Just read an interview with Hank Paulson and how he "rues the shortage of firepower as battle raged". The guy's an idiot....or thinks we are. He whines about how he wasn't able to fix the problems we are having with what he was given. Silly. He was given 700 BILLION DOLLARS and the authority to do whatever he wanted just like he asked. His problem is he asked for the wrong weapons! When a fire is raging out of control, DON'T USE A FLAMETHROWER!!! This is an apt metaphor. The dollar is losing value so fast, the government reporting constantly changes the particulars of what makes up the "core inflation". I don't know about you but when I see food prices jump 6-8% per month for several months running, I really don't care what the so called "core inflation" is. It's blue smoke and mirrors so that more money can be stolen from Social Security recipients by not raising the cost of living adjustment by the original promised calculation because that would be too expensive. You get the drift. Now Mr. Paulson bemoans the need to take equity positions in private banks because it's too much "like the initial UK programme where it was like a nationalisation or it was punitive." Those of us who remember a wonderful Disney animation called the "Song of the South" will remember Uncle Remus (a really neat old guy I wish I had in my neighborhood when I was a kid) told the story of Brer Rabbit who had been caught by Brer Fox and begged not to be thrown in the briar patch. These internationalist clowns are just like that. Hank Paulson wouldn't be the Treasury Secretary if he didn't subscribe to bigger government and his crocodile tears over having to take equity positions in private banks remind me of Brer Rabbit. By the way, don't ever forget that the money was to be used to buy "toxic assets" not equity. How soon they forget. Here in South Carolina our own Bob Inglis and Lindsay Graham voted for this travesty of a bailout and look what it got us! Demands for more bailouts! BIG surprise! Turn up the flamethrower. Let's make sure there aren't even ashes left of our much vaunted banking system so we have to be merged into a nice comfy new world banking system that will "work this time". We need to throw cold water on the central banksters schemes not flames. Private people can use gold and silver and shun the "elastic currency" of the banks. All the term "elastic" means is the banks can steal value from whoever holds the currency by inflating it. Start using only gold and silver produced by the US Mint. It's legal tender. How would you feel if you got paid for a week's worth of work with $50? Not good, huh? What if that $50 was a gold eagle? That's an ounce of gold. Not bad, huh? The IRS recently lost a court case in Nevada when there were no convictions from 161 various counts of fraud against one Robert Kahre and his employees who were paid in US issued silver coins. They declared the face value; the IRS claimed bullion value and reason prevailed. We are a "legal tender" system so the face value not the bullion value rules. We had this scenario during the American Revolution. The funny money was called the "Continental" and the gold and silver was called "specie". Our Continental Congress printed so much of the Continental dollar that within 3 years, you couldn't buy anything with them. Hence the derisive term, "Not worth a Continental". Now the banksters don't even have to run the printing presses; dollars are created as journal entries on computers. The cost: nothing. We, the people, have the advantage that we also have platinum coins that are legal tender at $100 per ounce. Let's start pricing stuff in "ferns" (FRN - Federal Reserve Notes which only have debt backing them) and "specie" which is legal tender US minted gold, silver and platinum. Like it? These coins can be purchased in sizes 1/10, 1/4, 1/2 and 1 troy ounce and I have seen 1/20 troy ounce platinum sold. For smaller transactions, let's use junk silver dated 1964 and earlier. It's time.