dollar is the only first class citizen in the US. Try minting gold or silver coins... you can count on the feds investigating you, or even knocking on your door to arrest you for counterfeiting. The dollar is a preferred currency only because you need it to pay taxes. Barter with your neighbor - the IRS will want dollars and only dollars. End the privileged position of the dollar and then see how competitors do.
Afaik 'return to the gold standard' is a simplification of his stance. As a libertarian he wants people to be free to choose the currency they want to do business in. The US can issue paper money all they want but should not disallow competition. He stands for competing currencies, including commodity backed ones (gold and silver being explicitly mentioned as a legal tender in the constitution which he follows). Gold standard doesn't necessarily mean 'the state issues gold backed money' but 'there is at least one legit currency that is backed by this particular commodity called gold'. When a single body has the right to issue money with no backing it has everybody by the balls and can steal purchasing power at a whim as there is no physical constaint to prevent that (especially when it has the authority to use force like governments do). He thinks that given choice, people would flock to the ones that preserve accumulated wealth best, which fiat money doesn't do as it has inflation built in - the de facto gold standard is simply the end result of this choice.
watch his speech for mortgage bankers he gave in 2006. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj8rMwdQf6k He said that: - implied government guarantees made dirt cheap loans for ninjas possible because they take risk out of the equation - interest rate much below supply/demand value doesn't help either because there is too much money in search of fat profits - nobody cared about sustainability when prices rose, if guy defaults, lender would make a profit either way - slicing and dicing, creating MBS introduced an incentive to give as much loans as possible just to resell it to wallstreet -> lending standards being taken care of by traditionally cautious lenders went out the window - bullshit rating assessment of MBS (lowest tranche made of the worst subprime mortgages, rated BBB- needed only 5% loss to channel the damage to higher layers) - bubble can't go on forever, soon everybody will have a house and nobody will want to buy - price ceiling and subsequent drop is inevitable, MBS will blow up, people borrowing against their appreciating home will be soooo SOL.
Everything he said was common sense, no elaborate equations, aggregate demand and other bullshit.
Schiff was wrong pretty much about one thing (assuming narrow time horizon) - countries of the world are much more dedicated to keeping the dollar and the US afloat (by destroying their own currency nonetheless) than he thought. In the long run he is right though, you can wipe your ass with your own currency only so long (printing, excessive borrowing), especially when you have nothing to show for. Also current eurozone troubles bought the US some time.
another Austrian follower: Ron Paul In Sept 2001 Ron Paul said that thanks to passed legislation housing bubble will form only to pop later as all bubbles do. Common sense: make borrowing cheap and subsidize housing on top of that and there will be a bubble of epic proportions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KONpt9a6HrI
Didn't go Milton Friedman? How would you stop the tide? There are 3 billion asians who for a fraction of cost are willing to do the work harder than what the westerners have experienced in last 3 generations. If your competitor cuts cost down 50% by outsourcing, you have to do the same or else he'll get 100% of the market. Sooner or later there will be an equilibrium and no amount of protectionism and wishful thinking is going to prevent that.
I assume you feel for people who lose jobs or get a paycut but only if they watch fireworks on 4th of July. This makes you a hypocrite, because you don't notice all those poor asians who substantially improved their living thanks to the global shift of production and wealth. Free trade helps many more people than it harms.
Either way not competing with cheap labor from 3rd world and having inflated wages would be much more prone to technological solutions to drive costs down. Anything that gives competitive advantage goes, tariffs or no tariffs, so instead of hearing about Chinese stealing jobs every day, you'd be hearing that machines steal them.
getting less than the current minimum wage is being royally fucked as opposed to not having a job at all? i'd pick option #1 in a heartbeat
Minimum wage prices people with skillset worth less than X of of the market. Let's say min wage is $10 and unemployment is 10%. Removing that threshold would allow the market to find the spot where the full employment occurs, eg $8 - that would be the absolute floor. You'd get a true minimum wage set by the market forces not by a brainfart of politicians buying votes. Would it be peachy to work for that kind of money? Hell no, but wage is nothing more than a price of work set by supply and demand - it doesn't have a heart, it doesn't care about anybody, it's just a very important signal in the market.
Sept 2001: "This real-estate bubble will burst, as all bubbles do" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KONpt9a6HrI You really want more people as economically illiterate as him in Washington
the government is the only tool we have to keep it regulated, policed, and therefore fair, where the large are prevented from using their entrenched position to cheat off the backs of the small
wait, you have a government that burns like 40% of gdp and the reality is that the rich and the large never accumulated wealth at faster pace in history. Doesn't that blow a hole in your idea? Powerful government attracts sociopaths, is able to funnel taxpayers money to well connected and makes it worthwhile to lobby/buy politicians (cheaper than good old competition in the market). Are you familiar with the concept of regulatory capture? You know, that thing where the governed make the rules and set up high barriers of entry to newcomers? Regulation? Madoff has been doing his thing right under the SEC's nose for years, regulation my ass.
year 2006: 'Fuck you, Ron. I earn only so much money and i can dream of my own home thanks to fannie and freddie and cheap credit with 0 downpayment and adjustable rate. You want to take that dream away from me, so i don't like you. Fuck you again and thanks for nothing.'
year 2007 and onward: yes, you know how it ended, it wasn't pretty and the consequences are there to this day.
you see what i am getting at?
Prices are inflated to the sky because of easily available loans and they are the main cause you are forced to take a loan in the first place. If you are willing to take a loan to pay tuition, you will do exactly that, because universities know this and will set tuition high enough to take all your disposable income and everything you can borrow.
So you subsidize the idea that every kid should go to college. Now, the spectrum of jobs available is not going to change drastically so every graduate can get a nice white collar job. You *will* have people who end up flipping burgers for a living, which they could do perfectly fine out of highschool. The only difference is that they lose 5 years of wages and experience and on top of that are burdened with 100k in loans, which will cripple them for life. Central planning fails *especially* in case of complex systems because it's impossible to identify all variables accurately. Central planners also thought that affordable housing is a worthy goal, subsidized the shit out of it and look what happened. As the saying goes: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
poor understanding of economics? Quote: This real-estate bubble will burst, as all bubbles do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KONpt9a6HrI 6th September 2001, the very beginning of the bubble.
Overturning it would likely lead to states outlawing things like interracial marriage, homosexuality, and the teaching of evolutionary theory.
evolutionary theory maybe - after all americans believe in creationism en masse (aprox 50%?) but then it would be a case of 'vox populi, vox dei'. Interracial marriage and homosexuality? You seriously believe that? Also the federal government tramples constitutional rights everyday with patriot acts, warrantless wiretapping and shit, i don't see how it could get much worse than that. Bill of Rights today is just a mirage that is supposed to make people feel protected, while in reality govt pays only lip service to it.
either way parent listed only 3 points he considered important and all 3 were covered by RP.
bad examples - they are either spectacular failures or they can be easily, more efficiently managed at the state level (as dictated by the constitution nonetheless)... or both. There may be legitimate complains but show me some other candidate who doesn't merely pay lip service to his program (whatever that might be) and actually wants to reign in the spending. Government programs efficient? Surely you jest.
I don't get how obeying the supreme law of the land can be seen an argument against and justify name calling (loon, wacko, nut, etc). I'd like to see someone who doesn't wipe his ass with the constitution for a change, we've seen enough of that already at top tiers of gov't. The whole world repeatedly elects 'sane' leaders and let's see where this has gotten us to... Mountains of debt covered by the taxpayers - business as usual.
what about Ron Paul? against the USA-PATRIOT Act - check ending the disastrous War on Drugs - check kicking America's habit of getting involved in multiple simultaneous wars thousands of miles away from home - check
Libertarian or not, he represents his constituents. Constituents pay federal taxes and expect that their man in Congress will get some of that tax money back. He wants to limit the scope of the government and shrink the budget, but that pool of money that is already there will be spent either way, with or without Ron Paul. Not trying to redirect some of that money to the home district would be sheer stupidity.
It's all CYA tactics. if the loss alone was 2billion imagine how much money was on the table. I don't see how a trader could have access to such obscene amounts of resources without any authorization and oversight. I am sure that the management knew about everything and was very happy because the bets on rising swiss franc were extremely profitable and pretty much printed money. They had to be smiling at the thought of fat christmas bonuses coming their way. Everything was peachy... until the swiss central bank intervened and announced pegging to euro at fixed 1.2 : 1 rate (6th of September). Nobody saw that (and the subsequent instant 8% drop) coming so bets placed to earn on rather minute upward movements blew up with full force when such a massive change occured.
average user as in ubuntuforums? He sometimes doesn't have much choice despite living in gui land. Broken video resolution at boot time, setting windows as the default option in grub menu or removing diagnostic modes from menu are not unreasonable things to tackle.
at least you are not left with broken configuration when you mess something up. Firing up livecd to repair nonbooting system is such a pleasure for your average user...
i cherry pick? you did it first by choosing 2007. Yes, there is nothing better to show the overall performance than to pick data from the short distortion period where stuff goes up and down wildly. 10 years is a reasonably long period that smooths bumps out, 30 years is ancient history. What about 2digit inflation in the seventies that was smacked down with 20% interest rate just at the beginning of the period you suggest? Is there a double digit inflation now that will cause brutal intervention that will cause massive selloffs? I don't think so. Last 10 years was the time when everybody was supposed to get rich with stocks and real estate, yet those barbaric relics nobody takes seriously came on top (just look at the sad performance of djia and s&p - they pretty much flatlined near 2000).
15% down is a lot but still it's 1600+ (from approx 300 near 2000)
1. at least the definition used by Austrians (quantification of money pool) is precise while the common definition is a watered down crap full of substitutions and holistics that doesn't pass the smell test at the gas pump and grocery store.
2. on the other hand when you measure performance from 2000 you get +400% return on gold and bullshit on inflated dollar (check out dollar index graph going down from 120 to 80)
3. 1 month ago swiss franc lost 10% in a blink of an eye just because the swiss central bank said so (peg to euro 1.2:1). Safety my ass. Besides during the meltdown all currencies went down against the dollar (big selloffs of non-US stuff) so it's not that cash is a magical protection in hard times. Monies I use every day dropped like a stone then.
if they didn't nationalize banks with all their gigantic debts and liabilities they would be just fine, their problems have nothing to do with their low CIT rate.
Ethiopia (that dirt poor country where majority of population is hungry all the time) has nothing to rob and went from 64 to 90M since 2000, that's almost +50% - thanks to foreign aid no less. Do you think the rest of the world will manage to keep them all alive when they hit 150, 200M? what about 300?
are you serious? you would kill standards of living in the west right off the bat and freeze the 3rd world in the stone age. The West is rich because for the most of history it was most technologically advanced and had access to pretty much all the resources of the world. Now 3 billion people come out of poverty and now the West has to compete for resources that were taken for granted in the past. The West is on the way south until the wealth levels adjust globally and there is no way around it but your ideas would greatly accelerate that process.
Agreed, i wouldn't want to be a factory worker in a dirt poor country but guess what - their other options available at the local job market are even worse. Local employers couldn't care less about the PR problems western companies take under consideration, so they exploit workers even more. Ban of child labor is an excellent example of what's wrong with such a wishful thinking - when 3rd world children are unable to work in factories they are not suddenly allowed to have a happy childhood with no worries. Their families still expect them to bring money because that's the matter of life and death. If you don't allow to 'exploit' them in factories they will go into crime, prostitution or will be mutilated to be better beggars. One thing is certain - they will work, one way or another. Problem certainly won't go away only because you legistate it to go away.
How is it possible that the bleeding heart do-gooders never think about the unintended consequences that usually are worse than the problems they want to fix.
Slashdot Mirror
so uninstall retarded scrollbars and global menus if you don't like them, where is the problem?
if typing web (as in web browser) will autocomplete to firefox then yes
Memory:
noscript, adblock, flashblock to cut down unnecessary bullshit
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers
Bring back the protocol in the URL bar:
about:config -> browser.urlbar.trimURLs = false
dollar is the only first class citizen in the US. Try minting gold or silver coins... you can count on the feds investigating you, or even knocking on your door to arrest you for counterfeiting.
The dollar is a preferred currency only because you need it to pay taxes. Barter with your neighbor - the IRS will want dollars and only dollars. End the privileged position of the dollar and then see how competitors do.
Afaik 'return to the gold standard' is a simplification of his stance. As a libertarian he wants people to be free to choose the currency they want to do business in. The US can issue paper money all they want but should not disallow competition.
He stands for competing currencies, including commodity backed ones (gold and silver being explicitly mentioned as a legal tender in the constitution which he follows).
Gold standard doesn't necessarily mean 'the state issues gold backed money' but 'there is at least one legit currency that is backed by this particular commodity called gold'. When a single body has the right to issue money with no backing it has everybody by the balls and can steal purchasing power at a whim as there is no physical constaint to prevent that (especially when it has the authority to use force like governments do). He thinks that given choice, people would flock to the ones that preserve accumulated wealth best, which fiat money doesn't do as it has inflation built in - the de facto gold standard is simply the end result of this choice.
watch his speech for mortgage bankers he gave in 2006.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj8rMwdQf6k
He said that:
- implied government guarantees made dirt cheap loans for ninjas possible because they take risk out of the equation
- interest rate much below supply/demand value doesn't help either because there is too much money in search of fat profits
- nobody cared about sustainability when prices rose, if guy defaults, lender would make a profit either way
- slicing and dicing, creating MBS introduced an incentive to give as much loans as possible just to resell it to wallstreet -> lending standards being taken care of by traditionally cautious lenders went out the window
- bullshit rating assessment of MBS (lowest tranche made of the worst subprime mortgages, rated BBB- needed only 5% loss to channel the damage to higher layers)
- bubble can't go on forever, soon everybody will have a house and nobody will want to buy - price ceiling and subsequent drop is inevitable, MBS will blow up, people borrowing against their appreciating home will be soooo SOL.
Everything he said was common sense, no elaborate equations, aggregate demand and other bullshit.
Schiff was wrong pretty much about one thing (assuming narrow time horizon) - countries of the world are much more dedicated to keeping the dollar and the US afloat (by destroying their own currency nonetheless) than he thought. In the long run he is right though, you can wipe your ass with your own currency only so long (printing, excessive borrowing), especially when you have nothing to show for. Also current eurozone troubles bought the US some time.
another Austrian follower: Ron Paul
In Sept 2001 Ron Paul said that thanks to passed legislation housing bubble will form only to pop later as all bubbles do. Common sense: make borrowing cheap and subsidize housing on top of that and there will be a bubble of epic proportions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KONpt9a6HrI
Didn't go Milton Friedman? How would you stop the tide? There are 3 billion asians who for a fraction of cost are willing to do the work harder than what the westerners have experienced in last 3 generations. If your competitor cuts cost down 50% by outsourcing, you have to do the same or else he'll get 100% of the market.
Sooner or later there will be an equilibrium and no amount of protectionism and wishful thinking is going to prevent that.
I assume you feel for people who lose jobs or get a paycut but only if they watch fireworks on 4th of July. This makes you a hypocrite, because you don't notice all those poor asians who substantially improved their living thanks to the global shift of production and wealth. Free trade helps many more people than it harms.
Either way not competing with cheap labor from 3rd world and having inflated wages would be much more prone to technological solutions to drive costs down. Anything that gives competitive advantage goes, tariffs or no tariffs, so instead of hearing about Chinese stealing jobs every day, you'd be hearing that machines steal them.
getting less than the current minimum wage is being royally fucked as opposed to not having a job at all?
i'd pick option #1 in a heartbeat
Minimum wage prices people with skillset worth less than X of of the market. Let's say min wage is $10 and unemployment is 10%. Removing that threshold would allow the market to find the spot where the full employment occurs, eg $8 - that would be the absolute floor. You'd get a true minimum wage set by the market forces not by a brainfart of politicians buying votes. Would it be peachy to work for that kind of money? Hell no, but wage is nothing more than a price of work set by supply and demand - it doesn't have a heart, it doesn't care about anybody, it's just a very important signal in the market.
tell that to all those unemployed kids with worthless degrees. Apparently the shift is not as drastic as you picture it.
Sept 2001: "This real-estate bubble will burst, as all bubbles do"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KONpt9a6HrI
You really want more people as economically illiterate as him in Washington
the government is the only tool we have to keep it regulated, policed, and therefore fair, where the large are prevented from using their entrenched position to cheat off the backs of the small
wait, you have a government that burns like 40% of gdp and the reality is that the rich and the large never accumulated wealth at faster pace in history. Doesn't that blow a hole in your idea?
Powerful government attracts sociopaths, is able to funnel taxpayers money to well connected and makes it worthwhile to lobby/buy politicians (cheaper than good old competition in the market). Are you familiar with the concept of regulatory capture? You know, that thing where the governed make the rules and set up high barriers of entry to newcomers?
Regulation? Madoff has been doing his thing right under the SEC's nose for years, regulation my ass.
year 2006:
'Fuck you, Ron. I earn only so much money and i can dream of my own home thanks to fannie and freddie and cheap credit with 0 downpayment and adjustable rate. You want to take that dream away from me, so i don't like you. Fuck you again and thanks for nothing.'
year 2007 and onward:
yes, you know how it ended, it wasn't pretty and the consequences are there to this day.
you see what i am getting at?
Prices are inflated to the sky because of easily available loans and they are the main cause you are forced to take a loan in the first place. If you are willing to take a loan to pay tuition, you will do exactly that, because universities know this and will set tuition high enough to take all your disposable income and everything you can borrow.
So you subsidize the idea that every kid should go to college. Now, the spectrum of jobs available is not going to change drastically so every graduate can get a nice white collar job. You *will* have people who end up flipping burgers for a living, which they could do perfectly fine out of highschool. The only difference is that they lose 5 years of wages and experience and on top of that are burdened with 100k in loans, which will cripple them for life.
Central planning fails *especially* in case of complex systems because it's impossible to identify all variables accurately. Central planners also thought that affordable housing is a worthy goal, subsidized the shit out of it and look what happened. As the saying goes: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
poor understanding of economics?
Quote: This real-estate bubble will burst, as all bubbles do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KONpt9a6HrI
6th September 2001, the very beginning of the bubble.
Overturning it would likely lead to states outlawing things like interracial marriage, homosexuality, and the teaching of evolutionary theory.
evolutionary theory maybe - after all americans believe in creationism en masse (aprox 50%?) but then it would be a case of 'vox populi, vox dei'. Interracial marriage and homosexuality? You seriously believe that?
Also the federal government tramples constitutional rights everyday with patriot acts, warrantless wiretapping and shit, i don't see how it could get much worse than that. Bill of Rights today is just a mirage that is supposed to make people feel protected, while in reality govt pays only lip service to it.
either way parent listed only 3 points he considered important and all 3 were covered by RP.
bad examples - they are either spectacular failures or they can be easily, more efficiently managed at the state level (as dictated by the constitution nonetheless)... or both. There may be legitimate complains but show me some other candidate who doesn't merely pay lip service to his program (whatever that might be) and actually wants to reign in the spending.
Government programs efficient? Surely you jest.
I don't get how obeying the supreme law of the land can be seen an argument against and justify name calling (loon, wacko, nut, etc). I'd like to see someone who doesn't wipe his ass with the constitution for a change, we've seen enough of that already at top tiers of gov't. The whole world repeatedly elects 'sane' leaders and let's see where this has gotten us to... Mountains of debt covered by the taxpayers - business as usual.
what about Ron Paul?
against the USA-PATRIOT Act - check
ending the disastrous War on Drugs - check
kicking America's habit of getting involved in multiple simultaneous wars thousands of miles away from home - check
Libertarian or not, he represents his constituents. Constituents pay federal taxes and expect that their man in Congress will get some of that tax money back. He wants to limit the scope of the government and shrink the budget, but that pool of money that is already there will be spent either way, with or without Ron Paul. Not trying to redirect some of that money to the home district would be sheer stupidity.
It's all CYA tactics.
if the loss alone was 2billion imagine how much money was on the table. I don't see how a trader could have access to such obscene amounts of resources without any authorization and oversight.
I am sure that the management knew about everything and was very happy because the bets on rising swiss franc were extremely profitable and pretty much printed money. They had to be smiling at the thought of fat christmas bonuses coming their way. Everything was peachy... until the swiss central bank intervened and announced pegging to euro at fixed 1.2 : 1 rate (6th of September). Nobody saw that (and the subsequent instant 8% drop) coming so bets placed to earn on rather minute upward movements blew up with full force when such a massive change occured.
average user as in ubuntuforums? He sometimes doesn't have much choice despite living in gui land. Broken video resolution at boot time, setting windows as the default option in grub menu or removing diagnostic modes from menu are not unreasonable things to tackle.
at least you are not left with broken configuration when you mess something up. Firing up livecd to repair nonbooting system is such a pleasure for your average user...
i cherry pick? you did it first by choosing 2007. Yes, there is nothing better to show the overall performance than to pick data from the short distortion period where stuff goes up and down wildly. 10 years is a reasonably long period that smooths bumps out, 30 years is ancient history. What about 2digit inflation in the seventies that was smacked down with 20% interest rate just at the beginning of the period you suggest? Is there a double digit inflation now that will cause brutal intervention that will cause massive selloffs? I don't think so.
Last 10 years was the time when everybody was supposed to get rich with stocks and real estate, yet those barbaric relics nobody takes seriously came on top (just look at the sad performance of djia and s&p - they pretty much flatlined near 2000).
15% down is a lot but still it's 1600+ (from approx 300 near 2000)
1. at least the definition used by Austrians (quantification of money pool) is precise while the common definition is a watered down crap full of substitutions and holistics that doesn't pass the smell test at the gas pump and grocery store.
2. on the other hand when you measure performance from 2000 you get +400% return on gold and bullshit on inflated dollar (check out dollar index graph going down from 120 to 80)
3. 1 month ago swiss franc lost 10% in a blink of an eye just because the swiss central bank said so (peg to euro 1.2:1). Safety my ass. Besides during the meltdown all currencies went down against the dollar (big selloffs of non-US stuff) so it's not that cash is a magical protection in hard times. Monies I use every day dropped like a stone then.
why lend to unreliable businesses when you can borrow at 0% from the fed, buy treasuries at 2-3% and earn risk free money?
if they didn't nationalize banks with all their gigantic debts and liabilities they would be just fine, their problems have nothing to do with their low CIT rate.
Ethiopia (that dirt poor country where majority of population is hungry all the time) has nothing to rob and went from 64 to 90M since 2000, that's almost +50% - thanks to foreign aid no less. Do you think the rest of the world will manage to keep them all alive when they hit 150, 200M? what about 300?
are you serious? you would kill standards of living in the west right off the bat and freeze the 3rd world in the stone age.
The West is rich because for the most of history it was most technologically advanced and had access to pretty much all the resources of the world. Now 3 billion people come out of poverty and now the West has to compete for resources that were taken for granted in the past. The West is on the way south until the wealth levels adjust globally and there is no way around it but your ideas would greatly accelerate that process.
Agreed, i wouldn't want to be a factory worker in a dirt poor country but guess what - their other options available at the local job market are even worse. Local employers couldn't care less about the PR problems western companies take under consideration, so they exploit workers even more.
Ban of child labor is an excellent example of what's wrong with such a wishful thinking - when 3rd world children are unable to work in factories they are not suddenly allowed to have a happy childhood with no worries. Their families still expect them to bring money because that's the matter of life and death. If you don't allow to 'exploit' them in factories they will go into crime, prostitution or will be mutilated to be better beggars. One thing is certain - they will work, one way or another. Problem certainly won't go away only because you legistate it to go away.
How is it possible that the bleeding heart do-gooders never think about the unintended consequences that usually are worse than the problems they want to fix.