responsibilities that go with these so called "rights.
- don't buy into the propaganda, 'copyright' is not a right at all, it's an entitlement.
It shouldn't even be called a 'copyright', it should be called a 'copy-entitlement', but then many things shouldn't be called 'rights' because they are not. Any kind of a group 'right' (be it women, disabled, race, etc.), those are all entitlements and obligations.
The copy-entitlement is not a natural right of an individual or anybody, rights cannot be 'granted', they must be protected or otherwise they are stolen, but that's the difference between a right and an entitlement.
Your right to life, free-speech, pursuit of happiness, free association, religion, etc., those cannot be granted to you, but government can steal them from you and it can entitle groups of people to something that is unnatural.
There is nothing natural or right about 'copy-entitlement', it's a completely contrived, totally artificial idea that goes against the nature itself and it can only exist where government steals rights from individuals.
The whole point of GPL is emulating what the world would be without copyrights
- you can't say that because GPL requires copyright to exit for the license to have any legal power.
as opposed to BSD which is basically "I'm a charity, take it and use or abuse, even against me"
- I don't understand this concept of 'abuse'. How is it abuse, I don't get. Who is abusing you? You are not getting anything that you didn't put into it - that's true, but without copyrights in the first place there would be much more software released into the wild and nobody could stop it legally.
Copyright PREVENTS competition and it prevents software from being released, it doesn't help to create more Free software, it prevents software from being free in the first place.
I am not interested in convincing you to release your software under any license. If you are so confused and think that your ability to 'eat' depends on ability of government to steal rights of individuals away and to give your business a form of government subsidy for some bizarre reason, then you are on the wrong side of this argument.
I just posted a review of the book that I finally decided to read over the last couple of days, I think it's relevant to this topic.
So? Your preferred model is based on the completely wrong idea of destroying people's freedoms via government enforcement of copyrights.
Again, there are contracts that people can accept instead of or as 'licenses' and then there are licenses like BSD that make much more sense for Free software.
Moreover, without copyrights much more software would be free in the first place.
I don't propose that contracts should be signed for OSS software at all.
I am proposing that GPL model is irrelevant once all copyrights are abolished, which is the correct thing to do to regain freedom from government intervention in the system.
Copyright and copyleft are two sides of the same coin and both are wrong. OpenBSD is the model for Free software, AFAIC there would be more free software if there were no copyrights in the first place, never mind GPL, it wouldn't matter.
GPL depends on copyright, yes, I am proposing to throw away all of the copyrights, patents and government power over people. I think it's a very good deal to get freedoms back.
As to software licenses - there are such things as contracts.
A Lunar base is a fine goal, when the economy is not in a shitter, and it's a fine goal when the country talking about it is not fighting multiple wars to steal resources and kill as many people as possible while not producing nothing of value for the people.
Even USSR didn't fight this many wars while running the space propaganda.
I am not talking about destroying countries or cities, I am talking about a large number of specific people, all government workers, that I pretty much find abhorrent and think world would be a much cleaner place without them.
The reason not to do it is not lack of resources or some form of fear, but mostly inertia of the every day life and unfortunate understanding that it is NOT specific people, who are the problem, it is the system.
How far will you be taking this? I know it's not PC, etc., and the government's strength is such today, that it is actually dangerous to put any recorded word out there, but say if I always felt that I would like to destroy a lot of people, and I had these feelings for a very long time (over a decade), should I be thrown to jail for having such feelings?
Are feelings today all it takes for government to arrest and imprison people, even if there are recipes of bombs and what not in their possession?
First off the US is a net importer. There is an investment in US bonds. If we were net exporting, like we were in the 1960s then you could argue that people aren't investing here.
- this is 100% backwards.
People used to invest in USA before the money started losing all that value (especially after 1971) and all the real investments were leaving for other countries.
Buying bonds does not mean investing, as I said: Fed gives discount window price of 0 to the bailed out banks, who are all insolvent the moment interest rates go up, because they turn around and buy US Treasury debt at somewhere between 2 and 3%.
The fact is people are perfectly content to invest, about $2b a day per day every day in the USA. That's why we are having such a large trade problem. People need to export to us to get the currency to invest here.
- do you even understand that there is nothing new being built in USA? Invest into what? Nobody is building anything new in US. Money that's pumped into government absolutely prevents (crowds out) all investments in private sector.
The fear trade based on complete misunderstanding of the fundamental economics based on Keynesian ideas is still prevalent, that's why all those bond holders will lose their shirt.
It's like Greece, but worse, because USA can print, and thus it can go out Zimbabwe style.
You obviously have an interest in economics. You need to stop talking in rhetoric and read standard econ 102 macro economics books about stuff like flow of funds.
- there is 0 difference between 'macro' and 'micro' economics, like there is 0 difference between 'macro' and 'micro' evolution. It's complete nonsense.
No they aren't. They are saving/investing in the USA. You may not like that fact,
- LIKE the FACT?
Like what fact? Like the fact that no company is building any new capacity in USA?
The full faith and credit of the United States.
- yeah, and Greece had very high ratings too, just 2 years ago.
Government assets in the $50t range (federal lands...).
- nobody needs land in USA unless that land can produce something that can be exported.
That is why we have 3% interest rates people are desperately fleeing other economies to put their wealth in our fiat money.
- no. Central banks of other nations are putting money that doesn't belong to them into US bonds, because they see how weak US dollar is and it's a STUPID DESPERATE attempt at keeping the dollar afloat.
Of-course it's an act of desperate madness, because you don't put money into bonds denominated in dollars, when in fact you are doing it because you are trying to save the dollars from its own weakness - this is not a business decision, it's a political decision.
As to mutual funds and pension funds, these have charters that legally prevent them from buying real assets that make sense. It's like: nobody was fired for hiring IBM, and so the Titanic of US dollars will sink, and those who are 'investing' into it think they will avoid the blame, because everybody was so sure that the ship couldn't sink, and if they instead put their investments into some other boat, probably loaded with something worthwhile, they could be sued if anything at all went wrong with that boat.
This is a shell game, no funds manager is investing his money that way for his own gain.
But we don't. So on top of all that, it is denominated in a fiat currency which the government can create at will in unlimited quantities.
- yes, and this is exactly THE problem. This is why the economy is dying.
They pay no income taxes, which means they don't care about raising those.
See, they do pay sales taxes, so they are against those. Of-course the correct way is to fund government from excise/import/duties (flat import tax is not an evil thing, only using that as a tool to discriminate is evil). Taxing people's income is wrong, because that's not what is allocated for spending, and government is pure spending and waste.
People can't take care of themselves because gov't breaks their legs, but then it gives them crutches - see, gov't is good?
also on student debt, I don't remember where my comment with the calculations is, I made a comment when Obama came out with his new plan a couple of months ago I think, but basically if you are a student, you should load up on all kinds of debt, you won't have to repay it!
It's because the number of years to repay were reduced I think to 20 and the maximum amount one has to pay per month was like a small percentage (15%?) of the earnings that are above the TWICE some minimum (poverty line or something?) I think basically if you earn say 50K, you only pay small percentage of earnings on money above 30K, and you only need to pay for 20 years I believe (not exactly, it's all from memory).
So if you take 200K worth of debt - good for you, you'll only pay maybe 30-40K out of it back if your salary is around 50K say.
That is why college tuitions are skyrocketing (and everything goes up with gov't money in it), and so Obama's fake state of the union (reelection speech) was funny, because he 'addressed' colleges: "how dare you raise tuition fees!".
Well, duh! Stop subsidising the borrowing for tuition and colleges will drop their fees! It's amazing how ridiculous everything is.
The mortgages bought by the treasury are turning out to be worth almost as much as they bought them for (surprisingly!)
- how do you figure, they are not selling them!
In fact there are more bailouts. Some people are living 2-3 years in houses without making a payment before they are kicked out.
Obama came out with another 'lifeline' - 50K more loans towards those, who can't pay their mortgages, gov't insured of-course! That's insane! Those houses aren't worth their mortgages, and they are certainly aren't worth their mortgages + 50K of more gov't money.
I think all of those jobs that were created over the last couple of months in retail are only there because people aren't paying their mortgages and refinancing in fact with more debt. It's repeating the pre-2008 inflation of the housing bubble that is done with the government again, so it's more fake 'recovery' all for the sake of Obama's re-elections, completely denying the reality that this makes the situation even more unbearable for the market, and more jobs will disappear and more USD will be printed.
Fed says they won't raise interest rates until 2014, well here is a guarantee - they can NEVER raise interest rates again, because they will immediately collapse the banks that they bailed out!
They will collapse the banks, and those banks hold Treasury and other types of government debt! There is no way ever for this government to actually allow interest rates to go up without collapsing what they bailed out and without collapsing their own debt, and so they cannot do it. Ever.
So it will be done in a different way - not ever by failing to increase the debt ceiling, but by the market refusing to buy US debt. Of-course you don't refuse if the interest rates go up enough for you to take that risk, but seriously, do you think anybody who is not a government bank (US or foreign) is buying US debt at 3% for what, 20 years, to clip coupons?
Clip coupons? No, of-course not, this is like flipping houses before that bubble burst, just be quick enough in this musical chair, hot potato game, you don't want to be stuck with that paper.
And of-course the banks will be bailed out again, there is no question about it. They can't NOT bail them out - those banks hold US government debt:)
Sure it does. Owing 1 billion corn flakes is less debt than owing a billion bars of gold. The rest of your stuff is about inflation. The government can do what they want with currency, like create a new one for the population.
- you don't understand something. It's not what government declares to be currency/money that is important. What is important what people think is money.
That's why there is no investment in USA anymore, as government prints dollars, nobody who has real savings wants to hold it in dollars, they are saving/investing in other countries, where they see better money, and many have gone into commodities not for speculation.
It's NOT uncertainty that drives investors, it's CERTAINTY that US dollar is gone.
A currency account surplus is the flip side of a trade deficit. What you seem to mean by "productive" was we were a net exporter then. Yes we were. And if our currency drops like a stone as you predict above we'll be a net exporter again
- Of what?
I say USA will be a net exporter again. Do you know why? Because in order to import any of the goods US will want to buy from other countries, it will have to export something that other countries will want to take for the goods. It's only now that ships are coming to USA filled with things and are leaving empty.
USA will b a net exporter.
USA will be a net exporter of oil, gas and other raw materials. It will not do the majority of population much good in the beginning, but in the long run the savings will be rebuilt, when US population will have to overproduce (maybe catch more fish, maybe grow more crops) and these savings will eventually buy some new tools from abroad and some of the manufacturing will come back eventually, but of-course the standard of living will be very very low at that time.
You seem to be under common misconception that a weak currency is somehow good for the economy. That's nonsense. Weak currency is terrible for the economy, because people move their real investment capital out of weak currency, and they move it into stronger currency or into real money and they invest where they have that money, so businesses grow where real money is.
Switzerland is trying to commit suicide now, it tied Franc to Euro, so that's a huge mistake. With 3% unemployment and a very strong currency, the Swiss are very productive, they export their products for the comparative advantage of importing foreign goods into the country. Of-course there are politicians on top there who also don't understand economics, so they decided to destroy the Swiss Franc. Well, now people are moving into gold.
So yes, strong money and strong exports are not somehow at odds with each other at all. Do you know why the Fed lowers interest rates when they say: we must increase economic activity?
Because lowering interest rates basically takes away real purchasing power, and with government setting labour laws and wage prices, this means simply making the labour force cheaper with inflation, that's all that low interest rates do (and of-course ability to print money, give it to banks and have them monetise the debt).
Weakening the currency to increase exports simply cheapens the exports, lowers the purchasing power of the exporter. Yes, you can export more (IF YOU HAVE MANUFACTURING, which you don't, so you'll be exporting raw goods and energy), but it means you are working more for less money, that's all that this does. Maybe it looks right on a quarterly corporate and federal report - there is more nominal dollars moving around, but it's terrible in the real economy - you can buy so much less for those same dollars.
Really that's what we are seeing? The vast majority of the means of production globally like say 99.9% are controlled by fiat currencies.
The US debt is 100% denominated in a fiat currency 100% under the control of the government. You use the debt to argue government weakness in a profound sense.
- what a wonderful argument.
It's false of-course. It doesn't matter what the debt is 'denominated' in, what matters is that it can never be repaid in anything worth anything. Printing currency is not the same as doing productive work to give back anything of value, of-course that will never be done. But it's not the creditors who have worthless dollars in their hands that will suffer the most, it's US population, because it will find out what it's like not to be able to buy anything from anybody abroad for the dollars.
As opposed to the decades of the cold war, the problems with Cuba and Vietnam?
- Cuba? Really? You are comparing to that? Vietnam lasted a long time and something like 60thousand were killed and 300thousand wounded just on US side, and in total about 1.5 million were killed and over 2 million wounded. That was pretty big of-course.
But at the time US was still a productive country, those wars were still not fought on debt.
If gold implies strength then between Fort Knox and Federal Reserve bank of NY we have tons of strength. Besides gold doesn't mean much of anything.
- so gold means nothing. Does USD mean anything? People are looking a way out of that currency (and other currencies) and we are seeing gold becoming de-facto money, that's what it means.
As to Fort Knox and Fed - when was the last real audit of all of that?
What about the TARP assets that are in Treasury? Those were worthless until US gov't bought them out at 100 cents on a dollar! (what great business people they are).
How about all the mortgages that are guaranteed today by FHA and F&F? That's half the mortgages. FHA guarantees 1Trillion USD worth of mortgages... with 5Billion in funds!
How about 1Trillion USD worth of students loans guaranteed by US gov't? There will be a bail out there.
How about States? Municipalities?
What happens to banks and other companies when interest rates go up? I believe there will be more bail outs. GM and GE certainly will be bailed out again, so will BofA, Citi, etc.
What about all the personal debt? Can it be ever repaid?
The real debt is much greater than 15T on the ticker.
USA has no money at all, not to do it 20 times, not 5 times, not 1 time. 40% of US gov't spending is borrowed right now, and if the interest rates go up, and instead of spending 200Billion USD/year on INTEREST payments alone, US starts spending something that corresponds to say 8% interest, you'll find that about all money taken in by IRS goes towards interest payments.
But what if the principal has to be repaid? Even partially?
'Having money' does not mean - currency. Having money means having production to do something.
Maybe you should look at their trade balance rather than FAKE government statistics and fancy Enron like accounting?
GDP in USA is not growing, hasn't been for a decade at least and even during Clinton it was an Internet bubble. Real GDP must take into account real inflation as a 'deflator', and when inflation is underreported by about 10% annually, then it's apparent that real GDP is shrinking.
Besides, in USA 70% of GDP is consumption. Consumption of foreign goods. Most of production is 'value added assembly' of foreign parts into ready products and it's military and bank related spending.
Obviously US has no money for this, but that never stopped a politician from making promises. Besides, so much money can be stolen/printed and provided via contracts to various contributors.
Do you know what a popular government slogan was in the former USSR? "Apple trees will grow on Mars" - that was the 'next step of the revolution'. Obviously USSR didn't have a sound economy and couldn't feed its people, but it was a great 'vision' pushed by the government elite, to have people believe in some form of 'brighter future'.
Another slogan was: "To catch up to and overtake America".
I think in US now the slogan that Obama pushes is: "To catch up and overtake China".
Slashdot Mirror
responsibilities that go with these so called "rights.
- don't buy into the propaganda, 'copyright' is not a right at all, it's an entitlement.
It shouldn't even be called a 'copyright', it should be called a 'copy-entitlement', but then many things shouldn't be called 'rights' because they are not. Any kind of a group 'right' (be it women, disabled, race, etc.), those are all entitlements and obligations.
The copy-entitlement is not a natural right of an individual or anybody, rights cannot be 'granted', they must be protected or otherwise they are stolen, but that's the difference between a right and an entitlement.
Your right to life, free-speech, pursuit of happiness, free association, religion, etc., those cannot be granted to you, but government can steal them from you and it can entitle groups of people to something that is unnatural.
There is nothing natural or right about 'copy-entitlement', it's a completely contrived, totally artificial idea that goes against the nature itself and it can only exist where government steals rights from individuals.
The whole point of GPL is emulating what the world would be without copyrights
- you can't say that because GPL requires copyright to exit for the license to have any legal power.
as opposed to BSD which is basically "I'm a charity, take it and use or abuse, even against me"
- I don't understand this concept of 'abuse'. How is it abuse, I don't get. Who is abusing you? You are not getting anything that you didn't put into it - that's true, but without copyrights in the first place there would be much more software released into the wild and nobody could stop it legally.
Copyright PREVENTS competition and it prevents software from being released, it doesn't help to create more Free software, it prevents software from being free in the first place.
I am not interested in convincing you to release your software under any license. If you are so confused and think that your ability to 'eat' depends on ability of government to steal rights of individuals away and to give your business a form of government subsidy for some bizarre reason, then you are on the wrong side of this argument.
I just posted a review of the book that I finally decided to read over the last couple of days, I think it's relevant to this topic.
So? Your preferred model is based on the completely wrong idea of destroying people's freedoms via government enforcement of copyrights.
Again, there are contracts that people can accept instead of or as 'licenses' and then there are licenses like BSD that make much more sense for Free software.
Moreover, without copyrights much more software would be free in the first place.
I don't propose that contracts should be signed for OSS software at all.
I am proposing that GPL model is irrelevant once all copyrights are abolished, which is the correct thing to do to regain freedom from government intervention in the system.
Copyright and copyleft are two sides of the same coin and both are wrong. OpenBSD is the model for Free software, AFAIC there would be more free software if there were no copyrights in the first place, never mind GPL, it wouldn't matter.
I didn't have to sign a thing to run my OpenBSD firewall.
Keep asking, you'll get there.
GPL depends on copyright, yes, I am proposing to throw away all of the copyrights, patents and government power over people. I think it's a very good deal to get freedoms back.
As to software licenses - there are such things as contracts.
Governments must be stopped and copyrights must be abolished. Is this getting clearer?
A Lunar base is a fine goal, when the economy is not in a shitter, and it's a fine goal when the country talking about it is not fighting multiple wars to steal resources and kill as many people as possible while not producing nothing of value for the people.
Even USSR didn't fight this many wars while running the space propaganda.
I am not talking about destroying countries or cities, I am talking about a large number of specific people, all government workers, that I pretty much find abhorrent and think world would be a much cleaner place without them.
The reason not to do it is not lack of resources or some form of fear, but mostly inertia of the every day life and unfortunate understanding that it is NOT specific people, who are the problem, it is the system.
I've been drinking distilled water almost exclusively for near 12 years. You are wrong.
How far will you be taking this? I know it's not PC, etc., and the government's strength is such today, that it is actually dangerous to put any recorded word out there, but say if I always felt that I would like to destroy a lot of people, and I had these feelings for a very long time (over a decade), should I be thrown to jail for having such feelings?
Are feelings today all it takes for government to arrest and imprison people, even if there are recipes of bombs and what not in their possession?
First off the US is a net importer. There is an investment in US bonds. If we were net exporting, like we were in the 1960s then you could argue that people aren't investing here.
- this is 100% backwards.
People used to invest in USA before the money started losing all that value (especially after 1971) and all the real investments were leaving for other countries.
Buying bonds does not mean investing, as I said: Fed gives discount window price of 0 to the bailed out banks, who are all insolvent the moment interest rates go up, because they turn around and buy US Treasury debt at somewhere between 2 and 3%.
The fact is people are perfectly content to invest, about $2b a day per day every day in the USA. That's why we are having such a large trade problem. People need to export to us to get the currency to invest here.
- do you even understand that there is nothing new being built in USA? Invest into what? Nobody is building anything new in US. Money that's pumped into government absolutely prevents (crowds out) all investments in private sector.
The fear trade based on complete misunderstanding of the fundamental economics based on Keynesian ideas is still prevalent, that's why all those bond holders will lose their shirt.
It's like Greece, but worse, because USA can print, and thus it can go out Zimbabwe style.
You obviously have an interest in economics. You need to stop talking in rhetoric and read standard econ 102 macro economics books about stuff like flow of funds.
- there is 0 difference between 'macro' and 'micro' economics, like there is 0 difference between 'macro' and 'micro' evolution. It's complete nonsense.
No they aren't. They are saving/investing in the USA. You may not like that fact,
- LIKE the FACT?
Like what fact? Like the fact that no company is building any new capacity in USA?
The full faith and credit of the United States.
- yeah, and Greece had very high ratings too, just 2 years ago.
Government assets in the $50t range (federal lands...).
- nobody needs land in USA unless that land can produce something that can be exported.
Of-course when people with US dollars in hands actually TRIED to buy something in US with those dollars, they weren't allowed.
That is why we have 3% interest rates people are desperately fleeing other economies to put their wealth in our fiat money.
- no. Central banks of other nations are putting money that doesn't belong to them into US bonds, because they see how weak US dollar is and it's a STUPID DESPERATE attempt at keeping the dollar afloat.
Of-course it's an act of desperate madness, because you don't put money into bonds denominated in dollars, when in fact you are doing it because you are trying to save the dollars from its own weakness - this is not a business decision, it's a political decision.
As to mutual funds and pension funds, these have charters that legally prevent them from buying real assets that make sense. It's like: nobody was fired for hiring IBM, and so the Titanic of US dollars will sink, and those who are 'investing' into it think they will avoid the blame, because everybody was so sure that the ship couldn't sink, and if they instead put their investments into some other boat, probably loaded with something worthwhile, they could be sued if anything at all went wrong with that boat.
This is a shell game, no funds manager is investing his money that way for his own gain.
But we don't. So on top of all that, it is denominated in a fiat currency which the government can create at will in unlimited quantities.
- yes, and this is exactly THE problem. This is why the economy is dying.
To /. crowd: what are the plans continuing to maintain the existing reader / commenter base of this site once the government shuts down the Internet?
They pay no income taxes, which means they don't care about raising those.
See, they do pay sales taxes, so they are against those. Of-course the correct way is to fund government from excise/import/duties (flat import tax is not an evil thing, only using that as a tool to discriminate is evil). Taxing people's income is wrong, because that's not what is allocated for spending, and government is pure spending and waste.
People can't take care of themselves because gov't breaks their legs, but then it gives them crutches - see, gov't is good?
also on student debt, I don't remember where my comment with the calculations is, I made a comment when Obama came out with his new plan a couple of months ago I think, but basically if you are a student, you should load up on all kinds of debt, you won't have to repay it!
It's because the number of years to repay were reduced I think to 20 and the maximum amount one has to pay per month was like a small percentage (15%?) of the earnings that are above the TWICE some minimum (poverty line or something?) I think basically if you earn say 50K, you only pay small percentage of earnings on money above 30K, and you only need to pay for 20 years I believe (not exactly, it's all from memory).
So if you take 200K worth of debt - good for you, you'll only pay maybe 30-40K out of it back if your salary is around 50K say.
That is why college tuitions are skyrocketing (and everything goes up with gov't money in it), and so Obama's fake state of the union (reelection speech) was funny, because he 'addressed' colleges: "how dare you raise tuition fees!".
Well, duh! Stop subsidising the borrowing for tuition and colleges will drop their fees! It's amazing how ridiculous everything is.
The mortgages bought by the treasury are turning out to be worth almost as much as they bought them for (surprisingly!)
- how do you figure, they are not selling them!
In fact there are more bailouts. Some people are living 2-3 years in houses without making a payment before they are kicked out.
Obama came out with another 'lifeline' - 50K more loans towards those, who can't pay their mortgages, gov't insured of-course! That's insane! Those houses aren't worth their mortgages, and they are certainly aren't worth their mortgages + 50K of more gov't money.
I think all of those jobs that were created over the last couple of months in retail are only there because people aren't paying their mortgages and refinancing in fact with more debt. It's repeating the pre-2008 inflation of the housing bubble that is done with the government again, so it's more fake 'recovery' all for the sake of Obama's re-elections, completely denying the reality that this makes the situation even more unbearable for the market, and more jobs will disappear and more USD will be printed.
Fed says they won't raise interest rates until 2014, well here is a guarantee - they can NEVER raise interest rates again, because they will immediately collapse the banks that they bailed out!
They will collapse the banks, and those banks hold Treasury and other types of government debt! There is no way ever for this government to actually allow interest rates to go up without collapsing what they bailed out and without collapsing their own debt, and so they cannot do it. Ever.
So it will be done in a different way - not ever by failing to increase the debt ceiling, but by the market refusing to buy US debt. Of-course you don't refuse if the interest rates go up enough for you to take that risk, but seriously, do you think anybody who is not a government bank (US or foreign) is buying US debt at 3% for what, 20 years, to clip coupons?
Clip coupons? No, of-course not, this is like flipping houses before that bubble burst, just be quick enough in this musical chair, hot potato game, you don't want to be stuck with that paper.
And of-course the banks will be bailed out again, there is no question about it. They can't NOT bail them out - those banks hold US government debt :)
Sure it does. Owing 1 billion corn flakes is less debt than owing a billion bars of gold. The rest of your stuff is about inflation. The government can do what they want with currency, like create a new one for the population.
- you don't understand something. It's not what government declares to be currency/money that is important. What is important what people think is money.
That's why there is no investment in USA anymore, as government prints dollars, nobody who has real savings wants to hold it in dollars, they are saving/investing in other countries, where they see better money, and many have gone into commodities not for speculation.
It's NOT uncertainty that drives investors, it's CERTAINTY that US dollar is gone.
A currency account surplus is the flip side of a trade deficit. What you seem to mean by "productive" was we were a net exporter then. Yes we were. And if our currency drops like a stone as you predict above we'll be a net exporter again
- Of what?
I say USA will be a net exporter again. Do you know why? Because in order to import any of the goods US will want to buy from other countries, it will have to export something that other countries will want to take for the goods. It's only now that ships are coming to USA filled with things and are leaving empty.
USA will b a net exporter.
USA will be a net exporter of oil, gas and other raw materials. It will not do the majority of population much good in the beginning, but in the long run the savings will be rebuilt, when US population will have to overproduce (maybe catch more fish, maybe grow more crops) and these savings will eventually buy some new tools from abroad and some of the manufacturing will come back eventually, but of-course the standard of living will be very very low at that time.
You seem to be under common misconception that a weak currency is somehow good for the economy. That's nonsense. Weak currency is terrible for the economy, because people move their real investment capital out of weak currency, and they move it into stronger currency or into real money and they invest where they have that money, so businesses grow where real money is.
Switzerland is trying to commit suicide now, it tied Franc to Euro, so that's a huge mistake. With 3% unemployment and a very strong currency, the Swiss are very productive, they export their products for the comparative advantage of importing foreign goods into the country. Of-course there are politicians on top there who also don't understand economics, so they decided to destroy the Swiss Franc. Well, now people are moving into gold.
So yes, strong money and strong exports are not somehow at odds with each other at all. Do you know why the Fed lowers interest rates when they say: we must increase economic activity?
Because lowering interest rates basically takes away real purchasing power, and with government setting labour laws and wage prices, this means simply making the labour force cheaper with inflation, that's all that low interest rates do (and of-course ability to print money, give it to banks and have them monetise the debt).
Weakening the currency to increase exports simply cheapens the exports, lowers the purchasing power of the exporter. Yes, you can export more (IF YOU HAVE MANUFACTURING, which you don't, so you'll be exporting raw goods and energy), but it means you are working more for less money, that's all that this does. Maybe it looks right on a quarterly corporate and federal report - there is more nominal dollars moving around, but it's terrible in the real economy - you can buy so much less for those same dollars.
Really that's what we are seeing? The vast majority of the means of production globally like say 99.9% are controlled by fiat currencies.
- sure, it's changing.
Gold isn't being
The US debt is 100% denominated in a fiat currency 100% under the control of the government. You use the debt to argue government weakness in a profound sense.
- what a wonderful argument.
It's false of-course. It doesn't matter what the debt is 'denominated' in, what matters is that it can never be repaid in anything worth anything. Printing currency is not the same as doing productive work to give back anything of value, of-course that will never be done. But it's not the creditors who have worthless dollars in their hands that will suffer the most, it's US population, because it will find out what it's like not to be able to buy anything from anybody abroad for the dollars.
As opposed to the decades of the cold war, the problems with Cuba and Vietnam?
- Cuba? Really? You are comparing to that? Vietnam lasted a long time and something like 60thousand were killed and 300thousand wounded just on US side, and in total about 1.5 million were killed and over 2 million wounded. That was pretty big of-course.
But at the time US was still a productive country, those wars were still not fought on debt.
If gold implies strength then between Fort Knox and Federal Reserve bank of NY we have tons of strength. Besides gold doesn't mean much of anything.
- so gold means nothing. Does USD mean anything? People are looking a way out of that currency (and other currencies) and we are seeing gold becoming de-facto money, that's what it means.
As to Fort Knox and Fed - when was the last real audit of all of that?
Yes, SS, Medicare.
What about the TARP assets that are in Treasury? Those were worthless until US gov't bought them out at 100 cents on a dollar! (what great business people they are).
How about all the mortgages that are guaranteed today by FHA and F&F? That's half the mortgages. FHA guarantees 1Trillion USD worth of mortgages ... with 5Billion in funds!
How about 1Trillion USD worth of students loans guaranteed by US gov't? There will be a bail out there.
How about States? Municipalities?
What happens to banks and other companies when interest rates go up? I believe there will be more bail outs. GM and GE certainly will be bailed out again, so will BofA, Citi, etc.
What about all the personal debt? Can it be ever repaid?
The real debt is much greater than 15T on the ticker.
The numbers have been cooked for a very long time, and when they are calculated as they were during even Nixon, they are much closer to reality.
Of-course I calculated the inflation numbers myself based on a basket of commodities long ago.
When did he become a democrat?
- better question is: "what the hell happened to the conservatives in US that they think Republicans are conservatives?"
USA has no money at all, not to do it 20 times, not 5 times, not 1 time. 40% of US gov't spending is borrowed right now, and if the interest rates go up, and instead of spending 200Billion USD/year on INTEREST payments alone, US starts spending something that corresponds to say 8% interest, you'll find that about all money taken in by IRS goes towards interest payments.
But what if the principal has to be repaid? Even partially?
'Having money' does not mean - currency. Having money means having production to do something.
Maybe you should look at their trade balance rather than FAKE government statistics and fancy Enron like accounting?
GDP in USA is not growing, hasn't been for a decade at least and even during Clinton it was an Internet bubble. Real GDP must take into account real inflation as a 'deflator', and when inflation is underreported by about 10% annually, then it's apparent that real GDP is shrinking.
Besides, in USA 70% of GDP is consumption. Consumption of foreign goods. Most of production is 'value added assembly' of foreign parts into ready products and it's military and bank related spending.
Obviously US has no money for this, but that never stopped a politician from making promises. Besides, so much money can be stolen/printed and provided via contracts to various contributors.
Do you know what a popular government slogan was in the former USSR? "Apple trees will grow on Mars" - that was the 'next step of the revolution'. Obviously USSR didn't have a sound economy and couldn't feed its people, but it was a great 'vision' pushed by the government elite, to have people believe in some form of 'brighter future'.
Another slogan was: "To catch up to and overtake America".
I think in US now the slogan that Obama pushes is: "To catch up and overtake China".