is the world screwed soon?

[gggmork]

Lately I've been reading/watching stuff like:

zerohedge.com
alex jones (youtube, click filter, sort by 'uploaded this week')
http://www.youtube.com/user/cgreene34#p/u/30/1kE6Ygj2qjI

I'm quite ignorant of human related affairs/history/politics. I'm wondering how true you think this type of stuff is and how do you actually know? Basically is this whole conspiracy theory movement a snowballing franchise of circle jerking charlatans to sell dvds and ads or maybe artificially increase the price of gold/silver as they scare everyone into buying it, or is some of this stuff true:

some claims: bankers and federal reserve elites controlling everything, possibly currently heading us towards ww3 in the middle east, destroying the dollar, destroying middle class, creating a new digital currency to replace the dollar,making a world government,wanting to destroy the internet etc.

I used to be of the atheist's groupthink opinion that conspiracy theories were similar to religion, a false parasitic memeplex of information replicating from mind to mind, but I don't know what information to believe anymore, who is an astroturfer, who is a honeypot trying to congregate non sheep, who's insane/misleading/charlatan/etc.
History does contain fucked up things like the holocaust, so one can't really dismiss something like an agenda to reduce world population as too crazy to be true. Faith is belief without evidence, but one insignificant peon like me can't really obtain much observation/evidence of claims about elites controlling media etc. aside from what I read. I can observe through my own senses that the economy is fucked, is this by design? And TSA groping and stuff.. are they trying to desensitize us for stuff to come? Mass surveillance seems to be increasing, patriot act, etc. I agree with the zerohedge article about the scam of colleges. Do you basically think we're heading toward a global oligarchy? Are the masses gonna be slaves soon?
Speaking of the economy, ebay became a dominant player obviously and I saw some STRANGE stuff over the last few years as if ebay was purposely sabotaging itself (lots of revealing comments, google: AuctionBytes Blog by Ina Steiner). I mean it was almost like the ceo secretly worked for amazon. Meg whitman of ebay ran for governor showing possible political relationships, like maybe they were paid off to go with the 'lets destroy the economy' plan or something.

Lets say hypothetically that the conspiracy theories are largely untrue.. even then its still a informational force to reckon with. I mean the existence of Satan is not true.. however someone who merely believes in that can still be driven to do weird evil things.. so it almost becomes indirectly true just because people believe in it. And there are some major players that appear on the alex jones show like ron paul. So even if its mostly false, having a guy running for president who believes this stuff is still a major thing to think about. I think richard stallman has to be quite smart and he was on the alex jones show.. but he might have asperger's so not really care what people think.
And then there's groups like anonymous (which seems possible to hijack by the elites or someone.. for example 'operation empire state rebellion' might have been a hijack of anonymous by conspiracy theorist type people.. then again anyone who is anonymous is by definition part of anonymous) and wikileaks springing up, complicating things further.

What do you make of all this stuff? Or is it pointless to ask because its just one layman misinforming another layman?

[exp(x)]

Your text is diarrhea.

[chungy]

it's a gggmork post

[Csonicgo]

Holy shit. I'm getting XDelusion flashbacks.

[Grazza]

It's utter bollocks.

[Chopkinsca]

Screwed soon. That implies it isn't screwed already?

[Maes]

Hey hey hey seems there's another contender here!

http://www.familyradio.com/index2.html

[Aliotroph?]

Funny how even the anti-government conspiracy theorists are still subject to ingrained American exceptionalism. America is not, has never been, and will never be the world.

There are places where paranoia does not reign supreme.

[AndrewB]

gggmork said:

Lately I've been reading/watching stuff like:

zerohedge.com
alex jones (youtube, click filter, sort by 'uploaded this week')
http://www.youtube.com/user/cgreene34#p/u/30/1kE6Ygj2qjI

I've actually spent about 20 hours a week for the last 3 months reading about this stuff.

'm quite ignorant of human related affairs/history/politics. I'm wondering how true you think this type of stuff is and how do you actually know?

I assume by "this stuff" you mean the coming economic collapse of the US. It's completely true.

Basically is this whole conspiracy theory movement

Why would you call it a conspiracy theory? You don't need a conspiracy to explain massive economic incompetence and ignorance in the US and in most of the rest of the world.

a snowballing franchise of circle jerking charlatans to sell dvds and ads or maybe artificially increase the price of gold/silver as they scare everyone into buying it, or is some of this stuff true:

Well, if people like Peter Schiff, Marc Faber, Max Keiser, et al are just pimping gold and silver because they have a vested interest in it, then they did a lot to help their own cause by establishing an unbelievably good track record over the years. Peter Schiff predicted the tech crash of 2000, the housing crash, and the the recession of 08. Marc Faber did all of this as well as predicting major crises of the 90's with almost spookily accurate timing.

The best thing to do is follow the smart money. Google and YouTube have given this generation a unique opportunity to quickly find the competent investors and they people who have had the best track record predicting major events. Among these people, it's a consensus: Invest in precious metals, agriculture, commodities, and China.

some claims: bankers and federal reserve elites controlling everything, possibly currently heading us towards ww3 in the middle east, destroying the dollar, destroying middle class, creating a new digital currency to replace the dollar,making a world government,wanting to destroy the internet etc.

The bankers and federal reserve elites aren't in control of a damn thing. They have about as much control of the economy as the plant operators had over Fukushima Daiichi. And the outcome will be pretty much the same.

I used to be of the atheist's groupthink opinion that conspiracy theories were similar to religion, a false parasitic memeplex of information replicating from mind to mind, but I don't know what information to believe anymore, who is an astroturfer, who is a honeypot trying to congregate non sheep, who's insane/misleading/charlatan/etc.

Again, you don't need a conspiracy to explain the economic disaster that's unfolding right now. The true cause of this crisis is worldwide incompetence. We've created generations of financially illerate people. Money issues, finance, and economics should have been taught in grade school generations ago. Unfortunately, our ingrained tendency to "protect" children from financial issues has prevented this from ever being a part of our society. As a result, we've had an entire generation of 20-somethings commit half a million dollars on a crapshack home while interest rates were at historic lows. The idiocy even surrounds me at work. Canada is in the early stages of its own real estate meltdown, and I'm going to be the one sitting in my rented apartment while families around me drown their kids in the bathtub and blow their brains out because they made one incorrect financial decision in their life. Sort of like how a butterfly in Japan can cause a hurricane in Florida, one innocently-omitted school curriculum from decades ago caused the complete collapse of the world economy in the 2010's.

History does contain fucked up things like the holocaust, so one can't really dismiss something like an agenda to reduce world population as too crazy to be true.

I can dismiss it because it's an unnecessarily complicated theory. Look, this is how things got so messed up: The US is the world's reserve currency. What this means is that countries all over the world keep the money that they can't afford to lose in the US dollar because it has been seen as the titanic of currencies. This means that the vast majority of US dollars are actually held outside of the country, and they're not doing anything. We're talking about somewhere north of 70 TRILLION dollars in bank notes. Well, this was true 15 years ago. But the fact that all this money is held in savings outside of the US is key. Because this money wasn't moving anywhere, just sitting in high-interest-collecting accounts, it wasn't really affecting the world economy at all. It's like if you had $20k in your bank account but another $70k in a jar in your closet that you completely forgot about. It's dormant money and not causing inflation, not causing speculation, not doing anything.

Then something changed.

Alan Greenspan announced that interest rates would be set to 1% and kept there indefinitely. And so the beast awoke. Suddenly all of the dormant money that was previously collecting a nice amount of interest had to go somewhere else. It needed to keep up with inflation somehow. First it went into the tech market. That didn't work. Then it went into US mortgage-backed securities. We all know how that turned out. Now there are no places left to speculate. There's just one obvious place left to go: Commodities.

There's just one little problem.

At current market prices, there simply isn't enough oil, wheat, gold, silver, or whatever to accomodate all of this money. Like I said, wost of this money is held by foreign entities such as China, Japan, India, and pretty much every other banking conglomerate in the world. The problem is that nobody wants to buy any of these commodities too fast for fear of causing a run on the market and sending prices to the moon. So, like the well known frog in the boiling pot theory, entities like China are gradually selling their US treasury holdings in favor of gold and other currencies.

It's like all the major economies on the world have suddenly realized that they're standing on a rickety, unstable US Dollar bridge over a raging rock-filled river hundreds of feet below. The 800-pound gorillas such as China don't want to make any sudden movements for fear of causing everything to come crashing down. However, the little mice on the bridge (like you and me) are currently free to buy as much gold and silver as we can afford at bargain-basement prices because we don't have enough influence to make everything crash. So for people who have some money, this is a once in a lifetime "crisitunity".

If there is a conspiracy going on right now, it's nothing more than a conspiracy to hold gold prices down so that the "important" people can shore up the gold they need to secure themselves. It's a lot like how the engineers on the Titanic did everything they could to prevent panic while the important people made arrangements to get on the lifeboats. Okay, maybe that's not exactly what happened on the Titanic but you get the gist of what I'm saying.

Faith is belief without evidence, but one insignificant peon like me can't really obtain much observation/evidence of claims about elites controlling media etc. aside from what I read. I can observe through my own senses that the economy is fucked, is this by design?

Yes, it is fucked. And the disaster is "by design" in exactly the same way that the Japan nuclear crisis was "by design". It was simply an unforseen event caused by unprecedented circumstances and one key poor decision years ago.

And TSA groping and stuff.. are they trying to desensitize us for stuff to come? Mass surveillance seems to be increasing, patriot act, etc. I agree with the zerohedge article about the scam of colleges. Do you basically think we're heading toward a global oligarchy? Are the masses gonna be slaves soon?

You should really stop with the conspiracy crap. It's completely unnecessary. Like I've said multiple times already, it's nothing more than worldwide incompetence caused by generations of a poorly educated populace. Isn't this much more believable than some evil mastermind plan to take over the world?

Speaking of the economy, ebay became a dominant player obviously and I saw some STRANGE stuff over the last few years as if ebay was purposely sabotaging itself (lots of revealing comments, google: AuctionBytes Blog by Ina Steiner). I mean it was almost like the ceo secretly worked for amazon. Meg whitman of ebay ran for governor showing possible political relationships, like maybe they were paid off to go with the 'lets destroy the economy' plan or something.
Lets say hypothetically that the conspiracy theories are largely untrue.. even then its still a informational force to reckon with. I mean the existence of Satan is not true.. however someone who merely believes in that can still be driven to do weird evil things.. so it almost becomes indirectly true just because people believe in it.

Dude, chill the hell out. The answer to the mystery is ALWAYS so much more simple and mundane, maybe even innocent than you could ever speculate.

And there are some major players that appear on the alex jones show like ron paul. So even if its mostly false, having a guy running for president who believes this stuff is still a major thing to think about. I think richard stallman has to be quite smart and he was on the alex jones show.. but he might have asperger's so not really care what people think.
And then there's groups like anonymous (which seems possible to hijack by the elites or someone.. for example 'operation empire state rebellion' might have been a hijack of anonymous by conspiracy theorist type people.. then again anyone who is anonymous is by definition part of anonymous) and wikileaks springing up, complicating things further.

What do you make of all this stuff? Or is it pointless to ask because its just one layman misinforming another layman?

So yeah, you know what my stance is at this point. It's all true EXCEPT for the retarded conspiracy theory angle. It's an unfolding full-blown world economic collapse called by mass ignorance and incompetence.

[ManCannon]

my body feels wet and lonely

[Sporku]

ManCannon said:

my body feels wet and lonely

That's what happens when you spend an hour sobbing to yourself in the shower with cold water beating down on you. Time to man up, son.

[Sharessa]

I stopped reading at "alex jones".

[gggmork]

"Your text is diarrhea."
My brain is pretty much diarrhea.

Interesting post above
"Peter Schiff, Marc Faber, Max Keiser" are useful sources to google.
I just saw this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgMclXX5msc
He said america borrowed tons from china and won't pay them back. They must have been even more retarded than me to keep loaning so much.

Well I'm gonna go back to reading Time Cube. Thanks for being courteous enough to stoop to the level of diarrhea and acknowledge my presence with your little quips everyone else. Its those special moments when I feel like a real human sometimes and not just a diarrhea covered diarrhea head.

[neubejiita]

Oprah Winfrey is the Anti-Christ, and Obama is the false prophet leading us into destruction, Oprah is denying Christ and replacing it with her own religion. Possibly the one world religion that the Illuminati want to bring in as part of the New World Order. The New Earth church is an allegory of that New World Order.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7vh5LJjJhc

The attacks on Libya are a part of the NWO and also the engineered collapse of America. The internet ID number they want to bring in is a part of restricting free speech and requiring a license to use the Internet. And the Alien False Flag attack planned to bring in the NWO and Martial Law.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcH6BD1Fxd8

[Csonicgo]

AndrewB said:

So yeah, you know what my stance is at this point. It's all true EXCEPT for the retarded conspiracy theory angle. It's an unfolding full-blown world economic collapse called by mass ignorance and incompetence.

Remind me, why gold is so expensive again? What can you really do with it in today's society besides electronics?

In my opinion, the value of gold is just as fake as fiat currency.

neubejiita said:

Oprah Winfrey is the Anti-Christ, and Obama is the false prophet leading us into destruction, Oprah is denying Christ and replacing it with her own religion. Possibly the one world religion that the Illuminati want to bring in as part of the New World Order. The New Earth church is an allegory of that New World Order.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7vh5LJjJhc

The attacks on Libya are a part of the NWO and also the engineered collapse of America. The internet ID number they want to bring in is a part of restricting free speech and requiring a license to use the Internet. And the Alien False Flag attack planned to bring in the NWO and Martial Law.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcH6BD1Fxd8

Wow, people actually made this shit? I know you're being sarcastic but...... damn, that's some sad shit, bro.

[Chopkinsca]

Csonicgo said:

Remind me, why gold is so expensive again? What can you really do with it in today's society besides electronics?

I don't know about you, but I enjoy adding melted gold to my potatoes.

[AndrewB]

Csonicgo said:

Remind me, why gold is so expensive again? What can you really do with it in today's society besides electronics?

Spend it. Gold has been money for millenniums. When the Zimbabwean dollar collapsed, the only money that could be used was gold and the US dollar. When the US dollar goes down the same road, there will be no other currency to turn to because every other major currency in the world is backed by the US dollar. Even in the worst of times, society needs money to function. Bartering has its limits.

In my opinion, the value of gold is just as fake as fiat currency.

Currencies can (and will be) debased by printing it like crazy. Not possible with gold/silver.

[Csonicgo]

AndrewB said:

Spend it. Gold has been money for millenniums. When the Zimbabwean dollar collapsed, the only money that could be used was gold and the US dollar. When the US dollar goes down the same road, there will be no other currency to turn to because every other major currency in the world is backed by the US dollar. Even in the worst of times, society needs money to function. Bartering has its limits.
Currencies can (and will be) debased by printing it like crazy. Not possible with gold/silver.

Even if it has "been money", so have been huge stones.

The only reason I see it being used as money is that laziness would keep a person from melting it and mixing an alloy of it, but you can do that with just about any metal now. Especially tungsten!

So, really, what is it about gold besides rarity? Gold now has a legitimate use rather than "money" and some gold idols. malleability and conductivity and resistance to corrosion. I don't see it as a money. I see it as a needed metal in technology. So what happens to that gold when the "dollar falls" and all the gold in the world is fair game?

[gggmork]

I just checked and all 3 of the guys you mentioned (Peter Schiff, Marc Faber, Max Keiser) have been on alex jones. I only watched a minute of this but keiser seemed to be going along with 'conspiracy'ish ideas here ("google and other corporations on list to form another branch of government", bla bla bla):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPoz5_**84k

That lolcow linked above, pastor manning, also is on alex jones sometimes I think, as well as david icke the guy who believes in lizard people I think. That seems like an obvious hit to jones credibility, but I think he sometimes just goes along with whatever meme seems to be popular to maximize viewership. Those people might be crazy or might be behaving that way deliberately to generate word of mouth advertising. The crazier ones could even be shills to make real conspiracy theorists seem crazy by association.
If any event happens in the news (japan earthquake, charlie sheen, pastor manning), Jones treats it like keywords to SEO. The japan earthquake happens and he floods youtube with keyword titles related to it (and tells viewers to spread it virally). One of his newer tactics is to tell viewers to google certain specific phrases.. I think in order to affect that google drop down suggestion box that appears when you type in google.
When you type "doom cyber" in google, "doom cyberdemon" comes up as a suggestion. He did something similar with a different phrase, I forget which, basically exploiting the "cyber" prefix and telling viewers to google the phrase "doom cyberterror" (but it was a different phrase) to shove that phrase into the drop down box.
Its kind of a big waste of time researching politics and such because so many have a motive to mislead you and you don't have much power anyway.

[bytor]

It wasn't hard to notice all the ]"Cash for Gold] ads that started popping up on television around the time that Bernanke's Federal Reserve said that a bailout of ] was necessary to avert a world financial collapse ]along with the failures of Lehman Bros.,Citigroup. Then much of that "bailout" money went]overseas through AIG

Goldman Sachs in ]IndiaChina

AndrewB said:

The bankers and federal reserve elites aren't in control of a damn thing.

See what they did to our housing market? The government will ] to control it (banking, economy in general) with more regulations, bigger government. Don't forget about the ]G20 Summit

EDIT: removed links

[AndrewB]

Csonicgo said:

Even if it has "been money", so have been huge stones.

If you feel you can preserve your money by stocking up on big rocks, then by all means go ahead. I can't guarantee that it will work out well for you, though.

So, really, what is it about gold besides rarity? Gold now has a legitimate use rather than "money" and some gold idols. malleability and conductivity and resistance to corrosion. I don't see it as a money. I see it as a needed metal in technology. So what happens to that gold when the "dollar falls" and all the gold in the world is fair game?

I don't think whether you "see it" as money has any bearing on what the rest of society does with it. I also don't understand what you mean by "fair game."

All in all, there's nothing really "about" gold besides rarity. That's the point. When it becomes the only accepted form of payment by OPEC, it'll be a pretty damned good thing to own.

[AndrewB]

bytor said:

See what they did to our housing market?

You mean they inflated it to ridiculous levels? The government deserves a lot of blame for causing the housing bubble by setting interest rates to 1%, but you can't absolve the American population of blame. If Americans had the slightest bit of intelligence, they wouldn't have accepted ridiculous amounts of debt and overpriced homes in the first place.

Not that's it's just the Americans who are idiots. Australians are likely in the beginning of a 90% decline in real estate, and Canada is likely about to start its 80% fall. US probably has at least another 50% to fall from its current levels.

[Mordeth]

lol americans

[Jannak]

This is conspiracy theory elephantshit.

[bytor]

AndrewB said:

but you can't absolve the American population of blame.

Oh! I can't agree with you more on that! Goes back to:

Money issues, finance, and economics should have been taught in grade school generations ago

These were things that were taught in the home. We've lost that. I think it started with the credit card.

[GreyGhost]

AndrewB said:

The best thing to do is follow the smart money. . . Among these people, it's a consensus: Invest in precious metals, agriculture, commodities, and China.

If the US economy collapses, the loss of more than 20% of it's export market will push China's economy into recession - or worse - and global commodity prices will go into freefall. There's half your investment strategy in tatters.

The bankers and federal reserve elites aren't in control of a damn thing.

In many countries they have their hands on the "Official interest rate" lever, which admittedly is a bit like steering a supertanker - you give the lever a nudge and wait for something to happen.

[CODOR]

Csonicgo said:
So, really, what is it about gold besides rarity?

It's shiny! And people who want to use it as money are impressed by shiny things! It can't be the rarity, cause then we'd be using an astatine-based economy. That stuff's so rare there's only about 30g of it in the Earth's crust at any given time. Of course, it's radioactive and the longest-lived isotope has a half-life of around 8 hours. But I think that'd be neat, having to continually produce more of the stuff or else you'd lose 7/8 of your money every single day...

AndrewB said:
I also don't understand what you mean by "fair game."

Operation Grand Slam, for instance.

[fraggle]

CODOR said:

It's shiny! And people who want to use it as money are impressed by shiny things! It can't be the rarity, cause then we'd be using an astatine-based economy. That stuff's so rare there's only about 30g of it in the Earth's crust at any given time. Of course, it's radioactive and the longest-lived isotope has a half-life of around 8 hours. But I think that'd be neat, having to continually produce more of the stuff or else you'd lose 7/8 of your money every single day...

To be fair, it is pretty rare. I remember reading that if you gathered together all the gold on the planet it would only fill two swimming pools. The key is that it's rare and something that can be realistically traded as a currency - something that was unstable would be useless as you couldn't trade it. Palladium is rarer than gold is, and you can invest in that, too.

[AndrewB]

GreyGhost said:

If the US economy collapses, the loss of more than 20% of it's export market will push China's economy into recession - or worse -

Say what? You're saying that the loss of America's pitifully small export market will hurt China? China is the export economy. China is exporting goods to the US. The US is exporting IOUs to China. The US is a deadbeat debtor who has no chance of ever paying its bills. China is being held down because it's sending all of its exports to America in exchange for increasingly worthless US dollars.

and global commodity prices will go into freefall. There's half your investment strategy in tatters.

When the US dollar collapses, there will be a run on scarce and precious commodities. The prices will skyrocket. Seriously, are you suggesting that as fast as the US dollar is devaluing, that prices of food and gas will devalue even faster? I didn't realize they had a printing press for food and gas.

Seriously, you're suggesting that during a worldwide economic crisis, where the countries are at war to devalue their own currencies and food production is falling, that food will be cheaper. I really hope I don't have to explain why that doesn't make sense.

The problem is the ongoing debasement of the US dollar through money-printing (QE) and the sudden velocity of long-dormant foreign-held US dollars. We're about to have all of the world's US dollars fighting over the few things that the world needs.

However, there's one thing that correct about your idea. Just like the depression of the 30's, the price everything, including food and fuel, will fall when priced in gold. It was true in the 30's and will be true again this time.

In many countries they have their hands on the "Official interest rate" lever, which admittedly is a bit like steering a supertanker - you give the lever a nudge and wait for something to happen.

Other countries, such as China and Australia, have been aggressively raising interest rates. This will allow their currency to rise in value, as has been happening. The results are actually quite immediate. What is NOT immediate and has a delayed effect is the US quantitative easing, pumping liquidity into the banks that don't want to lend the money out, creating a huge dam of money that will unleash unimaginable price inflation once the confidence in the US dollar falls below its tipping point.

[AndrewB]

CODOR said:

Operation Grand Slam, for instance.

Wikipedia said:

Operation Grand Slam is virtually synonymous with the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War. It refers to an audacious plan drawn up by the Pakistan Army, in May 1965, to attack the vital Akhnoor Bridge in Jammu and Kashmir, which was not only the lifeline of an entire infantry division in Jammu and Kashmir but could also be used to threaten Jammu, an important logistical point for Indian forces. The operation ended in a failure for Pakistan Army as the stated military objectives were not achieved and subsequently were forced to retreat following a counter attack by the Indian Army.

Wikipedia said:

Operation Grand Slam was an early major naval exercise of the newly-formed NATO alliance. This 1952[1][2][3] combined naval exercise took place in the Mediterranean Sea, and it included a naval force that was described as being "the largest armada to be assembled in that area since the end of World War II."[4]

Sorry, I'm still lost.