No, banks don't borrow to issue loans, they use money on deposit. That's how they "create" money. They take your $100 deposit, and lend out $90, which gets re-deposited and $81 gets lent out, each time 10% is kept in reserve (by law) and 90% is lent out. Your $100 still shows in your account and can be withdrawn, but I'll let you do the math on how much has been lent out by the time it's down to $0.01 (because I forgot the formula)

The very notion of "decentralized finance" makes no sense. For one, past the issuing authority, it is decentralized. There are lots of banks and financial institutions. And somehow, they expected that this wouldn't still end up being dominated by large financial interests? Well, I suspect they didn't, someone just wanted a new way to become a major financial institution themselves.

None of it ever made any sense. Currency whose value is processing its transactions by burning electricity? So, it's value is the electricity used to generate it? You don't create value with pure consumption. Electricity that could be used in a factory to actually create value is instead being used to generate play money? That sounds like a net drain in value.

I'd compare it to the "pet rock", but that at least came in a box with amusing text. This is just a scam.

Because breaking it worse isn't a fix?

I'm not falling for that one again! If it's already growing, then the "ground floor" is already too high to reach. Last guy tried to sell me a ladder too, but it was already too short.

Renew your subscription, jerk. Ma's hungry.

To make Orwell's system effective, you'd probably need it. Telescreen monitoring would have required a crazy amount of manpower.

Run the other way. Do not look back.

If anything could ever justify requiring "qualified investors", it's financial novelties. That retail investors would be exposed to this but aren't allowed to invest in the funds that make the rich richer, is a bright red sign indicating something is wrong with our financial regulations.

Private equity - sorry, too complicated for the average investor. You already have to be rich to use this straightforward thing that makes you richer.
Hedge funds - sorry, too complicated for the average investor. You already have to be rich to use this slightly complicated thing that makes you richer.
Digital Asset Treasuries - very complicated, brand new, very high risk, probably a scam and definitely a way to hide a scam. Go for it!

I'm just not yet sure if the problem is too much or too little regulation.

What makes you think it was unnecessary? What if this was a finance database storing details of people who took out auto loans? They'd need to retain all that data for collections and compliance.

So, dissolve Hyundai and 130,000 people lose their jobs because a criminal managed to break into a database? Would you call for so draconian a response if someone had broken in and stolen a filing cabinet?

Hyundai was the victim of a digital burglary, and you want them punished a second time?

Well, the only reason I can think of that they would have SSNs would be that the breached database held information about financing. Data they need to retain for practical and compliance purposes, not data harvesting.

I was wondering the same thing about SSNs when it hit me. They got the financing database. That's the only time an auto manufacturer needs a customer's SSN - when they're financing the car with a loan from the manufacturer. Also, dealerships run a customer's license to make sure they can drive the car off the lot, and that may also be collected as part of the loan verification process.

So, we don't know if those professors were originally from China?

I looked at that guy's page. A lot of links to state propaganda, which I'm going to ignore. I'm also suspicious of how those rankings were tallied, especially given how China has been operating as a paper mill for years. I'm sure there are a lot of heavily cited papers out of Chinese universities. Doesn't mean a single one was legit.

Besides, some prick who moved to a dictatorship and parrots the tyrant's propaganda is, in my book, deserving of neither respect nor attention. Communism is evil.

Looked at another of his articles. I'm going to go ahead and put the burden of proof on him that he isn't a traitor. I'm frikkin appalled.

In a free market economy, businesses do fail all the time. The damage is typically limited, as whoever made the wrong decision only runs one thing. In a planned economy, the same mistakes occur on a massive scale, leading to massive damage.

China's is the closest thing the world has ever seen to a functional planned economy, and this is still what happens. Empty cities built for show, cars nobody wants, hundreds of billions wasted. You made a fantastic point about building out capacity, but as it is a command economy they could have just built it. There was no need to overproduce cars unless the intent was illegal dumping or busywork. Or, a mistake.

And yes, US manufacturers may have overproduced as well, but what did they do when sales fell? They cut back. It doesn't sound like China cut back. The planners are slow to respond when conditions diverge from their expectations. The USSR had the same problem.

Some work is required of the student. Review the source material and note the necessary implications.

You just touched on something that has been pointed out to me as a reason why international education comparisons are flawed - The US tries to teach everyone; other countries send kids with weaker grades to trade schools from primary instead of into high schools. I'm not sure our approach is better. I'm also not sure we're that different, a bunch of kids at my high school went to BOCES (votech) instead of regular classes.

Anyhow, you may have a point with maybe sending them somewhere else if they fail, but that place must not be a university. That's just a stupid waste of resources and limited applicant slots.

But the most important thing to recognize is that the approach that has been tried for the last 30+ years has been an utter failure and needs to be immediately abandoned before it ruins more lives. Right now, the school systems are run by people unable or unwilling to recognize that glaring fact. Start failing students again instead of graduating them and then figure out how to better handle failures. The old way was definitely flawed, but it was better than what we have now.