Hey, Cool!

[ellyssian]

The US is completing its slide into a third world country! Our money is now being refused at places in Amsterdam (and, I suspect, other places in Europe...)

I bet we'd have been in better shape if we'd had a conservative or a liberal regime for the last eight years. These spendthrift fascists really do a number on a country.

Comments

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

True enough. Actual conservatives would have been preferable to what we had.

[wolfette]

maybe Cubans would still accept them?

[nursemae.livejournal.com]

I am not surprised...

By the time I left Germany I was fondly remembering how it was when I arrived there - the USD was worth a few more cents than the Euro! When I left I was crying because a quarter of every dollar I made was instantly gone...it actually drove me to shop on base more, which I rarely did.

It was nice to come back to where a dollar is a dollar!

[patrixa.livejournal.com]

Don't know if it is a party fault or the fault of an inept president and his policies; I suspect the latter. Fascism comes into play because all in position to oppose his edicts seem frightened to do so. Am I one of a handful who recall reading about pre WW II German inflation and what the fascist (oops, I mean Nazi) regime did to end it? It's probably not a tall tale to doubt Bush knows of it.

[rowancat.livejournal.com]

I'd think that was common knowledge taught in any competent modern history course.
But i then really doubt that Bush has any idea of what happen around 116-117 AD after Trajan overran and annexed what is now Iraq. While the rest of the Parthian Empire was regrouping in Persia and he faced insurrections in the
new provinces, the cost of raising 4-5 new legions (not to mention finding the manpower) to hold them and... had a general uprising in the Eastern part of
the Roman Empire because of the drain on the economy from the war
and the increasingly debased denarius.
The following second century of "peace" also saw a rapidly growing huge gap
of wealth and interpretation of law and privilege between the top 10% and the
rest of Roman citizens.
Not even counting the non citizens, mostly in the provinces.

[patrixa.livejournal.com]

The oft-quoted over the years statement: "Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it" is as true as it ever was. Some times I'm glad I'm getting old.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I have trouble with any officer in any branch of the military who thinks that the war is in any way a good idea or that it even has the slightest possibility of achieving a winning outcome for us.

Saying anything else shows a complete failure to understand military history, which comprises a large part of learning military tactics. You keep hearing things about how this is a new type of enemy that hasn't been faced before - and it hasn't, it's a brand new creation, provided you choose to ignore everything you learned and bind yourself lockstep to politics. Otherwise, you could just grab some carbon paper and create the scenarios from earlier invading empires and the resistance they faced.

[rowancat.livejournal.com]

Irony, back in the late nineties i won a British gold rose guinea of
George III at half its usual price in the USA by bidding online at a
large numismatic auction house based in Brussels in Belgium.

The gold guinea was the rare (because of demand in the USA) 1776 issue.
It was from a large collection in America and may well have had a USA provence. Many were shipped to the American colonies to pay for the British
military, government and well off colonists and merchants.

They still find them in the deep woods alongside the Hudson River in upstate NY because of the war going badly for the British there.

I paid in dollars converted to Euros.
The Euro was worth barely .85 cents USA at the time.
Low enough to soak up the cost of the buyers fee, etc.
The pound sterling was about 1.45 USA

In the early sixties i always carried a half dozen or so common date/mint British gold sovereigns (one quarter troy ounce each) in Europe and Asia.
Paying in USA dollars dropped prices by about 25%
Paying in gold coin dropped prices by 50% or more as you traveled East.