WikiLeaks, Money, and Ron Paul

Another day, another dozen WikiLeaks stories, several of which revolve around money. PayPal has given in to pressure to release WikiLeaks funds, though they still won't do further transactions. Mobile payment firm Xipwire is attempting to take PayPal's place. "We do think people should be able to make their own decisions as to who they donate to." PCWorld wonders if the WikiLeaks' money woes could lead to great adoption of Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer currency system we've discussed in the past. Meanwhile, Representative Ron Paul spoke in defense of WikiLeaks on the House floor Thursday, asking a number of questions, including, "Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on WikiLeaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?" The current uproar over WikiLeaks has prompted Paul Vixie to call for an end to the DDoS attacks and Vladimir Putin to break out a metaphor involving cows and hockey pucks.

Comments

Re:inflation

[DavidTC]

Serious question. Yes, the BitCoins are and will further gain in value, which is normally called deflation.

And is a very bad thing. Worse than inflation.

There are a lot of economists who'd say that's a very bad thing, but those are the same ones who ram wall-street into the ground regularly, so I'd not give them too much credit.

No, Wall Street's capture of regulatory institutions and their inability to regulate cause the Great Fuckup, and Congress's inability to actually stop companies from going overseas caused the recession.

It has nothing at do with fiat currency, you idiot.

* Central banks could not print as much (FIAT) money as they'd like (now a days they use the euphemism: quantitative easing). They could not print any. This would mean, that they could not inflate away debt (which is what's actually going on). They'd actually had to do responsible accounting (imagine that). And it would permanently restrict the size of the economy.

That's the real joke all you anti 'fiat currency' loons don't get. If we'd, for example, stayed on the gold standard...there's not actually enough gold in existence to operate the economy at $35 an ounce.

We'd have fucking money shortages, which have actually happened before. It happened in England once, where people cannot actually locate enough money to actually do things. If there's only physically $400 floating around, no one can actually buy a damn car, and people have to start bartering for stuff.

When it happened last in England, luckily, checks had been invented, so trusted people would write checks (despite not having cash.) and people would pass them around like currency, until they got back to the trusted person.

In other words, 'fiat money' is so evil that people spontaneously invent it when forced to use your stupid system.

* This would encourage people to actually save and spend what they have, and not buy everything on debt creating massive problems down the road.

Ah, yes, and people saving money in the bank would help the economy. In stupid land, where recessions are caused by something other than people not purchasing things.

No one will spend money to buy stuff, and hence no one will need jobs, but that's okay because everyone can sit at home on their deflationary money and live off the fact their money is now, somehow, 'worth more'.

That is perhaps the dumbest economic theory I've ever...scratch that. That's the dumbest theory, period, that I've ever heard.

Please google 'The Great Depression' for more information. Please note the deflation rate during that. Wow, everyone could have sat at home and earned 10% interest every year! I wonder how there was a depression?

This all would make pretty good economic stability and nominal growth (not this exponential lunatic thing we see today, ending in bubbles most of the time).

Well, yes. If you destroy the economy, you can no longer have bubbles. Good catch.

Bubbles have nothing do with the currency at all. Nor do they even have anything to do borrowing.

Incidentally, you can't have 'nominal growth' under a fixed amount of currency. You can't have any growth. (Which poses a rather large problem when you do have population growth.)

This is all based on simple logic, and must not be true, but can it get much worse than it's right now? I doubt it.

Perhaps 'simple' you and your 'simple' logic should be getting back to the group home? I think there's ice cream this evening!