Monetary meltdowns, the stink of molten cash, bitcoin blues and other funny money

In addition to mortgage meltdowns and market
meltdowns, much of the world may soon be able to
 see it's money melt, like ice cream in a blast furnace.

Maybe it’s the Christmas spirit. The Christmas money spending spirit, that is. Everywhere I go, the news turns to money.

In today's paper there's an article about Great Britain’s move (along with the move of other countries) to plastic money. No, not the credit card kind of plastic. I’m talking here about the kind of money that most countries once printed on paper. Apparently everybody’s printing money on polymer plastic now. Except us.

Today's New York Times reassured all of us about the fragility of plastic money:

“Richard Wall, the director of currency at the Bank of Canada, dismissed claims that polymer bills melt after being left inside cars on hot summer days or become brittle and snap in extreme cold. He said temperatures that would melt the bills would also melt interior plastics in a car. Tests show that polymer bills can withstand temperatures as high as 284 degrees Fahrenheit and as low as minus 103. 

(In an unscientific test using a household oven set to 280 degrees Fahrenheit, a new Canadian 5 dollar note did not melt. But after eight minutes, it started to smell bad, shrink substantially and curl markedly. Its translucent security features also became opaque blobs.”) 

This gives new meaning to the old cliche, "Keep your stinking money."

Then there’s bitcoin, a new form of currency consisting of a string of numbers, which in turn consist of even longer strings of the numbers in various combinations of one and zero. I hear that you “mine” them by solving mathematical problems. And they have value because everybody says they have value, whoever “everybody” is. I can tell you that everybody isn’t me. The first person who tries to pay me for anything in bitcoin will get bitten.

You really wanna know the truth? I have no idea what the bitcoin market is all about, or how you can produce something of value by solving a mathematical problem that is designed for the sole purpose of giving you a bitcoin if you get the right answer. Or why anybody would want to indulge in this stuff. Bitcoin is supposedly good for money laundering and illegal drug transactions, although I don’t understand why, especially now that there’s easily washable plastic cash.

Besides, as I write this, bitcoin holders must be biting on sticks, while the value of bitcoin plunges.

Finally, there’s the stock market. That interests me because that’s where my old age money is, nary a penny of it in bitcoin.)

According to all the theories I learned both in liberal Idiot Econ 101 back in my college days, and from my high school econ teacher, Miss Estelle Dwyer, who was somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, the market goes up in good economies and goes down in bad economies. Once upon a time, both the Left and the Right agreed on this.

Except that’s not true right now. Or at least not in the USA, where the market for the past few days has begun drifting down from all-time highs because the economy is getting better. That’s because, with the economy improving, the gnomes of Wall Street fear the U.S. Federal Reserve, (or is it the U.S. Treasury, or somebody ipretending to be Ben Bernacke or Janet Yellen?) will tighten up money, which will raise interest rates, which will make people less willing to invest to get dividends when they can put their money in the banks and earn interest without watching the value of some underlying stock see-saw up and down.

But if the economy starts plunging back into the toilet, the Fed will have to prop up the economy (and drag up the national debt) by loosening up money. In which case, a toilet bowl economy will create a stratospheric stock market.

Except, it turns out that these days the bank’s no place to put money either, even if the interest rates go sky high. That’s because, the banks appear to be back on their funny-money teeter-totters, and evidently if they fail again, there’s not enough money on the planet to bail them out. And also because, even if we do have a bailout, due to some technicality that causes me to grind my teeth with rage even though I don’t understand it, the government will be required to pay back the bankers who get us into the mess before they pay the insured depositors whose money got gambled away by the bankers. Which means, if true, that you rmoney is as safe in the bank as it is in 250 Shares Consolidated Hose Nozzle in the thieves market in Timbuctu.

I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.

Tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna get in bed with a bottle of scotch and ... oh, wait a second. Have you seen what a nice bottle of Scotch costs lately?

I wonder if the liquor store takes molten plastic?

Poison-me-Elmo, Dora the Toxic Explorer, and the Deadly Cookie Monster: Killing our kids for the sake of a buck?

I’ve just noticed that Mattel has announced a recall of toys. Evidently, Mattel’s crisis management PR guys must be burning billable hours full-tilt.

It seems someone found lead in the paint on a whole bunch of Mattel toys. Just the thing you don’t want your kids touching or putting in their mouths.

Why is that? Well, according to the National Safety Council, lead poisoning can result in “reduced IQ, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, behavioral problems, stunted growth, impaired hearing, and kidney damage. At high levels of exposure, a child may become mentally retarded, fall into a coma, and even die from lead poisoning.” (URL at the bottom of this post.)

Now look, I’m not criticizing Mattel for recalling what may be toxic toys. In that respect they’re doing the right thing.

But they also must be aware that there may be hell to pay when the stockholders latch on to this. The stock, in Thursday’s generally upward-moving market, fell 40 cents, or 2.7 percent. Things could be worse if customers stop buying Mattel products.

Minimizing the alarm

No wonder they’re minimizing the matter, even as they announce that their stuff may be poisonous. To quote an AP article (URL at the bottom of this piece) that quoted a Mattel honcho:

"We require our manufacturing partners to use paint from approved and certified suppliers and have procedures in place to test and verify, but in this particular case our procedures were not followed," Jim Walter, Mattel's senior vice president of worldwide quality assurance, said in a statement. "We are investigating the cause to ensure such events do not reoccur."

Well, Jim, glad you’re finally “investigating.” But I can’t help noticing that “this particular case” covers 83 different toys. To me that’s eighty-three cases. Eighty-three times how many units have you sold? In how many stores? Equals how many possibly poisoned babies, toddlers and little kids?

Oh, sorry, Mattel is not offering that information.

Who should take the blame for this? Blame Old Man Greed, who has agents ready to poison all of us for a buck every step of the way.

Death for your kids: another fine
product of our outsourced economy

We manufacture hardly anything in this country any more. To save a buck – and put much of that buck toward profits – we outsource just about everything we manufacture and a heck of a lot of stuff we eat to some low-wage corner of the world, There, desperate people can manufacture or grow it on the cheap.

And our prime source of stuff that we once made and grew for ourselves? Why, China, of course. So far, we’ve learned that China has poisoned our dog food, China has poisoned our cat food, China may be poisoning our own human food, and now they’re poisoning our toys. What's next, pharmaceuticals?

Sometimes when this happens, China arrests the president of some poisonous outsource facility and puts a bullet in the back of his head. You can rest assured that this teaches him a lesson he’ll never forget. Guaranteed he’ll never poison us again. Instead, it’ll be someone else’s turn.

What do you do when the enemy
controls your war production?

Other results of outsourcing are just as grave. Roughly two decades ago, I had a chat with the officer of a small conglomerate that was buying up high tech companies and making them more profitable before spinning them off again.

His company had purchased a U.S. military subcontractor that made missile nose cones. Then they moved the manufacturing facility from the United States to Pakistan, which resulted in cheaper labor, lower overhead and higher profits for the conglomerate. Of course there was a small problem.

Pakistan.

If we ever have to chase after Osama Bin Laden on the Pakistan border over Pakistan’s objections, what do we do? Call up the President of Pakistan and say, “Stop blocking those nose cone shipments? We need them to bomb you.”

Not to mention the possibility that Osama himself, as you read this, may be, umm, appropriating missile parts for his own purposes.

If we’re going to fix the problem we need a law that insists that every item sold in this country – and I mean every item – should come with a clear label that designates the country of origin. And we’ve got to ban outsourcing for defense.

And finally, we've got to ban outsourcing, period, from any country were there is a history of selling us impure or poisonous products – before all of us end up either economic prisoners of foreign suppliers, or poisoned by them.

The Republican Kumbaya tango

That noise you hear in the distance is the loud groaning of big business Republicans, wanting to know why we all can’t be nice and international and sing Kumbaya. Funny how they (and yes, some Democrats as well) turn into a bunch of hippies who want to buy the world a Coke whenever what’s really at stake is guarding huge profits at the expense of Americans. And that includes American kids who could be poisoned by their toys.

What’s next? A doll called Lucretia Barbie?


Check out these URLS:

(Note, I’m having linking problems that are making me very, very cranky. If the links don’t link, just copy and paste ‘em. That usually works.

The list of 83 potentially poisonous Mattel toys:
http://www.service.mattel.com/us/recall/39054_IVR.asp?prod=

News report on same:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070802/toy_recall_mattel.html?.v=3

What lead poisoning does to your kids:
http://www.nsc.org/library/facts/lead.htm

Duh!

Republican appointee Ben Bernake displays his financial wizardry to Congress:

"'Crucially, whatever size of government is chosen, tax rates must ultimately be set at a level sufficient to achieve an appropriate balance of spending and revenues in the long run,' Bernanke said.

"Bernanke said advocates of lower taxes would have to accept lower spending on entitlement programs. Likewise, proponents of more-expansive government programs must recognize the need for higher taxes brought about by higher spending, he added."

Perhaps this genius ought to explain Economics for Dummies to the dummy who appointed him.

Only a suggestion.

You'll find the entire laughable account here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070228/bs_nm/usa_fed_bernanke_dc