BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

If you've read the most interesting/incriminating Wikileaks & watched the Clinton Cash documentary & the Veritas tapes & have concluded that Hillary and the Democrats are not corrupt, I can't help you. You're willfully blind. If you haven't watched them, you are failing in your duty as a citizen, imo.

America is on the brink of becoming a banana republic. It's hanging by a thread. What the Democrats (& the Clinton Crime Family in particular) have done in the last 8 years make the 2nd worst president in history, Dubya, who made my blood boil with his (& Turd Blossom's) corrupt schemes, look like a piker.

If you've always dreamt that America would become a one-party communist 3rd world country, with a government run media, with rigged elections, with a completely dysfunctional/amoral society, with an educational system run like a propaganda arm of the government & with party-sanctioned violence against political opposition and law enforcement then by all means vote Hillary.

And Kaitlyn, fwiw I'm disgusted by the vitriol being hurled in here against you. Shows the true character of those people.

https://twitter.com/...707580576333829

https://twitter.com/...347635976671232

https://twitter.com/...015403596562432

https://twitter.com/...887145509056513

https://twitter.com/...535781231026176

https://twitter.com/...520599566053376

https://twitter.com/...448846567337989

https://twitter.com/...170116955418624

https://twitter.com/...384291565166593

I was not sure what you meant by a banana republic so I put it into my google search. The page filled up with references to a clothing store. The store looks nice so if we become one not sure what the problem is.


I did a bit more google stuff and found this:

anana republic or banana state is a political science term used originally for politically unstable countries in Latin America whose economies are largely dependent on exporting a limited-resource product, e.g. bananas.


Now I love bananas so again I wonder what the problem is.

mike777, on 2016-November-07, 15:33, said:

I have the impression and it has probably been garnered from conservative sources, that Soros deliberately bet against the Malaysian economy and then took steps to ruin it for his own gain. I looked it up today; some sites back that claim up and some say it is a myth. It could be one of those cases where the Malaysian ringgit was doomed and he just sped up the process.

Now, I am assuming that since he has large bets against the US economy (I've seen this quite a few times, and many of them say NET short meaning it's a real bet, not a hedge, but many of the places I have seen it are trying to sell me a financial newsletter or some other service, so it may be hype) and maybe he thinks we're in trouble but might he not attempt to expedite the financial pain (assuming you buy the part where he's net short the US markets?)

I am not implying he wants to destroy the USA. However, he is an investor known for manipulating markets and currencies to his advantage, and if he truly is short the US market, then wouldn't he take whatever measures would give him the most profit (i.e. do what is worst for the US markets?)

I'm not saying that he would set off bombs in all major US cities which would surely give him close to a maximum profit on his investments. However, there are things he could do that would cause Americans a lot of economic pain.

Many of you are saying that this isn't going to happen, and for now I'm going to choose to be optimistic and believe you (the collective you), as the scenario about him shorting the market because he expects fallout from Chinese markets is quite plausible (although why wouldn't he simply short China?) as several of the articles I've read today seem to indicate that he's not betting on devastation in the United States.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-07, 16:19, said:

1) Ok he does not want to destroy the USA, got it.
2) ok he has placed negative bets on the USA economy, got it.
3) He wants profit, lots and lots of profit, got it.
4) He could do things that cause Americans a lot of economic pain, got it.


I see your 4 main points, got it. So whats the problem, sounds like a typical capitalist. Creative destruction causes a lot of pain, if his actions lead to or contribute to economic pain in the form of job losses or company destruction, welcome to the markets.

Soros is also a huge advocate for a bigger safety net, conservatives would argue he advocates and puts money towards advocates in favor of cradle to grave entitlements. Conservatives would also defend, strongly defend his right to spend his wealth to influence policies that he strongly advocates for. It is liberals who want to stop the spending of billions of private, rich people money, not conservatives.

jonottawa, on 2016-November-07, 15:48, said:

This in itself is an interesting topic having a lot to do with how material is received.

When I first heard of the Veritas tapes, I thought it was going to be Clinton's downfall, for surely some really bad stuff was being exposed.

But something interesting happened - eerily similar to what has happened many times before with just about any other information from the media.

Most right leaning people believed the Veritas tapes were the end of Clinton's career just as I did, and thought that major Democratic Party fraud was being exposed.

Most left leaning people stated that "this is what O'Keefe always does" - that even though the people really said damning things, that they were taken out of context, and that James O'Keefe had a long history of making documentaries that were extremely biased against the left, using half-truths and outright lies to spin a tale of deception, and that nothing that O'Keefe produced was believable.

While there are many polarizing issues between the right and left, there are few more polarizing than O'Keefe. I have not found one left-leaning person that gave O'Keefe a shred of credibility, and have not found one right-leaning person that didn't believe what was on those tapes. Compare this to other issues:

Many right-leaning people (including me) are pro-choice.
Many right-leaning people (including me) are pro-gay rights.
Some right-leaning people (including me) are considering man-made climate change.
Some right-leaning people (including me) are considering Universal Basic Income.
Go down issue by issue, and I suspect you'll get some crossover.

But I have yet to see any crossover on the O'Keefe materials. So it won't matter if some Americans see the Project Veritas tapes. If they are left leaning, it is my guess that they will dismiss it as nutjob propaganda.

There are probably few voters with no leaning. My sweetie is registered Independent but makes me look like a liberal in comparison

EDIT to add:

This is what Google told me about O'Keefe:

James Edward O'Keefe III is an American conservative political activist. He produces secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters, some selectively edited to imply its subjects said things ...

Clearly that is a left-leaning view. However, given the fact that I haven't heard any conservative news outlets report that he has won some major lawsuits for slander, I have to wonder if there might be some truth in that depiction.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-07, 12:26, said:

Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns made bad investment decisions and lost.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-07, 13:30, said:

What you must dig for are facts. Facts are not opinions.

PS: I can't understand the rather silly notion that a single investor can take on the weight of a nation's wealth and win the battle. That's a problem with conspiracy theories - they always require a villain with superhero attributes.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-07, 16:36, said:

OK so I see your positions on several issues so I ask why do you consider yourself right leaning? I am asking what does "right" compared to "left" mean to you?
----

mike777, on 2016-November-07, 16:06, said:

If your attention span had allowed you to read the second line of said wikipedia article, you would have encountered the following sentence

Quote

Had you managed to read a bit further, you could have seen the following

Quote

Winstonm, on 2016-November-07, 16:45, said:

Soros took on the UK economy and caused a HUGE crash on the pound by short selling it, when you have 10 billion or so to use, you can do a huge amount of damage.

Cyberyeti, on 2016-November-07, 18:11, said:

There are at least ten hedge funds managing 30 or more billion dollars including one that manages more than 100 billion, but I don't see Ray Dalio screwing with a country for a quick kill.
These are the actual assets; with leverage, you can control much more than that as the futures and derivatives markets will let you control many dollars worth of currency for each dollar you have invested.

Now, if it were in another sovereign entity's best interest to screw with your currency, they could invest in a hedge fund whose interest aligned with their own giving them very much money to play with. However, in most cases, a country would want a trading partner's currency to increase, making the manipulating country's exports more attractive.

mike777, on 2016-November-07, 17:32, said:

Funny you ask, because I've made these positions well known in another group and am still considered an alt-right wing nut.

I consider "right" to be the ideology put forth by conservatives. I'm lumped in that group because I am in favor of small government, people's power > states' power > federal power, few regulations, and the idea that those who work and/or innovate should be rewarded, and that the Constitution should be interpreted the way our Founding Fathers would be expected to interpret it, and the whole idea of government "taking care of people" is not at all appealing to me. (Yes, I see the contradiction - I support UBI because I feel automation will make it so that there aren't enough jobs to go around; but the UBI level should be low enough such that those that never work are going to have a fairly low standard of living.)

I consider "left" to be the ideology put forth by progressives.

Cyberyeti, on 2016-November-07, 18:11, said:

That is fantasy. Short positions do not cause crashes; they are rewarded by them.

Cyberyeti, on 2016-November-07, 18:11, said:

As I understand what happened:

1. The UK joined the ERM at a time when UK inflation was roughly triple German, and the ERM was basically, as far as the UK was concerned, an agreement to keep the Pound trading within a narrow range against the Mark. It was a decision driven in part by pride, and was very controversial at the time.

2. German unification was happening and causing significant inflationary pressures in Germany, which reacted by tightening fiscal policy and increasing interest rates

3. Increased interest rates drove up the mark, including against the pound.

4. US dollar was depreciating, and many UK exports were priced, on the international market, in dollars, so the value of exports was declining, causing economic problems in the UK and adding to the downward pressure in the rate against the mark

5. The pound was driven to and should have fallen below the low end of the ERM band, but the ERM required that the UK government intervene.

6. It tried to make the pound more attractive to investors by raising the base rate (the UK version of the Fed rate) to 10%, which had an understandably bad impact on the ability of borrowers to borrow or to service debt, thus creating downward pressure on housing prices, and slowing business activity

7. Soros, in particular, was alive to all of these factors and was willing to bet virtually all of his and his clients' money by shorting the pound

8. when the pound dropped to the low end of the range, the Bank of England began buying large sums of sterling by spending foreign reserves, but Soros was selling pounds faster than the Bank was buying them, so the efforts to intervene, which could never have been a permanent solution (given the structural problems within Germany and the UK and the US) were having no effect. So the Government announced an increase in interest to 12 % and then, the same day, to 15%. Imagine what that did to the economy.

9. The market did not react favourably, apparently because the market consensus was that the government could not have the political will to implement the promise to jack the rates up as promised.

10. Faced with the prospect of frittering away foreign reserves and crushing the economy via interest rate hikes, none of which were sustainable and none of which afforded any solution to the long-term problems with staying in the ERM, the government backed down and announced the end of the UK participation in the ERM. This allowed the pound to seek its new, market-driven, value, rewarding the short-sellers.

11. The reality that the decision was prompted by the short-selling allowed the politicians to avoid admitting that the ERM was a blunder, and that the exit, and resulting devaluation, were inevitable, and to cast Soros as the villan

12. The exit from the ERM, and the devaluation of the pound, has been credited by a number of economists for creating a significant economic expansion in later years.

13. The reality appears to be that Soros's actions precipitated a decision that ought to have been made earlier (one prominent cabinet member had resigned earlier because he felt that staying in the ERM was a disaster waiting to happen), and that would have been inevitable, and with worse consequences, if it happened later.

14. The UK departure led to restructuring of the ERM to permit other economies, such as Italy, to breach the low end of the band without having to embark upon ruinous and likely futile government intervention. However, there seems little reason to think that Germany, or other more solvent players, would have amended the ERM either at all or in time to ward off the UK collapse that was basically inevitable.



Thus, it is arguable that Soros was a vulture who took advantage and caused great harm, and it is arguable that he not only made a lot of money for himself and his investors, but that he forced the UK government to do the right thing, even if for the wrong reason, and that the UK economy was, within a few years, greatly enriched.

Whichever way you look at it...he was open and transparent about what he was doing and why. Had he been wrong...had the UK economy been strong enough that it could have stayed within the ERM, he would have lost a huge amount of money, and probably the ability to persuade others to trust him with their money. I don't see how one can equate this with being 'sleazy' either way.

Winstonm, on 2016-November-07, 19:10, said:

A short could cause a crash if it causes enough margin calls. Derivatives and futures can be so leveraged that a small move can trigger a margin-call forced sale, which causes another one, etc.

Someone planning to do damage to profit from his positions can place these shorts at times of low activity so that they can cause drops of several points triggering more margin calls.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-07, 22:31, said:

This is nonsense and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of margin calls and short positions.
(At the most basic level, margin calls are triggered when traders have short positions in a stock that is appreciating)

Some researchers have made claims that a so-called "bear raid" can drive down the real value of a firm, through this impact the share price, and create a positive feedback loop however the dynamics are nothing like the ones that you are suggesting.

jonottawa, on 2016-November-07, 15:48, said:

Aside from being throwaway tweets with no basis in any sort of reality, what do these links have to do with the character of anyone here? Why not take one of these "issues" and present the evidence in depth to support it? This is precisely the issue with so much of what comes from the far right, it is all soundbite and no substance. The strategy is akin to throwing a truckload of grenades out and hoping the pin falls out of one or two of them. Even if it not, there are good chances that the enemy will either be running for cover for a short time or at least have to clear the grenades out of the way.

You may have noticed that I rarely throw vitriol around. On the other hand I find it frustrating that some posters type only propoganda and will prefer to move to the next subject rather than engage and have no problem in calling them out on occasion. I would like to think you would not be joining that list but as of now I will regard anything you post as liable to be falsified in much the same way as I approach AIU's posts. Hopefully you will prove me wrong in this respect over the coming days and weeks.

Ok, I have made up my mind about the candidates for the school board vacancies. Now if only I could decide on the candidates for president.
Joking.

We are going to have some work to do putting things back together after this election. I hope it can be done, and I hope we do it. Of course not everyone on the WC lives here, but I hope they wish us well. Those who do live here, well, they live here and I hope they see a reason to get through this.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-07, 22:31, said:

Your information source has a fictionalized notion of the markets and how much influence one person can have.

kenberg, on 2016-November-08, 09:01, said:

With several Western countries, including USA, being infested by fascist movements on the brink of grabbing power, maybe it helps a little to listen to the imprecions of someone who studied democracy's response to crises in places like Indonesia and Canada, where it survived, at least for now: http://www.npr.org/2...cracys-problems