Miscellaneous updates...

I have fully recovered from my fall into Tea Party madness. Whew!! I actually spent a couple of hours yesterday getting a a more balanced perspective of the Federal Reserve system and fractional reserve banking. I'm now aware of the advantages and problems with an elastic money supply. I'll also know exactly what it means when the Federal Reserve buys Treasury bonds, which it will be doing to the tune of $25 billion monthly, until further notice. Here is a link to the Planet Money article that started this whole intellectual excursion. I guess I can add monetary policy to the list of potential topics I might blog about.

More exciting things are on the horizon in my life as well. Today is my first singing lesson (of my third round of lessons, that is). I know I won't be doing much singing, mainly breathing. Also today is the launch of the Fall/Winter 2011 edition of Louisville Bride Magazine, in which I have a styling credit. At end the week, I'm supoosed to go to The Temple for Kabbalat Shabbat.

Off to my lesson...

The Creation of Money

For some reason I have been watching documentaries about our monetary system all day long. I'm not exactly sure how I went off on this tangent, but my search for "finance documentaries" led me to this page, where I have spent most of my day.

I have learned all about the perils of the Federal Reserve system, and the impending financial disaster that will dwarf any that we have seen so far. Part of me was getting swept up in the momentum, and but a larger part of me was having flashbacks of all the Armageddon craziness I grew up with as a child. Some of what I heard even sounded like Tea Party conspiracy theory.

Could it really be all doom and gloom as some of these people are predicting? Maybe so. I think people are so irrational when it comes to money and have no clue how the monetary system works that it will all be perpetuated until it becomes painfully obvious that it is not working. I didn't realize until today that money now represents debt instead of value.

It also never occurred to me that money actually disappears from our money supply when a debt is paid off, since the bank created that money out of thin air in the first place, and must create more debt to replace it (in the system as a whole). I really thought there was gold in a vault somewhere, even though I know I've listened to debates about going back to the "gold standard" on NPR.

In the end, I'm sure we'll eventually get more regulation and come to some sort of balance. But I'll be looking into urban homesteading and living off the grid...just in case.