Yeah, right!!!!

[jrm30655]

There was a discussion on FOX today with some financial people talking about what just happened in Cyprus and whether it could happen in the US. All the experts basically said "No way".

Those people are nuts. Governments in trouble will do anything to stay in power. They will lie, cheat, steal, even get you killed if necessary.

FDR confiscated gold.
Nixon dropped the gold standard.
Government taxes at any rate it desires
Governments draft people for war.
The Fed prints money and causes inflation.
Congress passes mandatory health insurance and says "We have to pass the bill to see what is in it".
Governments set up all kinds of currency controls.

Do you really think with $16T in debt and running up more daily, that the government is not looking at other taxes or means to get more money?

[TNHarley]

The debt does not mean shit
You didnt hear?

[Adelaide]

The US isn't Cyprus - apples and oranges.

[Peter1469]

The US doesn't have to seize bank accounts to fund a bailout. It just prints money. That lowers the value of the dollar.

Our problem is inflation- if it grows just a couple of percent we will not be able to pay the interest on our debt. (But then we could just print more money....)

[Bigred1cav]

FDR confiscated gold.
Nixon dropped the gold standard
Gold is and was to volatile to be the standard. Gold was set by and controlled by US Government at $35. 00 per ounce. While the world was trading gold at higher values. The US lost money on each dollar.



1934-1960
The U.S. attempted to maintain the price of gold at $35 per ounce by selling to the free market when the price increased, bringing the price back down.



1935
The increased price of gold, combined with lower wages and material costs prevailing during the Depression, caused gold mining to become attractive again. Old mines reopened and currently operating mines expanded.



1942
The U.S. government closed down the gold mining industry as a non-essential, war-related industry (War Production Board’s Order No. L-208.) This was an attempt to move the mining labor force into mining metals needed for the war effort.



1944
A “foreign-exchange gold standard” was adapted to regulate international trade. Currencies of many countries were valued in terms of the U.S. dollar. At that time, the U.S. was the most powerful nation in the world, both politically and economically, having the most stable currency in the world. In theory, the U.S. would redeem its paper money for gold on the international market.


1945
At the end of WW2, U.S. gold mining was reinstalled. Many California gold mines had flooded, caved in and were in a general deteriorated condition, requiring prohibitive capital needs to reopen.



1950s
The U.S. spearheaded an ill-fated attempt to change the world’s thinking about gold, weaning it away from gold as a medium of exchange, and setting the worldwide value of gold at $35 per ounce. This was known as the London Gold Pool, made up of eight major European countries. The pool agreed to sell off their gold, if the international price rose above $35 per ounce, and continued until the price dropped. When implemented, the pool lost $991 million of gold reserves. The U.S. lost $3.2 billion in gold reserves using this concept.


1968
One-fifth of the U.S. gold reserves were gone. President Lyndon Johnson asked the Bank of England to discontinue the London Gold Pool.


1968
In March, a two-tier market was established by the U.S. government. One tier required the U.S. Central banks to continue to transact business at the gold standard of $35 per ounce. The second tier allowed gold to fluctuate at what price supply and demand dictated.


1971
In August, to prevent further leakage of gold, President Richard M. Nixon issued an Executive Order which ended the U.S. redemption of gold at $35 an ounce, and raised the price of gold to $38 per ounce. In December, the U.S. dollar was devalued


1972
The gold standard price of gold was raised to $42.22 per ounce. With the announcement by the major U.S. Central banks that they would buy and sell gold at the free market price, the two-tier market perished. The concept of government regulation of the price of gold ended and was now based on supply and demand. This marked the end of the 180-year-old gold exchange standard and ushered in the current monetary system of floating exchange rates. Now, currencies are backed by a nation’s economic net worth rather than by gold.


1974
President Gerald Ford repealed all sanctions against U.S. citizens owning or selling gold to anyone they wished. Gold essentially became a commodity and was now listed on the New York Commodity Stock Exchange.

[Bigred1cav]

FDR confiscated gold.
Nixon dropped the gold standard.
Government taxes at any rate it desires, Pure bullshit
Governments draft people for war. Not since 1975.
The Fed prints money and causes inflation. Greed causes inflation.
Congress passes mandatory health insurance and says "We have to pass the bill to see what is in it". Offer some proof not just fox lies.
Governments set up all kinds of currency controls. Name them.

Any person with an IQ above a garden slug ignores fox liars. Ignorance is sold by fox to those wallowing in self absorbed ignorance.

[TNHarley]

FDR confiscated gold.
Nixon dropped the gold standard.
Government taxes at any rate it desires, Pure bullshit
Governments draft people for war. Not since 1975.
The Fed prints money and causes inflation. Greed causes inflation.
Congress passes mandatory health insurance and says "We have to pass the bill to see what is in it". Offer some proof not just fox lies.
Governments set up all kinds of currency controls. Name them.

Any person with an IQ above a garden slug ignores fox liars. Ignorance is sold by fox to those wallowing in self absorbed ignorance.

Govt does tax at whatever rate it wants
Printing money inflates
Pelosi did say that.

[simpsonofpg]

The US isn't Cyprus - apples and oranges.

no it is the same. When goverment get caugt short because they did a bad job they will come after those of us who save money and lioved witrhin our means. We are their only souce short of the printing press and China already owns more of us than I like.

[jrm30655]

Govt does tax at whatever rate it wants
Printing money inflates
Pelosi did say that.

There's all kinds of currency controls all ove rthe world. You can't take more than $10,000 out of the US legally without declaring it. In MX, you can't pay cash for anything over $10K, has to be check or wire transfer.

Go sell your Caddy for $50,000 in cash. Drive back home with it and put it in the bank. Your bank will send a notice to the government. Get stopped and searched and they will probably confiscate it and you will play hell getting it back. They will presume that you are a drug dealer.

The point is that governments will do whatever they wish if things get bad. They always have, always will. Thinking that a law will protect you only works until a "crisis" comes along and then it all goes out the window.

[Kindness]

It is a possibility, and it is just another aspect of the contradictions of capitalism. During economic recessions, states, which have an interest in preserving the capitalist mode of production, will do unusual things in order to save the economic system. In the past, this has meant shifting the currency basis (as happened under FDR during the Great Depression), printing / confiscating money, and bailing out financial institutions. These are all methods the state, with the support of the corporations, use in order to prop up the doomed system of capitalism during its natural cycles of decline. Such actions are not true solutions -- capitalism is fatally flawed -- but they keep the system running for a short period of time -- like a patch on a flat tire -- so that those who profit from it will continue to do so.

[Mainecoons]

Capitalism may be fatally flawed, or more likely, badly damaged by anti-capitalistic corporatism and cronyism with government, but socialism is a universal failure whose advocates have a congenital denial of history problem. :grin:

[Kindness]

Capitalism may be fatally flawed, or more likely, badly damaged by anti-capitalistic corporatism and cronyism with government, but socialism is a universal failure whose advocates have a congenital denial of history problem. :grin:

How is corporatism "anti-capitalist?" Corporatism is a direct result of the development of capitalism; it is a defining feature of what many social scientists call "late capitalism."

The system that existed in the USSR, Cuba, and China (pre-1977) was not socialism, but state capitalism run by a corrupt bureaucracy. Socialism has always worked wherever it was tried; such as in Ukraine in the early 1920s and in Spain during the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s.

[KC]

It is a possibility, and it is just another aspect of the contradictions of capitalism. During economic recessions, states, which have an interest in preserving the capitalist mode of production, will do unusual things in order to save the economic system. In the past, this has meant shifting the currency basis (as happened under FDR during the Great Depression), printing / confiscating money, and bailing out financial institutions. These are all methods the state, with the support of the corporations, use in order to prop up the doomed system of capitalism during its natural cycles of decline. Such actions are not true solutions -- capitalism is fatally flawed -- but they keep the system running for a short period of time -- like a patch on a flat tire -- so that those who profit from it will continue to do so.

The problem is that what you describe isn't capitalism at all, it is crony capitalism or conservative socialism, which is the worst economic system. It is an impulse as old as the state itself, and the flawed concept that if the government does not intervene markets will be unable to provide basic living goals dates back to mercantilism.

[simpsonofpg]

It could happen here in a heart beat. If congress is pressed enough they will attack personal savings especially those in the middle incomes. They will make some real BIG concession for the upper 5%. I can't prove it with a link but it sure looks that way to me