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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31672 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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The TLDR cut out the more full explanation that is not actually the bank itself that is benefiting from the theft-via-dilution. Who benefits is a fiendishly difficult question:

Well, to be more accurate, it is the government stealing your money, not the banks. Actually, to be more accurate, it is impossible to pin down who exactly is stealing your money, because banks should be seen as arms of the state, and the state is the arm of an ecosystem of elites and elite clients, and the entire thing has grown fiendishly complex because it is in everyones interest to allow it to be complex. In fact, the real bandit may be your neighbor who bought a million dollar home with a 30-year, 2% interest rate loan. Or maybe the thief is your friend who cashed out on Apple stock after Apple funded a stock buyback with a loan at 1% interest. (Don’t go screaming at your friend – hate the game not the player).

Moreover, the assumption that, because my savings are worth less because of inflation, that therefore someone has "stolen" money from me does not work.

Dilution is theft. If the board of a company secretly prints new shares and gives it to their friends that is theft.

If I choose to save it, then I have many options, but they are of two general categories: a) High risk / high return; and b) low risk / low return.

Our put is that option b) is actually low risk negative return and that this is a big problem.

I don’t see why it matters that it is a negative return. That is the price I pay for, among other things, insurance on my deposits. And, banks are very clear on how much interest they pay on their various accounts, and it is completely obvious how that compares to the inflation rate. If I don’t like those term, I am free to put my money elsewhere. Nor is that at all analogous to a board secretly and fraudulently diluting the value of company shares.

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