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The very concept of 'too big to fail' needs to be dragged out into the public square and shot.

Also, get rid of too big to jail while you're at it.

Because our government would never allow a bank which financed drug dealers and fomented revolution to do business in the US, right?

Granted, this was a long time ago, but not much has changed, has it?

Actually, that same bank, among others, was recently found guilty of pretty much similar crimes. But other than a slap on the wrist, nothing happened because:

the Justice Department, for the first time, admitted why it decided to go soft on this particular kind of criminal. It was worried that anything more than a wrist slap for HSBC might undermine the world economy. "Had the U.S. authorities decided to press criminal charges," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer at a press conference to announce the settlement, "HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the U.S., the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilized."

Re AC Citation needed. about the "This is less rigged and better regulated."
"The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam Yet" (Feb 12, 2014)
http://www.rollingstone.com/po...
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever (April 25, 2013)
http://www.rollingstone.com/po...
an easy understand insight into the aspect of the average person having a equal go.

Re AC Citation needed. about the "This is less rigged and better regulated."
"The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam Yet" (Feb 12, 2014)
http://www.rollingstone.com/po...
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever (April 25, 2013)
http://www.rollingstone.com/po...
an easy understand insight into the aspect of the average person having a equal go.

You got
that
right

You got
that
right

How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing 'Terrorists' - and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook:

The guy who convinced the plotters to blow up a big bridge, led them to the arms merchant, and drove the team to the bomb site was an FBI informant. The merchant was an FBI agent. The bomb, of course, was a dud. And the arrest was part of a pattern of entrapment by federal law enforcement since September 11, 2001, not of terrorist suspects, but of young men federal agents have had to talk into embracing violence in the first place... In all these law enforcement schemes the alleged terrorists masterminds end up seeming, when the full story comes out, unable to terrorize their way out of a paper bag without law enforcement tutelage."

You forgot some labels: "Who else are we supposed to be afraid of? Certainly animal-rights and environmental radicals."

But don't worry your pretty little heads over the epidemic of far-right insurrectionism that followed the election of Barack Obama: all told, according to a forthcoming data analysis by Neiwert, there have been 55 cases of right-wing extremists being arrested for plotting or committing alleged terrorists acts compared to 26 by Islamic militants during the same period. The right-wing plots include the bombing of a 2011 Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane and the assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller in 2009. Neither of their perpetrators, it goes without saying, had been arrested before they attempted their vile acts; neither required law enforcement entrapment to conceive and carry them out. It's just too bad for their victims they did not fit the story federal law enforcement seeks to tell.

Then we have Mommy Democrats who tells you how to behave with others and spend your money.

Then you bring out the Libertarian hand waving. Not that that winger claptrap had any basis in reality, but since Clinton, Democrats have been little more than secular Republicans.

And for those people complain that a libertarian party are the ones who would allow EPA disasters, schools to go unfunded, no fire/police departments are just using scare tactics to keep the status quo.

Because that's exactly what this does:

Keep the gov outta our personal, private and capitalist transactions. Why is this so hard to understand?

Why don't you read up on the 19th Century? That was your Libertarian Paradise in action, and it led to nothing but extreme wealth for an extreme minority, a slightly larger bourgeois class, and misery for everyone else. Now, go be a good little Paulbot and enjoy your nice West Virginian drinking water.

The person that seems to have the most alignment with this message is Bill Cosby.

Sadly, many of the young'ns don't know much about him... Maybe his new show can provide a platform for his message.

"A study last year found that in many American counties, especially in the deep South, life expectancy is lower than in Algeria, Nicaragua or Bangladesh. The U.S. is the only developed country that does not guarantee health care to its citizens; even after the Affordable Care Act, millions of poor Americans will remain uninsured because governors, mainly Republicans, have refused to expand Medicaid, which provides health insurance for low-income Americans. Although the federal government will pay for the expansion, many governors cited cost, even though the expansion would actually save money. America is unique among developed countries in that tens of thousands of poor Americans die because they lack health insurance, even while we spend more than twice as much of our GDP on healthcare than the average for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a collection of rich world countries. The U.S. has an infant mortality rate that dwarfs comparable nations, as well as the highest teenage-pregnancy rate in the developed world, largely because of the politically-motivated unavailability of contraception in many areas." Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/po...

"Maybe the U.S. Dollar isn't so bad after all."

Because the regulated financial institutions that deal in U.S. dollars are so much more trustworthy. Perhaps I should keep my money with these guys. Or this company. Or them perhaps? This guy looks trustworthy, doesn't he?

Here is what government-backed currency banks, lenders, investment firms, and the like have been up to recently. And here is what they're up to now.

You should probably spend some time reading this:

http://www.rollingstone.com/po...

How many banksters went to jail for tilting the entire fucking world economy over a cliff?

Oh yeah, zero.

You can even launder money for terrorists and drug cartels and be punished with nothing but a partial deferral of your annual bonus.

As Matt Taibi put it:

Wow. So the executives who spent a decade laundering billions of dollars will have to partially defer their bonuses during the five-year deferred prosecution agreement? Are you fucking kidding me? That's the punishment? The government's negotiators couldn't hold firm on forcing HSBC officials to completely wait to receive their ill-gotten bonuses? They had to settle on making them "partially" wait? Every honest prosecutor in America has to be puking his guts out at such bargaining tactics. What was the Justice Department's opening offer -- asking executives to restrict their Caribbean vacation time to nine weeks a year?

http://www.rollingstone.com/po...

"Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank".

Banks Launder Billions of Illegal Cartel Money

Royal Bank of Scotland fined £5.6m for failing to properly report over a third of transactions

EU fines Royal Bank of Scotland £324m over Libor rigging

This many:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/a-huge-break-in-the-libor-banking-investigation-20120628

I just googled the Rolling Stone article you alluded to, and I admit it is more leftist than I expected to see. That said, the pendulum swings back and forth. The people pushing the policies leading to todays out-of-control inequality should have looked at some history themselves, and the traction that outright communism was gaining after the Great Depression until some fairly mild measures in that direction (the New Deal) were adopted. Boomers enjoyed the benefits without acknowledging them, and dismantled them (through inadequate funding) in order to line their own pockets, at the expense of the millenials. Now the pendulum is going to swing back a bit. But we aren't going to become the USSR, regardless of anything Rolling Stone says.

You can't seriously be suggesting that the criminal proceeds of the illegal drug trade be laundered by spending it on food markets and opening a restaurant. It doesn't scale to the billions, you see.

Which is why the AC above s right: yes, supposedly bona fide banks are up to their necks in this business, and yes they get off with a slap on the wrist when this is proven in courts.

See this article for a pretty shocking example.

So, was there a second pipeline for all the cash to flow back into Mexico?

Yes. HSBC.

I'm glad it's not just a one way street with the government thugs.

Only in the case where a regular moral citizen has some power to do something about it. For all the other cases, it is similar to:
http://m.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213

It's not revisionist history if there are primary sources and first hand accounts stating the pro-corporate anti-fact checking was the goal of Fox News founder Roger Ailes. It's not an accident that the average Fox News fan is less informed than people that don't watch any news at all, it is on purpose. Fox news may be the worst, but most media outlets have the pro-corporate bias, since that is who owns them and pays the bills.

Q. How does Science do it?

There are a number of solutions:

- Remove money (profit) from the news.

- Hold the media accountable to actions that are contrary to the greater good.
  i.e. Charlie Brooker's Newswipe 25/03/09
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4

- Allow an independent organization the authority to audit the media for sensationalism, and fine them.

- Name and Shame / Peer Pressure
i.e. Scroll down to "7. The Harvard Man"
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-lost-the-war-on-drugs-20110324?print=true

When are we going to stop allowing greed to dictate our "news" ?
How long will we allow the media to profit from sensationalism instead of acting with integrity?

We frigging doubt it.......

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213

Or this?

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/#article/part3

If well deserves some kind of punishment, i wonder how much punishment gets people that do real damage and actual consequences, like drunk drivers (that may have killed several people), rapists, or even people that beat others leaving them maybe permanently injured (and lets not touch the consequences of lying to the congress or stealing trillons). What used to be a practical joke it seem to worth more than things with real life consequences in the actual society.

Yeah now that students are wised up to the Bad Deal http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ripping-off-young-america-the-college-loan-scandal-20130815

student loans are and are avoid college unless they can pay (which after decades of tuition inflation, they can't) they really have no means to support themselves except through raiding the ol' endowment , which can last at best another 7-10 years even in the case of multi-billion dollar endowments.

They can see online learning is going to rip them a new one, so thy're trying to get out ahead o fit,. now how to make money from it so things can be business as usual (hint: you can't!). Hey, maybe if we cut ourselves a slice of that Monster pie, we can keep this thing going.

Here's a dose of reality. For decades and decades you've ripped people off imposing double and triple inflation rates tuition increases with not a thought to the financial burden you were imposing on "people barely not children" and co-signing grandmas. Then you lobbied congress to make student loans unbankruptable just to keep your gravy train going. You discouraged stymied and thwarted every attempt to put your courses online or bring costs under control right up until Kahn Academy proved it was so simple it could be done by one guy with a magic marker.

Now you're all about it!

But the math still doesn't add up, does it? No , it really doesn't. You're still just fucked.

Sometimes in life, the new things just don't include the old things in any way at all.

And you thought you were bigger than history and changing times.

I just want to make sure that the state doesn't waste our precious taxpayer money making good on pension obligations when you-all go bankrupt, which can't be too soon.

What he is doing is, in fact, money transferring. He takes money and transfers it. That defines his activity. Which means he needs to keep records. Why do people involved in money transferring need to keep records? To prevent money laundering.

HSBC laundered hundreds of billions of dollars and admitted as such, yet the justice department decided to forego criminal prosecution.

After much public outrage and senate hearings, the justice department settled on a $1.92 billion penalty (against HSBC $18 billion annual profits).

How strongly do you agree with the federal government's stance on money laundering? From over here, it seems that the money laundering laws are only applied to the small players, used as "discretionary enforcement" as a tool of oppression. It's rule by thugs.

What's so bad about money laundering then?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/nobody-should-shed-a-tear-for-jp-morgan-chase-20131025

• First of all, the settlement, as the folks at Better Markets have pointed out, may wipe out between $100 billion and $200 billion in potential liability -- meaning that the bank might just have settled "for ten cents or so on the dollar." ...
• Moreover, the settlement is only $9 billion in cash, with $4 billion earmarked for "mortgage relief." Again, as Better Markets noted, we've seen settlements with orders of mortgage relief before, and banks seem to have many canny ways of getting out of the spirit of these requirements. ...
• There's also the matter of the remaining $9 billion in fines being tax deductible (meaning we're subsidizing the settlement), and the fact that Chase is reportedly trying to get the FDIC to assume some of Washington Mutual's liability.
• But overall, the key to this whole thing is that the punishment is just money, and not a crippling amount, and not from any individual's pocket, either. In fact, the deal that has just been completed between Chase and the state represents the end, or near the end, of a long process by which people who committed essentially the same crimes as Bernie Madoff will walk away without paying any individual penalty. ...
• A few more notes on the deal. This latest settlement reportedly came about when CEO Jamie Dimon picked up the phone and called a high-ranking lieutenant of Attorney General Holder, who was about to hold a press conference announcing civil charges against the bank. The Justice Department meekly took the call, canceled the presser, and worked out this hideous deal, instead of doing the right thing and blowing off the self-important Wall Street hotshot long used to resolving meddlesome issues with the gift of his personal attention.

> You're missing out on some good games that way, there are some good games that get lower scores because they are "niche" in some way.

1. RPGs suck up a lot of time: Last year I played Diablo 3 for 1 month (total waste of money), Borderlands 2 for 1 month, Torchlight 2 for 1 month, BF3 for 2 weeks, 1 month on Resident Evil 5 (which was crap); this year I've spent 3 months playing PoE, 1 month on Tomb Raider (which is the epitome of everything with the game industry.) Where am I supposed to find the time to play all these "good" games? when games require HUGE time investments?

Give me a list of the which games I'm missing out on ... and I can probably guarantee that I've played it in some form before. What do these "great" games bring to the table that is new ??

Which brings me to my next point ...

2. My standards are higher. I don't have time to play shitty games anymore -- I've played enough of them. Like I said, I have ~300+ games in my Steam Library because I play *all* genres (except for RTSes). I make exceptions for Indie games because I want to see what new innovate things people are doing and support them. But the older I get the more I find that I really don't have time for gaming these days as I find more and more of them to be repetitive and a boring grind-for-gear fest. All the games that are rated 95 and below are mostly crap. Notably exceptions being: L4D, TF2, Trine, Limbo, World of Goo, Path of Exile, Dishonored. Stuff like Mirror's Edge for $5 that you beat in a weekend is good value. Total crap like Defiance, Diablo 3, Tomb Raider are a waste of money. I'm tired of wasting money on shitty sequelitis.

3. The more I play other people's games, the more I find I would rather be working on my own game, so no, I'm not really "missing out".

--
A great example of how bureaucracy stops innovative thinking and new ways of dealing with the pseudo war-on-inanimate-object problems:
"7. The Harvard Man" http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-lost-the-war-on-drugs-20110324?print=true

Interesting definition of hypocrite. Thanks for the interesting POV ! (Maybe there is hope for /. after all ...)

I concur with your point that people never really have considered the issues. However my point was that there is a typical knee-jerk reaction along the lines of "think of the children" so "we must do SOMETHING" attitude not realizing that Adults themselves are sending mixed messages.

There ARE different ways to attack the problem as this beautifully written article shows ... see "7. The Harvard Man" of:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-lost-the-war-on-drugs-20110324?print=true

That''s what happens when finance people take over. They bought the company as a vehicle for getting bank loans.

1. Buy company.

2. Borrow money.

3. Pay oneself "fees" out of that money. (PROFIT!)

4. Company goes bust.

5. Find another company and GOTO #1.

...

That's how Mitt Romney got rich at Bain Capital.

As far as we know, they could be handing user information over to the government the second it hits Apple's servers; no request necessary.

Except that they've previously denied doing that.

Well, good thing that corporations never lie or misrepresent information they present to the public, then. </sarc>

Do you have any evidence that they do make factual misrepresentations to the public?

Hell yea! It's actually pretty easy to come up with incidents to cite, considering how openly evil banks have become in the past 30 years or so:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405

Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

The US is using its national intelligence agencies to obtain intelligence on terrorists trying to kill people.

Yes, and obtaining intelligence on political movements like Occupy Wall Street.

The intelligence agencies themselves don't have police powers.

Oh? What's that you say? TFA is about warrantless surveillance undertaken by the FBI, which is the federal agency with explicit domestic police powers.

The suspect in this case is accused of assisting a terrorist group.

Under the USA PATRIOT Act, providing "material support" to a terrorist group can be as simple as expressing support for it. And having a terrorism suspect browse your web site is enough to spark a secret investigation of your organization which scares away many of the donors who keep it in operation.

East Germany's secret police had both an intelligence function and police powers.

The FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Agency, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, at least, are agencies with police powers and intelligence operations. Heck, even the NYPD is in on the deal.

Their primary purpose was to keep the East German Communist party in power.

Given that NSA snooping hasn't indisputably foiled even a single terrorist plot, and the FBI instigated virtually all of the "terrorist" plots they've busted, I have to wonder what is the primary purpose of these agencies. Surely not to intimidate political dissidents!

You could be arrested and imprisoned for such things as making jokes about the nation's leadership, wanting to form a new political party,

Here in the U.S., they've at least figured out that making jokes about the leadership is essentially harmless and does nothing to erode their power. If people started to rise up to challenge them, we might see that change; the architecture of oppression is in place. As for forming a new political party, it does no harm to talk of it, because it's essentially impossible due to the laws in most areas which protect the two incumbent parties.

being a member of an unapproved church,

Like a mosque?

trying to leave the country without permission (could get you shot on the spot)

It won't get you shot, but you apparently can't leave without permission. The U.S. apparently has more finesse than East Germany did.

and many other possible infractions.

There are plenty of other infractions that'll get you in trouble, like walking while black,

The US is using its national intelligence agencies to obtain intelligence on terrorists trying to kill people.

Yes, and obtaining intelligence on political movements like Occupy Wall Street.

The intelligence agencies themselves don't have police powers.

Oh? What's that you say? TFA is about warrantless surveillance undertaken by the FBI, which is the federal agency with explicit domestic police powers.

The suspect in this case is accused of assisting a terrorist group.

Under the USA PATRIOT Act, providing "material support" to a terrorist group can be as simple as expressing support for it. And having a terrorism suspect browse your web site is enough to spark a secret investigation of your organization which scares away many of the donors who keep it in operation.

East Germany's secret police had both an intelligence function and police powers.

The FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Agency, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, at least, are agencies with police powers and intelligence operations. Heck, even the NYPD is in on the deal.

Their primary purpose was to keep the East German Communist party in power.

Given that NSA snooping hasn't indisputably foiled even a single terrorist plot, and the FBI instigated virtually all of the "terrorist" plots they've busted, I have to wonder what is the primary purpose of these agencies. Surely not to intimidate political dissidents!

You could be arrested and imprisoned for such things as making jokes about the nation's leadership, wanting to form a new political party,

Here in the U.S., they've at least figured out that making jokes about the leadership is essentially harmless and does nothing to erode their power. If people started to rise up to challenge them, we might see that change; the architecture of oppression is in place. As for forming a new political party, it does no harm to talk of it, because it's essentially impossible due to the laws in most areas which protect the two incumbent parties.

being a member of an unapproved church,

Like a mosque?

trying to leave the country without permission (could get you shot on the spot)

It won't get you shot, but you apparently can't leave without permission. The U.S. apparently has more finesse than East Germany did.

and many other possible infractions.

There are plenty of other infractions that'll get you in trouble, like walking while black,

We don't extradite to those countries.

False. We have extradition treaties with both Venezuela and Malaysia. Either Bush and Carrieles are as subject to extradition as Assange, or your argument is invalid.

And no, it isn't "well known" that the DOJ has a "sealed indictment" against Assange.

Yeah. It is.

And if you knew anything about US law, you'd know better than to believe that nonsense.

Where the Obama administration has subjected reporters to criminal investigations and prosecuted more whisteblowers than all previous administrations times two? If you are so ignorant as to US legal system is and has been working maybe you shouldn't be commenting on the subject.

No display of apples can make my oranges red.

No amount of poutrage is going change the fact that you're wrong. Manning showed how the USG is willing to treat whistleblowers and Padila showed how even civilains are subjected to brutal military prison conditions. And that was before the passage of the NDAA, which allows indefinite military detention without trial.

In the age of information, ignorance is a choice.

What you are seeing here is the birth of a government. First it's law enforcement, paid for by voluntary contributions. Then maybe some additional services - upgraded fire or rescue. Then it gets big enough that someone has to start working full time to manage it. If everyone decides (as often happens) that the people organizing this shouldn't be profiting, they all agree to take turns. Of course, this becomes cumbersome and they really find they need more continuity so the community chooses 3-4 people who will manage it, and they change those people every couple of years to each person doesn't get burned out. Then after a couple years the revenue starts flagging, and they realize that they're going to have to reimburse the organizers, and have to find a way to make sure everyone is contributing. So they form a local organization which includes everyone getting services and they agree on a way to split the costs equitably so everyone gets a bill. Most places choose the split by land area or value. Soon enough they realize that with everybody paying, they can get better garbage service, and maybe even reform the schools if everyone kicks in a little more.

And then one street decides that they aren't really getting enough service, so they take up a collection for a private security firm to supplement the (now official) police...

You're missing the part where these localities vote to disincorporate themselves from Oakland. I see that as a requirement for at least the 2nd half of your adventuresome tale. And at that point, they will find out that Wall Street has made a huge racket by fixing city bond/loan rates [1].

[1] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620

Yeah, we must jail the witnesses and leave free the assassins so they keep killing. You are sure that you won't be the next target, no? Or is just too deep into the culture to be too big to jail?

What were you expecting?

File Not Found: The Record Industry's Digital Storage Crisis

You are part of the cattle (and get years or decades of jail for things that are crimes, affects noone or make your rights prevail), or you are above the law, getting more money and support if you violate constitution amendments, get promoted if found that you intentionally lied to the congress, or get a small fine if is found that you you knowingly launder money for terrorist and drug cartels.

There are countries where law and justice seem to be antonyms.

Here's why:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ripping-off-young-america-the-college-loan-scandal-20130815

Yeah just don't go.Financially, it makes absolutely no sense. You're in wage competition with people who have zero debt from other nations. Guess who wins? Your ,student loans are 100% unbankruptable and the price for college is set by the amount of money lenders will lend, which is basically everything you'll earn over your lifetime, since, as I said, the debt is unbankruptable.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ripping-off-young-america-the-college-loan-scandal-20130815

Universities take that money and hire another level of administrators, give them all raises, build golden palaces for them to work in, build 5 star shopping malls / food courts, erect modernist pieces of architecture to house privately run research facilities and of course spend lavishly on their athletic programs , including more state of the art construction , high six digit salaries for everyone etc. etc.

This is what your student loans pay for. This is what the lifetime of debt you pay for goes to fund. This is the system the US has lying in wait for people who are, as Matthew Tabbi put it, people who are barely not children. An amount of debt that will push you into a life of literal indentured servitude before you even start of f in life.

http://www.freep.com/article/20130822/BLOG25/308220135/student-loans-debt-rolling-stone

This is purely predatory and the fact that the predation is by seasoned adults who understand the system and upon naive children who have been told since birth by the people they trust the most, most recently by Obama himself , that "college is the best investment you can make." , the fact that that is the predator -prey relationship says everything you need to know about higher education in America and America itself. From the housing crisis to the student loan bubble to the credit default swap to the savings and loans bailouts, it's a series of traps into which the naive are lured and pushed for the benefit of the sophisticated, the rule writers, the rich.

Don't go. You'll have incredible freedom. There is nothing at university you'll learn that you can't learn for free online. You and your friends can make your own way in the world if you don't have crushing debt waiting to seize everything every time you get ahead even a little. If you're not forcibly chained to an slave oar of a job that takes everything you have to give and leaves you with nothing to put into your own life at the end of the day.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/20/matt_taibbi_us_student_loan_bubble

There are a million ways for young people to arrange themselves in this world , a million ways waiting to be invented discovered, tried and iterated upon in order to gain knowledge, have access to resources, advance themselves and establish their market value that don't involve college and the unbankruptable crushing debt. Just do it. Everyone. Just invent it. Just try it. No opportunity is passing you by by trying until you get it right. You have nothing to lose. Nothing at all.

One notable difference between a casino and the stock market is that in the stock market, the odds are in the your favor.

Not any more, for 3 reasons:
1. There is now the equivalent of the House on the stock markets, in the form a few banks who control the majority of assets.
2. The largest investment banks can and do rig almost everything, from International interest rates to aluminum commodity pricing to municipal bonds.
3. HFT combined with premiums paid for slightly early releases of information mean that by the time an ordinary investor has heard about a serious problem in one of their holdings, the damage is already done because someone else found out and reacted to it 2 seconds earlier. In other words, the true price of your assets is based on information you can't see.

Remember the phrase too big to jail? Even known what they are doing they will be getting immunity ("or else bad things could happen").And things won't change, money talks, and makes enough noise to mute every citizen voice.

Wait - are you trying to suggest Fox News is NOT a propaganda outlet?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-20110525

There is no evil hoard of bankers sitting atop a mountain of cash

To put it succinctly, bull shit.

I don't know about you but half a BILLION dollars is a hoard of cash to me. And that's just one of the guys that made all that money disappear. Sure they made our money disappear for the most part but in doing so they made sure they they walked away with huge hoards of cash.

It's kinda funny. The Reagan administration prosecuted some 1100 bank officials in the Savings and loan meltdown. The Obama administration has prosecuted 0 in significantly worse crisis.

A carbon tax is laughably ineffective.

You know this how?

If you want to stop climate change, you have to stop burning fossil fuels altogether.

No, you don't, and reductions don't have to happen instantly. A fairly rapid reduction to (picking an arbitrary target) pre-1980s levels could be followed by a lengthier reduction to (also arbitrary) pre-1900 levels, etc. The sooner we start, the more gradual the change can be. The Earth can absorb some CO2 emissions, so we don't ever need to go all the way to zero.

You simply don't seem to grasp what a massive intervention that is.

Of course I do. But nobody's proposing that except deniers.

Those are changes that will take centuries if not millennia.

Miami begs to disagree. We will have infrastructure problems long before any cities are underwater. Miami is an extreme case, but more typical cases certainly will not take centuries, let alone millennia.

Also, climate change isn't the only environmental problem we have. There's the aforementioned air pollution, as well as increasing demands on fresh water supplies, rising oil prices, etc. Resource shortages tend to cause very expensive problems which are very expensive to fix. We need to be addressing these issues now, not waiting around to see just how bad the damage will be.

Humanity has experienced such massive changes throughout most of history and people aren't even aware of it.

Sure they were (and are). Massive environmental change means food shortages, especially when you're a peasant farmer with no trucks or airplanes to transport you far away. We just don't care that much about people that starved to death 500 years ago. Not as many people die today because we spend lots of money to keep them alive through droughts, floods, and other natural disasters.

There are also few costs associated with it anyway: cities and arable land constantly have to be renewed, and moving them gradually as they are being renewed doesn't add extra cost.

This is only true if the changes take place on a time scale much longer than a human lifetime. Otherwise, a lot of people end up with property they can't sell. And moving property lines by fiat takes exactly the sort of totalitarian government that we don't want.

I have strong faith in technology to be able to end carbon emissions. In fact, I think that's what will naturally happen, provided people don't foolishly intervene with heavy-handed governmental interventions, tax incentives, and other such programs.

There are two problems with this. The first is that many, many people are already being hurt by ongoing pollution, and the second is that natural processes have their own timetable. So far market-driven change has proved elusive. It is quite possible for government intervention to advance the state of an art, as it regularly does with military technology. Again, this is a situation where the predicted economic doom and gloom never seems to materialize.

You don't know what the hell you are talking about.

  8 yr old girl Alexey Poblete plays Rush's YYZ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ2wXoqAhI4

Plays with KISS cover/tribute band Mr. Speed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdBL5P0Adt8

Has only been playing for *two* years - Interview with ALEXEY - PowerTalk 1420AM Radio (Delray Beach,FL)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vv6pB5xc4g&list=PL7E242434C8E377C7

Neal Peart himself even says "She has so much there in terms of natural talent" -- Neil Peart Says Inspiring Things To Alexey Poblete About Drumming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4IuyTANf4c

As a drummer myself learning to play Rush's material I agree with one of the worlds best drummers when he says someone has natural talent instead of some no-name theorycrafting unable to understand a simple concept. This is a man who still takes drum lessons and isn't afraid to admit it./

Q. I think that a lot of people are surprised to learn that you still take drum lessons. You're seen as this drum master by most everybody.
A. What is a master but a master student?

* http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/q-a-neil-peart-on-rushs-new-lp-and-being-a-bleeding-heart-libertarian-20120612

Long after you are dead you will realize that EVERYONE has talent -- an innate ability to learn significantly faster, an intuitive way of mastering a difficult subject. Talent is not a substitute for passion + learned skill -- it *augments* it. It is like being born with fast legs. If you never run a race you will never use your talent. But with determination and learning how to run you can run even *faster*.

It would behoove you to "Know Thyself" and discover where your hidden talent is (aside from trolling that is.)

QED.

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/walter-white-interviews-bryan-cranston-on-fallon-20130803

just sayin'.

Maybe you would consider intentionally hosting a child porn site something legal? That happened inside US, after all.

Anyway, lose any hope to find justice in US, you are part of them and then outside law's reach , or you are not, and you can be labeled as terrorist, jailed for decades under any excuse, or eliminated if you cause trouble to their protegees.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216

Says it all.