milskidasith, I already admitted that what I said wasn’t accurate, so I’m not sure why you’re spending so much time picking it apart. What I meant was that banks can loan out 9 times what they keep as a deposit, not 9 times the entire deposit. Obviously there’s a huge difference, but you can see how I made the mistake.
This does not, however, change the overall point that I was making, which is that banks do NOT have the capital to back up all their debts. If tomorrow everyone went to the bank to withdraw all their money, there would simply not be enough. This is what happened with the Great Depression, when there was a run on the bank. Banks loan out money that DOESNOTEXIST. It is privately created as debt.
This was a long and confusing adventure in misreading posts.
More like a long and confusing adventure in understanding the U.S. economy. But this is important stuff, and I have no idea why it was never taught to me in high school, amid all the other bullshit I had to sit through. They didn’t even glaze over it in economics. Most people don’t understand it, and they think that banks only lend out money that they have. Let me grab my tinfoil hat as I ponder whether the government intends for this to be common information at all…
No need for a tinfoil hat, thats just our wonderful government following in lockstep, the path taken by just about every empire that ever rose and fell before us. Like all currency debasement of the past, the current system of fiat money and deficit financing is just another dishonest means to financing war and various other government programs. Funny thing is, that many economists, bankers, and congressmen have been caught in ignorance on these issues.
If the government where actually trying to suppress that information, you would not find it on google video, at least, not with obvious keywords for a search. The government simply does not place a high priority on spreading that sort of information, or placing it in proper context. By means of controlling the budgeting processes, the priorities are established throughout virtually all schools.
These sort of policies are based on ignorance:
The ignorance of financiers, when new capital is introduced and used to purchase assets at the old rates.
The ignorance of the people, when their financial system ends up fueling both sides of a major war.
The ignorance of the press, when fraud and deceit is used to initiate or modify a policy.
The ignorance of the politicians, that leads them to regard it all as both a magic money machine and vital to the interests of the people.
The ignorance of “the government”, of the disastrous long term effects of its policies.
I consider government to be an infernal machine with no driver. When rational and moral men take positions of power, it functions properly, but all to often, positions of power go to the irrational and amoral. The bigger the government is, the bigger the chaos it produces in such times; A government with a limitless supply of capital and power ultimately ends up producing a limitless supply chaos and destruction, even if, in the process of attaining the power, the politicians in place at the time where acting on the best of intentions. This characterization is sure to ruffle a few feathers, among the flag waving crowd.
The government will not tell you who was pulled strings to establish the Federal Reserve Bank and they won’t tell you who are the primary benefactors and who gets the shaft, or in what manner. To understand these matters is to understand the nature of government.
If you didn’t know money isn’t all that great. It s what the piece of paper or money is worth. For each note and coin there is a block of gold in the national treasury that makes your money worth a few bucks. Some countries don’t have huge blocks of gold so they use OUR notes of currency as their “block of gold” for their treasuries. So go burn that money, but if you don’t have your own block of gold to buy stuff then don’t
If you didn’t know money isn’t all that great. It s what the piece of paper or money is worth. For each note and coin there is a block of gold in the national treasury that makes your money worth a few bucks. Some countries don’t have huge blocks of gold so they use OUR notes of currency as their “block of gold” for their treasuries. So go burn that money, but if you don’t have your own block of gold to buy stuff then don’t
What? I can’t think of a country off the top of my head that actually backs its money with gold or silver anymore. The US stopped in 1971. The amount of gold left in Fort Knox is kept secret.
The gold standard was outdated anyway. The silver standard could work, in theory, but that would require a total restructuring of our banking system or the ability to conjure silver out of thin air. And of course, conjuring silver out of thin air would have made us incredibly rich until silver was so common as to be worthless by now, so we need a highly impractical restructuring of the entire economy. In theory, a slow increase, perhaps 5% a year, in the banks reserve rate could work, but otherwise the situation is pretty meh for backing our money with something.
Anyone who says money isn’t important has too much of it.
Money isn’t something to kill over, or screw a friend over or devote your life to, or make at the expense of your creativity or love, but it is pretty important. Everyone needs to eat. Everyone needs to do more than eat. It’s very hard to survive without money and it’s very hard to live by just surviving.
Money is a tool to better enjoy life, tools are important.
I think the tool of money should retain its value, and be left, as much as possible, out of the hands of [powerful] politicians (in particular, the ones that have war-making powers)…
