Gold price manipulated since longer than assumed?

[Skybird]

Refering to a German news, professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz from New York University, and Albert Metz, analysts at Moody´s,, published their findings of examining the price fixing for gold in London, and came to the conclusion that the price seems to be manipulated since not just three years, but at least since ten years. The had analysed the price of gold in the years from 2001 to 2013, and found several dates when the price suddenly was dropping sharply, with further examination concluding that it seems that a manipulation in favour of lowering the price artificially has taken place.

Abrantes-Metz delivered major parts of the material that led to the unveiling of the Libor scandal.

London-seated analast comapny Fideres cam to comparable conclusions, claiming that in 50% of the cases the price of gold has been manipulated for a lower score in the years 2010-2013. A relating article they published in the Financial Times, was deleted immediately on the same day.

Currently both German and British authorities exmaine the gold price fixing over suspiucions that the fixing has been manipulated.

The querstion is: do the states and their autorities indeed have any interest to unveil such a manipulation? Hardly. It would mean that in case of such finding being published, the gold price would skyrocket immediately in correcting that manipulation, and the criminal paper currency that was imposed on us would correspondingly drop in relation. When you consider that even with manipulated fixing the price of gold since 2001 has multiplied by a factor of 5 in 2012 and thus the dollar has lost 80% of value towards gold, you can imagine what this would mean for the snowballing system that paper moneys indeed is.

I thus predict that in some time we will read findings and reports claiming that no relevant manipulation of gold price fixings have been found. Some "tweaks" here and there in the past 3 years will be admitted to please the bloodthirsty crowd, but nothing serious and worth to be concerned about.

I dare to claim that a lie from A to Z. The show must run out. The lies must live.

To win some more time before the sky is falling nevertheless.

I have a different view there. The collapse of the paper money system is unavoidable, and so the result in the future already is decided, thus the future influences its past that is currently our present. But if the future is already fixed, why should I resist a collapse that is unavoidable anyway, necessary and even desirable?

Chinese are buying the Swiss and London gold market empty, btw. Does anyone worry for what that indicates, in the West? Nooo... Just do not spoil those precious illusions...

Governments since long try to prevent any objective scale for assessing the state of things in an economy. They prevent price fixings by free market mechanisms. They want to regulate prices. They control the value of money, as if they could do that. They suppress all information that is showing what time the clock in reality is showing, and keep their finger blocking the big hand on the dial.

But that damn thing keeps ticking. How unpleasant.

[STEED]

Nothing new Sky, as you and everyone else knows the whole system is bent or corrupt in some sort of way. These bloated pigs are on a win win win...until the law wakes up and decides to sort them out out big time which will never happen.

BTW: Sky..this book may interest you.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Death-Money-Collapse-International/dp/0670923699/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1393851657&sr=8-2&keywords=currency+wars

[Skybird]

Nothing new Sky, as you and everyone else knows the whole system is bent or corrupt in some sort of way. These bloated pigs are on a win win win...until the law wakes up and decides to sort them out out big time which will never happen.
The law is the law made by their own buddies. Go figure.

What just stuns me at times is that people just accept it, instead of storming institutions, hanging politicians and chasing the feudal class through the streets. Everybody tries to stay kind and calm, and ignores that doom is heading for him. I just don't get it. The German hyperinflation was the worst example of hyperinflation ever. But it is a child's play to what is coming to us in a truly globalised financial system and economy.

And it will not just be some bureaucratic nuisance for the ordinary John Smith in our Western countries. It will do plenty of killing. Hope my health takes me out before that day arrives, but things seem to speed up recently, and so I fear me too will get caught by the blow. I'm not eagerly looking forward to that.

The book, don't know that one in special, but have had several titles like that last years. Especially this one got my attention:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paper-Money-Collapse-Monetary-Breakdown/dp/1118095758/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393852278&sr=8-1&keywords=detlev+schlichter

Thanks for the hint.

In general I hint at the masterful work of Ludwig von Mises, and E.F. Hayek. What the above authors describe in latest books, has bee warned of and predicted already decades and over half a century ago by Mises and Hayek. It's a century to go back, if you count their predecessors they based their work on.

[STEED]

Some what a 1984 situation where most people are pros and as long as they get there little treats they will gladly go along with the lies. Makes me laugh when I hear friends say did you hear about JP Morgan and Chase along with Goldman Sachs got big stiff fines that will teach them! I just laugh and say teach them what, they only go and do it again.

[Wolferz]

Some what a 1984 situation where most people are pros and as long as they get there little treats they will gladly go along with the lies. Makes me laugh when I hear friends say did you hear about JP Morgan and Chase along with Goldman Sachs got big stiff fines that will teach them! I just laugh and say teach them what, they only go and do it again.

Compared to the illicit profits they've raked in with their thieving, the fines are nothing more than a business expense and could be called profit sharing for the gub'mint:stare:

Everything is manipulated for max profits these days. Not just gold.
I can only hope that Fort Knox still has the back up plan stored there. But, alas, it may be like the Social Security trust. Constantly raided until depleted.

Oh well. They can't take it with them after their lynching and I really couldn't care less about worldly things like money. You come into the world with nothing and you'll leave it the same way.

[Skybird]

Everything is manipulated for max profits these days. Not just gold.
Gold is not manipulated for profit in the main, but for protecting the snowballing scheme itself that is behind paper money - that is the point! ;) It'S not about a simple criminal coup. It is about the very system.

[Betonov]

If you can't beat them, join them.

Any idea how to predict when they'll inflate and deflate prices :hmmm:
There's €200 in my drawer waiting to become €2000 :)

[Skybird]

There are reasonable thoughts voiced by some who predict that gold will go beyond the 10.000 dollar mark the closer to final collapse day we are. I think that is possible. I tcoulöd even become multiple times that price, if you understand the logic behind FIAT money and gold.

But there will be new gold prohibitions announced by states, so you would be needing to act criminally and on the black market if you want to benefit from any - then illegitimate by the law'S letter - savings you stockpiled in gold and did not hand over to the state's gangsters when they demanded you to change your gold for useless rags of paper. You would need to accept the risk of most draconic penalties, because states cannot afford to tolerate black markets in such conditions. Or states catch you by excessive taxation of legal gold sales. In the end, when the going gets tough, there is no safety and no rescue, and those with gold will be in the mess as well as those holding shares (or follies like Bitcoins...) or landproperty (-> taxation, enforced expropriation).

We have had that before, and not just in Germany. America and Britain have been there, too, less than one man's lifespan ago.

Repeatedly.

[Tribesman]

Gold is not manipulated for profit in the main, but for protecting the snowballing scheme itself that is behind paper money - that is the point! ;) It'S not about a simple criminal coup. It is about the very system.
Gold is manipulated mainly for profit, same as silver diamonds oil or any other tradable material.
If seashells were a major valuable commodity then they would also be manipulated mainly for profit.

[Jimbuna]

If you can't beat them, join them.

Any idea how to predict when they'll inflate and deflate prices :hmmm:
There's €200 in my drawer waiting to become €2000 :)

Send it over to me and I'll put it to good use :)

Back OT...any tradeable commodity is used for profitable gain and always will do as long as there is a buyer and a seller within the marketplace.

[MH]

Gold price manipulated since longer than assumed? any evidence on the how...because if i had a ton of gold in the basement i would be very happy reading this.:haha:

Who is keeping the prices down and letting china buy all this stuff?
Why don't others buy the gold same way china does?

[Rockstar]

Gold is manipulated mainly for profit, same as silver diamonds oil or any other tradable material.
If seashells were a major valuable commodity then they would also be manipulated mainly for profit.

Once upon a time seashells did have value and were actually traded for goods, lands and services. That is until Dutch colonists realized this and began mass-produceding wampum in workshops to the point that the market for wampum was glutted and effectively destroyed.

Now it's nothing more than 'fashion' jewlery.

Kinda like where the dollar is heading.

[Skybird]

Send it over to me and I'll put it to good use :)

Back OT...any tradeable commodity is used for profitable gain and always will do as long as there is a buyer and a seller within the marketplace.
That is why it is of paramount importance to have a currency that is indeed a freely traded commodity just like any other and that has its value not regulated and fixed by governments, but market participants. Only then the "value" of the money actually has a meaning. And only then prices have a meaning. And only then businessmen and traders can make reliable calculations on their cost-gains-balances. In other words, the general status of an economy is reflected ion the price fixing on a free market, and the value of its currencies. And when you want to hide the real status of a desolate economy, you have to prevent all that and command which price the currency should have - by that, you distort all, precent all, disguise all.

But such a commodity currency that is decided about by market and private people, would mean that politicians have limited means available only to finance their spending frenzies by which they bribe the masses to vote for them. So they always will move all heaven and earth and tell just any lie to prevent such a currency and make people believe in paper money instead.

Also, paper money is a precondition for the giant redistribution scheme of real values from bottom to top that is happening today. The word to watch out for is "Cantillon effect". It makes sure that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer just by printing more FIAT money and pumping it into the system.

That gold has been used as such a widely accepted commodity money, is only because of past markets decided so and people made good experiences with the physical availability and ability to manage it. It is practical to handle, can be turned into smaller or bigger coins, and if a symbol on a thaler is declared invalid and the currency changes to another name, you melt your thaler and still have gold that has not lost one bit of its bartering power than if it were not a necklace but the same amount of gold pressed into the form of a coin, also, it cannot rot and does not corrode. It could as well be plant seeds, or seashells or bones, or tobacco, pieces of dried bacon and whatever else man has used as token for a currency system. But people found out that all these things were not as practical and valuable to them as precious metals turned out to be, and that they did not offer the practical advantages of using metal instead of furs or dried bacon. And so, gold it was.

The Chinese were the first to try a paper money system, I think in the 12th century. It collapsed. And since then, ALL paper money system tried in any part of the world have collapsed. The inflation of paper money is nothing else than what ancient kins did when they reduced the amount of precious metals in their gold and silver thalers, and replaced them with inferior iron, to increase the amount of thalers and give the illusion of having more wealth that they then spend. It is betrayal, theft, and always it is snowballing.

[MH]

The Chinese were the first to try a paper money system, I think in the 12th century. It collapsed. And since then, ALL paper money system tried in any part of the world have collapsed. The inflation of paper money is nothing else than what ancient kins did when they reduced the amount of precious metals in their gold and silver thalers, and replaced them with inferior iron, to increase the amount of thalers and give the illusion of having more wealth that they then spend. It is betrayal, theft, and always it is snowballing.

So how economy with relatively fixed amount of gold can deal with growing wealth.?
...after all people create wealth as well.

[Skybird]

So how economy with relatively fixed amount of gold can deal with growing wealth.?
...after all people create wealth as well.
It is totally unimportant how much quantity of a currency is in circulation. The Central banks' self-legitimation in parts is that "somebody must control the amount of money in circulation".

Nonsense.

If you increase the number of currency units in the system by - for the easiness of calculation in this example - by a factor of ten, then you see that prices adapt by moving the decimal one digit to the right. What costed you 1 thaler before, now will cost you ten thalers. If you reduce the number of currency units in circulation by let's say one half, you will sooner or later see that prices half as well.

If there are many gold coins in circulation, their price will drop on the market. When there are fewer gold coins in circulation, their value rises. But if you have some criminal mind called "politician" giving it a fixed value that the market is not to negotiate freely, then you are in a nightmare of deep troubles. Such a currency no longer represents and reflects true market events. And that is what politicians want with their control of the currency - to hide how they are abusing and ruining the system.

Wealth cannot be produced on the basis of fictional value (=credit). Already von Mises showed in all stunning logic, that wealth can only be founded (if you want it to last) on the basis of real value that you have saved before - and then investing this saved value. There are no shortcuts. You need to go the longer and more difficult way. You must save a little bit, and then invest that. Using credits for your investments only founds or increases the snowball system and its longterm devastating effects.

There is no way to generate value out of nothing. It's an illusion, and it destroys us like the happy dreams of constant heavy drug abuse destroys the consumer. But he grins until the bitter end.

[MH]

There is no way to generate value out of nothing. It's an illusion, and it destroys us like the happy dreams of constant heavy drug abuse destroys the consumer. But he grins until the bitter end. Creating new technologies is creating value from nothing.
Software you using is the same...value from nothing - an idea.
It is not about exchanging relatively fixed amount of goods for relatively fixed amount of metal anymore.
We would have value rise of gold coins till it was impractical to use them again.

Wealth is not about how many gold bars you own anymore.
Not saying that current system is perfect but gold based one is crazy...

[Tribesman]

There is no way to generate value out of nothing. It's an illusion, and it destroys us like the happy dreams of constant heavy drug abuse destroys the consumer. But he grins until the bitter end.
Of course you can, say for example you get some muppet like Beck to hype the value of gold and get some mises fanatics to further spread the gospel of hype then you can generate a completely false value which doesn't really exist.

[Skybird]

Creating new technologies is creating value from nothing.
Software you using is the same...value from nothing - an idea.
It is not about exchanging relatively fixed amount of goods for relatively fixed amount of metal anymore.
We would have value rise of gold coins till it was impractical to use them again.

Wealth is not about how many gold bars you own anymore.
Not saying that current system is perfect but gold based one is crazy...
Ideas you newly deveklope and form into inventions, base on intellctual work invested before, and the fruits of intzellectual work done before. They do not come form nothing. And you need financial wealth to materilaise the idea you had, to make profit from it. Like the farmer needs seeds in spring to be able to harvest in autumn - and save some for the seeds he needs again next spring.

Fee market bartering is nopt about "fixed" prices as yoiu suggested above. It is about prices freeely negotiate by market participants.

Handling heaps of gold, and how impractical that is. If there were just one ton of gold in a country, the ammount of gold you would need to carry to buy a house, would be almost microscopic. Anyhow, nothing speaks against storing yopur gold bars in a safe place, say a bank, and be given a receipt for that - as long as the bank does and miust store all that gold in full material volume all the time. Originally, that is where banknotes are coming from! But then the other of the two archsins of modern fincial corruption was implemented: the fracional reserve system that allows banks to not store all gold given to them by the owner, but just a fraction of it, trading with the major part of it. I have explained that problem in a thread two or three weeks ago. Fractional reserve banking systems and FIAT paper money without true commodity-coverage are the death sentence for any responsible, reasonable fiscal system. Because on the very first occasion you allow a bank to not withhold all material value given to it for storage against a paper receipt, means that this bank already is bancrupt because if people come and want back all their store gold, the bank cannot meet the demand.

So you can use paper banknotes as long as there is not more currency units represented by them as there is in real commodity, saved and stored away in some secure location. The sin is if you use this system - and then intruduce a fractional reserve system. Then you know that you have let the ghosts out of pandora's box.

Money is like any commodity, good, item, that people are interested to trade with or to barter. Prices for these items must be allowed to be freely negotiated. A need for FIAT money of any form does not exist except for politicians who will always dislike that there are unsurpassable limits defined by a solid money to their unlimited spending fantasies. It is always the kings, the feudal elites, later the governments and politicians in republics and the fans of socialist planned economies that have corrupted and ruined currencies and thus destroyed economies. And they all bred corruption and plundering en masse.

Central Banks are not needed. State control of currency is not needed. Fractional reserve banking is not needed. Each of these three alone already is utmost destructive. Together, they are apocalyptic.

What states need to do is to be as little and small as possible, to tax and to spend almost nothing, and to be as non-existing as can be achieved. Democracy always must lead to socialism and planned economy and bureaucratic totalitarianism. The opposite to democracy - is freedom.

[Tchocky]

If everyone got into a car accident on the same day then insurance companies would collapse.

[TarJak]

We could adopt the PNG traditional currency of pigs. 20 pigs for a good bride. It takes a set investment in time and feed to get a saleable pig.

[nikimcbee]

We could adopt the PNG traditional currency of pigs. 20 pigs for a good bride. It takes a set investment in time and feed to get a saleable pig.


Bacon eh....?:hmmm:

Brilliant!

What about thick sliced pepper bacon?

Send 5 slices to Neal for your donation.:D

[TarJak]

Yummy

[Skybird]

Bacon eh....?:hmmm:

Brilliant!

What about thick sliced pepper bacon?

Send 5 slices to Neal for your donation.:D

Actually, bacon (I mean "Speck")was used as a currency for sure. It was carried in more or less big pieces, and depending on how much you had to "pay", an according slice or piece was cut off. When they found out that that was impractical, they started to replace bacon with metal, and hacked off pieces from the bars. It was called "Hackgeld", therefore.

[Jimbuna]

Bacon eh....?:hmmm:

Brilliant!

What about thick sliced pepper bacon?

Send 5 slices to Neal for your donation.:D

Has to be seen to be believed :)

[Wolferz]

Pork currency? That would add truth to the phrase.. "Bringing home the Bacon":O:

[Tribesman]

Its all fine and well till someone adulterates the pork and lowers the value, then you have the speculators and hoarders who want to manipulate the market and set up piggy banks where they start a market in possible future piglet options, Peta get in on the act and want bacon kept on the trotter.
Then of course the muslim horde takes over like they always planned and move the currency to ovine from porcine, at which point the welsh get upset about the increasing price of sex and finally everyone sits down and agrees that the paper deal isn't that bad after all, apart from a few mises miseries who now insist that beef can be the answer to all the problems

[Penguin]

Funny how often the participants of the "free market" tend to prefer a planned economy - fixed prices. Last year alone in Germany, it was discovered that for years prices have been manipulated for sugar, elevators, wallpapers and (most shockingly to us :o) beer.
But of course it's all the fault of regulations, the state and some dubious "socialism" :rolleyes:

[Skybird]

Funny how often the participants of the "free market" tend to prefer a planned economy - fixed prices. Last year alone in Germany, it was discovered that for years prices have been manipulated for sugar, elevators, wallpapers and (most shockingly to us :o) beer.
But of course it's all the fault of regulations, the state and some dubious "socialism" :rolleyes:
You distort it, and I think you know it. Yoiur criticism of the price manipoulation for sugar coffee etc is not done by people wanting a free market (=captialists), but is done by people wanting monopolies. And monopolism and capitalism are antagonistic, no matter whether you consider free market versus states, or free market versus lobbyists.

Its indeed is strange that such distortions are attacked not as monopolism but as as "capitalism", when they appear in an economical context where secret cartel building (which also is a violation of the idea of free markets) takes place. But when monopolies are built in the name of socialist stuff or giovenrment rtegulation (which in the end is one and the same), then the same distortion is welcomed and defended as a achievment although it is at the cost of eroding the basis of everybody's wealth.

Strange that is becasue a true caspitlaist - knows the value of solid, healthy money, and the need for a free market as a precondition. States and socialists do not know that. Monopolists in the end are eneimies of freedom and free markets. And the state is the biggest monopolist of all, having the monopole to plunder and to legitimnate itself, and having the monopole to make laws and rules that regulate all others while the state has the freedom to exclude itself from these rules.

[Skybird]

If everyone got into a car accident on the same day then insurance companies would collapse.
But if a meteor hits Earth, they would not need to care.

Serious, you get the very same reply by me that you have already gotten from me some weeks ago on the same issue. I just edited the typos out of it, and changed a phrase here and there.


When you have a person going to the bank and paying in 1000 bucks, and the bank is allowed to hold only one tenth of that in real reserves, and pay out the other 9/10 as new credit, then you create more money, new money, from nothing. Which devalues the money in circulation. Which essentially is inflation. Because: the bank gives that money as a credit to a new debtor, who uses it to invest into something, do usual bank deals, and pays at least major parts of it to other banks - who again hand out most of that money to other debtors, because it must hold only one tenth of that sum as reserve.

If you do not see that as an essential and vital problem, then nothing will ever make you waking up: Somebody paid 1000 bucks to bank as credit, and the bank uses that to increase the amount of money in existence - WITHOUT THAT NEW ADDITIONAL MONEY REPRESENTING ANY NEWLY CREATED MATERIAL VALUE. And the ratio is intimidating:

After the first paying-in (forgive my probably inapt English here, I am not familiar with precise business English and the German terminology probably would not help here) by a customer of let'S say 1000 bucks, the bank can hand out nine tenths of that money to other customers, as new credit, because it must hold only a fractional reserve. That would be new money worth 900 bucks. Comparing assets and liabilities, the amount of money in circulation (digitally or paper, it does not matter), has grown by 900 bucks.

But it does not end here. The debtor of the bank who has taken those 900 bucks as a credit, uses it to mind his businesses and in the end the money ends on banking accounts of other banks, employees he paid, bills he paid, and so forth. These banks again can use this money they got to just keep one tenth in reserve, and hand out nine tenths of it again. From 900 bucks, the bank hands out 810 bucks, and only keeps 90 bucks in reserve. Adding together the increase in money from the first (900) and second (810) iteration of this game, the original, materialistically value-covered 1000 bucks, have grown to a total of 2710 bucks. But only 1000 bucks of that sum is real value. The remaining 1710 bucks are - "uncovered", value-less. They are FIAT indeed. 1000 bucks have been blown up to 2710 bucks. And that devaluation of money. And we have had just two iterations here! In reality, things do not stop here.

So now go to the next iteration, and do your math.

I do not think you know what fractional reserve banking really means in its desastrous consequences, since you ignore all its destructive implications that some wiser men have warned of already 50, 70 years ago, and earlier. And the basis of these men'S thinking already has been laid out decades before them. What you know is the colour of sand when the head sticks deep in it. One should rememeber that none of the established economic schools was able to warn in time of the fiscal disaster becoming apparent in 2007, and that none of these schools has forseen and predicted correctly the general trend of the erosion of the currency and economy from the 1970s on - none except one, the so-called "Austrians". And not only did modern Austrians almost completely rang the alarm bells before 2007, but earlier Austrians predicted these developments already in the 1930s and 40s - and explained clear and straight why these developments would be unavoidable. It seems that is more competence and healthy reason and insight into human psychology, than any of the recent years' and decades' Nobel prize winners in economics can show up with. The only Austrian ever given the Nobel, was Hayek - and to minimize that recognition for highly unpopular, reasonable concepts at the same time and to give politics an alibi for why to ignore him after that like they ignored him before the Nobel,, he had to share it with another guy, a socialist, who represented exactly the opposite in thinking and argument than Hayek, and supported insane spending frenzies and money devaluation.


In 2009, Germany was close to a bank run, and Merkel had to tell a now famous lie: that the state would guarantee all private savings on bank accounts, of all people in Germany. That there simply is not sufficient "money"to allow the paying out of all savers who want their "value" back from the bank that just a tiny fraction of savings could be payed back to their former owner, she did not say. Savers do not know the contexts and backgrounds, and believed it. The mioeny was left were it was. Cold progression in 2013 costed German private citizens 53 billions of their total savings, money that was stolen from them intentionally by and deliberately by the state, by implementing according policies via the ECB.

And it does not stop there.

What we see with in this precious paper money and fractional reserve system today - in reality simply is the biggest predatory raid in the history of mankind. In its dimension, it is without precedence in human history.

And what is all that paper money, in the end? Only a very tiny fraction of it still represents a material value. The lions share of it, the overwhelmingly biggest share of it: is debts, Value that is not there. Is nothing. And this tiny remains of real value, gets constantly eroded further. By printing more money.

Brilliant.

At the same time, due to the Cantillon effect, real property and value gets constantly transferred from the bottom to the top of the communal hierarchy. Here is where Penguin and me maybe would meet and share the same opinion in our criticism (saying that by the image I have of him). In a nutshell, the Cantillon effect means that new printed money that gets injected into the system, gets injected at the top of the banking industry. The first hands using it have a price advantage in using it to buy stuff, becasue when there now is more money, that money ciruclating is devalued accordingly, and prices will adapt by rising. But that takes time, and in the beginning, the first hands can buy with devalued money - but for the old prices. The next hands using that money, already have to deal with slightly adapted prices, and ther third hands will deal with a market where prices have adapted even more. And so the effect tickels through the hierarchic pyramide, from top to bottom. When the new money reaches the level of the ordinary man in the street, prices have adapte din full, and Jiohn Smith has slightly more money, but also has to pay for higher prices, nullifying the effect for private consummation. At the top of the pyrmade however, real material welath and püroperty has been added to the already existing ones, for the firts buyers were able to avoid the effects of rising prices and thus for some time had more buying power than by the monbey'S value they indeed had. It is a time-limited money cheat, so to speak. It erxplains why all these fincial stimulus programs to stimulate porivate consumeerism by injecting newly printed money into the system, have so little and most of the time no lasting effects.

[Tribesman]

Funny how often the participants of the "free market" tend to prefer a planned economy - fixed prices. Last year alone in Germany, it was discovered that for years prices have been manipulated for sugar, elevators, wallpapers and (most shockingly to us :o) beer.
But of course it's all the fault of regulations, the state and some dubious "socialism" :rolleyes:
What is funny about Skys "free market" dystopia is that he rails against monopolies yet he uses examples which were monopolistic as his ideal, like wise with the freemarket aspect, his ideal examples were exceptionally protectionist markets, he rails against monarchy feudalism and government yet picks prime examples of those systems as his dream
(plus those with a very unhealthy reliance on slavery to sustain them).
He complains of corruption, yet has dream examples where corruption despotism nepotism and warped patronage were leading factors in their operation.
To top it all , in order to achieve his anti government and anti big government and anti regulation dreamworld he is going to have to create a government whose size and scope absolutely dwarfs that of any empire which has so far existed.
It appears like the whole ideology driven concept being put forward makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but surely that cannot be the case:hmmm:

[Sailor Steve]

Send 5 slices to Neal for your donation.:D
I did. He complained that the bacon was bad by the time he got it and the envelope was soaked in grease.

[STEED]

When the day comes when it all goes to the wall and we all know that day is coming, just a question when. And on that day we can take the trash out.

Shoot the corrupt pigs or life in prison take your pick.

BTW: Forecasters are saying Gold, Silver and the Bit Coin are all going to do well this year. Hmmm we shall see. :hmmm:

[Jimbuna]

BTW: Forecasters are saying Gold, Silver and the Bit Coin are all going to do well this year. Hmmm we shall see. :hmmm:

Not in Canada or Japan though :hmmm:

http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/03/05/canadian_bitcoin_bank_collapses_after_hackers_stea l_digital_currency.html

[Penguin]

You distort it, and I think you know it. Yoiur criticism of the price manipoulation for sugar coffee etc is not done by people wanting a free market (=captialists), but is done by people wanting monopolies. And monopolism and capitalism are antagonistic, no matter whether you consider free market versus states, or free market versus lobbyists.

Its indeed is strange that such distortions are attacked not as monopolism but as as "capitalism", when they appear in an economical context where secret cartel building (which also is a violation of the idea of free markets) takes place. But when monopolies are built in the name of socialist stuff or giovenrment rtegulation (which in the end is one and the same), then the same distortion is welcomed and defended as a achievment although it is at the cost of eroding the basis of everybody's wealth.

Strange that is becasue a true caspitlaist - knows the value of solid, healthy money, and the need for a free market as a precondition. States and socialists do not know that. Monopolists in the end are eneimies of freedom and free markets. And the state is the biggest monopolist of all, having the monopole to plunder and to legitimnate itself, and having the monopole to make laws and rules that regulate all others while the state has the freedom to exclude itself from these rules.

I think the tendency to corruption, nepotism and the yearning for oligopoles/monopoles are inherently in this economic system- especially with a system which depends on constant growth, like the current one. The people who really want a free market, with transparency and choices are the buyers, not the sellers.
The 'real capitalist' argument sounds an awful lot like the 'true Scotsman' one. Let's see what the gramps of the invisible hand analogy has to say about this:
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." (Adam Smith) :know:

The beer price fixes are actually a pretty good example for my theory. The German beer market is huge, with many participamnts; millions of consumers, a huge amount of producers, about 1200 breweries in Germany alone. The market is open to foreign producers and consumers (hello Danes :)) with only some restrictions regarding reginal products. It's one of the most open markets we have, with little taxation on the product relatively to other countries. However we saw a conglomeration during the past few years, like in most other economic branches. And exactly those companies, which accumulated many breweries, resulting in a huge market share, did those price fixing agreements. So, I don't think they are not true capis, those guys did make it to the top of huge corporations; they just follow the internal logic of this system.

Oh, and here's a good read about free markets:why the free markets concept is useless (http://dbzer0.com/blog/why-the-free-markets-concept-is-useless/) -Goog blog, I can pretty much agree with the author's stance.


At the same time, due to the Cantillon effect, real property and value gets constantly transferred from the bottom to the top of the communal hierarchy. Here is where Penguin and me maybe would meet and share the same opinion in our criticism (saying that by the image I have of him). In a nutshell, the Cantillon effect means that new printed money that gets injected into the system, gets injected at the top of the banking industry.

I'm not really big in macroeconomics, but this sounds quite similar to Reagan's concept of trickle-down-economics, so yes, of course I criticize this :). That being said, money is not really my currency, it's just a tool for exchange. If I would sell my work for printed paper, sea shells or beer cans wouldn't matter, as long as I find others who agree on a value of those items.