Since when do EU elections mean anything? Seriously, there's a reason everyone on Earth knows who the president of the USA is and probably can't name more than 1 or 2 leaders of any EU country, if even that many.
I really don't think a lot of people understand the USA is the only real player on Earth right now and no one else is even close. I'm not saying it's always going to be this way but it is right now and has been for awhile now.
I love hearing about country X's 1212 party system. It's cute and all, but it's also worthless in terms of impact on the world.
I'm guessing you're not even American. If that's the case it's even more laughable that you vote. Do you think you really matter? I'm not dissing you or your country, but the facts are the US dollar (however weak it is right now) represents over 65% of the worlds wealth (it's second competitor is around 10%). And the elite in your country and fully vested in the US dollar. And very probably, if you're European, the most elite families own part of the Federal Reserve.
My point is a US vote is pretty worthless. A non-American vote is total and complete garbage. Your countries economic sustenance depends on the dollar and pretty much nothing more. You're country is likely so heavily invested in America and its vast quantities of wealth and power that you're simply a side effect of the drama that unfolds here. Research how many bonds your country holds in the USA. And then figure out how relevant your country is in the global theater.
Seriously, I'm not trying to be condescending, but it's hilarious to hear non-Americans act as if their country really has a say in anything. I don't think you understand how little you matter. The Federal Reserve is the single most powerful company in the world by an insanely, unbeatable margin. And it's an American company, however owned globally. The only people that can really have any effect on this company are American politicians. Sadly, you don't elect these so you really have no real power.
I guess my overall point is as an American I feel my vote is worthless, mainly due to the Federal Reserve being a private company operated by the elite of American and some of the world. Money controls the world, specifically the dollar (regardless of trading value, the dollar is still the strongest currency by a WIDE margin and the outlook doesn't look different) and unless you're voting for those who have a chance at changing the motivation of it (American voters) you pretty much have no say.
But please, keep pretending your countries politics actually matter.
I guess I figured out one day that the financially elite of the world pretty much determine what's going to happen regardless of who's elected.
I'm of the belief that any politician, at least most, are there to give the illusion of choice. We need this feeling of self determined destiny.
But in the end, there are about 200 ultra elite families around the world who own the Federal Reserve. They print money at will. No matter who you are, you are at their mercy.
I think it would be worth more than that. I live in a swing state so my vote is especially valuable. I believe George Bush spent around $33.00 per eligible voter in my state last time and still lost.
So how much would my vote be worth if they were guaranteed that I would vote for them? At least $100.00.
I quit voting
on
eBay The Vote
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I used to believe that my vote mattered and that there were "issues" being decided. But I eventually got smart and figured out it's all BS and it really doesn't matter how you vote. Politics are more or less an illusion created to distract us while we are more or less put into servitude by the elite. You're in essence given two polarizing choices and you pick a side. Suddenly the world is black and white. Right and wrong and nothing in between.
People site and listen and watch their party blare propaganda to them and they get angry and fed up with the other side who is evil of course. Meanwhile, both sides are laughing all the way to the bank as they receive payoffs from special interests funding their propaganda machine.
I stopped voting awhile ago and don't plan on going back. I wish I could sell my vote for market value.
I've never really understood why there's this belief that criminals have trouble being honest. Often, a criminal is only such because society labels them that way and thus dishonest. But in reality, many of them are very nice people performing honest business transactions (unregulated at that!) for their clients. Many drug dealers, prostitutes, pirates, hackers, etc are very honest people in the sense they aren't scamming their customers. They will provide great value to them in fact.
Supporters of the free market can look to the very successful black market as an example of unregulated trade working well. Often in the black market, as this article eludes to, your reputation is everything. So there is no benefit in ripping someone off.
I've worked with many "honest", good people in my black market transactions.
Yes, I would like that system because I would know that there are people much wiser, intelligent and aware than me making choices for me. I would assume they can do a much better job than myself. If it was proven....how can I boo if it's true? And I'm certain there would be plenty of people with a higher coefficient of opinion than myself. I'm just as certain that mine would higher than plenty of people who made ill-informed self deprecating choices.
Sort of like how I pay a doctor to operate on me. Or a mechanic to fix my car. Or a better example, a financial adviser. I feel I'm better off when he explains to me where my money goes. I could make the decisions myself but he's far more informed daily, knows more about how certain investments took shape over time and simply knows much more about the topic than me. Maybe not the best examples....
I'm only suggesting a coefficient of opinion.
Obviously, as I eluded to and you pointed out, this system is a mere impossibility. It would be corrupt immediately and it is with certinty the wealthy and powerful would exploit it (more than now). Plus, it would require a majority to vote for it which would never happen. It's un-American by the USA's constitution and many others as well.
I acknowledge this system can't happen. But the democracy as we know it is hardly close to an ideal. Wise Greeks knew this however many years ago. Most proletarians however think this system is not only good and just, but fair. Which it is not.
I piss on the fact everyone has an equal say and that it's free for all. Some people work harder than others and get silenced by nimrods who have an equal say, however lazy they are.
When my engine stops, either due to failure or me forgetting to add more gasoline, it stops. It stops on the road it was driving on. In general this isn't a dangerous proposition.
However, when my airplane stops for similar reasons, it stops. It stops and it falls out of the sky, accelerating towards the Earth. I very likely die.
I guess what I'm saying is if Ford starts making these, I won't be shopping those lots.
Russia wasn't beat because it was communist so much as they simply couldn't keep up with the USA. China is making quite the advancement in terms of economic power. I wouldn't count them out of anything yet.
I agree limiting power to a few would and does lead to corruption. So I propose a weighted democracy, if that made any sense. It is to counter your probably valid claim: "It's the idiot masses who ensure that the intelligent evil do not cause even more damage than they already do."
In essence, everyone gets to vote, but their vote carries only so much power. Everyone has a coefficient of opinion determined by various tests (IQ, insight, life experience, etc, etc) and it has to be retaken every X years, because people can improve themselves and let themselves go, etc. So, someone who is clearly wiser than others would have a vote that counts 100X the average. A complete raging idiot would probably get a fraction of a vote, but some say none the less.
Your vote counts for what you're ability says it is worth. I think it would be important to create this scale not on education specific things because wiseness, insight, etc are generally inherit things. The wealthy always have an educational advantage so it's important to limit that. Poor people generally have as much ability to be stupid as wealthy, for example.
This system is an impossibility without doubt. Socrates would endorse this system I believe as he was against the democracy in many ways and believed a society of philosophers should call the shots for everyone.
I agree that the idiot majority keeps the evil intellectuals (this isn't mutually exclusive however) in check some. But would you agree the idiot majority simply has too much power due to their vast, vast numbers, in this voting equivalence system of ours?
I say everyone votes, some just count for more than others.
"Doesn't anybody seem to think that just maybe that indicates that the majority of people in the US aren't as antagonistic towards the RIAA as..."
Ahhh, but you forget the majority of people are idiots who shouldn't have voting, much less breeding, privileges. And jury duty? *gasp!!*
Majority rules is the problem with our democracy. Facts are, some peoples ideas are better and worth more than others so their ability to vote should be weighted as such. We can't keep arming idiots with ballots and expect the country to be in good hands. The fact that well read, aware, intellectual people have the same power as trash-TV addicted, simple and vulnerable people is a problem.
So, the basis of your argument being that a majority of people feel this way and must be right is flawed in that you assume everyone should have, by a moral standard, the same mechanism of opinion, or in our case voting and jury duty. You fail to recognize most people are morons unable to act in todays increasingly complex and high stakes world. These people, making up a majority (especially in places like MN, where the less feeble minds generally escape) should be left to their simple devices and never queried for their opinion. They would do far better to let us, the intellectual free spirits of our time, make the choices and guide the society.
A society of equal opinion can never work for fairly obvious reasons. The majority is easily tricked and will empower evil, as we have time and time again. A society based on the premise that the intellectually elite assume power is one in which benefits all and guarantees for future success are more legitimate.
Si, what you're saying is I can have my trailer of computers but I can't leave the AC on?
How about my truck which is towing my trailer home of computers around? Can that have AC and a radiator? Would it be illegal for me to run the AC vents on my truck into the trailer?
Fair enough, I've never studied economics on any level really at all. I've only read things here and there.
What I meant by the USG creating money via the Fed was they can at any time declare debt and it is constructed in the form of a bond by the Fed. This bond is then sold to someone which creates the money the government needs. This money is then loaned out (10% of it so is kept in reserve) to a bank, which in turn loans out that money (of which 10% is kept in reserve) and so on and so fourth. It gets to the point where all this imaginary money is lent out due to the creation and selling of a bond that for every $1.00 the government creates in debt/bond, there is $10.00 now in the system, e.g. inflation.
That is what I meant by the government creating money at will. I didn't realize it was congress and not the executive branch. I'd imagine the executive branch has a lot of influence, especially when its part controls congress.
Yeah, I'd agree it was hardly some old world scheme. It's more or less wealthy bankers getting together and determining they could create a monopoly on money, pay off the politicians to make it law and profit. The beauty of the system is it took convincing the government to accept this and it's not hard to do when you also give the government the ability to in essence print money at will.
It can be argued it's simply a modern economic system designed to handle modern economic needs. After all, everything else advances due to new ideas, etc.
I'm of the belief that fiat economic systems can work, but they shouldn't be managed by a private organization with the goal of profiting and holding permanent economic power. Especially when the USG can buy the Fed and actually profit from buying it. So it doesn't really make sense not to.
However, being an American there is something comforting knowing the worlds most powerful (and no one is really even close) economic group, which has global interests, has an interest in American being successful. That, more or less, is the balance.
However, there is still plenty of room for corruption.
It's an interesting essay written by an economist who is highly respected. It's potentially FUD, but this guy has a history or predicting things accurately. It's fictional (takes place 8 years form now) but he makes a good case for why we're fucked.
Well, once argument often made against the Fed is every fractional banking system in the history of man has failed, by most accounts. The idea is, it's a matter of "when", not "if".
How long can they just keep printing money at will for us (creating debt) before the system collapses. It's their goal to teeter this fine line, no doubt, but it would only take a miscalculation or the presence of something unexpected to screw things up.
Interesting trends are the fact that Americans don't save money any longer. Around 7% of income was put to savings in the 1950's. Now something like -5% is. That is, we create debt.
Eventually this debt has to be paid. And when people die or default and don't have savings, how is this debt going to get paid? By tax payers or bad loans? It can add up fast and it's a problem we haven't faced before.
I wouldn't say it's that far fetched. I haven';t seen what you're talking about, but a lot of people don't sit easy with the idea of the Fed.
The facts are it was founded by a group of very wealthy families worldwide with the idea of overtaking the governments ability to print money. So they met (in what would be considered anti-trust) secretly to plot this and convinced Wilson (the president at the time) to sign it into law. Even though it is considered unconstitutional by some, as the constitution states that ONLY the USA Government can create money in the USA, essentially.
What's more is the USA government could buy the Fed right now, saving billions of dollars owed in debt to it. It can be argued it doesn't make sense we don't. We would save a lot of money (the country) we would then owe to ourselves. It can also be argued it isn't a good idea to let the government run anything.
So, is it so crazy to think there is something wrong with a private company that is secretive (they can't be audited) that has the right to print money at will, loan it out and charge interest? Is it crazy to think there is something wrong with a system that features a government asking them for money and then taxing its citizen to pay them back?
I'm not against the Fed, per se. But I can see why someone would be against them morally. They do in fact create a false economic system that preys on the fact most people are too ignorant to even have a clue what's going on. And those that do are able to exploit it enough.
Generally it's the government that increases money. The US government asks the fed for money which the Fed will create. At this time a bond is created and someone buys it.
The Fed is essentially at the will of the administration seeing over the country. When the administration wants money, the Fed creates it out of thin air.
Consider this, the current administration has cut "real" taxes. That is, most of us pay lower income tax. However, they have increased inflation at such a rate that our money is now worth less, and less. So they have in effect taxed us silently by making the money you earn every week worth less.
Wait until the run on the dollar. With the dollar dropping in value so much so fast, there is a theory that (mainly Asian, our biggest importers) will eventually sell their holdings in the dollar (t-bonds into cash into another currency) at a loss now and create a domino effect. This would flood the world with worthless dollars. Who ends up paying at the end? We do because we get paid in dollars. And it usually takes awhile for the typical persons salary to catch up with inflation. That is, working people are usually a crucial step behind this game of inflation.
Also, inflation is a trick that can be used to buy assets cheaply. A wealthy, influential organization could buy a lot of things on credit and then convince the administration to print a lot more money, creating an inflation. Now what they have paid is suddenly a discount since things are bought in dollars, not in value. Money is loaned in dollars with interest considering inflation. But when inflation out paces the interest, "free money" is created to those who have loans.
Allen Greenspan, before he was Fed chief, was for the gold standard.
Reinstating the gold standard would change things, but I'm not sure if they are good or bad. It would be a bad idea now anyways since so much reserve gold has been sold off.
But in theory, a gold standard assigns an intrinsic value to money. Since gold is mined at around a 3% increase every year, inflation is under control.
Most Libertarians want a gold standard, or some equivalent. A lot of people believe the Fed will collapse one day, as all fractional reserve systems have eventually.
It's fractional reserve banking and in essence a pyramid scheme. It's not crazy to believe that this monetary system is immoral and potentially very dangerous.
For some people it doesn't sit easy that an elite group of people have the right to print money at will and loan it to people with interest. This same group of people can buy assets and then print a lot of money, inflating the value of the currency and have obtained in essence, the assets at a huge discount.
I'm not going to read this book because it isn't breaking any new ground. People have known since 1913 that the Fed was more or less a scam. But this book should also cover the benefits it generates for people. That is, it makes credit viable and allows people to spend a lot more than they have, generating more things for everyone. It's a funny perpetual system based on debt and the promise to pay later.
As for the Fed, they didn't create real fiat money until the 1970's. This is also the time of super inflation. If you bought a lot of stuff on credit in the early 1970's, you made out very well.:)
One thing I really enjoy about this system is that if you do understand it (and it's rather simple in its essence) you can make informed decisions on when to borrow, when to invest, etc. Taking advantage of inflation through loans is the trick to making easy money.
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This is a stupid post. Casino's don't cheat anyone. Why would they cheat you when they make plenty of money off of you without cheating?
So, you're telling me you would rather play a black box game for money than a transparent one in a casino?
Since when do EU elections mean anything? Seriously, there's a reason everyone on Earth knows who the president of the USA is and probably can't name more than 1 or 2 leaders of any EU country, if even that many.
I really don't think a lot of people understand the USA is the only real player on Earth right now and no one else is even close. I'm not saying it's always going to be this way but it is right now and has been for awhile now.
I love hearing about country X's 1212 party system. It's cute and all, but it's also worthless in terms of impact on the world.
I'm guessing you're not even American. If that's the case it's even more laughable that you vote. Do you think you really matter? I'm not dissing you or your country, but the facts are the US dollar (however weak it is right now) represents over 65% of the worlds wealth (it's second competitor is around 10%). And the elite in your country and fully vested in the US dollar. And very probably, if you're European, the most elite families own part of the Federal Reserve.
My point is a US vote is pretty worthless. A non-American vote is total and complete garbage. Your countries economic sustenance depends on the dollar and pretty much nothing more. You're country is likely so heavily invested in America and its vast quantities of wealth and power that you're simply a side effect of the drama that unfolds here. Research how many bonds your country holds in the USA. And then figure out how relevant your country is in the global theater.
Seriously, I'm not trying to be condescending, but it's hilarious to hear non-Americans act as if their country really has a say in anything. I don't think you understand how little you matter. The Federal Reserve is the single most powerful company in the world by an insanely, unbeatable margin. And it's an American company, however owned globally. The only people that can really have any effect on this company are American politicians. Sadly, you don't elect these so you really have no real power.
I guess my overall point is as an American I feel my vote is worthless, mainly due to the Federal Reserve being a private company operated by the elite of American and some of the world. Money controls the world, specifically the dollar (regardless of trading value, the dollar is still the strongest currency by a WIDE margin and the outlook doesn't look different) and unless you're voting for those who have a chance at changing the motivation of it (American voters) you pretty much have no say.
But please, keep pretending your countries politics actually matter.
I guess I figured out one day that the financially elite of the world pretty much determine what's going to happen regardless of who's elected.
I'm of the belief that any politician, at least most, are there to give the illusion of choice. We need this feeling of self determined destiny.
But in the end, there are about 200 ultra elite families around the world who own the Federal Reserve. They print money at will. No matter who you are, you are at their mercy.
Voting doesn't really matter.
I think it would be worth more than that. I live in a swing state so my vote is especially valuable. I believe George Bush spent around $33.00 per eligible voter in my state last time and still lost.
So how much would my vote be worth if they were guaranteed that I would vote for them? At least $100.00.
I used to believe that my vote mattered and that there were "issues" being decided. But I eventually got smart and figured out it's all BS and it really doesn't matter how you vote. Politics are more or less an illusion created to distract us while we are more or less put into servitude by the elite. You're in essence given two polarizing choices and you pick a side. Suddenly the world is black and white. Right and wrong and nothing in between.
People site and listen and watch their party blare propaganda to them and they get angry and fed up with the other side who is evil of course. Meanwhile, both sides are laughing all the way to the bank as they receive payoffs from special interests funding their propaganda machine.
I stopped voting awhile ago and don't plan on going back. I wish I could sell my vote for market value.
I've never really understood why there's this belief that criminals have trouble being honest. Often, a criminal is only such because society labels them that way and thus dishonest. But in reality, many of them are very nice people performing honest business transactions (unregulated at that!) for their clients. Many drug dealers, prostitutes, pirates, hackers, etc are very honest people in the sense they aren't scamming their customers. They will provide great value to them in fact.
Supporters of the free market can look to the very successful black market as an example of unregulated trade working well. Often in the black market, as this article eludes to, your reputation is everything. So there is no benefit in ripping someone off.
I've worked with many "honest", good people in my black market transactions.
Yes, I would like that system because I would know that there are people much wiser, intelligent and aware than me making choices for me. I would assume they can do a much better job than myself. If it was proven....how can I boo if it's true? And I'm certain there would be plenty of people with a higher coefficient of opinion than myself. I'm just as certain that mine would higher than plenty of people who made ill-informed self deprecating choices.
Sort of like how I pay a doctor to operate on me. Or a mechanic to fix my car. Or a better example, a financial adviser. I feel I'm better off when he explains to me where my money goes. I could make the decisions myself but he's far more informed daily, knows more about how certain investments took shape over time and simply knows much more about the topic than me. Maybe not the best examples....
I'm only suggesting a coefficient of opinion.
Obviously, as I eluded to and you pointed out, this system is a mere impossibility. It would be corrupt immediately and it is with certinty the wealthy and powerful would exploit it (more than now). Plus, it would require a majority to vote for it which would never happen. It's un-American by the USA's constitution and many others as well.
I acknowledge this system can't happen. But the democracy as we know it is hardly close to an ideal. Wise Greeks knew this however many years ago. Most proletarians however think this system is not only good and just, but fair. Which it is not.
I piss on the fact everyone has an equal say and that it's free for all. Some people work harder than others and get silenced by nimrods who have an equal say, however lazy they are.
I'm sticking with my statement, "I very likely die". Also, I wouldn't buy one made by Ford. Or GM for that matter.
When my engine stops, either due to failure or me forgetting to add more gasoline, it stops. It stops on the road it was driving on. In general this isn't a dangerous proposition.
However, when my airplane stops for similar reasons, it stops. It stops and it falls out of the sky, accelerating towards the Earth. I very likely die.
I guess what I'm saying is if Ford starts making these, I won't be shopping those lots.
Russia wasn't beat because it was communist so much as they simply couldn't keep up with the USA. China is making quite the advancement in terms of economic power. I wouldn't count them out of anything yet.
I agree limiting power to a few would and does lead to corruption. So I propose a weighted democracy, if that made any sense. It is to counter your probably valid claim: "It's the idiot masses who ensure that the intelligent evil do not cause even more damage than they already do."
In essence, everyone gets to vote, but their vote carries only so much power. Everyone has a coefficient of opinion determined by various tests (IQ, insight, life experience, etc, etc) and it has to be retaken every X years, because people can improve themselves and let themselves go, etc. So, someone who is clearly wiser than others would have a vote that counts 100X the average. A complete raging idiot would probably get a fraction of a vote, but some say none the less.
Your vote counts for what you're ability says it is worth. I think it would be important to create this scale not on education specific things because wiseness, insight, etc are generally inherit things. The wealthy always have an educational advantage so it's important to limit that. Poor people generally have as much ability to be stupid as wealthy, for example.
This system is an impossibility without doubt. Socrates would endorse this system I believe as he was against the democracy in many ways and believed a society of philosophers should call the shots for everyone.
I agree that the idiot majority keeps the evil intellectuals (this isn't mutually exclusive however) in check some. But would you agree the idiot majority simply has too much power due to their vast, vast numbers, in this voting equivalence system of ours?
I say everyone votes, some just count for more than others.
"Doesn't anybody seem to think that just maybe that indicates that the majority of people in the US aren't as antagonistic towards the RIAA as..."
Ahhh, but you forget the majority of people are idiots who shouldn't have voting, much less breeding, privileges. And jury duty? *gasp!!*
Majority rules is the problem with our democracy. Facts are, some peoples ideas are better and worth more than others so their ability to vote should be weighted as such. We can't keep arming idiots with ballots and expect the country to be in good hands. The fact that well read, aware, intellectual people have the same power as trash-TV addicted, simple and vulnerable people is a problem.
So, the basis of your argument being that a majority of people feel this way and must be right is flawed in that you assume everyone should have, by a moral standard, the same mechanism of opinion, or in our case voting and jury duty. You fail to recognize most people are morons unable to act in todays increasingly complex and high stakes world. These people, making up a majority (especially in places like MN, where the less feeble minds generally escape) should be left to their simple devices and never queried for their opinion. They would do far better to let us, the intellectual free spirits of our time, make the choices and guide the society.
A society of equal opinion can never work for fairly obvious reasons. The majority is easily tricked and will empower evil, as we have time and time again. A society based on the premise that the intellectually elite assume power is one in which benefits all and guarantees for future success are more legitimate.
Si, what you're saying is I can have my trailer of computers but I can't leave the AC on?
How about my truck which is towing my trailer home of computers around? Can that have AC and a radiator? Would it be illegal for me to run the AC vents on my truck into the trailer?
So if I have a bunch of servers in a trailer and an ethernet cable sticking out of the door, I'm violating this patent?
I'm sorry, but white trash nerds have been doing this for a long time.
What the hell are you talking about? Since when does math have anything to do with numbers?
Fair enough, I've never studied economics on any level really at all. I've only read things here and there.
What I meant by the USG creating money via the Fed was they can at any time declare debt and it is constructed in the form of a bond by the Fed. This bond is then sold to someone which creates the money the government needs. This money is then loaned out (10% of it so is kept in reserve) to a bank, which in turn loans out that money (of which 10% is kept in reserve) and so on and so fourth. It gets to the point where all this imaginary money is lent out due to the creation and selling of a bond that for every $1.00 the government creates in debt/bond, there is $10.00 now in the system, e.g. inflation.
That is what I meant by the government creating money at will. I didn't realize it was congress and not the executive branch. I'd imagine the executive branch has a lot of influence, especially when its part controls congress.
Yeah, I'd agree it was hardly some old world scheme. It's more or less wealthy bankers getting together and determining they could create a monopoly on money, pay off the politicians to make it law and profit. The beauty of the system is it took convincing the government to accept this and it's not hard to do when you also give the government the ability to in essence print money at will.
It can be argued it's simply a modern economic system designed to handle modern economic needs. After all, everything else advances due to new ideas, etc.
I'm of the belief that fiat economic systems can work, but they shouldn't be managed by a private organization with the goal of profiting and holding permanent economic power. Especially when the USG can buy the Fed and actually profit from buying it. So it doesn't really make sense not to.
However, being an American there is something comforting knowing the worlds most powerful (and no one is really even close) economic group, which has global interests, has an interest in American being successful. That, more or less, is the balance.
However, there is still plenty of room for corruption.
Read this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200507/fallows
It's an interesting essay written by an economist who is highly respected. It's potentially FUD, but this guy has a history or predicting things accurately. It's fictional (takes place 8 years form now) but he makes a good case for why we're fucked.
Essentially it's about the run on the dollar.
Well, once argument often made against the Fed is every fractional banking system in the history of man has failed, by most accounts. The idea is, it's a matter of "when", not "if".
How long can they just keep printing money at will for us (creating debt) before the system collapses. It's their goal to teeter this fine line, no doubt, but it would only take a miscalculation or the presence of something unexpected to screw things up.
Interesting trends are the fact that Americans don't save money any longer. Around 7% of income was put to savings in the 1950's. Now something like -5% is. That is, we create debt.
Eventually this debt has to be paid. And when people die or default and don't have savings, how is this debt going to get paid? By tax payers or bad loans? It can add up fast and it's a problem we haven't faced before.
I wouldn't say it's that far fetched. I haven';t seen what you're talking about, but a lot of people don't sit easy with the idea of the Fed.
The facts are it was founded by a group of very wealthy families worldwide with the idea of overtaking the governments ability to print money. So they met (in what would be considered anti-trust) secretly to plot this and convinced Wilson (the president at the time) to sign it into law. Even though it is considered unconstitutional by some, as the constitution states that ONLY the USA Government can create money in the USA, essentially.
What's more is the USA government could buy the Fed right now, saving billions of dollars owed in debt to it. It can be argued it doesn't make sense we don't. We would save a lot of money (the country) we would then owe to ourselves. It can also be argued it isn't a good idea to let the government run anything.
So, is it so crazy to think there is something wrong with a private company that is secretive (they can't be audited) that has the right to print money at will, loan it out and charge interest? Is it crazy to think there is something wrong with a system that features a government asking them for money and then taxing its citizen to pay them back?
I'm not against the Fed, per se. But I can see why someone would be against them morally. They do in fact create a false economic system that preys on the fact most people are too ignorant to even have a clue what's going on. And those that do are able to exploit it enough.
Generally it's the government that increases money. The US government asks the fed for money which the Fed will create. At this time a bond is created and someone buys it.
The Fed is essentially at the will of the administration seeing over the country. When the administration wants money, the Fed creates it out of thin air.
Consider this, the current administration has cut "real" taxes. That is, most of us pay lower income tax. However, they have increased inflation at such a rate that our money is now worth less, and less. So they have in effect taxed us silently by making the money you earn every week worth less.
Wait until the run on the dollar. With the dollar dropping in value so much so fast, there is a theory that (mainly Asian, our biggest importers) will eventually sell their holdings in the dollar (t-bonds into cash into another currency) at a loss now and create a domino effect. This would flood the world with worthless dollars. Who ends up paying at the end? We do because we get paid in dollars. And it usually takes awhile for the typical persons salary to catch up with inflation. That is, working people are usually a crucial step behind this game of inflation.
Also, inflation is a trick that can be used to buy assets cheaply. A wealthy, influential organization could buy a lot of things on credit and then convince the administration to print a lot more money, creating an inflation. Now what they have paid is suddenly a discount since things are bought in dollars, not in value. Money is loaned in dollars with interest considering inflation. But when inflation out paces the interest, "free money" is created to those who have loans.
Allen Greenspan, before he was Fed chief, was for the gold standard.
Reinstating the gold standard would change things, but I'm not sure if they are good or bad. It would be a bad idea now anyways since so much reserve gold has been sold off.
But in theory, a gold standard assigns an intrinsic value to money. Since gold is mined at around a 3% increase every year, inflation is under control.
Most Libertarians want a gold standard, or some equivalent. A lot of people believe the Fed will collapse one day, as all fractional reserve systems have eventually.
It's fractional reserve banking and in essence a pyramid scheme. It's not crazy to believe that this monetary system is immoral and potentially very dangerous.
:)
For some people it doesn't sit easy that an elite group of people have the right to print money at will and loan it to people with interest. This same group of people can buy assets and then print a lot of money, inflating the value of the currency and have obtained in essence, the assets at a huge discount.
I'm not going to read this book because it isn't breaking any new ground. People have known since 1913 that the Fed was more or less a scam. But this book should also cover the benefits it generates for people. That is, it makes credit viable and allows people to spend a lot more than they have, generating more things for everyone. It's a funny perpetual system based on debt and the promise to pay later.
As for the Fed, they didn't create real fiat money until the 1970's. This is also the time of super inflation. If you bought a lot of stuff on credit in the early 1970's, you made out very well.
One thing I really enjoy about this system is that if you do understand it (and it's rather simple in its essence) you can make informed decisions on when to borrow, when to invest, etc. Taking advantage of inflation through loans is the trick to making easy money.
Only tool? Blasphamy, they have Tazers!
I would have killed to get some fresh video of this girl getting tazed!
That sweatshirt is gawd awful.