And the only answer is, of course, no - it is absolutely insane. Which is probably why you won't see the mainstream media getting anywhere near that question, because if the way we run our economy is insane, then we really should be trying to find something better - and then the people might start asking why our leading financial people can't seem to find something better, and if they can't, why can't (or won't, really) they, and maybe we need to find some people who can - and it doesn't take much travelling along this path until the confidence in the confidence men is shot - and then where will we be? And where will our economy be?
- notice all the interviews on the CBC about this, and stories in the papers - and not a single one questioning the 'wisdom' of letting our economy be placed in the hands of these crazy gamblers? Not a ONE!!! - they have all kinds of people talking about what to do, and offering advice - but not a single one ever questioning the system itself - this is an absolute box wall that will not only not be questioned, the idea that it might be changed will not even be entered into the discussion.
The whole thing starts from the way we create money, and circulate it, in our 'modern' economies (it's about as modern as witch doctors, really, as you would see if you opened some doors and turned on some lights - but these doors are very carefully guarded by the various assistants and acolytes of the Big Boss Witch Doctors (AKA Leading Financial Analysts, Investors, Finance Ministers, Chief Economists, Business Columnists, As-- oh sorry getting carried away, and etc).
You see, what makes the whole thing go round in 'our' economy (it's really 'ours' in the same way we might say 'our' favorite hockey team - there are people who control it, but it ain't 'us') is -
- imaginary money.
And being imaginary, you can imagine more or less of it pretty quickly - it's not the same as having hard cash, which you can get more of or lose some of, but it's quite a bit harder to do.
Seriously - most people don't know this, but only about 5% of the money in a 'modern' western 'democracy' (sorry about all those 's all the time, but that's what we have to do when we use a word that has a meaning we don't really agree with - and I know that you think you live in a democracy, but I don't, it's just another con game really - if you finish this little article about imaginary money and find it gives you something real to think about, then I'll show you where to go for another article on imaginary democracy).
Anyway, as I was saying, only about 5% of the money in your country is hard cash, bank notes or coins that you can hold in your hand, that 'your' government is more or less responsible for. All the rest of it is created by banks - 'our' government has given them this exclusive power (did they ever ask you about that? I don't recall them asking me... but that's a tangent for a longer article). And since they don't print notes or coins, that sort of thing being illegal still for anyone except the government, all of their money is imaginary. They approve a 'loan', then type some numbers in a computer and voila!! - money in your account. Small amounts for you, bigger amounts for your government (oh, yea, 'your' government borrows from them the same way - except 'your' government works with a lot more zeroes)
Imaginary money, because there are no coins or bills created for this money, nor have they checked around their vault and found someone else's hard-cash deposit they think they can safely lend you - no no, they have just created that money out of thin air, and said you can go and spend it on anything you like.
The kicker, of course, is that if they create a thousand bucks for you, you have to give them back more than they loaned you - and YOU cannot go around creating imaginary money, or 'your' government will put you in jail. And they don't want imaginary money anyway for that interest payment - they want REAL money (this is the con of the con - they give you trinkets, you give them real stuff in the end to pay for the trinkets). And if you can't give them real money - well, you signed a contract to get that imaginary money to play with that says if you can't find some real money to give them back, they can come for your real car, or your real house, or anything else real you have. Trinkets in, your house out. Haha sucker.
And the big cons playing with all that imaginary money just keeping bidding up the value of real stuff they want to buy with the imaginary money (the big players can do what they call 'leverage' and other little tricks they won't allow the marks to do) until one day they look around and see they've gotten so far from reality they've lost their way, and it all starts to crumble around them (the Witch Doctors call this the 'Business Cycle' for the marks - the marks might not want to play, or might catch on, if they called it something more real, like the Sting, maybe, or the Payoff or something....)
- and then there is a race to see who can catch the most real stuff as the imaginary money evaporates around them all - this is where your small 'investors' get wiped out in big numbers, because they are not connected to the banks which are in the front of the line for catching real stuff. Some of the wannabe-big-players get caught in this too, but that's the predator end of things, and they know the game they play, and that it's a bit like musical chairs for them, and some will fall and some will go on to even bigger and better scams...)
There are 3 groups of people here - the small group at the top running the scam (or at least knowing what is happening), a large group of marks who think they are cleverly making money, and another large group who have nothing to do with the scam directly, but because the scam is so powerful are still affected by it. One small group of winners, one very large group of marks. As with all scams.
All I have time for today - it's a much deeper story, but my day job is calling. I just showed you where the doors are. Start with the Box at the top of the page, which also has a chapter on Imaginary Democracy.
Go placidly amidst the noise and the haste .... (and if you don't know where that comes from, find out - it will help)
Note: On">http://www.rudemacedon....
The Best Way To Run An Economy????
Posted on Wednesday, January 23 at 10:53 by siamdaveContributed By
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Look at the price of gold. Jumping around a bit, but gradually increasing, gaining almost 300% in the last years.
The big gamblers know that their accumulated money holdings. especially in US dollars, are worthless and are slowly divesting them for gold, because nobody else can afford it.
The imaginary money created in the last 25, or so years, has been used by the same corporate mafia to buy control of the world's resources through the fraudulent scheme of globalization with the free movement of capital, especially here in Canada, and are now ready to put the world into a depression, as they have nothing to lose .
The purpose is the same as happened in Germany 75 years ago, where big business forced the starving, impoverished population to accept dictatorship with Hitler. This time they're gambling for a corporate dictatorship for the whole world and a depression will give it to them
Ed Deak,
-Max Planck<br />
<br />
I won't make any assumptions about your individual politics, but a common theme of much of the commentary on Vive is a rejection of the "large enterprise", particularly but not exclusively the private corporation.
I find this attitude odd, given the obvious gains in quality of life we've experienced in the modern industial era over that in which the cottage industry was king and economies barely extended beyond the village. It is economies of scale that made transportation, electricity and the personal computers from which you post affordable and accessible.
Once again, not attempting to pigeon-hole you, but this view seems to be typical of the present-day political left in Canada, who perhaps became disenchanted with the large enterprise not only through the capitalist experience, but also the industrialized state-run economies of the Soviet Union. The Soviets also attempted to achieve economies of scale through large, centralized production, but lacking the incentives of the capitalist system, failed to provide for the needs of their citizens.
Recognizing at last that collectivism does not scale up from the village or small co-op, the left has attempted to discredit the large enterprise and the prosperous lifestyle it provides to at least the majority of us. The current project of the left is to make us feel guilty about our materially rich lifestyle through a number of means.
We're supposed to feel guilty because consumerism has supposedly left us spiritually empty.
We're supposed to feel guilty because of the accumulation of greenhouse gases, especially if we live in (horror of horrors) the suburbs and drive our own vehicles. But we're also supposed to feel guilty about robbing future generations of fossil fuel reserves (an odd contradiction, but par for the course).
We're supposed to feel guilty about buying items produced by people in other countries, despite the fact that not all imported products are made in sweatshops.
We're supposed to feel guilty about wanting to live in a place relatively free of crime and surrounded by people who share our values. Once again, suburbs are evil because they erode that "sense of community" which really just comes down to us all feeding from the same trough.
We're supposed to feel guilty about our own wealth, as if the economy were a zero-sum game where our personal prosperity comes directly from the deprivation of another.
These guilt trips have one and only one purpose, to make us accept a lower standard of living, because a socialist economy (whether democratic or totalitarian, anarchist or authoritarian) cannot duplicate the standard of living generated by a capitalist economy. Only by making us feel guilty about what we have and how we live can the left succeed in downscaling and retracting our economies to the point where collectivism doesn't produce monstrous tyranny.
The rejection of the concepts of "economies of scale", comparative advantage and economic specicialization, in defiance of their intuitively obvious and empirically proven utility, is key to this sales job.
It's good that (much of) the Canadian left has finally seen the perils of the Soviet big-state command economy model. I just hope people really think long and hard about what they're being asked to give up before embracing the "new, improved" socialism such people are peddling nowadays.