Nobody Cares: PRS

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Tigger]

Bankers are minor players compared to oil cartels and Putin's oligarchs. The president of the United States is bending over backwards to further Putin's agenda, Russian money is pouring into the GOP campaign coffers, Russian trolls are flooding our social media outlets, and Russian hackers are probing state election systems. And you think bankers are running the world? Seriously?

And yet the banking crists of 2007-2008 hit almost every economy on earth, having drastic impacts causing businesses to fail, growing unemployment, changing access to credit, impacting on public services (and being the root of austerity measures in the UK which could reasonably be blamed for brexit) and even reducing human fertility levels across the world.

I wonder if any other industry is so interconnected that it could create cascading failures and quite so much global damage.

 

[Clara D.]

It's not the bankers' -it's the whole fucking class to be frank.

While it's a lot of "preaching to the choir," the article below is well written. The major talking points from it and my $0.01 (after taxes).in italics.

1. Rich people do not care about you.
Other than a means to an end, but a disposable one. It's not like there's a shortage of not-rich people.

2. Creating jobs isn’t a thing to be praised.
Politicians love to tout this. The more shit jobs that keep people stuck where they are the better.
And it's a great way to justify giving corporations mindboggling amounts of money to build shit.

3. Black/Brown people are not the reason you're poor, rich white people are.
As a side note, this is why they don't want to reform immigration. Illegal immigrants are a great source of really cheap labor.
Remember boys, girls, other, it's not "They [Mexicans] took our jobs" it's "They [Employers] are complicit in human trafficking."
When there's a problem, don't look *down* the ladder to see who's keep you from trying to get higher.

4. There is NO such thing as a “Welfare Queen.”
Even if it was a thing, "Welfare Queens" would be a very insignificant portion of those on assistance.
Again with the ladder analogy. Who's keeping you from raising yourself up -- not the people sideways or lower than you.

5. The “War on Drugs” and “The War on Crime” are fake.
Gotta keep that privatized system rolling! And it's a great way to stamp out those pesky civil rights in the name of "Safety."

6. Stop listening to people who say you need to boot-strap your way up, especially if they have never had to boot-strap their way anywhere.
Ever trying to literally pick yourself up by the bootstraps? Physically impossible, isn't it? Same goes for the bullshit saying.

7. Wealthy white people love to see poor people fighting among ourselves.
If we stand divided, we're not standing at all.

8.Rich people have convinced working class people that unions are bad.
Not much to add.

9. There is a myth that raising the minimum wage would allow unskilled workers to make as much as skilled workers and that wouldn’t be fair.
Which means that skilled workers are also terribly underpaid.

10. Continuing to support politicians who give tax breaks to the rich is never going to make your life better.
"Trickle down" might as well be "blood from a rock". The wealthy stay that way by keeping all of it.

Quasi-related:
One place where I got really pissed at Obama's administration was the bailouts.
Not to say that anyone else would have done different, but was hoping for "change."
Rich pukes should have been prosecuted, not bailed out. "Too big to fail" my ass.

What Working-class and Poor White People Need to Understand About Rich White People

Rich people do not care about you.

medium.com

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Exactly this. Criticizing banking as an industry is perfectly justifiable; it's an industry rife with abuse and corruption. But that very particular phrase "banks run the world" has a long and distasteful history that I would expect anyone steeped in politics to immediately recognize. It would be far more accurate to say that "oil companies run the world" -- that is the 21st century reality -- but funny how that phrase doesn't crop up. All those White Christian men running oil companies get a free pass.

I disagree - the oil industry is still selling a physical good you can use, so there's real value behind it to back it up. The financial industry though is in majority just playing with imaginary values printed on worthless paper, which are in sum a big magnitude larger than anything the real industry is able to generate. Hedge fonds like Blackrock have become so wealthy, that they are managing almost 7 trillion US$. Such companies simply put should not exist at all and get smashed into pieces.

So when the financial industry generates a bubble which suddenly needs to get paid by influx from money of the real industry then most of us are in trouble. What this means we have all witnessed with Enron and Lehman Brothers - and this can happen anytime again.

Then there's also the currency war - with the Fed pumping money like crazy into the economy, and the ECB doing the same thing as well.

Having said that ironically Trump is many things, but for sure had no good relationship to the Wall Street boys because they did not lend him money.

Money reigns the world - and banks are the perfect tool to reign the money. Period.

If oil would really rule the world Iran would have no problems to sell it. Since it has those problems so, money is king.

 

[Brenda Archer]

I disagree - the oil industry is still selling a physical good you can use, so there's real value behind it to back it up. The financial industry though is in majority just playing with imaginary values printed on worthless paper, which are in sum a big magnitude larger than anything the real industry is able to generate. Hedge fonds like Blackrock have become so wealthy, that they are managing almost 7 trillion US$. Such companies simply put should not exist at all and get smashed into pieces.

So when the financial industry generates a bubble which suddenly needs to get paid by influx from money of the real industry then most of us are in trouble. What this means we have all witnessed with Enron and Lehman Brothers - and this can happen anytime again.

Then there's also the currency war - with the Fed pumping money like crazy into the economy, and the ECB doing the same thing as well.

Having said that ironically Trump is many things, but for sure had no good relationship to the Wall Street boys because they did not lend him money.

Money reigns the world - and banks are the perfect tool to reign the money. Period.

If oil would really rule the world Iran would have no problems to sell it. Since it has those problems so, money is king.

No.

Enron was an energy company. I briefly worked there as a temp during the bankruptcy, helping file the SCADA data for the natural gas division that was getting spun off.

Enron’s mess helped create a culture change, in which ordinary people and employees started to see corporations as corrupt, and withdrew their respect. This previously had been more the thinking only of the small Left.

Enron’s legal battle with California was also part of the conflict that’s been ongoing between the fossil fuel industry and urban America. (Loosely, “the Democrats.” There’s a reason anti-Democrat propaganda looks the way it does.)

Modern communications allow rapid flows of money and trade and that’s legitimate work. The problem is lack of oversight, regulation and an outdated and oligarchical view of what corporations should be in the first place. But in a modern economy, there’s definitely going to be someone running financial networks. You couldn’t put a purchase on a Visa if there wasn’t.

The core of the problem is the weakening of democratic institutions that can enforce the laws. Ordinary people are being convinced they have no right to an opinion, and good information is hard to get. Once the transfer of power to the oligarchs is complete, the state will be a veneer on a mobocracy. Russia is already there. The US is closer than most people realize.

“The banks” aren’t unique in this, beyond any other wealthy industry. If an industry is poorly regulated, it becomes a parasite. Another famous example in the US would be healthcare.

Some people aren’t going to be nice of their own free will, which is why I’m not a libertarian.

Trading these days is done by quants and their techniques aren’t a secret, it just requires a math degree to really understand them.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Money reigns the world - and banks are the perfect tool to reign the money. Period.

The pursuit of money may be rampant, but that is not a control mechanism being used by a global agency to dominate the world. If you had bothered to read any of my earlier posts, you'd see that I very clearly state that I don't believe anyone is "running the world." That implies control and a master agenda, some nefarious plan.

But just because no one is in charge, it doesn't mean that industries don't affect the world. Of course they do. Banking -- when unregulated -- is just as unscrupulously greedy as any other industry, and they'll pursue profits even to the detriment of their country or even the world. But that's not the same as RUNNING the country.

The origin of "banks run the country" or "banks run the world" has been detailed in this same thread. It's a centuries old way to justify the vilification of Jews. The scenario of that scapegoating is that the Jews all belong to the same tribe, they're working together with the intent of taking over the world. The only way to protect the Christian world from the Jews is to remove them.

I'm all in favor of regulating the banking industry, just as any industry should be regulated. It's far too powerful, as is the oil industry. But I can support that goal without relying on Nazi dog whistles.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Old news: the US senate voted this week for officially acknowledging the Armenian Genocide done by the Ottoman empire at the beginning of the 20th century, and officially calling it as genocide.

Hot news: President Erdogan from Turkey threatens to recognise the genocide of the Native Americans as rebuke.

"We should oppose you by reciprocating such decisions in parliament. And that is what we will do. Can we speak about America without mentioning Indians? It is a shameful moment in the US history." Erdogan told.

 

[Brenda Archer]

Old news: the US senate voted this week for officially acknowledging the Armenian Genocide done by the Ottoman empire at the beginning of the 20th century, and officially calling it as genocide.

Hot news: President Erdogan from Turkey threatens to recognise the genocide of the Native Americans as rebuke.

"We should oppose you by reciprocating such decisions in parliament. And that is what we will do. Can we speak about America without mentioning Indians? It is a shameful moment in the US history." Erdogan told.

He seems to be aiming at Trump’s adulation of Jackson, though I don’t know if he realizes that.

 

[Rose Karuna]

He seems to be aiming at Trump’s adulation of Jackson, though I don’t know if he realizes that.

I'm betting that Erdogan analogy between NA's and Armenians are an aim at Jackson but that Trump is simply too full of himself and simply not smart enough to ever pick up on it.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

It's not much of a retort; although much to the chagrin of....certain people, the US has on a number of occasions more or less officially recognized the historical violence and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans in US history, however tepid and ineffectual that recognition has been.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Cool, cool, friends like this.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-border-crossing-rights-1.5382547

I used to prefer to fly into the USA for better treatment.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Anyone wanna work in IT in Canada?

Internet agency discovers explicit photos on president's computer - fires IT staff, keeps president

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority says it has "appropriately resolved" the matter and continues to take steps to ensure a safe and respectful workplace.

www.stcatharinesstandard.ca

eta: LOL

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I suspect most IT people of a certain age have stories about finding pink stuff while trying to figure out why file servers were unexpectedly full.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Career Counseling

A philosophy webcomic about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world. Also Jokes

existentialcomics.com

 

[Free]

 

[Cristalle]

It's not the bankers' -it's the whole fucking class to be frank.

This discussion has been very enlightening as an example of why you need to be careful when you trote out tropes. This could have been a discussion of class dynamics and how the wealthy (as a class) are screwing over ...basically everything.

Instead, it went off into the weeds because the choice to say "the bankers" invoked the jewish stereotype and (rightfully) earned a backlash against that.

Beebo is absolutely right; it was a very bad choice of words.

Lesson learned; either don't use loaded tropes (racist, anti-semetic) or be prepared to acknowlege that they're loaded and be prepared to defend why you used them.

I literally was in the middle of a conversation when I made the comment that the worst thing that happened to the world was the Harvard MBA when I was writing that post. Being accused of being anti-Semitic, which is what I took that for, was a sting that I was not going to accept. Especially since when I stated exactly what I meant a couple of sentences later, it should have been obvious that I wasn't trying to blame the Jews for anything. I wasn't even thinking about them. If approached differently, I'd have just taken the L and done a mea culpa. I appreciate Innula's more measured approach, but it rather pissed me off to be taken out of context and smeared.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Being accused of being anti-Semitic, which is what I took that for, was a sting that I was not going to accept.

I never accused you of being anti-Semitic. I accused you of repeating anti-Semitic tropes without regard for their origin or purpose.

 

[Han Held]

Especially since when I stated exactly what I meant a couple of sentences later, it should have been obvious that I wasn't trying to blame the Jews for anything. I wasn't even thinking about them. If approached differently, I'd have just taken the L and done a mea culpa.

First off, I can appreciate the sentiment -I've been pig piled and dug my heels in simply because I was being pig piled -over things I would "mea culpa" over in other circumstances.

So yeah, I get it.

PRS in particular conversations are very much a thrust-parry kind of deal. When I read what you wrote I knew what you meant (I would have extended it to the entire class -as I've said elsewhere) but I also knew you left a wide opening for attack and you were attacked.

I can sympathize because terms have been weaponized exactly so we are unable to communicate. Globalists simply mean the jews, and not the multinational corprate interests that are sucking wealth out of the US and elsewhere? When the fuck did that happen?

But ok, it did happen -and now if it comes up on a forum I can't simply say "the globalists", I have to spell it out or I have to accept charges of anti-semitism.

Language not only moves on -but it gets weaponized against us. It's up to us to be aware of that and route around it.

You're too astute for me to believe that you didn't know about that trope -I can accept it wasn't on your mind but now that it's pointed out I hope you see what the beef is.

Yes, it sucks; but at the same time, we have to work with it.

 

[Cristalle]

First off, I can appreciate the sentiment -I've been pig piled and dug my heels in simply because I was being pig piled -over things I would "mea culpa" over in other circumstances.

So yeah, I get it.

PRS in particular conversations are very much a thrust-parry kind of deal. When I read what you wrote I knew what you meant (I would have extended it to the entire class -as I've said elsewhere) but I also knew you left a wide opening for attack and you were attacked.

I can sympathize because terms have been weaponized exactly so we are unable to communicate. Globalists simply mean the jews, and not the multinational corprate interests that are sucking wealth out of the US and elsewhere? When the fuck did that happen?

But ok, it did happen -and now if it comes up on a forum I can't simply say "the globalists", I have to spell it out or I have to accept charges of anti-semitism.

Language not only moves on -but it gets weaponized against us. It's up to us to be aware of that and route around it.

You're too astute for me to believe that you didn't know about that trope -I can accept it wasn't on your mind but now that it's pointed out I hope you see what the beef is.

Yes, it sucks; but at the same time, we have to work with it.

I knew about the Jews Run the World thing but I did not make the connection to stereotype all bankers as being Jews.

 

[Sid]

I knew about the Jews Run the World thing but I did not make the connection to stereotype all bankers as being Jews.

I didn't see the link to Jews either in your posting. Your post was clearly about banks and bankers ruling the world.
And besides, you clarified more than enough what you meant and did not mean with your post after that.