Enishi

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9566#.UQd2UPL4LFE

Here's another good article on who controls the Fed and why it needs to be replaced: http://www.monetary.org/is-the-federal-reserve-system-a-governmental-or-a-privately-controlled-organization/2008/02

I agree, although the writer's arguments on his website are more nuanced and factual than those of many gold advocates, the "gold is REAL money!" assertion is one that I don't have much regard for anymore. It's really a form of gold mysticism that ought to be discarded. If one wants a sound currency, pegging it to the world's sum total of limited and sustainable resources and adopting a term like the "eco" would be a better bet imo.

http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2013/010313.html The World Gold Standard of 1870-1914: the Most Perfect Monetary System Ever Created January 3, 2013 (This item originally appeared at Forbes.com on January 3, 2013.) http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2013/01/03/the-1870-1914-gold-standard-the-most-perfect-one-ever-created/ The most perfect monetary system humans have yet created was the world gold standard system of the late 19th century, roughly 1870-1914. We don’t have to hypothesize too much about what a new world gold standard system could look like. We can just look at what has already been done. Contrary to popular belief, people generally did not conduct commerce with gold coins. Yes, gold coins existed, but people mostly used paper banknotes and bank transfers, just as they do today. In 1910, gold coins comprised $591 million out of total currency (base money) of $3,149 million in the United States, or 18.7%. These gold coins were probably not used actively, and served more as a savings device, in a coffee can for example. Silver coins were also used, but by then they had become token coins, just like our token coins today. By 1910, most countries in the world officially had “monometallic” monetary systems, with gold alone as the standard of currency value. This eliminated many of the difficulties of bimetallic systems, which had caused minor but chronic problems in the earlier 19th century. Also contrary to popular belief, there was no “100% bullion reserve” system, in which each banknote was “backed” by an equivalent amount of gold bullion in a vault. In the United States in 1910, gold bullion reserve coverage was 42% of banknotes in circulation. For other countries, we can refer to Monetary Policy Under the International Gold Standard: 1880-1914, by Arthur Bloomfield. It was published in 1959. Bloomfield provides references to major central bank balance sheets around the world. He summarizes various “reserve ratios,” but includes not only gold bullion but also foreign exchange reserves (i.e., bonds denominated in foreign gold-linked currencies). The “reserve ratios,” on this basis for 1910, were 46% in Britain, 54% in Germany, 60% in France, 41% in Belgium, 73% for the Netherlands, 68% for Denmark, 80% for Finland, 75% for Norway, 75% for Switzerland, 55% for Russia, and 62% for Austro-Hungary. Reserve ratios for gold bullion alone would be, naturally, less than these numbers. A number of countries had variations on a “gold exchange standard,” which is to say, a currency board-like system linked to a gold-linked reserve currency (usually the British pound). This became more common in the 1920s, and especially during the Bretton Woods period, but it was in regular use pre-1914 as well. Bloomfield lists countries on some form of a “gold exchange standard,” including: Russia, Japan, Austria-Hungary, the Netherlands, most Scandinavian countries, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, the Philippines, and “a number of other Asiatic and Latin American countries, whose currency systems operated analogously to modern currency boards.” The pre-1914 era was the age of empire, and many of these countries were formally or informally within one or another European empire. Their currency systems also ended up being subsidiary to the currency of the imperial seat. Most of the leading European countries had some sort of central bank, upon the model of the Bank of England. The U.S. did not, opting for a “free-banking” system (although one dominated by U.S. Treasury-issued banknotes). The countries with central banks also mimicked the Bank of England’s typical operating procedures, which included continuous involvement in credit markets by way of “discount” lending (short-term collateralized lending). This was not at all necessary, but was an outgrowth of the Bank of England’s history as a profit-making commercial bank. Thus, central banks also, in the fashion of the Bank of England, often managed base money supply by way of its lending policy, which included its “discount rate.” The world gold standard did not produce some sort of “balance” in the “balance of payments” – in other words, no current account deficit or surplus. There was no “price-specie-flow mechanism.” These so-called “balance of payments imbalances” are another word for “international capital flows,” and capital flowed freely in those days. With all countries basically using the same currency – gold as the standard of value – and also with legal and regulatory foundations normalized by European imperial governance, international trade and investment was easy. It was the first great age of globalization. Net foreign investment (“current account surplus”) was regularly above 6% of GDP for Britain, and climbed to an incredible 9% of GDP before World War I. From 1880 to 1914, British exports of goods and services averaged around 30% of GDP. (In 2011, it was 19.3%.) In 1914, 44% of global net foreign investment was coming from Britain. France accounted for 20%, Germany 13%. This river of capital flowed mostly to emerging markets. The United States, which was something of an emerging market in those days although one that was already surpassing its European forebears (much like China today), was a consistent capital-importer (“current account deficit”). Most British foreign capital went to Latin America; Africa accounted for much of the remainder. Gross global foreign investment rose from an estimated 7% of GDP in 1870 to 18% in 1914. In 1938, it had fallen back to 5%, and stayed at low levels until the 1970s. In 1870, the ratio of world trade to GDP was 10%, and rose to 21% in 1914. In 1938, it had fallen back to 9%. This explosion of European capital translated into tremendous investment around the world. British-governed India had no railways in 1849. In 1880, India had 9,000 miles of track. In 1929, there were 41,000 miles of railroad in India, build by British engineers, British capital, and Indian labor. British-governed South Africa opened its first railroad in 1860. This grew to 12,000 miles of track, not including extensions into today’s Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa. The arrangement was largely voluntary. There were no fiscal limitations or centralized governing bodies, such as the eurozone has today. The Bank of England served mostly as an example to imitate. Countries could opt out if they wished, and several did from time to time, although they usually tried to rejoin later. The countries that had rather loose allegiance to gold standard principles should be no surprise: Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Chile, and Greece, among others. With monetary stability assured by the gold standard system, bond yields fell everywhere to very low levels. Yields on long-term government bonds were 3.00% in France in 1902; 3.26% in the Netherlands in 1900; 2.92% in Belgium in 1900; 3.46% in Germany in 1900. Corporate bonds followed along: the yield on long-term high-grade railroad bonds in the United States was 3.18% in 1900. Unlike today, these rock-bottom yields were not obtained by every sort of central bank manipulation imaginable, but reflected the long history and expectation for monetary and macroeconomic stability that the gold standard system provided. They could continue at these low levels for decades, and often did: from 1821, when Britain returned to a gold standard after a floating-currency period during the Napoleonic Wars, to 1914, the average yield on government bonds of infinite (!) maturity in Britain was 3.14%. During the 20th century, and now into the 21st, no central bank in the world has been able to match this performance. They are not even in the same galaxy. No world monetary arrangement has provided even a pale shadow of that era’s incredible successes. We could create an updated version of the world gold standard system of the pre-1914 era. However, there isn’t really much need to change things very much. It worked fine, and would still be working today if not for World War I, and soon after, the rise of Keynesian notions that governments could manage their economies by jiggering the currency. This requires a floating currency, which is why we have floating currencies today. Once we finally abandon these funny-money notions – probably because of their catastrophic failure – it will be very easy to create, once again, a superlative world gold standard system.

Nice. I've noticed that in addition to music, other things that can set off spontaneous S-M for me are walking through or contemplating natural environments, and sudden epiphanies that break the usual linear chain of thought.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesdorn/2013/01/20/end-the-fed-or-celebrate-its-existence-reflections-on-our-central-banks-100th-anniversary/

For any degree that you want, go on job sites and look up the number of job openings for said field, along with stats on the number of regular applicants and other graduates. Career advisers at colleges really need to discuss this more, they tend to exaggerate the actual, objective opportunities out there.

A significant element, perhaps THE most important element of the Romans collapse was their treatment of the land they lived on. They cut down the forests en mass to supply their energy needs, and eventually had to import wood from outlying territories as the forests dissapeared. In addition, they depleted the quality of the soil through inefficient farming methods. Money and accounting is an abstract creation secondary to physical energy, and, along with other components of the Roman collapse, needs to be examined in relation to their treatment of the land and its energy.

I've noticed this as well. It's incredibly disconcerting. I'm starting to come around to the opinion that most 'spiritual practitioners' and 'Taoists' are just as politically and culturally indoctrinated, stubborn, blind and naive as any non-practitioner. Improving one's health and developing expanded awareness is certainly wonderful, but if said awareness and ability can't be applied to understanding and solving broad external problems beyond one's personal sphere, then those practices may very well go extinct as the world slides ever further down the path of increasingly destructive and violent changes.

Having grown up as a Christian, I'd say this is pretty accurate.

I wondered about that myself, it seems that the movements and focusing on the Dan are what initiate a shift in awareness and energy, and once it starts, you have to let go and let the 'shift' take the reins, rather than holding on to it forcefully.

For the sake of fairness and balance, I will post articles from the stable money camp as well. http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2012/020312.html

http://www.scotsman.com/news/alf-young-cashing-in-on-state-owned-banking-1-2654306

'Environmental destruction' is a category that includes not only the climate change debate, but also desalination, deforestation and eroding of the soil. Pollution of the oceans, which is very much an issue now particularly after Fukushima, is another big one. Some government regulations that favor big businesses do play a role I agree, but I have yet to see a convincing argument for how the above problems can be actively addressed without some form of state/public effort. On the subject of spending, I agree that spending in its 'current' form is a massive problem, but the areas of spending need to be looked at more closely. There's the military industrial complex and war efforts, which certainly need to be curtailed. There's also Medicare, a subject where I do in fact disagree with the majority. Karl Denninger does a good job of pointing this out on his Market Ticker blog, even given the most ambitious spending plan Medicare simply WILL NOT remain solvent indefinitely, very deep reforms are needed. Another spending black hole is the banking sector. Subtract bonuses to banker CEOs and administrators, along with the interest collected, and you free up significant room. Excess spending can however pay off if it's funded directly into infrastructure projects, rather than the financial sector. Such attempts were made by FDR, and some of them worked. Reform the banking/monetary, and it will be easier to implement similar efforts.

I agree, I often had a O.o reaction to his posts but on the other hand I liked his enthusiasm and eccentric ways.

Species extinction is very much a problem as each species is part of an intricate biosphere, and the removal of any one 'thread' can have countless unforeseen effects. In addition, most of the species dying out now aren't disappearing due to ordinary processes, but human activities that aren't sustainable in the long-term. That being said though, I do agree that trying to preserve species like Cheetahs that are quite rare and not particularly 'fit' will not make much of a difference either.

IIH is the main Hermetic system I'm familiar with, and has been a long time obsession. One thing I notice however is that some of the exercises can, depending on your individual quirks and makeup, be done much more easily if you approach them in a manner slightly different than Bardon explicitly described. Case in point, it's easier for me to do the sense concentrations in Step II if I make them fun, i.e. visualizing scenes from my writing or other stories, as opposed to something boring like visualizing an orange. Also, I still cannot forcibly hold my mind empty for very long, I have to 'ease into it' as I learned in Stillness-Movement. William Mistele writes about some of these personal alterations that can make the system better work for you, his approach is less orthodox than Rawn Clark's. Another thing he mentions is that starting with Akashic meditations earlier can be more expendient, and that, furthermore, many of the earlier meditations in the book ARE working with the Akasha, just in a more limited sense.

The history of Western Medicine, when fully examined, is not quite as glorious as the media and the academic/medical establishment would have one think. It's excellent for treating emergencies but in terms of preventive care it is quite lacking, and there's quite a few nasty skeletons in its closet, among them the suppression of treatments that didn't fit into the materialist paradigm. Numerous procedures performed at hospitals here in America aren't even necessary, but done for the sake of regulations to prevent lawsuits. More complementary treatments would help prevent such colossal suffering and waste. http://www.ahealedpl...et/medicine.htm

Agreed, I'm going to make one soon.

I'm kinda baffled that the ability to plug one's awareness into various energy sources and fields isn't more widespread, once you know the trick it's not terribly difficult. Then again it's something that's hard to describe with words, and most have been conditioned to thinking along linear lines.

Lol sorry. In terms of footwear I'm trying to get ahold of more 100% cotten socks and leisure clothes now. I've noticed that wearing my cotton pajamas result in better meditation sessions as oppose to blue jeans.

I bought a small fountain for my room recently, I wonder if it might help replenish the negative ions in the air? I should really start using it more.

One interesting thing about the reforms mentioned here is that besides persecuting and jailing the bankers, the other steps Iceland took such as initially nationalizing their banks and then instituting Glass-Steagall type regulations is something that a fair number of Austrian Economists/Libertarians are against. Their opposition to the broken system has been a great contribution, but when it comes to proposing solutions, they operate too much on an a priori abstract ideology, which can blind a person. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-03/post-crisis-iceland-is-test-site-for-too-big-to-fail-prevention.html

My own experience with Akasha, both from Initiation into Hermetics and from William Mistele's articles, is of a deep stillness/awareness that penetrates through both time and space. It seems dark at first, yet is at the same time laden with potential life and energy waiting to be actualized. The description of the traits of Air/Fire/Akasha in IIT is comparative to Wood/Fire/Metal to an extent, but not in full. The Western Elements seem to be more about astral/mental plane rarefied essences as opposed to direct physical transformations and phases. Overall I find it more enjoyable and instructive to work directly with various energies. My poor frustrated left-brain wants to try to grasp and define it all, but anything written on paper tends to a case of a sign that can only point you in the direction, it can't capture the actual reality.