Ask yourself where we would be RIGHT NOW if the government had not just all but promised the market THE LARGEST BAIL OUT IN HISTORY.
i would be fine... i dont work in the financial sector and my job/income will not be affected in any way, and i DO NOT invest in Wall Street or corporations at all... i also didnt take a bad mortgage on some house that is way over my head... i currently do not own a credit card either and have no credit card based debt, although i still owe on some student loans at a very low % rate
well god knows i'm not HAPPY about it.
This isn't about "hey DBTS was right, lets gloat over it"
this is about,
"Hey when people with half of a brain step up and repeatedly warn you 'man i kind've know what i'm talking about, man this is kind've a big deal' ... it would behoove folks to get over themselves to some extent, do some homework, and recognize that sometimes expecting the worst isn't simply reducible to derogatories like 'fearmonger' and 'tin foil hat nutter' ... and maybe try to ask themselves what it is that THEY were blocking mentally that someone else saw."
Because, once again, this is NOT about "ooh DBTS is so smart, and ooh DBTS was 'right' ..."
no, its about "what can I do as another contributing member of society to recognize the same OBVIOUS, but somewhat hidden, fundamentals that some other folks here were hip to, and how can i go forward with that information in a CONSTRUCTIVE fashion to help stop this mess from happening again."
LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT:
The point of these daily\weekly and repetitive exercises in "fear mongering" from my end was NOT about trying to scare folks for the sake of scaring them, or to put down predictions just to gloat after the fact ... IT WAS AN ATTEMPT TO EDUCATE ... both YOU and ME ...
I learned A LOT trying to reach out to the people on this board ... the constant brick wall i was rammed up against with all the "fearmonger" and "tin foil hat nutter" responses FORCED ME TO DO MY HOMEWORK and i learned a SHIT TON because of it.
But, besides trying to force my own awareness, i was trying to force YOURS.
Look folks, i don't think people here are idiots. I wouldn't be here if i thought that.
I'm here because, like Mr. Vedder himself, i happen to think that Pearl Jam fans on the whole are at least a small notch above the average bear when it comes to consciousness, awareness, and the content of their character. I believe that truly.
THAT was what this whole thing was about, from my POV.
I DON'T feel a whole lot of personal power over this crisis, but the one thing i saw an opportunity to do here was HELP EXPLAIN IT TO OTHERS so that maybe one day THEY would also see, and a MOVEMENT could begin to FOMENT.
That has ALWAYS been my intent.
Whether i ever or at anytime did that articulately or not, is beyond my analysis (i know i got more than a few positive feed back letters via PM, but i also got a lot of muck thrown my way on AMT) ... and certainly i never claim to have held my cool at any given moment.
This is intense stuff, and from my perspective at least, with what i deem myself to be knowledgeable of, it is intensely PASSIONATE material for discussion.
What i was HOPING to achieve in this forum was to INSPIRE SOME OF THAT SAME PASSION IN OTHERS.
Because, HONESTLY folks, the ONLY way we are going to change or challenge this juggernaut is if A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE GET THAT SAME PASSION, AWARENESS, AND DESIRE TO MAKE REAL CHANGE.
And real change starts with REAL UNDERSTANDING, followed by REAL solutions.
And ONCE again, i will plug a movie which i feel the time has come to plug shamelessly: The Money Masters.
I'm about 3/4 of the way through the Money Masters (it's a long one, kiddies), but it is incredibly interesting, informative, and dare I say, educational? Almost too educational, for some I would argue, as it might even bore some people to tears.
However, the research is clearly there and presented in more of a "textbook" way, than a movie like "Freedom to Fascism." Both movies share a lot of similar quotes, and this one is definitely older-- I wonder if Russo used it in his research?
The guy in the Money Masters really seems to hate on the gold standard, though-- and maybe I haven't gotten to the point where he explains WHY, but I find it kind of odd... Maybe I just missed it. I'll watch the conclusion tomorrow.
That being said, I hope you're wrong about everything you post on this board.
Unfortunately, the more I read up on how the government and the central banks actually work, the more I realize that regardless, we the people, are becoming more powerless with each passing day.
The articles that you post on here that are from "legitimate" sources, aka the major media sites (msnbc, cnn, etc...) often times explain the whole shadowy system in a real subtle way, with the tagline that "This is OK."
Your more "controversial" posts give a more in-depth look at what's happening, sometimes speculative, and tag it with "This is NOT OK."
I guess what I'm saying is, even the major news media sites give you some idea what is actually happening, except with a bias-- AND, they're pretty much banking on their readers to take everything at face value, without any real interpretation of what's being said.
I'm about 3/4 of the way through the Money Masters (it's a long one, kiddies), but it is incredibly interesting, informative, and dare I say, educational? Almost too educational, for some I would argue, as it might even bore some people to tears.
However, the research is clearly there and presented in more of a "textbook" way, than a movie like "Freedom to Fascism." Both movies share a lot of similar quotes, and this one is definitely older-- I wonder if Russo used it in his research?
The guy in the Money Masters really seems to hate on the gold standard, though-- and maybe I haven't gotten to the point where he explains WHY, but I find it kind of odd... Maybe I just missed it. I'll watch the conclusion tomorrow.
That being said, I hope you're wrong about everything you post on this board.
Unfortunately, the more I read up on how the government and the central banks actually work, the more I realize that regardless, we the people, are becoming more powerless with each passing day.
The articles that you post on here that are from "legitimate" sources, aka the major media sites (msnbc, cnn, etc...) often times explain the whole shadowy system in a real subtle way, with the tagline that "This is OK."
Your more "controversial" posts give a more in-depth look at what's happening, sometimes speculative, and tag it with "This is NOT OK."
I guess what I'm saying is, even the major news media sites give you some idea what is actually happening, except with a bias-- AND, they're pretty much banking on their readers to take everything at face value, without any real interpretation of what's being said.
Mission accomplished.
Gold Standard:
Money Masters starts talking about that around the time that they start talking about Jackson and the Second Bank, and then towards the end of the movie they REALLY cover it pretty well.
The bottom line is that gold is TOO rare, and TOO WELL OWNED BY THE BANKS. In otherwords, like Jesse Livermore (Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is an absolute CLASSIC book) used to love doing at the turn of the century, THEY'VE CORNERED THE MARKET. A gold standard could be (and indeed HAS in the past been) used to inflict VIOLENT PAIN on the American economy.
At the end of the day the Money Masters solution is really the same solution in the constitution, and at least on the level of the 2nd best solution offered by Milton Friedman: abolish the Federal Reserve and restore the power to print money back to the federal government itself, via the congress.
The ultimate solution, per Friedman, would simply be to stop printing money entirely, and allow the markets to adjust by coming up with their own (well regulated but still free market) secondary credit alternative (like credit cards are in a way a secondary money).
This would stop inflation entirely and GUARANTEE the SAVINGS of the masses against a large and violent transfer of wealth.
And to My2Hands,
i don't know what you do with your money, but whether you keep it under a matress or in a bank, you are losing between TEN AND TWENTY PERCENT OF ITS VALUE PER YEAR right now. That should be enough to get you pretty royaly pissed.
And if the system actually collapsed (read: no bailout) you would be pretty well hurting. A likely outcome would be food shortages due to violent (making todays all time record spike in oil look tame) spikes in commodities which would lead to the collapse of the food distribution system. Hundreds of thousands of businesses would be, due to massive bank failures, UNABLE TO OBTAIN CREDIT, credit necessary to operate on a daily basis, and would go under in short order. Everything would collapse in a violent interrelated chain. Banks that weren't failing would fail due to counterparty exposures (credit they had lent to banks that DID fail and so forth), and entire industries would collapse due to their inability to obtain loans.
Now, if you happen to be in the country with a garden and some guns, i may give you credit where credit is due.
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
On the back of this latest massive move in gold,
Jim Cramer is PREACHING TO THE MASSES TO BUY GOLD STOCK RIGHT NOW.
"YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO NOT BUY GOLD".
Lol.
It HAS to be bad ... REALLY bad ... when Cramer is screaming to buy gold stock.
:eek:
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Progress is not made by everyone joining some new fad,
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
And to My2Hands,
i don't know what you do with your money, but whether you keep it under a matress or in a bank, you are losing between TEN AND TWENTY PERCENT OF ITS VALUE PER YEAR right now. That should be enough to get you pretty royaly pissed.
And if the system actually collapsed (read: no bailout) you would be pretty well hurting. A likely outcome would be food shortages do to violent (making todays all time record spike in oil look tame) spikes in commodities which would lead to the collapse of the food distribution system.
Now, if you happen to be in the country with a garden and some guns, i may give you credit where credit is due.
no thanks on the guns, i prefer a fishing rod :cool:
veggies are cheap enough, i think i will be fine
see, i just try to have a view of the large picture... the entire US economy could collapse and wall street could burn to the ground, and i would still have it better then 95% of the world. some folks get all worked up about "the dow went down a gagillion" and "this business went belly up" and so forth while typing on their $1000 laptop, driving their $30,000 car, listening to their ipod, watching their flat screen TV with the satellite package and talking on their cell... me, i have a much simpler way of life, or at least am striving towards that goal... and i try to always keep the larger picture at hand, that 90% of the world is in poverty and lives on 1$ a day and that i will NEVER live in that level of poverty in this country no matter how badly wall street collapses under the weight of its own greed
the whole deal breaks down to GREED and deregulation. greed on the part of Wall Street fueled by their coveted deregulation agenda championed by the GOP since Reagan and greed on the part of middle class america living beyond their means and buying homes they cannot afford (would you say that is accurate drifting?)
no thanks on the guns, i prefer a fishing rod
veggies are cheap enough, i think i will be fine
see, i just try to have a view of the large picture... the entire US economy could collapse and wall street could burn to the ground, and i would still have it better then 95% of the world. some folks get all worked up about "the dow went down a gagillion" and "this business went belly up" and so forth while typing on their $1000 laptop, driving their $30,000 car, listening to their ipod, watching their flat screen TV with the satellite package and talking on their cell... me, i have a much simpler way of life, or at least am striving towards that goal... and i try to always keep the larger picture at hand, that 90% of the world is in poverty and lives on 1$ a day and that i will NEVER live in that level of poverty in this country no matter how badly wall street collapses under the weight of its own greed
the whole deal breaks down to GREED and deregulation. greed on the part of Wall Street fueled by their coveted deregulation agenda championed by the GOP since Reagan and greed on the part of middle class america living beyond their means and buying homes they cannot afford (would you say that is accurate drifting?)
I would say your assertions about living standards is for the most part accurate. My comment there would be that this current crisis could very likely see some of the most disturbing transfers of wealth and power in HISTORY. I'm talking about things like nationalizing utilities and food distribution networks. I'm talking about changes that would make FDR's National Industry Recovery Act seem like it WASN'T some quazi-fascist\quazi-communist stinkbomb. That would seem like capitalism at its finest in comparison. I'm not sure you are really grasping the implications of what a catastrophic market failure means. We are talking about a potential breakdown at EVERY level of the economy due to MASSIVE UNPRECEDENTED losses of liquidity in the market (and possibly an attempt to stop that by massive unprecedented inflation, and either way its scary as hell).
But yes, i agree that it would take a LOT to get to the point where you are scrounging to dig worms out of the ground for food, and covering your dick with maple leaves for warmth.
As for the bottom paragraph,
i would simply caution against falling in to THEIR trap of thinking we have had ANYTHING approximating "DEregulation" in the last 20 years. All we have had is RERegulation in favor of big business, and it is government intervention TO THE BENEFIT of large corporations.
"DEregulation" is the misnomer slapped on to the bills that achieve this, so that when SHIT GOES TO HELL (like now for instance) all the fuckheads in washington can then turn around and say "WE NEED NEW REGULATION", and start the process of fucking you over yet again, just under a different pretense.
:cool: :eek: :( :eek: :cool:
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
deregulation and LACK of oversight have led to the enron/energy scandal in california and collapse of enron... and it has led to many of these issues we are seeing play out right now, including the collapsing housing market fueled by bad loans being handed out with little to no oversight or regualtion
it is also screwing the consumer... in my state there had been a push for years from the untilities to de-regulate... after years they finally pushed it through 2 years ago and the instant it became law every form of energy cost in my state jumped overnight once the government controls were off... these companies were doing fine while being regulated but they are rolling in it now that that oversight and regulation is gone. the cost of electricity and heating gas literally doubled over night
deregulation and LACK of oversight have led to the enron/energy scandal in california and collapse of enron... and it has led to many of these issues we are seeing play out right now, including the collapsing housing market fuled by bad loans being handed out with little to no oversight or regualtion
it is also screwing the consumer... in my state there had been a push for years from the untilities to de-regulate... after years they finally pushed it through 2 years ago and the instant it became law every form of energy cost in my state jumped overnight once the government controls were off... these companies were doing fine while being regulated but they are rolling in it now that that oversight and regulation is gone. the cost of electricity and heating gas literally doubled over night
Haha right...and they came the record profits are being used for further r&D and better customer service probably.
no thanks on the guns, i prefer a fishing rod :cool:
veggies are cheap enough, i think i will be fine
see, i just try to have a view of the large picture... the entire US economy could collapse and wall street could burn to the ground, and i would still have it better then 95% of the world. some folks get all worked up about "the dow went down a gagillion" and "this business went belly up" and so forth while typing on their $1000 laptop, driving their $30,000 car, listening to their ipod, watching their flat screen TV with the satellite package and talking on their cell... me, i have a much simpler way of life, or at least am striving towards that goal... and i try to always keep the larger picture at hand, that 90% of the world is in poverty and lives on 1$ a day and that i will NEVER live in that level of poverty in this country no matter how badly wall street collapses under the weight of its own greed
the whole deal breaks down to GREED and deregulation. greed on the part of Wall Street fueled by their coveted deregulation agenda championed by the GOP since Reagan and greed on the part of middle class america living beyond their means and buying homes they cannot afford (would you say that is accurate drifting?)
Seems the 'living beyond their means' thing is overstated...the total defaults on actual mortgages is miniscule in comparison with the derivatives associated with them...this mess is hardly Joe Taxpayers' fault...
Even if we have better support systems in place for a total collapse of our economies, I think it's tough to predict what life would be like here in comparison to other impoverished nations...If there is a severe depression/food/energy shortage OR massive inflation in North America which pushed the majority of the population well below the poverty line, we would not have African-style famine...the city-centric, gun happy population of NA would have completely different problems and reactions to them....imagine trying to distribute bread in fucking NYC if people were hungry? yikes. If it came down to Mad Max type shit, I doubt having a little chunk of land and a couple rifles would do you any good...the exodus from the cities would swamp ya
ah, a little further down the hole and we'll have m2h's talking police state
Should we start a pool on when the media will start hyping the Amero?
Comments
i would be fine... i dont work in the financial sector and my job/income will not be affected in any way, and i DO NOT invest in Wall Street or corporations at all... i also didnt take a bad mortgage on some house that is way over my head... i currently do not own a credit card either and have no credit card based debt, although i still owe on some student loans at a very low % rate
so to answer your question, i would be fine
I'm about 3/4 of the way through the Money Masters (it's a long one, kiddies), but it is incredibly interesting, informative, and dare I say, educational? Almost too educational, for some I would argue, as it might even bore some people to tears.
However, the research is clearly there and presented in more of a "textbook" way, than a movie like "Freedom to Fascism." Both movies share a lot of similar quotes, and this one is definitely older-- I wonder if Russo used it in his research?
The guy in the Money Masters really seems to hate on the gold standard, though-- and maybe I haven't gotten to the point where he explains WHY, but I find it kind of odd... Maybe I just missed it. I'll watch the conclusion tomorrow.
That being said, I hope you're wrong about everything you post on this board.
Unfortunately, the more I read up on how the government and the central banks actually work, the more I realize that regardless, we the people, are becoming more powerless with each passing day.
The articles that you post on here that are from "legitimate" sources, aka the major media sites (msnbc, cnn, etc...) often times explain the whole shadowy system in a real subtle way, with the tagline that "This is OK."
Your more "controversial" posts give a more in-depth look at what's happening, sometimes speculative, and tag it with "This is NOT OK."
I guess what I'm saying is, even the major news media sites give you some idea what is actually happening, except with a bias-- AND, they're pretty much banking on their readers to take everything at face value, without any real interpretation of what's being said.
Mission accomplished.
Gold Standard:
Money Masters starts talking about that around the time that they start talking about Jackson and the Second Bank, and then towards the end of the movie they REALLY cover it pretty well.
The bottom line is that gold is TOO rare, and TOO WELL OWNED BY THE BANKS. In otherwords, like Jesse Livermore (Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is an absolute CLASSIC book) used to love doing at the turn of the century, THEY'VE CORNERED THE MARKET. A gold standard could be (and indeed HAS in the past been) used to inflict VIOLENT PAIN on the American economy.
At the end of the day the Money Masters solution is really the same solution in the constitution, and at least on the level of the 2nd best solution offered by Milton Friedman: abolish the Federal Reserve and restore the power to print money back to the federal government itself, via the congress.
The ultimate solution, per Friedman, would simply be to stop printing money entirely, and allow the markets to adjust by coming up with their own (well regulated but still free market) secondary credit alternative (like credit cards are in a way a secondary money).
This would stop inflation entirely and GUARANTEE the SAVINGS of the masses against a large and violent transfer of wealth.
And to My2Hands,
i don't know what you do with your money, but whether you keep it under a matress or in a bank, you are losing between TEN AND TWENTY PERCENT OF ITS VALUE PER YEAR right now. That should be enough to get you pretty royaly pissed.
And if the system actually collapsed (read: no bailout) you would be pretty well hurting. A likely outcome would be food shortages due to violent (making todays all time record spike in oil look tame) spikes in commodities which would lead to the collapse of the food distribution system. Hundreds of thousands of businesses would be, due to massive bank failures, UNABLE TO OBTAIN CREDIT, credit necessary to operate on a daily basis, and would go under in short order. Everything would collapse in a violent interrelated chain. Banks that weren't failing would fail due to counterparty exposures (credit they had lent to banks that DID fail and so forth), and entire industries would collapse due to their inability to obtain loans.
Now, if you happen to be in the country with a garden and some guns, i may give you credit where credit is due.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Jim Cramer is PREACHING TO THE MASSES TO BUY GOLD STOCK RIGHT NOW.
"YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO NOT BUY GOLD".
Lol.
It HAS to be bad ... REALLY bad ... when Cramer is screaming to buy gold stock.
:eek:
If I opened it now would you not understand?
This guy (below) seems a bit of a quirky douche, but he makes the points people need to hear and really think about:
http://fedupusa.org/
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
no thanks on the guns, i prefer a fishing rod :cool:
veggies are cheap enough, i think i will be fine
see, i just try to have a view of the large picture... the entire US economy could collapse and wall street could burn to the ground, and i would still have it better then 95% of the world. some folks get all worked up about "the dow went down a gagillion" and "this business went belly up" and so forth while typing on their $1000 laptop, driving their $30,000 car, listening to their ipod, watching their flat screen TV with the satellite package and talking on their cell... me, i have a much simpler way of life, or at least am striving towards that goal... and i try to always keep the larger picture at hand, that 90% of the world is in poverty and lives on 1$ a day and that i will NEVER live in that level of poverty in this country no matter how badly wall street collapses under the weight of its own greed
the whole deal breaks down to GREED and deregulation. greed on the part of Wall Street fueled by their coveted deregulation agenda championed by the GOP since Reagan and greed on the part of middle class america living beyond their means and buying homes they cannot afford (would you say that is accurate drifting?)
I would say your assertions about living standards is for the most part accurate. My comment there would be that this current crisis could very likely see some of the most disturbing transfers of wealth and power in HISTORY. I'm talking about things like nationalizing utilities and food distribution networks. I'm talking about changes that would make FDR's National Industry Recovery Act seem like it WASN'T some quazi-fascist\quazi-communist stinkbomb. That would seem like capitalism at its finest in comparison. I'm not sure you are really grasping the implications of what a catastrophic market failure means. We are talking about a potential breakdown at EVERY level of the economy due to MASSIVE UNPRECEDENTED losses of liquidity in the market (and possibly an attempt to stop that by massive unprecedented inflation, and either way its scary as hell).
But yes, i agree that it would take a LOT to get to the point where you are scrounging to dig worms out of the ground for food, and covering your dick with maple leaves for warmth.
As for the bottom paragraph,
i would simply caution against falling in to THEIR trap of thinking we have had ANYTHING approximating "DEregulation" in the last 20 years. All we have had is RERegulation in favor of big business, and it is government intervention TO THE BENEFIT of large corporations.
"DEregulation" is the misnomer slapped on to the bills that achieve this, so that when SHIT GOES TO HELL (like now for instance) all the fuckheads in washington can then turn around and say "WE NEED NEW REGULATION", and start the process of fucking you over yet again, just under a different pretense.
:cool: :eek: :( :eek: :cool:
If I opened it now would you not understand?
deregulation and LACK of oversight have led to the enron/energy scandal in california and collapse of enron... and it has led to many of these issues we are seeing play out right now, including the collapsing housing market fueled by bad loans being handed out with little to no oversight or regualtion
it is also screwing the consumer... in my state there had been a push for years from the untilities to de-regulate... after years they finally pushed it through 2 years ago and the instant it became law every form of energy cost in my state jumped overnight once the government controls were off... these companies were doing fine while being regulated but they are rolling in it now that that oversight and regulation is gone. the cost of electricity and heating gas literally doubled over night
Haha right...and they came the record profits are being used for further r&D and better customer service probably.
Seems the 'living beyond their means' thing is overstated...the total defaults on actual mortgages is miniscule in comparison with the derivatives associated with them...this mess is hardly Joe Taxpayers' fault...
Even if we have better support systems in place for a total collapse of our economies, I think it's tough to predict what life would be like here in comparison to other impoverished nations...If there is a severe depression/food/energy shortage OR massive inflation in North America which pushed the majority of the population well below the poverty line, we would not have African-style famine...the city-centric, gun happy population of NA would have completely different problems and reactions to them....imagine trying to distribute bread in fucking NYC if people were hungry? yikes. If it came down to Mad Max type shit, I doubt having a little chunk of land and a couple rifles would do you any good...the exodus from the cities would swamp ya
ah, a little further down the hole and we'll have m2h's talking police state
Should we start a pool on when the media will start hyping the Amero?