Hoo boy, I read some of that web site Diesel references... When I got to the part that stated 'The oldest known history book, the Bible, is replete with references to gold and silver as money' I could tell that it wasn't worth reading any further.
Money is ANYTHING (slips of paper, baskets of corn, white women, etc) that satisfies these three requirements: 1.Acts as a unit of exchange 2.Acts as a unit of account 3.Acts as a store of value
Federal Reserve notes satisfy all three of these requirements. The status of a legal substitute for 'money' as defined by the constitution is satisfied by the way they are created and the writing on them. Each one states that it is 'legal tender'. That's legal TENDER, not legal MONEY. Each further states that it is a Federal Reserve Note, and makes absolutely no pretense of being from the United States Treasury. (The signatures of the Treasury officials are there to authorize its use as legal tender.)
I'm not making any of this up; Federal Reserve Notes are legally kosher as tender, really, regardless of some lawyer's bible-thumping conspiracy theory!
The least inaccurate fact listed by this Diesel person is that the Federal Reserve is about as federal as Fed Ex. It would be better to say that the Fed is as federal as the U.S. Post Office, also a private non-profit corporation. Unlike the post office which frequently operates at a loss, the Federal Reserve returns its operating profits to the Treasury every year to the tune of several billion (yes, billion with a 'b') dollars every year. It is the *only* federal agency or quasi-agency to do this every year.
A dollar in 1900 bought a fair amount more than a dollar today but this numbers game is offset by the rise in wages and living standards since 1900. How much did a used car cost relative to the average wage in 1900?
Red seal silver cetificates were Federal Reserve notes. 'Fiat' paper? This language is too loaded to warrant comment.
US dollars don't exist... Can you spare a quarter? Coins fit the constitutional definition of 'money'. Notice that they do not have 'this quarter is legal tender' stamped on them.
Federal Reserve notes are completely legal by the constitution's definition of money. Actually read one sometime and see. (Or see the point above)
Like the other person who has condescended to reply to this wanker who has somehow managed to score 2 points for spreading misconceptions, I am annoyed and depressed how many people spew on topics in which they so obviously have only such understanding as it suits them.
I could rant for a while on this topic (and actually did, only to erase it) but won't to spare/. an insomnia-curing lecture on the constitutional definition of money versus Federal Reserve notes... simply put, the dollar bill in your wallet violates absolutely none of the constitutional definitions on money, although it is extrememly clever how they get around it.
All the information you need to see out how they're completely legal is printed right on every one of the things. (I'll just leave it at that.)
In 'Cryptonomicon', Goto Dengo says that General McArthur understood that gold is 'dead wealth'. What he meant by this is that gold is a storage place for work done in the past. It does not, in itself, take the place of new work (though it can be used in normal circumstances to buy work from people who will then themselves use it as storage).
Post-war Japan needed day to day work for the populace to rebuild the country, both in terms of physical infrastructure and morale, and not a just a bunch of gold... it's difficult to purchase from elsewhere the rebuilding an entire bombed out country.
Income taxes are hideously inefficient compared to sales taxes!
Just see how many people manage to cheat the IRS... You can get paid in cash and report only a fraction (if any) of your income, etc, etc. But how the heck do you cheat a sales tax? No amount of fast talking will get you past even the dimmest cash register jockey without paying your full tab, which automatically includes the sales tax.
It took the IRS years and years to catch Al Capone for tax evasion, but when he sent a flunky to buy cigars you can trust he got charged sales tax. All the criminals who launder all their income and all the people who can afford really good accountants pay little or no income tax, but they go to buy their Rolls Royce and the dealer will hit them up for the sales tax.
It is a LOT easier to catch one merchant who has shady bookkeeping than to catch the thousands of citizens who patronize that merchant who might be cheating on personal income taxes.
Do away with income, cap gains, inheritance, etc taxes and have sales tax on everything with 'luxury' items taxed at a progressively higher rate. This will catch EVERYONE according to how much they use. After all, the more you consume, the more you have to use infrastructure.
When I first saw Dune I asked, 'What the heck was all that about? Who was that freaky old hag with the torture box?' and my dad said, 'Oh! She was the leader of the Bene Geserit who do this and that and the other and all those other people were doing their thing because of these other reasons'. I protested, 'how the heck did you derive all that?!?' and he said, 'Oh, I read the five novels that go along with it.'
EXACT same thing happened with Akira... (except with my roommate, not dad). She thought it was cool and I was lost. 'Oh, but so-and-so did all that for all these reasons and I know because I've read this huge series of books from which the movie was condensed.'
The people who made Akira made it for the people who had already read the mangas. For anyone else, it's a bunch of disconnected images (though I admit well done disconnected images) about characters who have no discernable motivations.
At Colorado State University, my senior business capstone class played The Business Policy Game" which simulates business strategy between up to 8 companies per class. The overall master game program controls up to 12 'worlds' worth of 8 companies each (making it great for a large number of players), but players only compete with the 7 other companies in their own 'world'. The profs here organized the companies to consist of three students each, a CEO, CFO, and COO, but it could be organized however you like.
Companies are in three regions of the US and a South America country called 'Sereno' that was demographically somewhere between Mexico and Brazil. That way players only had to make one currency exchange and two GDP factors into account. Players have to mainly make production, advertising, pricing, and shipping decisions.
This made the learning curve was really light (compared to the Management Game by Center for Interactive Simulations) and only really took one class period with the prof clearing up detail questions from time to time. The game lasts for up to 6 game years with a decision/turn every quarter for a total of 24 turns.
We only played for 4 game years (two turns were due per week for the second half of the semester), and our grades depended on how well we did... my company came in third of eight; got a 'B'.
From an IT/game management point of view, it was pretty easy to set up. Students entered decisions at lab workstations to the server where the master console was installed and the profs sauntered by twice a week to run the master. Students then logged back on and got their own reports on what happened the last turn.
To sum up: the Business Policy Game was easy to learn, easy to play, and most students had fun with it.
While extreme leveraging was a major factor in 1929, the legal limit today is still 2x. And then a lot of those daytrader places have schemes in place that allow 100% leveraging, which is illegal.
This is a Federal Reserve Banking Supervision report from Dec, 1998, and presumably they have made a serious attempt to crack down on the daytrading houses, but the 2x limit remains as far as I know.
The book in question is giving entirely too much emphasis to the daytrading community who make technology stocks bounce wildly. You have to realise that the VAST bulk of monies in the US stock market are controlled by professional mutual fund managers. These people are NOT given to hysterical trading as they are looking after other people's money and on a decades long time frame. Sure, technology stocks may or may not be volitile and this causes big news, but they do not make up the majority of companies listed. The entire economy does NOT ride along with the Wall Street indices. Remember, the stock market crash in 1929 lead to the run on banks and it was failure of a lot of banks and everyone losing their money that way which brought on the Great Depression. It was NOT the crash of the market itself that ruined the show. Today we have FDIC to keep the banks afloat, and really, I don't think anyone is going to be running to the bank to draw out cash money in case the bank fails. As a populace we have MUCH too much faith in the banking system (even if we don't really LIKE our individual banks). All in all, the tech stocks are horribly overvalued, IMHO, but so what? In the big picture and in the long run, they'll settle out to what they are 'supposed' to be, even if it is a rocky ride for some individual daytraders. Meanwhile, trade in your options ASAP and invest your money in a variety of stock types and you'll be fine.
Slashdot Mirror
Money is ANYTHING (slips of paper, baskets of corn, white women, etc) that satisfies these three requirements:
1.Acts as a unit of exchange
2.Acts as a unit of account
3.Acts as a store of value
Federal Reserve notes satisfy all three of these requirements. The status of a legal substitute for 'money' as defined by the constitution is satisfied by the way they are created and the writing on them. Each one states that it is 'legal tender'. That's legal TENDER, not legal MONEY. Each further states that it is a Federal Reserve Note, and makes absolutely no pretense of being from the United States Treasury. (The signatures of the Treasury officials are there to authorize its use as legal tender.)
I'm not making any of this up; Federal Reserve Notes are legally kosher as tender, really, regardless of some lawyer's bible-thumping conspiracy theory!
A dollar in 1900 bought a fair amount more than a dollar today but this numbers game is offset by the rise in wages and living standards since 1900. How much did a used car cost relative to the average wage in 1900?
Red seal silver cetificates were Federal Reserve notes. 'Fiat' paper? This language is too loaded to warrant comment.
US dollars don't exist... Can you spare a quarter? Coins fit the constitutional definition of 'money'. Notice that they do not have 'this quarter is legal tender' stamped on them.
Federal Reserve notes are completely legal by the constitution's definition of money. Actually read one sometime and see. (Or see the point above)
Like the other person who has condescended to reply to this wanker who has somehow managed to score 2 points for spreading misconceptions, I am annoyed and depressed how many people spew on topics in which they so obviously have only such understanding as it suits them.
All the information you need to see out how they're completely legal is printed right on every one of the things. (I'll just leave it at that.)
Post-war Japan needed day to day work for the populace to rebuild the country, both in terms of physical infrastructure and morale, and not a just a bunch of gold... it's difficult to purchase from elsewhere the rebuilding an entire bombed out country.
Just see how many people manage to cheat the IRS... You can get paid in cash and report only a fraction (if any) of your income, etc, etc. But how the heck do you cheat a sales tax? No amount of fast talking will get you past even the dimmest cash register jockey without paying your full tab, which automatically includes the sales tax.
It took the IRS years and years to catch Al Capone for tax evasion, but when he sent a flunky to buy cigars you can trust he got charged sales tax. All the criminals who launder all their income and all the people who can afford really good accountants pay little or no income tax, but they go to buy their Rolls Royce and the dealer will hit them up for the sales tax.
It is a LOT easier to catch one merchant who has shady bookkeeping than to catch the thousands of citizens who patronize that merchant who might be cheating on personal income taxes.
Do away with income, cap gains, inheritance, etc taxes and have sales tax on everything with 'luxury' items taxed at a progressively higher rate. This will catch EVERYONE according to how much they use. After all, the more you consume, the more you have to use infrastructure.
I predict a new book explaining how to set this up: 'Data Havens for Dummies'
When I first saw Dune I asked, 'What the heck was all that about? Who was that freaky old hag with the torture box?' and my dad said, 'Oh! She was the leader of the Bene Geserit who do this and that and the other and all those other people were doing their thing because of these other reasons'. I protested, 'how the heck did you derive all that?!?' and he said, 'Oh, I read the five novels that go along with it.'
EXACT same thing happened with Akira... (except with my roommate, not dad). She thought it was cool and I was lost. 'Oh, but so-and-so did all that for all these reasons and I know because I've read this huge series of books from which the movie was condensed.'
The people who made Akira made it for the people who had already read the mangas. For anyone else, it's a bunch of disconnected images (though I admit well done disconnected images) about characters who have no discernable motivations.
Companies are in three regions of the US and a South America country called 'Sereno' that was demographically somewhere between Mexico and Brazil. That way players only had to make one currency exchange and two GDP factors into account. Players have to mainly make production, advertising, pricing, and shipping decisions.
This made the learning curve was really light (compared to the Management Game by Center for Interactive Simulations) and only really took one class period with the prof clearing up detail questions from time to time. The game lasts for up to 6 game years with a decision/turn every quarter for a total of 24 turns.
We only played for 4 game years (two turns were due per week for the second half of the semester), and our grades depended on how well we did... my company came in third of eight; got a 'B'.
From an IT/game management point of view, it was pretty easy to set up. Students entered decisions at lab workstations to the server where the master console was installed and the profs sauntered by twice a week to run the master. Students then logged back on and got their own reports on what happened the last turn.
To sum up: the Business Policy Game was easy to learn, easy to play, and most students had fun with it.
For more info see section 2187 of:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/ bhc/2000_bhc.pdf
This is a Federal Reserve Banking Supervision report from Dec, 1998, and presumably they have made a serious attempt to crack down on the daytrading houses, but the 2x limit remains as far as I know.
The book in question is giving entirely too much emphasis to the daytrading community who make technology stocks bounce wildly. You have to realise that the VAST bulk of monies in the US stock market are controlled by professional mutual fund managers. These people are NOT given to hysterical trading as they are looking after other people's money and on a decades long time frame. Sure, technology stocks may or may not be volitile and this causes big news, but they do not make up the majority of companies listed. The entire economy does NOT ride along with the Wall Street indices. Remember, the stock market crash in 1929 lead to the run on banks and it was failure of a lot of banks and everyone losing their money that way which brought on the Great Depression. It was NOT the crash of the market itself that ruined the show. Today we have FDIC to keep the banks afloat, and really, I don't think anyone is going to be running to the bank to draw out cash money in case the bank fails. As a populace we have MUCH too much faith in the banking system (even if we don't really LIKE our individual banks). All in all, the tech stocks are horribly overvalued, IMHO, but so what? In the big picture and in the long run, they'll settle out to what they are 'supposed' to be, even if it is a rocky ride for some individual daytraders. Meanwhile, trade in your options ASAP and invest your money in a variety of stock types and you'll be fine.