What's a Trillion? and do we have an Echo Forum?

[Adak]

One question, and one fact:

Question: Is Cprogramming.com linked somehow with Dev Shed C Programming forum?
Just was over there today, and they have 3 reposts on the first page, that are nearly, or entirely, copies of posts made here, by the same posters. (One name was changed from Typonius to Typhos, others are unchanged).

It's like going back in time, 2 days.

Fact:

How much is a trillion dollars?

If you spent a million dollars *every day*, starting at the birth of Christ, you would not have spent a trillion dollars!

[tabstop]

Well, there's American trillion and British trillion -- our trillion would run out, using your idea, in the year 2737, while the British would run out in 2737000000.

[sorrofix]

>Just was over there today, and they have 3 reposts on the first page, that
>are nearly, or entirely, copies of posts made here, by the same posters.
You find it shocking that people cross-post between forum sites?

[BobMcGee123]

Have you ever been hit in the face really hard?

EDIT:

I realize I gotta make my first comment PC...have you ever been hit in the face really hard with kindness ?

[abachler]

if you spent $1 every second it would take over 30,000 years to spend $1 trillion US.

It's largely irrelevant though, since expanding the money supply is the worse thing they can do right now. The crash is coming, but the longer it get sput off, the worse it will be and the longer it will take to recover. Bailing out the investors that made these bad investments will not prevent the collapse, it will only encourage even worse investments. Yes it sucks that people will lose their homes and teh country is headed into a financial collapse, but throwing money at the problem isn't the answer. Any real solution will require deep and broad based fundamental changes to the global financial system itself and will it will not be without painful value corrections at every level of society. The bad capital investments have already been made, and the resources expended. The losses have already been incurred, the only thing left to do now is balance the books and assign the losses to those that made the poor decisions. Capitalism only works if there is a financial penalty for making poor economic decisions.

[Adak]

Yeah, I'm shocked that someone who was answered completely, including working out code (and I mean a complete program), would then go to another forum and ask the same question they asked here, two days ago. Huh?

Makes no sense, since they already have a complete working program.

I figure it's either a bot set up to get more posts on programming forum, or it's someone collecting a ton of CS assignments off the forums, so they can sell them, over the net. So they need a bunch of different programs - the same old one's won't do.

Well, the majority wanted a socialist type president, and a leftist Senate and House, as well. Now we have one. Heaven help us.

Another $800 Million is being sent out soon - probably by Tuesday of next week they'll have reconciled the Senate and House versions of the bill.

Now that the Census will be handled from the White House for the first time EVER, the Democrats will be able to "work" the stats as they wish, without any "stupid" interference of the truth, from the Commerce Dept. Secretary.

Obama keeps this up, he's going to be looking like a first class liar after all his talk about "transparency" and "working for all Americans".

Maybe not as dumb as Bush though: "I'm acting against the laws of Capitalism, in order to save Capitalism". (or some dumb ........ like that). D'oh!

[abachler]

Well, we needed some kind of change, after 8 years of Bu........ economics. The economy is crippled. Instead of pointing the finger at Obama, how about pointing that finger at the last 8 years.

[cpjust]

Why is it OK for the government to print new money, but if I do it it's illegal?
Wouldn't printing new money just make the money people already have worth less?

[matsp]

Originally Posted by cpjust

Why is it OK for the government to print new money, but if I do it it's illegal?
Wouldn't printing new money just make the money people already have worth less?

I think if you ask the people of zimbabwe (where this was done recently), they would certainly agree.

How to solve the current economic crisis is a much harder question to answer, as there is really nothing the politicians can do as a quick fix - we just have to suffer bad economy until the people who control huge amounts of money feel confident to lend it to people who can't afford it again. That is, after all, how it works. Most of the worlds money is held by a relatively small number of people... And when that small number of people decide that it's a better investment to sit on a pile of money than to invest it in various business ventures, then that is how it will be. Nothing can really fix that.

Edit: There are also interesting qualities to rescue projects such as the car industry and banks - should the government (in the UK, US or elsewhere) allow large companies and banks to go under, simply to save money. If that happens, how does that affect the confidence of those people who have lots of money? How does it affect those with a little bit of money. Is it better to have a little bit of inflation, a lot of inflation, or people loosing their entire savings/pension, because the institute that held it went out of business and had to give whatever you had in a savings account to some other institution that ranked higher on the "get money from a failed company" list? Likewise, the US (and UK, German, etc) car industry is affecting a lot of other companies - like various suppliers, distribution networks, subcontractors and such. The consequence of this chain of industries failing/reducing staff will have huge consequences for the local and global economy.

--
Mats

[sean]

I think if you ask the people of zimbabwe (where this was done recently), they would certainly agree.

It doesn't matter who prints their money - it's still worthless.

[matsp]

Originally Posted by sean

It doesn't matter who prints their money - it's still worthless.

Yes, my point was more that printing more money doesn't in itself help the economy of the country - [although a new zimbawean dollar has SOME value, whilst you needed LOTS of them to buy a match-stick a few days ago - before they devalued the currency by 1E+12].

--
Mats

[whiteflags]

Originally Posted by cpjust

Why is it OK for the government to print new money, but if I do it it's illegal?
Wouldn't printing new money just make the money people already have worth less?

Are you arguing for a privatized currency?

And let's evaluate the opposite extreme. If you never printed money, deflation would soon arise.

[cpjust]

Originally Posted by whiteflags

Are you arguing for a privatized currency?

No, I'm being sarcastic.

Originally Posted by whiteflags

And let's evaluate the opposite extreme. If you never printed money, deflation would soon arise.

Then my money would be worth more. Hey, that's fine with me.

[whiteflags]

Until everybody puts off purchases waiting for things to be even cheaper. That means aggregate demand falls, companies won't earn enough to reinvest. The economy goes into a deflationary spiral because you refused to increase the money supply.

[abachler]

Originally Posted by cpjust

Why is it OK for the government to print new money, but if I do it it's illegal?
Wouldn't printing new money just make the money people already have worth less?

That is a complex question. Under a representative currency that is certainly the case, however, the US and most countries are under a fiat currency system. The perceived value of money is its utility to facilitate the exchange of goods and services, So to some extent increasing the supply of physical currency actually increases its value to a point as long as the goods and services are available on demand, which in the US they are. In Zimbabwe the supply of money outstripped the supply of goods and services, which is one of the reasons its currency crashed. [/extremely oversimplified explanation]

The problem with increasing the money supply when unemployment is high is it does cause inflation. The demand for goods and services doesnt increase but there is more money available, hence inflation. Increasing the M2/M3 money supply is what got us into this mess in the first place. The fed lowering interest rates allowed banks to increase their fractional reserve ratio's, because the cost of borrowing money to cover any short term cash demand spikes is lower. This increase in available money naturally leads to increased investment, no dollar can long sit uninvested. As these dollars began to chase ever increasingly inefficient investments it created an environment where highly risky investments with high prima facie yields became feasable. In a normal money supply these investments would not be attractive to investors, but with large amounts fo latent cash, the expectation to invest in something allowed them to happen. When these investments (e.g. mortgage backed securities) turned south, it created a flurry of cash demands as people moved their investments to other more stable but lower yielding investments. This spike in cash demands increased the cost of maintaining the fractional reserve ration. The federal reserve, seeing this lowered interest rates (again and again adn again and again some more) in an attempt to keep the problem at bay, which is exactly the wrong thing to do, since it lead to a further increase in the FRR.