Free Association Friday

A guy named Don runs a blog called 2008 China Olympics, and he asked to be blogrolled here.

He found out about this site through this unflattering post about China.

For a while, you couldn't access this site from China, a situation brought about shortly after I posted this thing about the China Olympics logo.

My boss, Marvel Variants, was in China last week, and they had loosened controls enough for him to be able to log on. (The hits had already cranked back up about a month ago.)

If you're wondering about the name "Marvel Variants", it refers to obscure price variations in Marvel comic books. Mr. Variants is trying to do with those things what the Hunt brothers tried to do with silver.

If you're wondering what the Hunt brothers tried to do with silver....they tried to corner the market. At one point, they owned half of the silver known to exist in "commodity" form. Once people figured out what they were up to, the Feds intervened, and everybody involved went bankrupt.

Believe it or not, the Hunts were motivated to do this because at the time it was illegal for private U.S. citizens to own gold - a situation that existed from 1934 till sometime in the 1970's. (The government saw gold as a competitor to cash, and they wanted to monopolize the means of exchange.)

The only major political figure to make a big deal about this government monopoly in the last 30 years: Ron Paul. He wants us back on the gold standard. Don't read his book "The Revolution: A Manifesto" if you don't want to be bothered about why we have so much faith in the little pictures of dead presidents called "cash".

If we keep printing the stuff to cover our debts, it's going to be worth less and less against the euro, the peso, the pound, and especially the renminbi. It's also helpful to think of it being worth less and less against the loaf of bread, the hour of electricty, the haircut, the gallon of gas, or anything else you swap for cash. It's worth only what people will give for it since it is no longer tied to a rare commodity.

I mention the renminbi because it's the official currency of China, the nation that now holds a lot of our national debt. China and Japan hold about 20% of our IOU's. Some people think China is buying up U.S. debt to prevent us from intervening if they go nuts in Taiwan or Tibet.

Which is what most of the protests at the China Olympics are about.

And I guess that gets us back to the 2008 China Olympics blog. Check it out if you get a chance.

Just think. Getting through all that took up five minutes of your life. Five minutes that you can never, ever get back....