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[Bauglir]

Doesn't that make it inherently trackable by at least somebody? Or am I missing something.

[alway]

TBH it sounds like glorified digital plush toy collectibles. Sure, there are some other nutty plush toy collectors out there willing to give you something for yours to increase the size of their collection, but not a single person aside from them gives a crap.

Even assuming it gets off the ground -- an assumption akin to speculating on what you would do if a boulder held you at knife point -- there really is nowhere for it to go other than a bubble. Money which is unregulated and uncontrollable by design will not be able to be steered away from oblivion as normal government controlled currency is. The shenanigans on wall street are minicule compared to what would be pulled off on a completely unregulated shadow-currency by those who don't give a sh*t about detonating the whole system.

[thobal]

The question I have is how are users able to maybe transfer a little micro-sd chip with a few of these BC for some crack. Or do all transaction need to take place online?

[LShadow]

This is game-changing concept. No central authority and untraceable? No transaction fees? The drug and porn industries alone will sustain this.

At the very least, maybe Toady could post a Bitcoin address so we could send him some donations without PayPal taking a cut.

[mainiac]

I like to know that the biggest army in the world will literally kill anyone who tries to debase my currency.

If that were the case then The Bernank would've been shot dead long ago.

Yes, because the value of the dollar has completely plummeted since Bernanke took over.

Maybe you were being sarcastic but there are a large number of people who are actually stupid enough to believe that the man who literally wrote the book on depressions and monetary policy when interest rates are very close to zero, doesn't know what he is doing and that inflation is about to skyrocket.  This is despite the fact that they have been making this prediction for three years and inflation remains far below trend.

[Strife26]

Bernake damn well saved the country from all sorts of shit, besides warning about the oncoming problem for a helluva long time.

[Criptfeind]

Bernake pretty cool for a stogy old guy.

He breaks tradition and saves us from financial meltdown. I can respect that.

[Lagslayer]

Bernake damn well saved the country from all sorts of shit, besides warning about the oncoming problem for a helluva long time.

Bernake pretty cool for a stogy old guy.

He breaks tradition and saves us from financial meltdown. I can respect that.

Only temporarily. When the Fed runs out of things to stave it off, the shit is REALLY gonna hit the fan.

[Criptfeind]

Not... Really?

I mean, I thought the thing was we have already hit the bottom and are now slowly rising.

[Lagslayer]

From what I understand, it still had a ways to fall and then they tried to stop it. It's not working. The fed keeps lowering interest rates to get people to borrow more money, which is what got us into this problem in the first place. Lowering the interest rates gives a temporary boost, but it can only go so low. Then it will fall even further because people took even more loans they couldn't really afford.

Printing so much money to pay off the national debt will destroy us.

[mainiac]

From what I understand, it still had a ways to fall and then they tried to stop it. It's not working. The fed keeps lowering interest rates to get people to borrow more money, which is what got us into this problem in the first place. Lowering the interest rates gives a temporary boost, but it can only go so low. Then it will fall even further because people took even more loans they couldn't really afford.

Printing so much money to pay off the national debt will destroy us.

Okay, let's take this one step at a time.
"What got us into this problem in the first place." What got us into this problem in the first place was the collapse of housing prices.  This created a panic and lead everyone to be scared of debt.  But people are already working on that.  Household debt is falling.  Business debt is falling and businesses are siting on huge reserves.  This creates a problem though because if I try to save and you try to save and everyone else does then suddenly nobody is buying anything and we have a massive recession.
"Lowering the interest rates gives a temporary boost"
There's this little thing called investment.  It's when you take money and spend it on something to be used in the future be it a house or business.  What lowering interest rates does is make investing (most noticeably investing in houses) more attractive, ramping up demand.  This creates a problem if there is too much demand in the economy because then too much demand is chasing too few goods and services and runaway inflation results.  But we don't have that situation, we have 9% unemployment.  There are tons of people who would work or who would work more hours if there were opportunities for them.  So inflation isn't a concern.  With inflation not being a concern, investment is a win win.  You spend your money sooner (getting a better price because of the slack market and getting attractive loan terms) and the people you pay are employed instead of unemployed.  It's true that you wont spend in the future, but now somebody else will spend your money in the future when otherwise they wouldn't have had the money to spend.
"Printing so much money to pay off the national debt will destroy us."
First of all, nobody is really printing money.  What the federal reserve is doing is slightly modifying the terms of loans between very large banks, making it more profitable for them to invest then sit on their cash.
Secondly, it's not being done to pay off the national debt.
Thirdly INFLATION IS BELOW TREND
Fourthly it's projected to remain so for an extended period of time, based on what the market spread between inflation indexed and un-indexed securities trade at for a wide variety of assets.  The people who believe that the Federal Reserve is somehow destroying our currency have lost huge sums of money trying to put that belief into investment strategies for the past three years.

If you wish to spout libertarianism and insist on talking about monetary policy, then do yourself a favor and read some damn Milton Friedman.

[alway]

http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/currentinflation.asp
Not only is it low now, but in '09 there was actually pretty big deflation.
tldr version of inflation related economics: when the economy increases too fast, there is high inflation, when it decreases or remains around the same, there is deflation. Monetary policy is intended to smooth this out to 'cool down' the economy when it 'overheats' and inflate it when inflation gets too low. This maxim holds in most situations, with the odd exception being 'stagflation,' which usually has a more concrete cause in the market than the general economic situation (ie: some type of important imported good becomes much more expensive suddenly)

[Lagslayer]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

From what I understand, it still had a ways to fall and then they tried to stop it. It's not working. The fed keeps lowering interest rates to get people to borrow more money, which is what got us into this problem in the first place. Lowering the interest rates gives a temporary boost, but it can only go so low. Then it will fall even further because people took even more loans they couldn't really afford.

Printing so much money to pay off the national debt will destroy us.

Okay, let's take this one step at a time.
"What got us into this problem in the first place." What got us into this problem in the first place was the collapse of housing prices.  This created a panic and lead everyone to be scared of debt.  But people are already working on that.  Household debt is falling.  Business debt is falling and businesses are siting on huge reserves.  This creates a problem though because if I try to save and you try to save and everyone else does then suddenly nobody is buying anything and we have a massive recession.
"Lowering the interest rates gives a temporary boost"
There's this little thing called investment.  It's when you take money and spend it on something to be used in the future be it a house or business.  What lowering interest rates does is make investing (most noticeably investing in houses) more attractive, ramping up demand.  This creates a problem if there is too much demand in the economy because then too much demand is chasing too few goods and services and runaway inflation results.  But we don't have that situation, we have 9% unemployment.  There are tons of people who would work or who would work more hours if there were opportunities for them.  So inflation isn't a concern.  With inflation not being a concern, investment is a win win.  You spend your money sooner (getting a better price because of the slack market and getting attractive loan terms) and the people you pay are employed instead of unemployed.  It's true that you wont spend in the future, but now somebody else will spend your money in the future when otherwise they wouldn't have had the money to spend.
"Printing so much money to pay off the national debt will destroy us."
First of all, nobody is really printing money.  What the federal reserve is doing is slightly modifying the terms of loans between very large banks, making it more profitable for them to invest then sit on their cash.
Secondly, it's not being done to pay off the national debt.
Thirdly INFLATION IS BELOW TREND
Fourthly it's projected to remain so for an extended period of time, based on what the market spread between inflation indexed and un-indexed securities trade at for a wide variety of assets.  The people who believe that the Federal Reserve is somehow destroying our currency have lost huge sums of money trying to put that belief into investment strategies for the past three years.

If you wish to spout libertarianism and insist on talking about monetary policy, then do yourself a favor and read some damn Milton Friedman.

People took out loans to buy these houses. Too many of these loans were flexible rate mortgages, and when the economy went south, the banks raised their rates to offset their losses. The banks broke no rules by doing this because it was in the loan contract. The would be home owners took a gamble and they lost. A loan should be a last resort, not the go to strategy. Pay in cash, you won't get screwed over like this. If you have to live in an apartment for a few years, get over it, but don't bitch if you take the risky loans and get burned.  Encouraging them to gamble some more is not going to solve this problem. And it's not just the government's fault for encouraging this; the people were foolish enough to take these loans out as well. Economic bubbles are caused by loans.

I've done some reading, and the actual printing of more money is up in the air, but there is little transparency so it's hard to confirm anything. The same goes for inflation and unemployment. I believe they are actually much higher than what the government is trying to convince us it is. Basically, I see no reason to trust them, so I don't.

http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/currentinflation.asp
Not only is it low now, but in '09 there was actually pretty big deflation.
tldr version of inflation related economics: when the economy increases too fast, there is high inflation, when it decreases or remains around the same, there is deflation. Monetary policy is intended to smooth this out to 'cool down' the economy when it 'overheats' and inflate it when inflation gets too low. This maxim holds in most situations, with the odd exception being 'stagflation,' which usually has a more concrete cause in the market than the general economic situation (ie: some type of important imported good becomes much more expensive suddenly)

I've heard this theory. Run a deficit to pump up a slumping economy, and run a surplus when the economy does well. Unfortunately, they never really did enough of the latter.

[alway]

People took out loans to buy these houses. Too many of these loans were flexible rate mortgages, and when the economy went south, the banks raised their rates to offset their losses. The banks broke no rules by doing this because it was in the loan contract. The would be home owners took a gamble and they lost. A loan should be a last resort, not the go to strategy. Pay in cash, you won't get screwed over like this. If you have to live in an apartment for a few years, get over it, but don't bitch if you take the risky loans and get burned.  Encouraging them to gamble some more is not going to solve this problem. And it's not just the government's fault for encouraging this; the people were foolish enough to take these loans out as well. Economic bubbles are caused by loans.

Or in other words, it would be best to regulate the system so as to prevent systemic collapse from bad decisions. That's pretty much the point of those 'evil regulations' libertarians complain about: to make such bad decisions which can and do have negative effects on others not merely looked down upon, but illegal.

Furthermore, these loans were not foolishly taken. In all circles but those of a few select expert traders, housing was seen as an investment which couldn't fail. Prices were rising, in some places IIRC as fast as 200% growth in about a year. You could flip a house and make a bundle; small scale real estate businesses were a great way of making a ton of cash. Can't make your mortgage payment? You could merely resell the house and if you were lucky even turn a small profit while you were at it. This of course all during relatively good economic conditions which meant if you lost your job, you would get another within a short period of time. And there was no reason for the average person to believe anything else would or even could happen; it had been happening for about a decade already, which is certainly long enough for the average, non-economist to consider it a permanent trend. Then the economic crash occurred. The houses lost their value: no reselling if you couldn't pay your mortgage payments; you would still be in debt (the 'underwater' loans). The people themselves, due to the economy, lost their jobs and couldn't find new ones.

Economic bubbles are NOT caused by loans. Economic bubbles are caused by human psychology. There was even an interesting experiment done about it. Even when given assets which everyone knows will decrease in value throughout a game, to the point where they are worthless when the game ends, the small price fluctuations will entice people to trade them in hopes of making money. The result is an asset which is not only vastly overpriced, but increasing in price when the real value is decreasing. It isn't until the assets are nearly worthless (15% of original value IIRC) that people realize their lack of value and try to get rid of them like the plague. The experiment shows the classic bubble effect as a phenomena whose roots are firmly entrenched in human psychology.

I've done some reading, and the actual printing of more money is up in the air, but there is little transparency so it's hard to confirm anything. The same goes for inflation and unemployment. I believe they are actually much higher than what the government is trying to convince us it is. Basically, I see no reason to trust them, so I don't.

So you're saying there is a government cover-up of figures with no evidence upon which to base your claims aside from what you choose to 'believe?' The inflation rate is easy to calculate based on the CPI, which is itself calculated using a formula which takes into account the cost of various consumer goods for the average person. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_Index

I've heard this theory. Run a deficit to pump up a slumping economy, and run a surplus when the economy does well. Unfortunately, they never really did enough of the latter.

Again, you are saying the government should make use of more regulation and taxation during the boom times in order to not only save up, but also prevent, the bust times.

[thobal]

How could anyone possibly consider housing prices rising beyond what the majority of people could afford to be a permanent trend? Especially considering the millions of McMansions being built across the country. Were they expecting a population explosion? Massive inflation? Migrations of wealthy people arriving from abroad?

There is a word for people like that in the world of business: Sucker.

The root cause of this was corruption. Massive corruption in monetary policy, in the legislatures, and everywhere else.
The problem normal, non greedy fucks have is that when the suckers get taken for a ride by the wealthy, they have to get out and push.

The truth is not always a pleasant thing, but unless we can some how stem the tide of money following into the coffers of the wealthy, the economy will only get worse. That money goes overseas and will only make foreign goods more expensive as the dollar inflates abroad. We wont see much inflation here except with goods produced mostly or partially overseas. We may see deflation on domestically produced goods. But the dollar will still be devalued at exchange.

The wealthy did not feel this economic recession in the slightest. They have no inkling of the recession they caused. For them, it's been painless. Only the most foolish of their number have dared complain publicly and they've been vilified for it for a few hours before other wealthy people call off the press.

Unless we can reverse the redistribution of wealth from the people who want more of it for counting to the people who need a little of it for living, the economy will get worse.

Not one job was ever created by giving a wealthy person free money. Jobs are created by customers.