Re: Ohhhh and NSA-proof!
The NSA only lets Obama use a Blackberry after they harden it themselves, that should tell you how nsa-proof the standard ones are.
973 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jan 2010
"is that actually what your suggesting? "
If you meant me, no that's not.
What I am suggesting is that the UK went to war to stop Germany from invading Poland, well that sounds nice.
But at the end of the war Poland was still invaded, together with quite a few other countries, and the UK was fine with that.
Really, I am not criticizing them, they had been fighting for years, they couldn't go on, I understand completely, I really do, who cares about central Europe anyway.
What I don't understand, and what I do criticize, is looking back at WWII like some epic battle between good and evil in which good won.
That wasn't it, WWII was Realpolitik through and through and the Allies let Stalin invade and subjugate half of Europe, evil won with the help of the UK and the USA.
" If she were alive now she would be reduced to tears at the betrayal of all they fought for."
She has my sympathies, but she would need to accept that all that fighting to let Stalin invade and subjugate half of Europe went down with the Berlin wall.
Seriously, the past isn't as nice as we like to believe.
"Must be annoying when every time your business comes up with a concept, idea or product someone copies it."
It only happens to every business, or even if it not a business, for example you have a semi cool group using Fawkes masks and suddenly every wannabe starts using them.
But I am really curious, the ACs are out in force to attack Samsung, doesn't it bother you that nobody cares?
"Does anybody know exactly how much money there is meant to be compared to exactly how money there is reported to exist?"
Yes, they track it
Why did you cut my quote "proven to be needed"? You couldn't twist what I said without doing it?
Since we are not going to agree, I am not going to answer all your points, people here must be bored enough with us already, so I will go directly to the end where you seem to believe that what I said would be easy to achieve, I do not, I know it would be extremely hard and I do know about lobbying, that's how the investment banks got the limit on leverage lifted, that it doomed them is not much of a consolation.
So, how would you go around creating a public bank system? Who do you trust with all that monkey?
My better ideas are actually very simple:
You have regulation that has been proven to be needed crisis after crisis.
For example, a limit in leverage, a limit that was lifted for the five biggest investment banks in the USA, a crisis came and, surprisingly, only one them, Morgan Stanley, survives as an independent company.
The surprising part, by the way, is that one survived.
Another example of good regulation that no longer exists is a separation of investment and commercial banks, so that the investment branch can't get to use customers money to speculative. Eventually they will lose it.
Another example are the anti cyclical provisions Spanish banks need to keep, not that it is a silver bullet, the saving banks kept them too, but they help.
Another example is that if bank goes bust, it goes into receivership, no big to fail nonsense is allowed.
People who know more about banks than I do are likely to be able to continue, things like independent appraisals of assets, limits on how much collateral you need and the like are likely to be mentioned.
So, you have this regulations, and this is important, you have an agency with real teeth that makes banks comply with them.
And definitely, if some banks break the law, no matter how many billions they are willing to pay to settle, you don't, you convict everyone involved, you also take the billions, of course, but as part of the conviction, not a settlement.
If you do little things like this, you can get a working private bank system, if you don't a public one won't help.
"why is all banking private? Why is there no public banking [...]?"
Up until this crisis we had in Spain the 'cajas de ahorro' you can translate that to something like 'saving banks', they were owned by foundations that were controlled by local and state politicians and unions, so they behaved as if they were public banks.
They were so badly mismanaged that they required a 40,000 million bailout which almost made Spain ask for a bailout. In the meantime private banks have survived on their own, Banco Santander even used the crisis as a chance to get to own 10% of the UK banking system.
Yes, I know what you are thinking, "that happened in Spain, a third. or fourth, world country, that would never happen here, only private banks go broke in my country, no matter how many trouble German landkassen are going through".
Keep dreaming.
Really, Is it that hard?
It wasn't that hard to go long or short in housing, you could use homebuilders stock to do it, I bet there is even an ETF, or two, that covers them, or you could use Fannie and Freddie stock
Another way to go long was investing in mortgage backed securities which were quite popular since they were triple A, shorting them was harder but Paulson managed to do it and made billions, which he then insisted on losing betting on gold.
"Have you noticed that Mercedes came out with a C Class that starts at $29,900 USD?"
Haven't you noticed that Mercedes has a car that sells for half that? They are called "Smart" although I don't know if they are sold in the USA
Seriously people, drop the auto analogies.
"sorry, you can't afford the mortgage and I can't give you a credit limit more than $1000".
In the first season of Boston High, one of the teachers tries to get a mortgage and is told something like that. The moral of the story is how evil bankers are.
And I think I learned what "collateral" is watching The best years of our lives in which a banker, a WW II veteran, gets bitter for not being able to loan money to other veterans who, he knew, would pay the loans back.
That had been going on for decades, so bankers finally get tired of being the bad guys of the movie and start granting loans to everyone.
So now they are even more evil for doing it.
The moral of the story, well none, but it is kind of funny in a non-funny way.
Nobody wants a nuclear reactor close to their homes. It may take a dictatorship like China to build one.
As for the US they have this natural gas boom due to fracking that has made it so cheap there is no real point in looking for other alternatives, not even because of global warning as natural gas allows them to phase out coal plants and reduce they carbon footprint.