15 Forum Posts by "Econocataclysm"
I'm curious what everyone thinks of the global economic meltdown, so I will pose a few questions for the denizens of Newgrounds:
1.) Which way will it go? Are you an Inflationist, Deflationist, is it a prelude to World Government or are we just looking at a world-wide Zombie Holocaust? Or will the problem "correct" itself in due course, leaving the world to go on with business as usual in due course? Are our "Leaders" around the world actually capable of pulling their heads out of their asses long enough to see what needs to be done and do it?
2.) How did it happen? Was it lack of regulation, too much regulation, too much greed, not enough greed, a failure to see into the long-term or TOO MUCH of the wrong kind of long-range prognostication?
3.) What part did strict adherence to political and/or economic ideology have in creating the crisis? And are those ideologies being promoted purely for thei own sake, or are they being twisted to serve the needs of various special interests?
4.) What solution would YOU put forward? What should be done?
5.) What do YOU intend to do to survive it?
I'll kick this off with my own answers to those questions:
1.) I'm an Inflationist. The massive monetization of debt that the Fed in engaging in right now spells the end of Dollar Hegemony but worse than that, I side with Peter Schiff in thinking that the only possible result, if the policy is not turned quickly ala Paul Volker, is massive hyperinflation. Furthermore, I do not think our leaders saw it coming and I believe they are equally incompetent to fix the problem. "New World Order" dreams have just ended, the world economic order will collapse giving us a Global Zombie Holocaust-type situation within the next six months, especially when the US Military can no longer function as the world's policeman once the Federal budget collapses under hyperinflationary pressures.
2.) I believe this happened because of massive deregulation and a decade of too-easy credit and artificially low interest rates from the Fed, and that's Alan "Bubbles" Greenspan's fault. It is easy to say "The Republicans Did It!!!" but in fact, once the Goldmanite disciples of Robert Rubin took over economic policy late in the Clinton administration this was inevitable. However, IMHO the Republicans were even MORE deregulation happy that the Rubinite Democrats. And it is useful to bear in mind that it was CLINTON who worked the hardest to repeal the Glass-Stegall Act so that banks could begin using our deposits as poker chips in the global casino again.
3.) While the forces APPEAR ideologically locked, they are in fact abandoning their own ideologies through policy decisions while maintaining the appearance of strict adherence. For instance, artificially low interest rates from the Fed while giving lip service to fighting inflation? Insane. They obviously want to re-ignite both the real estate and stock market bubbles and it won't work in either case. And even if it did, it would only cause the inevitable crash to be that much harder. The abandonment of mark-to-market principles where banks can keep their properties on their books at pre-collapse prices in order to avoid acknowledging taking a loss from a bat bet while the market has already decided what the value of those properties is flies in the face of all the hot air about "Free Markets". Everything is being done to preserve the value of the investements of the wealthy, to protect them from the penalties of their own malinvestment, so what we in fact have is a form of reverse Socialism that is sucking wealth UPWARDS by diluting the currency to cover these bad bets, thus making OUR currency have less real value.
4.) My solution? Increase interest rates and begin tightening the currency supply, pronto. Let the bubbles burst, all of them, so that the worst of the price distortions in the markets can be allowed to correct themselves. Let the bad banks fail, and bail out the account holders through FDIC. This would be cheaper than "Quantitative Easing", if anyone thinks those obligations will ever leave the Fed's books then they are fooling themselves. We will have to pay for them (Americans, I mean). In the mean time, increase spending on social programs so that people don't starve in the streets until such time as the markets correct themselves and we can have an economy again. And lastly, abandon the myth of a "Service Economy" which just means that we make nothing, consume everything, and live on credit which eventually causes problems like this. A weaker Dollar means we can begin dealing with our trade deficit and putting people back to work so they can deleverage themselves (in plain English, you need deleveraging means paying down your credit cards and othet obligations).
5.) I don't know about you, but I'm shifting as much of my paper assets into gold as I can as quickly as I can while leaving a small reserve of spendable cash for myself. The actual VALUE of gold won't go up during hyperinflation, but gold and silver and things like that will RETAIN purchasing power, unlike our soon-to-be Zimbabwe Dollars here in the US.
Whew!!! That was a lot. Your turn: what do you think of our wonderful little global econocataclysm?
-JR
I'm going to throw "Day Traders of the Dead" up there and see if I can't get another pop from Crooks & Liars. Plus, I DL'd the "Wall Street Massacre"/kill Bernie Madoff game and that goes next.
My biggest coup right now is the town hall meeting footage I took which I am now processing. I'm wondering if I should just stream my own shit from my own site (I have the capability) or just continue uploading to YouTube and using embed code? I'm thinking the second option gives me more exposure, but the first gives me more control. Although I have everything backed up, so if YT starts deleting my videos or whatever I can fallback to direct streaming. Thoughts?
At 8/18/09 08:11 AM, fastdrew wrote: Well it looks like it took more effort to make that a crappy FreeWebs site so you might have pontential.
Lurk more and you will indeed win the prize.
Dude I have no respect for people who get into this game and don't even bother to learn basic web design skills, so I feel ya there.
At 8/18/09 08:54 AM, superthief wrote: meh your websites ok man. fair play for making it, but some of it is buggy or glitchy or whatever you call it.
That's what I'm looking for Superthief! What did you find that was "buggy" or basically looked like shit, and what do you think could be done to improve it?
At 8/18/09 08:55 AM, kaywire wrote: Use the Wix engine, Its the new generation :
Wix
Hmmm, interesting. Maybe for my next project, right now I've got waaay too much invested in modifying self-hosted WordPress to easily go in that direction. On the other hand Wix does look very useful.
At 8/18/09 08:04 AM, Emomudkip wrote: As long as your not posting the same thread 6 times a day then no your not breaking the rules
---Yeah, pretty much I'd probably do the same to some fool who did that on my system as well. No, it all stays here no matter what. I pretty much say at the top of my Forums: It's MY system, I'm absolute dictator. I expect the same here, this place is 100% private property just like my system and I intend to respect that.
I am hoping this doesn't run afoul of Tom's "No Excessive Web Site Promotion" policy, I guess if it does he'll just take it down.
I'd like the code freaks and game wizards at Newgrounds to come to my website, check it out, and tell me what they think!!! Here's the link:
It's kind of a weird experimental site, a combination of Liberal politics (I've been front paged on Crooks and Liars already!) pessimistic economics ala Zero Hedge, political humor and a flash video game site (I've already used Endless Zombie Rampage 2 and Days 2 Die on there, and I plan on adding more games as I can find topics to tie in with the site. For instance, a joke post about N1H1 would probably have the game Pandemic 2 in it. Here are the links to the posts containing the games, the Days 2 Die post was the one fronpaged on C&L:
http://www.econocataclysm.com/town-hall-
meeting-defense-video-game/
http://www.econocataclysm.com/friday-fun nies-food-riot-survival-simulator/
And here is the video games page, at first I had them both on there until I realized that they all have to load whenever someone views that page, so now I just have links to the posts containing the games:
http://www.econocataclysm.com/video-game s/
Any suggestions on a more elegant way to handle THAT would be appreciated.
It's a self-hosted WordPress install, I did all the backend work myself and modified a theme by Ulysses Ronquillio (his link is still at the bottom of my pages, I figured since he did a GREAT job documenting that theme he deserves whatever extra traffic he gets from me). Also I have a Forum which is implemented with the latest version of bbPress here:
http://www.econocataclysm.com/forums/
It's basically empty at this point, but I've only been in operation for about two weeks and my analytics pretty much depend on how much trouble I can stir up in the blogosphere!!! Politics is VERY HOT right now, but there's so much of it that it is easy to get lost in the noise.
I'd like everyone's opinion of the technical work I've done on the site in regards to look and feel, and also the way I've integrated the video games both technically and thematically into the site. I'd also VERY MUCH appreciate suggestions as to games I could put up there, and how I could link them with a political topic.
A side note, I noticed that the great flood of political video games up here during the Bush administration has ebbed. I wish somebody would write some good political or economic meltdown themed games and put them up here or someplace I could download the flash files, it's not as if Obama isn't screwing up in his own way. For my personal politics, he's too much of a CORPORATE Socialist for my tastes.
Oh, and I don't care if people reply to here to blast my politics, although I joined in the political discussions in other threads so that would be kind of redundant and I'll be only too happy to defend my positiins there as well as on my own blog which I do anyway. What I'm looking for here is more advice from fellow gamers, website coders, and just internet freaks who might think this is interesting. To my knowledge, this sort of hybrid product has never been tried and I'd like to see where everybody thinks I'm going right and going wrong.
Thanks! And except for this thread, I'm going to leave the shameless self-promotion for my tagline from now on so Tom, please don't blast me!!!
Excuse me, but...
isn't adding 12 trillion Dollars to the Fed's balance sheet as a public obligation that WE have to pay a form of Socialism for the wealthy?
The debate has broken down in this country at this point, since we're in the habit of witing blank checks to Wall Street in order to cover the bad bets of incompetent economic actors who should be allowed to fail, and WOULD be allowed to fail in a free market.
PLUS, The Federal Reserve is INHERENTLY Socialist!!! It's central economic planning through monetary policy!!! This country hasn't had anything like a free market since 1913. What we do have, especially when economic policy has been captured by the Goldmanite disciples of Robert Rubin, is a form of Socialism designed to suck wealth UPWARDS. And it works pretty well: we're all broke, the economy is in ruins, and yet our media machine tries to paint this rosy picture and the government fudges every statistic there is to make the problem look like less than it is, and yet the buttheads on Wall Street who would have failed are going to the Bahamas with 100 million Dollar bonuses.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE???
At 8/15/09 02:44 AM, OddlyPoetic wrote:At 8/15/09 02:25 AM, dudewithashotgun29 wrote: We could probably get a large part of people out of jail by legalizing drugs, just saying...But then again, we'd have alot more people in drug rehab centers. Is it worth it? Legalizing drugs would mean sending far more Americans into crippling drug addiction then we already have. No matter what, it'll end up costing us something. Either the Prisons or the Government Rehab Centers.
True. However the strategy of harm reduction, where the money goes into rehab centers instead of more cops and more prisons has been shown to work everywhere it has been tried, and it's a damn sight cheaper. What does it cost to feed and house a prisoner, some tens of thousands of dollars a year? Rehab is much cheaper, nobody will argue that. Plus decriminalization takes the whole gang element out of it, which means our streets aren't filled with running gun battles anymore.
Yes, I agree that the Prison Industrial Complex is a waste of money, and so is the Drug War.
Oh, but that wasn't the point you were trying to make. Too bad.
MUAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
At 8/11/09 10:07 PM, poxpower wrote:At 8/11/09 09:47 PM, Proteas wrote: .... what the HELL is a "death panel?"I think it's about how, with socialized healthcare, the government will be in charge of deciding who is worth treating and who isn't.
So they have this idea about how, if you're old and poor, they'll just put you down like a dog after the DEATH PANEL decides you're not worth saving.
So yeah, instead of insurance companies telling you that it would cost you too much to be insured, it's the government who has to make the call.
Bottom line is that if you're poor, someone will have to make the call to let you die eventually.
The Republican Noise Machine has been opearting at maximum capacity this Summer, spreading outright lies just like this. Even dumbass Sarah Palin backed off on the death panels thing, she only put her two cents in because she's such a publicity whore anyway. She got an even bigger pop from retracting it than she did from spreading the lie in the first place, but Alaska's biggest quitter is politically irrelevant and she knows it. This is utterly typical of the way Republicans have tried to hijack the debate. I'll just leave a quote here from the naked capitalism blog at nakedcapitalism.com (hey, it's not MY site just a site I read a lot, along with zero hedge and Max Keiser) which pretty much points up Obama's utter failure of leadership on this issue... and another link to naked capitalism that describes all of Obama's problems in gross detail:
Quote:
Lack of political leadership: The health care fiasco is going to be a defining event for Obama, in a negative way. His inability to respond effectively to simply absurd distortions of his plan and of the record of public supported programs overseas (including that many are government funded but still privately run, for instance) may dispel the illusion that he is or can be an effective leader. His banking policy, which is vital to recovery, became hostage to Geithner and Summer's deep loyalty to the industry, and his lack or interest in rocking any boats. All Team Obama has done on the banking front is write a lot of blank checks, hold some bogus "stress tests" in lieu of doing the real thing, and raise a stink on a few symbolic issues to try to paper over the failure to embark on real and badly needed reforms.
Ed Harrison has called him a black Herbert Hoover. If the economy takes another down leg, it will further confirm his inability to do anything other than compromise and try to spin it as success. The confidence game worked when he was a new President, but nice talk and not much action is already wearing thin. We could use someone at the helm who is willing to plot a course and stick with it, and instead what we have is someone long on charisma and short on resolve.
Link:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/08/o bama-knowing-when-to-be-asshole.html
End quote
Us Socialist types (and I have no problem describing myself that way, all the things the robber barons say about Socialism are lies anyway) need to stick up for ourselves more, to go on the offensive more, and to stop trying to "find common ground" with people who only want to rip us off. If a massive blank check for Wall Street's bad bets isn't a form of Socialism, I don't know what is. The only thing I've learned from the past year is that, as far as the robber barons are concerned, Socialism is just fine as long as THEy are the benficiaries.
MUAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Atheist doesn't go far enough to describe me. I'm a Nihilist! Truthfully though, I self-identify as a Nihilist.
HELL YEAH we should legalize!!! As if we need to imprison a larger percentage of our population than any other country on Earth, including COMMUNIST China!!! In fact, END THE DRUG WAR COMPLETELY. It's a sham. With the budget squeeze coming up and the national debt doubled in a year, we'll be looking to cut some BS from the budget and I say the stupid drug war goes first!!!
At 8/16/09 02:11 PM, Ericho wrote: Are you still ranting on about Obama and socialism? Look at the socialized medicene in places like Canada and how well it works for them. Even if it is technically socalism, it'll still do us a heck of a lot of good, assuming it goes as well here as it did with other nations.
Very true, but I refuse to apologize for Socialism. I don't think unfettered robber baron Capitalism has done us much good, do you?
At 8/16/09 03:43 AM, TightRope wrote: I am a staunch supporter of socialized medicine, but it wont work in America and for good reason. First of all, illegal aliens who don't pay taxes but would still receive benefits would strain the system and raise taxes significantly eventually causing it to fail. Also, jobless breeders who abuse welfare would do the same, the taxes we would pay for these people would be horrific.
---And the money we're paying out to Wall Street right now isn't?!? Single Payer is only $100bn a year. We just put 12 TRILLION worth of Wall Street's bad debts on the Fed's books, which our children and grand children will have to pay for. We can't get single payer, but Goldman Sachs should get whatever they want??? Preposterous!
The second point is that Obama is doing this for no other reason then he is trying to introduce the beginning of socialism into our nation so that he can begin a tirade of destruction until he has eventually created one big socialist nation and destroyed his already tarnished image.
---Sorry, but the only people who get hurt by Socialism are the crooks on Wall Street. And to H-E-double-hockeysticks with them!!!
Lastly I'd just like to say, the only people supporting socialized healthcare on the internet and writing all these pro healthcare articles work for the government, not this many Americans can write a single article like rant without a single error, as well, the Obama Administration was caught logging all groups and organizations that opposed socialized healthcare.
----Now, you're just spreading conspiracy theories. Utterly silly. I wish the Government was paying me... but that's kind of the point, isn't it?
