patrick.net

bgamall4 says

the wars we have now are blatantly imperialistic.

Wow. I can't disagree more. Wars used to be about conquest, which is what made them profitable -- to the victor go the spoils, etc. We've spend billions and trillions on war which have only resulted in a very expensive way to dig holes in the ground - while gaining nothing from them economically. We're still waiting for all that Iraqi oil to pay off the costs of that war. And now the USGS is scoping out all the mineral deposits in Afghanistan. I promise you that if those deposits are developed (remember, that was the Soviet plan, too) that cash will be flowing into Afghanistan (it'll be needed to hire the poppy growers).

bgamall4 says

Millions were killed in World Wars.

Millions were killed because the world population was larger and because of the advancement of technology -- machine guns, aerial bombs, poison gas, etc. People can be especially cruel and also very dense; oftentimes things have to go "beyond reasonable doubt" before reason sets in.

If you want a more rational explanation, how about: War has gotten more precise. This means that because it's not about conquest, the only purpose is to kill people until their leaders change their minds. This means that the people being killed tend to be those who are willing to go to war. As those genes are culled from the population the world becomes a safer place to live.

Don't like that, how about sanitation? Some 90% of the French are infected with Toxoplasmosis, which tends to make men more violent and women more promiscuous. Those two details combined can make for very stressful situations. If we look at European history, who likes to starts things over there?

I'm not too familiar with the economic details of WWI (the war has been attributed to secret treaties (along with the assassination)), but I'll also assert that WWII was created out of fiat currency. For most of the WWs, the U.S. wasn't involved -- it was Germany's fiat Mark that drove a lot of the political instability over there. Remember the 1-trillion-to-one conversion to the Reichsmark?

Typically, fiat currency is a result of war, not a cause of it. For the U.S, it was Vietnam. Societal changes then come about 20 years later. Here are some references (sorry, most are from Wikipedia):

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=history-and-the-decline-of-human-violence

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/22/world-less-violent-stats_n_1026723.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis

corntrollio says

Yes, because the Swiss economy is doing so well... As cc0 said, you haven't been following the news very carefully

It was just a sarcastic canard. But I can see how people still get all touchy about currency "investment".

bgamall4 says

When the Taliban refused the pipeline Cheney hatched 911.

I'm not quite sure what you're implying there, but I don't think we fundamentally disagree with the broad strokes of this discussion.

However, I will retract my previous statement of me disagreeing; it is clearly imperialism. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking, but it was something along the lines of the second Bush era being not imperialism, but either fascism, or if you prefer, corporatism.

Sadly, I'm not sure that doesn't still apply.

bgamall4 says

No, if you allow securitization it is almost always accompanied by easy money. It is a scam, a fraud.

Again, only if done improperly. It was done for many years without massive bubbles.

cc0 says

There's nothing inherently 'wrong' with easy money - securitized debt isn't substantially different from issuing shares in a corporation or participating in prosper.com. This is just a way to raise money.

Yeah, exactly. It spreads risk too and allows lower rates for everybody. There are things you can do to improve underwriting practices, and some of those have been done, but some of them are the responsibility of the bondholder.

bgamall4 says

Massive securitization was made possible because of the repeal of Glass-Steagall. That securitization was fraud. Before that there was very little securitization.

Oh come on. Securitization has a history: http://financialservices.house.gov/media/pdf/110503cc.pdf

Securitization certainly went up after the repeal, but so did everything else.

Do you actually have anything substantive to say about why securitization is inherently flawed?

The person who buys CDs is a sucker. They Never pay you more than inflation and taxes. CD like money market, savings account is a parking place for your money, presumably to preserve your principal if you are lucky.
Vanguard High Yield Corporate Fund pays 7% yield.
The deal with bond funds is this: the NAV goes up and down with the economic conditions, your return is your interest over time. This particular bond fund is riskier because at any time the NAV may fluctuate down as the stock market does.
The deal with investing is simple: when interest rates are very low, stocks will be the place to put some dough. The dividend paying stocks are not going out of business soon: Verizon, Exxon, ATT, etc. aren't affected by people feeling too broke to venture out to the mall.
It's correct that our government and Fed policy punishes savers and rewards fools. Luckily other markets will punish those fools :)

Gentleshinobi says

Fricken autocorrect driving me nuts.

I don't do any kind of autocorrection on the site. Maybe it's your phone?

One way to defeat autocorrect is to first type a "z" and then backspace once before typing what you want to say. Since there are very few words than end in z, autocorrect doesn't know what to do and so it leaves you alone.