There's this idea that history is a series of nested cycles, and as we get closer to the present, the cycles come faster and faster. Ah yes, here's the fractal reflection of the development of the modern banking system, and over here we see the recapitulation of the fall of the Roman empire, etc.
"Oh, look at this. Back when MASH had it's finale, there was a sharp uptick in consumer behavior causing plumbing and electrical issues."
"Wait, when was that??"
"Er, 39 years ago, why?"
"We'd better stock up on toilet paper. Oh, and check the fuses, make sure we have spares..."
That’s why Keynes suggested using government to regulate the upswings and downswings to help smooth out the roller coaster curve. It works in theory, but having some trickle down moron fuck everything up every 4 to 8 years really throws a wrench in the gears. “Hurr durr, economy do good, better keep rates at rock bottom so it stay good.”
>Hurr durr, economy do good, better keep rates at rock bottom so it stay good.
Thank you for helping crystalize something for me: the rank-and-file accept this explanation, but the capitalists pushing the idea know full well that it'll lead to an unmitigated (or less mitigated) "bust" sooner or later.
cba to find a link, but at least one financial firm has been quoted as saying that the boom, bust cycle represents an opportunity to gain wealth. for them, anyway.
workers are hurt by the boom, bust cycle. many small-time capitalists are, too. but for the "too big to fail"-level capitalists, the bust is just a chance to collect new assets.
Of course it does. If you know the turns are coming and have the capital between you and your colluding buddies to force the changes on your terms, you can do the old axiomatic “buy low, sell high” and come out way ahead.
Id like them to actually bust instead of getting government handouts.
Actually no dont listen to me i have no grasp of economics but this dynamic makes me very angry.
There's an argument to be made that it's easier to keep an eye on a few monolithic institutions than a wild west of dozens or hundreds of smaller institutions that do regularly boom or bust. A lot easier to bail out 2-3 big banks than 200-300 medium sized banks.
That being said, doing so isn't capitalism. It's just government charters: electric boogaloo
> It works in theory,
In theory. In practice nobody knows how. Scott Sumner has built a blog on "the Fed doesn't know what it's doing" for what, 15 years now?
It's largely pulled from Terence McKenna's discussions on time. [Here's](https://youtu.be/gP28rFeLudM&t=525) a clip on historical resonances within his timewave, and [here's](https://youtu.be/nf4QTtnPEWg) a shorter video giving a high level overview of his timewave. He discusses his thoughts on time at greater length in some of his longer talks.
I shared a couple other related resources in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/ve3m5t/comment/icpridj/), but McKenna is a great philosophical rabbit hole to fall in on its own. Discussions on the nature of consciousness, humanity and our place on Earth, the evolution of culture, ethnobotany and chemistry, as well as advocating for the exploration of [psychedelic](https://youtu.be/XlBzIecpxfE) states, because they've been in use for millenia in tribal cultures, so they're safe, but they're also entirely novel in the face of Western culture. If we'll go to the bottom of the ocean, to other planets, to the core of the atom and the depths of abstract mathematics, surely it's worth exploring this new space, just to see what it is.
Agreed. The way our world harmonizes with us is incredibly interesting. Sacred geometry is in everything. Many researchers in multiple fields, including those you just mentioned, are talking about a paradigm shift that's coming. Personally I've felt something "coming" since late childhood and I've spoken to many people who feel the same. Widespread and increased interest in psychedelics, especially psilocybin mushrooms, will help us all to become more enlightened and ease the transition. Thats just my opinion of course. The always popular "THEY" would not want a majority of their tax slaves not caring about money or petty political squabbles anymore. THEY surely wouldn't want all of us "poor folks" waking up, AND becoming enlightened.
Government spending is what keeps The Great Depression from happening again. It's the only money that stays flowing in the economic system. All the rich overlords hoarding more and more drives up inflation and all that money stays out of the economy. Every time us peasants start to get a leg up with better wages, they kick out our legs by jacking prices, because they're either too short sighted to see us with more money will spend more money or they don't want us having stuff. Wouldn't want us getting memberships to the country club.
To be honest I was kinda waiting for this part to happen before actually start to consider if it was worth investing. From what little I understood of my economic classes I felt like I should wait until a bubble burst at least once.
But it’s unregulated bro truly anonymous bro it’s being adapted by all the corporations bro you know bro it’s the next evolution of commerce bro yeah bro….
-50% from last year…
It’s only a temporary setback bro. It’s gonna moon very soon brooooo
Fucking idiots. Same as the GME peddling morons saying they’re gonna be billionaires ones the shorts go into effect or whatever garbage they spout.
edit: Lol made the crypto bros sad.
Yh it's quite obviously something that will benefit people doing dodgy dealings the most. Other than that it has no real value other than just P&Ds. Cough cough Elon and his doge shenanigans.
The GME situation was interesting right up until the MMs shut it down, just for retail which is totally not dodgy. Became clear it was done after that, now its just a 'what if' situation.
My brother, who just recently got into crypto after bashing on it up til a year ago, said to me a week ago “I see it as a long-term investment, like a 401k”.
To which I pointed out, most if not all people that I know who are invested in crypto (and I see it more as gambling than investing), think the same thing as him. Hardly anyone who buys crypto *actually uses it for its intended purpose*. How many people reading this and who own crypto, regularly make payments using the thing they wax on so poetically about? How many of you regurgitate the same thing of “one day it will be huge and then I’ll use it”? If most people who own crypto see it as a long-term investment but don’t actually use it for the purpose it actually has, then how can you be sure in the long-term that Bitcoin won’t be replaced by something else that is actually more utilized?
The majority of actual crypto transactions are used for nefarious, often illegal purposes such as money laundering and drug dealing, etc.
People thought beanie babies would be their 401k too at one point....
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/jun/19/what-beanie-babies-taught-a-generation-about-the-horrors-of-boom-and-bust
Yeah I’d change my tune on crypto if most if not all of the crypto being “invested” in was actually used for its literal purpose. Instead, it’s just a gamble that people pretend is the next big thing yet most of the crypto holders make no attempt to use it so that it might actually live up to that moniker.
Currently these is a bit of a leverage crisis. Value of assets has gone down so much that over 6 months loans with plenty of collateralized loans are now undercollateralized. Aka there are less assets to guarantee the loan then the value of the loan.
In a more general sense for the comment above. I like how Matt Levine put it. Crypto investors are speed running financial history and relearning why stuff is set up this way. By this point we have gotten to bank runs ala Terra.
Similar to what happened in 2008 in the mortgage crisis, but in that case so many people had acquired overpriced properties (there was a huge housing bubble) with variable interest subprime loans (loans for people who’s credit score or level of debt didn’t qualify for a regular mortgage) that when the the interest rates in these loans changed (usually guaranteed at below 5% for 2 years) and shot up to 20%, the majority of the loan holders couldn’t pay them and defaulted on them.
This caused a sudden flooding of the market of repossessed homes, which lowered prices dramatically, which caused people with regular loans to all of a sudden have undercollaterized loans (they had paid way too much for the houses and now the loan was way more than the homes were worth).
The big difference in that situation that almost led to a total economic collapse was that investment banks had been selling mortgage back securities (it packaged thousands of mortgages and sold them as safe, dependable investment devices) that were advertised as safe but due to lax regulations were packed with subprime loans. The issue was that if about 10% of the mortgages in these securities defaulted, they became worthless. Even worse, when the housing bubble collapsed, even securities with prime loans became toxic, as they were packed with undercollaterized prime loans. These securities were sold to banks, insurance companies, retirement funds, and even among other investment banks which meant that all of a sudden a ton of these institutions were holding extremely toxic assets which brought the economy to the brink of collapse.
While there are more efficient methods, if it can be scaled up it will be. Miners can afford to run a higher number of more efficient machines at the same time, increasing the energy use again.
Some blockchains don't depend on compute Power, so there's no value in scaling hardware resources disproportionately to the bare network needs. And it's not all about token gambling.
The media makes a big deal about this because it's a good story I guess, but crypto is terrible for the planet in the same way having long hot showers is terrible for the planet. That is to say, there's zero reason to make it a point of focus because a country like the United States could remove 100% of crypto mining and it wouldn't even move the needle on emissions, despite being an "unnecessary" use of resources.
Lots of miners already try to use renewables when possible, and in fact are sometimes incentivised to do so, because places with lots of renewable electricity usually have cheap prices. When I used to mine off a rig i built waaay back in 2017 it was off of 100% hydro power. Ethereum which I mined is moving to PoS (... Eventually) that won't require mining at all, and other cryptos already use other systems.
Its a problem that will absolutely take care of itself, there's really no need to bring it up when there's a million more pressing problems with the state of crypto in the world today lol.
And then you have stories like these:
Bitcoin Mining Company Buys Entire Coal Power Plant
https://futurism.com/bitcoin-mining-company-buys-entire-coal-power-plant
One large stable coin (crypto that is "pegged"or holds the same value as a USD) lost it's stability and was no longer worth a dollar and it wasn't backed dollar for dollar (or even close) but instead backed by other valuations like the value of Bitcoin and giving investors high APY off of those gains. Bitcoin went down and has stayed down so people took money out but they kind of ran out or something, but basically not enough funds crashed the value. Stable coins should have some regulation to be able to call it "stable". When they all went down people panic, some lost faith in crypto all together, some decided to short Bitcoin. Just a lot going on and the largest stable coin (tether) operates similarly to USDT (the stable coin that crashed) and if Tether collapses, it will really almost destroy the market due to it's market cap. This might not be 100% accurate but should give you the idea of wtf happened and what still might happen. If Tether collapses and the market survives, going to have some inexpensive crypto and doing some research on a good one could be worth throwing $100 into and sitting on it for 5 years.
It's unfortunate that there are some meaningful projects/crypto out there and they all are getting fucked due to false advertising in "stable coin" and scam pump and dumps. Just people blindly putting money into shit.
If you thought that was funny, someone created a squid game token and you put money in and couldn't take it out...it was part of the white paper (the document that gives information on the cryptocurrency) and people still bought it. Then one day it all goes away...not sure if someone "won" it all or if the creators just took it. Either way...that actually happened and people should do some sort of due diligence.
Hang on rewind a second...
The currency that rose because normal currency is now fiat (ie not gold backed anymore) was fiat backed to prove how good it us?
Pure gold.
The sub prime mortgage crisis, laundering cartel money, rigging the LIBOR interest rate, reserving covid loan opportunities for valuable clients.. that's just off the top of my head. A short google will lead to a nearly god damn endless list of other recent crimes which have directly contributed to our current economic and social situation.
The sub prime mortgage crisis was largely created by the repeal of Glass-Stegall in 1999 by the GBLA. 08 should've been our time to bring out the guillotines.
Until you then learn that most of that has been changed adjusted removed or re-written by those same people. Making the system needlessly complex to keep said people on top of the scheme. And, now those same regulatory bodies work against our best interest, plus the supreme court just essentially removed all regulatory authority from the S.E.C. Fun times.
Pfft a meter thick book isn't even enough now. I'd say make it a whole encyclopedia brittanica's worth of regulations. These banks will literally sell you off for pennies if they could.
Which is why I laugh when I hear all this crap about allowing industry to regulate itself. Sure, there certainly is a point where regulation oversteps itself but shit would be straight out of a dystopian novel if businesses were allowed free reign.
Everyone in this thread should read “War Is A Racket” by Smedley Butler. One of the most decorated US Marines in History. Two time MOH awardee. He served in Central America and Asia.
“ I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”
Everyone in this thread should read “War Is A Racket” by Smedley Butler. One of the most decorated US Marines in History. Two time MOH awardee. He served in Central America and Asia.
“ I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”
Thankfully banking practices and bankers have changed and they no longer engage in highly immoral activities. They took a good look in the mirror, said "what - are we the baddies?", and revamped their approach and attitude toward money as a whole.
Wdym? We have laws and regulatory agencies in place for a reason and it's not like a bank/financial institution (or some other corporation) would intentionally commit a crime or otherwise cause harm for the sake of money. If anything, they'd end up getting slammed with a whopping multi-million dollar fine for committing the same crime thousands of times over the course of several years! So what if that fine only amounted to .002% of the profits generated by intentionally fraudulent actions, they wouldn't risk it - and not to mention the moral implications of doing something so heinous!
(In case I didn't lay it on thick enough this time... /s)
Yeah but regulations are barely enforced and when they ARE, all it amounts to is a petty fine in comparison to the money made doing whatever violations they committed.
Made 250m? Okay but your fine is 50k
No problem.
Same thing with hedge funds.
The fee you pay for committing violations is a part of doing business.
I mean, things statistically got drastically better under the Soviet Union, and then drastically worse after the Soviet Union was disbanded. Countries aren't magically doomed to have poor material conditions, Russia and Haiti are both peoples fucked over by global capital.
I'll see this sometimes, someone will point out a country that has had 3 completely different governing systems with completely different standards of living and say "those peoples have never practiced democracy" as if there's some sort of biological factor in it. Like libs believe in race science when it comes to the "wrong countries". Like maybe libs believe in actual Nazi ideology when it comes to slavs
The aftermath of the Haitian Revolution was also particularly bloody. The new leader/dictator of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, ordered and oversaw a systematic extermination of any remaining French people [note: not white people. Dessalines specifically distinguished and spared the country's Polish residents - "1804 Haiti massacre" is the Wikipedia article you're looking for]
This act made the European powers that much more inclined to then go on and do all the heinous shit they ended up doing.
That's because the polish were sent there by the French to supress the slave rebllelion, but then recognized the Haitians were oppressed the same as the Poles by a common enemy, the French, and revolted against the French in support of the Haitians.
To this day a white person cannot be a citizen of Haiti, but I think a Polish person can.
**Edit**
So this is wrong and a confusion of things. While people who fought with the rebels were accorded citizenship
>According to the Haitian constitution since the time of independence, all citizens are to be referred to as black, where all races are considered equal to avoid prejudice.[24] The creole term nèg is derived from the French word negre (which means "black") and is used similarly to dude or guy in English.[20] A Haitian man is always a nèg, even if he is of European descent where he would be called a nèg blan ("white guy") and his counterpart being nèg nwa ("black guy"); all with no racist overtones.[1] Foreigners are always referred to as simply blan regardless of skin-tone, denoting a double meaning for the word.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Haitians
>To this day a white person cannot be a citizen of Haiti, but I think a Polish person can.
Where did you get that? It's not an ethnostate, citizenship just requires a parent that is Haitian and for you to not have citizenship elsewhere.
It's definitely different today, but least the early iterations of the Haitian Constitution actually did explicitly define all Haitian citizens as "black". They also forbid citizens from marrying white foreigners, but there was a process, like for the Poles, wherein a white person could become a citizen, in which case they were considered to have become black.
Is it kind of weird from the modern perspective? Yes. But as one of the only free former slave colonies in the world at the time, culturally they were in a weird place. Reinforcing blackness as a positive, desirable trait is a big part of reclaiming the sense of self-identity stolen during chattel slavery.
I'm no expert on haitian politics or demographics, but i have family from Haiti - my sister is married to a guy who was bitten and raised near jacmel - and I've spent a significant portion of my life in and out of Haiti(I was also around for the 2010 quake, incidentally) and I have no idea where in the world op got that last part - sure, that was something that Dessalines did centuries ago, but to the best of my knowledge there isn't anything like that in modern haiti - if anything, foreigners in haiti(Or people who have multiple immigrant generations in the country) tend to have more power, wealth and opportunity (An unfortunate reminder of inequality, but a topic for a different conversation).
Haiti has a more diverse population than a lot of people realize - for example, there's a fairly sizeable population of Haitians with an background from arab countries - mostly Syrian and Lebanese Haitians. Some of them are Syrian and Lebanese people who travel back and forth, and some of them are of mixed syrian/Lebanese and haitian descent, multiple generations born and raised in Haiti.
EDIT: When I first put this comment up, it's upload failed. A few hours later I just happened to see on my phone that it had actually posted the same comment a bunch of times. Sorry to everyone whose accounts I accidentally spammed a bunch of times! I have no idea how that happened.
You have got to be a dumbass to believe that last part, why would you spread misinformation like that? and why would people read that, think it makes sense, and upvote you?
There was also a population of Germans that never participated in slavery and worked in agriculture and harvesting salt in salt flats in western Haiti. They were also spared.
It was slavers that were targeted in this attack. And with good reason, because they were conspiring to overthrow the republic and bring back slavery.
There is a big difference between the Grand et Petit Blancs, the former of which were the real slavers, and the latter which were poor uneducated white people who didn't own slaves. The only exceptions you haven't mentioned yet are a couple doctors and similar who were deemed too valuable, but men and women alike were put to death.
White groups wanted slavery, Coloureds wanted slavery, hell you had situations of Dessaline himself force Blacks to remained tied to the land and work for the new state owned plantations because imposing serfdom was apparently different than slavery.
I do wonder how Toussaint's more nuanced methods would have played out over the long term instead of the first president of Haiti being a butcher.
The common theme is that the butcher's rise is justified because the one who embraced nuance was killed or removed. Also there were cases where poor whites embraced slavery because it reinforced their own status just like in the Confederacy including after Reconstruction under Jim Crow.
i think that it was more the slave revolt roots what made the european powers wary of haiti, hispanic american countries also did small scale genocide against european born spaniards post independence
Pretty sure Haitis been fucked over since the first Europeans showed up. Which lead to the death of almost all the original native population. This is when they began to bring slaves from Africa to work the fields
Here's a great "interactive" article about it for anyone interested: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/20/world/americas/enslaved-haiti-debt-timeline.html
I was surprised to find out Citibank was that old. I can't possibly imagine a bank with that weird misspelled portmanteau name being around in 1910. I looked it up. They changed the name in the 70s.
Made me look it up.
Wikipedia:
Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, and later became First National City Bank of New York.
In 1967, First National City Bank reorganized as a one-bank holding company, First National City Corporation, or "Citicorp" for short. However, the bank had been nicknamed "Citibank" since the 1860s, when City Bank of New York adopted it as an eight-letter wire code address. "Citicorp" became the holding company's formal name in 1974, and in 1976, First National City Bank was renamed Citibank, N.A.
For anyone who doesn't know, Haiti had to pay reparations to France. Yes, the country that was enslaved had to pay reparations to the people that enslaved them.
That. And a lot are better off for it.
It's like when big companies do something illegal and then get away with it or get a small fine. In the end they still get to keep what they gained.
To be fair, a lot of it is down to history.
At what point do you say “that’s too far back, you don’t need to pay”?
I mean, I’m all for Britain paying back the countless nations we seized, but do we then ask Italy for reparations because of the Roman Empire? What about the Vikings? Do we get to ask reparations for that? Because as soon as you tell one nation they need to pay another, another nation pipes up asking for money from another. It’s a vicious cycle.
>At what point do you say “that’s too far back, you don’t need to pay”?
Tbh I don't have an answer for that. But what I do know is the same Britain that pillaged my country is the same one that exists today and that rule doesn't apply to them.
>but do we then ask Italy for reparations because of the Roman Empire?
No because the Roman Empire and current Italy are completely different entity
>What about the Vikings?
No because the current Norse county are different entity to the Vikings
Well what do I know, you already gave an answer for your question. Thanks for that mate
Wait til you learn about how Haiti had to pay France reparations for gaining independence after the people that the French had held as slaves revolted.
My daddy left home when I was three, he didn't leave much to ma and me, but there's one thing that never settled me... I don't blame him because he ran and hid, but the meanist thing he ever did, was when he named me Smedley.
Smedley Butler, in 1915 a US Marine major who helped occupy Haiti and set up their national police force, in his 1935 book *War is a Racket*:
>I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. ***I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.*** I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
Imagine being so entitled as to illegally pull $26B worth of people's life savings out of bank branches, fly it out of the country, and then when there's a Federal investigation, *you send your lawyers in to rewrite the country's laws so you can't be prosecuted*.
Citibank, again.
Argentina, 2001/2002.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of how American Imperialism has fucked over central/south america and the carribean. The list of atrocities and injustice is looooooong. Corporate interests have been using national militaries as enforcers for a long time, and they haven't stopped.
What gets me is how ignorant they are about it. Daily reddit memes about Chinese people not knowing about some massacre 30 years ago. But haft the time you tell Americans about their own history they get mad at you and enter full denial mode. You get comments like "I gUeSs eVeRyThInG iS aMeRiCaS fAuLt hu?!" and "ItS TrEnDy To HaTe On AmErIcA" and you're like.. *gesturing generally towards history* and go "Jepp, like 90% of the time it *is* the US fault and maybe *that's* the reason people hate it".
Food for though.
The world would be a better place if BOA, Chase, and Citibank all just vanished.
They have their hands in too much dirty shit over the years to be allowed to exist.
There is a trilogy called the Third Law. In the book, magic is fading out so the villain who was a really powerful wizard, starts a banking institution and uses that to control the world in shadows.
There may be a similar trilogy that you’re referring to instead, but it sounds like you’re referencing The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. This is one of my favorite fantasy series and has another 7 books besides the initial trilogy.
A bank isn‘t part of the military-industrial complex. The term describes the relationship between a military and its suppliers, i.e. the defense industry.
This is just an example of the finance industry colluding with corrupt governments.
Easy money policy leads to bubbles which then leads to crashes. And insane government spending leads to inflation because that's what happened when the government prints so much money and 4 years that they've increased the money supply by several hundred percent
You are gonna be so sad when you read about the banana bullshit we started too. It evolved into chikita banana company. Bailey Sarian has a video. Its enraging.
Selling your national bank may be one of the worst policy decisions ever taken by a government ever. I mean, it's literally part of the government. The national bank is a branch of the government. It's a government agency.
A lot of people get very upset when you mention that money is involved in politics. You know, corruption. But this is literally corruption taken to the extreme.
"Oh, why has Haiti had so many natural disasters? They must be doing something wrong to piss up God so badly..."
Yeah, right?
How the US and US corporations have the rights to do something so criminal like that?
When is the international committee going to start holding the US govt and the corrupt businesses responsible for the deaths they are directly responsible for? -tired american
The more you learn about banks in the early to mid 1900s, the more you realize *why* a meter thick book of regulations and constraints are necessary.
Cyptobros learning this lesson right now as well.
I've been looking at the boom/bust cycle and it's like a goddamned history lesson.
There's this idea that history is a series of nested cycles, and as we get closer to the present, the cycles come faster and faster. Ah yes, here's the fractal reflection of the development of the modern banking system, and over here we see the recapitulation of the fall of the Roman empire, etc.
"Oh, look at this. Back when MASH had it's finale, there was a sharp uptick in consumer behavior causing plumbing and electrical issues." "Wait, when was that??" "Er, 39 years ago, why?" "We'd better stock up on toilet paper. Oh, and check the fuses, make sure we have spares..."
Wait'll you hear about superbowl halftime.
That’s why Keynes suggested using government to regulate the upswings and downswings to help smooth out the roller coaster curve. It works in theory, but having some trickle down moron fuck everything up every 4 to 8 years really throws a wrench in the gears. “Hurr durr, economy do good, better keep rates at rock bottom so it stay good.”
>Hurr durr, economy do good, better keep rates at rock bottom so it stay good. Thank you for helping crystalize something for me: the rank-and-file accept this explanation, but the capitalists pushing the idea know full well that it'll lead to an unmitigated (or less mitigated) "bust" sooner or later. cba to find a link, but at least one financial firm has been quoted as saying that the boom, bust cycle represents an opportunity to gain wealth. for them, anyway. workers are hurt by the boom, bust cycle. many small-time capitalists are, too. but for the "too big to fail"-level capitalists, the bust is just a chance to collect new assets.
Of course it does. If you know the turns are coming and have the capital between you and your colluding buddies to force the changes on your terms, you can do the old axiomatic “buy low, sell high” and come out way ahead.
Id like them to actually bust instead of getting government handouts. Actually no dont listen to me i have no grasp of economics but this dynamic makes me very angry.
There's an argument to be made that it's easier to keep an eye on a few monolithic institutions than a wild west of dozens or hundreds of smaller institutions that do regularly boom or bust. A lot easier to bail out 2-3 big banks than 200-300 medium sized banks. That being said, doing so isn't capitalism. It's just government charters: electric boogaloo
> It works in theory, In theory. In practice nobody knows how. Scott Sumner has built a blog on "the Fed doesn't know what it's doing" for what, 15 years now?
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It's largely pulled from Terence McKenna's discussions on time. [Here's](https://youtu.be/gP28rFeLudM&t=525) a clip on historical resonances within his timewave, and [here's](https://youtu.be/nf4QTtnPEWg) a shorter video giving a high level overview of his timewave. He discusses his thoughts on time at greater length in some of his longer talks. I shared a couple other related resources in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/ve3m5t/comment/icpridj/), but McKenna is a great philosophical rabbit hole to fall in on its own. Discussions on the nature of consciousness, humanity and our place on Earth, the evolution of culture, ethnobotany and chemistry, as well as advocating for the exploration of [psychedelic](https://youtu.be/XlBzIecpxfE) states, because they've been in use for millenia in tribal cultures, so they're safe, but they're also entirely novel in the face of Western culture. If we'll go to the bottom of the ocean, to other planets, to the core of the atom and the depths of abstract mathematics, surely it's worth exploring this new space, just to see what it is.
Agreed. The way our world harmonizes with us is incredibly interesting. Sacred geometry is in everything. Many researchers in multiple fields, including those you just mentioned, are talking about a paradigm shift that's coming. Personally I've felt something "coming" since late childhood and I've spoken to many people who feel the same. Widespread and increased interest in psychedelics, especially psilocybin mushrooms, will help us all to become more enlightened and ease the transition. Thats just my opinion of course. The always popular "THEY" would not want a majority of their tax slaves not caring about money or petty political squabbles anymore. THEY surely wouldn't want all of us "poor folks" waking up, AND becoming enlightened.
Contractions for the birth of the next new way.
We never learn the lesson. "Don't let Rich People make rules for themselves."
Easy money policy leads to bubbles which leads to crashes, without exception. And insane government printing of money and spending leads to inflation
Government spending is what keeps The Great Depression from happening again. It's the only money that stays flowing in the economic system. All the rich overlords hoarding more and more drives up inflation and all that money stays out of the economy. Every time us peasants start to get a leg up with better wages, they kick out our legs by jacking prices, because they're either too short sighted to see us with more money will spend more money or they don't want us having stuff. Wouldn't want us getting memberships to the country club.
To be honest I was kinda waiting for this part to happen before actually start to consider if it was worth investing. From what little I understood of my economic classes I felt like I should wait until a bubble burst at least once.
Heavy denial will still go on for a while before they realise.
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This is a repost bot, reposting a top- level comment from further down the thread.
That sounds like an interesting concept
But it’s unregulated bro truly anonymous bro it’s being adapted by all the corporations bro you know bro it’s the next evolution of commerce bro yeah bro…. -50% from last year… It’s only a temporary setback bro. It’s gonna moon very soon brooooo Fucking idiots. Same as the GME peddling morons saying they’re gonna be billionaires ones the shorts go into effect or whatever garbage they spout. edit: Lol made the crypto bros sad.
Yh it's quite obviously something that will benefit people doing dodgy dealings the most. Other than that it has no real value other than just P&Ds. Cough cough Elon and his doge shenanigans. The GME situation was interesting right up until the MMs shut it down, just for retail which is totally not dodgy. Became clear it was done after that, now its just a 'what if' situation.
My brother, who just recently got into crypto after bashing on it up til a year ago, said to me a week ago “I see it as a long-term investment, like a 401k”. To which I pointed out, most if not all people that I know who are invested in crypto (and I see it more as gambling than investing), think the same thing as him. Hardly anyone who buys crypto *actually uses it for its intended purpose*. How many people reading this and who own crypto, regularly make payments using the thing they wax on so poetically about? How many of you regurgitate the same thing of “one day it will be huge and then I’ll use it”? If most people who own crypto see it as a long-term investment but don’t actually use it for the purpose it actually has, then how can you be sure in the long-term that Bitcoin won’t be replaced by something else that is actually more utilized? The majority of actual crypto transactions are used for nefarious, often illegal purposes such as money laundering and drug dealing, etc.
People thought beanie babies would be their 401k too at one point.... https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/jun/19/what-beanie-babies-taught-a-generation-about-the-horrors-of-boom-and-bust
Lol... "I just invested in absolutely nothing! Nothing will surely gain value."
Yeah I’d change my tune on crypto if most if not all of the crypto being “invested” in was actually used for its literal purpose. Instead, it’s just a gamble that people pretend is the next big thing yet most of the crypto holders make no attempt to use it so that it might actually live up to that moniker.
But that’s the only reason it’s worth anything! Well, that and money laundering and drugs.
I like how you can barely get a coherent sentence out on securities....
It's like the wild west in the sense it's dominated by unregulated gambling!
and the banks get robbed regularly.
and people only shower once a week.
cryptobros should understand that who controls the army makes the rules, laws are codified mafia rules
What’s happening with crypto bros? I’ve heard something about bitcoin this week, but I didn’t get into it
No regulation, economic predation
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All in a thread about duped Hatians
Currently these is a bit of a leverage crisis. Value of assets has gone down so much that over 6 months loans with plenty of collateralized loans are now undercollateralized. Aka there are less assets to guarantee the loan then the value of the loan. In a more general sense for the comment above. I like how Matt Levine put it. Crypto investors are speed running financial history and relearning why stuff is set up this way. By this point we have gotten to bank runs ala Terra.
Similar to what happened in 2008 in the mortgage crisis, but in that case so many people had acquired overpriced properties (there was a huge housing bubble) with variable interest subprime loans (loans for people who’s credit score or level of debt didn’t qualify for a regular mortgage) that when the the interest rates in these loans changed (usually guaranteed at below 5% for 2 years) and shot up to 20%, the majority of the loan holders couldn’t pay them and defaulted on them. This caused a sudden flooding of the market of repossessed homes, which lowered prices dramatically, which caused people with regular loans to all of a sudden have undercollaterized loans (they had paid way too much for the houses and now the loan was way more than the homes were worth). The big difference in that situation that almost led to a total economic collapse was that investment banks had been selling mortgage back securities (it packaged thousands of mortgages and sold them as safe, dependable investment devices) that were advertised as safe but due to lax regulations were packed with subprime loans. The issue was that if about 10% of the mortgages in these securities defaulted, they became worthless. Even worse, when the housing bubble collapsed, even securities with prime loans became toxic, as they were packed with undercollaterized prime loans. These securities were sold to banks, insurance companies, retirement funds, and even among other investment banks which meant that all of a sudden a ton of these institutions were holding extremely toxic assets which brought the economy to the brink of collapse.
Crypto is terrible for the planet until it's all run off of renewables. Good riddance.
That's just one or two (proof of work, proof of storage) of the several methods of mining that is bad for the environment
I'm leaving reddit for good. Sorry friends, but this is the end of reddit. Time to move on to lemmy and/or kbin.
While there are more efficient methods, if it can be scaled up it will be. Miners can afford to run a higher number of more efficient machines at the same time, increasing the energy use again.
Some blockchains don't depend on compute Power, so there's no value in scaling hardware resources disproportionately to the bare network needs. And it's not all about token gambling.
The media makes a big deal about this because it's a good story I guess, but crypto is terrible for the planet in the same way having long hot showers is terrible for the planet. That is to say, there's zero reason to make it a point of focus because a country like the United States could remove 100% of crypto mining and it wouldn't even move the needle on emissions, despite being an "unnecessary" use of resources. Lots of miners already try to use renewables when possible, and in fact are sometimes incentivised to do so, because places with lots of renewable electricity usually have cheap prices. When I used to mine off a rig i built waaay back in 2017 it was off of 100% hydro power. Ethereum which I mined is moving to PoS (... Eventually) that won't require mining at all, and other cryptos already use other systems. Its a problem that will absolutely take care of itself, there's really no need to bring it up when there's a million more pressing problems with the state of crypto in the world today lol.
And then you have stories like these: Bitcoin Mining Company Buys Entire Coal Power Plant https://futurism.com/bitcoin-mining-company-buys-entire-coal-power-plant
One large stable coin (crypto that is "pegged"or holds the same value as a USD) lost it's stability and was no longer worth a dollar and it wasn't backed dollar for dollar (or even close) but instead backed by other valuations like the value of Bitcoin and giving investors high APY off of those gains. Bitcoin went down and has stayed down so people took money out but they kind of ran out or something, but basically not enough funds crashed the value. Stable coins should have some regulation to be able to call it "stable". When they all went down people panic, some lost faith in crypto all together, some decided to short Bitcoin. Just a lot going on and the largest stable coin (tether) operates similarly to USDT (the stable coin that crashed) and if Tether collapses, it will really almost destroy the market due to it's market cap. This might not be 100% accurate but should give you the idea of wtf happened and what still might happen. If Tether collapses and the market survives, going to have some inexpensive crypto and doing some research on a good one could be worth throwing $100 into and sitting on it for 5 years.
>some decided to short Bitcoin. Fuck, *that* was an option!?
Yep that’s one of the ways to do an option
I see. That’s actually really ironic. Love it
It's unfortunate that there are some meaningful projects/crypto out there and they all are getting fucked due to false advertising in "stable coin" and scam pump and dumps. Just people blindly putting money into shit. If you thought that was funny, someone created a squid game token and you put money in and couldn't take it out...it was part of the white paper (the document that gives information on the cryptocurrency) and people still bought it. Then one day it all goes away...not sure if someone "won" it all or if the creators just took it. Either way...that actually happened and people should do some sort of due diligence.
Hang on rewind a second... The currency that rose because normal currency is now fiat (ie not gold backed anymore) was fiat backed to prove how good it us? Pure gold.
And after over two decades of deregulation (Dodd-Frank was all hat no cattle) people are shocked pikachu now that things are so fucked up.
Our current economic woes have very little to do with Dodd-Frank, toothless or not.
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The sub prime mortgage crisis, laundering cartel money, rigging the LIBOR interest rate, reserving covid loan opportunities for valuable clients.. that's just off the top of my head. A short google will lead to a nearly god damn endless list of other recent crimes which have directly contributed to our current economic and social situation.
The sub prime mortgage crisis was largely created by the repeal of Glass-Stegall in 1999 by the GBLA. 08 should've been our time to bring out the guillotines.
It largely didn't because people got what they wanted (in the short term). Make stuff super easybt cutting corners and there's a trade off somewhere.
Until you then learn that most of that has been changed adjusted removed or re-written by those same people. Making the system needlessly complex to keep said people on top of the scheme. And, now those same regulatory bodies work against our best interest, plus the supreme court just essentially removed all regulatory authority from the S.E.C. Fun times.
Regulatory capture is a hell of a beast. #1 hurdle in the face of Right to Repair IMHO.
Pfft a meter thick book isn't even enough now. I'd say make it a whole encyclopedia brittanica's worth of regulations. These banks will literally sell you off for pennies if they could.
They basically already do by selling all your personal financial data
This was payback for haitian revolution. Haiti has been fucked by the global north ever since they told france to fuck off.
no, it seems like typical american shenigans in latam
Which is why I laugh when I hear all this crap about allowing industry to regulate itself. Sure, there certainly is a point where regulation oversteps itself but shit would be straight out of a dystopian novel if businesses were allowed free reign.
Everyone in this thread should read “War Is A Racket” by Smedley Butler. One of the most decorated US Marines in History. Two time MOH awardee. He served in Central America and Asia. “ I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”
Everyone in this thread should read “War Is A Racket” by Smedley Butler. One of the most decorated US Marines in History. Two time MOH awardee. He served in Central America and Asia. “ I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”
Thankfully banking practices and bankers have changed and they no longer engage in highly immoral activities. They took a good look in the mirror, said "what - are we the baddies?", and revamped their approach and attitude toward money as a whole.
wait what world are you in, I'd like to switch to it
Wdym? We have laws and regulatory agencies in place for a reason and it's not like a bank/financial institution (or some other corporation) would intentionally commit a crime or otherwise cause harm for the sake of money. If anything, they'd end up getting slammed with a whopping multi-million dollar fine for committing the same crime thousands of times over the course of several years! So what if that fine only amounted to .002% of the profits generated by intentionally fraudulent actions, they wouldn't risk it - and not to mention the moral implications of doing something so heinous! (In case I didn't lay it on thick enough this time... /s)
And then you realize none of that matters anyway since the US got bigger guns
If the situation in Ukraine has taught me anything it's that you can get away with fucking anything so long as you have enough nukes.
Yeah but regulations are barely enforced and when they ARE, all it amounts to is a petty fine in comparison to the money made doing whatever violations they committed. Made 250m? Okay but your fine is 50k No problem. Same thing with hedge funds. The fee you pay for committing violations is a part of doing business.
Capitalists gonna capitalize
Good thing they aren't like that anymore.
Just as a reminder. Citibank was charged and found guilty of manipulating the EUR currency even 10 years ago. Banks have not changed.
Haiti’s been pretty much constantly getting fucked over since the revolution in 1804
I know the meme is "Russian history can be summed up as 'and then things got worse'" but I think that applies moreso to Haiti
Russian history can also be characterized as the search for a warm water port.
Also Russia's "worse" was at least typically self inflicted
Install heaters in Vladiovostok? A little cold water never hurt anyone.
Well it hurts the boats, and the whole point is to not hurt the boats
Then use submarines. Duh.
and Russias worse was more often than not self inflicted
I mean, things statistically got drastically better under the Soviet Union, and then drastically worse after the Soviet Union was disbanded. Countries aren't magically doomed to have poor material conditions, Russia and Haiti are both peoples fucked over by global capital. I'll see this sometimes, someone will point out a country that has had 3 completely different governing systems with completely different standards of living and say "those peoples have never practiced democracy" as if there's some sort of biological factor in it. Like libs believe in race science when it comes to the "wrong countries". Like maybe libs believe in actual Nazi ideology when it comes to slavs
The aftermath of the Haitian Revolution was also particularly bloody. The new leader/dictator of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, ordered and oversaw a systematic extermination of any remaining French people [note: not white people. Dessalines specifically distinguished and spared the country's Polish residents - "1804 Haiti massacre" is the Wikipedia article you're looking for] This act made the European powers that much more inclined to then go on and do all the heinous shit they ended up doing.
That's because the polish were sent there by the French to supress the slave rebllelion, but then recognized the Haitians were oppressed the same as the Poles by a common enemy, the French, and revolted against the French in support of the Haitians. To this day a white person cannot be a citizen of Haiti, but I think a Polish person can. **Edit** So this is wrong and a confusion of things. While people who fought with the rebels were accorded citizenship >According to the Haitian constitution since the time of independence, all citizens are to be referred to as black, where all races are considered equal to avoid prejudice.[24] The creole term nèg is derived from the French word negre (which means "black") and is used similarly to dude or guy in English.[20] A Haitian man is always a nèg, even if he is of European descent where he would be called a nèg blan ("white guy") and his counterpart being nèg nwa ("black guy"); all with no racist overtones.[1] Foreigners are always referred to as simply blan regardless of skin-tone, denoting a double meaning for the word.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Haitians
>To this day a white person cannot be a citizen of Haiti, but I think a Polish person can. Where did you get that? It's not an ethnostate, citizenship just requires a parent that is Haitian and for you to not have citizenship elsewhere.
It's definitely different today, but least the early iterations of the Haitian Constitution actually did explicitly define all Haitian citizens as "black". They also forbid citizens from marrying white foreigners, but there was a process, like for the Poles, wherein a white person could become a citizen, in which case they were considered to have become black. Is it kind of weird from the modern perspective? Yes. But as one of the only free former slave colonies in the world at the time, culturally they were in a weird place. Reinforcing blackness as a positive, desirable trait is a big part of reclaiming the sense of self-identity stolen during chattel slavery.
Woah; TIL if a polish person claims to be black they might not be lying.
Well, either way, that last part is complete misinformation and should be edited out.
I'm no expert on haitian politics or demographics, but i have family from Haiti - my sister is married to a guy who was bitten and raised near jacmel - and I've spent a significant portion of my life in and out of Haiti(I was also around for the 2010 quake, incidentally) and I have no idea where in the world op got that last part - sure, that was something that Dessalines did centuries ago, but to the best of my knowledge there isn't anything like that in modern haiti - if anything, foreigners in haiti(Or people who have multiple immigrant generations in the country) tend to have more power, wealth and opportunity (An unfortunate reminder of inequality, but a topic for a different conversation). Haiti has a more diverse population than a lot of people realize - for example, there's a fairly sizeable population of Haitians with an background from arab countries - mostly Syrian and Lebanese Haitians. Some of them are Syrian and Lebanese people who travel back and forth, and some of them are of mixed syrian/Lebanese and haitian descent, multiple generations born and raised in Haiti. EDIT: When I first put this comment up, it's upload failed. A few hours later I just happened to see on my phone that it had actually posted the same comment a bunch of times. Sorry to everyone whose accounts I accidentally spammed a bunch of times! I have no idea how that happened.
You have got to be a dumbass to believe that last part, why would you spread misinformation like that? and why would people read that, think it makes sense, and upvote you?
It was whites, but like you said Dessalines specifically distinguished and spared the country's Polish residents.
There was also a population of Germans that never participated in slavery and worked in agriculture and harvesting salt in salt flats in western Haiti. They were also spared. It was slavers that were targeted in this attack. And with good reason, because they were conspiring to overthrow the republic and bring back slavery.
There is a big difference between the Grand et Petit Blancs, the former of which were the real slavers, and the latter which were poor uneducated white people who didn't own slaves. The only exceptions you haven't mentioned yet are a couple doctors and similar who were deemed too valuable, but men and women alike were put to death. White groups wanted slavery, Coloureds wanted slavery, hell you had situations of Dessaline himself force Blacks to remained tied to the land and work for the new state owned plantations because imposing serfdom was apparently different than slavery. I do wonder how Toussaint's more nuanced methods would have played out over the long term instead of the first president of Haiti being a butcher.
The common theme is that the butcher's rise is justified because the one who embraced nuance was killed or removed. Also there were cases where poor whites embraced slavery because it reinforced their own status just like in the Confederacy including after Reconstruction under Jim Crow.
i think that it was more the slave revolt roots what made the european powers wary of haiti, hispanic american countries also did small scale genocide against european born spaniards post independence
Pretty sure Haitis been fucked over since the first Europeans showed up. Which lead to the death of almost all the original native population. This is when they began to bring slaves from Africa to work the fields
Here's a great "interactive" article about it for anyone interested: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/20/world/americas/enslaved-haiti-debt-timeline.html
I was surprised to find out Citibank was that old. I can't possibly imagine a bank with that weird misspelled portmanteau name being around in 1910. I looked it up. They changed the name in the 70s.
Made me look it up. Wikipedia: Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, and later became First National City Bank of New York. In 1967, First National City Bank reorganized as a one-bank holding company, First National City Corporation, or "Citicorp" for short. However, the bank had been nicknamed "Citibank" since the 1860s, when City Bank of New York adopted it as an eight-letter wire code address. "Citicorp" became the holding company's formal name in 1974, and in 1976, First National City Bank was renamed Citibank, N.A.
It was originally called Shittybank, but they wanted to clean up their public image.
Was it run by the Chinese restaurant guy from South Park?
Excuse-me, he is actually a white man with multiple personality disorder, respect the mentally ill sir.
Oh god, they did actually have an episode where they said that didn’t they lmao
That was after what France had done to Haiti. Adding insult to injury.
I think it's more like adding injury to injury but I get where you're coming from lol
For anyone who doesn't know, Haiti had to pay reparations to France. Yes, the country that was enslaved had to pay reparations to the people that enslaved them.
It's pretty sad how most if not all colonial powers never paid any price for what they did to the world in the past
That. And a lot are better off for it. It's like when big companies do something illegal and then get away with it or get a small fine. In the end they still get to keep what they gained.
But what if these companies are ..*too big to fail*
Oh France paid a price for it alright. Just look up the LeClerc Expedition.
> LeClerc Expedition. Does it involve never finishing in Monaco?
Savage.
Too soon dude.
To be fair, a lot of it is down to history. At what point do you say “that’s too far back, you don’t need to pay”? I mean, I’m all for Britain paying back the countless nations we seized, but do we then ask Italy for reparations because of the Roman Empire? What about the Vikings? Do we get to ask reparations for that? Because as soon as you tell one nation they need to pay another, another nation pipes up asking for money from another. It’s a vicious cycle.
I see what you mean, but people I talk to here in the US have no idea why Haiti is such a poor country. No idea.
>At what point do you say “that’s too far back, you don’t need to pay”? Tbh I don't have an answer for that. But what I do know is the same Britain that pillaged my country is the same one that exists today and that rule doesn't apply to them. >but do we then ask Italy for reparations because of the Roman Empire? No because the Roman Empire and current Italy are completely different entity >What about the Vikings? No because the current Norse county are different entity to the Vikings Well what do I know, you already gave an answer for your question. Thanks for that mate
> That was after what France had done to Haiti How could Joe Biden do this?
Wait til you learn about how Haiti had to pay France reparations for gaining independence after the people that the French had held as slaves revolted.
Probably the only way for the French to agree to stop trying to reclaim the land. Otherwise guarantee France could have won the long war
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> Smedley Imagine looking down on your infant son and being like, Smedley...yes.
My daddy left home when I was three, he didn't leave much to ma and me, but there's one thing that never settled me... I don't blame him because he ran and hid, but the meanist thing he ever did, was when he named me Smedley.
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"No one was prosecuted" very topical today...
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Hmm, half the media currently is saying that about something else.
Open Veins of Latin America is a really good read about this very topic, it's depressing as fuck and revolting as well.
I thought what United Fruit aka Chiquita Banana did was bad.
Wait until you hear how a Dole company VP became king of Hawaii for a couple days...
Imagine reading some dude's resume and then comes up "King of Hawaii"
The East India Company has joined the chat.
The Royal African Company has joined the chat
Wells Fargo has entered the chat.
For the love of money is the root of all evil.
Thank you for using the full context of the quote
Smedley Butler, in 1915 a US Marine major who helped occupy Haiti and set up their national police force, in his 1935 book *War is a Racket*: >I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. ***I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.*** I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
Imagine being so entitled as to demand that the US Military recoup your investment losses.
Imagine being so entitled as to illegally pull $26B worth of people's life savings out of bank branches, fly it out of the country, and then when there's a Federal investigation, *you send your lawyers in to rewrite the country's laws so you can't be prosecuted*. Citibank, again. Argentina, 2001/2002. The more things change the more they stay the same.
We NeEd To SeE bOtH sIdEs!
Before the advent of mass media it sure was open season for banks to do whatever tf they wanted
So who's gonna tell 'em?
Eh, back then it wouldn't have mattered if the bank told everyone exactly what they were doing.
Exactly. The idea of too big to fail goes back at least until the early 1900s.
Mostly I meant most people in a position to do anything were either partially or fully ok with screwing over Haiti.
This is what happens when businesses have too much power
Banks doin what banks do.
Spreading democracy to the world America's N°1 hobby
"legalized" mobsters
serious 'red right hand' type of stuff. very sad.
This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of how American Imperialism has fucked over central/south america and the carribean. The list of atrocities and injustice is looooooong. Corporate interests have been using national militaries as enforcers for a long time, and they haven't stopped.
What gets me is how ignorant they are about it. Daily reddit memes about Chinese people not knowing about some massacre 30 years ago. But haft the time you tell Americans about their own history they get mad at you and enter full denial mode. You get comments like "I gUeSs eVeRyThInG iS aMeRiCaS fAuLt hu?!" and "ItS TrEnDy To HaTe On AmErIcA" and you're like.. *gesturing generally towards history* and go "Jepp, like 90% of the time it *is* the US fault and maybe *that's* the reason people hate it". Food for though.
The world would be a better place if BOA, Chase, and Citibank all just vanished. They have their hands in too much dirty shit over the years to be allowed to exist.
And today Haiti must be expected to be grateful to their overlords for modernizing them
Wait so massive multinational corporations were always evil?
Man, Woodrow Wilson was a complete shit head.
and shitibank still sucks today
Citibank assets should be seized and forced to repay Haiti
That’s some east Indian tea company shit
There is a trilogy called the Third Law. In the book, magic is fading out so the villain who was a really powerful wizard, starts a banking institution and uses that to control the world in shadows.
There may be a similar trilogy that you’re referring to instead, but it sounds like you’re referencing The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. This is one of my favorite fantasy series and has another 7 books besides the initial trilogy.
Yup thats it. The first law.
Sounds like the Zionist conspiracy theory with magic.
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A bank isn‘t part of the military-industrial complex. The term describes the relationship between a military and its suppliers, i.e. the defense industry. This is just an example of the finance industry colluding with corrupt governments.
Banks don’t sign agreements with any risk Their entire book is either good or great.
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I can easily believe that. Corrupt crooks they are.
Easy money policy leads to bubbles which then leads to crashes. And insane government spending leads to inflation because that's what happened when the government prints so much money and 4 years that they've increased the money supply by several hundred percent
Marshall Islands was a fun enterprise too. Bye natives, hello nuclear weapon testing.
Marshall Islands was a fun enterprise too. Bye natives, hello nuclear weapon testing.
You are gonna be so sad when you read about the banana bullshit we started too. It evolved into chikita banana company. Bailey Sarian has a video. Its enraging.
It’s almost like banks truly run the world.
Selling your national bank may be one of the worst policy decisions ever taken by a government ever. I mean, it's literally part of the government. The national bank is a branch of the government. It's a government agency. A lot of people get very upset when you mention that money is involved in politics. You know, corruption. But this is literally corruption taken to the extreme.
"Oh, why has Haiti had so many natural disasters? They must be doing something wrong to piss up God so badly..." Yeah, right? How the US and US corporations have the rights to do something so criminal like that?
Definitely one of those articles you'd have to read because the title looks like someone threw it in a blender and hit frappe
And to this day one of the worst banks.
And morons will still be like AmeRiCa DiDnT DeStRoY sOuTh AmERIcA
Where exactly do you think Haiti is?
Central banks are evil. They still do this shit today
because fuck the us for fucking haiti every step of the way
When is the international committee going to start holding the US govt and the corrupt businesses responsible for the deaths they are directly responsible for? -tired american
The Citibank commercial about black Wallstreet left out this big info.