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The U.S. national debt reached $20 trillion for the first time ever last Friday after President Trump signed a bipartisan bill temporarily raising the nation's debt limit for three months.
While at Camp David, Mr. Trump, with the stroke of his presidential pen, increased the statutory debt last Friday by approximately $318 billion, according to the Treasury Department. Before the bill's completion, the U.S. debt was sitting around $19.84 trillion.
The legislation allowed the Treasury Department to start borrowing again immediately after several months of using "extraordinary measures" to avoid a financial default. The bill passed last Thursday 80-17 in the Senate and in the House 316-90 on Friday. Around $15 billion in emergency funding for Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts was attached to the borrowing measure.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-debt-hits-historic-20-trillion-mark/
[That works out to just shy of $62,000 per American. --Ed.]
(Score: 5, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 15 2017, @12:35PM (17 children)
"The currency isn't going to work. You can't have a business where people can invent a currency out of thin air and think that people who are buying it are really smart." --Jamie Dimon
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @04:27PM (15 children)
The answer is - go back to the gold standard. Our currency should have something behind it - not just our good intentions.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 15 2017, @04:40PM (7 children)
Gold is stupid. We need an energy standard. As a bonus, that's something that would encourage a metric shitton (or 1.15 imperial shittons if you prefer) of concentrating solar, "eggbeater" wind-turbine power, thorium, etc. Energy is king. Gold? Not a lot you can do with gold once you have it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @05:49PM (2 children)
I'm not sure. Isn't that dangerous, allowing the serfs their own way to generate wealth that's not bequeathed to them by their Owners?
Before we implement something like that, we need rules in place to ensure that an Owner owns the rays of the sun and the movements of the wind, like Owners in certain places own the drops of water that fall from the clouds, regardless of where those rays or drops land or where those winds blow.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Friday September 15 2017, @06:36PM (1 child)
Why not something useful, like a potable water standard, or a Clean Air Standard? Can you imagine? "This Federal Reserve Note is exchangeable for the current market valuation of clean air." See? Gold buggish, and environmental, all roled into one! All bitcoin gives you is hot air coming off the cooling systems on those mining rigs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @07:51PM
Potable water will work, at least in the jurisdictions where there is an Owner to take ownership of the water that falls from the sky. We can't have the serfs collecting it in barrels and then thinking they may employ filtration, boiling, or other techniques to make it potable. As long as every serf is beholden to an Owner for potable water, this is fine.
Same idea with clean air. In fact, if we designate Owners to the winds that blow across different jurisdictions, that would create the kind of framework we need. Then the only source of clean air for the serfs would be an Owner.
That being said, I recommend Druidia Air™ In-a-Can™.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 15 2017, @07:14PM
Too bad Enron screwed the pooch on that one so badly. It's a good idea that will probably never happen now.
(Score: 2) by Scrutinizer on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:09PM (2 children)
The reason for a gold standard is that such a currency was redeemable upon demand in gold. Gold is currently value-dense, rather scarce, effectively lasts forever, is impossible to counterfeit and hard to fake, and actually does have some industrial uses. Compare and contrast with the US dollar, the vast majority of which are ephemeral in computer storage and have been officially counterfeited/inflated over and over again at the touch of a button.
I'd be much in favor of an energy-based currency if I could exchange my $100 bill for $100 in energy. Currently, it's a lot harder to carry around energy in a pocket than it is a roll of bills - or a few gold coins. (No, no, I'm wise to your enriched uranium coin suggestion...)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 17 2017, @05:54AM (1 child)
Actually I was thinking small vacuum capsules with a speck of antimatter in one chamber, but hey, high grade U235 sounds exciting too! :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @06:16AM
Pocket-sized permanent magnetic bottles strong enough to store any quantity of antimatter may well make transacting in energy-based currency rather difficult due to the very large denominations involved.
Unless you were just planning to use it as a setup to blow folks like me up, in which case Russian polonium is a much cheaper alternative. =)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 15 2017, @05:05PM (6 children)
-1 Stupid.
What makes gold worth anything? Nothing more than people generally agreeing it does. It's no different than BitCoin. Gold is not a genuinely useful material, except for a few specialized applications (e.g., corrosion protection on electrical connectors, which only requires a coating a few atoms thick). A bag of rice is honestly more useful than a bar of gold, because you can cook it and eat it.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday September 15 2017, @05:17PM (4 children)
I will agree that gold and bitcoin have at least one valuable property in common: they are difficult to mass produce and/or poof into existence by self-serving politicians.
So, when the money- and power-drunk politicians go on yet another bender, they can further devalue the "not a genuinely useful material" paper dollars, but they can't touch Real Money.
Don't you get it? The reason everyone chases money so hard is that it is (relatively) scarce. Remove that attribute (gradually) and it (gradually) loses its worth.
Any kind of money worth having (for long) is a proof-of-work token. "But some people get dollars without working for them." Exactly!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 15 2017, @05:32PM (3 children)
Oh yes they can! Some things governments on gold standards have done to devalue the currency:
- Reduce the amount of gold per currency. For example, Roman coins got lighter as emperors became more desperate.
- Change the weights used so that a "pound" is no longer what a "pound" used to be.
- Mix other metals in with what appears to be a gold coin or gold bar.
- Add another metal into the monetary system, e.g. silver.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday September 15 2017, @08:53PM (2 children)
Currency is not gold. Currency may or may not be fraudulent. Coins too may be counterfeit. But as I said, government cannot devalue the gold.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @10:50PM
Ha! They sure can! They may not be able to change the physical laws of the universe (gold atoms) but they sure can control the valuation of their monopoly money.
(Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:21PM
Gold has an intrinsic value - shiny jewelry, gold fingers on circuit boards and other industrial uses.
But gold also has value as a currency (medium of exchange).
For a very long time, it's value as a currency has been much greater than it's intrinsic value.
While they can't devalue gold's intrinsic value, governments can (and have) interfered with gold's value as a currency - for example, they can make it illegal to own it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Friday September 15 2017, @09:23PM
Yup, money only has worth because of agreement:
when the shit hits and you can't get online and won't for years and you find it hard to get to town for your weekly grocery shop,
--bitcoin won't be worth anything (until things get 'fixed' anyways), i'm sure most people would agree. "I have 400 bitcoins: will you sell me that bag of rice?", will get you laughed at.
--I have 400 US dollars. I want a bag of rice. Can we come to any agreement that those bills still have worth? If so, we can make a deal. If not, no amount of bills will solve your problem.
Shit, people collect Barbie dolls thinking some day they'll be able to retire and sell them for vast amounts of money: but if no one agrees they have value, they ain't worth sh*t.
Same with the T Y babies (quite a few years back... wow, time moves): people were collecting them like they WERE bags of rice, then people stopped seeing worth in them and collectors couldn't frigging GIVE them away.
It's all agreement. Right now, i wonder how much anyone would pay for my body to eat it... probably not as much as they would 'pay' if there were no other food around, lol.
Agreement makes worth.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Friday September 15 2017, @11:13PM
OMFG that is a gem. Need that on Tshirts. Jamie Dimon is one greedy fuck.