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You should read up on the irish-dutch sandwitch tax dodge. That is exactly what they are doing.

http://www.investopedia.com/te...

"DEFINITION of 'Double Irish With A Dutch Sandwich'

A tax avoidance technique employed by certain large corporations, involving the use of a combination of Irish and Dutch subsidiary companies to shift profits to low or no tax jurisdictions. The double Irish with a Dutch sandwich technique involves sending profits first through one Irish company, then to a Dutch company and finally to a second Irish company headquartered in a tax haven. This technique has allowed certain corporations to dramatically reduce their overall corporate tax rates."

http://www.investopedia.com/te...

You should read up on the irish-dutch sandwitch tax dodge. That is exactly what they are doing.

http://www.investopedia.com/te...

Tax dodge. Taking advantage of treaties between Ireland, Denmark, and the EU to avoid paying taxes on their profits.

http://www.investopedia.com/te...

My theory is that these are inducements to keep the 'double irish' and 'dutch sandwich' tax dodges available. It seems highly unlikely that Ireland and Netherlands, the two countries that have Allowed apple to avoid hundreds of billions in taxes, and which have suggested that they might change these tax practices, have suddenly become recipients of major investments.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/double-irish-with-a-dutch-sandwich.asp

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
"Yeah, sad for me too. When I was a kid, in the late 1970s, with an interest in robotics and computers., my father and I would visit Radio Shacks to get various parts for my projects. ..."

I was tempted to follow creimer's example from that discussion and buy some stock or options hoping for a bounce, but I guess financially now I'm glad I didn't:
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
"Radio Shack has been preparing for bankruptcy for years. There's nothing new in the WSJ report that haven't already been reported before. Radio Shack stock price dived to $0.26 this morning and climbing back up. I bought 80 shares @ $0.48 on Tuesday. I might buy more share later. This is a long shot bet that might triple or lose my money."

Still might have been fun just for the nostalgia though, like by getting the actual stock certificates. Sorry buying RS stock recently was apparently not profitable you, creimer. You might want to request the actual certificates and hope they become collector's items eventually? See:
http://www.investopedia.com/as...
"Before online brokers and personally-directed accounts, holding a physical stock certificate was a necessity, as this was the only way to authenticate stock ownership. This is not the case anymore. Although you may not need to hold a stock certificate, you may request one. The corporation you are holding stock in issues stock certificates, and you can get your certificate either directly from the issuing corporation, or by contacting your broker who may get the stock certificate on your behalf.
      Detailed on the stock certificate itself will be your name, the company's name and the number of shares you own. There also will be a seal of authenticity, a signature from someone with assigning authority authenticating the certificate and either a CUSIP or CINS number. Currently, stock certificates are seen more as collectibles and souvenirs than actual records of ownership.
    On the other hand, corporations may not have an interest in sending all shareholders stock certificates, although they are required to by law if requested. ..."

In any case, even if not totally unexpected, sad news...

Yes....garbage collectors get jobs through political favors.

Google "Overpaid garbage collectors."

http://globaleconomicanalysis....
http://www.answers.com/Q/Are_N...
http://www.investopedia.com/fi...

Who would trust them?

First this: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/ed...
(bitcoin trust)

Then this: http://www.investopedia.com/ar...
(bitcoin payment system)

Now this thing... ("regulated" exchange that can't leave the US for an international virtual decentralized currency...)

Perhaps they just didn't get that memo about their relevance having tanked somewhere after they wanted to
renege on their FB settlement and go for a do-over uh-gain:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Their fifteen minutes of fame is up. The harder they try and bring themselves
into relevance the funnier it gets. The bell has rung. Time to get off the stage little boys.

E

What does inflation in the US look like in your situation?

http://www.investopedia.com/te...

Here's a non-political look at oil/gas and taxes from the perspective of an investor.
http://www.investopedia.com/ar...

Here's one from the Cato Institute (I.e. the Kochs)
http://www.cato.org/publicatio...

No, the statement was that profits are strongly tied to Office and Windows

Here is the quote I responded to (my emphasis):

Microsoft still makes 100% of its vast windfall profits from leveraging its monopoly

Key word in there "windfall". Not all profits are "windfall" profits; some references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
http://www.investopedia.com/te...


Now per Microsoft, "windfall" profits can be described as those with which little it done to achieve, which certainly describes the Office and Windows profits, as opposed to those that they have to fight tooth and nail for, such as those from Azure.

When I said that this statement was erroneous, you corrected me, with:

So how then are the profits not strongly tied to their monopolies in Windows (Desktop) and Office (Desktop Productivity)?

Now, if you were not intending to answer in the appropriate context, why did you answer in this context? You are absolutely correct that Microsoft profits are tied to Office and Windows, but again, context matters.

Yes, context does matter - and so does an understanding of the terms used.

Goodwill is the 'gap' between the valuation numbers and the purchase price by definition (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goodwill.asp).

No. Valuation only combines identifiable tangible and intangible assets. If you do not break out and assign distinct values to intangible assets like copyrights, trademarks, patents, or especially other intangible assets such as distribution contracts, those items do not fall within "book value," but rather the goodwill account. Read your own link. There are times that this needs to be done -- for certain tax benefits -- but otherwise you try to avoid this exercise.

To assign a book value to an intangible asset you have to be able to demonstrate that you've given it a so-called "fair value" . For intangible assets that can extremely difficult to do. The value of the "Coke" trademark is not traded on a market, or readily comparable to equivalents, or entirely described by a separate revenue stream (it is in part - licensing revenue for merchandise - but it is also inextricably part of the value of the base product). The entire point of "goodwill" is to provide an account mechanism for that portion of the fair market price -- the non-book value -- that cannot be marked to an asset market like most physical goods.

HBO revenues are significantly higher than Netflix.

Maybe, but what does that have to do with earnings?

(* Is it possible to still owe money on a car after it's been repossessed? I don't know, but it's certainly possible to claim to a bad-credit car buyer that they do.)

It is possible, it's called a recourse loan. http://www.investopedia.com/as...

All depends on your state's laws and what's in the loan agreement.

The latest recession was never called the mancession.

How is this rated informative? It is plain wrong.

You could find the same few examples (among many others) with a simple Google search, but since that is obviously too much work ...

Mancession Definition
The Mancession
Thanks to the “mancession,” metrosexuals have become “manfluencers”
One Mancession Later, Are Women Really Victors in the New Economy?
Economy: The Man-cession and the He-covery
It's Not Just a Recession. It's a Mancession!

Every definition I've seen disagrees with you.

Your flat tax is actually defined as "proportional," not "progressive."

The concept is called planned obsolescence , and it has existed for as long as people have been buying things.

It stimulates the economy

So we meet again.

The only lies exposed by that fiasco is that of the mortgage applicants lying on their loan-applications. Most of those folks have never been to Wall Street.

Not so. Back in about 2005 or so, I remember reading articles about NINJA mortgages -- No Income, No Job, No Accepted (or No Income, No Job or Assets). At the time I remember thinking it was a stupid idea, and made no sense at all.

The lenders were going on a drunken rampage giving loans to anybody with a pulse. But they knew they were doing this.

But, make no mistake, this wasn't borrowers lying on their applications. This was lenders approving any application which came across their desk, and was known to be a risky investment at the time.

What subsequently happened was that junk debt, (which they knew was junk debt, and was junk debt because they were just giving anybody with a pulse) was then bundled up into derivatives, treated as if it was AAA rated debt, and then sold off onto the market. And then everybody else bought bad US debt, and it trickled throughout the world.

Essentially the US lenders got themselves in deep shit, packaged up that shit as if it was caviar, and then let everybody else deal with the problem.

That, my friend, was Wall Street. And it was more or less theft writ large. They lied about the risk of their securities in order to get other people to buy them.

Basically they sold magic beans to the rest of the world, so that the debt was no longer their problem. When that debt collapsed, it undermined the house of cards which had been built on it.

"High Frequency Theft."

No lies there. In other words, fail.

You don't think the act of skimming money out of the market by making a large number of trades to allow yourself to do arbitrage and exploit the fact that you have direct access to the system is theft?

I think when they do this they more or less inject themselves as a middle man who creates no value, and distorts the market to their own ends. I see HFT as nothing more than institutionalized theft.

They don't 'earn' it, they don't generate value, they just sit in the middle and take the vigorish and act like they're entitled to it. It's just siphoning money out of the economy for their gain.

My person may be anecdotal evidence, but the Economist's article puts more solid statistics behind it.

My problem with the conclusion of the article is that it places the issue at the feet of Socialism. Since they only studied East Germany, they can't really say it was Socialism which caused it, only that in this particular case.

I'm not defending Socialism -- at least, not the form the Soviets were following. But, as you say, the attitude of "it's OK to screw the government" can spill over into a more generalized "it's OK to screw anybody".

I don't dispute that the people who grew up in East Germany were more prone to cheating a little. I do disagree with the conclusion that this was the result of Socialism -- I don't think they had enough to make that claim.

If it was true, I would assume you, and everybody who grew up in such a country would also be prone to cheating.

So, either you're a cheating bastard, or their conclusions are overly broad. ;-)

Pick any place with a failed economy, or where the penalties of cheating are outweighed by the rewards, and people will simply cheat. No matter your system of government.

Be that Wall Street, or East Germany.

To claim that economics doesn't make assumptions about scarcity, marginal utility, rational behavior, and risk is to create a new discipline.

Not at all. Such a claim is merely a claim about economics. And if it does actually create a "new" discipline, what of it? We're allowed to do that. But frankly, I think there's enough overlap on both the biology and economics side to avoid the need for doing so.

Economics is fundamentally tied to money and money is a psychological invention of humans.

Which is an absurd claim. We can look at actual definitions of economics:

A social science that studies how individuals, governments, firms and nations make choices on allocating scarce resources to satisfy their unlimited wants.

Obviously, the phrase "individuals, governments, firms, and nations" is very human-centric. And "unlimited wants" is kind of an exaggeration since there are limits to wants even at infinite levels of resources (eg, the cost of making the decision concerning disposition can outweigh the benefit of the additional infinite part of the resources).

But that doesn't change that economics is fundamentally about multiple parties with preferences making choices that allocate scarce resources.

I find it hard to take seriously arguments which depend even a little on redefining a term in a non-standard way. You continue with:

Biology doesn't have concepts of debt, or futures contracts, or inflation. If there is suddenly twice as much food, that doesn't mean that calories are devalued. But economics makes that assumption.

Science can't make assumptions because it's just an inanimate collection of ideas. Scientists can make assumptions. And we do see in the real world differences in behavior even at the microbe level when an organism has plentiful food rather than too little food. Just because the organisms might not have a concept of time value of calories or whatever, doesn't mean that they can't behave in ways which happen to exploit that concept.

Make your assumptions explicit, then.

No. Reality doesn't work that way. The power of patterns is that if some aspect of reality meets the preconditions of the pattern, then the pattern exists whether or not we are even aware of the pattern.

manufacturers continue to trash their customer base by doing this. It has to be profitable, right? Which means that it's worth the risk, which means that some bean counter figured that the potential loss is outweighed by the gain.

It should not surprise anyone seeing how many times over now an auto maker has put profits over its consumer's safety.

I'm back at my computer so here you go:

"Rent seeking is the socially costly pursuit of wealth transfers" -- The Encyclopedia of Public Choice, Rowley, Charles, Schneider, Friedrich (Eds.), Springer-Verlag 2003.

"Definition of 'Rent-Seeking' When a company, organization or individual uses their resources to obtain an economic gain from others without reciprocating any benefits back to society through wealth creation." -- Investopedia, http://www.investopedia.com/te..., Accessed June 1 2014.

"The idea that resources are unproductively used in rent-seeking contests has much broader application than the original rent-seeking papers suggested[emphasis mine] The rent-seeking logic has been applied to issues in history, sociology, anthropology, biology and philosophy. The core has also been formalized and analyzed more rigorously, using the tools of modern game theory. The modern rent-seeking literature describes the rational decision to invest in contesting pre-existing wealth or income, rather than undertaking productive activity. [emphasis mine]" -- Congleton, Roger D., Arye L. Hillman, and Kai A. Konrad. "Forty years of research on rent seeking: an overview." The Theory of Rent Seeking: Forty Years of Research 1 (2008).

In other words while rent-seeking in the sense of Anne Krueger's 1974 paper still continues to be an active area of research, the term is used differently in wider areas of economic research.

Oh, yes, and one more citation for you:

"prig (n.): a person who displays or demands of others pointlessly precise conformity, fussiness about trivialities, or exaggerated propriety, especially in a self-righteous or irritating manner." -- "prig." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 01 Jun. 2014. http://dictionary.reference.co...>.

The GP is attempting a pump-and-dump.

"Natural Monopolies" are an economic concept. These are industries in which the barriers to entry are so high that new competitors are blocked from entering. Infrastructure is commonly cited - power lines, power stations, the last mile infrastructure. The same goes for most infrastructure - telephone lines, cable lines, oil and gas pipelines, railroads.

So, there's no way to let customers vote with their feet in natural monopolies. There are no competitors. Hence the need for regulation to avoid the problem of monopolies, which is "monopoly pricing."

I don't think anything involving a government producing things for its military can really be classed as "free market".

"Free market" as it is bandied about today has no defined meaning within economics - it is a general concept, usually employed as a political slogan. As Investopedia says Just like supply-side economics, free market is a term used to describe a political or ideological viewpoint on policy and is not a field within economics..

It is in the government's interest to introduce market forces into its acquisition system to create competition, and efficiency incentives, and avoid cronyism. This is what the bidding process does.

Discuss:

$STOCKHOLDER == "parasite"

(After IPO (or other NEW ISSUE of stock ) has settled down...)

for background see http://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/03/020703.asp. Yes, I am aware that the stockholders are in a sense "PWNers". of the company, but the 'ownership' really seems to be of the right to sell that ownership (kinda like "famous for being famous" ) . "Ownership" in the sense of control seems to be mostly unavailable to any but the largest institutional investors, and difficult even for them.

(asbestos underwear duly donned)

Let me detangle some stuff.

The higher capital gains on the traded stock, the lower the return will be, so the stock price will be lower, so my returns will be lower as I sell my founding shares. Result? Less investment in start-ups.

There is a huge body of evidence that supports this – the higher the capital gains the lower the investment in the economy.

Why would I invest in startup under your proposal?

Because my proposal increases taxes on the exchanges where you pass money back and forth between you and idiots, but doesn't increase (or decreases) taxes when you go to a business and go, "I would like to buy into your business because I feel it is going somewhere. Here is millions of dollars for you to spend pursuing your business goals."

In short: investors at the NYSE aren't putting money in the pockets of the businesses whose stocks they're buying. The Harvard Faculty Petition to divest in fossil fuel energy companies isn't pulling Harvard's money away from Exxon; it's just selling pink sheets of XOM to other people who aren't necessarily related to XOM (it could, actually, create a stock price drop which Exxon-Mobil may respond to by issuing a stock buy-back, becoming more vested in themselves, so that the huge stock sell-off actually allows them to get even more money by issuing more stock into the market later; but that's a voluntary move by Exxon-Mobil, and they don't need to buy or sell or issue any stock in response to Harvard selling $500 million XOM).

Learn how the market works.

So your proposal is to heavily tax profits from publicly-held companies in which an ordinary person can invest (i.e. the stock market) and not tax profits from privately held companies where only a sophisticated investor (i.e. a wealthy person or institution) is allowed to invest? Screw the little guy, don't tax the big guy?

So in your example (here is millions of dollars for you to spend pusuing your business goals) are you allowed to sell your portion of that equity? If not, how can you ever monetize your investment? If so, how is that sale any different that an exchange-aided sale? In both cases equity in a company changes hands and there is a possibility of a capital gain (or loss).

Beside that point, your contention that a public company does not make money from its stock is false. Companies have a number of different ways they get capital from their stock. If they need a large influx of capital for a large project they can issue more shares. They can also sell shares that the company owns. Companies frequently compensate employees with stock and stock options, saving money on paying salary.

Exchanges and public companies allow small investors to participate in equity markets. Without them most people would not be able to participate in ownership of a company. I agree there is a class of investor that exploits the system to gain value on small market fluctuations and are largely parasitic, but even they add some value to the market in adding liqudity and producing accurate valuation. The high frequency trading issue could be addressed by a small exchange tax and the rest of the issue with this class of investor is largely dealt with in the different tax rates on short and long term gains.

Your proposal would tax the small time investor (the largest holders of public stocks are retirement and pension funds) and let the large private investors like Bain Capital or Berkshire Hathaway off the hook. I too would like a way to rein in the large brokerage houses and HFT firms but raising the capital gains tax on only public companies will only hurt the little people. I would support an across-the-board capital gains hike.

There isn't any way for an HFT company to see an order "on its way" to an exchange.

Leaked info? No, try sold your information, and it's not insider trading. It's called Payment for order flow where brokers sell your intent to buy or sell to HFT companies. Before the trade takes place.

Quote from WSJ posting on 4/6/2014: "Shares of E*Trade Financial Corp. ETFC +0.05% , Charles Schwab Corp. SCHW +0.27% and TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. AMTD +0.26% tumbled last week amid concerns that regulators would ban a practice that allows brokerages to collect hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue by selling orders to middlemen who use high-frequency strategies to trade with the brokers' customers. The practice, called payment for order flow, has gained more attention since the release of "Flash Boys," a book by Michael Lewis that argues the markets are "rigged" to benefit high-frequency traders, allegations that are stirring up long-running questions about the fairness of markets."

Which they don't follow. http://www.investopedia.com/te... There's ALL sorts of games you can play with revenue recognition alone.

Anyone here want to rely on Chinese accounting practices? http://www.chinaaccountingblog...

There are no securities laws in China similar to those in the US that require transparency so investors know what they are buying.

Hell, this will be a great IPO, just flip it on the first day. Make your profit and watch it crash.

And now to illustrate: the classic accountant's joke.

There once was a business owner who was interviewing people for a division manager position. He decided to select the individual that could answer the question "how much is 2+2?"

The engineer pulled out his slide rule and shuffled it back and forth, and finally announced, "It lies between 3.98 and 4.02".
The mathematician said, "In two hours I can demonstrate it equals 4 with the following short proof."
The physicist declared, "It's in the magnitude of 1x101."
The logician paused for a long while and then said, "This problem is solvable."
The social worker said, "I don't know the answer, but I a glad that we discussed this important question.
The attorney stated, "In the case of Svenson vs. the State, 2+2 was declared to be 4."
The trader asked, "Are you buying or selling?"
The accountant looked at the business owner, then got out of his chair, went to see if anyone was listening at the door and pulled the drapes. Then he returned to the business owner, leaned across the desk and said in a low voice, "What would you like it to be?"

This is like taking a vacation to the big ball of twine vs Disney Land because you can't afford it.

That is a terrible analogy. By comparing space exploration to vacation you are suggesting that the science has no value other than to satisfy someone's curiosity, which is simply not true.

A better analogy: Going to Europa is like a manufacturing company investing in a robotic production machine. It costs a lot and takes a considerable amount of skill to setup and use, but once it's going the payoff is enormous.

We should be taking money from other things and putting them into the space program. We need these investments. See: http://www.investopedia.com/fi...

Here's one economic definition of intrinsic value:

http://www.investopedia.com/te...

1. The actual value of a company or an asset based on an underlying perception of its true value including all aspects of the business, in terms of both tangible and intangible factors. This value may or may not be the same as the current market value.

This says something very different from cost of production + cost of distribution, and the fact that it includes "intangible factors" and "perception" belies the notion that it can be precisely calculated.

http://www.businessdictionary....

3. Economics: No intrinsic value exists for any good or service except its price (see use value) which is reflection of its demand and supply position and not of any inherent quality.

This one is explicitly refuting the idea that value and price have a disconnect at all. This is basically a "subjective theory of value" being defined here -- "everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it". The same cite has the investopedia definition as definition 7.

Here's the problem: there are multiple "intrinsic theories of value", and there is also the subjective theory of value. You are promoting the "Cost-of-production theory of value" as if it was the universally-accepted "economic definition" of intrinsic value:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Note the other theories of intrinsic value linked in wikipedia. Even restricting yourself to intrinsic value theory, I don't think "cost-of-production" is considered the slam-dunk winner of all things. More like an aspect of valuation.

He got into these problems with revenue matching because he is running his business on cash basis accounting. In general only very small businesses can be run on cash basis accounting almost all manufacturing oriented businesses use accrual accounting. With accrual accounting you would book the Kickstarter money as a customer deposit and then recognize it as income when the product ships.

http://www.investopedia.com/te...

If the law says cutting out the middle man is a crime, then it is.

Well for the states where that is true, Tesla will fight each state, and if they still fail, they will rightly go to the federal level if need be, and then with most likelihood, will win. A win is surely the best thing (as in for society as a whole) morally, economically, AND legally. Dealers are providing unnecessary work, and if you understand the broken window fallacy, you'll know that unnecessary work does not in any way benefit society, and in fact does the reverse.

You pay taxes if you take the award in cash. If you take the award in gift cards, the amount is grossed up.

FWIW, we still have budget for team building events. The 10% reserve is strictly an individual compensation fund.

The problem with Bitcoin is once a Bitcoin is lost, it's gone forever and can never be replaced. There's no provision in the system to void a coin and then mine a new one.

Therefore if bitcoins are lost at a rate > 0 the probability there will be zero bitcoins is 100% over time.

Is that the problem?

I thought it was volatility. No, wait... it was a pyramid scheme. Or rather, because the US won't accept it for taxes. Or was it because it's deflationary? Heck, I just don't know any more.

Economists will demonstrate something by telling stories, let's demonstrate something by showing value.

1) BitCoin has very small per-transaction fees. There are a whopping-big number of credit card transactions each day, each with fees of about 5%. Bitcoin will eliminate most of these, for a whopping-big cost savings.

2) BitCoin increases the market to people who don't have a bank account. That essentially doubles the potential customer base.

3) BitCoin allows for micro-payments. This increases the number and type of sales possible.

4) BitCoin almost eliminates counter-party risk. No authority in the financial chain (PayPal, payment clearing center, credit card company, bank, US government) can affect the transfer. No one can be "banned" (like Wikileaks), no one can be threatened with bad credit.

Assign value to each of these points and total them up (there's some subjectivity), then compare that value with the negative utility from losing coins over time.

Which is worth more?

All the other potential problems are just that - potential problems, and appeals to these problems are merely guesswork and rhetoric.

BitCoin will bring enormous cost savings, and that's why people will use it.,

Flame away, but [...] People want to trade one fiat currency, for another? Okay. What's the point?

Our economic challenge is one of resource scarcity. Coming up with schemes to trade compute time for fiat paper is not doing anyone any good.

Your post was neither inflammatory nor derisive. Ask, and it will be answered.

Crypto currency has three major advantages over state-issued currency: reduced transaction fees, no counter-party risk, and lower barrier for use.

1) Counter party risk in this case is where some agent involved in a transaction does something which is not in the interests of the participants.

For example, consider the parties involved in making an eBay purchase: eBay can sell your purchasing habits to advertizers, PayPal could take your money and not give it back, ChoicePoint can lose your identity info, VISA can sell your buying habits, and your bank can give all your history to the government.

Each party adds a little bit of risk to your transaction without any benefit to you and without your consent.

Cryptocurrencies eliminate these risks entirely.

2) Transaction processors charge a hefty fee for their services - upwards of 5% in total cost, with a high minimum charge.

Crypto currency transactions have much smaller fees. With no employees or physical cards or credit scoring mechanism, there's very little overhead - just a few cpu cycles per transaction.

This will push prices down (or profits up) by 5% or more for anyone who uses the new system. A merchant could lower prices by 5% for crypto-currency transactions, and make the same profit with a competitive advantage over their competitors.

That's huge.

Lower fees will admit micropayments. That's also huge.

3) Crypto-currencies increase market liquidity in two ways: the reduced fees allow micro-transactions, and they have no barrier to use.

Anyone can use cryptocoin without a credit check, permanent address, or bank account. Cryptocoin is similar to a "prepaid" credit card with no fees. If you have the money, you can use it... there's no need to connect to government or the financial system. Anyone with a cell phone and the money can make transactions online, which will be popular in poor nations. The world economic market could skyrocket.

That's also also huge.

Overall, crypto-currencies hold a lot of promise for being more valuable and easier to use than traditional systems. Whether this added value is enough to foster widespread adoption is up for debate, but there's enormous incentive to do so.

Let's look at some data, shall we?

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=qip shows that the Fed was in disciplinary mode, raising interest rates, before both the dot-com and the real-estate crash. Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" attitude was what killed dot-com, because, I think, he's an old fool who didn't understand the potential of technology to make obsolete his feudal economic models.

Regarding velocity of money: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=qiq
If velocity of money leads to inflation, why wasn't there high inflation during the 1960s, 1990s, and 2000s?

Regarding the money supply: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=qir
(Taking M2 because, as investopedia says, "economists like to include the more broadly defined definition for M2 when discussing the money supply, because modern economies often involve transfers between different account types. For example, a business may transfer $10,000 from a money market account to its checking account. This transfer would increase M1, which doesn’t include money market funds, while keeping M2 stable, since M2 contains money market accounts.")

Why does the money supply increase at an almost constant, exponential rate, with no devastating inflation?

Majority share is still >50%.

The US dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. Bitcoin is backed by absolutely no one.

Bitcoin is backed by the full faith and credit of those who mine it, trade it and use it. I have more faith in computer cycles than I do in the US govt. We are afloat because of we hold the world's reserve currency. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reservecurrency.asp

Reserve currency: A foreign currency held by central banks and other major financial institutions as a means to pay off international debt obligations, or to influence their domestic exchange rate. A large percentage of commodities, such as gold and oil, are usually priced in the reserve currency, causing other countries to hold this currency to pay for these goods. Holding currency reserves, therefore, minimizes exchange rate risk, as the purchasing nation will not have to exchange their currency for the current reserve currency in order to make the purchase.

Investopedia explains 'Reserve Currency' In 2011, the U.S. dollar was the primary reserve currency used by other countries. As a result, foreign nations closely monitored the monetary policy of the United States in order to ensure that the value of their reserves is not adversely affected by inflation.

You still don't understand that money can't be majicked out of thin air and be worth something?

The only thing keeping it afloat is other people believing the same fairy story.

And you still don't understand that money being pulled from thin air has been montary policy since the start of the 20th century.

Wikipedia: Fiat money has been defined variously as: any money declared by a government to be legal tender.[1] state-issued money which is neither convertible by law to any other thing, nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard.[2] money without intrinsic value.[3][4] The term derives from the Latin fiat ("let it be done", "it shall be").[5] While gold- or silver-backed representative money entails the legal requirement that the bank of issue redeem it in fixed weights of gold or silver, fiat money's value is unrelated to the value of any physical quantity. Even a coin containing valuable metal may be considered fiat currency if its face value is higher than its market value as metal. The Nixon Shock of 1971 ended the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold. Since then, all reserve currencies have been fiat currencies, including the U.S. dollar and the Euro.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fiatmoney.asp

Definition of 'Fiat Money': Currency that a government has declared to be legal tender, but is not backed by a physical commodity. The value of fiat money is derived from the relationship between supply and demand rather than the value of the material that the money is made of. Historically, most currencies were based on physical commodities such as gold or silver, but fiat money is based solely on faith. Fiat is the Latin word for "it shall be".

And so you aren't thinking my post is redundant, here is a an article from Forbes explaining how fiat currencies work, and why money is fiat and the only different is if its backed by something or not. http://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2013/01/08/all-money-is-fiat-mone So yes, you CAN pull money from nothing.

no, the economists do that: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/money.asp

Insurance companies did not, and many still do not, consider the information contained on your computer as "tangible property." http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0312/why-digital-insurance-is-important.aspx

I found references that insurances companies are beginning to cover the loss of data, but I didn't find any that would offer a secured storage. You can put them on USB and put that in a safe deposit box, but that's not securing a digital file, that's securing a physical item that contains data.

If you don't provide a link to a service that provides the service you claim exists, I'll have to assume you are lying because you really like arguing, and the truth is irrelevant to a good argument.

Fuck right on off you shitless moron.
Contact a bank, law firm, or insurance company. Tell them you have digital files you wish to secure and you have money you wish to pay them in exchange for them doing so.
All you would need to do is have the insurer create their own wallet and secure it, then transfer your funds to it through the Bitcoin network. DONE. They can store it physically or digitally, it doesn't fucking matter. Draw up a contract. Get it done. It's not fucking hard.
Just because it's not on the fucking menu at Geico.com doesn't mean it's not an option.
You can insure your fucking stuffed guinea pig collection from acid attacks if you ask through Lloyd's of London. Nothing is off menu unless you're s brainless plebe who doesn't know how the world works.

Insurance companies did not, and many still do not, consider the information contained on your computer as "tangible property." http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0312/why-digital-insurance-is-important.aspx

I found references that insurances companies are beginning to cover the loss of data, but I didn't find any that would offer a secured storage. You can put them on USB and put that in a safe deposit box, but that's not securing a digital file, that's securing a physical item that contains data.

If you don't provide a link to a service that provides the service you claim exists, I'll have to assume you are lying because you really like arguing, and the truth is irrelevant to a good argument.

What is Apple attempting to achieve by releasing a non-transparent transparency report? Its hardly 'full disclosure', possibly to the point of false marketing, in accordance with Investopedia's definition of the topic: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/transparency.asp

But the main point is that this corporate officer is twisting company policy to his personal benefit of $77 million/yr and the majority of owners of the company don't like him screwing around with their investment that way.

What? A CEO abusing the system to get more pay? Say it isn't so. Who would ever do that? Certainly no one as saintly as Steve Jobs?

You are right, HFT do not lower fees. Never claimed they did. I am not talking about commison (as in your example) nor custody. I was refering to the bid-ask spread. This is a extra cost on top of your commision. It will not show up on your trade ticket since it is a implict cost. Think of it as friction.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/121701.asp.

No, you aren't necessarily meant to infer what it means, since it has an understood definition. "Living paycheck to paycheck" describes the situation where someone's earnings go completely toward paying their monthly expenses, with little or no chance to build up a cushion of savings. If I make $100,000 per month and I spend all of that money maintaining my lifestyle (and I don't have a decent "rainy day fund" built up already), then I'm (technically) living paycheck to paycheck.

Granted, the term is a little broad, not really defining what "little to no savings" is, or for what period after being laid off someone should be able to survive. CNN's article uses "6 months or less in savings" as being the dividing line, so it's giving you a more solid definition, at least (while matching the OP's claim that "most people in the US live paycheck to paycheck").

Really? You seriously believe companies get money from investing in their stocks? Wow.

Companies receive no money from stock other than from the initial IPO. Honestly, look it up.

Actually, I'll do it for you:
From: Investopedia:
"Companies receive money from the securities market only when they first sell a security to the public....In the subsequent trading of these shares on the secondary market (what most refer to as "the stock market"), it is the regular investors buying and selling the stock who benefit from any appreciation in stock price."

From: UpDown.com
"The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq are the major secondary markets in the United States. On these exchanges, investors trade stocks that they already own, and the company which initially issued new stock doesn't receive any additional money from this activity."

I'm actually quite shocked that someone wouldn't know this....

Yeah, maybe you can buy a call option already and make a Bear Call Spread. Wish I had the money for that kind of gamblings..

For thousands of years whips were used to incentive workers.

To the extent you're implying that I had whipping in mind as a legitimate way to incentivize workers, you are just wrecking your own credibility.

It is practically a useless token, and nobody is fooled

Employee Stock Ownership Plans are indeed practically useless when it comes to those who aren't fooled. But you know there are a few goody-two-shoes employees who are fooled; who reckon "I must do good work because I'm an owner of the company!" and never make the cognitive leap to realizing that the benefit of their hard work is mostly enjoyed by other owners.

This only helps if a company jumps through regulatory hurdles and sells new stock.

Wrong -- to the extent that a company owns shares of its own stock (many companies do, and share buyback programs are common), rising share prices give the company more capital to work with.

But outside investors will almost never give good advice for improving a company's internals. They won't give educated suggestions about what might be researched, They won't know how employees are abusing supplies, wasting thousands of man-hours twiddling their thumbs, or spying on customers.

Every company has a paid management staff, responsible for dealing with those problems. It would be a bad idea to create barriers to ownership by pushing those problems off onto the company's owners (who, in most cases, don't even have any aptitude for management). It's entirely possible to be both an owner and a manager, but this should not be required of anyone.

Since most shareholders are nowhere, nohow involved in the company itself, this has devolved into an ever growing pursuit of cutting costs at the expense of quality, employee pay, and work environment. Now Now Now. This quarter This quarter This quarter... Officers of big corps who try to play 10 years ahead (let alone 20 or 30) get removed by big investment firms who don't intend to invest more than a few months, and could care less about the long term viability of the company.

There's absolutely no correlation between having a narrow short-term outlook and being a publicly-traded company (or between being a producer of shoddy products and being a publicly-traded company). In the auto industry alone, there are examples of publicly-traded companies that have a healthy long-term outlook and produce high-quality products (Toyota, Tesla Motors) and examples of publicly-traded companies that don't (GM, Chrysler).

I think you're totally off the rails here. Rich guys invested in him

Let's try again. Because Nikola Tesla had the backing of George Westinghouse, the technology of alternating current spread rapidly around the world. Now, you can call Westinghouse a "rich guy" -- and it's obvious that you do so pejoratively -- or you can more objectively call him an agent of the financial sector.

I aspire to become a "rich guy" myself -- not because I'm particularly fond of luxury goods, but because I would like to drastically expand the scope of the philanthropy work that I do. The more rich guys there are, the fewer poor guys there are. Poor guys will either directly transition to becoming rich or middle-class guys, or they will benefit indirectly from the activities of the rich guys. A rising tide lifts all boats: it's a cliche, but true.