Tragedy struck today as Gene Kelly was shot dead while singin' in the rain. "It was raining and he was just walking around, looking about," said shooter George Zimmerman.
Do you need more?
Yeah, could you add the part where Gene Kelley broke George Zimmerman's nose and pounded his head on the concrete? 'Cause that would be totally cool!
Walking around aimlessly? Really? thats why you called 911? Because a guy is walking around aimlessly?
Well, no. The guy was walking around aimlessly in the rain in the dark in a neighborhood that had experienced some recent thefts. That's why Zimmerman called 911.
In English, Congress wrote the bill explicitly so that it's not severable, i.e. if you void one part you have to void the whole thing.
That's not correct. In fact, the default for a law is that it is not severable. The reasoning is that the Supreme Court won't declare a portion of a law unconstitutional, because the remaining result would be a law that congress never voted for. Imagine, for example, that the social security tax were declared unconstitutional, but that the social security benefits weren't. It's unlikely that congress would ever pass such a law. Or imagine the reverse with the benefits being unconstitutional, but the tax passing muster. It's unlikely that congress would pass that law.
However, when congress passes a law with a severability clause, they state that this section remains in effect even if other sections are declared unconstitutional. The best you could say about the health care law is that Congress wrote it implicitly so that it's not severable.
The bills authors did this for a reason; they gambled that if the bill was written this way, future Congresses wouldn't have the balls to repeal it.
Severability has nothing to do with future congresses and changes they might make to the law. It only applies to the Supreme Court and the chance they might find a portion of the law unconstitutional.
It apparently never, ever occurred to them that the act could wind up at SCOTUS, and if the mandate was overturned, it would logically follow that the whole bill would be.
Oh, I doubt that!
That's simply not true. Very little of the bill has gone into effect, and the meat of it depends on the mandate to produce the necessary funds via forced participation in the program.
How can you say that it's not true! Anonymous Coward said that several parts of the bill have already gone into effect, and you deny that by claiming very little of the bill has gone into effect. What is the distinction between those two statements!
Don't waste any effort having a conversation with AC and his/her ilk. They won't believe anything that is in conflict with their world view. Their motto must be ignorance is bliss!
I don't get it...why should there be hate crimes at all?
First, let me say that I agree with you. I think crimes with and without hate should be punished the same. Now, having said that let me also say...it goes to the reasons for punishing crime. One reason that's sometimes given is to keep the person from committing the crime again. Another reason is to keep others from committing that crime. Another reason is to keep people from committing vendetta against him.
Suppose it takes three times as much punishment to keep people from committing a crime a second time when hate is involved as when it's not, then an argument can be made that more punishment is indicated for hate crimes. The same process is involved with the other two reasons I offered.
Strangely, if this argument prevails then that would imply that if the reverse were true--if more punishment were required when hate is not involved--then there should be less punishment when it's a hate crime. However, no one who is in favour of different punishments for hate crime is in favour of that.
Speculation. That's what it boils down to, folks. If you really want to see $2.00 gas prices again, outlaw speculation and it will happen overnight.
Speculators are a popular bogey man, especially for politicians since it gives them someone they can blame for the results of their own policies.
In fact, were speculation to be prohibited, prices would be more likely to go up rather than down. The reason is that volatility of prices is something that producers wish to avoid. They would prefer to get 95% for ten years, rather than 50% during five years and 150% for the other five. The 100% allows them to pay their continuing costs and get a little profit each year. Otherwise they risk going bankrupt during the lean years.
Speculators, by contrast, are better able to handle the risk. Perhaps by their size, or perhaps by diversification. Speculators would prefer to lose 45% during five years and gain 55% during the other five rather than 0% for ten years.
If you outlaw speculation then you are, in essence, forcing producers to become speculators. When producers go out of business then there is less production, which translates to less supply. Less supply with unchanging demand means higher prices.
We know from lots of studies and lots of data now that violent criminals very often begin their careers as nonviolent criminals. And the earlier you can get a nonviolent criminal's DNA in the data bank, the higher your chances are of apprehending the right person.
One of the little factoids that many people don't know--over 90% of all first-time criminals have never committed a crime before. That's why we need to get all the innocent people's DNA into a data bank--so we can increase the chances of apprehending the right person.
It still amuses me how the phrase "free speech" has somehow been redefined from its original definition of "freedom to speak out against the government or other public organization without repercussion" to mean "explicitly helping download copyrighted materials against the wishes of the copyright holders, plus one or two token Linux distros as a 'legal' front".
The situation may not be as clear as you imagine. Suppose we agree that legislators are sometimes opposed to free speech because it can cause them to lose their power or wealth. Suppose we also agree that the purpose of copyright is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. It seems obvious to me that there should be an optimum amount of time for the length of copyright to extend. Anything shorter that that optimum amount of time would insufficiently encourage authors and inventors, and anything longer would excessively inhibit the progress of science and the useful arts.
I have seen a study alluded to that suggests that two years is the optimum amount of time. That suggests to me there there is some reason other than promoting science and the useful arts that the current monopoly length was chosen. It occurs to me that Senator Orin Hatch has been called the Senator from Disney because he has been instrumental in strengthening copyright monopoly in the United States. It also occurs to me that Disney has transferred quite a bit if its wealth to Senator Hatch, possibly in the form of campaign contributions. It also occurs to me that the Senator from Disney would lose much of that income if he came out in favor of a two year copyright term. The Senator from Disney has passed laws that prohibit me from drawing Steamboat Willy in icing on a cake and selling it. I'm not free to express that. If I were to express that then the legislator would get less wealth. I conclude that it's possible that the excessive length of copyright is a freedom of expression issue.
Yet everyone gets up in arms and cries like banshees whenever the word "steal" gets "redefined". Way to not look like a bunch of self-centered pricks, you guys. *slow clap*
The Fed pays 0.25% interest on required balances and excess reserves.
I stand corrected. Thank you. The Fed pays interest on required and excess reserves, and has since at least 2008. It wasn't that way when I first studied the Fed.
The federal funds rate is 0.12%. This is the rate banks pay the Fed to barrow money.
No. The federal funds rate is the rate on bank to bank overnight loans, and the Fed cannot control it directly. It controls it indirectly through the purchase of Treasury Bills and Bonds. The discount rate is the rate that banks pay the Federal Reserve System to borrow money and currently is about 100 basis points above the federal funds rate, making it about 1%, since the Federal Reserve System goal for the federal funds rate is about 0%. Thus, if a member bank were to borrow from the discount window and deposit the required reserves with the Fed, then their earnings would be negative 0.75% (if the discount rate is based on the goal) or negative 0.87% if the discount rate is based on the actual federal funds rate). On the other hand, their return is as you have stated if they borrow from another bank at the federal funds rate and deposit required reserves with the Fed. This alternative is limited by two things--other banks have to have excess reserves in order to lend, and the banks who are depositing have to have less than their required reserves on deposit with the Fed. Otherwise they have to use the Fed's excess reserves rate.
I've long argued that the main thing propping up the artificially way too high US Dollar is its preferencing by extralegal entities since the normalisation of white collar "work" drove most of the American economy out of inherently tradeable production into devices which must be propped up by legal fictions to acquire monetary value.
Okay, I've got this...the, um, dollar is too valuable...and organised crime makes it that way...because...normalisation of white collar "work"? They normalised white collar work? When did they do that? Oh! You mean the predominance of service industries over manufacturing ones...Okay. Organised crime increases the value of the dollar because service industries...let's see...tradeable production would be manufactured goods, so that fits...so there's a difficulty bartering services compared to bartering for goods. The, um, product of service industries, so, the value of those services must be propped up by legal fictions. What legal fictions are those? Okay, organised crime overvalues the dollar because the output of service industries can't be used as money, and the government makes the services valuable. Oh, hell. I don't got it.
So the the Fed "prints" money by electronically transferring it to the banks. The banks then deposits that money with the Fed and earn 1/4% (or so) interest.
You've got that all backward. First of all the "Fed Discount Window" is now a minor fraction of bank-to-bank overnight loans, so the real rate you need to be looking at is the 0% federal funds rate. Secondly, the 1/4% window transactions you alluded to are loans from the Fed to member banks. As such, the member banks pay the Fed the discounted (below short term T-Bill) rates. Finally, deposits that the member banks have with the Fed are "required" and "excess" reserves. The Fed pays no interest on reserves deposited with them.
Rather than "Why are Nigerians such scammers..." perhaps we ought to ask ourselves - "what has gone wrong that causes people to do these things.
I think the question answers itself. The culture that you are in and the culture that I am in think that there is something wrong with people who scam others. The impression I got from the missionary is that the general attitude in Nigeria was that there is nothing wrong with people who scam others. In fact, there is something very much right with people who do. Obviously, that can't be a universal feeling; otherwise, there wouldn't be a law against it. Nevertheless, the culture, according to the missionary, lauds the acts whereas our cultures find them reprehensible.
...why so many of these scams originate from this area.
I asked that same question of a missionary who had just come from Nigeria. His answer was that there is a culture there of "you're a clever individual if you can get the other fellow to pay for your lunch." For what it's worth...
There was a Supreme Court case that dealt with this. Congress passed a law that regulated some migratory birds in some way (gave them certain protections or whatever). A state objected and took it to the Supreme Court and had the law overturned as unconstitutional because the Federal government doesn't have that power (they even tried to argue that the birds crossing state borders constituted interstate commerce, ha!) In response, they made a treaty (with Canada maybe? I can't quite remember) that made the same protections for the birds. The state objected again, but the court said, nope, sorry that is now the supreme law of the land.
So, if Congress made a treaty with China that they would violate their people's right of free speech and we'll violate ours, then that would be just peachie keen?
Actually all of the Abrahamic religions teach deceptions, lies, and murder.
Are you saying that they teach about them? As in...they tell about people who told lies? Or are you saying that they teach their followers to do them? The reason I ask is that in Judaism the first question you are asked in the afterlife at judgement is, "were you honest in your business dealings?" In that respect honesty could be said to be one of the most important tenets of Judaism. Similarly in Christianity Jesus admonishes its adherents to be completely truthful, as in not being more truthful when swearing an oath.
I suggest you investigate minor things like recorded history, where deflationary periods have always caused hoarding.
I agree that it causes hoarding. I never said it doesn't. What I said is that hoarding has been a tiny fraction of hand-to-hand currency. Both can be true simultaneously, which implies that your claim doesn't contradict mine.
You're a complete idiot for many reasons
I'm always pleased to see insults, because my experience has been that people who resort to them don't have a cogent argument to offer in their place.
You seem to consider it equivalent to "steal from" the rich with inflation, or "steal from" the poor with deflation.
Well, let me make it a little more plain, so that you don't have to infer from my statements. Stealing from people is offensive. It's offensive if it's done at the point of a gun, and it's offensive if it's done through inflation. Not to stray too far afield, but I think murder is offensive too, regardless of the amount of wealth that the victim owns. I feel similarly about assault and battery, breaking and entering, civil rights violations, and those little hats with the propellers on top.
Boo fucking hoo, that makes life sooooo hard for them.
Are you a member of any particular political group or association? The reason I ask is that I would like to have a label to apply to people who have so little compassion for such a large portion of their fellow man.
Basically, you think that a tiny economic injury done to a tiny number of people who already have all their needs met is 100% equivalent to real harm done to a much larger number of people who are struggling to scrape by. That means you are a bad person.
See, the neat thing here is that inflation is a continuum. We could have lots of inflation--something that's sometimes called a hyperinflation--or less inflation or a little inflation, or a little deflation, or a lot of deflation, or a whole lot of deflation. Similarly, we can have a whole lot of harm to the rich, or a little, or a little harm to the poor, or a lot. (Actually, that's mis-stated. What we can have is harm to debtors or harm to creditors; however, I am willing to stipulate that there is a positive correlation between the rich and between creditors.) The neat thing that I've skipped over thus far is that we can also have no inflation or deflation. That's how a continuum works. It's only needful to try to keep inflation at zero percent, and we have the minimum amount of harm to the whole population.
Also, I would point out that the very notion of a fixed, constant value of money is an impossible dream.
What an interesting claim! It would be ever so much more palatable with a little evidence. Would you be willing to offer some? Let us stipulate that the Federal Reserve System's "market basket" is to be the measure of inflation. I understand that the Fed's current goal is 1% inflation, which they justify through the concept of "replacement value." What's to keep them from dropping the replacement value concept and aiming for 0%?
It's called marginal value, a concept you seem to have completely failed to grasp during your "amateur" studies of economics.
I thank you for your attempt to educate me, but I've known about marginal value for about two decades. I think it's just about the fifth most important concept in economics just behind division of labor, comparative advantage, supply and demand, and the rôle of prices in a free market. However, marginal value is completely irrelevant to our discussion. We've been talking about inflation, which is a macroeconomic measure of the value of a unit of money in terms of aggregate goods. The preferences of an individual for a unit of currency are subsumed when discussing macroeconomics and aggregates.
Let me make it a little more concrete. Let's suppose Alvin has $1000 he wishes to lend, and let's suppose Bob wants to borrow $1000. Suppose they agree that Bob will
I think I do. I've made an amateur study of it for several years.
but a world without inflation would be much worse.
I find I must disagree.
The main purpose of inflation is to encourage people to spend money, or at least, save it in a bank, rather than keep the money in your closet.
No. The main purposes of inflation is to give government additional money to spend, to devalue its debts, and to increase taxation without voting on rate increases, as I mentioned in my earlier post. People don't need encouragement to spend money. Actual hoarding of currency has always been a tiny fraction of hand-to-hand money. The encouragement to deposit currency in a bank is the interest the bank pays on the deposits, and that incentive works even better during times of deflation.
Once there is no inflation, or even a small amount of deflation, it acts as a positive feedback - as the value of money increases, people tries to get hold of more cache, and that reduces the total supply of cash within the society, and it further increases the value of cash.
No. Under deflationary periods there is incentive to invest, since the return on investment is going to be paid with more valuable currency. You're trying to describe a dichotomy between normalcy and recession. The real dichotomy is between consumptive spending versus investment spending.
Eventually, all spending dries up, jobs will disappear (since there is nobody who's trying to by ANYTHING), and the poor guys will suffer more seriously, since the rich guys (=people with lots of cash) will have their assets' value increase automatically without doing anything, while the poor guys have no job, no cash, and nothing to buy anyway.
You're right about one thing. Inflation in one sense helps the poor, because it devalues their debts, and it harms the rich, because it devalues their investments. Similarly deflation harms the poor, because it increases their debts in real terms, and it helps the rich, because it increases their investments. I happen to think that both are evil, since one steals from the rich and the other steals from the poor. A more just policy would be to leave their mutually agreed upon contracts unaffected. In times of unchanging inflation it finally doesn't matter because the lenders are going to increase the interest on their loan offers, because they are going to be unwilling make loans at a loss. In the interim it's justice that matters.
What we need is a MODERATE amount of inflation - not sure how much is the right amount, but high enough to avoid the deflation spiral, and low enough to avoid hyperinflation.
What we need is zero inflation. Anything else is fraudulent.
Plus, what's wrong with government spending? The government is supposed to represent the people, and hence, the spending should be something for the people. If you find government spending to be evil, then you should have a better, more sensible government, and stop blaming the spending itself.
I never said that there was anything wrong with government spending. What I said was that they shouldn't finance it through inflation.
Boies, Schiller & Flexner. At one point SCO got BS&F to agree to represent them through appeals for what BS&F had already received plus a percentage of the proceeds. Score one for SCO.
Slashdot Mirror
Tragedy struck today as Gene Kelly was shot dead while singin' in the rain. "It was raining and he was just walking around, looking about," said shooter George Zimmerman.
Do you need more?
Yeah, could you add the part where Gene Kelley broke George Zimmerman's nose and pounded his head on the concrete? 'Cause that would be totally cool!
~Loyal
There is plenty of evidence that damn near proves that Zimmerman did NOT suffer any substantial injury.
That's correct. The law only allows you to defend yourself after you have personally been killed and dismembered* by your assailant.
~Loyal
* minimum of three limbs.
2.) no witnesses as to what happened
Actually, there were five contemporaneous witnesses, not counting Martin and Zimmerman.
~Loyal
Walking around aimlessly? Really? thats why you called 911? Because a guy is walking around aimlessly?
Well, no. The guy was walking around aimlessly in the rain in the dark in a neighborhood that had experienced some recent thefts. That's why Zimmerman called 911.
~Loyal
In English, Congress wrote the bill explicitly so that it's not severable, i.e. if you void one part you have to void the whole thing.
That's not correct. In fact, the default for a law is that it is not severable. The reasoning is that the Supreme Court won't declare a portion of a law unconstitutional, because the remaining result would be a law that congress never voted for. Imagine, for example, that the social security tax were declared unconstitutional, but that the social security benefits weren't. It's unlikely that congress would ever pass such a law. Or imagine the reverse with the benefits being unconstitutional, but the tax passing muster. It's unlikely that congress would pass that law.
However, when congress passes a law with a severability clause, they state that this section remains in effect even if other sections are declared unconstitutional. The best you could say about the health care law is that Congress wrote it implicitly so that it's not severable.
The bills authors did this for a reason; they gambled that if the bill was written this way, future Congresses wouldn't have the balls to repeal it.
Severability has nothing to do with future congresses and changes they might make to the law. It only applies to the Supreme Court and the chance they might find a portion of the law unconstitutional.
It apparently never, ever occurred to them that the act could wind up at SCOTUS, and if the mandate was overturned, it would logically follow that the whole bill would be.
Oh, I doubt that!
That's simply not true. Very little of the bill has gone into effect, and the meat of it depends on the mandate to produce the necessary funds via forced participation in the program.
How can you say that it's not true! Anonymous Coward said that several parts of the bill have already gone into effect, and you deny that by claiming very little of the bill has gone into effect. What is the distinction between those two statements!
~Loyal
No number that can be thought of is anywhere 'near' infinite.
As I understand it, programmers, mathematicians, and Isaac Asimov count 0, 1, infinity. That being the case, then, both 0 and 1 are near infinity.
~Loyal
Slashdot is a news commentary and aggregation site.
When I first read that I thought it said "news commentary and aggravation site" and I was moved to ask when I was going to get to see the commentary.
~Loyal
Don't waste any effort having a conversation with AC and his/her ilk. They won't believe anything that is in conflict with their world view. Their motto must be ignorance is bliss!
I'm having trouble telling you two apart.
~Loyal
I don't get it...why should there be hate crimes at all?
First, let me say that I agree with you. I think crimes with and without hate should be punished the same. Now, having said that let me also say...it goes to the reasons for punishing crime. One reason that's sometimes given is to keep the person from committing the crime again. Another reason is to keep others from committing that crime. Another reason is to keep people from committing vendetta against him.
Suppose it takes three times as much punishment to keep people from committing a crime a second time when hate is involved as when it's not, then an argument can be made that more punishment is indicated for hate crimes. The same process is involved with the other two reasons I offered.
Strangely, if this argument prevails then that would imply that if the reverse were true--if more punishment were required when hate is not involved--then there should be less punishment when it's a hate crime. However, no one who is in favour of different punishments for hate crime is in favour of that.
~Loyal
Speculation. That's what it boils down to, folks. If you really want to see $2.00 gas prices again, outlaw speculation and it will happen overnight.
Speculators are a popular bogey man, especially for politicians since it gives them someone they can blame for the results of their own policies.
In fact, were speculation to be prohibited, prices would be more likely to go up rather than down. The reason is that volatility of prices is something that producers wish to avoid. They would prefer to get 95% for ten years, rather than 50% during five years and 150% for the other five. The 100% allows them to pay their continuing costs and get a little profit each year. Otherwise they risk going bankrupt during the lean years.
Speculators, by contrast, are better able to handle the risk. Perhaps by their size, or perhaps by diversification. Speculators would prefer to lose 45% during five years and gain 55% during the other five rather than 0% for ten years.
If you outlaw speculation then you are, in essence, forcing producers to become speculators. When producers go out of business then there is less production, which translates to less supply. Less supply with unchanging demand means higher prices.
~Loyal
We know from lots of studies and lots of data now that violent criminals very often begin their careers as nonviolent criminals. And the earlier you can get a nonviolent criminal's DNA in the data bank, the higher your chances are of apprehending the right person.
One of the little factoids that many people don't know--over 90% of all first-time criminals have never committed a crime before. That's why we need to get all the innocent people's DNA into a data bank--so we can increase the chances of apprehending the right person.
~Loyal
It still amuses me how the phrase "free speech" has somehow been redefined from its original definition of "freedom to speak out against the government or other public organization without repercussion" to mean "explicitly helping download copyrighted materials against the wishes of the copyright holders, plus one or two token Linux distros as a 'legal' front".
The situation may not be as clear as you imagine. Suppose we agree that legislators are sometimes opposed to free speech because it can cause them to lose their power or wealth. Suppose we also agree that the purpose of copyright is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. It seems obvious to me that there should be an optimum amount of time for the length of copyright to extend. Anything shorter that that optimum amount of time would insufficiently encourage authors and inventors, and anything longer would excessively inhibit the progress of science and the useful arts.
I have seen a study alluded to that suggests that two years is the optimum amount of time. That suggests to me there there is some reason other than promoting science and the useful arts that the current monopoly length was chosen. It occurs to me that Senator Orin Hatch has been called the Senator from Disney because he has been instrumental in strengthening copyright monopoly in the United States. It also occurs to me that Disney has transferred quite a bit if its wealth to Senator Hatch, possibly in the form of campaign contributions. It also occurs to me that the Senator from Disney would lose much of that income if he came out in favor of a two year copyright term. The Senator from Disney has passed laws that prohibit me from drawing Steamboat Willy in icing on a cake and selling it. I'm not free to express that. If I were to express that then the legislator would get less wealth. I conclude that it's possible that the excessive length of copyright is a freedom of expression issue.
Yet everyone gets up in arms and cries like banshees whenever the word "steal" gets "redefined". Way to not look like a bunch of self-centered pricks, you guys. *slow clap*
Word to the wise...
~Loyal
The Fed pays 0.25% interest on required balances and excess reserves.
I stand corrected. Thank you. The Fed pays interest on required and excess reserves, and has since at least 2008. It wasn't that way when I first studied the Fed.
The federal funds rate is 0.12%. This is the rate banks pay the Fed to barrow money.
No. The federal funds rate is the rate on bank to bank overnight loans, and the Fed cannot control it directly. It controls it indirectly through the purchase of Treasury Bills and Bonds. The discount rate is the rate that banks pay the Federal Reserve System to borrow money and currently is about 100 basis points above the federal funds rate, making it about 1%, since the Federal Reserve System goal for the federal funds rate is about 0%. Thus, if a member bank were to borrow from the discount window and deposit the required reserves with the Fed, then their earnings would be negative 0.75% (if the discount rate is based on the goal) or negative 0.87% if the discount rate is based on the actual federal funds rate). On the other hand, their return is as you have stated if they borrow from another bank at the federal funds rate and deposit required reserves with the Fed. This alternative is limited by two things--other banks have to have excess reserves in order to lend, and the banks who are depositing have to have less than their required reserves on deposit with the Fed. Otherwise they have to use the Fed's excess reserves rate.
~Loyal
I've long argued that the main thing propping up the artificially way too high US Dollar is its preferencing by extralegal entities since the normalisation of white collar "work" drove most of the American economy out of inherently tradeable production into devices which must be propped up by legal fictions to acquire monetary value.
Okay, I've got this...the, um, dollar is too valuable...and organised crime makes it that way...because...normalisation of white collar "work"? They normalised white collar work? When did they do that? Oh! You mean the predominance of service industries over manufacturing ones...Okay. Organised crime increases the value of the dollar because service industries...let's see...tradeable production would be manufactured goods, so that fits...so there's a difficulty bartering services compared to bartering for goods. The, um, product of service industries, so, the value of those services must be propped up by legal fictions. What legal fictions are those? Okay, organised crime overvalues the dollar because the output of service industries can't be used as money, and the government makes the services valuable. Oh, hell. I don't got it.
~Loyal
Money's purpose is to act as a token for things that are naturally scarce.
It's going to sound like I disagree with you, whereas I don't. Much. Money's purpose is to separate the act of buying from the act of selling.
Which means that money itself has to be artificially scarce.
There's no reason why it has to be artificially scarce. It could be actually scarce--like when we were on the gold standard.
your possession of a copy doesn't interfere with my possession of a copy one bit.
It interferes with its resale valve.
~Loyal
So the the Fed "prints" money by electronically transferring it to the banks. The banks then deposits that money with the Fed and earn 1/4% (or so) interest.
You've got that all backward. First of all the "Fed Discount Window" is now a minor fraction of bank-to-bank overnight loans, so the real rate you need to be looking at is the 0% federal funds rate. Secondly, the 1/4% window transactions you alluded to are loans from the Fed to member banks. As such, the member banks pay the Fed the discounted (below short term T-Bill) rates. Finally, deposits that the member banks have with the Fed are "required" and "excess" reserves. The Fed pays no interest on reserves deposited with them.
~Loyal
Hell, look how much Visa sucks out of the economy every year.
It's almost exactly equal to the amount Visa pumps into the economy every year.
~Loyal
Kim, don't copy that dollar! You wouldn't steal a movie, would you?
~Loyal
Rather than "Why are Nigerians such scammers..." perhaps we ought to ask ourselves - "what has gone wrong that causes people to do these things.
I think the question answers itself. The culture that you are in and the culture that I am in think that there is something wrong with people who scam others. The impression I got from the missionary is that the general attitude in Nigeria was that there is nothing wrong with people who scam others. In fact, there is something very much right with people who do. Obviously, that can't be a universal feeling; otherwise, there wouldn't be a law against it. Nevertheless, the culture, according to the missionary, lauds the acts whereas our cultures find them reprehensible.
~Loyal
...why so many of these scams originate from this area.
I asked that same question of a missionary who had just come from Nigeria. His answer was that there is a culture there of "you're a clever individual if you can get the other fellow to pay for your lunch." For what it's worth...
~Loyal
There was a Supreme Court case that dealt with this. Congress passed a law that regulated some migratory birds in some way (gave them certain protections or whatever). A state objected and took it to the Supreme Court and had the law overturned as unconstitutional because the Federal government doesn't have that power (they even tried to argue that the birds crossing state borders constituted interstate commerce, ha!) In response, they made a treaty (with Canada maybe? I can't quite remember) that made the same protections for the birds. The state objected again, but the court said, nope, sorry that is now the supreme law of the land.
So, if Congress made a treaty with China that they would violate their people's right of free speech and we'll violate ours, then that would be just peachie keen?
~Loyal
Actually all of the Abrahamic religions teach deceptions, lies, and murder.
Are you saying that they teach about them? As in...they tell about people who told lies? Or are you saying that they teach their followers to do them? The reason I ask is that in Judaism the first question you are asked in the afterlife at judgement is, "were you honest in your business dealings?" In that respect honesty could be said to be one of the most important tenets of Judaism. Similarly in Christianity Jesus admonishes its adherents to be completely truthful, as in not being more truthful when swearing an oath.
~Loyal
I suggest you investigate minor things like recorded history, where deflationary periods have always caused hoarding.
I agree that it causes hoarding. I never said it doesn't. What I said is that hoarding has been a tiny fraction of hand-to-hand currency. Both can be true simultaneously, which implies that your claim doesn't contradict mine.
You're a complete idiot for many reasons
I'm always pleased to see insults, because my experience has been that people who resort to them don't have a cogent argument to offer in their place.
You seem to consider it equivalent to "steal from" the rich with inflation, or "steal from" the poor with deflation.
Well, let me make it a little more plain, so that you don't have to infer from my statements. Stealing from people is offensive. It's offensive if it's done at the point of a gun, and it's offensive if it's done through inflation. Not to stray too far afield, but I think murder is offensive too, regardless of the amount of wealth that the victim owns. I feel similarly about assault and battery, breaking and entering, civil rights violations, and those little hats with the propellers on top.
Boo fucking hoo, that makes life sooooo hard for them.
Are you a member of any particular political group or association? The reason I ask is that I would like to have a label to apply to people who have so little compassion for such a large portion of their fellow man.
Basically, you think that a tiny economic injury done to a tiny number of people who already have all their needs met is 100% equivalent to real harm done to a much larger number of people who are struggling to scrape by. That means you are a bad person.
See, the neat thing here is that inflation is a continuum. We could have lots of inflation--something that's sometimes called a hyperinflation--or less inflation or a little inflation, or a little deflation, or a lot of deflation, or a whole lot of deflation. Similarly, we can have a whole lot of harm to the rich, or a little, or a little harm to the poor, or a lot. (Actually, that's mis-stated. What we can have is harm to debtors or harm to creditors; however, I am willing to stipulate that there is a positive correlation between the rich and between creditors.) The neat thing that I've skipped over thus far is that we can also have no inflation or deflation. That's how a continuum works. It's only needful to try to keep inflation at zero percent, and we have the minimum amount of harm to the whole population.
Also, I would point out that the very notion of a fixed, constant value of money is an impossible dream.
What an interesting claim! It would be ever so much more palatable with a little evidence. Would you be willing to offer some? Let us stipulate that the Federal Reserve System's "market basket" is to be the measure of inflation. I understand that the Fed's current goal is 1% inflation, which they justify through the concept of "replacement value." What's to keep them from dropping the replacement value concept and aiming for 0%?
It's called marginal value, a concept you seem to have completely failed to grasp during your "amateur" studies of economics.
I thank you for your attempt to educate me, but I've known about marginal value for about two decades. I think it's just about the fifth most important concept in economics just behind division of labor, comparative advantage, supply and demand, and the rôle of prices in a free market. However, marginal value is completely irrelevant to our discussion. We've been talking about inflation, which is a macroeconomic measure of the value of a unit of money in terms of aggregate goods. The preferences of an individual for a unit of currency are subsumed when discussing macroeconomics and aggregates.
Let me make it a little more concrete. Let's suppose Alvin has $1000 he wishes to lend, and let's suppose Bob wants to borrow $1000. Suppose they agree that Bob will
I'm not sure if you understand basic economics,
I think I do. I've made an amateur study of it for several years.
but a world without inflation would be much worse.
I find I must disagree.
The main purpose of inflation is to encourage people to spend money, or at least, save it in a bank, rather than keep the money in your closet.
No. The main purposes of inflation is to give government additional money to spend, to devalue its debts, and to increase taxation without voting on rate increases, as I mentioned in my earlier post. People don't need encouragement to spend money. Actual hoarding of currency has always been a tiny fraction of hand-to-hand money. The encouragement to deposit currency in a bank is the interest the bank pays on the deposits, and that incentive works even better during times of deflation.
Once there is no inflation, or even a small amount of deflation, it acts as a positive feedback - as the value of money increases, people tries to get hold of more cache, and that reduces the total supply of cash within the society, and it further increases the value of cash.
No. Under deflationary periods there is incentive to invest, since the return on investment is going to be paid with more valuable currency. You're trying to describe a dichotomy between normalcy and recession. The real dichotomy is between consumptive spending versus investment spending.
Eventually, all spending dries up, jobs will disappear (since there is nobody who's trying to by ANYTHING), and the poor guys will suffer more seriously, since the rich guys (=people with lots of cash) will have their assets' value increase automatically without doing anything, while the poor guys have no job, no cash, and nothing to buy anyway.
You're right about one thing. Inflation in one sense helps the poor, because it devalues their debts, and it harms the rich, because it devalues their investments. Similarly deflation harms the poor, because it increases their debts in real terms, and it helps the rich, because it increases their investments. I happen to think that both are evil, since one steals from the rich and the other steals from the poor. A more just policy would be to leave their mutually agreed upon contracts unaffected. In times of unchanging inflation it finally doesn't matter because the lenders are going to increase the interest on their loan offers, because they are going to be unwilling make loans at a loss. In the interim it's justice that matters.
What we need is a MODERATE amount of inflation - not sure how much is the right amount, but high enough to avoid the deflation spiral, and low enough to avoid hyperinflation.
What we need is zero inflation. Anything else is fraudulent.
Plus, what's wrong with government spending? The government is supposed to represent the people, and hence, the spending should be something for the people. If you find government spending to be evil, then you should have a better, more sensible government, and stop blaming the spending itself.
I never said that there was anything wrong with government spending. What I said was that they shouldn't finance it through inflation.
~Loyal
So who the F@#K would represent them for free?
Boies, Schiller & Flexner. At one point SCO got BS&F to agree to represent them through appeals for what BS&F had already received plus a percentage of the proceeds. Score one for SCO.
~Loyal