Well, I did it. Voted for divided government.

There are still scientists and psychologists out there teaching in Universities who deny that hypnosis exists when it's practiced everyday by clinicians and studied in labs the world over.

When probing into the mind, not specifically the physical brain, the implications are so challenging for the more docrinaire empirical scientists that they will never confront it.

During my brief former experience in interacting with highly accomplished physical scientists what I was surprised to learn is that their personal conclusions about these topics are closely held, and they do not disclose their wild-ass views publicly.

I do think however that some of the wilder speculation involved with string theory is a reflection of these personal, mystical views.

If the public knew how stupendously wild the actual beliefs of their most distinguished physical scientists are they would be shocked.

Let's put it this way....

The most distinguished biological scientists continue to cling to random events to explain evolution.

The most accomplished of physical scientists do not.

I am a registered Republican 1%er, east coast NYer and I voted for Obama, for the 2nd time.. raise my taxes (in 2011 the SO and I paid over $400k to the feds) and cut spending big time - everybody get a bit of pain and we get off the credit/borrowing drug habit... this shit has got to stop Originally Posted by Roothead

I CAN NOT FATHOM A BIGGER FUCKING IDIOT.

Maybe now we'll get spending under control - somewhat, maybe, please, just a little?.

Here's hoping the GOP will finally start nominating fiscal conservatives who are libertarian on social issues. Candidates that will actually cut spending, including entitlements. Originally Posted by ExNYer

Good for you. Sane thread, thanks. I do happen to disagree with you on the spending issue. It isn't that I don't think we need to be more fiscally responsible and efficient in our spending (we do) but I just don't think that focusing on the spending, austerity in other words, is the right way to address deficits, debt and spending. Focusing on full employment, inflation and investment are the best ways, IMHO, to get deficits, debt and spending under control. It was Dick Cheney, not my favorite guy, but definitely smart, who said several times and on video, "deficits don't matter". Now I would take some issue with him on that (for instance, if we let them matter politically or psychologically then they do matter - but from a strictly accounting standpoint, they don't matter), but fundamentally he is correct.

Bottom line is that the budget of the U.S. is not a household, business nor even a state or city budget (only much bigger) and it shouldn't be thought of or handled in the same way. It is structurally different and can be easily shown to be so from an accounting perspective. None of the aforementioned budgets create their own currency and that makes a critical structural difference. A sovereign's macro economy is not a subset of a larger economy, it has peers with inputs and output, but it is top level - that makes a significant structural and mathematical difference that isn't accounted for in most assertions and discussions.

I keep repeating the mantra here that macro isn't micro and vice versa but no one still seems to get it. Why, if the rules are the same for both (and they aren't) are there two economic disciplines? Furthermore, in my study, the rules of macro are not intuitive because everybody thinks they understand micro-economics and accounting since they often run a household, a business or balance a checkbook. No one runs anything that has a guaranteed income (think trust fund, but in macro it is taxing authority - yes states, cities and counties have that I know) AND monetary policy. Specifically, in the modern world, a fiat monetary system. Look up, study and read about Chartalism and/or MMT to understand this. It only took me about five years to really start to get it and I don't fully yet, but I think I have some of the basics.

My biggest pet peeves are when people wrongly assert that the U.S. is bankrupt or is going bankrupt, will go the way of Greece or we are mortgaging our children's future. These ideas are just plain wrong.
#1 - Greece doesn't have any monetary policy and has a very corrupt tax system as well where many people don't pay taxes at all and this is considered OK. That makes Greece like a state where most of the taxes didn't get paid at all. Our country isn't and can't be like that unless we somehow do not have the political will to pay our bills (like not raising the debt ceiling).
#2 - The U.S. has tax income in perpetuity as long as the people and their elected representatives have the political will to raise taxes. In a fiat monetary system, taxes are used to create demand for the money and aren't or don't have to be used to pay for things because... see #3.
#3 - The U.S. creates its own money. This means that we don't have to borrow and don't have to pay interest if we don't want to. If you had a money tree in your back yard would you have to take out a loan for a car or a house? No. Would you have to pay interest on anything at all? No. We do those things for historic reasons, but we don't have to. Period. This is a mathematical and accounting reality that can be shown and proven quite easily.

Now, I'm not saying that we should have unlimited deficits, debts or spending nor that we shouldn't be fiscally responsible, but this furor over a "debt crisis" or "deficit crises" or "spending crisis" is unfounded. In fact most of the deficit since 2007 is due to non-discretionary spending - http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2...e-largely.html

This means that when the housing market recovers (which it is finally doing) and we get closer to full employment (which the housing market will help with) then the deficits will auto-magically mostly disappear. Yes, there are lots of other factors involved, but if we are headed in the right direction, however, slowly (remember the Ryan plan didn't even balance the budget until 2040) we will be doing fine. Stability, employment and low inflation (plus no deflation) are the keys to fiscal responsibility and the big plus is that business really likes that approach too. With those in place, we can easily grow out of these deficits, spending (except on Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, but those are cyclical and mostly manageable) and even the national debt that seems so huge will be manageable. With high employment, reasonable GDP growth and rational adjustment to the programs we have now, we can actually have pretty low taxes, fiscal responsibility and most of the government services we need.

I just get so F^%$&in sick of all the economic scare/fear tactics based on ignorance of how things really work. That leads to group psychological panic and terrible political and economic decisions. To really understand all this you have to start back at the Bretton-Woods conference and also study Nixon's end to converability in 1971 along with Chartalism and/or MMT.

Of course, we could just continue borrowing and printing money like there's no tomorrow, and continue to rely on the Fed to do a new iteration of QE a couple of times each year.

What could possibly go wrong with a sound plan like that? Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

If we can create/print money, then why in the world would we borrow it and pay interest on that? We actually don't have to. Makes no sense except that we did it because we had always done it. In 1973 we did it so that we wouldn't put all the bond traders out of business when Nixon ended convertibility. At the present point, we actually owe ourselves about $12 Trillion and the have foreign obligations of a bit less than $6 Trillion. Nobody seems to ever mention that we owe it to ourselves.

Inflation and then possibly hyper-inflation are the most likely things to go wrong with that. For the last five years that hasn't been a risk with QE and borrowing. Going into a deflationary spiral like Japan has been the real risk. We may get to a point where all the liquidity pumped into the system will fire up some serious inflation and it will be interesting to see what can be done by the Fed and the government to put a lid on that.

If we get back close to "full employment" and are growing GDP around #-4% or more we won't need to create money like crazy.

I am a registered Republican 1%er, east coast NYer and I voted for Obama, for the 2nd time.. raise my taxes (in 2011 the SO and I paid over $400k to the feds) and cut spending big time - everybody get a bit of pain and we get off the credit/borrowing drug habit... this shit has got to stop Originally Posted by Roothead

Actually, we don't need to borrow and we don't have to pay interest if we don't want to because we can create any money we need to run the government and the economy. We actually choose to borrow money (and we owe ourselves about $11 Trillion and foreign governments about $5.5 Trillion) and pay interest because we have always done it that way.

Modern economies are based on credit/borrowing and creating money so what we really need to do is understand much better how that works and learn to manage it responsibly so we have a fairly stable global economic infrastructure. If we actually did get off of the "credit/borrowing drug habit" it would pretty much crater the entire world financial sector not to mention most of the world economy.

"this shit has got to stop" would be a pretty disastrous approach. Why does it have to stop (is it immoral? are we mortgaging our children's future?)? We have built our economies on utilizing money by loaning and borrowing rather than just storing most of it in a vault. All the businesses that rely on borrowing, loaning, interest and moving money around would go out of business (much like when credit dried up after 2007) and most of if not all of their employees off.

It would certainly be good to turn the growth of deficits and debt around, but only once we are near full employment and only if it would not negatively affect that employment. We need to find ways to employ and grow the middle class, ideally in the private sector and also to grow their incomes, savings and wealth. Only that way will Wall St. and the government also be in good shape for the long run.

This means that when the housing market recovers (which it is finally doing) and we get closer to full employment (which the housing market will help with) then the deficits will auto-magically mostly disappear. Yes, there are lots of other factors involved, but if we are headed in the right direction, however, slowly (remember the Ryan plan didn't even balance the budget until 2040) we will be doing fine. Stability, employment and low inflation (plus no deflation) are the keys to fiscal responsibility and the big plus is that business really likes that approach too. With those in place, we can easily grow out of these deficits, spending (except on Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, but those are cyclical and mostly manageable) and even the national debt that seems so huge will be manageable. With high employment, reasonable GDP growth and rational adjustment to the programs we have now, we can actually have pretty low taxes, fiscal responsibility and most of the government services we need.

I just get so F^%$&in sick of all the economic scare/fear tactics based on ignorance of how things really work. That leads to group psychological panic and terrible political and economic decisions. To really understand all this you have to start back at the Bretton-Woods conference and also study Nixon's end to converability in 1971 along with Chartalism and/or MMT. Originally Posted by austxjr

You're providing the standard economists' answer and it's dead wrong. Here's why.

1.Without a return to the employment levels and loose underwriting prior to 2008 construction will never come back.

2.As Robert Reich has accurately said, there will be no recovery without an upward adjustment in household incomes and wages....which will never happen.

3.The only reason why there was full employment until 2007 was because of,
a.massive immigration increasing aggregate demand
b.loose credit for all captial goods, consumer items, etc.

4.Since the loss of loose credit and a decline in immigration since 2008 the economy has been marginally sustained by massive Federal spending and borrowing.

5.When the debt becomes unsustainable due to interest burdeon on the budget deficits will be slashed ----that will cause unemployment to soar.

6.When this happens there will be another depression, like in 1934, and it will never abate.

The underlying reason for all this is massive trade deficits.

Anyone who knows the structure of recoveries knows exports have to increase for recoveries to occur.

Anyone who knows the structure of employment knows it's impossible to have full employment with massive trade deficits.

These deficits are now STRUCTURAL, as they are the result of the moving of US corporate operations overseas.

The bulk of the trade deficit is actually US manufactures which are assembled overseas and brought into the US as foreign produced goods when they're actually US corporate manufactures.

This phenomenon is what's responsible for structural unemployment, stagnant wages, unrecoverable aggregate demand.

ps...

Real trade with Mexico has declined since NAFTA. What comes into the US from Mexico is US owned manufactures assembled in Mexico.

Good for you. Sane thread, thanks. I do happen to disagree with you on the spending issue. It isn't that I don't think we need to be more fiscally responsible and efficient in our spending (we do) but I just don't think that focusing on the spending, austerity in other words, is the right way to address deficits, debt and spending. Focusing on full employment, inflation and investment are the best ways, IMHO, to get deficits, debt and spending under control. It was Dick Cheney, not my favorite guy, but definitely smart, who said several times and on video, "deficits don't matter". Now I would take some issue with him on that (for instance, if we let them matter politically or psychologically then they do matter - but from a strictly accounting standpoint, they don't matter), but fundamentally he is correct.

Bottom line is that the budget of the U.S. is not a household, business nor even a state or city budget (only much bigger) and it shouldn't be thought of or handled in the same way. It is structurally different and can be easily shown to be so from an accounting perspective. None of the aforementioned budgets create their own currency and that makes a critical structural difference. A sovereign's macro economy is not a subset of a larger economy, it has peers with inputs and output, but it is top level - that makes a significant structural and mathematical difference that isn't accounted for in most assertions and discussions.

I keep repeating the mantra here that macro isn't micro and vice versa but no one still seems to get it. Why, if the rules are the same for both (and they aren't) are there two economic disciplines? Furthermore, in my study, the rules of macro are not intuitive because everybody thinks they understand micro-economics and accounting since they often run a household, a business or balance a checkbook. No one runs anything that has a guaranteed income (think trust fund, but in macro it is taxing authority - yes states, cities and counties have that I know) AND monetary policy. Specifically, in the modern world, a fiat monetary system. Look up, study and read about Chartalism and/or MMT to understand this. It only took me about five years to really start to get it and I don't fully yet, but I think I have some of the basics.

My biggest pet peeves are when people wrongly assert that the U.S. is bankrupt or is going bankrupt, will go the way of Greece or we are mortgaging our children's future. These ideas are just plain wrong.
#1 - Greece doesn't have any monetary policy and has a very corrupt tax system as well where many people don't pay taxes at all and this is considered OK. That makes Greece like a state where most of the taxes didn't get paid at all. Our country isn't and can't be like that unless we somehow do not have the political will to pay our bills (like not raising the debt ceiling).
#2 - The U.S. has tax income in perpetuity as long as the people and their elected representatives have the political will to raise taxes. In a fiat monetary system, taxes are used to create demand for the money and aren't or don't have to be used to pay for things because... see #3.
#3 - The U.S. creates its own money. This means that we don't have to borrow and don't have to pay interest if we don't want to. If you had a money tree in your back yard would you have to take out a loan for a car or a house? No. Would you have to pay interest on anything at all? No. We do those things for historic reasons, but we don't have to. Period. This is a mathematical and accounting reality that can be shown and proven quite easily.

Now, I'm not saying that we should have unlimited deficits, debts or spending nor that we shouldn't be fiscally responsible, but this furor over a "debt crisis" or "deficit crises" or "spending crisis" is unfounded. In fact most of the deficit since 2007 is due to non-discretionary spending - http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2...e-largely.html

This means that when the housing market recovers (which it is finally doing) and we get closer to full employment (which the housing market will help with) then the deficits will auto-magically mostly disappear. Yes, there are lots of other factors involved, but if we are headed in the right direction, however, slowly (remember the Ryan plan didn't even balance the budget until 2040) we will be doing fine. Stability, employment and low inflation (plus no deflation) are the keys to fiscal responsibility and the big plus is that business really likes that approach too. With those in place, we can easily grow out of these deficits, spending (except on Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, but those are cyclical and mostly manageable) and even the national debt that seems so huge will be manageable. With high employment, reasonable GDP growth and rational adjustment to the programs we have now, we can actually have pretty low taxes, fiscal responsibility and most of the government services we need.

I just get so F^%$&in sick of all the economic scare/fear tactics based on ignorance of how things really work. That leads to group psychological panic and terrible political and economic decisions. To really understand all this you have to start back at the Bretton-Woods conference and also study Nixon's end to converability in 1971 along with Chartalism and/or MMT. Originally Posted by austxjr

You are talking in circles. You have pointed out that macro and micro aren't the same and yeah, we get that. But what policies are you recommending in CONCRETE terms?

Scrape away all the soft-sell language in this and other posts you have made and it is readily apparent that you are recommending that we stiff our creditors, or print money by the truck load, or a combination of both.

If that works so well, why isn't anyone doing it? Or should I ask, why have the nations that did try have their economies destroyed?

Why do we need income taxes? Why not let everybody keep 100% of their income and just print money? How is that ANY different than what you are recommending when you say we should just print money to pay our debts. Currency must be backed by something. Otherwise it is just paper with green ink on it.

Businesses and people borrow money so they can have NOW what would normally take years to save to purchase. So if you want to start a business or buy a house, you borrow money from those who have it and get your business started or build the house. In return, you pay the lenders back the principal, plus interest. The interest is basically the rent you pay to have the principal in the first place. The bank (or its depositors) could have kept that money for their own use. But they didn't, they gave it to the borrower so the borrower could do something with it.

My life is immeasurably better because I was able to borrow money to buy a house and live in it immediately, rather than wait 15 years to save the principal and pay money to landlords in the meanwhile. Even though the interest made the house much more expensive over the 15 years of the loan, it was worth the tradeoff.

My life is also immeasurably better because banks gave my business lines of credit to help me buy/rent the equipment I needed and pay the staff I needed right at the start, before I even had a customer pay me anything. If I had to wait and save the money, I would still be working for someone else.

Credit makes all of that possible. Our modern society is what it is because of credit. Take away the interest and NO ONE will loan you money. Threaten not to pay them back and they will not loan money and they will seize my house.

We don't borrow money because we are used to doing things that way or to please banks and bondholders. We borrow money because we want something NOW, not 10 years from now. And they have the money and won't loan it out unless they get paid back, with interest.

If the sovereign can just print money to meet its needs, why bother to go to the trouble of collecting taxes? Just print $14 trillion in $100 bills and hand them over to all the pensions funds and investors who have bought treasury bills. Problem solved, right?

Except that the money would be worthless, everyone would know it, and we would have 10,000% inflation every couple of months.

And no one would accept US currency for payment of anything. The "full faith and credit" of the US would mean nothing.

And, even though the US would still have bills to pay, it would not be able to borrow to pay its employees, operate buildings, pay Medicare and SS. Because NO ONE will loan it money any more.

What then? Raise taxes? That money is no good either. Just like the money you printed.

If the sovereign can just print money to meet its needs, why bother to go to the trouble of collecting taxes? Just print $14 trillion in $100 bills and hand them over to all the pensions funds and investors who have bought treasury bills. Problem solved, right?

Except that the money would be worthless, everyone would know it, and we would have 10,000% inflation every couple of months.

And no one would accept US currency for payment of anything. The "full faith and credit" of the US would mean nothing.
Originally Posted by ExNYer

You are wrong, wrong, wrong.....

Money works because of two things only:

1.It's scarce because no one other than the state can make it, and,
2.The state has decreed that it alone is used as the means of exchange.

"full faith and credit" means nothing. It's a ridiculous idea.

Money doesn't work because of "faith," or "confidence."

Money works because of SCARCITY. The currency the state has mandated is SCARCE because no one other than the state can make it.

That means that money can and is made by fiat, and it works better that way than any currency backed by a commodity [usually one with no real utility other than it's shiney and oh so cool].

Tieing money to gold or anything else is stupid, and attaches the value of the currency to some commodity market and supply completely unnecessarily.

Printing money in vast quantities isn't necessarily inflationary either.

Inflation occurs only when there is no corresponding increase in product to account for the increased amount of currency.

Obviously there have been many situations in which states have injected amounts of currency into their economies too suddenly, and therefore all that additional cash was de-valued given the amount of product available stayed the same.

But in our current situation we've seen trillions of dollars printed in the last few years and no inflation because little of that money has actually reached the street.

The trillions in extra cash the Fed has dumped in the last four years has gone to offset the paper losses of banks and insurers, and therefore hasn't increased the supply of money available for real commerce.

If the Fed had not done this however the banks would have soaked up all the existing available capital to try to minimize their paper loses, and this would mean there would have been no money available for anyone else to purchase houses, cars, escort services, etc.....

You are wrong, wrong, wrong.....

Money works because of two things only:

1.It's scarce because no one other than the state can make it, and,
2.The state has decreed that it alone is used as the means of exchange.

"full faith and credit" means nothing. It's a ridiculous idea.

Money doesn't work because of "faith," or "confidence."

Money works because of SCARCITY. The currency the state has mandated is SCARCE because no one other than the state can make it.

That means that money can and is made by fiat, and it works better that way than any currency backed by a commodity [usually one with no real utility other than it's shiney and oh so cool].

Tieing money to gold or anything else is stupid, and attaches the value of the currency to some commodity market and supply completely unnecessarily.

Printing money in vast quantities isn't necessarily inflationary either.

Inflation occurs only when there is no corresponding increase in product to account for the increased amount of currency.

Obviously there have been many situations in which states have injected amounts of currency into their economies too suddenly, and therefore all that additional cash was de-valued given the amount of product available stayed the same.

But in our current situation we've seen trillions of dollars printed in the last few years and no inflation because little of that money has actually reached the street.

The trillions in extra cash the Fed has dumped in the last four years has gone to offset the paper losses of banks and insurers, and therefore hasn't increased the supply of money available for real commerce.

If the Fed had not done this however the banks would have soaked up all the existing available capital to try to minimize their paper loses, and this would mean there would have been no money available for anyone else to purchase houses, cars, escort services, etc..... Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

Money isn't scarce because only the government can make it.

It is scarce because the government only makes JUST ENOUGH of it.

Again, if you don't believe me, just try printing $14T and hand it out and see what happens.

Again, if we can just print as much of it as we want and it somehow still has real value, why do we need to collect taxes?

I'm still waiting for an answer to that question from you or Austxjr.

BTW, Austxjr, I love the new avatar. That chicks ass beats the hell out of that bearded dude.

Money isn't scarce because only the government can make it.

It is scarce because the government only makes JUST ENOUGH of it.

Again, if you don't believe me, just try printing $14T and hand it out and see what happens.

Again, if we can just print as much of it as we want and it somehow still has real value, why do we need to collect taxes?

I'm still waiting for an answer to that question from you or Austxjr.

BTW, Austxjr, I love the new avatar. That chicks ass beats the hell out of that bearded dude. Originally Posted by ExNYer

Well actually that's what the Federal government is doing today, at least with about half of its budget.

The Federal government since the 1950s has taken in about 19% of GDP in taxes and spent about 20%. But tax cuts and spending increases in the last decade have changed that. The Bush cuts reduced Federal revenues to only about 17% of GDP, and revenues lost from economic stagnation to even lower levels. At the same time increased spending on Defense and Intelligence as well as payments to the unemployed [and other services surging because of the recession] increased Federal spending to 22% of GDP in the last four years.

Therefore in the last four years almost half of Federal spending has been financed by issuing debt, thereby creating money, out of thin air.

The Federal government could theoretically meet its entire budget that way, but there would be two problems:

1.interest
2.it would puncture the myth that the dollar isn't created out of nothing, which is a simple fact most people are unaware of and would be distressed to learn because they'd resent it terribly to know that money is simply created by banks and then loaned out to their buddies when the normal person has to labor for it.

Well actually that's what the Federal government is doing today, at least with about half of its budget.

Therefore in the last four years almost half of Federal spending has been financed by issuing debt, thereby creating money, out of thin air.

The Federal government could theoretically meet its entire budget that way, but there would be two problems:

1.interest
2.it would puncture the myth that the dollar isn't created out of nothing, which is a simple fact most people are unaware of and would be distressed to learn because they'd resent it terribly to know that money is simply created by banks and then loaned out to their buddies when the normal person has to labor for it. Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

I didn't ask about "issuing debt". I asked about simply printing money and PAYING OFF debts with it. And also paying SS benefits and whatever with it. All 14 trillion dollars worth of it.

Both you and Austxjr have floated the trial balloon about how we can just print fiat money to take care of our national debt and it somehow won't cause problems because hey! it's legal tender and people are forced by law to accept it.

The Federal government could theoretically meet its entire budget that way, but there would be two problems:

1.interest Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

Why is interest a problem? The $14 trillion eliminates the national debt and gets rid of interest payments.

And the banks and institutional investors and treasury bill holders will be flush with that $14 trillion, so they won't need interest payments from the government. They can lend the $14 trillion out to the private sector at low, low rates (cause their is so much supply of it) and BOOM! the economy takes off forever and ever.

Where is the problem? It's legal tender, right?

The Federal government could theoretically meet its entire budget that way, but there would be two problems:

2.it would puncture the myth that the dollar isn't created out of nothing, which is a simple fact most people are unaware of and would be distressed to learn because they'd resent it terribly to know that money is simply created by banks and then loaned out to their buddies when the normal person has to labor for it. Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

What myth? You and Austxjr both said we could print lots and lot of fiat money to solve our debts and because it is legal tender and people have to accept it, the debt crisis would be fixed. So it MUST be real money, right?

And what's this about banks loaning money to their buddies when the normal person has to labor for it? Banks have loaned me money - for my house, my cars and my business. Does that make me their buddy? But they made me to pay it back. And I had to labor to do it! Does that mean I'm not a real buddy? Were they just pretending to be my friend?

Or are you telling me there are some people out there that get special "no repayment" loans from banks? How do I get one? How do I become that kind of bank buddy? Or is that kind of like federal bailout money and I have to be on Obama's speed dial?

And for the 99th time, can either you or Austxjr please explain why we go through all the aggravation and bother of collecting taxes if we can just print money to meet our needs? Why have an IRS? Wh\y have people waste time and hire accountants? Why put people in jail unnecessarily if we can just get rid of taxes and print whatever fiat money we need?

................Then voted Obama for President...... Originally Posted by ExNYer

I was just starting to respect you.

.........I knew you were an asshole.

I was just starting to respect you.

.........I knew you were an asshole. Originally Posted by TheDaliLama

Divided government, my friend, divided government.

Keep your eye on the big picture and avoid the petty partisan squabbling.

I didn't ask about "issuing debt". I asked about simply printing money and PAYING OFF debts with it. And also paying SS benefits and whatever with it. All 14 trillion dollars worth of it.

Both you and Austxjr have floated the trial balloon about how we can just print fiat money to take care of our national debt and it somehow won't cause problems because hey! it's legal tender and people are forced by law to accept it.


Why is interest a problem? The $14 trillion eliminates the national debt and gets rid of interest payments.

And the banks and institutional investors and treasury bill holders will be flush with that $14 trillion, so they won't need interest payments from the government. They can lend the $14 trillion out to the private sector at low, low rates (cause their is so much supply of it) and BOOM! the economy takes off forever and ever.

Where is the problem? It's legal tender, right?


What myth? You and Austxjr both said we could print lots and lot of fiat money to solve our debts and because it is legal tender and people have to accept it, the debt crisis would be fixed. So it MUST be real money, right?

And what's this about banks loaning money to their buddies when the normal person has to labor for it? Banks have loaned me money - for my house, my cars and my business. Does that make me their buddy? But they made me to pay it back. And I had to labor to do it! Does that mean I'm not a real buddy? Were they just pretending to be my friend?

Or are you telling me there are some people out there that get special "no repayment" loans from banks? How do I get one? How do I become that kind of bank buddy? Or is that kind of like federal bailout money and I have to be on Obama's speed dial?

And for the 99th time, can either you or Austxjr please explain why we go through all the aggravation and bother of collecting taxes if we can just print money to meet our needs? Why have an IRS? Wh\y have people waste time and hire accountants? Why put people in jail unnecessarily if we can just get rid of taxes and print whatever fiat money we need? Originally Posted by ExNYer

Central banks loan trillions of dollars made out of thin air to other bankers so they can speculate, buy up other peoples' assets, buy up businesses that other people don't have the credit to buy, etc...etc...etc....

Like Gordon Gekko they produce nothing....they own.

Being a part of a central bank is a license to steal. That's it. They make money out of nothing and their friends use it to buy up the world.

Yes you might be given a mortgage or a car loan but that's a joke.

Try going to your bank and say, "Hey, could you loan me 500 million maybe so I can invest it in a hedge fund someplace? I hear it's a better risk than the mortgage you already made me? You can use the value of the fund account as security just like you do my house."

Yeah Dude it is a better risk, but risk has nothing to do with it.

MERIT has nothing to do with it.

THEY get the money and you don't because they own the bank.

THAT'S why governments worldwide use central bankers to "print" fiat currency - because it would be too naked if government did it themselves.

The problem arises when the population wakes up the fact that the central bankers have been given the concession on the racket.

If you'd lived in shitty third world countries like I have you'd have a totally different opinion, because in corrupt little countries everybody knows that their central banks are corrupt.

If you'd lived in shitty third world countries like I have you'd have a totally different opinion, because in corrupt little countries everybody knows that their central banks are corrupt. Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

Since we are not a shitty third world country - yet - then i suppose our central bank must not be corrupt, huh?

Oh, the Chinese is growing in leaps and bounds. It used to be a shitty third world country. Now it is an emerging global powerhouse. So I guess having a central bank isn't hurting them either, is it?