[americandream]

Chinese and BRIC labour squrplus funds the current printing bout. Incidentally, this is another reason why Islam is facing off not just the West alone but the entire capitalist order worldwide.

[radon1]

It needs open markets.

This is essentially the same as growth.

A terminal non-growth stage implies that no open markets are left, and that this stage, well - is terminal, as far as capitalism is concerned.

Fiat money is perhaps the greatest creation of the Twentieth Century.

Money have always been fiat. In older times, whenever the cost of producing money - eg. cost of gold mining operations - exceeded the value of the coin, a deflationary crisis followed. Historically, such crises were commonplace when the precious metal mines depleted. The governors in charge usually addressed this issue via currency debasement.

[davep]

Fiat money creation doesn't need to be tied to debt/credit, it has just been engineered for that to be the case.

Watch this for the history of how the current system came into being and the banking shennanigans behind it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDtBSiI13fE

It's long, but very instructive.

Tally sticks were fiat and lasted 700 years because they were accepted for taxes. The problem isn't fiat.

[americandream]

Money was not backed by labour surplus is older mercantile or feudal systems (was fiat in other words) due to the absence of urbanisation, the factory economy and labour value. In capitalism, that is no longer the case.

[Oneaboveall]

Here's the kind of wingnut type that should have found a job or a hobby and never pick up a koran:

Ohio Man Charged With Plotting to Attack U.S. Capitol

Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, of Green Township, near Cincinnati, was arrested after he bought two M-15 semi-automatic rifles and about 600 rounds of ammunition and accused of planning to attack the U.S. Capitol, according to the FBI.

Cornell's father, John Cornell, said the family was blindsided by the arrest.

"He never showed any signs of violence or anything," John Cornell said of his son.

The FBI said the informer alerted authorities in August that Cornell — under an alias, Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah — was posting comments on Twitter in support of ISIS. Shortly after those posts began appearing, the FBI sent the operative to meet with him undercover.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ohio-man-charged-plotting-attack-u-s-capitol-n286326

I think a lot of this ISIS stuff is just mixed up people. They probably need some lithium or something.

It's like an anarchist thing, really.

Anyhow -- anybody that goes over to the enemy, will be convicted and sent to federal prison. We can build more prisons than there are idiots, in this country, if need be.

Yeah...about that:

LATEST FBI CLAIM OF DISRUPTED TERROR PLOT DESERVES MUCH SCRUTINY AND SKEPTICISM

...The alleged would-be terrorist is 20-year-old Christopher Cornell (above), who is unemployed, lives at home, spends most of his time playing video games in his bedroom, still addresses his mother as “Mommy” and regards his cat as his best friend; he was described as “a typical student” and “quiet but not overly reserved” by the principal of the local high school he graduated in 2012...

...Family members say Cornell converted to Islam just six months ago and claimed he began attending a small local mosque. Yet The Cincinnati Enquirer could not find a single person at that mosque who had ever seen him before, and noted that a young, white, recent convert would have been quite conspicuous at a mosque largely populated by “immigrants from West Africa,” many of whom “speak little or no English.”

The known facts from this latest case seem to fit well within a now-familiar FBI pattern whereby the agency does not disrupt planned domestic terror attacks but rather creates them, then publicly praises itself for stopping its own plots...

NYTimes Realizes That The FBI Keeps Celebrating Breaking Up Its Own Terrorist Plots

Over the last few years, we've noticed that nearly every victory the FBI celebrates against terrorism is actually about stopping its own terrorist plots that it feeds to hapless individuals, often nudging them and pushing them down the road to "become" terrorists, despite commonly displaying little to no aptitude for actual terrorism...

[ralfy]

I think it can become a kind of mythology that capitalism relies on growth. Discovery of wages and prices doesn't need growth for it to take place. It needs open markets.

This "war on terror" and the "new conflict with Russia" are both related to the process under way in the West, wherein the importance of open markets is gaining notoriety. Perhaps this is more obvious in dealing with the Russians than Islam because it can be observed in the Western military push that has occurred over the last decade and more, where the endgame seems to be about encompassing, ultimately, the Russian oil producing regions along with the Islamic controlled oil producing regions. Everything going on in the Ukraine is related to this, for instance. That is to say, the potential endgame, really, because it's only the threatened outcome of non-compliance with open discovery of market dynamics.

Yes, this does mean that changes do have to take place within Western Democracies and Western Economies as well. Old man deflation is going about attempting some of that change right now, in fact. Positions entrenched in lore over economic science are falling. Whether they are falling hard or easy, or at all, will be up to history.

Capitalism requires growth because that it involves more than just wages and prices. It also involves profits and returns on investment.

Open markets are, in fact, prerequisites to that growth, as they mean more profits and higher returns on investment from more sales of goods and services to expanding consumer markets.

[ralfy]

You're falling into that thinking trap where you look at yesterday's dollars in the same way as today's, or tomorrow's. Of course money creation is tied to debt/credit. Fiat money is perhaps the greatest creation of the Twentieth Century. You could argue that it really got its start in the Nineteenth, but that's kind of a stretch when it comes to usefulness as a yardstick.

I once watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie as a kid. In it the Ingalls children went to the store to buy school supplies. I was amazed as a kid to see them order up all the things they needed, for a penny! At the time I watched that episode the same stuff might have cost, what, five bucks. Today maybe it would cost twenty. Some inflation is natural. It doesn't point out an inordinate reliance upon growth. It's simply the effect time has upon money. It's math and not conspiracy. Under a fiat system this actually empowers your average man. What you don't seem to understand is that going to some gold standard or other means of slavish understanding of valuing money not only doesn't empower your average man, but enslaves him.

Keep in mind that prices were not the only things that changed from that period to the present.

[Sixstrings]

NYTimes Realizes That The FBI Keeps Celebrating Breaking Up Its Own Terrorist Plots

Over the last few years, we've noticed that nearly every victory the FBI celebrates against terrorism is actually about stopping its own terrorist plots that it feeds to hapless individuals, often nudging them and pushing them down the road to "become" terrorists, despite commonly displaying little to no aptitude for actual terrorism...

You raise a good point there.

The article's right, a lot of the "terrorists" caught are really entrapment stings. Entrapment is entrapment, it's the same with common crime like prostitution -- put a pretty blonde cop hooking on the street, more attractive than any real street worker, and the sting can just net john after john, all day long.

I don't like entrapment, on principle.

I think what would be most fair in these cases is if juries could have the decision about sentencing, which they don't of course, it's guilty or not guilty. The element of entrapment needs to be looked at -- a common sense panel of jurors could figure out whether someone really would have done something, all on their own, or not.

Having said that --

if you have to send 99 idiots to federal prison to net the 1 that really was going to be a terrorist, then perhaps that's what you have to do. There is a DETERRENCE value to entrapment, and terrorism is about the most serious crime there is. It needs to be deterred. People need to know they cannot be idiots and just go along with somebody emailing them to get involved in jihad.

Entrapment's an old debate, libertarians are against it, it was ruled constitutional a long time ago.

What do you guys think about this. Is entrapment wrong, or not.

And how will they handle this particular 20 year old, will a sentencing judge take a close look at it and use some common sense and figure out if this guy was a real threat or not. Did he come up with any part of the plan himself, or was it all part of the sting? Does that matter, do you think?

The only thing I know about the case is that he did in fact go to the gun shop. His father says that the FBI must have given him the money though, because the kid didn't have that kind of cash. Gun shop owner says the "skids were greased" so that the sale would be easy.

I would say that the entrapment issue starts to matter more, if the suspect is a low iq individual or disabled in some way and more susceptible to being lured into taking steps to commit a crime.

P.S. I also read in the article that he was doing pro-ISIS comments on twitter. That's what started it all. So moral of the story is: ISIS is the enemy, parents if your kid is reading a koran then make sure they are not going off into sympathizing with ISIS.

2nd P.S. this particular individual also demonstrated against a 9/11 ceremony or some such, years before this, and he was a "9/11 truther." This is all a hard call to make, there have been real nuts and crazies where gov stopped watching them and that's when they went and did something. The guy in Australia had a long history of protests and such, and in France some of those were being watched and then taken off the watch list.'

For my opinion -- if the Ohio guy was protesting about 9/11 truth stuff, if he was posting pro ISIS stuff on twitter, and if he did take that step to go to the gun shop, then he's not exactly an angel. It's just a matter of what will his sentence be, like 20 or 30 years, and is that fair? And did he come up with any part of the plan, or was that all handed to him?

[SeaGypsy]

Yanks still in denial about the nature of the 5 eyes system. Don't kid your selves 99% entrapment is bs.

[SeaGypsy]

The building 7 question is enough that 9/11 is actually irrelavent. I do not want another 9/11 thread just mentioning.

[evilgenius]

You're falling into that thinking trap where you look at yesterday's dollars in the same way as today's, or tomorrow's. Of course money creation is tied to debt/credit. Fiat money is perhaps the greatest creation of the Twentieth Century. You could argue that it really got its start in the Nineteenth, but that's kind of a stretch when it comes to usefulness as a yardstick.

I once watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie as a kid. In it the Ingalls children went to the store to buy school supplies. I was amazed as a kid to see them order up all the things they needed, for a penny! At the time I watched that episode the same stuff might have cost, what, five bucks. Today maybe it would cost twenty. Some inflation is natural. It doesn't point out an inordinate reliance upon growth. It's simply the effect time has upon money. It's math and not conspiracy. Under a fiat system this actually empowers your average man. What you don't seem to understand is that going to some gold standard or other means of slavish understanding of valuing money not only doesn't empower your average man, but enslaves him.

Keep in mind that prices were not the only things that changed from that period to the present.

Of course not, but do you really want to read a post that long? Besides, I think the point is exercised in this example, regardless of whether it does so explicitly. It is fashionable to grouse about the "debt based system" and how "it can't go on borrowing more money in order to fund its current debts", but that is a load of hooey. Those arguments are really nothing more than background complaint, which is common to all men. There is, however, a great deal of victory for a man when he can conquer his urge to complain and channel his energies toward more enlightening tasks.

For most people those tasks probably ought to include disciplining themselves to save more. Along the way they probably ought to re-evaluate the weighting of risk that they give certain things, like how much buying that jetski may really effect their future retirement. Basically, whether they should be borrowing as much to fund consumption, or if they would be better off using their borrowing in order to fund ventures and investments which have a better risk/reward ratio and a higher probability of success. I'm not saying that a person shouldn't consume, but the housing crisis could have been nipped in the bud by a more truly conservative and self-reflective average consumer. The banking system was willing to loan, for both greedy and political reasons, but the consumers were the ones taking out loans that they should have known they wouldn't be able to pay back.

Yes, there is more to it than this. There is a further issue here that my above reply doesn't address, namely, what constitutes the basket of school supplies that the Ingalls children had to buy? In other words, how do we define what is necessary? Is it true that the economist's use of substitutionary goods is valid when it comes to such things? What about the pressure of peer groups and technological adoption by the innovative group? And, by God, aren't I allowed my little luxuries in life? Isn't it true that real science(here personal economic science) needs experimentation and that experimentation requires failure? How much before I know to what degree what I own defines who I am? I can't answer that for you. Hell, I have a hard enough time answering it for myself.

Please take note, it is this last issue, and its relationship to the nature of complaint, that ties this to the topic of this thread. Islamic terrorism in the West is largely a function of envy. As such, no amount of physical opposition is ever going to fully win out. What you really need is a series of philosophical arguments that make sense to Muslims and happen to agree with whatever it is that generates opinion about such things in the West.

[ralfy]

Of course not, but do you really want to read a post that long? Besides, I think the point is exercised in this example, regardless of whether it does so explicitly. It is fashionable to grouse about the "debt based system" and how "it can't go on borrowing more money in order to fund its current debts", but that is a load of hooey. Those arguments are really nothing more than background complaint, which is common to all men. There is, however, a great deal of victory for a man when he can conquer his urge to complain and channel his energies toward more enlightening tasks.

For most people those tasks probably ought to include disciplining themselves to save more. Along the way they probably ought to re-evaluate the weighting of risk that they give certain things, like how much buying that jetski may really effect their future retirement. Basically, whether they should be borrowing as much to fund consumption, or if they would be better off using their borrowing in order to fund ventures and investments which have a better risk/reward ratio and a higher probability of success. I'm not saying that a person shouldn't consume, but the housing crisis could have been nipped in the bud by a more truly conservative and self-reflective average consumer. The banking system was willing to loan, for both greedy and political reasons, but the consumers were the ones taking out loans that they should have known they wouldn't be able to pay back.

Yes, there is more to it than this. There is a further issue here that my above reply doesn't address, namely, what constitutes the basket of school supplies that the Ingalls children had to buy? In other words, how do we define what is necessary? Is it true that the economist's use of substitutionary goods is valid when it comes to such things? What about the pressure of peer groups and technological adoption by the innovative group? And, by God, aren't I allowed my little luxuries in life? Isn't it true that real science(here personal economic science) needs experimentation and that experimentation requires failure? How much before I know to what degree what I own defines who I am? I can't answer that for you. Hell, I have a hard enough time answering it for myself.

Please take note, it is this last issue, and its relationship to the nature of complaint, that ties this to the topic of this thread. Islamic terrorism in the West is largely a function of envy. As such, no amount of physical opposition is ever going to fully win out. What you really need is a series of philosophical arguments that make sense to Muslims and happen to agree with whatever it is that generates opinion about such things in the West.

If the purpose for saving more is to spend less, then that can only be done by not depositing or investing savings, which means no interest is earned from them, and less money is circulated.

If savings are lent or invested, then to pay for the interest borrowers need to produce more goods and services, which means there has to be more spending.

One more point to consider is that the source of those savings is actually spending on part of others, which means one can only save more if others spend more.

Thus, not only does money empower people it also compels them to ride on a runaway train. And that runaway train requires ever-lengthening tracks to keep running.

[americandream]

Thus, not only does money empower people it also compels them to ride on a runaway train. And that runaway train requires ever-lengthening tracks to keep running.

I will have to frame this.

[evilgenius]

Of course not, but do you really want to read a post that long? Besides, I think the point is exercised in this example, regardless of whether it does so explicitly. It is fashionable to grouse about the "debt based system" and how "it can't go on borrowing more money in order to fund its current debts", but that is a load of hooey. Those arguments are really nothing more than background complaint, which is common to all men. There is, however, a great deal of victory for a man when he can conquer his urge to complain and channel his energies toward more enlightening tasks.

For most people those tasks probably ought to include disciplining themselves to save more. Along the way they probably ought to re-evaluate the weighting of risk that they give certain things, like how much buying that jetski may really effect their future retirement. Basically, whether they should be borrowing as much to fund consumption, or if they would be better off using their borrowing in order to fund ventures and investments which have a better risk/reward ratio and a higher probability of success. I'm not saying that a person shouldn't consume, but the housing crisis could have been nipped in the bud by a more truly conservative and self-reflective average consumer. The banking system was willing to loan, for both greedy and political reasons, but the consumers were the ones taking out loans that they should have known they wouldn't be able to pay back.

Yes, there is more to it than this. There is a further issue here that my above reply doesn't address, namely, what constitutes the basket of school supplies that the Ingalls children had to buy? In other words, how do we define what is necessary? Is it true that the economist's use of substitutionary goods is valid when it comes to such things? What about the pressure of peer groups and technological adoption by the innovative group? And, by God, aren't I allowed my little luxuries in life? Isn't it true that real science(here personal economic science) needs experimentation and that experimentation requires failure? How much before I know to what degree what I own defines who I am? I can't answer that for you. Hell, I have a hard enough time answering it for myself.

Please take note, it is this last issue, and its relationship to the nature of complaint, that ties this to the topic of this thread. Islamic terrorism in the West is largely a function of envy. As such, no amount of physical opposition is ever going to fully win out. What you really need is a series of philosophical arguments that make sense to Muslims and happen to agree with whatever it is that generates opinion about such things in the West.

If the purpose for saving more is to spend less, then that can only be done by not depositing or investing savings, which means no interest is earned from them, and less money is circulated.

If savings are lent or invested, then to pay for the interest borrowers need to produce more goods and services, which means there has to be more spending.

One more point to consider is that the source of those savings is actually spending on part of others, which means one can only save more if others spend more.

Thus, not only does money empower people it also compels them to ride on a runaway train. And that runaway train requires ever-lengthening tracks to keep running.

Or, maybe, you just don't understand what the term "rate" means?

[ralfy]

Or, maybe, you just don't understand what the term "rate" means?

Of course, I do. In this case, in order to pay for interest earned from savings, money has to be lent. To pay for that interest plus earn, more goods and services have to be sold. That means more spending.

[SeaGypsy]

Blah blah blah

I'm having an amazing time here in Indonesia. I haven't time to go into a rave, suffice to say of my Muslim friends here not one or anyone of many more I am meeting gives anything more than contempt to the Salafists. They are really despised here. The bastards doing this stuff are appropriately labelled as scum & nobody i am meeting here is afraid to say so. A guy I just had lunch with who is very well connected went to visit the Bali bombers in prison, to spit on them & call them enemies of Allah.

[Tanada]

Blah blah blah

I'm having an amazing time here in Indonesia. I haven't time to go into a rave, suffice to say of my Muslim friends here not one or anyone of many more I am meeting gives anything more than contempt to the Salafists. They are really despised here. The bastards doing this stuff are appropriately labelled as scum & nobody i am meeting here is afraid to say so. A guy I just had lunch with who is very well connected went to visit the Bali bombers in prison, to spit on them & call them enemies of Allah.

Ever notice the radical Islamist seem to come from naturally low population countries with overwhelming population pressure? Deserts of North Africa and the middle east, mountains of Afghanistan. As a general rule Iran and Iraq with their larger populations have been relatively low in percentage of radicals, and you can say the same for Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia. Maybe there is just something about living in a desert climate that makes people nutty. That would explain California...

[Sixstrings]

Some good news on the war on ISIS. US ally the kurds, backed up with american airstrikes, have cleared ISIS out of a large area in northern Iraq. That's better than a few months ago when they were getting pushed up to the wall against the Turkish border:

Kurds say they have ejected Islamic State militants from large area in northern Iraq

BAGHDAD — Kurdish forces claimed to have pushed back Islamic State militants from a 300-square-mile area of northern Iraq on Wednesday and said they cut one of the extremist group’s key supply lines to the occupied city of Mosul.

The multi-pronged operation, which began in the early morning, involved about 5,000 Kurdish soldiers, known as peshmerga and was backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, according to a statement from the government of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

The offensive came amid speculation that Iraqi forces are preparing for an assault on Mosul, one of Iraq’s biggest cities, which was seized by Islamic State extremists in June as they swept across the north.

Under pressure from airstrikes and paranoid about informants, the militants have cut phone lines and Internet connections to the city in recent months.

The Kurdish troops advanced through a string of villages and a key highway intersection, encircling Mosul on three sides and cutting supply lines between the city and nearby Tal Afar.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/kurds-say-they-have-ejected-islamic-state-from-a-big-area-in-northern-iraq/2015/01/21/ac459372-a1c6-11e4-b146-577832eafcb4_story.html?tid=hybrid_sidebar_alt1_strip_1

[americandream]

@ six

Islam cannot win. It runs against the currents of history.

[davep]

@ six

Islam cannot win. It runs against the currents of history.

That just doesn't make sense.