Tuesday, July 3, 2018

MONEY 133 - AMERICA


THIS IS MY 133RD BLOG ON UNDERSTANDING MONEY TOOLS
July, 2018

As I start writing this blog on July 3, 2018 I thought it all-important to cover “America”.  I will do this in several blogs, as one could write a book off my thoughts, and that may not constitute the definition of a “blog”.  I have been saving facts; what I deem as pertinent and material, for some time.

I need to set some parameters here.  First, let it be known that I am a realist, a pragmatist, a conservative and yet a socialist.  I believe in totalitarianism as long as a country or government has a benevolent person on top who reigns autocratically.  As with many of my statements or facts you should be prepared to go to my previous blogs at understandingmoneytools.blogspot.com. 

I also am a firm believer that no form of government in today’s world has succeeded because of greed and dishonesty and that stands for capitalism, socialism and communism.  With my blogs on America I will state things that are subjective, hopefully accurate facts.  I am expecting no conclusions, only that you digest what I have written and “you” determine your own conclusions.  Perhaps it is to get the reader to think!

Tomorrow will be Independence Day, what we call July 4th.  I watched a “take down” on this in the past couple of days where people on the street were asked what it meant.  Of course, and edited, we saw the intelligence of “America”.  We are breeding “dolts”/”idiots” and it is hard to think otherwise.  Perhaps today’s schooling is to teach technology, but you can’t  live on technology alone.  Too many mistakes have been made from politicians, including the presidents and advisors, making the wrong calls because they lacked the knowledge of history, and history repeats.  In my mind the elimination of subjects like English, history, geography, art appreciation, classic literature, sociology and others is a major mistake.

So much for this verbiage, let’s begin.  “America”.  Let’s test your history smarts.  What does July 4th, “independence day” stand for?  It is the day we declared to stand for the colonies independence from England.  Who was the actual president on July 4th, 1776?  John Hancock, a signer on the Declaration of Independence. He was president from 1775 to 1777.  Who was the very first president of the First Continental Congress?  Payton Randolph, starting in 1774.  Were there presidents before George Washington?  Yes, about 14!  When did President George Washington become president?  April 30th, 1789 when the first 13 colonies got their act together.  John Adams was Vice-President.  Many people call John Hanson our first president?  When?  He was president of the First Continental Congress in 1781 and accomplished many things.

Were these well-known first Americans great, kind men, as pictured in our school storybooks?  No.  They were for the most part fairly wealthy land owners wanting to avoid high taxes in England.  Many owned slaves who were considered assets, not with any human rights.  Were the original colonists nice to the Indians? No.  If you think about it, these English settlers were immigrants taking over another person’s land.

One reason I recap history is to show you two things.  One, when we were taught history in school it was not accurate.  (I will continue in these blogs along lines of inaccuracies.)  Point two I want to make is that almost all Americans are ill informed, not carrying and “dolts”!  As I have traveled quite a bit of the world it continues to amaze me that people in other countries have more knowledge about America than the people who live here.

After the Revolutionary War against England and our independence declared we were broke like after most of our wars.  Financially the French came to our rescue.  Advance forward a couple hundred years and the French pushed on debt we owed them in 1971.  After World War II we entered into a financial agreement with western nations known as the Bretton Woods Agreement.  On August 15th, 1971 President Richard Nixon cancelled this agreement unilaterally and took us off the gold standard in relationship to international finance and exchange.  We became a “de facto” freely floating exchange known as a “fiat currency”.  (May you have faith in our abilities to conduct business and pay our debts….including bonds.)  Big mistake, but wars and debt (at that time Viet Nam) will take a country down this path.

Enough for this one blog.  We will continue on “America” in our next blogs.  My intent here is to instill some facts that should be known by all, and peak your interest in history and knowledge.

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