*Osprey turns to dust*

yeah that's about right, innit

Are you talking about all debt or some debt? Because I was under the impression that it's not uncommon for countries to devalue their currency in order to pay back their debts. And that the US government has been willing to print money in order to get out of a bind even recently (e.g., quantitive easing, even though that wasn't a deficit related crisis).

And why is it not just a progressive policy but a progressive tax? Inflation benefits debtors (generally, non-capital wage earners) because it makes it easier for the more to pay off their debts, while low-inflation benefits creditors (or, those with capital), because it preserves the buying power of the dollars they already have. But is there a reason why inflation takes the form of a tax specifically?

lmao at the guy launching the Raven-B in the middle of a flock of Ospreys. And all those Marines with no dispersion. Holy **** at least I can say they got me with a ****ing dragon and climbing a mountain and ****, not unrealistic 'realistic' video game ads. Holy **** that was amazing.

I remember the one from 1998 being far more impressive in the CGI department 20 years ago!

Holy ****, we were just talking about that recently.

Psh, army of one? Try raid group of one.

I'm not sure how creditors distinguish between expansionary monetary policy and currency debasement, but I bet it's subjective and diplomatically sensitive. Even if nobody wants to call it default, though, a high inflation rate or recent inflation instability will at least limit a country's ability to issue local currency debt, exactly as if they formally repudiated their debts. That's a big problem when you depend on foreign creditors to cover half of your deficit intragovernmental loans don't count , or when you consider that a mere return to 1990s creditworthiness would mean paying $1.6 trillion interest per year. In 2018 dollars, obviously. It goes up with inflation.

Printing money could maybe work if the US intended to stay off debt for a long time, but I'm skeptical that the US government could afford to keep going without an inflow of foreign wealth. I don't think the US will ever be able to properly repay that debt, either. It's more like an eternal lien on the US working class at this point.

QE wasn't exactly printing money, it's more like a demand deposit, or a low-interest loan using treasury securities as collateral. But yeah, I get your point. The thing is, QE didn't just cause inflation, it also massively increased liquidity in the treasury securities markets. So it also made US government debt much less risky. Just issuing reserves without a bond swap won't do that.

The thing about fiat currency is, it's not worth anything by itself. It's only worth what you can buy with it. I've used the "pile of stuff" analogy earlier in this thread: take all of the stuff your country can make in a given year, put it all in a big pile, and then if you're holding 1% of the outstanding currency, you're allowed to take home 1% of the pile. That's more or less how fiat currencies work, it's a share in the total wealth of the country, redeemable at any time.

So why does a government collect a tax? It's because they want some of the pile. If the government requires everybody to give them 20% of all outstanding currency, the government can then spend that currency to take 20% of the pile of stuff. That leaves 80% of the pile for everybody else to divide amongst themselves.

What happens if the government simply prints 25% more money, and keeps the excess for itself? Then the government can spend that currency to buy 20% of the pile of stuff. That leaves 80% of the pile for everybody else to divide amongst themselves.

But what happens if the government just... like... steals 20% of the stuff? Sends in soldiers, takes 20% of the pile, and walks away? ...That leaves 80% of the pile for everybody else to divide amongst themselves.

In other words, it doesn't actually matter how the government finances itself. The result is the same, it's only who bears the burden that's different. And that's the real reason our governments collect income taxes instead of printing money, because, as you pointed out, it's the rich and the creditors who are affected by inflation, and it's the workers who are affected by income taxes. Thus, printing money is effectively a progressive tax, because the outcome is basically the same as an explicit progressive wealth tax would be.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/04/neo-nazi-holocaust-denier-art-jones-illinois-republicans

Just look who's emboldened now in the face of it all to run for office.

So how's that Equifax probe coming along?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-equifax-cfpb/exclusive-u-s-consumer-protection-official-puts-equifax-probe-on-ice-sources-idUSKBN1FP0IZ

The democrats wouldn’t have done anything either.

Ultimately, maybe? But at least it was the Obama-appointed director of the (then new) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that began the probe that the Trump nominee seems prepared to let die on the vine altogether.

Make Corruption Unapologetic Again.

Quite a big dip in the Dow today. Was it too high?

Like the Obama era investigation into ratings agencies taking bribes to rate mortgage derivatives higher

or the Obama era investigations into US banks knowingly laundering drug cartel money

or

or

or


The US government doesn’t enforce laws against corporations anymore, that’s it, the end. It doesn’t matter who’s in power. One political donation or job offer and the whole thing goes away, at most a small settlement, orders of magnitude less than the profit earned, with no admission of guilt.

Not only that, not only will Equifax get away without corrective action, but the US government also isn’t going to do anything about SSNs being compromised. Know why? Because companies like Equifax make too much money off of the US government not providing its own citizen authentication system.

lol, OK. This probably isn't significantly worse than what we would have gotten from a Democratic president.

ayy lmao

How much ETH did you cash out? Hope it was most!

Definitely not, why would I do that? It has to go down to somewhere below $10 before I start to lose money!

actually i cant lose money because i put my original investment that i took out into LASER IZE

Not selling at the peak is kind of like losing money, in a way.

So I lost money every time I didn't sell at the peak, each time on the way up, and somehow losing all that money resulted in me having the amount of money I have now?

Sounds dumb desu

Sell at peaks, buy at lows, is that not the strategy for maximizing profit?

I mean, it's speculative as ****, but I think it should have been really clear just how fragile the previous high was, I don't think it would have been a gamble to sell all and pick up again sometime when it feels floor-y.

This is wrong.

The strategy is to unfailingly beat hindsight by knowing exactly what to do before it happens. Then it will be impossible to regret anything, because it will be literally impossible to have done even an epsilon better.

It would make a lot of sense for me to do that if I was trying to maximize profit, but since I bought it to use, and not speculate or trade or whatever, it doesn't really have anything to do with me. The amount I have cashed out so far is way more money than I thought I would see from this directly (none, originally) and any future cashing out will, again, be a supplemental gain to the utility I bought the tokens for, so I don't really worry about it. It will probably be at $2k in an hour for ten minutes or some **** anyway, it's not like the price has anything to do with reality.

That said, if I did think the price was reflected by some sort of fundamentals, selling before Ethereum has even finished it's most important development milestones would be pretty stupid.

Fair enough, not sure what you'd use Ethereum for that isn't workable with good ol USD, but if that's your game I can't say nay.

OTOH the Dow took a beating as well today, I wonder what tomorrow will look like..

The Donaldberg Trumpertaincy principle, or: Conservation of Lying.

Did he lie when he said he'd submit to an interview with the special council? Or is he being truthful so far, and is waiting until he is under oath to lie?



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/us/politics/trump-lawyers-special-counsel-interview.html

To pay to host weird art on swarm once it comes out. Because the main character of the thing is a fungus, so it is going on a decentralized thing, because thats what fungi are like.

Get it?

Realized vs. unrealized gains



It seems as if you're saying that the real trick is to maximizing profits is knowing the future, because that's really the only way you'd know that a peak's a peak and a low is a low.




Timing the market is really difficult, especially in crypto trading where there are no fundamentals. What you're describing would have been a massive gamble. It might feel "floor-y", but who knows if it is? It might feel like a peak, but who knows if it is? Whenever you buy or sell, there's always risk: you can sell now, but maybe you shouldn't, because tomorrow it could be worth more. You can buy now, but maybe soon you can get it for cheaper. Or if you don't buy now, maybe tomorrow it'll rally, and you'll miss out on potential gains. Because you don't know the future, there's risk in every trade. And once you have some skin in the game, you learn that what your gut tells you isn't worth much, because, no matter who you are, your gut has been really, really wrong before.

I was going to make a joke about that one time my gut was "really wrong", but in truth I can count myself among those fortunate enough to have never been food poisoned.

I agree in basically all other circumstances, maybe I'm crazy but a month or two ago I felt absolutely 100% certain bitcoin was massively overpriced and would plummet and advocates on her for anyone to cash out. I called the peak, and felt very strongly about it.

I guess that is pushy when I say it like that, but I usually don't feel nearly so certain.

It's also hard to lose if you realize gains at the very top and rebuy down.

Well then, you were right, and it's really too bad you didn't have some to sell. But I'm guessing you also thought it was overpriced at 8k, and at 16k, and you probably would've been inclined to sell then if you had bought in.




Again, you'd have to know its the top and you'd have to know where the bottom is, and that's really difficult to do. I don't know if you've done any trading before, but, in my experience, it's not easy at a psychological/emotional level. There's a lot of emotional resistance to buying something at the precise moment when it is depreciating in value because people are deciding en masse that the future of the asset is not bright. It's also difficult to sell at a moment when an asset has a lot of momentum and is currently appreciating in value, and it's already made you money, and you worry about missing out on potential gains.

You know what's even more pathetic, is some folks I know who tell me that they'd never want to have made money by trading crypto-currency in the now-waning crypto-craze, because they are morally above it, and wouldn't want to waste their time thinking about it. My response to them: just admit already you'd have loved to have made a buck in hindsight and now regret being risk averse.

I know, I definitely regret not trading my life’s savings for USDT.

Yup!

Well, just to be clear, the person who expressed this sentiment to me did so about a month ago. I'm sure he's happier now.

Oh. Yeah. Well I'm sure there's plenty of schadenfreude to go around too.

You know what's even more pathetic, is some folks I know who tell me that they'd never want to have made money by selling pot before it was legalized, because they are morally above it, and wouldn't want to waste their time thinking about it. My response to them: just admit already you'd have loved to have made a buck in hindsight and now regret being risk averse.

Hmm. OK, I just remembered how slimy a lot of these 'novel' concurrencies are. Like people who just fork Etherium, ripping off the code, the name, and I guess also the suckers who buy into it. The SEC was finally starting to crack down on these guys last I checked, but at least one of the guys doing these shenanigans is based in the PRC.

How about that Donald Trump guy?

Has he done anything lately?

I dunno. I've been less clued into the news since I decreased my Twitter usage. Apparently the story of the moment has to do with a military parade?

How about that memo story? Did anyone care about that? I snoozed right through it.