I’m not even fucking joking.

Forget the 700 billion- multiply it by 11, that was a mind-boggling number in ‘08 but now is anyone evem surprised at the fuckery anymore?

1. The Federal Reserve made 7.77 trillion dollars out of thin-air and “lent” it to banks for an interest rate of as low as 0.01% -in other words: fucking free.
2. Then the banks took this same money that the Fed gave them for 0.01% and “invested” it (in the U.S. treasury) at interest rates of around 3% (market price) making billions of dollars of profits off the money they got for free.
   

7.7 trillion dollars is half of the U.S.’s total GDP. The 700 billion dollar bailout was apparently just a “diversion”. Congress didn’t even know the Fed was doing this. Long live the U.S. of A.

Source: Bloomberg and here are some main points.

My new business teacher actually said this. Like almost word for word. A few other things she said;

[when I criticized the American economic system]
”..,you know you can’t be anti-America about everything, it’s like the way some people say America never landed on the moon…”
Okay did you honestly just say that criticizing American economic policy is the same as saying NASA never made it to the moon (HOW IS THIS RELEVANT?) and being “anti-America” -_-

“Communism promotes restriction of freedom”

“Free markets gave us the banking system which had loads of innovations and this was great for consumers…”
Okay so she relented a bit about this when my jaw hit the floor but how does one even form that ^ thought.

“Now you’re getting into Political Science and I taught Political Science at university level so you should listen to what I’m saying because what I’m telling you is right. Go read about Economics, go read the newspapers, and learn the facts.”
So much for trying to engage is class room discussion…

She also argued that America follows Free Market Capitalism completely, and properly- and refused to listen to my points about Anarcho-Communism or Democratic Socialism saying that the political system cannot be separated from economic structure (uh yes they have to work off of each other but there are different versions woman).

Needless to say that we spent both lessons arguing and she’s a good teacher as far as the subject is concerned but I think I made sure that she fully hated me by the end of today :$

I can see I’m going to love Business this year XP

uniteordie:

Now what are all of those people doing camped out on Wall Street? Are they socialists? Commies? Anarchists? Left, right? For some reason the television news people don’t like them, which makes me sympathize. What’s going on?

I’ll explain.

Let’s say you are a young couple, newly married, anxious to get your piece of the American dream. And let’s say you decide to open your own hamburger stand.

Your first obstacle will be a maze of federal regulations. They are all well intended, helping out the disabled, protecting the environment, providing for workers’ health. The problem is that there are too many of them and they cost too much.

When I worked in the Bush Senior White House I saw the major companies come in and lobby for these REGS. They wanted them to be required for small businesses too, even businesses with five employees. Why? Because it would knock out the Mom and Pop operations who couldn’t afford them. By driving up costs they could assure that they would have a monopoly on hamburgers. But let’s say your parents mortgage their house and get you the start up money to pass that test.

Second, you will find that your competition controls the meat industry in this country. It is not just that they have volume but rather that their political donations assure that their friends get appointed to government meat inspection agencies. Sometimes, the very people who worked for the company will cross over and become a regulator. You must be prepared for some hair-raising conflicts of interest.

Third, your tax dollars will go to subsidize your competitor, the big hamburger company. Are you aware of this? This could be hundreds of millions of dollars.

There’s just no nice way to say this. Washington is corrupt. The big hamburger company establishes a lobby in Washington, D.C., which you can’t afford to do. They start with a firm of lawyers and former Justice Department prosecutors and meat inspectors. They lobby congress for money for their big hamburger corporation. And they get it.

For example, when I worked in the White House a major hamburger corporation lobbied for money saying that the French government was subsidizing their hamburger industry. Apparently the French felt that American hamburgers represented a cultural invasion. We had to either get a free trade agreement that worked or subsidize our own hamburger company.

Bottom line? Your competition is much larger and more powerful than you and not only controls the price and quality of the meat but takes dollars out of your pocket as an additional subsidy.

Now, here comes the piece de resistance.

Congressman Ron Paul has been railing about the unfairness of the Federal Reserve and the fact that it creates additional money, in secret, unaudited by anyone.

So thanks to Ron Paul, this past year, we were finally given a partial audit of the Federal Reserve. This applied to their activity in 2008. Here is what we learned. We learned that the Federal Reserved loaned out $16 trillion. That’s in one year. Keep in mind, that the entire accumulated national debt is just over $14 trillion. Remember Glenn Beck’s towering charts in his television studio?

And to whom did this money go? Well, banks, including banks that were owned by the members of the Federal Reserve board. Hmmmm. Nice huh? I guess they were secret for a reason. There were also a number of no bid contracts for companies to handle all of this. Here is a sweet tidbit, $3 trillion went to banks in foreign countries. We Americans are generous people. And oh, I almost forget, numerous corporations received this money too. For example, that big hamburger company, the one who needs federal subsidies? I think they got another $500 million interest free loan from the Federal Reserve.

Okay, who paid for that? Well, nobody. It was money “created” by the Federal Reserve. But you should really say that “everybody” paid for it because by increasing the money supply you are diluting its value for the rest of us. You are driving up the cost of wheat. You are causing famine in Africa.

Well, you say, why doesn’t somebody say something about this? They are trying. They are camping out on Wall Street. But then, keep in mind, the only way we can really know what is happening is through the news media. And that big hamburger company advertises in the news media. And one of the companies that got millions of dollars from the Federal Reserve owns one of the television networks.

So if you are that couple, just graduating from college, wanting to get your piece of the American dream? Forget it. You have two choices. Go to Wall Street and camp out. Or get a job at McDonalds. I think they pay $7.25 an hour. (But you can steal food.)

Doug Wead is a New York Times bestselling author and former adviser to two American presidents. He is a senior adviser to Ron Paul.

liberationfrequency:

The University in St. Gal len, Switzerland (how appropriate) has come out with a study that compares traders with psychopaths.

The surprising result was that not only do traders act like psychos, they’re worse. I’m not surprised at this at all. From NZZ:

“The study reviewed the direct comparison of results with an existing study of 24 psychopaths in German high-security hospitals and a control group of 27 “normal” people.”

The “normal people” that is referred to are 27 traders. Stock guys, FX/commodities traders and derivative types were the “normal’ people that were stacked up against the actual crazies in the German nut house.

Even the experts were surprised by the result. They attest to the stock market professionals with a penchant for immense destruction.

The performance of the 27 dealers is even worse than the psychopaths.

“It’s like beating one of the neighbor’s expensive cars with a baseball bat with the sole objective of owning the most beautiful car in the neighborhood.”

 Now that we “know” (what was has been suspected all along) that traders are nuts it’s worth looking at what a textbook definition of a psycho actually is.

1. Considerable superficial charm, verbal facility and average or above average intelligence.

2. Unreliability, disregard for obligations, no sense of responsibility.

3. Untruthfulness and insincerity.

4. Inexplicable impulsiveness.

5. Antisocial behavior.

6. Poor judgment and failure to learn from experience.

7. Total self-contriteness.

8. General poverty of deep and lasting emotions.

9. Lack of any true insight, inability to see oneself as others do.

10. Fantastic and objectionable behavior, after drinking and sometimes even when not drinking—vulgarity, rudeness, quick mood shifts, pranks.

11. An impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated sex life.

There was a point in my life where I thought of myself as a successful trader. A “Master of the Universe”; a “Big swinging dick”. That was 20 years ago. Looking at the above list makes me cringe. To one degree or another all the descriptions fit parts of my life at the time.

I’m “all better” now…

For a four-year period in the ’70s, the poorest families in Dauphin, Manitoba, were granted a guaranteed minimum income by the federal and provincial governments. Thirty-five years later all that remains of the experiment are 2,000 boxes of documents that have gathered dust in the Canadian archives building in Winnipeg.

Until now little has been known about what unfolded over those four years in the small rural town, since the government locked away the data that had been collected and prevented it from being analyzed.

 

But after a five year struggle, Evelyn Forget, a professor of health sciences at the University of Manitoba, secured access to those boxes in 2009. Until the data is computerized, any systematic analysis is impossible. Undeterred, Forget has begun to piece together the story by using the census, health records, and the testimony of the program’s participants. What is now emerging reveals that the program could have counted many successes.

[…]

For four years Dauphin was a place where anyone living below the poverty line could receive monthly cheques to boost their income, no questions asked. Single mothers could afford to put their kids through school and low-income families weren’t scrambling to pay the rent each month.

[…]

As part of the experiment, an army of researchers were sent to Dauphin to interview the Mincome families. Residents in nearby rural towns who didn’t receive Mincome were also surveyed so their statistics could be compared against those from Dauphin. But after the government cut the program in 1978, they simply warehoused the data and never bothered to analyze it.

“When the government introduced the program they really thought it would be a pilot project and that by the end of the decade they would roll this out and everybody would participate,” said Forget. “They thought it would become a universal program. But of course, the idea eventually just died off.”

[…]

Initially, the Mincome program was conceived as a labour market experiment. The government wanted to know what would happen if everybody in town received a guaranteed income, and specifically, they wanted to know whether people would still work.

It turns out they did.

Only two segments of Dauphin’s labour force worked less as a result of Mincome—new mothers and teenagers. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies. And teenagers worked less because they weren’t under as much pressure to support their families.

The end result was that they spent more time at school and more teenagers graduated. Those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did.

[…]

Although the Mincome experiment was intended to provide a body of information to study labour market trends, Forget discovered that Mincome had a significant effect on people’s well being. Two years ago, the professor started studying the health records of Dauphin residents to assess the impacts of the program.

In the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 per cent. Fewer people went to the hospital with work-related injuries and there were fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse. There were also far fewer mental health visits.