-----Original Message-----
From: pete <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Monday, January 12, 1998 6:50 PM
Subject: FW: Re The ghost in the mirror
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Walker) wrote:
>
>>We will hear many times over the next weeks and months from the likes of
>>Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan the phrase, "the economic fundamentals are
>>sound." We will also hear the media repeatedly use the metaphor,
"financial
>>meltdown." Paper is not plutonium.
Pete's extract calls attention to the phrase 'Paper is not plutonium.' It
reminds me of Sam Goldwyn's saying, 'Verbal contracts aren't worth the paper
they are written on.' Today's money may not be worth the paper it's written
on since it's mostly computer records. Collectively, national currencies are
backed by trillions of dollars in debt. The U.S. dollar alone is backed by
$4-6 trillion in debt depending on whose numbers you believe. Perhaps we
shouldn't take these currencies too seriously.
>I always laugh when I hear the phrase "the economy is fundamentally
>sound". I don't know, I've been on this list a couple of years,
>perhaps I've told this story here before; if so, sorry.
>
>Political leaders are always constrained to say the economy is sound
>regardless of its real state, because of the danger of causing
>greater damage by scaring investors with the truth, investors being
>seemingly more skittish than sheep. This leads to some absurd
>situations, and a lot of them were occurring during the early
>years of the Depression in '30-'31.
Yesterday I visited Toronto's main reference library to do some research.
After 6 or 7 hours I got an impuse to look at the micro fiche of the 1930s
Globe and Mail. A January first page one article predicted a fundamentally
sound year for the Canadian economy.
I didn't expect an article that sounded like cnbc when the market are
dropping. I shut the machine down, left the library and walked west along
Bloor Street looking for bookstores and a place to eat. I shared red lights
with a man eating fries out of a McDonald's bag. His pants were dirty but
his jacket looked new and clean. I wondered if he was a factory worker
heading home from a dirty job or a street person. As we walked along he
spotted a drink container with a straw sitting beside the sidewalk, grabbed
it, and took a long suck on the straw.
David
Orillia Ontario
