When inflation is above interest, or you store money in a way which doesn't get interest, then yes, it does act as a stimulus by allowing spending of money that is otherwise not being spent. Unfortunately, the main spending of the US federal government is on its war machine... so the problem is what is done with the debt+inflation tax, not the fact that it exists.

You do also need income to at least rise at the rate of the inflation, and then it only hits money not being spent, but neoliberal policies are making that happen less and less, with the worst off seeing a decrease in real wages, a refusal to increase minimum wage being heavily responsible there.

The powerful don't want to see inflation, it makes their money worth less.,

Um... as it says, the exploit code is Windows specific... IOW, the code which collects the hostname and MAC address will be using Windows API calls.

They probably would have spotted if the exploit bundled WINE!

Ugh, if he was a plant then part of his job would be to create impressions such as those, so you having those impressions and believing they mean anything shows that you probably shouldn't be calling other people "idiots".

The only relevant point is that his source code is open, so you don't HAVE to trust him. That's the whole point!!!

The missing bit though is that Foxconn are breaking laws... and it's not like China have tough labour laws, they give barely any protection to workers, but Foxconn are still managing to break the laws that are there. By extension of the laws that are broken in China producing these products, many laws also often get broken by the importation of those products into western countries.

Whether the local effect of "it's better than the alternatives" is true or not, the effect of allowing companies to operate under impunity holds people down. Disbanding Foxconn, I agree, is a bit too brute force an answer, but beginning to shut down factories that are breaking laws is a start, as this would incentivise them to bring other factories up to at least "legal" status. Apple can use their money to encourage this behavior also. Once factories are operating legally, the need for corruption disappears, and then you see the dragging-up effect on other local business standards who have to compete.

While investment instead is being directed at funding corruption to allow impunity, this dragging-up effect doesn't materialise, as to compete, you must also invest in corruption. If Apple paid more for products from factories that met their legal requirements, you would start to see improvement. This is not in Apple's perceived interest.

"Uh, yeah. That'll be why oil is over $100 a barrel"

No, it's not. Saudis say they would increase production if there was demand, but the truth is, there isn't. People aren't buying that much more oil, the price discovery mechanism breaks when more than 20-30% of movement on the market is speculators rather than receivers and users of the product. Traders have $1-2Trln that they're sitting on because they don't want to invest in such a rotten economy, meanwhile the massive FIs like JPMorganChase and Goldmann are desperately trying to recapitalise after losing so much money in the $8Trln housing bubble... they're doing it in the commodity futures markets, buying up food, buying up oil, buying up metals, pushing the price up so they can profit from the difference. Easy to do when you can borrow at next to nothing from the Fed (in fact the reason why JPMorgan merged with Chase Manhattan was so that they could borrow from the Fed, as only banks and bank holding companies can)

This has a bigger effect than one might realise. It's not solely responsibly, sure, but the effect shouldn't be underestimated.

Serves US goals... while they're pretending Iran is developing nukes, they can pretend the missile shield is being put in place for Iran, rather than for Russia/China as is really the case.

"...over what we all know Iran is actually doing"

How do you know? Because the news told you and you believe them?

"Hussein had plans for nukes"

Purchasing of nuclear material was an argument that Bush used, even though Joseph Wilson, who had been sent out to track down this material found the claim to be completely false (and I've listened to his evidence, his case is solid). Wilson's report was ignored, so he went public, and so they destroyed his wife, Valerie's career as a CIA operative working to keep weapons out of the US. Libby, who IIRC was Cheney's Chief of Staff, went to prison for it, but even so, they sent a message loud and clear... when the administration is building a case for war, you do not challenge them, you keep any information showing that they are lying to yourself, or they will go after your family.

The message was received loud and clear.

I highly recommend anyone who doesn't know about the case to research it. Might change how well you can trust the case that's being built against Iran.

It would be natural for them to want the bomb... and many of their neighbours want them to have the bomb - if you ask the people that is, obviously governments don't want them to have the bomb, but as we know, governments are often not representative of the will of the people. Up until Obama, the US didn't invade countries with nukes, so getting them was the only protection a country could get from the threat of US invasion. This has, of course, changes slightly with Pakistan, but it's only civilians that Obama sends people and drones in to kill, they don't attack the state, which is why they've gotten away with it as much as they have.

What seems to be forgotten here though is that we have even less evidence of Iran developing a bomb than we did for Iraq having WMDs that erm... didn't exist. But I guess we're not supposed to talk about that. Let the news do its job and gear us up for the next war, ay.

I thought international relations were based on not remembering anything?

"Honestly, I think we should have "liberated" Iran instead of Iraq"

Yeah, last intervention in Iran worked out really well, didn't lead to them getting an even worse government or anything.

"They have been a major threat to the US [...] Korean war ... Vietnam ... Afghanistan ... Pakistan"

You do realise none of those places are actually the US, don't you? Let's be clear here, what we're talking about is multiple countries fighting each other in order to gain exclusivity over the exploitation of local resources and populations. China may be a threat to the US's ability to take what they want, just as the US was to Britain last century, but the US was never a threat to Britain, just as China isn't a threat to the US. Truth is America's biggest threats are internal - the paralysis of the government means it's not able to effectively govern. It could set sane trade policies that would remove China's ability to compete, but US corporations are making too much money selling to US consumers products that they make in China, changing trade policies would mean US corporations would have to move jobs BACK to the United States, which means paying people non-slave-wages to make stuff, eating into their profits. This is not in their short term interests... it's in their long term interests, but in the days of instant stock trading, companies don't get to act in their long term interests.

The only real threat to America is America. Country refuses to adapt, and we all know from our evolution classes what happens when things don't adapt.

The rest of the world... well yeah, the big players have always fought to share that amongst themselves.

I really don't care what someone may try to define as being "normal", seeing as the term is one that lacks any useful definition. Seriously, what difference does it even make? It's "normal" for a volcano to erupt, doesn't mean you wanna sit underneath it as hot lava comes towards you and not bother trying to get out of the way. Whether something is natural or not makes absolutely no difference to the consequences.

You may feel isolated but that certainly doesn't hold true for everyone. My assertion of 'we' was the correct one, things that happen in this world have wider effects than you might imagine, and if you weren't so isolated you might understand how that was true.