Titled: To Da Moon Baby 2

In a post in January I mentioned the potential for a meteoric rise in gold and silver prices.

On the 16th January, the prices of gold was a strong $560 an ounce and silver was $9.

Today, three and a half months later, gold is passing $675, silver $14.30, gains of 21% and 59% respectively.

Annualized, this is 72% and 203%.

Especially promising is Silver which has almost doubled over the last six months.

Considering in many places, there is no tax on purchases of physical gold and silver, and maintainance / storage costs are zero, this is an investment choice worthy of further inspection.

Precious metals of this class are traditionally hedges against inflation and are almost certain never to become worthless, unlike almost any other form of investment.

Think carefully.

Usual disclaimers apply: This is not intended as investment advice - please do your own due diligence

Titled:   44 percent of Americans think that they pay the right amount of income taxes

John Lott brings us news of a surprising new survey that coincides nicely with the end of the tax season.

Apparently 44 percent of people think that they pay the right amount of tax. 48% think it is too high.

At first blush, this seems to say that taxes are about right, if a little high.

When you remember that nearly half of Americans pay no tax at all, you can see who the 44% comprise of.

In his Apr. 1 radio address, U.S. president George W. Bush discussed his fiscal policies, saying, "The debate in Congress over taxes ultimately comes down to this: Who knows best how to use your money—the politicians in Washington or you? I believe the money we spend in Washington is your money, not the government’s money. I trust you to make the best decisions about what to do with your hard-earned dollars, because when you do, your family is better off, our economy grows, and prosperity and opportunity spread throughout our great land."

Titled:     Two kids hurt in minor league scramble for cash

Two children were injured in a scramble to grab cash being dropped from a helicopter as part of a promotion after a minor league baseball game.

About $1,000 in cash was dropped Saturday from the helicopter over Fifth Third Ballpark's outfield as children lined the outfield fence. After the cash was dropped, the children scrambled.

A 7-year-old boy was trampled and taken to a hospital, while a 7-year-old girl got a bloody lip after being pushed onto the ground.

Titled:   Two Tier Currency Rumor

As the Federal Government works to find a way out of impending fiscal doom, rumors are starting to spread of a two tier currency system.

George at UrbanSurvival is trying to track down sources:

I am trying to find a source of a disturbing rumor in an email or two yesterday about so-called "red backs" - which it was speculated might be the beginning of a two-tier currency system.  The buzz is that a "normal" bill, used inside America's borders would continue to be the "green backs" and they would be heavily devalued in the event of a monetary crisis, and that "red backs" would be used outside of the US.  The "red backs" would not be devalued.  The idea is that if your greenbacks only bought, say 25-cents on the dollar outside America, we would, as a nation, import less.  (Might cause the immigration problem to reverse, too.)  At the same time, while countries outside the US would retain their purchasing power, then our exports would soar, at least so far as we make things any more.

As a way to have your cake and eat it, the idea looks promising to the Fed. As far as making it very expensive to travel outside the US, this would seem to be not quite so attractive.

Quite how it would work with international transfers and purchases using digital dollars I'm not sure. Maybe they plan to have people convert their dollars at the borders...

Probability of truth: <5%

Update:  Subject is also found here, and here

Titled:   Military Wins at U.S. High Court on Campus Recruiting

The Supreme Court ruled that universities give military recruiters the same campus access as other employers:

Titled:    Tory plan to kill long gun registry going strong

Canada's new minister of public safety says the government has no plans to back off on its intention to scrap the controversial long gun registry.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced his plan to kill the registry during the election campaign, and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told CTV's Question Period the plan hasn't changed.

"We're not backing away at all," Day said on Sunday. "We're moving ahead on this. It was an election promise. It's something we've been talking about for years."

...

Day said the total registry costs could be approaching $2 billion, while the registry has not had a positive impact on gun crime.

"It has not reduced gun crime," he said. "As a matter of fact, homicide rates in the last two years have gone up in Canada. And we have committed to scrapping it."

$2 billion dollars, to keep a list that was never accurate and had no positive impact on gun crime! I hope those pressing for a similar registry in the US see what they get for the money.

Titled:   As Canada's Slow-Motion Public Health System Falters, Private Medical Care Is Surging

Canada's health system has often been held up as a paragon of success by those interested in instituting a single-payer system south of the border, in the US. It is technically illegal to charge for treatment, resulting in long and incresing waiting lists for basic operations:

The Cambie Surgery Center, Canada's most prominent private hospital, may be considered a rogue enterprise.

Accepting money from patients for operations they would otherwise receive free of charge in a public hospital is technically prohibited in this country, even in cases where patients would wait months or even years in discomfort before receiving treatment.

But no one is about to arrest Dr. Brian Day, who is president and medical director of the center, or any of the 120 doctors who work there. Public hospitals are sending him growing numbers of patients they are too busy to treat, and his center is advertising that patients do not have to wait to replace their aching knees.

The country's publicly financed health insurance system — frequently described as the third rail of its political system and a core value of its national identity — is gradually breaking down. Private clinics are opening around the country by an estimated one a week, and private insurance companies are about to find a gold mine.

Dr. Day, for instance, is planning to open more private hospitals, first in Toronto and Ottawa, then in Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton. Ontario provincial officials are already threatening stiff fines. Dr. Day says he is eager to see them in court.

"We've taken the position that the law is illegal," Dr. Day, 59, says. "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."

...

The median wait time between a referral by a family doctor and an appointment with a specialist has increased to 8.3 weeks last year from 3.7 weeks in 1993, according to a recent study by The Fraser Institute, a conservative research group. Meanwhile the median wait between appointment with a specialist and treatment has increased to 9.4 weeks from 5.6 weeks over the same period.

Average wait times between referral by a family doctor and treatment range from 5.5 weeks for oncology to 40 weeks for orthopedic surgery, according to the study.

Current waiting times in the UK:

• 8 months for cataract surgery
• 11 months for a hip replacement
• 12 months for a knee replacement
• 5 months to repair a slipped disc
• 5 months for a hernia repair

It's the same story across the Western world:

A recent survey of hospital executives in five countries (Australia, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and the United States) found that none of the U.S. executives thought a 65-year-old man would have to wait six months or more for routine hip-replacement surgery. The numbers for other countries, which have greater government control of healthcare, were significantly higher: 81 percent of hospital executives in Britain, for example, thought the wait would be more than six months.

And this is for non-urgent medical care, for just pain. Look at the current times for Ontario:

Hospital wait times for key services. Average wait time in days.

• MRI scan: 55
• CAT scan: 30
• Cancer surgery: 37
• Angiography: 22
• Angioplasty: 11
• Bypass surgery: 22
• Cataract surgery: 142
• Hip replacement: 162
• Knee replacement: 203

The BBC reports of a UK woman being asked to wait for 18 months for an MRI!

There are some benefits to a centralized, one-payer, socialized medical system, but quick access to needed services is clearly not one of them.

One thing worth keeping an eye on for those interested in the future of the US, the dollar, savings and 401ks is the approaching Iranian Oil Bourse. In real simple terms, oil is sold in dollars only, which forces all other consuming nations to keep buying US currency. Now Iran is opening a Euro-denominated oil bourse in March, just a few weeks away. This will enable it to sell oil to Europe and the rest of the world for euros instead of dollars, meaning that there is a lot less reason for countries to hang onto their stockpiles of dollars. A much more detailed version is found here.

Add to this the rapidly rising inflation rates in the US, which continuously erodes the value of overseas dollar holdings and you have another reason to ditch the dollar.

Remember Iraq tried this just before the second Gulf War, although it was severely shackled by the UN Bribe Oil for Food Program.

If the dollar drops in value, everything we import, especially oil, will become a lot more expensive.

There are some upsides, especially for exports and balance of trade:

A key effect of devaluation is that it makes the domestic currency cheaper relative to other currencies. There are two implications of a devaluation. First, devaluation makes the country's exports relatively less expensive for foreigners. Second, the devaluation makes foreign products relatively more expensive for domestic consumers, thus discouraging imports. This may help to increase the country's exports and decrease imports, and may therefore help to reduce the current account deficit.

And some downsides, including that pesky inflation problem which will eat away at the real value of investments and savings:

A significant danger is that by increasing the price of imports and stimulating greater demand for domestic products, devaluation can aggravate inflation. If this happens, the government may have to raise interest rates to control inflation, but at the cost of slower economic growth.

And the thing about inflation is you can't solve it by printing more money. You have to increase interest rates, restricting the money supply. Which is bad for investment and spending, especially on the now more costly imports.

And VERY bad for the housing market. Mortgage rates would rise, slowing the housing market and lowering house values. On the other hand, house price reductions would be partially offset due to inflation making many homeowners feel a little better even as their assets lose real value.

Interesting Times - Keep your powder dry - Buy Gold!

Titled:   Iris Scanning For New Jersey Grade School

Iris scans have become part of everyday life at a New Jersey school. Everyone that wants to enter the school has to provide a drivers license for initial registration and submit to a scan:

When a parent arrives to pick up their child at one of three grade schools in the Freehold Borough School District, they'll need to look into a camera that will take a digital image of their iris. That photo will establish positive identification to gain entrance into the school.

Funding for the project, more than $369,000, was made possibly by a school safety grant through the National Institute of Justice, a research branch of the U.S. Department of Justice. "The idea is to improve school safety for the children," said Phil Meara, superintendent, Freehold Borough School District, on Monday. "We had a swipe-card system that operated the doors, but the technology was obsolete."

It seems crazy to install such an expensive, high-tech system for such a low tech purpose. If you wanted to gain access to the school to do harm, you would expect a criminal just to walk in with someone who is registered on the system, probably at knife or gun-point. The security system wouldn't know any different. And it would probably stop external responders from coming to the rescue too.

Wouldn't it just be easier to issue RFID keytags? Or are they obsolete too? Or an armed guard?

Titled:   Oh, what a dilemma...

Wizbang brings us an example of the nature of taxes and government. They're a little like hydrogen and water - when added togther you just get a lot of noise and steam. And once they're together, they're very hard to get apart:

Massachusetts finds itself on the horns of a rather tricky dilemma. Last September, the legislature voted to earmark $25 million to help house, feed, and take care of Hurricane Katrina refugees. It was a great gesture, showing that the Commonwealth can, occasionally, do the right thing.

But now they've found themselves in a slightly embarassing position. The refugees are pretty much all gone (I suspect that New Orleaners weren't capable of handling a New England winter on top of everything else), and the state finds itself having only spent about $6 million on their care. What should they do with the remaining $19 million?

Read the rest and lay your bets.

James Joyner from Outside the Beltway has this concerning the repeal of the death tax.