ZeitGeist Movie (caution)

Off-topic
21

says it all really.

and i’m waiting for it to load - my internet is real slow atm - but i’m sure its the kind of thing i’d like :slight_smile:

in america i’m pretty sure i’d be qualified as a communist ahaha - really i’m just a socialist but i mean american liberals are pretty much european conservatives and US conservatives are Extreme right european parties… (slight exageration but nearly there)

i mean why is it such an insult to be called a liberal? it seems on this forum its like the ultimate insult ! if i was called a republican i’d go run outside naked and get a communist flag just to prove u wrong.

22

seriously watch this it has been well thought through well presented and really makes you think

23

Oh of course. Did you know we ride horses to school too?

24

thats not cool whoever did that.

25

As a leftist liberal old pot smoking hippie

You would think this would fit my non theist world view. But seriously, it’s been real dry here of late. Perhaps my mind is closing.
I liked the first part, about the connections between Christian philosophy and astrology. I already knew that the bible was written for political reasons by Constantine. That part was all more or less ok by me. As an non theist, I had just assumed that the bible had not fallen out of the sky, yet I was unaware of it’s many connections to the sky.
The “loose change” parts was extremely poorly done IMHO. As a welder I have seen that a bar of steel that is heated in a normal fire will be so soft, it can be easily bent into a U. There is a top secret dark society, known as the blacksmiths, that have somehow eluded detection by these sharp film makers. For centuries they have been apparently plying their trade in secret.
How could a plane have flown into the pentagon and disappeared ! Impossible!, surely the only rational exclamation is that masterminds planned to launch a slow, low flying cruise missile, to fly over a city of millions without it being seen or photographed, and then get hundreds of people to lie for the rest of their lives, that they had seen a plane ! Then have David Copperfield make the actual plane of people disappear forever without a trace ! Is that a plan or what ?
If you throw a beer can into a campfire you can solve this great mystery. Be sure to drink the beer first! Note that it does not melt, it will oxidize into a white powder, indistinguishable visibly from common ash. A titanium airframe with do the same, at an even lower temperature. The melting point of titanium ( so scientifically mentioned in Loose change), is irrelevant. The plane does not melt, it turns into oxidized powder. These film makers must know this, I can only conclude that they are what they accuse Bush of being. Deliberate conscious frauds. When the parts I understand look like crap, it makes it impossible for me to trust them with the “facts” on the parts I don’t.
So part 2 gets an F. I already knew Bush is a lier and a corporate shill. It is true that the Iraq war was done to enrich Bushites. They get an F for the lameness of their presentation of evidence.
Part 3 was more mixed. The attacks on the Fed, with bad sounding words, like inflation and debt, can be confusing. If you ask a man if he would like credit so that he may buy a home, he says yes, that is good. Ask him if he would like to have a cut in pay every year for the rest of his life, he says no, that sounds bad. But this film says debt (credit) is evil. Without a central bank to expand the money supply to match population and economic expansion, the value of money goes up (deflation). This sounds good because your money buys more stuff, and we are told inflation is bad. What’s bad is that your labor is also worth less. Even worse, you are quite likely to lose your job all together. This is because credit drys up in a deflationary gold based economy. What rich man will loan you 100 gold today, on the promise that you will repay him with 90 gold next year ? Even if the 90 gold will buy more next year then 100 gold will today ? The anti-Fed, gold standard conspiracy buffs have to change the subject then. So they use the “Fed is just evil” argument. Because thats all they have left! They sure as hell aren’t going to loan you any money!
The part about wanting to inject everyone with an rfid chip is just dumb. To rely on this as a primary means of ID just makes no sense. What’s to stop someone from swapping chips with someone else ? Fear of needles? They can already ID you much better with finger print or iris scans.
So despite my certainty that the military industrial complex is at the core of much of the evil in the world, Bush is lying evil scum, etc. , I give part 3 an F as well. The conclusions are nothing new, their fear mongering is unproductive, and what few remedies they propose seem poorly thought out.
It is almost like the true purpose of this film is to engender a sense of hopelessness. Don’t forget that Bush is the most untrusted, unpopular Prez in history. Things aren’t always darkest just before everything goes totally black forever, etc.

26

I enjoy reading what you type up here, but how you do it makes it kinda hard sometimes. Everything is so together with how you do your paragraphs. Hitting enter two times would leave one line of space between your paragraphs, and I would enjoy that very much if you started to do that with future text.

You don’t have to though. I just thought I would finally tell you. =p

27

Yeah, I’ll second what Jerrick said, feel the light. What you say is interesting, just hard to read.

28

Thanks guys

I have been puzzled how, though I indent my paragraphs, they don’t post that way.

I hadn’t thought to try to hit enter twice between paras.:slight_smile:

29

I didn’t watch this movie yet, but let me debunk your monetary claims.

Debt isn’t bad, but excessive debt can be.

Not necessarily. Economic expansion is the increase of wealth, the turning of raw materials into something of use to us. Anything can be used as money, so the money supply doesn’t really matter, because as wealth is being created the money supply is naturally increasing. It’s just a matter of converting that useful product into the common medium of exchange, which is money.

Deflation depends on the economic situation. If the economy is good, there should be deflation. There are a few different types of deflation. There is growth deflation, which is when the efficiency of production is increasing. This means that more is being produced for the same amount of input, and therefore prices are lower. This is obviously good. Then there is cash building deflation, which is when the demand for money is increased due to people saving it for future needs. This is good, because people are freely choosing to fulfill there wants and needs, which includes the future. And then there is the bad kind of deflation, which is bank credit deflation. This is a decline in the money supply when people make a run on a fractional reserve bank and the bank doesn’t have enough money for every note it issued. You can’t have a bank credit deflation without first having a bank credit inflation. A bank credit inflation results in a boom and many malinvestments. The deflation here is a correction to these malinvestments and allows the economy to grow again, assuming the government doesn’t interfere like they did during the Great Depression.

Maybe the reason this film says debt is bad is because today, debt is from fractional reserve banking and therefore causes lots of malinvestments (just look at the housing markets now, lots of malinvestments caused price inflation in houses and now there is deflation in that market correcting it).

With the good kinds of deflation, no. Your labor is worth more because you are producing more efficiently and therefore can buy more with your earnings.

Again, only with the bad kind of deflation. You lose your job because there was malinvestment. Easy credit created a boom that put too many resources in a particular sector, once that bubble burst, the jobs created in that sector are no longer needed, because they really weren’t needed in that sector to begin with.

You have a misunderstanding of how interest rates in a free market work. It’s all about risk. Of course nobody would loan you something in exchange for less of it later. The risk of loaning you money to begin with is higher than just holding on to the item being loaned, because you may default on the loan whereas the gold is still the same amount of gold. However, they will still loan you 100 gold, but you would have to pay more than 100 gold later. On the other hand, it’s possible that gold will buy less in the future, so there is a risk there and one may choose to denominate the loan in something else, such as silver. The loan would still have to be paid back a higher amount of silver than we initially loaned out. It may be that the silver was worth the same as 100 gold at the beginning, but later is only worth 90 gold. Buying power of different things fluctuate, but it can’t always be predicted correctly what the best investment is. That’s just how the market works. Overall though in a free market, each individual is making their own decisions based on what they see in the market, and not everyone will make the same mistakes. That’s not the case with a central bank, because the central bank and it’s inflation will cause a huge part of the market to malinvest, and therefore there are many economic problems as a result of this fed created business cycle.

See above. The fed is evil because they cause the business cycle which is the booms and busts… lots of malinvestments. They practice inflationary monetary policy which is the confiscation of wealth from the producers to the banking cartel and the government. Instead of the actual producers receiving the benefits of their increased efficiency, they siphon it off for their own means. This is theft. It’s slavery.

30

Inflation punishes all equally

The billionaire loses the same % of cash each year as the begger. In this way, it is by no means a way to transfer cash from the poor to the wealthy.
You have said nothing to address the fundamental proven fault in a gold money system. You pretend that once the deflation of the gold dollar dries up credit, somehow credit can still be found in silver, or some other commodity. This is not true.

 History has shown that the Romans invaded Persia because they wanted gold. Not to stack ingots in a throne room. To make coins. They could not print money to support their expanding population. This lead to war. We are saved from that fate. Our expanding population and economy doesn't have to lead to a money shortage. We print money, and use it to reduce taxation ! 2-3 % inflation is ideal. Make those rich old people want to loan their money! :)
31

Which begs the question why do we need to be punished.

Is inflation equal? Nope. The price of one thing may go up, while the price of something else may go down. Today, the price of food has gone up. The price of energy has gone up. The price of housing has gone up. Everyone needs those things. The poor have nothing extra so that’s what they spend all their stuff on. Their wages are not going up in proportion to these increases. However, the mega rich have more and can afford luxuries. The price of luxuries have gone down. Further, they can put their assets in wall street, which is where most of the created money goes to. The military industrial complex, the banking cartel, big pharma, etc, etc, etc. They are getting the money before it’s realized by the economy. Inflation is not equal.

It doesn’t dry up credit. It is always profitable to loan to producers. What the loan is denominated in doesn’t matter other than that it will be denominated in whatever is agreed upon. If I foresee the need of gasoline in the future, I may denominate the loan I give out in gallons of gasoline. That’s less risky for me, because I know I will need that much gasoline. If I denominate it in gold, I don’t know how much gasoline gold will buy in the future.

Rome was an empire. They plundered other nations to expand their empire instead of actually producing. Wealth is achieved faster by theft, but that’s at the expense of others. Paper money is the same, wealth is achieved by theft, at the expense of others.

Then please explain to me why we have had more wars in our history since we got a central bank than we had before the central bank.

There is no such thing as money shortage unless there is not enough production in a society to meet the needs of the people. Printing money does not increase production, it only leads to malinvestment and theft from the people to the counterfeiters. Rich old people want to loan their money because they can always get a better return when they loan to the producers verses holding onto money.

32

FTFY

33

I remember how my dad explained it to me long ago

Let’s say Gilby lives in Productive town . He is the worlds greatest banker, so everyone trusts him. He never makes a bad loan, and he never lies to people
and says his bank has more gold then it does.

The gold mine is empty. There is exactly 100 lbs of gold in Productive town. Because he is such a good banker, 50 lbs is deposited in his bank. The rest is in circulation around town, used as money.

At the end of the year everyone in town had a productive year. They repay their loans plus interest, and Gilby gives all his savers 5 % interest, in gold, added to their account. So there is now 52.5 lbs of gold in his savers accounts. Next year there will be 55 lbs. Despite the great yearly gains in production in Produtive, Gilby sees no future in banking, and makes plans to move to a country with a fiat currency, because he knows he will refuse to lie to people, and has marked on the calender the day he must tell people there is more then 100 lbs of gold in the bank, or leave.

“It doesn’t dry up credit. It is always profitable to loan to producers. What the loan is denominated in doesn’t matter other than that it will be denominated in whatever is agreed upon. If I foresee the need of gasoline in the future, I may denominate the loan I give out in gallons of gasoline. That’s less risky for me, because I know I will need that much gasoline. If I denominate it in gold, I don’t know how much gasoline gold will buy in the future.”- Gilby the non banker

The above quote shows you can sense a problem that can be solved in a deflationary gold economy only through barter. But to improve on the inefficiencies of barter is what the tool of money is for ! How could you do business over the internet with barter ? :thinking:
34

Maybe you should have posted that in this thread… 'cause your scenario seems a bit misleading.

35

Why would I pay interest? I’m not a good banker if I have to pay interest on something that is sitting in a vault and not being used. Instead I would charge a storage fee for that service. Or if they choose, they can buy a certificate of deposit which would allow me to loan out their gold at interest to those I determine to be qualified to loan to. When that loan is repaid plus the interest, I take a cut of the interest and the investor takes a cut of it. Everyone wins without resorting to theft or taxation. The borrower gets use of the capital to expand their production. I get payment for my effort of investigating into the creditworthiness of the borrower and ensuring they repay the debt. The investor gets their investment capital plus interest back after the term. If I am wrong about the creditworthiness and the debt is not paid back, then I go out of business, and possibly the investor gets less back than they expected. That’s just the market working to weed out the inefficient businesses and rewarding good economic choices. Never would the total amount of gold accounted for be higher than the total gold in society.

Today, contracts have adjustments for things such as inflation and other things, even with paper money! imagine that. My example just has the index as being the value of gasoline. We can still have the transaction take place with gold or whatever the current money is, and who knows, it may end up where I loan 1000 gold and only get 900 gold back at the end of the term, but I can still get all the gasoline I needed.

Market makers. You and I have accounts with the same market maker, and we can exchange assets through them. If we have different market makers, we can probably still do barter if the market makers have a relationship to transfer assets between them.

36

The continuing story of Gilby the greatest of all bankers

Gilby was always perfectly honest. His charismatic honesty was so infectious that there was no crime in Productive. There was no police, courts or jail. They would have been a silly waste of money in the most utopic of gold currency towns, and wasting money was something the citizens of Productive could never even dream of.

And so of course Gilby never thought of renting space in the vault he never had. The worlds greatest banker did everything he could to maximize efficiency, the defining characteristic of citizens of Productive (the worlds hardest working and only entirely honest town).

His bank had no office, or building, and certainly no vault. As soon as a saver gave him a deposit, he would carry it across town to a borrower. And everyone always paid their debt plus interest. Nothing ever went wrong in Productive, the most perfect of towns.

And so the worlds most honest banker knew the day when he would have to leave. Because there was only 100 lbs of gold in the town, it was easy to see when the amount of gold he would ow his depositors would exceed that.

Of course, not all towns are so fortunate as Productive. During the benighted past of the gold based monetary systems, runs on the bank occurred with periodic regularity. So did deflationary conditions, combined with drying up of credit, and massive unemployment. Since the universal world adoption of printed money, and an expandable money supply, that predictable suffering has been eliminated. All because of a central bank that can expand the money supply at a rate that will cause 1-4 % inflation.:slight_smile:

And also because of infinite credit because of the infinite ability to pay savers interest on their deposits for an infinite amount of time into the infinite future. Regardless of how large the population grows or the economy expands. Because there is an infinite supply of printed money, that trickles into the economy at a finely controlled rate (the Feds job). This has worked so well that the buying power of an oz of gold or silver has shrunk consistently for decades. Interest rates are low, inflation is low. Unemployment is low. For decades now, ever since the world (not just the rich Americans) junked the gold standard. The entire earth runs on fiat currency, and will forever. The worlds economy is growing much to fast for a non expandable currency to serve as money now. No one is forcing you to accept credit (debt), and you may hoard gold to your hearts content.
We are even free to dis and villainize the wealthiest most powerful people on earth in a public forum, fearlessly. I own my own home, have no debt now, and come and go doing what I please. Yet I am not free because my money is not metal ? I will buy a gold coin if I wish one. I do not.:smiley:

37

[snip… mathematically and logically flawed example]

You should move to Zimbabwe.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Zimbabwe+hyperinflation

Can you make a living without paying your master? Nope, you have to pay taxes, enforced at the barrel of guns.
Can you do anything you want to your own property without a permit?

You are not free. You still have many freedoms, for now, but you are not completely free.

A hard money system constrains the government, which means they can not take your freedoms from you as fast because they can’t overspend beyond their taxing ability. Without the ability to print money to come up with their shortfalls, they’d have to tax us. And the people will not like that and will rebel.

Hard money is one of the checks and balances our constitution mandates on our government.

The best savings now for maintaining buying power is actually nickels. They are a hedge against inflation, and deflation. If the monetary policy changes and the fed deflates the money supply, then the nickels will still be worth face value. If the fed continues to inflate, the nickel will be worth it’s melt value, which is currently a little over 7 cents.

I don’t recommend keeping a lot of assets in money (dollars, gold, silver, etc.), but have enough to meet living expenses for several months. The purpose of savings is to meet short term future needs. Investments are to try to profit from others using your currently unused capital. I diversify my assets with a huge portion in foreign funds. If you want to speculate on bubbles, which are created from the fed induced malinvestments, gold can be played. The late 1970s was a huge gold and silver bubble. Using it as a basis of gold not keeping up with inflation is flawed.

If the dollar does collapse, alcohol, cigarettes and bullets will be the best money. :wink:

38

The US gov can’t print money to cover deficits

“A hard money system constrains the government, which means they can not take your freedoms from you as fast because they can’t overspend beyond their taxing ability. Without the ability to print money to come up with their shortfalls, they’d have to tax us. And the people will not like that and will rebel.”- Gilby

Congress and the prez cannot order an expansion of the money supply. That is the Feds job, and their sole authority. When congress and the prez deficit spend, the treasury dept. must come up with the cash from the bond market. This is why excess gov deficits increase interest rates. We must compete with our own gov for available capital. These US treasury bonds are held by individuals and groups around the world. You could buy one if you like. They are considered a safe investment, but typically pay rock bottom interest rates. This is how the deficit is funded.

Although the chairman of the Fed, and the 12 governors are appointed by the prez and confirmed by the senate, they serve long terms and can only be removed for cause. The congress or prez can’t order the Fed to do anything. The Fed sets the prime lending rate (that member banks can borrow money at). This is the only way that more money is printed. Only the Fed can raise or lower the prime lending rate. The higher it goes, the less banks borrow, and the slower the money supply expands. And vice versa.

  The Fed was set up as an independent agency to prevent the problem you think only hard money can solve, how to keep politicians from printing more money.  Simple, remove the authority and give it solely to an independent agency. :)
39

You’re half right. Here’s how it works. The government has a deficit so they borrow by issuing treasury bonds. These could be sold on the open market to the public: individuals, corporations, foreign governments, etc. That’s the best scenario for deficits, even though it puts capital into wasteful government spending to be paid by force by taxpayers and then crowds out available capital for productive private investments. Savings are just transfered from the bank accounts of bond buyers to the bank accounts of the treasury.

The other option is for a commercial bank to buy the bond (we’re not talking about the fed yet). When this happens, the bank just creates the money as demand deposits and pays for the bond. The commercial bank has to meet the reserve requirement, which is currently 10%, so they have to borrow from the Federal Reserve The federal reserve has to create that money plus their own reserve requirement by purchasing old bonds on the open market. So if the Treasury issues a new $100 billion bond, the bank system first creates the $100 billion to buy the bond, and then $11 billion for the reserves, for a total of $111 billion of created cash.

40

Why do you still believe in God, do you not believe the ‘facts’ (I too am unsure if all of these are definatly true) in the movie? If you do not, have you done any research to make an informed decision about a God.

I am truely interested in your reply, although please do not get angry or defensive at me. That will not help anything at all.

Cheers in advance,
Mike