His level of "richness" depends on how much stuff he can buy. He can buy more stuff for the same amount of money in a lower cost-of-living city.

So by "person with the exact same possessions and material wealth" you actually meant "one dude with crappier possessions (of the exact same monetary value) and the same amount of money". Why is it unreasonable for me to mean "literally the exact same possessions and net worth"? I am simply dismissing any subjective value that a person might place on living in a particular city and focusing on how much money a person has and what sort of possessions they have.

One of the things he is buying is where to live.

I mean, seriously?

http://lewrockwell.com/rothbard/frb.html

Using the term counterfeiting to refer to M0 expansion is just bizarre. It's printing actual, real money. I mean, it's not enough for you to use the bizarre ACist/Austrian terminology, but now you're creating your own derivative meanings of those terms?


Again, it's irrelevant whether banks cut your personal rates or not, which has mostly to do with your lack of credit and scale - there is an international free market over these funds that anyone can access. The Fed influences rates and creates money by intervening in interbanking lending. That is, lending between banks. But why do banks care about lending to one another as opposed to some other party? They don't, as long as you have credit and liquidity. You too could borrow at those rates, provided that you're deemed creditworthy enough.


We're not talking about deposit insurance - stick to the topic.


Fractional reserve banking is mostly just lending. It's you lending X dollars to someone else, and you still feeling that your loan has actual cash-like value (and other market participants accepting this cash-like quality of your loan and accepting this for payment) and the other guy having actual cash. That's all there is.


No, it's not last price, it's current price. If the fed conducts open market operation to keep some price at X, then everyone gets X, not just those who deal directly wih the fed.


But bank shares haven't done very well - since about 2006, there are few investments worse than investing in bank shares. So again, who's benefiting? If it's so easy to figure out who benefits from the intervention, why can't anyone answer this question? You too could be a partial owner of those banks, but you chose not to be, so it can't be owners of those banks. And if banks are subsidized this way and still cannot make abnormal profit, they must be wholly passing on this subsidy to other market participants. Doesn't this nullify your contention that it's easy to see who's benefiting by looking at who gets the subsidy? If banks benefited in the past, but not anymore and not at all times, again, isn't it just speculators who are able to time this who benefit?


Then why don't you actually follow that spending line and actually point out actual people in actual positions?


Why can't you get to know those people? To the extent that ties are important, why don't you think those people invested in those ties by going to expensive schools, working on connections, understanding conventions of this particular social network etc? Efforts that could've been spent on other endeavors? To the extent ties are inherited, how is it any different from any other form of inheritance?

Besides, what on earth does this have to do with government intervention? Is it government intervention that causes prestigious jobs to go to those who know the insiders? And is your contention that government intervention in this instance benefits people who are good at networking? How do we determine this quality? Who are those people? Do we just assume that everyone who's successful in banking has this quality? Why wouldn't this quality be useful for other reasons in the absence of government intervention?


Your complete inability to focus on the argument aside, we were and are still talking about how this intervention benefits specific people over others and how easy it is to figure out exactly who those people are.


What does this have to do with anything? Lobbying the government not being a free market per your definition has nothing to do with the underlying truth that lobbying requires scarce resources that can be applied elsewhere. And those who choose to engage in lobbying aren't magically offered above-market returns on their investment.

Focus, Zygote, Focus.

Why do I have to include this into my definition of wealth? Why is it unreasonable to focus on how much money a person has and what sort of possessions they have? Why is it unreasonable to count identical houses of different values as the same when calculating wealth?

Where did you learn about the financial system? My guess in spoiler box:



Actually, let's try something that will ultimately be more embarrassing for you. How do you think "new"(counterfeit) money the fed creates enters the economy? How does a bank's fractional reserve lending force the fed to "create" more money?

More spoiler box, statist tyrants only read this:

You can exclude anything you want, but once you are down the road of everyone having their own subjective definition of "rich" then disputing anyone else's views is pretty silly.

I haven't disputed anyone else's view. I have simply been defending my view.

and @lol at PB calling fiat money real money

Just for the sake of humoring some people, let's assume $250K is not rich. What is it, then? Middle class? Poor? Laissez-Faire?

There needs to be a name for it if not "rich," and no one's offered anything so far.

Well-to-do.

/THREAD

one time

rothbard link too long. reference me the point you're making please.

printing actual real money is to dilute the relative marginal value of outstanding money. The economic effect is no different when a criminal counterfeiter expands the money supply compared to a legalized counterfeiter like the central bank. expanding the money supply, no matter who does it, gives the expander the chance to bid for scarce resources with new money instead of acquired savings. The acquisitions and consumptions the expander engages in cause a greater scarcity among the public at large and their prices are relatively higher than they would otherwise be. In the process of expansion his early expenditures turn out to be early extra income for those who receive it. This allows them to profit more than otherwise would, since their demand is greater as result of the monetary increase which led to bidding. They can spend this extra income elsewhere, further diminishing the scarcity of resources and raising the relative prices for everyone else. Eventually it reaches a point where the new money is factored in but the factoring process involved diminishing the relative wealth of those who are left with greater expense rises than income rises.


sometimes its because of their needs to improve solvency. this was the case in Canada when banks stopped passing on rate cuts like they traditionally did a couple years ago.

and how exactly are you deemed creditworthy enough?

deposit insurance is relevant to the money supply. are you telling me this is in no way a liability of the fed? there is a de facto guarantee from the fed to stop the banking system from panicking assuming the treasury and fdic cannot meet their obligations. i mean the fdic is already bankrupt and the treasury's finances aren't so good so this may be a real question at some point. even now the implict backing effects the markets.

ya. so what. now this is off topic but the problem here is obviously that its traded as cash like when it clearly is not and this forces heavy discounting at times assuming the system has checks and balances in place.


the fed so far hasn't seemed to be targeting the prices of securities. And by them targeting a price, they keep that price higher than it would otherwise be, making it more expensive to acquire the product than otherwise. how is this beneficial? its only beneficial if i predicted this before others and bet on it.

clearly they could do this though and probably will cap certain yields if they need to, but their monetary policy is based on balance sheet expansion, since they preannounce amounts they're gonna purchase rather than take a discretionary approach like "we'll purchase as much as needed to maintain the yield at X".

it does not matter what bank shares have done. dont you understand this? they could have squandered the gifts they were giving. it may have cushioned them but wasnt enough to be a net benefit.

it does mean their subsidy as whole is thrown away in such a case. but the chain of events is such that they receive a subsidy and waste it. wasting it doesnt take away from the fact that they had a subsidy to waste. another thing is the bank is not an entity as a whole, and some within it will walk away big winners and others big losers. this is still seperate. none of this changes the fact the banks get a subsidy and its easy to see that.

but also i do agree speculators are able to benefit a lot under any circumstance they can speculate information that is not priced into markets. this doesnt change the fact that the early receivers of money still benefited more than they should have otherwise as do those who are the early receivers of their funds.


the easiest way to see who benefits is to look down the line. so as i said it starts with the fed. they buy assets on the recipients of those funds incomes rises more than otherwise since there is now more demand for their assets than their was before. since their expenses have yet to rise in conjunction they will benefit at the expense of those who are in the opposite situation. thereafter all recipients of government expenditures, since the fed is one of their largest financiers. all recipients of primary dealer expenditures. etc. are early receivers in the chain of events.

i really dont see the point of arguing this stuff.

im a big advocate of learning by the use of argument but you really are just arguing for the sake of it here. i really dont get your point. can you outline your argument in one sentence?

ahhh.. there you go. and now ive explained this above.

the problem is that there is a group to be lobbied for such action. im not saying they didnt "earn" what they get in the sense that they played their cards right to get it or were dealt good hands. but the existence of the cash grab is wrong. creating a fight over it is wrong.

I did. You seem to have conveniently missed that I quoted a specific part that contradicts your usage.


Since the "expander" is the Fed and the eventual beneficiary of the Fed's income is the taxpayers at large, so it benefits taxpayers at large?


The same way anyone is deemed creditworthy. If you're Berkshire Hathaway, you're pretty creditworthy, more so than almost all banks. If you're Zygote, maybe not so much.


Do money creation and inflation go away once you get rid of deposit insurance? Stick to the topic at hand.


Again, we're not discussing whether the Fed's operation benefits the society at large or not. Of course it does, but that's not the point. Who on earth benefit from this? You keep saying it's easy to figure out who do, but you can't seem to answer the question.


Wait, so passive owners of bank shares were subsidized, but squandered the gifts? What did they do? They didn't do anything! So kind of you to point out that they are beneficiaries of the system! I'm sure they greatly appreciate the gifts!


So who are big winners and who are big losers? The entire argument your side is making here is that it's easy to determine who are big winners and who are big losers. I was trying to figure out who the easy money went to in the last big inflationary cycle (you know, follow the money, find the winner, right?) and it turns out that the money went to home buyers! So people who bought a house during the boom are, like LDO, beneficiaries of the easy money, right?


So it benefits owners of assets of the type that the Fed buys? Since the Fed largely buys treasuries and the biggest net owners of treasuries are probably Chinese and Japanese governments, it must be those governments that benefit?



Again, no one is arguing about the rightness or wrongness. So your argument is that banks were subsidized, but actual owners of the banks didn't benefit - someone else did. How do you determine who that someone else is? This must be true in all cases, right? Otherwise, you can buy shares of government contractors too!

i'm familiar with that, actually. it's no accident I used the term pay check (implication : salary of a working class person) rather than income, but I should have taken the time to make my post more clear and accurate.

it's not necessarily wrong to call someone rich based on today's value of future pay checks, but I can think of many reasons why it's a dubious thing to do in almost any case. any income plays a role in determining where you stand in the poor-rich continuum, but a 'normal' salary alone shouldn't be enough to be considered rich. of course this is taking us back to the simple fact we have different definitions.

i feel like a lack of vocabulary is behind this disagreement. rich is supposed to be a strong word. it seems to me that the "well-off" category should be very large and most of it clearly separate from the rich category, but some of the posters here appear to think of these as synonymous.

i really dont get it. is your point that anyone who does benefit an ACist should be snag that position with enough effort? who cares? im really confused where you are going with this.

you must be closing your senses though to an extent because we're circling a bit now too. do you agree money expanses benefit the early expander and his recipients at the expense of those whose expenses rise faster than their income?

if so and there is a group in our society that expands money then someone is benefiting more than they otherwise should from this fact at the expense of others. that someone is whoever receives new income from newly created money faster than their expenses rise. This is relative, they may not be net benefiters in life, but that doesnt take away from the marginal advantage they have. however hard it is in finance, the government makes it a lot easier. the average salaries and bonuses are much higher than they would otherwise be. the downside is somewhat protected, and the ability to succeeded is somewhat aided. being first in line for new money allows quite a wealth transfer. during certain times these benefits can and do divert a lot of capital and resources to the financial sector as more people try acquire the benefits.

you keep asking why wouldn't i invest in their stocks if they are benefiting but ive told you already that just because a company receives a subsidy doesnt mean they are overall worthwhile and there may not be an easy way to attach oneself to their marginal benefit. further im telling you that the price of investing in their stocks is only worth it if it isnt priced in and was expected to benefit shareholders anyways. Your point that anyone can ride along with their benefit is non sense. truly i dont really know what you're trying to prove.

there is no one place money constantly flows, but ANYONE WHO RECEIVES EARLY INCOME BEFORE THEIR EXPENSES RISE AS RESULT OF NEW MONEY BENEFITS. ANYONE WHO RECEIVES HIGHER EXPENSES AS A RESULT OF NEW MONEY WITHOUT COMPENSATORY RISES IN INCOME LOSES. whoever you meet who satisfies those characteristics wins or loses.

Why are you even bothering to debate PB, he argues in the classic first year undergrad way, has only glimpsed a fraction of the whole picture but will argue any position gained from that glimpse with absolute conviction and authority.

His position is absolutely contradictory, there is no one who benefits, but hey conceding that there might be, it does not matter because we could all be that guy and the only thing stopping us is the odd billion in capital and the necessary knowledge. It does not matter if there is an entrenched parasitic system because we could all be the parasite (Ignoring some rather substantial structural hurdles).

Also lol again at Flywtf snuggeling up to PB which just proves he is afflicted by anti AC ideological knee jerk blindness because PBs position is just as if not more so antithetic to FLWwtf's views but he cant see it just because PB is arguing against an AC poster boy.

i missed it when i pressed reply it didnt show up. i just read the post while responding.

anyways, the terminology is irrelevant. i dont think a lot of so called austrian economists have everything right when it comes to money and ive disagreed with rothbard on money before. overall i think his picture his sound though, but my preferred terminology and expression is different than his and i think his can lead to more confusion so i try avoid it. anyways there are ways to think of FRB as counterfeit but its irrelevant to this debate. its distinctly different from real money creation. fudiciary media has wholly different characteristics over real money, and thats all that matters to me.

so AIG, fannie, etc. are more creditworthy more than me even when they have negative equity? also their assets are only worth something when the fed decides to buy it too. if suddenly the fed wnated to pay high prices for zygote notes i print, id be really credit worthy too i guess. since the feds portfolio coincides with those of banks and gses, a lot of the creditworthiness is provided by the fed. it also causes the fed to under collateralize loans since they value the collateral including them as the major participant in the market. however collateral is only useful to sell to someone excluding yourself. if the fed is half the market they'd obviously tend to significnatly overstate the value of collateral submitted especially when they do high loans to value.

ya they somewhat do. and the subsidy to banks somewhat diminishes too and checks and balances rise.

you just dont want to listen to the answer. i told you already, the government and primary dealers. what dont you understand about this answer?

i never said passive owners squandered the gifts?


sure some people who got credit when they otherwise wouldnt have benefited from getting this increased access to credit. this comes at the cost of credit increasing later.

you only benefit from new money if you are able to spend at unadjusted prices with your inflated income or asset. if this is the case then it is.

This is a framing debate, that's all. And this is one that is in the minority in that the right has lost, at least thus far. That having been said, it is telling to me how much time has been spent fighting the framing as compared to just arguing the merits against progressive taxation.

This thread has nothing to do with progressive taxation. Why is it telling that it isn't being discussed?

Oak, what does M0 mean? In the context of a discussion of the money supply.

Zygote didn't answer me, but also can you tell me how you think the money supply is expanded? I mean mechanically, not the big picture of good and evil stuff. I want you to explain the inner mechanics of the United States financial system to me.

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