I think I found the right guy for the Fed's empty board seats...
- Thread starter Jack_Larkin
- Start date
interest rates shouldn't be to begin with. be, as in exist. the business cycle that makes people go default is a built-in symptom of the interest rate based monetary system. remove the ability to create money out of thin air, and you'll get a stable economy. more money doesn't create wealth, it does the total opposite --- it erodes it. production creates wealth. if i have 10 apples and 10 dollars, and tomorrow grow 10 more apples, my dollar is now worth 2 apples. manipulators call it "deflation", when in reality it's just the appreciation of the value of my dollar.
I disagree to a point. Should the use of someone else's money be free? I think not. However, that's precisely the deal the banking system is getting right now so they are able to borrow at a cost of nothing and lend at a cost of a lot. What a sweet deal that must be.
I'm surprised the thieves at Goldman didn't remain a "Bank Holding Company" (what a joke) so they could commit financial rape at the cost of nothing. Oh wait! That's right. Doing so means they would be regulated as a bank and wouldn't be able to rachet up their leverage to 40-fold, or whatever the hell it is these days. "God's work," my ass.
I'm surprised the thieves at Goldman didn't remain a "Bank Holding Company" (what a joke) so they could commit financial rape at the cost of nothing. Oh wait! That's right. Doing so means they would be regulated as a bank and wouldn't be able to rachet up their leverage to 40-fold, or whatever the hell it is these days. "God's work," my ass.
i realize that you posted before I edited my comment to elaborate on my statement, but what you described is just one more symptom of the monetary system that world currently employs.
should money be free? under the current paradigm, you might as well ask, should production be free? conflating money with wealth is built-in symptom of the current monetary paradigm that we live in. if money is to be a store of wealth (and as a continuation of logic, not "free"), then why employ fiat in the first place, let alone an interest-based fiat? this is a built-in contradiction of the interest-based monetary system.
I agree that the whole money out of thin air concept has the potential to destroy economies, as we've just seen, but wouldn't free borrowing do the same? If borrowing were free wouldn't the demand to borrow enter the stratosphere, creating exactly the same problem? And exactly whom would we borrow from? Remove the profit generating motive from the banking system and you and I would have to borrow from our parents or our neighbor, which, in my opinion, is a good thing because when I was growing up we were only remotely removed from the Gold Standard and folks did exactly that -- borrow from friends and family. What a novel concept but do friends and family have the resources to float your house or a new car? Interestingly enough, the prices of cars were so reasonable back then an auto loan rarely even existed. People actually saved to buy a car for cash. In such a short number of decades the economy, the banking system, and the concept of borrowing has changed ooohhh so dramatically. Zero percent balance transfer offers? Unheard of! Credit cards barely even existed back then. It was a glorious time, aside from mid-70's recession. That was a tough one but what did I care. I was a kid. My biggest worry was getting too much mud on my clothes and getting a whack from Mom because she didn't want to have to scrub the clothes before tossing them in the wash. Maaannn...what I wouldn't do to be a kid again. Sorry for getting a little off topic. Ok, a lot off topic.
you mean "would do"
i actually enjoyed reading your post and how it was back then, as I was just born in '89. it gives me a perspective of how life was as compared to how it is now.
you brought up a valid point regarding borrowing at no cost. obviously, as you said, demand to borrow would climb "to the stratosphere". we are facing the age-old question of whether interest should be allowed, its benefits (time-value of money in a fiat system), its detriments (cornering of wealth), and all the consequences that such a system entails.
interest by itself is not inherently bad. the best example is our current system: with a monetary system based on fiat (with its universal tendency to expand), interest rates are the bulwark against endless money creation; a valve, so to speak, that serves as a control mechanism against hyperinflation. print too much too soon, and the market will demand much higher interest rates.
it's not surprising then, that our monetary history has turned out the way it did. interest and fiat go hand-in-hand. remove the former, and you have no defense against hyperinflation; remove the latter, and you have cornering of wealth by a few. and contrary to all the mindless calls to abolish the Fed (as some magic panacea that would solve all our economic problems), in a perverse kind of way, it would be much worse if the power to print money would have been given to the govt; as is obvious, they can't prudently manage public finances without having the power to print, now imagine what would happen if they did (Mugabe would appear a fiscal conservative in comparison).
we can look at Jews and their history in Europe and learn much about money. no offense to Jews, for i am one myself (though not of European extraction). banned from practicing almost all trades in most of Europe, they were naturally forced into the money lending business (and therefore, usury --- a dysphemism of "interest", as all interest is usury and vice versa, regardless of the rate IMHO). and what happened? to the chagrin of the same Church that tried to disenfranchise them by this prohibition, it had only economically empowered them (relatively speaking). whether the Church did this on purpose (aside from the Biblical prohibition), using Jews as a scapegoat to do their dirty deed so as to have an enemy to present to the public (while at the same time profiting from that usury indirectly by levying high taxes on them), is a matter of debate and off topic. point is, some concentration of wealth in Jewish hands was inevitable, until some Italian merchants decided to break the trend and get a piece of the pie.
i probably have gotten ahead of myself here though. i don't want to muddy the concepts of interest and fiat. you can have a hard money system w/ interest, and a fiat system w/o.
but first and foremost, interest is the fiat system's natural control mechanism. for hard money that doesn't undergo inflation in supply and a corresponding deflation in value --- as it's impossible to print it or electronically type it into existence (leaving aside the very possible problem of dilution of the metal content by the govt, for the sake of argument)--- it would serve no purpose. the concept of time value of money, as it is understood now, would simply not apply. hence why God had forbidden it in the Bible.
you can probably deduce "why" yourself. but if you want, i could pm you the "why". i'm not too fond of sharing valuable, hard-earned knowledge on a public forum.
