Topic: The Biggest Scam In The History Of Mankind - Hidden Secrets of Money (Read 9184 times)

China PBOC (Chinese Central Bank) is front-running the Fed's taper, by tapering first.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-20/pboc-says-no-longer-in-china-s-favor-to-boost-record-reserves.html
“It’s no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves,” Yi Gang, a deputy governor at the central bank, said in a speech organized by China Economists 50 Forum at Tsinghua University yesterday.

The confusion between money and its representation is the basis for that between debt and money. For further information, please read this: http://bit.ly/Z9cRyY.

Are you telling me that dollars do not represent goods and services? Have we so deeply mistaken money by debt as to forget it was ever money?

However, in a sense you are correct: the damage to productive capacity, social infrastructure, social cohesion, and the environment will outlive any reengineering of the monetary system to solve the debt problem.

The only problem you seem to be having is that the government DOESN'T have that capacity.

It BORROWS those dollars. Every dollar in circulation is either a dollar of national debt, or a dollar of somebody's personal debt. Eventually, people won't continue to lend to a country with always increasing debt. And when they stop, then the only one left to lend is the Federal Reserve, and the system collapses.

I agree w/ everything you said except "Forcing future generations to repay outstanding debt instead of producing." The national debt is in dollars, not in goods and services. Future generations produce goods and services, not dollars. The US Govt has an infinite capacity to produce dollars. The productivity (and wealth) of future generations depends on the productive capital that is available to them.

Misallocation of resources by our government, now THAT is a real problem.

Again I'd recommend everyone read "Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy" which probably does a better job explaining the points I'm trying to make. http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf

I'd also again challenge theonewhowaskazu or anyone else who'd like to try to answer this: "What if the US had absolutely zero trade with other nations, everything was domestic. Would you grant me that deficit spending and issuing treasury bonds would not be stealing from future generations in that scenario?" If you agree that's not stealing, then how does the fact that there's international trade change the question?

And again my other question, what if the Federal Reserve held every treasury bond, regardless of whether there is international trade or not. Would moving treasury bonds from the US Treasury to the Federal Reserve be stealing from future generations?

I'm not here to defend the US monetary system, I'd like to see a change and that's one reason I support bitcoin. But I see no reason why we should be using false statements to attack the current system when there are plenty of other valid criticisms to pursue.

It needs to be updated for BASEL III Accord from BIS.
It is Agreed but not yet implemented it further reduces the "backing" of currencies and interlocks the main currency pairs with each other's debt as the backing.  Reduces the value of gold and hard assets for central banking account settlement.

And what is the significance of this? You're trying to say its easier with Bitcoin to check how many Bitcoins other users have?

Inflation can finance far bigger deficits than taxes because people mistakenly blame it on merchants. Additionally, turning debt into money provides the perfect disguise for inflation as it makes money self-inflationary.


Using just inflation to pay public debt would destroy the currency too rapidly, which is why whoever controlled the government created the income tax along with the central bank.


We are stealing wealth from the future by:

1. Destroying or failing to create productive capacity - by misallocating resources.

2. Forcing future generations to repay outstanding debt instead of producing.


Mike Maloney's mistake is to be found instead in his distinction between "money" and "currency."

The fundamental deficiency of gold is that it makes no distinction between itself as a representation of monetary value and the monetary value it represents. Bitcoin makes that distinction by representing monetary value as a private key then metarepresenting as a public key.

*SIGH*
No, I haven't. I simply said that if it WAS part of the US Government - which it isn't - it still wouldn't matter.
Exactly, and YOU said it could do this without issuing new debt. Which it can't.
Except this is not a net-0 process.

Look, here's what you're saying. You're saying that the government is printing itself money, lending that money to itself, and paying that interest back to itself, which you say is effectively the same as if they were just printing the money and spending it into the economy directly. And that would be true, if that's what they were doing.

First off, only profits of the Federal reserve are turned over to the treasury. That means anything necessary to maintain its balance sheets, or pay its obligations (including the dividends to banks) aren't handed over. So, the Fed's "profit" amounts to 94% of the interest it earns from the loans it makes to the US Government. What you don't seem to understand is that the US Government is always paying out more interest to the bonds that the Federal Reserve now owns than the Federal Reserve actually collects, because of the Open Market. The Open Market says that the Fed doesn't directly buy bonds from the government at auctions, but buys them from, guess what, the open market. So what happens is that the banks re-sell the bonds on the open market for a profit.

Throughout this whole process, there are 'leaks'. Where US Government interest money is not all going back to the treasury, but is instead being diverted into the pockets of banks. Even a single tiny leak kills your supposed theory of the IOU exchange being a net-0 process. There are lots of REALLY BIG leaks going on right now.

Ok, how do you pay off debt other than by working.
Actually, we do.
Or what if the US had absolutely zero trade with other nations, everything was domestic. Would you grant me that deficit spending and issuing treasury bonds would not be stealing from future generations in that scenario? The same logic supports the conclusion that we are not stealing from future generations in a world with international trade.

For the sake of illustrating my point, you could also picture a world where international trade exists but every treasury bond is held by the federal reserve. They hold trillions as is, but lets just make that 100% of outstanding bonds for this example. I would argue that this is equivalent to a world where treasury bonds don't exist at all and the US Treasury just prints currency as it needs to cover deficits, even though the national debt would still technically exist. We count the treasury bonds held by the federal reserve in debt figures, so that hardly seems extreme.

How could the debt or deficits be stealing from future generations there?

It seems you've granted me that the Federal Reserve is part of the US Government. Yes it has shareholders, yes it's largely autonomous, but it was created by the US Government and sends its profits to the US Treasury.

When the US Treasury issues treasury bonds which are then purchased by the Federal Reserve, the result is that the government has more dollars to spend and it didn't get those dollars from taxation. The bonds go from one place in the government to another place in the government, new dollars are created, and then those dollars can be used for government spending. It says this is in the video itself. I'm arguing that this whole process (issuing bonds to be bought up by the fed reserve) is a formality and logically unnecessary.

I didn't talk at all about anyone being forced to work, nobody is going to be forced to work.

Maybe try thinking about it this way, obviously we have a bunch of federal debt that existed long before you and I were born. I'm assuming you're an American here. You and I don't have to work extra hard for the bonds that were issued during WWII.

Or what if the US had absolutely zero trade with other nations, everything was domestic. Would you grant me that deficit spending and issuing treasury bonds would not be stealing from future generations in that scenario? The same logic supports the conclusion that we are not stealing from future generations in a world with international trade.

Also I strongly recommend you read this book: http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf . That is what opened my eyes to a lot of new things. The first two chapters are quite relevant.

Even assuming the Federal Reserve WAS entirely public and didn't pay any dividends, it would make absolutely no difference assuming they continued their current policies. The US Dollar may be a sovereign currency except the US Government still can't just print it and spend it into the economy as a substitute for borrowing. Lets look at what you said:

The government doesn't "need" deficits to issue bonds, but there is no real reason why they would borrow money they don't need, so what the heck.
The government DOES need to issue bonds to pay for its deficits, because thats the only way the Government can get additional spendable currency (aside from taxing more obviously).

The fact that the Federal Reserve pays dividends just makes the "value leak" from the US Dollar into the pockets of bankers that much bigger. In either case, you still have a problem currency, and you still have government issuing bonds to pay for its deficits.

You're trolling so very bad right here its not even funny. The point of working is to make money, and the point of that money is to buy goods and services. Being forced to work, while not making any money, or getting compensated with other goods and services, is known as slavery.

If you work, then spend all your money for goods and services, you're not being stolen from, you're spending your money. If you work, and then SAVE your money, you're not being stolen from either, because you still have your money which you can spend. If you work, and then DON'T spend your money, but still don't have any money saved due to no fault of your own, THEN you are being stolen from, because you have been enslaved.

A trade deficit is where a country has some savings, and spends them, so that more products and services come in than go out.
A trade surplus is where a country works hard, so more money comes in than flows out, so its savings grow.

Both are natural states for a country to be in. There is only so much money, so naturally sometimes you'll get it and sometimes you'll spend it.

When its stealing from future generations, is when you spend MORE money than you're savings, and then you never pay off that debt. Now, future generations work - earn some money - but neither get to spend it or save it, because its going to pay off the debt that YOU made. That is stealing. Saying that a trade surplus is a good thing, so that's something the manufacturing sector should be happy about, is like saying jobs are a good thing, so we should enslave people, so they're happy they have a job. Obviously its not the job people want, its the money resultant from that job, and the products and services that money can buy.
And that's exactly what we're doing. Our children are going to have to work extra hard to make extra stuff to sell that extra stuff to get money to pay off the debt that we caused. There is a reason why if your father runs up his credit card then dies and leaves you 0 money, you're not responsible for paying off that credit card bill. Its because being born into debt is being stolen from. That seems amazingly obvious.

The US Treasury, and more specifically the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, does the actual printing but I'm considering the Federal Reserve as a part of the government anyway. Yes I know they have shareholders and they're not entirely public, but the US dollar is still a sovereign currency.

You said that "future generations may have their goods and services flowing overseas." That would be a trade surplus, which a lot of Americans in the manufacturing sector would actually be quite happy with. The dollars held by foreigners today allows them to buy US goods and services in the future, and the reason they hold them is because of trade deficits in the past. When an American sells dollars for Yuan to a Chinese person so that he can, lets say, take a vacation in China, there is no "debt." If that Chinese person takes those dollars and buys a treasury bond, all that entitles him to is a nominally greater amount of dollars in the future. He isn't entitled to any real goods and services, at least not more than any other person with dollars is. You can say that the existence of dollars held by foreign entities could raise the prices of American goods, taking away the purchasing power of dollars held by domestic entities, but that's the case with any dollars in existence.

The US government doesn't (completely) control the trade deficit, in other words they don't control whether existing dollars (or bonds) in domestic hands are put into foreign hands. They control fiscal policy. When they issue a bond to a person and collect present dollars, they repay him with future dollars down the road and that person can buy future goods and services with those future dollars. That's it.

If you take what the video says at face value, they make it sound like our children are going to have to word extra hard to make extra stuff and then send it into some sort of wormhole all because treasury bonds exist. We're not taking, and in fact can't take, any goods and services away from future generations. It's a critical point to grasp, I think. I used to think that the national debt and deficits were stealing from future generations as well, because I was misinformed, and I'd hate to see others misinformed in the same way.

Except the US Government doesn't print US Dollars, the Federal Reserve does. And the federal reserve doesn't just give those US Dollars to the US Government, it only lends them to the US Government.


No, I'm not talking about trade deficits in general, I'm talking about a very specific kind of trade deficit.

You see if we're spending more gold than we're taking in, then our future generations maybe won't be able to continue that practice, because they won't have the gold to do so, but they will still be able to keep any products & services they produce, if they want. That's not stealing, although perhaps it is leaving a poor inheritance.

However, if we're borrowing gold/usd/etc... then our future generations perhaps will not only no longer be able to continue that practice, but they will also have to pay back our debts plus interest. So they WON'T be able to keep many of the products and services they produce, because many of those are going to pay off the debt. That's stealing, because we are actually taking future generation's products and services away from them - the products and services they, themselves, produced, not anything we gave them -  without their consent.

What don't you understand about #1? The US government is the issuer of all US dollars and has infinite capacity to issue dollars. Therefore, it doesn't need to borrow to pay for its spending. It also doesn't need to tax for its spending, although as a practical matter it is generally wise to do so or else the nation would likely face massive inflation. Those are characteristic of a sovereign fiat currency. I'm not endorsing these characteristics, but they are the realities of our system.

You're talking about trade deficits in #3. There is an important distinction here from federal deficits. We could have trade deficits even if we never ran federal deficits or even if we were on the gold standard. If Americans bought foreign goods with gold, the foreign entities holding that gold could buy domestic goods with that gold in the future. I don't consider that stealing, though, since it's all voluntary trade. But I think my point stands and that the video is being misleading, the government cannot steal from future generations by deficit spending or by issuing treasury bonds. The closest we can come to stealing from the future is by depleting or destroying natural resources, in my opinion.

1) I don't even know what the heck this means.

2) I get what you're saying but you're not being entirely fair. In FY 2013 I'm seeing a budget deficit of about 718 Billion and interest (on just treasury securities) of 416 Billion. That means over half the deficit is from the interest on treasury securities alone. If you throw in pensions, and count their appreciation as interest, and you take into account the fact that with less spending usually means less revenue as well, you might be able to argue that the deficit might not exist at all if we didn't have to pay any interest.

3) The government can theoretically "steal" prosperity from future US generations. Goods and services made overseas are currently flowing into the US. Future generations may have their goods and services flowing overseas. Thus, we 'stole' future generation's goods and services and are consuming "them" now.

This video was really well done but contains a few critical inaccuracies.

1) The government doesn't need to issue bonds to pay for its deficits, it also doesn't need deficits to issue bonds.

2) More importantly, the government doesn't need to tax to pay off its existing bonds. The latter point is obvious, the US govt is paying its maturing bonds and interest payments while still running a deficit.

3) The government cannot "steal" prosperity from future generations as this video implies. That is literally impossible. The goods and services that are produced in the future cannot be sent back in time to be consumed in the present. When the government spends, it is taking labor and resources away from the PRESENT. As an example, the fuel, steel, and manpower that was squandered in the Iraq War did not come from the future, even though we ran major deficits and issued new bonds, it came from today.

I really wish they would correct these things, I can't get behind it or share it in its current form. At least #2 and #3.

And the fundamental deficiency of gold is....? That it's not easily transferable? It was about as easily transferable as anything, when it was used as currency. :\

Although Mike Maloney is doing a great job educating people, his distinction between money and currency is flawed. He believes that money was originally sound (as gold) then got corrupted, when it was corrupted from the beginning. If he went deep enough to find the flaw, then he would see the fundamental deficiency of gold, which Bitcoin overcomes.