Well, I'll just be over here at my $600.00 a month job with my college degree, plotting to become a super-villain.

A good way to prevent this from happening is to make sure there's a middle-class with high wages so your wages don't look so high. Otherwise, you're trying to convince people who make $15 an hour or less that you're suffering when you're making 17 times as much as they do.

Also, throughout recent history, most revolutions have started when wages between the highest-paid and the lowest-paid have been this low. Just because America hasn't had one lately doesn't mean it will never happen. Look at Gaddafi and Egypt: when people don't benefit from a regime, they also don't really care if they live or die or not getting to you.

The rest is tl;dr but I'm going to start out by saying: Debt is why people hate bankers. It's because debt, like duty to the king or a slave to his master or a peasant to a landlord, is an unnecessary obligation that shouldn't exist, the only difference being that initially two parties in a debt obligation start on the assumption that the two are equal, and then the creditor tries to translate a moral idea into an exact economic account to justify violence, theft, and denying basic human needs and human lives so that Chase bank doesn't lose out on a loan or two and make the debtor feel obligated and in a lower class (see the IMF, austerity, the mafia). Debt is entirely based on violence and who owes who comes down to who's holding the gun. That's why Haiti and Greece are paying and the US gets by. Because our "loans" are actually tribute to our military empire. Occupy is kind of like the latest revolution in that regard, having moved past slavery, feudalism, and monarchy, now at least part of the movement challenging the unneeded authoritarian systems of wage slavery and debt.

When an employee makes a little money and wants to keep it somewhere, she puts it in a bank account. This is considered safer than just putting it under the mattress. In the US, bank accounts are federally insured, so there's little danger the customer won't get it back. The real risk lies in what the banks do with all this wealth; it's ironic that even when the exploited have some money of their own, they entrust it to capitalists so the latter can go on accruing profit.

In effect, the customer is loaning money to the bank, the same way banks loan money to other customers. The bank's business plan is to borrow money as cheaply as possible and sell loans for as much as possible, profiting on the difference in interest rates; they have to make enough in the process to cover their operating expenses and the occasional loan default. Of course, just as the depositor's balance is government-insured, the government protects banks against defaulters by enforcing their right to foreclose on "collateral assets"-such as people's homes-and often by buying mortgages outright as well. This ensures that when something goes awry the cost comes out of taxpayers' pockets, so the bank can go on profiting.

Banks don't just take money from depositors; money itself is a commodity, and banks get it wherever it's cheapest. Today, the government loans money to banks for an unprecedented low interest rate and the regulations that prohibited banks from selling stocks and bonds have been eliminated. If it's more profitable for a bank to participate in the financial market than to issue loans, it will focus on the latter. Banks are willing to pay interest for large deposits from customers, but those with less money have to accept low interest rates or even pay the bank to keep and use their money. This is emblematic of how capital works, "naturally" flowing from low concentrations to high concentrations.

The practice of loaning out borrowed money has the uncanny effect of "multiplying" the amount of money available to a bank. Imagine that a person deposits $100 in a bank, and the bank loans that money to another person who uses it to buy goods from the first person. The first person deposits that additional $100, and the bank loans it out again to someone else who also uses it to make a purchase from the original account holder. This process can occur many times, increasing the assets of the bank by multiplying others' obligations to it.

The only problem is these loans have to come back in eventually or else the whole system collapses-and as the poorest get the highest interest rates, they're under the most pressure to come up with money as if out of thin air. This is one of the reasons capitalism has to go on expanding indefinitely to avoid crisis. The position of banks is actually less precarious than it sounds-between charging interest and receiving government bailouts, they usually do quite well for themselves even during financial meltdowns.

When banks run low on cash, they borrow money from the government's federal reserve banks. Together these banks constitute the US central bank, providing the government with a mechanism for controlling the growth of the economy by dictating the interest rates on loans to other banks.

Of course, the money from the federal reserve banks has to come from somewhere, too. The US government has a few different ways of producing funds for this. It can raise taxes. It can eliminate social services, as many European governments are doing right now. It can sell bonds, essentially taking out loans from private investors. Finally, it can print more money. In the virtual era, this simply means jacking up the numbers on a balance sheet.

So money, the cause of so much anguished yearning and pursuit, is simply made up, albeit under very specific conditions. Just as the Church invented the soul to establish its power and kings propagated the notion of duty, one might say that money is generated in order to create debt. All of these are ways to structure a social system based on false obligations.

Inside the logic of this system, a thousand pressures combine to force the participants to be absolutely ruthless; yet the system itself is hardly necessary. Debtors' prison was finally abolished because even legislators were forced to agree that a bank shouldn't be able to foreclose on someone's freedom. If we want access to housing and other necessities to be determined by anything other than what makes money for banks, we have to disconnect them from the banking system as well.

But barbaric and precarious as it is, it's possible that capitalism will somehow perpetuate itself indefinitely, each risk propelling it forward, each crisis renewing it. The real danger is not that the system will collapse, but that it might go on inflicting the unsustainable costs of its operations upon us forever.

Free advice to the whiny prick banker: Be thankful Americans aren't prone to making pipe bombs and molotov cocktails when they get angry.

m2313: The rest is tl;dr but I'm going to start out by saying: Debt is why people hate bankers. It's because debt, like duty to the king or a slave to his master or a peasant to a landlord, is an unnecessary obligation that shouldn't exist, the only difference being that initially two parties in a debt obligation start on the assumption that the two are equal, and then the creditor tries to translate a moral idea into an exact economic account to justify violence, theft, and denying basic human needs and human lives so that Chase bank doesn't lose out on a loan or two and make the debtor feel obligated and in a lower class (see the IMF, austerity, the mafia). Debt is entirely based on violence and who owes who comes down to who's holding the gun. That's why Haiti and Greece are paying and the US gets by. Because our "loans" are actually tribute to our military empire. Occupy is kind of like the latest revolution in that regard, having moved past slavery, feudalism, and monarchy, now at least part of the movement challenging the unneeded authoritarian systems of wage slavery and debt.

When an employee makes a little money and wants to keep it somewhere, she puts it in a bank account. This is considered safer than just putting it under the mattress. In the US, bank accounts are federally insured, so there's little danger the customer won't get it back. The real risk lies in what the banks do with all this wealth; it's ironic that even when the exploited have some money of their own, they entrust it to capitalists so the latter can go on accruing profit.

In effect, the customer is loaning money to the bank, the same way banks loan money to other customers. The bank's business plan is to borrow money as cheaply as possible and sell loans for as much as possible, profiting on the difference in interest rates; they have to make enough in the process to cover their operating expenses and the occasional loan default. Of course, just as the depositor's balance is government-insu ...

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

LectertheChef: Free advice to the whiny prick banker: Be thankful Americans aren't prone to making pipe bombs and molotov cocktails when they get angry.

I guess bankers hate cops too, since the police in Oakland are pushing it in that direction.

/You would assume bankers would hate cops just on the premise that criminals are generally hostile to police in general anyway, but bankers are a class of criminals that almost never get prosecuted.

m2313: The rest is tl;dr but I'm going to start out by saying: Debt is why people hate bankers. It's because debt, like duty to the king or a slave to his master or a peasant to a landlord, is an unnecessary obligation that shouldn't exist, the only difference being that initially two parties in a debt obligation start on the assumption that the two are equal, and then the creditor tries to translate a moral idea into an exact economic account to justify violence, theft, and denying basic human needs and human lives so that Chase bank doesn't lose out on a loan or two and make the debtor feel obligated and in a lower class (see the IMF, austerity, the mafia). Debt is entirely based on violence and who owes who comes down to who's holding the gun. That's why Haiti and Greece are paying and the US gets by. Because our "loans" are actually tribute to our military empire. Occupy is kind of like the latest revolution in that regard, having moved past slavery, feudalism, and monarchy, now at least part of the movement challenging the unneeded authoritarian systems of wage slavery and debt.

When an employee makes a little money and wants to keep it somewhere, she puts it in a bank account. This is considered safer than just putting it under the mattress. In the US, bank accounts are federally insured, so there's little danger the customer won't get it back. The real risk lies in what the banks do with all this wealth; it's ironic that even when the exploited have some money of their own, they entrust it to capitalists so the latter can go on accruing profit.

In effect, the customer is loaning money to the bank, the same way banks loan money to other customers. The bank's business plan is to borrow money as cheaply as possible and sell loans for as much as possible, profiting on the difference in interest rates; they have to make enough in the process to cover their operating expenses and the occasional loan default. Of course, just as the depositor's balance is government-insu ...

Is that your original work? If so, may I quote you?

tankjr: Is that your original work? If so, may I quote you?

It's my original wording and partially my original thoughts on the matter but most of the ideas I actually encountered in David Graeber, from a lengthy analysis of all his interviews. And then I felt stupid, because his book, Debt: The Last Five Thousand Years, sums up most of his interviews and most of what I stated, while actually giving a very in-depth historical analysis. David Graeber is an anarchist (his father and mother were involved in the Spanish Revolution and he grew up in a housing collective in NY), an anthropologist, an author, and was one of the first people literally on the ground at Occupy Wall Street's original location. The direct action, consensus, spokescouncils, and horizontal organization is in large part inherited from anarchist tactics popularized by the "anti-globalization" summit hoppers and also observed from more-or-less stateless/gift economy (as opposed to market) societies he stayed with.

Mentat: Mr. Banker, we hate you because you contribute nothing positive to society. The only "innovation" you provide society is new and inventive ways to pillage our 401K's and pension funds. You move electrons around and call it wealth while teachers are forced to buy their own school supplies while being demonized for supposedly working only 9 months a year. You biatch because you have to pay a 15% capital gains tax while working families wonder how they're going to put food on the table this week. You blow up the economy and then whine that you shouldn't have to pay the consequences because you're the "best and the brightest". You destroy companies, fire the employees, send their jobs to China and and then brag about how much more profitable the company is now that it's former employees can no longer afford basic consumer goods.

Ayn Rand had it backwards. You're the true parasites.

THIS

Bankers and the non-producing ilk are the true leeches in society. Our forefathers thought making money without actually doing anything useful was morally repugnant. Banking was considered a profession of low lives and criminals.

It probably is because the services you provide are not worth 500k.

JRoo: Well, I'll just be over here at my $600.00 a month job with my college degree, plotting to become a super-villain.

When you strike doom and devastation upon the land will you be hiring full time minions? I would settle for part time henchmen as long as it pays $8an hour. I have prior knowledge of doom day devices, working in volcano, and Microsoft office. I'm also a team player and have a great maniacal laugh. Muu ha ha ha mu hahahaha ha!

tankjr: Is that your original work? If so, may I quote you?

Oh, and yeah, you can quote me.

Because bankers don't do $500,000 worth of work. That is why we hate them. And what's better is that bankers actually think they are better and wiser than us because of it.

jaylectricity: Gergesa: It probably is because the services you provide are not worth 500k.

They are if they make somebody else five million dollars. 10% commission ain't bad for the high rollers.

So by that logic if I save my company 5 million dollars, they should pay me 500k too right?

jaylectricity: They are if they make somebody else five million dollars

Nope. It's not their own money they're risking, nor their own effort by which that investment grows. Parasites. Worthless.

tjsands1118: JRoo: Well, I'll just be over here at my $600.00 a month job with my college degree, plotting to become a super-villain.

When you strike doom and devastation upon the land will you be hiring full time minions? I would settle for part time henchmen as long as it pays $8an hour. I have prior knowledge of doom day devices, working in volcano, and Microsoft office. I'm also a team player and have a great maniacal laugh. Muu ha ha ha mu hahahaha ha!

They would hire you but it is cheaper to outsource minions overseas.

m2313: The rest is tl;dr ..

100% of foreclosures happen to people with a mortgage
100% of defaulted credit cards happen to people who carry a balance

People need to ditch this mentality that banks exist to make us feel warm and fuzzy and are there to lend a helping hand out of the warmness and kindness of their heart. They are there to make money. If they seek your business - they are there to make money off you. Sometimes, when you need a car, or a house or a loan for whatever reason, you and the bank can do business. you get What you want and the bank makes money off the "gotta have it" mentality that shiat-wrecked this country 4 years ago

Let's say you hate bankers and found some way to bring their pay down to $10,000 a year. Exactly how does that help you? Is it that your life is such a fetid shiatpile that envy and destruction of somebody else's good fortune is what it takes to make you feel better?

o5iiawah: m2313: The rest is tl;dr ..

100% of foreclosures happen to people with a mortgage
100% of defaulted credit cards happen to people who carry a balance

People need to ditch this mentality that banks exist to make us feel warm and fuzzy and are there to lend a helping hand out of the warmness and kindness of their heart. They are there to make money. If they seek your business - they are there to make money off you. Sometimes, when you need a car, or a house or a loan for whatever reason, you and the bank can do business. you get What you want and the bank makes money off the "gotta have it" mentality that shiat-wrecked this country 4 years ago

The whole "you gotta pay off you debts" craziness is killing us. And it's not even true in standard economics (risk taking) and it was shown to be a blatant lie to people back in 2008.
People being foreclosed on their homes are effectively being punished for acting too uppity and like the rich.
But yes, we do need to kill the banking industry and its parasitism entirely and make a system where humans can either get the cars,houses, or resources they need without slaving for some boss or bureaucrat and having their entire lives dictated by ever two evil allies the market and the state (while the left/right dichotomy fools us by arguing over which of the two halves of the same connected demon should control us, not realizing markets were pretty much created by and went hand in hand with states).
Or live in a system where you wouldn't need cars, houses (although some form of shelter I think would be a necessity), or as much resources. One might also question a system in which you need to go into debt for something as "frivolous" as shelter or else spend their lives paying some landlord or other rent just for existing in a shelter they need to survive.
And if someone wants to say "no free market!!!" then let's abolish all forms of non-labour income,the state and its taxes, get the government entirely out of protecting private property (instead opting for a personal property/occupancy and use system), eliminate the distinction between people who use and don't own or own but don't use and then we can try a free market. Because there's no such thing as a free market in the top-down hierarchies of capitalism (a system that rewards the wealthy for being wealthy) or the state it necessitates.

I don't know if I've come across you before, m2313, but holy balls you've shot to the top of my favorites list in the matter of one thread.

Bankers thrive because the culture of debt encourages consumers to enter into contracts for high interest rates that they willingly accept by bankers who leverage the cash on their books (AAA banks may leverage a ratio of 25:1). They collect a lot in interest rates from a lot of people, and this generates a lot of profit to distribute among top executives.

The securitized loans were the real problem, the defaulting of so many sub-prime loans corrupted the system: they really shouldn't have been offered in the first place. More conservative and risk-averse behavior by investment bankers fueled by greed would have prevented a meltdown. Which made a lot of people angry when their retirement accounts and life savings suddenly vanished. The problem is not the system which rewards executives (they make an inordinate amount of money from a profitable business model), but when innovative investment vehicles are used and the risks are not fully understood by the people who use them, bad things are bound to happen.

/More oversight would prevent this sort of thing; at least almost 2 years after Dodd-Frank, someone finally threw down the gauntlet and appointed a consumer chief.

timujin: What product do you make?

Bundled derivatives that are fundamentally unsound that you can then bet against internally..

m2313: Of course, the money from the federal reserve banks has to come from somewhere, too. The US government has a few different ways of producing funds for this. It can raise taxes. It can eliminate social services, as many European governments are doing right now. It can sell bonds, essentially taking out loans from private investors. Finally, it can print more money. In the virtual era, this simply means jacking up the numbers on a balance sheet.

That's not true at all. You're conflating the separate roles of the Fed and Treasury.

The Federal Reserve is independent of Treasury/government. The money it gives out (e.g., when it buys bonds) does NOT have to come from anywhere. They just change numbers on a spreadsheet/computer. The Fed isn't allowed to print physical cash (i.e., banknotes or coins), but they are allowed to create money that they can spend. They don't receive any taxes or create any bonds.

Treasury are the ones who mint/print cash, but they're not allowed to do it freely: they're just supposed to make sure that society doesn't suddenly run out of $20 bills or something. What cash they do mint/print is recorded as a debt against them. It's not an asset, and they can't spend it, so, to Treasury, cash is not really "money" ... not as you'd normally use the term. Unlike the Fed, Treasury can't just create money out of nowhere by changing numbers on a spreadsheet. For Treasury to have "money" they can actually spend, it has to come from bond sales or taxes.

Totally different institutions. When you conflate them, it makes no sense at all. If the government can create money, why the massive national debt? If the Treasury can create money, why all the drama over the debt-threshold last year? If the Fed can't create money, where did the $2 trillion for quantitative easing in 2008 come from?

one might say that money is generated in order to create debt.
I've heard others say that, and it's a soundbite that completely baffles me. Banks generate loans to make a profit (which is practically the reverse of what you've stated). How does that get twisted into the purpose of money is to create debt?

jjorsett: Let's say you hate bankers and found some way to bring their pay down to $10,000 a year. Exactly how does that help you?

For starters, it removes the monetary incentive towards those behaviors by bankers and traders that brought the world to the brink of financial collapse in the fall of 2008, and continue to put the entire world at high risk of financial catastrophe and another Great Depression.

Unless you want us to believe that the whole mess wasn't brought about by greed, but only by pure universal stupidity of bankers/traders, in which case you might argue that they would have done the same thing even if only making $10,000 a year. Either way, whether they were only greedy, only stupid, or a combination of both, the vast majority don't deserve $1M or $500k a year for what amounts to playing a high-tech shell game with my money.

And yes, they currently have access to my money whether I like it or not, esp. via government handouts when big corporations have a bad day at the casino. I can live with and even encourage our government helping actual living human beings whose health/life are in danger, but I have no time for bailing out of corporations whose workers bemoan and cry that they only make $500k a year.

m2313: s.

The practice of loaning out borrowed money has the uncanny effect of "multiplying" the amount of money available to a bank. Imagine that a person deposits $100 in a bank, and the bank loans that money to another person who uses it to buy goods from the first person. The first person deposits that additional $100, and the bank loans it out again to someone else who also uses it to make a purchase from the original account holder. This process can occur many times, increasing the assets of the bank by multiplying others' obligations to it.

The only problem is these loans have to come back in eventually or else the whole system collapses-and as the poorest get the highest interest rates, they're under the most pressure to come up with money as if out of thin air. This is one of the reasons capitalism has to go on expanding indefinitely to avoid crisis. The position of banks is actually less precarious than it sounds-between charging interest and receiving government bailouts, they usually do quite well for themselves even during financial meltdowns.

When banks run low on cash, they borrow money from the government's federal reserve banks. Together these banks constitute the US central bank, providing the government with a mechanism for controlling the growth of the economy by dictating the interest rates on loans to other banks.

Of course, the money from the federal reserve banks has to come from somewhere, too. The US government has a few different ways of producing funds for this. It can raise taxes. It can eliminate social services, as many European governments are doing right now. It can sell bonds, essentially taking out loans from private investors. Finally, it can print more money. In the virtual era, this simply means jacking up the numbers on a balance sheet.

Are you really arguing against the very idea of fractional reserve banking?

She doesn't understand we make a product. She doesn't see it. And Main Street says you're still getting paid too much: Even getting cut from $1 million to $500,000, they still think you're earning too much.

You know what might have actually helped your case here, Cletus? If you'd bothered to explain what that product is. Because that's really the rub. Most people don't think pushing bits around a computer network is inherently productive. If you're guiding people on long term investing, I can see the point, because long term investing does actually serve a useful, material purpose and people who are willing to invest in companies properly should be rewarded. But if all you're doing is bundling anomalies in a giant computer system to try and multiply someone's money based on what your gut tells you about largely random swings on a chart.... no, you're not earning anything and you don't deserve even a penny. Even people who run and program slot machines are more useful than you. At least they can point out that they're ultimately supporting an entertainment industry.

If asked, I can pretty clearly explain the service I provide my company, for which I'm compensated, and cite plenty of examples of how that benefits my company which in turn does actually produce something which it then sells.

I'll bet you can't do that same.

LiquidSky: m2313: Of course, the money from the federal reserve banks has to come from somewhere, too. The US government has a few different ways of producing funds for this. It can raise taxes. It can eliminate social services, as many European governments are doing right now. It can sell bonds, essentially taking out loans from private investors. Finally, it can print more money. In the virtual era, this simply means jacking up the numbers on a balance sheet.

That's not true at all. You're conflating the separate roles of the Fed and Treasury.

The Federal Reserve is independent of Treasury/government. The money it gives out (e.g., when it buys bonds) does NOT have to come from anywhere. They just change numbers on a spreadsheet/computer. The Fed isn't allowed to print physical cash (i.e., banknotes or coins), but they are allowed to create money that they can spend. They don't receive any taxes or create any bonds.

Treasury are the ones who mint/print cash, but they're not allowed to do it freely: they're just supposed to make sure that society doesn't suddenly run out of $20 bills or something. What cash they do mint/print is recorded as a debt against them. It's not an asset, and they can't spend it, so, to Treasury, cash is not really "money" ... not as you'd normally use the term. Unlike the Fed, Treasury can't just create money out of nowhere by changing numbers on a spreadsheet. For Treasury to have "money" they can actually spend, it has to come from bond sales or taxes.

Totally different institutions. When you conflate them, it makes no sense at all. If the government can create money, why the massive national debt? If the Treasury can create money, why all the drama over the debt-threshold last year? If the Fed can't create money, where did the $2 trillion for quantitative easing in 2008 come from?

one might say that money is generated in order to create debt.
I've heard others say that, and it's a soundbite that completely baffles me. Banks gener ...

One could argue that the confusion comes from the fact that the physical cash in our pockets has the words "Federal Reserve Note" and not "US Treasury note"

Mentat: Mr. Banker, we hate you because you contribute nothing positive to society. The only "innovation" you provide society is new and inventive ways to pillage our 401K's and pension funds. You move electrons around and call it wealth while teachers are forced to buy their own school supplies while being demonized for supposedly working only 9 months a year. You biatch because you have to pay a 15% capital gains tax while working families wonder how they're going to put food on the table this week. You blow up the economy and then whine that you shouldn't have to pay the consequences because you're the "best and the brightest". You destroy companies, fire the employees, send their jobs to China and and then brag about how much more profitable the company is now that it's former employees can no longer afford basic consumer goods.

Ayn Rand had it backwards. You're the true parasites.

Can I steal that?

LiquidSky: m2313: Of course, the money from the federal reserve banks has to come from somewhere, too. The US government has a few different ways of producing funds for this. It can raise taxes. It can eliminate social services, as many European governments are doing right now. It can sell bonds, essentially taking out loans from private investors. Finally, it can print more money. In the virtual era, this simply means jacking up the numbers on a balance sheet.

That's not true at all. You're conflating the separate roles of the Fed and Treasury.

The Federal Reserve is independent of Treasury/government. The money it gives out (e.g., when it buys bonds) does NOT have to come from anywhere. They just change numbers on a spreadsheet/computer. The Fed isn't allowed to print physical cash (i.e., banknotes or coins), but they are allowed to create money that they can spend. They don't receive any taxes or create any bonds.

Treasury are the ones who mint/print cash, but they're not allowed to do it freely: they're just supposed to make sure that society doesn't suddenly run out of $20 bills or something. What cash they do mint/print is recorded as a debt against them. It's not an asset, and they can't spend it, so, to Treasury, cash is not really "money" ... not as you'd normally use the term. Unlike the Fed, Treasury can't just create money out of nowhere by changing numbers on a spreadsheet. For Treasury to have "money" they can actually spend, it has to come from bond sales or taxes.

Totally different institutions. When you conflate them, it makes no sense at all. If the government can create money, why the massive national debt? If the Treasury can create money, why all the drama over the debt-threshold last year? If the Fed can't create money, where did the $2 trillion for quantitative easing in 2008 come from?

one might say that money is generated in order to create debt.
I've heard others say that, and it's a soundbite that completely baffles me. Banks gener ...

Okay, it's all in your quote.

The treasury can print money, but they can just spend it, they have to do loans and stuff right, means interest.

So they can never actually distribute as much money as they owe, right? So the bank loans out ten dollars and expects twelve back, right? Where do the two extra dollars come from?

You can avoid the issue and say growth or something, but suddenly the guy owns the bank more money than actually exists, see? And since the treasury has to pay interest on the money it prints to the banks(or whoever else has a billion or two lying around to fund the government), you get into a situation where the debt can never be repaid.

And your going to tell me something about inflation or something, but that doesn't get around the fact that money has to come from somewhere. There is a reason usury was once considered a sin.

ChibiDebuHage: Either way, whether they were only greedy, only stupid, or a combination of both, the vast majority don't deserve $1M or $500k a year for what amounts to playing a high-tech shell game with my money.

God help us if there's going to be someone in charge of deciding what other people 'deserve'.

There is a whole lotta mad in this thread. Just sayin'.

m2313: It's because debt, like duty to the king or a slave to his master or a peasant to a landlord, is an unnecessary obligation that shouldn't exist, the only difference being that initially two parties in a debt obligation start on the assumption that the two are equal, and then the creditor tries to translate a moral idea into an exact economic account to justify violence, theft, and denying basic human needs and human lives so that Chase bank doesn't lose out on a loan or two and make the debtor feel obligated and in a lower class (see the IMF, austerity, the mafia). Debt is entirely based on violence and who owes who comes down to who's holding the gun. That's why Haiti and Greece are paying and the US gets by. Because our "loans" are actually tribute to our military empire. Occupy is kind of like the latest revolution in that regard, having moved past slavery, feudalism, and monarchy, now at least part of the movement challenging the unneeded authoritarian systems of wage slavery and debt.

I agreed with you with a lot of the concepts you bring up in your post, but the above quoted introduction contains a lot of anti-establishment garbage nonsense equating Chase with the IMF.

LiquidSky: one might say that money is generated in order to create debt.
I've heard others say that, and it's a soundbite that completely baffles me. Banks generate loans to make a profit (which is practically the reverse of what you've stated). How does that get twisted into the purpose of money is to create debt?

It's a big picture statement. "Money" as it is today is a measure of debt, not of wealth. Look at this video here for more info. While it may be that the video is somewhat biased against banks, it does explain the concept of fractional reserve banking fairly well.

If you can't even convince your mom that her precious snowflake creates value to society, then the odds are that you don't.

jaylectricity 2012-01-11 10:00:51 PM
It's crumbling. Not nearly as fast as I want it to. But it is. Please don't let them rebuild the public's confidence in them. They will unleash a flurry of marketing and public relations to try to right the ship.

I'm begging of you...don't believe them. Don't let your friends and family believe them. Don't even let your enemies believe them.

The Infamous Cap'n Kirk LET THEM DIE video clip

imashark: LiquidSky: one might say that money is generated in order to create debt. I've heard others say that, and it's a soundbite that completely baffles me. Banks generate loans to make a profit (which is practically the reverse of what you've stated). How does that get twisted into the purpose of money is to create debt?

It's a big picture statement. "Money" as it is today is a measure of debt, not of wealth. Look at this video here for more info. While it may be that the video is somewhat biased against banks, it does explain the concept of fractional reserve banking fairly well.

I understand the concept of fractional reserve banking. However, I don't understand the negativity. The semi-utopian ideals painted about 3/4 of the way through the vid (where governments create the money themselves, rather than letting the banks do it, or where dividends/profits are put back into the hands of the people) are basically already in existance. The biggest difference is that the Fed has the job, rather than the elected government. (That's a good thing, since governments tend to have short-term, populist priorities, while the central bank should be taking a broader/longer view of what is "good" for the economy).

Back to the original point ... I agree that debt increases the money supply (and thus lowers the value of money unless there's a simultaneous increase in demand). I can see the logic of shortening that to "debt is money". What I still can't see is how it suddenly turns into "money is debt". It's sort of confusing cause and effect. Sunscreen is cancer prevention /= cancer prevention is sunscreen.

I can see how someone would believe it after watching that video, but it made a hash out of some important facts and was often misleading by omission. (To be fair, some of those really stood out for me because I'm an Aussie and our system is different enough to highlight certain bits as being US-specific, rather than general artifacts of fiat-currency.) I could pick it apart statement by statement, but this thread is a bit old for a decent debate. So, to narrow it down to just my absolute bit of misleading propoganda:

17.00: Some countries don't have fractional reserve limits at all. Oh noes! Those poor countries! Who were they again? Answer = Sweden, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Hmmm. I see why they weren't mentioned by name in the vid. Since those countries aren't suffering massive inflation from infinitely expanding debt, there's obviously something else at work. That something else is the Basel regulations (and local regulations on top of that) that set leverage limits based on bank capital, not on bank reserves. Banks are actually limited to lending x times their OWN money/assets, not x times the deposits they're holding on behalf of customers.

/thanks for the link though ... while I still disagree with the premise, at least I know a bit more about what they're arguing now.

jaylectricity: It's crumbling. Not nearly as fast as I want it to. But it is. Please don't let them rebuild the public's confidence in them. They will unleash a flurry of marketing and public relations to try to right the ship. I'm begging of you...don't believe them. Don't let your friends and family believe them. Don't even let your enemies believe them.

Seconded.