Something that has me puzzled mightily....how can

[shraby]

people have money in the billions, and banks and company have money in the trillions, and the federal government has borrowed trillions when it is literally impossible to print that much money. It all has to be computer 1s and 0s..which isn't real money, just computer code.
Nobody will every be able to physically get anywhere near that much money in their possession. It's all fake...or am I just an un-enlightened person.

[opihimoimoi]

1. Not fake.....real........

[patrice]

17. Yes, money is real, but not in the ways that we assume it is.

[opihimoimoi]

19. money is a form of energy..... if the flow is adequate...the econ can "glow"

the greed of the GOP stifles the glow

[alex cross]

2. Not necessarily unenlightened

Just to narrow in your definition of "money". Much like the computer bits, our paper dollars and base metal coinage are a representation of money that has no intrinsic value of their own. It's worth is derived from what the agreeing parties say it's worth.

[patrice]

4. Yes, but we are not amongst the agreeing parties. The Fed is a private organization as are all of

the banks and it is their private computers, running privately designed routines, that process the 0s and 1s thusly determining what they are "worth". We get to play a role in the chain of processes only as long as we keep the 0s and 1s in our own "possession" moving according to the rules written by those who own the whole thing.

[Occulus]

13. So the best way to attack us economically would be to undermine the trust in that implied agreement.

Is it even remotely possible that that is what has been going on with our economy?

An actual act of economic war?

[patrice]

16. Economic War amongst the transnational financial royalty who rule Earth.

That's what 9/11/01 was about, amongst other things. One of their generals, Bush, and his cadre, Project for a New American Century, was attacked by another of their generals, King What's-'s-name of Saudia Arabia.

[RKP5637]

3. Yep, it's vaporware, no substance, just what global public opinion thinks it's worth. It's

a little scary IMO. Somewhat similar I guess to confederate money having no value today.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Welcome to the magic world of "notional value"

Translation: " Its worth what I say its worth".

[patrice]

7. and the only real choice most of us have in the matter is to walk away and try to

find someone who says our labor-capital is worth something a little more to our liking, but even that doesn't matter, because it's all privately determined, so the deal can be changed after you've already destroyed your options for reacting to any changes in the deal.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. Another option is local currencies.

This is interesting:

Wikipedia has a whole and quite long list of local currencies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_in_the_United_States


A story about West Coast of Canada using local curreny:

On Salt Spring Island, where the "Salt Spring Dollar" has been in circulation for almost 10 years....
and
"Squamish dollars" in denominations of $1, $2, $5, $10 and $20, Fuller said. The bills, whose value would be at par with that of the Canadian dollar, could be exchanged for goods and services at participating local businesses."

article here:
http://www.squamishchief.com/article/20101215/SQUAMISH0101/101219983/-1/squamish/summer-2011-launch-for-8216-squamish-dollar-eyed

[Recursion]

6. "Money" is a much broader category than "currency"

Start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply

[Pharaoh]

8. only 3 percent

of the money in the US is in paper. the rest is all digits in your bank account.

[shraby]

9. That's the point I'm trying to make. There is no way the owners

of that money can ever ever pull it out of their swimming pool like Scrooge McDuck. The large majority of it is vapor ware.

[Pharaoh]

14. The money system

is just a set of rules we all agree to. If the vast majority of us agreed to start a new fairer system
we could start over fresh and debt free. Watch this 3 plus hour docu on the global monetary system and see how it is just a huge corrupt ponzi scheme.

The Money Masters


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936#

[surrealAmerican]

11. Money itself is an abstraction ...

... that represents the relative value of goods and services. This is just an extension of that concept.

[Locrian]

12. money is debt

>> represents the relative value of goods and services
No, money stopped representing "value" a long time ago. Back when local currencies were based on "value" it was true. As it is now, the more "money" the more disassociated it becomes from any true sense of "value".

Modern money is created out of thin air, and it represents debt.

Say you get a loan for 1 million and the interest is 2 million. Where does that "value" come from? Think about
it....

Another think to think about:
The world reserve currency (right now is dollars $$). We are the only country in the world who can just "create" money w/o any value, but "printing" money (actually 1's and 0'). THAT is what has propped the US up and let us continue our "consumer" economy. The SECOND that changes we become massively poor, as our currency becomes worthless.

[Bandit]

15. You should have seen all those pallets of shrink wrapped hundred dollar bills

Nine Billion dollars in shrink wrapped hundred dollar bills loaded on huge C-4 Cargo Jets and shipped off to Iraq to never be seen or heard about again...

[mudplanet]

18. It's both fake and real. It's important to remember that economics is a social

science, not a pure science like mathematics. It's about what people will do with money, goods and services.

Money isn't real. And paper money isn't any "more" real than 1's and 0's in a computer (it's just a little harder to steal). It only has value because we agree it has value. In itself, it's only value would be as a fire starter, and then only when it is in paper form. But don't try to tell that to someone who is hungry and needs to buy food, or needs money for their rent. Then money is all too real.

That's why so many people can get away with the idea of returning to a gold or silver standard: that way their "money" actually represents something of value (however questionable: gold and silver's real utility is as dental fillings and electrical conductors) that they can lay their hands on and possibly swap for something they need.

To get an idea of the inherent value of money, read any good science fiction novel about the collapse of civilization. Stephen King's The Stand would be a good one. I found it entertaining.

[SmileyRose]

20. It's both

If all the gyzillionaires tried to liquidate at once - like they tried when the house of cards crashed in 2007 - then those computer 1's and 0's will magically disappear - it will have all been fake.

but if they manage it right, and liquidate it a little over time to live high and mighty, then it will buy a lot of government officials - meaning it will be real.