Letters to the Editor
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Blacker than Black
By Blacker yet Tuesday the banks will still be open, but their accounts will be frozen. Or at least only partial payments will be forthcoming. The Fed has printed trillions of dollars in hard currency, in anticipation of the problem. There is a good chance we will go back to being a cash economy, for a little while anyway. [If you have been hoarding your hard earned cash, the blizzard of fresh paper will make your life savings about as important as another bucket of water over Niagara Falls]
There are also contingent plans to put time strips in the new bills, and to place penalties on bank accounts which have no activity. Keep your old money as long as you can.
On Blacker than that Wednesday all the gold in storage will be locked up. Foreign countries will have nationalized their assets by then. Fort Knox is rumored to be empty, we will find out. The economy will revert to somewhere near the level we were at in the 1950's.
Russia will become a world power overnight. The Chinese will go broke along with their US consumers. There will be a workers Revolution. We will forget all about terrorism and they will forget about us.
Dont' forget that during the first Great Depression farmers went broke because no one could afford their products, and taxes went higher. That shouldn't as much of a problem this time, because money will be all over the place. It will just be a question of desirability.
If you own property, cattle or gold, you may do okay. You might even get rich if you can sell more of what you have, over and above what you need. Technological development will slow to a crawl, and we will be unable to come up with the counterdevelopments will offset many of its unintended consequences. In short people will live more simply.