garlic to celebrate. The 
leftovers in the fridge can just sit there.

"Ya Baby!"
Bob



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[e-gold-list] Re: The problem of land value

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> {But there would be no reason or need at all to do so, there is
> essentially unlimited land, there is so much utterly unused land.
> The sentence "all land on earth is unused by humans" is so close to
> being true it makes no odds.}
> 
> (iv) note that food prices have constantly plummeted since time
> immemorial, and they will continue to do so.

JP,

I can remember a couple/few decades back listening to Buckminster
Fuller (and reading his books) saying, by his calculations, that 
the world produced *more* than enough food for everybody. It was
just politics that got in the way of its distribution.

Just look at satellite photos of the world at night. Even the
US is mostly black.

Land/food is like gold. There's plenty to do the job.

Bob



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[e-gold-list] e-gold funded ATM cash cards (WMcards)

[Bob]

You can get your own e-currency debit card at www.wmcards.com.
Regards,
Bob.
Sales Team.

See also:
www.ecurrencylinks.com (free ecurrency directory)


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[e-gold-list] Brand new e-currency directory - www.ecurrencylinks.com

[Bob]

Hi everybody,

New online e-currency directory goes live. Free listing.
http://www.ecurrencylinks.com

Regards,
Bob.
WMcards.com Sales Team.
http://www.wmcards.com

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[e-gold-list] Here is another scam letter!

[Bob Pavonia]

Dear all,

Below is another scam letter that was sent in to my inbox.
Please be careful and don't reply to the similar messages.
Yours, Bob Pavonia

Subject: Your e-gold account has been disabled
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 

Dear e-gold member, 
we are sorry to inform you that we had to disable your account. After 
many
unsuccessfull login attempts to your account, we shut it down to 
prevent
any type of security breach to your account and our servers. Please use
this link https://www.e-gold.com/ssl/cgi-bin/websrc=cmd?=_l2ej33 to Log 
In
to your account using our SSL security server.

Sincerely, 

Thomas Cooks 

https://www.e-gold.com





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[e-gold-list] New e-gold ATM card provider

[Bob]

Offshore e-currency ATM card for $89.
Currently it can be funded by e-gold and webmoney. More e-currencies will
come soon. We offer online card ballance on our web site, notifications to
your e-mail if the card balance is changed and, of course, monthly
statemens to your e-mail. You can fund you card automatically from our web
site. Also the card card can be funded by wire transfers.
Card issuing takes only 2-5 business days, no need to wait for months
before you will receive a it.
More info on our web site at www.wmcards.com.

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[e-gold-list] Any ideas?

[Bob]

Any ideas on why I can't get the confirm page when making
an e-gold spend. I had to throw something to Potter for his
latest opinion.

Now a days I can't get the confirm page like a used to.
I'm using Navigator 3.0 (like I used to). I have JavaScript
turned on and I accept all cookies.

I press the comfirm button. Then I get for a moment a transfer
interupted text, then at:
https://www.e-gold.com/sci_asp/pmtcommit.asp

> This form cannot be processed because your online session has timed out, or you have 
>submitted an
> improper form.
> 
> This error will also appear if you try to refresh a submitted order with your browser
> 
> Payment processing was aborted.
> 
> The system was unable to perform your request at this time,
> please try again in a few minutes.

But, if I go check my e-gold account, I find that the spend
was made.

Bob

-- 
 http://www.constructiongigs.com/

ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
http://www.constructiongigs.com/assets/DH-DSSkey.txt
Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] Data Missing

[Bob]

I made an e-gold spend. Pressed the confirm button. Got what may
have been a confirmed page for a split second. Then I got the

"Data Missing

This document resulted from a POST operation and has expired from the
cache. If you wish you can repost the form data to
recreate the document by pressing the reload button. "

So I go back to the account and check "History". The payment
was made.

Any ideas on why this happened? A problem with my older Navigator
browser (4.+)? I had both cookies enabled and JavaScript turned on.

Bob
-- 
 http://www.constructiongigs.com/

ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
http://www.constructiongigs.com/assets/DH-DSSkey.txt
Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] "No Records Found."

[Bob]

How much longer is "No Records Found." going to be a problem
at e-gold?

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: Maybe they're winning

[Bob]

George Matyjewicz wrote:
> 
> Hi:
> 
> Damn, a client just sent me a note about PayPal.  Say what you want about
> them, they may be winning the digital currency battle.
> 
>  From their site...
> "We seek to become the global standard for online payments, offering our

 list buster

> service to users in 38 countries including the United States. We have over
> 17 million registered users, including more than 3 million business
> accounts. Our account base is growing by an average of 28,000 accounts per
> day, with virtually no traditional sales or marketing. "
> 
> And yes, I do know all the issues like chargebacks, yada, yada,
> yada.  Still 17 million accounts is quite impressive.
> 
> George

$ list buster

> ___
> George Matyjewicz  GAP Enterprises, Ltd.   http://www.gapent.com/
> Book Author and Doctoral Candidate in Training
> Moderator of E-Tailer's Digest http://www.etailersdigest.com/
> Automated Press Releases http://www.automatedpr.com/
> Marketing Your Web http://www.gapent.com/myweb/
> Board Member AIB  #34  http://www.aib-world.org/

George,

Yup. They're on a roll. But they circulate USD. The US is on
its (how'd I do, Patrick?) third currency. Which has lost 95%
of its value. Why can't it lose the rest? Governments screw
up. It's part of their nature. They can't help it. The bigger 
and more powerful they are, the bigger and more powerful their 
screwups. Ask those participants in the former USSR, or 
Argentina, more recently. When it finally happens, it should be 
quite the duzzy. PayPal will be like the BIS (Bank for International
Settlement), all screwed up. And the Fed, too. And a lot of other
central banks.

Right now in the US, federal and state revenue is plunging, 
while federal spending is going up. Some states have told businesses 
and *individuals* that they're not getting their tax return payments.
And that they don't know when. Ya ever hear of that one before?

GDP is supposed to be a measure of value creation. Government
spending is included. The Fed creates currency out of thin
air and hands it over to the federal government in return for
an IOU, and then the federal government spends it. In the whole
scheme of things, once everything is added and subtracted, that's
not value creation, despite its positive effect on the GDP number. 
What happened was that somebody (a lot of bodies) got screwed, 
stolen from. Their wealth got *consumed* by the federal government.
That's not wealth/value creation. Ultimately that's bad for the USD. 
I expect this type of federal government action to accelerate.
Is next year going to produce another fabonacci number for government
spending? We have the first one down. Is the next number going to
equal the sum of the two before it, like the last one did?

There is this huge amount of federal, state, business and individual
debt out there, the price to be paid of which doesn't go away, 
whether defaulted on or not. It doesn't matter that incomes go away.
The piper still's godda be paid.

The chart is too young to make much of it:
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=pypl&sid=0&o_symb=pypl&x=65&y=14

Hey, it's (how'd I do, Patrick?) gotten totally nutty out there.
Ten years from now, things should look a lot different.

Got metal?

Bob

"The law perverted! And the police powers of the state 
perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from 
its proper purpose but, made to follow an entirely contrary 
purpose! The law, become the weapon of every kind of greed! 
Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils 
it is supposed to punish! - Frederic Bastiat, The Law (1850)
-- 
 http://www.constructiongigs.com/

ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
http://www.constructiongigs.com/assets/DH-DSSkey.txt
Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] DigiGold v. Systemics - Final Award

[Bob]

> Subject: 
> DigiGold v. Systemics - Final Award
>   Date: 
> Sat, 31 Aug 2002 23:36:34 -0400
>   From: 
> IanG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: 
> Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> 
> In the matter of DigiGold v. Systemics, the Arbitration
> (AAA) claim brought and filed in May 2001, at EFCE, by
> DigiGold.net Ltd, the Final Award was delivered this
> last Wednesday, 28th August 2002 by the Arbitrator.

quote rule breaker

> We have not had much of a chance to analyse and form
> conclusions on the long document delivered, but the
> headline is very clear:
> 
> None of the claims brought by DigiGold was upheld.
> 
> That is, DigiGold's claims were denied by the Arbitrator.
> 
> I offer my thanks to all those who supported us in the
> tough times of the last couple of years.  We were lucky
> to have such a wide body of strong supporters, and also
> doubly lucky to find ourselves with counsel capable of
> absorbing and dominating the first test case in the
> now mature field of Financial Cryptography!

quote rule breaker

> Notes:
> * Some claims by DigiGold were earlier dismissed
>   early for lack of jurisdiction.
> * Systemics did not file a counter-claim.
> * Arbitration has no appeal, hence the title of
>   "Final Award."
> 
> -- 
> iang

Too bad there is no 'castpoint for the Gold Money suit
where those with the best perceptions and knowledge can
get rewarded.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] minting

[Bob]

Now, Renaissance Minting provides minting services for
Ricardian contracts.

http://199.233.112.213/

The domain name (renaissanceminting.com) should resolve 
within another day.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Remember Serpico?

[Bob]

Subject: 
FC: Famous former NYC cop laments loss of individual liberties
  Date: 
Mon, 08 Jul 2002 13:23:09 -0400
  From: 
Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


---

From: "Danny Yavuzkurt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Declan McCullagh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Frank Serpico publicly criticizes 'anti-terrorism' measures
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 21:20:00 -0400

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/nation/3612338.htm

Very short article; merely a blurb, but I find it interesting that when
he
spoke out against the losses of freedom we've suffered in the 'fight
against
terrorism,' he was jeered at by the audience - the same audience that
came to
hear him read the Declaration of Independence.  Does the hypocrisy of
the
American public know no bounds?  How can these people be such sheep?

-Danny

"Posted on Sat, Jul. 06, 2002



Serpico decries anti-terror measures
Associated Press

CHATHAM, N.Y. - Frank Serpico, the whistle-blowing ex-New York City cop,
criticized the government's anti-terrorism
measures at a July Fourth reading of the Declaration of Independence.

"It is my opinion that never before have we, as a nation, stood in
greater
danger of losing our individual liberties as we are today," he said.
"We, the
people of this great nation, are being punished for the transgressions
of our
leaders and their consorts."

Despite catcalls from the audience, he continued with his statement
before
moving on to the text of the historic document.

"When I still have the freedom to speak, I'll always use it," said
Serpico,
best known for fighting corruption within the police department in the
1960s.

[...]




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[e-gold-list] I figure it's too late

[Bob]

for the US to right itself. See my related February 03, 2002
"This ain't pretty" post at:
http://www.bananagold.com/cgi-bin/columns.cgi?all

David L. Littmann is chief economist of Comerica Bank. He sounds to me
like he has become disgusted/sickened by what he is seeing. Despite
being part of a defacto nationalised industry. Anybody got a freeish
market type job for him? He might jump ship.

Bob


"Will Capitalism Prevail Over The Politics Of Dependency?

By David L. Littmann

from the June 19, 2002 IBD


Americans are increasingly reliant on government. For more than a
century before Sept. 11, dependence on goverment spending programs,
subsidies and trade protection - regardless of war or peace - has
captured growing proportions of our population.

This trend is still at work. A recent study by the Heritage Foundation
found that dependency grew 117% over the past 40 years, by 38% over the
past 20 years and by 9% just since George W. Bush took office.

An that accounts only for federal dependency. Heritage puts the number
of dependents at nearly 71 million today and notes that the growth rate
of federal dependency since 1962 has risen three times faster than the
US population.

Decade Of Growth

Strangely, this burgeoning dependency has occurred at a time when four
factors should have contributed mightily to greater self-reliance and
optimism. The end of the Cold War eased tensions and slashed defense
spending. The 1990s featured a superb decade of economic growth and
wealth accumulation. Reform after 1996 cut welfare rolls in half,
converting former tax-absorbers into dignified taxpayers.

And finally, the nation is blessed with an unusually large proportion of
Americans in the baby boomer portion of the life cycle (ages 38-56),
whose health and productivity should make them more economically
independent.

Yet, elected officials increasingly adopt policies that weaken
wealth-creating economic incentives. It is axiomatic that faster real
GDP growth contributes to larger government revenue collections, so one
might think this would be a shared political-economic objective in a
market economy.

Clearly it is not. Despite copious increases in revenue to government
coffers at all levels in the wake of three capital gains tax cuts since
1978, no further cuts are under consideration. Despite global evedence
of the income - and revenue - enhancing power of broad-based income tax
cuts (most recently in Ireland) these policies are off the table, too.

Bad Politics

Instead, governments are postponing scheduled tax cuts; raising taxes;
adding layers of costly new fees and regulatory burdens; implementing
price controls (especially in the pharmaceutical industry); and
accelerating subsidies and deficit spending for social programs.

Until recently, this dichotomy - where bad politics consistently
over-whelmed good economics - was glibly explained by election
imperatives. Said differently, populist class warfare and social justice
themes were successful vote-getters.

But, the economy decelerated, the stock market veered south and
un-employment rates rose. Budgets at every government level slid sharply
from suplus to deficit within 18 months and the outlook for GDP growth
in the US and our trading partners has deteriorated. Therefore ,
politicians should be interested in restoring economic poliies that
promote growth incentives.

After all, if the long-term political objective is greater tax revenues
for new government programs or to expand existing ones, then it would
seem both economically and politically illogical to maim the economy. 

Yet higher taxes and more onerous regulations do just that. They harm
incentives to work harder, longer, smarter and more productively. US
competitiveness is reduced and our industries and house-holds are
rendered more vulnerable to economic shocks. And, as a result, we are
made more dependent on largess from the public sector.

Failure to cut tax rates and relieve the economy of counter productive
regulations thus seems quite illogical. So, is there another agenda?

There certainly is. The agenda and the tactics of its deployment come
most into focus when considering the time dimension. That dichotomy
between bad politics and good economics tends to be resolved once it is
understood that politicians typically have a time horizon of 18 to 24
months so that the benefits of their proposals become visible to
constituents by Election Day. This is why most observers ascribe to
politicians the shallower motivation of income redistribution and class
equalization.

But what's really at work, both in the short and long terms, is a much
deeper threat to our economic future. The only way elected officials can
contiue capturing larger proportions of the population in their webs of
dependency is by throwing more monkey wrenches into the gears of a
dynamic and competitive capitalism.

Politicians Vs. Capitalism

Sadly, it's no accident that politicians adopt po

[e-gold-list] Temporary bottom in US equities?

[Bob]

at BananaGold's BGC:
http://www.banangold.com/

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Equities

[Bob]

at BananaGold's BGC:
http://www.bananagold.com/

Bob
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[e-gold-list] Re: The QQQ

[Bob]

Steve Schear wrote:

> A big time bomb may be brewing over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Both have
> used account sleight of hand to mask the quality of their assets and risk
> management techniques. Currently they are shield from SEC enquiry. If they
> come under real scrutiny then watch out economy.

Whadda ya mean? Moody just gave them a clean bill of health the
other day. You questioning Moody?  :)

Bob
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[e-gold-list] The QQQ

[Bob]

Basically it's the 100 largest stocks on the NASDAQ. It recently went 
below it's Sept. '01 lows. This is big big news that I doubt the mass
media has said anything about. But I don't know. I don't pay too much
attention to them. When I do, I find it astounding the mindless
Enquirer human interest type stuff they call news. Whether it's
ABC, NBC or the front page of the Boston Globe. 

http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=qqq&sid=&o_symb=qqq&freq=1&time=8&x=33&y=13

Indirectly bullish for the precious metals.

Bob 
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[e-gold-list] "... and your time is running out." - Ayn Rand

[Bob]

TALE OF THE FOURTH LIE - Antal E. Fekete
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_02/fekete061402.html

I think Antal Fekete's other articles on the site are excellent also.

Bob
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[e-gold-list] Patently Absurd

[Bob]

Subject: 
Patently Absurd
  Date: 
Fri, 14 Jun 2002 19:38:31 -0400
  From: 
"R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044_print.html

Patently Absurd
Gary L. Reback, 06.24.02


Too many patents are just as bad for society as too few.
There are those who view the patent system as the seedbed of
capitalism--the place where ideas and new technologies are nurtured.
This
is a romantic myth. In reality, patents are enormously powerful
competitive
weapons that are proliferating dangerously, and the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office (USPTO) has all the trappings of a revenue-driven,
institutionalized arms merchant.

My own introduction to the realities of the patent system came in the
1980s, when my client, Sun Microsystems--then a small company--was
accused
by IBM of patent infringement. Threatening a massive lawsuit, IBM
demanded
a meeting to present its claims. Fourteen IBM lawyers and their
assistants,
all clad in the requisite dark blue suits, crowded into the largest
conference room Sun had.

The chief blue suit orchestrated the presentation of the seven patents
IBM
claimed were infringed, the most prominent of which was IBM's notorious
"fat lines" patent: To turn a thin line on a computer screen into a
broad
line, you go up and down an equal distance from the ends of the thin
line
and then connect the four points. You probably learned this technique
for
turning a line into a rectangle in seventh-grade geometry, and,
doubtless,
you believe it was devised by Euclid or some such 3,000-year-old
thinker.
Not according to the examiners of the USPTO, who awarded IBM a patent on
the process.

After IBM's presentation, our turn came. As the Big Blue crew looked on
(without a flicker of emotion), my colleagues--all of whom had both
engineering and law degrees--took to the whiteboard with markers,
methodically illustrating, dissecting, and demolishing IBM's claims. We
used phrases like: "You must be kidding," and "You ought to be ashamed."
But the IBM team showed no emotion, save outright indifference.
Confidently, we proclaimed our conclusion: Only one of the seven IBM
patents would be deemed valid by a court, and no rational court would
find
that Sun's technology infringed even that one.

An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among
themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit
responded. "OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents.
But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to
Armonk
[IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe?
Or
do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"

After a modest bit of negotiation, Sun cut IBM a check, and the blue
suits
went to the next company on their hit list.

In corporate America, this type of shakedown is repeated weekly. The
patent
as stimulant to invention has long since given way to the patent as
blunt
instrument for establishing an innovation stranglehold. Sometimes the
antagonist is a large corporation, short on revenue-generating products
but
long on royalty-generating patents. On other occasions, an opportunistic
"entrepreneur" who only produces patent applications uses the system's
overly broad and undisciplined patent grant to shake down a potential
competitor.

Abusers of the patent system have been aided and abetted by the USPTO.
At
best, the office has abdicated its role in forming patent policy. More
accurately, the office has concluded, without the benefit of analysis,
that
more patents are better for society. In fact, every patent issued comes
at
significant economic cost. Usually, a company needs to make better
products
more cheaply to succeed. But as an incentive to innovate, a patent
holder
gets a free pass from the rigors and challenges of competition.

The right amount of such incentive may well spur invention. But too many
patents are just as bad for society as too few. The undisciplined
proliferation of patent grants puts vast sectors of the economy
off-limits
to competition, without any corresponding benefit to the public.

The tension between the patent as a way to stimulate invention and the
patent as a weapon against legitimate competition is inherent in the
system. And, given the enormous competitive advantage conferred by a
patent, it is not difficult to anticipate that interests of all types
would
besiege the USPTO seeking the government's imprimatur to exclude
competition. For almost two centuries, the USPTO did a reasonable job
balancing the need for incentive against the need for competition. But
about 20 years ago the floodgates burst open, and the free-enterprise
system has been thrashing in a tidal surge of patent claims ever since.

This change in patent policy came largely from the USPTO and the courts,
rather than Congress. In 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-to-4 vote,
broadened the scope of

[e-gold-list] "Volume and resistance"

[Bob]

at BananaGold's BGC:
http://www.bananagold.com/

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Distribution and Bonds

[Bob]

at BananaGold's BGC:
http://www.bananagold.com/

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: Domain for sale and translations.

[Bob]

Alexis Golzman wrote:
> 
> I intend to sell the goldenraffle.com domain. Those interested in buying
> it, send me an offer.
> 
> About translations: I can translate your web pages to Spanish for US$ 0.05
> per word. 

Alexis,

Interesting. How many types of Spanish are there in the world,
and which one do you translate into?

Best,
Bob

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ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
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[e-gold-list] MSB

[Bob]

MSB (Money Survices Businesses) now include:

*
*
*
*
* Currency Exchange
* Stored Value

Right on the home page:
http://www.msb.gov/

Bob

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[e-gold-list] silver trading

[Bob]

If anybody is interested in subscribing to a silver trading service
that I can provide, let me know. 

I'll gear up with short term trading software, real time data
feeds for it, etc. Emails. A pass word protected site with 
screen captures, text, etc.

About USD 300 (in today's dollars) worth of e-silver per year.
If the purchasing power of silver gets out of hand, I'll
lower the subscription cost.

This is only a go if there are enough subscriptions to make it
worth while.

Bob Nugent (Bob's Gold Column at BananaGold.com)

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[e-gold-list] Re: not as impressive as e-gold!

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> there have been (in total - not daily!) about a million bucks worth
> of transactions at 1mdcGrams.
> 
> Not really as impressive as e-gold's $3 mllion per day!
> 
> JP!

Money is a 1.) store of value 2.) a medium of exchange and 3.)
a unit of measure. 

The market might be saying that the high velocity could mean a 
money/currency is a good medium of exchange, but not so good a 
store of value. That there's some good in and out to get the job
done (as in medium of exchange) going on, as apposed to the 
store of value aspect. I think it's too early for the unit of
measure aspect to be operating in DGCs.

Bob

"Defense is boring but wins championships in all walks of life."
 - Austin Passamonte

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[e-gold-list] Re: [dgc.chat] Sylvia Berndt rocks!

[Bob]

SnowDog wrote:
> 
> > Dear Sylvia,
> >
> > You rock!  You are great.  You forget to mention the
> > very high esteem in which you are held by Charles Evans,
> > Steve Foerster, and Ian Grigg (as I recall, off the
> > top of my head).
> 
> Charles Evans is her husband, so he has to say good things about her. :)

I'm not her husband, so I don't have to. :) But I do. 
Sylvia is the 'Finest Kind'.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Paul

[Bob]

"... I would like to fully legalize competition in currencies."

>From the Congressman Ron Paul interview at:
http://www.planetgold.com/

I never realized this till just recently, trying to get the 
interview on the site, but you need both Style Sheets and
JavaScript turned on in your browser to get the full text affect
of the interviews at planetgold.com.

In case there are others like me who run around on the Web with
nothing turned on in there browsers. 

Bob
-- 
http://www.bearerinstruments.com

 A Directory of Web sites and Internet 
  presences accepting non-fiat monies.

http://www.bearerinstruments.com/assets/BIMDsPGPkey.txt
650C 51DA 734F 697F 5706 3D6A 7712 BCC9 D1AE 00BA

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[e-gold-list] Defining Inflation

[Bob]

Take the symbol (word) for a cause and use for the cause's affect.
Then the populace over time won't think about the cause. Or 
understand the cause. In this case it's government. Hey, good trick.

Bob


Subject: 
Defining Inflation
  Date: 
Fri, 8 Mar 2002 10:54:14 -0500
  From: 
"R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


--- begin forwarded text


Status:  U
From: Mises Institute <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Defining Inflation
Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 08:04:03 CST

<http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=908>http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=908

Defining Inflation

by Frank Shostak

[Posted March 8, 2002]

 On August 16, the U.S. government will debut of a new type of Consumer
Price Index (CPI), one which it says will better reflect true inflation.
Unlike the existing CPI, the new index will be subject to revisions as
more
detailed data become available. The regular CPI has long been criticized
for overstating the actual rate of inflation. The hope is that, once the
Fed is able to use more accurate information concerning general prices,
it
will be in a better position to use its tools to counter inflation.

Is inflation about price rises?

The fundamental problem here is a failure to define the problem
properly.
For example, the definition of human action is not that people are
engaged
in all sorts of activities, but that they are engaged in purposeful
activities--purpose gives rise to an action.

Similarly, the essence of inflation is not a general rise in prices but
an
increase in the supply of money, which in turns sets in motion a general
increase in the prices of goods and services.

Consider the case of a fixed money supply. Whenever people increase
their
demand for some goods and services, money will be allocated toward other
goods. Thus, the prices of some goods will increase--i.e., more money
will
be spent on them--while the prices of other goods will fall--i.e., less
money will be spent on them.


If the demand for money increases against goods and services, there will
be
a general fall in prices. In order for an economy to experience a
general
rise in prices, there must be an increase in the money stock. With more
money and no change in money demand, people can now allocate a greater
amount of money for all goods and services.

>From this we can conclude that inflation is a general increase in the money
supply.

As Mises explained in his essay
"<http://www.mises.org/efandi/ch20.asp>Inflation: An Unworkable Fiscal
Policy":

"Inflation, as this term was always used everywhere and especially in
this
country, means increasing the quantity of money and bank notes in
circulation and the quantity of bank deposits subject to check. But
people
today use the term ‘inflation’ to refer to the phenomenon that is an
inevitable consequence of inflation, that is the tendency of all prices
and
wage rates to rise. The result of this deplorable confusion is that
there
is no term left to signify the cause of this rise in prices and wages.
There is no longer any word available to signify the phenomenon that has
been, up to now, called inflation. . . . As you cannot talk about
something
that has no name, you cannot fight it. Those who pretend to fight
inflation
are in fact only fighting what is the inevitable consequence of
inflation,
rising prices. Their ventures are doomed to failure because they do not
attack the root of the evil. They try to keep prices low while firmly
committed to a policy of increasing the quantity of money that must
necessarily make them soar. As long as this terminological confusion is
not
entirely wiped out, there cannot be any question of stopping inflation."

When inflation is seen as a general rise in prices, then anything that
contributes to price increases is called inflationary. It is no longer
the
central bank and fractional-reserve banking that are the sources of
inflation, but rather various other causes. In this framework, not only
does the central bank have nothing to do with inflation, but, on the
contrary, the bank is regarded, against all evidence, as an inflation
fighter.

Thus, a fall in unemployment or a rise in economic activity is seen as a
potential inflationary trigger which therefore must be restrained by
central-bank policies. Some other triggers, such as rises in commodity
prices or workers wages, are also regarded as potential threats and
therefore must always be under the watchful eye of the central bank.

The popular definition cannot explain why inflation is bad

If inflation is just a general rise in prices, then why is it regarded
as
bad news? What kind of damage does it do? Mainstream economists maintain
that inflation, which they label as general price increases, causes
speculative buying, which generates waste. Inflation, it is maintained,
also erodes the r

[e-gold-list] ... a dozen of donuts.

[Bob]

at Banana Gold's BGC.
http://www.bananagold.com/

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[e-gold-list] Re: shipping silver out?

[Bob]

Bob wrote:

> He never got into that stock spitting thing. :)
> 
> Bob

I meant to spell splitting. :)

Bob

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[e-gold-list] shipping silver out?

[Bob]

James M. Ray wrote:

> > "Now, many current actions make more sense. For instance, WB
> > taking his silver out of the country (prior to the possibility
> > of embargo, and taxation, or confiscation)."
> >
> > WB I take to mean Warren Buffet.
> ...
> 
> I'm not so sure, Bob. Mr. Buffett is a pretty old man these days, but he
> didn't have much money back then, if he was alive at all he'd have to be
> just a kid (I think) so therefore I think it's another WB. Warner Brothers
> was probably a film studio then, and film uses silver, but I doubt it's
> that
> WB either.

Jim,

It appears he's talking about recently:
"Now, many current actions make more sense. ... "
I think he's talking about today's Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffet.
Warren bought a bunch of silver a couple/few years ago. I think it was
for Berkshire Hathaway. I didn't follow it, though.
Shares closed Friday:
Class A $73,400 sym:brka
Class B  $2,445 sym:brkb
Don't believe me. Check the symbols out for yourself at:
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=brka&sid=&o_symb=&x=32&y=17

He never got into that stock spitting thing. :)

Bob

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[e-gold-list] shipping silver out?

[Bob]

"Now, many current actions make more sense. For instance, WB 
taking his silver out of the country (prior to the possibility 
of embargo, and taxation, or confiscation)."

WB I take to mean Warren Buffet. This is a quote from:
"GOLD CONFISCATION and THE EMERGENCY BANKING BILL of l933"
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_02/smithf022502.html

Has anybody else read anything about WB shipping silver 
out of the country?

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: German? Gold? Price?

[Bob]

Mark S. Ohberg wrote:
> 
> No twernt the Swiss bank, but the German's turn, plus India was not
> buying,
> Which reminds me.
> Central banks crying wolf won't stop a bull market. if only they would
> really sell their gold holdings,  the aggregate gold holdings of the
> world's CBs actually haven't changed in the past 20 years. All that
> selling but, very little has actually been sold in fact it only moves
> from one set of CBs Canada, Australia, England. to another China,
> Taiwan, Russia.. 

Another example of gold moving from the western hemisphere
to the eastern. He who has the gold makes the rules. Twenty
years from now, the power structure of the world could be
quite different.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: Pennant formation?

[Bob]

Ken Griffith wrote:
> 
> Hey Bob,
> 
> Is gold doing another pennant formation?
> 
> Ken

It's too early to say, Ken. A week or 2, from now, is needed.
Gold ran up 6 days in a row. Then it closed down a little bit 
from the close of the 6th day. Today, in New York, it stayed 
right around yesterday's close. I expected it to go down more
but it didn't. I don't know what's up. 

The heads of the G7 central banks are meeting in Canada this Friday
and Saturday, I read. Maybe people are expecting them to agree 
to devalue the USD some. I don't know. "Ya Ya, we're the ones 
lowering the USD. Every things ok. We're in control... oh ya, 
we know what we're doing. Don't worry. We're taking care of 
things for ya. This will be for your own good. Trust us." 
Ya know. They might want to make like the FX doesn't have 
control of the USD. Anyways, when a bunch of bureaubrats like 
them get together, they can't be up to any good.

JP's the expert on flags and pennants. He's the one to ask
for what to be looking for if they develope. And if they do
develope, IAITC subscribers will be kept informed of their
developement. http://www.itsallinthecharts.com/
Hell, I subscribe to IAITC. It can remind me to see something that
I've forgotten to see. Sometimes it's just *one* simple overlooked
item that can make a huge difference. Hey, IAITC is good ammo.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Yuan

[Bob]

Any of you money changers accept Yuan for a dgc? 3PPay, GoldMoney 
or e-gold? I have a valuable employee (Senior Piping Superintendent) 
in China (who wants to stay in that part of the world) who wants to 
submit a resume. It'd be a lot easier for him if a money changer 
accepts Yuan.

In my opinion, a lot of wealth is going to be moving from the western
hemisphere to the eastern hemishpere over the next decade.
One of my proxies sym:chn is up about a third recently:
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=chn&sid=0&o_symb=chn&x=54&y=11

The western government top heavy economies, plus Japan, are in
deep dodo. Their centers of buoyancy are close to their centers
of gravity.

Bob
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ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
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Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] Re: Japan to follow Argentina into default?

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Fascinating stuff Jim
> 
> Can anyone guess which country will be #3 -- after Japan?
> 
> One gram to the winner! :)

The US.

"A Fibonacci Expansion of M3?" - Robert Gregory
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_02/gregory011102.html

The mythical surplus is gone. Current Republican president
sounding just like a Democrat (promising more spending anyways).
The biggest debtor nation in the world. Massive unfunded liabilities.
Military in 141 countries in the world. A central bank reeling from 
one side of the road to the other. A banking system with reserves
down to about 1%. It's currency forming a long term topping pattern.
... ah heck. I quit. I don't have the 8 hours to finish this 
paragraph. :)

Bob

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from
the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for
the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with
the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy
always followed by dictatorship." --Alexander Fraser Tyler

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[e-gold-list] Re: Where does one keep ones wealth in an end-game scenario?

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Who can answer the question?  If the USD starts to collapse on
> Monday, where's the best place to hold wealth?

I wouldn't want it all in one place or form.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: Argentina

[Bob]

And, one of the government of Argentina's biggest problems was 
that it simply took on more debt than was safe to do. Which
reminds me of the US. Which isn't capitalistic anymore. It's
socialistic. I believe the World Trade Towers were owned by
goverment. The New Jersey and New York Port Authorities.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: Someone tries to hack my accounts

[Bob]

> >In order to make me feel comfortable about 1mdc I would request a thorough
> >explanation of:
> >
> >- who is behind 1mdc
> 
> Me - JP May! :)
> 
> John Wayne Zidar is not an investor.
> 
> >- what are the 3rd party controls in place (like audits)
> 
> It's just like e-gold, there are none! :)



> >- a complete set of addresses, organisation chart etc. of this 'company'
> >(i doubt it's a legally registered company at all)
> 
> It certainly and proudly is not, you're right!  It is a pirate 
> company in the modern mode.  The sole trust is reputation.

I would never think to see if some government sanctions any
business operation owned by JP May, based on his earned 
reputation since the early days of e-gold's mailing list.

It's the person, not whether some government gives
it's ok to that person. JP's the "Finest Kind",
old Grand Banks saying.

Bob

A copy of an Hettinga post:

Finally, in what has become the most famous exchange in the 
[House
Banking and Currency subcommittee 1912 "money trust"] hearings'
thousands
of pages of testimony, the two men returned to the question of
controlling money and credit. [Samuel] Untermyer [vocal critic of the
"money trust", committee counsel] said, "The basis of banking is 
credit,
is it not?"

Morgan: "Not always. that is an evidence of banking, but it is not 
the
money itself. Money is gold, and nothing else."

There was in 1912 a significant difference between actual metal 
coin and
loans represented by paper (banknotes, bonds, bills). When 
Morgan repeated
yet again that money could not be controlled, Untermyer asked 
whether
credit was not based on money -- that is, did not the big New York 
banks
issue loans to certain men and institutions "because it is believed 
that
they have the money back of them?"

Morgan: No sir. It is because people believe in the man."

Untermyer: "And he might not be worth anything?"

Morgan, with less than perfect regard for grammar: "He might not 
have
anything. I have known a man to come into my office, and I have 
given him
a check for a million dollars when they had not a cent in the world."

Untermyer: "That is not business?"

Morgan: "Yes, unfortunately, it is. I do not think it is good business,
though."

Untermyer did not, apparently, think much of this answer, for he
repeated
his proposition: "Is not commercial credit based primarily on 
money or
property?"

Morgan: "No sir; the first thing is character."

Untermyer: "Before money or property?"

Morgan: "Before money or property or anything else. Money cannot 
buy it" -
-- and he elaborated, after a few more questions -- because a man I 
do not
trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in 
Christendom."


- -- From _Morgan:_American_Financier_, by Jean Strouse. 
Random House, New
York, 1999


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[e-gold-list] HYIPs, Ponzi, pyramids, MLM, sales orgs

[Bob]

Jim Davidson wrote:

> A great many efforts have been made over the years to cure
> humans of their faults.  Prohibition of alcohol was a
> famous effort of this sort.  It resulted in the creation of
> a national police agency, the FBI, many national and 
> international organized crime groups, and the loss
> of considerable profit by legitimate businesses.  It also
> increased the consumption of alcohol.

Jim,

I think Alan Greenspan agrees with you.

Bob

"Regulation - which is based on force and fear -
undermines the moral base of business dealings. It
becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than
to meet his standards of construction. A fly-by-night
securities operator can quickly meet all the S.E.C.
requirements, gain the inference of respectability, and
proceed to fleece the public. In an unregulated
economy, the operator would have had to spend a
number of years in reputable dealings before he
could earn a position of trust sufficient to induce a
number of investors to place fund with him. Protection
of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory."
- Alan Greenspan 
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[e-gold-list] Re: How Penny Per Page Might Work

[Bob]

James M. Ray wrote:

> Trivia question for (at least) a gram! What's the name of the VERY FIRST
> currency that was based wholly on e-gold, 

Flying Rat

and (this is the hint...) where is
> it used? First correct answer gets a gram of e-gold!

It's not used now that I know of.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: The US Fed Dances

[Bob]

James Turk wrote:

> SnowDog wrote
> >Q: How would you go about abolishing the Federal Reserve? 

> It is exactly this question that is addressed in a wonderful new book just published 
>called "Crashmaker".  I've written a review on "Crashmaker" for my newsletter, and 
>I've posted this review to my website,

>From James Turk's review:
"This book is truly magnificent."

Now there's an excellent word to describe the book: "magnificent".
Nice going James.

Spend US$ 100,000 on a US college education to try and find out
how the world really works. You probably won't come close at
most colleges.

Spend US$ 60 on Cra$hmaker and you've got a huge chunk of it.
And it doesn't take 4 years to read.

Bob
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[e-gold-list] Re: The US Fed Dances

[Bob]

SnowDog wrote:

> Q: How would you go about abolishing the Federal Reserve? Almost all USD in
> circulation are debts to the Federal Reserve. How would you replace this
> debt-backed currency with an other type?
> 
> SnowDog

SnowDog wrote:

> Q: How would you go about abolishing the Federal Reserve? Almost all USD in
> circulation are debts to the Federal Reserve. How would you replace this
> debt-backed currency with an other type?

Read 'Breaking The Banks: Central Banking Problems and Free
Banking Solutions' - by Richard Salsman

Introduction
I.   The Importance of Sound Banking
II.  Standard Measures of Commercial Bank Stability
III. The Theory of The Effects of Central Banking On The
 Financial Condition of The Commercial Banking System
IV.  The Historical Record of Central Banking In The United
 States: Weakening The Commercial Banking Industry
V.   The Theory of The Effects Of Free Banking On The Commercial 
 Banking Industry
VI.  The Historical Record Of Free Banking In The United States:
 Strengthening The Commercial Banking Industry
VII. Alternative Views Of Banking Instability: Deregulation, 
 Management Incompetence, And Fraud.
VIII.The Basic Purposes of Central Banking
IX.  Money And Banking Reform: The Transition From Central Banking
  To Free Banking
  The Federal Reserve
  Capital Adequacy Regulations
  Deposit Insurance
  Regulation
  Transition to Free Banking
   1. Permit Free Banking
   2. Allow Unrestricted Mergers and Acquisitions
   3. Phase Out Government Deposit Insurance
   4. Permit Private Bank Notes
   5. Permit Gold-Based Banking
   6. Repeal Legal Tender Laws
   7. Discontinue Open-Market Operations
   8. Close the Discount Window
   9. Privatize the Federal Reserve System
  The Current Central Banking Structure
  The Transition to Free Banking
  Conclusion

  Bibliography  p. 143-171

Buy here:
http://www.aier.org/fundpubs.html
USD 12.00

Salsman used to be a practising New York banker.
He's now in business for himself:
http://www.intermarketforecasting.com/

bob
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[e-gold-list] Re: The US Fed Dances

[Bob]

eCurrencyCrawler wrote:
> 
> > http://www.bananagold.com/bob.html
> 
> The article is a bit "off the mark" seeing as it is not uncommon for
> interest rates to be extremely low or negative values in a downward
> economy...
> 
> "Whacky" wouldn't be the exact term I would use... I would much rather
> use, "Smart".
> 
> What would you do to boost the economy?
> 
> Just curious... ;]
> 
> ...!

Me? I wouldn't do anything to boost it. It should be left entirely
on it's own. It's amazing that most didn't learn a thing from
the self imposed implosion (an economic event) of the former USSR.
Or Japan's 11 year long mess.

Bob
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[e-gold-list] THOM CALANDRA on gold

[Bob]

http://www2.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid={72F7EB78-4A85-4152-8695-38927719ECA7}&symb=NEM&sid=3400

bob
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[e-gold-list] Money & Honor

[Bob]

Subject: 
ip: Money & Honor
  Date: 
Fri, 31 Aug 2001 20:45:24 -0400
  From: 
"R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


--- begin forwarded text


Status:  U
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 13:54:06 -0500
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (by way of [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Subject: ip: Money & Honor



Money & Honor
by Joseph Sobran 


http://www.lewrockwell.com/sobran/sobran191.html

James Madison observed that liberty is lost more often through gradual
encroachments than through sudden revolutions. This is also known as the
boiling-frog principle: if the water heats slowly, they say, the frog
doesnâ*™t notice the fatal increase and fails to jump out in time.

I donâ*™t know about frogs, but I keep an eye on people, and Iâ*™ve
concluded
that theyâ*™ll put up with anything if they can get used to it by slow
degrees
until theyâ*™re convinced itâ*™s the way things have always been.
Weâ*™ve long
since passed the point our ancestors would have recognized as the
dividing
line between liberty and tyranny.

The first income tax imposed in this country, during the Civil War,
caused
outrage and was eventually declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme
Court. The rate was 3 per cent on all income between $600 and $10,000;
those
tycoons making more than $10,000 paid 5 per cent. The federal government
justified this crushing tax on grounds of a pressing national emergency,
but
it was hated anyway. Americans saw it as an act of tyranny, a dangerous
first step toward the loss of all their freedom.

Today, if a president could get tax rates down to the 3-to-5 per cent
range,
he would be a hero to taxpayers. They would probably honor him as the
Great
Emancipator.

Not that any modern president would harbor any such utopian goal as
restoring the tax rates of yore. Liberals attack President Bush as
irresponsible for seeking to limit the top tax rate to 33 per cent.

One reason Americans have such poor historical memories is that they are
systematically cut off from their past by their own money. The
government
has debased its own currency so badly that comparisons with the past are
difficult.

Today a $10,000 income makes you a poor man. A century ago it would have
meant that you were rich. Even when I was a young man, $10,000 was still
a
very good annual income. By the time I was making that kind of money, it
was
just enough to live on, but I still paid tax on it at rates that had
been
designed to soak the rich.

A state without justice, St. Augustine said, is nothing but a band of
robbers. In this country there is no longer a pretense of justice about
it.
The governmentâ*™s chief function is extorting money from us and giving
it to
others. It has the power to do with impunity what private persons would
go
to prison for doing. It is, literally, organized crime.

But the frog still doesnâ*™t notice the rising temperature. Our
ancestors
thought diluting the currency was one of the foulest things a government
could do. That was what counterfeiters did: robbery of the general
population through bogus increases in the money supply. The U.S.
Constitution not only charged the federal government with preserving the
value of money, but specifically authorized it to punish counterfeiting.

Today that selfsame government effectively counterfeits its own money.
And
it does so on a scale no private counterfeiter could ever match. But do
we
protest? No. We take inflation for granted, as a normal and inevitable
fact
of economic life, with no moral or criminal dimension.

Once upon a time, a dollar was a dollar: not a piece of paper, but a
fixed
amount of precious metal. It was hard to fake. The federal government
was
authorized to "coin" it, not "print" it. Paper money, or "bills of
credit,"
was suspect; it had to be strictly tied to metal, for the general safety
of
society. The governmentâ*™s honor was staked to the stable value of its
money.

A government that, over time, reduced the value of its own money to a
small
fraction of its original value, as ours has done, would be regarded as
criminal, tyrannical, and also incompetent. But weâ*™re not complaining.
We
donâ*™t even remember that things were ever any different. We canâ*™t
even
imagine a government behaving honorably. The very concept of honor is
equally unfamiliar to politicians and to government experts.

But Iâ*™d like to close on a positive note. So let me record my grateful
acknowledgment that this government has never quartered a single soldier
in
my home. Whatever can be said about the rest of the Constitution, the
Third
Amendment is alive and well.

Joe Sobran is a nationally syndicated columnist. He also writes
"Washington
Watch" for The Wanderer, a weekly Catholic newspaper, and edits
SOBRAN'S, a
monthly newsletter of his essays and columns.

Get a free copy of Joe Sobran's lecture, "How Tyranny Came to America"
by
subscribing to SOBRAN'S. See www.sobran.com for details. For a fr

[e-gold-list] Re: GBC (ad banners redux)

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> Boy, do you have the wrong impression of how futures work!!!
> 
> (From a professional futures trader),
> 
> Hans.
> 
> Bob wrote:
> 

quote buster

> > I would say the opposite. Most pork belly futures contract owners do
> > have the financial capability to take delivery. Say a single contract
> > is worth USD 100,000. And the owner put down 5% to buy it. Where did
> > the other USD 95,000 come from? The broker loaned it to the owner.
> > Ya think the broker just goes around loaning those amounts to anybody?
> > No. The owner of the contract had to put up collateral for the $95,000
> 
> The broker doesn't loan anybody anything!

You are right in a lot of cases. I was wrong about that. 
Technically a loan isn't made. However, if things go wrong 
for you, you owe. If you don't have the wealth required, 
you're in deep dodo. They're going after your assets.

Financially healthy futures brokers don't open accounts
with just anybody.

I guess what they're doing now a days is watching your account
like a hawk and not hesitating to take control of it. But if
they can't bail you out, you owe.

I hope you're in the 5% that make it.

> Quote buster (is this needed anymore?)

bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: GBC (ad banners redux)

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> Bob wrote:

> Uh, definitely WRONG.  You can open an account with some brokers for
> only a couple G's.  Presently Belly margin is around $2.5K, and that
> is ALL you need.  No need to show/prove the ability to assume the
> whole contract.

I noticed you said "some". I wouldn't want to own shares in those
"some" brokerages. I wonder how long they are going to be in business.


> > So are you saying that when the bacon futures contract settles,
> > it's life ends, the underlying security (the bacon) went pueff?
> > Disappeared into thin air? Or the contracts went pueff? Disappeared
> > into thin air? But the bacon was still there?
> 
> No.  When the contract expires, all hell is to pay.  You better be out
> by then, else Guido the Collector will be there with the truck load
> of bacon and his hand out for the money.  

I don't think you understand the questions.

But, as mentioned before,
> you don't have to prove that you can/will pay for the whole contract
> at the time of purchase/sale.  Usually, the broker will make sure
> that you are out well before First Notice Day.
> 
> Hans.

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[e-gold-list] Re: GBC (ad banners redux)

[Bob]

Viking Coder wrote:

> > The important thing to keep in mind is that the *only* reason you
> > can "get" *any* coins is because it is possible to "redeem" (even if
> > this right is almost never exercised).  This is *not* a mere semantic
> > distinction.
> 
> The point being made is that it doesn't matter if you can't "redeem"
> e-gold for 1/10 oz. gold coins. Several dealers will give you any manner
> of coins, nuggets, dust, etc... in exchange for e-gold because they know
> e-gold can be redeemed for large gold bars.

I agree with Craig and Viking. This is a way around not being able
to redeem in amounts of less than about 400 ozs.

That means the coin/small bar dealers that accept e-gold, GGs, 
e-Bullon, etc. are the canaries in the coal mine. 

bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: GBC (ad banners redux)

[Bob]

James M. Ray wrote:
 
> Gosh, I'd say just about any comodity plays like that. 

We're talking about derivatives in general.

Presumably,
> it's planned that 99% or so of the people who trade in pork bellies
> never will "redeem" a contract for them, but as long as about 1%
> of the players CAN, 

Jim, it doesn't work like that. The brokers aim for 100% of players
that *CAN* take delivery of the underlying security. Try opening
an account for buying any type of futures contract. Then you'll see.

You're a big advocate of getting people to open an e-gold account
so they can get a good grasp of what it's about. Go ahead. Take
your own advice. Just *try* to open an account to buy a futures
contract. It's just a single phone call.

it doesn't matter at all, and all contracts tend
> to settle *without* most owners ever having to worry about what to
> do with an unexpected truckload of bacon -- 

So are you saying that when the bacon futures contract settles,
it's life ends, the underlying security (the bacon) went pueff?
Disappeared into thin air? Or the contracts went pueff? Disappeared
into thin air? But the bacon was still there?

bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: GBC (ad banners redux)

[Bob]

Craig Spencer wrote:

> Most derivatives are like that.  Consider a futures contract, say
> for pork bellies.  Very very few people who trade in pork belly
> futures have the capacity to execise the rights that give their
> contract value and take delivery of a few tons of pork bellies.  Many
> don't even have the financial capacity to do so; 

I would say the opposite. Most pork belly futures contract owners do
have the financial capability to take delivery. Say a single contract
is worth USD 100,000. And the owner put down 5% to buy it. Where did
the other USD 95,000 come from? The broker loaned it to the owner.
Ya think the broker just goes around loaning those amounts to anybody?
No. The owner of the contract had to put up collateral for the $95,000
loan. As in house(s), buildings, horse(s), boat, stocks, and so on. 
Most futures contract owners have the ability to take over the lease 
in a silo or cold storage warehouse and buy the bellies. Or to buy one 
or more of each of the 500 stocks that make up the S&P 500. 
Practically speaking, futures derivatives work the opposite of 
e-gold. Almost all owners have the ability (assuming they were not 
fraudulent with their broker) to excercise points in their 
derivative contract. I can't think of a derivative that does not 
work the opposite of e-gold.

just like the case
> of e-gold.  In this case the "certain circumstances" are having
> suitable cold storage facilities and an exceptionally large amount
> of cash.

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[e-gold-list] Re: GBC (ad banners redux)

[Bob]

Craig Spencer wrote:

snip

> No.  I only included the "under certain circumstances" qualifier so
> that people would not introduce an irrelevancy by objecting that they
> couldn't redeem a 1oz coin.  But then Bob did it anyway!
>
> > that makes it not-storage/ownership/non-backyness?
> 
> They are storing gold.  But you do not own any of it.  What you own is
> a contractual obligation promising conditional redemption.  [What that
> has to do with "backing" I leave to you.]  e-gold still is not gold
> but a derivative.

Craig,

I respect your thinking as you are careful what you think and type.
I did see the "under certain circumstances".

My point was that virtually no e-gold user (about 99%) can meet
the stringent redemption requirements. So I don't see how it
can be a derivative. A mutual fund is a derivative for me if I
buy a single share or 1,000,000 shares. This derivative works
the same for all shareholders. The same goes for a huge bunch of 
other derivatives out there. Buy one, buy a million of 'em. It
makes no difference. They work the same for everyone. e-gold
doesn't even come close.

Now there may be some "under certain circumstances" derivatives
other than these so called GBCs, but I don't know of any. Do you?

bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: GBC

[Bob]

Craig Spencer wrote:

> Both are transferable *derivatives* of gold.  That is, they are
> contractual obligations whose value derives from that of gold.  

I'm not so sure about that Craig. A derivative's value is a function
of more than the underlying security. At the end of 1979 a big
US underwriter came up with the Danish put warrant, a put on the
Nikkei Dow. The timing couldn't have been better. The first thing
Jimmy Rogers questioned on TV was whether the underwriter would
stand behind the put and come up with the money. Or for how long
they would come up with the money. Who's responsible for the 
performance of the derivative? What's their reputation for integrity?
Doug and Barry's reputation, in my opinion, is a bit tarnished now.
Can the tarnish ever be burnished off? I doubt it, such is the nature
of reputations.

e-gold's a payment system that transfers instructions to change
control over bits and pieces of the gold in the vaults. The same
thing can be done with 2 humans talking on the phone, making 
credits and debits in books, using lead pencils. It would be a lot
slower though. I wouldn't call those 2 people, their books, their
phones and their lead pencils a currency.

The
> principal contractual commitment is the obligation to redeem e-gold
> in gold on demand (under certain circumstances).

Currently, for almost all people who have a degree of control 
(sometimes called ownership) over some gold in e-gold's rented 
vault space, if they want to get that gold in their hands (which
they can't), they have to plain 'ol go out and buy some coins or 
stuff at a regular jewelry or coin dealer who uses the e-gold 
payment system. So I suppose the word redemption could be used, 
but very very loosely.

bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: GBC

[Bob]

Viking Coder wrote:

> > The day e-gold isn't backed by gold is the day most people will stop using
> > e-gold. (Most because there are people that use OSGold)

e-gold isn't and has never been backed by gold. It can't be. It's
a payment system. What's so hard to understand about this. So what
if people are calling e-gold a GBC. The terminology doesn't decide
what reality is. It's the payment system that allows gold itself
to circulate electronically. Gold is not backed by gold. Gold can't
be backed by gold.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: 'visual spend' feature; opinion sought

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

http://interestingsoftware.com/temp/features.html

> Thus, say you are doing a spend, for example: on the CONFIRM page of
> a spend, it would show a photo of the human the gold is coming from
> and a big arrow pointing to a photo of the human the spend is going
> to.
> 
> All comments are much appreciated!

None human photos allowed, right? Anything, right? A graphic
to relate to an account?
 
> (Incidentally the above shows what the account info page on
> 1mdc-money is going to look like...and that look is
> super-simple-streamlined.  If anyone wants to comment on that too,
> great!)

It's wonderfully clean.

bob

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[e-gold-list] in search of new metals

[Bob]

Subject: 
 in search of new metals
Date: 
 Tue, 7 Aug 2001 16:53:19 -0400 (AST)
From: 
 Ian Grigg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: 
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  To: 
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Sometime last week (the 2nd of August, 2001, to be precise)
marked the expiry of a two-year exclusive that Systemics
provided to DigiGold.net Ltd for its issuance of metals-based
contracts for gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.

Agreeing to that exclusive was something that I have not ever
regretted, much to the dismay of the other would-be metals
issuers.  It allowed DigiGold to make their best effort to
succeed without having to look over their shoulders all the
time.

Douglas Jackson, being the negotiating face of DigiGold,
argued strongly for an exclusive on issuances denominated in
the four precious metals, from 2nd August 1999 for two years,
and this was accepted and signed into the agreement, and also
memorialised in other evidence.

Sad to say, the agreement with DigiGold.net Ltd didn't work
out.  The documents filed in the Anguilla High Court show that
on or about November 2000, Systemics accepted DigiGold.net's
termination of the agreement.  The exclusive died as part of
the agreement.

It was never a question as to whether the exclusive died with
the agreement itself, but one can imagine the court arguments
on this issue.  We decided to not really push the point until
we could be sure.  As of the 2nd of August, we know that the
exclusive is expired as well as terminated.  We have the dates
set in the contract, and the retained emails to back up the
full intention of both the parties on the meaning of those
dates, so that any other interpretation by the courts or
arbitrator would be obscure, indeed.

This means that Systemics is now actively in search of issuers 
of metals.  We are not offering an exclusive this time, as that
makes less sense than it did two years ago.  However, we are 
advising the people we are talking to to focus their offerings 
on a particular segment.  There really is no point in just 
invading other people's patches at this stage in the market,
as there are so many uncontested patches to gather without 
competition.

An issuer of metal does not have a particularly hard job of
it, compared to some other issuances.  The contracts have
been written, for the most part, by various parties, already; 
and we are starting to establish a contractual track record 
with the subsequent revisions by legal experts over the last 
twelve months.

For repositories, there are now several easy choices.  It is
not necessary to store physical metal, as there are several
systems that promise to do it for you;  the last twelve months
have seen the arisal of half a dozen new "gold backed
currencies," so much so that they have a new acronym: GBC.

The main consideration that arises is to pick a GBC as a 
repository that gives you the governance equation and a 
marketing message that are aligned with your business.

There is little point in picking a "gaming" GBC for a savings
and investment concept;  likewise, there may not be any point
in paying percentage points for a top of the line governance
system if you are only going to be offering gambling to your
punters.

Another thing that is very important to the business is
having a customer base.  The mousetrap strategy -- build it
and they will come -- is not going to work any more.  It will
be too slow, because exponential growth is extraordinarily
pathetic in the first few years, when measured in absolute
terms.  

You probably need to have access, somehow, to a significant 
user base.  In other words, you had better have a marketing
strategy along with the skills, resources, and good luck to
carry it out.

One benefit of our current nascent metals world, the so-
called "gold economy," is the presence of market makers
or exchange providers.  The loading problem that bedevilled
the payment systems experiments of the second half of the
1990s is a thing of the past now.  Start to get to know those
exchange providers, they are a critical part of the network.

The major questions all derive from the marketing equation
that one would set.  What will users use this new currency for?  
There should be an application in mind, it is well established
that you need to direct your marketing efforts to the activities
of the users and not play the money-is-its-own-application card.

Systemics provides the payment system, we call it Ricardo.  But
we don't necessarily provide the application.

The most obvious application is retail, as we call it, and for
that, we direct people to Intertrader, who have this handy-dandy
CashBox product that helps to do the middleware.  That product
is demonstrable right now with SOX/Ricardo payments, and is now
looking for some retail attention.  We are hoping to be able to
use it for our major exchange providers in the future.

Ricardo excels at those applications that require serious
non-revocability

[e-gold-list] Charts ....

[Bob]

... for studying. The latest at BGC.

http://www.bananagold.com/bob.html

-- 
http://www.bearerinstruments.com

 A Directory of Web sites and Internet 
  presences accepting non-fiat monies.

http://www.bearerinstruments.com/assets/BIMDsPGPkey.txt
650C 51DA 734F 697F 5706 3D6A 7712 BCC9 D1AE 00BA

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[e-gold-list] cliff II

[Bob]

http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/GD/81

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[e-gold-list] cliff

[Bob]

A cliff hanger:
http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

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[e-gold-list] Re: The CRISIS!!!

[Bob]

Ken Griffith wrote:
 

> Our two largest former opponents, now competitors, Russia and China, 

When was China our opponent? Mostly they have a very long history
of minding their own business. I know the mass media is trying to 
make China the next big thing to worry about, since we no longer
have an immediate enemy. Ya got to keep the masses worried about
something!

Russia and most of the rest of the former USSR states/countries
couldn't compete their way out of a wet paper bag.

bob

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace 
alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing 
it with an endless series of hobglobins, all of them imaginary." 
-- H.L. Mencken

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[e-gold-list] Re: The Chevronetz

[Bob]

Julian Morrison wrote:
> 
> GoldSpender wrote:
> >
> > Not all yet know about the crisis coming
> > in the US,
> 
> What crisis?

With both parties in the US saying there's a surplus when
there is none because unfunded liabilities are growing at
over a trillion USD a year, there's bound to be some type
of rockn n rolln (crisis?) at some point, because most, it
appears to me, in the US believe their politicians.

There's going to be some real nice percentage gains to be 
made. Not that I know when. But who cares when. 

"It's all in the charts" - JP May
"What? Me worry?" - Alfred E. Newman ('Mad' magazine)

Now GoldMoney has ads on it's *home* page, too!
http://www.goldmoney.com/
"Oh, no! Mr. Bill!". What if e-gold caves in to stay competitive?
What will the spend page purists do?

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: If Russia creates a gold-based economy.....

[Bob]

Dale Pond wrote:
> 
> Russians Anticipate Dollar and Bush Crash
> 
> by Rachel Douglas
> 
> Russia is getting ready for the dollar to crash. Preparedness measures have
> moved from the realm of published warnings, to concrete actions, such as the
> Central Bank's decision to put the gold chervonets coin into circulation. 

I just had a CRA$HMAKER flashback.
http://www.tradervic.com/

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[e-gold-list] "You dirty rat" - James Cagney

[Bob]

All right. Who knocked me out of the game? Come on. Spill it. :)

If this wasn't a margin call, and you don't want to be short
anymore, I'll go short if you want to go long.

"historic"? Ya can bet ya butt it is! Show me another round the
clock world wide gold market. Even after we have to start paying
the vig, it'll still be a mind blower. It's almost certain that
you know what price your order will be filled at. Try and find
that today anywhere in the world. This is a gold mind, and not
just for Bamdex.

What's needed here is *liquidity*. One of the reasons Bamdex 
doesn't have liquidity is that there is no way to *communicate*
efficiently that it exists, to those in a position to play.
Still, not even a peep out of the indecisive Melbourne office,
one way or the other, about spend confirmation page ads.

Go head Melbourne. Keep it up. Pretty soon you'll be known
as The Gang (GBC) that couldn't shoot straight. The McHales Navy 
of the GBC industry. The F Troop of the GBC industry. The "Stupid
Pet Tricks" (thank you David Letterman) specialists of the GBC 
industry.

Traders *will* go where the most liquidity is. That's a promise.
Bamdex should go with the GBC that can provide the means to 
develope the most liquidity. And once that's established with
a GBC, I can't see a reason for Bamdex to try another GBC. Not
with easy switching between GBCs already here. There's Cambist.net,
and some others. Who are you others? Claude? Eric?

Bamdex should turn into something really really *big*. Ya hear
that Melbourne? Hello ... hello ...

.. well, there were a few signs of life from Jim and Jay recently.
But signs of life in the long run don't cut it. If ya have the
auto pilot on, I hope you guys at least have a look out on deck.

Bob

The matchbot has spoken:

> Subject: 
> Your contract has been closed
>   Date: 
> Sun, 22 Jul 2001 06:44:30 -0500
>   From: 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
> Bamdex member number:
> 3014
> 
> Contract:
> # 9900111
> contract: IFGETD USD against e-gold
> up or down: 'ups'
> 
> Has now been closed out.
> (Either you closed it, or, the matching side closed it,
> or it was automatically closed because either your side
> or the other side exhausted margin.)
> 
> Was created at:
> 2001-07-09 20:41:47
> at $ 266.70 USD per ounce
> (116.62 grams per thousand dollars)
> 
> And is now out at:
> at $ 269.20 USD per ounce
> (115.54 grams per thousand dollars)
> 
> Profit/Loss:
> 1.08 grams has been added to your account
> 
> (Profit/loss is calculated by difference in g.p.t. values.)
> 
> Your account details will now include one new historic
> contract entry and one new journal entry. The margin
> required for this contract is released.
> 
> Review your account details at
> Bamdex site: http://www.bamdex.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> End.
> 
> 
>

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[e-gold-list] It (no, a new it) never ends

[Bob]

JP May innovation that is. 

The winking dollar monkey:
http://www.bananagold.com/bob.html

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[e-gold-list] Re: open

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> http://1mdc open for business at last, this Friday 13th..

Unique! Intriguing! I can only wonder what great new features
'1mdc' has in store for it's lodgers.

Great going, JP.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] OECD and FATF

[Bob]

Subject: 
ip: Claude Frederic Bastiat
  Date: 
Sat, 14 Jul 2001 22:15:00 -0400
  From: 
"R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


--- begin forwarded text


Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 14:41:03 -0500
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (by way of Jan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
Subject: ip: Claude Frederic Bastiat


Happy Birthday, Bastiat!
By J. Bradley Jansen

http://www.aim.org/


On June 29th, as we celebrated Claude Frederic Bastiat's 200th birthday,
we
were also celebrating economic common sense. Perhaps more than any other
economic commentator, Frederic Bastiat was able to reduce economic
sophisms
to their basic principles and follow them to their logical conclusions.
This
approach was very effective in educating people of the ill-effects of
various
proposals.

We need more Bastiats today. Born at Bayonne, France, Bastiat was
orphaned at
age nine and raised by his grandfather and his aunt.

He studied languages, literature and music, and lived through a
revolutionary
time. He was 14 when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo and then exiled.
At
17, Bastiat began to work for his uncle then, at age 19, Bastiat also
continued his studies by turning his interests to political economy with
the
writings of Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say. Bastiat survived the
Revolution
of 1830 and became involved in local politics the following year.
Bastiat
rose to prominence in 1844 with the publication of an article on tariffs
and
trade. Although he died just six years later, Bastiat became a vocal and
eloquent critic of protectionism.

One of his most famous works was his petition of the candle makers and
others
to the members of the Chamber of Deputies (<
http://www.dallasfed.org/htm/pubs/ei/ei3_1.html>).

In that fictional petition, the makers of candles and related industries
were
lobbying the legislature for trade protection from an unfair foreign
competitor who was hurting their business, costing French jobs.

The petition read in part, "We are suffering from the ruinous
competition of
a foreign rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to
our
own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market
with
it at an incredibly low price: for the moment that he appears, our sales
cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry
whose
ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete
stagnation."
That foreign rival wreaking havoc on the domestic market was none other
than
the sun. The petitioners were asking for a law requiring the closing of
all
shutters, skylights and other openings permitting the light of the
unfair
foreign competition.

As Bastiat explained, "The sort of dependence that results from
exchange,
i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We
cannot be
dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this
is
what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural
interrelations
is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely."
His
insight into the benefits of free trade still offers us a valuable
lesson.

Another important essay of his was the essay, "What is Seen and What is
Not
Seen" which explained that consumers and citizens should not be duped
into
only looking at the ostensible benefits of government action and should
consider the hidden costs as well.

In his "The Broken Window" essay, he exposes the fallacy that forced
redistribution has a net benefit effect for society as a whole. In fact
some
gain at others' expense, but the net effect is often negative for
everyone.

Bastiat gave us a wealth of insightful quotations also (some are
available at
<http://www.bomis.com/rings/bastiat/2).
One of my favorites reads, "The state
is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of
everybody else." Another favorite is "Plunder, which plays such an
important
role in the affairs of the world, has but two instruments: force and
fraud,
and two impediments: courage and knowledge." It is a call to arms that
we
should not cower from pointing out the fallacies in economic debates.

Unfortunately, one place where his economic insights did not last seems
to be
Paris. There, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
and
the Financial Action Task Force are in the process of making a mockery
of the
Rule of Law. Their bureaucrats are not directly accountable to people of
the
countries they claim to represent, but they claim to represent
themselves as
policy-making bodies. Even worse, the OECD and FATF bureaucrats are not
only
trying to make policies for their own member countries. They are also
trying
to dictate the policies for countries that are not members of the OECD
or
FATF and have no say in determining the rules of the game. Both the
approach
and policies of the OECD and FATF regarding tax competition, finan

[e-gold-list] "Only thirty years ago ... the dollar was a joke; ... "

[Bob]

Subject: 
ip: The Fallible Fed
  Date: 
Sat, 14 Jul 2001 22:12:14 -0400
  From: 
"R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


--- begin forwarded text


Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 14:40:44 -0500
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (by way of Jan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
Subject: ip: The Fallible Fed



The Fallible Fed
by William Anderson

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=725&FS=The+Fallible+Fed

Austrian economists, I believe, understand the Federal Reserve System
like no
other people because they despise it so much.  In fact, Austrians
condemn
central banking in general because they recognize that these
institutions are
set up primarily to fund profligate spending by politicians and to
rescue
banks from their own bankruptcy.
Outside the Austrian School, however, central banks often seem to wear a
halo.  Historians praise them, most mainstream economists support
them, and
politicians quickly discover that they cannot exist without them. Â
This does
not mean that these folks actually understand central banking.  In
fact,
most
economists, having been schooled in either Keynesianism or monetarism or
both, have a general idea of what the Fed does, but they are so woefully
ignorant in financial matters that their "knowledge" proves to be less

than
worthless.
People trained in finance, unfortunately, are generally agnostic when it
comes to knowing much about economics per se.  Thus, the modern world
of
economics and finance gives us the worst possible combination:
economists who
donâ*™t understand financial instruments and financial "experts" who
donâ*™t
comprehend economics.  Out of this witchâ*™s brew come modern fiscal
and
monetary policies that emanate from Washington and nearly every other
capital
of the world.
Martin Mayer, who has distinguished himself in earlier worksâ*”and who
was one
of the few financial journalists who actually understood the roots of
the
1975 New York City financial crisisâ*”has attempted to shed some light
on the
Fedâ*”and generally succeedsâ*”in
The
Fed: The Inside Story of How the World's
Most Powerful Financial Institution Drives the Markets (The Free Press,
2001).

I agree with Gene Epstein of Barronâ*™s, who believes that a reader
will learn
more from Murray Rothbardâ*™s
The Mystery
of
Banking.  Rothbard was well-known
for his everlasting hatred of the Fed (which, I may add, was
well-deserved).  Mayer, on the other hand, while not worshipful of our
august
central bank, cannot quite bring himself to condemn this monstrosity,
either. Â
Unlike so many others, who have written about the Fed in hushed,
reverent
tones, Mayer does admit that, for all of the hype that politicians and
the
press give the Federal Reserve System, "a lot of them donâ*™t know what
theyâ*™re doing."  If he were absolutely honest, he could include Alan
Greenspan himself in that group of the blind who are leading the blind.
For someone not trained in finance (like me), The Fed is quite helpful
if one
wishes to understand just what is going on in the markets and in banking
today.  For all of the mysteries and complicated formulas surrounding
modern
finance, it is really quite simple: Securities must be "backed" by
assets.  Once upon a time, the bedrock asset in the financial system
was
gold.  Today, it is debt, and, most ominously, it is government debt.Â
 As I
explained twenty years ago to an incredulous group of middle-school
students
who still believed that we were on a gold standard, the "backing" of
money in
this country is based upon the "ability" of the government to go into
hock.
Furthermore, the Fed was created to back up the system of fractional
reserve
banking, which Rothbard and other Austrians have correctly defined as
being
legal fraud.  State authorities prosecute and punish polygamy, but
they
tremble before the "majesty" of the bank, which simply commits a form of
polygamy with the money of its depositors.
If one is a Fed-watcher (which I admit to be from what I wish were a
safe
distance), then The Fed is important reading.  Mayer seems to mostly
understand modern money and bankingâ*”even though his analysis is hardly
Austrian.  He also allows the reader to see just how the Fed, like an
octopus, has been able to slowly but surely extend its arms over the
entire
financial system, much of the permission to expand given it by Congress
in
the aftermath of crises generally spawned by the Fed itself.  In
addition to
Mayerâ*™s explanation of the Fed and its actions, his chapter on central
banks
is important reading for those who donâ*™t understand why governments
more than
three centuries ago began to originate them.
When the Fed was formed in 1914 (after being created by Congress the
year
before), its primary purpose was to serv

[e-gold-list] "Compared to What" - Swiss Movement

[Bob]

Subject: 
Compared with what?
  Date: 
Thu, 12 Jul 2001 07:48:51 -0400
  From: 
"R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/slipsky/?id=95000797

DISPATCH
High Hat
Is the dollar too valuable? Compared with what?

BY SETH LIPSKY
Wednesday, July 11, 2001 12:01 a.m.

Before sitting down to write this column, I put on my favorite hat. It's
a
fedora made by the French hatter Motsch Fils & Cie. A warm gray, it has
a
gold embossing in the band that says garanti castor naturel, meaning
it's
made of real beaver. Hard to come by these days. The hat is
distinguished
by another feature. It was, in the mid-1980s, the object of what may
well
be the strongest exchange rate ever commanded by the dollar against the
modern French franc. The hat was priced at 1,300 francs, but I bargained
it
to 1,100. When the salesman stuck there, I asked him if he'd take a
Reagan
C-Note for it. "Ah, bien sur," he said, and I walked out with the
chapeau.

I reached for my Moetsch as I began to reason out the lead story in
Sunday's New York Times, which ran under a headline asserting "A Strong
Dollar Clouds Prospects for Quick Rebound." More than six months after
the
Federal Reserve began battling to reverse the economic slowdown in the
U.S., the Times reports, economists and business executives say an
unexpected rise in the value of the dollar is complicating the prospects
for a rebound. This is happening, the Times reports, despite six
interest-rate cuts by the Fed this year that would typically be expected
to
weaken the dollar. The result is that American products have become more
expensive when sold abroad.

It has to be said here that I am notoriously slow at these matters. I
often
have to read things several times to figure out what they mean. But it
didn't take me long to grasp that when the Times refers to a rise in the
value of the dollar, it appears to be referring to its value with
respect
to European scrip and the Japanese yen. I then went to the version of
the
Times story on the Web so that I could search the text automatically,
and I
ran a search to find the word "gold." I wanted to double-check my
impression from reading the print version. Sure enough, it turns out
that
this entire dispatch about the value of the dollar doesn't include the
word
gold. Not even once.

Of course, there's no indication in the story of what the value of the
yen
or the euro is either, although the dispatch is illustrated with charts
showing how these currencies stack up against one another. It's like
comparing rulers embossed with different unnumbered lengths. One has
more
lengths than the other, though what length they are is hard to
determine.
To find out what the dollar's real value is--that is, the price of
gold--one has to search elsewhere. It turns out that in fact the
dollar's
value has been decreasing in recent days and, in recent months at least,
has been more or less steady, ranging between 1/250th and 1/275th of an
ounce of gold.


Now if it sounds like I'm a typical gold bug, let me draw some
distinctions. I'm not an economist, for better or worse, but a
newspaperman. I am more concerned with accuracy of description than
policy.
And, for what it's worth, I'm not trying to criticize the journalism of
the
Times, per se. It just happens to be the paper that landed on my
doorstep
Sunday morning bearing a lead story about the "value" of the dollar. No
doubt it reflects the kind of thinking that passes for a policy debate
these days. My beef is that using some kind of plain-language test, it's
impossible to connect the terms in which policy is being debated to
anything real.

Back in 1986, The Wall Street Journal published a famous editorial
called
"The Bonn-Tokyo Deflation," which was accompanied by a shrewdly crafted
chart. It depicted the price of gold in dollars, deutsche marks and yen.
>From a straight line across the center of the chart, representing no change
in price, it showed the dollar angling up slightly, the mark angling
down,
and the yen plunging at a steeper rate still, as the gold price fell in
those currencies. The illuminated the fact that, as another Journal
editorial of the period put it, while the dollar had been inflating
slightly against gold, the yen and the mark had been soaring. What was
happening was the Germans and the Japanese were deflating.

These days the dollar seems to be more or less steady, at least in
recent
months. So if there's a problem it may well be that the Europeans and
Japanese are allowing their currencies to weaken rather than pursuing
other
pro-growth policies like tax reduction and deregulation.


Not that the disinflation of the kind that occurred in America in recent
years is entirely inconsistent with growth. By my lights the
underappreciated story of the 1990s expansion is that it took place in
the
face of a decade-long working up of the value of the dollar against

[e-gold-list] The Federal Reserve Is All About Stupidity

[Bob]

> Subject: 
> ip: The Federal Reserve Is All About Stupidity
>   Date: 
> Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:00:08 -0400
>   From: 
> "R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: 
> Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> 
> --- begin forwarded text
> 
> 
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:46:32 -0500
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: ip: The Federal Reserve Is  All About Stupidity
> 
> The Federal Reserve Is  All About Stupidity
> By Charley Reese [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> © 2001 The Orlando Sentinel 7-9-1
> In the late 1960s, you could buy four or five heavy bags of groceries at
> a supermarket for about $17. Today, you can carry $17 worth groceries in a
> plastic sack hooked around your little finger. Ever wondered why the change?
> 
> It's simple. Our currency has been devalued. When a nation's currency is
> devalued, businesses and professions can raise prices and fees to compensate
> for the loss of value. It's the working men and women who get the shaft.
> 
> America's money and credit system is deliberately confusing. The people who
> designed it were logically afraid that if people understood it, they would
> never put up with it.
> 
> Let's start with the money in your pocket.
> 
> You will notice that it is a Federal Reserve Note. It is redeemable in
> nothing. It is backed up by nothing. Its exchange value, or purchasing power,
> is determined by the volume in circulation in comparison with the goods and
> services available at any given time. What makes the scam possible are those
> 11 little words tucked away in small type.
> 
> "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."
> 
> Without a legal-tender law, people could defend themselves against
> devaluation by simply switching to gold or silver or even to a more-stable
> foreign currency, such as the Swiss franc. In the early days of the Republic,
> there were many different kinds of money in use.
> 
> The next step in figuring all this out is to realize that the Federal Reserve
> System is a privately owned central bank. It was made confusing deliberately.
> There are 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, each one private and owned by
> the commercial banks. As in George Orwell's Animal Farm, all the Federal
> Reserve Banks are equal, but the New York Federal Reserve Bank is more equal
> than the others are. It handles the government bonds, and its president has a
> permanent seat on the Federal Reserve Board. This board, whose members are
> appointed by the president, is a quasi-governmental organization. More quasi
> than governmental, I assure you.
> 
> So here is how your money is devalued. When Congress wants to spend $50
> billion more than it collects in taxes, it goes to the Federal Reserve. The
> government gives the Federal Reserve $50 billion in government bonds, and the
> Federal Reserve adds $50 billion to the government's checking account.
> 
> Seems reasonable. But there is a catch. Where does the Federal Reserve get
> the $50 billion to put into the government's checking account?
> 
> It creates it out of nothing, with a keystroke. The bonds and the interest
> due on them are paid for with taxes, which is to say the sweat and labor of
> the American people.
> 
> In the meantime, to stay with our example, $50 billion in new money has been
> put into the system. In addition to that, the Federal Reserve can manipulate
> the economy. To put more money into the system, always in the form of debt at
> interest, it lowers interest rates; to take money out of the system, it
> raises interest rates.
> 
> But always the Federal Reserve acts in the interests of banks -- not in the
> interests of the people or the country.
> 
> Ignorant reporters have recently elevated the current Federal Reserve
> chairman, Alan Greenspan, to folk-hero status. Nothing is more absurd.
> 
> Still, as another American hero said, "Stupid is as stupid does."
> 
> --- end forwarded text
> 
> 
> -- 
> -
> R. A. Hettinga 
> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
> "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
> [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
> experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
> 

-- 
 http://www.constructiongigs.com/

Use gold as money. It's easy. Create a free e-gold account here:
http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=101670

ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
http://www.constructiongigs.com/assets/DH-DSSkey.txt
Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] The end of liberty

[Bob]

> Subject: 
> R. A. Hettinga wrote:
> 
> --- begin forwarded text
> 
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:00:10 EDT
> Subject: The end of liberty
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> Dear Friends:
> 
> Some of you may have thought some of our fears about the what the statists
> have planned to end our freedoms were exaggerated.  The following is from a
> UN report last week - unfortunately it shows that the paranoid were right.
> 
> The U.N. High Level Panel on Financing for Development
> Recommends Making Orwell's Big Brother Real
> 
> On June 25, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan provided the report of the High
> Level Panel on Financing for Development to the General Assembly.  He
> appointed the panel in December of 2000.  Annan considers the report a "sold
> piece of work" and commends the panel for the "energy, imagination and effort
> that they brought to their task."  The recommendations of this report will be
> considered at Conference on Financing for Development which will take place
> in Monterrey, Mexico between March 18 and March 22, 2002.
> 
> The report recommends the creation of an International Tax Organization (ITO)
> (pages 27-28, 64-66).  The ITO would "sponsor a mechanism for multilateral
> sharing of tax information, like that already in place with OECD, so as to
> curb the scope for evasion of taxes on investment income earned abroad."
> (page 28).
> 
> The OECD harmful tax competition would require targeted small low tax
> countries to routinely provide all financial information on citizens and
> investors in those countries to the 30 industrialized OECD countries.  The
> OECD initiative imposes absolutely no requirements whatsoever on the country
> receiving the information to take any steps to protect financial privacy and
> no requirement that any OECD country show any probable cause that wrongdoing
> has been committed before being provided the information.  Countries that do
> not comply with this total abrogation of financial privacy would be subject
> to extraordinarily brutal sanctions.  The OECD would not require its own
> members to comply with these rules.  Large countries, like the United States,
> that provide tax advantages to foreign investors and honor financial privacy
> of its citizens and investors (at least to some degree) would be exempt from
> the OECD rules but would not be exempt from the United Nations ITO rules.
> The proposed U.N. ITO would result in every U.N. member government having
> routine unqualified access to the financial information of the citizens of
> all U.N. member states.  It would undoubtedly result in governments receiving
> this information using it not only for tax purposes but for intelligence
> purposes and to oppress minorities and political opposition.
> 
> The report states:
> 
> "The taxes that one country can impose are often constrained by the tax rates
> of others:  this is true of sales taxes on easily transportable goods, of
> income taxes on mobile factors (in practice, capital and highly qualified
> personnel) and corporate taxes on activities where the company has a choice
> of location.  Countries are increasingly competing not by tariff policy or
> devaluing their currencies but by offering low tax rates and other tax
> incentives, in a process sometimes called 'tax degradation'." (page 65)
> 
> "It [the ITO] might engage in negotiations with tax havens to persuade them
> to desist from harmful tax competition.  It could take a lead role in
> restraining the tax competition designed to attract multinationals -
> competition that, as noted earlier, often results in the lion's share of the
> benefits of foreign direct investment accruing to the foreign investor."
> (page 65)
> 
> Tax competition is a highly desirable limit on the degree to which
> governments can tax and a check on the inefficiency and corruption of
> government.  Countries that wish to attract investment from abroad by
> providing low taxes have every right to do so and neither the U.N. nor the
> OECD should dictate tax levels to sovereign states.
> 
> "Another task that might fall to an ITO would be the development, negotiation
> and operation of international arrangement for the taxation of emigrants.  At
> present most emigrants pay taxes only to their host country, an arrangement
> that exposes source countries to the risk of economic loss when many of their
> most able citizens emigrate."  (page 66)
> 
> The idea that a government should be able to impose taxes on those that have
> emigrated from its jurisdiction is repugnant and a violation of fundamental
> human rights.  It rests of the premise that the state retains a right to the
> fruits of its national's labor and investment income even after they have
> emigrated.  It should be viewed as a violation of Article 13 of the Universal
> Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948
> which states in relevant part that "[e]veryone has the right to leave any

[e-gold-list] Re: Banner ads on GoldMoney

[Bob]

James M. Ray wrote:
> 
> At 06:03 AM -0400 07/12/2001, Bob wrote:
> (funny, I don't recall copying the e-gold list on that private email!)...
> 
> >Jim,
> >
> >That's an excellent idea!

Jim,

You are right. It wasn't sent to the list. I didn't notice.
I apologize. Would you please PGP your private mails to me?
Then I won't make this mistake.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: Banner ads on GoldMoney

[Bob]

James M. Ray wrote:
> 
> At 04:25 PM -0400 07/11/2001, Bob wrote:
> >Viking Coder wrote:
> >
> >> > You are certainly right... And IMO, e-gold will do same as
> >> > GoldMoney.
> >>
> >> And IMO, they shouldn't. It is the wrong path to follow.
> >>
> >> Viking Coder
> >
> >Ya, we know what you think they *should* do, but what do you think
> >they *will* do?
> 
> Maybe someone (Constructiongigs?) will set up a poll. There's probably
> no way to stop multiple-voting by either side, but it might be interesting
> to see, especially if the voters could leave short comments.

Jim,

That's an excellent idea! 

So. why hasn't G&SR already jumped to it? It appears to me that
they have the money, time (non-renewable resource) and energy (non-
renewable resource) to burn.

How I see e-gold now:

 a leader no more
 pressuring/forcing it's business customers to use it's 
competitor's monies.
 holding back it's business customers
 twiddling it's thumbs while it's competitors close in

It's one thing to catch the ball. It's another thing to take it,
run with it, and really go somewhere.

Getting stuck in a rut ain't too cool. The only difference 
between a rut and a grave is the depth.

Now:

http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/GD/81
Ads above and below the chart, plus a pop up window.

http://stocks.tradingcharts.com/stocks/charts/nem/d
Banner ad plus a pop up

http://www.bigcharts.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=nem&sid=0&o_symb=nem&x=32&y=13
Banner, big side bar, 4 buttons

Traders, speculators and investors have a lot more to think about
than what it takes to make a lousy e-gold spend. Where's all the
p*ssing, moaning and howling coming from traders, speculators and 
investors. I've never heard of any.

Bob (one ticked off shareholder)
-- 
 http://www.constructiongigs.com/

Use gold as money. It's easy. Create a free e-gold account here:
http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=101670

ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
http://www.constructiongigs.com/assets/DH-DSSkey.txt
Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] Bamdex

[Bob]

JP,

That's an incredibly good personal account page one gets 
after logging in.

Have you had to send out margin calls yet? If so, how do
you do it?

Bob
-- 
http://www.bearerinstruments.com

 A Directory of Web sites and Internet 
  presences accepting non-fiat monies.

http://www.bearerinstruments.com/assets/BIMDsPGPkey.txt
650C 51DA 734F 697F 5706 3D6A 7712 BCC9 D1AE 00BA

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[e-gold-list] Re: Banner ads on GoldMoney

[Bob]

Viking Coder wrote:

> > You are certainly right... And IMO, e-gold will do same as
> > GoldMoney.
> 
> And IMO, they shouldn't. It is the wrong path to follow.
> 
> Viking Coder

Ya, we know what you think they *should* do, but what do you think 
they *will* do?

Bob

-- 
 http://www.constructiongigs.com/

Use gold as money. It's easy. Create a free e-gold account here:
http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=101670

ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
http://www.constructiongigs.com/assets/DH-DSSkey.txt
Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] Separation of Control -- A Principle of Financial Cryptography

[Bob]

> Subject: 
>  Separation of Control -- A Principle of Financial Cryptography
> Date: 
>  Sun, 8 Jul 2001 13:37:47 -0400 (AST)
> From: 
>  Ian Grigg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: 
>  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>   To: 
>  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>   CC: 
>  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
> Separation of Control -- A Principle of Financial Cryptography
> 
> 
> As a Financial Cryptographer, I've been thinking a lot
> lately about the Governance aspects of systems that deal
> with electronic value.
> 
> Financial Cryptographers do this.  Especially during our
> occasional conferences where new systems present challenges,
> sometimes new and sometimes familiar [1].
> 
> Imagine a system storing some physical commodity like
> greenbacks or bricks or somesuch.  Then issuing the
> commodity in digital form.  With Ricardian Contracts,
> or some other technology.  Our recent EFCE conference
> in Edinburgh presented a bunch of these to a skeptical
> and critical audience [2].
> 
> I've written extensively on how to protect the assets of
> such from internal fraud and so forth [3].  I use a fairly
> simple management accounting or agency concept that I call
> my 5 parties model.  It's all written up extensively on my
> site and occasionally appears in published papers [4] and
> some internal papers [5].  I consult in this area, as do
> others.
> 
> One of the things that we do is to advise the issuers of
> value -- by whatever means they issue -- to separate out
> their risky components from their non-risk components.  For
> example, the Issuer of value should be separate from any
> entity that buys and sells value for a spread, and takes a
> risk on same.
> 
> This point takes some time to appreciate, although it is
> well-bedded in accounting and finance principles.  An
> entity that buys and sells takes on a risk in the position,
> as well as dealing directly with lots of parties who also
> take on risk.
> 
> In contrast the core payment system takes on no risk if it
> is 100% reserved with strong back-to-back contracts.  It
> only deals with users of payments in a highly contained
> context.
> 
> The exchange operator -- let's call her Matilda -- should
> indeed take on risk, as in this way she earns profits,
> normally by setting a spread.  The payment system -- we
> call him Ivan -- should not take on the risk, as he holds
> the value in trust, or escrow, or similar, on behalf of
> users.
> 
> The payment system is thus a juicy target.  Fat, smiling,
> and somewhat detached from the users, a bit like those
> western images of a buddha.  Meanwhile, the exchange
> operator is elusive, quick, nimble, aggressive, and as
> skinny as a wraith, like the ladies in Crouching Tiger,
> Hidden Dragon.
> 
> It's an analogy, no more, there are some quite nice exchange
> makers out there, and they are not that skinny and no doubt
> some unsmiling payment systems as well.
> 
> Unfortunately for all, our wraith-like Matilda generates
> the greater degree of suits, as she is in fact taking on
> the riskier business.  It sort of goes with the territory,
> all those martial arts movies show her getting into bust-up
> after bust-up.  But, she has few assets on hand.  So she
> takes her profits, just today's profits, and moves on when
> her luck runs out.
> 
> What happier situation for the attacker to find an exchange
> operator sitting hand-in-hand with one of those juicy 100%
> reserved payment systems.
> 
> >From the point of view of the non-aggressive user (let's call
> him Bob), he should bear in mind that what is happy for the
> aggressively-minded Alice is unhappy for him.  A payment
> system with a nice pot of reserves and one of those risky
> exchange operation all mixed into one is likely to attract
> the worst sorts of attention, and thus endanger those
> reserves.  Don't know when, don't know how.  Trouble has
> a habit of creeping up on these situations.
> 
> I therefore often advise concerned parties to separate out
> the payment system from the exchange operator [6].  Further,
> we anticipate that wise users will look for:
> 
> * different owners.  let the exchange operation go free,
>   let it profit, so that the Ivan the payment system can
>   live happily, smiling, safe forever.
> 
> * make the payment system as risk-free, and as low profit
>   as possible.
> 
> * look for separation of control.  Be religious about
>   this point, a secret marriage is not a good one.
> 
> * look for true competitive access to the core float
>   feature (adding m

[e-gold-list] Re: cheap, but quality webhosting / e-gold accepting

[Bob]

Chris Lord-Van Voorst wrote:
> 

> Does anyone have any recommendations?  Thanks!


Bearerinstruments.com:

http://www.bearerinstruments.com/search.php3?Cat1=Internet&Cat2=Web+Sites&Cat3=Hosting&Cat4=

-- 
 http://www.constructiongigs.com/

Use gold as money. It's easy. Create a free e-gold account here:
http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=101670

ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
http://www.constructiongigs.com/assets/DH-DSSkey.txt
Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] E. van der Koogh on EFCE

[Bob]

> Subject: 
> [Webfunds-users] Presentation for EFCE
>   Date: 
> Tue, 10 Jul 2001 00:14:39 +0100
>   From: 
> "E. van der Koogh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
> I have copied both devel and user list because I think it might be
> interesting to non-developers as well.
> 
> Sorry for the late posting, my RSI is keeping me from typing a lot :(
> 
> During EFCE I presented a XML Schema to format Ricardian Contracts.
> The main purpose was not to push this development, but to get people
> thinking about what a Ricardian Contract is and what it should look
> like.
> 
> When I was working on Webfunds ( a long time ago in a galaxy far far
> away) we always assumed that XML was the way to go for Ricardian
> Contracts. After having worked on them I am not so sure anymore.
> 
> My presentation can be found online at
> http://www.koogh.com/efce/efce.sdd
> 
> A healthy discussion started between technical people and lawyers on
> different requirements of a Ricardian Contracts and how to satify them.
> 
> I hope to be able to incorperate those ideas into a better proposal for
> a Ricardian Contract, which would be closer to solve the problem of the
> requirements.
> 
> For more information on Ricardian Contracts see
> http://webfunds.org/guide/ricardian.html
> 
> 
> The whole conference was a great experience with some great
> presentations and of course the main event. The serving of 2 subpoenas
> in the Signet Library.. This is one of the surest signs that Financial
> Cryptography is getting somewhere. It's potential already warrents a
> couple of courtcases.
> It's just too bad that it has to be a battle between some of the
> pioneers of this area. E-gold against Systemics and E-gold against
> Charles Evans. I hope that E-gold realizes it's mistake and drops the
> cases and work together with all of us to get the things done we all set
> out to do. It's rediculous to think they can win the court case against
> Charles, which is about him revealing trade secrets. How hard is "you
> give me money I give you gold. If you give me gold I'll give you
> money?". Even if that's a trade secret they should do a little better to
> guard them too, they asked me to help them debug some code when I was on
> a visit there, without having signed NDAs. And I won't mention the
> silver bar that was used to keep the door open ;)
> 
> Enough rambling about court cases. EFCE was great fun and very enjoyable
> and you should definately come next time. I hope I can have my XML
> Schema for the contracts by then so we can really get some acceptance
> out there :)
> 
> Oh yes, the presentation is in StarOffice format, I sure hope MSOffice
> can read it :P
> 
> Erwin
> 
> 
> ___
> WebFunds-Users mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.webfunds.org/mailman/listinfo/webfunds-users
>

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[e-gold-list] RE: free advertising and conflicts

[Bob]

Samuel Mc Kee wrote:
> 
> > >In particular, how would he feel about his shopping cart containing an ad
> > >for a direct competitor? Coke could advertise on Pepsi's shopping cart.
> > >
> >
> > This precisely and exactly happens right now.
> >
> > (1) in a supermarket, the rolling-baskets have ads on them for Pepsi
> > -- even though Coke may be sitting in the basket of a customer!
> 
> That's not the same thing at all. The rolling-basket is not Coke's domain. A
> better analogy would be if Coke were actually required to print ads for
> Pepsi on the Coke can itself. The spend confirmation page, because of the
> way the SCI works, becomes an integral part of the merchant's shopping cart,
> so putting ads on it is effectively the same as putting ads on the
> merchant's web site.

I don't know about that. I remember way back on this list, a guy or two 
complaining that they couldn't customize the e-gold spend page because
it 
ruined the esthetics/continuity of their sites. That it was too obvious 
that their site visitor had come upon or gone to another site to make 
the spend.

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[e-gold-list] Re: Ads on the e-gold site

[Bob]

Samuel Mc Kee wrote:
> 
> > How would the general merchant feel if his customers are being showed
> > advertising while completing the spend process for his/her site?
> 
> In particular, how would he feel about his shopping cart containing an ad
> for a direct competitor? Coke could advertise on Pepsi's shopping cart.

But what are the odds of this happening? I should think miniscule.

> If the NRA starts accepting e-gold, should I see an ad for Handgun Control,
> Inc. on the page where I'm making a donation?

How's that going to make a difference? You going to turn around
and make a contribution to a gun control .org? 

Maybe you'll get ticked off and make a second contribution to 
the NRA. :)

Bob
-- 
 http://www.constructiongigs.com/

Use gold as money. It's easy. Create a free e-gold account here:
http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=101670

ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
http://www.constructiongigs.com/assets/DH-DSSkey.txt
Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] Re: Ads on the e-gold site

[Bob]

Viking Coder wrote:
> 
> > > Wouldn't it be bad etiquette to advertise for one company while providing
> > > a payment service to another company?
> >
> > I don't understand that question.
> 
> How would the general merchant feel if his customers are being showed
> advertising while completing the spend process for his/her site?

I don't know how he would *feel*. I think that he would think
that it doesn't matter to him.

> No, I'm concentrating on the fact that I don't like being forced to view
> ads when I'm paying for a service. 

Finally it comes out. You just *personally* don't *like* 'em.
Why didn't you just say that?

If you don't like 'em, don't look at 'em. You shouldn't have a
problem if you're in business mode.

Ya see? There's another problem in the world. To much 
*feeling* going on.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: Ads on the e-gold site

[Bob]

Viking Coder wrote:
> 
> Everybody probably already knows my stand on this issue. I'll try to do an
> objective analysis though.
> 
> e-gold averages between 5-10,000 spends in any 24 hours period.
> In the past few months, there has been as few as 2500 and as many as
> 28,000.
> 
> A few relevant questions are:
> 
> How many of these spends take place through the SCI?
> How many of these spends take place throught the programmer's interface?
> How many of these spends are made in rapid-fire mode by MMs who are doing
> the day's round of e-gold exchanges?

I don't know. Who cares? What difference does it make. A guy takes out
an
ad for a price and measures the results. Maybe the results are worth
more money the next time. Maybe less. 

> Wouldn't it be bad etiquette to advertise for one company while providing
> a payment service to another company?

I don't understand that question.

> Anybody using the programmer's interface, or Khurram's new rapid spender,
> wouldn't ever see the posted ads.

Those people would be such a small percentage of e-gold users, it
wouldn't
make a difference.

> Anybody who is in 'business-mode' when doing spends probably does not want
> to be distracted by advertising.

You can't please all of the people all of the time.
And, if they are really in 'business-mode', the ads shouldn't be a
distraction.

> The standard response is that people can turn off the ads if they want to.
> 
> How many people will leave the ads turned on? It should actually work the
> other way around. If e-gold does decide to implement ads, they should be
> opt-in not opt-out. After all, how many people are happy about opt-out
> mailing/spam lists?
> 
> Then we have the slippery slope phenomena. Once the ads are on the spend
> page, why not put them on them on all the account pages, or all over the
> site?
>
> JP said that advertising is done strictly for revenue, right? The amount
> of revenue that e-gold could earn from ads would be inconsequential when
> compared with the revenue they earn from transaction fees.

Your forgetting revenue earned from transaction fees can be increased 
because of increased e-gold accepting business's revenue due to 
advertising. It seems to me you're consentrating on a small part of the
big picture. Things affect other things. Growth rates affect other
growth
rates.

If e-gold accepting business's growth rates are suffering because they
are having a problem communicating with an important market, so won't
e-gold's growth rates suffer. What's so hard to understand about this?

Do you actually think that all GBC companies are going to refuse for
ever
a growing demand for ad space. What's going to happen after the first
GBC
starts accepting ads?
 
> e-gold's # of users with funded accounts is currently at ~100,000 (96,185
> funded gold accounts). This is impressively high compared with what it was
> last year. 

Ya, but the new account growth rate has leveled/fallen. Besides, what's
your
point? That e-gold growth rates that are lower than they can be is a
*good*
thing?


However, this is comprised of people from all over the world
> with dramatically divergent wants and needs. Currently, small
> 'cottage-farm' companies populate the landscape because a niche company
> will only interest a fraction of the relatively small e-gold userbase;
> even with ads on the spend page.

Ah come on man, most of the biggies started out as small niche
companies.
Sheesh.

> Anybody who starts up a new venture, online or not, will have to do some
> form of advertising. This includes their store-front presence; 

What good is a store front presense if almost nobody knows the store 
exists (assuming it's a Web site)?

either a
> website and/or a physical location. If a large company decides to accept
> e-gold, a multi-billion dollar ad campaign won't be required to alert
> their normal users to such an action. They can use their opt-in mailing
> lists, make announcements on their website, and utilize the same, very
> useful, tool that e-gold does - word of mouth. Good personal
> recommendation are worth tremendously more than any advertising.

It could be that an existing large company's incentive to accept e-gold
is to bring in *new* business. Somebody recently raised money to start
another business, from going to an existing customer base. Get it?

> I didn't really succeed in doing an objective analysis, but I think I have
> asked a few questions that weren't asked yet.

"The Theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but commmon sense 
 reduced to Calculus."  -  Pierre Simon de Laplace

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[e-gold-list] Re: Need to "do something" about the value of the dollar

[Bob]

Samuel Mc Kee wrote:


> So there's this gigantic and ever-growing pile of U.S. dollars (in the
> multitrillions, if we are to believe the protectionists) 

"The reason why the dollar has continued to rise in the face of 
large deficits is because there is a scarcity of dollars in the 
world economy."

And then you have Bruce saying the opposite. Hey, got to keep the 
populace confused and alarmed. So that they're clammering for 
protection.

-- 
 http://www.constructiongigs.com/

Use gold as money. It's easy. Create a free e-gold account here:
http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=101670

ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
http://www.constructiongigs.com/assets/DH-DSSkey.txt
Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] Re: The Bananagold Stats Contest.

[Bob]

SnowDog wrote:
> 
> > "When will it be useful for large retailers
> > to accept e-gold?"
> 
> uuuhhh... when ADS are allowed on the E-Gold Spend Page???

Riiight!

Where's the problem on the spend confirmation page?

William Penn said--if you protect men from folly, you'll get a
nation of fools. Ya can't protect everybody from themselves.
Some will screw up no matter how simple. Like in the voting
booths in the US.

e-gold is just holding itself back.


Subject: 
[e-gold-list] Re: The issue that is holding e-gold commerce
back.
   Date: 
Sat, 10 Feb 2001 21:38:09 -0500
   From: 
Bob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
   Reply-To: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Organization: 
ConstructionGigs.com
 To: 
"e-gold Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I'm
> talking about THE ABILITY OF EGOLD-USING COMMERCIAL ENTERPIRES, TO
> ADVERTISE TO THE EGOLD COMMUNITY.

We have no way other than hit or miss. You're absolutely right, JP.
One of the most important reasons for advertising is simply to let
people know that you exist, or what you sell, or what a current 
special is. It's a means of communicating.

That payment page is the choke point. The funnel.

> >> http://www.bananagold.com/howitshouldbe.gif

Man, would that be valuable to have a banner there for a while,
every now and then.

68,459 funded accounts divided by 9111 spends/day equals
about 8 days to be exposed to some large percentage of the spenders.

You're right JP. Advertising is commercial grease, oil, silicon 
spray to commerce.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: egold for cash

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> >> Eric, is the REVERSE possible, can you somehow have people pick up
> >> cash at banks when they sell e-gold?
> >
> >Isn't that usually called a bank wire? :)
> 
> heh - swift wires aren't worth the paper they're not printed on anymore, eh?
> 
> But for small amounts -- I think there is an incredible opportunity
> out there for some market maker to pick up the fone and strike a deal
> with, say, Mailboxes Etc.
> 
> Mailboxes Etc (or some similar outfit with retail stores everywhere)
> could be a buyer/seller for small amounts (say 100 to 500 bucks, no
> more or less) of e-gold.
> 
> You could walk into a M.E. and get $200 in cash in exchange for e-gold.
> 
> The Market Maker could carry all the underlying trades and M.E. would
> just get a coupke percent simply added or subtracted at point of sale
> on each deal.

I've driven by more than one jewelry place with "We deal in gold"
on their store front signs. They're traders. They are candidates
for providing walk-ins with fiat for GBCs. Eventually walk-ins
should be walking in with their Web enabled hand helds.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: The Dollar

[Bob]

R. A. Hettinga wrote:

> Bruce Bartlett (back to story)
> 
> July 7, 2001
> 
> The Dollar
 
> Manufacturers and farmers are especially sensitive to changes in the value
> of the dollar, as they must compete head-to-head on international markets
> with producers of essentially the same products. A barrel of corn, 

Screw the US farmer. That's what they are doing to the US taxpayer. Most
don't know how to run an honest farming business.

 
> The dollar has risen pretty much steadily against most major currencies
> since the Mexican financial crisis in 1995. 

Gee, I wonder why? It's because capital goes where it's best treated.
Currently that's the US. This will change. History and human nature
says this. And it will catch the crowds by surprise.


> The reason why the dollar has continued to rise in the face of large
> deficits is because there is a scarcity of dollars in the world economy.

Here we have it. The reason why a statest economist (political lapdog)
is 
talking this ragtime. He's trying to set people up for, get 'em
comfortable
with, inflation, a speeding up of the printing presses.

"scarcity of dollars", what popycock. The world is awash in USD. Wait
till
they come flooding back to the US.

The problem is that the phony surplus that the US politicians say we
have,
has theoretically dried up, and our politicians can't see where they are
going to get the USD to spend, that they want to spend. They can raise
taxes just so much. They can go to the debt markets just so much.
They're
only recourse after that is simply to print it.

Yo, Barret! Front and center! We got a job for you're mouth!

Bob


Budget surplus vanishing
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/07/06/fp1s2-csm.shtml




The full post (if you want to wade through Barret's crap):



Subject: 
The Dollar
  Date: 
Sat, 7 Jul 2001 06:49:49 -0400
  From: 
"R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


QUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | RIGHTPAGES | CHAT | WHAT'S NEW

townhall.com

Bruce Bartlett (back to story)

July 7, 2001

The Dollar

Pressure is building on Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to do something
about the soaring value of the dollar. Although a strong dollar is good
for
consumers, because it makes foreign goods cheaper, it is harmful to
exporters, by making U.S. goods more expensive on world markets. The
result
is a widening trade deficit, as imports increase while exports stagnate.

Manufacturers and farmers are especially sensitive to changes in the
value
of the dollar, as they must compete head-to-head on international
markets
with producers of essentially the same products. A barrel of corn, after
all, is pretty much the same everywhere, so purchasers buy almost
entirely
based on price. If they have to spend more lira, yen or rubles to buy
corn,
even if it's only because the dollar has risen against their currency,
then
they are going to buy it someplace where it is cheaper.

This is a source of great frustration to many American businesses,
because
in many cases they are the world's most efficient producers. But their
advantage in terms of productivity has been offset by forces beyond
their
control, namely exchange rates. That is why the National Association of
Manufacturers and other business groups are pressuring O'Neill to
intervene
in financial markets to bring the dollar down against foreign
currencies.

The dollar has risen pretty much steadily against most major currencies
since the Mexican financial crisis in 1995. At that time, the Treasury
was
forced spend large sums from its Exchange Stabilization Fund to help
support the peso. This had the effect of driving the dollar down
vis-a-vis
other currencies. Subsequently, however, the dollar moved sharply
upward,
with just a slight dip for the Asian financial crisis in 1998.

In 1995, $1 would buy 94 yen. Today, it will buy 122 yen. One dollar
would
have bought $1.37 worth of Canadian goods in 1995. Today, $1 will buy
$1.52
worth of Canadian goods. The same story can be repeated almost across
the
board. The Federal Reserve's index of the dollar's value against major
currencies, adjusted for inflation and weighted by trade, shows an
increase
of 39 percent in the last 6 years. This means that prices of U.S. goods
would have to fall by 39 percent in real terms just to stay competitive
on
international markets.

Considering that the U.S. trade and current account deficits have risen
to
record levels, this is a remarkable performance. In theory, such
deficits
should cause a currency to weaken, thus bringing about an automatic
readjustment. Yet the trade deficit just keeps getting bigger. Last
year,
the United States imported $449 billion more goods than it exported.
Taking
services into account improved the figure somewhat, to a de

[e-gold-list] Re: Cover story in "Gold Magazine"

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> i just saw a copy of _Gold Magazine_
> containing an article about online gold currencies.
> 
> the cover blurb:
> "e-gold: interactive currency of the future?"
> 
> for more info, try this PDF link:
> http://www.gold.org/Gra/Pr/Gold_website_ad.pdf
> 
> jay w.
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Right now at:
http://www.gold.org/Gra/Pr/Gold_website_ad.pdf
the cover of "Gold", issue 4, says:
"GoldMoney gives e-commerce the green light;"
in a paragraph about the contents.

They might be giving each GBC it's turn. 

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Bastiat

[Bob]

> Subject: 
> In Praise of Bastiat
>   Date: 
> Thu, 5 Jul 2001 06:41:30 -0400
>   From: 
> "R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: 
> Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> 
> http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB994299301115112922.djm
> 
> July 5, 2001
> 
> Commentary
> 
> In Praise of an
> Economic Revolutionary
> 
> By Bob McTeer, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
> 
> "The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live
> at the expense of everyone else."
> 
> -- Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)
> 
> Claude Frederic Bastiat was born in Bayonne, in the southwest of France,
> 200 years ago last Friday. This week, I kicked off a conference in nearby
> Dax, France, celebrating Bastiat's contributions to individual liberty and
> free markets.
> 
> The whole world should be celebrating the birthday of this pioneer of
> free-market capitalism.
> 
> Frederic Bastiat
> 
> Bastiat's output was prodigious, especially in the last five years of his
> life. Through his writing and speeches, and as a member of the French
> Chamber of Deputies, Bastiat fought valiantly against the protectionism and
> socialism of his time. He proselytized for free trade, free markets and
> individual liberty. His weapons were wit and satire; his method was the
> reductio ad absurdum. More than any other person before or since, he
> exposed economic fallacies with a clarity, simplicity and humor that left
> opponents with no place to hide.
> 
> The most famous example of Bastiat's satire was his petition to the French
> parliament on behalf of candlemakers and related industries. He was seeking
> relief from "ruinous competition of a foreign rival who works under
> conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he
> is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price." The
> foreign rival was the sun. The relief sought was a law requiring the
> closing of all blinds to shut out the sunlight and stimulate the domestic
> candle industry.
> 
> Despite the publication of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" decades
> earlier, Bastiat was still fighting the mercantilist view of exports as
> good and imports as bad. He pointed out that under this view, the ideal
> situation would be for a ship loaded with exports to sink at sea. One
> nation gets the benefit of exporting and no nation has to bear the burden
> of importing.
> 
> Bastiat once saw an editorial proposing a Bordeaux stop on the railroad
> from Paris to Spain to stimulate local business. He wondered, why only
> Bordeaux? Why not have a stop in every single town along the way -- a
> neverending series of breaks -- so the prosperity could be enjoyed by all?
> They could call it a "negative railroad."
> 
> This point is true even today. Trade with Mexico has boomed since the
> passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and so has truck traffic
> across the Rio Grande. Luckily we have bridges to facilitate the crossing.
> But while the bridges were made for crossing, the hundreds of warehouses
> near the border were not. They're for storing and waiting -- where Mexican
> truckers are required to hand over their cargo to domestic carriers.
> Bastiat had his "negative railroads." We have "negative bridges."
> 
> Then there's Bastiat's broken-window fallacy. It seems someone broke a
> window. It's unfortunate, but there's a silver lining. Money spent to
> repair the window will bring new business to the repairman. He, in turn,
> will spend his higher income and generate more business for others. The
> broken window could ultimately create a boom.
> 
> Wait a minute, Bastiat cautioned. That's based only on what is seen. You
> must also consider what is not seen -- what does not happen. What is not
> seen is how the money would have been spent if the window had not been
> broken. The broken window didn't increase spending; it diverted spending.
> 
> Obvious? Sure, but we fall for a version of the broken-window fallacy every
> time we evaluate the impact of a government program without considering
> what taxpayers would have done with the money instead. Some people even
> judge monetary policy by what happens, without considering what might have
> happened.
> 
> Most economic myths give way to Bastiat's distinction between the seen and
> the unseen. Related concepts include half truths and whole truths, intended
> and unintended consequences, the short run and long run and partial effects
> and total e

[e-gold-list] Re: IFGETD contract

[Bob]

Ken Griffith wrote:
> 
> Suppose you put in an order for $1000 worth of gold on 5 grams margin, and
> you want to actually take delivery - How do you take delivery of your
> contract at Bamdex?

Get out of your contract. Now you have just e-gold (hopefully
there's some left), and no contracts. Tranfer it to your e-gold 
account.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: IFGETD contract

[Bob]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> >JP,
> >
> >How often is the price of gold calculated for the IFGETD contract?
> >Once a day?
> 
> Bob, sorry if it isn't clear.  It's actually THE PRICE OF E-GOLD.

Ah. Yes. I didn't pick up on that distinction. I guess they're
ready to change the price of e-gold a number of times a day
if they think necessary. A good proxy for the price of gold.

> It's an USDollar-against-egold contract.
> 
> (So, Jay could be a cheater by temporarily changing the price to the
> advantage of his contracts! :) )
> 
> The price is checked every single time anything is "done" on the
> system. So, you look at your personal details page, the price is
> checked at that instant.
> 
> You close a contract, the price is checked at that instant, you look
> at the "live stats" page, the price is checked at that instant - and
> so on.
> 
> Since there's 2-4 million per day in e-gold transactions (approaching
> 1% of the level of the NZ Dollar!) it seems a good
> price-information-source to trade the USD against.

Yes. I think it's a very good source.

This is an excellent trading capability that you've created here,
JP. It's super!

Bob

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[e-gold-list] IFGETD contract

[Bob]

JP,

How often is the price of gold calculated for the IFGETD contract? 
Once a day?

Bob
-- 
 http://www.constructiongigs.com/

Use gold as money. It's easy. Create a free e-gold account here:
http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=101670

ConstructionGigs.com's PGP public key is here:
http://www.constructiongigs.com/assets/DH-DSSkey.txt
Fingerprint:
3C4D A63F 3C8B 2D7B 7E1A FFE8 9A2E 4D78 CAD6 66B7

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[e-gold-list] Re: Insurance for Unauthorized Access / fone 860-277-0111

[Bob]

Which reminds me.



Anybody know if Doug ever got e-gold off of the Windoze operating
system? It can be made pretty secure but with a lot of unnecessary 
work. And, it can be kept pretty secure but with a lot of unnecessary
work. Wasting scarce or non-renewable (time, energy) is not too cool.

Bob

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[e-gold-list] Re: Defense Fund - Update

[Bob]

Chris Lord-Van Voorst wrote:
> 
> There are those of us on the e-gold list who don't even know who Charles
> Evans is.  No one has yet to explain why Evans deserves funding in his
> fight against e-gold.  If there's more to the story, I'd like to hear it.
> Until then, any pleas on Evans' behalf are meaningless, in my opinion...
> 
> Chris Lord-Van Voorst

Chris,

People fear frivolous law suites now a days so you probably 
won't get much history from this list. 

However, this is a great example of the importance of reputation 
capital. This list is almost 2 years old now. Both on and off list, 
Charles and Ian have built impecable reputations. Doug has built a 
reputation also. Reputations are built by what one says and doesn't 
say. By what one does and doesn't do. On list and off. A single action
can ruin the value built of years of what you say and do. Charles and 
Ian understand this and take their reputations dead seriously. I have 
no doubt about those two. I'd put money up for Charles in a heart beat.
And I have.

And, as a shareholder in G&SR, I'm really, really dissapointed
in Doug and Barry, and think Doug's CEO butt should be fired. I
believe chairman of the board is the appropiate place for Doug's
butt.

I think these suits (according to a Bob Hettinga post to his list, 
Ian was served again in Edinburgh, "They got Ian Grigg, too.") that 
Doug has decided to pursue are going to turn out to be a substantial 
negative for e-gold and the value of my shares. As Khurram Khan a 
while back on this list pointed out, there is no mystery to starting 
a private gold backed currency business. Time will tell.

Did you miss this post?

> Subject: 
> [e-gold-list] Termination of services to DigiGold II
>   Date: 
> Wed, 20 Jun 2001 01:04:50 +0100
>   From: 
> "R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: 
> Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> 
> --- begin forwarded text
> 
> 
> Status:  U
> Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 16:41:04 -0400
> From: Bob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Organization: Bearerinstruments.com
> To: "e-gold Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [e-gold-list] Termination of services to DigiGold II
> 
> > Subject:
> > [Webfunds-users] Termination of services to DigiGold II (June
> >19th)
> >Date:
> > Tue, 19 Jun 2001 11:21:58 -0400
> >From:
> > "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Organization:
> > Systemics Inc.
> >  To:
> > WebFunds Users <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >
> >
> > L.S.,
> >
> > On 21 May 2001 Ian Grigg announced that Systemics Inc. would
> > cease supporting DigiGold on the 25th of May 2001 due to
> > non-payment leading to termination of the contract between
> > both parties.
> >
> > In a subsequent email this shutdown date was pushed forward by
> > one week to give DigiGold users a bit more time to take action.
> >
> > Tuesday 29th of May an injunction was filed against Systemics
> > to prevent us from shutting down the DigiGold Issuance Server.
> > The matter was deferred until the 19th of June.
> >
> > This morning we went to court 9:00 (GMT-4). The judge heard
> > the case in private chambers so we do not have all the details.
> >
> > We know our counsel proposed that the injunction could be
> > sustained if DigiGold were to pay our operational costs. The
> > opposition apparently did not accept this offer.
> >
> > The net-effect is that the judge decided to discharge the
> > injunction and to award Systemics costs.
> >
> > We are still faced with an unfortunate situation: Systemics
> > has operated the DigiGold Issuance Server at it's own expense
> > for the past year. We can no longer afford to do so as this
> > negatively impacts our paying customers.
> >
> > We have therefore decided to take the DigiGold Issuance Server
> > offline. That will happen today (June 19th).
> >
> > For DigiGold users this means that it will no longer possible
> > to make payments in any of the four DigiGold metals.
> >
> > We regret any inconvenience this may cause.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Jeroen
> > --
> > Jeroen C. van Gelderen - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> >
> >
> > ___
> > WebFunds-Users mailing list
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > http://www.webfunds.org/mailman/listinfo/webfunds-users
> >
> 
> ---

[e-gold-list] Euro

[Bob]

Subject: 
The Euro
  Date: 
Sat, 30 Jun 2001 06:59:51 -0400
  From: 
"R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Digital Bearer Settlement List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brucebartlett/printbb20010630.shtml

QUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | RIGHTPAGES | CHAT | WHAT'S NEW

townhall.com

Bruce Bartlett (back to story)

June 30, 2001

The Euro


Almost everyone who ever visited Europe has probably come back with the
odd
pound, franc, lira or mark that they never got around to exchanging for
dollars. They should hold on to them, because they are going to become
collector's items.

In a few months, they will cease to exist. All members of the European
Union are withdrawing their individual currencies and coins from
circulation, and replacing them with something called the "euro." If the
United States wishes to keep the dollar dominant in international
commerce
and finance, it needs to respond to this challenge.

The euro has actually been around for a couple of years. It was formally
introduced on January 1, 1999, but since has been available only for
bank
transactions. People can hold euros in bank accounts but still must use
national currencies for cash transactions. However, national currencies
are
now linked to the euro, so that exchange rates are largely fixed. This
has
led to a convergence of inflation and interest rates throughout the EU,
exactly as economic theory predicted.

To the dismay of Europeans, however, the euro has not become as popular
outside Europe as expected. They thought the euro would quickly
challenge
the supremacy of the dollar as the currency of choice in international
commerce and finance. But although the euro was initially valued at
$1.19,
it has fallen fairly steadily to a current value of just 86 cents.

Europeans hope that withdrawal of national currencies and replacement
with
euro notes and coins will revive interest in the euro. They have even
taken
steps to give euros an advantage over dollars, by printing large
quantities
of 1,000 and 500 euro notes -- much bigger than the largest U.S.
currency
in circulation. The largest dollar note available is the $100 bill.
Although $500, $1,000 and larger bills exist, none have been printed
since
1946, and since 1969 the Treasury Department has withdrawn them from
circulation.

The problem is that there has been a lot of price inflation since 1946.
A
$100 bill today will only buy what $11 bought then. That is a key reason
why U.S. currency per capita has risen from $179 in 1950 to $2,146
today.
But because the Treasury adamantly refuses to supply the demand for
larger
bills, people have little choice but to hold more and more of their cash
in
the form of $100's. Such bills now account for 67 percent of all U.S.
currency outstanding, twice the percentage as recently as 1979.

Another reason for the growing use of $100 bills, of course, is the
underground economy, both here and abroad. This includes not only
criminal
activity, such as drug dealing, but much ordinary commerce that people
simply wish to avoid reporting to tax collectors. Because taxes are so
much
higher in Europe, the underground economy there is about 50 percent
larger
than here. Estimates by economist Friedrich Schneider of Linz University
in
Austria put the underground economy at about 16 percent of the gross
domestic product in Europe in 1994. It ranged from a low of 13.1 percent
in
Germany to a high of 25.8 percent in Italy. His U.S. estimate is 9.4
percent -- in line with previous calculations.

Kenneth Rogoff, recently named chief economist at the International
Monetary Fund, believes that the EU's decision to issue notes larger
than
$100 is a de facto effort to gain "market share" in the underground
economy. Historically, dollars have been the preferred medium of
exchange
in this area, which explains why the U.S. "exported" more than $22
billion
of currency in 1999. This helped finance much of the U.S. current
account
deficit.

Of course, much underground economic activity in Europe takes place in
local currencies. But with their elimination, those with large stashes
of
cash have to do something with it before the end of the year. It would
appear too suspicious to law enforcement officials if they tried to
exchange large quantities of unexplained cash for euros next year. The
result has been a spending boom throughout Europe, as people rush to buy
tangible assets with their underground cash.

In Spain, this has led to a real-estate boom that has driven housing
prices
up by 27 percent in the last 2 years. In The Netherlands, the unexpected
repatriation of underground cash from abroad has caused the guilder to
fall
by 7.9 percent.

Economists generally applaud introduction of the euro, believing it will
facilitate commerce and growth throughout Europe. It would help the
dollar
compete if the Treasury once again issued $500 bills. After all, they
will
only buy $56 worth of goods compared to when they