tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post97184720965877700..comments2024-03-27T18:24:19.683-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: Making moneyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-31782963962913097262013-10-08T18:32:52.822-07:002013-10-08T18:32:52.822-07:00Steve:
Its all rather simple when you stop and th...Steve:<br /><br />Its all rather simple when you stop and think about it and blow away the smoke of confusion.<br /><br />The government spends a certain amount of money which ultimately goes to US residents and corporations, and also extracts a certain amount of taxes which come from US residents and corporation.<br /><br />If it spends more than it takes in, the private sector is gaining money (= wealth). If it spends less than it takes in, the private sector is being squeezed and losing money.<br /><br />The net surplus to the privte sector accrued by government deficit spending is monetized into private cash which is either saved (= invested) or spent on imported foreign goods in excess of exports.<br /><br />Even when running a surplus (as in 1997 to 2001), a trade deficit can occur from the private sector dipping into its accrued savings and capital gains from asset appreciation. There is of course a limit to that, which is why the budget cannot be balanced or in surplus for very long without hurting the standard of living.<br /><br />As noted, the American Dollar is the world reserve currency in trade (meaning that account balances between countries for an imbalance in trade are generally settled in dollars to avoid countries getting stuck with some loser currency like Mexican Peso's). This means that countries are constantly buying and selling dollars and converting them back and forth from their own currency to facilitate their foreign trade. In essence, the dollar performs the role previously played by silver and gold.<br /><br />A handful of other currencies have some intrinsic desirability because of the country's production of desirable natural resources, food, stable government, rule of law, and profitable financial instruments. In the former category are resource/food exporters like Canada, Australia, South Africa, Chile, and New Zealand. In the latter category of financial investments are the UK and Switzerland. Lastly, two industrial economies have desirable currencies because of their high quality export goods - Germany and Japan.<br /><br />By rights, the Russian Rubble should be a desirable world currency given the riches of Russia. That it is not is a testament to just how screwed up that country is.<br /><br />China on the other hand is on the wrong side of the currency battles. No one wants Yuan, and China must earn foreign currency in US, Australian, and Canadian dollars to buy the natural resources needed by its economy to function. In essence this leaves China's masses slaving away paying tribute to us and our allies through their labor in exchange for little bits of paper with funny green ink.<br /><br />Additionally, the world oil market is priced in dollars, such that all imports of oil are paid directly with dollar currency. Also, many of the larger oil exporters in the Gulf, and also Ecuador and ahandful of other countries use the dollar as their currency. In order to get oil from these countries, other countries must obtain dollars. The only source of dollars is from selling things to the residents of the US in exchange for their surplus dollars resulting from government deficit spending.<br /><br />In essence we get more goodies from government than we have to pay for, and a steady flow of goods produced by the world's labor for scraps of paper with funny green ink. What's not to like?<br /><br />Now the final bit of this equation is what countries do with their surplus dollars. We of course make government bonds available as a convenient investment promising to pay them even more surplus dollars. We also have a conveniently liquid stock and real estate market, where additional money inflow means higher valuations on housing and stock portfolios.<br /><br />If you view it overall, its a win, win, win all around for Americans.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48762445570681093512013-10-08T09:09:49.289-07:002013-10-08T09:09:49.289-07:00> There is inflation though. Have you bought a ...> There is inflation though. Have you bought a set of tires recently? Sometime in the last two years, tires doubled in price. Also, a lot of inflation has been masked by packaging. Cereal boxes are thinner. The cardboard-tube in many brands of toilet-paper role has increased in diameter (with the o.d. of the roll staying the same). One also sees it in restaurants. A barbecue joint in my town stopped serving beef<br /><br />Plus, just look at consumption figures vs time. Meat. (By weight, I mean, not money spent.) Kinds of meat. Car miles driven. (Car miles driven for non-remunerative purposes would be even better.) Gasoline.<br /><br />Prices vs time. Average rent. Gasoline. <br /><br />Read Devin Finnbar on consumer price index and real GDP. He convinced me it is all near-worthless, except for (synchronic) nominal GDP. Too many adjustments that are too questionable. Might as well not even look at these numbers at all.<br /><br />Stuff like meat has caveats or confounds of its own. Consumption of it might rise or decline for various reasons. Still, looking at a bunch of different concrete things and getting a subjective sense of things with your own senses, is better than the pseudo-objective indicies.<br /><br />For detecting fine trends, that is. Obviously, if you want to look at the rise of Japanese GDP during the 60s, it is so large that +/-5% error doesn't make much difference. If Greek GDP/head is off 30% from 2008, that is a meaningful statement -- seeing as there, again, 5% error, or even five-percentage-point error, does not suffice to invalidate very much of the meaning of the statement.RSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-1021604326183218712013-10-08T08:21:44.993-07:002013-10-08T08:21:44.993-07:00Having your currency being the world reserve is th...Having your currency being the world reserve is the type of thing any establishment would welcome because it is simply too powerful to turn down. But it is inevitably corrupting and will disrupt and hurt the non-connected people.<br /><br />It is like the ring in Lord of the Rings. <br /><br />Basically the world subsidizes the worst aspects of the American economy and their empire. The government doesn't have to make hard choices and the public doesn't care.<br /><br />Johnsons guns and better is the perfect example of the corruption caused by having the reserve currency. France stood up and demanded gold for the inflated dollars and this started the break down of Bretton Woods and the last link to gold. If you give a person the rights to the printing press don't be surprised when they uses it. So far America can rely on the world having found a suitable replacement with Euro proving a poor choice. Until then America can basically coast.<br />Samnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-65357191958446713572013-10-08T07:15:09.643-07:002013-10-08T07:15:09.643-07:00How to Sink an Aircraft Carrier<a href="https://medium.com/war-is-boring/f281fbc518fd" rel="nofollow">How to Sink an Aircraft Carrier</a>David Davenporthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03315090179595817174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-42668918385904768092013-10-08T06:42:26.481-07:002013-10-08T06:42:26.481-07:00> So how did they get the $100 bill in the firs...> So how did they get the $100 bill in the first place? Unless they had been hanging on to it for ages of course.<br /><br />They probably got it from some bank-ish entity that probably has some kind of counterfeit insurance and/or detection experts. You don't.RSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-7359455867011589792013-10-08T06:37:36.549-07:002013-10-08T06:37:36.549-07:00>> "If the dollar is upheld by military...>> "If the dollar is upheld by military power, then why wasn't the Soviet Union's currency ever a competitor as the world's reserve currency?"<br /><br />> they didn't win at bretton woods. <br /><br />They had power, lots (still had 10M men under arms in '45) but <br />1. their homeland and empire were 50% smoking rubble<br />2. they remained potentially subject to invasion by other powers, where the US homeland has not been for a long time<br />3. they were politically wild and crazy in hugely conspicuous ways<br /><br />If you hold much of your wealth in a currency whose country gets invaded, or gets politically revolutionized by a bunch of wackos, or has some major crisis (which has often gone hand-in-hand with grave inflation, going back 2000 years+)... you lose.<br /><br />It's really the /combo/ of power, power projection, regime stability, economic-monetary sanity, safe homeland, etc.<br /><br />Even if USSR never got deeply invaded, suppose it got in a war with China in 1955, or '65. The Chinks are quite able to kill and be killed, as they proved in Korea and indeed other times in history. The US could get in a war with China in 1965, but unless the lower-48 got deeply invaded, it wouldn't ravage the USA homeland nearly as much as a similar war would mess up USSR if USSR got in that war. RSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-2789239262529437462013-10-08T05:54:37.568-07:002013-10-08T05:54:37.568-07:00> Of course if you want to feel any significant...> Of course if you want to feel any significant amount of heat you have to use the blower fan - THAT uses electricity which in turn increases the load on your alternator which uses gas (but really not that much).<br /><br />At a modest setting, I would guess a few mL per hour, thus maybe ~4 cent at today's prices. After all a gasoline blower, albeit without the waste from converting to electricity first, will blow like a hurricane for an hour on some hundreds of mL.<br /><br />There's rather a lot of energy in chemical substances, including food, more than one might readily appreciate. You don't really see it when filling a car's tank, since of course the work of accelerating the ~1,500-kg car is so staggeringly enormous but is no skin off your hide. Using a weedeater or chainsaw kind of brings the point home. Thing will run for a whiiiile..... and surely the chainsaw making a 6-mm cut is blowing through way more energy than you would use making a 1.5-mm cut with a handsaw. <br /><br />Also the fact that a fairly vigorous aerobic workout of modest duration burns some ridiculously small amount of calories, like about a granola bar or something. The effect of exercise on obesity is obviously one of metabolic-hormonal normalization, it has almost nothing to do with 'burning off' what amounts to 15 mL of cheddar cheese, three slices or something.<br /><br />Of course if you ride a bike 100 miles at a serious clip with some hills, or do hard labor for eight hours, /that/ will admittedly require some noticeable excess food intake.RSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-77614465876305154512013-10-08T05:26:57.954-07:002013-10-08T05:26:57.954-07:00> If bond investors thought the value of the do...> If bond investors thought the value of the dollar was going to rapidly erode via high inflation, presumably, they would be bidding up the yields (and bidding down the prices) of US Treasury securities to compensate for that. And indeed some financial pundits have predicted for years that this is inevitable. Hasn't happened so far though. <br /><br />Can't argue with that. But how to view the gold boom paradox?<br /><br />I guess one way it might not be a paradox is if you think the dollar is a good investment but has a very low probability of a high-magnitude wipeout, hence is an investment you really want but also one you want heavy insurance on. Ie you think the T bill is either a really great think to hold or a really terrible thing to hold, with not much probability density in between.RSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-55987753419049621422013-10-08T02:25:17.611-07:002013-10-08T02:25:17.611-07:00" knew you were a prole."
LOL i lived i..." knew you were a prole."<br /><br />LOL i lived in that apartment for 6 months and now i'm a prole? let's see you buy a house in las vegas in 2005. that's right dead in the peak of the biggest housing bubble in history, in one of the cities (THE city?) with the biggest bubble in the nation. house prices were going up 5000 bucks PER WEEK in the summer of 05.<br /><br />it's MIND BOGGLING how much the values of those houses crashed in 2008. we're talking MORE THAN 50%. good luck being upside down on one of those loans, and being a middle class european american who pays their taxes. that's exactly who the banks and government go after if you try to walk away from the house once the loan gets out of control. the other people get to just walk away, but oh ho ho, you don't, whitey.<br /><br />"The guy was an amateur."<br /><br />LOL they did not print 12 million dollars then slowly and steadily buy stuff with it directly. they turned the bills over via whatever their scheme was, but eventually it got back to them. it usually does. the feds traced the bills back to them, found the source and busted their ring.<br /><br />"The real reason is that when you pay something in cash, bankers make no profit. When you pay something with a credit card, they do."<br /><br />credit cards were not in common use back when large denomination bills were removed from circulation in the US. people mainly used cash and checks back then. heck, the US was still on the gold standard when big bills were dropped.<br /><br />it's all about eliminating cash transactions which they can't track and tax.<br /><br />"Slightly off topic, but why on earth does the US dollar always have to be in green?"<br /><br />greenbacks. before that, paper bills came in all different sorts of colors.<br /><br />"If the dollar is upheld by military power, then why wasn't the Soviet Union's currency ever a competitor as the world's reserve currency?"<br /><br />they didn't win at bretton woods.jodynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-30254363526260633492013-10-08T01:04:31.644-07:002013-10-08T01:04:31.644-07:00"In any case, even in the old days, I dunno w...<br />"In any case, even in the old days, I dunno why anyone would have traveled to France with only US $100 bills. Either you changed for francs or you got travelers checks (in books of small denominations so they were easy to cash as needed) so this was a stupid move even then."<br /><br />As I said, a last minute decision. I worked Friday, stopped at the ATM after work, went to sleep, woke up at midnight, and left.<br /><br />anonAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-74549039247837839312013-10-07T22:46:43.063-07:002013-10-07T22:46:43.063-07:00Another lesson: Running the heater doesn't use...<i>Another lesson: Running the heater doesn't use any extra gas.</i><br /><br />But it must be using some electric power and thus <i>is</i> going to use some a little extra gas.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-52670996597776068942013-10-07T22:30:37.256-07:002013-10-07T22:30:37.256-07:00They have no reservations about selling you a $100...<i>They have no reservations about selling you a $100 bill that is older than what they will accept.</i><br /><br />So how did they get the $100 bill in the first place? Unless they had been hanging on to it for ages of course.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-6768771727203989052013-10-07T21:32:33.980-07:002013-10-07T21:32:33.980-07:00Here's August, 2013 text and video of F-35B&#...<a href="http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3ae14de239-0201-4cd6-afd9-21344c382ecb" rel="nofollow">Here's</a> August, 2013 text and video of F-35B's and V-22 tiltrotors operating from the USS WASP. The Wasp is an amphibious assault ship, not an aircraft carrier.David Davenporthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03315090179595817174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-89755302681932447252013-10-07T20:50:29.924-07:002013-10-07T20:50:29.924-07:00> one of the reasons why they didn't is bec...> one of the reasons why they didn't is because Switzerland would have been hard to conquer<br /><br />Undoubtedly true given topography, and I'm not sure how much was there other than money. Which in certain situations ain't worth much. They needed oil, coal, food, and iron -- lots. But I'm not sure who they had to buy things from, necessarily. RSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-12254146552275911902013-10-07T20:43:51.423-07:002013-10-07T20:43:51.423-07:00> But even the dollar itself is only as worthy ...> But even the dollar itself is only as worthy as its market value - the nations that do best, the ones with trade surpluses always but always end up on top in the currency game (eg Germany, Japan), simply because people wish to but that which they poduce. That's the long and short of it, no other explanation is necessary.<br /><br />There's no good or service in this world quite like not having your women raped, and then you get shot. And next to that, light sweet crude at a high EROEI.<br /><br />These are some of the most interesting questions. <br /><br />I've seen some people argue that it doesn't matter what oil is denominated in -- that this doesn't create demand for $ that wouldn't exist otherwise. Madness. Oil is important and its price fluctuates, therefore if OPEC takes dollars you need to stockpile dollars and/or oil, or be ready to do without or pay an undesirable exchange rate should one ever crop up. Case closed.<br /><br />Of course, if that were /enough/, we wouldn't have the Saudi sovereign wealth fund (allegedly) 'obliged' to buy US arms and US T-bills. <br /><br />But PRC (and Japan) also buy tons of T-bills. I'm not exactly certain why. (PRC also buys mountains of gold which seems to make sense.) That is surely the more confusing part of the equation. But at the end of the day I do think a certain 'tribute' is - probably - paid to the USA through dollar hegemony. There are various grades of this theory. John Michael Greer seems too maximalist on this for me: Japan and Western Europe seem fine wealth-wise, so obviously unless we are voluntarily giving them part of the tribute, then said tribute can be only so vast. Granted, those are pretty much high-IQ high-C countries, and the USA is, relatively, not really such a country lately. They have some demographic age inversion problems, we have some nice economies of scale, we have more natural resources than Japan or W-Europe, so it's not so clear how one would make a comparison... but yes I do think we might be a little poorer than the Dutch without the 'tribute' that comes from quasi-owning OPEC, Qatari gas, and other such things.<br /><br />If the dollar is partly or largely backed by power . . . well, that ain't gonna last forever if our relative power is declining. There are other powers in this world. We probably aren't going to be nuking each other's homelands (hopefully). So basic game theory tells you we cough up control over some of the high EROEI energy to others who are increasingly able to project force.<br />RSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-33011254003106500322013-10-07T18:40:53.072-07:002013-10-07T18:40:53.072-07:00"reordering the US to resemble Switzerland.&q..."reordering the US to resemble Switzerland."<br /><br /> At last Whiskey has a good idea!Dutch Boyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02687679491743923216noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-17237703220064842013-10-07T17:47:55.194-07:002013-10-07T17:47:55.194-07:00"Switzerland wouldn't be ablt to defend i...<i>"Switzerland wouldn't be ablt to defend itself against a serious invader. The Nazis didn't invade Swissland because the Swiss basically played along with the Berlin regime. And weren't Goering and some other big wigs stashing money in Swiss banks during the war? <br /><br />... Money Goering was skimming from his own regime. Outright takeover of Swissland would have been problematic for some of the big National Sozialists."</i><br /><br />Invading Switzerland was on Nazi Germany's <a href="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum" rel="nofollow">to-do list</a>, but they didn't get around to it, and one of the reasons why they didn't is because Switzerland would have been hard to conquer.Dave Pinsenhttp://twitter.com/dpinsennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-38650047412912504312013-10-07T17:14:27.584-07:002013-10-07T17:14:27.584-07:00This ship is older than I am but it is still the t...<i>This ship is older than I am but it is still the third longest carrier in the world outside of the other US carriers. One wonders why we don't just spruce it up a little and put it back to sea.</i><br /><br />Let's suppose some former US Navy sailor is the third tallest sailor of the 20th century. Why not just spruce that old boy up a bit and send him back to sea, instead of some younger sailor-person. Never mind if his joints are a wee bit arthritic and his heartbeat a little irregular.<br /><br />Wouldn't that be a good idea?David Davenporthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03315090179595817174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-6712036060428498932013-10-07T17:12:57.489-07:002013-10-07T17:12:57.489-07:00the us dollar is the world reserve currency becaus...the us dollar is the world reserve currency because if you act like it isn't you get Quaddafi'ed by us military. geoffhttp://www.cnn.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-44629953919124265602013-10-07T17:04:49.529-07:002013-10-07T17:04:49.529-07:00If a country is at risk of getting conquered, it&#...<i>If a country is at risk of getting conquered, it's currency won't be worth much.</i><br /><br />True. That's why it's good that the USA can't be conquered except by swarming immigration, excuse me, a swarm of infiltration. <br /><br />If foreigners decide not to buy Treasury bills, the long term consequence is all to the good. America will become self-sufficient in manufacturing again.<br /><br /><i>But in this context, Switzerland's citizen militia (and mountainous borders) count for as much as our aircraft carriers.</i><br /><br />Switzerland wouldn't be ablt to defend itself against a serious invader. The Nazis didn't invade Swissland because the Swiss basically played along with the Berlin regime. And weren't Goering and some other big wigs stashing money in Swiss banks during the war? <br /><br />... Money Goering was skimming from his own regime. Outright takeover of Swissland would have been problematic for some of the big National Sozialists.<br /><br /><i>If the dollar is upheld by military power, then why wasn't the Soviet Union's currency ever a competitor as the world's reserve currency? They were a serious competitor for the world's most powerful military for decades, after all.</i><br /><br />They might have been a serious competitor, but they weren't #1. To quote the late Osama B. L., "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they want to go with the strong horse."<br /><br /><i> But if you didn't want to buy weapons, all they could sell you was a bleak, concrete version of socialist "prosperity," so their currency wasn't sought after. </i><br /><br />There you've sort of answered your own question. A bleak, concrete version of socialist "prosperity." -- Obamacare, or something similar.<br /><br />If you had to choose between banking in Moskva or with an American bank or some European bank under the American military aegis -- including Swiss banks, you wouldn't pick Soviet. <br /><br /><i>We have 19 and most of them are nuclear.</i><br /><br />Wikipedia says:<i><br /><br />Name: Nimitz-class aircraft carrier<br /><br />In commission: 3 May 1975<br /><br />Preceded by: Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carrier and<br />Enterprise-class aircraft carrier<br /><br />Succeeded by: Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier<br /><br />Subclasses: Theodore Roosevelt class and<br />Ronald Reagan class<br />In commission: 3 May 1975<br /><br />Planned: 10<br />Completed: 10<br /><br />Active: USS Nimitz (CVN-68)<br />USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69)<br />USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70)<br />USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71)<br />USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72)<br />USS George Washington (CVN-73)<br />USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74)<br />USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75)<br />USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76)<br />USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77)</i><br /><br />Current plans are for the USS Nimitz to be retired in the year 2020 or thereabout.<br /><br />USS Ford is not yet active, so we have ten aircraft carriers, all fission powered. Wasp-class amphibious assault ships are not counted as aircraft carriers.<br /><br />My own opinion is that big aricraft carriers are the dreadnoughts of the 21st century. That's not a compliment.David Davenporthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03315090179595817174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-19723746899818218482013-10-07T13:42:40.341-07:002013-10-07T13:42:40.341-07:00"Basically, since Nixon reneged on the promis...<i>"Basically, since Nixon reneged on the promise to redeem US dollars for gold, back in '71, the entire world monetary system has been f*cked-up and based on a lie. It's no accident that the oil crisis of 1973 followed hot-on-the-heels of Nixon's treachery - and the global economy has been a roller-coaster mess ever since.<br />1960s America thought it was rich and invincible, a society that the world had never seen before, but the costs of Vietnam, Apollo, the 'great society' etc proved that even the USA iis not immune from the law of supply and demand and hence the decison to renege on a solemn promise and overnight render currency worthless."</i><br /><br />There's a line in Bonfire Of The Vanities where a bond trader says the (US Treasury) bond market has been sinking since the Battle of Midway. But right about when Tom Wolfe wrote that, that reversed, and there's been a huge bull market in US Treasury bonds since. Remember that bond yields move inversely with bond prices and look at <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5ETNX#symbol=%5Etnx;range=my;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;" rel="nofollow">how</a> the 10 year Treasury yields have dropped since the early 1980s. <br /><br />If bond investors thought the value of the dollar was going to rapidly erode via high inflation, presumably, they would be bidding up the yields (and bidding down the prices) of US Treasury securities to compensate for that. And indeed some financial pundits have predicted for years that this is inevitable. Hasn't happened so far though. Dave Pinsenhttp://twitter.com/dpinsennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-67728797595698022252013-10-07T12:41:15.349-07:002013-10-07T12:41:15.349-07:00For the most part, using the heater doesn't hu...For the most part, using the heater doesn't hurt your gas mileage - either the waste heat from the engine will be dumped to outside via the radiator in the front or it will be dumped to a 2nd little radiator under the dashboard called your heater core. But there is plenty of waste heat that has to be disposed of so your engine doesn't melt, so the heat is "free".(BTW, if your car is ever overheating on a hot day, turn ON the heater, on HIGH and it may help (though you will roast)).<br /><br /><br /> Of course if you want to feel any significant amount of heat you have to use the blower fan - THAT uses electricity which in turn increases the load on your alternator which uses gas (but really not that much).<br /><br /> Someone said that using the heater might improve your mileage. How? I think that's pretty much impossible.<br /><br />In any case, even in the old days, I dunno why anyone would have traveled to France with only US $100 bills. Either you changed for francs or you got travelers checks (in books of small denominations so they were easy to cash as needed) so this was a stupid move even then.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-53257899135160294952013-10-07T11:51:10.318-07:002013-10-07T11:51:10.318-07:00Maybe you really don't understand money. I don...Maybe you really don't understand money. I don't understand aircraft carriers.<br /><br />Just what are we doing with all the damn carriers? A quick peek in Wikipedia tells me that ten nations have carriers. Italy surprisingly has two. Both of which are non-nuclear and rather small. Everyone else only has only one. Russia has one, China has one, Britain and France each have one.<br /><br />The number three and four economies - Japan and Germany don't have any.<br /><br />We have 19 and most of them are nuclear. And most are much bigger ships than those of other countries. Yet we have plans to build even more. India which has one small carrier has plans for two more smallish carriers. No other nation has any carrier construction planned.<br /><br />Are we in an arms race against India?<br /><br />The year before last I celebrated New Years on the USS Hornet. They had a forties style dance band in the big area under the flight deck. This ship is older than I am but it is still the third longest carrier in the world outside of the other US carriers. One wonders why we don't just spruce it up a little and put it back to sea. China, Russia and France have bigger carriers - no one else.<br /><br />Maybe we should give it to Britain so that they would have a full size carrier. Or just give it to me so that I could be a major world naval power. I'd be the first on my block. <br /><br />AlbertosaurusPat Boylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13477950851915567863noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-72249896923990090232013-10-07T10:48:28.401-07:002013-10-07T10:48:28.401-07:00David Davenport said...If anyone has ever argued t...David Davenport said...If anyone has ever argued that military spending is necessary to maintain the US dollar's status as the world's reserve currency, I haven't heard it.<br /><br />"The US dollar is upheld by US military power."<br /><br />That is not an explanation or an argument. It is a baseless assertion. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-52857947147394246362013-10-07T10:25:09.184-07:002013-10-07T10:25:09.184-07:00"...there's a reason the 100 is the large...<i>"...there's a reason the 100 is the largest bill. they don't want you using cash. if you could still get bills with higher denominations that would make it a lot easier to avoid the feds tracking your every move."</i><br /><br />This theory sounds plausible to me. Glossyhttp://lazyglossophiliac.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.com