Let's talk about Economics

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Henry Hazlitt said it best in his "Economics in One Lesson"
(this isn't word for word)

The people in power will use their power and influence to help confuse the public about economics, AND to institute laws and policies that will benefit them individually (while hurting the general populace)

a reply to: FamCore

I absolutely agree with this!

I think there are 2 issues here. The first being what the populace uses as an exchange. The second and most important is how the vampires co-opt this medium of exchange to leach off of our income without producing, mining or growing anything. We are their hosts.

I am not sure if this is the direction you were going for.

Everyone loves to complicate this issue. Through that complication, they themselves are able to leach off of a small stream of other people's productivity, even if they are not part of the cabal. I actually think this is probably 1/3 of our current society: paper pushers, investors, advisors and almost anything to do with the market.

They will come along and tell you how complicated this whole system is and how it is almost working perfectly. They will defend the system because they receive substance from it. The system is quite simple. 99% of it is pure fraud.

Through simplicity, this system will crash and burn. Through its ashes and lessons, we may actually learn something and be stronger for it in the end.

There is a lot of pain involved in this type of reform. I am positive we are no where close to being ready to handle that pain.

a reply to: ClovenSky

It is indeed the direction.

I think there's a third element and this is complicity of regulators and politicians who allow these parasites to exist so long as they continue to feather their beds.

When we couple all these things together, and then put things out on the world economics stage we wind up with a market no one can fully understand. When that situation exists it is then relatively easy to manipulate and exploit that market because there is no benchmark for value to tie it to.

So we have the perceived value of the medium of exchange, the parasites and the politicians and spin doctors who obfuscate it all. These are all symptoms of a larger disease, and that disease is a market / economy which has no basis in reality...and no clear path back to that reality at all.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Oh god yes. Beautiful.

But if we reform this system properly, we will need no overseers. If there are overseers, the system is too complicated and will be corrupted in a very short amount of time.

How far are you willing to go to correct this?

There should be absolutely no fear of deflation. In fact, I think deflation would be good for the sheeple. That is why it very rarely occurs and when it does, it is never intended by the powers that be.

a reply to: ClovenSky

I would be willing to wager that 95% of people do not fully understand the concepts of inflation and deflation. And, standing alone those terms are not even explainable. In order to fully understand one must be able to understand inflation in an expanding economy and inflation in a contracting economy. Likewise for deflation, it has to be understood in the context of what direction the overall economy is moving.

I have tried to avoid the inflation/deflation concept in this discussion so far because it muddies up the water pretty quickly, especially when people base their understanding of economics from the vantage point of one or the other. Many hold inflation or deflation in their mind as the constant and then measure the economy, when in reality it is exactly the opposite approach.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I would almost propose that the market has always been corrupt. If that wasn't the intention to begin with, it probably would have never been born.

We will have to get rid of the market as one of the many steps. We will also need to get rid of the fed and return the power to coin money back to the rightful heirs, congress. They money congress will issue will be debt free.

One of the main ways they siphon off of our productivity is inflation, mainly caused by the creation of money out of thin air. People will argue the cause of inflation in many different ways, but they are usually trying to explain asset inflation that has nothing to do with the monetary base expansion.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

One thing that I have realized (or at least comfortably lie to myself about) is that the majority 80-95% will never get it and it doesn't really matter if they did understand the current system. There are plenty who fully understand this system and are against it, but that has not made much difference either. When the system is setup properly, there is no need to oversight. This system can be built so the 80-95% of sheep out there will fully understand it. If they understand it, it will be harder to corrupt. The key is simplicity.

a reply to: ClovenSky

What 'market' are you referring to, the stock market, or some other more generalized meaning of the term?

a reply to: ClovenSky

... The key is simplicity.

BINGO!

The US and world economics stage has been made intentionally complex...for precisely that reason, so people can't understand it or the bigger picture!

ETA - Think about it...why do things like derivatives even exist?? It's a security nobody would otherwise buy in their right mind...so they package up a rabid skunk to look like a cute fluffy little kitten and all of a sudden people will buy it. But it's still just a rabid mangy skunk. Then when you add in the hedge market brokers who short sell this stuff, betting on people losing, you have positive value getting created out of negative value. This isn't possible, not in the real-world anyway, but for some creative black magic which allows it to exist and "seem" like some value was created. It's absolute madness and insanity! And, the worst part is...people believe it!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Well, I should drop off after this response because your direction will probably be vastly different.

Get rid of all financial gambling. Video lottery & other types of gambling are just fine as the individuals know fully well what they are getting into and have full responsibility for their actions.

Get rid of the market. Get rid of the ability for a company to go public and float shares. No more stocks. No more shares. No more dividends. I am not sure how I feel about the bond market. I am not sure if that could be kept in some semblance of what we have now. I am not sure how to neuter bonds from interest. If there is a set amount of money, interest repayment on top of the original loan can never be repaid. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

Hard coded money of which the amount of which will never increase. Something like gold coins with identification numbers on them with a finite supply. Maybe congress could issue new issuances into to current monetary pool, but it would have to be simple and very very clear/transparent. If the population increases and the money supply stays the same, deflation. I am trying to think what type of problems deflation would cause.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Exactly. Derivatives are pure fraud. If a company issues a loan, they should be required to keep it on their books. If the loan goes bad, they eat it. If enough loans go bad, they fold.

I think they simply created derivatives because they were unhappy with the slow flow of blood from their hosts. They created derivatives as a greater payoff to their gambling. They probably don't even gamble anymore since we made the majority of them fully whole in 2007/2008. What money we didn't give them directly we used to buy off these #*&*@ corrupt securities at mark to fantasy. If they would have been required to mark to market in 2008, 98/100 banks would no longer be in existence, including goldman.


ETA:
My full understanding of derivatives is probably poor and faulty. I probably confuse securities and derivatives. I understand there could be a potential benefit to derivatives say in the case of farmer's future buys and sells. But if the system was setup properly, the correct things would be valued and possibly the need for derivatives wouldn't be as necessary. It would be funny if the financiers created the environment where derivatives are beneficial to the smaller players, while still taking their cut.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

If you have not read it yet, I would refer you to "The Creature from Jekyl Island" By G. Edward Griffon.

PDF Download here

It is a rather compelling read about the hijacking of our monetary system.

Let's face it, America has always tried to get away from a Central bank.

We fought our Revolution in part because of it.

Andrew Jackson himself killed the Second attempt at a Central bank in 1836. In fact, it was considered by him to be his crowning achievement.

Third Central bank was in installed in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act... thank you Woodrow Wilson. His quote on that after?

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world - no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.

And here we are... under a Central bank.

Now who would be behind something like this? Who has the power to own and regulate the banks of the world?

Mayer Amschel Rothschild quote... "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws."

If you look at our wars even you will see that by and large, we invade countries with no Central Bank (Afganistan, Iraq, Libia for some recent examples). What is the first thing we do? Install a Central Bank.

Central banks are specifically designed to trap nations in debt spirals from which they can never possibly escape. Today, the debt to GDP ratio for the entire planet is up to an all-time high record of 286 percent. Humanity is being enslaved by a perpetual debt machine, but most people are not even aware that it is happening.

There is your conspiracy, in a nutshell. Fleshing that out would be a thread or two all its own, but there is the meat of it.

S&F...

Edited to add... I am always sorry and somewhat amused when I look at Andrew Jackson's face on a $20 Federal Reserve bill. The look on his face is like "really?....No, REALLY???"

If you don't have a gold backed currency, how is the value derived? All these countries, all these currency exchanges, how exactly is a base value determined? Well, according to Milton Friedman, value is based on what we perceive it to be. That's it. It's up to the discretion of, ultimately, the consumer. Whereas with gold, or any other rare commodity, you had a baseline derived from supply on hand.

This is why the economic system in the U.S. really is a house of cards with it's base now being debt. Call me crazy, but looking back through recent history everything in the U.S. seemed to be more stable. Before 1971 that is when the gold standard went the way of the buggy whip. If you ask me, we went backwards and we're still going that way at a break-neck pace. Personal debt is higher than ever, the national debt is higher than ever and there is no solution in sight other than QUIT SPENDING. But if you do that on a personal level, the ripple effects on the way to the top will be catastrophic and felt the world over. We seem to be stuck on a downward spiral of our own making.

100 shares of stock in a company worth $100 means each share is worth $1. Add 100 shares (for a total of 200 shares) and now each share is worth $0.50. ETA...keep the stock value at $1 and conversely you now have a company worth $200, right? But is it really "worth" $200? That extra $100 was derived from 'perceived' value, not from 'actual' value.

Another case in point about how our currency is valued. Perception. You cannot have actual value without an actual commodity to base it on.

But with the shares, I could have sworn that the value of a share only goes up in tandem with the value of the company going up. A company is worth 1 million dollars. When the next quarterly earnings statement comes out, that value is now 1.25 million. If they had 1 million shares at 1 dollar per, that value is now $1.25 per. If they don't raise the price of the share, they offer up more shares at the old price to equal the amount of value as a whole that was raised. I never correlated the price of a share as dictating what the value of the company was, in other words.

You seem knowledgeable with this, so if I have it wrong, please explain.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I have forgotten much of what I learned years ago but some of it still hangs with me. I studied that the first bankers were the smiths, the men who worked the early forges, the men who worked in metals. The use of metals was paramount to the advancement of early societies. Horse shoes, plows and mostly weapons. Good arrow heads were traded as valuable tools for hunting and killing. The metal smiths, as the people who worked specifically with that resource naturally found that metals gravitated to them as seeds gravitated to the farmers. This not forgetting that seeds were traded between farmers, one for another.

One of the problems with metals is that they are heavy. As pools of ''capital'' began to accumulate around those who were more successful in their endeavors a manner of ''holding'' that wealth came into being. Rather than holding those metals by any person or family or group, those metals were kept with the metal smiths. The smiths would take in metals and give them back as needed to whoever owned them. Smiths would accept metals and issue receipts of ownership and then when the owners would come for their metals they would return the receipts.

As capital pools grew the hindrance of carrying metals around the process of trading receipts came into vogue. One person would take a receipt for held metals and rather than just going back to the smith for the metal would just give the receipt or receipts to whoever they owed and that person could then go to the smith with the receipt for redemption.
Paper currency. Smiths then began to ''short'' the refund of metals when redeemed with paper. Thy would pinch of a little portion of the metal being redeemed hence returning from X amount of metal, X-pinch of metal for their services. Likely this was unknown by the redeemers. And the skullduggery began.

a reply to: Peacetime

You're correct, in actuality it does (but with an assumption). The assumption is that people will actually "buy" the stock offering at the offered price. It all depends on the exact moment you make this observation. In my rudimentary example I did not accept this assumption and instead just printed the fictitious shares as part of the total stock and then valued the company at that exact moment (i.e. before the sale). It was just a simplified example. It avoided getting into a lot of complicated legal mechanics.

In a perfect vacuum, with no progress or expansion of business, and no outside economic influences (i.e. no changes) the aggregate stock prices would quickly drop to establish an equilibrium so that by the end of the sale the price would be roughly $0.50/share. (e.g. as the shares increase the price/share would steadily drop staying close to the equilibrium point the whole time).

In reality, if you watch the price of a big stock offering the price per share will drop initially immediately following the offering. This is the same principle. Whether the stock continues to drop, or stops and begins to rise is a result of perceived value and market confidence in that product or service.

So your observation was essentially correct. I just chose to characterize it at a different point in time for explanation purposes based on another response.

All Economic Platforms, from Capitalism to Communism are authoritarian and oppressive, the actual thought that a piece of paper or metal can have any "value" or "inherent value" placed upon it by a person, is absurd, the fact that people worship economics, and "money" as a religion is equally absurd.

Any "economic Platform" is going to be enforced by some kind of threat...

Currency is current.

Energy is the only true human commodity.

Everything else is borrowed or stolen from the earth.

a reply to: howtonhawky

And Thanks to Green-Capitalism, they are discovering new ways to charge for the sun and 'natural resources'