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Old 03-06-2007, 09:30 PM   #49 (permalink)
Yakk
Wehret Den Anfängen!
 
Location: Ontario, Canada
*sigh* -- in case you didn't notice, they mentioned "at one point, people used feathers".

Also note that at 15 minutes, the creator of the video fails to divide by 9. 10,000$/9 is not 9,000, it is 1,111$.

...

So, let's note that the money lent out by the bank is also borrowed from someone -- be it the government or a depositor. The central bank of the state controls the interest rate of borrowing money by issuing governent-backed bonds.

That interest rate is set based on policy -- typically keeping inflation under control.

Next, note that when a borrower defaults, the bank is screwed. They have to make up the difference.

The supply of money is kept under control this way -- the price of new money is determined by the interest rate. This creates a supply-demand system, and those who want and can justify capital more than others get access to it.

If people stopped wanting to borrow money, they could just reduce the price of borrowing money. If you could borrow money for 0.1% annual interest, you would be pretty damn tempting.

Note that at minute 25, there are issues. It ignores the growth of the economy. The economy grows exponentially, just like debt. You'll notice at 26:30, they don't make the world "bigger" -- which is dishonest. The economy everything is working off is growing really damn fast.

And "natural resources" are not the fuel of the economy -- at least no fixed resource. The multiplier factors of "improving" natural resources is where economic growth comes from, together with increasing abilities to find and extract natural resources. As time goes on, more and more of the economy is service-based (ie, not resource based) -- and one could imagine a world in which nearly none of the economic activity exists in the "real world", it is all information services.

The monetary system is designed to facilitate exponential growth. Exponential growth means your standard of living gets better and better.

And it contains peak oil claims that it will happen right now. Considering this is about the 8th peak oil scare in the last 100 years... Could we be at the peak of the peak oil scare scare frequency?

I'll note rather cutely that the video contains a rather lot of medium-subtle jew-baiting.

Gave up at 37 minutes. Tired of it.
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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.
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