unlike you, I do not give people that much credit when it comes to the logic, reasoning and intelligence in general. Especially not the people who work for government.
Do you regard that past decade of behaviour was sustainable
- no. And it wasn't sustainable since the Fed and SS were established.
The whole "social security is a ponzi scheme" is bullshit: everyone takes part in SS whereas a ponzi scheme collapses because there are not enough new investors to give profitable returns the older investors.
- you missed the point. There was never 'investment', it was always a ponzi scheme from get go. There was never a fund. Whatever they consider a 'surplus' is US treasury bonds, and those are like checks to yourself - don't make you any richer, but worse, they also have to be sold on bond market, and this means that it's debt that is funding SS, not investments.
If gov't wanted people to have real retirement savings, it would have never taxed income - that's the only way to allow people to do their own real investment. But the gov't also would have to NOT have Federal reserve.
Federal reserve was a ponzi scheme from get go as well, as the idea was to allow gov't to print reserve notes without having any real gold reserves to back up the notes.
If it is a ponzi scheme, when is it considered that it will fail and what's retarding it?
- being a reserve currency.
US Fed started printing in 1913, by 1920 US was in the deepest recession it ever experienced before than, and it wasn't local, it was country wide.
Harding fixed that recession by firing/cutting gov't budget by 70%.
Today to do the same the budget must be cut by 99.9%! (that's not a factorial, that's just an exclamation sign.)
Past the 1920-22 recession, USA Fed was printing to prop-up UK pound, and another bubble was created (when you print/counterfeit currency, you force other asset classes to go up in prices, in that case it was equity, US stocks.)
1929 turned into Great Depression due to FDRs policies of gov't spending, rather than doing what should have been done - allowing the market to restructure by removing government imposed limits and government spending.
That depression lasted until WWII ended and then USA had a boom (not due to high taxes, as nobody was paying them) but USA had boom because it had no competition in labor market around the world because nobody was hired around the world, as the rest of the producing nations had their capital/infrastructure destroyed.
This lasted through 50s and 60s. Then Nixon decided to go off the gold standard completely, and also China opened up for business (they went through a decade of death due to hunger before than) and so US capital started leaving the country, as the country was top heavy from gov't/taxes/regulations/corruption.
US had various 'bail outs' in its history, all having to do with borrowing/printing money, all adding a temporary boost to the spending in the economy, but none having a good lasting effect, as once the subsidies stop, the effect is a greater collapse. The response by the government is then more subsidized spending (borrowing/printing/setting extremely low interest rates,) which leads to worsening of the economy and deepening of the incoming collapse.
USA spends too much on its government and it's killing its savings because of 0% interest, so capital leaves. It also chases away production due to its laws/regulations/taxes, so jobs leave.
Clinton had a moment when the Internet bubble grew due to new business ideas, most of which failed, so the 20million+ jobs created were really unsustainable, and then came the collapse of that and Greenspan set interest rates to 1% as a bailout/stimulus response.
Bush walked into that recession, which he didn't want, so Bernanke set interest rates to 0%.
That, coupled with lack of jobs and lack of mortgage lending standards, due to gov't agencies such as HUD, FHA, programs such as Freddie/Fannie, which incidentally decreased its securitization standards and since 1992 to 2000 had the number of % of people who would be p
Interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials and business associates and a review of documents show that Mr. Montgomery and his associates received more than $20 million in government contracts by claiming that software he had developed could help stop Al Qaedaâ(TM)s next attack on the United States. But the technology appears to have been a hoax, and a series of government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Air Force, repeatedly missed the warning signs, the records and interviews show.
- this is from the story at hand.
For 8 years CIA missed the warning signs?
I agree, this sounds more effective and intelligent than I gave it credit for. It only took 8 years to understand that this was not a magic piece of software.
Hey, if those they report to have a preference for one 'kind' of intelligence over another, it's easy to see that intelligence agency then becomes not intelligence gathering agency, but just a propaganda machine. For that kind of work you don't need to 'gather intelligence', you just need to put the expected words into the expected reports.
But to have that, you need not a conspiracy, but a massive bureaucracy that is terrible at its job in totality and only cares about funding and job security. In that environment there is no effective difference between ineffectiveness/stupidity and malicious intent.
If that's the case, then CIA is WORSE than useless.
Madoff didn't set up the biggest ponzi scheme in history.
THIS is the biggest ponzi scheme in history, followed by this.
Both are government creations, btw.
As to having those crises described as 'planned'. Well, yeah. Every failure can be described as planned if you use the word 'planned' in a peculiar manner and add a fresh doze conspiracy theories to it, mix it up with the complacency and stupidity... your ideology is not-non-similar to that of a creationist.
As long as you do it BIG ENOUGH you not only do not get 'caught' (wtf?) but you get tens or more BILLIONS of dollars and gov't "thank you"s, not jail. Jail is so 'early last century', it doesn't happen for defrauding government anymore.
What's 'defrauding' anyway? Who cares today if you steal some money that the Fed prints? Nobody cares. US is destroying its currency with all that printing - nobody is going to jail for that one, and that will end up taking down the entire economy.
It's fairly typical for geeks to recount times where they felt they were surrounded by clueless idiots controlling everything around them. Yet, oddly enough, the organisations still manage to function and nothing happens to indicate a serious failure of operation
if your story is remotely true, then you are an idiot.
You could have made millions on this - everybody is in on the game, so are you holier than the rest of them?
You should have approached this fella privately and 'sold' him a module to his application that would also provide ability to track all GPS systems installed in all cars/other vehicles with just a few simple clicks.
If/when he would have told you: "BS/impossible", you could have just point back at him and winÐ and said something like - "not less possible than whatever you are selling", and you would have been in business.
Was the steel industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
- I don't know about this in USA, however I bet it was.
Was the oil industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
- absolutely.
Was the railroad industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
- absolutely.
Multiple players within industries are always more innovative if they are not government oligopolies/monopolies. Most of the rail industry always had government in it, and I assume so was most of steel (at least this was true in Russia since the times of Petr and Demidov)
It is possible that one player takes over a market segment for a while and as long as this player was providing the market with a product of a quality/price that market accepted this domination could continue, until some new improvement in technology came along that reduced the cost of entry for new players in the market.
(Standard Oil)
However sometimes the monopoly in question is very efficient for a very long time, the way it was with Alcoa Aluminum and it could provide the product at very low prices that nobody could really compete on price with and then the competition did the bad thing - used government intervention to break up the monopoly and decrease efficiency and start providing the same product for higher price!
That's quite rich, coming from an AC. Everything I write is based on facts. I am not here to give you citations any more than you are here to pay me for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe so, maybe you are right. Halliburton OTOH doesn't have such qualms.
Yes, that's why they are poor, while Halliburton and Co are raking in billions.
unlike you, I do not give people that much credit when it comes to the logic, reasoning and intelligence in general. Especially not the people who work for government.
This is not surprising given what the electorate looks like and it has been known for thousands of years.
Do you regard that past decade of behaviour was sustainable
- no. And it wasn't sustainable since the Fed and SS were established.
The whole "social security is a ponzi scheme" is bullshit: everyone takes part in SS whereas a ponzi scheme collapses because there are not enough new investors to give profitable returns the older investors.
- you missed the point. There was never 'investment', it was always a ponzi scheme from get go. There was never a fund. Whatever they consider a 'surplus' is US treasury bonds, and those are like checks to yourself - don't make you any richer, but worse, they also have to be sold on bond market, and this means that it's debt that is funding SS, not investments.
If gov't wanted people to have real retirement savings, it would have never taxed income - that's the only way to allow people to do their own real investment. But the gov't also would have to NOT have Federal reserve.
Federal reserve was a ponzi scheme from get go as well, as the idea was to allow gov't to print reserve notes without having any real gold reserves to back up the notes.
If it is a ponzi scheme, when is it considered that it will fail and what's retarding it?
- being a reserve currency.
US Fed started printing in 1913, by 1920 US was in the deepest recession it ever experienced before than, and it wasn't local, it was country wide.
Harding fixed that recession by firing/cutting gov't budget by 70%.
Today to do the same the budget must be cut by 99.9%! (that's not a factorial, that's just an exclamation sign.)
Past the 1920-22 recession, USA Fed was printing to prop-up UK pound, and another bubble was created (when you print/counterfeit currency, you force other asset classes to go up in prices, in that case it was equity, US stocks.)
1929 turned into Great Depression due to FDRs policies of gov't spending, rather than doing what should have been done - allowing the market to restructure by removing government imposed limits and government spending.
That depression lasted until WWII ended and then USA had a boom (not due to high taxes, as nobody was paying them) but USA had boom because it had no competition in labor market around the world because nobody was hired around the world, as the rest of the producing nations had their capital/infrastructure destroyed.
This lasted through 50s and 60s. Then Nixon decided to go off the gold standard completely, and also China opened up for business (they went through a decade of death due to hunger before than) and so US capital started leaving the country, as the country was top heavy from gov't/taxes/regulations/corruption.
US had various 'bail outs' in its history, all having to do with borrowing/printing money, all adding a temporary boost to the spending in the economy, but none having a good lasting effect, as once the subsidies stop, the effect is a greater collapse. The response by the government is then more subsidized spending (borrowing/printing/setting extremely low interest rates,) which leads to worsening of the economy and deepening of the incoming collapse.
USA spends too much on its government and it's killing its savings because of 0% interest, so capital leaves. It also chases away production due to its laws/regulations/taxes, so jobs leave.
Clinton had a moment when the Internet bubble grew due to new business ideas, most of which failed, so the 20million+ jobs created were really unsustainable, and then came the collapse of that and Greenspan set interest rates to 1% as a bailout/stimulus response.
Bush walked into that recession, which he didn't want, so Bernanke set interest rates to 0%.
That, coupled with lack of jobs and lack of mortgage lending standards, due to gov't agencies such as HUD, FHA, programs such as Freddie/Fannie, which incidentally decreased its securitization standards and since 1992 to 2000 had the number of % of people who would be p
CIA reports to the National Intelligence Director and the POTUS.
Now you, try again, this time with a better argument than CIA is intelligent and/or efficient at it.
It's sort of ironic that another product with the same name (Plan B) is used to get rid of unwanted 'intrusion', not promote it...
Interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials and business associates and a review of documents show that Mr. Montgomery and his associates received more than $20 million in government contracts by claiming that software he had developed could help stop Al Qaedaâ(TM)s next attack on the United States. But the technology appears to have been a hoax, and a series of government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Air Force, repeatedly missed the warning signs, the records and interviews show.
- this is from the story at hand.
For 8 years CIA missed the warning signs?
I agree, this sounds more effective and intelligent than I gave it credit for. It only took 8 years to understand that this was not a magic piece of software.
Hey, if those they report to have a preference for one 'kind' of intelligence over another, it's easy to see that intelligence agency then becomes not intelligence gathering agency, but just a propaganda machine. For that kind of work you don't need to 'gather intelligence', you just need to put the expected words into the expected reports.
But to have that, you need not a conspiracy, but a massive bureaucracy that is terrible at its job in totality and only cares about funding and job security. In that environment there is no effective difference between ineffectiveness/stupidity and malicious intent.
If that's the case, then CIA is WORSE than useless.
Oh, please.
Madoff didn't set up the biggest ponzi scheme in history.
THIS is the biggest ponzi scheme in history, followed by this.
Both are government creations, btw.
As to having those crises described as 'planned'. Well, yeah. Every failure can be described as planned if you use the word 'planned' in a peculiar manner and add a fresh doze conspiracy theories to it, mix it up with the complacency and stupidity... your ideology is not-non-similar to that of a creationist.
if national agencies do not work for the better of the nation, then they definitely have no place in this world.
Oh, please, stop the drama.
As long as you do it BIG ENOUGH you not only do not get 'caught' (wtf?) but you get tens or more BILLIONS of dollars and gov't "thank you"s, not jail. Jail is so 'early last century', it doesn't happen for defrauding government anymore.
What's 'defrauding' anyway? Who cares today if you steal some money that the Fed prints? Nobody cares. US is destroying its currency with all that printing - nobody is going to jail for that one, and that will end up taking down the entire economy.
effective?
no major failures?
intelligent?
useful?
You are not safer even when they are not necessarily ignorant.
It's fairly typical for geeks to recount times where they felt they were surrounded by clueless idiots controlling everything around them. Yet, oddly enough, the organisations still manage to function and nothing happens to indicate a serious failure of operation
- really?
nothing happens?
just in case, some more questions about the intelligence's intelligence
The Arab 'revolutions' caught the 'intelligence' by surprise after all.
aaaaa ooooo ok but are they less incompetent or what?
Really? less incompetent?
Ha ha ha ha! You have just made my day.
ade 651 and the company's website - they sell them to gov'ts and military at around 60,000USD/pop.
GT200 - these are cheaper I think, about half the price of ADE. They are sold to governments.
Quadro Tracker
Sniffex
hedd1
h3tec
etc. all of these are sold to and bought by various government institutions. From schools to military to airports to subway systems, etc.etc.
Makes you so much securer. Or does it? Reliance on these devices KILLS people, who 'use' them and then believe the place is safe.
if your story is remotely true, then you are an idiot.
You could have made millions on this - everybody is in on the game, so are you holier than the rest of them?
You should have approached this fella privately and 'sold' him a module to his application that would also provide ability to track all GPS systems installed in all cars/other vehicles with just a few simple clicks.
If/when he would have told you: "BS/impossible", you could have just point back at him and winÐ and said something like - "not less possible than whatever you are selling", and you would have been in business.
Millions, you could have made millions.
or do the opposite. Tired of the boring unnoticed normal guy look?
Nothing that I can see is unusual about me in anyway.
- orly? let's find something.
I'm in a happy, stable marriage with my wife.
- we see what you did here.
there is plenty of unusual about you in at least one way.
it didn't take anything at all to predict this - it was too bloody obvious and reasoning was sound too.
Was the steel industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
- I don't know about this in USA, however I bet it was.
Was the oil industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
- absolutely.
Was the railroad industry more innovative than a government monopoly?
- absolutely.
Multiple players within industries are always more innovative if they are not government oligopolies/monopolies. Most of the rail industry always had government in it, and I assume so was most of steel (at least this was true in Russia since the times of Petr and Demidov)
It is possible that one player takes over a market segment for a while and as long as this player was providing the market with a product of a quality/price that market accepted this domination could continue, until some new improvement in technology came along that reduced the cost of entry for new players in the market.
(Standard Oil)
However sometimes the monopoly in question is very efficient for a very long time, the way it was with Alcoa Aluminum and it could provide the product at very low prices that nobody could really compete on price with and then the competition did the bad thing - used government intervention to break up the monopoly and decrease efficiency and start providing the same product for higher price!
That's quite rich, coming from an AC. Everything I write is based on facts. I am not here to give you citations any more than you are here to pay me for them.
Food is expensive because USA is printing money and most other countries are printing to stay on par.