Dr. C.

9 Comments

    • ON: Wed Oct 8th 21:06 PM
      Commented on:
      The Beginning of the Endgame for Monetary Policy, Redux
      debtacid:

      while it's a great quote, source is questionable. see....

      see: www.americanvision.org...

      "Then there’s the attribution of the following citation to historian Alexander Fraser Tytler (or Tyler) (1747–1813). It supports what many believe are important political observations, but is it authentic? Can it be found in any of the works of Alexander Tytler?:

      A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

      Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

      Like the dubious James Madison quotation, the Tytler extract is cited on a regular basis and often finds its way into published works.5 While there was an Alexander Tytler, there is no extant evidence that puts these words in his mouth or in any of his published works. Supposedly it can be found in a book supposedly written by Tytler that goes by the title The Fall of the Athenian Republic or The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic. There is no such book in circulation or attributed to him. Others claim that the quotation can be located in Tytler’s Elements of General History: Ancient and Modern, a book that does exist. The following response from the library of the University of Edinburgh states that their research has shown that the quotation does not appear in the library’s holdings of Tytler’s books:

      Edinburgh University Library occasionally receives enquiries, particularly from North America, about this particular work. However, this title is not in our Library holdings, nor does it appear in the stocks of the other major research libraries in the United Kingdom. . . . Locally, the chapters of Tytler’s General History . . . (which we DO have) has been checked on the off-chance that The Decline and Fall [of the Athenian Republic] might have been a chapter title . . . but it is not. . . . We have scanned our holdings pretty thoroughly on different occasions, going back a few years now, but we have not found the quotation or anything similar to it, but we cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that we have missed it.6

      Even the United States Library of Congress has been called in on the search with no success in finding the much cited but elusive quotation. Even so, the Madison and Tytler quotations continue to circulate as authentic history. Here’s the lesson to be learned: If there are so many who are willing to accept the authenticity of historical citations with something less than a shred of evidence, then it shouldn’t surprise us when students accept historical accounts found in textbooks and scholarly journals that have about the same amount of evidentiary support. The difference, however, is that so much of what finds its way into textbooks and popular works of history affect the way Christianity and the Bible are portrayed. It’s one thing to be wrong about a few unsupported quotations; it’s another thing to reshape a school curriculum based on fabricated history that relegates the Bible to the dust bin of history. "

      ----------------------...
      just thought readers might be interested.....//
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    • ON: Fri Jun 6th 17:14 PM
      Commented on:
      Thursday Was a Huge Day for This Market
      Friday was also a HUGE day - bigger then thursday I believe.....//

      disclosure: still long SKF
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    • ON: Mon Mar 31st 11:27 AM
      Commented on:
      A Far Cry from "Hooverville"
      Comparing today's published unemployment rate to historical rates is meaningless. Today's unemployment rate calculated as it was calculated in the first half of the 1900's would be about 12%. See: www.shadowstats.com/ar... and www.shadowstats.com/al... .
      View article »
    • ON: Sat Mar 29th 09:25 AM
      Commented on:
      Investor Sentiment and Market Returns: Now's the Time to Be Bold
      Wish you would have included data on 1929 and 1970 - all your data points reflect recent observations in a cyclical bull period. Things could well be different now.
      View article »
    • ON: Mon Mar 3rd 08:06 AM
      Commented on:
      Time to Get Serious About Utilizing Short ETFs
      Good points! I agree - the pundits (pinheads?) don't seem to read the news - they just make up

      Been in and out of SKF, SRS, a few times since December. Back in last week when both SKF and SRS around $105 and Gasparino was floating his tales. Also into QID.

      Plan is to stay short 6-12 months for the big leg down then move into DBA and GLD long term.
      View article »
    • ON: Fri Feb 29th 20:23 PM
      Commented on:
      Inflation's Power: The Dollar in 25 Years
      For user 4326 - actually it is worse then it seems. Incomes have not kept up with inflation, the standard of living will continue to fall, and the US is heading for bankruptcy and financial collapse.

      Since the late 1960's the $ has lost about 90% of it's value - on average, prices have increased by a factor of about 10x. Over the same period, average household income has increased by a factor of about 7x - and in the 1960's most households were single earning households. Today most households have two earners. So even the shift to dual income households has not kept household income rising fast enough to keep up with rising prices.

      If you're collecting social security or military retirement benefits (or plan to before the country goes bankrupt and defaults), increases in benefits (cola or cost of living adjustments) are calculated based on the understated official CPI. Since the official CPI annually understates the true inflation rate (and has for 25 years) current (and future) benefit levels have not risen fast enough to match rising prices. see www.shadowstats.com/ar... for a discussion of this.

      I also highly recommend the link to the David Walker video that talktowen posted - here is another.
      www.youtube.com/watch?...

      Sound investing now in commodities and real money (gold) will help you increase your wealth but if you think the next 30 years will look anything at all like the halcyon years we've experienced in the last 30 years you are in for a rude shock. We are in for some serious problems.
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    • ON: Fri Feb 29th 11:10 AM
      Commented on:
      Inflation's Power: The Dollar in 25 Years
      The real inflation rate (not the published government version) is closer to 12%. See shadowstats.com/altern... . This rate takes that future buying power down to about $40 in today's $'s.

      (sorry about this double post - somehow I posted under someone else's name above)
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    • ON: Fri Feb 29th 11:08 AM
      Commented on:
      Inflation's Power: The Dollar in 25 Years
      The real inflation rate (not the published government version) is closer to 12%. See www.shadowstats.com/al... . This rate takes that future buying power down to about $40 in today's $'s.
      View article »
    • ON: Mon Jan 7th 08:28 AM
      Commented on:
      Ron Paul Supporters Claim Hand in News Corp 'Rout'
      Way in the green and donating the profits to Ron Paul.
      View article »
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