It is interesting that almost nobody talks about it (or at least I haven't seen it) but our ENTIRE financial system is based on FIAT currency, or in layman's terms currency that that is about as worthless as monopoly money other than the fact that the US government (or any other government that issues their own currency) will honor it as a means to pay for debts owed to it. When I was a kid I was told that currency was back by gold and/or silver, which meant that you could always trade the note for it's value in silver, but as I got older I found out that that wasn't true. However I don't feel so bad about not knowing this because many people I meant it to are unaware of the fact that money isn't backed by anything. The one thing that kind of pisses me off about this is how come other people and/or groups can't just quit their jobs and print money for their own use?

Anyways, what is also weird is that supposedly the people who own and run the 'money presses' (as far as I know of the people who own the Fed are the same people who own a majority of banks in the US and they are in turned ,not too surprisingly though, own mostly by some of the most wealthiest families in the US) have a plan to use  it to own anything and EVERYTHING of any value in the world.  How this works is kind of simple, they print the money lend it to a bank (ie. a institution that is own by the same groups that owns the FED, so they are more or less lending to themselves) for next to nothing, and the bank they loan it to in turns lends the money to the US government (ie. American citizens and taxpayers) at a MUCH higher interest rate.  Although it is still a quite a bit lower than the interest on thing like bonds, credit cards, etc.

The problem with this is that it is next to impossible for anyone they lend the money to to ever really pay it back fast enough to ever NOT be in debt. I mean think about it, if the currency that is being created and make daily transactions is ALSO the currency  that is used for the government to pay for it's own debts. If the government was smart they would run the printing presses and  bank THEMSELVES, but of course this would deprive the people that own the FED from having their own free lunch.

However there is one way out of any time for a government with FIAT currency (whether owned by themselves or by private ownership) and that is high (or sometimes hyper) inflation or declare the currency is no longer honored or valid and start printing some new currency. Of course doing this often creates as many problems as it solves for those in power.

I guess my point is that for the people that own the banks and the organizations that have influence with such things, money is merely a 'plaything' used to get leverage over those beneath them who in turn use their access to money to have leverage over the rest of us plebs.

Another way to look of it like this, the whole world financial/investment system is a rigged game (much like a casino) where the people who OWN THE MACHINES THAT MAKE THE MONEY DON'T TAKE ANY RISK WITH THEIR OWN MONEY AND/OR OTHER INVESTMENTS, instead they print fake/fiat money (which they actually have to get something of value in exchange for, unless it is for some other countries fake/fiat currency as well) sit back and watch as people run around doing all the other major leg work and trying to figure out how to pay back the loans, then rinse, and repeat it all over again. When someone else has to do all the work and/or all the risk (since all you have to worry about is losing some of the fake money and/or threats to the money system) you more or less have it made in the shade.

It is kind of like the casinos, all you got to do is sit back and get enough stupid and/or bored people to come in and play in the hopes of winning, when in the end the only people who actually  'win' are the people who own the house. The occasional lucky person who walks away with more money than the came in with is just to motivate other suckers to believe they have a chance.

Is there something wrong with me for seeing it this way, or is it something that just is and because nothing can be done we choose to ignore it?

I believe it is all rigged, especially 'playing' the stock market, which can be like playing casino games.

Are there actual people out there who think the game isn't rigged?

The only thing all fiat currencies have in common is historically, they ultimately collapse.
Every single time.
Debt based currency is never viable over the long haul.
It's been like watching someone have a stroke in small increments from 2001 watching them prop up the petrol dollar.

Think, say and feel what you like about them,
these guys still the only political party in modern
history to address the problem at all, in their
(in)famous program point #11, freedom from
debt slavery:

(04-03-2017, 12:41 AM)Accidental Stoner Wrote:  Think, say and feel what you like about them,
these guys still the only political party in modern
history to address the problem at all, in their
(in)famous program point #11, freedom from
debt slavery:

What was it all about, Adolph?

(04-02-2017, 08:08 PM)Octo Wrote:  Are there actual people out there who think the game isn't rigged?

Actually there is quite a few, such as the people I talk to that think I'm crazy for suggesting that it is EVEN possible for money NOT to be backed by gold. Surely a guy I used to work with, who was in his late 40's I believe, that was either completely stupid and/or crazy for saying they could print money without it being backed by ANYTHING; although when I tried to explain that it was backed by just the word of the US government he kept thinking it meant that it was backed by gold. I even gave him information about what FIAT currency and Wikipedia pages explaining how the US currency is a FIAT currency, he still could not get it.

The only thing he could get was that it was impossible for a FIAT currency to be stable for too long. However his belief was as soon as someone tried to do it it would IMMEDIATELY crash. To this question I had no answer except that the people who already HAD too many dollars in their bank account when it happened just went along with it and the rest of us plebes had little choice but follow suit. I mean when you are wage slave all your life and getting paid in 'company money' (the kind of money companies use to pay their employees in instead of real currency), you don't how much options if your living hand to mouth.

(04-02-2017, 07:26 PM)UniqueStranger Wrote:  I believe it is all rigged, especially 'playing' the stock market, which can be like playing casino games.

I use to invest and know that it is POSSIBLE to make money over the very long term, but when you count in all the financial hiccups that will cause someone to have to pull their money out too soon and games that people with more money play that gives them leverage over the little guys, then yeah it IS a rigged game for all by the financially secure people out there (who are really no different than the house when in the casino).

If your not COMPLETELY financially secure and your not able to wait a very, very long time (or don't belong to an insider trading group) then your pretty much just a patsy.

(04-02-2017, 08:09 PM)JayRodney Wrote:  The only thing all fiat currencies have in common is historically, they ultimately collapse.
Every single time.
Debt based currency is never viable over the long haul.
It's been like watching someone have a stroke in small increments from 2001 watching them prop up the petrol dollar.  

Yeah, I believe you are right in that in order for the system to work they got to flood the market with currency (creating inflation to weed out those trying to hoard currency) as well as corner the market in nearly everything that can be bought and used instead.

It was funny but I heard the main reason we went to war in Iraq the second time around wasn't to get Saddam or because Bush wanted revenge but to secure the US dollar as the currency used in exchange for oil. Supposedly since Saddam couldn't sell enough oil to the US or elsewhere for US dollars (ie because of trade embargoes) , he decided to sell as much surplus oil for almost any currency anyone would give him. However doing so would have weakened the dollar at the time and put our economy on a tizzy. So in order to maintain the status quo of the existing petro dollars (or at least at that time) the people on high decided it was best to invade. Plus doing so was supposed to keep other countries in check by helping them realize that the US dollar was not only backed by the US government but by our military as well. In hind sight we might of gotten mixed results because we had to go deeply in debt in order to maintain the petro dollar, but at least the countries we are indebted too are kind of screwed as well as we keep jsut flooding the marker with more money and they keep just buying up US bonds to help their status quo.

But if you nearly got all the money in the world I guess that is just the game you got to keep playing...

(04-03-2017, 12:41 AM)Accidental Stoner Wrote:  Think, say and feel what you like about them,
these guys still the only political party in modern
history to address the problem at all, in their
(in)famous program point #11, freedom from
debt slavery:

I think almost all of our founding fathers didn't like the idea of centralized banking nor debt slavery. However the one's that DID like it where the one's that owned the banks ,even if they were small at the time, and they where very excited to start working on creating a centralized bank as soon as (or perhaps even before) our country got started. I think some historians said that with the amount of power that centralized banks had in Europe at the time, it was pretty much a given that they would have eventually do the same thing here in the US. It is pretty much the same where ever you go, in the being of a revolution or even a start of a company everyone is just part of a big happy family (because you need everyone more than at any other time) and after the bloodshed and sacrifices are made and things stabilize a bit more, the people in charge start worrying about divioting up the spoils of success. Of course it is usually they people in charge of such projects that get the lion share of the rewards and then use those same rewards to gain leverage and eventually put themselves in power when they get the chance.