Big Message in A Small Package

[BobK71]

I have a framed copy of a October, 1929 front page of the New York Times.

Apart from the big headline that the stock market had dropped a lot, plus the headline that top bankers were organizing a rescue of the market, there were just the usual politics and personalities, mostly issues that didn't stay fresh over the decades.

There was nothing about how we got here, how people were borrowing money to buy stocks, what the future might look like, and how the system really works.  In short, no analysis that would have been unhelpful.

Instead, you have a warning that, if you bet against this system, powerful people are working to make you pay.  If you bet ON this system, on the other hand, well, hang in there.  Help is on the way.  Keep your trust.

Some of us might think of today's world in terms of chaos and moral decay, and yesterday as the golden age.  The truth is, nothing really changes over the centuries.

If a leading paper of the 'free' and 'independent' press of the 'free world' had clearly been compromised, in one way or another, it helps to show that the nature of the modern world system is cancerous.  By that, I mean that the incentives are set up so the rot reaches the very center of the system, very quickly.

Even we ourselves, by being citizens of the West, have been compromised in a sense.  We have enjoyed our artificially propped-up currencies and perhaps subconsciously know that we must look away and not pop the various bubbles, in order to continue to enjoy the benefits.  If the ultimate cost is the death of children in Syria, well, all these conspiracy theories must be wrong.  You can't have conspiracies that big.

The reality is that overt conspiracies aren't always needed, when a properly distributed set of benefits, combined with public 'ignorance' and the power of banks and the state, will do.

Nevertheless, what has penetrated everything in this world is theft and deception.  Trust no one (except me!)

[Xester]

I have a framed copy of a October, 1929 front page of the New York Times.

Apart from the big headline that the stock market had dropped a lot, plus the headline that top bankers were organizing a rescue of the market, there were just the usual politics and personalities, mostly issues that didn't stay fresh over the decades.

There was nothing about how we got here, how people were borrowing money to buy stocks, what the future might look like, and how the system really works.  In short, no analysis that would have been unhelpful.

Instead, you have a warning that, if you bet against this system, powerful people are working to make you pay.  If you bet ON this system, on the other hand, well, hang in there.  Help is on the way.  Keep your trust.

Some of us might think of today's world in terms of chaos and moral decay, and yesterday as the golden age.  The truth is, nothing really changes over the centuries.

If a leading paper of the 'free' and 'independent' press of the 'free world' had clearly been compromised, in one way or another, it helps to show that the nature of the modern world system is cancerous.  By that, I mean that the incentives are set up so the rot reaches the very center of the system, very quickly.

Even we ourselves, by being citizens of the West, have been compromised in a sense.  We have enjoyed our artificially propped-up currencies and perhaps subconsciously know that we must look away and not pop the various bubbles, in order to continue to enjoy the benefits.  If the ultimate cost is the death of children in Syria, well, all these conspiracy theories must be wrong.  You can't have conspiracies that big.

The reality is that overt conspiracies aren't always needed, when a properly distributed set of benefits, combined with public 'ignorance' and the power of banks and the state, will do.

Nevertheless, what has penetrated everything in this world is theft and deception.  Trust no one (except me!)

You have some major points there but the way you deliver your message was messy and it is hard to understand. I do give you a good rate in the words that you said "trust no one". But it is funny when you said that that there is an exception and that is you. To add in your statement, for me trusting no one doesnt mean that we should hate everyone but we must act with an open mind. We must be aware and always asking questions if what is displayed in front of us is true or not.

[Mometaskers]

As someone who's mostly ignorant on how things work (heck, can't even wrap my head around conspiracy theories) I mostly just let myself be washed away by the current. Like you mentioned yourself, try paddling upstream and you can find yourself sinking. This is just to large for one man to completely understand, much more go against. Be like the crypto-Jews. Keep it all to yourself. If you're small enough, they just might not notice you. Freedom is really overrated. No one's ever truly free. Same can be said for free will.

Trust no one (except me!)

You can't tell me what to do! 

[Iranus]

As someone who's mostly ignorant on how things work (heck, can't even wrap my head around conspiracy theories) I mostly just let myself be washed away by the current. Like you mentioned yourself, try paddling upstream and you can find yourself sinking. This is just to large for one man to completely understand, much more go against. Be like the crypto-Jews. Keep it all to yourself. If you're small enough, they just might not notice you. Freedom is really overrated. No one's ever truly free. Same can be said for free will.

Trust no one (except me!)

You can't tell me what to do! 

Free will is irrelevant because man kind has perceived free will.  But to stay on topic, Bitcoin is our simple way of escaping the banking system and mainstream currency, without necessarily even fully understanding the banking system, which we don't always need to do.

But to be honest in some cases fiat does actually help people - you mention the benefits given to people, and isn't ignorance bliss for some people?  If everyone knew about Bitcoin most people wouldn't make a profit from it because the main gains of it are from increases in adoption.

[BobK71]

As someone who's mostly ignorant on how things work (heck, can't even wrap my head around conspiracy theories) I mostly just let myself be washed away by the current. Like you mentioned yourself, try paddling upstream and you can find yourself sinking. This is just to large for one man to completely understand, much more go against. Be like the crypto-Jews. Keep it all to yourself. If you're small enough, they just might not notice you. Freedom is really overrated. No one's ever truly free. Same can be said for free will.

One thing is for sure, the elites don't mess around.  The system is set up so most people will be parted from their wealth one way or another: if you stay safe, the entire system is designed to inflate other people's paper wealth and dilute your own.  If you play the game, you never know when the elites will lose control.  When they do, you'll surely pay a big price.

There's no real safety.  If you're smart and spend a lot of time on it, you may gain some statistical advantage, but not many people can do even that.

It may seem that the system is too complex to understand.  I think the truth is the opposite.  Assuming we distinguish between understanding the theft and knowing how to play the system (the latter is hard), it's remarkably easy if you look at it from the right angle.  It's just that the elites don't want people to take that angle.

There's nothing wrong with being philosophical about the whole thing -- we just hope we can tell the difference between noble resignation and laziness.

[BobK71]

You have some major points there but the way you deliver your message was messy and it is hard to understand. I do give you a good rate in the words that you said "trust no one". But it is funny when you said that that there is an exception and that is you. To add in your statement, for me trusting no one doesnt mean that we should hate everyone but we must act with an open mind. We must be aware and always asking questions if what is displayed in front of us is true or not.

If I get more comments that my message is hard to understand, I may have to change my style.

Right, that last part was not serious.

And to add to your statement about trust, I was really thinking mostly of the mass media today (and the mainstream commentary in general.)  It doesn't take a genius to see that the US mainstream media was filtering major information to help Hilary Clinton -- it didn't work, but does it mean my warning was unnecessary?

(Apparently the Russian-hacked information that was embarrassing to Clinton was not important enough to report during the campaign, but now it is important enough, to show that Russia helped Trump!)

I'm not so sure, since everything in the financial media and literature told us that money market funds were as good as cash, until it turned out there was no legal guarantee of any kind, during the crisis in 2008.  Perhaps we're better at seeing through political BS than the financial.

[Hydrogen]

Historians and textbooks never seem to divulge information that helps people understand what real history is.

During World War I, one of the generals had an opportunity to attack a mining facility one of the armies relied on to produce munitions. If they attacked they could have ended the war years earlier. Their superiors ordered them to stand down. When one country was low on iron or gunpowder, sometimes, they would be provided with the resources they needed to continue the war by a country they were at war with.

The same thing happens today, the united states is at war with the taliban in afghanistan. The war could have been over years ago, if the united states attacked taliban opium fields which the taliban rely on to buy weapons and pay soldiers. Instead US soldiers are guarding taliban opium fields, & opium production is way up.

After the great depression a set of laws called glass steagall were implemented to prevent that type of crisis from happening again in the future. Around 1999, under Bill Clinton's administration, glass steagall was repealed. Only took about 9 years later for the same thing that happened during the great depression to happen again in 2008. People probably don't see a problem with glass steagall being repealed. Textbooks and historians don't teach the reason for how glass steagall and similar measures prevent crisis.

The history & textbooks taught in schools seem like they could be a lie created to leave people vulnerable and make it easy to prey upon their lack of knowledge. That seems like it could be an issue facing society.

[BobK71]

Historians and textbooks never seem to divulge information that helps people understand what real history is.

Thank you for this timely, excellent information.

During World War I, one of the generals had an opportunity to attack a mining facility one of the armies relied on to produce munitions. If they attacked they could have ended the war years earlier. Their superiors ordered them to stand down. When one country was low on iron or gunpowder, sometimes, they would be provided with the resources they needed to continue the war by a country they were at war with.

Secretly helping the 'enemy' during World War I would seem in character to me.  Most people still don't know the point of that war, and specifically, why Britain sent so many of its people to die.  The real point of that war was to destroy the strength of Germany so the US, the lone remaining strong country, would take over global monetary and financial hegemony.  A friendly US would help Britain avoid a hard-landing burst of its financial bubbles, which would have been disastrous to its banking elites, as they would be solely blamed by the political class for the ensuing economic pain.  (The same situation holds today -- with the US playing Britain, China playing Germany, and India playing the US.)

If the war had ended too early, even with German defeat, Germany would have retained more strength and the reparations demanded of it would have been less (and less enforceable because of German strength.)

The same thing happens today, the united states is at war with the taliban in afghanistan. The war could have been over years ago, if the united states attacked taliban opium fields which the taliban rely on to buy weapons and pay soldiers. Instead US soldiers are guarding taliban opium fields, & opium production is way up.

This also would seem in character.  The US has never wanted a stable Afghanistan.  It did everything it could after the Soviet withdrawal, and after the post-9/11 invasion, effectively, to destabilize the country.  A stable Afghanistan can only mean one thing: unity under one of the major Mujahadeen forces that fought the Soviets, and had real Afghan respect and support.  Unfortunately for America, the Mujahadeen were famously independent and probably wouldn't have followed Washington's plans, for example, to strengthen India against Pakistan.

So, if what it took to prevent the independently-minded from coming to power was to install Western stooges on the government with no local respect and support, leave the country in endless civil war, and (as you reveal) help strengthen the Taliban, so be it.

After the great depression a set of laws called glass steagall were implemented to prevent that type of crisis from happening again in the future. Around 1999, under Bill Clinton's administration, glass steagall was repealed. Only took about 9 years later for the same thing that happened during the great depression to happen again in 2008. People probably don't see a problem with glass steagall being repealed. Textbooks and historians don't teach the reason for how glass steagall and similar measures prevent crisis.

The imperial system, at any time, consists of alliances among 'winner' groups, to jointly benefit from using state power to inflate the values of financial assets.  This amounts to theft against all other groups, that is not visible until the bubble bursts.

Starting in the early 80s, symbolized by the coming to power of Reagan and Thatcher, there was a seismic shift where the political elite were forced to abandon major voter groups and rejoin the banking elites to form a new alliance.  This was forced by national debts, having ballooned over the postwar decades under the alliance with voters, that threatened to implode.  The repeal of Glass-Steagall was the icing on the cake for the bankers.

The entire event was cast, in the popular imagination, as a shift to free-market economics.  (There is nothing free-market about effective state guarantee of bank debt.)

The history & textbooks taught in schools seem like they could be a lie created to leave people vulnerable and make it easy to prey upon their lack of knowledge. That seems like it could be an issue facing society.

Amen!

The global imperial system doesn't have enough 'hard power' to run the whole world.  It must rely partly on 'soft power,' which, in reality, is deception.

[whizter]

As someone who's mostly ignorant on how things work (heck, can't even wrap my head around conspiracy theories) I mostly just let myself be washed away by the current. Like you mentioned yourself, try paddling upstream and you can find yourself sinking. This is just to large for one man to completely understand, much more go against. Be like the crypto-Jews. Keep it all to yourself. If you're small enough, they just might not notice you. Freedom is really overrated. No one's ever truly free. Same can be said for free will.

Trust no one (except me!)

You can't tell me what to do! 

Free will is irrelevant because man kind has perceived free will.  But to stay on topic, Bitcoin is our simple way of escaping the banking system and mainstream currency, without necessarily even fully understanding the banking system, which we don't always need to do.

But to be honest in some cases fiat does actually help people - you mention the benefits given to people, and isn't ignorance bliss for some people?  If everyone knew about Bitcoin most people wouldn't make a profit from it because the main gains of it are from increases in adoption.

to me i think if a person have a little sense then he can get good profit from bitcoin even though he do not have any money at all. i think he need to invest some money in trading alt coin and if he have some good trading skill then he can make money from trading alt coin. and if a person do not have any money t invest still he has the opportunities to earn bitcoin by joining alt coins.

[Yakamoto]

I'm kind of lost on the message that you're aiming to get across from this, but I can see some of the sentiments that you're expressing and to an extent there is a currency propped up by what amounts to nothing aside from government power.

Overall I get lost with your point because of the abrupt ending and the complex examples and wording you use in your post. Being succinct is one of the best things you can do to express a point to a group.

[Mometaskers]

One thing is for sure, the elites don't mess around.  The system is set up so most people will be parted from their wealth one way or another: if you stay safe, the entire system is designed to inflate other people's paper wealth and dilute your own.  If you play the game, you never know when the elites will lose control.  When they do, you'll surely pay a big price.

There's no real safety.  If you're smart and spend a lot of time on it, you may gain some statistical advantage, but not many people can do even that.

It may seem that the system is too complex to understand.  I think the truth is the opposite.  Assuming we distinguish between understanding the theft and knowing how to play the system (the latter is hard), it's remarkably easy if you look at it from the right angle.  It's just that the elites don't want people to take that angle.

There's nothing wrong with being philosophical about the whole thing -- we just hope we can tell the difference between noble resignation and laziness.

I guess things are slightly different in countries in the periphery where I'm at. Still, for someone powerless, I'd accept relative safety. I still believe it's possible to be large enough to not suffer the collapse but small enough for the establishment to not worry about you. Sigh, this entire thread made me even more weary of my existence. 

Free will is irrelevant because man kind has perceived free will.  But to stay on topic, Bitcoin is our simple way of escaping the banking system and mainstream currency, without necessarily even fully understanding the banking system, which we don't always need to do.

But to be honest in some cases fiat does actually help people - you mention the benefits given to people, and isn't ignorance bliss for some people?  If everyone knew about Bitcoin most people wouldn't make a profit from it because the main gains of it are from increases in adoption.

A part of me want everyone to use Bitcoin but another says that would not be ideal. They're OK with the whole cryptocurrency thing for now because it fits their agenda and they can make some quick bucks out of it but once it become apparent it threatens their hold, they'll do everything they can to stop people using it.

[BobK71]

I'm kind of lost on the message that you're aiming to get across from this, but I can see some of the sentiments that you're expressing and to an extent there is a currency propped up by what amounts to nothing aside from government power.

Overall I get lost with your point because of the abrupt ending and the complex examples and wording you use in your post. Being succinct is one of the best things you can do to express a point to a group.

Thank you for your advice.  I guess a succinct but rigorous statement of the world system would be:

The alliance of political and financial elites uses state power to artificially prop up the values of money, debt, and other financial assets that they issue.  Because assets are thus over-valued, and because the elites have every incentive to destabilize the system by maximizing their issuance, and to use deception and even violence to prolong bubbles, eventually market forces wake up and destroy some asset's value overnight.  When that happens, the entire economy pays the price in lost demand, jobs, savings and business, especially because of the economic distortions that have set in during the asset inflation.

It is after this point that central banks must take off their benevolent mask and issue just enough money (to ease the economic pain) to keep social stability.  Issuing more, even if beneficial to most people, would mean inflation and exposure of their entire scheme.

[Reid]

Yeah that seems to happen a lot before.
Fighting against those who are in power will make you regret it some time.
It happens with investments too.
I think the film "The Big Short" can tell that also.
Nerds that are trying to fight against the housing bubble that there is a hole in it but nobody believes them and they all just laugh at them. Just a few believed and look what happened. If only they listened then it might be saved but no. They thought the investor against it will just lose because of the power that it had.
After all the people who invested against it win but with a sad face because of the collapse.

[taxmanmt5]

As someone who's mostly ignorant on how things work (heck, can't even wrap my head around conspiracy theories) I mostly just let myself be washed away by the current. Like you mentioned yourself, try paddling upstream and you can find yourself sinking. This is just to large for one man to completely understand, much more go against. Be like the crypto-Jews. Keep it all to yourself. If you're small enough, they just might not notice you. Freedom is really overrated. No one's ever truly free. Same can be said for free will.

Trust no one (except me!)

You can't tell me what to do! 

Free will is irrelevant because man kind has perceived free will.  But to stay on topic, Bitcoin is our simple way of escaping the banking system and mainstream currency, without necessarily even fully understanding the banking system, which we don't always need to do.

But to be honest in some cases fiat does actually help people - you mention the benefits given to people, and isn't ignorance bliss for some people?  If everyone knew about Bitcoin most people wouldn't make a profit from it because the main gains of it are from increases in adoption.

Just think of bitcoins and it total adaption till now. Considering the whole world, the percentage of people using bitcoin is very low. How will people use bitcoins in villages where internet is not available easily ? There are many other factors to consider also .  Lack of education will be a hindrance too for using this currency easily.

[BobK71]

A part of me want everyone to use Bitcoin but another says that would not be ideal. They're OK with the whole cryptocurrency thing for now because it fits their agenda and they can make some quick bucks out of it but once it become apparent it threatens their hold, they'll do everything they can to stop people using it.

Bitcoin, like gold, will also do well when countries are not united under the imperial system.  The elites in the adversary countries, including the US, will want to acquire non-state monies, in case they need them to play a non-cooperative financial game against other major powers.

For example, China is floating or leaking the idea that it might adopt a state-issued crytocurrency to free itself from under the dollar, if the US pushes it too far.  The US will need to support Bitcoin to fight that eventuality.

[Hydrogen]

Secretly helping the 'enemy' during World War I would seem in character to me.  Most people still don't know the point of that war, and specifically, why Britain sent so many of its people to die.  The real point of that war was to destroy the strength of Germany so the US, the lone remaining strong country, would take over global monetary and financial hegemony.  A friendly US would help Britain avoid a hard-landing burst of its financial bubbles, which would have been disastrous to its banking elites, as they would be solely blamed by the political class for the ensuing economic pain.  (The same situation holds today -- with the US playing Britain, China playing Germany, and India playing the US.)

If the war had ended too early, even with German defeat, Germany would have retained more strength and the reparations demanded of it would have been less (and less enforceable because of German strength.)

This also would seem in character.  The US has never wanted a stable Afghanistan.  It did everything it could after the Soviet withdrawal, and after the post-9/11 invasion, effectively, to destabilize the country.  A stable Afghanistan can only mean one thing: unity under one of the major Mujahadeen forces that fought the Soviets, and had real Afghan respect and support.  Unfortunately for America, the Mujahadeen were famously independent and probably wouldn't have followed Washington's plans, for example, to strengthen India against Pakistan.

So, if what it took to prevent the independently-minded from coming to power was to install Western stooges on the government with no local respect and support, leave the country in endless civil war, and (as you reveal) help strengthen the Taliban, so be it.

The imperial system, at any time, consists of alliances among 'winner' groups, to jointly benefit from using state power to inflate the values of financial assets.  This amounts to theft against all other groups, that is not visible until the bubble bursts.

Starting in the early 80s, symbolized by the coming to power of Reagan and Thatcher, there was a seismic shift where the political elite were forced to abandon major voter groups and rejoin the banking elites to form a new alliance.  This was forced by national debts, having ballooned over the postwar decades under the alliance with voters, that threatened to implode.  The repeal of Glass-Steagall was the icing on the cake for the bankers.

The entire event was cast, in the popular imagination, as a shift to free-market economics.  (There is nothing free-market about effective state guarantee of bank debt.)

Amen!

The global imperial system doesn't have enough 'hard power' to run the whole world.  It must rely partly on 'soft power,' which, in reality, is deception.

Great post, btw. Sorry for late response, I kept putting it off.

The info about world war I being extended years longer to empower war profiteering comes from an old documentary from the 1930's entitled "Dealers in Death". Its really old but should probably be required viewing before people decide whether to support wars in the middle east or with russia.

The rest can be found via google. "US soldiers guard taliban opium fields." "Opium production up since afghan US war." "Glass steagall and its impact on the 2008 economic crisis." Some of the things I said might sound crazy but info on those topics which support what I said is very easy to find, I would imagine.

I think I learned some things from your response also.

[BobK71]

Yeah that seems to happen a lot before.
Fighting against those who are in power will make you regret it some time.
It happens with investments too.
I think the film "The Big Short" can tell that also.
Nerds that are trying to fight against the housing bubble that there is a hole in it but nobody believes them and they all just laugh at them. Just a few believed and look what happened. If only they listened then it might be saved but no. They thought the investor against it will just lose because of the power that it had.
After all the people who invested against it win but with a sad face because of the collapse.

Both logic and history suggests that the bubbles (including fiat currencies) inflated by the powerful are doomed to collapse.  The reason is actually quite simple, the incentives for the elites are always to benefit from issuing more money and other financial assets.  So while their system is stable for whatever reason, the elites themselves benefit from doing things to make their own system unstable!  It's guaranteed to fail.

Of all the bubbles, the biggest and most protected are imperial currencies and public debt.  All global empires and their bubbles have collapsed or deflated, including (from 500 years ago) Spain, the Netherlands, Britain, and (eventually) the US.

The trouble, of course, is predicting exactly when the collapse will come.  The most profound bubbles can easily outlast a couple of lifetimes.  As they say, 'markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent!'

[BobK71]

Great post, btw. Sorry for late response, I kept putting it off.

Always good to hear from you.

The info about world war I being extended years longer to empower war profiteering comes from an old documentary from the 1930's entitled "Dealers in Death". Its really old but should probably be required viewing before people decide whether to support wars in the middle east or with russia.

Thank you, hope I can find it.

Do you detect how most of the media reports about Russia say something like 'interfering with the 2016 US election?'  This is not technically wrong, but includes a lot of really bad stuff, instead of being more specific, i.e. Russia stole and published information that was embarrassing to Hilary Clinton.  Of course, the media have no agenda...

A great book to read would be 'Confessions of An Economic Hit Man.'  The author worked for the imperial machinery.  Over the postwar decades the US worked hard to get leaders around the world to play the game to support the dollar and other core imperial interests.  The methods used were (in first-to-last order) bribing, political coup, assassination, and armed invasion.  Most visibly involved were countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Panama, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Iraq.  The media were heavily involved in shaping public opinion just the right way.

This is a must-read for those who still believe in the imperial fairy-tale.

The rest can be found via google. "US soldiers guard taliban opium fields." "Opium production up since afghan US war." "Glass steagall and its impact on the 2008 economic crisis." Some of the things I said might sound crazy but info on those topics which support what I said is very easy to find, I would imagine.

As you imply, it's very easy to fall into the belief that the US is the benevolent superpower (or at least the 'least-bad world leader') while all these horrible accusations are only conspiracy theories that can't possibly be true.

This is due to most people not understanding the dynamics of money and finance at the core of the system.  By manipulating only these deeply buried systems, the empire is able to look like a democracy with free markets on the surface (even though the truth occasionally pokes through the facade even for most people, as during the Great Depression and 2008.)

Just as interesting is how the financial dynamics also force the empire to commit horrible crimes, eventually if not right away.  The whole thing is based on deception, and if the financial bubbles burst, the entire world system blows up.  The elites themselves have the incentives to make the deception less and less credible, and the brutal means more and more necessary, over time.  The horrible crimes are not wild accusations.  They are inevitable.