Replies to post #2009 on Americas Silver Corp fka USAPF

[Montanore]

Excellent post and I agree with everything you've written.

I wonder, though, if paying down debts via austerity can be sustained. Austerity has been put off for far too long. Instead of some short term pain and belt tightening, it could now become excruciating. The crushing burden of debt and entitlement spending will probably be met with inflation. We'll get either a hyper-inflationary event or a deflationary collapse. What a choice. Both lead to a lot of pain. Those holding gold and silver will find either scenario less painful.

[downsideup]

That is also fully rational... and appears to me to be right on the facts.

I agree there is no easy way out, but that the way out isn't easy, doesn't mean that we won't make the hard way work.

I see the inflation/deflation and monetary issues in a slightly different light, with an additional layer or two in complexity... as the conflicts we see DO NOT occur in the generally assumed vacuum of a genuine free market in global trade... rather than in the context of a system of global trade that isn't free... that has layered interfaces with the monetary system that various actors seek to exploit to their unique advantage. The system of trade we do have is rather more a system of mercantilism over-layered with states acting as sovereign market PARTICIPANTS rather than as makers of markets populated by private actors.. with the policies being adopted in trade NOT isolated from the competitive interests of nations acting in strategic self interest... in COORDINATED fashion... pairing the trade and monetary policies of nations in a strategic competition being conducted with clear PURPOSE.

That makes it a mistake to consider that the various policies being implemented by different nations are inputs that are occurring on a level "free market" playing field... rather than policies intended to engage in conflict, employing many of the ideological errors we've seen exposed as errors in banking over the last two years...

So... Germany is rushing Europe along toward becoming the engine driving the global economy into an accelerated entry into a deflationary depression as a function of the need for austerity, while the fictions of the previously unexamined fictions of the Eurozone are coming to grips with other realities... while the U.S. and China (until this week, if you can believe the news about it this week matters) are paired in a struggle that has them engaged in a "race to the bottom" in terms of currency devaluation, while also engaged in an emerging awareness about a long running conflict in a significantly imbalanced trade arrangement, that has, while in operation over the last two decades, worked to sap the American economy for the benefit of the Chinese... which is less useful while we're funding two wars, and replacing the Soviets as a primary source of stability in parts of southwest Asia they used to "manage"?

That postures the U.S. as needing to chart a policy that navigates between the two extremes... deflation in Japan with that in Germany spreading to infect all of Europe... and a trade war based in currency fictions vis a vis China...

There is excursion to the extremes in different places... and, IMO, that obvious lack of coordination in policy isn't "an accident" of regional policy divergences, rather than a more deliberate element in others choices of competitive strategies.

It is that element which makes end-gaming more difficult, IMO, as the outcomes will require there be "winners and losers" in terms of strategies... if not in the economic outcomes, with a proper resolution. If there is persistence in division, that will make the more ergotic results more likely... not less... with increasing potential for discontinuities occurring... layering in with those already in train... such as the collapse of the Euro.