Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Ed Oscuro]

It sounds like Christie had a lot to do with Rubio's downfall.

Kasich Anyway?

BryanM, your ongoing bromance with Trump is kinda...oddly hopeful, but trying to spin him as a principled anti-war guy is wrong. Despite what he says, he didn't make any strongly anti-invasion statements until the year after the invasion. In fact he doesn't even remember when we went to war in Iraq.

[BryanM]

Oh no, he's on both sides of every issue as I've said. And I'm damn aware of his "read into me what you want" strategy. (For those people who haven't been paying attention, that "bernie" meme I posted on the last page is actually a trump meme.)

I do admit to having ~2% hope for Trump, which is astronomically more than any other viable non-sanders candidate in the past... forever.

Still would pine for that meteor though.

[quash]

Your google results aren't impressive considering those three are copy-pastes of the same article with the wording slightly altered.

Welcome to modern journalism, where the difference between middle-brow content farms and prestigious news sources is...

Do I really need to explain the difference between voting "yea" to Afghanistan and "nay" to Iraq 2: Electric Boogaloo?

Not to me, you don't. You're misunderstanding: I have no issue with Sanders' voting record on Kosovo, Afghanistan or Iraq. It is an element of the Democratic party that does, and it is that very element that we are going to have to keep a close eye on in coming years. Call me crazy, but I see an uprising on the horizon, and I see a lot of disenfranchised neolibs and neocons converging to fend off the more radical elements of both sides of the aisle.

[quash]

The only unaffordable part of the area is San Fran proper. The surrounding areas, save a few ritzy parts, are only expensive - not ludicrous.

Here, it even has a graph. The entire Bay Area's average rent has gone up ~$1000 over the past five years. I don't know how far you want to move this goalpost, but this is pretty ludicrous if you ask me.

There are still people living in the valley that don't have huge paying jobs. They're everywhere, actually.

Don't have to tell me twice, I was one of them. I was fortunate enough to hit the emergency eject button right as shit was really hitting the fan.

Funny thing is, my 2SLDK in Yokohama is ~$1600 a month. It has literally become cheaper for me to live in fucking Japan than to move back home.

[Mischief Maker]

Call me crazy, but I see an uprising on the horizon, and I see a lot of disenfranchised neolibs and neocons converging to fend off the more radical elements of both sides of the aisle.

Ha! Trust me, with the state of the democratic party for the last twenty years ANY radicalization of the left could be nothing but an improvement.

[quash]

Careful though, you're gonna end up with a lot of disenfranchised Hillary supporters. That joke I made way earlier about returning to the days of Southern Democrats? It wasn't a joke. You're gonna have a lot of disenfranchised neocons stepping in line with the "fuck everyone" party.

[BulletMagnet]

Call me crazy, but I see an uprising on the horizon, and I see a lot of disenfranchised neolibs and neocons converging to fend off the more radical elements of both sides of the aisle.

You're crazy.

[Mischief Maker]

Hooray for Bernie in NH!

BryanM, maybe this will remind you just why it's so goddamned important not to let Trump pick the next few Supreme Court Justices. Just in case...

[EmperorIng]

You're crazy.

Not exactly, but if you don't tow liberal platitudes online you are likely to be labeled as crazy.

Kasich's speech tugged at my heartstrings for two reasons. One because he comes off as a genuinely good-hearted individual, and two, he would never be able to withstand the non-stop negative ads a Clinton machine would throw at him during a general election. I can see it now...

"Ugh, electing another old white man? Wake up America!" "Noticing a lack of diversity on Kasich's stage - we know who he really represents." "Furious over how Kasich mouths platitudes about drug addiction and against legalization - its not 1930s anymore kasich" and on, and on.

In a more perfect world people would like some positivity!

the conservative leadership still refuses to concede that either Bush's economic policies or the excesses of Wall Street in particular had anything whatsoever to do with the Recession (totally the Fed's fault for not lowering interest rates enough...of course, that still hasn't stopped us from screeching that it's "debasing the dollar" when they've done it in more recent years). And feel free to try to bring up how Reagan's high-end tax cuts gutted the Social Security trust fund and created the Big Bad Deficit as we know it. The real problem continues to be the fact that most liberals, much to their discredit once again, have utterly refused to push back.

good thing you put in the qualifier of "leadership" because conservatives have been calling against the Federal Reserve, the bailouts, and whatnot for years. In this regard, the "liberal" and "conservative" leadership is identical in their refusal to believe that large-scale government meddling in the economy produces disastrous results. We now have two prominent historical examples - the Great Depression (Hoover, FDR) and Great Recession (Bush, Obama) to show what happens when politicians, with the best of intentions, have attempted to prop up failing institutions (that failed because they were fundamentally propped up by the government in the first place - rigged in the case of the Recession) and wreak general havoc on the working class. Thinkers like Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, politicians like the Pauls have all been pretty clear in why things have happened the way they did. I think it's disingenuous to paint the liberal leadership as merely being weak-willed when it comes to pushing back the conservative boogeyman. They are as culpable as Republicans when it comes to rigging the system in their favor; there's no need to "push back" when you are sleeping in the same bed, getting the same benefits.

BryanM, maybe this will remind you just why it's so goddamned important not to let Trump pick the next few Supreme Court Justices. Just in case...

As long as you agree with the court's decision, then it's ok! Reading the article, it sounds like they are delaying the case so the EPA can be forced to produce a more accurate assessment of the immediate impact of forcing dozens of plants to close down and restructure. This is some peoples' livelihoods after all (in an area of grinding poverty), and the source of much of the USA's electricity.

[BulletMagnet]

Not exactly, but if you don't tow liberal platitudes online you are likely to be labeled as crazy.

To the best of my knowledge quash's prediction doesn't go against any particular facet of liberal orthodoxy, but I still don't think it has a snowball's chance of happening. By the way, if you truly believe that the internet is an all-encompassing bastion of lefty radicalism, you haven't seen nearly enough of the internet.

In a more perfect world people would like some positivity!

Back when the shoe was on the other foot the prevailing counter-narrative, as I recall, went something like "How's all that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?" Not that I have anything in particular against positive messaging (in moderation, anyway), but like anything else it tends to be utilized only when convenient.

good thing you put in the qualifier of "leadership" because conservatives have been calling against the Federal Reserve, the bailouts, and whatnot for years.

Even that's not much of a qualifier, because during the Bush years there was VERY little resistance of note from self-styled "true" conservatives; everyone from the libertarians on down was just as eager to label everyone to the left of Limbaugh a traitor as anyone else, and didn't care how much cash the administration rolled up and smoked as they did it. Frankly, the same goes for anyone who can claim to support any of the current GOP crop, because every single one of them is poised to drive us several times deeper into debt than W ever did, almost completely to the benefit of wealthy corporatists, and once again you don't hear a peep of protest from the "deficit hawks".

I think it's disingenuous to paint the liberal leadership as merely being weak-willed when it comes to pushing back the conservative boogeyman.

I find it disingenuous to solely blame the government for kowtowing to the "pro-business" initiatives that "true conservatives" have bent over backwards pushing it to implement, and completely absolve the corporate side of the equation of blame when it all goes bust. By the way, the theories parsed out by the personalities you mentioned are far and away the outliers when it comes to interpretations of the Depression et al...which, of course, is simply more evidence of a conspiracy to conceal the truth, right?

[Ed Oscuro]

The right wing's complaints about the Fed were mostly like "no fiat money," "Gold Standard forever," "everything should be unregulated," and indeed Rand's boy Greenspan more or less followed that ideology while nevertheless being the typical opaque chairman. In fact the chairs since then - Bernanke and Yellen - have been much more open to making the Fed's guidance transparent and understandable. Greenspan's quip was that if the reporters didn't understand what he was saying, then he was doing his job right.

Any sane critique of the Fed has more to do with its role in a democracy, transparency, accountability, and who benefits from its actions, but I haven't yet seen a very good comprehensive argument against the idea of fiat currency and monetary policy.

Ultimately you either have an organization like the Fed, or you get every two-bit speculator pecking away at the stable base of the currency.

[Skykid]

The right wing's complaints about the Fed were mostly like "no fiat money," "Gold Standard forever," "everything should be unregulated," and indeed Rand's boy Greenspan more or less followed that ideology while nevertheless being the typical opaque chairman. In fact the chairs since then - Bernanke and Yellen - have been much more open to making the Fed's guidance transparent and understandable. Greenspan's quip was that if the reporters didn't understand what he was saying, then he was doing his job right.

Any sane critique of the Fed has more to do with its role in a democracy, transparency, accountability, and who benefits from its actions, but I haven't yet seen a very good comprehensive argument against the idea of fiat currency and monetary policy.

Ultimately you either have an organization like the Fed, or you get every two-bit speculator pecking away at the stable base of the currency.

The Federal Reserve is a cartel. It loans fiat currency at interest, which is essentially a tax passed onto the common man.

Because it is a fiat currency, the dollar is literally worthless if the rest of the world decide to buy their oil in a currency actually backed by something - like gold. The dollar has no reserve fund and the only thing that stops it being devalued due to insane amounts of printing (which theoretically is a death blow by inflation) is that it remains a global standard currency for oil trade.

And we all know what happens when pesky middle eastern people try to buy their oil in Euros: the get lynched in the name of democracy. Not a conspiracy theory.

For now everyone is still playing ball with the US Federal Reserve, but the Yuan is looming and it's both powerful and stable, and backed by actual reserves.

Regarding your point, there's actually nothing you can do to replace the Fed now. It will either live or die and take the country with it or not, but the conditions of its survival are volatile because they're based on a financial black hole. You can be sure that the families who created it won't be on the sinking ship when the time comes, however. I'm confident they keep their money in more future proof currencies than the dollar.

[Ed Oscuro]

I posit to you that there is no medium of exchange that is worth anything without a popular consensus, which can change at any time.

The Fed may be a cartel, but that doesn't carry quite the stinging rebuke it would if they were more involved in microeconomic issues. Most of their actions hit broad macro targets which affect everybody. Do banks get favorable treatment? Sure, and did you want to hide your dollars under your pillow?

Any idiot can start a run on gold, and without any central agency issuing gold you can't shut that down. This has happened many times in the US and internationally. You can't do the same to a fiat currency. Since moving away from the gold standard, US currency has been much stabler.

A couple other usual bullet points against gold:

- It doesn't have very much intrinsic value: Its market value for electronics and jewelry would have it much lower than it is today. In short, it's a speculation target that is only highly valuable because people have agreed it should be - and given a different climate that value can plummet very far.
- Gold is prone to the same problematic effects on "the value of a dollar" due to the expansion of the money supply

In fact, true Gold Standard devotees, like the people (person?) behind bitcoin, aren't really in favor of the gold standard. They want an absolutely controlled monetary supply - Friedman wanted 4% expansion of the money supply annually, where Bitcoin is set to never allow more than 21 million bitcoins - period. The usual arguments for and against Bitcoin's inflationary or deflationary potentials are interesting (Murphy is a good guy, I like him, so I'll give his ideas some thought).

tl;dr - The Austrian economists have some kooky ideas about how the world works - IMO - and when they say something is a good idea it is probably a very interesting idea, but I find these things reckless to ask about implementing. So, in that sense, we're in agreement: We're stuck with the Fed, for better or worse.

[Skykid]

Since moving away from the gold standard, US currency has been much stabler.

I actually agree with this, I personally don't think gold with its fluctuating worth is as reliable a commodity. But the dollar still has a problem being a fiat note full stop, loaned at an interest that effectively makes every man that bit poorer with each new loaned sum; the backing of oil is not a guarantee - in-fact it's as fanciful and faith based as the dollar itself. There is no quantifiable oil reserve that can be exchanged for your dollar, and certainly not enough the world-over to actually cover the amount of dollars printed or in general circulation.

The reason why the Yuan is attractive is because it's based on other commodities that aren't gold. Trading power, essentially, is the main reason for its rise to power, and all the stuff behind that trading power is considered a reliable reserve.

That and zero national debt.

[Ed Oscuro]

Inflation is naturally always bad from the perspective of devaluing a person's store of money, but it is just that - a narrow perspective. Consider what might happen if there were no inflation: Anybody holding money would have no special incentive to reinvest that money if they were risk-averse, since they were guaranteed to not lose value to inflation. This isn't really going to hurt most people, but it is going to help move big owners to continue to reinvest. This is also similar to how keeping one's money in local currency is often a Good Thing for the economy - the owner of the money avoids exchange fluctuation and their money is reinvested more directly in the local economy.

Another thing to keep in mind is that, just as is an issue with bitcoin, having an expanding money supply is a good thing. Anyhow, instead of giving my barely economically literate version of things, here's a couple choice quotes from the Economist article above:

Economists reckon money is anything that serves three main functions. It must be a “medium of exchange”, which can reliably be swapped for goods and services. It should be a stable store of value, enabling users to tuck some away and come back later to find its purchasing power more or less intact. And it should function as a unit of account: a statistical yardstick against which value in an economy is measured. The American dollar meets all three conditions. Bitcoin has some way to go.

[...]

The currency’s “money supply” will eventually be capped at 21m units. To Bitcoin’s libertarian disciples, that is a neat way to preclude the inflationary central-bank meddling to which most currencies are prone. Yet modern central banks favour low but positive inflation for good reason. In the real world wages are “sticky”: firms find it difficult to cut their employees’ pay. A modicum of inflation greases the system by, in effect, cutting the wages of workers whose pay cheques fail to keep pace with inflation. If the money supply grows too slowly, then prices fall and workers with sticky wages become more costly. Unemployment tends to rise as a result. If employed workers hoard cash in expectation of further price reductions, the downturn gathers momentum.

The quote is perhaps a bit quaintly preoccupied with the traditional "consumer economy" model but you can reapply the principle to other situations. Actually, it seems a bit like the old and I think discredited simplistic version of the Philips Curve - which holds that inflation and unemployment are tied together in a simple way (in the short term, yes, in the long term...)

Anyhow, the last and perhaps most important thought on inflation is this: Most central banks have been targeting low inflation recently, because encouraging high inflation would have been insane. For example, we had at least three "rounds" of Quantitative Easing in the US, which I would guess could be fairly called the reverse of printing money. In fact, Japan and some other economies have been pushing interest rates below zero.

National debt is another easy scapegoat that's actually fairly easy to understand, but that'll be for another time.

[BryanM]

A simpler way of looking at it is nothing is in stasis - you either have inflation or you have deflation. Inflation is annoying. Deflation is absolute death.

Re: Gold bugs... never understood their fixation with gold. At least with silver you can defend yourself against star wraiths. You ever hear about anyone killing a dracula by throwing a gold brick at its head? Lunacy.

Peter Schiff: "Fiat currency is absolutely worthless, gold is the only thing with value. Buy my gold from me with your fiat currency."

It's up there with sea salts, Taebo and the Bacon Genie.

[Ed Oscuro]

Haha, I think you just rescued the thread again. Yeah, that's an excellent way of putting it, but unfortunately everybody thinks there's some system out there that's going to bring precious stasis.

It's kind of like wanting to be immortal, isn't it? Like a...star wraith.

Speaking of which, here's some fun stuff (plutonium hair!):
http://freebeacon.com/blog/how-david-br ... lumenthal/
http://thehill.com/opinion/dick-morris/ ... oys-b-team
and what about this? http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/12/insid ... nizations/

[Mischief Maker]

Obligatory.

[Skykid]

A simpler way of looking at it is nothing is in stasis - you either have inflation or you have deflation. Inflation is annoying. Deflation is absolute death.

Deflation isn't a death knell as much as a warning siren; it depends on circumstances. Deflation occurs in the technology sector on an almost constant basis.

And it's not about stasis, it's about stability. Stability these days seems to be based on A: circulation, and B: everyone drinking the kool-aid regarding assumed value.

Inflation is naturally always bad from the perspective of devaluing a person's store of money, but it is just that - a narrow perspective. Consider what might happen if there were no inflation: Anybody holding money would have no special incentive to reinvest that money if they were risk-averse, since they were guaranteed to not lose value to inflation. This isn't really going to hurt most people, but it is going to help move big owners to continue to reinvest. This is also similar to how keeping one's money in local currency is often a Good Thing for the economy - the owner of the money avoids exchange fluctuation and their money is reinvested more directly in the local economy.

Nobody is arguing against inflation. Without inflation investment in property would be absolutely useless, and property is the only reliable investment the average joe can make in his lifetime.

Generally speaking inflation is natural, but if you have trillions of dollars continually in print and then suddenly the currency starts being traded in another currency, suddenly it will be at enormous risk. If the value plummets then the Fed's interest margin will be basically worthless and that could cripple the currency.

I don't forsee the dollar dying any time soon because it's the lynchpin of global trade - especially to the Chinese - it's still by far and away the strongest currency in the IMF with a 49% strength globally, and everyone is still trading oil with it (now those middle-eastern troublemakers are in a noose).

But because of the Federal Reserve "System", it is a currency held up by invisible winged cherubs with trumpets and not much else. At the moment China is enjoying a devaluation of its currency again, down 6% against the dollar from last year - which make no mistake, is exactly what they want. While most economic speculators are running wild at the thought of China's currency weakening, the boys in Beijing are rubbing their hands together at the thought of another spike in manufacturing trade thanks to cheap labour, and the next hundred Scrooge McDuck money bins they'll be building somewhere in their secret hoarding patch.

[soprano1]

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ad3808 ... e124368f33

Seems legit.

[Ed Oscuro]

a currency held up by invisible winged cherubs with trumpets and not much else.

This is every currency, ever. You can't talk sensibly about currency without understanding that it's valued only because of a social contract.

With regard to Bitcoin and deflation, there are some "currencies" that do not have an inflation problem, but they have other problems. For starters, they aren't real money. From The Economist again:

Economists reckon money is anything that serves three main functions. It must be a “medium of exchange”, which can reliably be swapped for goods and services. It should be a stable store of value, enabling users to tuck some away and come back later to find its purchasing power more or less intact. And it should function as a unit of account: a statistical yardstick against which value in an economy is measured. The American dollar meets all three conditions. Bitcoin has some way to go.

And in the follow-up to the article they restate the issue with deflation:

The issue, as the piece explains, is that deflation in the unit of account leads to unemployment, thanks to the fact that wages generally don't adjust downward. Mr Hearn suggests that the idea that deflation might be costly is controversial among economists. I must disagree; it really isn't. Economists would love it if he were right that deflation didn't matter—that money, in economists' parlance, is neutral. If wages adjusted quickly and cleanly then they could go back to applying really straightforward classical economic models and everyone's life would be simpler. But the data are very clear on this point; wages are "sticky", and so deflation in the currency in which wages are set is costly.

The example about inflation and "sticky" wages seems rough, but it's just the truth. The alternative, deflation leading to unemployment, is much worse.

A simple thought experiment will demonstrate this: If you had gotten into Bitcoin in its early days, what would you have done with the money? Like most everybody else, you would probably have continued to pay your bills with "funny money," i.e. fiat money, and kept the bitcoins as a speculative investment, to dump whenever it seemed appropriate. This was what really interested most people about Bitcoin - you couldn't get more than 21M bitcoins in circulation at any time and it loudly promised not to lose value due to inflation. However, as we saw, inflation controls in the design have nothing to do with speculation control.

If our only currency was prone to this deflationary spiral, the problem of fat cats hoarding wealth would be quite bad indeed, since there would be far less incentive to invest. This should be obvious: You invest to keep ahead of inflation, but deflation allows you to get a return simply for hoarding. And if the economy goes bad, hoarding becomes even more attractive as investments fall further behind.

[BryanM]

So far this cycle I've managed to tell Clay Aiken that he's a doo-doo garbage person and Clay Bennett that he's a hack fraud.

Now I have to personally insult one more "Clay" to have a full triple. It's gonna drive me insane until I do.

[Mischief Maker]

Now I have to personally insult one more "Clay" to have a full triple. It's gonna drive me insane until I do.

What did you think of "Clay Fighters?"

[BryanM]

Unremarkable.

You can't beat Street Fighter 2 by copying it mediocritly.

[Skykid]

This is every currency, ever. You can't talk sensibly about currency without understanding that it's valued only because of a social contract.

Oh I agree - that's exactly what I was saying. It's the social contract that's at risk in favour of more stable pastures.

I know nothing much about bitcoins BTW which is why I haven't been commenting.

[Ed Oscuro]

It's the social contract that's at risk in favour of more stable pastures.

Such as?

I know nothing much about bitcoins BTW which is why I haven't been commenting.

Just bitcoins?

Bitcoins are a good example because they are being put forward as precisely the kind of "more stable pastures" compared to fiat currency, and indeed they can be better for the right purposes (certain kinds of online sales work great with bitcoin). But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and to this day they are just an interesting niche alternative

[BryanM]

See, this is an example of a good single panel format political cartoon:

[GaijinPunch]

Funny thing is, my 2SLDK in Yokohama is ~$1600 a month. It has literally become cheaper for me to live in fucking Japan than to move back home.

Rent hasn't moved (down if any) in Kantou in 20 years. And as a gaijin you stand to make more dough than a counter part in your age bracket. The problem is Japan nickel and dimes the fuck out of you. 10,000 yen to cancel your phone contract. A month's rent to renew your lease. Shit like that adds up quick and can offset the savings in deflation.

As for the Bay Area price graph - those look similar to Chicago-proper prices, and technically Chicago is a cheap city. Indexes say 40% cheaper than Manhattan or The Bay Area.

[Skykid]

It's the social contract that's at risk in favour of more stable pastures.

Such as?

Economies tied to currencies without debt, governments that don't allow corporate involvement (and encompassing corporate risk) in banking (and therefore control all domestic banks), countries without a Federal Reserve cartel loaning money to the government at interest, therefore making the government completely in control of their money supply, debt free.

And countries with a shitload of oil and gold for good measure.

We've already discussed the possibility of the renminbi becoming the new global reserve currency, so I'm not sure why this needs spelling out - I just don't think it's likely to happen soon because Beijing is on a mission to devalue their currency at every opportunity so they can keep signing manufacturing contracts with Walmart.

[Xyga]

the possibility of the renminbi becoming the new global reserve currency, so I'm not sure why this needs spelling out - I just don't think it's likely to happen soon because Beijing is on a mission to devalue their currency at every opportunity

Yup. And not just Beijing, everyone's helping !

Spoiler