no bias in the media?

[Thesemindz]

True, but all you have to do is look at the types of stories they put on display and then read the editorials. Papers have always had a "left or right lean".

Many local outlets are owned by conglomerates when you follow the money too....

This is the value I still see in the mass media.

As long as I know the bias of the show I'm watching, I can just read between the lines and compare it to other shows that have a differing bias in order to get a more complete picture of events.

If you couple that with an exploration of alernative media, you can learn a lot, both about media bias, which clearly exists, and what's really going on, which is rarely reported on.


-Rob

 

[Gordon Nore]

I'm not sure if anyone saw it, but John Stewart did a great bit on the daily show last week where he compared Fox News' support of the tea parties, with CNN's clear bias against them, with MSNBC making crude sexual innuendos about "teabagging" all day long.

I saw it also. Behind the comedy, it was a very good analysis of where the networks position themselves.

 

[Empty Hands]

When a currency is backed by, or even made of, a real commodity of consistent value then that currencies value will also be consistent.

The key word is "consistent". There are no truly consistent commodities. Even when money actually was gold and silver instead of just being backed by it, the value of the currency could radically change. In one example, in the 17th century, a flood of new silver mines exploited in the New World caused a radical inflation of the silver money of the time.

There are no magic bullets.

 

[Thesemindz]

The key word is "consistent". There are no truly consistent commodities. Even when money actually was gold and silver instead of just being backed by it, the value of the currency could radically change. In one example, in the 17th century, a flood of new silver mines exploited in the New World caused a radical inflation of the silver money of the time.

There are no magic bullets.

You are exactly correct. In fact, that is the only way that commodity backed currencies' value can fluctuate radically, if the market becomes flooded with that commodity.

But the market has a response to that as well. People will still require an intermediary device for commerce in order to address the problem of the coincidence of wants. If silver no longer fits that need, they will use something else, whether it's a different metal, or whiskey, or bear skins, or IPhones.

You are right that there are no magic bullets, but there are deadly poisons, and fiat currency is definitely one. It's history is undeniable.


-Rob

 

[Marginal]

Is that how CNN’s Susan Roesgen described the nationwide public demonstrations? Or maybe it Markos Moulitsas's descripton? They do go over the top.

No, the random bearded guys in the crowds with signs like "Revolation!" tended to be asserting that without any any additional estate filtering their message further. (Fox = This man are patriot! CNN = LOLZ teabagger! etc...)

 

[crushing]

No, the random bearded guys in the crowds with signs like "Revolation!" tended to be asserting that without any any additional estate filtering their message further. (Fox = This man are patriot! CNN = LOLZ teabagger! etc...)

I meant the "armed overthrow" part. A revolution is a drastic change in thinking or behavior and doesn't necessarily require arms or even an overthrow (other than an overthrow of old ideas). I haven't heard anyone say anything about a coup. It doesn't sound like there was anything random about whom you chose from the crowds to make a generalization about the whole demonstration/movement.

 

[Marginal]

I meant the "armed overthrow" part. A revolution is a drastic change in thinking or behavior and doesn't necessarily require arms or even an overthrow (other than an overthrow of old ideas). I haven't heard anyone say anything about a coup. It doesn't sound like there was anything random about whom you chose from the crowds to make a generalization about the whole demonstration/movement.

Well, there was also the guy from one of the crowds on Hannity advocating that while Hannity did a little happy dance and offered whatever assistance he possibly could.

That aside, nobody seems to have a clue about what the heck they're trying to protest going by the interviews of the participants. "We're being taxed to death." (While carrying signs with Regan's face on them who had a higher tax rate in place....) "We're suffering greater tyranny than under George III!"

*sigh* Yes. Yes we are. The US that only existed in your fevered grime ridden nostalgia trips is rapidly fading from your grasp. Time to march around with a misspelled sign!

 

[Makalakumu]

Yes soaring.

When a currency is backed by, or even made of, a real commodity of consistent value then that currencies value will also be consistent. This is why historically currencies were either made of, or backed by, precious metals which hold a constant value by weight and purity. Unfortunately for the state, this made it hard to uncontrollably increase the money supply in order to fund the many wars they wished to participate in, and so they divorced the currency from its commodity backing and left it to “float.” The reason governments can get away with this is because of the money illusion.

The money illusion refers to the tendency of most people to think of their money in nominal terms instead of real terms. For instance, many people would say that there is no nominal value difference between a five dollar bill now, a five dollar bill ten years ago, and a five dollar bill eighty years ago. However, the reality is that in the last eighty years, the five dollar note has lost so much value, that what was five dollars then would cost you nearly sixty dollars now. Here's a quick little calculator to show you how worthless your money has become. By disguising the devaluation of the currency through inflation and seigniorage, and relying on the money illusion, the state is able to hide its theft from the people.

Removing taxation would immediately reduce the cost of goods and services by more than 22 percent. Even worse, since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the federal reserve note has lost 94% of its purchasing power to inflation. Additionally, by some estimates, nearly 70% of your money goes back to the government through taxation, tariffs, and fees. This combines to reduce your purchasing power to approximately 1.8 percent of the face value of your currency. In a system with commodity based monies, you would have the full value of your currency, increasing your purchasing power by nearly 5000 percent.

But that's not the end of it. Each dollar collected by government is a dollar not invested in the growth of the economy. A mere 3 percent tax increase from 21 to 24 percent costs the economy nearly 200 percent of the value of the money taxed over 50 years. And that number increases exponentially with greater taxation. That's money that never existed, was never invested, never earned, and never spent. By removing that money from the economy, government continues to depress the standard of living of all Americans, rich and poor. What's more, in many industries, wages are growing slower than inflation, so every year, people are actually making less than the year before.

You see, taxation is soaring, but it isn't the only way the government steals money from the people. In a fiat economy, you can't control the value of your money, or by extension your asset wealth because even if you hide your money under the mattress the government can steal it's value by printing more.

Until our money is backed by real commodities again, the government will continue to steal from the people through overprinting, hyperinflation, and interest rate manipulation.




-Rob

QFT!

This is the most important issue in politics today. I consider myself "left" on most issues, but I'm willing to put it all aside to support this. I wouldn't vote for Ghengis Khan if he supported this, but I'll vote for any reasonable candidate that has a plan to pursue this.

 

[Archangel M]

How the gold standard contributed to the Great Depression.

Ultimately, the reason why we're not on the Gold Standard and wont ever return to it is that there are simply too many of us, too many humans, walking the face of the Earth, for gold to be a usable basis for currency. There has to be the metal available regardless of using coun or gold certificates. We've replaced our faith in gold with our faith in the system, in each other, which is where the value of any currency in any form is drawn.

Not to mention the drastic reduction in wages that would have to happen to re-impliment a gold backed currency.

 

[Makalakumu]

The key word is "consistent". There are no truly consistent commodities. Even when money actually was gold and silver instead of just being backed by it, the value of the currency could radically change. In one example, in the 17th century, a flood of new silver mines exploited in the New World caused a radical inflation of the silver money of the time.

There are no magic bullets.

Joules. Value = Energy. Imagine if every dollar had an exchange rate in energy. Imagine if every item was priced according to the energy of supply and demand.

This is a physics equation and I am just barely scratching out some numbers. I don't know what to tell you, but I think there is something to it.

 

[Makalakumu]

How the gold standard contributed to the Great Depression.

Basically, it blames the Gold Standard for shrinking the money supply during the Depression. It should be noted that, Ben Bernanke, the current head of the Federal Reserve, believes that the Depression was the fault of the Central Banks. He has stated on the record that they deliberately contracted the money supply. Alan Greenspan, another head of the Central Bank, has also stated this. Greenspan also was an ardent supporter of Hard Currency, back in the day.

So, what are you going to say? Here's an author who is blaming the depression on the Gold Standard in order to defend the Central Bank, but the last two former heads of the Central Bank have said that it was the Federal Reserves fault.

I'm thinking that a certain village idiot "on campus" didn't get the memo. LOL!

 

[Makalakumu]

How the gold standard contributed to the Great Depression.

Ultimately, the reason why we're not on the Gold Standard and wont ever return to it is that there are simply too many of us, too many humans, walking the face of the Earth, for gold to be a usable basis for currency. There has to be the metal available regardless of using coun or gold certificates. We've replaced our faith in gold with our faith in the system, in each other, which is where the value of any currency in any form is drawn.

Not to mention the drastic reduction in wages that would have to happen to re-impliment a gold backed currency.

You can set the standard to whatever you wish and, over time, the monetary system will stabilize. You shouldn't confuse past standards with what could happen. We could have a gold Standard that would represnet our modern currency and it would be no problem.

 

[Archangel M]

The gold standard and the great depression.

 

[Archangel M]

The golden anchor

The gold standard and the Great Depression. The current judgment of economic historians (see, for example, Barry J. Eichengreen, Golden Fetters) is that attachment to the gold standard played a major part in keeping governments from fighting the Great Depression, and was a major factor turning the recession of 1929-1931 into the Great Depression of 1931-1941.

• Countries that were not on the gold standard in 1929--or that quickly abandoned the gold standard--by and large escaped the Great Depression
• Countries that abandoned the gold standard in 1930 and 1931 suffered from the Great Depression, but escaped its worst ravages.
• Countries that held to the gold standard through 1933 (like the United States) or 1936 (like France) suffered the worst from the Great Depression
  • Commitment to the gold standard prevented Federal Reserve action to expand the money supply in 1930 and 1931--and forced President Hoover into destructive attempts at budget-balancing in order to avoid a gold standard-generated run on the dollar.
  • Commitment to the gold standard left countries vulnerable to "runs" on their currencies--Mexico in January of 1995 writ very, very large. Such a run, and even the fear that there might be a future run, boosted unemployment and amplified business cycles during the gold standard era.
  • The standard interpretation of the Depression, dating back to Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz's Monetary History of the United States, is that the Federal Reserve could have but for some mysterious reason did not boost the money supply to cure the Depression; but Friedman and Schwartz do not stress the role played by the gold standard in tieing the Federal Reserve's hands--the "golden fetters" of Eichengreen.
  • Friedman was and is aware of the role played by the gold standard--hence his long time advocacy of floating exchange rates, the antithesis of the gold standard.

 

[Makalakumu]

LOL! We're back on topic! Bias in the media indeed!

 

[Gordon Nore]

LOL! We're back on topic! Bias in the media indeed!

I've referred to this comment before on another thread, but I thought I'd bring it up again here. I'm normally not a particular consumer of Arianna Huffington's blog or commentary, but I ran across an interesting comment she made in a magazine interview some months ago. When asked about media bias, she argued that the problem to her mind was not bias per se, but that network news programs treat every story as if it must have a left-right / Republican-Democrat side to it.

This is where cable news falls down for me. CNN is the only US news I tend to watch, so I'll limit my comments to that network. A story like waterboarding or the President's release of memos on torture are released, and immediately "the best political team on television" is called in to comment. The typical roster of pundits contains people with ties to leadership of the one of the two parties, so their commentary is highly predictable. So then, instead of the viewer forming an opinion on the story, it becomes an exercise in the viewer deciding which pundit made the best argument, but it's so skewed because the pundits have come with an agenda.

So, I'm inclined to think, if the TV networks have biases -- just as newspapers often do -- that's not really the problem. The problem, to me, is that they simply won't tell us the story. Too many news programs consist of anchors talking to other reporters or pundits. The people inside the story almost get pushed to the background because the priority if for people to form opinions, not to be informed of events.

CBC radio produces a program called As It Happens, which consciously reverses this trend, and has done so for many years. The hosts of the program almost never talk to reporters. They do mostly phone interviews with witnesses and participants in the story. The program's available on public radio in the US, and, I would imagine, satelite radio elsewhere. It's really quite interesting to listen to because it reverts back to an old style of journalism -- simply telling a story.

 

[Makalakumu]

I've referred to this comment before on another thread, but I thought I'd bring it up again here. I'm normally not a particular consumer of Arianna Huffington's blog or commentary, but I ran across an interesting comment she made in a magazine interview some months ago. When asked about media bias, she argued that the problem to her mind was not bias per se, but that network news programs treat every story as if it must have a left-right / Republican-Democrat side to it.

This is where cable news falls down for me. CNN is the only US news I tend to watch, so I'll limit my comments to that network. A story like waterboarding or the President's release of memos on torture are released, and immediately "the best political team on television" is called in to comment. The typical roster of pundits contains people with ties to leadership of the one of the two parties, so their commentary is highly predictable. So then, instead of the viewer forming an opinion on the story, it becomes an exercise in the viewer deciding which pundit made the best argument, but it's so skewed because the pundits have come with an agenda.

So, I'm inclined to think, if the TV networks have biases -- just as newspapers often do -- that's not really the problem. The problem, to me, is that they simply won't tell us the story. Too many news programs consist of anchors talking to other reporters or pundits. The people inside the story almost get pushed to the background because the priority if for people to form opinions, not to be informed of events.

CBC radio produces a program called As It Happens, which consciously reverses this trend, and has done so for many years. The hosts of the program almost never talk to reporters. They do mostly phone interviews with witnesses and participants in the story. The program's available on public radio in the US, and, I would imagine, satelite radio elsewhere. It's really quite interesting to listen to because it reverts back to an old style of journalism -- simply telling a story.

This is a brilliant post because that's exactly what happens. The Left/Right thing is entirely contrived and opinions are literally being crafted for consumption along those lines.

I listen to AIH all of the time. It's a great program and I appreciate the old style of reporting.

 

[Gordon Nore]

This is a brilliant post because that's exactly what happens. The Left/Right thing is entirely contrived and opinions are literally being crafted for consumption along those lines.

I listen to AIH all of the time. It's a great program and I appreciate the old style of reporting.

I guess this goes to the difference between TV and newspapers. As a number of people have pointed out, newspaper biases are understood -- indeed they're reflected especially on the editorial pages. For many years The Toronto Star and the dailies under the old Southam News chain were understood to be 'liberal,' just as the national Globe and Mail was understood to be conservative.

TV doesn't have the editorial section. It constantly brings in people not only to editorialize but to react. So there's this constant clash of event reporting and editorializing.

I'll relate another anecdote I've shared before. During my son's seventh grade year in middle school, there was a stabbing the school. A student from outside the school entered the building and assaulted a girl in the washroom in what was later termed a 'case of mistaken identity.' Staff responded appropriately, and locked the building down. My son happened to be in the music room where there was a phone and was able to call home, though he obviously had no details, other than to say that he and his immediately classmates were safe.

My wife and a neighbour raced to the school and waited in a designated area set up by police. Immediately, reporters from two different stations shoved mics in her face and asked her what was happening. When she said she didn't know, they asked her what she thought was happening. It's really absurd when you think about it. In the absence of actual details, let's all just speculate and run that as the story.

By the way, the lockdown was very well done, and staff and students were escorted safely down to parents in the cafeteria after the building was cleared and a suspect arrested off-site.

 

[Thesemindz]

How the gold standard contributed to the Great Depression.

Ultimately, the reason why we're not on the Gold Standard and wont ever return to it is that there are simply too many of us, too many humans, walking the face of the Earth, for gold to be a usable basis for currency. There has to be the metal available regardless of using coun or gold certificates. We've replaced our faith in gold with our faith in the system, in each other, which is where the value of any currency in any form is drawn.

Not to mention the drastic reduction in wages that would have to happen to re-impliment a gold backed currency.

Which is all at least partially true. But I never called for a return to the gold standard. I call for a return to commodities backed currencies.

Many people are advocating a return to currencies based on energy. Still others say it doesn't really matter what they are backed by, as long as they are backed by something. In fact, different currencies could be backed by different things, and we could set up an exchange rate between whiskey dollars, gold dollars, and energy dollars. The key is that all those dollars can be exchanged for actual, fungible goods, instead of hopes and dreams.


-Rob

 

[Thesemindz]

TV doesn't have the editorial section. It constantly brings in people not only to editorialize but to react. So there's this constant clash of event reporting and editorializing.

While I agree with your general point, I'd change it slightly to say that much of tv "journalism" is only editorial in nature, with very little actual reporting going on.

To some degree, I applaud Fox News for at least being honest about this. They have few if any true news programs, offering instead a constant stream of editorial punditry. My problem with them is when they are offering a "straight" news program, and someone like Shephard Smith looks straight into the camera and lies to the american people. One such example was before the first of the recent corporate bailouts when he looked right into the camera and told the American people that if they didn't support the bailout we'd all go to work next week and not get our paychecks. That was a straight up, bold faced lie. And he didn't give a damn, because he gets paid to lie. At least the pundits only get paid to give their opinions, which may or may not be lies. He's supposed to be a straight newsman. Balderdash.


-Rob