I believe most of the US's failing (and strengths) are cultural. It is a known fact that children of less educated parents will be less educated themselves relative to their peers. There is good evidence to suggest that student performance is directly related to parental involvement. In many more culturally homogeneous nations, policy takes average parental responsibility as a given. If as is the case in Latin America education is a lower priority than for example Northern Europe or East Asia (regardless of CPI) then focusing on averages is good government policy, while in higher achieving countries, focusing on the top is better policy. The United States has no such norms. It has an inconsistent mix of over- and under- achievers (greater standard deviation from manically diligent to morbidly lazy). If you reward parental responsibility or student performance the result will be stratification. If you reward the median then the best will be handicapped. I believe this problem is most pronounced in the United States than any other nation in which I have lived.

Personally, I think the federation is too big to be governed. Policy from high is irrelevant to the majority. Let the states compete. If they want to teach creationism in Indian or that God decreed pi to be precisely three in Alabama, then we should allow their GDP to fall and the intelligent to flee. Maybe after a generation they'll be smart enough to remodel their education system on successful States.

In this , I would have assigned you and cypherdoc and was afraid I'd get .

A betty is the BTC:USD pair? I don't follow what you're saying, the Bitcoin central bank will peg the BTC to the Euro? Or you mean before Zurich threw the wrench into the rally? Yes, this would be an ideal scenario, if it's easy to sell your european currency (euro, kroner, swissy) for btc (because it's seemingly pegged to the dollar) then it will appreciate even against the dollar. This would be an excellent development ahead of a Greek default.

With the dollar appreciating and flight from the euro, a stable USD/BTC might be an attractive hedge.

There's nothing holy about 100% debt/GDP, it's only psychological, because debt is in absolute terms while GDP is annual. I would suggest rate of change of deficit/GDP as a more telling statistic. But even that is misleading because as GDP goes down so does tax revenue, all else being equal, deficits will necessarily go up. What should scare the shit out of Americans and all major economies is that the ratio of welfare recipients (old people) to welfare payers (young people) is rapidly expanding and will continue to do so for at least a generation. US budgets:

2011 revenue:$2.17    expen:$3.82    deficit:$1.65 trillion

2010 revenue:$2.381    expen:$3.552    deficit:$1.171 trillion

2009 revenue:$2.7    expen:$3.107    deficit:$1.4 trillion

2008 revenue:$2.7    expen:$2.9    deficit:$0.4548 trillion

2007 revenue:$2.57    expen:$2.73    deficit:$0.161 trillion

2006 revenue:$2.41    expen:$2.66    deficit:$0.2482 trillion



Source Wikipedia and http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/03/the-2009-index-of-dependence-on-government

Are you from the region? I stayed in a small Shan village southwest of Chiang Rai, called Mae Lana, years ago while Thaksin had a bounty on drug dealers' heads which turned into an excuse for gang warfare. If I had known about the Taiwanese tea culture, I would have spent more time in Santikhiri, rather than swimming in tea on the wrong side of the Mekong.

WTF ? ? ?

Google tells me you have bold leaf, ruan zhi, jade, gue fei and da hong pao. Do the gardens sell directly? Does for example 101 also sell teas from Nantou? I'd be interested in purchasing a dozen 20g samples of pure oolongs. I tend toward darker caramels but am curious about all the oolongs in the region.

Nice. Should we watch part 1 and 2 first?

I suggest you support a state religion. Look at the apathy toward religion in educated societies where religion is state sponsored as opposed to the cultish fervor in nations with rampant unrestrained religious freedom marketing.

I've been predicting a federal European state for a decade and have always received a sort of "your nuts" reaction. The EU was founded on a very similar structure as the United States. The central government received power from the individual states. State power and voting rights were based proportionally to both discreet states and population size (in the US, 2 senators and congressmen proportional to population). Both systems solidify more central power during times of conflict and crisis until the states lose all sovereignty. It's a slow and seemingly inevitable process. The United States is on a path toward Empire, the Zenith before the fall. Ron Paul uniquely tries to turn the wheel back. Europe would be lucky to have such an knowledgeable, intuitive and noble politician.

So if you buy a ticket on that train of thought, 'lying' a new persona to satisfy others admits a respect for your audience over yourself. Acting in order to gain an advantage will likely put the spot light on your flaccid standing. Do you respect yourself?

I would say one should try to be sincerely humble, not for the sake of others, but for oneself. Recognize that you are not superior in most things, you have much to learn, and ignorance of your own ignorance is greater than all of your knowledge and ability.

Oh and smoke a spliff, get some pussy, travel, breath the air, is good advice. I'd throw a little acid in the mix as well.

I've got muskox wool (Qiviuq). You'll only need one pair and your neighbors will be warm.

TyGrr, do you know anything about tea in general or the tea you are considering selling specifically?

Hey Atlas, didn't Ayn Rand have a few words on this topic? For example, she attributed lying to a greater respect for others' impressions than respect for oneself.

It seems to me that while Asia or Europe might dream that their own currencies reach reserve status, they are so mortally dependent upon the relative strength of USD, that all major economies will conspire to prop USD up at nearly any cost. The US has plenty of wiggle room to continue monetizing its own debt in relation to the vast majority of other fiat currencies.

For the past ten years, gold has risen under the radar, primarily because there were other assets that consistently out performed. However, if gold continued and accelerated its trajectory throughout the last three years it would both signify and cause the destruction of USD and the major economies.

It follows therefor that the major economies would have every incentive to collude in the suppression of the price of gold if necessary. At less than $10 trillion (13 zeros, 15% gross global product), I think this game can be played for a very long time. After all, gold does not have its own military. This is not to say gold can not go higher, but I wouldn't count on its price reflecting fiat monetary inflation.

Cypherdoc's point, that deleveraging of the past three years overwhelms base USD supply, is undeniable. Even if southern Europe implodes orders of magnitude greater than Lehman, to where will Europeans flee, where are they already running? Perhaps this is precisely why gold just tanked. I have personally suggested that my friends and family in Europe buy up metal since July. They won't, but USD and American assets, sure.

I don't think there's anything significant one can say about volume. USD volume / BTC volume = USD/BTC price.

USD:

BTC:

Someone is determined to keep the price at $5 give or take 2%.

I'd like to see a little microlinux server with ncurses client packed into 10 mb + (well, we need to do something about this blockchain)

+1 .. I think it's inevitable: multiple implementations, expanding user base, simple proven algorithm, it'll happen. I expect firstbits could help condense the local block chain. There need only be one instance of each (firstbits key, address) tuple and all other instances of the address can be reduced about 80%.

At nearly 0% interest, UST's are free money for the US gov. When interest rates are forced to rise, I think defaulting on UST would be a fascinating play. By the time that might be considered, investors the world over won't know which direction is up.