BIOS - Modifizierungen | BIOS - Modifikationen

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Changing a VMs virtual hardware info to match that of the host. Serial number,type,model,vendor ect.

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uuid und Bios id WMware ändern

Mir sagt das was du da willst zwar nichts - farmen crossfire bahnhof - ich kenn auch keine VMWare Mediastation sondern nur VMWare Player ;). Vielleicht bin ich zu alt.

Hmm als VMWare Pro haette ich 3 Ideen wie eine x-beliebige Software erkennen könnte ob es eine VM ist. Auf jedenfall keine VMWare Tools installieren.

1. Grafikkarte / VMWare typische PCI Geräte - daran kann man schlecht drehen - temporär lassen sich die PCIID in der Registry ändern (SUBVEN / VEN) - nach einem Reboot ist das dann aber wieder weg.

Du müsstest alle Einträge für Geräte mit VEN_15AD killen.

2. NIC - hier könnte nach PCIID geschaut werden und MAC, die MAC tauschst du mit diesen Einträgen in der VMX Datei aus.

uuid.action="keep"
Ethernet0.addressType="generated"
Ethernet0.generatedaddress="00:0c:76: fd:47:f1 "
Ethernet0.generatedaddressoffset="0"
Bei uuid.location und uuid.bios die letzten 3 Bytes dann mit den letzten 3 Bytes der MAC austauschen.

Damit aus der AMD/VMWare Karte eine 08/15 Intel wird setzt du

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

in die VMX Datei.

3. Am PC Hersteller - der lässt sich aber durch setzen von

SMBIOS.reflectHost = "TRUE"

in der VMX Datei überschreiben, läuft deine VM auf ein Firma X Rechner meldet sie dann auch Firma X.

Probier die Tricks auf einer VM ohne VMWare Tools im VMWare Player mal aus, beginn mit 3 dann 2 dann 1.

Bitte Feedback geben :)

Alternativ schau dir doch VMWare Thinapp an, eine 60 Tage Version bekommt man für lau und damit lassen sich auch mehrere Instanzen der selben Software auf der selben Windows Version paralell laufen lassen. Ich bin mir sicher daran denkt kein Mensch ;).

wichtige Zitate aus der Zeit von 1927 bis 1933 als Chart - Weltwirtschaftskriese -

 

1. "We will not have any more crashes in our time."
- John Maynard Keynes in 1927

2. "I cannot help but raise a dissenting voice to statements that we are living in a fool's paradise, and that prosperity in this country must necessarily diminish and recede in the near future."
- E. H. H. Simmons, President, New York Stock Exchange, January 12, 1928

"There will be no interruption of our permanent prosperity."
- Myron E. Forbes, President, Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co., January 12, 1928

3. "No Congress of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time. In the domestic field there is tranquility and contentment...and the highest record of years of prosperity. In the foreign field there is peace, the goodwill which comes from mutual understanding."
- Calvin Coolidge December 4, 1928

4. "There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash."
- Irving Fisher, leading U.S. economist , New York Times, Sept. 5, 1929

5. "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. I do not feel there will be soon if ever a 50 or 60 point break from present levels, such as (bears) have predicted. I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher within a few months."
- Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in economics, Oct. 17, 1929

"This crash is not going to have much effect on business."
- Arthur Reynolds, Chairman of Continental Illinois Bank of Chicago, October 24, 1929

"There will be no repetition of the break of yesterday... I have no fear of another comparable decline."
- Arthur W. Loasby (President of the Equitable Trust Company), quoted in NYT, Friday, October 25, 1929

"We feel that fundamentally Wall Street is sound, and that for people who can afford to pay for them outright, good stocks are cheap at these prices."
- Goodbody and Company market-letter quoted in The New York Times, Friday, October 25, 1929

6. "This is the time to buy stocks. This is the time to recall the words of the late J. P. Morgan... that any man who is bearish on America will go broke. Within a few days there is likely to be a bear panic rather than a bull panic. Many of the low prices as a result of this hysterical selling are not likely to be reached again in many years."
- R. W. McNeel, market analyst, as quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929

"Buying of sound, seasoned issues now will not be regretted"
- E. A. Pearce market letter quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929

"Some pretty intelligent people are now buying stocks... Unless we are to have a panic -- which no one seriously believes, stocks have hit bottom."
- R. W. McNeal, financial analyst in October 1929

7. "The decline is in paper values, not in tangible goods and services...America is now in the eighth year of prosperity as commercially defined. The former great periods of prosperity in America averaged eleven years. On this basis we now have three more years to go before the tailspin."
- Stuart Chase (American economist and author), NY Herald Tribune, November 1, 1929

"Hysteria has now disappeared from Wall Street."
- The Times of London, November 2, 1929

"The Wall Street crash doesn't mean that there will be any general or serious business depression... For six years American business has been diverting a substantial part of its attention, its energies and its resources on the speculative game... Now that irrelevant, alien and hazardous adventure is over. Business has come home again, back to its job, providentially unscathed, sound in wind and limb, financially stronger than ever before."
- Business Week, November 2, 1929

"...despite its severity, we believe that the slump in stock prices will prove an intermediate movement and not the precursor of a business depression such as would entail prolonged further liquidation..."
- Harvard Economic Society (HES), November 2, 1929

8. "... a serious depression seems improbable; [we expect] recovery of business next spring, with further improvement in the fall."
- HES, November 10, 1929

"The end of the decline of the Stock Market will probably not be long, only a few more days at most."
- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, November 14, 1929

"In most of the cities and towns of this country, this Wall Street panic will have no effect."
- Paul Block (President of the Block newspaper chain), editorial, November 15, 1929

"Financial storm definitely passed."
- Bernard Baruch, cablegram to Winston Churchill, November 15, 1929

9. "I see nothing in the present situation that is either menacing or warrants pessimism... I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring, and that during this coming year the country will make steady progress."
- Andrew W. Mellon, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury December 31, 1929

"I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence."
- Herbert Hoover, December 1929

"[1930 will be] a splendid employment year."
- U.S. Dept. of Labor, New Year's Forecast, December 1929

10. "For the immediate future, at least, the outlook (stocks) is bright."
- Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in Economics, in early 1930

11. "...there are indications that the severest phase of the recession is over..."
- Harvard Economic Society (HES) Jan 18, 1930

12. "There is nothing in the situation to be disturbed about."
- Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, Feb 1930

13. "The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity."
- Julius Barnes, head of Hoover's National Business Survey Conference, Mar 16, 1930

"... the outlook continues favorable..."
- HES Mar 29, 1930

14. "... the outlook is favorable..."
- HES Apr 19, 1930

15. "While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst -- and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There has been no significant bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us."
- Herbert Hoover, President of the United States, May 1, 1930

"...by May or June the spring recovery forecast in our letters of last December and November should clearly be apparent..."
- HES May 17, 1930

"Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over."
- Herbert Hoover, responding to a delegation requesting a public works program to help speed the recovery, June 1930

16. "... irregular and conflicting movements of business should soon give way to a sustained recovery..."
- HES June 28, 1930

17. "... the present depression has about spent its force..."
- HES, Aug 30, 1930

18. "We are now near the end of the declining phase of the depression."
- HES Nov 15, 1930

19. "Stabilization at [present] levels is clearly possible."
- HES Oct 31, 1931

20. "All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed... and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S."
- President F.D. Roosevelt, 1933

saponated cresol

A fatal case of saponated cresol ingestion.
Kinoshita H, Fuke C, Kubota A, Nishiguchi M, Ouchi H, Minami T, Matsui K, Yamamura T, Motomura H, Yoshinaga K, Marukawa S, Hishida S.
Source

Department of Legal Medicine and Emergency, Critical Care and Disaster Medicine, Hyogo College of Medicine, 1-1, Mukogawa-cho, Nishinomiya, Hyogo 663-8501, Japan. kinochin@hyo-med.ac.jp
Abstract

We describe here a case of suicidal poisoning by saponated cresol ingestion. A 41 year-old male was found unconsciousness in a park in the early morning, and an empty bottle of saponated cresol was found beside him. His death was confirmed approximately 2 hours later, despite attempts at resuscitation and intensive care. The autopsy revealed severe morphological damage of the upper gastrointestinal tract and congestion of the lung. We also observed by histopathological examination severe lung edema and severe erosion of the esophagus and stomach. Toxicological analysis also identified a high concentration of cresol isomer in the blood and gastric contents. The cause of death was given as cresol poisoning, based on the results of the autopsy and toxicological examination.

PMID:
16948448
[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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Fiat Money come to Zero, or A Thousand Pictures Is Worth One Word

A Thousand Pictures Is Worth One Word

Jeff Clark, Senior Precious Metals Analyst

July 27, 2011 4:40pm GMT

By Jeff Clark, BIG GOLD
In spite of constant headlines about debts and deficits, most Americans don’t really believe the U.S. dollar will collapse. From knowledgeable investors who study the markets to those seemingly too busy to worry about such things, most dismiss the idea of the dollar actually going to zero.
History has a message for us: No fiat currency has lasted forever. Eventually, they all fail.
BMG BullionBars recently published a poster featuring pictures of numerous currencies that have gone bust. Some got there quickly, while others took a century or more. Regardless of how long it took, though, the seductive temptations allowed under a fiat monetary system eventually caught up with these governments, and their currencies went poof!
You might suspect this happened only to third world countries. You’d be wrong. There was no discrimination as to the size or perceived stability of a nation’s economy; if the leaders abused their currency, the country paid the price.
As you scroll through the currencies below, you’ll see some long-ago casualties. What’s shocking, though, is how many have occurred in our lifetime. You might count how many currencies have failed since you’ve been born.
So what’s the one word for the “thousand pictures” below? Worthless.

Yugoslavia – 10 billion dinar, 1993

Zaire – 5 million zaires, 1992

Venezuela – 10,000 bolívares, 2002

Ukraine – 10,000 karbovantsiv, 1995

Turkey – 5 million lira, 1997

Russia – 10,000 rubles, 1992

Romania – 50,000 lei, 2001

Central Bank of China – 10,000 CGU, 1947

Peru – 100,000 intis, 1989

Nicaragua – 10 million córdobas, 1990

Hungary – 10 million pengo, 1945

Greece – 25,000 drachmas, 1943

Germany – 1 billion mark, 1923

Georgia – 1 million laris, 1994

France – 5 livres, 1793

Chile – 10,000 pesos, 1975

Brazil – 500 cruzeiros reais, 1993

Bosnia – 100 million dinar, 1993

Bolivia – 5 million pesos bolivianos, 1985

Belarus – 100,000 rubles, 1996

Argentina – 10,000 pesos argentinos, 1985

Angola – 500,000 kwanzas reajustados, 1995

Zimbabwe – 100 trillion dollars, 2006

So, will a similar fate befall the U.S. dollar? The common denominator that led to the downfall of each currency above was the two big Ds: Debts and Deficits.
With that in mind, consider the following:

Morgan Stanley reported in 2009 that there’s “no historical precedent” for an economy that exceeds a 250% debt-to-GDP ratio without experiencing some sort of financial crisis or high inflation. Our total debt now exceeds GDP by roughly 400%.

Investment legend Marc Faber reports that once a country’s payments on debt exceed 30% of tax revenue, the currency is “done for.” On our current path, analyst Michael Murphy projects we’ll hit that figure by October.

Peter Bernholz, the leading expert on hyperinflation, states unequivocally that “hyperinflation is caused by government budget deficits.” This year’s U.S. budget deficit will end up being $1.5 trillion, an amount never before seen in history.

Since the Federal Reserve’s creation in 1913, the dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power. Our government leaders clearly don’t know how – or don’t wish – to keep the currency strong.

Whether the dollar goes to zero or merely becomes a second-class currency in the global arena, the possibility of the greenback being added to the above list grows every day. And this will lead to serious and painful consequences in our standard of living. While money is only one of many problems we’ll have to deal with, you can protect your assets with the one currency that can’t be debased, devalued, or destroyed by irresponsible leaders.
Don’t be the investor who dismisses this message from history. Use gold (and silver) as your savings vehicle. Any excuse you have now will be meaningless and irrelevant when we enter that fateful period. Make sure you own enough precious metals to make a difference in your portfolio.
Because when it comes to money, worthless is not a fun word.

Famous Quotes about Fiat Money

Famous Quotes about Fiat Money

“The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money.”

- Adam Smith

“At the end fiat money returns to its inner value—zero.”

- Voltaire

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.”

- Abraham Lincoln

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”

- Amschel Rothschild

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

- President Woodrow Wilson (regretting signing into law the Federal Reserve Act)

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before morning.”

- Henry Ford

“By this means (fractional reserve banking) government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.”

- John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1920)

“The modern banking process manufactures currency out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of slight hand that was ever invented…If you want to be slaves of the bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the banks create currency”.

- Lord Josiah Stemp, Former Director of the Bank of England (1937)

“If the governments devalue the currency in order to betray all creditors, you politely call this procedure “inflation.”

- George Bernard Shaw

“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation […] Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the “hidden” confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.”

- Alan Greenspan, Gold and Economic Freedom (1968)

Niman Kenkre NimanKenkre about fiat currency

fiat currency

By:

NimanKenkre 

Dated:

11 Jun, 2011

I have been meaning to write about this topic for some time, but because it's a complex topic to write about, I've been putting it off.  But I think it is a subject that needs to be discussed.  It's important for everyone to understand, but particularly so for poker players who deal with large amounts of cash.  Even though this is a long post, I urge all of you to try and read the whole thing.  It is very important for everyone to understand the implications of what is happening today and what that might mean for the short or mid-term future.  We might even be able to do something about it.
As everyone knows, the United States economy is in a total shambles.  However, what many people do not realize is that in the direction that we are headed, we could be in for a complete currency collapse.  With the national debt getting close to 15 trillion dollars now, and being very close to the debt ceiling, the fact of the matter is that something has to be done - and we, as US citizens are going to pay the price for the economic irresponsiblity that our government has indulged in.  I could talk about this forever, but I'd like to talk specifically about one (of many interrelated) aspects of the problem.  That is the issue of our currency not being backed by anything, and being essentially a fiat currency.  The implications of this could be disastrous.
Before I get into the teeth of this, let me give a poker analogy.  If you go to a casino today, you exchange your cash for chips.  You then use those chips not only to play poker, but if you wish, you can use them to pay for dinner at the casino, to pay for a massage at the table, to pay/tip for drinks, and basically to buy anything you want that is owned or operated by the casino.  At the end of your stay in the casino, you can exchange your chips back for cash (at the same rate that you exchanged the cash for chips), leave the casino, and return to the rest of the world.  You could also if you wish keep your chips, keeping them for your use for when you return to that casino next.  The reason that this all works is that the chips in the casino - i.e. the casino currency - are backed by the United States dollar.  In other words, the chips in the casino represent actual dollars.  The actual chips are only a way of representing the amount of money that you are in possession of in a less bulky, easier-to-handle way.  Because of this, you can exchange your chips for dollars and vice-versa without fear, and you can pay for anything (charged in dollars) with chips.
Now imagine for a minute that the casino decided to go off of the dollar standard.  The chips are no longer backed by anything and are an independent entity.  Now all of a sudden, the casino is in complete control.  They can manufacture any number and monetary amount of chips that they choose to, since they no longer represent the dollar in a direct translation.  Of course now, if the casinos manufacture and distribute more and more chips, the value of the actual chips in your possession go down accordingly.  That is simple math - and the concept of inflation.
Meanwhile, as the valuation of the casino chips go down, and merchants realize that they can go down arbitrarily (as the casino decides to make more irrespective and independent of the actual US dollar), you will no longer be able to pay for a $5 drink with a $5 chip.  They will insist that you pay with actual dollars, since the chip may not (probably will not) have the value that it is attempting to represent.
Of course, while this would cause some inconveniences and also some devaluation of your 'money', it can get worse.  If the casino keep manufacturing chips indiscriminately, not only will the value of the chips drop so much that you and the other casino patrons(with outside currency - be that the dollar or anything else) will be hesitant to exchange it for chips (whose value will continue to decrease), but eventually if it gets bad enough, there will be a panic among all those people that have a large percentage of their money in casino chips.  As a large number of people start realizing the arbitrary valuation of their currency, they will try to get rid of them for actual dollars.  Eventually, no merchants will accept chips as payment, and if there is a run on the casino cage, people will not be able to get 'actual' money in exchange for their chips.  Ultimately, the chips will be totally useless, and you won't even be able to get that $5 drink with a $5000 chip.  In other words, the casino will have a currency collapse - caused by (a) their currency being taken off of the dollar standard; and (b) their indiscrimate inflation - manufacturing more and more chips to distribute.
While this may sound ridiculous to you guys, this is precisely what is happening in the United States today.  The United States was on the gold standard until Nixon took the country off of it in 1971.  That meant that the paper currency - the dollar - represented exactly an amount of gold that the owner was in possession of.  The actual gold was kept in depositories, and the paper currency used for bartering could only represent the amount of gold that was in possession and ownership.  As a result, there was absolutely minimal inflation (what little inflation there was was due to the mining of more gold), and the country functioned powerfully from an economic standpoint.
Now when the country was taken off of the gold standard, the government had the ability to arbitrarily print more and more money - and inflation became a problem.  However, it did not get out of control until recently.  Note that even in our casino example, if the casino took the chips off of the dollar standard, they could still function (albeit in a less stable steady-state) if they ran their establishment responsibly without getting out of hand with the manufacturing of more and more chips.
Since the economic collapse of 2008, the US government has done exactly that.  They have irresponsibly printed more and more money in an attempt to ease the pain of the recession.  They printed astounding amounts of money to generate the bailout, and now the whole quantitative easing is doing the same thing.  Instead of healing a serious infection, they've been trying to put a band-aid on it and move on.
Well folks, it's getting very close to being time to pay the piper.  The national debt is close to 15 TRILLION dollars now which is very close the debt ceiling (although that is a somewhat arbitrary number).  That means that we are in for something really really bad.  In the BEST case scenario, we are going to go through a period of hardship where the quality of life for everyone is going to go down.  We won't have the luxuries that we've become accustomed to, and all of the residents of this country are going to deal with a slowly decreasing quality of life.
In worse (but very possible scenarios), the price of food, gas, etc will be such that the middle class will be decimated, and the poorer people will not be able to afford the basics needed for survival.  That could in turn lead to a riotous state in which people are mugged, beaten, and murdered for their basic amenities.
Or in order to prevent that, the government may go totally ballistic with raising the taxes on the higher income contingent in order to plug the leak - which will ultimately remove all incentives for the best and brightest people to innovate and produce.  Once you do that, there is really little or no hope for the country to persevere.
And in the case of a currency collapse, our dollars will mean nothing.  In order to buy food, you will have to barter - either exchanging goods and services directly - or using actual precious metals (which have held their value as a currency primarily because of their rarity) in the form of gold and silver bars and coins.
Fiat currency - or currency that is not backed by anything has ALWAYS failed, and has often resulted in the demise of an empire or country.  A few examples:
One of the first examples of the debasement of a currency was the denarius in Rome.  At the beginning of the first century A.D., the denarius, Rome's coinage at the time was essentially pure silver.  By 54 A.D. Emperor Nero started to devalue the currency in order to pay the bills and increase his own wealth.  By around 100 A.D., the denarius' silver content was down to 85%.  Emperors that succeeded Nero continued to devalue the currency (i.e. inflation) exactly as the current government has been doing here in the United States.  By 218 A.D., the denarius was down to 43% silver.  At the time of Rome's collapse, the denarius contained only 0.02% silver and virtually nobody accepted it as a medium of exchange or a store of value.
In the 11th century, a bank in the Szechuan province of China issued paper money in exchange for the iron coins.  Initially, this was fine, but  inflation started to take hold as the Chinese tried to "fabricate" more money to fund their ongoing war with the Mongols.  Gengis Khan and the Mongols won this war, took over the currency, and continued the process of inflation, much as the Romans did with the denarius and as the United States is doing today with the dollar.  Ultimately, this empire came crashing down as well.  In the words of Marco Polo:  "Population and trade had greatly increased, but the emissions of paper notes were suffered to largely outrun both.  All the beneficial effects of a currency that is allowed to expand with a growth of population and trade were now turned into those evil effects that flow from a currency emitted in excess of such growth.  These effects were not slow to develop themselves.  The best families in the empire were ruined, a new set of men came into the control of public affairs, and the country became the scene of internecine warfare and confusion."
I could give a few more examples of currency collapses from a long time ago when countries used fiat money.  France failed with Livres and Assignats when they lost 99% of their valuations and descended into a riotous state.  And Weimar Germany was one of the greatest periods of hyperinflation that ever existed.  The Treaty of Versailles was effectively a financial punishment placed on Germany to make reparations for World War I.  The sums of money to be paid by Germany were ridiculous, and the only way that it could make repayment was by printing money indiscriminately.  (again, EXACTLY as the US is doing now with their huge unpayable debt).  Inflation got so bad in this period that German citizens were literally using stacks of marks to heat their furnaces!  Or, if you want that expressed mathematically, in April of 1919, the exchange rate for the US dollar was 12 marks.  In November of 1921, it was 263 marks.  In January of 1923:  17000 marks.  August 1923: 4.621 million marks.  October of 1923, 25.26 billion marks.  December 1923:  4.2 trillion marks.
There are more examples, but this post is getting long enough, and I want to give some examples of more recent currency collapses.  Without getting into the amount of detail that I did in the previous paragraphs, I want to point out that fiat money, backed by nothing and eventually irresponsibly inflated crushed the currencies - and ultimately the lives of the denizens.  Argentina went from having the eighth largest currency in the world to a cmoplete collapse.  In 1992, Finland, Norway, and Italy had catastrophic currency collapses.  In 1994, the Mexican peso fell through the floor and economic hardship and a dramatic decrease in quality of life spread through Mexico.  The same thing happened to the Thai baht in 1997 and the Russian ruble in 1998 (I actually remember seeing pictures of Russians taking wheelbarrows full of money to the grocery store just to buy a quart of milk).  At the present time, Zimbabwe, which once had the strongest currency in Africa and was the wealthiest country on the continent, has totally fallen apart.  Mugabe's attempts at disrupting the free market (sound familiar?) and hyperinflation have created a nation that cannot even supply bread and clean water.
Guys, this problem is real and it is here NOW.  The United States currency was at least tied into oil whereby anyone buying oil in the Middle East had to purchase it in US dollars.  But now that oil is decoupling from the dollar, we are very dangerously close to having a purely fiat currency.  And with the goverment trying to find quick fixes to every problem merely by inflating the currency - and ultimately reaching totally unpayable levels of debt, it is inevitable that we are going to enter a period of serious economic hardship.  Let me say that again:  it is inevitable that we are going to enter a period of serious economic hardship.  It may be just a slow disintegration of our quality of life.  It may be an absurd tax on the rich, ultimately causing the best and brightest producers to leave and/or stop producing.  It may be a riotous state, where it is dangerous to be out on the street.  Fiat currency has ALWAYS failed - and its failure has always been expedited when the respective governments have accelerated the printing of more money.  Please do not underestimate the problem.