Avesism

well, i went ahead and took your advise. it's now displaying my options up top in a language that i am fully unfamiliar with. any help on how to get it to read in english would be much appreciated!

Yeah, is has kind of a weird status. Technically the Fed isn't even part of the government. But they do have the power to print money, which anyone else would get thrown in jail for. I guess quasi-governmental would be the best way to describe it.

If something that used to cost $1.00 now costs $1.96, then it's roughly twice as expensive. So money has lost half its value, not 96%. It's true that the value of money has declined, which is another way of saying that the price of things has been rising. But wages have been rising too. I don't know what the actual number is for average income in 1913 and 2000, but I'm sure it more than doubled. So, on average, we're a lot better off than we were in 1913. And sometimes inflation is actually driven by increasing wages. You're right that the fed prints money (or just creates it electronically). But the Fed does not fund the US government. There's two markets for US government bonds: the primary and the secondary market. This is kind of technical, but it's absolutely crucial to understanding what the Fed does. The primary market is when the government issues bonds -it's the government selling bonds to raise money. The secondary market is when people who have already bought the bonds resell them. The money in the secondary market goes to whoever owned the bond, not the government. The Fed buys (and sells) bonds in the secondary market. It does not buy bonds in the primary market, precisely because this would be printing money and handing it to the government. And this would cause hyperinflation. So the Fed is not responsible for the the welfare state and us being the world police. We still fought wars before it was created. And it's true that the Chinese are lending the US government some absurd amount of money, but the Fed has nothing to do with that either.

wire- sand IN my joints

something tells me we're both waiting on the same person.

congrats J!!!

the game was fixed.

i am officially relinquishing my fair weather football fandom. this season i somehow forgot that i dont like watching fucking football because it's too fucking intense, and i have no fun working myself into within heart attack range. in fact, i hardly paid attention this season until all this undefeated talk infected my fucking brain. i'm done. this is fucking insane. i'm trying to figure out how i can avoid the media completely for the next month. fuck this. so this is what the yankees fans felt like in the 2004 alcs. at least with this season over, i can look forward to baseball starting up again and not have to substitute it with that nerve racking fucking sport. go sox.

i cant take this shit

new york hits the field with daft punk playing. new england hits the field with ozzy playing. OZZY FTW!

Hey, this is Theme's brother, the one with the master's in Economics. I'm not a beltwayite, but I do work in the financial sector and I read a lot of literature on finance and economics. So I feel a have a decent grip of the issues, and there isn't a lot of support among economists for eliminating the Fed. I don't know of any serious serious economists that support it. What do you mean when you say that the Fed has caused the purchasing power of the dollar in 2008 to be worth $.04? I'm not clear what this number means. Are you talking about the exchange rate? If you are then your numbers are way off. As for the Fed printing money to finance wars, that's not what it does. If it did, the US government wouldn't be running a budget deficit - they would just print more money. The Fed has nothing to do with foreign policy. We fought the Spanish American War while we were on the gold standard, so I don't see how going back on it would keep us from being the world police. As far as inflation, you're right that inflation kills capital, but is this something you're really worried about? You say that economists are the only people who urge you to buy stocks. Well stockholders tend to have a lot of capital, so they're the ones who would be most hurt by inflation. You're also correct that going back on gold would virtually eliminate inflation, but the Fed can also do this. It ended the inflation of the late 70s and early 80s by limiting the growth of the money supply. Listen, I'm not trying to say that the Fed is the greatest or most democratic institution ever. But you guys seem to have no idea what it actually does. If you think the Fed is "controlling our economy from the shadows," maybe you're just not reading the right media. There are a whole slew of magazines and newspapers that report on the Fed's every move. I think the Iraq war was possibly the greatest mistake in the history of our country. I think that personal liberty is under threat because of the Patriot Act. I just don't see what the Fed has to do with any of this.

bump because im listening to "i lost all my money at the cock fights" and it kicks serious ass...

funny, my brother has his masters in economics and has been working with and in the "economists community" for some time now. i've heared quite the opposite from him and every single one of his colleagues. the jist of it being that doing away with the federal reserve would create the biggest disaster our nation has ever been through.

lol, yeah because we all know that getting rid of the federal reserve is a brilliant idea.

funny though, seeing that even his supporters have basically surrendered to the fact that he is simply not going to win, this thread seems to have turned more into a republican/libertarian meet and greet thread. and you were all so enthusiastic in the beginning!

that still doesnt fit the definition of smarmy. in fact, you gave a list of synonyms for the word. the definition paraphrased is relating to a false sense of earnestness. that covers all politicians, but just the same, poor choice of words. and if you had paid attention to out past discussions, you would know that none of those mentioned by you are my candidate. fail. http://www.merriamwebster.com

im fully aware of the definition of smarmy. you havent given any sort of explanation for your use of the word. especially when you didn't even specify a candidate in your original post. give examples or fail.

wine kills me. just a sip and i'm suffering the next morning.

my coworker tipped me off to carbohydrates for getting rid of a hangover. a coffee with lots of sugar, a bagel, 3 advil and 2 kolonapin seems to have done the trick.

err...ok? i believe you've used "smarmy" out of context.

please elaborate on "smarmy candidate."

just out of curiosity, do you paul supporters really still think this guy stands a chance of becoming president?

where's the drak from floe crew flicks?

check you out. young man, im not trying to diss your hero. just calling it as i see it. as far as what i have done....i keep my shit off the internet intentionally, and got nothing to prove. ask about me and act like you know. anyway, im not trying to get all sym bashing. so i'll jump off this thread and you can get back to nut huggin.

what i can get mad about is the blatant disrespect and ignorance of clipping that brown throw and the smile character that had been riding on that spot for 15 years. i wonder if this kid even knew what graffiti was 15 years ago. that's a newjack move. again, props for going big, respect? none earned.