"Soverign debt is not like personal debt!"

As Dick Cheney famously said on the eve of the Iraq War, "Deficits don't matter".

He said that because sovereign debt really isn't like personal debt when the sovereign debt is in a convertible fiat currency. Because the difference between you and a nation is the power to issue currency. Do you know how many countries have ever actually paid off their debt? Take a guess.

The IMF is like a loan shark. They don't want countries to pay off their debts. They want countries to service their debts until such time as they can burn it down for the insurance (CDO) money.

One more thing: The colluding traders making these outsized profits for the banks actually named their online chat rooms, "The Cartel", "The Cabal" and "Mafia".

Here's the link to the "Cabal" story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05...

Remember, it's the shareholders that pay these fines. And no one in the bank corporation is held accountable.

I just learned that the fines for illegal activity paid by banks since the economic collapse have totaled more than a quarter trillion dollars which is more than the entire economy of Greece. And that number is from 2014, before the $13 billion from Citi and the recent $5 billion for the banks involved in the price-fixing scandal.

Coincidence?

One of the traders for those banks, who was part of a collusion group that called itself (I'm not making this up), "The Cabal", said, in an email to the group, "If you're not cheating, you're not trying." That's $5 billion in fines for activity that made them hundreds of billions of dollars and bonuses.

And so far, not one of the members of "The Cabal" have been charged with a crime, and they'll be keeping their record bonuses. In fact, no one from those banks will be facing criminal charges of any kind.

So if you want me to be mad at Greece for letting the IMF dangle, I'm sorry. There are much bigger fish to fry.

There's so much more to this Greece story than just, "Oh those lazy Greeks with their big pensions." The IMF and the biggest banks were basically doing what those sketchy "payday loan" places in the strip mall do. They were basically doing what the home-lending institutions were doing in the 2000s. They were giving big bonuses to loan brokers for making loans - any loans - to people because they knew they could flip them on the secondary and CDO market. Investors were chasing yield so the word went out to mortgage lenders to "just get it done" and they basically defrauded as many people as possible. That's what the IMF does in countries like Greece and many South American companies. I think we're going to start seeing more of these countries deciding to just tell the IMF to go eff itself and take their monetary policy medicine and just be done with it. Then you'll start seeing the CIA-backed and German-backed and UK-backed coups start to happen.

Oh no, we can -- and should -- speculate. Consider everything we can think of. Consider.

What we should NOT do is create a self-fulfilling prophecy by taking the verbal fecal output of doom-criers as the inevitable or even as the likely.

Since you mention cats, would you like an AI treating you like you treat the cats?

Frankly, that would be awesome.

"Nasty 1" is my rap name.

This new development will be great for my career, but not so good for my street cred.

Oh other things I have done to the notebook:

* Upgraded to a Core 2 Quad Extreme (did that a week after buying the notebook - as usual it was many hundreds cheaper to buy the upgraded processor separately so I ordered it with a mid-range Core 2 Duo)
* Replaced both heat sink thermal transfer pads with copper shims when I replaced the motherboard after the lightning strike (and of course cleaned ALL of the dust out of every nook and cranny of the notebook while I had it torn down to the bare chassis)
* About six months ago the screen hinge FINALLY started to loosen up so I disassembled the screen assembly to tighten all the internal screws on the screen frame. Feels like new.
* Upgraded to hybrid hard drives about six years ago (so, not long after buying the laptop)
* Upgraded the RAM about four years ago

Aside from the above all I've done since is maintain the Windows 7 install (including defrag of MFT and shrinking/defragging registry hives) and update the Linux install (OpenSUSE - my preferred Linux distro for workstations). The processor is still plenty fast for sysadmin work, and even for software builds on occasion.

It has what is by far the best laptop screen I've used - and I do credit that to the RGB-LED backlight array, I've worked with newer Precisions, HPs, Asus, Lenovo, and other desktop/workstation replacement and gaming laptops and none of the screens compare. :-(

I'd like to see a real upgrade to the m6x00 line (their 17" mobile workstations). I am still running an M6400 Precision Mobile Workstation. Why? Because I like a full keyboard, dual pointer options, and the 17" screen. I check the Precision lineup every few weeks hoping an upgrade comes out. The problem with the current models is that they are downgrades; the laptop I have has a WUXGA (1920x1200) RGB-LED backlit display while the current models top out at 1080p, with white LED edgelights. I want to see them go back to the RGB-LED backlight, and more importantly, offer a 1440p or higher resolution display.

They manage to offer WQXGA+ (3200x1800) and UHD (4K) displays in the 15" models - why are those of us who want the flagship 17" worksation left out in the cold when it comes to decent screens now? I also checked the Alienware line (since they're pretty much Precisions/Latitudes with a gamer case and gaming video card rather than the Quadro line) but even they top out at 1080p in the 17" model.. :-(

Until Dell gets their act together with screen offerings on the m6x00 I'll keep my M6400 going. It paid for itself hundreds of times over and it is still going strong. I did have to replace the motherboard after a lightning strike but other than that it has been absolutely flawless. It's dropped from a 4' high ledge onto a tiled concrete floor while running and never skipped a beat; you cannot tell it was ever dropped and the hard drives scanned clean and STILL scan clean (SMART long test and surface scans with CHKDSK and fsck respectively) to this day. It's been an absolute tank for me, and aside from video resolution and video performance (I can't really use it for current games, plus it'd be nice to drive an external 3D display when at home) I am still very happy with it. I am still even on the original battery and still get decent life (almost two hours - when new it would get almost three hours) with the thing. :-)

Dell please throw m6x00 customers a bone - offer a 1440p or higher resolution display, then shut up and take my money.

15" laptops? Not interested. I like larger screen models (since it allows for close to full-size keyboards) with as high of a resolution as possible.

Except that the opinion of people like Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk is definitely worth more than any "majority" thinking differently.

Nosense. That's just hero worship mentality. Very much like listening to Barbara Streisand quack about her favorite obsessions.

Bill Gates' opinion is worth more than the average person's when it comes to running Microsoft. Elon Musk's opinion is worth more than the average person's when building Teslas and the like. Neither one of them (nor anyone else, for that matter) has anything but the known behavior of the only high intelligence we've ever met to go on (that's us, of course.) So it's purest guesswork, completely blind specuation. It definitely isn't a careful, measured evaluation. Because there's nothing to evaluate!

And while I'm not inclined to draw a conclusion from this, it is interesting that we've had quite a few very high intelligences in our society over time. None of them have posed an "existential crisis" for the the planet, the the human race, or my cats. Smart people tend ot have better things to do than annoy others... also, they can anticipate consequences. Will this apply to "very smart machines"? Your guess (might be) as good as mine. It's almost certainly better than Musk's or Gates', since we know they were clueless enough to speak out definitively on a subject they don't (can't) know anything about. Hawking likewise, didn't mean to leave him out.

Within the context of our recorded history, it's not the really smart ones that usually cause us trouble. It's the moderately intelligent fucktards who gravitate to power. [stares off in the general direction of Washington] (I know, I've giving some of them more credit than they deserve.)

What kind of business could have revenue less than or equal to its tax bill but will continue to "pay taxes"?

That's upside down thinking. Corporations pay tax on income which means "profits".

Ergo, all taxes a business will pay must be funded out of revenue.

This is the right-wing brainwashing at work. You can't even imagine taxes being funded out of profits, can you? Please bear in mind that a corporation is simply a legal mechanism by which capital can avoid liability. You have somehow come to believe that a companies costs exactly equal its revenue and that they only exist for the public good.

Banning Mosques is cultural self-defense.

You mean cultural suicide. After all, it violates the freedom of religion, which is absolutely vital for the marketplace of ideas to exist. That marketplace is the essence of Western Culture, underlaying every currently reigning local ideas.

The only thing mosques do is give the local populace a chance to copy whatever good ideas Islam might have, and of course the other way around. And the only ones it threatens are those who are on top in current status quo and wish it to remain.

Raise the tax rate to 75% of the corporate profit and see what happens...

Companies will reinvest revenue rather than pay it out as dividends. Also, stock prices fall as future expected dividends are cut by 75%, and then rise again as said reinvestment makes economy grow faster.

Actually, this could be just the stimulus economy needs...

The only way to do that is raise prices.

If you can make more profit by rising prices, why haven't you done so already?

If I am unable to raise prices that far, then I'll invest the $10 million of capital somewhere else.

"Somewhere else" is taxed too, so it'll do you no good. You'll simply have to settle for a level of profit the market can offer, the same as everyone else. Of course, you could sit on your $10 million and let inflation eat it away.

If my current profit is $1 million and you now say it will be only $100K due to new taxes, then either my prices have to go way up, or the product/service won't be offered.

In the latter case your profit will be negative due to inflation. $100K is the best option you have. And, should you decide to pass as a protest or whatever, that's okay too, your competitors will gladly expand their market.