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1. Shorting practicalities for Tether not clear. 2. Need confidence 3rd party will pay out. 3. Market can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent. 4. Especially high risks when dealing with an entity which for the moment can print money to manipulate markets.

In short, I’m confident it will fail and fairly spectacularly but I don’t know when and I’m also not sure how to go about shorting it.


You missed threatening to sue the newspapers and reporters before the first stories dropped with Wylie on the record blowing the whistle the previous Sunday.


One is about telling other people how they should behave and possibly making them uncomfortable it they have had an abortion, the other is acknowledging the existence of people and their freedom to be who they are.

This is a pretty fundamental difference isn't it? No one is out wearing t-shirts telling other people that they should be queer are they?

And I'm assuming your use of the phrase "the LGBTQ+ life style" was a slip not an intentional denial of the many different lifestyles LGBTQ people have and that being L, G, B, T or Q is for most not a lifestyle but fundamental component of their person.


Firstly there are two ways that money is printed.

1) Government/central bank spend more than they take in taxes.

2) Private banks make loans to private sector (biz or individuals).

Money is destroyed by government running a surplus or by loans being repaid.

Note also that for the government to run a surplus the private sector must run a deficit (decrease savings or increase borrowing) in most circumstances.

The question is where money should be created and how it should be managed and controlled.


Money-Debt also expires via bankruptcy and gets eaten away via inflation.


Bankruptcy is actually the way to reduce debt without destroying the matching money (but may have knock on effects on further lending and related money creation).

Inflation is less clear cut and comes in many forms, assets, import costs, wages, consumer goods.


Yes, that's all true. I'm just balking at the idea that "austerity hurts growth". I think the alternative hurts growth even more.


Firstly, empirical evidence suggests otherwise. Political instability and inequality, both consequences of austerity, significantly hamper long-term growth and innovation. No country ever went from poor to rich by neglecting to invest in its people and infrastructure. Lots of countries have gone from rich to poor that way though.

Secondly, even if this were true what does it matter? Many people don't care about how fast the economy is growing overall if their personal fortunes are dwindling. That's just robbing Peter to pay Paul, except in this case Paul is already filthy rich.


Why does money need to be managed and controlled?

Real money inherently has a limited supply, so there is no need for it to be managed or controlled; the market does that on its own. However, the fiat currencies that are used by central banks around the world are not real money. The arrogance of central banks thinking they can manage and control the economic interactions of millions of people in a country is what leads to these great depressions and recessions.


Economic crises today are nowhere near the disasters they were in the past. It's pretty obvious that the system's stability has increased–in the past, depression could mean starvation.

> The arrogance of central banks thinking they can manage and control the economic interactions of millions of people in a country...

The arrogance of physicians thinking they can manage and control the biological interactions of billions of cells...

Just because something has a lot of moving parts doesn't make it intractable. "Complex" is just latin for "put together", and we can always try to take it apart, learn about individual parts, and work our way up.

In any case, not doing anything is also a decision. It's a completely arbitrary idea–as if monetary policy were some sort of intrusion into the "natural law" of the economy.


I don't think that the rarity of starvation in modern times is due to central banks, but instead due to advances in farming that allows a very small percentage of people to produce enough food for everyone.

Physicians don't think they can manage and control the billions of cells in our bodies; we still don't understand how all of our cells even work. Physicians apply tested practices to individual people and hope that it addresses whatever medical problem is being observed. They understand that treatments are not one-size-fits-all and that mistakes can kill people. They also understand that our bodies self regulate and they are only trying to address a specific imbalance in their specific patient, not something that applies to an entire population.

Central banks think they can turn a couple of knobs (currency supply and interest rates) and control an entire economy made up of millions of people. Using the physician example, that's like thinking that the only two treatments needed for any medical condition are adjustments to our blood level and body temperature.

Monetary policy is a newer invention in the history of human civilization and even then, it wasn't always applied so universally. Monetary policy can only exist with central banks.


what is "real money" to you? Fiat currency is real money to me. It's the only thing I can pay my taxes with.


I don't know who defined this originally, but the six characteristics that money needs to have are durability, divisibility, portability, acceptability, limited supply, and uniformity. Additionally, money needs to serve as a store of value, a unit of account, and as a medium of exchange.

Fiat currencies do not have a limited supply and are therefore not a store of value (i.e., inflation constantly lowers the value of fiat currencies). The main reason that fiat currencies are still used as a medium of exchange is for the exact reason you mentioned: governments mandate their usage to pay taxes.

As an example, gold and silver have been used as money for 1000s of years because they meet all of those requirements.


Muffett is ex-FB and worked on messenger. He truly believes in it and doesn't see Facebook as the threat that you (and I) do.


Rackspace's Cloudfiles. Does support static websites.


I use both RS Cloud Files and Google's Cloud Storage. Google's is superior in nearly every way.

The only con is that it is a Google product that could be deprecated at any point in time. But, with all the acquisition stuff happening over at RS, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about them killing of their cloud offering.


Two things:

1) Google Cloud Storage can host static websites:

https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/hosting-static-website

2) Google Cloud Platform has a 1 year deprecation policy, which would never happen with a product that so many companies and customer rely on (Google Reader had a small but passionate base)

Disclaimer: I work on Google Cloud Platform


To clarify on #2, are you saying that Google Cloud Platform in its entirety has a 1 year deprecation policy? Or that individual products within the platform have a 1 year deprecation policy? I'm not worried about Google deprecating the Storage service but that they could kill off the entire platform.

Also just wanted to say that I've been extremely happy with GCP thus far and all the services I've tried thus far have more features than RS. I really hope GCP is here for the long haul.


Sorry, for any product on GCP, there is a 1 year deprecation policy. GCP isn't going anywhere. See the comment about Snap and Diane Greene's involvement (she is an Alphabet board member).

Disclaimer: I work on Google Cloud Platform


For what it's worth, a fairly large 5 year contract between Google Cloud and Snap Inc was recently made public.


I worry about everything Google hosts because they have such a track record of just randomly axing products with no or little warning.


Looks like it. Brief panic caused here.


Uber seems to be a slightly special case in terms of how blatant discrimination seems to be and the explicitly deceitful and in the obviously abusive responses from HR but the general problems of harassment and discrimination are not unique.

I'm aware of multiple issues at Google and issues at Docker (although not the full details of that one). HR being useless and protecting company and senior management is common although they may be less blatant about it than Uber. Google is obviously huge so many areas may be OK.

Those are just issues I'm aware of following a few women on Twitter, they are the tip of the iceberg, some issues never come out at all, others are privately shard between women and others that might be vulnerable (I'm not in that loop).


My problem with your comment is the entitlement you claim to define acceptable behaviour of those being abused "what I demand from anyone who wants to call themselves a victim". Also people don't want to call themselves victims, they are victims who may feel able to make that known.

Letting a bully know that they are having an effect on you is far from risk free.

You also seem to believe that people have no responsibility for making people around them comfortable unless they are explicitly told it is making them uncomfortable. Everyone has a responsibility not to be ass.


>You also seem to believe that people have no responsibility for making people around them comfortable unless they are explicitly told it is making them uncomfortable. Everyone has a responsibility not to be ass.

I do not believe this.

>My problem with your comment is the entitlement you claim to define acceptable behaviour of those being abused "what I demand from anyone who wants to call themselves a victim". Also people don't want to call themselves victims, they are victims who may feel able to make that known.

Well if they want my sympathy those are my standards, sorry.

And by the way this:

>Also people don't want to call themselves victims, they are victims who may feel able to make that known.

Is not remotely true.


>>You also seem to believe that people have no responsibility for making people around them comfortable unless they are explicitly told it is making them uncomfortable. Everyone has a responsibility not to be ass.

>I do not believe this.

Let's take this further. If your coworker pulled you aside and punched you every day when you came into work, would you say they were justified as long as you didn't tell them you didn't want that to happen?

If this person were your boss and you were afraid you'd be ostracized or fired if you spoke up, are you not a victim?

At what point can we agree that behavior is worthy of condemnation without needing to explicitly be told that it's not okay?


If that isn't what you believe you aren't clearly expressing what you do believe and what responsibilities people, particularly senior people do have.

Most who come forward aren't asking for sympathy but reporting what has happened to them. What I would ask is for you to stand up if you witness inappropriate behaviour.

Some may want the abuse recognised but they all wish they weren't victims. Going public is tough, main reasons to do it are to protect others by either changing the organisation or just waning likely victims away. You stating "Is not remotely true" does not a reasonable argument make, at least put some description behind your opposing thesis.


Speeding is illegal too, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.


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