Just months after we learned Chinese hackers had compromised US telecom systems through government-mandated backdoors, an inexperienced developer from Musk’s DOGE unit is pushing untested cod…
What happened in Albania was that a bunch of people, basically, stole most of the money in the country. It caused a civil war, sort of. Nobody ever got their money back either.
I would like to say it’s more complicated than that, here, but I’m not sure that it is. My one consolation is that Musk and Trump have not the slightest idea what they’re fucking with or what they’re up against, if it really gets its dander up at them, but that’s at minimum 40% wishful thinking on my part.
I would like to say it’s more complicated than that, here, but I’m not sure that it is.
The US has infinitely deep pockets, practically speaking. That produces a lot of fraud and embezzlement, but its not like you can just walk away with the real material assets of the country (particularly since so much has already all been carved up and privatized out).
What you can do is break down the flow of commerce passing through the federal government and send a bunch of contractors and federal staffers spiraling into bankruptcy. All those hospitals that rely on Medicare/Medicaid payments, all the MICs that the Pentagon has to pay to keep delivering goods and services, all the folks on SS getting a direct deposit… You could fuck up a lot just by stalling when those payments get processed.
It’s more complicated, without a doubt. But that doesn’t improve the situation. We already saw what happened when the private sector financial flow got snarled up in 2008. God only knows what’s going to happen when Musk and Trump decide to start labeling half the Treasury’s recipients “DEI”.
Strap in, folks…
My one consolation is that Musk and Trump have not the slightest idea what they’re fucking with or what they’re up against
I think they’ve discovered, over the last twelve years, that nobody is guarding the hen house. You really can just send four schmucks with a basic understanding of Quickbooks into the US Treasury and have them start meddling with trillions of dollars in cash flow.
Yeah. American’s wealth is not in the computers of the federal reserve. We have a continent’s worth of resources; armies upon armies of smart, committed, talented people; education; strong businesses; technical knowledge of an incredible variety; and most importantly, we’re still attractive enough (or were, as of last year) to be attracting the best and brightest of the world to come and add to the fire and keep it going. For as much as we’ve been fucking it up for the last fifty years, that all still remains true to a pretty large degree. Everything that happens in the treasury department draws off of that capital. Nothing that happens out in the world depends, at the root, on the computer that Musk now has access to.
But, it’s also true that the financial world is a city in the clouds. Pop the bubble, and sometimes it takes quite a long time to rebuild and inflate back to its former size. Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it’s a catastrophe in the making. I don’t know, to be honest. But “strap in” sounds just about fucking right, it’s not going to be simple or smooth.
Yeah, true that. There’s a whole history of theft and oppression that I’m glossing over there. I do think that about 50% of it was legitimate hard work.
I also think it is fascinating that, after 50 years of the working class going to open war with capitalism to fight for a decent way to live and a decent system (1880-1930), the US spent the next 50 years becoming the most powerful country on earth. I think those two are highly related and the connection is almost never talked about. We spent a lot of the years before 1880 stealing and oppressing just as hard, and it didn’t really do shit for us in terms of building a modern-US-style type of wealth and privilege.
The implications under that theory for what’s about to happen, based on what the current system is for how long, are pretty unsettling to me.
It was also kind of sort of every other first world economy getting bombed into the ground twice in a row which left the US as the only major manufacturing centre for a long time and able to reap massive benefits from that position.
Yeah, but there are always big world events that someone could have capitalized on. China could be the dominant power today, or South America. The US just hit on a successful formula for it in a way that a whole lot of other governments and groupings of people did not, and I’m saying that having a massive population base that genuinely believed in the program that the government was selling was a big part of why that happened.
It didn’t happen on its own, the people had to fight for it against active deadly government resistance. But once it happened, it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to either the people or the government. And then, not knowing what they had, the government and the people let it fall to ruin, and now we’re fucked.
They’re specifically putting in place a measure to hide that they blocked payments. So the government books will read that it was properly paid but the money won’t go.
I wonder what they could possibly want to do with that money. Politically they could just lie about paying it. They’ve done that to great success already. So for what possible reason could they want to spoof the accounts book?
Just wait until they allow bitcoin transfers over tor… Its a featured not a bug…
What happened in Albania was that a bunch of people, basically, stole most of the money in the country. It caused a civil war, sort of. Nobody ever got their money back either.
I would like to say it’s more complicated than that, here, but I’m not sure that it is. My one consolation is that Musk and Trump have not the slightest idea what they’re fucking with or what they’re up against, if it really gets its dander up at them, but that’s at minimum 40% wishful thinking on my part.
The US has infinitely deep pockets, practically speaking. That produces a lot of fraud and embezzlement, but its not like you can just walk away with the real material assets of the country (particularly since so much has already all been carved up and privatized out).
What you can do is break down the flow of commerce passing through the federal government and send a bunch of contractors and federal staffers spiraling into bankruptcy. All those hospitals that rely on Medicare/Medicaid payments, all the MICs that the Pentagon has to pay to keep delivering goods and services, all the folks on SS getting a direct deposit… You could fuck up a lot just by stalling when those payments get processed.
It’s more complicated, without a doubt. But that doesn’t improve the situation. We already saw what happened when the private sector financial flow got snarled up in 2008. God only knows what’s going to happen when Musk and Trump decide to start labeling half the Treasury’s recipients “DEI”.
Strap in, folks…
I think they’ve discovered, over the last twelve years, that nobody is guarding the hen house. You really can just send four schmucks with a basic understanding of Quickbooks into the US Treasury and have them start meddling with trillions of dollars in cash flow.
What they’re “up against” is a paper tiger.
Yeah. American’s wealth is not in the computers of the federal reserve. We have a continent’s worth of resources; armies upon armies of smart, committed, talented people; education; strong businesses; technical knowledge of an incredible variety; and most importantly, we’re still attractive enough (or were, as of last year) to be attracting the best and brightest of the world to come and add to the fire and keep it going. For as much as we’ve been fucking it up for the last fifty years, that all still remains true to a pretty large degree. Everything that happens in the treasury department draws off of that capital. Nothing that happens out in the world depends, at the root, on the computer that Musk now has access to.
But, it’s also true that the financial world is a city in the clouds. Pop the bubble, and sometimes it takes quite a long time to rebuild and inflate back to its former size. Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it’s a catastrophe in the making. I don’t know, to be honest. But “strap in” sounds just about fucking right, it’s not going to be simple or smooth.
The “wealth” of empire is in petrol-dollars, saudi tyrants, environmental destruction, international exploitation/theft, endless violence, etc.
lol.
Yeah, true that. There’s a whole history of theft and oppression that I’m glossing over there. I do think that about 50% of it was legitimate hard work.
I also think it is fascinating that, after 50 years of the working class going to open war with capitalism to fight for a decent way to live and a decent system (1880-1930), the US spent the next 50 years becoming the most powerful country on earth. I think those two are highly related and the connection is almost never talked about. We spent a lot of the years before 1880 stealing and oppressing just as hard, and it didn’t really do shit for us in terms of building a modern-US-style type of wealth and privilege.
The implications under that theory for what’s about to happen, based on what the current system is for how long, are pretty unsettling to me.
It was also kind of sort of every other first world economy getting bombed into the ground twice in a row which left the US as the only major manufacturing centre for a long time and able to reap massive benefits from that position.
Yeah, but there are always big world events that someone could have capitalized on. China could be the dominant power today, or South America. The US just hit on a successful formula for it in a way that a whole lot of other governments and groupings of people did not, and I’m saying that having a massive population base that genuinely believed in the program that the government was selling was a big part of why that happened.
It didn’t happen on its own, the people had to fight for it against active deadly government resistance. But once it happened, it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to either the people or the government. And then, not knowing what they had, the government and the people let it fall to ruin, and now we’re fucked.
They’re specifically putting in place a measure to hide that they blocked payments. So the government books will read that it was properly paid but the money won’t go.
I wonder what they could possibly want to do with that money. Politically they could just lie about paying it. They’ve done that to great success already. So for what possible reason could they want to spoof the accounts book?
? That’s actually extremely secure
Yes but hard to trace. Not impossible to trace but allows government corruption money to flow.
Is that a joke? Its a public ledger thats easier to trace than USD