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PoliGAF 2012 Community Thread

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F

Flying_Phoenix

Banned
Chichikov said:
That's bullshit.
If anything, Manos is a poor homeless man's eznark.
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Manos generates responses. he can derail threads for pages and pages on almost any issue. Eznark is a one trick Walker pony.

eznark said:
Dow gains 284 points on Walker victory. Best day of 2012.


That seems Manos-y, right?
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You're getting better.

Byakuya769 said:
What's the beef? I'm confused.
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I was joking with this part. Trying to bait him with my false grammar.

I ♥ eznark!

Aaron Strife said:
More people left the workforce than people losing jobs.

It's the same way the unemployment rate went up last month nationally, even though the economy added jobs.
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How do they define people leaving the workforce? People quitting their jobs I assume?

Sorry I didn't get much sleep last night. I'm slow today.
 
E

eznark

Banned
Yeah, I am totally lost.

Ah, got it. I'm now a more focused member of poligaf. I don't want to get Dubya'd. No ideological debates.

Aaron Strife said:
More people left the workforce than people losing jobs.

It's the same way the unemployment rate went up last month nationally, even though the economy added jobs.
Click to expand...

It's going to be interesting to see how rapidly expansion picks up. The state Chamber (lol yada yada) released a survey this year saying 87% of members were looking to expand and/or add jobs but were waiting on the election results. If there isn't a serious and statistically significant jump over the remainder of the year I hope they get completely shit on.
 
Kevitivity

Kevitivity

Member
empty vessel said:
All of them, except the Eurozone. Every dollar the government spends is "printed" (created) at the time of spending. Every unit of currency that every government spends (except Eurozone countries) is "printed" (created) at the instant of spending. A dollar is just a unit of accounting, not an actual "thing" in the world (although it can be represented physically, as by paper currency, checks, and pixels on computer screens). The question is not whether the government ought to "print" (create) money--all of them do, every time they spend--it is how much money it should be spending at any given time.
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EV you are again confusing the amount of physical money in an economy (printing) with government spending (budget). The two are very different tools.
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
Flying_Phoenix said:
How do they define people leaving the workforce? People quitting their jobs I assume?

Sorry I didn't get much sleep last night. I'm slow today.
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Nah it's fine.

Leaving the workforce just means someone's not working and isn't looking for work. When someone gives up on the job hunt, they're no longer counted in the unemployment rate.
 
empty vessel

empty vessel

Member
Kevitivity said:
EV you are again confusing the amount of physical money in an economy (printing) with government spending (budget). The two are very different tools.
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I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. I mean, yes, money is not a budget. Money is a unit of accounting created by the government and spent into the private economy where it gets traded by private sector actors and taxed. A budget is just, like, a piece of paper with numbers written on it instructing the executive how many accounting units it may create and spend into the private economy in a given time period (usually a year).

Cyan said:
He's still unable to understand what ev is saying.

ev is saying that the govt can create money whenever they want, by adding units in a spreadsheet somewhere. In fact, he's saying not just that they can do this, but they do, that this is what govt spending is.

Kevititvy is unable to separate this view from what he thinks ev is saying, which is something about physically printing money.
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Yeah, I still don't know what he is getting at with his statement, but my only point is that the government is constantly creating and destroying money. When it comes to money, the government can be viewed like a black box. Let's say that there is $1000 of money (for visualization purposes, let's say it is cash--all $1 bills) outside the box in a closed world. You observe these bills streaming into the black box. You also observe $1 bills coming out of the black box on the other end. You have no idea what happens inside the black box, but you do know one important fact. The black box is the sole creator of money in this world. You also observe that the total of amount of $1 bills in the world (and outside the black box) at any given time is changing, sometimes expanding beyond $1000 and sometimes shrinking below $1000. Once you know these facts, you understand that, regardless of what is actually happening inside the black box, you can logically conceive of what is happening as the black box destroying every $1 bill that gets put into it at the moment it enters the box and creating every $1 bill that it emits at the moment of its emission. This conception will hold even if the black box is not in fact creating and destroying the bills, but reusing some or all of them.


This describes the monetary system we have. The government, because it is the sole creator of money in the economy, can always be conceived of as destroying every dollar it ever touches that gets sent to it externally and as creating every dollar it spends at the moment of spending. So when I say that the government always spends by creating money, I am using this analogy to the black box. It is a property of any monopoly issuer of currency.
 
X

XMonkey

lacks enthusiasm.
Kevitivity said:
EV you are again confusing the amount of physical money in an economy (printing) with government spending (budget). The two are very different tools.
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Still waiting for you to explain what disaster awaits the US if we keep running government budget deficits (at the Federal level, let's say).

And also why you thought comparing the situation in Greece to the situation in the US is valid.
 
Kevitivity

Kevitivity

Member
Cyan said:
He's still unable to understand what ev is saying.

ev is saying that the govt can create money whenever they want, by adding units in a spreadsheet somewhere. In fact, he's saying not just that they can do this, but they do, that this is what govt spending is.

Kevititvy is unable to separate this view from what he thinks ev is saying, which is something about physically printing money.
Click to expand...

EV explicitly said 'print'
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
I'm not always in complete agreement with EV but there is one thing that he says that is absolutely correct: money is an illusion that we use because it enables a system that we've found works, much like imaginary numbers in mathematics. If arbitrarily changing the amount of money could have positive repercussions on the system there is no actual impediment to doing so. Just concern over weather it will also have negative repercussions, and how everything shakes out.
 
Kevitivity

Kevitivity

Member
Chumly said:
Dude have you ever taken an economics class? Do you ever comprehend what were talking about? How old are you?
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I love how the trolls come out to defend EV's nonsense...

My point is this, increasing the money supply is not the same as Government spending. The two have different effects on the economy.
 
C

Chichikov

Member
The_Technomancer said:
I'm not always in complete agreement with EV but there is one thing that he says that is absolutely correct: money is an illusion that we use because it enables a system that we've found works, much like imaginary numbers in mathematics. If arbitrarily changing the amount of money could have positive repercussions on the system there is no actual impediment to doing so. Just concern over weather it will also have negative repercussions, and how everything shakes out.
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Imaginary numbers are not arbitrary, an illusion, or made up.

/derail
 
C

Chichikov

Member
The_Technomancer said:
They're a theoretical concept that enable certain types of calculation. A phasor doesn't actually "go anywhere" when it rotates into the imaginary domain, its just a very good model for us.
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Like negative numbers, right?
I mean, how can I give you 5 apples if I only have 3?

I don't want to get to the whole pi in the sky argument* but whatever your answer is, imaginary numbers are not really different from real numbers.
They either have innate meaning or they don't.

Or to put it in slightly more technical terms, if you accept a polynomial as something that have a "real" meaning then you have to accept a 2 dimensional plane of numbers.

* in short - the question whether mathematics is a feature of a the universe or of our mind.
 
T

TacticalFox88

Banned
The_Technomancer said:
They're a theoretical concept that enable certain types of calculation. A phasor doesn't actually "go anywhere" when it rotates into the imaginary domain, its just a very good model for us.
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obama_not_amused.gif
 
Kevitivity

Kevitivity

Member
Cyan said:
Then why didn't you say so, instead of going on an unrelated tangent about physical currency?
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I have. I 'm just trying to get EV to clarify - he lumps fiscal and monetary policy together whenever he starts talking about how we need to increase spending to fix the economy.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Chichikov said:
Like negative numbers, right?
I mean, how can I give you 5 apples if I only have 3?
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Well...yes. Debt is another concept that we use to make the system work that doesn't have a physical grounding, you can't have negative three apples. I think you guys are misunderstanding my point. Me owing you something doesn't mean anything other then what we say it does.

A polynomial has modeling ability, just like pretty much all math does.
Cyan said:
Speaking of unrelated tangents!
It's just a rotation in a different dimension. The 90 degree rotation to the negative number's 180 degrees.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Its a rotation into a different dimension, but that doesn't have any physical interpretation. If I send a sinusoidal electric signal there is no energy going into some other dimension, we have simply established the imaginary axis as a way of modeling this process.

Okay, end tangent.
 
C

Chumly

Member
Kevitivity said:
I love how the trolls come out to defend EV's nonsense...

My point is this, increasing the money supply is not the same as Government spending. The two have different effects on the economy.
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I was dead serious because you seem incapable of understanding EV's point.

Maybe if you would just articulate why he is wrong or what you mean by any of your points. What do you think government spending does for the economy?
 
I

Invisible_Insane

Member
Kevitivity said:
I have. I 'm just trying to get EV to clarify - he lumps fiscal and monetary policy together whenever he starts talking about how we need to increase spending to fix the economy.
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Yo dawg: I heard you were incapable of understanding fractional reserve banking, so I put a printing press in your central bank so you can print money while you "print money."

One of the central assertions of mmt proponents, which you seems to have taken great pains to ignore, is that the separation between the treasury and the fed is arbitrary and somewhat unnecessary.
 
Kevitivity

Kevitivity

Member
Chumly said:
I was dead serious because you seem incapable of understanding EV's point.

Maybe if you would just articulate why he is wrong or what you mean by any of your points. What do you think government spending does for the economy?
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I'll let EV tell me what his point was. Thanks.
 
P

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
Kevitivity said:
I'll let EV tell me what his point was. Thanks.
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This is obtuse. It's ok to say you don't understand. Hell, I'm the first to admit that I don't quite get how if money can and should be printed at will how it could maintain any value, but that doesn't mean I dismiss my academic betters.

And this is one of those situations for you, I think.

To TA's wholesale dismissal of EV's general approach, I think the better way to say it rather than being snarky is to point out that regardless of how correct his economic theories have been proven, simply saying we can print (the theoretical print, i guess we need to specify now LOL) our way out of the economic crisis doesn't deal with political realities on the ground. It'd be cool if we could do that, but we can't.
 
P

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
Quick PoliGAF poll!

1. Do you think the government should help those that cannot help themselves?

2. Do you believe the government should have a right to regulate individual freedoms when they encroach on the freedoms of another?

3. Do you believe that there are some things/goals so large (in scope or money) that only a government could see them realized?
 
empty vessel

empty vessel

Member
Kevitivity said:
I have. I 'm just trying to get EV to clarify - he lumps fiscal and monetary policy together whenever he starts talking about how we need to increase spending to fix the economy.
Click to expand...

I do not lump them together so much as I discount monetary policy. Central banks in advanced economies cannot control the money supply. Why? Because they have to commit to backstopping banks. What does that mean? That means that they have to provide reserves to the private banking system when they fall short because the banks have lent in excess of legal reserve requirements.

What about open market operations? These are allegedly how the central bank increases or decreases the money supply. So assume the central bank wants to increase the money supply it would purchase bonds in the markets and, accordingly, add reserves to the banking system. The banks in turn will try to lend those reserves out because they don’t want to be stuck with under-performing deposits and competition in the overnight markets will drive the interest rate down. Clearly, if the central bank wants to maintain control over the overnight interest rate it has to then drain the excess reserves which would require it offer the banks an interest-bearing asset commensurate with the overnight rate. That is, it would have to sell bonds in an open market operation. The reverse is true if it tried to reduce the money supply by selling bonds. This drains reserves from the cash system and would probably leave some banks short of required reserves. Given the only remedy for an overall shortage of reserves is intervention from the central bank the attempt to decrease the money supply fails.

It is clear that the central bank then is unable to control the volume of money in the system although it can control the price through its monetary policy settings. The money multiplier is a flawed conception of how things work. The monetary base does not drive the money supply. In fact, the reverse is true. So the reserves at any point in time will be determined by the loans that the banks make independent of their reserve positions.
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http://modernmoney.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/myth-of-money-multiplier/

Read that whole page if you want to understand why central banks cannot control the money supply. A Federal Reserve paper confirms:

Monetary policy has traditionally been viewed as the process by which a central bank uses its influence over the supply of money to promote its economic objectives. For example, Milton Friedman (1959, p. 24) defined the tools of monetary policy to be those “powers that enable the [Federal Reserve] System to determine the total amount of money in existence or to alter that amount.” In fact, the very term monetary policy suggests a central bank’s policy toward the supply of money or the level of some monetary aggregate.

In recent decades, however, central banks have moved away from a direct focus on measures of the money supply. The primary focus of monetary policy has instead become the value of a short-term interest rate. In the United States, for example, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announces a rate that it wishes to prevail in the federal funds market, where overnight loans are made among commercial banks. The tools of monetary policy are then used to guide the market interest rate toward the chosen target. For this reason, we follow the common practice of using the term monetary policy to refer to a central bank’s interest rate policy.
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http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/EPR/08v14n2/0809keis.pdf

The paper notes and discusses the "tension" that exists between controlling the money supply and ensuring stability of the financial system by a central bank.

For context and discussion of that particular FR paper, see: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=9392

In short, the money supply is dictated by the fiscal policy of the government (spending and taxing), not monetary policy of the central bank.
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
PantherLotus said:
Quick PoliGAF poll!

1. Do you think the government should help those that cannot help themselves?
Click to expand...
Yeah!

2. Do you believe the government should have a right to regulate individual freedoms when they encroach on the freedoms of another?
Click to expand...
What is this like "Should the government not let the KKK burn someone's house down"? Yeah!

3. Do you believe that there are some things/goals so large (in scope or money) that only a government could see them realized?
Click to expand...
Probably!
 
F

Flying_Phoenix

Banned
PantherLotus said:
Quick PoliGAF poll!

1. Do you think the government should help those that cannot help themselves?

2. Do you believe the government should have a right to regulate individual freedoms when they encroach on the freedoms of another?

3. Do you believe that there are some things/goals so large (in scope or money) that only a government could see them realized?
Click to expand...

Why are you asking this?
 
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