HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme

3/25/2015 7:18:46 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
condor_0000 Tampa, FL 57, joined Feb. 2013	It's called "capitalism." ------------------- Growing warnings of another financial disaster 25 March 2015 World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/25/pers-m25.html Excerpts: Global financial markets are on the road to another crash, with consequences even more serious than the collapse of September 2008. There have been a series of dire warnings from within the ruling class itself that present monetary policies have created massive financial bubbles with devastating consequences. Last week, an analysis of the S&P 500 Index from the Office of Financial Research, attached to the US Treasury Department, concluded that the US stock market had entered a situation comparable to patterns seen in 1929, 2000 and 2007. That is, a major downturn, if not a crash, was looming. There are growing fears of a “liquidity crunch” if all the major investors and speculators, which operate on basically similar financial models, try to make an exit at the same time, only to find that there are no buyers. According to a report in the Financial Times on Tuesday, some fund managers have warned “not since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and the freezing of money markets in August 2007 has there been such widespread concern over the structure of fixed income [i.e., bond] markets.” It said that prices of bonds had risen appreciably as investors had “gorged” on the cheap money provided by the low-interest rate regime of central banks and warned that there could be a “liquidity crunch” if they “collectively run for the exits.” The same situation has developed in corporate and government bond markets, which have surged ahead on cheap money, making commonplace the previously extremely rare phenomenon of negative yields. Negative yields mean that investors are in effect paying governments for the privilege of lending governments money. The phenomenon is the result of a situation in which, despite the fact that bondholders would make a loss if they held the high-priced bond to maturity, they can still make a capital gain because the outflow of central bank finance will push bond prices still higher. They can simply sell the bond to another investor, who is himself operating under the assumption that he can do the same. In effect, corporate and bond markets have been turned into a giant Ponzi scheme where profits can continue to be made so long as money continues to pour in. In other words, the modus operandi of what started as a criminal venture in the US during the 1920s has now become the central operating principle of the global multi-trillion dollar financial markets. Meet singles at DateHookup.dating, we're 100% free! Join now!
3/25/2015 7:19:59 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
txninnc Euless, TX 47, joined May. 2014 online now!	Quote from condor_0000: World Socialist Web Site
3/25/2015 7:30:51 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
jillybodob Naperville, IL 24, joined Jul. 2013 online now!	Comrade, really, this is not the forum. hint Quote from condor_0000: It's called "capitalism." ------------------- Growing warnings of another financial disaster 25 March 2015 World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/25/pers-m25.html Excerpts: Global financial markets are on the road to another crash, with consequences even more serious than the collapse of September 2008. There have been a series of dire warnings from within the ruling class itself that present monetary policies have created massive financial bubbles with devastating consequences. Last week, an analysis of the S&P 500 Index from the Office of Financial Research, attached to the US Treasury Department, concluded that the US stock market had entered a situation comparable to patterns seen in 1929, 2000 and 2007. That is, a major downturn, if not a crash, was looming. There are growing fears of a “liquidity crunch” if all the major investors and speculators, which operate on basically similar financial models, try to make an exit at the same time, only to find that there are no buyers. According to a report in the Financial Times on Tuesday, some fund managers have warned “not since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and the freezing of money markets in August 2007 has there been such widespread concern over the structure of fixed income [i.e., bond] markets.” It said that prices of bonds had risen appreciably as investors had “gorged” on the cheap money provided by the low-interest rate regime of central banks and warned that there could be a “liquidity crunch” if they “collectively run for the exits.” The same situation has developed in corporate and government bond markets, which have surged ahead on cheap money, making commonplace the previously extremely rare phenomenon of negative yields. Negative yields mean that investors are in effect paying governments for the privilege of lending governments money. The phenomenon is the result of a situation in which, despite the fact that bondholders would make a loss if they held the high-priced bond to maturity, they can still make a capital gain because the outflow of central bank finance will push bond prices still higher. They can simply sell the bond to another investor, who is himself operating under the assumption that he can do the same. In effect, corporate and bond markets have been turned into a giant Ponzi scheme where profits can continue to be made so long as money continues to pour in. In other words, the modus operandi of what started as a criminal venture in the US during the 1920s has now become the central operating principle of the global multi-trillion dollar financial markets.
3/25/2015 7:41:35 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
peterk2 Fort Lauderdale, FL 54, joined May. 2007	*cant help ya. you and your buddies trapped us in a political ponzi scheme that makes madoff look like an amateur*
3/25/2015 7:56:09 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
darthcapital North York, ON 45, joined Apr. 2014	Quote from condor_0000: It's called "socialism." Fixed it for you. -
3/25/2015 7:57:47 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
jillybodob Naperville, IL 24, joined Jul. 2013 online now!	See Games, Quizzes, and Surveys.
3/25/2015 8:10:23 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
lennyjohn58 Rosedale, MD 56, joined Feb. 2015 online now!	That's the great thing about having nothing, you have nothing to lose.
3/25/2015 8:28:54 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
inventtis2 South Haven, MI 36, joined Nov. 2012	It's called social security.
3/26/2015 1:42:59 AM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
condor_0000 Tampa, FL 57, joined Feb. 2013	Quote from inventtis2: It's called social security. Right-wingers are outraged as they demand that Social Security, which provides income to retired, working-class people, is a Ponzi scheme, demanding that it be stopped immediately. On the other hand, they have no such declaration about the Ponzi-scheme capitalist system that funnels wealth to super-rich, gangster-capitalist one-percenters.
3/26/2015 2:03:42 AM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
condor_0000 Tampa, FL 57, joined Feb. 2013	Financial Feudalism By Dmitry Orlov March 25, 2015 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41345.htm Excerpt: But eventually almost all the good, local sources of hydrocarbon-based energy became depleted, and had to be replaced using lower-quality, more remote, harder-to-produce, more expensive ones. This took a big bite out of economic growth, because with each passing year more and more of it had to be plowed right back into producing the energy needed to simply sustain, never mind grow, the system. At the same time, industry produced a lot of unpleasant byproducts: environmental pollution and degradation, climate destabilization and other externalities. Eventually these started showing up as high insurance premiums and remediation costs for natural and man-made disasters, and these too put a damper on economic growth. Population growth has its penalties too. You see, bigger populations translate to bigger population centers, and research results show that the bigger the city, the higher is its energy use per capita. Unlike biological organisms, where the larger the animal, the slower is its metabolism, the intensity of activity needed to sustain a population center increases along with population. Observe that in big cities people talk faster, walk faster, and generally have to live more intensely and operate on a tighter schedule just to stay alive. All of this hectic activity takes energy away from constructing a bigger, richer future. Yes, the future may be ever more populous (for now) but the fastest-growing form of human settlement on the planet is the urban slum—lacking in social services, sanitation, rife with crime and generally unsafe. What all of this means is that growth is self-limiting. Next, observe that we have already reached these limits, and have in some cases gone far beyond them. The currently failing fad of hydraulic fracturing of shale deposits and steaming oil out of tar sands is indicative of the advanced state of depletion of fossil fuel sources. Climate destabilization is producing ever more violent storms, ever more severe droughts (California now has just a year's worth of water left) and is predicted to wipe out entire countries because of rising ocean levels, failing monsoon seasons and dwindling irrigation water from glacial melt. Pollution has likewise reached its limits in many areas: urban smog, be it in Paris, Beijing, Moscow or Teheran, has become so bad that industrial activities are being curtailed simply so that people can breathe. Radioactivity from the melted-down nuclear reactors at Fukushima in Japan is showing up in fish caught on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. All of these problems are causing a very strange thing to happen to money. In the previous, growth phase of capitalism, money was borrowed into existence in order to bring consumption forward and by so doing to stimulate economic growth. But a few years ago a threshold was reached in the US, which was at the time still the epicenter of global economic activity (since eclipsed by China), where a unit of new debt produced less than one unit of economic growth. This made borrowing from the future with interest no longer possible. Whereas before money was borrowed in order to produce growth, now it had to be borrowed, in ever-larger amounts, simply to prevent financial and industrial collapse. Consequently, interest rates on new debt were reduced all the way to zero, in something that came to be known as ZIRP, for Zero Interest Rate Policy. To make it even sweeter, central banks accepted the money they loaned out at 0% interest as deposits, which earned a tiny bit of interest, allowing banks to make a profit by doing absolutely nothing. Unsurprisingly, doing absolutely nothing proved to be rather ineffective, and around the world economies started to shrink. Many countries resorted to forging their statistics to paint a rosier picture, but one statistic that doesn't lie is energy consumption. It is indicative of the overall level of economic activity, and it is down across the entire world. A glut of oil, and a much lower oil price, is what we are currently witnessing as a result. Another indicator that doesn't lie is the Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the level of shipping activity, and it has plummeted too. And so ZIRP set the stage for the latest, most queer development: interest rates have started to go negative, both on loans and deposits. Good bye, ZIRP, hello, NIRP! Central banks around the world are starting to make loans at small negative rates of interest. That's right, certain central banks now pay certain financial institutions to borrow money! In the meantime, interest rates on bank deposits have gone negative as well: keeping your money in the bank is now a privilege, for which one must pay. But interest rates are certainly not negative for everyone. Access to free money is a privilege, and those who are privileged are the bankers, and the industrialists they fund. Those who have to borrow to finance housing are less privileged; those who borrow to pay for education even less so. Those not privileged at all are those who are forced to buy food using credit cards, or take out payday loans to pay rent. The functions which borrowing once played in capitalist economies have been all but abandoned. Once upon a time, the idea was that access to capital could be obtained based on a good business plan, and that this allowed entrepreneurship to flourish and many new businesses to be formed. Since anybody, and not just the privileged, could take out a loan and start a business, this meant that economic success depended, at least to some extent, on merit. But now business formation has gone in reverse, with many more enterprises going out of business than are being formed, and social mobility has become largely a thing of the past. What is left is a rigidly stratified society, with privileges dispensed based on hereditary wealth: those at the top get paid to borrow, and get to surf on a wave of free money, while those at the bottom are driven ever further into debt servitude and destitution. Can NIRP underpin a new feudalism? It certainly cannot reverse the downward slide, because the factors that are putting limits on growth are not amenable to financial manipulation, being physical in nature. You see, no amount of free money can make new natural resources spring into existence. What it can do, however, is freeze the social hierarchy among the owners of capital—for a while, but not forever. Everywhere you care to look, the ever-shrinking economy eventually results in populist revolt, war and national bankruptcy, and these cause money to stop working in a number of ways. There is usually devaluation, bank failures, inability to finance imports, and the demise of pensions and of the public sector. The desire to survive causes people to focus on getting direct access to physical resources, distributing them among friends and family. In turn, this causes market mechanisms to become extremely opaque and distorted, and often to stop functioning altogether.
3/26/2015 2:32:50 AM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
nycman530 New York, NY 61, joined Dec. 2010
3/26/2015 2:47:55 AM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
amusicluvr Salem, OR 62, joined Nov. 2013	In 1929, before the crash, anyone could buy stock on margin (credit)...putting 1% down, and borrowing the other 99% of the cost of the purchase. The idea was to buy a lot of stock, wait for it to rise, sell it at a profit, pay off the loan plus interest, and still have a bundle left over. Even shoe shine boys, doormen, and elevator operators, were doing it. As long as most stocks rose rapidly, and few to none went down very far, for very long, it worked. Finally, most stock was based on paper profits only, since not all stocks always did well. When one went down more than usual, and did not again rise soon enough, the owner had to sell most of his portfolio to pay off the debt owed, and then still often owed more money. When enough people started doing that, the market crashed. That can't happen today, since the rules were changed. Now only the richest customers-millionaires, and billionaires, get to trade on credit, and they have to put down at least 50% of the cost. They can borrow no more than the other 50%...no more 99% credit buys now.
3/26/2015 6:34:36 AM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
testsignup Springfield, VA 61, joined Sep. 2009	What really makes these repeated nonsensical rants silly, is that Socialism is actually just another SHADE or VERSION of capitalism. So what these particular socialists keep saying is "I don't want capitalism, I want capitalism." It's almost cute.
3/26/2015 7:01:45 AM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
condor_0000 Tampa, FL 57, joined Feb. 2013	Quote from testsignup: What really makes these repeated nonsensical rants silly, is that Socialism is actually just another SHADE or VERSION of capitalism. So what these particular socialists keep saying is "I don't want capitalism, I want capitalism." It's almost cute. Socialism is not liberalism. Socialism begins the elimination of the capitalists, the confiscation of their ill-gotten loot, the elimination of the capitalist stock markets and the dollar as currency. Under socialism the capitalists are gone, the stock market is gone, the military industrial complex is gone, and the debt is repudiated, meaning he bond holders are gone. The working class has taken political power and all political policy is geared around what is best for workers, rather than all political policy being geared around making billionaire capitalists richer. If one doesn't understand socialism, it is easy to be fooled by the ruling-class and the pseudo-left groups capitalism likes to produce in the effort to keep the masses chained to the rapefest and lootfest of capitalism. ------------------ Official endorsements reveal Kshama Sawant’s close ties with Democratic Party By Eric London 25 March 2015 World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/25/sawa-m25.html Excerpts: After over a year in office, Seattle City Councilperson Kshama Sawant’s first term is defined by her determined efforts to draw ever closer to the Democratic Party. Though Sawant claims to represent a “socialist alternative” to the American political establishment, she has in fact worked tirelessly to integrate herself into it. Sawant made her support for the Democratic Party clear when she attended an official Democratic Party fundraiser on February 21. At the event, Sawant paid homage to her friend Larry Gossett, a local Democratic Party operative who currently sits on the County Council for the jurisdiction that includes Seattle. Gossett, who has endorsed Sawant's reelection campaign, recently voted in support of a $200 million plan to construct a new 150-cell prison for children. In recent weeks, Sawant has intensified her campaign to cozy up to the Democratic Party. On March 16, Sawant’s re-election campaign announced that it had received the endorsement of Democratic State Senator Pramila Jayapal, a self-described close political ally of Seattle’s Democratic Mayor Ed Murray. The Democratic state senator is a former Wall Street investment banker who described her time managing leveraged buyouts as “terrific experience” on her campaign website. An internal Socialist Alternative document reveals the group’s explicit orientation toward the Democratic Party. Socialist Alternative published the document on an internal online message board in response to questions from its membership about Sawant’s attendance at the February 21 Democratic Party fundraiser. “We should fight to win the support of Democratic politicians for demands that advance the interests of working people,” the letter admits before meekly reserving “the right to politically criticize them.” Socialist Alternative doesn’t only defend Sawant’s attendance at the fundraiser, it also acknowledges that the purpose of Sawant’s attendance was to appeal to the Democratic Party: The internal letter continues to explain that “socialists should welcome Gosset’s [sic] endorsement of Kshama as it strengthens Kshama’s credibility and support among progressive Democrats in Seattle,” and that “working together—where possible—to win concrete improvements for workers and the oppressed also helps to answer the attacks on Kshama that she is unwilling to collaborate and puts her ideology ahead of making progress on important issues, etc.” To put things more concisely: Socialist Alternative sees itself—and is—essentially a faction of the Democratic Party. This whole operation plays a crucial role in pulling the wool over the eyes of workers and young people who are growing increasingly dissatisfied with the American political establishment and the vast levels of social inequality over which it presides. Despite their incantations to the need to build an “independent” movement of the working class, Sawant and the pseudo-left groups as a whole see their central task being to derail and block precisely such a movement. The “place” that Socialist Alternative seeks to construct is revealed when Hedges notes that Sawant “cited the problems of Chicago Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel in seeking re-election as evidence that even the very beginnings of movement by working people and communities of color can shake and weaken the Democratic Party establishment.” This is a reference to the campaign of Jesús “Chuy” García, a thoroughly conventional Democratic Party politician that Socialist Alternative has backed in the election campaign. Sawant adds that the aim must be to build “a mass movement, a viable radical alternative. This is what is happening in Greece and Spain.” This is a reference in particular to Syriza, which has taken state power in Greece and has proceeded to enforce the austerity dictates of the European banks. [Edited 3/26/2015 7:04:25 AM ]
3/26/2015 10:24:16 AM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
darthcapital North York, ON 45, joined Apr. 2014	Again with the Orlov quotes condor you do know that orlov, ah never-mind , you will dispute the actual facts again.
3/26/2015 10:27:50 AM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
nat_now Ocala, FL 56, joined Jul. 2013	I would have to block the page spreader to even HOPE to read this pg 1... dayum!... think of us poor saps with tiny phones [Edited 3/26/2015 10:28:26 AM ]
3/26/2015 11:46:43 AM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
condor_0000 Tampa, FL 57, joined Feb. 2013	Quote from nat_now: I would have to block the page spreader to even HOPE to read this pg 1... dayum!... think of us poor saps with tiny phones I had to block him to read the thread, too. I don't know why people post idiotic crap that offers no argument at all, but only demands that they be blocked in order to read the thread. When the thread gets tired, I'll unblock the moron. But what a stupid f**k!
3/26/2015 11:49:11 AM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
condor_0000 Tampa, FL 57, joined Feb. 2013	Quote from darthcapital: Again with the Orlov quotes condor you do know that orlov, ah never-mind , you will dispute the actual facts again. Right-wing propaganda rule #1: When facing material that leaves you utterly incapable of offering any kind of valid counter-argument, simply attack the author. After all, the character of EVERYONE can be attacked in some fashion.
3/26/2015 12:06:34 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
darthcapital North York, ON 45, joined Apr. 2014	Marxist propaganda rule # 1 post evidence from apocryphal sources to discredit actual facts and hopes people are too naive or dumb to know the difference.
3/26/2015 12:26:38 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
condor_0000 Tampa, FL 57, joined Feb. 2013	Quote from darthcapital: Marxist propaganda rule # 1 post evidence from apocryphal sources to discredit actual facts and hopes people are too naive or dumb to know the difference. If you have some argument with anything Orlov wrote, post it! That's all you have to do, dude. Just tell us where Orlov is lying. I posted a substantial excerpt. If Orlov truly is nothing but an evil, lying propagandist whose every word is a despicable lie, it should be pretty easy for you to point that out.
3/26/2015 12:35:40 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
peterk2 Fort Lauderdale, FL 54, joined May. 2007	Quote from amusicluvr: In 1929, before the crash, anyone could buy stock on margin (credit)...putting 1% down, and borrowing the other 99% of the cost of the purchase. *wow, and they teach all economic history in moscow. those versatile communists*
3/26/2015 1:03:13 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
darthcapital North York, ON 45, joined Apr. 2014	I have pointed out the last time when you mentioned orlov and I asked an important question which you avoided. Nice try though condor.
3/26/2015 1:17:23 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
condor_0000 Tampa, FL 57, joined Feb. 2013	Quote from darthcapital: I have pointed out the last time when you mentioned orlov and I asked an important question which you avoided. Nice try though condor. So, you've got nothing. That's pretty much business as usual for you.
3/26/2015 1:42:01 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
nat_now Ocala, FL 56, joined Jul. 2013	I'm all for that anti rat race sentiment! Glad I've lived middle ground. The other end is ones who find it far more lucrative to take it too easy and be spoon-fed..rationed, no less. I've sure learned a lot reading u and d.cap and lob and even mlvr lol...there's always content ringing true!!! Omg... that post re seattle...
3/26/2015 2:27:42 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
jinxthejuvy11 Philadelphia, PA 48, joined Aug. 2014 online now!	Quote from nycman530: . Will somebody wake this guy-up!!
3/26/2015 2:41:24 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
condor_0000 Tampa, FL 57, joined Feb. 2013	Quote from jinxthejuvy11: . Will somebody wake this guy-up!! He's been sent to his bedroom for a nice little nap until this thread has run its course. [Edited 3/26/2015 2:42:04 PM ]
3/26/2015 4:27:24 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
peterk2 Fort Lauderdale, FL 54, joined May. 2007	condom, is it fun to go to those commie meetings where the old hippie babes go braless? [Edited 3/26/2015 4:27:55 PM ]
3/27/2015 3:01:58 PM	HELP! I'm Trapped in a Ponzi Scheme
amusicluvr Salem, OR 62, joined Nov. 2013	Sucking saggy tits is better than having no tits to suck.

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