12DrinkMore

23 hours ago, seancbk said:

We then have this relationship — Many People (millions of Bitfinex clients) : 1 Wallet (the Exchange’s cold storage Wallet) : 1 Address. We can actually see that Wallet on the blockchain:

This is confusing me.

I thought that the blockchain was supposed to indicate the actual owner. If these coins are being held in a common wallet, then surely the wallet owner owns the coins? And if they are being held "in trust" by the exchange, what regulatory and legal rights do the guys who think they own the coins actually have?

And this idea of "trust" I thought was one of the main properties that bitcoin was supposed to eliminate?

51 minutes ago, seancbk said:

 

Bitcoin only stats 

https://blockchain.info/stats

The info I gave in my previous post came from https://coinmarketcap.com/

 

Yes, I have been there before.

I have still not been able to find statistics over the volume of bitcoin transactions that use fiat currency on the other side of the transaction.

Ie strip out all the bitcoin to alt-coin stuff and what is left?

13 hours ago, Pinot said:

 

Then your beliefs are wrong. That's unsustainable and none of the funds I quoted do that. You don't understand CEFs. 

 

Oh really?

As an absolute minimum an investor should read and fully understand the two page "Facts" paper.

Here's ETY.

Eaton Vance Tax-Managed Diversified Equity Income Fund

https://funds.eatonvance.com/includes/loadDocument.php?fn=2777.pdf&dt=fundpdfs'

Quote

Fund currently makes distributions in accordance with a managed distribution plan. Distributions may include amounts characterized for federal income tax purposes as ordinary dividends (including qualified dividends), capital gain distributions and nondividend distributions, also known as return of capital distributions. Return of capital distribution may include a return of some or all of the money that an investor invested in Fund shares.

Now, please, who has the belief and who has the facts?

And now you wrote

Quote

FOF, like some fund of funds (there are a few), sells at a discount to most of the funds it owns selling at a discount. It's compounding the discount of the funds it owns. It more than makes up for management fees. It's a CEF offering a nice return (8%) and was up 23% last year. That's why this person bought a fund of funds.

That is surely a gross misunderstanding.

The FOF is priced at a discount because of the costs and risks of liquidating the underlying instruments, some of which tend to be highly illiquid. The market demands a discount to take on the risk.

You will have to explain the mechanism "compounding the discount of the funds it owns", it is a concept I can't seem to grasp.

The only way that s CEF can offer 8% is by selling stocks. This is currently easy because the market is rising.

The DOW Yield is currently 2.33%. Where do think the other 5.67% is coming from?

http://indexarb.com/dividendYieldSorteddj.html

It is utterly impossible for a Fund of Funds to distribute 8% without selling some of the underlying funds.

4 minutes ago, Peterw42 said:

Yes, an indication that nobody wants to buy Australian dollars, to then buy Australian goods and services, and why would they, we dont make anything any more. A first world country that doesnt make TVs, washing machines or refrigerators. We buy other countries currencies (pushing the price up) so we can buy their products.

 

Its not rocket science

Australia had a huge boom digging stuff out of the ground and selling it to the Chinese.  Those were the days when teachers and other professionals were lining up to drive trucks to the ports and could earn fantastic amounts.

It still exports wine and farm produce. And there is still a healthy "export" market in education, where the Asians go to Aussieland for higher education.  

5 minutes ago, Brickbat said:

From 2015 to now, it’s made a solid base. The bigger the base, the bigger the rise.......hopefully.

Some might call it a solid ceiling, the more solid the ceiling the greater the fall. 

1 hour ago, seancbk said:

 

The amount of Bitcoin that changed hands in the last 24 hours is 858.952 Bitcoins

 

or ฿286,047,072,520 THB

 

or $9,117,910,000 USD

I would say that is pretty good liquidity

That is a mix of bitcoin to alt-coin churn and transactions with real currencies such as the USD.

So far I cannot find data on the  volume of bitcoin <=> fiat transactions. And with numbers for the major exchanges? 

It is certainly nowhere near 9 billion USD. Just think how much money the exchanges would make on a percentage of that.

Can you help with a website?

That will help with answering

2 hours ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

How liquid is Bitcoin actually?

Unless someone can show me otherwise, every time a bitcoin is sold for real currency, a buyer with real currency has to come forward.

3 hours ago, welovethailand said:

the top 1% own more than 87% ?

Those are the big banks.

Totally manipulated.

As with any bubble, there will be winners but mostly losers.

Winners are those who are not greedy

Know when to hold them, when to fold them, and when to walk away.

?

The top 1% of bitcoin owners have been in from the very start, techies, enthusiasts and those making a very fortuitous punt.

There are zero banks in  among that group.

20 minutes ago, Dario said:

Can you give the community the source of that article, please? Thank you

The data source is in the post.

The words are my personal ramblings, which may be a load of cobblers.

But I am interested in hearing other opinions.

1 hour ago, car720 said:

Ah!  The power of the pussy.   Thank God I made it through in one piece.

I always find that in and reverse out is the best way.

Never realised there was another exit.

4 hours ago, Wonderboy said:

I lend you 100$ and suddenly there is 100$ new money created. New to me...

You are not a bank.

1 hour ago, chingching said:

Your basic premise is wrong.  Money is created by the process of loans, BUT local banks like SCB or Bangkok Bank, or Citibank can only loan out an amount dictated by the central bank.  For example if SCB has 100M thb from deposits, the Central Bank will allow them to loan a fraction of it ( fractional reserve ) So if they are allowed to loan 50% they can loan 50M,  and that has created 50M thb that did not exist before.  If the local banks did not have to take direction from the govt. central bank, then why not go into SCB and ask for a 1M dollar loan in USD.   

You can always go and ask.

There are two basic restrictions.

1. The bank is prepared to take the risk of lending you the money. You have to prove that you are able to supply some collateral for the loan. Which might be property deeds for a large loan or your promise to work your <deleted> off and repay the loan for a small personal loan.

2. The capital reserve requirement held as part of the shareholders' funds, which can be written down if a debt goes tits up.

The banks, as another poster just pointed out, do not look at deposit accounts before making loans, nor do they consult the Central Banks.

Talk about uneven wealth distribution.

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

The top 2.5% of bitcoin owners possess 95.8% of all the bitcoins.

Or the top 1% own more than 87%

This is surely masking an unprecented massive transfer of wealth in the form of hard earned fiat currency from recent wannabee rich guys to long term holders of bitcoin......

So how skewed is the distribution?

Addresses richer than:

1 USD             100 USD     1,000 USD    10,000 USD    100,000 USD    1,000,000 USD    10,000,000 USD
20,053,613    7,323,557    2,596,315    769,041            163,566            19,932                   1,903

I think it would be reasonable to say that even if on paper the big wallets will lose out hugely when it collapses, they will also have safely moved a nice chunk into Mrs Yellen's fiat.

And it is another reason why bitcoin can never deliver on its promises, all the churn and liquidity is in very small amounts. The rest is sticking somewhere, useless for transactions.

A month's salary is hardly severe.

A fair number of English teachers just get up and leave after receiving a pay check. I consider it to be fair play, some of the schools are not very nice to the English teachers.

It would not affect coming back to Thailand as a tourist.

4 minutes ago, davidst01 said:

''However the Fed is not the only player. The ECB, SNB and BoJ are all still engaged in injecting significant amounts of liquidity into the markets. There will be leakage from the actions of the ECB and BoJ into the US, and the SNB is directly active in the US market.''

 

I want to understand more about your opinion there. Are you saying that you dont think there will be a crash or correction because the other central banks are not doing the same as the FED? 

 

It is certainly  a big issue if the other central banks in Europe and Japan do reverse the QE. This would cause the equity markets to be less attractive for sure. 

I am sure there will be a correction at some point. The valuations are remarkably high on an historical basis. My gut feeling is that the herd will push the DOW towards 30,000 as they like these "significant" numbers, and take a breather. But who knows?

I was pointing out that it is not the Fed alone that currently affects the US markets. 

2 hours ago, MaeJoMTB said:

Link 1 is about benefit fraud, in countries where the pension increase is given.

Link 2, also benefit fraud

 

No mention of pension increases.

Did you not  read your own links,  or did you just think I wouldn't?

I don't understand why you are separating claiming pension increases by  not providing your real address from benefit fraud. They are both fraud. And sooner or later technology will catch up.

Sorry, I have failed to find the case I had in mind. Must have been on one of the expat forums I seldom visit.

I suppose if you really want to find out, then a quick letter to the UK governemt will provide an interesting reply.....

Thinking about it, he may have just had his pension reset without the excess payments being reclaimed. If it does spring back to mind, I'll let you know.....

10 hours ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

Occasionally, robust lending activity depletes a commercial bank's cash reserves to where they fall below the government's mandated reserve requirement. At this point, the bank has two options to avoid running afoul of the law. It can borrow from another bank, or it can borrow from the Federal Reserve.

Borrowing from another bank is the cheaper option, but many commercial banks, especially when only taking out an overnight loan to meet reserve requirements, elect to borrow from the discount window because of its simplicity.

Thanks for the reply and quote from an unknown source.

Firstly I think the above quote has answered the question.

There is no effective restraint on a bank's lending through a deposit reserve requirement as the bank can always borrow the reserve funds overnight to meet the regulations from another bank or the Fed at the discount window.

The banks have also been active in using technology. The 10% requirement only applies to certain deposit accounts, by using "sweeping software" the banks shuffle these funds around so that there is no reserve requirement.

https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/01/0101ra.pdf

Quote

In January 1994, the Federal Reserve Board permitted  a commercial bank to begin using a new type of computer software that dynamically reclassifies balances in its customer accounts from transaction deposits to a type of personal-saving deposit, the money market deposit account (MMDA).1 This reclassification reduces the bank’s statutory required reserves while leaving unchanged its customers’ perceived holdings of transaction deposits.

And from wiki.

Quote

Even in the United States, which retains formal (though now mostly irrelevant) reserve requirements, the notion of controlling the money supply by targeting the quantity of base money fell out of favor many years ago, and now the pragmatic explanation of monetary policy refers to targeting the interest rate to control the broad money supply.

The Fractional Reserve System describes taking in customer deposits and lending them out whilst retaining some percentage, usually mentioned as 10% in the text books. This is simply not how the system works.

If there is a willing borrower and the bank is willing to make a loan to that customer, the loan will always be made (provided the Capital Reserve Ratio is maintained). The process is incredibly simple, two book-keeping entries are made. Voila! 

Don't believe me.

Here's the Bank of England

Quote

This article explains how the majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans. Money creation in practice differs from some popular misconceptions — banks do not act simply as intermediaries, lending out deposits that savers place with them, and nor do they ‘multiply up’ central bank money to create new loans and deposits. 

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy

Fractional Reserve Banking is not how the banks work.

So where do we stand on this at the moment?

Quote

the rest of your post is also at least partly wrong. You have a lot to learn about banking.

12 hours ago, ghworker2010 said:

 I understand that if the Feds radical tightening causes a 10 to 20% crash or worse (this yr) then they will simply 'pause' their current experiment (or reverse it and start printing money again).

That would be a mere "correction", to be taken in one's stride......

Crashes are a bit bigger, although I don't think it is precisely defined.

The Fed is trying to be very predictable about its actions. They have announced the plan and I doubt if a "correction" will cause them to stop or reverse. It will take them six years to get back to where they were at 50 billion/month.

However the Fed is not the only player. The ECB, SNB and BoJ are all still engaged in injecting significant amounts of liquidity into the markets. There will be leakage from the actions of the ECB and BoJ into the US, and the SNB is directly active in the US market.

Also large companies such as Apple are planning to onshore profits due to the Trump tax reforms. That money has to end up somewhere.

35 minutes ago, YetAnother said:

pity his knowledge comes at such a high price; his story should be required reading for all males under age 60 entering thailand

Are you proposing that those over 60 are old enough to know better?

52 minutes ago, MaeJoMTB said:

Link to one case where this has happened?

Please.

http://www.chiangraitimes.com/uk-cracks-down-on-expat-pension-benefit-fraud.html

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/abroad-fraud-warning-for-benefit-thieves

'nuff?

59 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

To be precise, certain financial institutions hold reserve balances at the Federal Reserve (depository institutions, Federal Home Loan Banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, etc.). The federal funds rate is the interest these institutions charge when they lend reserves to other institutions overnight.

Gimme a break.

That is not lending out reserves to customers, which is the way it is usually interpreted. It is moving funds around in the Central Bank pool of bank reserves to balance the books overnight as part of the daily activity.

I would really like you to argue for 

Quote

The rest of your post is also at least partly wrong. You have a lot to learn about banking.

3 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

The FED have a dual mandate:

 

This mandate was originally specified by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and was most recently clarified by an amendment to the Federal Reserve Act in 1977.

According to this legislation, the Federal Reserve's mandate is "to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.

 

The rest of your post is also at least partly wrong. You have a lot to learn about banking.

The primary function of the Fed is to ensure that the payment system functions. That was why it was set up in the first place, to act as a Central Bank and lender of last resort. It supports the banks.

Your maximum versus my full employment is mere semantics.

Stable prices and mderate long-term interest rates are basically inflation control and the 2% is the level set.

Otherwise

Fractional reserve banking does not exist in the banking world.

Reserves cannot be lent out.

If you disagree with any of those two statements please tell me why I am wrong, not that I am wrong and do not understand. I can show both are correct. But as challenger it is up to you to show they are wrong.

2 hours ago, midas said:

I don't agree with anything you say and it's not the article that is disingenuous- it is your post! Because you seem to be claiming the Federal reserve is a legitimate body who operate in the best interests of the American people  

 

You didn't have to look any further than the very harsh criticism levelled against this body  by former Congressman Ron  Paul who was the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology on   Financial Services, which oversees the Federal Reserve. Despite his best efforts the Federal reserve has never allowed an audit of its activities. Why is this?

 

You said " The financial crisis required some unusual policies, and sure, a few large financial companies were rescued from the brink". Now that is a totally disingenuous statement!

 

After the financial crisis you refer to Alan Greenspan fought tooth and nail to keep the derivatives market totally deregulated. Why? Is that in the best interests of the American people?

 

So today the derivatives market has grown even more since 2008 and is still totally unregulated — often estimated at more that $1.2 quadrillion at the high-end. Some market analysts estimate the derivatives market today at more than 10 times the size of the total world gross domestic product.

Is that in the best interests of the American people?

Hi,

Ron Paul only wanted the physical gold held by the Fed to be audited. Nothing else that I am aware of. I don't know why Bernanke refused, except that it would set a precedent and be a total expensive pain in the bum. The Germans got all their gold back earlier than promised.

The finance companies had to be rescued otherwise the entire global financial edifice could have collapsed. It was a time of incredible stress. The Fed probably did way too much, but considered it prudent. If the payments system had collapsed then the majority of the world's trade would have ground to a halt.

Greenspan constantly ran with the theme, "the markets will sort themselves out", he stated that it was impossible to say that a bubble had developed until it popped. It was his policy. He also said after he had retired that his "models were wrong". He had been successful for a long time "letting the markets rip" and probably did not want to change horses at the age of 80. Maybe he should have retired two decades earlier.

The issue with derivatives is are you measuring the nominal value or the value at risk?

(BTW I neglected to point out that the author the article you referenced, Ellen Brown, is in the business of selling her book. Nothing like a hint of conspiracy theory to move the numbers)

I have not heard any Fed bashers for a long time until this came up today. Even Schiff and Kaiser have gone quiet.