Bank-crisis

[Peter]

Does anyone has deep thoughs about the mortgage-bank-run crisis.
It is coming closer and closer, well it is already in europe. (Oh, for the point britain isn't europe, britain we ignore)

After a whole time of different american and britain banks being taken by each other.
More or less ignoring america and britain here.  

Now there is a number of banks in europe that seems to have problems. 2 banks in belgium(from witch one doesn't exist anymore)and a bank in germany has got a huge load from the goverment. And also a number of other banks that are short of money.

Maybe the biggest of the whole crisis is that Iceland, after natiolising multiple banks, is in deep trouble. And maybe a national bankruptcy is nearing.

[Numsgil]

Keep going!  Stocks are so low I can build the most awesome 401(k) (tax free retirement account in the US) for pennies on the dollar, so to speak   Even assuming a Great Depression like, well, depression, those stocks are going to be golden in 30 to 40 years when I start retirement.

Ironically I set up a Washington Mutual checking and savings account because they don't have my old bank, Chase, in California.

[bacillus]

Finished typing yet?

[Commander Keen]

Over here the media are busy saying this is the next big depression, and are trying to make people panic. The elections are nearing so the politicians are all busy lying as usual...

In New Zealand all of our banks are owned by offshore investors, with the exception of one, which is a state-owned enterprise, so overseas problems could be a worry. The Government has predicted a $6 billion dollar loss over the next year. It might not sound like much, but there's only 4 million people in New Zealand, so thats $1,500 per person!

[bacillus]

Huh, not as big as I though then   .
I think you're right, though, for New Zealand this big depression thing is really coming in time with elections. The politicians are all saying that they regret saying they're giving the public a tax cut, but will go through with it anyway (which is sure to drive the votes in!)

[Peter]

Keep going!  Stocks are so low I can build the most awesome 401(k) (tax free retirement account in the US) for pennies on the dollar, so to speak   Even assuming a Great Depression like, well, depression, those stocks are going to be golden in 30 to 40 years when I start retirement.

Ironically I set up a Washington Mutual checking and savings account because they don't have my old bank, Chase, in California.

Heh, the crisis has given you some though about retirement already. How'd you come by the 401(k) number anyway, did you calculate how much you're going to win.

Over here the media are busy saying this is the next big depression, and are trying to make people panic. The elections are nearing so the politicians are all busy lying as usual...

In New Zealand all of our banks are owned by offshore investors, with the exception of one, which is a state-owned enterprise, so overseas problems could be a worry. The Government has predicted a $6 billion dollar loss over the next year. It might not sound like much, but there's only 4 million people in New Zealand, so thats $1,500 per person!

Well, it is a pretty much a big depression. I mean how often does it happen a goverment takes over multiple savings-banks in panic. And states the next day, we can't pay we're out of cash.
You're not that bad Iceland had a extremely high deficed.

And in the netherlands there was a profit of 2 billion euro expected for this year. Well that was until the goverment took over the dutch part of the belgium bank fortis. That costed 16 billion, so now we're losing 14 billion.

Now the belgians are whing we took over their bank.
Funny to look at belgium websites how we stole their bank.

[Numsgil]

American tax code is amazingly complicated.  The section on tax free retirement savings is in the 401st chapter, section k.

[Testlund]

The reason behind the bank crisis:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912

..and the solution:

http://www.thevenusproject.com/vgallery.html

Click the trailers.

Time to change or perish.

[Numsgil]

I don't have two hours, I'm double parked with my idling hummer outside.  Can you summarize quickly?

[Testlund]

Well, they talk about how the monetary system works, where it comes from and what the whole purpose with it is, and that it's the root of pretty much all problems in the world. At the end they also present solutions of a resource based system instead where money isn't used at all. Also they talk about how people can stop supporting the monetary system, to make it obsolete. Very controversial and I highly doubt they will manage to get it to work, but maybe if the economic crisis would cause USA to fall into a deep enough depression, where the majority will have serious problems buying and selling anything, then a lot of people might be willing to change.
It's better if you try to watch the whole documentary though when you have the spare time to make up your own mind.  

[Peter]

Well, if I look at the first part of the film. You'll just get the ussual whining why the current financial system is bad. And why money is bad. Yes, it seems money is bad.

Well, I tend to think this crisis has come becouse of the greed and stupidiness of bankers and others who are in that market.
Well here is, how I think the crisis works.

Overall, this crisis wouldn't only get the USA in a big crisis. From the beginning the EU lost more money of this crisis then the US. Overall this wasn't very visable becouse europe is much bigger than the USA in the financial market. No really much, much bigger, the complete europe controls about half of the world assets.

It isn't just the USA. The rest of the world too.

Iceland is in trouble, after Iceland said it wouldn't pay out the savings on the bank they natiolised.

Britain used a anti-terrorism law against Iceland to block money on brittish bank accounts.
The Netherlands threated with blocking money from the IMF(still doubting if they really have some control there). After a while the money was repayed with money Iceland loaned from the dutch-goverment.
There seem to be rumors that there is coming a lawsuit again the central bank of iceland, for giving wrong information and the bank itself that broke a deal that they wouldn't gain more then a certain amount of savings money.
The USA isn't in trouble, Iceland is. Altrough I wouldn't doubt it if some american-banks are thrown at court.

  Iceland is more and more starting to become some kind of soap.

About that venus project.
Not original, very pretty old idea indeed. A world where everybody is happy, everybody equal, enviroment friendly, everything should look futoristic(why always). And overall I don't really like this kind of communist-idea.

[Numsgil]

Money isn't inherently a problem.  Money is just a somewhat tangible estimation of your ability to trade.  If we went back to a barter system, there'd still be all the problems of the current world, plus some added issues since not everyone is willing to trade me food for programming time.  Planned economies, where people are dolled out by a central authority, aren't as efficient as a capitalist society.  That seems to be the lesson learned from Russian and China in the 20th century.  They work, and they're more fair (in the sense that there aren't super rich or super poor), but they're more wasteful than a capitalist society, and cause things like shortages and massive surpluses (issues like too many ipods but not enough rechargable batteries for them).

Another option might be a gift giving economy.  Modern economies are based on the principle of acquisition, but there are some societies that are based on the giving of gifts.  The more you can afford to give other people, the more highly esteemed you are in the society.  I don't think it's a magical panacea, but I sometimes wonder what the world would be like under that kind of system.

[Testlund]

"not everyone is willing to trade me food for programming time"

What if you could just go to the store and pick your fair share for the week and walk out? If people are not forced to work for money they can instead pick a profession they have interest and talent in, and contribute to society that way. You didn't chose to be a programmer because of the money, did you? You and Eric have worked with this for free.

[Numsgil]

That's what I was suggesting with a gift giving economy.  It sort of exists like that right now in open source projects.  You contribute (gift your time and talents), and get social prestige for it.

But suppose no one likes to be a plumber.  Everyone's doing fun jobs and no one wants to be a plumber.  And suddenly my toilet backs up.  In a monied economy, not fun jobs get lots of money.  You can actually make a pretty decent living as a contractor doing carpentry or plumbing or mechanics on cars, that really only requires a short apprenticeship instead of college or a lifetime of dedication.  As fewer people want or can do a job, the compensation naturally increases until a balance is reached.  You might not like plumbing, but if I offer you $1 million for an hour of work, you'd probably take the job.

To take it back to open source, many open source projects are pretty terrible in support.  There's a reason windows can charge $100s for an OS when its main competitor is free.  Doing support work, fielding calls from users who don't have the computer plugged in or are running a program even though they don't have the specs for it, it's not fun.  It's not sexy.  So in open source communities, it doesn't get done as well as in the commercial sector.  Microsoft has gigabytes of documentation on everything and anything.  It wasn't fun for the developers to write, I'm sure, but they did it because they got paid more to do it than not (probably wouldn't have a job if they refused actually), which translates in to more luxury items.  Darwinbots is in the same boat.  The wiki is woefully out of date in places, and technical issues are quite common.  We try to work through them, but they're pitiful compared to most things EA or Microsoft would release.

[Testlund]

I don't trust that it's actually the payment that incourage people to do a good job. The risk of getting fired may be, but it looks to me in most cases that people don't care what they do as long as they get paid for it; products that promises more than they can do and crumbles short after you've bought them, internet businesses making promises but leave out the bad stuff letting the customers find out the hard way AFTER they've bought the product or service. This just keep getting worse. Like the guy from the venus project says in the documentary; you can't trust anyone doing things for profit.
It's hard to imagine a society which isn't run with money. The only thing to compare with is small tribes in the forests. It has never been tried on a big scale. You would need to educate people differently, bring up children differently and teach people the importance of working for the good of all instead of egostic and profit desires. Nothing that's possible over night, and personally I think it would take a collapse of the whole monetary system, which might be where we're heading, for enough people to be open to try a new system.