Laundering $800 Mil in Drug $, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?

[hippifried]

[quote=an8150;1279941]And here was my question: "So government can print as much money as it likes, with no ill effects?[?QUOTE]
Yes. I'll explain it one more time, since you & others have such a problem grasping the idea that money is just a barter simplification. Money's an abstract. It ain't real. It's created by whatever powers that be need to keep track of trade values of various merchandise that aren't directly related. For example: How many tons of sand is needed to trade for that cow, so you can swap it for the iron ore you need to make yourself a new knife? I, for one, am glad I don't have to go through that kind of BS anymore instead of just going to the knife store. Money can be anything. It could be gold, if people could be talked into carrying all that excess weight. It can be cigarettes in prison (Yes, money can be a consumable & still be stable.). Currency can be no more than slips of paper scrip & numbers in a ledger, which is what almost all money is today, worldwide. Money is created by debt, destroyed by payoff or charge off, & grows by the interest added. Yup, right out of thin air. The only reason to think that lending institutions don't need regulation is not understanding money in the first place.

I don't enjoy tormenting you because you're extremely stupid, I enjoy it because you're a boor.

Even though I'm not a farmer, I'm sure I could seem boorish to know-nothing upper class wannabes. It's probably just because I find the egoist cult, its demigod, & its followers so extremely stupid.

[buttslinger]

Should our Escort friends here in the USA go to jail?

It depends on which lawyer you ask.

[trish]

Should our Escort friends here in the USA go to jail?

It depends on which lawyer you ask.

And which judge you pull.

[broncofan]

And which judge you pull.

Oh that's cute

[Ben]

Obviously the size, wealth and power of the company determines how well it can ride out disasters.

So as a libertarian, how do you feel about copyright and patent protections?

Great point. Patents and copyright are indeed government intervention in the economy. So is a minimum wage law. And, well, child labor laws. I mean, a libertarian/fully free market paradise would consist of 10 year olds working down the coal mines.
Or we could go back to the 1880s where people worked 7 days a week and 10 to 15 hrs. a day.... I mean, would, say, the Kochs really have a problem with that???
I mean, that's a fully free market.... No restrictions, no government intruding on corporate space, as it were.

History of Child Labor:

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/a...ry-child-labor

[fivekatz]

Great point. Patents and copyright are indeed government intervention in the economy. So is a minimum wage law. And, well, child labor laws. I mean, a libertarian/fully free market paradise would consist of 10 year olds working down the coal mines.
Or we could go back to the 1880s where people worked 7 days a week and 10 to 15 hrs. a day.... I mean, would, say, the Kochs really have a problem with that???
I mean, that's a fully free market.... No restrictions, no government intruding on corporate space, as it were.

History of Child Labor:

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/a...ry-child-labor

Standing Ovation!

If US businesses really believe that the government is intruding on their rights so badly why don't they start by refusing to accept the subsides, tax exemptions and deals to harvest public lands of their resources so that corporate America can really show that they don't believe in government intervention?

The biggest problem capitalists have is also their greatest gift. Their greed knows no bounds and their ambition to win is all encompassing. There are of course exceptions and those who once they have gained great wealth engage in great philanthropy. But the need to win at the game is greater than the money itself, which is why humans will do things as stupid as the whole housing bubble was and to spend so much money trying to unseat a President who did not send a one of their asses to jail when so many deserved to be convicted of fraud.

[Prospero]

Succinctly put Ben. Thank you.

[hippifried]

No need to try & tie copyrights to child exploitation in what's left of this conversation (a stretch at best). The egoist cult is already the loudest bunch of crybabies when it comes to protection of intellectual "property". The whine remains the same: "Please government... Protect my property for me, but don't interfere with me taking someone else's."

The egoist cult are NOT libertarians.

[trish]

Was reading Richard Fortey's Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms this morning and ran across this quote,

"As with bluefin tuna right now, when an animal finally gets rare, the price goes up, and those same market forces push ever onward towards extinction. The very last one will be the most valuable."

The capitalistic mechanism behind this one example underlies numerous tragedies, old and modern, and not just tragedies for flora and fauna but ourselves as well.

If we continue to give free reign to our greed and the greed of those who would exploit our resources for their benefit and ours, then we have no right to act surprised when we wake up and find our resources are polluted and depleted.

No system of oversight and regulation will be free of error and corruption, but certainly regulation and oversight are indispensable for our future survival.

[Stavros]

Fair points, Trish, which also apply to a range of amimals who, year on year find humans taking up their space -bears in some parts of the USA and Canada, various primates and also big cats and Rhinos in Africa -it isn't just illegal hunting for skins and horns, but population growth and urban sprawl that may doom some animals, like Tigers and Rhinos to complete extinction, although we will always have wildlife tv programmes as a record. How one saves Polar Bears if the warming of the Arctic takes place over an extended period of time removing their habitat, I don't know -round them up and re-locate them to Siberia? Zoos?

But crucially, it is not just regulation and oversight, but planning that is problematic -real change on a range of issues needs long term planning, and while corporations that rely on natural resources can plan 50 years ahead, politicians are always worried about being re-elected: Obama might be free to act because he doesn't face re-election, but enough Democrats and Republicans are hedged in by their re-election prospects, and their forward thinking often doesn't extent beyond the next election which is also the case in the UK.

On issues like climate change, where the 'sceptics' are doing all they can to prevent long term policy changes becoming law, it results in disappointing decision making, if any. In the case of renewable sources of energy, because the frackers are convinced they will make the USA self-sufficient in hydrocarbons for 'years to come' the next wave of capital investment is more likely to be in unconventional hydrocarbons rather than renewables who need it most precisely because of the technological obstacles to realising its potential as a mass energy source, if it ever is likely to be one. But how long will unconventional hydrocarbons meet US demand? And then what? Can any government make policy now that will be relevant 50 or 100 years from now? After all, someone who is 25 years old, and can expect to live until they are 85 is in this mix for the next 60 years, it is policy making for the rest of their lives.

I believe that it is the case that the science, at its best, is not a core problem, but that the politics is -because it impacts investment decisions where science can improve what we have while creating something new.

Can we afford not to make long term decisions on the environment, on energy, on water resources? It is curious that in Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, a substantial part of the world is ruined/destroyed by nuclear war or accident, he doesn't seem to be interested in the potential impact of climate change evern though the book was published in 2003.

And, if we do go for long term planning, how can we be sure it will turn out to have been the right policy option that was taken -as it were, the road we decided to travel on....?