They give me a good ROI, I'll pay them whatever they want.
- well, if you are getting dividends and you are happy with the way company is ran, then it's not what I am talking about. Most people don't get dividends for the stocks they are holding.
HFT is a non issue, it ONLY affects those who are playing that game.
- I am not saying HFT is an issue, I am pointing out that the reason it is happening is the same - the free money turned stock market into a casino, stock flipping, not investing into companies.
If you don't like what the Fed is doing, why don't you translate your currency into something other than US dollars?
- my point exactly and I don't have US denominated assets.
HP doesn't care about its investors for the same reason CEOs get pay that is too high and HFT continues. Of-course other reasons for not caring about investors is limited liability that the top management of corporations enjoy because government created this moral hazard in the first place. There shouldn't be such a thing as government provided limited liability to corporations.
But the reality is that in the market that is promoted with all this inflation and destruction of investment and savings, there are no investors, the market is turned into a casino, everybody is gambling on price of stock, not investing into a business for long term.
There should not be any government protections to people, who are investors except that contract law needs to be upheld by courts, that's all there is to it, but with all the government destruction of economy, there is so little competition and so little choice of where to invest, that people are stuck with the current casino, seagull management and gambling.
Can investors sue the Federal reserve for DESTROYING their US dollar denominated savings and investments? After all, the US federal reserve is causing money destruction that is causing the federal reserve notes to lose over 10% of value per year.
HONESTY IN NAMING. Give that bill's number, make them read it. Of-course this will do nothing for Obama's reelection, but this "America Invents Act" will do nothing for inventions in America.
152 pages. You'd think to have America "inventing" you wouldn't need that. What you'd need is to stop punishing people for investments with inflation, taxes, regulations and insane spending, like that on wars. How about ABOLISHING the patent system altogether and abolishing all patents and refunding those that are pending by the way? Having a freer society, so that people could ACTUALLY INVENT AND INNOVATE without FEAR of being SUED?
You think they'll stop wars in that bill? You think they'll stop inflation and encourage underconsumption, savings and investments?
Please. It's about dates of filing, it's about law suits. It's about more government protections given to large corporations. It's about lawyers.
The only 'innovation' that will be promoted by this bill will be lawyer innovation, innovative ways to file MORE LAWSUITS.
That's all this is going to do - more lawsuits and actually less innovation and fewer inventions, as always the exact opposite of what the bill is named.
How about abolishing the child labor laws as well as minimum wage laws, teach the kids to read, write and count, (of-course some real history and economics would be nice) and then LET those, who want to get out there and take low paying jobs learning skills at work.
There is no better way to learn skills, and majority of people don't need to learn any academics beyond basic reading/arithmetic.
People DO need to learn about reality though, this needs to come from history and economics, real economics, not bullshit propaganda, that is pushed in schools. Here is what I am talking about - watching an hour of this, is much more education about economics and politics than most of what kids learn on these subjects in their entire span of education.
Allowing kids actually to work would do wonders for society as well. This would allow debts to be reduced, as majority of kids don't need higher education and don't need to go to colleges to take binge drinking classes disguised as "majoring in sociology". Allowing kids to enter work force earlier and cheaply would reduce their further dependence on any government. Of-course this must be coupled with abolishment of any such programs as social security.
By the way, on the issue of NAMING bill and naming programs in government: there needs to be HONESTY in naming conventions. The bills really shouldn't be named by those who push for them.
A "Jobs Act"? Who is against jobs? It's like Perry said during a debate: I hate cancer! - Fucking genius. Who loves cancer? Vote for Perry, he hates cancer!
I am saying this because the very naming conventions are designed to provoke an emotional response, which directs the population. Just because you call something "Social Security" doesn't actually mean that it will provide real security rather than eventual Social Destruction.
Anyway, a good idea in a bad economy, where there is high unemployment would be to make employing people much simpler and cheaper, rather than trying to engineer a way out that is only going to guarantee further destruction (printing and dumping money into the system.)
As to kids programming: some are replying here that it's a good thing to teach kids that, because it would teach them logic and other skills.
In reality most kids don't need to take these courses, just like most kids don't need courses zoology, but they could learn quite a bit if they were allowed to work, to go into apprenticeships. That's what would really help quite a number of kids and the economy.
Get rid of TSA completely, have airlines take care of this privately WITHOUT any government money involved.
Whatever the rules that are set by the private airlines go - you are allowed to take whatever you want with you (including guns, bombs and gasoline) on my preferred airline, named: Take a Chance.
These government officials always must be the first to get anything that they prescribe as treatment to other people done to themselves first.
You want to pass a TSA type act? For a year you should be the only one, to who these treatments are applied. You should be forced to these treatments on daily basis, and if after a year you think it's still a good idea, then maybe... you should still forget about it and think how to increase individual liberties instead of destroying them, and how to uphold and protect the Constitution, as you swore.
Also if you break the oath of protecting the Constitution, all of the ways in which you broke it should be applied to you on mandatory daily basis for 50 years.
I don't believe this has anything to do with 'micro-trading', you won't lose that much money in microtrading, there you make money by sucking it out of the system efficiently:), but you can't fix HFT without fixing the underlying fiscal misconceptions.
Are you all sure this entire story is not a huge lie, that this one trader is not used as a scapegoat, a fall guy for a larger systemic problem at the bank? On one hand knowing how Credit Swiss and UBS handle customers I can sort of believe that there is large level of confusion and things are not, as you would expect them, at least not what engineering types would expect it to be. It's like you are always trying to build a better system, a system that handles transactions properly, a system that does not allow errors, but when you deal with some banks, it's as if they are still ran with pen and paper, it's amazing. (though it's not true, they do have computer systems, but sometimes it feels like their computer systems have routines there, that create chaos, havoc and confusion on purpose). But seriously. 2 billion dollars in this case. There was a guy who lost 6-8 billion a year ago or so in some French bank.
Maybe, maybe. Or maybe the bank is using this guy as a stooge, a sap, somebody to take the fall in case some shady deals go wrong. After all, do you hear about banks catching such cases, where money was made and not lost? I mean if somebody used bank resources to trade and to make money for themselves personally, they would have to draw that money out somehow.
-- In other news the Federal reserve bank and national banks of UK, Switzerland (fuckers) and Japan came out with a strategy to ensure that the paper currencies are destroyed even faster by printing more of it to buy all the outstanding short term securities that USA is issuing or that are maturing. It's all nonsense, it forced a bunch of people to cover a bunch of short positions in a bunch of commodity markets (those who hedge against their dollar and other currency reserves by using commodities), because this news of the national banks is more inflation, the relative prices of commodities must go higher, so people are buying to cover shorts.
The DOW and other markets go up in dollar and other currency terms of-course, because again, this is more inflation.
Interesting times, as always, wrong solutions driven by wrong understanding of economics, as always.
Those who employ you are not driven by the same motivations as you are. Your employment is a function of difference between the value that you deliver to your employer and the cost of your employment, or profit that you generate for your employer.
Your employment comes as a function of profit and capital available to your employer. Profit is what keeps you there and capital is what makes you productive, as capital provides you with tools and everything you need to do your work.
Whether you are driven by it or not (and you are going to work rather than sitting doing nothing, so you are driven as well, since you do need to eat), your employer is driven by profit.
The government of the United States, formed under the Constitution, was intended to fulfill the following functions:
- your wrote that, and then you wrote the MEANS by which the actual GOAL was to be obtained.
You didn't write the GOAL.
The GOAL is to provide a more perfect union by protecting individual liberties and freedoms, to protect people's rights, property, to uphold criminal and contract law.
The GOAL is NOT to "collect taxes and duties" - those are MEANS to the GOAL.
So you are so confused when it comes to the PURPOSE of government, why don't you take 5 minutes to think about this: do YOU exist so that government can collect taxes, or does government exist, so that you have liberties and freedoms protected in this life?
Well, at the very least in USA, the government was formed for a very specific function: protection of liberties and freedoms in order to achieve a 'more perfect union'. The point was to occupy the space that would otherwise be power vacuum, and would be filled in with something that would appear spontaneously.
This is was like a programming effort, but eventually it was hacked, cracked to do something that it was not intended to - the exact opposite, to steal your freedoms, to steal everything from you.
Providing an electronic currency IS minting in the digital age.
- OK, it's a bit contrived.
Private currencies tend to run into trouble.
- currencies are not money. Currency is a coin or a note. Money is gold or maybe silver. If currencies are undermined by counterfeiting, they will run into trouble, private or not. That's what all currencies today are showing - they are all in trouble due to government counterfeiting.
I never claimed that government creates wealth, it creates money.
- government doesn't create wealth or money.
Government is supposed to MINT coins out of money that YOU own already. So you bring your gold nugget to mint, and they'll make a coin out of it for you.
Today, on the other hand, government counterfeits CURRENCY, not money. Currency - an IOU, a federal reserve NOTE.
If your world makes opening a savings account as complex as buying a house, I don't want to live there and neither do a lot of other people. That kind of overhead doesn't come for free either you know.
- that's what competition is for. I am NOT smart enough to know what's best for economy at any point of time, what's best for consumers, what's best for market.
I am smart enough to understand that the individual will make choices based on their understanding and this a much better, safer, flexible system, than what you have now.
A person with no insurance but in need of life saving medical care is HARDLY a corner case.
- in free market it is a corner case.
Ford was paying $5/day to his employees in 1914 I believe because of high turnover. So he came up with a way to address the market regulation (high turnover) by paying twice as much as anybody else at the time, by reducing working hours to 8/day and by reducing work week to 5 days.
This was at the time when gold was just under $20/troy ounce, so in a week that was 1.25 ounces of gold, which is about 2500USD today, or over 130K/year.
That's without unions. That's without income taxes. That's without SS. That's without payroll taxes. That's without any of the regulations you have today. That's at a time, when private health insurance was around $2/month and a visit to a doctor was 1-2 dollars. The point is that in that system a person not making enough money to pay for insurance and to pay for doctor out of pocket (like they ALL did at the time and they paid for tuition out of pocket too), would have been a corner case.
Corner cases are handled by other corner cases, and it's wrong to base policy on this. That's why Ron Paul answered as he did: we didn't turn anybody away. Well, that's because there were so FEW people without insurance or money to pay out of pocket.
I left a comment long ago on this, with a lot of government data showing how popular and cheap private health insurance was prior to 1965, that it was more popular than public offerings (blue shield/cross), before government jumped in with all the money and which means with all the corruption, that allowed prices to skyrocket.
At least Ron Paul didn't try to weasel out of answering the very legitimate question.
- he always answers question unlike every single other R or D out there. He is the only legitimate statesman, nobody else can claim that title in the race on any side.
Believing that all wealthy people are good, or that bad people with wealth won't do horrible damage, or that government shouldn't stop them, is beyond merely naive.
- that's why I don't believe anything (and I am an atheist).
I don't believe in good intentions, I believe in self interest.
Self interest is what makes people want to make a profit. Self interest and making a profit is what makes people try to come up with products that other people may want to buy, thus providing the profits for those, who are self-interested.
Profit is the best motivator we have. Government can also profit some people by stealing money via taxes/counterfeiting and inflating/borrowing and then it can distribute this money based on whatever political agenda, but none of it actually is good for economy, as none of it works based on market regulations - which are: make me a product that I like and I will buy it. Make a better product, and I'll buy that one instead. Make it a cheaper product and I'll buy this one.
What IS basic income? If you have federal reserve print 10,000USD (federal reserve notes, IOUs, which in the past meant those were promises to give GOLD for the note), then you basically set the reference price on USD.
10,000 USD = 0.
Money does not come from thin air, it must be earned - products must be made, and then it can be either consumed or it can be saved (under-consumed) and it can be invested if it's not spent.
Government cannot create actual wealth - products that people want, so it can't legitimately make money - profit. It cannot do it unless basically it's a command economy, like the kind I was born in (USSR), and it fails, because nobody is smart enough, no system is smart enough to understand all of the intricacies of what people, individuals = markets want or need.
How would a bureaucracy KNOW to attempt building iPads? How?
The FDIC was a necessary step because a lot of people were seriously harmed financially during the big crash before the depression
-
1. FDIC was solving a non-issue. Only about 2% of bank deposits were actually lost. However the deflation made the remaining 98% of deposits that were not lost much more valuable, because much more could be bought with that money (and gov't tried everything to keep prices for agriculture products up, just like they are doing since 2008 in housing).
2. The recession of 1929 has its roots in 1925, when US federal reserve started printing USD to buy bad UK debt, which created too much money and inflated the bubble in agriculture stocks.
3. FDIC cannot solve a problem, no government regulation can solve any problem. The concept is "blowback" - everything backfires and does the opposite of what was intended EVEN if the intention was "good".
People had no ability to evaluate the banks business practices to find a suitable one (and they still don't, are you REALLY going to audit BoA's books to open a savings account?).
- of-course!
You don't have to do it YOURSELF, you ask to see the private insurance underwriter report before you put your money their.
Do you know all the paper YOU have to sign when you buy a house and a bank gives you a loan?
IT IS THE SAME PRINCIPLE IN REVERSE.
You are giving a bank money, you must be careful who you are giving money to. Gov't can't remove risk, it can't.
It's the same problem with people not understanding the concept of health insurance. It's why when Ron Paul was asked in the last debate in Tampa: "Do you let a 30 y.o. person die if they have no insurance?"
He said "no", he gave his answer based on his medical experience of taking care of patients without insurance.
I, on the other hand, am not a doctor. I would have said this:
You CANNOT base policy on CORNER CASES. Because if you base your policy on corner cases, you are going to corner the entire system.
Yes, in certain cases people need to be let go of, the market economy requires that we are allowed to do things that are not very smart, so that some of us can be examples to others of what is not a good idea. Some people would die, well, some people die today in the current system in all countries.
"last stimulus was a failure" False - it stimulated, per CBO and other credible analysis.
- Since when is CBO credible? Is it since they release their rosy projections of future spending based on unrealistic growth projections?
GPD is fake. CPI is fake. Unemployment numbers are fake.
Dollar per dollar stimulus destroys more jobs than it creates specifically because the spending on government jobs removes investment opportunity in the real economy for jobs that actually could decrease the trade deficit and debt. It's a multiplier effect in reverse, every dollar spent by government is dollar either removed from economy by inflation, which brings monetary destruction closer, or it's money borrowed, which is deferred taxation and it still brings the monetary destruction closer, as short term interest rates will not be allowed to move up, because paying the interest on the debt becomes impossible, but this will blow up in the face, once this beach ball of actual real interest rates comes rushing from under water of the artificially low interest created by federal reserve printing and buying up debt.
SS is bankrupt right now, it was always a ponzi scam, but now it's it's just leaving the space of ridiculous and coming to the sublime, with government trying to pretend there is a 'fund', so it borrows, puts the borrowed money into this so called 'fund', then borrows from the 'fund', all to create an illusion that there are ASSETS in the 'fund'. Government can't pay for anything, it's completely broke and it doesn't allow economy to fix itself by allowing it to have an actual recession, which is the fix the problem, not printing more currency.
SS is broke now, it takes in less money than it pays out. 1.87 fully employed workers in USA are paying to 1 beneficiary - an all time low.
I left a comment earlier describing how Reagan (the biggest disappointment of a POTUS) "fixed" SS by raising taxes (20% on all, 140% on high earners, while means testing and cutting benefits of high earners).
So if that's how you "fix" this pyramid, then you know it's the only fix, the only right thing to do is to allow people to opt out and see how many would.
GDP is fake, it's being in steady decline of about 10% per year for a decade, this is because CPI is fake, it's over 10-13% inflation in reality, and GDP is 70% consumption of goods made abroad (so much for Domestic in GDP).
Summary: there is no difference between macro and micro economics. As I said if you ask Krugman, he'll tell you that wars, tsunami and alien invasion is good, because it "creates stimulus", but if you ask him would he want his own house destroyed to create stimulus, he'd tell you now. Because that's MICRO economics.
What's good for the goose, good for the gander. The difference between micro and macro is BS in economics as much as it is BS in evolution.
Here is what a regulation looks like. Read and weep, this may be the only time you'll have an opportunity to be an 'employer', to hire a babysitter, and if that passes and you are in California, you'll quickly learn why hiring people is so dangerous in USA, why now everybody is trying their hardest not to hire anybody.
As to ENIAC - it was directly funded from war spending.
As to Internet - TCP/IP to be precise. It's great, but it was NOT VITAL to eventual appearance of world wide Internet, similarly as PHONES were created privately and so were phone networks, the computers were already communicating over other types of protocols. TCP/IP is a good protocol, but it absolutely does not mean it's the only possible protocol of communications, nor does it mean that the idea of having packet switching is extremely different from the old idea of having circuit switched networks (PSTN).
No, the TCP/IP did not have to be invented by the government, it could be a different protocol. Yes, the fact that it became ubiquitous is due to government spending, no, it doesn't mean that government must at all participate in research and development, which companies AND private individuals do ANYWAY, case in point - Steve Wozniak in a garage, not in a government funded laboratory. (Then of-course Edison, Tesla, Marconi, etc.etc.etc.)
Thanks, in a market of ideas some ideas are promoted and some are shut down, and in reality it doesn't matter if idea is right or wrong in principle, if enough people just vote with or against it.
I don't know if any of the comments make any difference (but they MAY actually for individual people, who may just figure out what is coming in time to save themselves from the economic collapse), but at the very least, when the big one hits the fan, they won't be able just to come out and say:
NOBODY SAW IT COMING.
It's just not true. It wasn't true during the dot com bubble, it wasn't true during the housing bubble and now, with the biggest bubble of all that is being inflated in government debt - it is again not true.
well, somebody would have to bring the lawsuits up, but yes, absolutely, it makes sense today in USA to hire absolutely NOBODY and to try and get rid of as many employees as possible as is.
Thank the Internet for ability to connect 2 interests together - a side that needs a job done, and a side that wants to earn some money doing that job. I just did exactly that over 99designs.com - I hired somebody to do a design. Where is this person from, that did the design for me? Who knows? I don't know, nor do I care.
What I DO care about is the fact that I did NOT have to hire anybody to do the work, I was able to just to get the work done and I paid for it, we "shook" on it, so to speak over the Internet and we went our separate ways.
AFAIC, if there was no Internet and all the opportunities that it provides for the last 20 years, the incredible depression that USA and many other Western nations would have been in by now, would have been just amazing in its magnitude.
The fact that there is STILL some economy left is the testimony to the POWER OF PEOPLE and POWER OF LACK OF REGULATIONS because that's what we have on the Internet - the Freest Market Available today.
Slashdot Mirror
I explained why CEOs are paid too much (and they are).
They give me a good ROI, I'll pay them whatever they want.
- well, if you are getting dividends and you are happy with the way company is ran, then it's not what I am talking about. Most people don't get dividends for the stocks they are holding.
HFT is a non issue, it ONLY affects those who are playing that game.
- I am not saying HFT is an issue, I am pointing out that the reason it is happening is the same - the free money turned stock market into a casino, stock flipping, not investing into companies.
If you don't like what the Fed is doing, why don't you translate your currency into something other than US dollars?
- my point exactly and I don't have US denominated assets.
HP doesn't care about its investors for the same reason CEOs get pay that is too high and HFT continues. Of-course other reasons for not caring about investors is limited liability that the top management of corporations enjoy because government created this moral hazard in the first place. There shouldn't be such a thing as government provided limited liability to corporations.
But the reality is that in the market that is promoted with all this inflation and destruction of investment and savings, there are no investors, the market is turned into a casino, everybody is gambling on price of stock, not investing into a business for long term.
There should not be any government protections to people, who are investors except that contract law needs to be upheld by courts, that's all there is to it, but with all the government destruction of economy, there is so little competition and so little choice of where to invest, that people are stuck with the current casino, seagull management and gambling.
Can investors sue the Federal reserve for DESTROYING their US dollar denominated savings and investments? After all, the US federal reserve is causing money destruction that is causing the federal reserve notes to lose over 10% of value per year.
You HAVE to give protection to dead people because if you don't, they won't innovate and invent again.
Why force 99% of kids to read classic works of literature? Why force 99% of kids to participate in physical education?
You are absolutely correct. There is no reason for that, just like there is no reason for this.
But I know that your point is the opposite, but that's what my comment is about that I am referencing. Get those kids to work.
Again, I just posted on this in the previous story.
HONESTY IN NAMING. Give that bill's number, make them read it. Of-course this will do nothing for Obama's reelection, but this "America Invents Act" will do nothing for inventions in America.
There are 152 PAGES in that bill. (PDF warning)
152 pages. You'd think to have America "inventing" you wouldn't need that. What you'd need is to stop punishing people for investments with inflation, taxes, regulations and insane spending, like that on wars. How about ABOLISHING the patent system altogether and abolishing all patents and refunding those that are pending by the way? Having a freer society, so that people could ACTUALLY INVENT AND INNOVATE without FEAR of being SUED?
You think they'll stop wars in that bill? You think they'll stop inflation and encourage underconsumption, savings and investments?
Please. It's about dates of filing, it's about law suits. It's about more government protections given to large corporations. It's about lawyers.
The only 'innovation' that will be promoted by this bill will be lawyer innovation, innovative ways to file MORE LAWSUITS.
That's all this is going to do - more lawsuits and actually less innovation and fewer inventions, as always the exact opposite of what the bill is named.
How about abolishing the child labor laws as well as minimum wage laws, teach the kids to read, write and count, (of-course some real history and economics would be nice) and then LET those, who want to get out there and take low paying jobs learning skills at work.
There is no better way to learn skills, and majority of people don't need to learn any academics beyond basic reading/arithmetic.
People DO need to learn about reality though, this needs to come from history and economics, real economics, not bullshit propaganda, that is pushed in schools. Here is what I am talking about - watching an hour of this, is much more education about economics and politics than most of what kids learn on these subjects in their entire span of education.
Allowing kids actually to work would do wonders for society as well. This would allow debts to be reduced, as majority of kids don't need higher education and don't need to go to colleges to take binge drinking classes disguised as "majoring in sociology". Allowing kids to enter work force earlier and cheaply would reduce their further dependence on any government. Of-course this must be coupled with abolishment of any such programs as social security.
By the way, on the issue of NAMING bill and naming programs in government: there needs to be HONESTY in naming conventions. The bills really shouldn't be named by those who push for them.
A "Jobs Act"? Who is against jobs? It's like Perry said during a debate: I hate cancer! - Fucking genius. Who loves cancer? Vote for Perry, he hates cancer!
I am saying this because the very naming conventions are designed to provoke an emotional response, which directs the population. Just because you call something "Social Security" doesn't actually mean that it will provide real security rather than eventual Social Destruction.
Naming something a "Jobs Act" doesn't mean it will actually create jobs or it's for jobs.
Anyway, a good idea in a bad economy, where there is high unemployment would be to make employing people much simpler and cheaper, rather than trying to engineer a way out that is only going to guarantee further destruction (printing and dumping money into the system.)
As to kids programming: some are replying here that it's a good thing to teach kids that, because it would teach them logic and other skills.
In reality most kids don't need to take these courses, just like most kids don't need courses zoology, but they could learn quite a bit if they were allowed to work, to go into apprenticeships. That's what would really help quite a number of kids and the economy.
Get rid of TSA completely, have airlines take care of this privately WITHOUT any government money involved.
Whatever the rules that are set by the private airlines go - you are allowed to take whatever you want with you (including guns, bombs and gasoline) on my preferred airline, named: Take a Chance.
are you a Perry voter?
These government officials always must be the first to get anything that they prescribe as treatment to other people done to themselves first.
You want to pass a TSA type act? For a year you should be the only one, to who these treatments are applied. You should be forced to these treatments on daily basis, and if after a year you think it's still a good idea, then maybe... you should still forget about it and think how to increase individual liberties instead of destroying them, and how to uphold and protect the Constitution, as you swore.
Also if you break the oath of protecting the Constitution, all of the ways in which you broke it should be applied to you on mandatory daily basis for 50 years.
I don't believe this has anything to do with 'micro-trading', you won't lose that much money in microtrading, there you make money by sucking it out of the system efficiently :), but you can't fix HFT without fixing the underlying fiscal misconceptions.
Are you all sure this entire story is not a huge lie, that this one trader is not used as a scapegoat, a fall guy for a larger systemic problem at the bank? On one hand knowing how Credit Swiss and UBS handle customers I can sort of believe that there is large level of confusion and things are not, as you would expect them, at least not what engineering types would expect it to be. It's like you are always trying to build a better system, a system that handles transactions properly, a system that does not allow errors, but when you deal with some banks, it's as if they are still ran with pen and paper, it's amazing. (though it's not true, they do have computer systems, but sometimes it feels like their computer systems have routines there, that create chaos, havoc and confusion on purpose). But seriously. 2 billion dollars in this case. There was a guy who lost 6-8 billion a year ago or so in some French bank.
Maybe, maybe. Or maybe the bank is using this guy as a stooge, a sap, somebody to take the fall in case some shady deals go wrong. After all, do you hear about banks catching such cases, where money was made and not lost? I mean if somebody used bank resources to trade and to make money for themselves personally, they would have to draw that money out somehow.
--
In other news the Federal reserve bank and national banks of UK, Switzerland (fuckers) and Japan came out with a strategy to ensure that the paper currencies are destroyed even faster by printing more of it to buy all the outstanding short term securities that USA is issuing or that are maturing. It's all nonsense, it forced a bunch of people to cover a bunch of short positions in a bunch of commodity markets (those who hedge against their dollar and other currency reserves by using commodities), because this news of the national banks is more inflation, the relative prices of commodities must go higher, so people are buying to cover shorts.
The DOW and other markets go up in dollar and other currency terms of-course, because again, this is more inflation.
Interesting times, as always, wrong solutions driven by wrong understanding of economics, as always.
Researchers at MIT have designed a device the size of a U.S. quarter that harvests energy from low-frequency vibrations
- it's been around for ages. Called 'clitoris', look it up.
cheap to do with existing botnet systems.
Those who employ you are not driven by the same motivations as you are. Your employment is a function of difference between the value that you deliver to your employer and the cost of your employment, or profit that you generate for your employer.
Your employment comes as a function of profit and capital available to your employer. Profit is what keeps you there and capital is what makes you productive, as capital provides you with tools and everything you need to do your work.
Whether you are driven by it or not (and you are going to work rather than sitting doing nothing, so you are driven as well, since you do need to eat), your employer is driven by profit.
The government of the United States, formed under the Constitution, was intended to fulfill the following functions:
- your wrote that, and then you wrote the MEANS by which the actual GOAL was to be obtained.
You didn't write the GOAL.
The GOAL is to provide a more perfect union by protecting individual liberties and freedoms, to protect people's rights, property, to uphold criminal and contract law.
The GOAL is NOT to "collect taxes and duties" - those are MEANS to the GOAL.
So you are so confused when it comes to the PURPOSE of government, why don't you take 5 minutes to think about this: do YOU exist so that government can collect taxes, or does government exist, so that you have liberties and freedoms protected in this life?
Well, at the very least in USA, the government was formed for a very specific function: protection of liberties and freedoms in order to achieve a 'more perfect union'. The point was to occupy the space that would otherwise be power vacuum, and would be filled in with something that would appear spontaneously.
This is was like a programming effort, but eventually it was hacked, cracked to do something that it was not intended to - the exact opposite, to steal your freedoms, to steal everything from you.
That's what we basically do in Lucerne.
Providing an electronic currency IS minting in the digital age.
- OK, it's a bit contrived.
Private currencies tend to run into trouble.
- currencies are not money. Currency is a coin or a note. Money is gold or maybe silver. If currencies are undermined by counterfeiting, they will run into trouble, private or not. That's what all currencies today are showing - they are all in trouble due to government counterfeiting.
I never claimed that government creates wealth, it creates money.
- government doesn't create wealth or money.
Government is supposed to MINT coins out of money that YOU own already. So you bring your gold nugget to mint, and they'll make a coin out of it for you.
Today, on the other hand, government counterfeits CURRENCY, not money. Currency - an IOU, a federal reserve NOTE.
If your world makes opening a savings account as complex as buying a house, I don't want to live there and neither do a lot of other people. That kind of overhead doesn't come for free either you know.
- that's what competition is for. I am NOT smart enough to know what's best for economy at any point of time, what's best for consumers, what's best for market.
I am smart enough to understand that the individual will make choices based on their understanding and this a much better, safer, flexible system, than what you have now.
A person with no insurance but in need of life saving medical care is HARDLY a corner case.
- in free market it is a corner case.
Ford was paying $5/day to his employees in 1914 I believe because of high turnover. So he came up with a way to address the market regulation (high turnover) by paying twice as much as anybody else at the time, by reducing working hours to 8/day and by reducing work week to 5 days.
This was at the time when gold was just under $20/troy ounce, so in a week that was 1.25 ounces of gold, which is about 2500USD today, or over 130K/year.
That's without unions. That's without income taxes. That's without SS. That's without payroll taxes. That's without any of the regulations you have today. That's at a time, when private health insurance was around $2/month and a visit to a doctor was 1-2 dollars. The point is that in that system a person not making enough money to pay for insurance and to pay for doctor out of pocket (like they ALL did at the time and they paid for tuition out of pocket too), would have been a corner case.
Corner cases are handled by other corner cases, and it's wrong to base policy on this. That's why Ron Paul answered as he did: we didn't turn anybody away. Well, that's because there were so FEW people without insurance or money to pay out of pocket.
I left a comment long ago on this, with a lot of government data showing how popular and cheap private health insurance was prior to 1965, that it was more popular than public offerings (blue shield/cross), before government jumped in with all the money and which means with all the corruption, that allowed prices to skyrocket.
At least Ron Paul didn't try to weasel out of answering the very legitimate question.
- he always answers question unlike every single other R or D out there. He is the only legitimate statesman, nobody else can claim that title in the race on any side.
Believing that all wealthy people are good, or that bad people with wealth won't do horrible damage, or that government shouldn't stop them, is beyond merely naive.
- that's why I don't believe anything (and I am an atheist).
I don't believe in good intentions, I believe in self interest.
Self interest is what makes people want to make a profit. Self interest and making a profit is what makes people try to come up with products that other people may want to buy, thus providing the profits for those, who are self-interested.
Profit is the best motivator we have. Government can also profit some people by stealing money via taxes/counterfeiting and inflating/borrowing and then it can distribute this money based on whatever political agenda, but none of it actually is good for economy, as none of it works based on market regulations - which are: make me a product that I like and I will buy it. Make a better product, and I'll buy that one instead. Make it a cheaper product and I'll buy this one.
What IS basic income? If you have federal reserve print 10,000USD (federal reserve notes, IOUs, which in the past meant those were promises to give GOLD for the note), then you basically set the reference price on USD.
10,000 USD = 0.
Money does not come from thin air, it must be earned - products must be made, and then it can be either consumed or it can be saved (under-consumed) and it can be invested if it's not spent.
Government cannot create actual wealth - products that people want, so it can't legitimately make money - profit. It cannot do it unless basically it's a command economy, like the kind I was born in (USSR), and it fails, because nobody is smart enough, no system is smart enough to understand all of the intricacies of what people, individuals = markets want or need.
How would a bureaucracy KNOW to attempt building iPads? How?
I don't want everything to come down to me from some government, I want free market of ideas. I just wrote a comment on how the Internet is the last bastion of actual free market in the world, and that's why I don't hire people, but I do pay people on the Internet to do jobs for me. I don't even know who I paid, they don't even know who they worked for. We exchanged: I gave them money, they gave me the product. It's a world wide free market economy at its best. Without this the depression would have started in early 90s and would have been incredibly terrible.
The FDIC was a necessary step because a lot of people were seriously harmed financially during the big crash before the depression
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1. FDIC was solving a non-issue. Only about 2% of bank deposits were actually lost. However the deflation made the remaining 98% of deposits that were not lost much more valuable, because much more could be bought with that money (and gov't tried everything to keep prices for agriculture products up, just like they are doing since 2008 in housing).
2. The recession of 1929 has its roots in 1925, when US federal reserve started printing USD to buy bad UK debt, which created too much money and inflated the bubble in agriculture stocks.
3. FDIC cannot solve a problem, no government regulation can solve any problem. The concept is "blowback" - everything backfires and does the opposite of what was intended EVEN if the intention was "good".
People had no ability to evaluate the banks business practices to find a suitable one (and they still don't, are you REALLY going to audit BoA's books to open a savings account?).
- of-course!
You don't have to do it YOURSELF, you ask to see the private insurance underwriter report before you put your money their.
Do you know all the paper YOU have to sign when you buy a house and a bank gives you a loan?
IT IS THE SAME PRINCIPLE IN REVERSE.
You are giving a bank money, you must be careful who you are giving money to. Gov't can't remove risk, it can't.
It's the same problem with people not understanding the concept of health insurance. It's why when Ron Paul was asked in the last debate in Tampa: "Do you let a 30 y.o. person die if they have no insurance?"
He said "no", he gave his answer based on his medical experience of taking care of patients without insurance.
I, on the other hand, am not a doctor. I would have said this:
You CANNOT base policy on CORNER CASES. Because if you base your policy on corner cases, you are going to corner the entire system.
Yes, in certain cases people need to be let go of, the market economy requires that we are allowed to do things that are not very smart, so that some of us can be examples to others of what is not a good idea. Some people would die, well, some people die today in the current system in all countries.
Best thing is to allow market to earn and spend. Spending occurs in market absent government mandates and free money, and the inflation is created by the federal reserve devaluing the currency by printing it out of existence, which provides reason to gamble with money and create waste, and then market solution is a recession, but the government in power wants to be reelected, so its only SOP is to pour as much counterfeit currency into the system as possible, providing a temporary high, which still doesn't help to improve the economy, as no jobs are created, then bogus Jobs acts are pushed forward as a measure to get reelected, while the ignorant are trying to apply old failed ideas, but they will of-course fail, just like they always do even though some people predict and warn about the coming failures.
Some people are trying hard to warn others , but very few listen.
"last stimulus was a failure" False - it stimulated, per CBO and other credible analysis.
- Since when is CBO credible? Is it since they release their rosy projections of future spending based on unrealistic growth projections?
GPD is fake.
CPI is fake.
Unemployment numbers are fake.
Dollar per dollar stimulus destroys more jobs than it creates specifically because the spending on government jobs removes investment opportunity in the real economy for jobs that actually could decrease the trade deficit and debt. It's a multiplier effect in reverse, every dollar spent by government is dollar either removed from economy by inflation, which brings monetary destruction closer, or it's money borrowed, which is deferred taxation and it still brings the monetary destruction closer, as short term interest rates will not be allowed to move up, because paying the interest on the debt becomes impossible, but this will blow up in the face, once this beach ball of actual real interest rates comes rushing from under water of the artificially low interest created by federal reserve printing and buying up debt.
SS is bankrupt right now, it was always a ponzi scam, but now it's it's just leaving the space of ridiculous and coming to the sublime, with government trying to pretend there is a 'fund', so it borrows, puts the borrowed money into this so called 'fund', then borrows from the 'fund', all to create an illusion that there are ASSETS in the 'fund'. Government can't pay for anything, it's completely broke and it doesn't allow economy to fix itself by allowing it to have an actual recession, which is the fix the problem, not printing more currency.
SS is broke now, it takes in less money than it pays out. 1.87 fully employed workers in USA are paying to 1 beneficiary - an all time low.
I left a comment earlier describing how Reagan (the biggest disappointment of a POTUS) "fixed" SS by raising taxes (20% on all, 140% on high earners, while means testing and cutting benefits of high earners).
So if that's how you "fix" this pyramid, then you know it's the only fix, the only right thing to do is to allow people to opt out and see how many would.
GDP is fake, it's being in steady decline of about 10% per year for a decade, this is because CPI is fake, it's over 10-13% inflation in reality, and GDP is 70% consumption of goods made abroad (so much for Domestic in GDP).
Summary: there is no difference between macro and micro economics. As I said if you ask Krugman, he'll tell you that wars, tsunami and alien invasion is good, because it "creates stimulus", but if you ask him would he want his own house destroyed to create stimulus, he'd tell you now. Because that's MICRO economics.
What's good for the goose, good for the gander. The difference between micro and macro is BS in economics as much as it is BS in evolution.
Here is what a regulation looks like. Read and weep, this may be the only time you'll have an opportunity to be an 'employer', to hire a babysitter, and if that passes and you are in California, you'll quickly learn why hiring people is so dangerous in USA, why now everybody is trying their hardest not to hire anybody.
I just wrote a comment on this little fact, that were it not for the last real Free Market economy found on the Internet, the depression would have started 20 years ago and would have been amazing in its depth and girth
As to ENIAC - it was directly funded from war spending.
As to Internet - TCP/IP to be precise. It's great, but it was NOT VITAL to eventual appearance of world wide Internet, similarly as PHONES were created privately and so were phone networks, the computers were already communicating over other types of protocols. TCP/IP is a good protocol, but it absolutely does not mean it's the only possible protocol of communications, nor does it mean that the idea of having packet switching is extremely different from the old idea of having circuit switched networks (PSTN).
No, the TCP/IP did not have to be invented by the government, it could be a different protocol. Yes, the fact that it became ubiquitous is due to government spending, no, it doesn't mean that government must at all participate in research and development, which companies AND private individuals do ANYWAY, case in point - Steve Wozniak in a garage, not in a government funded laboratory. (Then of-course Edison, Tesla, Marconi, etc.etc.etc.)
Thanks, in a market of ideas some ideas are promoted and some are shut down, and in reality it doesn't matter if idea is right or wrong in principle, if enough people just vote with or against it.
I don't know if any of the comments make any difference (but they MAY actually for individual people, who may just figure out what is coming in time to save themselves from the economic collapse), but at the very least, when the big one hits the fan, they won't be able just to come out and say:
NOBODY SAW IT COMING.
It's just not true. It wasn't true during the dot com bubble, it wasn't true during the housing bubble and now, with the biggest bubble of all that is being inflated in government debt - it is again not true.
well, somebody would have to bring the lawsuits up, but yes, absolutely, it makes sense today in USA to hire absolutely NOBODY and to try and get rid of as many employees as possible as is.
Thank the Internet for ability to connect 2 interests together - a side that needs a job done, and a side that wants to earn some money doing that job. I just did exactly that over 99designs.com - I hired somebody to do a design. Where is this person from, that did the design for me? Who knows? I don't know, nor do I care.
What I DO care about is the fact that I did NOT have to hire anybody to do the work, I was able to just to get the work done and I paid for it, we "shook" on it, so to speak over the Internet and we went our separate ways.
AFAIC, if there was no Internet and all the opportunities that it provides for the last 20 years, the incredible depression that USA and many other Western nations would have been in by now, would have been just amazing in its magnitude.
The fact that there is STILL some economy left is the testimony to the POWER OF PEOPLE and POWER OF LACK OF REGULATIONS because that's what we have on the Internet - the Freest Market Available today.