Without pictures this post was useless.

You’re welcome!

OK, let’s try to dispel some of your ignorance here:

1. No, centrally planned economies are, well, centrally planned. The bureaucrats are deciding how much of what to make. Sorry, but subsidies and perks for favored industries (which., ahem, we have here–is Erich Honecker the president perchance?) does not qualify. Germany does have a market economy like our own, else it would not be able to tax the heck out of it, nor would you be able to buy BMW or Diamler-Benz stock.

2. If social spending drove inflation in our country, explain why the CPI is around 2-3% despite ever higher social spending in the past 40 years? Again, data do NOT square with your hypothesis, even in a very limited scope with several confounding variables.

3. Economic growth actually decreases inflation until the government “compensates” by increasing the money supply, 108, because you take the same amount of money and use it to buy a larger amount of goods and services.

So once again, we are left with basic supply and demand. When the Fed increases the money supply faster than the (real) economy grows, we get the increase in prices commonly called inflation.

If this is complicated to you, maybe you should send Miss Bundchen a note and ask her to explain it. Obviously, Econ 101 is NOT getting through to you.

You’re right; I should not insult Britney by comparing you with her. My apologies.

Now try something to get the impossibility of heavy regulation through your skull; try to memorize a tax form, or copy it with quill and parchment. Just one page.

If you succeed at this, try to imagine somebody memorizing hundreds of pages of regulations, and then try to imagine people actually listening to them. Or try to imagine somebody making lots of copies of it for every cabbage grower in the country.

If the very thought doesn’t come across as some sort of absurd Monty Python skit to you, you just plain aren’t thinking. Period. Regulation requires a printing press to produce the reference documents. That’s why you don’t find the kind of regulation we have today before 1930; it was simply cost prohibitive, and people would never have submitted to what it would take to do so.

Historically, the rules for making various products have been handed down from father to son, or by guilds, not by government. There would be records of regulation if it had truly existed–and probably revolts by people forced to listen to cabbage regulations in their time off.

And if you can read history, even of the past 150 years, without being struck at how greatly the state has increased its control of private business, I’m sorry; you just plain aren’t thinking.

And if you can ignore supply as a factor in the dollar’s current plunge, I’m sorry; you just plain aren’t thinking.

Sorry, but I’m seeing a pattern here. You are simply refusing to think about the basic implications of supply and demand and technology on what’s going on. Give it a try, it won’t hurt you.

Seems that is has now changed to someone in her camp claiming she likes to be paid in Euros, and that she herself is very pro American.. But it’s not really important. She’s just a celebrity with no real skills.

As for River’s comment. One can only assume based on the way it was written, that it was meant to be an insult of some sort. Which is kind of funny, because a quick check around currency exchanges will clearly show the Dollar is weaker than the Euro, and HAS BEEN for quite some time.

If people checked their own facts before posting on the Internet, there would be a lot less flame wars,haha.

Baloney. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to hold you to your original statement:

Social spending for vote-buying purposes, beyond any real need, is the biggest crime of govt, and is actually what produces the dreaded inflation

Sorry, but this is what you said, and it’s complete and utter baloney. Stop trying to defend it.

Stop the baloney; how do you propose to test your hypothesis?

I don’t see Germany doing that well economically. Our PPP GDP per capita is 42% higher than theirs.

I would also say that the US has more slackers holding us down than Germany does, but their overall levels still are that much lower than us.

108, please take a look at your first paragraph, and tell me exactly how someone would prove or disprove ANYTHING with the criteria you suggest? You more or less condition the acceptance, or rejection, of your hypothesis on an experiment that cannot be performed.

Forget Econ 101. Try Logic 101, 108.

Oh sure, like we need them.

Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) — The dollar slid to record lows against the euro and the Canadian dollar after a Chinese government adviser said plans to diversify foreign-exchange reserves will involve buying better-performing currencies.

We can just print more coz it won’t cause inflation!!
Just like r108 says….

As long as the political class uses social spending to buy votes, we will have inflation(not hyperinflation, btw); which is the real cause of the inflation,

see, keep printing, it don’t matter.

…trying to explain how nations with the highest social spending have some of the lowest inflation.

They have sacrificed productivity for lowered inflation, and our politicians have sacrificed productivity for vote-buying purposes. Germany is a socialist country, where the major means of production are owned or controlled by the central govt. You are wrong yet again. Your monomaniac obsession with inflation as the ony measure of economic health is simply wrong. Even if I did buy German products(which you are making up, since you have no knowledge of what I buy), it would be because they are the best deal for the money. In our system, things are worth what people are willing to pay for them. You need to absorb that fact.

So again, you’re left with the reality that government social spending doesn’t drive inflation.

It does in this country, although your blanket description of all investment borrowing as “inflationary” is the real source of your error here.
Germany protects it’s major industrial giants, which reduces competition, which in turn reduces new investment, since you don’t have the entry and exit(with the concomitant need for new funding) that is characteristic of a more competitive business environment. This situation reduces economic growth in order to increase security for the existing businesses. You may choose to ignore this fact, but it results in exactly what I described: Germany sacrifices economic growth through restricting competition, which results in lower “textbook” inflation.
I have to point out that your definition of inflation really defines almost any economic growth as a source of inflation, and ignores the real difference between economic(productive) debt and non-productive debt.
Sorry, your adolescent attempts to attack me just don’t wash.
Our currency isn’t “artifically propped up by govt”, btw. As long as demand creates supply, it’s OK.
Your superstitious fear of a sensible monetary supply policy is duly noted.
The “store of value” function of money is archaic, and the transactional value function is what matters now.

108, we have the data to test your hypothesis already, and if we used your test, it would only add one or two data points to what we already have. There is simply no correlation.

And since when do I advocate more management of the economy? Did the grower of cabbage in Solomon’s time have to pay 40% of his income in taxes and conform to 325 or so pages of regulations on how to bring cabbage to market?

Not in his wildest nightmares. He had the Torah, and that was it, with only 614 short laws in toto.

No, I advocate less management, starting with the end of central banking and fiat money.

So once again, or one thousand times again, your claims have no root in reality. You should take your lesson from that supermodel.

I guess not. Nice talking with you, Mrs. Federline.

You reveal your emotional/intellectual level. Nice.
Your facts and logic are just overwhelming. /sarcasm

I ask again: Did any of King Solomon’s subjects not know what the King demanded of them? Whether you call them regulations or mandates or commandments, and whether they are transmitted orally, on stone tablets, parchment scrolls or printed documents, this type of thing has always been with us; to maintain anything else is simply nonsense. You grasp at straws here.

And if you can ignore supply as a factor in the dollar’s current plunge, I’m sorry; you just plain aren’t thinking.

Thanks for making my point; the increase in the money supply to pay for non-productive social spending is inflationary, which is what I have been saying from the beginning. I don’t know how you twisted yourself around to my position, but I have to assume you are so emotionally triggered that your thinking processes have become deranged. As I have said many times, all govt spending and regulation is inflationary; it’s just that social spending is a much larger part of it than anything else.
Just to refresh your memory, I am against all but Constitutional govt spending. Thanks again.
Your adolescent insults are pathetic.

Stop the baloney; how do you propose to test your hypothesis?

No “baloney” involved; drastically roll back the size, scope and cost of govt, especially by eliminating social spending.

Well, for starters, it would have been impossible to produce 325 pages of regulations for every cabbage grower 2300 years before Gutenberg invented the printing press, don’t you think?

Pure speculation, and onerous regulations predate the printing press. You have no argument here, lacking both facts and logic. Not so smart at all. I think even a Brazilian supermodel is smart enough to see through what you have written.

Whatever you say, 108. I’m sure that my ancestors in the distant past spent hours around the fire listening to the orator reciting regulations about growing cabbage.

At least when it wasn’t a real treat; tax oration time! They got to listen to someone explaining Solomon’s Alternative Minimum Tax! Woo hoo!

Forget the Mishna, the Nibelungenlied or the Song of Roland–we get to hear the new regulations come from the castle! No more epic poetry for us, we get to listen to chicken-shit regulations! Break out the new wine! Slaughter the fatted calf! Yes, it’s time for petty bureaucrats to regale us with the newest from OSHA!

You do know that those regulatory documents are intended not as epic literature, but as reference documents, right? And that people only started to produce them about a century ago, right?

I guess not. Nice talking with you, Mrs. Federline.

Sorry, but this is what you said, and it’s complete and utter baloney.
Stop trying to defend it.

Actually, it’s true, and I have demonstrated how it works in several ways, using simple economic logic. You are misled by your fanatical focus on inflation as a measure of economic health, and it isn’t. This false premise leads you to false conclusions, time after time.
When you divert resources from the productive sector to the non-productive sector(social spending), you decrease the value of the economy by making it less productive. I know it takes a deeper understanding than simply reading a textbook, but there it is.
When the money supply increases to meet investment demand, no real inflation takes place; when it expands to meet consumption demand, it is slightly inflationary, but when it expands to meet govt social spending, it is almost 100% inflationary.

And since when do I advocate more management of the economy? Did the grower of cabbage in Solomon’s time have to pay 40% of his income in taxes and
conform to 325 or so pages of regulations on how to bring cabbage to market?

Any actual data on this, especially that presents more than one side of the story?

My statements are grounded in economic logic. You may take all the financial advice you want from a Brazilian supermodel. I’m smarter than that.
It is just plain silly to compare a Biblical monarchy in any way with a modern industrial free enterprise economy. Any data on the inflation rate then? How about unemployment figures, or return on capital? Do you really maintain that there was any amount of private ownership and control of capital in King Solomon’s time? As benign as he was in the context of his time, there is no valid comparison, and you are making yourself look foolish to try to use such a comparison, absent any sound economic logic, to justify your position.
You may choose, at any time, to quit using banks and to trade in gold, silver or puka shells as you like.
Just don’t try to force that on the rest of us. We know better.

Not that dumb, really, as the dollar has been plunging vs. the euro due to loose money policy at the Fed, just as it did prior to the euro vs. the Deutschmark.

Of course, she *could* have simply taken the dollars and put it into euros, or whatever financial instrument she favored, after she received the dollars. We’re not exactly the Weimar Republic at this time, after all.

In short, looks like a smart move at face value, but reality is that she would do well to have a good financial advisor that knows how to navigate the perils of expansionary monetary policy.

If your logic is so impeccable, it should also be testable. Any logical syllogism has premises and conclusions that must be connected to the real world to be applied.

Your hypothesis is easily testable; nations with high social spending out to have high inflation, and vice versa.

I’ve made the case that we don’t see what you claim in real life. So let’s have it; give some evidence for your position. Maybe you can quote Malthus or Bill Buckner.

108, if Germany’s economy were managed by the government, its products would resemble the Trabants, gosh-awful chocolate, and sickening cola I had while walking the Alexanderplatz in East Berlin. Sorry, but you don’t get BMW vehicles, Bitburger Pils, Zeiss and Leica cameras and optics, and wonderful breads and chocolates when you tell workers “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability,” as socialist control of the markets would do.

Yes, Germany has a welfare state and regulations, just like the United States. That doesn’t make it a planned economy, however, and anyone who has ever been to Germany ought to know this just by seeing what happens at every meal.

And in the same way, any real conservative should know that when governments artificially prop up their currencies, exports cease (again, Germany is a top exporter) and currency traders like George Soros short it like a vulture circling a carcass.

So again, you’re left with the reality that government social spending doesn’t drive inflation. Printing too many units of currency by the central bank does, as any employee of the Bundesbank will tell you with a quick reference back to the 1920s.

You really need to get out more and see the real world, 108. If a Brazilian supermodel can do so, so can you.

bat

In the past week, I’ve had a nagging suspicion that the problem isn’t a “weak” US dollar as much as it is a “strong” Euro

Don’t forget a strong,
Australian Dollar
British Pound
Canadian Dollar
Japanese Yen
Swiss Franc
Brazilian Real
and even the Mexican Peso

Your argument is with the several billion people who would rather have dollarsUS in hand than any other currency. Try to explain away reality, it is entertaining to watch.

108, you’re displaying a lot of ignorance today. First, Germany is not a command economy, but rather a market economy with heavy social spending. Moreover, they have never used fixed exchange rates, but rather have let the currency “float” since it was established.

Now if they’d been trying to support their currency at far above its actual value, their exports would have collapsed and George Soros would have made a bundle shorting it.

More or less, the very fact that you can buy German products refutes your claim, and you are left where you were before; trying to explain how nations with the highest social spending have some of the lowest inflation.

Tha answer, again, is basic discipline by their central bankers, a trait not always shared by the Fed. Kudos again to Miss Bundchen for realizing this.

Well, you fix the national debt, and you remove the Fed’s ability to act–a policy I wholeheartedly agree with, but I think it misses the point.

The point is that unless we can argue that the Fed is powerless to adjust the supply of money (its very purpose for existence), we must ascribe at least a portion of blame to the Fed for inflationary pressures. In contrast, the European Bank (and prior to it, the Bundesbank of Germany) has done a pretty good job of restraining inflation.

Notably, the German “Wirtschaftswunder” occurred as the Bundesbank was holding the line on inflation, while the Fed kept it humming quite well for the dollar. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, the dollar dropped by about a factor of five vs. the Deutschmark.

Again, although there is an easy work-around for her, Bundchen’s got a very good point. Loose money policies at the Fed have greatly reduced the dollar vs. the euro.

Where was it proved false?

2h, your talkin through your you know what, as usual.
First of all the Euro holds $452,757,000,000 in currency reserves, while the USD holds $65,000,000,000.

Gold reserves:

I’m not sure what street you are talking about, but,
many, many countries and investors have been moving away from the USD in the past few years and as they do the dollar falls further.
FYI…..the USD and all others are considered fiat because they are only backed by paper.

Did a sweep. Gisele, the stupormodel, has changed her story. Exactly how does that make what she did say before not exist?

It is an electronic world, and as soon as stupidity dribbles out of your mouth everyone can see and hear it. She should have known that, being a world famous stupormodel and all.

BB: Your incorrect premise is that inflation is any indicator of the strength of an economy. This leads you to the incorrect conclusion that Germany’s economy is stronger than ours, simply based on the amount of inflation they admit to. No economy with any amount of central planning generates real economic numbers.

Yes, the big problem is social spending, which is why Germany (and most of Western Europe for that matter) spends far more on social spending than we do, and yet has had far less inflation than our country in the past half century.

We can’t actually have people figuring out that the “price” of money is related to supply and demand, after all. Who needs this Econ 101 garbage, anyways?

Sorry, guys; you can make arguments for a Federal Reserve, but please don’t spout off this bull about inflation not being due in part to their policies. Anyone who remembers the Carter years ought to know better.

I think a lot of the hype around the value of the American dollar has more to do with self-loathing American liberals and international types jealous of America’s ranking as the globe’s #1 economic powerhouse getting in some cheap shots.

Did you ever hear of sub-prime loans? How about Merrill Lynch or CitiCorp? Is this sinking in?

Non sequitur, Whistler. Just because a nation has a lower GDP than us means nothing about its monetary policy. You could just as sensibly point out that the German Wirtschaftwunder moved tens of millions of Germans from B-17-induced homelessness to significant prosperity, a record that our economy simply can not match.

Again, let’s approach the central question; is Miss Bundchen correct to point out that the dollar is losing value at a precipitous pace? (yes) Do we further agree that the supply of money is one of the big causes of inflation (I sure hope so)?

At that point, we can suggest that the supplier, the Federal Reserve, is acting in such a way as to make any sane Brazilian–one who remembers that country’s hyperinflation–very nervous, and justifiably so.

Is that so complicated?

Is the glass half empty… or is it half full?

In the past week, I’ve had a nagging suspicion that the problem isn’t a “weak” US dollar as much as it is a “strong” Euro. Rather than US inflation, the culprit may well be European deflation instead. With Euro interest rates higher than market and a relative shortage of euros in circulation, the effect would be exactly the same as what we have seen lately… complete with the sort of ignorant (and tasteless!) commentary we’ve seen lately as well.

Whether or not this is a deliberate attempt by the EU to undermine the US I can’t say, although it is worth noting that another socialist international organization, the Wrd Bank, yesterday announced a $1 billion aid package to the Iranian theocracy, in direct contravention of US attempts to isolate Iran via economic and financial sanctions.

No, Rob, not about that, but about the general perils of inflationary monetary policy. Ms. Bundchen knows, as apparently a lot of people here do not, that the dollar has been plunging in the past few years due at least in part to the Fed’s work. As such, she’d be happier if her employers would pay her in a currency that wasn’t losing its value so quickly, as it saves her the trouble of getting her pay into a form that will hold its value better.

Having grown up in Brazil during one of its hyperinflationary periods, I would dare suggest that Bundchen is aware of the perils of expansionary monetary policy in a way that few Americans can be. Yes, we can learn a LOT from this particular supermodel in this regard, I dare suggest.

“Wow! Brazil is big.” –George W. Bush, after being shown a map of Brazil by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brasilia, Brazil, Nov. 6, 2005

Without pictures this post was useless.

Last time I checked, she’s not from America is she?

And before you ask, Bill, she can’t perform open heart surgery or fly a 747 either! (I’ll get back to you on how fluent she is in French!)

So 108, your hypothesis simply fails. High government spending simply does not correlate to monetary inflation, let alone cause it.

BB: It’s not an hypothesis, it’s reality. Money spent unproductively(social spending) increases the money supply without increasing productivity, which results in the money being worth less. It’s not rocket science. Any command economy(like Germany) creates its own economic stats, and if they want to show low inflation for political purposes, they can do that. It’s just shifted into another sector of the economy, resulting in lowered economic growth. Whether you call it inflation or lowered productivity, the end result is the same. Your semantic game is simply wrong.

Here comes another lecture about the “worthless fiat money” we all pay our mortgages with.

Whistler:

Without pictures this post was useless.

Well said. Enough talk of currency matters. I think we need more analysis of her most important assets.

i would prefer to get paid in precious metals, ammo, and guns. the universal currency! i wonder if that’s against ms. bundchen’s ethic? also, the fact that this is attracting attention really shows the link between tits and monetary policy. I think before bush tells us again not to worry and to go out and spend like nice little citizens… he should get a tit job! more people would clearly listen.

if she ain’t a jew, roma, or slav … her grandaddy might have been a Nazi!

Rob
Lots of brazilians are of german, austrian, and jewish decent. remember ww2 and the fallout? there is even a significant bolivian jewish population.