For starters, it didn't go missing and for the most part wasn't spent or even actually exist. Loan guarantees and overnight loans are a whole different ball game. If provide a $1B overnight loan for you 10 times, I haven't spent $10B dollars. Same if I had guaranteed $100B. Save for a default, I haven't spent anything (actually I made money). The reason why the Fed didn't announce which banks were in trouble is stunningly obvious, which is why outside of internet conspiracy circles this video isn't big news.
As I understand, when the fed increases a bank's lending window, it is not actually giving more money to the bank. It is akin to increasing the credit limit of the bank. If the bank actually does borrow up to the increased limit, it pays interest on that loan.
That jives with what I've read as well. Also a number is incremented in the database, no currency is actually printed. So when it's returned no currency has to be taken out of supply.
For whatever reason, overnight loans are standard which grossly inflates totals over a period of time (I think it's just conspiracy theorists that use totals like that as they count on people not knowing it's an overnight loan that has been returned). A billion dollars a night for a year is $365B. It doesn't take long at all with a handful of large accounts before you hit $9T.
For starters, it didn't go missing and for the most part wasn't spent or even actually exist
Correct.
At the same time, I believe the size of the Fed's intervention in the banking system and continuing support of the Fed and treasury for "too big to fail" institutions and loans is an ongoing and problematic trend.
It is disheartening to see this situation analyzed through ignorant grandstanding rather than serious analysis - ie discussing the situation without distinguishing between credit and cash.
Because expanding the credit within the economy in an unlimited fashion is still a very problematic dynamic even without any ostensible increase in the cash.
For more the topic, I'd recommend Doug Noland's Credit Bubble Bulletin at prudentbear.com.
> It is disheartening to see this situation analyzed through ignorant grandstanding rather than serious analysis - ie discussing the situation without distinguishing between credit and cash.
I could not agree more. There are absolutely questions that need answered, but I can't take seriously anyone who has such an incorrect grasp or is intentionally being misleading.
> If provide an overnight loan for you 10 times, I haven't spent $10B dollars.
No, but you had to have had $10B to transfer.
> Same if I had guaranteed $100B.
No, but someone had to believe that you had access to $10B in case the guarantee was needed.
> Save for a default, I haven't spent anything (actually I made money).
"I made money" doesn't follow. Whether or not you made money depends on the terms. And, even if you did make money, it doesn't follow that it was a good deal. (The risk may have been greater than the return. The fact that you haven't been in an accident doesn't imply that not wearing seat belts is a good idea.)
No, I would have had to have just $1B (it gets tossed back and forth--with interest given to the Fed). Also, the Fed doesn't need the $1B, it can create it and then destroy it when it's deposited back. It's electronic these days, so a number is incremented and decremented in a database.
Someone knows where the money went it just wasn't the woman in that video. She oversees the lending to the regional reserve banks who loan out money. There is no possible way she could know who that money goes to.
OpenGovernment is a great idea and I wish the team building it all of the best. OpenGovernment will be the only competitor so far to a startup I've been working on the past 3 years: http://www.openpoll.us. It's exciting to see other people prove your idea is a good one. That being said, I think a release of OpenGovernment with only 5 states is a little premature.(I'm waiting to have all states complete before releasing my MVP.) I am very interested in seeing what they come up with.
If you heard of a website launch with partial data without your state, how often would you go back to check if your state was added? My opinion is that users would initially see the site, and not visit again for a few months. You have a larger target-able market by waiting.
The truth is they have a lot more than 5 states in github. They could have probably gotten away with launching 20 or 25 states.
you might be interested in the underlying scraper project we run @ http://openstates.sunlightlabs.com - this is the first step to getting all of the data so it can be used by OpenGovernment and other sites
Well, what did you expect would happen? It's the same buddies sitting at the Fed, the SEC, Goldman Sachs. There's no real oversight. Why wouldn't they abuse it? There's a ton of money to be stolen, and nobody is watching.
Exactly. All the more reason that the efforts of Participatory Politics Foundation and Sunlight Foundation with OpenGovernment are needed. Even better, it's open source, so we can all dig in and do our part to help better prevent this madness from happening right under our noses.
We also plan to have them on a future podcast episode. Maybe later this month or early next after they launch the beta.
Create a currency that cant be stolen/diluted without breaking 1024 bit encryption and a password. Entities like the federal reserve can just print money out of thin air, diluting my past hard work.
It shouldn't be too hard to create a system of person to person wealth transfer utilizing thumb drives and laptops that exchange receipts of units of human labor that can't be diluted by simply making more human labor receipts.
Of course, whoever champions this kind of thing will disappear in the night along with their family. Imagine working a days labor, and being able to redeem that 100 years later in full. Something like this would have to begin operation after a complete revolution, and would have to earn a place next to the right to free speech. The basic right of encryption in data and currency.
First, An ordinary thumb drive wouldn't enough for such a system. Encryption doesn't telepathy. You copy data from Bob. You and Bob show up at the bank with the same data. What is the bank supposed to do? Encryption-based money systems require either a smart card or a central repository.
But even more, just assume that a "wealth transfer system" could be created by a bunch of random individuals who create N unduplicable units of value. Why should I accept particular units of value. I'd be better off doing the same thing myself - then it would be mine.
I think the lack of understanding of money-dynamics in these schemes comes from people reacting morally to it rather than rationally.
1. Create 100 trillion units of wealth in some kind of software system, generate keys with a strong algorithm.
2. Completely destroy the private key, give everyone the public key. So everyone can find out if a key is one of "the original" wealth units, and not one created after the fact by nefarious entities.
3. Give everybody in the world, equally, these 100 trillion units.
4. Let them exchange them for goods and services. If you want more of them, you have to acquire it from someone who has them.
A. If a "unit of wealth" is just a number, why can't I give ten identical copies of this number to ten people? The way encrypted exchange has been envisioned and really how it has to work is that the values are kept on smartcards and smartcard's possessors don't know all the information on the card and can't change that information at will. But a smartcard system is clearly far from the "utopia" you envision.
B. Assuming the impossibility that an encypted number would be enough, What "algorithm" could prove you've the destroyed the private key anyway?
C. Why couldn't someone else do the same thing and so why should we work with Bob's system when Mary's seems just as appealing? If Bob is German and Mary is French, it's logical to expect the German's to go with Bob's system and the French to go with Mary's. If human beings suddenly became massively more cooperative than they are today, a system of this sort might conceivably be organized - but in that case why bother since any money inherently adverserial. If everyone in the world is cooperating, they can just organize society in that fashion. If not, we'll muddle along with our current currency system as we muddle along with everything else.
D. An economy with only a fixed amount of value units actually doesn't work that well. Think about it. There is more and more valuable stuff produced each day for a larger and larger population. So with a fixed amount of value units, those units become more valuable each day. That is call "deflation". It creates a disincentive to buy stuff since your money will buy more tomorrow. That tends to cripple economic activity in the infamous "deflationary spiral". And, yes, the Gold standard did have this problem. The economy was not well served in the days when people actually carried gold (bank deposits representing are something different).
-- So yes indeed, seven ways from Sunday it can't be done and probably shouldn't be done. What could be done is returning to the gold standard but that still shouldn't be done (and certainly won't be done since it would require the acquiescence of the world's governments who stand to lose by it, not that many people would win from it).
As much as I would love for OpenGovernment to succeed. You guys have got NO chance, your just standard average Joes. You could be the President's son and it still wouldn't make a difference. There are so many layers of corruption, collusion, old boys networks and John McCain's that you will never change how the government works.
Not to mention that the Federal reserve is a completely different beast. You would literally have to physically destroy the government before you have any chance of change.
Errr. I don't really see how your point is relevant. I guess you thought I meant "I didn't want change", or that "there's no point in trying because it will never happen".
What I actually said, and perhaps I should have been clearer was: there is not a single thing any group of people (we), any size, no matter of what "civillian" importance you are can do to change a single thing about how your government operates, or how it regulates its money supply.
Least of all, an online community of any type, especially one thats campaigning for data. I know this is going to read like I'm a dick, but I'm not. I just know there is one thing I am certain of: the world if fu* corrupt. AWFULLY so.
If the government official in the video, who was hired by Obama to oversee the fed, doesn't have access to the data, and won't answer that/those questions - then who does? Nobody within the organisation we call "the government".
Moreso, if they do have the data and they just aren't sharing it, then its double bull because that in my book, is a bit hooky.
Edit: so I suppose my conclusion is, given that the government either doesn't have, or isn't sharing the data. How are you peaceful protestors going to get this data out of them? Assuming of course if the government doesn't have the data your battling a faceless, nameless, infinitely wealthy enemy. Or that if its the government, well, they have an army.
So now, you can see why I think a campaign for data is borderline ridiculous. But very commendable given I'm not doing a single thing to change things. That goes without saying.
Edit 2: It all comes down to incentives, and I would be surprised if anybody could fathom and incentive that would make them hand over all the money, all the power, all the land and all the fun in the world. Which is this campaigns ultimate aim, through uncovering bad behaviour in the data. Unless of course you have a jar of flying powder, or eternal life juice.
