Quantitative Easing 4

[Azure Flame]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afonteve...lls-below-6-5/

So the US is now printing entirely too much money.

Thoughts?

[munenori2]

If they really wanted to boost the economy, they should just forgive some student loans. I'd be spending $400 more a month, baby!

[Azure Flame]

Don’t waste energy worrying about things you can’t do shit about?

There are things we can do.

Debts will be easy to pay off in the future, commodity prices will rise...

[Absurd]

Oh, I just noticed you have been degraded from LIE and SLE to IEI, DJA, good for you and all the people who read your stories on Te and Se dominance. Oh and E-4 now, well, that was fast.

You think U.S. economy is going to hold up to such sudden fluctuations of behaviour and stop printing cash?

[FDG]

Let them give me some?

[strangeling]

Politics is pretty much the art of oversimplifying problems and convincing people to accept solutions that just create other problems. It's like Plato's Allegory of the Cave - everyone analyzes and reacts to the shadows they are making, while oblivious to how the fire influences those shadows. They don't care about finding causation, but give priority to determining it.

Anyways, why do you think history repeats itself? Because most of us don't learn from it. Sad, but true; or not, if you don't care.

[Red Villain]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afonteve...lls-below-6-5/

So the US is now printing entirely too much money.

Thoughts?

It's not exactly clear how more money in circulation = more jobs. Jobs are created when a new company opens, or an existing company expands, to do this, one needs a certain amount of capital, either in the form of productive capacity or in the money form whereby the quantitative value of all products are realized. What the Fed's are doing- generating more money into circulation- is completely ineffectual, because they act on the erroneous opinion that the prices of commodities are somehow determined by the amount of money in circulation.

[Red Villain]

Politics is pretty much the art of oversimplifying problems and convincing people to accept solutions that just create other problems. It's like Plato's Allegory of the Cave - everyone analyzes and reacts to the shadows they are making, while oblivious to how the fire influences those shadows. They don't care about finding causation, but give priority to determining it.

Anyways, why do you think history repeats itself? Because most of us don't learn from it. Sad, but true; or not, if you don't care.

Politics is the science dealing with the ways in which people organize themselves in society. The misconception that politics consists of nothing more than people "oversimplifying problems" and of "convincing people to accept solutions that just create other problems" is not something so oversimple to be explained by an allegory; the problem in your thinking arises from the fact that society is divided by material interest, and that the politics of a person express that which best works toward fulfilling their own material interest, and from what you've witnessed, those who are in a position to realize their political interests are working contrary to what you perceive to be your interests.

Moreover, history doesn't "repeat itself," True, parallels can be drawn from two points in history, just as a parallel can be drawn between two paintings of the same artist, but like the two paintings, two points in history are separated in time and in space, and if we consider the concrete conditions that engender any given historical state of society, those that led to and determine it's future development, we will always find that they are fundamentally different, for they were modified by different courses of specific development- nothing more than continuations of older forms. They can’t possibly be exactly the same. On the other hand, universal historical parallels that are found to reoccur can partly be attributed to the activity (or lack thereof) of mankind for it is mankind's activity that determines the future of society's historical development, but only partly because that activity is confined by the material conditions they've inherited from the previous generation.

[munenori2]

It's not exactly clear how more money in circulation = more jobs. Jobs are created when a new company opens, or an existing company expands, to do this, one needs a certain amount of capital, either in the form of productive capacity or in the money form whereby the quantitative value of all products are realized. What the Fed's are doing- generating more money into circulation- is completely ineffectual, because they act on the erroneous opinion that the prices of commodities are somehow determined by the amount of money in circulation.

I thought the general idea was they were buying up gov't debt held by banks in the hopes that it would lead to greater ease of lending since they couldn't drop interest rates any lower or something? I could be wrong, but that's the gist I'd gotten from what I'd heard on QE3 and Operation Twist.

[Azure Flame]

they print money because it makes it easier to pay off the debt... which raises prices and causes more people to borrow money, which creates more debt, which demands more printing of money.

[ragnar]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afonteve...lls-below-6-5/

So the US is now printing entirely too much money.

Thoughts?

The US and Europe seem to be drowning in debt, with governments on all levels being among the debtors, in addition to much of the public, including the voting public. Which means there's a desire for some kind of easing of the debt burden among a significant fraction of both voters and those voted for. In practice such "easing" will come in the form of inflation, a gradual increase in paper money wages and ditto increase in prices.

If interest rates don't increase correspondingly then long-term paper money debt will just wilt away, which I'm sure would be welcome for a large and increasing number of people, Repubs, Dems, Libnuts and Carenots alike, including many members of this forum.


With hyper-inflation the effect would be similar to the Biblical principle of regular debt forgiveness:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...15&version=NIV
At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the Lord’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed.

[Saberstorm]

Please, can we get a different government? God I hate this. Fucking crap.

[Ozz]

It's been years since I have taken Money & Banking.

I think the Federal Reserve is pretty much trying too hard to drive down expectation of future nominal interest rates while at the same time maintain stable future inflationary expectations. This has the effect of driving bond interest rate down and thus driving down the real interest rate. This, I am told, will stimulate investments.

They have been trying different ways to drive down expectation of future nominal interest rate for years now. If I recall correctly, last year, people were expecting interest rate to rises later so that pushed up the expectation of future nominal interest rate. It looks like they are trying to target unemployment to alleviate that fear.

They are doing exactly what the model says they should do - to drive down real interest rate. I am a bit concerned through one or more part of this model appears to not work as expected in the real world. Perhaps at the end of this, we will have a new model, but for now they appear to be very hell bend on following this current model.

[strangeling]

Politics is the science dealing with the ways in which people organize themselves in society. The misconception that politics consists of nothing more than people "oversimplifying problems" and of "convincing people to accept solutions that just create other problems" is not something so oversimple to be explained by an allegory; the problem in your thinking arises from the fact that society is divided by material interest, and that the politics of a person express that which best works toward fulfilling their own material interest, and from what you've witnessed, those who are in a position to realize their political interests are working contrary to what you perceive to be your interests.

First of all, I used the allegory to paint the picture of how politics fails societies and why governments collapse and fall apart as a result - mass ignorance of the greater picture. It's basically like seeing people complain and bicker about say birth control when a meteor is about to hit them, except they believe the meteor isn't coming because they never bothered to look. This isn't hard to understand.

Second of all, I used the words "pretty much", which means that's not all I think politics is, but that I think it mostly entails such aspects, which is why governments eventually crumble apart. If you want proof, consider the simple fact that all governments eventually fall apart.

Lastly, you have no idea what I've witnessed and what I've based that on because I never made that clear. Instead, you've pre-judged me and proved my point that people tend to determine causation, instead of finding it. And you are wrong in your assumptions, if you care. And this, again, is why I find politics infuriating because you've already turned me off for reasons you've decided without my say. And fuck you too.

Moreover, history doesn't "repeat itself," True, parallels can be drawn from two points in history, just as a parallel can be drawn between two paintings of the same artist, but like the two paintings, two points in history are separated in time and in space, and if we consider the concrete conditions that engender any given historical state of society, those that led to and determine it's future development, we will always find that they are fundamentally different, for they were modified by different courses of specific development- nothing more than continuations of older forms. They can’t possibly be exactly the same. On the other hand, universal historical parallels that are found to reoccur can partly be attributed to the activity (or lack thereof) of mankind for it is mankind's activity that determines the future of society's historical development, but only partly because that activity is confined by the material conditions they've inherited from the previous generation.

First of all, I never suggested they would be exactly the same. You assumed that and never bothered to ask me.

Secondly, you're missing the point. There are fundamental aspects to the way that humans communicate and behave with one another that are learned as we grow and age. Someone who studies history learns faster by learning how to avoid past mistakes in human relationships. In a lot of ways, when a government collapses, solutions to these mistakes become incorporated into the new government, progressing society. The problem however, is when people remove these solutions instead of adding more solutions. Then it's a step backward and then the government becomes unstable. In other words, people who don't understand the past mistakes don't think they are problems and repeat them. This isn't rocket science and claiming "different points" in "space and time" as an argument against such ideas doesn't bring anything on the table on your part, except to claim "everything is always different". Wow, I learned a lot Rob, thanks for wasting my time.

Lastly, go fuck yourself for generalizing more shit about what I say.

[InvisibleJim]

@Tackk I think that centralised governments decentralise when it becomes clear there are no external threats that they can provide capability to combat. I think the financial crisis is a good example of one of those crises.

[strangeling]

@Tackk I think that centralised governments decentralise when it becomes clear there are no external threats that they can provide capability to combat. I think the financial crisis is a good example of one of those crises.

I don't really like generalizing too much, if at all. But that's probably true in some cases, but I tend to believe the message in 1984's "War is peace" where threats are created or encouraged as a replacement to giving up so much centralized power. I know it's a little different because the idea there is to suggest that it creates peace and order, but in the eyes of the ones holding power, they don't want to give anything up unless they "have" to.

But see then because of this, you get people who think they should always stick it to those in power and suggest we should decentralize power as much as we can, ignoring the fact that there are instances in the cases of mass production where centralized power benefits everyone. Such people become dangerous because they would rather destroy a society and create a resulting greater sense of fairness, even if they end up living worse off than they did before. It becomes about envy and common sense goes out the window.

Ideally, a government should centralize on things it can do better and decentralize where individual sects can do better. I think this is what the US is based on, which is pretty cool, but it seems to be getting imbalanced. I think the problem is that the federal government can increase its power through Congress, while the state governments can not. The Federal Government is set up to check and balance itself in a way, but the state governments are on the defensive with the Constitution (and the government seems to be overriding this more and more) and elections; and there is no guarantee that such elected officials will have an impact on the sect they come from and have no way to increase their power in any useful opposition. The problem then is that the Federal Government does not cater to minorities and will subject individual sects to the majority will. It allows majority ideologies to hold power over all others, thus creating its own opposition and allows the pursuit of ideals to destroy the dynamic network of ways that we each live our lives differently - it is strictly intolerant of anyone that lives or believes differently from whatever is preached as "the answer". And sometimes "the answer" has already been a historical mistake for very knowable reasons, if people would take the time to look and see how. And if that's not ignorance, then I don't know what is.

Fuck it. I just wanted to post a song and I got entangled in this mess, thanks to Villain Rob the asshole. I'm going to drink some more Christmas Cheer; Christmas is awesome.