today's topic...
i promise not to say a word about deflation. inflation . or.. even the price of fish.
but it is so difficult to avoid so please dont hold me too close to my promise.
because fiat money, though usually a topic of economics where people talk of M2 or whatever, has so become an issue. everyone knows its basis is confidence in the system of the caesar whose head is on the coin or banknote in more modern times.
it is only redeemable in terms of belief in the system. you know that. (btw, the image above is of a coin issued by julius caesar, dictator of rome.)
in the days when rome was an expanding power, the currency was copper. lumps of it would be weighed out in exchange for goods etc. later silver was used. it was minted and the price of the coin was determined by factors other than its intrinsic worth/weight. i like to remind the gentle reader of these things. as we know, these days the metal of choice is gold though silver has certainly gone the distance.
well.. ceasar changes but rome doesn't change. ------despite the rhetoric emanating from the power locii.. hehehe.
but if you look at it now a couple of millenia further on then yes..indeed rome has changed.. in many ways the change has been positive. the romans were a distorted bunch whose contribution was largely negative and whose perfidy was so demonstrated time and again from the murderous conquest of italy to the punic wars to basically every betrayal of humanity they made. at least these days they stay in rome. the power they had has so shifted.
still some good things came out of it all.. cement and aquaducts. virgil and catallus.. thats about it.
rome fell and its bastards continued with their bastardry. louis the fourteenth (also known as 'cat whores' for some reason) you could say set in train a policy that bankrupted the most opulent of them and ultimately lead to the revolution of 1779 or whenever they actually cut the head of louis 16. his grandson.
everyone says that this is the only way to kill a zombie, but i have my doubts.. lol. (hey dont quote me on the dates or the details.. i wasn't a history major.. & i only visited versailles once..)
zombies just seem to be coming up a fair bit in the ether recently..hehehe.
the french kings lost credibility. the portrait on the coin (the franc) had no value. only the metal it was made of. commodities don't lose value.. they are value. obviously
grandmother used to say..
'most of life is froth and bubble,
two things stand as stone,
kindness in anothers trouble
and courage in your own.'
i dont know where it comes from..
she passed away years ago. bless her.
i would tend to add certain commodities to the list after the aforementioned courage and kindness.
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