How long until this Pandemic ceases?
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Trump and the Gold Standard (Updated 2023)
The gold standard hasn’t been used in the US since the 1970s, but when Donald Trump was president there was some speculation that he could bring it back.Rumors that the gold standard could be reinstated during Trump’s presidency, which ran from 2017 to 2021, centered largely on positive comments...
investingnews.com
What Would Happen If We Returned to the Gold Standard?
A fervent minority of Americans are obsessed with the idea of the United States returning to the gold standard. Why would this be a bad idea?
www.livescience.com
In essence: We don't have enough gold to go back to the gold standard, and even if we did, everyone we owe money to would want gold in exchange for the dollars we owe them. I'm sure some people would want us to tell them to go pound sand, effectively defaulting on our debts, because crashing our economy and destroying millions of jobs is a small price to pay for a short-lived feeling of smug superiority.
Trump and the Gold Standard (Updated 2023)
The gold standard hasn’t been used in the US since the 1970s, but when Donald Trump was president there was some speculation that he could bring it back.Rumors that the gold standard could be reinstated during Trump’s presidency, which ran from 2017 to 2021, centered largely on positive comments...
What Would Happen If We Returned to the Gold Standard?
A fervent minority of Americans are obsessed with the idea of the United States returning to the gold standard. Why would this be a bad idea?
In essence: We don't have enough gold to go back to the gold standard, and even if we did, everyone we owe money to would want gold in exchange for the dollars we owe them. I'm sure some people would want us to tell them to go pound sand, effectively defaulting on our debts, because crashing our economy and destroying millions of jobs is a small price to pay for a short-lived feeling of smug superiority.
Executive Order 6102 - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I'd say that property is severely overvalued around the world.
Your concerns with this are very real, and I have them as well. However this doesn't allow us to ignore how bankers managed to fuck the entire world in the pursuit of perpetual war and loans to fuel it.
"The only reward for hard work done well is more hard work."
Yeah, it's just weird seeing people who say that companies should be unfettered to pursue maximum profits are now worried about how massive companies like Walmart and Amazon have become and how much they dominate their markets. I just wish people wouldn't be blaming people for being worried about their well-being or that of others instead of the very system they cling to working as intended.
I'm all for B and C, but A seems a little moot at this point, no? So much of it is already out in circulation as jewelry and in technology now that it seems it would be hard for all countries of the world to pull together enough for even a few of their economies.
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Why is any criticism of capitalism treated automatically as full-blown endorsement for socialism/communism?
The gold standard has failed three times since 1900. And when I say failed, I mean globally failed. And countless countries struggled mightily along the way - although it was effectively when the big nations hit the buffers that it collapsed more widely.Dollars could be exchanged for gold up to 1933. US government made it illegal to hoard gold in the continental US. It was a mass buy-back - in essence, a confiscation of wealth from regular Americans.Executive Order 6102 - Wikipedia
I'd say that property is severely overvalued around the world.
Your concerns with this are very real, and I have them as well. However this doesn't allow us to ignore how bankers managed to fuck the entire world in the pursuit of perpetual war and loans to fuel it.
Inflation has an economic use: easy money allows easy borrowing - but borrowing is actually how people get on and get ahead. Most of the population doesn't have the money to acquire properties and start or expand businesses. They could save up, but that's years if not decades that they can't enter the market or have their own house... it's a world of many, many lost opportunities - or opportunities that only exist the people who already have a lot of money.
You have no idea how much "money" is squirreled away in hideouts like Panama. Tens of Trillions, even more. These numbers barely mean anything anymore. What happens when you destroy them? Deflation. Suddenly your money is worth more, not less.
The US government destroyed Rockefeller with antitrust, and he was 3 times richer than Bezos is now.
There is a trend, and you can view it yourself, of banks consolidating, merging, growing larger and swallowing the smaller ones. These large banks do not bother with lending to smaller and medium sized businesses or to households. Even if they do, you will have no way to negotiate with them, and you will have no other alternative.
You asked what was so great about capitalism, I assumed you didn't feel capitalism is the "answer" and you were implying lets try a different system like socialism or whatever. All I said was to take the best aspects all of the systems instead of just going with one system.
I agree. But it's not just banks, it's everything.
Quite possibly. As power and wealth consolidates into ever larger corporations, so larger corporations become a larger proportion of bank business, and banks will increasingly concentrate their attention on them. It might also involve the fact that bank managers don't really do so much anymore - decison-making (certainly for little people) will be with more impersonalised, centralised services.
When I am having this conversation with like-minded individuals they mention a different approach to creating an artificial scarcity of currency - basing it upon blockchain technology, thus controlling the issuing of further notes (in connection to a creation algorithm). The issue here is that central banks in the US and EU had been pumping new notes by the billions and selling debt with a negative interest rate... It's all overpriced, inflated, disgusting.
And that is what a good government will protect it's citizens against - starvation homelessness and ruin in unprecedented circumstances.
So why are you criticising basic pandemic protocol when it's the capitialist nightmare we've allowed to enslave us all which is the cause of what you outline?
While small businesses can have a hard time acquiring loans I can assure you that banks love to lend money to households, especially mortgage loans. Which is why in Belgium the central bank has issued directives to reduce the amount of risky mortgage loans issued by banks (by imposing minimum amounts of own capital required when borrowing). People seem to love to hate banks but as an insider I can assure you that most banks are not like the big investment banks and that in Europe at least, due to post crisis measures and laws, banks have become a lot more responsible. I'm much more worried about big pharma, big retail conglomerates and the GAFA than banks.
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I think this is a good point. Banks have faced a lot of scrutiny the last 12 years, and the increased oversight and regulations have been a positive. In the EU at least, I'm not sure much stuck in the USA.
2007/8 is clear enough indication that self-regulation has severe limits. Regulation was complacent and certainly had not kept pace with innovations in the banking industry. In particular, there is now "shadow banking", which exists largely unregulated. Some estimates are that shadow banking is about a quarter of global financial assets (Up to $100 trillion of ~$350 trillion) - although much of it is actually run by conventional banks. Most of this is going through the usual suspects: USA, UK and its dependent territories, and (disproportionately relative to its financial industry) China, although China is beginning to get tougher on it. Of all the shadow banking, half is reckoned to be very risky and a threat to financial stability.
Even when the pandemic is "resolved" by a vaccine, the top 1% have gained so much power terrorizing us regarding the flu. They may never give it up as it fits into a larger, terrifying agenda. Example of why I think as I do...
I, for one, am surprised that what followed this was a link to a Youtube video.
I am surprised youtube allowed it.
Have you independently ever heard of the 4th Industrial Revolution? I had not.
Is it real? Is there power behind it? If so, why is it happening? Might make it an interesting thread on its own.
Hey if the government actually did the job they were supposed to and protected people instead of serving their own personal interests, then i would say lock us down for as long as it takes.
But we dont live in that world and the best thing that can come out of this plague is that people hold the government accountable and demand the corrupt fuckwads in office change or get the fuck out. However i feel like the days of those kinds of uprising are long behind the human race.
Sadly we now live in a world in which money rules above all else. Including human life, (though i still hold to the belief that the fatality rate of this virus is highly overblown).
People like the call people like me assholes. "How dare i put my livelihood over human lives?" And such simply because i think everything should open up. Though i never said that precautions cant still be in place, (ie masks and such).
Usually those that hold the view that anyone who just wants their business or their jobs back are bastards are simply people who have no responsibility or at least dont have anyone else that relies on them to take care of them. No kids, no family, or a job that hasnt been affected by fhe shutdowns. It is easy to demand things that dont harm you.
But you ask any father out of work, watching his bills pile up past due and feel the growing doom of losing house and home while he tries to keep a happy face so his children and wife dont sorry.....then you dont know pressure or stress.
I dont know many grandparents who would gladly die so that their children and grandchilden's lives could survive in tact through this.
Believe me, i would much rather have an excuse to spend 6 months in my house binging games and not worrying about keeping the lights on. But our government doesnt actually fucking give a shit about the people. And i can only hope this wakes people up to how bullshit political peacocking actually is.
The problem is people dont see these burdens, all they see is the news reporting numbers.