COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[Mark Rippetoe]

Bumping this again. It's very important: https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/...EC-6-17-22.pdf

Remember that I was a geologist before I was a strength coach. This sums up my position on the gross situation:

A 4.6 billion-year-old planet with an 8000-mile diameter, with a molten core (heat, etc.), with an atmosphere that is only 50 miles/240,000ft thick (being rather generous), that orbits a star only 93 million miles away with 330,000 times the earth's mass and that emits enough radiation to burn your naked ass in 30 minutes, is having its weather unalterably changed over the course of the next 5/10/15 years (whatever it is now) by the presence of a weak greenhouse gas, CO2, that happens to now be at its lowest level in damn near the entire history of the planet -- a history punctuated by global glaciations while that weak greenhouse gas was far higher than it is now -- and that also happens to be the basis of plant life (and therefore atmospheric oxygen), a gas whose greenhouse effect is dwarfed by that of water vapor (on a planet with a surface area that consists of 70% water), and that geologically is currently in an interglacial period. The models that generated this political bullshit have predicted nothing correctly -- not sea level change, polar ice cover, or weather. To put it very mildly, the solar system is a multivariate and very complex place, with variables in effect that we know absolutely nothing about since we've only been observing it effectively for less than 50 years. But career researchers who publish on grant money for a living, and politicians who are paid to control things have determined that they KNOW what they cannot possibly know, and which makes no logical sense.

And everybody believes it anyway, to the extent that they are handing the management of the world's economy to elderly megalomaniacs with an agenda based on their own personal power, who run the world's governments. You're not even allowed to question it -- otherwise sensible people have agreed with the ridiculous premise that CO2 is a deadly poison that must be eliminated from the surface of the earth. Every August, everybody runs around like it's not supposed to be hot. Every time there's a drought, everybody acts like it's the very first time it's been dry too long. "Hurricane season" started in June, and how many hurricanes have devastated coastlines already inundated by the molten ice caps? How many times over the past 20 years of this shit have the hurricane predictions been correct? Climate is long weather, and they can't even predict the weather.

Really, the children are in charge now, seeking validation for "caring about the planet," running around yelling about "carbon" -- the 4th most abundant element in the physical universe --being a deadly poison. Their managers are common criminals whose entire agenda is money and control, and we are letting it happen. It is the result of the shitty science education we received in the government schools, and it probably cannot be stopped.

I have been following this for a very long time, and I live with a woman who is far more intelligent than I am, who is intimately familiar with both Science and Professional Research (two completely different things) in several areas of endeavor. The models do not predict anything correctly, have never predicted anything correctly, the data has been either massaged or blatantly falsified to bolster the models, and "climate science" is no more legitimate than nutrition science. The governments of the world pay for research through grants, and grants are not available for studies that contradict the anthropogenic climate change premise.

Somebody has to pay the salaries of people like Happer and Lindzen, since the NSF refuses to do so. Hell, if Exxon paid their salaries it wouldn't bother me, as long as what they published actually made sense and was actually reproducible, which would distinguish it from literally everything disgorged by the clowns at the IPCC. I don't have time to cite the examples I've seen over the last 20 years of studying this, and you don't have time to read them. If you are interested, they are available, but you have to look in places you probably don't visit very often -- the bottom of the internet is an interesting euphemism for places that disagree with your preferred narrative.

It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you are psychologically unable to analyze anything outside of what previously recognized authorities have told you to believe. -- Vox Day

[magadorm]

Student loans aren't real money. It isn't like the Fed or the seedy financial institution that gives a student 80k a year to go to school is going to the vault and getting cash or gold and sending it to the institution of higher learning.The bank is not using existing money. It is made up money being created by the loan. All loans work this way. Sure banks and thrifts have some rules about cash on hand and all that but how do you determine how much of a fiat currency to let loose in the wild? How much money did we supposedly just give the Ukraine. Cancelling Student loans would be deflationary. Less money in the system inflation goes does down.
Why do you think the FED exists? It isn't part of the government.

The Bank of England explains it:
Video: Bank of England explains money creation and QE, debunks money multipler [5 mins] : Economics

The Bank of England Just Explained How Investment Banks Make Their Money

One of the many issues with the Student Loan forgiveness is that when this is forgiven it is future revenue the government had on its books that is now gone. This loan forgiveness is supposed to total something like $400 billion. That will now be $400 billion more added to the budget deficit, that is not deflationary.

[francesco.decaro]

By definition, if a group of nations move to a common currency (which Bitcoin would be) they are fixing their exchange rate. This means, again by definition, that for some of those countries the exchange rate will be too low, thus locking in a competitive advantage, and for the others it will be too high, putting them at a permanent disadvantage.
After the fixing, the dynamics of inflation differentials will take over; given that prices are determined, in the main by cost of raw materials and wages, and you normally can't control the former (unless you are Russia, for example), nations in the group with higher inflation will have no choice but to adopt deflationary policies, which means high unemployment and lower salaries (and a cut in welfare and social services).
Should these policies succeed (and eventually they do, once the local population is impoverished enough), they will trigger a response from lower-inflation countries, eager to maintain their competitive advantage, and the game starts again.

The whole system is inherently deflationary, in the most vicious sense, and it's vividly demonstrated by the Eurozone, whose monetary system is even stricter than the post-WWII gold-based one (and is advantageous for Germany because it allows them NOT to revalue their currency).

That system had at least two mitigating features, that reduced the burden of adjustments on higher-inflation nations (thanks, of course, to the benevolence and tolerance of the USA. This tolerance has been abused, chiefly by Germany, with the predictable results we see playing out now): controls on capital movement, and a clear separation of banking activities from speculative ones (thanks to the Glass-Steagall-type legislation, which predates the Bretton Woods agreement, of course).

The Eurozone is Bretton Woods without any of these mitigating features; replacing fiat currencies with Bitcoin would be at least as bad, if not worse.
Personally I find it quite surprising that someone from Italy, who has probably experienced first hand the effects of using the wrong monetary system, can advocate Bitcoin (and its ilk) so blindly and uncritically.

IPB

You seem to think Bitcoin is something that governments can seize and legislate. Like it's some sort of central bank currency.
And how would it inflate again? And how is it not the best alternative we have at the moment?
And by "we" I mean individuals, not nations.

[anticausal]

One of the many issues with the Student Loan forgiveness is that when this is forgiven it is future revenue the government had on its books that is now gone. This loan forgiveness is supposed to total something like $400 billion. That will now be $400 billion more added to the budget deficit, that is not deflationary.

The interest paid might have some inflationary effect, but the debt itself is never being paid. It's literally never going to happen.

[Browndog]

Any chance you can elaborate? I'm curious. I already very much hate her, but it's good to know one's enemy.

Not to get too granular here:

I was a member of a non for profit here in WNY. We were performing a feasibility study for low income senior housing, and part of the program involved obtaining support from the State of NY, both politically and then through the granting of tax credits and such.

We reached out to local representatives at a City and County level, as well as her office as Lt Governor. We received strong support from the City, warm support from the County, and a cold shoulder from her office. It was thought that our organization was too skewed to supporting only the "wealthy" of Erie County...even though this specific project was for "low income, senior housing" in an area that desperately needed it and deserved it.

Of course it didn't stop her from taking a bow at the opening of another project we completed (without her help).

Add to that, I know a number of her staff from years back...and I'm not too fond of them either. I operate under the adage of: "you're known by the company you keep".

[Jovan Dragisic]

You seem to think Bitcoin is something that governments can seize and legislate. Like it's some sort of central bank currency.
And how would it inflate again? And how is it not the best alternative we have at the moment?
And by "we" I mean individuals, not nations.

Dude, again, it is amazing how little you know and how little you understand, and yet you keep going on. You have literally not understood a word of what IPB wrote, not a single word, and you are trying to put words into his mouth which he never uttered. If you continue down this path, you will embarrass yourself even more than you did with the slave thing. This is just a friendly reminder, I hope you don't listen to me, I actually find it really fun when people dunk on you...

[Jovan Dragisic]

Well said. Although, they'll probably tack on some requirements to try and make it inflationary anyway. We've been trained that "A little inflation is good! Deflation VERY BAD!", only because that "little inflation" keeps the scam going with low risk of revolution or unrest, while deflation ends it.

Inflation is not bad in itself. Italy ran the strongest growing economy in Europe for close to 50 years with inflation that would be considered life ending today. Their economy largely went to absolute shit once they accepted German appointed euro deflation. There are numerous such examples.

[francesco.decaro]

Dude, again, it is amazing how little you know and how little you understand, and yet you keep going on. You have literally not understood a word of what IPB wrote, not a single word, and you are trying to put words into his mouth which he never uttered. If you continue down this path, you will embarrass yourself even more than you did with the slave thing. This is just a friendly reminder, I hope you don't listen to me, I actually find it really fun when people dunk on you...

Hey it's fun for me to, at least I get new information and mabye learn something. That is why I asked those questions at the end of my statement.

Whether the move is fast or slow, it cannot be controlled by a central entity.
This is all theoretical and there are people who think it's all a big scam and central institutions can just pull the plug on it whenever they want. I say they can't, because they would've already and because the algorithm and the whole network is set up in a way where that is very close to impossible.
Bitcoin is a different kind of money and a different kind of technology.
One of the mistakes people have made when adapting a new technology is trying to implement it on the previous infrastructure aka thinking of Bitcoin as identical to fiat money and using it as such.

I would also like to know how the printing of trillions of dollars out of thin air is not responsible for inflation, unemployment and low wages, but a deflationary decentralized private currency would be. You cannot legislate Bitcoin and create policies to make it inflationary or deflationary. If so, I'd like to know how

[conradbc]

That will now be $400 billion more added to the budget deficit, that is not deflationary.

"The Budget" has nothing to do with any of this. An increase in fiat cash causes inflation, a decrease causes deflation. It is all theatre and meant to distract.

[Yngvi]

The interest paid might have some inflationary effect, but the debt itself is never being paid. It's literally never going to happen.

It is inflationary if the car dealerships are willing take a $10,000 cancellation of debt notice as a down payment on a car.
I am not certain it is outside of the realm of possibility in the 2020s.

IQ over 120 will often hurt a STEM graduate's job prospects as an American in the US rather than helping them.
If you talk to current engineers, scientists, IT personnel etc., they will tell you 80% of the employees are not competent enough to do their job and get very little done....but the company still chooses to hire and retain them anyway.