Text 4236, 83 rader
Skriven 2010-01-31 06:01:38 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
   Kommentar till text 4078 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: Fox stoops even lower
=============================
Replying to a message of Michiel van der Vlist to Bob Ackley:

 MvdV> Hello Bob,

 MvdV> On Friday January 29 2010 07:20, you wrote to me:

 MvdV>>> Maybe some will still trade with the US, but they will
 MvdV>>> no
 MvdV>>> longer accept Dolars as payment. They will demand
 MvdV>>> payment
 MvdV>>> in Euro or Yen or Yuan...

 BA>> More likely bullion, at least that's what I'd do.

 MvdV> Perhaps? But how far would that get you? The gold mines
 MvdV> have run dry and the buffer at Fort Knox is not infinite.
 MvdV> Not to mention that the price of gold may plummet when
 MvdV> the USA starts paying its debt in gold.

 BA>> But that dollar would be perfectly valid *in this country*
 BA>> - which is what most people here care about.

 MvdV> I think you are making the mistake of thinking that the
 MvdV> USA could maintain the same standard of living when it
 MvdV> has to do without the rest of the world.

 MvdV> You will face massive inflation and the US will become a
 MvdV> third world country.

 BA>> The fact that one couldn't purchase anything not made
 BA>> domestically wouldn't matter - after a while.

 MvdV> Where are you going to get oil?

Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Wyoming and California.  Offshore wells in the
Gulf of Mexico and off the southern California coast.  Of course it will be a
LOT more expensive...

 MvdV> The texas oil wells are as good as dry. You could never
 MvdV> maintain the present level of economic activity without
 MvdV> importing oil. You will be thrown back 100 years if you
 MvdV> can not import oil.

 BA>> It occurs to me that reneging on those debts just might be
 BA>> the best thing that could happen to the US domestic
 BA>> industrial base.

 MvdV> How? If you have no oil?

Coal if nothing else.  I think that it can be converted to oil if
necessary.  The US has one of the largest reserves of coal on the
planet - sufficient for well over 100 years of use at present
consumption (its primary use is fuel for power plants).

Converting motor vehicles to run on 85% or even 100% ethanol will help.
There's a pilot plant up and running south of here that uses algae rather
than corn to produce ethanol, that sort of thing can be scaled up.  There's
at least one plant here in Iowa that produces diesel from soybeans, and
there are a few folks that recycle used cooking oil (the overwhelming bulk
of which is discarded) for use in diesel engines.

 MvdV> What other than military might do you have to sell to pay
 MvdV> for the oil?

Conquer enough of Venezuela to obtain the oil there.  And, I suppose,
Aruba...

 BA>> It might solve the illegal immigration problem, too,
 BA>> because those immigrants could no longer send money home
 BA>> to Mexico (which many of them do, there's quite a big
 BA>> business in money transfers to Mexico and points south and
 BA>> the tax people and other control freaks here are quite
 BA>> upset about it).

 MvdV> It would indeed probably solve the illegal immigration
 MvdV> problem. Because nobody will *want* to come to the US any
 MvdV> more. On the contrary, people from the USA will go to
 MvdV> Mexico because life is better there.

A lot of US citizens already have.  Not so much better as cheaper.

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 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)