If banks hold 100% of the money and lend it all out x10 (fractional reserve) and earn 1% interest, the money supply is growing by 10% per year.
That’s inflation. All that money goes to the banks.
Edit: that’s 1% on top of whatever they have to pay for the money from the fed, so 7% rate plus 1%, or whatever.
That doesn’t even account for the stock market and other speculative devices.
When business and the wealthy class get richer, they want to get even RICHER. Prices rise. Which drives record profit, which makes rich people wealthier, which causes the cycle to repeat.
Raising interest rates is SUPPOSED to make people uncomfortable and stop spending. It’s not working yet, because literally EVERY INCENTIVE IN OUR SOCIETY is pushing people to spend spend spend.
There is no functional market force driving down housing costs, food costs, or education costs. Unchecked capitalism can’t work.
We just need proper incentive structures and regulation. But seeing as nobody has the guts to start figuring that out, the only lever we have is interest rates.
Make it do they have to have it, to be able to loan it
The banks do have to have it to be able to loan it.
Fractional reserve says that they're not allowed to loan all of it.
So if you deposit 100k at the bank and there's a 10% fractional reserve. Then they're only allowed to loan 90k.
Now you might ask, so if the bank can only loan 90% of the money they have where does the money multiplier come from?
If person A comes and deposits 100k, and the bank loans 90k to person B. Then there's still only 100k in cash, but now there's 190k in bank accounts.
So every time someone comes in to deposit 100k, they loan out 90k. Once they've got 1,000k, they've loaned out 900k and keep 100k cash in reserve.
The important difference here is that loan only happen when there's a borrow. And there are strict regulations about how reliable those loans can be. Which is why they tend to require collateral.
So, really when a bank has 1,000k in people's account, it only has 100k in cash. But it also has 900k in houses, cars and furniture.
The whole system ends up stabilizing the value of money because it is backed by real tangible things through the loaning and collateral system.
I also think it helps to keep money at a stable but small rate of inflation (1-2%). Otherwise people will just hoard the cash instead of growing the economy in the form of investments. But I don't know what the literature says on that topic, or how reliable that literature is, in practice.
My point is, getting rid of the whole system just because it looks complicated to you seems like a terrible idea.
Like our focus should be on breaking up monopolies, progressive taxation and a solid well funded social support system. I think it's safe to leave the management of the money supply to the bean counters for now. It's clearly not perfect but it's not bad either.
I don’t like all of the fuckery the banks get up to. But even I’m willing to admit that this is a Pandora’s box situation… I’m not sure we can ever go back.
It would be like trying to restore the gold standard. Just… How?
If banks hold 100% of the money and lend it all out x10 (fractional reserve) and earn 1% interest, the money supply is growing by 10% per year.
You've got it backwards.
Banks hold other people's money and use it to issue loan. It's the issuance of loans that creates money. The fractional reserve doesn't magically multiply the money. It just (in a roundabout way) allows banks to loan up to that multiplier of money to people. But that only works if there's people who want to borrow that money.
If a bank earns 1% interest, that doesn't grow the money supply. It transfers money from the people that borrowed the money to the bank which then uses it to pay executives, shareholders and employees (in that order of priority).
The higher the interest rates, the less money people can afford the borrow, the more the money supply shrinks.
Banks HATE high federal reserve rates, because that means people don't borrow as much which means they don't make as much money.
When business and the wealthy class get richer, they want to get even RICHER. Prices rise. Which drives record profit, which makes rich people wealthier, which causes the cycle to repeat.
This can only happen in a poorly regulated environment where the rich setup monopolies or oligopolies. Otherwise they'd lose all their customers if they raise prices.
We just need proper incentive structures and regulation. But seeing as nobody has the guts to start figuring that out, the only lever we have is interest rates.
I think you're just speaking for yourself here. Before you start spreading misinformation on the internet, maybe you should find the guts to actually figure out what you're talking about.
High federal reserve rates can make things difficult for banks and that might be why the CEO of JP Morgan is butt hurt right now.
Want to deal with inflation? Raise interest rates.
Want to really improve the population's purchasing power? Break up the monopolies and oligopolies.
I actually don’t disagree with most of what you’re saying. I’m mostly pro-capitalist but anti-crony and anti-corruption which it sounds like you are too.
Maybe I’m just misunderstanding, so I’ll try and clarify:
If a bank earns 1% interest, that doesn’t grow the money supply.
X$ exists.
Banks loan out 10*X$ (or whatever).
The loaned money is debt and so doesn’t change anything because the cash and the liability counter each other.
The bank charges Y$ in interest.
After the debt is repaid, the bank has X+Y$
You’re saying that because the Y$ comes from somewhere, it’s not inflation. However as banks are profitable, they clearly have more money left after paying salaries, wages, costs, and dividends.
As long a the money that the bank has is growing, the amount they can lend is growing which means the pool of available money is growing.
It might not be “real” money (I’m probably misusing the term “money supply”) but it doesn’t change the fact that more “money” is available.
Raising interest rates means people borrow less which means banks make less money and grow slower. If this were to keep up eventually the banks would lose money and the amount of loans they could give out would decrease and the available money would decrease. Which might finally put an end to this rampant inflation.
Bank profits don't cause inflation in the way you seem to say and bank profits are no different than any other company's profits in terms of how they affect inflation.
Theyre raising rates because it is a way to limit the amount of money entering the system. Low rates have been feeding investers that have been driving up housing prices among other things. And the rate of inflation hasnt slowed down as much as it needs to. That suggests the amount of money the market requires is still significantly lower than the amount being added to the system.
I’m not sure what the other person’s talking about.
It’s really simple. Companies borrow money to do projects that they can’t currently afford. When interest rates are low, you can start a lot more projects. When interest rates are high… those projects have more risk and need more immediate returns before your interest payments start hurting your profits.
It’s kind of like 0% APR in the consumer world, “why buy later when I can buy now for basically free.”
Of course, all that money companies use to start projects doesn’t immediately create the business to do the work … so the businesses doing that work previously can charge more, and the price to get them to do any work increases. That last part is the inflation…
So… if you raise the interest rates, you kill the purchase orders, which lowers demand, and then lowers prices.
That’s also why raising rates too much is a scary prospect, because you can literally stall out the economy because instead of too many companies trying to start projects too few companies are starting projects and people start getting laid off because there’s not enough work to go around.
18 U.S.C § 2381, states that a person guilty of treason against the United States “shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
For those complaining about the short sentences many of these folks are getting, the silver lining is this is a felony on their records, forever. Decent jobs will be nearly unreachable, once they get out, and federal prison sentences has no (drastic) “released early for good behavior” crap like state ones. No “sentenced to ten years, out in 4” at the federal level.
Yeah. I’d rather they get proper sentences and have a chance to rehabilitate and get back to a normal and non criminal life after prison. But then again i am not American, so the whole “vengefullness over prevention and rehabilitation” seems rather stupid.
First we need a federal initiative/ referendum system. Because the existing politicians will never vote to limit their own power.
After we have this, we can start with initiatives that set maximum ages, fix the voting systems. Fix Roe. Dismantle the terrible stranglehold the two party system has on getting anything done.
Do all the things that are popular but politicians will never do.
Direct democracy has shown to be a pretty bad idea. It’s useful here and there for certain things like referenda, but to use it for everything? Fuck that, no way. People are fucking dumb and are already constantly voting against their interests.
I mean just look at Brexit. And that would be just the tip of the iceberg if we ran our entire country that way.
Unfortunately, like filibusters, government shutdowns are a Pandora’s box. Once they’ve been used as a negotiating tactic once, you can never un-use them.
That’s not to say this isn’t despicable, but unless there’s bipartisan support to change the process, we’re going to see government shutdowns every time there’s disagreement over funding.
While that may be true, they are probably also weighing that this has been a long strike. I don’t know about you, but if I had to go 100+ days without working, my finances would be a wreck. Reality is, people gotta eat
They didn’t though. They came alarmingly close to overturning a performative ceremony that has no actual bearing on the election. Do you really think Trump would have become president if they had succeeded in stopping the count? It had already been counted, just not officially. That’s how stupid these people are.
Saddam Hussein seized power by essentially doing this. If they’d gone in, captured Congress and executed anyone who disagreed that’s pretty much game over. I’m convinced the only reason we’re not in a full civil war today is that Trump was too lazy to lead the march over to the Capitol.
The votes were already counted. No number of congresspeople executed would change the results of the election. It would just put Trump in far, far, far more legal jeopardy than he’s in now and he’s in a lot.
What precise actions do you think would be taken if a sitting president successfully murders the president elect and the opposition party, and for that matter any judges who disagree with him.
I’d be interested in hearing how you think that plays out in reality opposed to this “just world” you seem to imagine yourself living in.
Bad move by the WGA boards. While I hope the TA is good and meets all demands, the workers literally haven’t seen it yet, let alone voted on it. You always want to have the strongest strike possible, and part of that is that no work gets done until a new contract is delivered, approved, and put in place. This puts the union in a weak position if the TA gets voted down.
While that may be true, they are probably also weighing that this has been a long strike. I don’t know about you, but if I had to go 100+ days without working, my finances would be a wreck. Reality is, people gotta eat
I literally have no idea, but I assume that the strike cannot go on forever. Though, since I made my previous comment I’ve learned that the striking members are still able to work, so long as it isn’t WGA specific stuff (which seems fairly obvious, and I feel dumb for not realizing it). So, while it’s lesser paying stuff, those who really need it can still get work to hold them over.
As a Teamster, if I strike I get 80% of my pay (well above minimum wage) and I get their health care. Starting day one of the strike. Used to have to be on strike for two weeks, but it changed.
Not just the writers either, the entire industry is at a standstill while this plays out, and now they’ve gotta wait for the writers to actually write before productions start back up again. Lots of people will be out of work until spring probably.
The WGA also released the complete 94-page contract and a summary of the new terms. The deal includes gains in compensation, a new requirement for minimum staff levels in TV writers rooms, improvement payment terms for screenwriters and protections for the use of artificial intelligence in the writing process
It sounds like everything they were asking for. I don’t think they’d move forward so aggressively if the deal was weak.
Saying that the strike failed is playing into the studio’s hands. WGA considers the strike a victory, and furthermore, the studio downplaying the strike’s agreement is a disinformation campaign they had done before.
Twitter thread by David Slack @/slack2thefuture:
“As WGA leaders meet today to finalize our deal, we begin a new era for writers — and for labor in our industry. But we also begin to face the final and most insidious form of unionbusting propaganda: a years-long effort to sell the lie that our strike was not worth it.
Over the coming days, months, and years, the studios, streamers, and their surrogates will take every opportunity to undermine what we have won together. They will seize on the inevitable consessions and compromises made by our NegCom as proof that we “failed.”
They will urge us to overlook all that we won through hard work and unwavering solidarity. They will claim it wasn’t enough, that we should have gotten X instead of Y, that we lost more by striking than we gained in this new contract. And they will be wrong.
They will tell us that the strike was unnecessary, it was a waste of our time and our savings, that our agents or managers or lawyers could have gotten us everything we won through individual negotiations without anyone having to walk a picket line. Well… then why didn’t they?
As hard as it is to believe right now, these lies can work. They’ve worked before. During our 2017 strike authorization vote, it was shocking to discover how many members believed we lost the ‘07-08 strike, in which we went on strike for the internet — and won the internet.
This didn’t happen by accident. It was the result of years of whispering by studios and anti-union allies. And they don’t just do it because they’re bitter about losing. They push the lie that we used our power and lost because they hope to stop us from using our power to win.
Our strike was necessary because, in our individual negotiations, our employers consistently refused to acknowledge our right and reasonable demands. Because the profound changes we needed could only be won through the unique and overwhelming power of collective bargaining.
Our strike was necessary because our employers made it necessary by driving our income down 23% in 10 years. Because they refused to address free work in features, streaming coverage in comedy-variety, the abuses of mini-rooms and the threat of AI until we withheld our labor
Our strike was necessary. Our strike was effective. Our strike is a victory. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, it’s ‘cause they never want to see us stand up for ourselves again. Don’t believe it. We won this fight. We’re the WGA, and when we fight, we win. #WGAStrong”
FYI I never said that the strike had failed or anything to that effect, I just said it was a bad move by union leadership to call off the pickets before the TA had been agreed on or even been given to members (which it hadn’t at the time I posted this). It’s also fair to critique union leadership if they’re putting forward tactics that are weak. Weak tactics and bad leadership play into the boss’ hands far more than critique.
However, all of that said, now that the details of the TA are out, it does seem to be a really solid deal and WGA members should absolutely be celebrating. This was a hell of a fight and they’ve earned it.
Going from Neil Gaiman’s tumblr (easy guess which show i’m hoping will continue :D) he’s being very cautious and also advocating staying on the picket line for SAG. And he’s not updating twitter yet, hmmm.
news
Hot
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.