patrick.net

Don't worry about that balance sheet expansion; it's being financed (to the tune of $90B more this past week) by the Treasury. When all boats are falling, dollars don't look that bad.

MST

I am just being sarcastic. It is deleveraging, I don't believe in the strength of usd for even a brief moment, I am glad that someone up there is giving me more time to turn on USD wage into something useful.

Metal prices have too much speculative component in them right now. I think warren buffet's commentary on metals in general is quite apt.

I think gold prices will see a TEMPORARY drop given that people are slowly moving from depression fear to recession fear.They are buying in to fed's magical powers.

*not an investment advice*

What I don't get is why do people buy metals on ebay? You are going to spend a grand, and you trust the other party is going to ship you something real, or something at all?

I don't understand the ebay fad, and I personally have only sold things on ebay, never bought anything, cannot trust an outfit that only exists virtually. The rating system can be professionally gamed, and I know companies that do that, by creating lots of false identities and conducting bogus transactions to boost rating of a new seller.

TOB,

I saw this about 6 months ago. I like the simple big picture view of this E8 theory. When you dig deeper into this you see how complex it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oycE0r_azP8

Here is another video of a rotation of this complex mathematical idea.

Just remember that many particles were predicted with math long before any empirical evidence of the particle was found.

OO says

I personally have only sold things on ebay, never bought anything
For you to sell things on ebay, somebody needs to engage in the same fad you are questioning

When stakes are not that high, I think you need to sometimes just trust in general goodwill that exists in our society . If the whole world is so paranoid , we will have trust crisis just like liquidity crisis. The world will stop functioning :-)
I am more than willing to take a small risk for low priced items based on the reviews.

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~drichter/gossetzome.htm

Wow! I wonder how long this took to build.

snmr,

I would rather go to Target or a retail store to get the small things. Maybe I don't have that many niche habits looking for extremely exotic objects in small value.

Based on what I know of these professional rating agencies, I think the trust most have on eBay is abused, to a certain extent. I trust Amazon, because if something goes wrong, I send back the item for refund. For more niche products, I prefer craigslist so that I can meet the seller in person.

The credit bubble got so big precisely because we "trusted" each other, and the system too much that some clever abusers come along to take advantage of us all. I don't mind if I cannot sell an item on ebay, because it is not a medium that I rely on to get things done.

There's much more goodwill if you can attach a face to a person.

That E8 group is over 100 years old. The math is so complex, you would work your entire life to solve it on paper. It is so complex that they had to solve 1/2 of it at a time on the computer and then combine the results.

Scientist can only be as good as their tools and instruments. Imagine a modern doctor trying to explain the concept of a virus to another doctor just a 100 years ago.

TOB :

Why do you keep dragging india in to discussions.
This blog gets hijacked by eventual race/H1b ..etc discussions when you keep doing this.
how old are you anyways ?

>> how old are you anyways ?

The Original Bankster must be over 40 and could be black ....

America could regain its footing if we were willing to accept the pain now and start building a real economy. This financial alchemy is wastes resources. The bailouts just make this more and more impossible.

If we can make energy cheap and drive technology, we can take the status of World Super Power back. Now we need figure out how to get kids to study engineering and science. Like most things, money is the method I would choose to motivate behaviors.

I will never see how cheap human labor could ever be cost competitive with robots on a production line. I see it ever day I work. I do not make electricity. The machinery that I watch after makes the electricity. I just work at an energy factory. The productivity of 12 well educated and trained people make enough electricity to power about 800,000 homes.

Now imagine modern factories where autonomous machinery manufactures every thing. The only people required would be highly trained people to operate/repair the equipment. The service economy that we stuck in our crack pipe could be possible if we had some industrialization. Sad fact: We can’t make large steel components for power plants. We are at the mercy of Spain, France or Japan!

With technology, we could collect massive amounts of resources for production, cheaply move the goods, and make 1 human more productive than 10,000 humans in a third world shit hole. Just imagine what cheap access to space and the ability to mine asteroids with robots could do for us.

On another note: That E8 group has the golden ratio that I talked about in the last thread. I think it is so cool that you can take small parts of math and piece them together to make complex models.

*where=were

I am going to guess that TOB is from 4th planet of the Sigma Draconis system. He has been on Earth for 36 years and has to take some kind of alien potion to keep his human appearance.

OO Says:
October 16th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
"What I don’t get is why do people buy metals on ebay? You are going to spend a grand, and you trust the other party is going to ship you something real, or something at all?"

I did it quite a bit a few years ago and for the most part it all worked out very well. I bought my car on Ebay too. I think Ebay is a great way to buy a car because every word of the transaction is a permanent record so there is no "you didn't disclose that" "Yes I did, prove I didn't" kind of crap. I used to watch People's Court and the judge would say the same thing as you "Why would someone buy a car on Ebay?" and I used to think, the biggest complaint small claims court judges have in deciding a case is slippery testimony. When it is all carefully documented the facts are less disputable and it is only the matter at law at hand.

Gold on the other hand, well, you may be right about that although I did go off only outstanding seller ratings, but if you think about it, the negative feedbacks can't really be manipulated, and even moreso now when sellers can't leave retaliatory feedback for a buyer who pays.

Believe it or not, that 10 oz bar I told you guys about a few years ago, I believe I paid $6,400 for it, and yes I bought it on Ebay. I buy Japanese swords on Ebay, and I also once got Rolling stones tickets for half of face value. I saved $400. Ebay in general sucks, but every now and then I hit a home run on it.

37 White, naturalized American of British decent. No trace of a British accent but some have asked if I am from Canada.

NuttyNeutron, I totally agree with your plan to get America back on track. Maybe Obama will put you in a Department of Energy position.

TOB is definitely over 40, no doubt.
Russian jew who immigrated, or perhaps Pakistani. Has ties to that part of the world, I don't sense that he is black.

Malcolm please don't make me barf. I plan on again giving my vote away to a third party person. Some people seem to get pissed that I "throw my vote away" but it is mine to do with what I want.

Obama and McCain both represent the 2 hands of the same corrupt people. Making the choice between the lesser of 2 evils is like asking how I want to be executed. In the end, did it matter which method was used?

I didn't say you were going to vote for either one :)

I just said I hope Obama gives you a job. I buy into your vision, I don't understand why it is so rare in this country. Other countries can make power from tides, we have ocean on 3 friggin sides of this country and suggesting it gets you labeled a liberal. Sheesh!

Carlin has a great reversal on the "If you don't vote don't bitch" cliche.

His reasoning was, if you vote then you got what you wanted so you can't bitch. He on the other hand, didn't vote, so therefore he can bitch because like you he didn't want to legitimize or pepetuate the scuzzy system.

I just wonder what the first smart apes that discovered fire had to deal with. Did leftist apes exist back then to prevent the smart ones from making fires out of fear for burning the forrest down?

http://www.bobbarr2008.com

I dont agree with all of it, but on the critical issues, I think he has it right.

Maybe the leftist apes tried to teach the other apes how to make the fire. The conservative apes demanded that a piece of meat be exchanged for a burning stick.

Nutty, I'm not sure I want to donate money and vote for a guy whose goal is "To send them a message." No offense. At least Ron Paul was in it to win it.

Define conservative ape.

If these conservative apes want to use a book to determine how I will live my life, they can stick it up their ass.

I consider myself a libertarian because I believe that I have the right to read the latest issue of Barely Legal while walking to the whore house to snort blow off a hookers ass and then screw her. This is all at a negotiated price between the hooker and me. The consequences of these actions would be my problem alone and would not be the gubermint's problem.

The conservative apes didn't understand how the fire got there so they figured God put it there.

I label myself libertarian because I don't go running around telling other people what to do. In general I believe in markets with a realistic level of regulation but free movement of prices. I believe in property rights but recognize and want recognition of social costs. I believe government has a role in innovation, and that when it works properly it promotes an environment where people can reach their full potential.

My idea of a conservative ape would be the guy that likes the fire that the smart one created. The conservative ape would require rituals like the sacrifice of food to the flames to please an unseen divine being. If you don't do it, they beat you over the head until you give in.

Instead of accepting the fire, they have to add shit to it so they can feel comfortable in their narcissistic view of being the center of the world.

TOB,

I was just being sarcastic and trying to paint a picture that would make the "family issues" people that vote for secret sodomites cringe.

Malcolm,

I agree with your views. I have wondered about how to keep the role of government in check.

I do believe a fiat currency can work if you could keep the corruption out. The reason why gold was used for hundreds of years as a currency boils down to trust. You can't fake gold. In the end human nature makes the idea of a fiat currency based only on trust something that is almost impossible to work.

I have no use of the yellow metal. I am just pointing out why some prefer it. Something that can't be faked and can garner the support of having value does have appeal. The problem comes in when it actually prevents the economy from growing. Deflation via the smaller share of gold per person makes barrowing for investment a bad idea.

OT: btw- nutty + other physics people: what do you think of this guy:

bs or genius?

Isn't he also a plumber in Ohio?

How does gold address the problem of hoarding.
Any financial uncertainity could cause hoarding and thus make deflation a big problem.
We can always create new money with fiat currency.
Fiat is very powerful if used correctly. If used unwisely, it could be devastating.

TOB : demurrage looks like an interesting idea.

I have some doubts on its widescale implementation though.
Enforcing demurrage looks like a challenge.

Fiat currency is more risky but removes some real bottlenecks present in gold backed currency.
In the end, time will tell which one is superior.

In the end, time will tell which one is superior.

It is still about strong hands versus weak hands. As I have said, humanity is a tragedy. Or, at best, a black comedy.

Which one do you prefer? Bankster politicians or military dictators?

The former group probably favors fiat currency whilst the later group prefers hard currency.

It is just like Alien v. Predator... whoever wins, we lose.

thenuttyneutron Says:
homepages.wmich.edu/~drichter/gossetzome.htm
Wow! I wonder how long this took to build.

If you are interested in this stuff, you should check out some of the Tibetan Buddhist and ancient Indian chalk patterns. They are two-dimensional projections of hyper-spaces.

A lot of those projections involve compound transformations - but they are expressed node-based patterns that are so simple that Tibetan kids practice drawing them for entertainment. A professor at Urbana-Champaign gave a very interesting talk about it a few years ago, but I forgot his name.

TOB:

Lisi is for real, and up to 10 minutes in, he's only talking about what is already known. The rest is extension of the kind of symmetries that have already yielded actual results. E8 efflorescence is a hell of a lot more likely basis for reality than the incredible crap string theorists churn out, that have yet to yield one verified prediction.

Indeed SP, the Kalachakra Mandala and the Palace of Shambala are exactly where my mind goes in recognition when I see the E8 rotations.

http://tinyurl.com/6h8nkb

Kipling on Conservative Apes Vs. Liberal Apes: Very timely!

http://tinyurl.com/5z73wk

A pull from the above:

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Uh-huh.