Saturday, October 18, 2008

Saturday Odds and Ends

It seems like this weekend may be devoid of the usual fireworks that have been the norm for about a month. I mean the Yahoo Finance lead story was about President Bush promises the country everything will be OK, eventually. Hard to argue with that. Eventually the Moon will spin away from Earth, as it moves away 30 millimeters or so a year. Eventually is a relative term.

Question About Newspapers
I do get a physical newspaper and have not for about 5 years. I remember when I was younger that my Mom was always waiting to get the paper in the evening and especially on Sunday. I was wondering how many of the readers here get an actual paper? Or do you rely on the Web alone to read news items? Just curious, so leave your response in the comments section.

Interesting Tidbit
You can learn something new every day! Today I ran across the book "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville. I Wiki'd the book and I was amazed that an actual ship was sunk by an angry sperm whale. This event inspired Melville to write the story.

The ship that was rammed by the whale was called the Essex and it was based out of Nantucket. If you have some time you should read about the entire episode as it entails shipwreck, remote island life, cannibalism, and other drama. Who knew?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)

Cool Old Money Site
I was searching around trying to find out some information on a weird $10 dollar bill my wife had last week. A clerk at a gas station gave as change to my a wife a 1934 Ten Dollar Bill! The bill was very different than any money I had ever seen. It turns out the bill is of some value (not alot, do not get excited!) so it was a neat find.

During my research I came across a totally awesome site that specializes in old money, banknotes, bonds, and other financial paper from all across the US over time. I seriously spend hours looking at all kinds of things on this site. I am going to buy a few things for myself when I figure out what I want the most. You can see what the guy is selling here:

http://www.donckelly.com/forsale.html

Some examples of things I find very cool:

I know it is hard to believe, but the US money supply was once backed up by solid gold! Amazing. There were things called Gold Certificates that you could actually redeem for gold. The bills have, of course, gold colored accents. The bills are very nice (clicking on picture will give you a bigger version):
Front Side


Backside:


How about Confederate money from the Civil War?:


The site even has regional money printed by local banks. You can search out old bank notes from your hometown perhaps. Here is an old bill from 1882 issued by the bank of Gloucester here in Massachusetts:


I am in no way associated with that site, I just came across it yesterday so my mention of it here is out of my own interest, not an endorsement! I really do like the old money though.

That is about it. Quiet Saturday night and I had some time to post.

Have a good night.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gysc

I use the net excursively for news except a small local paper the covers only local news. As for old money one of my daughters used to manage a large gas station on I5 the main freeway the runs threw CA, she was the recipient of a lot of this kind of stuff which she would buy from the station for face value. One day someone came in a paid with 12 silver dollars dating in the late 1800's more then likely it had been stolen is my best guess that was in 2005. Now my guess is with hard times hitting people are scouring the ceder chest just to pay for a tank of gas.

Kevin

Anonymous said...

I seen something interesting in the news today, it was the Europeons wanting to break down the sovereignty of the United States from my persective.

"Sarkozy says 'world must change' before crisis talks with Bush"

"Also on Saturday the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon offered "strong support" for a financial crisis summit involving world leaders along with representatives from the IMF and World Bank, which Sarkozy proposed on Friday at the 12th Francophonie summit in Quebec City, Canada."

http://tinyurl.com/6ewxt4

"Bush plans to host world powers at economic summit"

"Sarkozy has floated the idea of reforming rating agencies and even exploring the future of currency systems. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who engineered a British bank bailout that inspired U.S. and European rescues, is proposing radical changes to the global capitalist system, including a cross-border mechanism to monitor the world's 30 biggest financial institutions."

http://tinyurl.com/5m2mw2

I would say to read between the lines but even that is no longer necessary.
Globalization here we come.
And no, it won't be a good thing for the average American.

(you did catch that bit about Sarkozy's "currency system" didn't you?)

@GYSC
I'm like Kevin, I get my info from the net except for the local newspaper, got to know who got drunk and crashed over the weekend and whose mobile home went up in flames because of a grease fire :)

EconomicDisconnect said...

Watchtower,
LOL!! Too funny!

Anonymous said...

Watchtower,

You have a hot more excitement in your local rag the I do usually it's who celebrated their 81st birthday and which relatives showed up from out of town. Hell you can pull the tractor up in front of the bars out here with the kids riding on the hood and no one thinks a thing about it. I love it out here.
LOL

Kevin

Edward said...

We canceled our newspaper subscription one week ago. Ten years ago, they had 200 newsroom staff. One year ago, they had 137 news room staff. As of layoffs last Friday, they are now at 85.

Tey have only about 20 to 22 people doing actual news reporting now.

During this downsizing and massive page loss in the paper, they never lowered the subscription price. Next year, they are reducing the full page from 13 inches to 11 inches and may be eliminating the letters to the editor on some days.

In their latest round of layoffs, they fired all of the "new media" staff that were just about to launch a new online multimedia web news site that was to be their future, plus they fired their news radio operation too.

When I called to cancel, I was on hold for 30 minutes ... kind of wonder if I was not the only one canceling our subscription ...

Anonymous said...

Newspaper is going to shrink back to what it should be.

1. "Local" news papers
2. Big mega cities papers
3. Fringe or alternative papers

The newspaper these days is not worth the trees it is printed on. Plus it is messy and is hard to archive.

The digital press will surpass everything from the past. It will all be controlled by big companies .... unless your have your own blog or online news community which will be black listed from the new internet I2.

Enjoy your freedoms now.

G