(All Over) - I wrote most of this over a week ago and was going to publish it when Obama's strings to the elite Progressive establishment became more apparent, in three or four months, making things get really crazy. Unfortunately, things have excelerated. Maybe it's the 21st Century 24-hour news cycle. Maybe it's my fear that the election of Michael Steele, a true conservative and excellent pick for party chairman, will make Republicans sit back on their laurels and not continue teaching and listening to their constituents like the past few days (our guy, Caton, would have been better, but Steele's a solid choice). Maybe I've downloaded so many podcasts from talk-show hosts around the state that are sooooo close, but yet not quite there. Anyway, here it is..

Robert Reisch, President Obama's economic advisor, previously thought to be dead and discredited for his medieval economic theories, is alive and back in charge of the country's economics. Good grief! This well-meaning gentleman almost destroyed, single-handedly, our economy before the 1994 Republican revolution stopped him cold, in his well-meaning tracks.

See, his theories about economics are the worst of kind cheap trash. He just doesn't know it. He went to Harvard, of course, and that means he can't have a decent conversation with anyone who has anything to do with logic. Many scholars think it's a virus one catches when one attends the school for scandal, but in fact, science has discovered that it's a complete molecular change, caused by a softening of the membrane surrounding the cranium, due to semester-long exposure. Imagination is a wonderful thing, but it has little to do with numbers, unless you set your mind to basing your imagination on the numbers, rather than the Harvard way 'round.

Reality is like this: Money can either have its own worth, or it can have worth, the value of which is set by someone else. Gold and silver have their own basic worth. F'r'instance, an ounce of gold should be able to buy a cow. A tenth of an ounce of silver (about the size of a silver dime) should be able to buy a regular loaf of bread. A silver quarter and a silver dime (¹/₄ oz. + ¹/₁₀ oz.) should be able to purchase a gallon of milk in a free market (or ½ ounce of silver in South Carolina's government-protected price market.) No matter what the paper price for any given item, its actual metal price remains constant. Another example of this is the price of oil during the gas price spikes. The price of oil never rose above its actual gold and silver equivalency, although the price of oil and gold in dollars fluctuated wildly. The nickel nickel and the copper penny, at a tenth of an ounce each, are roughly equivalent to their historical prices in relationship to the other metals.

As a historical note, it's always good to remember that one of the proper functions of governance is to have an elected group who can authorize the minting of and guarantee the purity of coinage (not print paper). The problem comes with lazy and guilty governments who try to cover their butts with paper. The argument about the lack of specie is (sorry) specious. There is plenty of gold, silver, copper and nickel to go around. And as we expand throughout the solar system and then the galaxy, there will plenty more specie. Yes, banks can continue to hand out debit cards, and, with transparency, that, too, can work with a specie system. I have to admit, though, that I'm not crazy about banks. They are, by and large, fraudulent enterprises - the bigger they are, the more prone to corruption they become - and a cash society should probably avoid them. Savings and Loans are a different and needed animal.

On the other end of the argument, lately, the idea that paper money represents a type of ad-hoc "barter" system has become popular among those hoping to hang on to the passé ideas of John Maynard Keynes. The problem is that, while barter, in its purest form, is the truest form of trade, it can only exist in a complex society as an imaginary system, because it's not practical. It all revolves around who would set the worth of labor, which in itself is a mathematical impossibility.

Progressives and wimbly-wombly moderates, pay attention, please:

Barter, by its nature requires a matrix of items, needed and desired, to be valued as well as the proportion, frequency, availability of bartered time, opportunity of barter, and the needed skill to take advantage of the barter opportunity. The matrix expands with the amounts of food, clothing, shelter, communication, meds, transportation, tools, insurance, entertainment, and miscellaneous items. There are, in even the simplest matrix which conforms to our current level of technology, 105 variables.

Simply, 105 variables would create, in the old-fashion statistics still being taught in our high schools, a ratio of 11,026 to 1. New chaos/game theory would predict a ratio of 1.65+E215 to 1. That's 165+a comma+213 Zeroes to 1, or 165, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 to 1. And that's per month - daily would add many more variables and more zeros.

If, as Reisch implies, government sets the control of paper as "barter units" (our term, not his), do you really think government can control even the smaller of the two ratios of variables for EACH person's life? Does government even have the capacity? Hardly. Yet, Reisch assures us that government is the answer, and that they can do precisely that. It seems a better bet that only the Almighty can handle those odds.

But at the base of it all remains the question: What is the value of a person's labor? Who decides? Government? At the very least, that's price-fixing, and we already know that doesn't work. Ask Roosevelt or Nixon. Even in the slightest of things, like fixing drug price limits, the question is begged. At its outermost limits, it's nothing less than communism. We already know that didn't work. But you can't tell a Harvard man anything. And it won't matter whether they fine all the plush executives and find temp jobs for every minority in the country. In any case, this isn't change, it's lunacy.

Now, wait a minute, you say. If all of this is true, how come we haven't gone into a paper-tailspin? The answer is, we have. The media won't admit it, and the politicians don't know it's already happened. In fact, they want to double down on our paper world and hang us by their paper moon to the tune of almost a trillion more dollars.

As I have observed several times, here, we could have fixed it by quietly backing bank accounts, killing the 2007 "bi-partisan" mark-to-the-market policy, and putting Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd on a stripper-and-liquor laden boat to Greenland. But no, President Bush had to be "nice." He knew who's fault it was but, instead doing the hard, not-nice thing, put Hank - the moron - Paulson, whom he really did think could fix things, in charge. But he turned out to be the fox in the henhouse. If the first trillion had worked, things would be getting better already. It's NOT. Paper, especially paper money isn't going to work. All the money already spent by congress and all the money going to be spent will not create a single cent of private wealth. And so far, only a very few Republicans, and Neil Cavuto have admitted that the game, as it's currently being played, is in grave danger of simply being over.

So, if things progress as expected, sadly, only those who convert 20% of their wealth to silver and gold, within the next year, will be saved from this Progressiveic reincarnation of Keynes's wet dream. When it happens, there will be significant stagflation which will make the 20% metal equal all of the rest of their current investments. Only those banks who begin, now, to encourage the depositing and holding of precious metals will survive, as savers realize saved paper is just paper. Afterwards, either a repressive fascist government or a free cash economy will emerge. Either is entirely possible. And let me remind you that liberals are the first to turn to fascism. 1924 - 25 Italy is instructive here.

The sky has not fallen yet, and there is still time, brother, but the tumblers are already turning, and the safe is going to be cracked, unless the Progs "jobs" initiative is completely repudiated. And to tell the truth, it is pathetic, in itself, that the situation is as simple as that.

If not, the truth probably won't become evident tomorrow or next month. The precious metal markets will still go up and down for a while, independent from reality. But the truth will out. My fear is that the truth will then be told in gold and silver and lead. It's not a clever intellectual exercise, anymore.

If, . . no.   WHEN it comes - things going as expected - for those who have not prepared, it will be too soon, and too late.

- Dick Anderson