I need to rant and let some thoughts out. Feel free to build on mine, post your own, whatever. This thread is about your own opinions and commentary on the state of the USA and their politics. Sarah Palin just mumbles talking points incoherently. It's annoying. Now, I'd like to hope that Congress grows a pair and uses this as an opportunity to help people fucked over with foreclosures. Right now, this whole economic fiasco is just a blatant upward transfer of wealth. So where did the $700 billion number come from? Who knew it would be necessary to bailout private corporations but people losing their homes, a little cheque in the mail for $300 should cover that and boost consumer economy. Sec. Paulson told congress yesterday that the plan was to spend roughly 50 billion a month, Sen. Schumer asked: why not $150 billion then, and let the next administration do a re-evaluation in January? No real answer. Sadly, there does need to be a bail out. But like Senator Bernie Sanders said, "If these companies are too big to fail, then they are too big to exist." These problems wouldn't happen if regulation were enforced. Or not slowly stripped away with each new administration. Monopolies are as much a problem in free markets as are governments. Why they would allow the situation to come to this is beyond me. It's just lunacy. I'm starting to think it's a conspiracy. It's clear Obama is going to win, so they're going to saddle his administration with such a massive debt that he can't fulfill any of his social promises. And then they blame Obama for the failing economy, point to all the promises he didn't keep. And pretend it wasn't a Republican administration directly responsible for this fuck up. I mean, fuck. There's $700 billion available at the snap of a finger to bail out these Wall Street assholes who were trading monopoly money. But universal health care is TOO EXPENSIVE?! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
First of all, it has nothing to do with Democrat or Republican. That's just another media-created diversion to get people pointing fingers instead of actually stopping to think. However, the fact is most of this goes back to Alan Greenspan and when Clinton was in office. What we're seeing is just a culmination of what has been going on for a very long time through the manipulation of our currency, which ties into your question of where does the money come from. The money comes from that which is printed out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, that which is barrowed from foreigners, and that which is pillaged from the taxpayers. The root of all this stems from the Federal Reserve. Everything else is just a symptom of the real problems the media likes to ignore. The media is content to focus on the housing crisis and bad loans, which do factor into this, but is not the root of the problem. Again, these are just symptoms of a much bigger problem -- one that has been artificially and deliberately created. What is going to break the system is the collapse of the dollar, which is tied directly to the Federal Reserve flooding the markets with endless liquidity to prevent recession and bail out Wall Street. This flooding of the markets with increasingly worthless fiat paper didn't just happen recently, it has been going on for a very long time now. But now it's happening at a much faster rate with this proposed bailout, which is entirely illegal, and will dump billions of dollars of worthless paper into the markets to drive the dollar down even faster. But it's all according to the plan, of course. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING that is happening right now is by mere coincidence. It's not some accident that this is happening. It was planned to happen. They always create the problems to then offer the solutions, as that is the Hegelian Dialectic. Don't think the elite are not profiting from this consolidation we see occurring.
That's not entirely true, and it certainly isn't where the majority of our money comes from(thus where the inflation comes from). Only about 5% of our money supply was created from the federal reserve. The other 95% is bank credit, created out of thin air by loans the bank is making. Some of these firms were loaning out $30 for every real one. Banks loan money they don't have! All this of course is approved and supposedly regulated by the Federal Reserve, but they're not the ones making the money. The financial institutions have a stranglehold on our currency.
The fact is, for the Fed to keep things from temporarily unraveling, they must continue to print money up (which in fact is credit), which causes the dollar to weaken, which means things cost more and more money because of inflation. All money is credit, including paper, since it is fiat currency with nothing backing it. So it is credit money, not commodity money, which would be backed by something like gold (it's not). But I was specifically referring to where the money comes from to bail out these Wall Street institutions. It comes from the Federal Reserve which creates money (i.e. credit) out of nothing. As far as credit, it's merely debt creation. When you go to take out a loan, not a single dollar is printed for that loan. Yet from that point on, you are paying interest on what are simply numbers entered into a computer. Yet if you fail to make the payments on that loan, the banks can come and take away your REAL assets (car, house, etc.) Yes, that is the scam that is credit. That is one of the many scams of banking that nobody seems to question. Nobody questions what gives a few men the authority to create money out of thin air, charge interest on that money, and keep people in perpetual debt through the issuance of credit. Most matrix-minded people don't even think about this and just accept it as normal because it's all they know.
Inflation is such a cock. It's artificially created and artificially inflated and deflated at the will of the people who crunch numbers behind closed double doors. Private equity firms are making more money than they have brains, and it's because they bundle their investments and create a macro-super fund to lower the risk in the market. Private equity firms will tie nice existing money-making corporations up in a neat little package, sprinkle a person's pension, health insurance or whatever they are paying every month into on it, call it a fund and make capital off it. I mean, when you invest a person's pension by putting their money into a pool with Cadillac and McDonald's, it really blurs the lines of where this money is going and who exactly owns it. It's almost money laundering, but in a legal way to conduct investments. EDIT: I forget my point and where my idea was going. I'll come back to it. I should really finish chapter 26 of Gargantua.
Ok I'll bite... Let's get something straight. If you take out a loan and buy a house, you are in fact, asking the bank to buy the house for you with the promise to pay the bank back over time. It's absolutely no different if you went to your rich Uncle Wally and HE loaned you the money. Who REALLY bought the house? Uncle Wally REALLY bought the house, correct? And the REAL asset is Uncle Wally's, which you are using immediately with the promise only to pay over time. It's fine to question how systems work, but if you want to understand how the matrix works, start with the basics.
So, let me get this straight... Russia is blamed for what Georgia did. Iran's president is misquoted and all candidates wants to leave the option of going to war with Iran 'on the table'. Palestinians are portrayed by the media as evil psychotic goblins that want nothing more than to kill a Jew. Invading Iraq under false pretenses. Patriot Act (and its cousins). Foreclosures up the asshole. Administration after administration slowly deregulating big businesses. 700 billion dollar bail out, yet we 'can't afford universal healthcare'. All the big wigs leaving the country. McCain trying to squirm his way out of a debate. What limited food sources that we have, some of it is used to create biofuels. Gays are treated as second class citizens. DEA busting down marijuana shops and arresting patients. Meanwhile, as this all goes on, millions of Americans are waiting to see who wins the televised dance contest. Ya, there is no conspiracy going on. Thus concludes my rant. Thank you. China? Hello, nice to meet you. Have you seen Blade Runner... wow that movie sure was accurate. What's that now? Learn Mandarin? Don't mind if I do. Well hello there JACKIE CHAN, how's it going braski?
You're missing the point. The banks create credit out of nothing. Imagine if you had the power to print money (with no real worth other than the paper it is printed on) and loan it to people at interest, and they were to pay that loan back at interest or else suffer the consequences. Imagine the kind of power over other people's lives you would have. Well, that is the case with the banks who use credit and debt as a proverbial noose to control people and entire governments alike. They loan money that is created out of thin air, charge interest on that loan which was created by simply adding zeros into a computer, yet if you fail to pay they can come and take your REAL hard-earned assets. This is precisely how the banks have taken over the government.
Of FFS learn some basic financial concepts. Banks have assets and liabilities. Loans (among other things) are assets, deposits (among other things) are liabilities. The difference between the two - positive, if the bank isn't bust - is equity, the net worth of the bank. You cannot loan money you do not have. Banks' balance sheets always add up: assets equals liabilities plus equity. You cannot increase assets (e.g. loans) without increasing liabilities (e.g. deposits) or equity. Get a set of financial statements for a bank and figure it out.
Hiptastic you are delusional. The way banks have always worked is by loaning out more money (or gold certificates back when they came up with the system) than they have in deposits. They started this when everthing was paid for with gold coins. The goldsmiths would store a persons gold in a safe place and issue the person a certificate that said they have X amount of gold at Y goldsmith. People started trading certificates between each other instead of going to the goldsmith trading the paper for the gold, then trading the gold to another person who then brings it back to said goldsmith and stores it in there name. When the goldsmiths realized that even though the certificates they gave out equalled the amount of gold they stored, the people never withdrew all the gold at once they came up with the idea of lending certificates for gold that they never had and charging interest they could make wealth out of nothing. Thus fractional banking was born. Banks are allowed under law to lend out more money than they have in deposits. That is money out of thin air. Equity is the loan they made that they don't have the money for, in the form of the loanee promising to pay back the money with interest. That is why the economy must always grow or fail. It is a never ending inflationary system. Money for nothing until it fails, which always happens. The bankers know it fails but they know when to sell their shares just before it happens, then buy back the bankrupt assets (equity)at pennies on the dollar. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer everytime.
They are not. Take any bank, anywhere in the world. Look at the balance sheet. Assets = Liabilities plus Shareholder's Equity. Balance sheets balance (hence the name), the same as for any other company in any other industry. If you cannot explain to me why the banks balance sheets balance even as they turn each dollar of liabilities into multiple dollars of assets, then you don't understand what you are talking about. The reason its called fractional reserve banking is because when the bank gets a $100 deposit, they only have to keep (e.g.) $5 and then they can loan out the other $95. A fraction is kept in reserve. So in a sense, the depositor has $100, and the borrower has $95, so the money has "multiplied" even though the assets and liabilities all net off and there is really nothing but the original $100.
No, fractional reserve banking would be more like this... I start a bank. I invest, say $10,000 in cash (in the case of the banks it's fiat paper money). Then I decide to loan out $100,000. Well, how can I loan out $90,000 dollars I don't have? (In reality, I don't even have the $10,000 because it's just worthless bank paper.) It's simple, I just print the money up. That's what fractional reserve banking is. It's printing up money out of nothing. That's what the Federal Reserve banks do. They simply create cash out of thin air. This is more commonly called counterfeiting, except it's legal when the Fed does it. This is why people's money is worth so little and people have to work three jobs to support their families. It's called inflation, but people like Hiptastic will continue to defend it and claim how great it is because it likely has no impact on his little world. As long as he is making money on the markets, why should he care? Maybe because the books are cooked. Idiot.
No, I didn’t miss the point. My point was that you were explaining financial theories developed by thousands of people over centuries of time as debt creation “out of thin air” while saying the house was the real asset of the borrower. It is extremely inaccurate. I am well aware that some banks have the power to create money which exists simply because they say it exists, just as I know that judges can sign a piece of paper and have someone jailed, or doctors can cut open someone and remove a kidney simply because a piece of paper says they have the right to do that. You can add to that list: borrowers who have used no money to obtain rights to property merely with a promise to pay a tiny little bit a month over a period of time. You view the financial system as being one-sided, and designed to enslave. You see the power to create money as benefiting only one party: the bank. This is not true. The creation of money is an attempt to benefit everyone. The borrower clearly can benefit by obtaining rights to property and creating these rights “out of thin air” simply because of a “promise” to buy it slowly over time. As for banks owning the government, yeah that line of reasoning only goes so far, until you realize that history is full of examples where governments suddenly turn against the banks and say “thanks for paying to build our country, now we are kicking you out and if you come back we’ll kill you.” THAT threat is something very real to a banker. It kinda balances out the power huh?
Well, gee, then I guess fractional reserve banking has really paid off. That's why our dollar is worth so much and the economy is just booming.
But this entire bailout situation in the USA is a one-sided debate. The government decides to withdraw from economy affairs and let the marketplace dip its unseen molesting hands into the underpinnings of a monopolized financial system. The same people who said "Back off government, you don't belong in this wing of economics" are the same people who then said "Hey, hey government! You should intervene now." Lesson is, it's a one-sided debate. The corporations and big money-pushers get what they want. And they get it by telling the government how to react to their business deals. Capisce?
I agree with you, this bailout is a one-sided debate. The bailout is a total clusterfucker and its not a question of if it will happen, but only how much the price tag will be. I liked your rant and it summed up much of what I think. We have the former head of Goldman Sacs as head of the treasury, and we’ll bail out this group of sociopaths, and, just to make it all the more pathetic, hire the same sociopaths who are partially responsible for making this mess to manage the property for us! My thing is that our banking system, or any banking system, is ultimately based on two things: trust and promises. I do not believe the banking system only benefits the banks, knowing the minute someone signs a mortgage with virtually no money of their own, they instantly gain rights to a property which they would otherwise not have, and that is no small benefit. The seller of the property also walks away with the money, correct? To say it is ONLY the banks who benefited is wildly inaccurate. So in my view, this mess can only happen when 3 things occur at once: the government looks the other way, the banks throw all responsible lending practices out the window, and borrowers buy houses they know they can’t possibly afford in hopes of selling it to a greater fool for a higher price. Take any one of those three factors out and we don’t end up where we are. See? It’s fun to scheme up grand conspiracies about how “they” got together to screw “the people” but the scary thing, the truly scary thing is, ‘the people’ jumped on the bandwagon and happily started screwing each other, didn’t we?
Seems to me the people who made out best were the home sellers. Or is there some secret organization that took that money too?
