Category: Uncategorized

Nature on science fraud

Even the mainstream journals are being forced to tacitly admit that science skeptics are justified in their skepticism about modern professional science:

Retractions of scientific papers have increased about tenfold during the past decade, with many studies crumbling in cases of high-profile research misconduct that ranges from plagiarism to image manipulation to outright data fabrication. When worries about somebody’s work reach a critical point, it falls to a peer, supervisor, junior partner or uninvolved bystander to decide whether to keep mum or step up and blow the whistle. Doing the latter comes at significant risk, and the path is rarely simple. Some make their case and move on; others never give up. And in what seems to be a growing trend, anonymous watchdogs are airing their concerns through e-mail and public forums.

The reason that the watchdogs have to be anonymous is because scientists are far less amenable to having their mistakes exposed than most people are capable of imagining and the secular priesthood reliably retaliates against those who pull back the curtain on the myth.

Saving SF from Strong Female Characters IV

The fourth installment in John C. Wright’s detailed explication of one of Pink SF’s barbaric ills and the various ideological and religious reasons that underlie it:

My objection is to falseness, insincerity, propaganda, bad drama, bad art, and treason against the muses.  My objection is to using art for propaganda purposes. My objection is to Politically Correct piety. My objection is to the Thought Police.

My objection is to the spirit of totalitarianism.

For about ten years now, I have been writing and posting essays and articles on my electronic journal, and in all that time, I have been subjected to the Leftist mob tactics of mass hatred once and once only. It was the time I mocked the Sci-Fi Channel for kowtowing to Political Correctness. My motive for objecting was perfectly clear to everyone: I would like to write without censorship, formal or informal, based on political considerations. Formal censorship is state enforced; informal is enforced by organized mob-tactics, minority pressure groups, yelling, screaming, boycotts, hysteria mob-tactics and general bullying.

Because I would like to write without informal censorship interfering with my livelihood, I objected to Sci-Fi channel, or anyone in my field, surrendering to the minority pressure groups screaming and yelling and mob-tactics and bullying. So I mocked the Sci-Fi channel for encouraging the bullies by bowing in the knee to them.

And in return the mob tried to bully me, of all people. As if I give a tinker’s damn for the opinions of these yowling halfwits. (There was exactly one person of the seven hundred or so who wrote in to me who seemed sincerely offended, and to him I apologized. To remaining six hundred and ninety-nine or so, I offered defiance in public, and in private prayed for their fool souls, hoping despite all appearances they were not damned fools.)

This taught me a lesson, but not the one the mob organizers wanted to teach. It taught me what they were afraid of. Not of me: no one can be afraid of a fat and balding nearsighted science fiction writer with a dull swordcane.

Nor were they offended by calling sodomites sexual perverts, which I have done frequently before and since, never eliciting a single angry comment in reply, or attracting the slightest notice.

Since my legions of drug-maddened terror troops are all stranded on Salusa Secondus, the third planet of Gamma Piscium, 138 lightyears away, surely they are not afraid of any physical force I can bring to bear. Neither am I in a position to deny any man any economic opportunities, nor am I influential enough to provoke public opinion or create any controversy. I doubt I could even do as much myself against them as they have done to me, such as hack a Wikipedia page or send around an open letter and expect it to be published and reprinted.

To explain what they are afraid of, I am afraid I have to explain something of the pathology of Leftism.

They actually think they are fooling us.

Pink SF/F is a crystal-clear picture of Dunning-Kruger effect in action. Which is ironic, considering that the pinkshirts love to cite that effect, almost always inappropriately.  As Wright wryly notes:

“They think they are smarter than us. These undereducated boobs who cannot follow a syllogism of three
steps, who do not speak a word of Greek or Latin, who do not know the
difference between Arianism and Aryanism, who have never read ORIGIN OF
SPECIES or DAS KAPITAL or THE REPUBLIC and who do not even know the
intellectual parentage of all their ideas, these vaunting cretins whose
arguments consist of nothing but tiresome talking points recited by rote
and flaccid ad hominem, whose opinions are based on fashion, they, of
all people, think they are smarter than the rest of the world.”

Because degrees. Never mind that these magic credentials primarily consist of being willing to go into debt in order to obediently listen to serial monologues by poorly-read academics with no experience of the real world.


I don’t think I’ll ever forget being called “parochial” by a fan of a monolingual Canadian who grew up in the sticks of Western Ontario, graduated with an MA from the University of Western Ontario, and now lives in Canada’s 15th largest municipality, which happens to be located in southwestern Ontario. That, more than anything, made it obvious that Pink SF not only has no interest in reality, but can’t recognize it even when it is standing right in front of them, poking them in the nose.

Happy Thanksgiving

Among the many things for which I am grateful to God:

  • Marcher Lord Hinterlands. I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to be able to write in the full knowledge that I can write whatever I want and see it professionally edited and published in a timely manner. One has to have repeatedly put up with the vagaries of mainstream publishing to fully appreciate this.
  • Kirk and JartStar. Yesterday I received the QM:AMD dustjacket from the former and a high-res image of the QM:GK cover from the latter. Spectacular on both accounts. I’ve seen so many writers try to grin and bear it, try to pretend that they LOVE LOVE LOVE the dreadful cover that the publisher’s crack team of stock photography contorters have produced, that it is a true luxury to know that the cover is all but guaranteed to be the best part of the book.
  • John Scalzi, Andrew Marston, and the various anklebiters. When motivation is lacking, they are always there for me, an endless pool upon which to draw. It may sound strange but I’ve realized that they are, in their Platonic Form, my collective muse. But perhaps it’s not so strange; most male athletes respond better to curses, insults, and derision from their coaches than flattery and praise.
  • My football team and my continued good health. I’m the second-oldest man on the team, but I was selected to start more than half the games this year. Not too bad for someone who thought he was finished due to injury six years ago.
  • My partner in game development. Markku has worked himself nearly to the bone and we’re not finished yet. But First Sword is going to be really good, perhaps even great with a bit of luck and a tailwind.
  • The reviewers of my novels. Many writers and publishers have marveled at how many reviews my books get in comparison with their sales. Every novelist has his fans, but a higher proportion of mine are sufficiently motivated to take the time to tell others what they think, and better yet, to do so in an intelligent way that shows they are no mere fanboys and fangirls.
  • The readers of this blog. I blog out of compulsion, not out of the desire for fame or fortune. (NB: I’m no St. Francis; the latter is why I design games.) So, in one sense it doesn’t matter if anyone reads VP or not. But I was re-reading the debates with both Nate and Dominic yesterday, and it is very clear that the product of the interaction with the readers is superior to what I can produce alone.

So give thanks today. And be cognizant of to whom you are giving thanks. For without God, not only would there be nothing for which to give thanks, there would be no consciousness to be thankful.

Troll Ban: Mark Gainer

Mark Gainer is a socially autistic atheist who erroneously thought he could ignore the rules of the blog. He quickly discovered otherwise. It’s pretty simple. Either you abide by the rules of the blog which were posted years ago, or you do not comment here.

If you don’t like the rules, I don’t care. They are not going to change. And the last ten years indicates that everyone here will survive very well without your continued contributions to the discussions.

November 27, 2013 4:27 PM

    It’s faith based on BAD evidence. Very Very bad evidence.

November 27, 2013 7:30 PM

   VD: “Oh, is it now? And what is the standard by which you assert the evidence is “very very bad”?”

    I presume you refer to the bible when you talk this religion crap. Most idiots do. The bible is high derivative. The bible was written years after the fact. The bible is a propaganda too. The bible was revised by later generations.

    Do your self a favor and get out of that cult. If you don’t, you’ll live a life as a lie. No one should do that. On the other hand, if you are so feeble minded that you need an ancient fairy tale to tell you how to live your life, then maybe that derivative lie is what you need.

November 27, 2013 7:33 PM

    If you can’t state a question properly or make sense of words, don’t bother.

 November 27, 2013 7:48 PM

    Rules of the blog? That cute. The answer is it would depend. I’d need to see the sticks, the type of connections between them, and the nature of the surface?  Just make your fucking case instead of trying to ask idiotic rhetorical questions.

 November 27, 2013 7:54 PM

   Very cute….”Rules of the blog”. What’s number 6? “Idiots may apply?”

  VD: Since you clearly refuse to abide by the rules of the blog, you cannot comment here.

November 27, 2013 8:30 PM

   Under those conditions, then, no.

Bring it on

I agree with Tony Jones. It is absolutely time for a schism in the Church over the role of women:

I don’t take this lightly. I very much take Jesus’ prayer for unity in the Fourth Gospel seriously. Our eschatological hope is that the church will be one, and that we will all be united in belief, practice, and love.

But sometimes we need to separate. We need to say hard words to those who are not living the way that Jesus laid out for us. We need to divorce.

The time has come for a schism regarding the issue of women in the church. Those of us who know that women should be accorded full participation in every aspect of church life need to visibly and forcefully separate ourselves from those who do not. Their subjugation of women is anti-Christian, and it should be tolerated no longer.

That means:

  •     If you attend a church that does not let women preach or hold positions of ecclesial authority, you need to leave that church.
  •     If you work for a ministry that does not affirm women in ecclesial leadership, you need to leave that ministry.
  •     If you write for a publishing house that also prints books by “complementarians,” you need to take your books to another publishing house.
  •     If you speak at conferences, you need to withdraw from all events that do not affirm women as speakers, teachers, and leaders.

That is, we who believe in the full equality of women need to break fellowship with those who do not. The time for dialogue and debate has passed. The Spirit has spoken, and we have listened. It’s time to move forward with full force.

The schism has been declared. Very well. And likewise, Christians who actually follow the Word of God need to do the same. 

  •     If you have members that insist women preach or
    hold positions of ecclesial authority, you need to expel them from that church.
  •     If you run a ministry that does not affirm women in ecclesiastical leadership and you have employees or volunteers who do, you need to expel them from that ministry.
  •    
    If you run a publishing house that prints books by
    “non-complementarians,” you need to drop those authors.
  •     If you speak at conferences, you need to speak against the affirmation of women as speakers, teachers, and leaders.

As for me, I stopped attending all churches that feature female preachers or teachers or pastors or priests years ago. Based on the declining numbers of equalitarian church congregations around the world, I’m far from the only one.

The Spirit to which Tony Jones is listening to is not the Holy Spirit. It is the sweetly whispering voice of the Prince of This World.

THERE IS NO EQUALITY. EQUALITY DOES NOT EXIST IN ANY REAL, MATERIAL, LEGAL, OR SPIRITUAL SENSE.

Pop culture is utter filth

Vile, abusive, and occasionally lethal filth, especially where animals and children are concerned:

American Humane Association monitor Gina Johnson confided in an email to a colleague on April 7, 2011, about the star tiger in Ang Lee’s Life of Pi. While many scenes featuring “Richard Parker,” the Bengal tiger who shares a lifeboat with a boy lost at sea, were created using CGI technology, King, very much a real animal, was employed when the digital version wouldn’t suffice. “This one take with him just went really bad and he got lost trying to swim to the side,” Johnson wrote. “Damn near drowned.”

King’s trainer eventually snagged him with a catch rope and dragged him to one side of the tank, where he scrambled out to safety.

“I think this goes without saying but DON’T MENTION IT TO ANYONE, ESPECIALLY THE OFFICE!” Johnson continued in the email, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. “I have downplayed the f— out of it.”

The full scope of animal injuries and deaths in entertainment productions cannot be known. But in multiple cases examined by THR,
the AHA has not lived up to its professed role as stalwart defenders of
animals — who, unlike their human counterparts, didn’t themselves sign
up for such work.

Corey Feldman and others have spokenly openly about the homosexual pedophiles who infest Hollywood. But they’re also active in the music industry, as the guilty plea of Ian Watkins, the former lead singer of Lostprophets, demonstrates:

The police faced serious questions last night over why they failed to act sooner to stop Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins after it emerged fans had warned for nearly four years that he was obsessed with child porn.

From early 2010 horrified fans who had become friends with Watkins went online to beg for help after discovering vile images on his computer. Friends claim they called police to tell them the 36-year-old was a paedophile but officers did nothing, allowing him to go on to subject babies to the most horrific abuse.

A disturbing child porn profile created in that time by Watkins was viewed by more than 40,000 people on the internet and yet appears never to have been monitored by authorities.

In one post, written before his arrest, a fan wrote: ‘His on-off girlfriend reported him to police twice for being a paedophile.

‘He sent pornographic pictures of a little girl to a few girls telling them it was a five-year-old girl he’d raped. He also watches child porn constantly. Sick sick man.’

Watkins allegedly boasted to obsessed female fans that he had HIV and was on a mission to pass it on to children.

Child abuse and animal abuse are two of the inevitable consequences of secular culture. It’s not an accident that these predilections are beginning to come out of their closets at this time. It is both logically and empirically obvious that the tolerant, non-judgmental moral parasitism of secularism cannot survive the absence of its host. This is not to say that all men and women will inevitably descend into total depravity, only that their inability to prevent those who are more susceptible to such sins becomes complete in a moral vacuum.

You who pride yourselves on your tolerance, know that you are tolerating the rape and slaughter of the innocent. If you cannot say: “these things are wrong and they are evil because they are against the Law of God and Nature”, you are part of the problem. You’re not responsible, but you have rendered yourself useless with regards to assisting in the solution.

I liked Lostprophets. But, not unlike the band members themselves, I really don’t care to have anything to do with it anymore. Ian Watkins did, indeed, turn out to be a Prophet of the Lost.

Rights roundup

In case you’ve missed my recent posts at Absolute Rights, here is a summary of them. And you won’t want to miss my next one there, which reveals how totally I am in touch with the young people of America today and even features an up-to-date pop cultural reference to the rock star Kate Perry.

Kill Immigration Reform or Kill America

The problem is that immigrants and Americans alike want to live in
the America that was the result of 1950s America, but most immigrants
and many Americans have proven themselves completely incapable of doing
so without destroying it. If passed, Obama’s immigration reform will
transform the entire nation in much the same way that his health care
reform has transformed the health care industry. In other words, it will
prove to be an expensive and poorly-managed blunder that will destroy
what it purports to be saving without benefitting the very people it was
supposed to help.

It is long past time for Americans to grow up and realize that there
is nothing magical about American geography. It will not transform
peasants into productive middle-class businessmen and it will not
convert barbarians into civilized men and women.

The Game of Race Hate

The Civil Rights Movement has failed. Forced integration has failed.
Martin Luther King’s dream has become a nightmare, in which men are
neither judged by the content of their character or the color of their
skin. And where there is no judgment, no civilization is possible.



It’s Still the Economy, Stupid

It might seem strange to the non-economist that it never occurs to the professional economists that household debt, relative to income, might be a root cause of the problem rather than a symptom. After all, it’s hard to buy more consumer goods when most of your income is already going to paying off your mortage, your credit card, your student loan, and your manufacturer-financed car.

But the obvious is the impossible to the mainstream economists, because their Neo-Keynesian economic models consider debt exogenous to the system and therefore ruled out as a potential cause by definition.

The stagflation of the 1970s blew up conventional Keynesian economy theory. It is now looking increasingly likely that the debt disinflation of the 2010s will destroy the Neo-Keynesian theory that resulted from that previous failure.

Economics needs new and better models.

Sinners in the New America’s eyes

VDH observes that those of us who do not subscribe to equalitarian dogma are deemed sinners by modern society:

The radically egalitarian ethos demands always the descent to the lowest common denominators of taste. A world without requisites is the fairest. To capture the most attention of the masses requires a Cyrus, Gaga, or West. Once classical canons of artistic, literary, or musical expression were torn down, and once those classically trained rebels who ripped them apart have passed on, we are left with the ruins of trying to shock what is perhaps beyond being shocked. What more could Miley Cyrus do — wear two foam fingers? Could Mr. West mount his girlfriend, and sing and dance while riding backwards?

In other words, once you have rebelled against hexameters, quarter notes, or realistic representation, and after you have rebelled against that rebellion with crucifixes in urine, obscenity-laced rap, and peek-a-boo nudity on stage, what are you left with? The 20th-century rebels who knew what they did not like have been replaced by the anti-rebels who don’t know that there was ever something against which to rebel. Again, we are left with the 21st-century of Lady Gaga giving birth to a blue sphere, Miley Cyrus probing body orifices with a foam oversized finger, and Kanye West humping on a motorcycle while reciting obscene nursery-rhyme ditties.

In a society where endorsing fairness and equality equates with success, no supposedly arbitrary canons can exclude much of anything. Who are you to say that song A is bad, or movie B is good, given your own class, race, and gender privileges that result in excluding someone or something? The less dialogue and the more explosions and nudity earn supposedly more ticket-buyers, at least until a new generation wishes to build something from the ashes.

There can be no truth in our culture, given that it discriminates and proves hurtful to too many.  The greatest sin in America is not to lie, but to embrace a hierarchy of any sort at all.

So be it. I blaspheme against the equalitarian worms thusly:

ALL MEN ARE NOT EQUAL. WOMEN ARE NOT MEN. MEN ARE NOT WOMEN. CHILDREN ARE NOT ADULTS. ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. REALITY EXISTS AND IT IS NOT SUBJECTIVE. MORALITY EXISTS AND IT IS NOT SUBJECTIVE. HOMOSEXUALITY IS AN ABNORMALITY. RACE IS SCIENCE. CIVILIZATION IS NOT A GIVEN.

And, of course, the capstone:

THERE IS NO EQUALITY. EQUALITY DOES NOT EXIST IN ANY REAL, MATERIAL, LEGAL, OR SPIRITUAL SENSE.

And in more pragmatic terms, VDH’s article tends to put Ann Barnhardt’s essay, We are the Gold, in a stark and brutal light, does it not? Morality matters, and the society that casts morality aside will have no choice but to suffer the consequences.

So, who will he rip off?

The people have spoken. Of the 401 respondents, 202 (50%) believe that John Scalzi’s next novel is not going to rip off Heinlein, Piper, Dick, or Star Trek, but someone entirely new. Only 11 (3%) thought that he’d return to ripping off H. Beam Piper, while 23 naive Scalzi fans (6%) genuinely believe he’s going to publish something entirely new and original. That would certainly be interesting; should that unlikely future come to pass, I might even consider reading it myself.

I happened to think the majority is wrong. I assume he would publish a Midnight Star tie-in novel. But as it happens, I was wrong, as unbeknownst to most of us who don’t pay anywhere nearly as much attention to McRapey as some would assume we do, we already had our answer: LOCK IN

Fifteen years from now, a new virus sweeps the globe. 95% of those afflicted experience nothing worse than fever and headaches. Four per cent suffer acute meningitis, creating the largest medical crisis in history. And one percent find themselves “locked in”—fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to Stimulus.

One per cent doesn’t seem like a lot. But in the United States, that’s 1.7 million people “locked in” …including the President’s wife and daughter. Spurred by grief and the sheer magnitude of the suffering, America undertakes a massive scientific initiative. Nothing can restore to the “locked in” the ability to control their own bodies. But two new technologies emerge. One is a virtual reality environment, “The Agora,” in which the locked-in can interact with other humans, both locked-in and not. The other is the discovery that a few rare individuals have brains that are receptive to being controlled by others, meaning that from time to time, those who are locked in can “ride” these people and use their bodies as if they were their own.

This skill is quickly regulated, licensed, bonded, and controlled. Nothing can go wrong. Certainly nobody would be tempted to misuse it, for murder, for political power, or worse…

I can’t remember who wrote it, but apparently the answer is either James Cameron or the guy who wrote the book about rich people riding the bodies of poor people renting them out. Anyone remember the name of that one?

Mailvox: you talking to ME?

Serge Tomiko is a rather strange anklebiter who enjoys informing me that I know absolutely nothing about economics, which statement is inevitably followed by an economics-related assertion that indicates he has read the appropriate material, but he hasn’t understood it. He’s very much like Kevin Cline in A Fish Called Wanda; the last time he showed up, he failed to understand that the graph he was citing to dispute my contention was charting the data from the very same Federal Reserve report I had cited in the first place.

This time he felt the need to “correct” my factual statement that deposits are unsecured loans from the depositor to the bank:

Once again, Vox shows he is absolutely clueless about how banking functions. Deposits are NOT loans to the bank. Banks do not in any way require deposits. It is a service they provide.

Banks create money by the authority of the government, which is given to entities in exchange for interest payments. They do not lend money. In this case, the banks are being perfectly honest. It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether or not they have deposits. In fact, this kind of policy is intended to discourage deposits. 

Because beating up on Serge feels rather like kicking a toddler in the head, I thought I should give him the opportunity to retract his foolish “correction”.  I wrote: “Serge_Tomiko, I humiliated you the last time you tried to correct me.
Fair warning: I’m going to prison-rape you on this one, brutally, if you
don’t retract this. You have until tomorrow to think this over.”

Not being the brightest bulb on the planet, Serge proceeded to double-down.

What more can one say? It should be blatantly obvious. How could banks charge negative interest rates if their lending was at all dependent upon deposits?

This is a complicated issue, but Vox has it completely wrong.

This would a good, recent work that not only demolishes Vox’s common, yet ill informed idea of banking, it explains the origin of his error. Will he read it? I doubt it. 

As it happens, I did read it. I could have written it. And not only do I completely agree with it, but I note that it has precisely NOTHING to do with my original contention. The article deals with what bankers do with the money they are loaned by their depositors and says absolutely nothing about the nature of that money or the nature of the legal relationship between the depositor and the bank. Regardless of what Serge thinks, the central message of Buddhism is not every man for himself.

On the other hand, the 1848 Foley-Hill case in the English House of Lords said everything that one needs to know about both.

Edward Thomas Foley,–Appellant; Thomas Hill and Others,-Respondents

(1848) 2 HLC 28
English Reports Citation: 9 E.R. 1002
July 31, August 1, 1848.

Mews’ Dig. i. 42, 1007; ix. 76; xi. 988. S.C. In 8 Jur., 347; 1 Ph. 399; 13 L.J. Ch. 182. On point as to relation between banker and customer, considered in St. Aubyn v. Smart, 1867, L.R. 5 Eq. 189; A.-G. v. Edmunds, 1868, L.R. 6 Eq. 390; Moxon v. Bright, 1869, L.R. 4 Ch. 294; Summers v. City Bank, 1874, L.R. 9 C.P. 587; Marten v. Rocke, 1885, 53 L.T., 1948. Distinguished on point as to limitation (1 Ph. 399; cf. 2 H.L.C. pp. 41, 42) in In re Tidd (1893), 3 Ch. 156, and in Atkinson v. Bradford Third Equitable, etc., Society, 1890, 25 Q.B.D. 381.

EDWARD THOMAS & FOLEY, – Appellant; THOMAS HILL and Others,–, Respondents [July 31, August 1, 1848].

Banker and Customer–Accounts not complicated, subject for action, and not for bill.

The relation between a Banker and Customer, who pays money into the Bank, is the ordinary relation of debtor and creditor, with a superadded obligation arising out of the custom of bankers to honour the customer’s drafts; and that relation is not altered by an agreement by the banker to allow the interest on the balances in the Bank.

The relation of Banker and Customer does not partake of a fiduciary character, nor bear analogy to the relation between Principal and Factor or Agent, who is quasi trustee for the principal in respect of the particular matter for which. he is appointed factor or agent.

Is that sufficiently clear? The relationship between the depositor and the bank is the normal one between a creditor and a debtor. Because it is a loan from the former to the latter. In case the Old English legalese is too complicated for you, we can go from 1848 to 2013 and make it even simpler. Last week, the investor Jim Sinclair explained the same thing on Market Sanity:

I think that our listeners need to understand that when they make a deposit in a bank, they don’t have an asset. They become an unsecured lender to the banking institution, that goes back to British law in the 1850s and present law in North America and elsewhere. In fact, it’s universally accepted that once you make a deposit in a bank you’re lending the money to the bank. When you hear that the bondholders and lenders will have to undertake the rescue of any banking institution that faces difficulty to the listener, you are the lender. You are a lender without collateral. You are in a very junior financial position.

And if you’re still in doubt, it is right there in US law, specifically 12 USC § 1813 – Definitions

The term “deposit” means—
(1) the unpaid balance of money or its equivalent received or held by a bank or savings association in the usual course of business and for which it has given or is obligated to give credit, either conditionally or unconditionally, to a commercial, checking, savings, time, or thrift account, or which is evidenced by its certificate of deposit, thrift certificate, investment certificate, certificate of indebtedness, or other similar name, or a check or draft drawn against a deposit account and certified by the bank or savings association, or a letter of credit or a traveler’s check on which the bank or savings association is primarily liable:

What is an “unpaid balance of money received?” It is a loan. As it happens, it is an unsecured loan, albeit one that is nominally guaranteed by the FDIC, at the FDIC’s sole discretion. Which is exactly what I stated in the first place. Banks are nothing but middlemen, which is why they require loans from their “depositors” in order to make new loans and profit from the difference between the interest they pay and the interest paid to them. The real service they provide is collecting all of the many smaller deposit-loans into a single large credit pool that can then be borrowed from more efficiently in larger loan packages. This is a legitimate function, perhaps even a necessary one, but hardly one that rationally justifies nearly 30 percent of all the operating profit in the country being devoted to it.

As it happens, the ability of the banks to create money is not completely dependent upon receiving loans from the general public. They can also receive loans directly from the Federal Reserve. And, as per the previous post, that $2.5 trillion injection of credit from the Fed is what has produced the $2.1 trillion nominal increase in bank assets since 2008.

The amusing thing about this particular failure to grasp the obvious is that Serge is a self-avowed fascist who flatters himself with the idea that he understands the English Common Law. It appears he is still stuck on the Magna Carta and hasn’t reached the 19th century yet.