JustARandomPanda

Fair enough. This is not an unreasonable thing to ask. It seemed that way to me. I prefer seeing the sources that shape people's opinions. When people make claims I expect to see the sources. Sloppy Zang has a fondness for demanding sources too as I recall. I don't think that is an unreasonable request. Just post a link to your sources. If you don't have sources on hand just say so. Maybe they're laying around or maybe you could at least share the search engines and queries/methods you used so we can duplicate the results ourselves. I've been putting in time to see if Ellen Brown actually does receive money from Soros orgs whether directly or indirectly and so far I'm coming up short. If you've got any insider info on the linkages please share them. I think it's more like DEBT period in all it's forms is the basis of our money supply. However, if this statement is false I am interested in reading the sources you used to educate yourself on exactly where and how our money supply comes from instead. I do recommend you set aside some cash and buy the Lost Science of Money. Or borrow it from a library somewhere. Whether you agree or disagree I think you'll find it an interesting read. This is really too bad. I'd love to have your sources. They just might convince me. I'm not unreasonable. I can't read your mind. Dude this is exactly what Small Government Conservatives/Libertarians do too. They cherry pick with a vengence. They do all that stuff too. It's a Human Trait, not a Leftist/Progressive one. I'm surprised your belief is that it's restricted only to the Left. Human behavior shows we all have that tendency. It's hard to overcome. That's why we needed the Scientific Method. That's why the Scientific Method is so damn useful. It has a wonderful way of showing how much of what we Know to Be True just ain't so. The arguments for the Holy Trinity of Contracts/Private Property/Free Markets is not as locked up tight as the Small Gov' guys assert. I used to BE one of those Holy Trinity peeps. No longer. That doesn't mean I'm Pro Big Gov either. The most I can state right now is that I think the vast majority of people out there KNOW they KNOW what the problem is - and they've got THE answer. I'm a lot more suspicious of everybody's 'evidence' and 'conclusions' than I used to be. Everywhere I turn I can find legit evidence both for and against the Holy Trinity helping or hurting. Everywhere I turn I can find legit evidence for and against Big Gov helping or hurting. Most of all I see a profound lack of people online willing to see AND SHARE sources that present facts and counter-facts to their own theories and data. In short - a lack of willingness to try to 'robust' test their data and conclusions. Now I know that is highly unusual to do so. Generally, other people are all too willing to attack your positions and attacking is usually far easier than supporting something. But it becomes doubly difficult when people don't share their sources. Triply so when you see them repeat ad nauseum slogans like "Big Government is the Problem" (big problem today) or "Capitalism exploits workers" (big problem in the past). Speaking only for myself it also cuts down on my time to share sources. If I share my sources I allow you to form your own judgments while not having to go into exhaustive detail of why I believe/disbelieve this or that. I know people will form judgements of my sources naturally. Sometimes they'll agree with me - other times they won't because my sources and experiences will not duplicate theirs. That's why I seldom engage in debates with the Holy Trinity peeps anymore and just stick to trying to provide people with the same sources I've used to investigate stuff.

Hmmm.... Interesting. An unwillingness to post the link(s) to the research you did showing the Ellen Brown-to-George Soros connection. Takes the same amount of time it took you to post that reply...curious indeed. I'll let you off the hook for unwilling to support the following claim since you've announced it's just not important to you to defend or support your assertions in this thread: Most people only want to support their worldview when it's convenient to them - which is typically when it's not being attacked or called into question. On a separate note: So far I've been unable to verify this Ellen Brown-to-George Soros connection you claim to have found and I've been running extensive searches. I hope you'll eventually 'get there' and share the A ) search methods you used to discover it and B ) provide the sources so I and others can see the original information as well. I am not unamenable to trying to discover this link myself and have committed time and effort to doing so but still come up empty. So far all my efforts and evidence are showing your claim is unsupported personal opinion instead of hard fact. Just speaking for myself: Even if George Soros orgs do fund Ellen Brown's law firm directly or indirectly I don't count that in and of itself as a bad thing. Soros has some good criticisms of the way the current financial markets are set up and I don't think they should be dismissed out of hand without serious consideration and investigation. Yes, this does mean time spent investigating it will be time not spent on something else. But at least I'll have a lot more respect for your objections than what I'm currently seeing by most people's posts online these days. If a claim is good it will be good independent of whom is making the claim. This is true no matter who is putting forth the theory/model/argument/evidence - whether Right, Left, Libertarian, Anarchist, Liberal, Conservative, etc.

Just saw this before I was about to head to bed. Yes, I agree. In fact, similar ideas are in effect already. People are actually implementing many different idealistic ideas about how to live better together. I don't see why Venus Project or Zeitgeist Movement Communities couldn't start popping up. Obviously they wouldn't achieve a total Resource Based system (unless I guess they wanted to live like the Amish?) but they could at least begin to implement those aspects of being Resource Based that were under their control. Anyway - These idealist-run communities have a name. They're called Intentional Communities. Many of them are based around the idea of being "green" (EcoVillages). Some are more spiritual oriented. Some are more into communal living and working, etc. Here's a Wiki page about Intentional Communities Here's the Wiki page about EcoVillages And here's a directory if you are interested in actually trying to live this way yourself.

I haven't researched all of this completely yet but this Wiki on the Venus Project goes a bit in detail of what and how a Resource Based Economy would work. Interestingly, Jacques Fresco states that the U.S. has actually used a Resource Based Economy approach on limited occasions - namely, during WWII: Here's the quote: That has piqued my curiosity but it's so vague I'd like to see an article, book or video explaining exactly HOW the U.S. implemented this Resource Based approach. I also found 2 YouTube vids that explain a Resource Based Economy though I admit I haven't watched them yet. I'm too sleepy and about to go to bed. I've got them saved so I can watch them tomorrow. But I figured I'd provide what I found in case anyone else is curious about this type of economy and would like to watch them.

I agree. But I do think it helps guide my actions if I know a bit about what's going on first (or at least what's reported to be going on). I'd love for TaoMeow to weigh in and advise on how we can actively do something to help. I don't have her experience alas. I was never trained by a Taoist priesthood or Shamans. The best I can do is try to figure out how to counter things I don't like in my own life in every day actions. That's why I linked to one of Ellen Brown's articles where she said one way people can counter all the short selling and proxy voting (if you own a brokerage account) is to submit in writing (certified mail) that your account is not to be a Margin account. Those are the kinds of actions I know how to do. Along with the usual. Try as best I can to direct my dollars to people and/or companies or organizations I support. I've donated to a local Buddhist organization for example. If there were a Taoist temple around I'd donate to that too but alas I've not been able to discover one.

Ooh -K-! You little Research Data Hound you! Posting those links is like waving a plate of fresh baked brownies under my nose! I can't resist! Damnit! Now I gotta get that book too!

Ugh. I am having a difficult time digging up this Ellen Brown/George Soros connection. In the interests of fairness I did discover the following website. It's going to be quite interesting perusing it and seeing what linkages turn up. Man...sometimes you find the most interesting stuff when combining search engines with random word combos. DiscovertheNetworks.org

so the solution is to make all the banks public? seriously?? I do not recall Ellen Brown ever advocating that ALL banks in the U.S. must be publicly owned. I know she's said in the past that historically that's been the case but from what I've read she's currently advocated simple creation of one publicly owned bank in each state. The vast majority would still be private. Institutions like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley would also still be private. Wells Fargo, Citibank, Chase, etc would still be private. The financial markets would still be private. She even supports Ron Paul on some things. As I understand it she's advocating a return to our Constitution - returning the sole right of money creation ( as mentioned in our Constitution ) to the government as it was delineated and set up by our Founding Fathers. Can you please cut and paste into this thread the actual words where she makes this statement?

Please provide your Sources, JoeBlast I'm especially interested in the Brown-Soros connection you discovered. Again I ask - what specific policies do you have evidence of that Ralis supports?

Thanks TM. The more I investigate the more I begin to wonder if those Conspiracy Theory wackos might not be so wacky after all - or at least on some things if not all. I've added 2 new attachments. These connections interlocked so much I had to cut it into 2 halves. Here they are: Too Big To Fail Banks **** More things that make you go Hmmm... IMF-Style Austerity Comes to America How China Buys Our Debt While Burying it's Own Inflation Fears: Real or Hysteria? Why QE2 Failed: The Money Went Offshore The Global Debt Crisis: How We Got in It and How to Get Out

What policies do you think he supports?

And now.... Lest anyone forget.... and especially because a picture is worth a thousand words I give you some particularly fun and revealing maps to check out I especially liked one in particular. Here's how to duplicate it. Go to theyrule.net on the left hand side click the link that says Recent Maps Then click the link near the very top that says Public Policy Think Tanks Stand back in utter awe at the vast web of connections (supposedly purely in the public interest) all these hugely famous and influential Think Tanks (with their lobbyists) have to an equally huge number of multinational corporations. My jaw especially hit the floor when I saw just how damn many are connected to the Brookings Institute. Here's another fun one click on Popular Maps Then click on War and Oil Media Machine Still think U.S. news is "fair and balanced"? Yet another one Click Recent Maps Click Media Financial and Right Wing Think Tanks And yet another one: Click Military Industrial Complex Here's another revealing one Click Popular Maps Click TARP and Council on Foreign Relations Corporate Orgy And finally my last fun suggestion Click Popular Maps Click Too Big to Fail Banks And for those who for some reason might not have the opportunity to do this themselves I've added some attachments (hopefully you can make out what they are) of 3 Think Tanks.

A bit more info dumping for those interested (pick and choose among my links of anything that interests you - or just let your eyes glaze over and ignore it all ) Some more as it pertains to the International Money Machine Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System The Amazon page has 2 vids available of the author giving speeches about this subject Here is a YouTube vid about China re-iterating its calls for the need for a new Global Reserve Currency China's proposal - a Super Sovereign currency - one that supposedly would not be linked to any single economy. I get the hunch the Chinese government is not particularly happy that they have nowhere else to dump all their population's savings. It wouldn't surprise me if they start trying to find a way (along with their allies) to quietly create just such an alternative. If anyone thinks losing global reserve currency status isn't a big deal just ask the British what it was like after it happened to them. Here is a bit about the man partly responsible for the the S&P Downgrade of the U.S. In an illuminating exposé posted on Firedoglake on August 5, Jane Hamsher concluded: "It's becoming more and more obvious that Standard and Poor's has a political agenda riding on the notion that the US is at risk of default on its debt based on some arbitrary limit to the debt-to-GDP ratio. There is no sound basis for that limit, or for S&P's insistence on at least a $4 trillion down payment on debt reduction, any more than there is for the crackpot notion that a non-crazy US can be forced to default on its debt. . . . "It's time the media and Congress started asking Standard and Poors what their political agenda is and whom it serves." Who Drove the S&P Agenda? Jason Schwarz shed light on this question in an article on Seeking Alpha titled "The Rise of Financial Terrorism" . He wrote: Also named by Schwarz as a suspect in the market manipulations was Michel Barnier, head of European Regulation. Barnier triggered an alarming 513-point drop in the Dow on August 4, when he blocked the plan of Hans Hoogervorst, newly appointed Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, to save Europe by adopting a new rule called IFRS 9. The rule would have eliminated mark-to-market accounting of sovereign debt from European bank balance sheets. Schwarz writes: Schwarz notes that Barnier, like Sharma, was a confirmed attendee at past Bilderberger conferences. What, then, is the agenda of the Bilderbergers? The One World Company Daniel Estulin, noted expert on the Bilderbergers, describes that secretive globalist group as " a medium of bringing together financial institutions which are the world's most powerful and most predatory financial interests." Writing in June 2011, he said: It seems the Bilderbergers are less interested in governing the world than in owning the world. The "world company" was a term first used at a Bilderberger meeting in Canada in 1968 by George Ball, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs and a managing director of banking giants Lehman Brothers and Kuhn Loeb. The world company was to be a new form of colonialism, in which global assets would be acquired by economic rather than military coercion. The company would extend across national boundaries, aggressively engaging in mergers and acquisitions until the assets of the world were subsumed under one privately-owned corporation, with nation-states subservient to a private international central banking system. Estulin continues: That base of power was found in the private global banking system. Estulin goes on: The world company acquires assets by preventing governments from issuing their own currencies and credit. Money is created instead by banks as loans at interest. The debts inexorably grow, since more money is always owed back than was created in the original loans. (For more on this, see here.) If currencies are not allowed to expand to meet increased costs and growth, the inevitable result is a wave of bankruptcies, foreclosures, and sales of assets at firesale prices. Sales to whom? To the "world company." Battle of the Titans If that was the plan behind the market assaults on August 4 and August 8, however, it evidently failed. What turned the market around, according to Der Spiegel, was the European Central Bank, which saved the day by embarking on a program of buying Spanish and Italian bonds . Sidestepping the Maastricht Treaty, the ECB said it would engage in the equivalent of "quantitative easing," purchasing bonds with money created with accounting entries on its books. It had done this earlier with Greek and Irish sovereign debt but had resisted doing it with Spanish and Italian bonds, which were much larger obligations. On Tuesday, August 16, the ECB announced that it was engaging in a record $32 billion bond-buying spree in an attempt to appease the markets and save the Eurozone from collapse. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was also expected to come through with another round of quantitative easing, but his speech on August 9 made no mention of QE3. As blogger Jesse Livermore summarized the market's response: ". . . [T]he markets sold off rather rapidly as no announcement was made about QE3. . . . It wasn't until . . . the last 75 min of market activity [that] the DJIA gained 639 pts to close at a day high of 11,242. That begs the question, where did that injection of capital come from? The President's Working Group on Financial Markets? Or did the "policy tools" to promote price stability by any chance include the next round of Quantitative Easing unannounced? Titanic Battle or Insider Trading? There could be another explanation for the suspicious downgrade that was announced despite the fact that the government had just made major concessions to avoid default, and despite the embarrassing revelation that S&P's figures were off by $2 trillion. On August 12, MSN.Money reported that the downgrade "wasn't much of a surprise": "Wall Street had heard a rumor early on that the downgrade was coming. News sites reported the rumor all day. "Unless it was all a huge coincidence, it's likely that someone in the know leaked the information. The questions are who and whether the leak led to early insider trading." The Daily Mail had the story of someone placing an $850 million bet in the futures market on the prospects of a US debt downgrade: "The latest bet was made on July 21 on trades of 5,370 ten-year Treasury futures and 3,100 Treasury bond futures, reported ETF Daily News. "Now the investor's gamble seems to have paid off after Standard and Poor's issued a credit rating downgrade from AAA to AA+ last Friday. "Whoever it is stands to earn a 1,000 per cent return on their money, with the expectation that interest rates will be going up after the downgrade." The Securities Exchange Commission announced on August 8 that it is investigating the downgrade. According to the Financial Times, the move is part of a preliminary examination into potential insider trading. Whatever was going on in the market in the first two weeks of August, it was unprecedented, unnatural, and bears close observation.

You and me both. The one question I always ask myself whenever I hear someone give a talk about something (especially political, social or economic ones) is "what am I not being told?" And then I try to go find out. In the past that sometimes meant spending a lot of time perusing info at the library. Today it means spending time hunting stuff online with occasional trips to the library as back up. But there's only a limited amount of time I can devote to that. And unlike most people I don't fault the majority of Americans for not bothering to take the time to do what I do. We all have different areas of expertise. It's when people mistakenly think they also have the astuteness to get the gist of public policy or economic debates without investing more than a minimum amount of time in seeing if their 'gist' has holes in it or can be falsified that I occasionally get irritated (the science of heuristics deals with one area of this - See Sources of Power:How People Make Decisions for fast decisions made with limited amount of data - that's why society needs the Scientific Method imo). But most of the time I don't. I just remember you're point. We can't be experts about everything we're always being asked to be in to be a "clued-in electorate/public". This is especially true if they don't think about 'off-the-beaten-path' areas that can change the whole terms of a debate. See how Nassim Talib and Dierdre McCloskey have scathing critiques on statistics and thus it's truth claims as one example. Most people don't think that statistics itself as a discipline can be attacked or go off-track. If it can be shown that it can and has - anything that uses statistics for justifying something becomes a lot more rocky as well. (and don't get me started on the classic How to Lie with Statistics). Honestly I've wondered that myself. My own admittedly non-scientifically-derived opinion is that sometimes I'll be led astray and other times my 'gist' will be fairly correct. I don't know about other people but I don't think you're lazy. You're just doing what humans naturally do. Use heuristics and that's been shown scientifically to serve under many conditions to be a good way of deciding things. But it's not infallible. I suppose my own bias is that I tend to like science and the scientific method. Done correctly it can go a long way to helping expose our own heuristic biases that might lead us to conclusions that later don't pan out. Here's one example in the interests of being fair minded about the Money Issues discussed in this thread. I was curious to see just who might have a critique of that massive tome The Lost Science of Money. And here's a pretty good one I found. Again - I always want to try to find the weaknesses and/or holes in a theory/model/explanation I've heard - especially if I like said theory/model/explanation. Now I don't think he's shot down Zarlenga. To me it just means that in this particular area of Zarlenga's presentation the jury is still out. For anyone interested here's a paper by the same author critiquing Hayek and von Mises. And here is his conclusion. [bTW - if this author really IS proposing to make Mises-Economics axiomatic (and thus potentially testable) my interest in this branch of economics just got renewed] This does not address touchy areas mentioned by Talib and McCloskey of course. Pst.... Engineers, I haven't forgotten how essential you are to solving many problems that have public policy implications either.... ********** *edit* *gulp* Just saw Ralis' credentials. Yikes. I have no where near that kind of college level, in-depth exposure to such topics.

Here's another info dump just to give peeps more insight into how "iffy" the foundation of higher modern economics (and other sciences!) really can be. Most upper level economics is math. LOTS of math. Let's say you are one of those Statisticians who does not buy Nassim Talib's criticisms of the Limits of Statistics (and they are out there). You still have to contend with the critics within Statistics I give you the book (yes, I own it): The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs us Jobs, Justice and Lives (Economics, Cognition and Society) Here's the book blurb Just to give a refresher on what Statistical Significance IS you can check out this YouTube Vid. Here is the of Dierdre McCloskey's talk on her follow up book to the above: Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

LBDaoist, Your question is precisely what Web of Debt explains in detail. Here is a (1 of 5) that discusses Fractional Reserve Banking. Now let's add in some fancy Casino Gambling - also known as Derivatives. Here is a (1 of 10) that explains how Credit Default Swaps work. Now realize CDS are not the only "new and innovative" means used to make obscene amounts of money. The second has a heavy reliance on math - statistics in particular to try to generate more money. Now add those 2 together and you begin to realize why Nassim Talib was so scathing in his rebuke of modern Banking and Finance. Here's an article by Talib on the Limits of Statistics. There are other reasons besides the reasons listed above as to why things get so bad but just these alone are devastating enough. ****end of part addressing LBDaosist**** ***Beginning of my own musings to no one in particular**** A lot of the links I've been providing are to try to counter balance a lot of the over-emphasis online these days by and about the Conservative Love Affair of "Contracts Uber Alles" and "government is evil" or even "government is a totally unnecessary evil". But whereas Conservatives/Libertarians are suspicious of injustices via the use of Kratos (power via strength of arms) Anarchists and Leftists are suspicious of injustices via the use of Arche (power of societal rank conferred via non-kratos means). The former is overt, the latter covert. But human ingenuity can and does use either to its advantage. Americans as a whole are justifiably suspicious of the former but woefully uneducated (or a few just don't care) about abuses/injustice done via the latter. I have made it a point to familiarize myself with a lot of these debates because it's long pissed me off to see Conservative Parrot Heads point to their wonderful "guarantor of freedom" - the Contract - and how that will cure injustice - as if injustice can only be "true" if a threat of physical violence is immanent. Anything else doesn't count as injustice in their eyes. I've spent time online occasionally arguing with Parrot Heads like these. They read their little circle of books that confirm their world view without really bothering to investigate why anyone anywhere would want to point out their perfect system leaves holes of injustice so wide trucks can drive through it. That's the seductive allure of models and theories. Especially if they are breathtaking in their explanations. It sucks even the brightest of minds in. That's why John Nash started criticizing the participants of a study that was designed to empirically test if people actually DID do what his game theory predicted they would under the conditions his theory described. They didn't. They acted far more co-operatively than the particular theory being tested said they would. He mused it was a failure of the Testees - instead of looking at what actually happened - his theory failed. That's why I was shocked so many people at Amazon rated Ormerod's book so low. Ormerod's whole point is that theories, models and testing methods developed for sciences such as biology, complexity, chaos, etc are doing a helluva lot better at predicting how people actually behave economically (just look at what Mandelbrot showed with his fractal math applied to stock prices!). Fiscal and Monetary policy ultimately derive their justifications from Microeconomics - if the latter gets called into question that has serious consequences for Macroeconomic justifications for Fiscal and Monetary policy. I'll give one example by Ha-Joon Chang (an economist in London): Here's an excerpt from his book Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism I know it's a highly unpopular opinion but I actually think Karl Marx did a damn good job of describing the problems inherent in Capitalism (what will be really interesting is if these new sciences and computational math techniques actually bear out what he delineated). Where he went off the rails was in prescribing how to fix them. He got seduced by his theory but true to history people have a wonderful way of acting contrary to elegant theories and models (even ones that win Nobel Prizes). Now from the links I've provided one might conclude I hate Libertarian thought. I don't. I actually think a lot of their criticisms are valid and agree with them. But I don't agree that markets and contracts are the panacea many of them believe to be. Sometimes in arguing with them I wonder if this is what old-timers used to feel back in the day when Communist theories were sweeping the world. It feels like you're talking to a brick wall - that True Believer - he's found THE model that explains it ALL. It's just so simple in it's beauty you must be an airhead to just NOT GET IT. Back then it was the ever present True Believer of the Left distributing pamphlets and meeting in cafes. Today it is the True Believer of the Right doing the same via YouTube vids, posts on message boards and other forms of media (both MSM and alternative). And that is just one reason why people are Occupying Wall Street.

I get the weird feeling I'm just talking to thin air with my posts.

A few more books to recommend since they are huge factors in how modern globalized economies are run (and hence why Wall Street and all the other world stock exchanges have so much power) The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air You Don't Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization From some reviewers of the book above:

Pretty honest guy who works on Wall Street. Short Selling

Here is one book I plan to read What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson Note: I detested the movie which I saw when it first came out in the Theater. I've begun the book and already it's different (thank god!) from the movie. I haven't gotten far enough into it yet but here's something one of the Amazon reviewers said about the book

For those who can't afford the admittedly expensive but totally awesome Lost Science of Money I recommend the following book Web of Debt Way cheaper and gives a fascinating overview of the way money is created, flows and destroyed in the U.S. Although Amazon shows The Lost Science of Money as being out of print it's not. You can get it (like I did) direct from the American Monetary Institute. Web of Debt is also a fantastic book. I'd try to see if you can get either one from a library first or maybe an ebook. One thing I DO recommend even if you never read either book is to take the time to read the actual REVIEWS on Amazon for both books. For example: Did you know GOLD is also a FIAT currency? Yep. Sure is. History proves it despite all the GoldBugs out there who love to chant otherwise. Such people's heart is in the right place but because they fail to follow up on the actual history of money in all it's assorted forms we keep dooming ourselves to repeated cycles. Take the time to read this fascinating transcript of a talk given by Stephen Zarlinga to the British House of Lords on the actual history of money (including all that messy history that usually doesn't make it into PHD economics textbooks, etc) Here are some Yin Money movements sprouting up Openmoney.org There are also barter exchanges popping up Barter Exchanges facilitated via the Internet (that is only one example I linked to) Another book I recommend Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics Here was the review of the book I submitted to Shelfari after reading it:

An article by Charles Eisenstein He recently released a new book called Sacred Economics I intend to buy soon. Here's a curious and intriguing look at the depth of the financial system and globalization's problems worldwide.

Ah! One other fun site I forgot to add. You want to see exactly WHO has influence into today's economies vis-a-vis other people? Well you can find out here: Theyrule.net All the peeps who sit on the boards of 5000 multinational corporations. This site is a beauty to behold. Check out the webs of cross linkages you can build just by seeing who is related to whom Boardwise. As an example I give you the (less than) 6 Degrees of Separation between Apple Inc. and Goldman Sachs in the attachment. Have fun discovering your own links.

Well I do not have the sources Taomeow or Witch have. However I am willing to share with others in this thread things I've come across that interest me vis-a-vis this thread's topic. On Wallstreet. Check out several of these books The Lost Science of Money available at American Monetary Institute I own this book and it is freaking HUGE! Bigger than most of my college textbooks! This guy did his homework and then some. The website also have some YouTube vids you can watch of the author giving his talks about it. Here's the 1st Youtube vid of a guy who points out the problems with Fiat Monetary systems (of course I also made it a point to see what problems arise when money is based on a hard standard such as gold or some other commodity that's always of limited or fixed supply) The following is an article equally pointing out one of the weaknesses of adhering to a hard commodity currency. The Gold Standard and the Great Depression (Things are never cut and dried and there are no easy answers. *heavy sigh* ) Here's a book that talks about all the ugliness that goes on in international laisez-faire Finance Capitalism's Achilles Heel Here's a of a guy who read it and reviewed it Here's a book by Satyajit Das - a high level insider in the high leverage activities on Wall Street to the point he has training materials for people coming into the business. It's all about what REALLY goes on behind the scenes. Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives (after reading this book I laugh at Libertarian Economists like Mark Skousen who trumpet how wonderfully efficient ['gov'mint is da epitomy of inefficient evil'] markets are at weeding out corruption in the long run. Nay - markets can be equally efficient in aiding and abetting corruption in the short and long run - which ties into the Capitalism's Achilles Heel book too) Here's Das' sequel Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk There's an interview on the same page of him discussing this book Here's a book by David Harvey The Limits to Capital - a mindblowing book. Promise you will never look at Capitalism the same ever again. Harvey is Professor Emeritus at a NY University. It is HUGE. Not as big as the Lost Science of Money but nonetheless it is huge. Not what I would call pleasure reading but if you want to see serious inquiries into the problems of Capitalism and not just a screed please look into this book. David Harvey is trained as a geologist but has become one of the few remaining pre-eminant Marxist economists around. Here's a Youtube Vid of Harvey on one of his latest books Here's Hyman Minsky's first book Stabilizing an Unstable Economy Here's a and the renewed interest his theories are receiving. Here's a book by the famous Bernoit Mandlebrot The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Markets - by using this new branch of math in analyzing decades of financial markets Mandlebrot was able to show markets are far more volatile and risky in the real world (and this new math describes it better) than what the Standard Model Economics/Finance currently describes and predicts. If Social Security gets entirely privatized as many Libertarians and lasaiz faire marketers hope for then Mandlebrot's research and mathematics of the markets should (ideally) become known to the ordinary American so he/she can realize just how deep a risk they're really taking and can plan accordingly if they don't want to run the risk of being the Old-Old (80 and up) and mired in deep poverty. Here's Naseem Talib's book about his famous Black Swans Here's Mancur Olson on rigidities that become fixed over time in long standing markets (free or otherwise) The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation and Social Rigidities Then there's a book by the sadly long forgotten Friedrich List List's book (first published in 1856) is still probably the best critique of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations ever published. It takes guts imo to go after Adam Smith - the High King of Capitalism - himself. Here's a Wikipedia page describing New Trade Theory Here's a book that goes into New Trade Theory **** For a non-mathematical/diagrammed way of understanding exactly WHAT is Economics 101 today check out this book Naked Economics The above book just tries to teach what is considered Economics as it's been known and taught in universities for the past 100 years without shoving a college textbook at you...(read: you ain't gonna hear about much about Monetarist schools, Austrian schools, Supply-Side schools, Marxist schools, etc). It's just your run-o-the-mill Economics 101. The stuff probably 90% all Economists agree on. Here's a book by a Law Professor on the history of the modern corporation and how it came to be - including significant case law that granted corporations the right to be considered "persons". The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power Another book in a similar vein Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became "People" and How You Can Fight Back Here's how China with it's limited amount of "rule-of-law" laws and regulations vis-a-vis meeting the needs of the "market" actually plays out in real life by an insider there: Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the China Production Game In a country that is zealously pursuing capital accumulation for the people at all cost but with few of the regulations that structure things for Western corporations it's pretty interesting to see what shakes out. More Lasaiz faire than in the U.S. by sheer dint that they don't have the several hundred years of regulatory structure and case law that western europe and the u.s. have accumulated. Interesting Hong Kong turns out one way but mainland China has companies that are equally financially rewarded by doing the opposite (and winning just as much). Here's one guy's answers to modern Libertarians. It starts out quite silly but then settles into genuinely interesting (to me) critiques. There's plenty more I can share if anyone is curious. I have a whole list of pro-Libertarian literature/books/vids too as I do make it a point to try to understand all sides, not just one, two or a few.

What an interesting thread. I can not recall where I read it but the argument I've seen on more than one occasion was that it is not Democracy, Theocracy, Communism, Populism, Socialism, Anarchism, etc that is the most prominent "ism" gaining ground worldwide but rather Nationalism with its typically ethnic/linguistic overtones. Tribalism is just Nationalism (imo) on a smaller scale but it's general outlines are visible in either form. My guess is that it is probably always there - just either goes a bit more dormant for a while then pops up again when something rubs enough of the population a certain way to hit the "flare up" point. It is not just Nation-States that have this mentality. It can be found in some religions as well. Judaism teaches that the Jews are God's Chosen People. I don't know how many Jews actually do believe that these days. My guess is probably very few but who knows. Just saying that's one of the things taught in the Old Testament. I saw it as a method of re-enforcing an ethnic or tribal identity that either ( in its good form) celebrates one's identity or (in it's bad form) has an element of supremacy. That is just one example that isn't necessarily restricted to a Nation-State. There are others that fall in that similar line of thinking. My belief is it is Nationalism/Tribalism/Ethnicism in it's virulent form (supremacist) that becomes a problem. What I wonder is: Is seeing many people displaying Pro USA stickers or making Pro USA posts on web forums and social networks a sign the virulent form is starting to awaken? And what would the above have to do with "spiritually aware" people? I don't count people who don't engage in Spiritual Cultivation practices as being "spiritually aware". They may TALK a good game about how spiritual they are but I just don't see it born out in everyday life around me. I get the feeling a lot of the Christian Right rank-and-file look around and see many other Christians the same way I do. That is - "Christian-in-name-only" sort of thing. Hence, they like to rant about what a "Godless" country the U.S. has become. So why do I seem to be picking on them? Don't really mean to particularly it's just that right now they make up a lot of the people who self-identify as being in the Tea Party. And the Tea Party is definitely Pro USA. I'm going to guess at least a few Tea Partiers are some of the folks you might be talking about as being A ) Nationalistic and B ) "spiritually aware". ***Footnote**** Just wanted to say I personally don't count Tea Party supporters as being among the "spiritually aware" despite their own claims to the contrary (unless they're a practicing Taobum). To me a spiritually aware person is someone who's spiritual cultivation practices have born fruit (or are working to manifest it in the future). To get that you have to engage in Insight practices among other practices. Something I have never heard such people as these do. I suppose that is one thing I mourn about the decline of the appeal of becoming a monk or nun in modern day society. My mom's church just sold an old mansion it owned because the last nun who lived there died and no young people have any interest in becoming a nun or monk anymore. I don't even think there is a general awareness among the Christian public that those old monasteries or convents taught genuine spiritual cultivation techniques. That knowledge among the general populace (if it ever did exist) seems to be lost. In the old days spiritual cultivation practices (like reciting the Lord's Prayer continuously with prayer beads while focusing on the heart center - a Christian Mantra that can quiet the mind and awaken Bodhicitta) was mainly restricted to the monasteries and convents. I do not recall from my investigations of there being any well known corresponding lay traditions of spiritual cultivation practices in Christianity like what I've seen preserved in Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism or Sufism.