Ask-Me-Anything questions thread for Joseph Salerno

Nielsio · 1 day

During the financial crisis of 2008, if banks were losing all this money (do we know how much?) from being on the wrong side of derivatives, who was the recipient of that money? And I suspect the answer may be the same, but who was losing money from derivatives to the banks for all those years until they finally hit the jackpot in 2008? And did banks that were strictly commercial lose money from derivatives or was that just a investment bank or investment/commercial hybrid thing?

pBeloBAC11 · 2 days

I tried those "Sherry" drivers about a year ago and extended desktop stopped working and I noticed no improvement in gaming performance. Did a registry system restore and got rid of em

vakeraj · 3 days

It's good and covers not only what happened during the financial crisis, but why proposals to to get the economy "going" again that involve government interference in the market would fail. For example, he looks at why spending money on WW2 did NOT get us out of the Great Depression, which I just quoted the other day

Only bad thing is that he doesn't go over derivatives or Brooksley Borne in Meltdown (he says he does in Rollback). I'd still like to know: who the hell got all that money from these super leveraged derivatives and who the hell was making losing bets on derivatives for years until they finally hit the jackpot. I suspect the answer is the same, but I still don't know the answer

albertgalt · 3 days

5th plank of the Communist Manifesto (central bank)? Check.

2nd plank of the Communist Manifesto (income tax)? Check.

Ability to shop around a very competitive market for the best product at the best price (and maaaybe introduce your own product if you can jump through the hoops)? Check.

Your confusion is justified

punnettcube · 3 days

I would oppose any efforts to make abortion illegal but would support efforts to to take away taxpayer funded abortions. People who find abortion morally repugnant should not be forced to pay for abortions.

TestZero · 3 days

"World War II got us out of the Great Depression".

With 29 percent of the labor force shifted into the armed forces at some point during the war, their places were taken by elderly men and by women and teenagers with relatively little work experience. We are supposed to believe that an economy suffering from these disabilities somehow managed to achieve average real GDP growth rates of 13 percent per year, an achievement never matched in American history before or since? And we're also supposed to believe that when the original labor force was restored at the end of the war, the American economy's real output would fall by 22 percent over the next two years?

If spending on munitions really makes a country wealthy, the United States and Japan should do the following: Each should seek to build the most spectacular naval fleet in history, an enormous armada of gigantic, powerful, technologically advanced ships. The two fleets should then meet in the Pacific. Naturally, since they would want to avoid the loss of life that accompanies war, all naval personnel would be evacuated from the ships. At that point the U.S. and Japan would sink each other's fleets. Then they could celebrate how much richer they had made themselves by devoting labor, steel, and countless other inputs to the production of things that would wind up at the bottom of the ocean

from "Meltdown" by Tom Woods

TestZero · 4 days

Here's a book on that which I haven't read: Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover

a12345678910 · 4 days

Here's how NOT to accomplish this: "take a musical appreciation class in high school and/or university, passively sit still while your teacher plays you one of what is supposed to be one of the classics, listen to a lecture on the life and accomplishments of the composer, take a test that on information that you cram for the night before and forget the next day and for the rest of your life"
Show people how to ACTIVELY develop their own taste in classical music. Here's what I would say: "check out a few classical CDs from the library (collection albums with various artists are a good place to start), listen to the first 1 minute of each track and if you like it, make note of it and listen to the rest later (or keep listening if you really want). If you don't like it, skip to the next track and don't bother listening again unless YOU want to. Pretty soon, you will discover what artists or compositions you enjoy and you will hunger for more. Personally, I have a strong preference for melodic classical music - Peter and the Wolf (Prokovief)? Check. Dance of the Dead (Saint Saens)? Check. Mysterious Barricades (Couperin)? Check. Most of Bach's works? Check? 20 minute tracks that drone on and don't go anywhere (Beethoven's 9th 3rd movement)? Nope.
The above method works great for me, not just for classical but for any kind of music - when you're willing to give anything 1 minute for a chance to impress you, you're going to encounter a great variety of music - Indian Jazz, Jewish Reggae, Arabic Techno, Japanese Blues, Classical Disco (Arthur Fiedler has such an album) and plenty more. And if you think someone is too goddamn lazy and/or would feel overwhelmed at choosing their CDs from the many albums at the library (or they think CDs are too "old fashioned"), make it easier for them: choose 10 tracks of a certain style, take a 1 minute clip of each track, and put in up on youtube (or put 10 1-minute tracks on burned CD and give it away). Here a couple examples on my youtube channel:

Jazz-World fusion, 10-song music sampler

Celtic ~ Irish ~ Scottish music sampler - 10 songs (vol. 1)

Or give them links to 1 minute mp3s. Whatever

I'm much more open to listening to a piece to completion when watching it live. When it comes to classical music, every time you see concerts for classical music, it's $45 per ticket and you're supposed to dress up. You need to do these things:

1) advertise the free or cheap or optional donation concerts a lot better - pass out flyers or something to a lot more people and do this often

2) Classical music street performances. You don't need a symphony hall, get a quartet of people and start playing some classics on a a street corner for an hour or two per week and have business cards or flyers for people to learn more. Or maybe you can volunteer to play at a business (like the mall or shopping center parking lot or restaurant)

For the love of god, in CDs or performanceprogram guides, DO NOT WRITE THE NAME OF THE PIECE IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE. Write it in English (where applicable of course) or give a bilingual listing. And so long as I'm at it, you Opera performers need to do a lot more English operas

imasunbear · 4 days

If he doesn't like Paul's stance on national defense, he definitely won't like Romney's because VERY soon there won't ANY money for national defense. By 2025 the entire federal budget will be consumed by entitlements and interest on the national debt. That was from a 2010 CBO forecast see chart on pg 12 In 2007, only 3 years before, the GAO had forecasted that wouldn't happen until 2040 see chart on pg 5. And BTW, 2025 is an optimistic number:

These projections are based on fairly moderate assumptions about future interest rates. The nation’s outlook will grow far more ominous if America’s creditors lose confidence in the federal government’s commitment to address its debt problem – which will increase interest rates. A loss of confidence in the markets could also send the value of the dollar plunging overseas, which could trigger runaway inflation and still higher interest rates. Rising debt and rising interest costs could evolve into a “death spiral,” with the two feeding off one another in an ever-more vicious cycle. No one knows when such a catastrophe might occur, but no prudent nation would put itself at such risk. Even without a crisis, rising debt will increase our reliance on foreign lenders, raising a host of other economic and national security issues. Already, more than half of U.S. federal debt is foreign-owned and China is the largest foreign holder.

scpg02 · 7 days

not mentioned: Brazil experienced hyperinflation for a decade and a half, introduced a parallel fiat currency to temporarily fix the problem, and has somewhat high inflation and high interest rates now

http://www.indexmundi.com/brazil/inflation_rate_%28consumer_prices%29.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/03/28/brazil-inflation-off-the-charts/

enchantrem · 7 days

Courts and police solve problems which are not created by government. Some people are greedy or unethical or irresponsible or of unsound mind and they will do bad things to other people. Ever witnessed a bully when you are a child before you you even knew anything about government? How about an adult that domestically abuses family members? How about some asshole tries to mug you, a policeman witnesses it, and puts a stop to it? How about you accidentally leave the stove on and cause a fire and the firemen put it out and rescue people or animals trapped inside? How about someone abandons their pet, it winds up on your property and is a danger, and you call animal control?

The above are certainly not problems caused by government (though indirectly they sometimes can be) and they are or can be solved by government. On the other hand, sometimes the above is or can be dealt with in the private sector - I've heard of private fire fighters. There are some private animal control groups - here's an interesting example of a group that deals with stray cats humanely: Hearthside Cats

Most libertarians aren't for no government, they are for limited government.

morellox · 7 days

Why aren't more Mulsims libertarian if that is the case? What are most Muslims now (particularly in the U.S.)? It's certainly hard to believe they'd be conservative Republicans

morellox · 7 days

Beck's 2009 Fox show was pretty good and very libertarian for a while. It wasn't until sometime in the fall of '09 that the show shifted from libertarianism to week long rants against Van Jones or ACORN. That's when it started to suck and I stopped watching, though there was some good shows every now and then afterwards (black founding fathers episode, G. Edward Griffin episode)

lasermind · 8 days

DOS games that won't work on an emulator within Windows won't work on a Mac that boots windows and neither will some Win 95/98 games that won't work in a virtual pc windows environment, but they will or can be made to work on an older DOS/Windows PC with the right hardware, so your original statement stands correct.

kodark · 8 days

Shining Force 3. Each game was progressively better than the predecessor (and SF3 itself was also a trilogy though SF3 Scenario 2 and Scenario 3 were never released in the U.S.)

emazur · 8 days

I found one so far that looks promising: http://eecs.oregonstate.edu/new-online-post-baccalaureate-computer-science-degree

goddamnbatman617 · 9 days

Similar to this Harriet Tubman quote: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman

"I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves."

Sorry to say, the National Black Chamber of Commerce quoted that in an article and then went on to say:

America has now been blessed with a visionary and a person of courage. These times are very tough but, alas, we have someone who is not fidgety and confronts the matters head on. He has introduced to us the Stimulus Bill, also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This bill has an enormous amount of opportunities to help unserved and underserved communities begin to “level the playing field”.

Just goes to show you what Goethe and Tubman were saying. (BTW, where does one go to sign up for the National White Chamber of Commerce?)

thoughtbludgeon · 9 days

Bad news bro - by 2025 the entire federal budget will be consumed by entitlements and interest on the national debt. That was from a 2010 CBO forecast see chart on pg 12 In 2007, only 3 years before, the GAO had forecasted that wouldn't happen until 2040 see chart on pg 5

In 2011, Social Security entered a stage of going into permanent deficits: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9vxfczmiwI

Of course, the Social Security "Trust Fund" was a lie in the first place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTLiqD2YkGI

reddit_or_deddit · 9 days

I love it and would recommend it to anyone. It has my the best passage I've ever come across in literature:

>There have always been men of intelligence who went on strike, in protest and despair, but they did not know the meaning of their action. The man who retires from public life, to think, but not to share his thoughts-the man who chooses to spend his years in the obscurity of menial employment, keeping to himself the fire of his mind, never giving it form, expression or reality, refusing to bring it into a world he despises-the man who is defeated by revulsion, the man who renounces before he has started, the man who gives up rather than give in, the man who functions at a fraction of his capacity, disarmed by his longing for an ideal he has not found-they are on strike, on strike against unreason, on strike against your world and your values. But not knowing any values of their own, they abandon the quest to know-in the darkness of their hopeless indignation, which is righteous without knowledge of the right, and passionate without knowledge of desire, they concede to you the power of reality and surrender the incentives of their mind-and they perish in bitter futility, as rebels who never learned the object of their rebellion, as lovers who never discovered their love.

The book is very long - I'd recommend the audio version instead of reading it. There's also an abridged audio version which is only I think 10 CDs long.

I'd recommend first reading Anthem - it is very short and in many ways is similar to Atlas Shrugged. If you like Anthem, you'll probably like Atlas. There's also The Fountainhead which I liked but not enough to give it a glowing recommendation, and We the Living which I had a hard time getting into never finished, though I'd be willing to give it another go.

Cygnus_X · 10 days

In 2007, it was calculated by the Government Accountability Office that by 2040 the entire federal budget would be consumed by entitlements and interest on the national debt see chart on page 4

In 2010, it was calculated by the Congressional Budget Office that by 2025 the entire federal budget would be consumed by entitlements and interest on the national debt - see chart on pg 12 And that's an optimistic scenario that assumes interest rates won't rise, which can happen due to factors beyond the U.S. government's ability to control:

These projections are based on fairly moderate assumptions about future interest rates. The nation’s outlook will grow far more ominous if America’s creditors lose confidence in the federal government’s commitment to address its debt problem – which will increase interest rates. A loss of confidence in the markets could also send the value of the dollar plunging overseas, which could trigger runaway inflation and still higher interest rates. Rising debt and rising interest costs could evolve into a “death spiral,” with the two feeding off one another in an ever-more vicious cycle. No one knows when such a catastrophe might occur, but no prudent nation would put itself at such risk. Even without a crisis, rising debt will increase our reliance on foreign lenders, raising a host of other economic and national security issues. Already, more than half of U.S. federal debt is foreign-owned and China is the largest foreign holder.

So what what will be the year it's projected we enter the fiscal black hole by the end of a second Obama term and a second or third stimulus? 2017?

Antonomon · 12 days

Lol!!! I thought free market capitalism was the mob allocating resources.

Well think again - there is no mob, there are individuals who who create products and services, and if they don't have the money to fund it, they seek out people who will voluntarily assist them in exchange such as a cut in the profits or simply interest on a loan. The only time a mob comes in to allocate resources is when government gets involved, but that's hardly "free market capitalism".

with all those people buying his apples he will probably make more, because the price would be high.

The general rule is as supply goes up, price goes down. Besides, maybe he doesn't even want to sell any apples and just consume all of them himself, and that should be his right.

sleepysnowboarder · 12 days

Those are some nifty Tron suspenders

Antonomon · 13 days

So using direct democracy leads to usurpation of rights and freedoms, but magically a well organized mob would NEVER use it to allocate resources to benefit themselves at the expense of others.

That's a really nice looking apple tree you've got on "your" property there. I don't even have an apple tree, and the apples from the 10 other people on this block sucks - all small or wormy or sour. We've put in to a vote and and the majority of us say you need to redistribute all your apples evenly to the rest of us. We also decided you need to plant 10 more trees on "your" property so that each of us can enjoy the same amount of apples that you used to be able to enjoy for yourself. While we were at it, we decided where they should be planted, by when they should be planted, and the punishment for not meeting the collective's apple allotment.

Don't like it? Tough titty - you wanted mob rule to control resources and you got it.

emazur

TROPHY CASE

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