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Odin wrote on 2013-04-26 04:32
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425
Read this in detail.
A lot of people have probably suspected it even without any kind of conspiracy theory to back it up or justify it.
It turns out that some time in the mid 90s, banks learned that they could manipulate prices on a global scale for nearly market, and use that knowledge to their advantage.
Now it's reached a point where they have so much money and influence, that they can even admit to it and get away with it.
And this has probably happened over and over again in nearly every market out there.
If there's one thing that history shows, it's that absolute power corrupts.
Well, it looks like there really is one or more people who have access to absolute power through the guise of the world banking systems.
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Cucurbita wrote on 2013-04-26 05:19
Its not really a conspiracy. All the information was public and there. They never had to admit to anything because every criminal offensive they've committed is out in broad daylight.
Its like they're saying "come at me bros" and we're like "no thanks, thats scary"
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BobYoMeowMeow wrote on 2013-04-26 06:21
^ this
everyone knows that a finance based economy will result in rich people becoming richer
you need money in the first place to make money
poor countries owe these banks money
everyone is working a plebeian wage compared to the U.S.'s total wealth.
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TLCBonaparte wrote on 2013-04-26 14:15
Quote from BobYoMeowMeow;1076075:
^ this
everyone knows that a finance based economy will result in rich people becoming richer
you need money in the first place to make money
poor countries owe these banks money
everyone is working a plebeian wage compared to the U.S.'s total wealth.
That's not what either of them are saying.
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BobYoMeowMeow wrote on 2013-04-26 15:31
It's additional context for the idea that the system is stacked.
The article mentioned global interest rates and how easy it is to destroy competition through manipulating prices and coercion among themselves.
Small banks cannot win. All the money and credit is stacked in the top banks.
http://blogs.hbr.org/leadinggreen/2008/09/shortterm-strategies-dont-work.html
People turn towards banks to take out loans or to invest into something. A lot of people in the modern world want and use credit.
Poor countries are suckered into debt with crippling interest rate because they have to spend money for development. They only end up being able to afford the interest.
Politicians turns towards banks because it's so expensive to run a campaign.
Yes, it is stacked but only because people accepted that they want to live in a world where a person can become obscenely rich.
There's lots of people who want to become one of these people.
Ivy school graduates often go to work on Wall Street.
http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2012/02/08/sections/letters/5440/index.xml
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Sumpfkraut wrote on 2013-04-26 16:41
I see the invisible hand is lame, again. Happens awfully often.
Cases like these could be handled realtively well and fairly. Strip the responsible individuals of all their possessions, give them a fresh lower class start and prohibit them from working in finances ever again. I think the cost of monitoring them for lifetime is easily offset by the opportunity cost of not doing anything about it at all. Also put the banks under absolute majority of state ownership to give future banks incentive to not hire crooks, and incentive for the state to search for crooks more dilligently.
It's got its flaws, but it still beats the classic approach. Punishing a company and its customers and if big enough even threaten the world economy thus, because its managers abuse it to run nations into the ground at will? The only sound option is to punish the people responsible.
Businesses are legal entities, not conscious entities.
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Perfectio wrote on 2013-05-05 18:59
>b-but muh free markets
Face it guys, if you're to the right of Paul Krugman, you're batshit insane or deeply delusional. The invisible hand is a mailed fist punching everyone making below 1m in the balls.
The history of capitalism is not and has never been mutual exchange, but armed , state-backed expropriation of resources and elimination of the people who previously owned said resources, combined by massive fraud and theft. I'm not saying socialism is the absolute solution but "free markets" are not free whatsoever.
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TLCBonaparte wrote on 2013-05-07 02:04
At least Bill Gates give something back to the people, he's not perfect but we need more rich people like him.
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Sumpfkraut wrote on 2013-05-07 20:46
Quote from Perfectio;1082611:
The history of capitalism is not and has never been mutual exchange, but armed , state-backed expropriation of resources and elimination of the people who previously owned said resources, combined by massive fraud and theft. I'm not saying socialism is the absolute solution but "free markets" are not free whatsoever.
I don't think creating a false good-evil dichotomy by throwing completely different even if sometimes coexisting economical systems (
remember, the world is complicated) together and bashing it as though it's one and the same is a very honest or accurate approach. The East Indian Trade Company had jack shit to do with a free market.
But yes, laissez-faire economics are pretty primitive.
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Perfectio wrote on 2013-05-09 01:40
Well, it's not so much the idea of a free market but the ideology which uses the idea of free markets to promote de facto serfdom combined with the idea of people having a sacred right to wealth and property that emanated from the Original Gangsta version of the Holocaust (you know, the version that makes the Nazi one look like a barroom brawl).
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Sumpfkraut wrote on 2013-05-09 10:12
I have no clue what you're saying.
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Perfectio wrote on 2013-05-09 12:38
Basically, the wealth that free-market radicals are so keen to defend was not acquired through peaceful exchange, but atrocities ranging from "merely" exploitation to outright genocide. Compare how many Native Americans were here before Columbus to how many there are now. The current wealthy in much of the world are wealthy almost solely because of violent state interventions against poor/dark/etc people. Even if one didn't oneself kill or enslave anyone, many of the rich entrepreneurs are sitting on land/resources violently expropriated from other people.
Now, I'm not saying we should abandon the USA and leave it to what few natives are left or something, but the point is that acquired wealth is not sacred, not above the law (and that's what libertarianism is, the idea that wealth and privilege should be above the law as long as it follows certain rules that favor wealth and privilege to begin with), and can and should be forcibly redistributed (yes, I said it) for the sake of national interest or the welfare of the people. If force was used to acquire wealth for private purposes, force can be used to take wealth for public purposes. But free market cargo cult theory says that the rich are "job creators" and taxing them, nationalizing their resources, etc etc, would hurt the "economy" (as measured by stock markets or the feelings of bonds traders, classical economists, and bankers, as opposed to the middle and lower classes who indisputably benefit from statist economic policy)
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Sumpfkraut wrote on 2013-05-09 13:02
Ah I see it now. I was perplexed by your genocide comment because I do not consider the emergence of classical liberalism (Britain and France) related to the, uh, domestic policy of the US at that time.
Aside of that you are certainly right about what you said, depending on the strength and way of implementation of governmental economic action.