Extra in pension or extra in mortgage?

[Dorset Plodder]

I think you guys are far too clever to be working for a company like Royal Mail. I think you should use your brains for something constructive.

Postiewhite: On a serious note, don't forget to live for today while you're at it. Good friend of mine (who I thought had it all and TBH I was a little jealous of) went to work in the morning, had a Motor Traffic Accident and was killed. Sadly missed.

Made no difference to him what state his pension was in, or how much was owed on his mortgage.

[bustedflush]

What gives gold value ?
As an asset class Bitcoin is very similar to gold - with, however, distinct advantages over it.

You need to read more about the decentralised blockchain/distributed ledgers if you think it could succumb to a DDoS attack.
Bitcoin "banks" can get hacked yes - much like any other banks. The retail banks are losing so much to hacks that they won't reveal to us exactly how much !! And now, apparently, they've decided themselves to stock up on Bitcoin in order to pay off the hackers - this, they think, is a better bet than actually trying to defeat them.
Part of the beauty of Bitcoin is that it kind of negates the need for a conventional bank - you can be your own bank.

The Bitcoin/blockchain protocol is very secure indeed. You have about as much chance at guessing my private keys (the keys that mean I own and have access to my Bitcoin) as finding a particular grain of sand off the beaches of all the world (and then some). This is why it works.

When the commercial banks finally do away with cash (like they are proposing to do in some countries) what you going to do when there is a run on the bank and you can't get your money out for love nor , well, money ? You will be over a barrel son - much like we have all been to some extent to the banks for a long time now - only more so.

It's a shame you refer to Bitcoin as paedophile pennies cos I tend to like your posts, and tend to agree with you on a lot of stuff - and generally your outlook.

But I can see your mind is made up on Bitcoin, so I'll let it go.

Sorry for my acidic terminology there, but unfortunately they are sought after or utilized by some sections of the web community that, let's say, aren't fussy about what they buy or sell. Of course they can bypass legal restrictions both in countries and between them and regrettably that reason has contributed largely to the demand for them. There are online casinos US-facing which are now Bitcoin-only as this resolves the difficulties in getting payments from and back to US residents because banks are prohibited by the Wire Act from processing gambling transactions. Not too fussed about that, but the anonymity has unintentionally played into the hands of the sickest people in society, and logically explains the rise reported recently in the barter of criminal filth by paedophiles which was hindered previously by the traceability of nearly all online payment types.

[jetblack]

Bitcoin isn't anonymous - it is what is known as pseudonymous. The public ledger is completely transparent. If anything it has been an aid in tracing the flow of money/Bitcoin to paedophiles.
Many in the libertarian community (and those who want Bitcoin to be truly anonymous and fungible (like cash)) are as we speak devising methods that Bitcoin be truly anonymous (see Monero, Zcash etc). But as it stands. , it isn't.

Have scumbags used crypto currencies ? Yes, I'm sure they have and do. Much the same as Mexican drug cartels used HSBC and others for laundering money in sterling and dollars.

But what are you going to do, uninvent the Internet ( and Bitcoin is the Internet of money and value transference) because someone, somewhere has used it to watch porn or gamble outwith their jurisdiction ?

Meanwhile, the other 99.9% of us, that are innocent, have to be denied the greatest technological advance since the invention of the wheel ?

Anyhow, I'm aware this is off topic - so I"ll attempt to make some kind of a connection to the OP.
Did you know that for every £10k I have deposited the bank is allowed to magic into existence another £90k to lend out to you on your mortgage ? Except, they pay me 1.5% to borrow my £10k - but then are allowed to charge you between 3% and 16% (on credit cards) on the magicked into existence money You could not make this s**t up.

And they get greedy.
Then they start lending it out to people that have no hope of paying it back.

Then they get really greedy and start selling derivatives of high risk debt to unsuspecting and desperate states/people on the promise of stellar returns.

It all eventually goes a peary default shape and the banks start realising colossal losses.
But they can't be allowed to go bust. God no , not these businesses.
Because they are too big to fail, you see, and too many of us have our life savings tied up with them.


So, on top of being perpetually scammed by their interest rates wizardry, we now get to be double scammed by paying for their losses from our taxes (RBS just announced another £469m loss for the third quarter BTW). And on top of that, the mother bank, the Bank of England, has to magic up several billion (well, half a trillion) into existence - thereby necessitating the reduction of interest rates to a level by which I am (or soon will be) paying the bank to hold my f***ing money - which, BTW, has the extremely unfortunate side effect that my old age will now be spent impoverished due to the bankrupt state of my companies final salary pension scheme (which is statutorily bound to disproportionately invest in interest paying gilts)

And so, with the benefit of hindsight, it looks very much like the financiers knew all along that they were in an unassailable win-win situation. How else can we account for their actions ?


And you tell me a currency that doesn't rely on a central authority for its legitimacy, that cannot be magicked into existence, whereby commercial banks cannot play fast and loose with other people's money precisely because the supply of said currency is finite - you tell me it's for crooks ?

I suppose you might say that oftentimes a nascent technology might first be ceased upon by those with more underground tendencies - this is often the case, mostly cos crooks are oftentimes very savvy.

But if you ask me, the monetary system that we have in place today is about as crooked as it gets.
By design.

[bustedflush]

Yes, it used to be called the RAR (reserve asset ratio) when I studied Economics all those years ago, and back then it was 12.5% i.e. the Banks couldn't lend over £1m unless they had over £125k deposits as reserve. Going by your example it must be only 10% now, but the lower the figure the more exposed are the Banks and economy as a whole. This is why they are so terrified of 'a run' when people lose confidence and try and withdraw deposits en masse. I agree the system isn't perfect but at least it can be micro and macro-managed.

I still prefer property or tangible assets like Gold though, or land. As Mark Twain said about land 'they ain't making any more of it.'