May 2023 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Big plans for A.I., energy, and crypt? . Well la-de-da.
by professor rat 16 May '23

16 May '23

Sam Altman is going to need killing shortly if he doesn't start talking-up quantum-PKI leading directly to cryptoanarchism. The quantum internet. State-of-the-art encryption too cheap to meter. Come ON! Cryptoanarchism is the only cybernetic system that can manage ever-stronger AI, Fusion and global UBI. Its not just foolish in the extreme to pretend the existing powers can handle all this - its suicidal. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sam-altman-plowing-ahead-nuclear-200434840.h… Reposts not allegedly benign versions of Peter Thiel and/ or Elon Musk

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Secret recordings of ex-partner continue to haunt law firm Freedman Normand | Reuters
by Gunnar Larson 16 May '23

16 May '23

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/secret-recordings-ex-partner-conti… (Reuters) - The plaintiffs firm once known as Roche Freedman, now redubbed Freedman Normand Friedland, has been ousted from another crypto class action because of clandestine – and embarrassing — video recordings of onetime name partner Kyle Roche. But this time, the problem wasn’t the content of the videos, in which Roche appears to boast of his lucrative stake in blockchain company Ava Labs Inc and to suggest that he filed class actions against Ava competitors to boost Ava’s prospects. Instead, U.S. District Judge James Donato of San Francisco removed Freedman Normand as lead counsel in a securities fraud class action against blockchain company Dfinity USA Research LLC because he found the firm to be so consumed with vindicating its own reputation that it could not be relied upon to protect the interests of class members. Advertisement · Scroll to continue Donato’s May 8 decision followed seven months of litigation that the judge described as “a bitter war" that included "charges of personal vendettas, deepfake videos and other events not typically encountered in securities lawsuits.” (More on that below.) He is the second federal judge to remove Freedman Normand as lead counsel in a crypto case, after U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of Manhattan booted the firm from a class action against stablecoin issuer Tether Ltd and crypto exchange Bitfinex last October. After Failla’s ruling, Freedman Normand voluntarily withdrew from two other crypto class actions in Manhattan federal court. The firm has defeated disqualification motions in several other cases, including litigation against self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright, who unsuccessfully sought to remove Freedman Normand from the appeal of a $143 million judgment the firm obtained for Wright’s onetime business partner. Advertisement · Scroll to continue The Dfinity fight before Donato was particularly heated, though, because Freedman Normand blamed Dfinity’s founder and CEO for the entire Roche mess. According to the firm, it was Dfinity that engaged a Norwegian businessman with ties to international intelligence agencies to lure Roche to London to discuss a supposed investment in a litigation funding venture. Those meetings, according to Freedman Normand, were actually a set up: The Norwegian operative got Roche drunk and secretly videotaped him making intemperate remarks, including a comment that crypto class members were “100,000 idiots out there” and that jurors are “10 idiots [who] control the flow of all the money that happens in American class actions.” Freedman Normand asserted that Dfinity then launched an anonymous website, Crypto Leaks, to post the secret recordings of Roche. The firm has espoused different positions on the authenticity of the recordings at various points in its fight to stay in the Dfinity class action. Early on, it acknowledged that Roche – who left the firm soon after Crypto Leaks published the videos – had made inappropriate and inexcusable comments. But later in the disqualification litigation, Freedman Normand sought to file an expert report purporting to show that many of the Crypto Leaks videos were inauthentic “deepfakes.” Advertisement · Scroll to continue Donato noted the shift in his opinion ousting the firm. He called it a “flipflop,” and said Freedman Normand’s renunciation of its “forthright” acknowledgement had added to his concern that the plaintiffs firm “is heavily invested in protecting its own interests, to the detriment of those of the class.” Roche, who now has his own eponymous firm, did not respond to my email query. Freedman Normand said in an email statement that it is "disappointed" with Donato's order. "It criticized the firm for merely defending itself from Dfinity’s accusations [and] did not address central aspects of our arguments," the statement said. "The firm has never 'flipflopped.' We continue to disavow the problematic statements in the videos, but when new evidence indicated the videos are deepfaked and that Mr. Roche never made those statements, we sensibly advised the court of that development." Dfinity counsel from Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan did not deny Dfinity’s involvement in the secret recordings in their brief responding to Freedman Normand’s assertions. Dfinity merely said that it didn’t matter if Roche was set up because he was not coerced into making the statements that landed him in hot water. Dfinity’s lawyers did not respond to my email request for comment. After initial briefing on Dfinity’s motion to disqualify Freedman Normand, Donato ordered a deposition to determine the extent of Roche’s remaining ties to Freedman Normand, including the extent of Roche's control of the firm's Ava-issued tokens, which are held in a crypto wallet. The deposition of name partner Freedman generated yet more bizarre allegations. In a letter asking Donato to seal the deposition transcript because it revealed confidential information about the firm’s relationship with its now-former client Ava, Freedman Normand also told the judge that it feared Dfinity executives would “misuse” the sensitive information to threaten and intimidate Roche and his former colleagues. Freedman Normand asserted that Dfinity had already “made threats on Mr. Roche’s life, necessitating FBI involvement.” Advertisement · Scroll to continue In Monday’s decision, Donato said he did not need to probe that claim, which turned out to have been based on “multiple layers of hearsay.” (Apparently, a Freedman Normand associate told the firm's in-house general counsel that a friend, also a lawyer, reported hearing that “people associated with Dfinity were planning to kill Mr. Roche.”) Donato said he regarded Freedman Normand's assertion of a murder threat as yet more evidence that the firm was so “deeply immersed in a toxic perception of the defendants in this case” that it was not capable of fulfilling its fiduciary obligations to the class. Donato also said that the record showed Roche remains entangled with his former firm. Roche’s new firm is co-counsel with Freedman Normand in three cases – none of them class actions, according to the firm – and is still in joint control, with Freedman, of the digital wallet containing tokens from Ava. (Ava, according to Freedman Normand, terminated its relationship with Roche and the successor firm after Crypto Leaks released the Roche tapes.) It has now been six months since the Roche tapes shook up the crypto bar. Most of the disqualification motions based on the tapes have already been decided, so Donato’s Dfinity ruling serves as a sort of coda on the entire fiasco. In the end, it turns out, Freedman Normand's fight to delegitimize the tapes seems to have only made things worse.

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Cryptocurrency: Debt, People Buying Hard Assets with Cheapening Fiat
by grarpamp 16 May '23

16 May '23

US Now Spends More Servicing Its Debt Than On National Defense By Mark Cudmore, Bloomberg Markets reporter and strategist Thanks to rising yields, the US government now has to spend more each year on servicing its immense debt burden than it spent on national defense in 2022. The calculation is based on estimated annualized debt payments as of end of April versus the Treasury’s release of last year’s budget expenditures. If you want one stat to sum up why debt-ceiling negotiations are so fraught this time around, making them both harder to conclude and yet more important for markets, this is probably it. Estimated annualized debt-servicing costs are about 90% higher than they were back in 2011. This is partially due to an exploding debt pile, but also due to a significant shift higher in US yields. In 2022, based on how the Treasury breaks down line items, the US government only spent more on social security ($1,244b) and health ($909b), with income security in line with today’s debt-servicing costs at $813b. A Disorderly Reset With Gold Revalued By Multiples Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com, Tectonic shifts lie ahead. These will involve a US and European debt crisis ending in a debt collapse, a precipitous fall of the dollar and the Euro with Gold emerging as a reserve asset but at multiples of the current price. The next phase of the fall of the West is here and will soon accelerate. It has been both precipitated and aggravated by the absurd sanctions of Russia. These sanctions are hurting Europe badly and affecting the US in a way that they didn’t expect, but was obvious to some of us. The Romans understood that free trade was essential between all the countries that they conquered. But the US administration blocks have both the money and the ability to trade of the countries they don’t like. But shooting yourself in the foot really hurts and the consequences are in front of our eyes. No foreign country will want to hold US debt or dollars. That is a catastrophic problem for the US as their deficits will grow exponentially in coming years. So a debt collapse is not just a looming disaster but a bomb hurling towards the US economy at supersonic speed. With the imminent death of the petrodollar and explosion of US debt, there is only one solution for the funding requirements of the US Government – the FED which will stand as the sole buyer of US Treasuries. A CATASTROPHIC DEATH SPIRAL So the DEBT spiral of higher debt, higher deficits, more Treasuries, higher rates and falling bond prices will soon turn into a DEATH spiral with a collapsing dollar, high inflation and most probably hyperinflation. Sounds like default to me but that word will probably never be used officially. It is hard to admit defeat even when it stares you in the face! Yes, the US will probably obfuscate the situation with CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) but since that is just another form of Fiat money, it will at best buy a little time but the end result will be the same. US Debt Ceiling Farce belongs to Broadway rather than Wall Street The debt ceiling was created in 1917 as a means of restricting reckless spending by the US government. But this travesty has gone on for over 106 years. During that time there has been a total disdain for budget discipline by the ruling Administration and congress. The problem is not just the debt but the cost of financing it. The annualised cost of financing the Federal debt is currently $1.1 trillion. If we assume conservatively that the debt grows to $40 trillion within 2 years, the interest cost at 5% would be $2 trillion. That would be 43% of current tax revenue. But as the economy deteriorates, interest will easily exceed 50% of tax revenue. And that is at 5% which will probably be much too low as inflation rises and The Fed loses control of rates. Thus a very dire scenario lies ahead and that is certainly not a worst case scenario. THE FED IS BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE The Fed and the thus US government are now between Scylla and Charybdis (Rock and a Hard Place). As it looks today, the US will bounce between Scylla and Charybdis in coming years until the US financial system and also the economy takes ever harder knocks and goes under just as every monetary system has in history. Obviously the rest of the West including an extremely weak Europe will follow the US down. BRICS AND SCO – RISING POWERS The whole world will suffer but the commodity rich nations as well as the less indebted ones will ride the coming storm far better. This includes much of South America, Middle East, Russia and Asia. The expanding power blocks of BRICS and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) will be the strong powers where a much increasing part of global trade will take place. Barring major political and geopolitical upheavals, China will be the dominant nation and the main factory of the world. Russia is also likely to be a major economic power. With $85 trillion of natural resource reserves, the potential is clearly there for this to happen. But first the political system of Russia needs to be “modernised” or restructured. What I outline above is of course structural shifts that will take time, probably decades. But whether we like it or not, the first phase, which is the fall of the West, could happen faster than we like. A MONETARY SYSTEM ALWAYS ENDS IN A DEBT EXPLOSION In 1913, total US debt was negligible, and in 1950, it had grown to $406 billion. By the time Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, debt was $1.7 trillion. Thereafter the curve has become ever steeper as the graph below shows. From September 2019 when the US banking system started to crack, the Repo crisis told us that there were real problems although no one wanted to admit it. Conveniently for the US government, the Repo crisis became the Covid crisis which was a much better excuse for the Government to print unlimited amounts of money together with the banks. Thus, just in this century, total US debt has grown from $27 trillion to $94 trillion! But that was history and we know we can’t do anything about the past. But now comes the fun. I have been warning about a coming debt explosion for some time. Well, I believe this is it. In a recent article about the price of gold I explained that the final stages of hyperinflation are exponential. We will see a very similar exponential pattern with the coming debt explosion. If we assume that the final 5 minutes of the exponential phase started in September 2019, the stadium was then only 7% full and will in the next few years grow from 7% to 100% full or 14X from here. This is obviously just a demonstration and no exact science, but it shows that theoretically US debt could now explode. So let’s take a quick look at a few factors that will cause the debt explosion. BANK FAILURES A Hoover Institute report calculates that more than 2,315 US banks currently have assets worth less than their liabilities. The market value of their loan portfolios are $2 trillion lower than the book value. And remember this is before the REAL fall of the asset values which is still to come. Just take US property values which are greatly overvalued by the lenders: So the four US banks that have gone under recently are clearly just the beginning. And no one must believe that it is just small banks. Bigger banks will follow the same route. During the 2006-9 subprime crisis, bailouts were the norm. But at the time, it was said that the next crisis would involve bail-ins. But as we have seen so far in the US, there were no bail-ins. Clearly the government and the Fed were concerned about a systemic crisis and did not have the guts to bail in the bank customers, not even above the FDIC limit. As the crisis spreads, I doubt that bank depositors will be treated so leniently. Neither the FDIC, nor the government can afford to rescue everyone. Instead depositors will be given an offer they can’t refuse which is compulsory purchase of US treasuries equal to their credit balance. The European banking sector is in an even worse state than the US one. European banks are sitting on large losses from bond portfolios acquired when interest rates were negative. No one knows at this stage the magnitude of the losses which are likely to be substantial. Both in commercial property and housing, the situation is worse in Europe than in the US since the European banks are funding most of these loans directly themselves, including € 4 trillion of home mortgages. The banks also have a mismatch between low rates received on mortgages against high rates paid to finance them. The ex-governor of the Bank of France and ex-head of the IMF, Jacques de Larosière accuses the authorities of subverting the private banking system with deranged volumes of QE after it had become toxic: “Central banks, far from promoting stability, have delivered a Masterclass in how to organise financial crisis” $3 QUADRILLION OF GLOBAL DEBT & LIABILITIES If we add the unfunded liabilities and the total outstanding derivatives to the global debt, we arrive at around $3 quadrillion as I discussed in this article: “This is it! The financial system is terminally broken” Sadly, the Western financial system is now both too big to save and too big to fail. Still all the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot save it. So even if the system is too big to fail, it will with very dire consequences. GOLD TO BE SUBSTANTIALLY REVALUED IN THE DISORDERLY RESET Just over a century after the creation of the Fed and the beginning of the debt ceiling, the mighty dollar has lost 99% of its value in purchasing power terms. And measured against the only money which has survived in history – Gold – the dollar has also lost 99%. This is obviously not an accident. Not only is gold the only money which has survived but also the only money which has kept its purchasing power throughout the millennia. For example, a Roman Toga cost 1 ounce of gold 2000 years ago, which today is also the price for a high quality man’s suit. You would have thought that losing 99% of its value for the reserve currency of the world would be a disaster. Well it is of course, but the US, as well as most of the Western world, has adjusted by increasing debt exponentially to make up for the disastrous debasement of the currencies. What is even more interesting, gold is up 8-10X this century against most currencies. That is a superior performance to virtually all major asset classes. And still nobody owns gold which is only 0.5% of global financial assets. More recently gold is at all-time-highs in all currencies including the dollar. But in spite of the extremely strong performance of gold or more correctly put, the continued debasement of all currencies, no one talks about gold. Just looking at the number of articles covering gold in the press in the graph below (white bars), it confirms that the most recent price increase of gold (blue line) is met by a yawn. This is obviously very bullish. Imagine if all stock markets made new highs. It would be all over the media. So what this is telling us is that this gold bull market, or currency bear market, has a very long way to go. As I often point out, no fiat money but only gold has survived throughout history. Gold’s rise over time is always guaranteed as governments and central banks will without fail destroy their currency by creating virtually unlimited fake money. Since this has been going on for 1000s of years, history tells us that this trend of constantly debasing fiat money is unbreakable due to the greed and mismanagement of governments. And now with the debt crisis accelerating, so will the gold price. Luke Groman makes a very interesting point in his discussion with Grant Williams (grant-williams.com by subscription). Luke suggests that although the dollar will not yet die as a transactional currency, that it is likely to be replaced by gold as the reserve asset currency. The combination of dedollarisation and liquidation of US treasuries by foreign holders will lead to this development. Commodity countries will sell for example oil to China, receive yuan and change the yuan to gold on the Shanghai gold Exchange. They will then hold gold instead of dollars. This will avoid the dollar as a trading currency when it comes to commodities. In order for gold to function as a reserve asset, it will need to be revalued with a zero at the end and a bigger figure at the beginning as Luke says. The whole idea would be that gold will become a neutral reserve asset which floats in all currencies. The inverse triangle of Global debt resting on only $2 trillion of Central Bank gold shown above makes the revaluation of gold obvious. A floating gold price as a reserve asset is of course much more sensible than a fixed gold price backing the currencies and would be the nearest to Free Gold. See my 2018 article, “Free Gold will kill the Paper Gold Casino”. So the consequence of gold becoming a reserve asset could involve a rise of say 25X or 50X the current level. Certainly not an improbable outcome in today’s money. The debasement of the dollar and other Western currencies is likely to have a similar effect but then we are not talking in today’s money. Time will tell. As gold is now in an acceleration phase, we are likely to see much higher levels however long it takes and whatever the reason is for the rise. The 1980 gold price of $850, adjusted for real inflation would today be $28,300 As gold is now in an acceleration phase, we are likely to see much higher levels however long it takes. What is clear is that fiat money, bonds, property and stocks will all decline precipitously against gold. What is important for investors is to take protection now against the most significant RESET in history which is a disorderly reset. So if you don’t hold gold yet, please, please protect your family, and your wealth by acquiring physical gold. Gold repositioning as a Global Reserve Asset could happen gradually or it could happen suddenly. But please be prepared because when it happens you don’t want to hold worthless paper money or assets. Much Of The Markets Still Don't Believe The US Can Default By Ven Ram, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist "if political [debt ceiling] kabuki ends in risk-off drama then Fed does QE (like BoE last Oct)…this is why other assets classes not worried." - BofA's Michael Hartnett Except in some specific corners, most of the markets don’t quite buy the story that the US Treasury could, after all, default on its obligations. T-bills due around the estimated time of the X-date have shown some angst, with yields on one-month instruments up some 200 basis points in less than a month. Meanwhile, credit-default swaps are pricing in a 3% chance of a default. While that may not seem alarming, that default pricing is way higher than in 2011 and 2013, when we were last witness to such stress. Yet, the rest of the markets are still pretty sanguine about the eventual outcome. The S&P 500 is still holding onto to its 7+% rally for the year, while the Nasdaq 100 is up a gravity-defying 22%. Front-end Treasury yields have come off more than 100 basis points from their peak for the cycle, but that is more a reflection of the markets positioning — rightly or wrongly — for a putative Fed pivot rather than anything to do with the debt-ceiling impasse. Gold, which BBG readers reckon will be a haven should the US indeed default, hasn’t done much so far this month. While the supposed X-date — when the Treasury will have run through its gamut of emergency maneuvers — is supposedly June 1, in reality it may turn out to be different because it’s impossible to look through the crystal ball and know precisely when, say, tax receipts may flow in. That is perhaps one reason the markets reckon that lawmakers will do what common sense dictates by the time the D-Day rolls in. X-date outlook is worsening as FDIC withdrew $12bn on May 4-5 from TGA & Treasury released new estimates of extraordinary measures remaining. Looking like $20bn cash on hand at end of day on June 1 (old expectation was $38bn) https://t.co/Zf6dIaBIkQ pic.twitter.com/cbF3LVdiwW — Donald Schneider (@DonFSchneider) May 15, 2023 The point, though, is the the US economy, already facing considerable headwinds from the turmoil in the banking industry, isn’t quite so well-placed to flirt with another Wile E. Coyote moment. And that is the part the stock markets haven’t quite priced in — yet

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Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin Miami May 18~20 2023, Lotta Pump, Nothing on Privacy or P2P Cash Scaling
by grarpamp 16 May '23

16 May '23

Bitcoin Miami May 18~20 2023, Lotta Pump, Nothing on Privacy or P2P Cash Scaling Last chance, pay $2200+ at the door to get an anti-privacy Bitcoin LN blowjob. Unlike impotent Rudy, most attendees will bust a nut all over those hoes.

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FDIC Seizure of Foreign Deposits at SVB Opens Pandora’s Box at JPMorgan Chase and Citi – Which Hold a Combined $1 Trillion in Foreign Deposits with No FDIC Insurance
by Gunnar Larson 16 May '23

16 May '23

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/05/fdic-seizure-of-foreign-deposits-at-… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 15, 2023 ~ Federal Reserve Building, Washington, D.C.If you have been following the banking crisis, you have likely read at least a dozen times that on March 12 federal banking regulators, with the consent of the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, invoked the “systemic risk exception” in order to protect both insured and uninsured depositors at the two banks that failed in March – Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. That’s why there were gasps of shock on Saturday evening at around 5:30 p.m. when the Wall Street Journal (paywall) published the stunning news that depositors in the Cayman Islands’ branch of Silicon Valley Bank had their deposits seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which they are unlikely to ever see again. As Wall Street On Parade has previously reported, under statute, the FDIC cannot insure deposits held on foreign soil by U.S. banks. What it can do, however, is to sell those deposits to the bank that acquires the collapsed bank. In the case of Silicon Valley Bank, the acquiring bank was First Citizens Bancshares which, apparently, declined to purchase the foreign deposits in the secrecy jurisdiction of the Cayman Islands, a jurisdiction most notable recently for the largest share of customers engaged with Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto house of frauds. The Journal reported that as of December 31, 2022, Silicon Valley Bank held $13.9 billion in foreign deposits with an unknown amount remaining as of the date of its failure and FDIC receivership on March 10. The Journal also reported that “On March 31, the FDIC notified SVB’s Cayman Islands depositors that they wouldn’t be covered by its deposit insurance, and that they would be treated as ‘general unsecured creditors,’ according to documents reviewed by the Journal as well as interviews with employees of multiple firms.” Adding to what is certain to be political fallout, the depositors left out in the cold in the Cayman Islands branch included “investment firms in China and other parts of Asia.” Those depositors can’t be too happy to see their deposits seized while everyone else gets protected, whether they had deposit insurance or not. What the Wall Street Journal has actually done with this report is to open a Pandora’s box regarding the vast sums of foreign deposits held in foreign branches of JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup’s Citibank – none of which are covered by FDIC insurance. It further raises the question as to why the banking regulators of these two Wall Street mega banks have allowed this dangerous situation to occur. According to the year-end call report filed by Citibank, it held a stunning $622.6 billion of deposits in foreign offices. (See page 34 of call report.) According to the year-end call report filed by JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., it held $426 billion in deposits in foreign offices. (See page 34 of the linked report.) Together, these two banks held just over $1 trillion in deposits on foreign soil – which had no U.S. deposit insurance backing. As for whether the foreign jurisdiction’s deposit insurance scheme would apply to the foreign branch deposits of U.S. banks, the FDIC offers this two-sentence explanation in a recent report: “Deposits in foreign offices of U.S. banks are not insured by the FDIC. Some jurisdictions may provide some deposit insurance coverage of these deposits; the amounts of coverage, if any, vary by jurisdiction.” In most cases, foreign countries’ deposit insurance schemes offer far lower deposit protection than the $250,000 per depositor, per bank, offered in the U.S. JPMorgan Chase and Citibank also have exposure to uninsured domestic deposits – that is, deposits exceeding $250,000 per depositor in their bank branches on U.S. soil. At year end, JPMorgan Chase held $1.058 trillion in uninsured deposits in domestic branches while Citibank held $598.2 billion in uninsured deposits in domestic branches. Combining domestic and foreign uninsured deposits versus the $1.4 trillion Citibank held in total deposits at year end, means that 87 percent of Citibank’s deposit base lacked FDIC insurance protection. That is very close to the 90 percent of uninsured deposits held by Signature Bank when it blew up on March 12 and went into FDIC receivership. Given Citibank’s history of teetering on the brink and being rescued by exorbitant sums from its financial “supervisors” during and after the financial crash of 2008, it is nothing short of an outrage to U.S. taxpayers that its banking regulators today have allowed 87 percent of its deposits to lack FDIC insurance protection. From December 2007 through mid 2010, Citigroup/Citibank received the following bailouts: the U.S. Treasury injected $45 billion of capital; there was a government guarantee of over $300 billion on certain of its assets; the FDIC provided a guarantee of $5.75 billion on its senior unsecured debt and $26 billion on its commercial paper and interbank deposits; and secret revolving loans from the Federal Reserve sluiced a cumulative $2.5 trillion in below-market-rate loans to Citigroup according to the eventual audit performed by the Government Accountability Office. The FDIC’s recent report on the banking failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and the options for Congress to consider in reforming the federal deposit insurance program, concedes that uninsured deposits play a pivotal role in bank runs and the ensuing failure of banks, writing as follows: “Abstracting from the specifics of the events of March 2023, several developments suggest that the banking system has evolved in ways that could increase its exposure to deposit runs. These developments include the amplification of concerns through social media and the speed of some depositor responses, the interaction of failure-resolution events and depositor behavior, and the increased volume and proportion of uninsured deposits in the banking system. “The risk of depositor runs is inherent in banking, where long-term assets are funded by short-term deposit liabilities. The FDIC was established largely in response to the widespread bank runs of the 1930s. Depositors who are unprotected by deposit insurance may consider moving their funds if they are concerned about the liquidity or solvency of their bank. If uninsured depositors believe that other depositors share their concerns and that a run on the bank and potential failure is imminent, then they may act quickly to withdraw their funds. Synchronous deposit withdrawals may then force the liquidation of assets and cause the failure of the bank. A bank failure caused by a run can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Editor’s Note: The third paragraph of this article has been corrected to show that the Cayman Islands represented the largest share of customers for Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto house of frauds, not its home base, which was in the Bahamas.

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Conde Nast the next VICE
by professor rat 16 May '23

16 May '23

Looking back on WIRED coverage of cypherpunks is like looking over the Grand Canyon. They used to feature regular semi-sympathetic stories and had an ' embed ' here in the form of Declan. Then - after 9-11 - they followed Eric Hughes in an unseemly rush for the exits and dropped coverage for years. In recent years they've had to cover c-punks once more due to the successful deployment of cryptoanarchist ENOUGH technologies like cryptocurrencies - but they send all their previous articles down the memory hole when they elevate the likes of Poxie Fish-hook or worse . . . Douglas Rushkoff and Malcolm Harris! Jesus Fucking Christ. The overall sinking trend is clear - they had a chance to lead and blew it - blew it so badly they may now be compared to WaPo and VICE. Failing and flailing this bad might even be compared to the NYT and Wikileaks. TL/dr? They're old - we're young - and such is life.

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Gramps Twitter Messiah and World-Historical Jackass in the news
by professor rat 16 May '23

16 May '23

Elon Musk is subpoenaed by the US Virgin islands in its litigation into the role played by JPMorgan in the activity of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein https://reut.rs/3o1xB1A https://reut.rs/3o1xB1A And in related news - https://twitter.com/marketmonkpicks/status/1658297307010310144/photo/1 Reposts not dumps off Gramps garbage scow of sad defeated lies and fascist MAGAT gibberish

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Cryptocurrency: Sam Altman's AI Worldcoin: A 1984 Abomination Upon All Humankind, MUST BE STOPPED
by professor rat 16 May '23

16 May '23

The general sentiment of mankind is that a man like Gramps who will not fight for himself, when he has the means of doing so, is not worth being fought for by others, and this sentiment is just. For a man who does not value freedom for himself will never value it for others, or put himself to any inconvenience to gain it for others. Such a man, the world says, may lie down until he has sense enough to stand up.

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EXIT VICE Media
by professor rat 16 May '23

16 May '23

Gramps you moron I try and avoid lies since it means extra work and I was pleased VICE was bankrupt because I thought that would be the end of it. I'm not happy to hear anyone might be willing to give mouth-to-arse resuscitation to such a rotting corpse. Soros is only my friend so long as he gives any of my enemies an aneurysm. And Soros ought to be more appreciated by cryptonians, especially Btc Maxi's, since he did for the Bank of England what they plan to do for the Fed. Show some fucking respect! And stop supporting a supporter of violence like Assmange you lying little turd!! JULIAN " ‘[The military] protects the sovereignty of Australia. It protects the independence of Australia.' ASSANGE July, 2013

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Cryptocurrency: What rate of theft from you is required for a productive economy?
by grarpamp 16 May '23

16 May '23

Bitcoiners advocate for theft by refusing to make Bitcoin a privacy coin. Jeff Booth: What rate of theft is required for a productive economy? (v.redd.it) https://v.redd.it/vyfws00046za1 submitted 1 day ago by KAX1107 [–]Rustafareanredditor for 3 months 19 points20 points21 points 1 day ago So the government will teach the general public about importance of inflation to economic growth So the people will keep working more to catchup with the value lost through inflation That's sad. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]Joe_Doblow 2 points3 points4 points 1 day ago Reminds me of the movie “in time” with Justin Timberlake permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]nvnehi 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago That’s the world of a deflationary currency. Quite literally. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]nvnehi -2 points-1 points0 points 1 day ago Nothing to do with catching up. Inflation allows poor people to survive. Without inflation no new fiat is added, and when the wealthy can’t spend more money, or have no reason to, then you have to introduce money SOMEHOW in order to prevent millions from dying a year. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]IIIIIIllllllll0redditor for 5 weeks 6 points7 points8 points 1 day ago Lets do a thought experiment. If the only goal of inflation IS inflation, then why don't we create inflation by simply sending $1 to every American citizen? every poor citizen, every rich citizen, every citizen. And do this until we reach the rate of inflation that's desired? permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Living-Walrus-2215 0 points1 point2 points 16 hours ago Without inflation no new fiat is added, and when the wealthy can’t spend more money, or have no reason to, then you have to introduce money SOMEHOW in order to prevent millions from dying a year. Why do you think the amount of cash available has anything to do with providing people services? permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Mektzer 18 points19 points20 points 1 day ago Everyone that has at least a little bit of keynesian indoctrination knows very well that the rate of theft required for a productive economy is around 2% per year. To the question why? Well, numbers go up, GDP is higher, wages go higher, numbers go up. People don't really know why this is good or IF this is good. They just know that THAT is what they're aiming for: "growth". permalink embed save report give award reply [–]The_Realist01 14 points15 points16 points 1 day ago It’s not growth though - it’s inflation. There is no incremental value provided by the growth of 2% due to inflation. If US gdp grows at 2.8%, and inflation is 2.0%, incremental value produced in the year is only 0.8%. People are just dumb. Dumb with a B. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Fbastiat1850 8 points9 points10 points 1 day ago If US gdp grows at 2.8%, and inflation is 2.0%, incremental value produced in the year is only 0.8%. Wrong. Because technology is deflationary, you're measurement of inflation from the zero bound is inaccurate. IF inflation measured at 2%, but -2% deflation would have occurred due to technology and productivity improvements, then the rate of inflation is 4%, not 2%, because you measure from the wrong 'starting point'. What would 2.8% GDP against 4% inflation leave you with? permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]The-Francois8 3 points4 points5 points 1 day ago That’s a shrinking economy in my opinion. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]rhozack 4 points5 points6 points 1 day ago That's a shrinking economy in fact. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]The_Realist01 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Yes fine. Technology and additional incremental productivity gains. Correct viewpoint to take. Not only does fiat burden us with base inflation, we lose out on deflationary technological and productivity gains. Double theft. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]PoeCollector [score hidden] 16 minutes ago I just want to add that GDP increase reflects increased money flow, not necessarily an improvement in the concrete state of things. For instance, cleaning your own house doesn't increase GDP, hiring someone to do it does. If everyone ordered DoorDash so they could dedicate more time to their soulless corporate jobs and pay for twelve different streaming services and Subscription Boxes of Bullshit, GDP would go way up. If everyone cooked meals for their families and read books, GDP would go down. Progress = hyper-specialized office geek bugmen who can't cook. Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]BuyRackTurk 4 points5 points6 points 1 day ago Rigth, its keynesian fairy tale that offers no justification. Its virtual a religious cult permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Fbastiat1850 5 points6 points7 points 1 day ago Government is a dogmatic religious cult. Keynesianism is simply a tool used by said cult, to justify deficit spending by the cult. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Olorin_1990 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago 2% target was selected to give the Fed enough time to react to deflationary pressures which signal a recession. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Mektzer 2 points3 points4 points 1 day ago Yeah but it doesn't make sense, it never worked. With that excuse the system has simply been abused over and over again. As Jeff Booth said: technological advancement IS deflationary, deal with it. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]snek-jazz 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Oh they know why, it's because you're effectively borrowing from the future, because there's a lag between when you print and spend the money and when the full effects of the inflation are felt. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]spezthemanipulator 3 points4 points5 points 1 day ago Money is time, time is life. Basically the ones enabling inflation are mass murderers. That symbolic 1 trillion coin, siphoned from society, that's about 500.000 lifetimes of money. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]justinlongbranch 4 points5 points6 points 1 day ago Productive for who? That's the question permalink embed save report give award reply [–]OkCalligrapher4400 5 points6 points7 points 1 day ago Productive for homeowners and people with strong investment accounts. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]HurricaneHarvey7 5 points6 points7 points 1 day ago Dunno, but any time I bring up this issue in other subreddits they automatically say that Bitcoin doesn't fix the problem and inflation is good for everyone. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–][deleted] 1 day ago [deleted] [–]mostlyeve 13 points14 points15 points 1 day ago Which in turn benefits the rich and people close to the printer. How does inflation benefit a 21 yo working 3 jobs in New York? Or a 40 yo carpenter in Lebanon? permalink embed save report give award reply [–]Daddio_87 4 points5 points6 points 1 day ago Exactly! 💯 permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]nutyourself 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago The argument, not that I necessarily buy it, is that inflation invites growth (spending). A guy decides to spend his money by starting a business and hires a carpenter and a 21 yo. Instead of sitting on his cash saving it. The carpenter and 21 yo have jobs because of inflation (indirectly, obviously). Or so they say, don't kill the messenger. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]icocode 2 points3 points4 points 1 day ago If they have jobs only because of inflation, are those even good jobs, sustainable long-term? Or if they have jobs because they are producing true value for the economy, wouldn't they have jobs without inflation anyway? I get giving the economy a kick-start now and then in a crisis, but I am not convinced that's productive in long term. Like living on coffee and sugar, sooner or later there's a price. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]IIIIIIllllllll0redditor for 5 weeks 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago if inflation creates those jobs, then the only way we can continue to provide those jobs is to keep doing more and more inflation, effectively having a net 0 effect. Meaning we lose just as much as we gain, effectively achieving nothing. Money shifts around within society but no additional value is actually created, and when we stop printing, we can no longer provide the jobs. Think about this for a second. what you're saying is that if we take a tiny bit of money from everyone (inflation), we can take the carpenter, who already has a job, and the 21 year old, who already has a job, and give them.. a different job? Nothing was gained. And in order to do this, again, we had to steal money from everyone. Glossing over all of that is the essence of blind self motivated behavior to the point of intentionally disregarding your impact on your community. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Kobens 9 points10 points11 points 1 day ago encourages investment Rather than sitting on cash I keep hearing this. And I keep hearing that "if our money grew in value over time, we would never spend it, knowing that we could by the product for less tomorrow" I think that argument is utter nonsense. If I need a gallon of milk and eggs to make my kids breakfast, I am not going to say "kids, let's skip breakfast today, so that the next day we can get that breakfast for less". Sure, this is an oversimplification, but I believe it is all that is necessary to drive the point home. Business wouldn't just "stop spending". If they need a new vehicle today, because the old one broke down, that business isn't going to say "well, let's just halt our business operations for now. That way we can purchase that replacement vehicle next year for less money" In order words, purchases would be based more off current needs. Not fear of "I have to get rid of this cash because it is losing value". No common person is buying bulk necessities because "I need to buy it now as my dollar is losing value". Thus, helping grow the economy. Deflating the value of the people's money is theft of the people's money. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]zuilli 3 points4 points5 points 1 day ago I agree with what you say and go even further: if we are incentivized to keep our money and only spend on what's necessary then products and services have a giant push to become of a better quality to justify it's value to consumers. Planned obsolescence and consumerism would have a sharp drop if people are incentivized to not spend trivially. The only people that see that as a loss are the big players in capitalism. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–][deleted] 1 day ago* [deleted] [–]Kobens 2 points3 points4 points 1 day ago Don't believe I proposed "sitting on cash" either. Pretty sure I said "people would spend, because they need". Cash would still serve as a medium of exchange. I am also fine with a target inflation of 0%. Explain why inflation is necessary. "Encourage investment" isn't an explanation. It's a desired outcome, which neglects to acknowledge the hurt it causes in the process. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]skystarsss 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago I don't have a single clue how is inflation good for everyone. Good for maybe the 5% I dunno. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]smallbluetext -1 points0 points1 point 1 day ago Because inflation promotes spending, while deflation promotes saving. Economies thrive based on spending not saving. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]nogi-ezekielredditor for 3 months 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago So I guess all those poor african countries just forgot all they had to do was print a bunch of money and spend it, then they'd all be wealthy, right? permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]smallbluetext 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago The fuck are you talking about? There are a million reasons unrelated to inflation why they are poor. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]nogi-ezekielredditor for 3 months -1 points0 points1 point 1 day ago so it's almost as if spending isnt what actually makes economies prosper permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]smallbluetext -1 points0 points1 point 17 hours ago Yeah poor African country residents are spending so much with their massive wealth dude permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]sc00ttie 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago People who wish to trade goods, services, and labor. A free market is productive because it evolves to meet the needs of the smallest minority, the individual. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]tallmon -2 points-1 points0 points 1 day ago Whom permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]BuyRackTurk 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Productive for who? That's the question for the people who produce. For the people who steal, of course inflation is great... but you cant call that productive because its anti-productive. It reduces total production in society when you steal. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]bitjava 0 points1 point2 points 21 hours ago All else being equal, technology makes us all more productive. The problem is inflation is constantly stealing from the poorest people, negating those benefits or even causing a net negative, yet the average person thinks the “greedy corporations” are to blame, which is not surprisingly the government-sponsored narrative. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]dbudlov 15 points16 points17 points 1 day ago Zero percent ideally, every instance of theft/taxation makes the state and politically connected better off to the detriment of everyone it's stolen from We're living through a global scam called government, the sooner it ends the better off we all are permalink embed save report give award reply [–]albacore_futures 10 points11 points12 points 1 day ago 0% is the ideal, but is reaching 0% possible? I don't think so, and fwiw neither did Satoshi. He wrote about the ideal being 0%, and the ideal being obtained by a money supply that would automatically contract and expand in response to the need for it (which would be 0% inflation). However, he decided that implementing it would be too technically difficult - you'd have to sift out wash trades, effectively, to prevent manipulation of the supply - so he went for a purposefully-deflationary currency. What matters for inflation and deflation is not absolute change in the money supply, but instead the change in money relative to the demand for it. If the demand for money goes up but the supply stays constant, then we have deflation. If demand for money collapses, but the supply stays constant, we have inflation. Satoshi decided that a deflationary currency is superior to an inflationary one. The question is whether or not that judgment is correct. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]FairBlamer 5 points6 points7 points 1 day ago Could you kindly share any sources you have regarding what Satoshi said on this subject? I hadn’t heard that before and I’m skeptical by default permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]albacore_futures 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/p2pfoundation/3/ permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]KAX1107[S] 4 points5 points6 points 1 day ago* Money in its natural form is a privately produced market good like all the goods we trade it for. Anyone from anywhere in the world can produce bitcoin through work. Gold is a saleable market good but it's political, not absolutely scarce, lacks velocity and doesn't work without trust, therefore gave rise to fiat. We need neutral money that's not political, very hard to create, very easy to carry and transfer without trust. Monetary inflation is a consequence of one thing only, monetary expansion/debasement of currency. Relative asset price inflation is driven by free market dynamics and money in the sense of a privately produced market good is no exception to it. "The quantity of money available in the whole economy is always sufficient to secure for everybody all that money does and can do." What is the correct amount of money? permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Iamgod189 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago >From 1813 to 1913 prices went down because we had a deflationary economy and had the industrial revolution. I'm not saying that caused the IR but it didn't harm it. Deflation increases wealth permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Alfador8 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago I would argue that the industrial revolution caused the deflation during that time period. Prices of everything dropped precipitously because they became exponentially cheaper to produce/transport. I believe we would be seeing the same thing happen with the technological revolution if not for our debt based monetary system demanding constant inflation permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]albacore_futures 0 points1 point2 points 22 hours ago* Productivity drove aggregate demand higher, but the money supply remained the same. The result was deflation (the same amount of money chasing more transactions), and in the US a remarkably underdeveloped and unstable banking system which catastrophically failed more often than any other contemporary system. The deflation also created the primary political division of the 19th century - between farmers / populists, who advocated an expansion of the supply, and the goldbug bankers who insisted on maintaining the gold peg at all costs and refused to add silver to the supply. The resulting increase in income inequality led to outbreaks of armed rebellion against the government and employers from ~1870 until about WW1. Deflation further prevented average Americans from affording a mortgage, which in addition to being much shorter than today (5-10 years, with full repayment due at conclusion) actually grew more expensive to repay over time. This is what deflation does, and it's one of the main reasons farmers and their populist allies demanded and won a federal revamp of the home mortgage system during the Great Depression. The idea of Jeffersonian homeownership, of self-reliance, is a long-held American ideal and the deflationary gold standard directly harmed that principle. We shouldn't act like it was a wonderful policy that worked without any issues. There's a story behind why that system got replaced, not just in the US but worldwide. Deflation caused serious problems. Side note - I've always found it ironic that today's goldbugs cast themselves as populists when they are, in fact, making the same arguments JP Morgan would have in 1895, and with the same passion. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]AnonTheGreat01 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago What matters for inflation and deflation is not absolute change in the money supply, but instead the change in money relative to the demand for it. Incorrect. You have to take into account monetary expansion and demand, but also productivity. Per your definition, in/deflation is not possible with constant demand and fixed monetary supply, but this is false. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]albacore_futures 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Productivity has a direct effect on the demand for money. As things become cheaper, demand for them increases. Increased demand for stuff means an increased demand for money to transact said stuff. Inflation and deflation are not possible with fixed demand and fixed monetary supply. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]AnonTheGreat01 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Yeah I thought about that, but I don't think that's completely true because how does that reconcile when demand is static for example? E.g. some revolutionary innovation for a vital prescription drug has its price drop 90%. I don't think it does, because that's productivity induced deflation without a change in monetary supply or demand. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]albacore_futures 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Productivity leads to price declines, which all else held equal leads to increased demand for whatever good's price is declining. More demand for that good means more transactions (more people buying it), which in turn requires more money to facilitate the transaction. Without an expansion of money to facilitate the transaction, then we'd have a price decline both from productivity and from monetary forces. Should the money supply magically expand to precisely its needed level to facilitate these new transactions, we'd see a price drop but it won't have a monetary component. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Expensive-Tap420 0 points1 point2 points 20 hours ago *Monetary inflation * doesn’t happen with fixed money supply, but you’re always going to have inflation and deflation in different sectors, driven by supply and demand. Also, you can still have derivative markets if you have a fixed money supply and that can still cause bubbles. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]albacore_futures 0 points1 point2 points 11 hours ago Right. I have been disambiguating the impact of monetary forces on overall price levels from the impact of productivity on certain price levels. What OP described was overall productivity gains writ large, not one particular sector's boom. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]FUSeekMe69 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago If you believe human ingenuity will outpace the deflationary currency, then that judgment is correct. I believe that to be true. And ironically, bitcoin being tied to cheap, abundant, and sustainable energy helps us achieve that goal. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Living-Walrus-2215 0 points1 point2 points 15 hours ago 0% is the ideal, but is reaching 0% possible? Yes, just don't print money and the long term inflation rate will be 0%. Check the cumulative inflation rate in the US from its founding until the Fed was founded. It was basically 0%. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]bitusher 2 points3 points4 points 1 day ago Correct. 0% is ideal , but achieving that is near impossible. Thus as long as inflation is a very stable 1-2% or deflation is a very stable 1-2 %(hopefully what Bitcoin eventually achieves) it should be acceptable. What is horrible is how the CPI is calculated in a very dishonest manner to misrepresent the rampant inflation. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]DekiEE 2 points3 points4 points 1 day ago And how do you plan on maintaining streets or education without tax? Only allow school to people who are able to afford it? This is a highway to societal exodus. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]The-Francois8 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Taxes are better than inflation. It’s more honest. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Wesinator2000 2 points3 points4 points 1 day ago I don’t think there are many examples of a structured society that doesn’t have a governing body. If people are going to work together, they typically agree to set some ground rules. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]KAX1107[S] 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago* When you remove money from government, the government is restored to its rightful role as servant of the people. Today, everything politicians pay lip service to, virtue signal and say they'll fix if you vote for them, not one of them really has any intention of actually fixing. Politicians are beholden to the money masters, not to the electorate. A society without honest money cannot aspire to honest political systems. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Throwaway021614 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Right! The government itself isn’t an entity that wants to benefit. Legislators can manipulate the stock market, make markets, and punish competitors. They do what this for their corporate sponsors. The government doesn’t steal wealth. They transfer it to the wealthy. Honest money doesn’t matter if those with more of it can blatantly do what they want without restrictions. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]BuyRackTurk 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago When you remove money from government, the government is restored to its rightful role as servant of the people. lol... no. Government rules you, for its own benefit. It has no other real purpose. Our goal should always be the shrink or eliminate government. Putting a halo on a monster doesnt magically make it good. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]KAX1107[S] 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago Government rules you, for its own benefit through control of money shrink or eliminate government Removing money from government shrinks government to size. All incentives are corrupted by corrupt money. We'll always have some form of government but without control, only to serve the people permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]BuyRackTurk 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago Lets end the Fed permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Ok_Opportunity2693 3 points4 points5 points 1 day ago You don’t want government, like, at all? permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]LordIgorBogdanoff -2 points-1 points0 points 1 day ago Inflation benefits governments, yes, but governments don't need inflation to exist. Just put sales taxes, or tariffs. Those would be sufficient. What would be restricted is war, bailouts and social welfare. I'm sure you have mixed thoughts on that but that is the reality of fiat. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Throwaway021614 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago There’s nothing more a big business wants than a small government permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]LordIgorBogdanoff 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago Tell me you're indoctrinated without telling me you're indoctrinated. Big business LOVES big government. They often work hand in hand (see 2008 bank bailouts, Twitter censorship of anti-Biden news during the 2020 election cycle, and don't even get me started on wars for oil) Go back to r/neoliberal with the other midwits. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Throwaway021614 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago They’ve learned to work within the system with their paid media and politicians. Remove the system and they won’t have to waste that money greasing palms and buying media companies. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]LordIgorBogdanoff 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago* And how do you remove the system without removing big government? The easiest answer I see is the removal of central banking as an institution. No more wage slavery, induced boom/bust cycles, or other "once in a lifetime" events that magically happen more in central banking (but we're supposed to believe exclusive correlation isnt causation). No more exclusive money printing theft for the elite or government. No more disproportionate exponential powers. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Throwaway021614 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago Thank you for not adding a personal attack or to tell me to remove myself from the discourse and return to an echo chamber. I think this is a good discussion. I fully support a decentralized monetary system. The excessive printing and contraction of money supply is a core part of our economic situation. But a government is needed to ensure that wage slavery and financial crisis do not keep happening. Having a decentralized currency does not force companies to pay a living wage. It does not prevent them from polluting my fishing and hunt grounds, and turning my camp grounds and trails into condos. It does not prevent corporate landlords and property owners, like Blackrock (or is it Blackstone? I can’t remember which is which) from buying up homes and driving up cost of living. it does not stop food manufacturers from artificially increasing consumer cost and giving themselves record profits. Government is needed for that. Government is not working as well as we would all like, but that’s probably due to incompetence and external manipulation in the form of unregulated money into politics from a campaign level and a personal level for our legislators, judiciary branch, and executive branch. The government itself is a tool, right now those wielding it the best are the wealthy. And the absolute worse thing we can do at this moment is blame each other for our politics and culture. We’re being pitted against each other and fighting a culture war, when we should be fighting a class war. What a large corporation and a wealthy individual can do with their money absolutely needs to be regulated. Whether that takes a large government or well targeted small government, I’m going to honestly admit I don’t know. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]New_Painting5190 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago but governments don't need inflation to exist. Just put sales taxes, or tariffs And who in their right state of mind would vote for a President/party that significantly increased taxation? Of course Governments need inflation, they literally buy votes by promising better pensions, zero student debt, lots of "free" public services and how will they pay for it? By raising taxes? Not a chance, they just issue 1 trillion USD worth of new treasuries, e.g, kicking the can down the road and that'll become an even bigger problem for the next Government. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]LordIgorBogdanoff 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago I don't disagree with you but you are missing my point. Also people constantly vote for higher taxes on the wealthy, either because they (mostly rightly) feel billionaires do not deserve their wealth and have taken it through unethical or even illegal methods, or simply out of envy. It never works that way because the billionaires own both parties though. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]New_Painting5190 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Well but you said that Governments don't need inflation cause they can just raise taxes. What I'm saying is they cannot do that to the level they'd need to sustain public debt...people think they vote for higher taxes on the wealthy without realising the wealthy can just fuck off to another more friendly jurisdiction if it comes to that, the reality is that the middle class ends up paying more taxes. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]LordIgorBogdanoff 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago* Raise taxes =/= survive on taxes. I agree with you, again. What would be needed would be a drastic decline in public spending. Which means either less services and public projects and/or more efficiently spent ones. Social welfare, war and glowies are very expensive endeavors that would not be sustainable with sound money. You can have your opinion on whether any of those are good or bad things, but sound money renders them impossible because the state can't take out debts with decentralized currency. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]New_Painting5190 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago EXACTLY, fully agree with you there. Public spending needs to be reduced, there's simply no free lunch and the sooner the average person understood that the better. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]nvnehi 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Inflation benefits the poorest. What are you talking about? permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]LordIgorBogdanoff 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Poe's Law is the bane of my existence permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Tebasaki 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago While I love this view and the eye opening conversation he's having, I'm curious what kind of world we would have with no government in your eyes? permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]bitjava 0 points1 point2 points 21 hours ago State ≠ government. Government will always exist in some form or another. The issue is the fiat controlled state, and the current form of government, but not government as a concept. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]DOG-ZILLA 0 points1 point2 points 17 hours ago It’s a stretch to go from inflation being bad to governments being bad. Just because some governments are corrupt in many ways, it does not make the whole idea of a government a bad one. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Bitcoin_Maximalist 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago* and why 2%? why not 1,5% or 3% ? there must be a broad scientific foundation for the goal of 2% inflation. where is it? permalink embed save report give award reply [–]guryfitze 5 points6 points7 points 1 day ago Scientifically, the 2% is how fast you increase temperature so that a frog doesn’t realize it’s being boiled. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]uber_poutine -1 points0 points1 point 19 hours ago There are many factors that cause inflation - speaking in terms of monetary supply, interest rates, and credit (which is not the entirety, but these are the ones most easily controlled by govt) sticking inside that range lets you extend sufficient credit to promote economic growth (which is generally considered good) while (at least usually) avoiding an inflationary spiral (which is generally considered bad). FWIW economics is much more an art than a science. That's not to say that there aren't metrics, but if your whole field of study assumes humans are rational... 🤷‍♂️ permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]kenlbear 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago There was never any intent to redeem or pay back the US national debt. Inflation reduces its real value while, at the same time, providing a reason to increase taxes and prices. Inflation and debt are the twin pillars of monetary policy. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]nvnehi 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago Scale wise, you’re paying less despite paying a “higher number.” Debt is a good thing at scale because it implies trust between those the debt is share between. Countries have little reason to attack those with whom they share debts. If we go in on a house together you are less likely to burn it down to spite me - sure, it can happen, it’s just far less likely. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]uber_poutine 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago He completely fails to mention the role that the petrodollar plays in this - by denominating certain commodity transactions in USD (ie. oil), inflation of USD is a tax levied on the world. What happens to the US when they can't do that anymore? What happens to the relative value of the USD, what happens to Americans' purchasing power, and what happens to geopolitical stability? permalink embed save report give award reply [–]bitjava 0 points1 point2 points 21 hours ago It doesn’t contradict his hypothesis, and it’s not his area of expertise. Have you read his book or listened to the many podcasts he’s done? It’s not fair to claim he completely fails to mention anything if you haven’t read/heard the entirety of his work. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]uber_poutine 0 points1 point2 points 20 hours ago It absolutely doesn't contradict his hypothesis, nor is it intended to. It's actually an illustration of how the problem is substantially bigger and thornier than he presents it. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Pale_Sock_7815 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago The problem with this narrative is that the average American’s purchasing power was significantly higher before the end if the Bretton Woods system and the creation of the petrodollar. Ending the petrodollar is going to negatively impact those who benefit from the Cantillon effect. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]coredweller1785 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago The part that a lot of these ppl leave out (probably purposely) is that capitalists need continued growth and this is part of it. Anyone on the left realizes that there have been many instances of economies without inflation that worked better for most ordinary people. I'll recommend my favorite book on this that goes back to 400 bc in China and traces lines forward through their economic history through the 1980s reform period. So many incredible ideas and ways of constructing economic reason. So much to think about in our current context since our current setup does not really work. How China Escaped Shock Therapy by Weber permalink embed save report give award reply [–]Pale_Sock_7815 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago This strawman is so convoluted that you’re not even wrong. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]BuyRackTurk -2 points-1 points0 points 1 day ago The part that a lot of these ppl leave out (probably purposely) is that capitalists need continued growth and this is part of it. Capitalism does not need growth. What kind of insane logic is that ? Capitalism neither needs nor demands anything. Its just a type of freedom to trade with your neighbor. Thats all, its really simple. Do you need "growth" to borrow your neighbors lawn mower ? Do you need "growth" to sell lemonade to the public ? Obviously not. The whole "growth" story is a keynesian fairy tale that has nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with justifying monetary socialism. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]coredweller1785 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago You are mistaking markets and commerce which has existing for millenia with capitalism. You dont need capitalism to trade anything with anyone. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]BuyRackTurk -1 points0 points1 point 1 day ago You are mistaking markets and commerce which has existing for millenia with capitalism. Capitalism is older than society. Any voluntary trade is capitalist. You dont need capitalism to trade anything with anyone. If the trade is voluntary, its capitalism. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]_Ad_Astra_Abyssosqueredditor for 3 weeks -1 points0 points1 point 1 day ago You know you can just Google this stuff instead of spouting incorrect info. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]nvnehi -3 points-2 points-1 points 1 day ago Markets need growth because people are living longer, and the population is growing. Without inflation poor people will die in the millions per year. You do need growth to borrow your neighbor’s lawnmower because in 10 years they’ll have two neighbors wanting to borrow it instead of one. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]nvnehi -2 points-1 points0 points 1 day ago It doesn’t work on a globalized scale. It only works in a locked society which doesn’t trade much with the outside world. Capitalism is very effective - you can’t compete with it but, you can operate within it within any system. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]coredweller1785 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Oh please, ask Cuba if they are allowed to operate within it. Or how about Nicaragua, Soviet Union, etc. Capitalism only allows a very narrow set of choices to be made and if you don't make them you are invaded, couped, etc. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]BraidRuner 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Vladimir Putin knows the answer to this question. Check the yachts in the Harbour at Monaco and St Barts and theres your answer. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]FUSeekMe69 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Inflation isn’t “needed” for growth. Look around, What did money build? What did money create? That is human growth. That is human creativity. That is a representation of human’s usage and storage of energy. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]thedarkpath 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Someone been reading a little too much of Ayn Rand… permalink embed save report give award reply [–]MBA922redditor for 3 months -3 points-2 points-1 points 1 day ago Inflation is not theft because voluntary exchanges can escape it. Bitcoin/property/business value goes up with inflation. Just spend cash as fast as it comes in on hard assets. Inflation is only theft from banks/creditors. Wage earners whose wage gains grow slower than inflation are simply oppressed by factors other than inflation. Slavery and oppression can cause high theft/desperation crime, but it has the highest productivity rates. So if 90% of stuff does not get stolen, but you can pay less than 90% of "fair value" to people who need 70 hours/week to survive, and are willing to participate in 100 interviews per job opening process, outcompeting their fellow oppressed, then this all counts as productive. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]lahoussss -1 points0 points1 point 1 day ago There is. I reason for that, we should set the reality as it is, each corporation has it shares, even nations have currency that are simply a share of their economy the one that control the maximum flow has the control over the country and so on permalink embed save report give award reply [–]FuckRedDecks -1 points0 points1 point 23 hours ago Inflation isnt controlled by the government though permalink embed save report give award reply [+]biz_owner -10 points-9 points-8 points 1 day ago Problem is nobody in western countries is accepting bitcoin, so what are u gonna do about it? permalink embed save report give award reply [–]BigDeezerrr 2 points3 points4 points 1 day ago I accept Bitcoin. Individual choices to transact in Bitcoin and educating others. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]BuyRackTurk 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Smart businesses are accepting only bitcoin. The dollar is garbage. permalink embed save parent report give award reply [–]Born_Wave3443 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago He has a soothing voice, not gonna lie permalink embed save report give award reply [–]Dazzling_Marzipan474 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago Funny how its been working that the richest keep getting richer while the other have less and less. My grandpa worked 1 job with a little overtime and provided for him, his wife and 5 kids. My dad worked 1 job with lots of overtime and provided for him, his wife and me and my brother. My wife and I both work overtime and no kids and we do ok, but if we did that in 1940-1990 or so we'd be rich AF. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]ryoma-gerald 0 points1 point2 points 23 hours ago Well said. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]superdopes 0 points1 point2 points 13 hours ago 2% to encourage creative destruction permalink embed save report give award reply [–]kenlbear 0 points1 point2 points 6 hours ago Conversely a debt can create enmity between the debtor and the loaner.

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