I agree that the opinion expressed above is absolutely nothing more then my gut feeling. Never said it was anything more. I freely admit that I do not have hard data to back it up. However, as far as I can tell neither does our friend Mr. Armstrong.

I read all the links including the linked "proof" and find it simply unconvincing. Armstrong's table of predictions presented
here makes it seem as though he made all these predictions in the 1985 World Economic Conference. However, that chart of predictions looks to have been made using a modern version of powerpoint.

When I try to find actual documented predictions from 1985 I can't find anything independent ie not published by Armstrong himself. Even Armstrong's own self published proof from 1985 is less than breathtaking.
http://armstrongeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Princeton-Economics-Correspondence-1985.pdf


Ok kinda sorta maybe. But a new global monetary system in just over a year? That does not seem too probable right now and time is rapidly running out.

Sorry but the more I look at Armstrong the less convinced I am. Armstrong claims his data and predictions come from his proprietary computer model.
http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/06/20/self-aware-artificial-intelligence/


However, he states he will never share the source of his predictions or his methodology with us.
http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/12/13/open-source-perhaps-the-real-curse/


Armstrong is definitly interesting though. I agree with his article about the importance of of capital flows and his prediction that US stocks are going to do better then others in the short term. He is reportedly writing a book and I will buy that as long as its reasonably priced. He is interesting enough that I have kept an eye on his webpage over the last several months. Nevertheless I stand by my claim that he is a prophet or soothsayer if you prefer that word.

Mr. Armstrong claims he has a personal link to a self-aware computer which he is using to predict the future. He refuses to share his methodology with us and we just have to take his word for it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I just don't see it here.

Just because the theft is a minuscule theft spread across millions of victims does not make it any less of a theft.
What is stolen is purchasing power aka value. The value of all of the other money in the economy drops whenever new money is created by banks.

A banks does not need deposits to make a loan. If a bank with no extra deposits wanted to give out a million dollar loan they just do it. Its not completely cost free. They are required to keep 10% of loans on reserve with the FED. However, if they are short the $100,000 they can simply get that money from the FED itself where it is lent to them at the Federal Funds Rate (currently 0.25). That done they simply credit the borrowers electronic account with a million dollars. Simultaneously all other existing money is diluted in value.

Finance Part I: Understanding the Parasite
Finance Part II: The Parasitic Cycle
Finance Part III: Divide, Conquer, Enslave


In an economic system that is systemically rotten yet sanctioned by law as good and normal a population with a declining moral standard should not come as a surprise.

Be careful about calling things too early. Personally I don't think things will collapse by 2016 it is just too soon for collapse.
There is plenty more "dry power" QE to be thrown at the world economy.Confidence in central banks is not yet broken and I doubt it will be by 2016.



I think you posted this picture up thread somewhere or I saw it after following one of your links. I am remain skeptical of Armstrong being a big skeptic of prophets in general. Nevertheless, the time frame here 2033 seems more realistic to me.

I can see the populace starting to lose faith after the next 19 years are filled with a full generation of QE. However, if the economy takes a dive in 2016 I think we will just see QE 5 and kick the can a little farther down the road.



“All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.” - George Bernard Shaw (Socialist and founding member of the Labor Party)

If I was a child in this situation I would want my parents to let me die quickly and as painlessly as possible as an infant.

You seem to to be confusing withdrawing of unnatural and invasive medical therapies with execution.  This child is not having her life ended. The mother is refusing further invasive and unnatural medical care.


If the child is unable to say
"I am in pain please stop torturing me and let me die"
We should just keep the torture going forever huh?
Seems a bit harsh to me.

Personally I would rather rely on the parents who are the ones most likely to love and care for the child and choose what is in the best interest of the child.

Agreed the child cannot choose anything and in this case will never be able to choose anything.
Foster parents make an average of $800-1000 dollars a month per child they watch. They often try to watch more then one so they can make more.

This child would require someone who has undergone extensive training on how to take care of her. Care of this child requires multiple and regular administration of tube feedings, care of the feeding tube, multiple daily diaper changes, daily showers and transfers form her bed to a wheelchair. Daily checks for skin breakdown on the buttocks and other pressure areas looking for pressure wounds.

She needs someone who will watch her and be there for her 24 hours a day. No foster parent is going to accept that for $800 a month. No responsible child protective service would put a child with this level of special needs into the foster care system where it is a guarantee she would not get properly cared for. She would need to be placed in a nursing home.

The mother is the child's legal guardian. She is the one entrusted to make decision for the child.

Did you read the article? The child is blind, cannot speak or communicate, and in constant agony. No family is going to adopt this child. No way foster care is an option. A child like this needs round the clock 24 hour care. Essentially the choice is have a full time 24 hour caregiver ie mom stay home and dedicate the rest of her life to watching the child or put the child in a nursing home funded by the taxpayers and have nurses watch her in shifts until the child dies. It is disingenuous to pretend such a child could ever be adopted.

Note this is not a decision about letting a child die. This is a decision about stopping aggressive unnatural medical interventions (in this case forcing food down a tube into the stomach of a child who was and never will be capable of eating) and letting nature take its course.

Personally I think this is a mistake.
Things are bad in the US and getting worse but most everywhere else is in even poorer shape.

The economic system is the same or worse elsewhere and the US has the advantage of

1) Strong libertarian and IT movements
2) Guns
3) A good constitution. (not enforced but still better then nothing)

The US will be the last to suffer from the coming debt collapse and likely among the first to bounce back and recover.

Once upon a time when money was not fiat defaulting on a loan meant you had lost someone else's hard earned capital.
That was regarded as shameful and rightly so.

Personally I would never in a million years default on a peer to peer loan like a prosper loan regardless of my financial circumstances. Defaulting on such a loan is stealing from someone who worked and earned their money and is trying to earn a return lending it out.

It would not bother me at all, however, to default on a home mortgage. That money is in no way someones hard earned savings. The bank simply created it from nothing. In effect they are lending me stolen money and I have no problem defaulting on thieves.

People are proud to declare bankruptcy because they feel that they are screwing over a bunch of crooks. Truth be told they are largely correct in this judgement.

Regarding student loans the policy would have to be applied to all student loans for it to be effective.
 

The situation you are describing a good student deliberately defaulting on loans can be handled in much better ways then the government enforced debt slavery we have now.

If this became genuine problem, and that is a big if as we seemed to do just fine before 1976 a much better solution is name and shame. If people who have the ability to repay start defaulting on student loans just extend the period of time such a default stays on your credit report for as long as it takes to minimize the problem.

If you had a good job and good income prospects would you default on your student loans if it meant being cut off from the credit markets for 15, 20 or even 30 years. Most of these individuals would see the wisdom of maintaining access to the credit markets.
Poor suckers who go to fly by night diploma mills and have no hope of paying off their loans would have an out.  

Costs of tuition and the size of these loans would also drop dramatically if we get rid of the government guarantees and government enforced debt slavery. That alone would drastically mitigate the problem.

 

Not at all. I am sure her doctors were good people who worked hard to save the life of a very sick child.
I am not at all certain, however, that the mother had any idea what she was getting into when she consented to various invasive procedures to "save" her child's life when she was an infant.  

The problem is a cultural one. We as a society are unwilling to ever let nature take its course.
Medicine does not focus on the long term but rather the immediate problem.

Combine that with a false belief among the masses that doctors can cure anything and a false hope that maybe they will someday invent something that can reverse severe brain damage and you have a setup for tragedy.

If your theory was correct we would expect to see a massive drop off in personal bankruptcies after 1976. All of those college students getting a free ride and bailing out on their student loans right?



If student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy as they absolutely should be then lenders would be much more careful about giving them out. Strong students at good schools would still be able to get loans. Week students at fly by night for profit diploma mills not so much. Some students would have to work a little to finish school. Schools would not be able to ramp up tuition as much as they wanted without losing enrollment. College in general would be much much cheaper then it is today. Lets look at what happened to the cost of college after this change.



The cost of college has increased by more then 12 fold since 1976 grossly exceeding inflation. What allowed this to happen? Those nonchargeable government guaranteed student loans.


I stand corrected. If after paying your fiat overlords and buying groceries you have less then $117 dollars left
the state will generously allow you to file chapter 7 bankruptcy. Click here if you want to read exactly how this is calculated. If you have $118 dollars, however, off to the slave pens you go.

Coming soon: Lenders work with the IRS. Generously reduce loan payments! Struggling borrowers now given deferred payment options to ensure they have at least $120 dollars in disposable income each month. Adoring masses cheer.

I have no problem with this one very few people realize just how long we can sustain life unnaturally. Cant eat anymore we feed you through a tube. Sick to the point where you intestines cant absorb nutrients no problem we can feed you directly into you veins with TPN (liquid nutrients). Can't breath anymore no problem we will put you on a ventilator. Heart is shot we can put a mechanical LVAD (heart assist device in).

We can and will keep you going on and on while you family watches you gradually and progressively deteriorate. Eventually something will fail that we can't stop. We can not replace liver function yet. Also chronic infection may set in something that wont respond to antibiotics.

This poor mom has taken care of an extremely sick child for 12 years. A child that had no hope of ever growing into an healthy adult. A child that in any other time would have died naturally as an infant. Don't judge her unless you truly understand what she has been through.

ScryptAsic you are confusing fraud with bankruptcy

Fraud is the intentional use of deceit a trick or some dishonest means to deprive another of his or her money.
It absolutely sounds like you were the victim of fraud with some of your prosper loans. You problem in proving that is that prosper loans are more or less high risk by definition. It is primarily used by people who have been cut off from the regular banking industry due to bad credit high debt. This makes fraud hard to prove but I understand why you are rightfully pissed.

You said such individuals should be labeled scammers. This is the appropriate response to such behavior.
This used to happen when someone declared bankruptcy. Once upon a time when people declared bankruptcy their debts were wiped clean, their hard assets seized, and their credit was ruined. This is the proper response. Label them a scammer/deadbeat and cut them off from future debt and the ability to default on others. The only role for the state should be gross criminal fraud and the bar for intervention must and should be very high.

What many fail to realized is that our entire economic system is fraudulent. You worked very hard for your money and are justifiably very angry when someone walks away with it after making only three payments. But this is small time fraud. Any financial entity can essentially create the same money you worked so hard to collect and fund that same prosper loan. However, instead of having to work for it like you did they can essentially just create it almost for free. Each time they do so they are stealing from me you and everyone else. This theft is no different from the theft of the deadbeat prosper lender who takes out a loan with the intent of defaulting right away.

Fractional reserve allows financial interest to load us up with student debts, credit card debts, car loans, prosper loans. There is no limit to the amount of debt they can create. Each created debt steals a little more from the productive members of society who actually produce and earn their living.

The only risk such finance faces is default. If a mistake is made and money is lent to someone without enough assets to seize finance could face a loss. This is why we are seeing and will continue to see a gradual tightening of the noose around the indebted masses.

Before 1976 all debt could be discharged when you were bankrupt. First non profit student loans were exempt from protection in 1976. Then in 1986 private student loans were exempt from bankruptcy. In 2005 chapter 7 bankruptcy protection was denied for anyone earning over the median income in their state regardless of how much debt they were in. Now in 2014 case law is gradually being created allowing 25% automatic wage garnishments for all debts. The rules are being rewritten and the masses are gradually being led into slave pens built using money that was stolen from us all.  

The future trend is obvious. Gradual and continued tightening of debt slavery. Options and the ability to free yourself will become more and more limited. When the masses go through periodic mini revolts the financial interest will shift gears for a few years and back their "people" in the other party. Then we can expect cycles of higher taxes government bailouts and asset seizures from the "rich people" who can afford to fund prosper loans and are not paying their "fair share". Back and forth it will go with ever higher taxes ever higher debt and growing debt slavery until the system either collapses or maybe just maybe we evolve into something better.

Yep really. That quote was indeed my reaction when I first read the links in post #1. However, AnonyMints economic predictions are rather dire.

I do very well under our current system of government. A very large portion of my salary comes from the taxpayer and government spending.

Personally I will be much better off financially if the economic theories above are false. However, I am unable to find any serious flaws in them. Nothing would make me happier then for someone to convincingly demonstrate that Anonymint is completely wrong.

Unfortunatly, however, despite a lot of interesting conversation AnonyMint's thesis has held up rather well.

An honest and ethical banking system would operate without any fractional reserve money creation.

Banks should have two kinds of deposits.

1) Deposits that are not lent out but kept for immediate withdraw. Banks should be required to keep 100% of these on hand and would charge the depositor a fee for this service.

2) Deposits that are lent out as loans. This money once lent would not be available for withdraw and the interest paid on the loan would go directly to the depositor. The bank would take a fee to administer the loan and identify appropriate borrowers.

Combine this with an honest currency. This could be gold or better yet cryptocurrency something that is non fiat with an inflation rate of population growth rate + 1-2% a year.

You can not blame socialism for creating income inequality. Even in times when socialism was a shadow of what it is today 1870-1900. You had the robber barons and massive income inequality.

What socialism does is protect such entities from competition that might otherwise destroy them. Socialism allows such monopolistic growths to cease innovating and and simply survive as parasites on the population.  

Our problem is not socialism but our underlying fractional reserve based economic system. Socialism might work just fine in an economy with honest money, were fractional reserve lending was outlawed, and where government was required keep a balanced budget and barred from issuing debt.

The problem with any such dream system is its tendency to naturally decay into what we have today. In today's world socialism is simply the tool finance will use to steal the wealth of the upper 51-98% of the population. The bottom 1-50% has already been mostly wiped out by fractional reserve, debt, and usury.  
  

It appears he has. I think he wrote somewhere that he scrambles his passwords every so often as a form of self imposed exile. Personally I just log off but that's just me.

Personal quirks aside. Its been almost a year now since I started this thread. I did not do so because I wanted to promote Anonymint's economic writings.

I started this thread because I wanted others to find flaws in his economic theory that I could not find. 18 pages later I have yet to see much in the way of serious counterargument. I see a lot of "Agonymint is so arrogant" and "Its so hard to understand what he is saying" but no convincing critiques or counterarguments.

Personally I could care less about personality or arrogance. What interests me is one simple question: Is he right?

Agreed and this is just the beginning. In most states if you lose your home or car and the mortgage the lender can go after you for any remaining outstanding debt. We are sure to see wage garnishments in this area too. Garnishing the wages of someone who just lost their home is no different really.  

It completely baffles me how otherwise intelligent conservative people cheer for this this gutting of the working Joe. Where are all these newly destitute formerly middle class folks going to turn? They will of course turn to whomever promises to raise taxes on the "rich" and help them. This economic impoverishment drives the growth of socialism and government like like fuel for a wildfire.

Finance Part III: Divide, Conquer, Enslave



Impressive summary on Capital One. I had no idea their CEO was so deeply enmeshed in the FED.

Until recently this was limited almost exclusively to existing hard assets and typically reserved for gross abusers of the system ie a deadbeats who maxed out his credit cards but had lots of money in the bank and just did not want to pay.

What you are seeing today is an oppression of the middle class using the state to enforce unsecured debt to grab future earnings in perpetuity and this is very new. Here are a few things that have facilitated this change:

1) Chapter 7 bankruptcy is now much harder to file. These garnishments would have been rare in the past as it was much easier for people in trouble to file bankruptcy and start over.

2) Lenders are using sophisticated methods to track the employment and income of those in debt. Capital One and the like leave the debt in limbo accumulating high interest and don't engage in an aggressive attempts to collect until the debtor starts to get back on his feet. That is when they apply the thumbscrews.

3) Courts are shifting the entire cost of the debt collection to the debtor. These cost used to be born by the lender.

4) Courts are allowing high interest debts to continue to accumulate after a judgement is made. In the past courts would set a repayment plan the freeze or cap the interest on the debt.

Together these morph credit card debt from a high risk bet on the part of the bank to an almost guaranteed low risk proposition. Seizing all future earning in perpetuity is very problematic policy and essentially a form government sanctioned slavery. It should only be used in the most extreme situations if ever. Certainly not for unsecured debt.  

In ancient times they had similar rules. Fall behind on your debt and you were required to sell yourself into slavery to pay them. Some cultures justified this by requiring the slave owner to pay the slave a pitiful salary so the slave had some hypothetical method of freeing himself after several decades.

Nothing wrong with that policy right? After all not paying your debts is theft. Bring out the chains.

Your statement above is grossly and provably false.

Finance Part I: Understanding the Parasite