The Fed is not taxpayer-funded. It returns profits to the Treasury each year. It can easily provide Detroit with the same zero-cost borrowing it provides to financial institutions.
The main point is that Detroit is not insolvent. It has cash flows. It should not be in bankruptcy. Putting it in bankruptcy is a political decision to punish city workers by not honoring promises made to them.
Detroit was screwed by banks such as USB. Pre-crash, Detroit bet that interest rates would go up. After the crash, rates went down, and banks and traders did shady things like the LIBOR scandal to lower rates. Detroit thus had big payments to make to USB.
But Detroit isn't insolvent. It has cash flow. There is no reason for Detroit to go bankrupt, it can make payments. Bankruptcy is a scheme to weaken the negotiating power of city workers. If Detroit was a private company, it would be able to renegotiate its payments. Or the Fed would bail it out. Why doesn't the Fed bail out Detroit? One of the reasons the Fed cited when it bailed out banks was that pensions would be threatened otherwise. In Detroit, its precisely pensions that are being reduced. The Fed could act. Why doesn't it?
In conclusion, Detroit should not have been making bets with big jackal banks like USB. But even now, Detroit has cash flow, it is not insolvent. It should be bailed out, because pensions are at stake.
Clarke was probably aware of the following (from wikipedia's article on Iapetus):
In the 17th century, Giovanni Cassini observed that he could see Iapetus only on the west side of Saturn and never on the east. He correctly deduced that Iapetus is locked in synchronous rotation about Saturn and that one side of Iapetus is darker than the other, conclusions later confirmed by larger telescopes.
MOOCs provide free education. Give each child a laptop, or something like that, and they can learn how to use the microscope. Or they can play with it and learn on their own, which is better than not having one, right?
I think when the Fed expands its balance sheet, as it did by a factor of two in a week in 2008, that money is not connected with the stockholder banks,
The value is unaffected by finance. If it's a good idea, how you finance it does not matter. Fear of debt should not be used as a reason not to finance a good idea.
Arizona, southern California set record highs over the same winter. Nebraska has had a multi-year drought. So your local weather has been canceled out in the averaging.
Besides being a carbon sink, trees also scrub pollution and hold groundwater, working to prevent landslides.
"Although forests do release some CO2 from natural processes such as decay and respiration, a healthy forest typically stores carbon at a greater rate than it releases carbon."
"To grow a pound of wood, a tree uses 1.47 pounds of carbon dioxide and gives off 1.07 pounds of oxygen. An acre of trees might grow 4,000 pounds of wood in a year, using 5,880 pounds of carbon dioxide and giving off 4,280 pounds of oxygen in the process."
So does the US. The Constitution gives the government the power to coin money. The Fed gives the government zero cost borrowing. The Modigliani-Miller theorem of finance shows that how you finance a good idea doesn't matter. If climate engineering is a good idea, we can finance it.
Finance should never be used as an excuse not to carry out a good idea.
I've watched Voyager too. I challenge you to cite sources about the scarce resource aspect.
The characters don't ever talk about the holodeck or replicators as being a scarce resource. They don't think in terms of scarcity. It's a post-scarcity society. Any scarcity is being imposed by your brain, not by the script-writers.
It wasn't until later work (by Schmidt, for example) provided solid observational evidence (which hadn't been available before, because the telescopes weren't big enough, and theories hadn't been developed as to why supernovae explosions differed in the length of their explosions), that a coherent theory was presented.
The way Schmidt explains it, is that new technology and ideas about supernovae permitted him (and others) to measure distances and redshifts farther and in greater number than before. It was those additional observations of farther-away objects that hadn't been detected before that led to the discovery that the universe was expanding.
The other instructor in the class, Paul Francis, described his work in the early 1990s determining the age of far-away galaxies, which appeared to be older than the Big Bang. He said that the results appeared stupid at the time, and there was no serious theory to deal with the discrepancies. It wasn't until later work (by Schmidt, for example) provided solid observational evidence (which hadn't been available before, because the telescopes weren't big enough, and the knowledge of why supernovae explosions differed in the length of their explosions, that a coherent theory was presented.
I think this is the same attitude as the guy who wrote the book, and the recent article, predicting that science is slowing, or whatever. You simply define away anything exciting that is discovered after you wrote your book. Like covering your eyes and singing "Lalala".
I'm taking the edx MOOC Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe. One of the instructors is Brian Schmidt, 2011 Nobel Prize winner for discovering Dark Energy. I just watched a video where he displays his data from 1998, which led to the conclusion that the universe's expansion rate was speeding up. In his words, "What a surprise."
So I think I was quite correct. Dark Energy was (surprisingly) shown to exist after the guy's book was published.
The true business of mankind is knowledge. Using economics to subvert that is making economics into a God that we must serve, instead of using it as a tool to serve us.
Slashdot Mirror
The Fed is not taxpayer-funded. It returns profits to the Treasury each year. It can easily provide Detroit with the same zero-cost borrowing it provides to financial institutions.
The main point is that Detroit is not insolvent. It has cash flows. It should not be in bankruptcy. Putting it in bankruptcy is a political decision to punish city workers by not honoring promises made to them.
Detroit was screwed by banks such as USB. Pre-crash, Detroit bet that interest rates would go up. After the crash, rates went down, and banks and traders did shady things like the LIBOR scandal to lower rates. Detroit thus had big payments to make to USB.
But Detroit isn't insolvent. It has cash flow. There is no reason for Detroit to go bankrupt, it can make payments. Bankruptcy is a scheme to weaken the negotiating power of city workers. If Detroit was a private company, it would be able to renegotiate its payments. Or the Fed would bail it out. Why doesn't the Fed bail out Detroit? One of the reasons the Fed cited when it bailed out banks was that pensions would be threatened otherwise. In Detroit, its precisely pensions that are being reduced. The Fed could act. Why doesn't it?
In conclusion, Detroit should not have been making bets with big jackal banks like USB. But even now, Detroit has cash flow, it is not insolvent. It should be bailed out, because pensions are at stake.
Clarke was probably aware of the following (from wikipedia's article on Iapetus):
MOOCs provide free education. Give each child a laptop, or something like that, and they can learn how to use the microscope. Or they can play with it and learn on their own, which is better than not having one, right?
I think when the Fed expands its balance sheet, as it did by a factor of two in a week in 2008, that money is not connected with the stockholder banks,
The value is unaffected by finance. If it's a good idea, how you finance it does not matter. Fear of debt should not be used as a reason not to finance a good idea.
By US law, the Fed returns its profits to the Treasury every year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01...
The point is, he uses less than he could. Harm reduction.
Arizona, southern California set record highs over the same winter. Nebraska has had a multi-year drought. So your local weather has been canceled out in the averaging.
You're pulling those figures out of your lower orifice.
Besides being a carbon sink, trees also scrub pollution and hold groundwater, working to prevent landslides.
"Although forests do release some CO2 from natural processes such as decay and respiration, a healthy forest typically stores carbon at a greater rate than it releases carbon."
http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/47...
I think you're wrong:
"To grow a pound of wood, a tree uses 1.47 pounds of carbon dioxide and gives off 1.07 pounds of oxygen. An acre of trees might grow 4,000 pounds of wood in a year, using 5,880 pounds of carbon dioxide and giving off 4,280 pounds of oxygen in the process."
http://www.forestecologynetwor...
Let's go to Mars. The technology is available, only the will is lacking.
The stock market will keep going up in the long term, right? What it does tomorrow doesn't affect the long-term trend.
So does the US. The Constitution gives the government the power to coin money. The Fed gives the government zero cost borrowing. The Modigliani-Miller theorem of finance shows that how you finance a good idea doesn't matter. If climate engineering is a good idea, we can finance it.
Finance should never be used as an excuse not to carry out a good idea.
How much compared to the Koch brothers' houses?
I've watched Voyager too. I challenge you to cite sources about the scarce resource aspect.
The characters don't ever talk about the holodeck or replicators as being a scarce resource. They don't think in terms of scarcity. It's a post-scarcity society. Any scarcity is being imposed by your brain, not by the script-writers.
Also should have probably added that "the universe was expanding" at an accelerating pace.
Correcting the last sentence:
It wasn't until later work (by Schmidt, for example) provided solid observational evidence (which hadn't been available before, because the telescopes weren't big enough, and theories hadn't been developed as to why supernovae explosions differed in the length of their explosions), that a coherent theory was presented.
The way Schmidt explains it, is that new technology and ideas about supernovae permitted him (and others) to measure distances and redshifts farther and in greater number than before. It was those additional observations of farther-away objects that hadn't been detected before that led to the discovery that the universe was expanding.
The other instructor in the class, Paul Francis, described his work in the early 1990s determining the age of far-away galaxies, which appeared to be older than the Big Bang. He said that the results appeared stupid at the time, and there was no serious theory to deal with the discrepancies. It wasn't until later work (by Schmidt, for example) provided solid observational evidence (which hadn't been available before, because the telescopes weren't big enough, and the knowledge of why supernovae explosions differed in the length of their explosions, that a coherent theory was presented.
"Please stop. There is no such thing."
I think this is the same attitude as the guy who wrote the book, and the recent article, predicting that science is slowing, or whatever. You simply define away anything exciting that is discovered after you wrote your book. Like covering your eyes and singing "Lalala".
I'm taking the edx MOOC Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe. One of the instructors is Brian Schmidt, 2011 Nobel Prize winner for discovering Dark Energy. I just watched a video where he displays his data from 1998, which led to the conclusion that the universe's expansion rate was speeding up. In his words, "What a surprise."
So I think I was quite correct. Dark Energy was (surprisingly) shown to exist after the guy's book was published.
No way, he should have pulled a Satoshi Nakamoto.
What relevance did relativity have, when it was discovered? And yet it's used today for GPS. Who saw that, in 1905?
The true business of mankind is knowledge. Using economics to subvert that is making economics into a God that we must serve, instead of using it as a tool to serve us.