Topic: Bank insiders fretting about "Virtual Dollars" breaking the money monopoly (Read 4901 times)

Wow, that guy's ignorance and triumphalist statism really know no bounds.

@Satori: Fractional reserve as presently implemented is accurately described as a scam. However, I suspect that in a truly free market (i.e., absent the state and its privileges to the banking cartel) fractional reserve would complete quite successfully with full-reserve banking.

The theme of the American Bankers Association convention next year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGZ1nK4mOuw&feature=related

Thanks for the read, very funny!

unlike the forex market 

"consumer abuse" - wat? People trading goods an services without giving the government it's cut. Stop abusing the government, people!

Lol +1

It's so not their way of thinking that it'll seem just like aliens landing and taking their jobs.

I think it's accurate, if unintentionally so.  The fiat value of a fiat currency is not its purchasing power but its ability to prevent the government from kidnapping you, killing you, or taking your stuff.  Considering how taxation (aka demands for fiat currency or else the government will kidnap you or take your stuff) and government murder rates have generally tended to grow, the fiat value has probably only rarely depreciated.

The value of fiat currency in terms of purchasing power, though, is another matter entirely...

Resistance if feudal.

Banks used to be outlawed in medieval Europe, because of their tendency to get into economies and knock them over.

We also get the word villain from the feudal term for a land-owner who'd make people work his land for him in order to have use of any.

Resistance if futile.

The banksters have their hands full propping up their collapsing house of cards, bitcoin is off their radar. imagine halfway through next year, they are in the middle of a war, debt bombs going off everywhere, runs on sovereign bonds, banks going bust, riots in the streets and then BITCOIN shows up on their radar looking like the size of the mothership from planet Nemesis ... it'll be the killer-blow, they're fucked.

To be fair, the things he derides in this article aren't p2p currencies, but a sort of dollar backed digital script issued by private organizations.

I'm sure he'd shit a brick over Bitcoin though.

I don't see how anyone can deride a P2P currency while attempting to defend something as utterly corrupt as banking.

Not to mention the scam known as fractional reserve lending.

Another interesting article on the same subject: Simon Dixon: Peer To Peer Lending — will it replace banking?

Failed to mention the Fed request said dollars and lends out at interest.

Legal tender is fiat currency to begin with.  "Legal", as distinct from lawful, is defined as "having the form and appearance of law, without necessarily having the substance of law".  It's a term of bureaucracy.  All the papers signed correctly, dated, turned in on time to the right people?  Great, it's legal.  But it doesn't follow that it's also lawful.  To be lawful something must also derive from the authorities we the People vested in our government.  Thus, lawful money would be gold or silver.  We authorized nothing else, and did not authorize the federal government to outsource its responsibility to mint to private corporations like the Fed.  "Legal" is typically used by white-collar in-the-know hucksters as shorthand for "will appear legitimate to most people", or more plainly, "looks legit".  I don't typically care whether it looks legit; I care whether it actually is.

This is why legal tender is tendered, and things are purchased now rather than owned.  Purchasing refers to being allowed to use something, upon a promise to pay the owner at a later date.  As such, items aren't bought anymore.  Nor are they owned; instead the would-be owner is considered the "holder in due course" of the item.  This is so because legal tender is backed by "the full faith and credit of the people".  Literally, all the assets of federal citizens are mortgaged to back Federal Reserve Notes.  These promissory notes are promises to pay at a later date, and naturally you can't pay off a debt with IOU's.


Certainly.  In this case, without deigning to lend publicity to BitCoin, that author tries to use it as the opportunity to promote acceptance of flawed, corrupt alternatives.

Like the War for Independence, the only remaining option when you can't effectively use brute force to stop an idea from spreading is to convince people they're getting what they want, so they'll relinquish it.  The War for Independence never stopped, it simply went from military force to propaganda and rampant public defrauding.  It's difficult to stop an idea through force of arms, and if they had kept up they would've had ideas from the Colonies spreading to the citizens back home.  A gradual campaign of distortion and corruption over about two hundred years was needed, with the result that the U.S. is now worse than Britain had ever been.  But knowlegable dissent, by and large, had been quieted due to the apparent success achieved by the People.

I guess I took him to be saying that its value has never markedly depreciated [stop] and has never deviated from state to state.  But I think you're right, I read him uncharitably.  Upon reflection, what he meant was it's value has never depreciated from state to state and it's value has never deviated from state to state.  Ok, I fail.  But, then again, his claim doesn't address the fact that transactions are more and more international over time, so the dollar's stability between US states is irrelevant when I'm buying something from Europe.

I get a sense from his article that there's an analogy between his attitude and the attitude of, say, Britain toward the American colonies - "they're starting to do their own thing over there without our say so, we need to act quick to stamp them down".

This is one of my favorite quotes from the article.


Or, you know, since 1862.

Someone should inform that guy of Bitcoin. Might be fun if he answers.

well i never had to pay more with card that i would pay with euros from my pocket

in fact i don't see any difference (for those that taking money from me) between 1% fee for processing card payment and renting armoured van and security guards to transport money that supermarket just earned

while fb money can be wiped out or lose all value instantly i really dont think there is any substantial difference (that he is suggesting) with 'real' and 'bank' money

His world of bank power is about to end.