The Gaming Den

I am amused that an article from a publication called "goldseek.com" is reaffirming monetary policy and, by extension, fiat currency.

Edit: Ah, I see now that the rest of the website is full of people ranting about how all economic crises lead back to taking the dollar off the gold standard. Much more in line with expectation.

Regarding monetary velocity, you're putting the cart before the horse and conflating several issues at once.

1. Don't confuse GDP with unemployment or the health of an economy. High monetary velocity of the sort identified in your link is, as noted, the result of financial innovation: namely, an electronic shuffle of not-bills back and forth. It generates profits for banks and pumps GDP, while also doing shit all for an economy at large; its presence or absence only really indicates how profitable the banking sector is and has little to do with the health of the economy propping it up.

2. The link apparently wants to tie monetary velocity to availability of credit, or at least takes that tack in linking the Fed's QE policy to increasing velocity. That's not the case. Credit availability and use determines monetary velocity, not the other way around. It's like saying that the car has no gas and isn't moving, so we need to get out and push to get it moving rather than get more gas.


BOGAMBSL is basically the monetary base: the amount of cash sloshing around. That spike is QE. The point is that "the amount of money" is terribly hard to track and ultimately sort of meaningless in a modern integrated economy.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... supply.svg


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RE: Batshit insanity, Democrats, and the 111th US Congress

Universal health-care is not batshit insane. A worthless compromise that doesn't address anything is.

Closing GITMO is not insane. The US prison system can handle prisoners well enough. It is presumably only kept open because there is no compelling reason to keep its current occupants in other than the US military wants them in.

Juton wrote:I think we have a problem here with our definitions. Obama definitely isn't what progressive Democrat voters wanted, and I defy you to justify how he is. Democrat politicians have an annoying habit of being spineless, so I wouldn't call Obama spineless, it takes one to go against your party and your voter base for a reason I can't fathom.

Obama may not be what progressive liberal Democrat voters wanted, once they realized that they were, in fact, lied to. But he is very much an overall progressive of the Democrat variety.

It's sometimes easy to confuse liberalism (as known in the modern Pelosi Democrat) and progressiveism (as can be seen somewhat with Obama) because they seem to be similiar, but they both have different set of priorities.

Consider the war: to the progressive, the war in Afghanistan is an annoying distraction from the fundamental changing of the relationship between the federal government and the people. To the liberal, still swimming in the peace and love movement of the 60's that defined the party, the war is evil incarnate and needs to be ended ASAP.

The tax agreement (one forged from necessity, because he had to defer to President Clinton to really explain it) is a very bad label. Instead this is the unemployment extension agreement; kick the tax question down the road two years until the Republicans can't use the "you can't raise taxes in a bad economy" argument against it, in return for a good extension on the unemployment insurance coverage. That's actually a pretty good liberal position (if it wasn't for the fact that taxes always trumps everything incliuding the party base) since as Pelosi once stated, unemployment payments are actually a form of stimilus. (A stupid argument, but that's what she made and it's a good liberal position.)

Juton wrote:I think Obama is acting like a moderate Republican would act, again I defy you how a McCain administration would differ greatly than this Obama administration. To most moderate Republican's credit I think they wouldn't like a situation like this even if McCain was in office.

First of all, I'm not here to praise McCain. His administration would have differed from Obama's in a number of significant ways. I think his priorities would have been the war, accountability, and the deficit, in that order. His medial plan was radically different from Obama's and given the current composition of congress would have played out the same way Bush's provitation of Social Security played out. (Panned, dropped and ignored.) He would have created an entirely different stimilus, seeing that he generally hates earmarks and pork with a passion. He clearly would have not taken as many golf outings, vacations and probably even international trips (especially the one to attempt to secure the olympics when his chances for success were dismal at best).

I think he would have been two points above Ford, although we will never know for sure. By the way, that's not a compliment. Remember (WIN)?

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Zinegata, please either present one batshit insane idea proposed by the Democratic Party in the last two years or admit that your bullshit false-equivalence is bullshit.

Oh my, this is kiond of like shooting fish in a barrel.

We can try people arrested by the military abroad under conditions of war in US civilian courts where the burden is on the accuser to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt. (Hint war scenes aren't the same as crime scenes, and the ability to gather conclusive evidence is always impossible in a war scene.)

Unemployment benefits are actually a stimilus and a way to create new jobs.

The only way we can be free of foreign pressure because of our dependency on foreign oil is to eliminate the production of all domestic oil and natural gas.

A carbon exchange is a great idea! (The notion that you can create a market that rewards someone for not doing something is one level of batshit over that of complex derivatives based on loan mortgages. It's a system that is ripe for abuse. Especially since the attempt of Europe several years eariler was crashing and burning right before their eyes.)

The federal government has the authority (where, who knows, who cares) to force every American to buy health insurance, to force them to eat their veggies, and to ensure that everyone lives the nice watered down and safe liberal vision of a "wonderful life."

You know, I could go on all day.

tzor wrote:We can try people arrested by the military abroad under conditions of war in US civilian courts where the burden is on the accuser to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt. (Hint war scenes aren't the same as crime scenes, and the ability to gather conclusive evidence is always impossible in a war scene.)

If your primary objective is to hold onto those captured, at great expense and no foreseeable intelligence benefit moving forward (since their intelligence is necessarily out-of-date by now), then yes, this is stupid.

If you want to impose something like a rule of law and end arbitrarily-long detentions, then it is not crazy.

As opposed to, say, wanting to reduce deficits by decreasing taxes and taking a decidedly hawkish foreign policy stance, which is just flat-out fucking crazy.

Unemployment benefits are actually a stimilus and a way to create new jobs.

I'm more than a little startled why you think this is NOT true. Answers that don't include the phrase "marginal propensity to consume" do not count.

The only way we can be free of foreign pressure because of our dependency on foreign oil is to eliminate the production of all domestic oil and natural gas.

Well, considering the pollutant load such undertakings and their minuscule benefits, one wonders what the point of propping up tinpot dictators is if we're going to just go ahead and shit in our water and air anyway.

ANWR is something like five minutes of US oil use and sits on ecologically sensitive land. It's simply not worth it. Its like telling someone that if you marry a corpulent hambeast for the rest of your life then your uncle will totally give you $500. The benefit is paltry compared to the cost.

A carbon exchange is a great idea! (The notion that you can create a market that rewards someone for not doing something is one level of batshit over that of complex derivatives based on loan mortgages. It's a system that is ripe for abuse. Especially since the attempt of Europe several years eariler was crashing and burning right before their eyes.)

First, note that cap-and-trade was a compromise because simply saying, "stop doing that" wasn't going to get anything done.

Second, pretending that because the EU ETS had troubles there's no possible way to do anything at all like it ever (except every fucking other market like it in the US: http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/ ) is not crazy. It's called governing.

Third, it really is cap-and-tax. It's a tax on carbon production. "Reward(ing) someone for not doing something" is called an incentive. It's similar to, say, every other pollutant control out there with penalties attached, except there's an incentive program on top.

The federal government has the authority (where, who knows, who cares) to force every American to buy health insurance, to force them to eat their veggies, and to ensure that everyone lives the nice watered down and safe liberal vision of a "wonderful life."

Yes, the evil US government also forced whites to eat with [EDITED].

On liquidity: In Keynesian terms, the economy is currently in a liquidity trap.

mean_liar wrote:

tzor wrote:We can try people arrested by the military abroad under conditions of war in US civilian courts where the burden is on the accuser to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt. (Hint war scenes aren't the same as crime scenes, and the ability to gather conclusive evidence is always impossible in a war scene.)

If your primary objective is to hold onto those captured, at great expense and no foreseeable intelligence benefit moving forward (since their intelligence is necessarily out-of-date by now), then yes, this is stupid.

If you want to impose something like a rule of law and end arbitrarily-long detentions, then it is not crazy.

As opposed to, say, wanting to reduce deficits by decreasing taxes and taking a decidedly hawkish foreign policy stance, which is just flat-out fucking crazy.

Actually I thought the goal was to punish the guilty and exonorate the innocent. But as I pointed out, the accrual of evidence is simply not possible in a war situation. Current civil law defers to the defendant and generally will give not guilty to the guilty more than it will guilty to the innocent. In civilian courts this is considered a good thing. (I would argue this, but I'm not in the mood.) In times of war, this means a bastard is let loose to kill another American.

mean_liar wrote:

Unemployment benefits are actually a stimilus and a way to create new jobs.

I'm more than a little startled why you think this is NOT true. Answers that don't include the phrase "marginal propensity to consume" do not count.

I almost thought this was a no-brainer. The employed do not create jobs, employers create jobs. Yes I feel for the unemployed, I would like to help them. The best way to help them is to give them what they want and need ... a job. Compensation is only half a help at best.

If you want to create jobs, you need to make employers feel good in their decision to hire more workers. That's how you "make jobs" (and really they were the ones to create the jobs in the first place).

mean_liar wrote:

The only way we can be free of foreign pressure because of our dependency on foreign oil is to eliminate the production of all domestic oil and natural gas.

Well, considering the pollutant load such undertakings and their minuscule benefits, one wonders what the point of propping up tinpot dictators is if we're going to just go ahead and shit in our water and air anyway.

ANWR is something like five minutes of US oil use and sits on ecologically sensitive land. It's simply not worth it. Its like telling someone that if you marry a corpulent hambeast for the rest of your life then your uncle will totally give you $500. The benefit is paltry compared to the cost.

OK, I'll give you ANWR for the moment; it's a lovely conservative battle cry, but that wasn't my point. Currently, there is no drilling of new wells in the Gulf ... ANYWHERE IN THE GULF! Deep water or shallow water, it doesn't matter, the administration has cut off all permits completely. No permit, no drilling; such is the power of government. Then there is the unsettled question of whether fracking is bad for the environment. (That is holding up a whole lot of natural gas projects.)

mean_liar wrote:

A carbon exchange is a great idea! (The notion that you can create a market that rewards someone for not doing something is one level of batshit over that of complex derivatives based on loan mortgages. It's a system that is ripe for abuse. Especially since the attempt of Europe several years eariler was crashing and burning right before their eyes.)

First, note that cap-and-trade was a compromise because simply saying, "stop doing that" wasn't going to get anything done.

Second, pretending that because the EU ETS had troubles there's no possible way to do anything at all like it ever (except every fucking other market like it in the US: http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/ ) is not crazy. It's called governing.

Third, it really is cap-and-tax. It's a tax on carbon production. "Reward(ing) someone for not doing something" is called an incentive. It's similar to, say, every other pollutant control out there with penalties attached, except there's an incentive program on top.

Every single animal, including humans, (heck, even trees) emit carbon. Every forest fire, emits carbon.

It is not similiar in "other pollutant control" in that every living process does it.

Real pollutant controls have monitors that check to see how much polutant was actually emitted. How the hell do you do that with carbon?

Also note that there are no "sinks" of polution that absorb and thus deserve "credits" of any kind, except for CO2. How do you calculate the amount of CO2 absorbed by a farm field? How do you accurately measure it?

There is so much potential for abuse that it boggles the mind.

mean_liar wrote:

The federal government has the authority (where, who knows, who cares) to force every American to buy health insurance, to force them to eat their veggies, and to ensure that everyone lives the nice watered down and safe liberal vision of a "wonderful life."

Yes, the evil US government also forced whites to eat with [EDITED].

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.


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The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.


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The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.


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What part of the 10th admendment don't you understand?

Please note your point was addressed through the 14th amendment. (More or less) While there is no support whatsoever in the constitution for my points.

If you simply want crazy on the left side that is easy enough.

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WBRjU9P5eo wrote:Geoge Bernard Shaw[/url]]You must all know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say Sir, or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can’t justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight in the social boat, if you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the organizations of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.

If you want a more modern example, try the truthers.

In the McCain (in theory) / Obama (in fact) presidental comparison I just saw this wonderful article on Gather.

[url=http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978855089 wrote:Obama us wants us all to cut back and Tighten our belts. But, Is he leading by example?[/url]]
The First Lady was photographed last night in Hawaii wearing $635 per pair designer shoes by Maison Martin Margiela.

A woman lucky enough to have a job in this economy and working for the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour would have to work 88 hours (without taxes taken out) to make enough to pay for Michelle Obama's shoes.

The Obama's are staying at an $8.9 million estate for an estimated $4000 per night. To cover the Obama's ten night stay, the minimum wage worker would have to work two-and-a-half years (before taxes) to come up with the $40,000 Obama is reportedly laying out.

Obama has lectured Americans about how they can not expect to live their lives as indulgently as they have in the past. He has lectured businesses about their travel and pay. Yet Obama and his wife live like .......?

The news media has yet to call him out on his extravagance when there is 10% unemployment with no sign of the employment picture improving this coming year.

I wonder if President McCain would pull that sort of shit during a war and hard economic times and whether the press would let him get away with it?

Data Vampire wrote: If you want a more modern example, try the truthers.

Dude, that is totally wrong.

The Wikipedia Artikel you yourself linked to about who adheres to 9/11 truth policies wrote: Adherents of the 9/11 Truth movement come from diverse social backgrounds. The movement draws adherents from people of diverse political beliefs including liberals, conservatives, and libertarians.

Emphasis mine.

Disregarding entirely the potential validity of the truthmovement, it is by no means a phenomenon confined wholly to one side of the politicalspectrum.

No. There is no potential validity. The whole thing is batshit insanity wrapped in paranoia.

tzor wrote:I wonder if President McCain would pull that sort of shit during a war and hard economic times and whether the press would let him get away with it?

You have got to be fucking kidding us.

While the Truthers have adherents from many different political views, the majority of them are left-wing. The key distinction, however, is that the Truthers are a fringe group with no influence and no voice; while for instance, the (rolls dice) Birther conspiracy theory has adherents who are Republican congressmen, and the Tenther movement has members who are Republican governors.

The political Left in America purged their extremists decades ago and continues to disregard and marginalize them. The political Right in America has embraced their extremists and given them high office.

tzor wrote:In the McCain (in theory) / Obama (in fact)...

So now five seconds ago you were complaining about mindless Bush bashing, and now you are posting irrelevant unsubstantial fluffy political attacks against Obama?

"Ooooh he spends money! He goes on trips! He has holidays! His wife is alternately criticized, by the same people, for buying designer clothing and then other times for not being respectably fashionable enough! And all that "decadence" is the same, if not LESS than Republicans would have had, did recently have and still do have! OOOOOHGABOOGA! (ps are you distracted from talking about economics and policies?) SHOES! OOOOOOGHABOOOGA!"

Here is an idea Tzor, NEVER repost a political attack angle like that if when you actually think about it it would STILL be a political attack angle if Obama did the EXACT OPPOSITE. Can you IMAGINE the rethuglican attack articles if Obama WERE only spending like a minimum wage pay slave like YOU just suggested your president SHOULD?

No really. Can you imagine the "oh he so fake, he so cheap, he so shameful, he so commie, he so evil!" attacks THAT would garner? (edit: that is HAS garnered at the same time as the decadence attack line )

What UTTER bullshit, sniveling cowardice, and general misdirection your post was. But then, that's pretty standard fare for you.

name_here wrote:No. There is no potential validity. The whole thing is batshit insanity wrapped in paranoia.

Meh. Truthers get.... out there. On the other hand, the official word on how WTC building 7 came down is... "it fell down". Seriously, the report doesn't even really go into it and they don't have a super convincing explanation for it even now. Several news outlets reported that WTC 7 had collapsed half an hour or even an hour before it actually did. The chances that WTC 7 was a controlled demolition are actually pretty high. And there are entirely non-sinister reasons for that to have happened - as it genuinely had had big chunks of crap fall on it and it was full of fire and had it not collapsed it would have been a danger to the other buildings. Certainly, I don't regard the assumption that WTC 7 was a controlled demolition to be by itself an opinion that relegates people to the loony bin.

The people who think that WTC 1 and 2 were packed full of explosives don't make any sense to me though. And a lot of the theories get more out there than that. Any time anyone uses the word "nanothermite" I want to back away a quickly as possible.

But like everything, it's a range. Not all opinions are equally crazy.

-Username17

You know tzor, I'm a reasonable dude who commonly, respectfully disagrees with folks here... but in this case I'm not going to bother spelling it out for you. It takes too long.

You have a fucked spin on most everything, and a poor understanding on top of that. It's a bad combo and parsing through your posts to counter every one of your (bias/incomplete understanding) cocktails is a pain in the ass.

So, instead, here's the TL;DR version.

RE: Gitmo.
Capital and diplomatic and moral costs way out of proportion to benefit.

RE: Unemployment as stimulus
"Marginal Propensity to Consume". I told you to at least familiarize yourself with it. Jobs > unemployment benefits does not mean unemployment benefits != stimulative.

RE: domestic energy production
Drilling can eat a dick until the regulatory regime gets its head out of the industry's ass.

RE: carbon
Industrial CO2 emissions can be measured. Stop playing stupid.

RE: The Constitution
The Commerce Clause is going to shit all over any attempt to pretend healthcare can't be a government mandate, just like it did to the 10th with the Civil Rights Act.

mean_liar wrote: RE: The Constitution
The Commerce Clause is going to shit all over any attempt to pretend healthcare can't be a government mandate, just like it did to the 10th with the Civil Rights Act.

This is an aside (but it's a derail from Tzor, who's nearly incomprehensible, so I hope I'll be forgiven), but serious question:

If the commerce clause can cover actions that directly affect interstate commerce, those that indirectly affect interstate commerce, and basically anything that has anything whatsoever to do with buying or selling anything (including requiring people to buy and sell certain things, as in this case)...is there anything it doesn't cover? Are there any limitations, Bill of Rights aside, on Federal authority to regulate?

I am specifically not asking whether there should be or not; I am asking if you feel there are any, from a legal standpoint.

Not as such, no. The constitution is so bizzarely extensible as to render the tenth amendment meaningless. The Neccessary and Proper clause more or less allows anything to go.

I am not a Constitutional scholar. But then again, neither is Clarence Thomas: "If Congress can regulate (marijuana raised, bought and sold within a single state) under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything – and the federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers."

From a legal standpoint, no. Congress can do whatever the fuck they want until they're called out on it. As specifically regards regulation, they really do have carte blanche.

tzor wrote:I wonder if President McCain would pull that sort of shit during a war and hard economic times and whether the press would let him get away with it?

No.

President McCain would have lowered his own taxes during a war so he could spend a few extra days at the place.

He would also have greatly increased the tax burden of the middle and lower-middle class by making their employer-provided health benefits count as taxable income.

He would have then said we need to tighten our belts by cutting entitlement programs. To pay for the tax cut he gave himself.

In other words, he would have been a million times bigger hypocrite.

Oh, and the media would celebrate him for doing it.

PoliteNewb wrote:

mean_liar wrote: RE: The Constitution
The Commerce Clause is going to shit all over any attempt to pretend healthcare can't be a government mandate, just like it did to the 10th with the Civil Rights Act.

This is an aside (but it's a derail from Tzor, who's nearly incomprehensible, so I hope I'll be forgiven), but serious question:

If the commerce clause can cover actions that directly affect interstate commerce, those that indirectly affect interstate commerce, and basically anything that has anything whatsoever to do with buying or selling anything (including requiring people to buy and sell certain things, as in this case)...is there anything it doesn't cover? Are there any limitations, Bill of Rights aside, on Federal authority to regulate?

I am specifically not asking whether there should be or not; I am asking if you feel there are any, from a legal standpoint.

Well, I'm not mean_liar, but I do have some info on the issue of the extent that the interstate commerce clause can extend. In Wickard vs. Filburn it was ruled that the government can control the production of wheat on your own property that is for your own private use, because it can effect interstate commerce. United States v. Lopez refined it a bit after that and put some limits on it, but the power remains broad.

I am a constitutional scholar. And the answer is...

It depends. If you mean in practical concerns, what the government can do under the commerce clause as currently understood, mostly anything unless you piss of five justices, because then they will declare it an activity not significantly having to do with interstate commerce.

As to whether that is the correct interpretation... people will argue about that all day.

FrankTrollman wrote: Any time anyone uses the word "nanothermite"

Please tell me that exists in Shadowrun. I have never heard the term before, and died a little bit inside when I saw it written there.

It's not a real thing. You see, the problem the Truthers ran into is that the WTC didn't collapse like it would if it were destroyed with actual thermite, which is a pretty shitty explosive for clean demolition but excellent for fucking things up in ways even the user can't predict. However, the only explosive that the debris have anything like traces of is thermite, because it's made of aluminum, rust, and some other components that also happen to be used in construction. So they made up a type of thermite to fit into the theories.

Yeah.

I recall Rosie O'Donnel proclaiming it had to be bombs because she thought fire can't melt steel. "What, you mean for the first time in history fire melted steel?"

Some people just want to believe the world is slipping into darkness and that they are the last holdout of a bastion of Light and Truth or some shit.