Journal zogger's Journal: The shoe is dangling 19
A few hints from a top Chinese economist on moves with the yuan coming soon. The biggest little clue, one I have been watching for as a precursor to the Great Dollar Dump, is he is quoted as saying they may decide to peg to a basket of currencies. Translated that means start dumping bucks, which would lead to a global rout.(as I have been saying, when the US loses world reserve currency status, that's it, the party is over, that's all she wrote, etc, the empire goes away, it collapses) There's pressure on China to revalue higher, from all quarters around the globe, the big O harangued them a little bit about it..but they won't do that *until they are good and ready*, and right now they *aren't* good and ready, and are still scarfing up cheap-to-them natural resources all over, locking them in.
Their undervalued currency and massive manufacturing ability keeps letting them do this, it is a profitable loop for them, so they aren't in any hurry to change things. They can export and undercut most anyone, in return they get oodles of other nation's hard currency, which they turn around and use to get more raw resources via outright purchase or signed long term production contracts, etc. The other stuff they buy is advanced R&D, the means to keep doing what they have been doing. Anything at all to do with new tech, they get it, buy it, siphon it away, reverse engineer, whatever. They compound their own R&D budget immensely this way. Heck, they get foreign companies to put their own money up and come to China and build them even more factories!
moof (Score:1)
A totalitarian capitalist state is prolly the ultimate in effectiveness at waging and winning at economic warfare. So what then do you do, join 'em?
But I still think a free capitalist society could hold its own against such, if only its people felt any kind of loyalty to their country and countrymen.
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Freedom and loyalty are mutually exclusive. You can't have both at once. You can EITHER have loyalty, in which case you voluntarily subsume your freedom to the greater good of the group, or you can have individual freedom, in which case loyalty flies out the window and is utterly destroyed.
I think writing this back to you just convinced me to find a way to pay my extra dues and become a 4th Degree Knight of Columbus- because loyalty and patriotism do not necessarily require that I support the freedom to h
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"in which case you voluntarily subsume [some of] your freedom to the greater good of the group [towards achieving a greater good for yourself]"
Yes, freedom includes being free to decide to voluntarily limit some of one's own freedoms sometimes for various personally chosen purposes, such as for one or more greater goods.
Take marriage for example. In our culture, marriage typically isn't arranged or forced, many (most?) of us voluntarily enter into it. This is giving up certain freedom(s) and limiting other(
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"Imagine our society if practically no one committed to another person."
Given the modern state of the Sacrament of Marriage- when even 3:4 Catholic marriages will end in divorce or annulment, I'm not at all sure we're not nearly there already.
Commitment is a dirty word to most Americans. And I blame the cult of individualism for it.
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Divorce rates are an area rife with popular myths floating around about them. For example, apparently it never was 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce. In fact, apparently marriages were never checked for divorce rates, just a numerical comparison of the # of marriages and # of divorces that occurred in a year. And apparently it was rising rapidly in the 1960's and '70's (I guess hippies were finding out you couldn't keep a spouse when you were really married to your bong), to about 40%, and it was just project
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I was thinking *American* only, not worldwide. Worldwide the statistics are *far* better. However, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Not all Catholic divorces end in an annulment. Many today just end with one or the other partner no longer attending services at all, or if they're particularly moral (since nobody seems to care about enforcing morality) voluntarily refraining from the Eucharist. Many don't even do that.
But yes, I think the bubble *might* be decreasing, it was certainly the Baby Boomer ge
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Hopefully the existence of the tea party movement means enough people have been awakened to the danger of traditional America slipping away that they're taking steps to ensure that their kids are learning what those Left-wing hippie baby boomers have rooted out of school curricula.
I'd like to see a private school system develop around teaching old-fashioned American values (the good ones, that is -- not racism, for example). Nothing wrong with the Catholic schools -- I remember going one Saturday to take a
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I've seen a Catholic School kind of like this: Holy Family Academy in Woodburn, OR. It was NOT run by the archdiocese, but by some RadTrad parents, and ended up with a pretty good curriculum. It did have a religious aspect- but it also taught Latin to 7th and 8th graders and the 8th Graders had to learn the Summa Theologicae, in the original Latin.
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...sleazy playa's...
Gee!! Thanks a lot!
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Hey, you're back. At least, I thought you had gone away. If so, hope it wasn't health-related or anything bad.
(addendum to reply of a few minutes ago) (Score:1)
Make that: "And like boys egging each other on, we have a culture of where businesses,...".
And why do people have families and work to support them? And see that their members don't fall by the wayside. One could generally spend much more money on themself if they didn't assume this loyalty (to others). Nevertheless, it's usually deemed worth it by people to actually make great sacrifices for one's family unit. As the overall reward is greater.
Then what about the community unit? Isn't it worth sacrificing j
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"And why do people have families and work to support them? And see that their members don't fall by the wayside. One could generally spend much more money on themself if they didn't assume this loyalty (to others). Nevertheless, it's usually deemed worth it by people to actually make great sacrifices for one's family unit. As the overall reward is greater."
More and more every year though, don't. Almost *every* divorce I've ever seen is related to one partner suddenly realizing that nothing is keeping them
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It strikes me that either or both parties could have, at any time, instituted corporate tax policy that simply makes it much more cost effective to hire than lay off. It's absurd that while the engine of our country is economic growth, neither side is interested in growing one of the major inputs to it! If it's not cheap labor Conservatives screwing the American worker it's government dependency Liberals. We just can't win, with either. I really would like to see the tea party movement spawn a major politic
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Yep, which just proves to me that NEITHER party gives a shit about *real Americans*. But for the Tea Party to get to the point of being a major political party, you're going to have to weed out the people protesting entitlements while living on entitlements (I wonder if anybody has bothered to inform them that Social Security Disability and Medicare are Entitlements? Saw a sign in this morning's Tea Party protest in Portland that said "Hands off my Medicare" on one side and "Entitlements end in November" o
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Well entitlements should be kept alive for those at or near retirement. But yes, a tea party party would need an official platform, to solidify peoples' thinking on a set of core principles that are not inconsistent, and discourage away those who don't (yet) have their ideas mutually coherent, or any undesirable elements there might be lurking like Communists or skinheads waiting for an opportunity. But in general, no more watered-down "big tent" parties -- have the smallest set of principles that will suff
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One interesting way to do it would be to limit investment in chains to franchises rather than the stock market. That way, a "shareholder" or even a small group of "shareholders" would be *directly* responsible for their own profit- while providing a top management layer that is local despite being a part of a chain.
The "stock market" concept itself is rather too easy to corrupt, as is most trading in derivatives.
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Becoming a franchisee is an expensive proposition. Unless you're saying that, instead of one person take out a huge loan to buy the right to open a local Subway shop for example, that there could be a system where us little guys could funnel a little bit of money every pay period into paying off the franchise fee, for part ownership in said shop down the street from us. Then we could "invest" (and be vested in) in the various local establishments that we like and want to see prosper (and think will prosper)
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"Becoming a franchisee is an expensive proposition. Unless you're saying that, instead of one person take out a huge loan to buy the right to open a local Subway shop for example, that there could be a system where us little guys could funnel a little bit of money every pay period into paying off the franchise fee, for part ownership in said shop down the street from us. Then we could "invest" (and be vested in) in the various local establishments that we like and want to see prosper (and think will prosper
Dumping will force revluation of the yuan (Score:2)