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Japanese Government Raids Intel Tokyo Offices
mordicus writes "Reuters
is reporting that Japanese Trade Officials have raided Intel's Japan Offices. From the article:
'Japan's fair trade watchdog raided the offices of Intel Corp's Japanese unit on
Thursday and a government source in Tokyo said the chip giant is suspected of violating
antitrust laws.' Japan seems to be rather vigilant in enforcing its antitrust legislation. Microsoft's Japanese unit was target of a
similar operation
less than two months ago."
Microsoft last month, Intel now.
So, who's for the chop in May then?
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
What's their reasoning, I wonder? They think Intel is stealing processor stuff from Nintendo?
Its their "Lets fighting love" strategy
It's hard to declare Intel a monopoly (which is has to be if you are going to accuse it of monopolistic practices) when the latest numbers I've seen show AMD at 12% of the market and climbing, prior to this "invasion".
Well, at least they have been against American companies.
"You should do more manufacturing in Japan."
"You should have these new Japanese employees contribute money to the (misnamed) Liberal Democratic Party".
The Japanese merely enjoy "raiding" things. Look at China, for example.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think they might have chosen a more descriptive word for what happened? When I think of a raid, I think of things like a drug bust where they bang down the door and come in with guns drawn. I may be wrong, but I have a feeling this "raid" was more like some guys in suits showing up and demanding to speak with certain people and look at certain files, etc. Then again, Intel does hire some sneaky folk, and you never know if they have a stockpile of BFG-9000's in the back room waiting for the FTC to come.
Needless to say, calling it a "raid" gives the wrong impression (to me).
Celebrate Steak and a Blowjob Day!
And in other related news: Microsft, SCO and the RIAA have teamed up to counter this threat by sucking up all of the countries legal and technical resources in a frivolous and long-term legal battle. On a more serious side, it is about time a country gets tough on this subject. My biggest fear is that Japan will not be able to counter these international economic threats. The U.S. government was not even powerful enough to take on Microsoft. Their best bet is to cooperate in the Asian market with OpenSource. Have you ever seen or used Asian versions of Microsoft products? They are even worse than the American counterparts. It is no wonder they are feeling a bit angry. My prediction is that the Asian market is going to give BIG Corporate American business a big surprise in coming years.
Unfortunately, many countries are not in the same position to aggravate or turn down Western business, even if in the medium and long run they lose in the deal. For many "third world" countries, short-term existence (and political graft) are the only thing on the radar.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/photo/special/2004/presco tt/images/g30l.gif
Japan seems to be rather vigilant in enforcing its antitrust legislation.
Considering that Microsoft has probably been breaking antitrust laws for 10+ years, I wouldn't call this "vigilant".
I think that it is refreshing to see some trustbusting and pricefixing countermeasures in our cosey little global economy.
you know, more than just obvious corporate welfare, subsidies and pandering. At least the Japanese look after their own a little.
From all of the recent /. stories, I imagine a lot of japanese robots doing the raiding...
That or I watch too much anime. Probably a bit of both.
You are wrong if you think any American company is going to march into Japan and tell the Japanese how to run their business. Very wrong!
The Japanese are known for protecting their own, at any cost, from non-Japanese threats. To say such protectionism a cornerstone of their culture is an understatement. Chances are that Intel tried to go John Wayne* on their Japanese suppliers/distributors, and they replied to the threat in their own special way: Using Tokyo to respond for them.
* - Being an American currently living in Japan, I can say that acting American in a Japanese Business setting is like walking upto the plate, in baseball, with 2 strikes against you.
No-knock raids have been going on in America for quite some time to combat those crazy marijuana and crack users. It's about time that other countries pick up on the value of no-knock raids in taking down corporations that violate anti-trust laws. Had it gone down American-style, someone would have ended up dead.
Isn't that a declaration of (business) war?
... you really should re-read the parent post you are referring to. The poster said no such thing as you imply.
Sony is like the Microsoft of Japan. Billboards dominate the streets. They certainly dominate the media and the advertising dollar there. Interesting how they would "raid" a US company who, to me, seems no more guilty than the dominant player there. It also lends creedance to revenge - seeing as Sony recently made a HUGE order of Transmeta Chips and didn't go with intel version of the ARM processor.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Bit like perl harbour there then :p
IIRC, japan takes it's crime very seriously, compared to say.. the US (disclaimer: I'm a native of the USA). Criminals move with the expectation of being caught, because the cops in Japan are highly efficient, work selflessly, etc etc. I hear some figure about how criminals in Japan have a 80-90% chance of being caught, where as in the US, it's more like 20-30%.
Is it still that way?
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
If a Japanese company had a position in the US markets as dominant as Microsoft or Intel, I imagine you'd see some action from DC.
You can't believe this is in the interest of fair trade, not in Japan, where business has the government firmly wrapped around its little finger? Surely you don't believe this was not at the behest of griping japanese electronics manufacturers who have had a difficult time competing with Intel on their home turf. This is the country that dumped consumer electronics and automobiles on the world, subsidized by taxing their own citizens. This is the country that negotiated hardball and grudgingly every millimeter of trade concessions for years.
When Japan, Inc. does things we like, like make handheld devices with Linux embedded, we applaud. When they do things we're less thrilled, we overlook. Japan, Inc. makes some damn fine stuff, but don't confuse that with government-industrial policies.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Antitrust laws are not only used against monopolies (which means it is already too late in some way), but also for anti-competitive behaviour.
It is best for the consumer if all those backroom deals and exclusive contracts disappear and the consumer has the free choice. That would be a concept, wouldn't it?
...of other nations, Japan makes no secret of the fact that they are a highly nationalistic country, and that they will do whatever it takes to protect their markets. Most other western industrialised nations are more fragmented and disingenous about it. Japan since WW2 and their rebuilding, sees economics as just another form of warfare basically, and acvts accordingly. They are polite about it, but ruthless. They are also really up the creek with the yen and the dollar, and are exploring different ways to ease the burden of supporting a still grossly over valued dollar. They have too many investments tied to it, but realise they needed major serious diversification like years ago, and are in max overdrive to rectify what to them is a national economic disaster in the making if it's not addressed past the lip service level. Same thing in the US, just we have.... stupider central bankers. They thought that they could keep pushing funny bux forever, like no one would ever notice. another subject there, but that is happening as well.
There's probably also a lot of other internal political action (politics=money, like any other place) going on around this, but I don't follow their internal affairs adequately enough to comment on it to any significant degree.
As an aside,I am also highly surprised that in this day and age that *any* intel chips get used in Japan.
I think that he said Japan WAS a third world country, not IS. He was pointing out the fact that Japan is now strong enough to challange western dominance. Read carefully.
it could be that microsoft ratted intel out for leniency....u know...the wintel issue from back in the day, before AMD became as big a contender as they are now; to the point that AMD now dictates what's in the X86-64 extension instruction set, etc. (even the rumor mill is spewing out that Intel will implement some of those extensions for some of their 32bit P4's later on)
(which is has to be if you are going to accuse it of monopolistic practices)
Says who? You can have monopolistic practices without being a monopoly. Isn't that what everybody has been saying about Microsoft all these years?
According to Columbia Guide to Standard American English the -istic suffix means:
"in imitation of" or "having some characteristics of,"
Keep in mind that the Japanese antitrust laws are not meant to promote competition like the American ones are; they are meant to protect Japanese-owned companies. The government in Japan is not that strong; it's still the original Shogunate families that have run things for hundreds of years. The only difference is that weild brief cases and laptops rather then swords.
It is best for the consumer if all those backroom deals and exclusive contracts disappear and the consumer has the free choice. That would be a concept, wouldn't it?
I think you'll find the land of the Zaibatsu wrote the book on backroom dealing.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
japan vigilent
intel antitrust frolicks
ruined by truncheon
Kimonos to Japan
-1 Insipid
There are Japanese companies with positions like that in the US and no, there's no action from DC, other than sticking their hand out for a bribe.
Intel and Microsoft? They need to raid a case maker, a hard drive maker, a video card maker and a motherboard maker and they'll be all set to play Half-Life 2 at the precinct. ;)
And its laws. American companies get away with far more than they should here. It wouldn't be surprising that they think the rest of the world is just as forgiving. For a company like Sony that has been created in Japan, they know what they can and cannot do inside and out. It makes sense that Japanese companies are not being busted, they probably all realise how harsh it can really be if they mess up. It's a learning lesson American companies will have to learn quickly. Ever wonder why the XBox has done so bad in Japan? It's because Microsoft cant get the leverage they can in other countries without breaking a metric ton of laws. Microsoft in turn has slammed Japan over and over saying they dont need them, etc .. While doing this, they've pretty much lost all respect for any Japanese developers jumping on the XBox2 ship. They've doomed their console hopes because they finally have to play fair somewhere and it bit them in the ass.
I wish AMD was the only processor manufacturer in the world, then everyone could only buy processors that are high quality for a low price.
I wonder if the price of AMD would be so good if they would be a monopoly ...
I still like choices. Let AMD and Intel and maybe some more companies compete. This creates innovation and good prices
Japan was never a 3rd world country. 2nd World until after WWII maybe but never 3rd world. It is just ethnocentricism and ignorance to say any different. Hell the US was closer to a 3rd world country for most of the 1800's - poverty, starvation, weak federal government.
Actually Japan IS a third world nation along with the swiss. For a similar but differing view look here
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Read the book "intel Inside". The insider account of the culture of fear and paranoia fostered at Intel, with propaganda posters on the wall about how "it's nice to work at Intel", constant employee surveillance, the Randall Schwartz of Perl fame lawsuit, etc etc.
It's Orwellian nature makes it perfectly suited for Japanese culture. Should be a slam dunk. Except, as another slashdotter pointed out, the profits are rolling back to Andy Grove and his clan. The Intellies probably cut some deal with Taiwan and a Japanese company lost out, and before you know it, the offices are being raided.
With Intel's culture, a government raid is the biggest kick in the balls you could deliver. Start going through computer files and the network there, and people would be flipping out. What if they uncovered the AMD sabotage plot?
In most countries 25% of the market is considered a monopoly for legal purposes, so yes they clearly are a monopoly, and should AMD break the 25% mark they too would be a monopoly.
This helps the law take on duopolies and oligopolies which have most of the powers associated with a monopoly.
AC
Japans Mega-Coroporations are clearly in violation of any sort of anti-trust law. Dumping and price fixing is an art with them. Sony? Honda? Panasonic? Funny they only raid foreign companies. Hmmmmm....which corporation do you think gave political donations to get that?
Evil Man
THe thing is, Japan is targeting American conglomerates like MS, Intel and pretty soon a few more. All of which are American companies. Docomo NTT is has 90% market share of the telecommunications and overcharges lots of its customers yet the government does nothing about it.
25%? That sort of goes against the root word 'mono' doesn't it?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I haven't heard of this book, but may have to check it out. One of my oldest friends works there, we grew up together (in our 30's now). I was just out visiting him, and I have to tell you that Intel seems like a nice place to work. He gets very nice stock options. He has been getting decent to very good bonuses for the last 7 years. After 7 years, they get a sabattical - 3 months paid time off, plus his vacation for the year. He gets to telecommute 1 day a week, as does most of the other people he works with. They have a very casual attire policy.
He said their policy is to always compensate their employees better than the industry average, and much better than the industry average during times when the economy is bad. Which is much better than where I work now, where I am consistently reminded that "I am lucky to even have a job." But he is a quality control engineer, I am a software guy. I know this guy, and he wouldn't bullshit me. He really loves his job at Intel.
Now that says nothing about their business practices. He did say they are very careful about trade secrets, and there is this feel that people are watching you. But Intel does have trade secrets that a lot of people would like to steal.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Did you even read your own links? According to the definitions from both places, Japan is considered First World. Your second link even included Japan in a list of First World countries.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.-Ecclesiastes 1:9
...they have to protect the local Japanese businessmen from foreign encroachment--that way you know that when your knuckles are being broken, at least a native got that job, and didn't lose it to a foreigner!
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Go suck you Japanese cock! I know you like it...
Hard to declare Intel a monopoly? On the contrary, if AMD has 12% of the market it sounds like declaring Intel a monopoly is a slam-dunk.
In the US, the threshold for a monopoly is not 100%. If you are twice as big as the nearest competitor and the nearest competititor is bigger than all the rest of the competition, you can be considered a monopoly. Even if a competitior is gaining ground on you. It is not illegal to be a monopoly. However monopolies do have another layer of restrictions with which they must comply.
Outside the US I doubt that 12% amounts to proof that a monopoly does not exist.
Judging by some of the 'Hooray, someone's going after big American companies' statements that people are posting, it's quite obvious that few slashdoter know much about Japanese business practices. Japan is always quite vigorous about enforcing anti-trust laws against foreign companies. With their own companies, it's quite another matter.
Japanese companies routinely form all sorts of anti-competitive agreements and partnerships with each other. It's considered standard procedure for corporations to team up in order to create horizontal monopolies and price-fix products through the roof.
According to the second... Japan is first world ... the first draws the lines as Nato=1st warsaw=2nd everybody else=3rd..
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Why? Because Slashdot readers are idiots. Yes, I'm talking to you.
there is at least one other reason not to buy products from intel....
intel built a cpu factory (fab) on occupied palestinian land. they help to financially support an oppressive and racist regime.
Go AMD!
http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-intel.html
what I said. I said US central bankers were stupider. that's it. And they are. They failed to hold some cards, they threw away any backup "economy", they over extended how far they could push other nations to keep taking petrodollars, and they exported too many jobs too fast. japan was a little slower to do it, that's all. I said nothing about japans central bankers except they are trying to distance themselves from the buck, as are any number of other nations, that is just data, use google news search for the info, alot has been happening this year..
If you ask me, the only smart bankers now are in the islamic nations, where they have kicked off the adoption of the gold dinar to settle national debts between the islamic nations, and at some time, these nations will expand that to insisting on gold or partially gold backed currencies for their oil, or use direct swaps, oil for manufactured goods, and guess who will be in the drivers seat then with A the need for oil, and B-manufactured goods to swap. big hint, it ain't japan or the US. Starts with a "C". That is also one of the reasons that the shrub crime gang invaded iraq, he was about to insist on getting paid in euros for oil, not in fed reserve notes. They wanted to establish a beachhead with troops on the ground to help counter chinas obvious moves into the mideast, beyond what they are doing already. Venezuela is close to that now, too, BTW, sewriously thinking about not using dollars for their oil.
The days of the debt based counterfeit money are numbered, that includes the yen and the dollar. The euro will take longer to slide, but it will too, even though it's up nicely lately.
ALL the big industrialised nations are in trouble regarding currencies,debt, and the obvious inability to fund their populations "retirements". Ain't happening. Because basically, the entire concept on debt based currency is insane, it's a scam, a con game. Japan went along with it too, yes they have been struggling, they are more aware of it's deficiencies than anyone posting on slashdot, including me of course. They just have the same amount of political crooks and banker crooks as "leaders" as we do, and no way will those guys admit what a full ripoff it is, how truly corrupt a system like that becomes... so they have to keep trying to plug the flooding dike, and it's almost impossible.
There's no easy fix for it when you are running on debt as a benchmark as opposed to honestly quantified produced wealth. You cannot "borrow" wealth into existence, but you can easily borrow "debt" into existence. Calling it wealth does not make it so. Do that long enough and extensively enough, ya gets your problems..Japan has 'em, we got 'em, and etc...
In the short and medium term, historically speaking, it can be used to create the illusion of wealth production, obviously it works,congames usually work, but in the long run, the historical track record of any fiat or debt based currency ever tried in man's history has always failed and collapsed in the end. It always BSOD in practical terms. All shiny and flashy, everyone is happy, everyone is rich, blather yada yada, exactly like the dotcom boom when people thought that that fiat currency,their "portfolios" which showed these totally unrealistic "worth values" that they were pre spending in their minds,the inflated debt based projections represented by stock "value" collapsed, and collapsed hard once reality set in. Those inflated values are an exact analogy to a fiat currency such as exists in japan, the us, and elsewheres. Works for awhile, then kaboom. the only variable is in the timing. No exceptions yet in man's history. It usually causes tremendous social change, conflicts, wars, whatnot.
Japan is trying to deal with as problem that is basically un-fixable, the best they can hope for is a mitigation of the problems, not a full complete fix. They've already adjusted insane real estate prices, and they had to adjust their internal economy by outsourcing, something they never really w
Riiight, we all believe them.
There are several tests for determining if a company is a monopoly. The old one looked at sheer percentage, as you state. However 88% share would be plenty to consider it a monopoly. The newer method looks at the competitors sizes as well and is somewhat complicated.
Being a monopoly is not a crime per se.
But that's all pretty-much irrelevant. Building or maintaining a monopoly, even unsuccessfully, is illegal. Many anti-competitive actions are illegal even for non-monopolies.
Do they bust open doors and put people in handcuffs? YES if anyone on site is foolish enough to resist. Usually most people are not. Would you an army of cops for your boss?
No a raid is precisly what happened. It just won't make a good episode of cops. That is because while collar criminals are smart enough not to wrestle 10 cops with guns.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This isn't fair. I mean, it's extremely fair when the government storms Microsoft offices and smashes up everything over there. But if they kindly walk into Intel offices and ask to be shown around, that's a bit invasive and unfair.
Japan is pretty vigilant until it comes to Japanese companies. Anti-trust laws? Japan is the center of huge conglomerate coroporations like Mitsubishi and Sony! Japan is completely unfair towards foreign companies, putting the small foreign business man through red tape until he gives up, and then using these so-called 'anti-trust laws' to raid bigger foreign companies, while their own domestic companies are immune to this kind of treatment.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
I hear some figure about how criminals in Japan have a 80-90% chance of being caught, where as in the US, it's more like 20-30%.
No, Japan's about on par with the US there--in fact there've been news reports lamenting how the Japanese rate of catching criminals is "down" to 20% lately. The 80-90% figure is your chance of getting convicted if they take you to trial, and that's mostly because the police don't bring charges unless they're more or less certain they can convict you. (Even if you show up at the police station and confess to a crime, the standard procedure goes something like: confession --> interrogation --> confirm details --> okay, now we arrest you.)
Japan is just another country, like everyone else. You stupid anime-addicted wotakus are building a wall without realizing it!
they should be making all their own.
Where? Where is it in all the history books? You've given a single example (the dot-com boom) for something you claim has been happening constantly throughout the entire history of mankind.
And it's a dubious example, at that. How is a stock exchange an "exact analogy" to a nation's currency? How is ANYTHING an "exact analogy" to anything other than itself?
Either say it with backup or don't say it at all.
fiat currencies, just printed up paper being used as money? You can't find any examples? This is "money 101" territory here
Stocks.. how many people do you know who were sitting on what they thought was a "ton o money" in their dotcom stock portfolio, then it vaporized on them? If it was a representation of a tangible produced product, it would be sitting in a warehouse someplace, but it wasn't, it isn't, that's why it can disappear. And be created at will.
All representations of money are subject to poofing, being inflated, devalued, etc *until* they are turned into a tangible product or have been exchanged for a sevice completed. Even gold and silver coin have had inflationary pressures and been counterfeited by being diluted with base metals, had their edges trimmed, etc. That's why most coins evolved with ridges around the circumference, it was an attempt to slow down the practice of filing off around them, making the coins marginally smaller and using the filings elsewheres.
The US dollar (a debt based private bank "note" which has a legal definition, look it up) is a great example why using fiat currencies backed by nothing doesn't work in the long run, it's easy to see. I used to be able to get X amount of product for a dollar, I will give an exact example, I have purchased 5 lbs of hamburger for a single dollar before, back in the olden daze.. Now in a lot of cases, the same product costsd x larger amount, last I got a deal on any it was around a buck 50 a lb. this is called inflation, over the years, the central banks artifically create more money than what is represented by accumulated produced wealth, this is why you can't go to the store and still get 5 lbs chiopped meat for a buck. And this despite the technology for producing, packaging, shipping, retailing has undergone very good changes with regards to efficiency, it's still way more expensive than it used to be. Other examples abound, famous case was in ww2, the german reichsmark. What can you buy with them today, and how fast did it go from a "piece of valuable money" that people used for day to day whatever, to fireplace kindling? How about the iraqi dinar, before the war, now after the war? it was used as money there, now it's not, theyhave "new and improved money", but it's the same old printed up stuff, just now we control it.(and manipulate it)
We have a phrase from our own past, "not worth a continental". Continentals were fiat money, printed up, backed by nothing, used to attempt to pay for our government when we were at war in the early days. They were worth nothing, people didn't use them much and their production ceased when it became obvious they were worthless.
Any "money" that isn't the end user product or service itself is a fictitous representation of "wealth". Precious metals coin were an attempt to even that out, at least the representation was a tangible of universal recognized worth, and still is around the world. It's still a representation though.
Wealth cannot be borrowed into existence,not really except as part of long standing official banking con games, wealth has to be grown, mined/extracted, or manufactured using the above materials. that's it, everyhting else is a fictitous srepresentations of wealth, and it pays to always keep the two terms separate.
Wealth may be serviced, but a service itself is not a measure of produced wealth, although it's current worth may be represented with the currency du juor. A service for a tangible is a re arrangement of produced wealth, but it is not wealth creating.
Stocks in a portfolio are just another representation of "wealth",and as such are a form of tradeable "currency",(the common slang term for them is poker chips) but until they are traded in, sold in other words to another sucker.. I mean "investor", through as many layers as you want to use, for a product or service, they are vaporware. they are a form of money that can be classed as "electronic promises to pay". They are usually even more highly infl
... umm, that's why I said the top 100 produced products. I would INCLUDE precious metals in their normal coin form like we have now, it's always beeen recognized and is still in use around the world, and set their worth pegged to the top 100 (98 if you want to be picky about it) other commodities actually produced in the preceeding year.
As society and technology and business changes, those commodities can be adjusted by dropping them in the rank on the list, or raising them, or dropping them completely off the list when they don't make the top 100 (buggywhips for example) entirely, or adding brand new products based on tech advances or whatever. I picked 100 because it's a nice number we all understand and more importantly is a large enough representation of what is made across the board in the nation so it will include the most important stuff. Your example-beef-most likely would be included, I think it would make the cut into top 100 commodities easily. My system is based entirely, 100% entirely, on verifiable, quantifiable *produced wealth*, and not based on created credit or future-debt like it is now. It is inflation proof, the money is *entirely* backed by something real, the something being what the nation has produced into existence. By necessity, again, wealth (leave out land, it can't be produced, what we got is here already), wealth has to be either something mined/extracted, or it is grown or harvested, or it's manufactured from something in some combination from the first two. And that's it if you think about it. Just pick the top 100, and that data is easily found, they already track it.
The first year during a transition, a date is picked and a freeze on the money supply occurs, the supply meaning how many digits they claim are in existence at that point. This number is cross indexed/compared to the data of the totality of the top 100 products. That becomes a floating point of worth, that is adjusted annually, merely by using the already collected and collated data that those various industries and government already produce. this is done proportionally, any verifiable increase in production has a corresponding increase in the offical money supply. This is cool, it adjusts for population ups and downs, it adjusts for changes in business climate, it gives investors a much more accurate way to gauge the currency and their particular nich of investing they are looking at, and it makes the currency very attractive for continual foreign investment, because they can count on it being STABLE in worth.
It's really a simple concept. The only real drawback is that no government insider or central banker/system can get "rich" off of it by borrowing into existence "money", miraculously "loaning" it to us, and somehow even then having the nads to actually charge us "interest" on it.
Think about it, we are told we owe THEM interest. On what? Where the hell did they have enough real money to be able to LOAN the US government people this "money"? They sitting on umpteen trillions of realdollars and decide to cut us a deal and "loan" it to us? Nope, they are allowed to create and obscenely profit from having a LEGAL MONOPOLY on the most important thing we have in our economic system, our day to day "money". Why we do that? Why do we even need those guys? Really, why? We have a mint, and it's separate from the federal reserve, we don't really need them, just they conned some folks back in the teens with a few bought off senators. It's in the history books and is one of the US's darkest days with government. Is that a nutso concept or what, but they pulled it off (check history of creation of fed reserve, fascinating case study of abuse of government and insider deals there, the mother of all fast ones, conjob deluxe), and we've been paying the price and supporting them leeches ever since, and it really leads to extreme boom and bust artifically created cycles that do nothing but skim off the economy and create economic chaos.. And that single "drawback" if you want to call it that t