Hacker attack Russian Rubel

[Skybird]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-08/russian-hackers-moved-currency-rate-with-malware-group-ib-says


Hackers used malware to penetrate the defenses of a Russian regional bank and move the ruble-dollar rate more than 15 percent in minutes,
I am strictly against the freedom-killing insanity of forbidding cash payments and cash money. My main fear, is the total helplessness and vulnerability of citizens against future plundering operations and negative interest rates run by the state. My other big fear is big scale crime operations like this one described in the article.

Don't say "Ah, the Russians!". If you think this is not possible with the sophisticated Western states and banks, I laugh you in your face.

I am also just waiting for hacker terror attacks against hospitals, traffic, powergrids. The question is not "if", but "when". Such attacks also can be used to blackmail states for ransom or obedience, can be motivated by money-related crime, not necessarily always ideologically driven terror.

[Jimbuna]

I'm not overly concerned for the financial institutions but definitely more so for hospital and power grids etc.

[MaDef]

Hospital hit with ransomware (http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/16/the-hospital-held-hostage-by-hackers.html) already happening. this hospital caved after a week.

[Skybird]

I'm not overly concerned for the financial institutions
What you call "money", has no intrinsic value and is just unfunded borrower'S note. So is electronic checkbook "money" (=German: Giralgeld). When you want to pull some notes from the automat, and cannot, or the bank deposits of the banks have been dramatically reduced in a coup over night, or increased, and the imagined value of the remaining money gets additionally distorted by the shockwaves from these attacks - then you will care all of a sudden, promised. ;) Becasue you will all of a sudden be unable to buy even a single loaf of bread if you do not have any cash money left at home anymore.

People think they live in a safe world with electronic money. The thinbking error could not be any greater. They aren't more safe, but desperately less. The damages from electronic and computer bank crime are outclassing that from cash robbery already. And the biggest plunderer is the state anyway.

Locky is haunting Germany currently. The famous Fraunhofer institute has dozens of systems being locked down. The criminals behind the attacks demand ransom to be paid in bitcoins.

[AndyJWest]

Nothing has 'intrinsic value'. 'Value' is a social construct.

[Skybird]

Offer somebody two pieces of toilet paper and two diamonds, and let them choose. You will see immediately which of the two have more and which have almost no intrinsic value.

Your argument is as useless as as the often "gold cannot be eaten" thing. Of course gold cannot be eaten, to own it even can be declared a crime - and often has been so, and alwys by unscrupolous polticians. Still, which of the two things - a gold nugget or a note of a currency which yesterday was declared as unvalid by those who printed it, like a ripped theatre ticket - which one will get your farther when you need to barter to survive?

Things are worth what people are willing to give you for them. Notes only are worth something as long as the state does not declare them illegal or unvalid, and you still can find some fool willing to give you something of real intrinsic value for that paper snippet of yours - which is just an unfunded note of debt these days. One cannot magically create real value out of nothing like an alchemist.

For that hundred billion Mark-note from one hundred years ago, I get nothing today, not even from a museum. For that gold coin from the same era however I today at least would get the equivalent of the coin's gold, and maybe even a bonus for the sentimental value the coin has for a collector. A gold trader however only gives me the price of the gold.

Like gold can be prohibited to own by the unscrupulous scum in the politcial parties and governments, mafia gangs and conspirators that they all are, paper currencies can be devalued, and declared invalid. There is no difference. Just that the owner of gold can go to the blackmarket, or try to bring his gold beyond the border and out of reach of the robbing dictatorship. With an invalid currency, you are ruined even when being a millionaire. Intrinsic value, you see. The one has much of it, the other almost none. When the prohibition ends maybe 40 years later, your gold still will have intrinsic value, depending on the time and circumstances then.

My grandfather's father saved the better ammount of his moderate wealth that way: silver and gold. Not banknotes. Banknotes were moved around on pushcarts back then when buying bread at the baker - that huge was there intrinsic value. Worker who got their wages spent it within two hours. Becasue two hours later they would have gotten for it just half or even a third only of ehat theys owuld have gotten for it two hours earlier. The things they got, had intrinsic value. The banknotes that they moved around on hand trucks, had none.

What do I uselessly talk here. Modern people do not understand it. They think they just need to press the right button, and the problem of the world would be solved. That's what the gangster in the banks and finance ministries also think. Thats why they want to get rid of cash money, and have electronic money only that they can magically increase or steal from tohers by pressing a button. Why spending less when you have debts when instead you can steal and plunder from private savers?

That "experts" and "economists" can talk in public about negative interests, de factor demanding thte plundeing of private people and devaluiong private people'S legitimate possesson, even call this to become official state reason, that these criminals gansgter can call for these crimes without police leading them away and before a judge to have them charged, is a scandal and shows how deeply rotten, how absent claimed "morals" and sense of justice today really is.

But the most depressing detail is that people let these gangster get away with it, even applaude them, even elect them - instead of chasing them out of town or hanging these plunderers into the trees. If the victim of a crime refuses to accuse the perpetrator, even applauds him - then all is lost, and all effort is in vain.

[Oberon]

But gold will get you further than something like alcohol or cigarettes in a SHTF™ scenario, so they say. :hmmm:

[Skybird]

Why "but"?

Compare to today'S paper money, which represents receipts, vouchers for material values that do no exist. Somebody thought "We need more paper money so that we can spend more". And so he just printed it, not putting aside any material commodities that guarantee for these receipts, that form a material security.

Now that is as if somebody wants to pay somebody else by saying "Here, take this: I wrote this certificate of debt, worth my last shirt, you can trade and barter it to anybody who can take my last shirt from me when handing this note out to me." - But what if there is no last shirt in my cupboard, and I ran around already naked, and I have no last shirt? The certificate of debt by which i recognise that I owe the value of one shirt to the owner of that certificate, is worth nothing, obviously. Where nothing is, nothing can be taken, where I do not own anything, nothing can be taken away from me.

The king parades in the street these days, showing off his new clothes, and everybody says "Oh!" and "Wowh!" and "Look how fantastic his clothes look!" But the mere truth is - the king is naked.

The day will come when even the slowest people will recognise what is going on - and from that moment on nobody will give you anything for your Euro and dollar notes anymore - nobody. Since the first day when the banks handed out more credits and notes than they had stored in security values in their safe, they were bankrupt. In a fractional reserve system, all banks are allways bankrupt and cannot address their liabilities if customers demand that. Only a microscopic fraction. One of the greatest evils, one of the greatest crimes in the history of man: the fractional reserve banking system. A total disaster from day one on - with an unlimited guarantee that there never can be a happy end.


And then come some idiotic alchemists who are drunk of their own greatness and glory and tell the world that we must steal and plunder from people trying to secure their life at old age by putting aside some savings during their life, and that we must print more money and create money FROM NOTHING...? HOW CRIMINAL AND HOW INSANE IS THAT...??? You can lower your debts by spending more - and living more and more on tick and increase debts and intensify taxes and plundering...???

Somebody wanna seriously tell me their world is not a madhouse that I am living in...?

It does not need rocket science to understand these things. Every two kids bartering their candies and counting them and collect their missing colours know that. We are talking math, first class elementary school. The Rogoffs and Krugmans and Yellens and Draghis and almost every career politician of this world never had maths at school, obviously. Nor did they had lessons in ethics and morals. Though shall not steal - nobody has heard or read that before...?

[AndyJWest]

I find no value in your endless explanations for why the sky will fall in. Evidently they make you happy, so they must have some value to you. Good luck in exchanging them for something useful...

[mako88sb]

Hospital hit with ransomware (http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/16/the-hospital-held-hostage-by-hackers.html) already happening. this hospital caved after a week.

There was an episode on the CSI:Cyber show about something similar. I didn't see the whole thing so can't compare but it's pretty worrisome to say the least.

[Jimbuna]

But gold will get you further than something like alcohol or cigarettes in a SHTF™ scenario, so they say. :hmmm:

Rgr that...hide those bars in a safe place.

I've plenty of spare room if you're out of ideas/places :03:

[Skybird]

Rgr that...hide those bars in a safe place.

Until the next gold prohibitioon comes. Then you need a long breath to sit that one out, means: liquidity.

Lets face it, states are the by far most powerful manifestation of organised crime, and they always are on the inside track. Prohibition, mandatory taxes when selling, enforced exchange rates, even raids into private homes and confiscation, expropriation - we have been there, we will be there again.

And most people even elect these people. :dead:

They even can do things more elgantly. In germany, currently gold can be bought anonymous up to a limit of 14999 Euros per day, per head. If they introduce the cash payment limit of 5000 or 3000 euros, as they plan to do in Germany, this form of anonymous investment is gone. If people think it is about fighting crime or terror when abandoning 500 Euro notes or limiting cash payments, then they allowed to get fooled by the gangsters in the govenrment and banking industry. Its about enforcing people to expose their "wealth" digitally to any attempt by the state to tax it additonally, plunder it, enforce negative interests rates, etc etc. It is about enforcing even more hidden expropriation - without needing to accept criticism for it, for one does not do to steal and plunder, but to "fight organised crime" and "money laundering" - how could one be against that?! Yeah, sure. Experiences in countries that have cash limits since longer time already show that these limits have had no signficant effect on counter-crime. And the bigger financial damage these days comes from e-cash and computer banking crimes already anyway. If safety would be the objective, you would need to ban computer banking and e-cash and credit cards - and enforce a full cash-system.

They are lying, and then they lie more, and they end with even more lies after that. Stealing and plundering, devaluing and hidden expropriation - thats what they are about, nothing else.

[Jimbuna]

So what is the answer because I am slowly losing my will to live?

[Schroeder]

So what is the answer because I am slowly losing my will to live?
Gold Pressed Latinum is accepted throughout the galaxy.:D

[Oberon]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/20/15/09/20150955aab4411aabdd24a2ae7f20ac.jpg

[AndyJWest]

Shiny rocks. The answer to everything...

[Betonov]

Problem with gold is, that I cannot go into a store and buy bread with it.
I have to converted to state money first.

When it comes to SHTF scenarios, I doubt people will find gold that valuable in a goods trade economy. Cigarettes and canned food will be the currency.

But it is a good investment medium. Fire, water and corrosion can't touch it.

[Skybird]

My grandparents still remembered a SHTF scenario, they lived through it. Eggs were traded for coal, cigarettes for butter, a warm coat for a sack of potatoes, and so forth. Jewelry was rarely traded, but of course: it happened, everywhere. So were gold and silver coins.

Legal by the law it was not. It was called black market. The law fades when you struggle for mere survival.

When you save in real commodities, like gold, you try to save "value" from one currency ending into the next currency beginning. It would be good if the next one would be a full-value money, like silvercoins and gold coins, but I fear the next currency will be designed to be even worse than the garbage there now is.

Fractional reserve banking, and a minting monopole for the state - the two arch-sins for every economy. Aloow any of ther two to happen, and you have sealed the doom coming afterwards, for both options open doors and gates for making debts. And different to what alchemists saym debts are debts, and inflating the money in ciruclation never is something good, since it just devalues it.

You cannot get anything out of nothing, this trick simply does not work. Keynes can turn in his grave, socialists can claim differently, career politicians can cry wolf: from nothing comes nothing, you cannot spoend yourself out of debt, you cannot consume and think that way you save.

It tells something about modern state of minds when one must expülain something so essential, fundamental, logical.

The solution, Jimbuna, you want to know? Collapse. Its the only option left, and it will happen, since it already is happening, no matter whether we like it or not. An end with horror, or horror without end (meaning dicatorship to enforce debt money regime) - thats the only choice left. When you have fallen into the pool already, you do not ask how to get out of the water without getting wet, Jim. You ARE wet already. Sine the 12th century, all paper money experiments have failed, with dramatic consequnces, always, all of them. Our modern ones will not become the first exception from the rule, even if we think it to be smart to now try paper money without paper: digital money. The reason is simply: from nothing comes nothing. You cannot eat and save the cake at the same time - and before you even have baked it, and earned the money to buy the ingredients. It has never worked, it does not work, and it will never work. Because it can never work.

"Schulden sind vorgezogener Konsum, der in der Zukunft ausfällt."

[Oberon]

Wait...wait...wait...so Gold isn't the answer and the best goods to have in a SHTF™ scenario now?

[AndyJWest]

Nope. When the sky falls in, shiny rocks won't hold it up...

[ikalugin]

Problem with gold is, that I cannot go into a store and buy bread with it.
I have to converted to state money first.

When it comes to SHTF scenarios, I doubt people will find gold that valuable in a goods trade economy. Cigarettes and canned food will be the currency.

But it is a good investment medium. Fire, water and corrosion can't touch it.
Weapons is the best currency ofcourse.

First of all - weapons (and specifically - ammo) provide for the most basic human need - security. How can you eat your food or drink your water if it was taken by others? Or if you were murdered for no reason?

Secondly - weapons tend to be fairly non perishiable, allow for long enough storage, can be traded in small ammounts (ie you could use rounds as individual currency units).

Hence the best place for the People (and the State) is the Armed Forces and Military-Industrial complex.

-troll ended-