". . . a republic, if you can keep it."
At what point can we speak about immigration and race without being denounced? We’ve been trained to denounce one another. It’s terrifying, reminiscent of how the communists trained the populations they enslaved to denounce one another as capitalists or saboteurs.
When a German public school only has three German students left, is that a good thing? And what should we think when Peter Sutherland of Goldman Sachs says that European ethnicity must be “undermined” through mass immigration?
Most American’s don’t know that there’s a backlash underway in Europe against the mass immigration imposed on them by the EU, and the paralyzing political correctness imported from the United States. Some MPs voice the backlash starting at 26:00.
Lew Rockwell:
The neocons ran their usual smear campaign against Ron Paul when they discovered he would be speaking at a big Catholic gathering on peace. But it was a belly flop for the warmongers. Of course, he kept his word, gave a magnificent speech, and the libelers fell flat on their faces, as always, as he was cheered again and again.
One of the highpoints for Ron was his talk with the Catholic archbishop of Antioch, who had been a priest in the US for 20 years, and who is a genuine expert on the horrific, neocon-promoted events in Syria. Ron also noted what a sweet, gentle, and loving crowd it was, the opposite of what the neocons claimed. But then, they are virtually always opposite to the truth.
Ron had noted that it not easy to take part in a gathering where the other speakers advocate evil, but nevertheless he had decided to participate in the Republican presidential debates.
In the US government’s campaign against journalists (FAIR Blog, 8/27/13), Barrett Brown is one of the lesser-known victims. And now even less will be forthcoming about his story, as the Texas-based writer, satirist and Internet activist is under a federal court gag order, forbidden to talk about his case or the charges that could land him in prison for more than 100 years.
Brown was arrested in Dallas a year ago, hit with a dozen charges of identity theft for pasting a link to the chat room of ProjectPM, a wiki research forum he founded in 2009. The link led to a huge cache of hacked documents posted to WikiLeaks that had been purloined from the intelligence contractor Stratfor Global Intelligence. Among some 5 million documents, some politically embarrassing to the firm and its clients, were some files containing credit card information. Brown’s linking to the huge trove containing a relatively small amount of personal financial information is the basis for the identity theft charge. 
(Read more)
I was surprised to discover no readily available list of worldwide monetary supplies denominated in a common unit like dollars or ounces of gold but such a list is easily calculable from publically available data. Here, I use M2 data from the World Bank and the United Nations’ list of exchange rates. I repeated the calculation using M1 data from the Trading Economics data service.
A spreadsheet containing this analysis is available here.
So what do the numbers reveal and how do crypto currencies compare?
| 1. All Euros | $21.69 Trillion | |
| 2. China | 15.89 | |
| 3. United States | 14.10 | |
| 4. Japan | 11.68 | |
| 5. Germany | 6.13 | |
| 6. France | 4.25 | |
| 7. United Kingdom | 3.87 | |
| 8. Italy | 3.43 | |
| 9. Spain | 2.65 | |
| 10. Canada (2008 data) | 1.97 | |
| 11. Netherlands | 1.90 | |
| 12. Korea, Rep. | 1.65 | |
| 13. Brazil | 1.56 | |
| 14. Australia | 1.38 | |
| 15. India | 1.26 | |
| 16. Switzerland | 1.20 | |
| 17. Russian Fed. | 0.98 | |
| 18. Hong Kong SAR | 0.88 | |
| 19. Austria | 0.72 | |
| 20. Belgium | 0.68 |
| 1. Euro Total | $7.03 Trillion | |
| 2. Japan | 5.73 | |
| 3. China | 5.07 | |
| 4. United States | 2.55 | |
| 5. United Kingdom | 1.86 | |
| 6. Germany | 1.84 | |
| 7. France | 1.07 | |
| 8. Italy | 1.04 | |
| 9. Spain | 0.70 | |
| 10. Canada | 0.68 | |
| 11. Switzerland | 0.59 | |
| 12. Netherlands | 0.46 | |
| 13. Korea, Rep. | 0.44 | |
| 14. Russian Fed. | 0.42 | |
| 15. India | 0.32 | |
| 16. Saudi Arabia | 0.26 | |
| 17. Australia | 0.25 | |
| 18. Luxembourg | 0.21 | |
| 19. Austria | 0.19 | |
| 20. Hong Kong SAR | 0.18 |
One surprise (for my American mentality) is that dollars are not the biggest, nor second biggest monetary supply in terms of value. They are third or fourth biggest depending on whether one considers M2 or M1.
Please note, the data is imperfect: the M1 data is newer than the M2 data, but the difference in M2 versus M1 ranking also speaks to great differences in banking structure and practices in various countries.
The main difference between M2 and M1 is that M2 includes savings and money market accounts. The proportion of M2 to M1 varies widely between countries. Though the ratios may be off because some data is older than other data, in the United States, M2 is more than five times bigger than M1. In Luxembourg, it’s only 1.3 times bigger. In Saudi Arabia, it’s 1.5 times bigger.
As of the time of this writing (September 7th, 2013), all the Bitcoins in the world are worth about $1.39 Billion. That makes their supply slightly less valuable than the M2 monetary supplies of Chad, Guyana, Montenegro, but slightly more valuable than the M2 monetary supplies of Mauritania, the Maldives, Belize, El Salvador, Malawi and Tajikistan. Bitcoins are on the map!
All the Litecoins in the world are worth about $59 million dollars, which is a little better than half the value of the smallest M2 monetary supply reported by the World Bank, that of Sao Tome and Principe.
The methodology behind this last analysis is speculative, but interesting nonetheless. What if we measured the value-per-note of all mediums of exchange? What if we counted all the notes in the world (Dollars, Euros, Litecoins, Vietnamese Dongs, Yen, Rubles, Lira, etc), and then counted the value of all the notes. For any currency, we could then compare their percentage of world-wide notes to their percentage of value of all the monies.
For example, imagine a world in which only two mediums of exchange were used: Roman’s Rubles and Mises’s Marks. Imagine that a million of each circulated, but Mises’s Marks were three times as valuable as the Rubles.
It’s easy to quantify the difference. Mises’s Marks represent three quarters of the value and only half of the notes. This can be described by a factor of 1.5. Roman’s Rubles also represent half the notes, but only one quarter of the value. They can be given a factor of 0.5.
A real-world example would be comparing Vietnam’s money, the Dong to the Euro. Taken note for note, the Dong represents a quarter of all the money in circulation, but only 0.15% of the value (when considering M2). The Euro is almost the exact converse. Euros represent 0.15% of the notes, but a quarter of value of all mediums of exchange in this analysis.
What conclusions be gleaned from this data? Most interestingly, is this factor (percent of value divided by percent of notes) in any way measure trust?
Several methodological concerns come to mind:
1) Aggregating all mediums of exchange, including Tide, gold and pig tusks (used as a medium of exchange on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu) seems like the best approach. In this analysis, only M2 data and the two most valuable crypto currencies, Bitcoin and Litecoin, are considered.
2) How would gold be incorporated into this analysis, since there is no single obvious unit to represent a note? People trade in grams, ounces, bars, tonnes.
3) Should crypto currencies be compared with M2, M1, or not at all? The ranking of trust factors was similar for M2 data and M1 data.
4) Can value per note be a meaningful measure of trust or anything else? Perhaps monetary discipline? What correlations can be found with this ratio?
With these concerns in mind, here is a list of the most and least trust monies using M2 data:
| 1. Bitcoin | 15,589 |
| 2. Kuwaiti Dinar | 456 |
| 3. Litecoin | 370 |
| 4. Bahraini Dinar | 345 |
| 5. Oman Rial | 337 |
| 6. Latvian Lats | 245 |
| 7. U.K. Pound | 198 |
| 8. Jordanian Dinar | 183 |
| 9. Euro | 172 |
| 10. Azerbaijan Manat | 166 |
| 11. Swiss Franc | 140 |
| 12. US Dollar/Bahamian Dollar/Panama Balboa | 130 |
| 13. Australian Dollar | 118 |
| 14. New Zealand Dollar | 104 |
| 15. Singapore/Brunei Dollar/Libyan Dinar | 102 |
China’s Renminbi: 21.2
Japanese Yen: 1.3
(% money supply = % value of money supply)
Sri Lankan Rupee 0.987
Icelandic Krona 1.090
| 1. Iran | 0.0052 |
| 2. Vietnam | 0.0061 |
| 3. Sao Tome Principe | 0.0070 |
| 4. Indonesia | 0.013 |
| 5. Belarus | 0.015 |
| 6. Laos | 0.017 |
| 7. Paraguay | 0.029 |
| 8. Sierra Leone | 0.030 |
| 9. Cambodia | 0.032 |
| 10. Uganda | 0.050 |
Though the Bitcoin economy may still be small, the fact of it being larger than many national monetary supplies — after only five years, no less — makes its dismissal by lingering critics downright silly. (Not that the “honey badger of money” cares much about its critics.) The value-per-note analysis is even more surprising. If indeed the relative trust of various currencies can be measured by comparing value-per-note, then Bitcoin is already the champion (precious metals not considered), and Litecoin is threatening to take second place.
A number of people from the former Soviet Union wishing to immigrate to Israel could be subjected to DNA testing to prove their Jewishness, the Prime Minister’s Office said Sunday.
The policy was reported in Maariv on Monday, one day after the Israeli paper revealed that a19-year-old woman from the former Soviet Union was required to take the test to qualify for a Birthright Israel trip. (Read more)