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Gary Johnson for President!

http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/

http://teapotpartyblog.com/

i am with either him or Ron Paul... haven't fully decided yet....

I like Ron Paul... but honestly

I do not think he is electable

a fear of mine as well. why do you think so?

The campaign to re-elect Obama announced intentions
to raise and spend ONE BILLION DOLLARS, which will
be a record for any political campaign.

(probably a loud & clear message to any possible
Democratic challengers: Don't even think about it)

well Ron Paul might be able to raise enough as he has enough supporters but for some reasons libertarians aren't favored in the land of liberty

I like him and agree with some of his arguments...but
the average voter is an ignorant tard who votes based
on emotion and sadly Ron Paul's talking points do not
whip up the right.

If he were pist about abortion or commies or darkies
or something the right already hated then yeah sure
but THE FED is more of an academic annoyance they
do not understand than a demon they can hate.

I am running late and rushing, more later....

Whats a darkie?

Black people, Brown people, Arabs, etc.
Of course the religious right also dislikes
gay people, abortion, and legalizing drugs.

I am an Independent / Libertarian who wants
maximum freedom so long as one's actions
do not have negative externalities.

For example, if I BASE jump or snort drano
or have an abortion or have gay sex or
listen to polkas while I shower SO WHAT!

However, texting or drinking while driving
can seriously fuck up someone else's day
hence they should both be illegal.

Do you think that BASE jumping actually cannot injure someone else besides the jumper?? Or that gay sex can't seriously fuck up someone's day? Isn't an abortion.... never mind... Doing the polka in the shower could certainly cause the rotted bathroom floor to give way and collapse on top of your neighbors having gay sex while snorting draino, could it not?
Is it not just a point of view or an opinion when you say things like that? Why is your viewpoint better than someone elses?

Do you REALLY think that it matters who gets elected?

Why can't you have the courtesy to close out your color choice for text? Do you think everyone likes the color you like?

Don't you think that by making the statements you have and then affecting others by not changing your green text makes you a hypocrite?

Just askin....

Nader/Streisand 2012
Just wait fuckers!

The presidential limo will be a tandem bike, and the word Nixon will be cause for addition to the no-fly list.

Thanks 570

New sig line is in black, so hopefully
my green choice will not affect others.

In all seriousness though... there is a
concept in philosophy called the "veil
of ignorance" which suggests that the
best way to plan a rule/law/system is
for the person to pretend they are
unborn and have no knowledge what
position they will take when born.

For example: slavery would never have
been accepted IF each one of us would've
had an equal chance of being born into it.

The idea of allowing all behavior as long
as it does not harm another seems so
obvious but since our laws do not reflect
this I believe it warrants repeating... if
only to my fellow choir members

I think pot is illegal to help increase the
profits of cops, lawyers, judges, jailers,
bondsmen, & sellers of alcohol, tobacco,
paper, fun pharmaceuticals, etc.

Gary Johnson seems like a good guy, even if Johnson or Paul do get in there we shouldn't get our hopes up about the change as this would probably happen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX2jcNlofO4

It's simple: whichever politician expands the public sector (at expense and diminishment of private sector of course) via promises of imposing prejudices/values from one group onto the many while stealing through taxes, will win. Business as usual and it doesn't matter what we like or want, we're just the subjects. You're still free to delude yourself into the cute thought that you have control though.

edit: NICE sig line againsthumanity !

thank god you have turned off the green... color that is

the veil of ignorance sounds like other ideas such as the Golden Rule and putting yourself in others shoes. Great in theory but EVERYONE needs to play the game in order for it to work smoothly.

You say "our laws" do not reflect this but what laws are you referring to? Are you talking about the laws of the union of several states or the UNITED STATES?

I like your posts and definitely agree with you on a lot of aspects. Looks like you have a good background in economics.

When it comes to economic liberalization, which Ron Paul is a serious champion of, there are so many complications that come along with it. For instance, the speculative market regarding derivatives. The ramifications of these are so great and plenty it is hard for me to wrap my head around them even with years of research.

Banks have been investing in financial markets and speculative currency/toxic assets rather than loaning out money to businesses that hire, produce, and sell. Surely this was a result of their freedom to choose where they invest and is one of the many reasons the US has been lacking in manufacturing. It's probably a minimal portion when compared to global imbalances like Chinese labor, blatant disregard for human rights, artificial inflation of the Yuan etc.

Ron Paul's foreign policy is spot on for me. I love his stance on Iraq and Afghanistan and he understands where those conflicts really stemmed from. I agree the fed is in need of some serious alterations, but I am equally scared of what a gold standard could bring and if Austrian Economics took over as our idolized doctrine.

Ko Nichi Wa Mitch

Did a quick pass over your blog. Japan is a great
place, the wife & I spent 3 weeks there, we loved
the people, food, shinkonsin(sp) ryokons(sp), and
bicycling all over Kyoto and Gion(sp).

Arrigato/Thank you for the comment on my posts.


Regarding derivatives and other esoteric
investment vehicles... IN MY OPINION
they are not good for society at large.

Long term investments are a way for us
workers to save income for retirement,
so we serves as lenders of capital, which
the private sector uses to expand their
operations, conduct R & D, etc.

Short term investments are a way for a
small group of savvy investors to benefit
financially from betting on a certain price
being too low or too high, which helps to
correct bubbles before they get too big.

Asymmetric Information - when one party
to an agreement has more information than
the other. For example: I am selling a used
1973 Plymouth Valiant which I owned for 10+
years, you are the buyer who has driven this
sweet ride for 10 minutes, who knows more?

Or better yet, Joe comes in for a personal loan
and swears it is for home repairs and NOT to buy
coke, hookers, some huge SBD...

Moral Hazard - financial incentive to engage in
some undesirable behavior for example driving
your rental car in Twin Falls, drunk, over loaded,
doing E-brake slides in the rain in the Woody's
parking lot because, "hell, we got insurance" or
say the motivation for professional ball players
to use drugs to perform better and make money.


These same things are at play in many ways for
some financial intermediaries (nerd term for the
institutions known as banks, credit union, savings
and loans, etc.).

For example: the shitty housing situation and part
of our current economic condition is in part thanks
to brokers and banks chasing money while exposing
all of us to risk.

Old school business model was I would only give you
a loan IF your credit, down payment, and home choice
actually made sense to me since I would hold the loan.

New school business model was to say fuck it, houses
always go up in value so let's make a metric shit ton
of money by writing sketchy loans to people who were
really bad risks... this only works if you plan to re-sell
the loan quickly.

Of course smart people started to figure out that the
quality of loans were becoming marginal since home
prices were over-valued while the quality of lenders
was declining. Think of the last person you would
invite on a technical 12 way jump versus the first
few, as the number gets bigger and bigger you would
exhaust the pool of better skilled choices.

Hence the financial intermediaries started to POOL a
bunch of shitty mortgages and collective call them a
new thing - Derivatives.

The rational is basically good, same as insurance, just
to make this post longer and greener I will elaborate.

Insurance works on the idea that not everyone in some
group is going to wreck their car, burn down their house,
or bounce. So if we all put in some small amount of
money then the poor guy who suffers one of those loses
will use the pot of money to fix the situation.

This works IF and ONLY IF: the chances of lose x cost of
lose = sum of premiums. This is why most ideas about
health insurance are a fucking joke!!

BUT if your pool is nothing but bad loans then the default
rate will be super high... well then you basically get a
short term personal financial gain at the expense of a
much bigger long term group cost. Or as someone
said this week in Twin: You can't make chicken salad
out of chicken shit. Of course I hate mayo and debt
so either way I am smiling

Time for Tai Chi, I will be available after class to
answer questions feel free to grab your marshmallows.

Really glad to hear you loved Japan. It's a remarkable place and easily one of the most different I have been to culturally. Did you go to most of the temples in Kyoto? I do a lot of downhill/freeride mountain biking, but I am pretty sure the longest time I have been on a bike was in Kyoto going around the city haha.

I think we are on the same page with toxic assets, etc. Since the 80's Wall St has absolutely blown up in size. There are more traders now than ever and not many of them are investing in stable companies which they plan to hold for a long time and watch grow (therefore creating jobs, efficient procedures, etc). Day traders have one specific notion in mind: to make capital using capital. I would argue this is parallell to the inefficient parts of government. Both are externalities to an economy and withhold capital from being productive.

So with this in mind and exactly the situation you described with the insurance metaphor, housing bubble, and derivatives: we have to remember that both of us have studied economics extensively. We know the implications of these actions and bubbles in general. The common person can't see that coming for the most part. That is entirely why social security was formed. It was a way for government to ensure nobody had to worry about saving for retirement and assumed most were too naive to do so. Then again, this also leaves a lot power to those with the knowledge (such is life eh )

I guess where I am going with all this is people in society all have a different set of skills. Austrian economics, as Ron Paul favors, would be great if we all had the same advantage monetarily and knowledge-wise. Since we don't people who specialize in financial aspects will easily take advantage of those who don't (like a mechanic can take advantage of an old lady) It's sort of an idealist doctrine, much like communism. With income disparity at an all time high and real wage decreasing since the height of the Reagan tax cuts, there has to be a better way than forcibly removing government or ramping up policies.

Kyoto rocked!! Seeing it on 2 wheels was a stroke
of genius or luck..., I saw a bike shop and through
some gestures, bowing, & minimal Japanese words
I was able to rent 2 bikes for very cheap.

YES, I visited some temples and Bushido centers.
Plus my buddy was there teaching English (which
was how we could afford to stay so long since he
had an apartment where we crashed) and he was
studying at a community center out in the country
so I got see lots of local Martial Arts practiced.

AS for our discussion of financial matters, sure we
know more than most but that is by choice! I had
to learn about skydiving, BASE, chess, mortgages,
and many other things I was never taught during
my own extensive education.

I have heard newscasters and politicians confuse
the terms DEBT and DEFICIT, simple but different.

Many of my students can blather on about who won
the latest reality bullshit TV show and why but can
NOT explain to me things relevant to them saving
money, saving for retirement, etc.

Consider these two things:

1. Hoover in 1928 was elected by promising:
A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage
http://www.presidentsusa.net/1928slogan.html

Now a days children AND homeless people have cell phones,
people can use email on the internet for free (public libraries),
almost everyone has air conditioning, women are the largest
growing segment of higher education, minorities are allowed
to marry whites, hold great jobs, and I voted for a BLACK
president who won.

At this point in time if you are not on the ball... well it is
NOT the system's fault, either your parents sniffed glue
while you were in the womb OR you are just fucking lazy.

One of my best friends of 18 years is a C4-C5 quad who
made it through college and law school without being able
to move his hands. While I love him deeply, honestly he
is not super bright, but he used his average brains well.

2. ah shit, while typing this the dog puked and the phone
rang and now I can't remember what number two was...
oh well, my point is basically summed up in this movie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

Wait, I remembered, a line from the Tao Te Ching which
says to keep the masses happy all you have to do is give
them order and plenty of food. Religion was once the
opiate of the masses, replaced by TV, internet, and now
everyone's favorite addiction: their Smart Phones, which
are already smarter than most of the rotund mouth
breathers I side-step in the grocery store

yes yes, have you read the book Brave New World, by chance? I see Huxley being far more relevant than Orwell's scary government watching our every move. Doesn't it seem, like you said, we remain willingly ignorant?

I agree this is the case for a lot of people, but there are honest genuinely hard working people who don't have the opportunity to learn about these things. Single mothers with two jobs are an example and definitely not a rare thing in US culture. It's also comparative to the welfare slug argument. Obviously there are people who recklessly abuse the system, but they are talking about removing benefits and slashing the budget in areas that will significantly impact the generations of elderly who have been genuine and honest citizens.

Take for instance, my grandmother. She's the daughter of an Irish immigrant who didn't have the opportunity to save enough for retirement. Without her medicare and social security she would not be able to live. Actually that isn't enough and my father has to subsidize her income in order for her to eat somewhat healthy.

The problem is good and hardworking people get screwed in our system. The middle-class shares an unreasonably high burden of tax because they don't make enough to higher a financial guru to take their personal finances and grow them in respect to the bubble investing we previously talked about. At the same time, they are not poor enough to qualify for the safety nets and tax breaks.

Wealth is freely inherited in this country by mega millionaires. Is the something for nothing stipulation only applicable to welfare slugs? It seems to be in this country. It is more of a problem with media and sociology than economic policy, but we need to realize it works both sides. I always see reports on welfare slugs and hear people talk about them, but I never see a negative report about the century long business owner contributing to political campaigns and receiving subsidies. I realize this is a political/economical debate but I have not seen Ron Paul even touch on farming subsidies because I believe he truly knows the implications of removing the subsidies. Therefore, it is a major hypocrisy in his logic.

I realize this is fairly scatter brained and lacks detail, but I feel these are important issues largely ignored by the public. So I would just rather throw them out there to see what people think.

Holy crap! This whole post wreaks of elitism and an overinflated ego. Maybe you didn't mean it like that but jeez!

Since you are claiming to know so much about certain matters let me ask you this...

1. When we go to the banks for a loan do they loan us anything? If yes, then where do they get the money to loan?

This shouldn't be a tough question for a sharp economics student, let alone a wizard of economics like yourself!

FYI - I admit to my students, and others, to be third
generation white trash. I know Blue Collar economics
from the street level and criticize the assumptions of
some economic concepts since they were written only
by rich, white men, without calluses, from an Ivory
tower (that is too low to jump).

I have not created any new economic concepts nor
have my investments performed better than average.

Sorry if I am coming across as elitist, I am not, my
point is the very same one we point out to newbies
who ask: 'Do I need a Slider from 300 feet?'

The answers are out there, if it is your life, you should
care enough to research the answer. Does not matter
if you want to BASE jump, freebase or kick some BASS
the answer is out there and with little to no effort you
can find it in the modern age.


Now to answer your question sir


The primary role of financial intermediaries is to turn
IDLE dollars into LOANABLE funds. At the end of the
month most of us have a couple bucks leftover, not
near enough to start making loans but if ALL of our
excess money is POOLED well then there is large pile
of money.

This same function is also performed in less formal
methods, for example, in Jamaica a group of female
friends would conduct a thing known as the "Hand".
Say there are 10 of them and each throws in $10 a
week into a pot and each member takes their turn
getting the whole pot.

This seems strange to us who have credit cards but
in a more primitive financial market or for people
with limited access to credit this is a smart, simple
low tech way to accomplish the same goal.

$10 you can't do much but $100 allows you to maybe
buy a big ticket item your family really needs. The
economic/business things being neglected in this form
are the transaction costs, risk, and profit - nonetheless
it shows how people without Brooks Bothers suits can
perform the same function of pooling capital.


Bank, credit unions, etc. reward Savers with a few
percentage points return on their money, as long as
the rate of return is better than the rise of inflation
then the purchasing power of their money holds and
might possibly grow.

SO all of us citizens typically operate on both sides
of the function... we serve as Lenders when we have
money in a bank (even $12.34 in a checking account)
and we serve as Borrowers when we have a mortgage,
car loan, student loan, etc.

Banks et. al used to simply serves as the middlemen,
which is simple and why there was "3 martini" lunches
and "Bankers Hours".

For example: a bank would pay 3% to rent capital and
charge 10% to borrow capital, with the difference of 7%
to cover inflation, costs of doing business, and profit...

However, the banking model has changed and sadly
banks now make more money on fees than interest

For example, one of my friends would pay a $2 fee to
withdraw money using an ATM, but he would only get
$20 at a time. I asked, why don't you just get out
$40 and reduce your transaction costs, he said, well
because if I have I will spend it...

Well if you are GIVING AWAY 10% of your money
simply for spending, well, I am out of words... yeah
I know, some of you are shocked.

Or did you want a few paragraphs on
a) what is money
b) why it replaced bartering,
c) and its 3 primary uses ?

I don't disagree with you on this point, however most people that are 'knowledgeable' seem to be of the mindset that once they think they have an answer that is plausible and sits well within their framework, they STOP trying to learn and start defending their position.



After reading this long winded diatribe I have pieced together what I THINK your answer to my question is so please correct me if I am wrong.

Are you saying that banks use depositors money, misc. fees and funds they have generated through arbitrage to lend to the public?

Are you familiar with GAAP? Generally Accepted Accounting Principals.

if you apply this beyond the realm of economics, they you have a profound, yet subtle, insight into humanity.


for example, it explains why political "discussions" between the left and right tend to devolve so rapidly.

Yes, I think banks lend money that they have
as a result of people who deposit it with them
and/or invest with them plus the corporation's
existing stock of capital.

Or were you referring to the fact that the money
supply, or the number of "tokens" in circulation is
also greatly impacted by all entities that extend
any form of credit.

I am aware that GAAP exists, first heard about it
briefly during two under graduate accounting
classes could not honesty recite any verbatim.

However, I saw "The Smartest Guys in the Room"
and understood accounting irregularity and why
it would be illegal.

I am down though to learn, please tell me your
thoughts about banking and accounting, thanks.

Since this topic has strayed from it's original, I have created a new one in reply to you.
http://www.basejumper.com/...ost=2940932;#2940932