a steady diet of fear, paranoia, and survivalism

June 16, 2015 11:29 AM

With Eye on Fiscal Armageddon, Texas Set to 'Repatriate' Its Gold To New Texas Fort Knox
On Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation that will create a state-run gold depository in the Lone Star State – one that will attempt to rival those operated by the U.S. government inside Fort Knox and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s vault in lower Manhattan. “The Texas Bullion Depository,” Abbott said in a statement, “will become the first state-level facility of its kind in the nation, increasing the security and stability of our gold reserves and keeping taxpayer funds from leaving Texas to pay for fees to store gold in facilities outside our state.”
posted by andoatnp (96 comments total)

I only wish Donald Westlake or Elmore Leonard were still alive to write a heist book about it.
posted by box at 11:31 AM on June 16, 2015 [13 favorites]

Rushed for time, Capriglione cut short his interview before he could be asked if he had ever seen the films “Heist,” “Goldfinger,” “Ocean’s Eleven,” or “Die Hard 3.”
posted by andoatnp at 11:32 AM on June 16, 2015 [13 favorites]

GOOOOLLLLLD!


*does high-kicking dance, fires pistols in the air*
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:34 AM on June 16, 2015 [41 favorites]

Privatized security guards making $10/hr will do a fantastic job. Let the low bidding commence!
posted by benzenedream at 11:36 AM on June 16, 2015 [22 favorites]

Because the Schoolbook Depository worked out so well for everyone.
posted by stevis23 at 11:37 AM on June 16, 2015 [22 favorites]

No, no, Texas, you're doing it wrong. If you want to be Florida, you have to invest in grass-roots bugshit crazy. The joke isn't "Florida Government", it's "Florida Man."
posted by Etrigan at 11:37 AM on June 16, 2015 [17 favorites]

My spidey sense is telling me that this is probably not legal, and that the Federal government could come down on this like a bag of gold bricks. Could someone with more legal knowledge confirm or correct me on this hunch?
posted by overeducated_alligator at 11:38 AM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

> The joke isn't "Florida Government", it's "Florida Man."

something something Idiocracy something
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:40 AM on June 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

Maybe we should have a national conversation about states to let go of, including Texas, which keeps electing yahoos who are absolutely toxic to notions of democratic governance and rule of law. They want out pretty badly; maybe their seditious belligerence should be humored to the fullest extent legally possible?
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:40 AM on June 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

For Gov. Abbott so loved his country that he made war upon it, and calling unto him his four horsemen, Fear, Loathing, Resentment, and Paranoia, did he build a crazy-ass compound filled with his people. And to make their hearts pure they cut themselves off from the country which through its largesse did support them, and cast themselves adrift, and died of the madness and privation which their pride wrought. So let it be done.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 11:40 AM on June 16, 2015 [41 favorites]

Goldbuggery drives people to do crazy things on crazy scales.
posted by Sternmeyer at 11:41 AM on June 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

loons
posted by JPD at 11:43 AM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

How exactly do they decide how much gold is "theirs"? Where did their billion dollar number come from?

Plus, this whole making of a separate gold-backed currency... seems like it's against the Constitution. Pretty sure the agreements made after the Civil War had something to say about it, too.
posted by backseatpilot at 11:43 AM on June 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

And to make their hearts pure they cut themselves off from the country which through its largesse did support them

I don't believe this is true, is it?

Ah, Texas. Stay batshit crazy, forever.
posted by echocollate at 11:43 AM on June 16, 2015

Maybe we should have a national conversation about states to let go of

Doesn't California threaten to break into three states from time to time? And even Texas (#12), for that matter? We should bring back Franklin or Transylvania or ...
posted by Melismata at 11:44 AM on June 16, 2015

Let's all gather 'round for a lecture on fiscal responsibility from the folks who paid a bank half a million dollars a year to store a bunch of gold bars (when the feds will do it for the price of a minimum wage employee) until they came up with the even better idea of storing it themselves.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:49 AM on June 16, 2015 [13 favorites]

Maybe we should have a national conversation about states to let go of, including Texas, which keeps electing yahoos who are absolutely toxic to notions of democratic governance and rule of law. They want out pretty badly; maybe their seditious belligerence should be humored to the fullest extent legally possible?

Hi could we not do this, there are lots of good people in Texas, we're just not the ones in charge, ok? WE'RE TRYING and we get really discouraged and it would be good if the rest of you didn't shit on us.

(shit on Abbott all you want, though.)

Lots of other good people in other red states in the same boat.

Secession is a dumb joke, neither Texas nor any other state would survive it, and the cynical motherfuckers in the capitol know it. But it's red meat to the dumbasses who keep letting them steal everything, so they throw it out there. This is no different. Honestly, if moving gold bricks around makes them feel good and manly, I would like them to keep doing it and stop obsessing over what my ladyparts might be up to.

More cynically, a Depository project, should it come to fruition, sounds like a nice fat money-attractor for his contributors. It will be expensive and serve absolutely no valid public purpose. The perfect Republican pork project.
posted by emjaybee at 11:49 AM on June 16, 2015 [78 favorites]

oh hey TPM buried the lede:

And the new depository will not just be a well-guarded warehouse for that bullion. The law Abbott signed calls for the creation of an electronic payments system that will allow gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and rhodium depositors to write checks against their accounts, making the depository into a bank – one that will create a metal-backed money supply intended to challenge the paper currency issued by the Federal Reserve - or "Yankee dollars" as one of the law's top supporters calls them.

posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:51 AM on June 16, 2015 [42 favorites]

If there really is a 'fiscal apocalypse,' it's not exactly a sure bet that gold will appreciate or even hold its value. Depending on the underlying cause and how sector-specific bubble collapses (or whatever happens) are handled, the price of gold might increase, stay the same, or decrease, but storing a huge pile of gold is probably the most embarrassingly simplistic substitute for actual, reasonable fiduciary management that I can think of aside from Texas just passing a law that makes economic recession illegal.
posted by clockzero at 11:53 AM on June 16, 2015 [19 favorites]

a Depository project, should it come to fruition, sounds like a nice fat money-attractor for his contributors.

Yeah, sounds like it - privatize the whole thing (to the tune of an "undetermined" cost), store the gold in private vaults, and then let the state be on the hook for any losses from those vaults. Sounds good to me!
posted by backseatpilot at 11:53 AM on June 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

I feel so very sorry for all the Texans who have to deal unwillingly with their highest elected officials who have basically become, as Charlie Pierce would put it, the latest patients to come down with the prion disease that has infected American conservatism. Between this and Abbott channeling Alex Jones over Jade Helm 15, I'm genuinely afraid what might happen to them in the next few years.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:54 AM on June 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

What Texas gold reserve?

Texas actually has gold reserves?

Cool. Lets go steal them.
posted by eriko at 12:00 PM on June 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

Indeed, clockzero, when SHTF all that gold will be shiny junk. Which is why I'm introducing my own legislation tomorrow to establish state-run depositories for .22LR ammunition, gasoline, tool steel, and laudanum.
posted by fifthrider at 12:02 PM on June 16, 2015 [8 favorites]

Maybe we should have a national conversation about states to let go of, including Texas

Echoing emjaybee here; even solid-red states have a fair amount of progressive residents and others who would be done no favors by removing the protection of the US Constitution from them.

I live in Indiana, and as dopey as Mike Pence and the legislature made the state look with the so-called "religious freedom" bill brouhaha, I wouldn't want to be booted out of the Union because of it.
posted by Gelatin at 12:07 PM on June 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

In 2010 and 2011, [Bass] steered the University of Texas Investment Management Company’s board of directors to put nearly 5% of the then-$19 billion university and pension fund they manage into physical gold by converting options into bullion.

Texans, you must melt this down and make for yourselves a Golden Longhorn which shall go before you.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:10 PM on June 16, 2015 [63 favorites]

What could possibly go wrong?
posted by jeff-o-matic at 12:15 PM on June 16, 2015

> Indeed, clockzero, when SHTF all that gold will be shiny junk. Which is why I'm introducing my own legislation tomorrow to establish state-run depositories for .22LR ammunition, gasoline, tool steel, and laudanum.

Someone's looking to become The Bullet Farmer.
posted by Monochrome at 12:15 PM on June 16, 2015 [10 favorites]

I presume that the new gold depository will be the Alamo?
posted by fallingbadgers at 12:16 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

There's no need for a new heist movie, this is the heist.
It will be stolen within three years of crossing the Texas state line.
posted by fullerine at 12:17 PM on June 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

I presume that the new gold depository will be the Alamo?

In the basement, right?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:17 PM on June 16, 2015 [10 favorites]

In 2010 and 2011, [Bass] steered the University of Texas Investment Management Company’s board of directors to put nearly 5% of the then-$19 billion university and pension fund they manage into physical gold by converting options into bullion.

Good job losing 37 million dollars, Texas!
posted by junco at 12:22 PM on June 16, 2015 [14 favorites]

The best plan for dealing with a SHTF scenario, I believe, is having plans and materials in place to support the ongoing function of existing physical infrastructure: clean water, sewage, and electricity. Those three things are the pillars of normalcy in civilization, and without them, having ammunition, gasoline or tool steel isn't an asset, it just makes you a target for people who don't have resources.

On the other hand, if by 'SHTF' one refers to a Mad Max-style scenario, I would say what's the use in planning, really?
posted by clockzero at 12:23 PM on June 16, 2015 [7 favorites]

After a significant run-up and subsequent fall in 2012, gold traded on Monday at $1,186. Over more than four years that just a 3% gain for the fund before you account for the cost of housing the gold in New York and the transaction costs that will be incurred if and when the endowment fund ships the bars back to Texas or sells them to a buyer. Over the same period, the S&P 500 index - a broad measure of owning stocks - gained 60%.

*slow clap*

Dude's a financial wizard!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:23 PM on June 16, 2015 [8 favorites]

If this is a first step on their quest to secede, they better not get all the way to being their own country and then someone pulls a Goldfinger on them.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 12:25 PM on June 16, 2015

rhodium depositors

Finally! Somewhere to deposit all my hard-earned rhodium.
posted by rbellon at 12:26 PM on June 16, 2015 [12 favorites]

There's a fine line between specie-backed and specious-backed.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 12:28 PM on June 16, 2015 [12 favorites]

Somewhere to deposit all my hard-earned rhodium.

Gold gets all the attention. Nobody ever thinks of the platinum group metals. Show them some love.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:29 PM on June 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

If SHTF, and say, in Texas, a sizable group of armed militants start causing REAL problems? They'd be taken out with a military drone before any of them saw or heard it. There's no point in hoarding stockpiles of weapons if the Fed Gubbmint is what you're ascaird of.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 12:29 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I thought Abbott sending "observers" to those military training exercises to appease the conspiracy loons in Texas was just a cynical, pandering political stunt, but this makes me think he really believes in what he's saying.

Good on you for sticking up for the sane Texans, emjaybee, but I'm pretty glad I left my home state behind.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:30 PM on June 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

We definitely don't have anything better to do. Nope.
posted by fiercecupcake at 12:32 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

See, what you have to understand is that things like stocks and yankee dollars are social constructs that will be valueless in the post-SHTF future. Once things go properly pear-shaped, what you're really going to want is something that holds its value outside of social conventions — things like pieces of very shiny metal, or numbers that when hashed with blocks in a distributed database yield a result numerically smaller than a given target value.

Come on guys this is econ 101.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:33 PM on June 16, 2015 [39 favorites]

this might be a good time to introduce Economics of Money and Banking by Perry Mehrling[1,2,3] into the texas school curriculum :P public banking![*]

like the EU is having a 'national conversation' right now about the possible secession of a member state from its currency union, but if we go back in time to the establishment of central banks which evolved to stop financial panics/manage business cycles, there's a pretty rich history there to inform the conversation! recall the series of financial panics that led to the creation of the federal reserve and then think about the series of financial crises in the US and elsewhere from more recent history and wonder whether we are not due for another wholesale reimagining of the monetary system :P to do that constructively tho i think requires a much better public understanding about what money is, how it operates and the mechanisms of its control or lack thereof...
posted by kliuless at 12:34 PM on June 16, 2015 [11 favorites]

That's not the worst of it.

Due to a spelling error in the legislation, they've been approached by Guinness Book of World Records, as they are planning on creating the world's largest -- and most expensive -- suppository.
posted by markkraft at 12:34 PM on June 16, 2015 [9 favorites]

Wouldn't the strategic helium reserve in Amarillo be a bigger ace in the hole in the event the SHTF?

Airships, people!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:41 PM on June 16, 2015 [11 favorites]

”“We don’t want illicit goods to be repatriated or criminals or drug lords” to see Texas as a safe harbor, he added.

Sure you don't buddy.

Also, gold is a rock. If there's ever a real, serious collapse of civilization it will be worthless. The only things that will have value will be practical items like weapons, food, water and drugs. If you really want to be well-off after the apocalypse stockpile morphine and antibiotics.
posted by dortmunder at 12:53 PM on June 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

This is why we can't have nice things like public land grant universities with low tuition and fees.
posted by immlass at 12:53 PM on June 16, 2015 [11 favorites]

recall the series of financial panics that led to the creation of the federal reserve and then think about the series of financial crises in the US and elsewhere from more recent history and wonder whether we are not due for another wholesale reimagining of the monetary system

Personally, I think a reimagining of the monetary system could be a very good thing; but doesn't this framing assume that financial crises are caused, to some degree or in some important way, by the nature of the monetary system? If so, what is it about the extant monetary system that makes the financial system prone to familiar crises, and what changes would improve that systemic vulnerability?
posted by clockzero at 12:57 PM on June 16, 2015

I like to think of Texas as an experiment on how closely a state, in it's actions and policies, can come to mimic its constituents.
posted by johnnydummkopf at 1:02 PM on June 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's been a long time since I felit like I understood why the symbolic value of gold was more real than the symbolic value of currency mapped to a measure such as GNP.
posted by lodurr at 1:04 PM on June 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you really want to be well-off after the apocalypse stockpile morphine and antibiotics

Alas, both are perishable.

Bullets, though -- those have a really long shelf life.
posted by lodurr at 1:06 PM on June 16, 2015

Personally, I think a reimagining of the monetary system could be a very good thing; but doesn't this framing assume that financial crises are caused, to some degree or in some important way, by the nature of the monetary system?

Well, also a lack of regulation. The opaque CDOs, credit default swaps, NINJA mortgage loans and repeal of various provisions of Glass-Steagall that comprised the payload that blew things up in 2008.

Of course, Bass himself would profit handsomely by betting against this poorly-regulated morass.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:10 PM on June 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

Well, clockzero, there's certainly theories about Capitalist crises... Some hold that this is a systemic feature of Capitalism (admittedly, to believe this requires a belief in the Labor Theory of Value)...
posted by symbioid at 1:12 PM on June 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

So what are the demographics looking like in Texas?
posted by Atreides at 1:20 PM on June 16, 2015

I know a lot of people who place top priority on a local gold vault. Ostensibly absolutely totally normal people. (I live in Texas but not for much longer.)
posted by bukvich at 1:30 PM on June 16, 2015

So what are the demographics looking like in Texas?

Gettin' browner all the time! Unfortunately, the white people have most of the money and they're hard to dislodge. And of course non-white folks can and do vote Republican. Though I imagine that's getting harder all the time.

A quick Google search of "Texas turning blue" has a list articles saying either that it's inevitable or that it will never happen.
posted by emjaybee at 1:32 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Huh. He tried this during the 2013 session too, but the bill never left committee. I wonder what changed.

Other bills introduced by Capriglione:

HB 1218 (2015): To specify that sex ed classes teach that life begins at conception.
HB 1407 (2015): Enabling an immigrant witch hunt.
HB 1778 (2015): See above.
HB 1985 (2015): Allowing disabled vets use of HOV lanes regardless of number of passengers in the car.
HB 1691 (2013): Removing the requirement that government officials disclose gifts of food, transportation, lodging, or entertainment.
HB 3506 (2013): Codifying the sanctity of "Made in Texas."
posted by mudpuppie at 1:33 PM on June 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

Well, clockzero, there's certainly theories about Capitalist crises... Some hold that this is a systemic feature of Capitalism (admittedly, to believe this requires a belief in the Labor Theory of Value)...

Certainly, and I'm familiar with critiques of capitalism along those lines. I was asking more about what sounded like a kind of monetarist argument that I thought kliuless might have been making about financial crisis; that is, that something about the management of the money supply or the conditions of a currency's production, circuluation, etc. potentiates crises, perhaps. Maybe I misunderstood what kliuless meant, though.
posted by clockzero at 1:34 PM on June 16, 2015

Somebody's been listening to too much Glenn Beck.
posted by jgaiser at 1:35 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

If so, what is it about the extant monetary system that makes the financial system prone to familiar crises, and what changes would improve that systemic vulnerability?

glad you asked!

also see (for extra credit ;)
-What's the problem?
-The Tardy Product: In which Practice gets ahead and Theory catches up
-What Gorton and Holmstrom get right and get wrong
posted by kliuless at 1:49 PM on June 16, 2015

Not to give Capriglione too much credit, mudpuppie, but the bill you linked actually does the opposite of what you said: it removes an exemption from reporting requirements that allowed for anything in the form of food, lodging, transportation, or entertainment to not count as a reportable gift.
posted by fifthrider at 1:49 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Go Tell Aunt Rhodium
Go Tell Aunt Rhodium
Go Tell Aunt Rhodium
The golden goose is dead
posted by thelonius at 1:56 PM on June 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you really want to be well-off after the apocalypse stockpile morphine and antibiotics.


If you really want to be well-off after the apocalypse, stockpile skills and friends.


Learn how to grow things. Learn how to build or fix things. Learn how to work with people and cultivate a group of like-minded individuals who will help each other out when things get tough.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:57 PM on June 16, 2015 [13 favorites]

I only wish Donald Westlake or Elmore Leonard were still alive to write a heist book about it.

Carl Hiassen, you're wanted on line 3.
posted by ocschwar at 2:00 PM on June 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

You're correct, fifthrider. I missed the initial 'not.' Carry on.

Made in Texas™
posted by mudpuppie at 2:05 PM on June 16, 2015

You can also read about Germany's efforts to repatriate their gold from the Fed in Der Spiegel. This stems from the Fed's treating German auditors like Saddam treated U.N. weapons inspectors.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 2:18 PM on June 16, 2015

Alas, both are perishable.

You gotta time the market. It's tricky.
posted by dortmunder at 2:24 PM on June 16, 2015

From now I will refer to this as 'Operation Golden Shower'.
posted by The Vice Admiral of the Narrow Seas at 2:35 PM on June 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

The National Bank Acts established a national banking system and imposed a 10% tax on state bank notes to induce them to join the national system. The Bank of North Dakota is the only state bank; technically it's the State of North Dakota doing business as the Bank of North Dakota (or State of North Dakota DBABND).
posted by kirkaracha at 2:37 PM on June 16, 2015

From now I will refer to this as 'Operation Golden Shower'.

Thankfully, I'm working at home today. My tears of laughter would be tough to contextualize for the folks sitting next to me. All I could manage to squeak out between whoops of laughter would have been the following:

"Texas...conservatives...gold reserves...bad investments...GOLDEN SHOWERS!"
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:49 PM on June 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

If SHTF, and say, in Texas, a sizable group of armed militants start causing REAL problems? They'd be taken out with a military drone before any of them saw or heard it. There's no point in hoarding stockpiles of weapons if the Fed Gubbmint is what you're ascaird of.

Because of course history demonstrates that superior tech and firepower always allows for the convenient and efficient dispatch of insurgents without any side effects.
posted by bracems at 2:59 PM on June 16, 2015

Tried to look up some figures on how much fiat currency is out there, and how much gold is out there, and it turns out there aren't hard figures for either number. If all the world's known mined gold (which may be off in either direction by a factor of 10) of about 5507422890 troy ounces was used to back the M1 (cash, checks, other equivalent vehicles) supply of about $2.5 trillion, it'd work out to about $450/oz, about the extraction cost of mining and refining an ounce of gold. But add in the rest of the world currencies, and that number goes way up, possibly above his dream of $5000/oz. Holy jehosephat, now the goldbugs are all Rich! Except if gold-backed currency became the law of the land, so would the centralized bank issuance of gold certificates, and yes, I imagine all private holdings would become illegal in the State of Texas in order to maintain the reserves necessary to back said currency. Whoops!
posted by Blackanvil at 3:25 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

On the other hand, if by 'SHTF' one refers to a Mad Max-style scenario, I would say what's the use in planning, really?

1) Stockpile gold
2) SHTF
3) Trade gold for red onesie, wall of amps, vehicle, flamethrowing guitar and fuel for latter two

PLANNING.
posted by delfin at 3:28 PM on June 16, 2015 [7 favorites]

ah, Texas. Always good for letting other Americans feel the way the rest of the world feels about America. Texas is the America of America.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:40 PM on June 16, 2015 [14 favorites]

I wonder if Giovanni Capriglione ever stops to reflect that, in the Good Old Days, an Italian would barely be considered white by Texans, much less manage to get electoral support without somehow proving the Pope was not behind all his actions. But I guess if you're a reflective man, you don't do well in the GOP these days.

I was reminded of this thread by an article showing some results of a Gawker FOIA request for emails to the Texas governor about his Jade Helm orders. One typed letter begs the governor to station troops in the writer's town because "IF JADE HELM EVER COME TO TEMPLE AND THE SURRONDING AREA I WOULD BE SHOT BECAUSE I AM IN A WHEEL CHAIR." This person also states that SSI is their sole source of income.
posted by Countess Elena at 4:10 PM on June 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

add in the rest of the world currencies,

Nope, goldbuggery is particularly a US problem, no other advanced economies have the remotest belief that this would ever be a thing again.
posted by wilful at 4:25 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Smaug the Magnificent (R-TX)
posted by um at 4:29 PM on June 16, 2015 [13 favorites]

For a bunch of self described conservatives these guys sure have a bunch of radical ideas.
posted by humanfont at 4:46 PM on June 16, 2015

ah, Texas. Always good for letting other Americans feel the way the rest of the world feels about America. Texas is the America of America.

Likewise, Midland-Odessa is the Texas of Texas. And somewhere in there, the very beating heart of evil, a particular house is the Midland of Odessa.

...and that's where the red lectroids enter our dimension.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:54 PM on June 16, 2015 [7 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that Texas Governor is the new Florida Man.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 5:02 PM on June 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

Nope, goldbuggery is particularly a US problem, no other advanced economies have the remotest belief that this would ever be a thing again.

And ironically for the gold bugs, if the US hadn't abandoned Bretton Woods, it wouldn't have become a reserve currency, thereby adding to the estimable economic power of the US of A by doing stuff like lowering borrowing costs for the government and so on.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:27 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you really want to be well-off after the apocalypse stockpile morphine and antibiotics.
If you really want to be well-off after the apocalypse, stockpile skills and friends.

I'd settle for being well off until the apocalypse instead.
posted by srboisvert at 7:02 PM on June 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

Like two or three times a day somebody is going to have to go into that vault and clean up the dead bodies from teabaggers who tried to Scrooge McDuck the gold pile.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:13 PM on June 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

What About Today's Republican Party?

Perhaps it is bet to think of it as the curse imposed on the Republican Party by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. The 1964 Civil Rights Act seemed to them to create an opportunity for the Republican Party. It could attract Southern Democrats conservative and hostile to civil rights by covering the flag of racism under the banner of libertarianism and individual freedom. They could thus make the South competitive.

There is this line in the comic book The Watchmen: "You think I am locked in here with you. But actually you are locked in here with me!"

Nixon and Goldwater thought they were locking a segment of ex-Southern Democrats into the Republican Party under conditions that would [give] them a subordinate role. But now the Eisenhower, the Nixon, and I would say even the Herbert Hoover and Barry Goldwater Republicans find themselves locked in and in a subordinate role with a bunch of people who are very difficult to live with. People who think the world is against them. People who think that, somehow, others are manipulating the system and stealing their stuff. Sometimes those others are "eggheads"; sometimes they are, in Nino Scalia's terms, those "pursuing the homosexual agenda"; Black welfare queens are a constant threat; immigrants--God alone knows why a party that thinks it is for the entrepreneurial and upward-striving doesn't regard someone who has managed to dodge the dogs and walk a thousand miles from Chiapas to get here as their best friend--are a threat; feminists seems to be a constant threat. I really do not understand it.

Most recently, over the past month we have seen a normal United States military exercise, Jade Helm--the kind of thing which has, since before World War II, always designated pieces of the country as "opposition-controlled"--turned by talk radio into a U.S. plan for the military takeover of Texas. And we we have the Republican senators and the Republican governor of Texas not daring to tell their base that they are being silly. They are, instead, saying: We have to take this seriously. We must have the Texas Guard watch the U.S. military. That political cowardice is, I think, the scariest thing.

The Republican Party is 30% of the country. The Republican primary electors are only 15% of the country. The truly loony right-wingnut majority of the primary electorate is only 10% of the country. But that is still 10% of the country. And that 10% exercises a greatly outsized political influence. This is extremely worrisome to us all. And if you are a Republican, it ought to be especially worrisome to you.

oh and btw :P
Economics of Money and Banking, Part Two - "Introduction to a 'money view' of economic activity for modern times, building on the intellectual traditions of British central banking and American institutionalism. Part One explores the economics of payment systems and money markets. Part Two explores connections with foreign exchange and capital markets. NOTE: The first week of Part Two reviews Part One, so you can take Part Two even if you missed Part One."
posted by kliuless at 7:25 PM on June 16, 2015 [7 favorites]

The Texas Bouillon Repository would be a decent restaurant
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:28 PM on June 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

Goldbuggery

I was going to say that going from "goldbug" to "goldbuggery" was picking up some unintended connotations along the way, but on reflection it's perfect.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:29 PM on June 16, 2015 [11 favorites]

The 2012 election map isn't vastly different from the 1896 map. These same bofoons would be braying about a cross of gold within half a generation if they got their gold standard.
posted by wotsac at 8:04 PM on June 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

(I was originally looking for a less earnest application of goldbuggery to Bryant, but '... peg mankind with a dildo of gold.' is a long way to walk for a joke that nobody will get)
posted by wotsac at 8:10 PM on June 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

If you're planning for a future of ecologically-desolate war-ravaged wasteland of small communities struggling to survive, I just want to say one word to you:

Bottlecaps.
posted by bonehead at 9:18 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Stupid stupid Texass.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 9:31 PM on June 16, 2015

Sounds like a great prelude to the Texas Cheesecake Depository.
posted by aaronetc at 10:25 PM on June 16, 2015

The really scary thing about this is that if the past decade and a half is any guide to the future, in about 4 years people are going to start talking about this Abbott loon as a presidential contender. Preferrably with a running mate named Costello.
posted by TedW at 3:49 AM on June 17, 2015

Don't think plans aren't already being made for Abbott's 2020 (or 2024, if Jeb wins) run. The GOP power brokers have a bench plan at least three cycles out.
posted by Etrigan at 4:50 AM on June 17, 2015

Nope, goldbuggery is particularly a US problem, no other advanced economies have the remotest belief that this would ever be a thing again.

not totally true. See the Germans and the Fed for example.

Though certainly we get more than our fair share.
posted by JPD at 5:21 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

As Slavoj Žižek once said, it is easier to imagine the end of America than the end of the petrodollar.
posted by clarknova at 10:46 AM on June 17, 2015

I dunno. The end of the petrodollar might come in 30-40 years. Unless you want to include Son of Petrodollar, for which one could definitely make an argument....
posted by lodurr at 1:05 PM on June 17, 2015

TEXAS WANTS ITS GOLD BACK INSIDE THE STATE'S BORDERS
posted by andoatnp at 1:18 PM on July 5, 2015