4 more years

[BigBlueBrock]

Actually, no.

Sadly in your chart there's no way to measure experience. Formal education is easily measured, but the kind of education that teaches common sense has no yardstick.

I'm "highly educated" in a formal sense, so I know of which I speak, and I knew lots of people who graduated with me who weren't nearly as "smart" as people who never went to college when it came to political economy. The reason is they had no experience.

If you have no formal economic education, you cannot pretend to understand how the political economy works. Reading articles from the Cato Institute doesn't make you a competent economist. Understanding how and why systems are connected and how they work to create a modern world economy does.

In the theoretical world all the leftist theories sound great. That's why they survive in the ivory towers of academia. They don't fall apart until they hit the real world, where they destroy the very fabric of supplying the needs of the consumer that built this nation. People who work doing that every day know that truth, even when not at an "educated" level where they can show the micro economics supporting it.

Of course "educated" means a lot of different things. First let's peel off the Liberal Arts as any help with understanding political economy. Fine majors, nothing against any of it, but just b/c you know literature or a foreign language doesn't mean you understand more about how the free market works than a self employed plumber or a third generation farmer.

And Austrian economic theories sound great, too! Problem is too much negative liberty, while it sounds great in theory, is bad for anyone that isn't already rich.

Self-employed plumbers or farmers have not the slightest inkling of how the economy works. They know they provide a service or goods that people want and buy. That's about as far as their "economic" understanding goes, and really that's more business understanding. They don't know how the monetary system works, how the US economy is tied to the economies of the world, or what "world reserve currency" means. Working for yourself doesn't give you an understanding of anything other than how to run a business. Business knowledge =/= economic knowledge.

[QUOTE]We can also eliminate the sciences and mathematics. While they create a certain discipline through the scientific method, since they dont' study and test economic things it's not particularly helpful in that regard. Maybe a little in conditioning a way of thinking, but not much and certainly not more than growing up in the family business.

Even within economics let's just whack out macro economists. Some have it right, most don't, and if you ask 10 of them a question you'll get 14 answers. Macro economics outside of the Chicago school and rational expectations takes a backward approach, ignoring the individual incentive based decision making of each person in the economy that together make up the macro behavior and instead trying to look at the macro and define it without the micro that composes it.

The best part is I get to say these things b/c I in fact studied economics. I've studied macro with a Fed Reserve board member, political economy with the chairman of Reagan's council of economic advisors. So this isn't just me dismissing the educated, this is me knowing my mother who brought herself up by her bootstraps knows 10x as much about how the economy really works than 90% of the people in those classes. She can't tell you about the elasticity of demand in formal terms, but she understands it intuitively and uses the principle of it in her job regularly.

However, the most important part is this:

The notion that formal education is some indicator of understanding of political economy or especially the true nature of the American Experiment is totally unsupported. The American Experiment is based on self reliance and individual liberty. That isn't something one is educated to understand or desire. One either believes in those things or one doesn't.

This is all great, but it doesn't mean anything. You haven't demonstrated anything other than an ability to repeat Cato Institute BS about bootstraps and self-reliance and unpredictability of human behavior, etc. Your mother I'm sure is a great lady and I applaud her for what she's done. But pulling yourself up by your bootstraps doesn't grant you understanding of economics, either. Studying economics gives you an understanding of economics.

America wasn't founded with the goal of being the wealthiest nation, or even the healthiest, or anything else. It was founded to be the most free, the nation with the most individual liberty.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

You either believe that liberty cannot be compromised for security, economic or otherwise, or you don't. Formal education has nothing to do with it.

It's no coincidence the red states are states with high percentages of people who are self reliant and either own or work in small businesses. They are more self reliant and closer to the economic realities of the free market. They are on the front lines of the notion that to survive you have to meet the needs of others by providing a product they want.

No they didn't all go to college, and having done more than my share of going I can safely say they didn't miss a whole lot when it comes to understanding the nature of America or the vision of the Founders or how economics really works. They may not have the formal eloquence to describe it, but they know it far better than someone who has only seen it from a book.

The rest of this is idealistic drivel with little relevance to the original question. It's just a massive distraction. I have no interest in debating what you believe to be the "original intent of the founders" in relation to how this economy works, because it isn't relevant. The founders couldn't foresee the size and scope of the US economy, how it would relate to the world economy, or how big the numbers would get. It's why they didn't specify an economic system, only what the government needed to accomplish.

I did want to address the highlighted statement above because it is insanely hilarious.

Red states are red states because they're full of uneducated, ignorant, poor, white people. Red states take far far far far more money from the federal government for social welfare programs (Social Security/Disability, food stamps, welfare, Medicare/Medicaid) than they give in federal taxes. Red states are red, not because they have a bunch of "self-sufficient go-getters" that just want Uncle Sam outta their pockets, but because the GOP has convinced poor white people that BS like gay marriage and abortion matter more than their own financial security. Oh, they also all believe that MURKA won't be safe until/unless we turn the Middle East into a glass sheet. The most successful places in the country - urban areas - vote Democratic. And it's NOT because those areas are full of people that do nothing but leech off the government taxpayer.

[BigBlueBrock]

It's absolutely true the numbers are too big, certainly for anyone to understand at a fundamental level. The government is far too big, and has amassed such a debt that it will take decades to cut enough and grow the economy enough to even get it within reason.

We can't even get to a balanced budget, and even that would leave us with every penny of the existing debt and the massive interest payments, we just wouldn't be adding more.

Like someone maxing out their credit cards, we're being eaten alive by the interest. This isn't a hard concept to get, and it's not hard to see how it ends up either.

This is a much better post that asks good questions.

You cannot, in any way, relate US government spending and debt to personal spending and debt. They have almost nothing to do with one another, and the reason is simple - Because you nor I can print our own money to pay our debts.

[dan_bgblue]

[CattyWampus]

Studying economics gives you an understanding of economics.

You mean like Paul Krugman, right?

The most successful places in the country - urban areas - vote Democratic. And it's NOT because those areas are full of people that do nothing but leech off the government taxpayer.

Are you talking about those people wanting their Obamaphones, their Obama dollars, are worried about their ladyparts, and don't know who the VP is? Who knew these people were examples of highly educated people?

[CattyWampus]

I see what you did there. I hope that's a super-duper sized box.

[BigBlueBrock]

You mean like Paul Krugman, right?

Are you talking about those people wanting their Obamaphones, their Obama dollars, are worried about their ladyparts, and don't know who the VP is? Who knew these people were examples of highly educated people?

Do you have a point or are you just having fun spouting conservative talking points like they're at all meaningful?

[Catonahottinroof]

This is a much better post that asks good questions.

You cannot, in any way, relate US government spending and debt to personal spending and debt. They have almost nothing to do with one another, and the reason is simple - Because you nor I can print our own money to pay our debts.

Spending more money than you take in, or have the ability to pay over time is no different for the government than it is for business or private individual. You are buying in to the too big to fail philosophy. The Fed will fail at this rate of spending within our lifetime. See Spain, Greece and soon to be Italy.

[dan_bgblue]

Spending more money than you take in, or have the ability to pay over time is no different for the government than it is for business or private individual. You are buying in to the too big to fail philosophy. The Fed will fail at this rate of spending within our lifetime. See Spain, Greece and soon to be Italy and France.

Fixed

[Doc]

Spending more money than you take in, or have the ability to pay over time is no different for the government than it is for business or private individual. You are buying in to the too big to fail philosophy. The Fed will fail at this rate of spending within our lifetime. See Spain, Greece and soon to be Italy.

Clearly you don't understand "political" economics. Thats different than other kinds of economics. In other types you can't spend more than you take in but with "Political" economics you can. All you need to do is give free **** away to 50.00001% of the voters and you can spend until your heart content. Then when you become overdrawn, you demonize the rich as not paying enough despite them supporting 90% of the federal gov't, or you raise the debt limit so you can borrow from future generations or you just print more money and ignore the fact that all that does is devalue the dollar and make everybody who has money poorer. That other type of economics does not apply because "political" economics means you write the rules as you go along then blame somebody else for your failures.

[BigBlueBrock]

Spending more money than you take in, or have the ability to pay over time is no different for the government than it is for business or private individual. You are buying in to the too big to fail philosophy. The Fed will fail at this rate of spending within our lifetime. See Spain, Greece and soon to be Italy.

I'm on my phone, so this will be kind of short.

It is very different. The reason it's different is because the fed can print money to meet its debt obligations. And because the US dollar is the world reserve currency, inflation isn't an issue because demand for the dollar will be there for the foreseeable future.

The reason Greece and Spain are different is because they were not on their own currency, they were on the Euro.

[CattyWampus]

Clearly you don't understand "political" economics. Thats different than other kinds of economics. In other types you can't spend more than you take in but with "Political" economics you can. All you need to do is give free **** away to 50.00001% of the voters and you can spend until your heart content. Then when you become overdrawn, you demonize the rich as not paying enough despite them supporting 90% of the federal gov't, or you raise the debt limit so you can borrow from future generations or you just print more money and ignore the fact that all that does is devalue the dollar and make everybody who has money poorer. That other type of economics does not apply because "political" economics means you write the rules as you go along then blame somebody else for your failures.

Now, that's funny right there, I don't care who you are.

[CattyWampus]

.... are you just having fun spouting conservative talking points like they're at all meaningful?

Nope, just pointing out the contradictions of your learned pontifications.For every unedumacated red-stater, there are five uneducated palm-upward nanny-staters.

[CitizenBBN]

Lord I knew this would take a while. Going to have to break this up in parts for time reasons but I promise I'll keep going till I get to your condescending insults about those who live in red states. Can't wait for that one.

First things first, this comment:

If you have no formal economic education, you cannot pretend to understand how the political economy works. Reading articles from the Cato Institute doesn't make you a competent economist. Understanding how and why systems are connected and how they work to create a modern world economy does.

Given your other reference to the Cato institute and me below I think this is directed at me and not the royal "you". I've tried to avoid listing my specific qualifications in large part b/c I don't think they are significant to the discussion (ad hominem fallacy) and it sounds horribly egotistical even though I don't hold paper degrees in terribly high regard. To be clear I have a Bachelors and MBA from a top 20 university including dual masters concentrations in finance and operations and minors in American history and economics. Numerous grad level classes in both history and economics in addition to the undergraduate minor. So I have more than a "read Cato Institute" level of education in the subject.

That said, I love the notion that unless you've been taught something you can't know it. It's nonsense. I once had a discussion with the Dean about this subject, whether a college diploma meant you knew the subject or if it meant simply you'd taken X classes in the subject. He lamented that while it would be nice to be the former, the truth is all they can certify is the latter. That is to say they can prove they led you to the water, they can't prove you drank it in sufficient quantity to be hydrated.

Many of the great minds had no formal education in their field of excellence. Anecdotally we can list

Henry Knox, a book store owner who became one of the finest artillery and logistical officers in US history, Thomas Edison who had a whopping 3 months total of formal schooling his whole life, Benjamin Franklin who had 2 years of education before he was 10, THomas Paine, a staymaker who stopped school at age 13, this is a long list. Two of the great minds on which American political economy is based.

But let's continue on how education is so key to political economy understanding. 25 of the 55 Delegates did not have college degrees. 30 did and that's a super high number, but remember at that time education prior to college was often not structured but a classical version of "reading of the law",which is how one became an attorney. It was far from "formal" with grades and courses but was a matter of reading a lot. Being well read and able to read in Latin, Greek etc. was considered high education and in fact was the entrance requirement to schools like Harvard. There was no standard education at all.

So in essence what these men did was, to borrow your description, read a lot of Cato Institute papers. They educated themselves through reading, something you dismiss as a preposterous basis for claiming to know a subject. As if learning requires buildings and test scores.

Of course of those 25 we have George Washington, a man who understood this nation perhaps more than any other who had almost no "formal" education. Roger sherman had no formal education beyond grammar school. Alexander Hamilton dropped out of King's College to serve in the Revolutionary Army. Anyway, it's a long list of brilliant men.

Then there's the great industrialists. Andrew Carnegie had no education whatsoever and was a child laborer. John Astor didn't have any. Vanderbilt quit school at age 11. John Gates (who did graduate college but had no education in oil or business or certainly not barbed wire). Jay Gould didn't go to college. JP Morgan's education was formal but bizarre thanks to his father, which included a degree in art history and a near obsessive focus on languages. Certainly no education in the many fields which he would manage as a financier. Rockefeller's "higher education" was a 10 week course in bookkeeping, the equivalent of a vocational school today.

Then some more modern examples, from the computer revolution, America's 2nd great economic step forward after industrialization. Notice how I picked the key economic occurrences in America? Gates, who while educated still dropped out of Harvard without a degree and without much of any formal computer training, or Steve Jobs who dropped out of college after 6 months, Steve Wozniak who dropped out of Berkeley after a year to design the Apple I. The entire computer revolution was mostly driven by college dropouts who had no high and mighty formal education in computers or engineering at all. They were just smart.


So the nation was founded by men with no "formal education", was run by men with no formal education, and the great industrial revolution that made us the most powerful nation on earth was driven by men with no formal education, and the most technologically advanced economic event was driven by men with little or no "formal education".


I could do this all day, but suffice to say there is a huge body of anecdotal evidence to disprove your position. So much so in fact it's hard to maintain your hypothesis that if you "have no formal education in XXXXX you cannot pretend to understand how XXXXX works."

I have shown how specifically in the field of political economy some of the greatest thinkers on the subject had little or no formal education in it, as well as how many of those who most impacted the economic structure of modern America had little formal education.

What this shows is that your inverted hypothesis is false. It is true a formal education can show an understanding of a subject such as economics, but that affirmative cannot be reversed to then say formal education is what defines an understanding of economics and lack of such means you don't understand.

It has to do with the notion of learning versus the notion of sitting in class. You can sit in class and pass them till the end of days and still not have learned what someone with a thirst for learning could learn by spending time in the library without teachers and clocks and core course requirements. For literally 1,000s of years the greatest minds in history learned just that way.

So yes you can teach yourself political economy if you are an honest and dedicated student.

In fact I'll let you in on a secret -- those who have to be fed knowledge and cannot learn on their own and teach themselves as they need are the ones who are at a disadvantage in understanding. If you can go learn to weld b/c you need to weld something you are developing a mind that can grasp new concepts and apply critical thinking and reason and draw from other fields instead of just memorizing.

Formal school is largely memorizing. Doing that makes you no smarter than my computer, and with political economy in academia it's a severe case of garbage in garbage out.

[CitizenBBN]

It is very different. The reason it's different is because the fed can print money to meet its debt obligations. And because the US dollar is the world reserve currency, inflation isn't an issue because demand for the dollar will be there for the foreseeable future.

Wow. Just wow.

It's OK b/c we can devalue our currency as much as we want and demand for it won't change and it will always be the reserve currency of the world just because.

This view is a big reason why we're in this mess. Currency devaluation is costless. wow.

PS - Greece is lucky it's on the Euro, if it weren't it would be so bad off it would make their current state look like paradise. They'd have complete currency collapse, hyperinflation where it would take a wheelbarrow load to buy bread.

[CattyWampus]

Lord I knew this would take a while. Going to have to break this up in parts for time reasons but I promise I'll keep going till I get to your condescending insults about those who live in red states. Can't wait for that one.

First things first, this comment:

If you have no formal economic education, you cannot pretend to understand how the political economy works. Reading articles from the Cato Institute doesn't make you a competent economist. Understanding how and why systems are connected and how they work to create a modern world economy does.

Given your other reference to the Cato institute and me below I think this is directed at me and not the royal "you". I've tried to avoid listing my specific qualifications in large part b/c I don't think they are significant to the discussion (ad hominem fallacy) and it sounds horribly egotistical even though I don't hold paper degrees in terribly high regard. To be clear I have a Bachelors and MBA from a top 20 university including dual masters concentrations in finance and operations and minors in American history and economics. Numerous grad level classes in both history and economics in addition to the undergraduate minor. So I have more than a "read Cato Institute" level of education in the subject.

That said, I love the notion that unless you've been taught something you can't know it. It's nonsense. I once had a discussion with the Dean about this subject, whether a college diploma meant you knew the subject or if it meant simply you'd taken X classes in the subject. He lamented that while it would be nice to be the former, the truth is all they can certify is the latter. That is to say they can prove they led you to the water, they can't prove you drank it in sufficient quantity to be hydrated.

Many of the great minds had no formal education in their field of excellence. Anecdotally we can list

Henry Knox, a book store owner who became one of the finest artillery and logistical officers in US history, Thomas Edison who had a whopping 3 months total of formal schooling his whole life, Benjamin Franklin who had 2 years of education before he was 10, THomas Paine, a staymaker who stopped school at age 13, this is a long list. Two of the great minds on which American political economy is based.

But let's continue on how education is so key to political economy understanding. 25 of the 55 Delegates did not have college degrees. 30 did and that's a super high number, but remember at that time education prior to college was often not structured but a classical version of "reading of the law",which is how one became an attorney. It was far from "formal" with grades and courses but was a matter of reading a lot. Being well read and able to read in Latin, Greek etc. was considered high education and in fact was the entrance requirement to schools like Harvard. There was no standard education at all.

So in essence what these men did was, to borrow your description, read a lot of Cato Institute papers. They educated themselves through reading, something you dismiss as a preposterous basis for claiming to know a subject. As if learning requires buildings and test scores.

Of course of those 25 we have George Washington, a man who understood this nation perhaps more than any other who had almost no "formal" education. Roger sherman had no formal education beyond grammar school. Alexander Hamilton dropped out of King's College to serve in the Revolutionary Army. Anyway, it's a long list of brilliant men.

Then there's the great industrialists. Andrew Carnegie had no education whatsoever and was a child laborer. John Astor didn't have any. Vanderbilt quit school at age 11. John Gates (who did graduate college but had no education in oil or business or certainly not barbed wire). Jay Gould didn't go to college. JP Morgan's education was formal but bizarre thanks to his father, which included a degree in art history and a near obsessive focus on languages. Certainly no education in the many fields which he would manage as a financier. Rockefeller's "higher education" was a 10 week course in bookkeeping, the equivalent of a vocational school today.

Then some more modern examples, from the computer revolution, America's 2nd great economic step forward after industrialization. Notice how I picked the key economic occurrences in America? Gates, who while educated still dropped out of Harvard without a degree and without much of any formal computer training, or Steve Jobs who dropped out of college after 6 months, Steve Wozniak who dropped out of Berkeley after a year to design the Apple I. The entire computer revolution was mostly driven by college dropouts who had no high and mighty formal education in computers or engineering at all. They were just smart.


So the nation was founded by men with no "formal education", was run by men with no formal education, and the great industrial revolution that made us the most powerful nation on earth was driven by men with no formal education, and the most technologically advanced economic event was driven by men with little or no "formal education".


I could do this all day, but suffice to say there is a huge body of anecdotal evidence to disprove your position. So much so in fact it's hard to maintain your hypothesis that if you "have no formal education in XXXXX you cannot pretend to understand how XXXXX works."

I have shown how specifically in the field of political economy some of the greatest thinkers on the subject had little or no formal education in it, as well as how many of those who most impacted the economic structure of modern America had little formal education.

What this shows is that your inverted hypothesis is false. It is true a formal education can show an understanding of a subject such as economics, but that affirmative cannot be reversed to then say formal education is what defines an understanding of economics and lack of such means you don't understand.

It has to do with the notion of learning versus the notion of sitting in class. You can sit in class and pass them till the end of days and still not have learned what someone with a thirst for learning could learn by spending time in the library without teachers and clocks and core course requirements. For literally 1,000s of years the greatest minds in history learned just that way.

So yes you can teach yourself political economy if you are an honest and dedicated student.

In fact I'll let you in on a secret -- those who have to be fed knowledge and cannot learn on their own and teach themselves as they need are the ones who are at a disadvantage in understanding. If you can go learn to weld b/c you need to weld something you are developing a mind that can grasp new concepts and apply critical thinking and reason and draw from other fields instead of just memorizing.

Formal school is largely memorizing. Doing that makes you no smarter than my computer, and with political economy in academia it's a severe case of garbage in garbage out.

Forget the buttered popcorn. Bring me a big tub of popcorn with dark chocolate, white chocolate and raspberry drizzles.

[CitizenBBN]

US debt isn't like consumer debt b/c the US government can just print more money.

I didn't see the first post of this, but between the two this is clearly the statement. And I'm having to defend my formal knowledge of economics? It'll be a while before I can completely formulate a response.

[Catonahottinroof]

Printing currency to cover debt, devalues currency for that debt and any other spending in the consumer economy. If anything, that situation is worse than the debt itself.

[DanISSELisdaman]

I'm on my phone, so this will be kind of short.

It is very different. The reason it's different is because the fed can print money to meet its debt obligations. And because the US dollar is the world reserve currency, inflation isn't an issue because demand for the dollar will be there for the foreseeable future.

The reason Greece and Spain are different is because they were not on their own currency, they were on the Euro.

Do you really believe this????

[BigBlueBrock]

Wow. Just wow.

It's OK b/c we can devalue our currency as much as we want and demand for it won't change and it will always be the reserve currency of the world just because.

This view is a big reason why we're in this mess. Currency devaluation is costless. wow.

PS - Greece is lucky it's on the Euro, if it weren't it would be so bad off it would make their current state look like paradise. They'd have complete currency collapse, hyperinflation where it would take a wheelbarrow load to buy bread.

We're not devaluing the currency. That's the point. There is incredible demand - worldwide - for the US dollar. Because EVERYTHING is purchased with US dollars. OPEC prices oil in US dollars. Exports are bought and sold in US dollars. Until demand for the dollar dries up, which is likely to NEVER happen, it is almost impossible for the United States to devalue its currency to the point of hyperinflation. The Fed has been holding interest at or below 0% for years now, and inflation is at barely 3%. We're nowhere near this hyperinflation debt crisis nightmare the GOP wants people to believe we are, and we're not getting closer to it.

You CANNOT relate the debt crises of Greece or Spain to the United States because their currency isn't in demand around the world and neither is the Euro. Hyperinflation of currency occurs when supply vastly outstrips demand. The US isn't anywhere close to that happening because our dollar is used by most of the world to buy and trade internationally.

[BigBlueBrock]

Printing currency to cover debt, devalues currency for that debt and any other spending in the consumer economy. If anything, that situation is worse than the debt itself.

In most situations, that is true. But because the currency of the United States is used by the worldwide economy as the reserve currency (i.e., countries all over the world buy VAST quantities of it because it is used for global trade pricing, such as oil), it doesn't hold true for us.

[Catonahottinroof]

I have to disagree Brock. The most shining example I can give you is our neighbor to the north, Canada. 15 years ago the Canadian Dollar was .60 to $1 USD. Now the currencies are exchanged 1 for 1. Canada has debt, to the tune of $600 Billion currently, snowflakes compared to the blizzard that is innudating the US financially. 15 years ago the US national debt was under a trillion dollars, still within reach. that is a 40% devaluation against a less than powerhouse Canadian dollar.
I've traveled overseas in the 90's with General Motors and within the last 2 years for pleasure. US currency used to buy quite a bit overseas. Now US currency is a pitiful exchange to nearly all currencies except the Euro which is absorbing the French, Spanish, Greek and Italian floundering economies. The Euro is drowning faster than the US buck. Paying debt with watered currency is economic suicide. If Germany were to exit the Eurozone the others around it would collapse, or just maybe all of Western Europe will speak German......

[kencat]

Ben Franklin nailed it. "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."

[dan_bgblue]

Ben Franklin nailed it. "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."

Excellent quote, and 230 years later, it is accurate today, if not more accurate to the state of affairs we face, than it was back then.

[HerbTarlek]

In most situations, that is true. But because the currency of the United States is used by the worldwide economy as the reserve currency (i.e., countries all over the world buy VAST quantities of it because it is used for global trade pricing, such as oil), it doesn't hold true for us.

You seem quite self assured and smug. What are your bona-fides?

Also, I must say, you're wading quite deeply into the weeds, here. I hope you know what you're doing.

[CattyWampus]

You seem quite self assured and smug. What are your bona-fides?

Also, I must say, you're wading quite deeply into the weeds, here. I hope you know what you're doing.

I'm glad you posted this. I wanted to post something similar, but since my posting history here is pretty limited, I thought it better to let some one else do it.

[CitizenBBN]

We're not devaluing the currency. That's the point. There is incredible demand - worldwide - for the US dollar. Because EVERYTHING is purchased with US dollars. OPEC prices oil in US dollars. Exports are bought and sold in US dollars. Until demand for the dollar dries up, which is likely to NEVER happen, it is almost impossible for the United States to devalue its currency to the point of hyperinflation.

This will take forever so I'll hit it in snippets. Will take probably 10 posts to rebut all of the stuff on the list here. Let's look at OPEC, and try to show a timeline of what is really happening.

Post 9/11, currency reserves were already being shifted by key nations in OPEC and othersThis is from 2004, showing "BIS data reveals that OPEC states have reduced their dollar deposits from 75 per cent in the third quarter of 2001 to 61.5 per cent today - a fall of of some 13 percentage points. "
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/...6/211118.shtml

In 2007 there was a lot of buzz about decoupling the dollar from OPEC oil transactions.
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationw...83_opec19.html
http://gata.org/node/5755

Fortunately Saudi Arabia and other US allies took it off the table in 2007 and have slowed the process since that time: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=avaHAh3PQvUE

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, rejected a proposal by Iran and Venezuela to discuss the weak dollar at this weekend's OPEC summit in Riyadh, saying it didn't want the U.S. currency to ``collapse.'' Saudi Arabia won't discuss pricing oil in currencies other than the dollar, Saudi Foreign Minister said

By 2008 OPEC's Chairman was publicly saying they could switch to the Euro but will take time: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2008/0...82239220080208

Now move forward a year. Re OPEC. Iraq was already on the Euro before the war fwiw, but within a year of the OPEC statement with Iran lobbying for non-dollar transactions, OPEC allowed each nation to denominate as they chose. Iran, the 2nd largest producer, moved away from the dollar in 2009. They quote in Euros.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500395_162-4057490.html

More recently we see the move away from dollar reserves, including by Saudi Arabia, continuing. http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=622626

The constantly declining value of the dollar and persisting economic crisis in the US has encouraged many countries to drop the currency in favor of a more stable one.

Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China, Venezuela, Sudan and Russia have taken steps to replace the US dollar in their foreign exchange reserves.

Basically our foreign policy ties is propping up the dollar through OPEC pricing among other things. Sans our military support of certain OPEC nations and Saudi Arabia's desire to spend money to prop up our currency the dollar would already be trashed. That's not limitless demand for the dollar, that's "we need to not be invaded so we'll have to keep using the dollar". Wholly different realities.

There is no such thing as limitless demand, it is always a function of supply and alternatives to satisfy the needs that create that demand. Micro economics 101. There will come a point when the OPEC nations either don't need our military support or lose so much money by tying to the dollar and losing money as the currency devalues between contract and delivery they'll make the move.

Anyway, that covers OPEC currency base. While many OPEC nations still price in dollars, others do not, and there is growing pressure to change to the Euro and even our OPEC allies are quietly hedging away from the dollar in their reserves. Rather than being a statement supporting this endless demand for dollars, it shows a growing potential crisis for the strength of the dollar.

OPEC actions prove the dollar is just the opposite of strong or impervious to devaluation, it shows it's gotten so bad OPEC is looking at other options despite our overwhelming military influence over those nations.

I'll hit the other devaluation stuff next. May be tomorrow.

[jazyd]

Wampus, dont' ever feel like you can't weigh in, you have done well so far.

this is fun, like watching a guy bring a pop gun to a gunfight.

I'm glad you posted this. I wanted to post something similar, but since my posting history here is pretty limited, I thought it better to let some one else do it.

[blueboss]

Pull CBBN off of him before he hurts him too badly.

[jazyd]

nope, always love to see the pain on someone who is rather smug when they go against Citizen. I dont' need an economic course, just tune in here with Citizen plus I get a good history lesson to go with it.

Pull CBBN off of him before he hurts him too badly.

[cattails]

Wampus, dont' ever feel like you can't weigh in, you have done well so far.

this is fun, like watching a guy bring a pop gun to a gunfight.

That is funny Skip, a friend of mine won a local long drive contest. So he advanced to regional competition and there he got smoked. One of his fellow competitors who had the lastest in long drive equipment, special type shaft, 50" long (legal limit), special head etc, etc., says to my friend "you brought a knife to a gun fight". True story.