Gold

 

Goldfinger

Mister Goldfinger
Pretty girl beware of this heart of gold
This heart is cold

He loves only gold
Only gold
He loves gold
He loves only gold
Only gold
He loves gold 

Will the sanctions imposed on Russia result in a return to the gold standard? 

Prior to 1933, the US Dollar was on the gold standard. Each US Dollar could be converted into gold which could then be owned by an individual. This currency, medium of exchange, would inevitably lead to economic crashes when one group acquired most of the currency, and the supply and demand curves had to readjust. ( Because one person’s buyer is another person’s seller. It’s just  Apartment House Rules. One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor). In 1933 individual ownership of gold was made illegal which effectively took the dollar off the gold standard. The US Dollar before that time was what is called a commodity currency, it could be converted into a commodity (gold). After 1933, the dollar became what is known as a fiat currency. The US Dollar became worth what the US government said that it was worth. 

At that time international trading was still done in gold. However during World War II, the United States became the principal holder of gold in the world. If international trade was to take place, then there needed to be another medium of exchange. To promote international trade, there needed to be a fiat currency, to replace gold. At Bretton Woods in 1944, John Maynard Keynes proposed an international currency, the bancor. The United States proposed the US Dollar, convertible into gold. Needless to say the US won. 

By 1971 international trade had increased such that if the foreign countries who had accumulated US Dollars as a result of trade called for a conversion into gold, those countries would empty the US gold supply. This prompted the Nixon Shock of 1971, when the US Dollar was no longer convertible into gold by foreign nations. The rapid inflation that resulted in the 1970s was similar to the economic crashes that had been experienced domestically when the dollar was on the gold standard as the supply and demand curve adjusted. 

Trade, an exchange of goods, requires trust between the buyer and the seller, including the medium of exchange used in that trade. When one of the parties reveals themselves to be untrustworthy, say by invading Ukraine, you can refuse to trade with them. You can also say that the medium of exchange that county has acquired will no longer be honored. 

What that country could do, and apparently has done, is to say that in the future they will only deal in gold, or hard commodity currencies, for trade. The advantage of gold is not only that it has a value which has been agreed to, and it is liquid, but it is also much more untraceable than fiat currencies, and is a  means of evading international sanctions. 

This is a suitable time for the United States to suggest discussions on establishing an international fiat currency, to be a managed by an international association such as e.g. the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, or G-7, etc. The objection by Russia seems to be it can not trust the United States, so everyone should adopt the gold standard, not trust anyone and everyone should return to the gold standard. Saying that there is an international fiat currency that is NOT the US Dollar says that people should trust each other, even if you don’t trust the United States. 

Goldfinger was a villain. He loved only gold. Let’s not become villains ourselves.

Ketanji Brown Jackson Nomination Hearings II

 

Respect

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB, oh

A little respect
(Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me)
Whoa, babe 

Was former President Trump correct?  Was KBJ being disrespectful?

·       Trump accused Ketanji Brown Jackson of being "disrespectful" to GOP senators at her confirmation hearings.

·       Trump said that Republican lawmakers asked Jackson questions "really nicely."

·       Jackson's grilling by Republicans was described by the media as "hyperpartisan" and "poisonous."

Insider, Joshua Zitser, Sun, March 27, 2022, 6:38 AM https://news.yahoo.com/trump-attacked-ketanji-brown-jackson-103838583.html

And here I thought the Orange Menace watched TV. Clearly he wasn’t watching the same TV as me.  Republicans such as Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and Marsha Blackburn were respectful and KBJ was disrespectful? Is black really white, and white really black, also? Just more evidence that it you want to uncover the truth, it is the opposite of what Donald Trump is saying.

In response to questions from the Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee that were not only disrespectful, they were inane, irrelevant, deceitful, demeaning, illegal, etc. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson responded with respect and grace In fact it was the most graceful demonstration I have seen since Fred Astaire danced with Ginger Rodgers. And like Ms. Rodgers, KBJ did it backwards and in high heels. Like Senator Booker, I believe that "You (KBJ) have earned this spot. You are worthy.”

Breaking News

 

Man Bites Dog

Extra! Extra! Extra! Extra! Man bites dog!
Extra! Man bites dog! Extra! Man bites dog!
Man bites dog! Man bites dog! Man bites dog!

Breaking News! Senator McConnell will not vote for the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson! 

I received a Breaking News Alert on my iPhone.  It was a Dog Bites Man headline and was hardly breaking news.  Did anyone seriously expect Senator Mitch “Yertle the Turtle” McConnell to vote to confirm Judge KBJ?  He has never seen a Republican nomination that he opposed, nor a Democratic nomination that he endorses.  Now if he voted to confirm THAT would be a Man Bites Dog headline.  Otherwise this is a Dog Bites Man story and not worth the designation as breaking news.

Vladimir Putin II

 

Wonderful World

Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about a science book
Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me, too
What a wonderful world this would be

Vladimir Putin doesn’t much about know history….or about love.

Valdy, Valdy, Valdy. And here I thought that it was Americans who did not know Russian history. It sounds like you are not too hot on that subject either. In a speech on March 25^th, President Putin said that the West was trying to cancel the culture of a 1000 year old county, including cancelling such composers as Tchaikovsky.

1000 years? Really? Really? The Russian Federation, of which you are the President, dates only back to 1991. The USSR, which preceded the Russian Federation, was established in 1921. Ukraine was in the USSR only because the Russian Bolsheviks invaded, and conquered, the Ukraine People’s Republic. Ukraine was an independent country between the assassination of the last Romanov Tsar in 1917 and 1921. While Nicholas II was the last of the Romanovs  (by the way, I think Amazon Prime should be told that its series the Romanoffs has been cancelled. Yes, it is spelled different but that is because you Russians use that funny alphabet which can have multiple translations. The series was there the last that I looked!), he actually was descended from Peter II and Catherine the Great ( by the way The Great is currently a series on Hulu starring Elle Fanning as Catharine.  Is it being canceled too?).  That pair were actually Germans who changed their name from Holstein-Gottorp to Romanov when they assumed the throne. Peter spoke little Russian). But that was in 1762. The last actual Romanov was Tsarina  Elizabeth Petrovna who died in 1762. The Russian Empire was declared by Peter the Great in 1721 which, do the math, was NOT 1000 years ago. The first actual Romanov Tsar, not the Holstein-Gottorp-Romanovs, was Tsar Michael who ruled from 1613 to 1645. The First Tsar of Russia, who was not a Romanov, and whose title you are clearly want, was Ivan the Terrible who ruled from 1547 to 1584. A thousand years ago Russia was ruled by the Mongol Golden Horde, you know of Genghis and Kubla Khan fame, or is it too soon to mention that. The Rus Kiev, modern day Kviv, was founded in 880, but the Dukes of Moscow conquered and ruled Kiev beginning in 1389. But the Ukrainians are their own people. They have their own language and their own religion, Ukrainian Catholicism or Orthodoxy, which is different than Russian Orthodoxy, and everything. Just because Russia ruled Ukraine once, it does not mean that you can rule it forever.

As to cancelling Tchaikovsky, that is news to me. Does that mean the Boston Pops won’t be playing the 1812 Overture on the 4^th of July as it does every year, because it is such a beautiful patriotic commemoration, in this case of the Russian defeat of the invasion by Napoleon? Is the Pops going to be playing an updated version where the Russian National Anthem fades as the Church bells ring? Does canceling Tchaikovsky  mean that his Nutcracker ballet won’t be performed in virtually every American city during the Christmas season? Canceling the persons performing Tchaikovsky who also support your invasion does not mean that we are cancelling Tchaikovsky. You do realize that Tchaikovsky died in 1890 and is not in a position to support you?

Clearly you don’t know much about history. Your absence would make it a wonderful world.

 

 

Bias

 

That Song About the Midway

So lately you've been hiding, it was somewhere in the news
And I'm still at these races with my ticket stubs and my blues
And a voice calls out the numbers, and it sometimes mentions mine
And I feel like I've been working overtime, overtime

Do the numbers ever lie?

I have had to conduct, or use, numerous surveys in my engineering career.  Surveys are done because it is NOT cost effective to observe the behavior of an entire universe. However you can obtain statistically accurate results if the sample being surveyed looks like the universe.

If the survey sample looks like the universe, then the sample is said to be unbiased.  If the sample does NOT look like the universe, then the sample is said to be biased.  ( yes I know that this is an emotionally loaded term, but that IS the statistical term). That does not mean that the sample is invalid, just that the portion that is underrepresented has to be oversampled in order to eliminate the bias.

For example, if according to the 2020 Census, the US population is 13.4% black and 50.8% female then in a nine person sample, say SCOTUS, there should be 4.5 women and 1.2 blacks.  If there are 8 justices on the Supreme Court and only 3 of them are women and only 1 justice is black, then the next justice on SCOTUS should be a black woman.

It does not matter if the sample is screws, household travel, corporations, or Supreme Court Justices.  If the sample is biased then a method to correct that bias is to oversample.  If you oppose that oversampling, then by definition you are biased. Figures don’t lie, but liars do figure.

Justice

 

No Peace, No Justice

We glow in the dark
And we shine in the light
The souls of Kings and Queen
As we all rise

Can we have peace and justice?

“With great power, comes great responsibility.”  This phrase comes from Spiderman comics.  It describes a System Optimal solution.  A User Optimal  solution  would be “With great power, comes great opportunity”.  The tension between User Optimal solutions and System Optimal solutions is at the heart of many conflicts, most recently the invasion of Ukraine, a User Optimal solution by the Russian Government, versus the opposition to that invasion, a System Optimal solution; and the hearings on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, where the Democrat Senators appear to be on the side of the System while the Republican Senators appear to be on the side of the Users.  The US Constitution designated The People as its sovereign but recognized that people will act as individuals and might not act for the good of the sovereign People.  A majority of people acting through their representatives may decide that an action should be undertaken, such as administering justice.  But that is justice as determined by the majority.  The constitution was not ratified without protections of the individuals against the tyranny of the majority.  The Bill of Rights established the rights of the individual which can not be abridged by the majority and the US Constitution was not ratified until these protections were in place.

The framers of the US Constitution also recognized that they were only human and could not be perfect.  They established that it would take a super majority, NOT a majority, to amend the Constitution. A majority of the people could view a law as just, but it takes a supermajority to amend the Constitution.

The constitution is not infallible.  It did not recognize the probable formation of political parties which led to the 12^th Amendment.  It did not consider that life expectancies would increase and that presidents might need to be limited to two terms which led to the  25^th Amendment.  Morality could also change.  While slavery was originally allowed, it was abolished by the 14^th Amendment.  Women were granted the right to vote by the 19^th Amendment.  Morality can change and lead to mistakes.  Alcohol was prohibited by the 18^th amendment and then allowed again  by the 21^st amendment.  An income tax was deemed unconstitutional before the passage of the 16^th amendment.

The Constitutional purpose of the Supreme Court is NOT to administer justice.  It is to decide when a law is in conflict with that Constitution.  Claims that a nominee to the Supreme Court is soft on crime are irrelevant. The only consideration should be whether that  nominee can correctly establish that a law is in conflict with the Constitution.  Justice by a simple majority is still vigilante justice.  The People decide justice. Not a majority of the people, but a Constitutionally mandated supermajority of The People.  The Supreme Court decides whether the laws enacted by the majority are in conflict with the justice of The People as established in the Constitution.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Can the Supreme Court be wrong  in its decisions? Of course.  Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson.

Can the Supreme Court make a correct decision but explain that decision poorly? Of course.  Roe v. Wade.

The question is not whether fetuses are people, marriage is only between different genders, what Critical Race Theory is and how it should be applied, or what is justice for pornographers.  The questions that will be faced by the Supreme Courts are only whether a law is in conflict with the Constitution. The rights of the majority versus their government is not in question.  The Constitution is about protecting the rights of the minority from the government.

Conservatives used to be those who realized that while the People, collectively acting though the government for a System Optimal, must still be comprised of people who are individuals.  Those individuals might be acting in their own self interest, are User Optimalists, and not in the interests of the People.  Also people as individuals can change their position or lie about their original position.  Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely leads to a belief that government, the System, should be composed of as few individuals as possible with as little power as possible.  People as individuals might also not see the long-term consequences of their short-term decisions.  To protect against unintended consequences, as few actions  as possible should be undertaken.

Conservatives used to favor small government, not a User Optimal government which is an oxymoron.  Activist judges who invent rights are not confined to so-called liberals.  See the unstated right to self defense justifying a law to bear arms NOT in support of a well-regulated militia invented by Justice Scalia; Corporations who are NOT listed as people have protected speech; yet that right was granted by conservative justices. The Voting Rights Act applied to governments not individuals, and governments are NOT limited by a life span, and yet conservative justices decided that those governments have "suffered" long enough. These were not liberal decisions.  The Republican majority in the Senate is acting as if they are User Optimalists which is NOT a conservative position.  Framing the nomination hearing as a conservative versus liberal conflict is a lie.

Ketanji Brown Jackson Nomination Hearings

 

 It’s A Shame

 Why do you use me, try to confuse me
How can you stand, to be so cruel
Why don't you free me, from this prison
Where I serve my time as your fool

Senator Graham, have you no shame?

 

”Several GOP members of the committee took time Monday to lament the treatment of Brett Kavanaugh, Robert Bork and other conservative nominees during their own confirmation hearings. Kavanaugh's contentious hearing in 2018 was centered on accusations of sexual misconduct, allegations Kavanaugh denied before being confirmed to the bench.

 Senator Lindsey Graham said the panel was already off to a better start with Jackson, stating lawmakers "couldn't go back to our offices during Kavanaugh without getting spit on." 

https://www.newsweek.com/ketanji-brown-jackson-hearing-day-one-takeaways Ketanji Brown Jackson Nomination Hearing: 5 Key Takeaways From Day One BY ALEXANDRA HUTZLER ON 3/21/22 AT 4:23 PM EDT 

Are you kidding? Do you not remember the Fortas hearings? Democratic President Johnson nominated Abe Fortas to be elevated from an Associate Justice to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Senator Thurmond, Lindsey Graham’s predecessor in the Senate, made a spectacle of those hearings, famously hosting a pornographic film festival after hours. I am sure that Senator Graham would have been a perfect uncontentious gentleman during the hearings on Merrick Garland, but Republican Majority Leader of the Senate Mitch McConnell never allowed those hearings to take place. While I agree with Justice Thomas that the Supreme Court has become too political, I hope you can forgive me for thinking that his statement was gaslighting especially in light of the political activities of his wife, including actively supporting “Stop The Steal” lie and attending the rally before the January 6th Capitol Riot.   

When Republican Presidents do not nominate Justices to the Supreme Court who can credibly be charged with workplace  sexual harassment (Clarence Thomas); sexual assault (Brett Kavanaugh) or were not the notable exception to Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre (Robert Bork) then perhaps the hearings could be less contentious.

Maybe then we can get justices who actually read and uphold the constitution; and will protect equal justice under the law; and will not invent a right to bear arms in self defense apart from the stated Second Amendment purpose to regulate a militia ( Antonin Scalia).  If Senator Graham and the GOP leaders have no shame, I am ashamed for them.