Oh, and if you did find a way to reverse entropy (given that you are saying that most things are subsidised by government), then why bother with solar panels? Just power everything with the hot air that the politicians produce and reverse entropy so that the politicians don't have to be powered by anything themselves to create all that hot air.
- In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Think about your statement and realise that it is nonsense. You can't have an economy where "most things" are subsidised because otherwise they are not economically viable. You end up sucking out all energy out of everything to subsidise.... everything?
OTOH what USA has now is something to that effect, where actually the biggest sectors of the economy are subsidised with inflation and taxes (and thus all of it is redistribution), the only way USA can 'sustain' such a pattern of behaviour for such a long time, is because it's NOT subsidising everything for everybody.
It uses the inflation mechanism to subsidise USA economy by taxing the economies of all the foreigners that hold (or get paid in) US dollars.
Unless you found a way to go around entropy, you can't claim that all or even most things are subsidised by government and it is somehow a sustainable model.
Really big money does not get audited, really big money comes from the printing presses (figuratively speaking, they don't even need those anymore). Really big money cannot be touched and it is used to finance wars, murder, foreign occupation, destruction of individual liberty, monopolisation of various formerly free markets, destruction of people's savings. Really big money is used to set the law, which is used to prevent any type of competition and ability of people to thwart the Really big money from stealing from small time money. Really big money steals from everybody and murders hundreds of thousands if not millions and the perps get 'respect' from the media and the idiots, not jail time.
so go make your own society, where such controls don't exist
- people did, it was called USA.
and after you get ripped off, by... get this... criminals... learn your lesson the hard way
- yes, we know, we know who the criminals are. They are in the government or they have closest ties to the government, they are known as 'too big to fail'.
criminality exists in this world. i'm sorry this bothers you, and i'm sorry in your naive rage you blame those who pursue criminality rather than criminality itself
- 'criminality' is a word. What exists is a legal system that turns normal people's behaviour into 'criminal behaviour', because the real criminals don't want to have to sit on different roads, waiting for wagons to rob. They want to define what roads are, and every road must lead through a toll booth that this type of criminals have set up. It would be a pity if you didn't pay the toll and something would happen to your beautiful business. Oh, didn't you know, it was for the 'common good' and 'general welfare', apparently those things can be used to justify any type of criminality, from theft to murder, no problem. From income taxes and money printing to NDAA and drone strikes, no problem.
but this doesn't change the fact that criminality is real, if unopposed it grows, and the vast majority of society has no problem with tactics like this to fight criminal organizations
- clearly a true statement. The criminality is real, it is unopposed and it's growing and the vast majority of society has no problem with this criminality, they cheer for it because they share in the proceeds.
welcome to reality
- this reality is about to bite the people who support it in the ass.
I am not arguing, I am writing thoughts down in response to any question and to criticism (I mostly get criticism).
It's going to be impossible to do the right thing, politically it's impossible, so it's a majority driven suicide pack and because of that you have to take care of yourself and people you know, I don't think you can fix the problem for all, just try and mitigate it for people you care about. There are no politicians that will do the right thing in the office. The ones who would do the right thing do not get access to do it, Ron Paul didn't get access, Gary Johnson didn't get access, etc.
I am looking at Cyprus, because it's a microcosm of what is happening everywhere (some of my relatives have some money stuck there that were in transit, so money was moving through a bank in Cyprus, and just like in a highway robbery, with masked bandits stopping the wagon to loot it, the bankers and politicians in Cyprus stopped a transfer of funds and stole it). And so what do we observe from the politicians and bankers? First they steal to create an illusion of prosperity (apparently they were getting a 'good return' on buying Greek bonds for a few years, that Greek debt became expensive) and when it obviously went bust, they started looting anything they could put their hands on, even money in transit. That's the only thing politicians understand how to do - steal, they know nothing else. Again, those who wouldn't steal and wouldn't promise to "take care of people" are not in government.
The problem with hoping that the Fed's next bubble will prevent the dollar bubble is that you can't and neither the Fed can control where the bubble is going to form. Sure, the Fed buys mortgages to the tune of 80Billion USD/month (and it's going to increase those amounts), but so what? What happens with those loans that the Fed gives out with fake money? Where does the inflation go? The money is created and then the owners are expected to refinance their houses because the Fed creates artificial demand, so the owners refinance just to make payments in the inflating economy.
That money that is a liability to the Fed, but that's irrelevant. That money flows into the system through the mortgages and it ends up somewhere. Where does it end up? Who gets it? It's partially the stores in USA, partially it's the manufacturers in other countries (50Billion USD/month trade deficit shows that USA consumption comes from other countries, and that 50 Billion is just the trade deficit, never mind the amount of goods that come in that are actually paid for, so they don't end up as deficit, but the manufacturers still get the dollars).
But those dollars end up in foreign central banks, that print the local currency to buy the dollars, and then they use the dollars to buy more short term US Treasury paper, they can't do anything else with it. So they grow their credit balance with USA Treasury. That's the bubble, not the mortgages, because you see, the money doesn't end up in anything but Treasuries (and equity).
Why doesn't it end up in anything else? Because there is no investment and production.
What do the store owners do with their part of the money that they get from the transactions, when the refinanced mortgages are used to buy the goods? They pay the ever inflated prices for rent (again, thanks Fed), utility costs, taxes that are going up in everything, don't forget Obamacare, that's a tax that will cause massive shift from permanent jobs into part time jobs for low quality positions.
So plenty of that money is just siphoned into the government as taxes again but whatever is not is recirculated into something else.... equity prices - the stock market traders are happy that the Dow is going up, the stocks are going up.
Bernanke won't be happy until Dow hits 20,000, well sure, but that's just inflation in itself, it doesn't create any new productive output.
So what have is just bidding wars. Bidding wars to escape inflation - bonds, equity, and you have an attempt to reflate
what do we do with all the nearly retired who were expecting to live off the proceeds from they sale of there inflated home and often far to little savings to make up any short fall there.
- let the interest rates go up where the market takes them right now and the retired will have an income from their savings. Worst case for those who don't have savings except for a house is to sell the house in the falling market and use the money from the sale to get income due to actual interest rate that the market would pay for their savings if the government stops destroying the money.
Do you not see that the people who are hurt the most by inflation are those very people on fixed incomes and the retired, whose checks will buy less every month.
Who knows, the Cyprus like situation is not actually impossible. Cyprus bought bad Greek debt and now has no money to return to the depositors, who are just creditors to the bank. So it's not the bond holders that are going to take a haircut, but the depositors. Of-course the bond holders should now run forward and offer to take a haircut and spare the creditors (depositors), otherwise the bondholders will lose 100% (those who didn't liquidate yet, many did probably), because without depositors there is no bank.
My point is that the situation that the Fed is creating with inflation is almost unpredictable in terms of how exactly it will play out, but it IS predictable that there will be an implosion due to this, and so why would you want to risk an implosion (imminent implosion) instead of allowing the economy to restructure right now? Yes, restructuring means a recession. You know what, USA is in a depression right now, never mind the government numbers, the reality is that there is no recovery. The jobs are fewer every month (they can manipulate the numbers because there are people who stop looking and so it may seem that unemployment numbers go down, in reality what is going down is the desire and ability to work in that system).
new group of dependants who will likely be on the dole for 20-30 years until they expire,
- you are assuming that this is possible for the government to take care of the people who will suffer due to the economic collapse for 20-30 years, I beg to differ. I don't believe that there is any way at all to take care of them. That's what I think the situation is, there is no way to take care of them by using government if the system blows. Government gets its money from working people and that's how the dependent get their checks. If the system blows the way I think it will, then the government will not be able to take care of ANY dependent people, it's a physical impossibility.
Even with interest rates being over 3% the system collapses AFAIC, but if the interest rates are, say, 15%? 35?
At 7% the entire revenue of USA goes towards interest payments, nothing else, and actually it's worse, because at those interest rates USA revenues will be disappearing for a while at least, there will be many failures, so much fewer income revenue will be coming in.
Do you see what I am saying? You believe that it is physically possible to take care of people for 20-30 years, I think what will happen will make it a physical impossibility to do it. It would be better right now to stop pumping money into the system and allow interest rates to rise now and take a hit and let the prices fall and let people to start making income from interest payments (this would deflate the bond market bubble, the equity bubble, this would return some stability to the dollar).
I think the pain that will come because of that will be much less prolonged. 1921, 1947, 1981 show that the difficulties that are met with real cuts and higher interest rates are solved by the market in just a couple of years.
I think what will happen if this is not allowed will last for decades, and then yes, your scenario: wait until people die off (but you won't have to wait
And the ugly demographic problem will become an ugly catastrophe when people will not be able to use dollars to buy goods they need to survive. What good if your house is 500,000 dollars if your weekly food costs you 10,000? 20,000?
The young will be much better off if there are no bubbles at all, if the debts are restructured, why should they be on the hook for the debts while in an economy that is suffocating because the debts prevent any type of investment?
The Fed may affect inflation but it doesn't control it.
- the Fed creates inflation, as to 'controlling' it, it does somewhat. When the Fed creates fake credit to buy Treasuries and mortgages, the very first place that the money ends up in is the bond and the housing market. In fact Bernanke is on the record, talking about the need to 'prop up housing'. He wants house prices to go higher, because obviously it's so much better if things cost more. What he really ends up doing is creating inflation and in response prices of everything else go up together with the house prices (which need to go down, by the way, not up, there is no reason why house prices should be going higher, the market needs the house prices to fall further).
But you are right, the Fed can't control inflation. Bernanke says he has a '2% target', while the reality is that the real rate of inflation is easily 4-5 times higher than that right now at any moment in time. He can't actually control the rate at which inflation shows up in different markets. He can flood the Treasury and housing markets with money but he can't control how quickly money moves out of those markets.
However here is what we do know: you can't really inflate the same bubble twice in a row, so while he is really trying, he won't be able to create an absurd housing bubble right now, but he is propping up house prices. However we also know that Treasuries have maturity date.
That's the thing, Clinton with Rubin refinanced US mortgage (debt) with short term, adjustable rate paper, they went away from 30, 20 even 10 years Treasuries, those are now on the Fed's balance sheet (operation Twist, remember?). The other debt holders have short term paper which matures once every 3 or 2 or 1 year or maybe even 6 months! So when the talking heads on TV say: it's very cheap to borrow, so we should borrow more and more, what they don't understand is that it's cheap to borrow NOW.
So you are going to end up loaded with debt and all of a sudden the people stop rolling these things over (and the Fed is the only buyer of new Treasuries at this point as is), and what happens to interest rates all of a sudden?
Read my sig, the US government can pay the interest on its debt right now, when it's at historic lows. What happens 6 months from now, 1 year from now? We know that the debt will be higher, but will the bond holders roll their holdings over again or will they sell? (and really, they can sell at any moment, but even if they hold it until maturity it doesn't really make much of a difference when it's 1 year or 2 years term paper).
What happens is that all of a sudden instead of 300 Billion USA has to pay 1 or maybe 2 Trillion in INTEREST PAYMENTS and maybe even more than that, but that's about how much the federal gov't collects in revenues today. So what happens at that time, when they can't collect more revenue and they can't borrow any more money because people are selling in bulk?
Where will the interest rates go, how high? Will the US gov't even have enough revenue in a year to pay the interest? If 100% (or more) of revenues go towards interest payments, how can the gov't exist?
What is happening in Cyprus right now can happen in USA, because all of the big banks in USA are bankrupt the moment interest rate goes over 2-3%. So your deposits are at risk, never mind your government operations, because the banks will immediately fail (the people won't be able to afford their loan payments to the bank and the banks will have negative equity, as all of those Treasuries that the banks hold for the 2-3% return all of a sudden fall through the floor in price).
What is going to happen is going to be horrific. When I say it, I see it the same way as when I was talking about the Iraq war being a mistake because Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMDs, people didn't want to understand. Same thing is going to happen here.
If it is passed and it meets the criteria of being uniform, then it is a Constitutional tax, I cannot say anything about it.
I can say that income tax is unconstitutional and it is collected unconstitutionally. The 16th amendment didn't specify actually what that tax was, and so it took SCOTUS to do it and SCOTUS specified that the only way that tax was legal if it was indirect (because it is not apportioned) and to make an income tax indirect, the person must be disconnected from the source of income, and this is only possible via a corporate balance sheet, so in reality what the IRS claims is an 'income' tax can only legally exist as a profit tax and individuals don't have profits (otherwise you should be able to have revenues and expenses and be able to deduct things like amortisation of your education and training, depreciation of your own body, etc.) There are many arguments explaining that there is no such thing as a law that forces a person to pay a mandatory income tax, you can read my comment about it that I linked to.
However a federally mandated sales tax is legal as long as it is uniform and can be collected in a uniform manner (so there is no discrimination against any people when the tax is collected, there should be a clear standard that would apply across all state borders, etc., as to how this is collected.)
So of-course by having BOTH the federal income tax and the federal sales tax, you are getting squeezed on all ends, it's obscene. Same thing is true of other countries of-course, but in USA the law is much more precise about things that the government cannot do (supposedly) but it does them anyway. Medicare and Payroll taxes for example are illegal for the same reasons that the income tax is illegal. By the way, payroll tax was only deemed Constitutional on a definition that it is not in fact tied to any benefit, because it's illegal to tax one person for a direct benefit of another, so this is one more way to understand, for those who don't, that they are not accruing any benefits in SS regardless of how much they contribute to it (SCOTUS: Flemming v. Nestor (1960), no one has an accrued property right to benefits from Social Security).
If this tax goes through you really should start thinking about all the ways that you are getting screwed, some are legal and some are not. The most insidious tax that any average means person pays on daily basis is the tax created by the Federal reserve - inflation. Every time something goes up in price rather than going down because of natural increase in efficiency and productivity in the market, you should thank your federal reserve printing those dollars (and Bernanke is quite explicit that he will keep printing money and just pouring it into the economy in every way, from government Treasury purchases to mortgages purchases to bank stimulus, whatever.
What is this new Tobocco thing, I am interested to learn more? Is it used in defense, by nonprofit organisations maybe? That seemd unlikely to me at first, but after reading TF summary, I am becoming more convinced that I need to learn about it.
Next story is going to be about the failure of the military branch of government to get with the program and modify all military vehicles to run on solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells.
The environmentalist crowd won't be happy until American tanks and aircraft carriers are as environmentally friendly as possible (of-course discounting the whole "blown people up with depleted uranium shells" thing...)
Putin will get his money back, so will the biggest account holders. The bankers and the politicians of Cyprus are probably not stupid enough to cause some of these people lose their money. A likely scenario: Russia extends a large line of credit to Cyprus and in exchange Gazprom gets the rights to drill for gas in the country and Russian bankers are 'asked' to manage the restructuring of the failed Cyprus banks. That's one possibility, this includes a new Russian military base on Cyprus.
This would be a kick in the balls to the EU.
Another possibility is the EU finds a way to kick the can down the road and extend more credit to Cyprus, the lower amount accounts (0-20K) are spared, anything above it loses 10-15% of money and the banks are opened with capital controls, so that nobody can pull out more than say 5% of their money per month from a bank (and people WILL be pulling money out), but the largest account holders will have exemptions, otherwise again, there will be actual physical damage to a number of people.
Another possibility is: Cyprus fails to open the banks, the banking system there collapses, and it goes into some form of bankruptcy court and I don't know what that means to the small account holders, but the middle are probably wiped out (between 100K and 500K are wiped out) and the bottom get their '100K insurance' somehow from EU and a few people on the top get all of their money back, otherwise again, you think it's silly, but there will be actual corpses found in the sea there.
Certainly there are a number of those, but it's not just 'mafiosos', actually a very large number of companies that operate in Russia keep headquarters and money in Cyprus because of how uncertain and difficult the political situation is in Russia. Many thought that they are playing it safe by not keeping money in Russia, enough people lose their shirt in Russia to the government officials, who when they just want to steal a business would raid it and take over, part of that is called a 'mask show', when SWAT like forces show up (special forces maybe) and shut down a business and just take everything, arrest everybody and then the next day the business may reopen with new owners already.
As you can imagine this type of property violation is a very sensitive issue for people who run all sorts of businesses. Of-course there are also large Russian businesses, like banks that even have some branches or a subsidiary in Cyprus. All of that is shut down. Actually about 10 to 20 billion USD are inaccessible by large Russian banks right now and can you imagine what this does to payments on business deals?
Even just salaries, those are payments on business deals. What if you run a business in Russia and at the end of the month you move money out of Cyprus to Russia to pay salaries, rent, etc.? Now do you see a potential problem of a very large size if it's 10-20billion dollars locked that are not money that is just sitting there, it's moving back and forward all the time, basically normal bank account activities.
There are obviously just generally people's accounts that are locked, nobody can access funds. You want to make a rent payment or to buy groceries? Can't do it with your bank card or credit card!
But yes, there is some money there belongs to Putin and some of his friends and large size business people, who are mostly seen as legitimate, but some of them will not actually stop at anything if they want revenge, that's what I am talking about. Not the kind of mafia that you see in the movies, not this clan stuff. No, I am talking about the 'legitimate' mafia that runs the country. Large bankers, large energy and raw material exporters, politicians, Putin himself... you don't even want to be on Putin's shit list AFAIC, not unless you are impervious to polonium 210. And of-course most people are not impervious to beating and gun wounds.
I spent extraordinary amount of time on various sites..... not just/.,/. is not a forum that can pin a discussion and keep at it for months. There were plenty of those at the time, I was absolutely overwhelmed by people who were pro-war, pro-invasion, pro-military action, completely out of their mind yelling that Saddam was the devil himself and he caused 9/11 and probably fucked their grandmother (and her cat) while gradpa wasn't watching.
Actually I think some were so weird, they nearly referred to the Southpark (the movie, uncut etc.), because it had Saddam and the Devil in it at the same time, that was pretty freaking weird.
Basically there was story after story after story and after story completely swamping, overwhelming every freaking site and forum about how absolutely necessary it is to attack Iraq.
I couldn't believe what was happening, it was like a fucking nightmare. The sort that reminds you of the original Elm street movie, where you are walking the stairs and are just getting sucked into the carpet, can't move, the house is collapsing around you. That's what was happening.
You absolutely could add Twitter and every bit of technology you wanted to this mix and it would only AMPLIFY the crazy.
And the crazy were talking about how Saddam attacked USA on 9/11! I mean they could add how Saddam attacked USA on 9/12 and burned the white house in 1812. It was un-fucking-believable. They were absolutely sure that Saddam had every weapon in his disposal, it doesn't matter if I was pointing out before the invasion that if Saddam HAD anything, USA would have NOT attacked him!
Already in the first days of the invasion I was writing that if I were him, I would have used every single bit of every type of WMD against every American (and some of his internal enemies) immediately, in the first minutes or hours of that attack.
No, the crazy became only more and more vocal and actually cheering and jubilant as the war progressed.
I think that the live TV coverage that everybody was involved in actually helped USA pro-invasion propaganda. Also I remember how surreal it was to watch a real war on TV, not in real life. In real life it's different, you are there and you only see a little bit of what surrounds YOU. But when you see it on TV from many crews and many angles, it's so strange, like a surreal movie, that's not really happening. Similar to the weird feeling I remember having when watching the actual attack on 9/11 in real time (I was in a TV channel station, it was on the same floor as my contract at the time and they were getting a live feed) and the twin towers collapsing. It was a weird moment to watch, unbelievable almost, the entire war was like that, only stretched into weeks of that live coverage.
You could turn on the TV and watch live war at any moment in time. No Twitter, no anything could stop that.
The people's common sense was completely turned off. Anybody suggesting that the war was the wrong thing to do was almost attacked (or attacked for real). The answer to the question mark in the story headline is no.
- wrong, he did, read TFA. He is part of the network that steals and deals credit cards.
He steals money, why would anybody want to hire him unless they are a government propped bank? Maybe he has a future in current version of government propped banking or politics, but normal people will look at him and his approach and won't want to have anything to do with him.
He also stole private information of people, so how can he be even trusted to deal with customers, with anything?
He endangered lives of people by calling SWAT teams on them, I don't know how difficult it is to understand - this is not a fucking game, he could have caused real damage this way, to actual health and lives of people. I don't see any redeeming qualities in him yet, for me to see it he has to be punished and he has to learn something as well, and punishment is part of that learning process. As I said: actions... consequences.
yes, that will certainly teach him how to be honest and decent.
- no, he will learn that actions have consequences, that's all.
Actions... consequences.
see? If he derives the wrong lessons from his actions and he doesn't connect that the consequences are due to his actions and after he is out of prison and is no longer flogged he still continues to do the same, then he will get caught again or maybe he'll get killed.
Do you know what's happening in Cyprus right now? The banks loaned the money the Greek government and the Greek government blew the money on various government programs and subsidies. The Greeks have nothing to repay their bonds with and the Cypriot banks have no way to get back the billions that they gave the Greeks.
There are people that the bankers owe money to now that are not the kind of people one wants to owe money to. I don't think the Cypriot bankers and politicians quite realise all of the negative consequences of what they have done.
You see, if somebody taught those bankers and politicians the simple connection between actions and consequences at a much earlier age, they might not have gotten into this mess and then most of them would live through their entire natural live spans. As things are today, it's not at all clear that many of them will.
The scary part is I don't know what my parents could have done to prevent that. I have no idea how to keep my son from doing stupid shit like this.
- but I think I know what can be done (I don't know that it will guarantee success, but I think it would limit the probability of this type of behaviour).
Something to do. Something to do that is rewarding, something to do that is useful in some way, that teaches the kid, that gives him the satisfaction of seeing the results of his work.
Something productive to do that would channel the kid's energy.
I think the society went in the wrong direction in many ways, from the way the kids are treated with 'kid gloves' (really, everybody should be allowed to take a chance and dive into the Hudson river and swim in raw sewage, or maybe something less extreme but productive, like working at an earlier age) to the way the education system seems to inspire confidence instead of knowledge.
Basically I think you have to help the kid to find a productive way to occupy himself, maybe learning about tech stuff, building computers and robots from scratch, maybe it is sports, after all that's what Americans value most it seems. Maybe it is starting his or her own little business from early on and learning about the real world that way.
The "Phobia" guy could have been using his 'mad skills' for something productive, maybe building tools and websites for some small amounts of money for people who'd pay or audit security, etc., instead he does this. Of-course he was probably never really properly taught a lesson* in his life, but that's about to change.
(* - what can you tell a guy with 2 black eyes? Nothing. He's been told twice already.)
The dumbest thing was to talk but also to involve cops with the SWAT thing. If he just kept to online stealing and harassment this wouldn't be as bad as the SWAT thing, now the cops have a personal issue as well with him. The way he just blurted everything out showed how really 'smart' he is.
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The nonsense part of this entire thread consists of defining tax deductions as a 'subsidy'.
This is akin to saying that a thief that came into your house and stole almost everything subsidised you, because he didn't take your slippers.
How is that "begging the question"?
Oh, and if you did find a way to reverse entropy (given that you are saying that most things are subsidised by government), then why bother with solar panels? Just power everything with the hot air that the politicians produce and reverse entropy so that the politicians don't have to be powered by anything themselves to create all that hot air.
Nor are most things.
- In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Think about your statement and realise that it is nonsense. You can't have an economy where "most things" are subsidised because otherwise they are not economically viable. You end up sucking out all energy out of everything to subsidise.... everything?
OTOH what USA has now is something to that effect, where actually the biggest sectors of the economy are subsidised with inflation and taxes (and thus all of it is redistribution), the only way USA can 'sustain' such a pattern of behaviour for such a long time, is because it's NOT subsidising everything for everybody.
It uses the inflation mechanism to subsidise USA economy by taxing the economies of all the foreigners that hold (or get paid in) US dollars.
Unless you found a way to go around entropy, you can't claim that all or even most things are subsidised by government and it is somehow a sustainable model.
No, it's called productivity.
Really big money does not get audited, really big money comes from the printing presses (figuratively speaking, they don't even need those anymore). Really big money cannot be touched and it is used to finance wars, murder, foreign occupation, destruction of individual liberty, monopolisation of various formerly free markets, destruction of people's savings. Really big money is used to set the law, which is used to prevent any type of competition and ability of people to thwart the Really big money from stealing from small time money. Really big money steals from everybody and murders hundreds of thousands if not millions and the perps get 'respect' from the media and the idiots, not jail time.
so go make your own society, where such controls don't exist
- people did, it was called USA.
and after you get ripped off, by... get this... criminals... learn your lesson the hard way
- yes, we know, we know who the criminals are. They are in the government or they have closest ties to the government, they are known as 'too big to fail'.
criminality exists in this world. i'm sorry this bothers you, and i'm sorry in your naive rage you blame those who pursue criminality rather than criminality itself
- 'criminality' is a word. What exists is a legal system that turns normal people's behaviour into 'criminal behaviour', because the real criminals don't want to have to sit on different roads, waiting for wagons to rob. They want to define what roads are, and every road must lead through a toll booth that this type of criminals have set up. It would be a pity if you didn't pay the toll and something would happen to your beautiful business. Oh, didn't you know, it was for the 'common good' and 'general welfare', apparently those things can be used to justify any type of criminality, from theft to murder, no problem. From income taxes and money printing to NDAA and drone strikes, no problem.
but this doesn't change the fact that criminality is real, if unopposed it grows, and the vast majority of society has no problem with tactics like this to fight criminal organizations
- clearly a true statement. The criminality is real, it is unopposed and it's growing and the vast majority of society has no problem with this criminality, they cheer for it because they share in the proceeds.
welcome to reality
- this reality is about to bite the people who support it in the ass.
deal with it
- we are dealing with it.
I am not arguing, I am writing thoughts down in response to any question and to criticism (I mostly get criticism).
It's going to be impossible to do the right thing, politically it's impossible, so it's a majority driven suicide pack and because of that you have to take care of yourself and people you know, I don't think you can fix the problem for all, just try and mitigate it for people you care about. There are no politicians that will do the right thing in the office. The ones who would do the right thing do not get access to do it, Ron Paul didn't get access, Gary Johnson didn't get access, etc.
I am looking at Cyprus, because it's a microcosm of what is happening everywhere (some of my relatives have some money stuck there that were in transit, so money was moving through a bank in Cyprus, and just like in a highway robbery, with masked bandits stopping the wagon to loot it, the bankers and politicians in Cyprus stopped a transfer of funds and stole it). And so what do we observe from the politicians and bankers? First they steal to create an illusion of prosperity (apparently they were getting a 'good return' on buying Greek bonds for a few years, that Greek debt became expensive) and when it obviously went bust, they started looting anything they could put their hands on, even money in transit. That's the only thing politicians understand how to do - steal, they know nothing else. Again, those who wouldn't steal and wouldn't promise to "take care of people" are not in government.
The problem with hoping that the Fed's next bubble will prevent the dollar bubble is that you can't and neither the Fed can control where the bubble is going to form. Sure, the Fed buys mortgages to the tune of 80Billion USD/month (and it's going to increase those amounts), but so what? What happens with those loans that the Fed gives out with fake money? Where does the inflation go? The money is created and then the owners are expected to refinance their houses because the Fed creates artificial demand, so the owners refinance just to make payments in the inflating economy.
That money that is a liability to the Fed, but that's irrelevant. That money flows into the system through the mortgages and it ends up somewhere. Where does it end up? Who gets it? It's partially the stores in USA, partially it's the manufacturers in other countries (50Billion USD/month trade deficit shows that USA consumption comes from other countries, and that 50 Billion is just the trade deficit, never mind the amount of goods that come in that are actually paid for, so they don't end up as deficit, but the manufacturers still get the dollars).
But those dollars end up in foreign central banks, that print the local currency to buy the dollars, and then they use the dollars to buy more short term US Treasury paper, they can't do anything else with it. So they grow their credit balance with USA Treasury. That's the bubble, not the mortgages, because you see, the money doesn't end up in anything but Treasuries (and equity).
Why doesn't it end up in anything else? Because there is no investment and production.
What do the store owners do with their part of the money that they get from the transactions, when the refinanced mortgages are used to buy the goods? They pay the ever inflated prices for rent (again, thanks Fed), utility costs, taxes that are going up in everything, don't forget Obamacare, that's a tax that will cause massive shift from permanent jobs into part time jobs for low quality positions.
So plenty of that money is just siphoned into the government as taxes again but whatever is not is recirculated into something else.... equity prices - the stock market traders are happy that the Dow is going up, the stocks are going up.
Bernanke won't be happy until Dow hits 20,000, well sure, but that's just inflation in itself, it doesn't create any new productive output.
So what have is just bidding wars. Bidding wars to escape inflation - bonds, equity, and you have an attempt to reflate
what do we do with all the nearly retired who were expecting to live off the proceeds from they sale of there inflated home and often far to little savings to make up any short fall there.
- let the interest rates go up where the market takes them right now and the retired will have an income from their savings. Worst case for those who don't have savings except for a house is to sell the house in the falling market and use the money from the sale to get income due to actual interest rate that the market would pay for their savings if the government stops destroying the money.
Do you not see that the people who are hurt the most by inflation are those very people on fixed incomes and the retired, whose checks will buy less every month.
Who knows, the Cyprus like situation is not actually impossible. Cyprus bought bad Greek debt and now has no money to return to the depositors, who are just creditors to the bank. So it's not the bond holders that are going to take a haircut, but the depositors. Of-course the bond holders should now run forward and offer to take a haircut and spare the creditors (depositors), otherwise the bondholders will lose 100% (those who didn't liquidate yet, many did probably), because without depositors there is no bank.
My point is that the situation that the Fed is creating with inflation is almost unpredictable in terms of how exactly it will play out, but it IS predictable that there will be an implosion due to this, and so why would you want to risk an implosion (imminent implosion) instead of allowing the economy to restructure right now? Yes, restructuring means a recession. You know what, USA is in a depression right now, never mind the government numbers, the reality is that there is no recovery. The jobs are fewer every month (they can manipulate the numbers because there are people who stop looking and so it may seem that unemployment numbers go down, in reality what is going down is the desire and ability to work in that system).
new group of dependants who will likely be on the dole for 20-30 years until they expire,
- you are assuming that this is possible for the government to take care of the people who will suffer due to the economic collapse for 20-30 years, I beg to differ. I don't believe that there is any way at all to take care of them. That's what I think the situation is, there is no way to take care of them by using government if the system blows. Government gets its money from working people and that's how the dependent get their checks. If the system blows the way I think it will, then the government will not be able to take care of ANY dependent people, it's a physical impossibility.
Even with interest rates being over 3% the system collapses AFAIC, but if the interest rates are, say, 15%? 35?
At 7% the entire revenue of USA goes towards interest payments, nothing else, and actually it's worse, because at those interest rates USA revenues will be disappearing for a while at least, there will be many failures, so much fewer income revenue will be coming in.
Do you see what I am saying? You believe that it is physically possible to take care of people for 20-30 years, I think what will happen will make it a physical impossibility to do it. It would be better right now to stop pumping money into the system and allow interest rates to rise now and take a hit and let the prices fall and let people to start making income from interest payments (this would deflate the bond market bubble, the equity bubble, this would return some stability to the dollar).
I think the pain that will come because of that will be much less prolonged. 1921, 1947, 1981 show that the difficulties that are met with real cuts and higher interest rates are solved by the market in just a couple of years.
I think what will happen if this is not allowed will last for decades, and then yes, your scenario: wait until people die off (but you won't have to wait
And the ugly demographic problem will become an ugly catastrophe when people will not be able to use dollars to buy goods they need to survive. What good if your house is 500,000 dollars if your weekly food costs you 10,000? 20,000?
The young will be much better off if there are no bubbles at all, if the debts are restructured, why should they be on the hook for the debts while in an economy that is suffocating because the debts prevent any type of investment?
"Do nations have the right?" - no, only individuals have rights. Groups of people do not have rights that are different from other groups of people.
More pressing is the question: how to protect yourself against a drone strike?
The Fed may affect inflation but it doesn't control it.
- the Fed creates inflation, as to 'controlling' it, it does somewhat. When the Fed creates fake credit to buy Treasuries and mortgages, the very first place that the money ends up in is the bond and the housing market. In fact Bernanke is on the record, talking about the need to 'prop up housing'. He wants house prices to go higher, because obviously it's so much better if things cost more. What he really ends up doing is creating inflation and in response prices of everything else go up together with the house prices (which need to go down, by the way, not up, there is no reason why house prices should be going higher, the market needs the house prices to fall further).
But you are right, the Fed can't control inflation. Bernanke says he has a '2% target', while the reality is that the real rate of inflation is easily 4-5 times higher than that right now at any moment in time. He can't actually control the rate at which inflation shows up in different markets. He can flood the Treasury and housing markets with money but he can't control how quickly money moves out of those markets.
However here is what we do know: you can't really inflate the same bubble twice in a row, so while he is really trying, he won't be able to create an absurd housing bubble right now, but he is propping up house prices. However we also know that Treasuries have maturity date.
That's the thing, Clinton with Rubin refinanced US mortgage (debt) with short term, adjustable rate paper, they went away from 30, 20 even 10 years Treasuries, those are now on the Fed's balance sheet (operation Twist, remember?). The other debt holders have short term paper which matures once every 3 or 2 or 1 year or maybe even 6 months! So when the talking heads on TV say: it's very cheap to borrow, so we should borrow more and more, what they don't understand is that it's cheap to borrow NOW.
So you are going to end up loaded with debt and all of a sudden the people stop rolling these things over (and the Fed is the only buyer of new Treasuries at this point as is), and what happens to interest rates all of a sudden?
Read my sig, the US government can pay the interest on its debt right now, when it's at historic lows. What happens 6 months from now, 1 year from now? We know that the debt will be higher, but will the bond holders roll their holdings over again or will they sell? (and really, they can sell at any moment, but even if they hold it until maturity it doesn't really make much of a difference when it's 1 year or 2 years term paper).
What happens is that all of a sudden instead of 300 Billion USA has to pay 1 or maybe 2 Trillion in INTEREST PAYMENTS and maybe even more than that, but that's about how much the federal gov't collects in revenues today. So what happens at that time, when they can't collect more revenue and they can't borrow any more money because people are selling in bulk?
Where will the interest rates go, how high? Will the US gov't even have enough revenue in a year to pay the interest? If 100% (or more) of revenues go towards interest payments, how can the gov't exist?
What is happening in Cyprus right now can happen in USA, because all of the big banks in USA are bankrupt the moment interest rate goes over 2-3%. So your deposits are at risk, never mind your government operations, because the banks will immediately fail (the people won't be able to afford their loan payments to the bank and the banks will have negative equity, as all of those Treasuries that the banks hold for the 2-3% return all of a sudden fall through the floor in price).
What is going to happen is going to be horrific. When I say it, I see it the same way as when I was talking about the Iraq war being a mistake because Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMDs, people didn't want to understand. Same thing is going to happen here.
If it is passed and it meets the criteria of being uniform, then it is a Constitutional tax, I cannot say anything about it.
I can say that income tax is unconstitutional and it is collected unconstitutionally. The 16th amendment didn't specify actually what that tax was, and so it took SCOTUS to do it and SCOTUS specified that the only way that tax was legal if it was indirect (because it is not apportioned) and to make an income tax indirect, the person must be disconnected from the source of income, and this is only possible via a corporate balance sheet, so in reality what the IRS claims is an 'income' tax can only legally exist as a profit tax and individuals don't have profits (otherwise you should be able to have revenues and expenses and be able to deduct things like amortisation of your education and training, depreciation of your own body, etc.) There are many arguments explaining that there is no such thing as a law that forces a person to pay a mandatory income tax, you can read my comment about it that I linked to.
However a federally mandated sales tax is legal as long as it is uniform and can be collected in a uniform manner (so there is no discrimination against any people when the tax is collected, there should be a clear standard that would apply across all state borders, etc., as to how this is collected.)
So of-course by having BOTH the federal income tax and the federal sales tax, you are getting squeezed on all ends, it's obscene. Same thing is true of other countries of-course, but in USA the law is much more precise about things that the government cannot do (supposedly) but it does them anyway. Medicare and Payroll taxes for example are illegal for the same reasons that the income tax is illegal. By the way, payroll tax was only deemed Constitutional on a definition that it is not in fact tied to any benefit, because it's illegal to tax one person for a direct benefit of another, so this is one more way to understand, for those who don't, that they are not accruing any benefits in SS regardless of how much they contribute to it (SCOTUS: Flemming v. Nestor (1960), no one has an accrued property right to benefits from Social Security).
If this tax goes through you really should start thinking about all the ways that you are getting screwed, some are legal and some are not. The most insidious tax that any average means person pays on daily basis is the tax created by the Federal reserve - inflation. Every time something goes up in price rather than going down because of natural increase in efficiency and productivity in the market, you should thank your federal reserve printing those dollars (and Bernanke is quite explicit that he will keep printing money and just pouring it into the economy in every way, from government Treasury purchases to mortgages purchases to bank stimulus, whatever.
Here is something fun to watch.
What is this new Tobocco thing, I am interested to learn more?
Is it used in defense, by nonprofit organisations maybe? That seemd unlikely to me at first, but after reading TF summary, I am becoming more convinced that I need to learn about it.
Next story is going to be about the failure of the military branch of government to get with the program and modify all military vehicles to run on solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells.
The environmentalist crowd won't be happy until American tanks and aircraft carriers are as environmentally friendly as possible (of-course discounting the whole "blown people up with depleted uranium shells" thing...)
Treason, shmison, we don't look back, we look forward.
Obama.
Putin will get his money back, so will the biggest account holders. The bankers and the politicians of Cyprus are probably not stupid enough to cause some of these people lose their money. A likely scenario: Russia extends a large line of credit to Cyprus and in exchange Gazprom gets the rights to drill for gas in the country and Russian bankers are 'asked' to manage the restructuring of the failed Cyprus banks. That's one possibility, this includes a new Russian military base on Cyprus.
This would be a kick in the balls to the EU.
Another possibility is the EU finds a way to kick the can down the road and extend more credit to Cyprus, the lower amount accounts (0-20K) are spared, anything above it loses 10-15% of money and the banks are opened with capital controls, so that nobody can pull out more than say 5% of their money per month from a bank (and people WILL be pulling money out), but the largest account holders will have exemptions, otherwise again, there will be actual physical damage to a number of people.
Another possibility is: Cyprus fails to open the banks, the banking system there collapses, and it goes into some form of bankruptcy court and I don't know what that means to the small account holders, but the middle are probably wiped out (between 100K and 500K are wiped out) and the bottom get their '100K insurance' somehow from EU and a few people on the top get all of their money back, otherwise again, you think it's silly, but there will be actual corpses found in the sea there.
Certainly there are a number of those, but it's not just 'mafiosos', actually a very large number of companies that operate in Russia keep headquarters and money in Cyprus because of how uncertain and difficult the political situation is in Russia. Many thought that they are playing it safe by not keeping money in Russia, enough people lose their shirt in Russia to the government officials, who when they just want to steal a business would raid it and take over, part of that is called a 'mask show', when SWAT like forces show up (special forces maybe) and shut down a business and just take everything, arrest everybody and then the next day the business may reopen with new owners already.
As you can imagine this type of property violation is a very sensitive issue for people who run all sorts of businesses. Of-course there are also large Russian businesses, like banks that even have some branches or a subsidiary in Cyprus. All of that is shut down. Actually about 10 to 20 billion USD are inaccessible by large Russian banks right now and can you imagine what this does to payments on business deals?
Even just salaries, those are payments on business deals. What if you run a business in Russia and at the end of the month you move money out of Cyprus to Russia to pay salaries, rent, etc.? Now do you see a potential problem of a very large size if it's 10-20billion dollars locked that are not money that is just sitting there, it's moving back and forward all the time, basically normal bank account activities.
There are obviously just generally people's accounts that are locked, nobody can access funds. You want to make a rent payment or to buy groceries? Can't do it with your bank card or credit card!
But yes, there is some money there belongs to Putin and some of his friends and large size business people, who are mostly seen as legitimate, but some of them will not actually stop at anything if they want revenge, that's what I am talking about. Not the kind of mafia that you see in the movies, not this clan stuff. No, I am talking about the 'legitimate' mafia that runs the country. Large bankers, large energy and raw material exporters, politicians, Putin himself... you don't even want to be on Putin's shit list AFAIC, not unless you are impervious to polonium 210. And of-course most people are not impervious to beating and gun wounds.
I spent extraordinary amount of time on various sites..... not just /., /. is not a forum that can pin a discussion and keep at it for months. There were plenty of those at the time, I was absolutely overwhelmed by people who were pro-war, pro-invasion, pro-military action, completely out of their mind yelling that Saddam was the devil himself and he caused 9/11 and probably fucked their grandmother (and her cat) while gradpa wasn't watching.
Actually I think some were so weird, they nearly referred to the Southpark (the movie, uncut etc.), because it had Saddam and the Devil in it at the same time, that was pretty freaking weird.
Basically there was story after story after story and after story completely swamping, overwhelming every freaking site and forum about how absolutely necessary it is to attack Iraq.
I couldn't believe what was happening, it was like a fucking nightmare. The sort that reminds you of the original Elm street movie, where you are walking the stairs and are just getting sucked into the carpet, can't move, the house is collapsing around you. That's what was happening.
You absolutely could add Twitter and every bit of technology you wanted to this mix and it would only AMPLIFY the crazy.
And the crazy were talking about how Saddam attacked USA on 9/11! I mean they could add how Saddam attacked USA on 9/12 and burned the white house in 1812. It was un-fucking-believable. They were absolutely sure that Saddam had every weapon in his disposal, it doesn't matter if I was pointing out before the invasion that if Saddam HAD anything, USA would have NOT attacked him!
Already in the first days of the invasion I was writing that if I were him, I would have used every single bit of every type of WMD against every American (and some of his internal enemies) immediately, in the first minutes or hours of that attack.
No, the crazy became only more and more vocal and actually cheering and jubilant as the war progressed.
I think that the live TV coverage that everybody was involved in actually helped USA pro-invasion propaganda. Also I remember how surreal it was to watch a real war on TV, not in real life. In real life it's different, you are there and you only see a little bit of what surrounds YOU. But when you see it on TV from many crews and many angles, it's so strange, like a surreal movie, that's not really happening. Similar to the weird feeling I remember having when watching the actual attack on 9/11 in real time (I was in a TV channel station, it was on the same floor as my contract at the time and they were getting a live feed) and the twin towers collapsing. It was a weird moment to watch, unbelievable almost, the entire war was like that, only stretched into weeks of that live coverage.
You could turn on the TV and watch live war at any moment in time. No Twitter, no anything could stop that.
The people's common sense was completely turned off. Anybody suggesting that the war was the wrong thing to do was almost attacked (or attacked for real). The answer to the question mark in the story headline is no.
He stole NO money.
- wrong, he did, read TFA. He is part of the network that steals and deals credit cards.
He steals money, why would anybody want to hire him unless they are a government propped bank? Maybe he has a future in current version of government propped banking or politics, but normal people will look at him and his approach and won't want to have anything to do with him.
He also stole private information of people, so how can he be even trusted to deal with customers, with anything?
He endangered lives of people by calling SWAT teams on them, I don't know how difficult it is to understand - this is not a fucking game, he could have caused real damage this way, to actual health and lives of people. I don't see any redeeming qualities in him yet, for me to see it he has to be punished and he has to learn something as well, and punishment is part of that learning process. As I said: actions ... consequences.
yes, that will certainly teach him how to be honest and decent.
- no, he will learn that actions have consequences, that's all.
Actions ... consequences.
see? If he derives the wrong lessons from his actions and he doesn't connect that the consequences are due to his actions and after he is out of prison and is no longer flogged he still continues to do the same, then he will get caught again or maybe he'll get killed.
Do you know what's happening in Cyprus right now? The banks loaned the money the Greek government and the Greek government blew the money on various government programs and subsidies. The Greeks have nothing to repay their bonds with and the Cypriot banks have no way to get back the billions that they gave the Greeks.
There are people that the bankers owe money to now that are not the kind of people one wants to owe money to. I don't think the Cypriot bankers and politicians quite realise all of the negative consequences of what they have done.
You see, if somebody taught those bankers and politicians the simple connection between actions and consequences at a much earlier age, they might not have gotten into this mess and then most of them would live through their entire natural live spans. As things are today, it's not at all clear that many of them will.
I'd rather take advice from Carlin than from Bloomberg even though I don't actually drink sugar water.
I agree about a job, but I personallywouldn't hire him before he got his flogging and 3 years of paying back the money he stole, but maybe you would.
The scary part is I don't know what my parents could have done to prevent that. I have no idea how to keep my son from doing stupid shit like this.
- but I think I know what can be done (I don't know that it will guarantee success, but I think it would limit the probability of this type of behaviour).
Something to do. Something to do that is rewarding, something to do that is useful in some way, that teaches the kid, that gives him the satisfaction of seeing the results of his work.
Something productive to do that would channel the kid's energy.
I think the society went in the wrong direction in many ways, from the way the kids are treated with 'kid gloves' (really, everybody should be allowed to take a chance and dive into the Hudson river and swim in raw sewage, or maybe something less extreme but productive, like working at an earlier age) to the way the education system seems to inspire confidence instead of knowledge.
Basically I think you have to help the kid to find a productive way to occupy himself, maybe learning about tech stuff, building computers and robots from scratch, maybe it is sports, after all that's what Americans value most it seems. Maybe it is starting his or her own little business from early on and learning about the real world that way.
The "Phobia" guy could have been using his 'mad skills' for something productive, maybe building tools and websites for some small amounts of money for people who'd pay or audit security, etc., instead he does this. Of-course he was probably never really properly taught a lesson* in his life, but that's about to change.
(* - what can you tell a guy with 2 black eyes? Nothing. He's been told twice already.)
The dumbest thing was to talk but also to involve cops with the SWAT thing. If he just kept to online stealing and harassment this wouldn't be as bad as the SWAT thing, now the cops have a personal issue as well with him. The way he just blurted everything out showed how really 'smart' he is.