Leaderboard

With regards to AOC, anything that comes out of her pipe hole? But if you want specifics: -Green New Deal, running Amazon out of NYC costing her constituents 25k jobs, comparing combating climate change to fighting the nazis, not understanding how unemployment works (thinking unemployment is so low due to people working two jobs), accusing Ted Cruz of trying to murder her for the Jan 6 spectacle which didn’t even occur in her building, claiming Billionaires shouldn’t exist/her radical tax ideology, comparing southern border detention centers to nazi concentration camps (those “cages” still exist but Democrats are in power now so, nothing to see here), wants to eliminate Border Patrol, supports open borders, supports defunding the police, anti second amendment, claims it is okay to spread misinformation as long as she is “morally right”. Want us to go on? The fact she got re-elected (over a Jamaican Republican businesswoman as her republican contender) tells me everything I need to know about the people in Queens and why it’s the armpit of America. She sucks, and so does the rest of the “squad”. Zero sympathy for her.

By excellent you mean an aircraft that is still dwarfed by a C-5 and is slow as a strat airlifter, and destroys the dirt airfields it lands on when performing the tac role. Good all purpose aircraft but not great at any one thing.

You’re smarter than this. Has she built multi-million dollar businesses? Did she expose actual corruption within our government? Has the media aligned against her to blow every comment out of proportion and take each glib remark out of context? Has anyone won a Pulitzer for spreading lies about her? AOC is a radical revolutionary with niche appeal intent on tearing down this country. Say what you will about Trump and his off-putting mannerisms, but the man has statistically significant voter appeal and leads a political movement based on prioritizing American security, energy independence, and economic growth, all while facing historically unprecedented resistance from a media-government inner circle. I see zero equivalence between him and AOC other than a bent towards showmanship.

At FedEx we used to have the ability to create a "negative airman list". Essentially a list of the pilots you didn't want to fly with. If your awarded schedule came up with one of the folks on your list, the system would bypass and you got your next choice. Now it gets funny. Of course, the same 5% minority of clowns were showing up on everyone's list. The FedEx lawyers start pondering this system and decided it's a bad idea. They didn't like having a consistent list of problem children being created each month by a group of competent professionals whose judgement is respected and well paid. Bzzzt to the negative airman list. Now the Captain's bid are published Tuesday and the FO's bid's are delayed 24-hours. This allows them to manually de-conflict if they find someone they'd rather not fly with on their bid with no paper trail for the lawyers to worry about. As Serious said, Captain's are stuck with who they get. But, it seems the majority of the pilots who have a list are FO's, so it probably works out most of the time.

Looking up from my MQ-9 GCS with the plane doing like 150 KTAS for a 6-9 hour transit…

Best typo in the history of Twitter 🤣

Awkward FO- “Parking checklist complete. Good flying with ya, maybe I’ll see you on another trip soon!” CA - “Yeah, about that. Here’s my employee number. Do me a favor would ya…”

This is an interesting chart. What are derivatives? How much risk is hidden within them? (remember MBSs and CDSs?) How much of your wealth is dependent on the performance of derivatives? How much of your part of the world economy, into which you spend your actual wealth, is dependent on derivatives?

Reading the Air Force Amn/NCO/SNCO Facebook page about finance is comedy gold! Highly recommend!!

I'd imagine because it seems like a good deal. USAF seems hell bent on killing them all.

💯💯 People need to stop harassing other people, including public officials, and going home thinking they’re Rosa Fucking Parks or MLK Jr. 🙄 I don’t support it when progressive do it nor when right-wing people do it either.

What serious said. At DAL anyway, FO's can bid to avoid certain employee numbers. I've never actually bid to avoid anyone because I'm not going to let one asshole take away any of my bidding power. I have heard of Captains telling FO's to add him to their no-fly list lol.

While simultaneously clutching their pearls as Kinzinger reads letters from loons and claiming the Republican Party is full of extremist terrorists and crap… These idiots don’t get it both ways. You can’t advocate for violence and threats and then be upset when it happens to your side. They and every other idiot saying “enough talk” or “you can’t reason with the other side” own this crap. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That using protestors to find politicians in public and "make them uncomfortable" is a double edged sword. This is obvious unless you only follow one side of the political discourse.

A few that stuck around for 20 did get fighters as the Recce sqds were closing down. That one low level ride we received in the -38 turned me on to the RF-4C and made a career killing move taking it over the F-4. Only regret was not having a chance to fly the F-5E. LL is still in my blood as I flew a 1.5 hr "sortie" this morning and never got above 1000' agl.

https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-races-to-sniff-one-last-girl-before-losing-sense-of-smell-from-covid/

I may know why that FCIF dropped..... So there I was, walking into caddy shack to fly my daily suckfest sortie out of the Deid. Looked at my flight orders and saw I had one Col Patrick Rhatigan flying with me on that fine day. Didn't know the dude, so whatever. Everything was going fine until he noticed I was wearing my Alma Mater's ball cap during my preflight. He asked me if I was going to take it off before we departed. Getting the hint, I said yessir. He then asked me "if you didn't take off your cap, how would you quick don your oxygen?" I thought to myself "The same way I don it every time I test it during the preflight..." Fast forward a a few minutes, and then he asked me if I was going to unroll my flight suit sleeves. Because "what if we caught on fire and your arms got burned?" I figured if we were on fire, and my arms were at risk, we had much bigger problems. Don't remember much of the sortie, probably because no one did much talking, as we didn't want the Colonel to chime in. After we landed, I was on my way into MX debrief, and for some reason he followed along. Once we entered the outer door, he asked me why I didn't call the area to attention. I wish I remember how I responded. I probably just stared back at him with a confused look on my face. The next day....... So there I was, walking into caddy shack to fly my daily suckfest sortie out of the Deid. As I was scrolling through my seemingly endless FCIFs, I noticed one labeled "Approved Headgear." From Col Rat basically stating that ball caps were not authorized, and then went on to list all of the headgear that IS authorized. That FCIF was because of me. I was so proud of it.

Adding another Wendover video (cause they're really well done and they become a wormhole I've fallen down more than a few times) about fuel prices likely not going anywhere. If this video is correct we, the airlines and pax (or drivers in general), will have to factor in high fuel costs for the foreseeable. Not sure how that all dances with a (likely) economic slowdown/reduced travel, inability to lower ticket prices without being red for fuel costs, etc., but it could be something big in the calculus for potential hiring. It also makes sense when looking at the fact oil was, inflation-adjusted, north of $180/bbl in June 2008, yet prices were not this high at the pump.

I Thought a prerequisite for that job was to be a terminal O-5 on a fini tour. They must’ve needed a snacko or something.

F-15E 1. High, you'll be busy, whether you're at home or away 2. Reasonably stable, but busy. Expect 1-2 AEFs per assignment plus numerous exercises/TDYs 3. Pretty darn good 4. Around until at least 2035, good upgrades planned 5. Mountain Home, Lakenheath - amazing / Seymour Johnson - not so much We bring some capabilities no one else does, but we also have our limitations compared to the 5th gen guys. We're popular right now due to our load out, comms and long legs (for a fighter.) I suspect the reason you haven't heard a ton from the fighter guys is that if you aren't 100% sure this is for you, it probably isn't, as you'll quickly burn out. Deployments are fun, but the 12hr+ days for years on end at home will wear you out if you don't love it. If I have to talk you into a fighter, it isn't for you. That isn't meant to say that you can't make it, but that you may not want to. If you've always dreamed of flying fighters, you will have zero regrets and kick yourself when you look back for even thinking of another option.

Quoted for truth. I flew C21s, KC10s, and C130H3s (all 3 to many Conus and oconus locations, and logged O1 time in all 3)....the Lear was the easiest and most family-friendly, the -10 the most comfortable, and the most widely-travelled, and the Herc the most fun and challenging. The only one I'd volunteer to go fly again is the Herc.

C-130H at Yokota Take all this with a caveat since the C-130H is going away and being replaced with the J (same mission, just no engineer, navigator and much more advanced systems.) Also, I'm at Yokota which is one of the best flying assignments in the Air Force, so what I say will not necessarily mirror Little Rock or Dyess. Maybe Ramstein.. 1. Ops Tempo/Deployment: We don't deploy anymore but the ops tempo is absolutely crazy. This is cool if you like to fly like me, not so cool if you value family life. That being said most families love Yokota/Japan. Tight knit community here and the Japanese are absolutely wonderful people (although robot like.) We fly about 30 local lines a week, and about 20 off station missions a month as a squadron. Not to mention, exercises (to awesome places like Thailand, Guam, Philippines.) Life is busy. Young guys can expect to fly their asses off and I'm sure that will continue with the J transition. Captain-Major types, still expected to fly the line often (which is great,) but also manage a flight, 18 additional duties, MC for an exercise and be in-charge of the air-show. One thing that sucks about the H is that it breaks ALL the time. Very frustrating to go try to fly the line and the plane has a 3 hour ETIC thus your line cancelled. Your 2 day off station can turn into a 30 day real quick. Not too bad if you are single and like being on the road but very unstable. 2. Lifestyle/ Family Stability: As a young guy it is awesome. I've been to 80% of the countries in Asia in the C-130. While we don't deploy, we go to some very challenging, remote airfields that really put your PIC skills to test. We go to Nepal often and as a bro of mine would say: "there is no way to legally take off out of that place." Mt Everest is 29,000 feet and we can't even climb that high. As I mentioned, most families love Yokota, all families live on base and single dudes/dudettes live off base. 3. Community morale: The base sucks, plain and simple. Worst support service I've ever seen. Not knocking on any one individual, I know many great dudes in comm/finance/etc. but as an organization the base is horrendous. People care more about keeping track of resiliency training/SAPR/w/e than launching planes. 4. Advancements & Future of the airframe: Future? Guard/Reserves or go J. Most H guys are going J so that's cool. Advancements? We get a lot of opportunities here that you won't get elsewhere. Young captain as mission commander of a combined/joint exercise with Philippine/Korean/Japanse/Aussie C-130s flying together in formation? Hauling cargo and people into third world countries? Dropping Cambodian paratroopers out of an American C-130 and planning the whole thing? A lot of advancement. 5. Preferred PCS locations : Yokota or Ramstein. Dude, at the end of the day, I love the C-130. We get to travel the world like our C-17/C-5 brothers but yank and bank like our fighter bros, 300 feet of the ground, in formation, to an assault landing or throw shit out the back like our bomber bros. It truly is the best of all worlds.

Flying fighters (F-16 for me) is awesome. I've done incredible things I would never had the opportunity to do anywhere else. The flying part: Flying A-B is nothing more than a means to an end...the end being tactically employing the aircraft. Flying the jet is easy, employing it well is difficult. If you want to fly around the world and stay in 69 countries before your first assignment is up, this is not the place. If you want to have "chill" time while flying, fighters are not what you're looking for. That said, I have flown all over this world (for a fighter guy anyways), had countless badass TDYs, and employed weapons in the best (i.e. TDYs) and worst parts of this world. The squadron camaraderie, even under the iron fist of the past few years, is second to none. Squadron life: Can vary a lot depending on leadership, as I'm sure the same is true in just about every walk of life. I have been fortunate to have great leadership, so my general experiences have been very positive. I know guys who were/are miserable because they have shitty leadership. Luck and timing matters. In the CAF, I'd say the average guy works 12 hrs day, 5 days a week. It's not uncommon to come in on the weekend to do 2-6 hrs of mission planning for a Mon sortie (because everyone was too hammered or didn't give a shit on Fri afternoon after academics and pilot meetings). However, that's personal choice; dudes could get it done on Fri and have the whole weekend off. You're expected to work your ass off on the tactical side to be a good fighter pilot, but there is still all of the BS that has to get done. You will have a lot to balance, but it is doable and the reward of flying the mission is worth it...at least for a while. If you go to other assignments such as teach B-Course, test, etc. life can ease up a bit and you're not necessarily working 60+ hr weeks...those are good "break for the family" assignments. Family life: It seems in general we are not on the road nearly as much has the AMC/AFSOC bros. But, depending on what's going on the squadron, those 12+ hr days can lead to a lot of missed dinners with the family, etc. There was about a 4 month period (no TDY, no deployment) where I didn't see my first kid 5 days a week because I left for work before he woke up and came home after he went to bed...I made the weekend family time. Overall, in my time flying fighters, I've been gone roughly 50% of the time (TDYs or deployed). Some guys hit more or less, but I'd say 50% is about the average. Overall for my family personally, we prefer longer time away with less frequency. Other communities do less time away, but far more frequently. That may work out better for other's family situation. Overall, I absolutely recommend dudes look into fighters. I think the best analogy I can think of is it's like playing team sports - very competitive (in a good way), you're very close with the bros (work and leisure), and you fly the jet/work together to win. Or you lose, but you learn and get better so when the big game kicks off, you're ready. It's a constant challenge that I personally would be bored without.

This leads us to our first actual post on money and finance, and we should start by asking why is this a necessary topic. Alluded to above, the theory most people have been taught about money is false, and after a 40 year fight the central banks are acknowledging this fact. This means that the arguments and assertions most people make are often, unknowingly, incorrect. Let's start by covering some useful facts: most large nation states don't have reserve requirements. And, the money supply is not created by banks accepting deposits first and then lending them out. Instead, banks create money when they issue a loan, and no pre-existing deposits are required to issue that loan. The bank creates money when it writes entries on its balance sheet. As such, money is technically two things at the moment it is created by a private bank or money creating entity, such as a non-bank financial intermediary (aka shadow bank): an asset (A) and a liability (L). These two components are bound together by the legal contract which creates them, such as a mortgage loan created by a bank and signed by a borrower. When the liabilities are returned to the contract, the asset and liability are then deleted from the balance sheet of the bank (destroyed). Money pops into and out of existence according to the lending practices of banks and loan repayment. There are multiple kinds of money, globally organized in a hierarchy of importance, for example: $ Federal Reserve Deposits $ Commercial Bank Deposits $ Eurodollar Bank Deposits $ Private contracts When people use language like: "there is insufficient reserves in the system" or "reserve liquidity is too low" they are talking about a specific form of money, Federal Reserve Deposits. These are just like the deposits you and I have in our commercial bank accounts, except that they belong to account holders who bank with the Federal Reserve (checking accounts of the banks at their bank, the Fed)--you and I cannot open reserve accounts at the Fed, we cannot hold reserves in digital form. However, cash is essentially a reserve deposit in physical form, and we can hold cash. Similarly, we can open accounts at the Treasury (https://www.treasurydirect.gov/) to purchase US Gov securities directly, which is very similar to being an account holder at the Fed (you become, essentially, an account holder at the Treasury which is an account holder at the Fed). The hierarchy of money is a outcome of historical circumstance. A great source covering this topic in detail is this book here: https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Bretton-Woods-Relations-University/dp/0691162379/ref=sr_1_1?crid=12M70BIUIWIBJ&keywords=battle+of+bretton+woods&qid=1652974414&sprefix=battle+of+bretton+woods%2Caps%2C160&sr=8-1 In short, the US deposed the UK through clever finance and replaced the Pound Sterling with the US Dollar as the primary means of all financial settlement in the early 1940's. If you had to read one source in this thread, The Battle of Bretton Woods would likely be the most applicable to military history and education and is the easiest to read. We visualize the hierarchy very simply with a set of balance sheets corresponding to each bank, and their account holders. Here you can see your account at your bank, which is simply an entry on that bank's balance sheet. Similarly, your bank is account holder at the Fed, as are foreign central banks and some foreign banks. What you see in your account is just the bank's liabilities they have assigned to you. These numbers do not represent physical objects or cash at the bank, or any bank, they are just numbers in the liability side of the bank's ledger. For matters about the government's debt level, taxation and government borrowing, we are interested in the account at the Fed for the Treasury, called the Treasury General Account (TGA). You can see the balance in the TGA at the Fed, you can always see the TGA at the Fed online, pirctured here below: When you pay taxes, bank deposits in your account are deleted from your bank's ledger. And, reserve deposits in your bank's account at the Fed are also deleted. The Fed then marks up the TGA. Subsequently, taxation removes reserve deposits and commercial bank deposits from the system. We can say that taxation reduces liquidity, as it reduces the total amount of 'money' that people can use for payments from the financial system and places it in the TGA. Running a gov surplus thus reduces the capacity of the private sector to make payments, which increases fragility. Running through the balance sheets of a tax payment: your bank deletes its liabilities it assigned to your account, and your balance disappears from your account. The bank then borrows reserve deposits in the interbank market which it will use to complete your desired payment to Treasury. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Zimbabwe hyperinflation --> You can a very brief report on Zimbabwe here for folks who aren't familiar with the history of the region: https://clintballinger.com/2020/04/30/airplane-crashes-arent-hyperlandings-notes-on-zimbabwe/ The second most important takeaway from Desan is that the typical description of money as something that is: 1) Medium of Exchange, 2) Store of Value, 3) Unit of Account, is factually incorrect. Money, in short, is a means of organizing human beings through some central authority toward some specific objective, and its role as a means of settlement between third parties was not an intended outcome, originally. The primary reference here is Sumer, or modern day Iraq, and the use of taxation to create waterways for irrigating crops in approximately 4000BC. In exchange for early payment of taxation (barley used to feed workers performing the work and fighters to defend the city) tokens were issued, which were collected at the time of taxation to ensure double payment was not enforced. These coins held value equal to the tax amount in terms of barley, and circulated in peripheral exchange unrelated to the tax or associated irrigation projects. The token which was imprinted with an image of the ruler was not a store of value, medium of exchange, nor a store of value without the ruler or their capacity to enforce the tax imposed. To be blunt, the concept of intrinsic value of commodity money as the basis for an objects moneyness is false. Here is an example of what I am trying to address here in this thread. Viperman is making an assertion of treating the Gov balance sheet like a household balance sheet, and he uses Kotlikoff as a source: If we look at some of Kotlikoff's work, we will notice something: there is no money or banks in the model. Although there is language that agent's hold 'equity or bonds denominated in dollars', the money supply is actually exogenously determined as any amount required by the agents themselves. This means that Kotlikoff is assuming that there is a single money issuing authority which will always create any amount of money tokens required. This is not realistic, first because we know that money is debt and is created by predominantly by private banks (as stated by the Fed and Bank of England), and second because money issuance is not guaranteed (the recent crisis in money markets are empirical facts that money is not always created when demanded). So here Viperman is making assertions about a government's use of money citing an author who does not incorporate bank money in his models, just as an example. Another way of expressing the same idea could be something like: "let's analyze paths of aircraft in an airspace assuming that an aircraft can transit space occupied by mountains without any negative effects" or "lets assume that terrain is always everywhere flat". The rest of the world generally saves in terms of dollars, and requires dollar denominated bank deposits in order to conduct exchange, which we can see here. This puts the US Federal Reserve at the top of the money hierarchy, although the Euro is increasingly used for exchange. The limits to bank-created money is generally collateral, which is to say that regulations (which are not laws!) and finance creativity govern the total supply of private liabilities banks can create. However, there is no limit to the amount of reserve deposits the Fed can create, because they are accounting entries--the real goods and services those dollars can allocate may change if the Fed were to create 'too much' for the 'wrong projects'. In general, however, discussion about the level of deposits is irrelevant an endogenous money system. What we are interested in is real goods and services, real projects to increase future production, current and future quality of life.

In response to Viperman's assertion that the Gov should run a surplus, given that households want to run a surplus (financial and real savings, like bank deposits in savings account, bonds, firm equity, and real estate) and that firms empirically fund their investment from retained earnings (firms also want to run a surplus), and that banks by definition must run a surplus (a deficit bank is insolvent), and given what we know the Fed and Bank of England have said about money being debt create by banks when they issue loans--who is holding the debt? Not the government (Treasury or Central Bank). Not the households. Not the firms. Not the banks. Not the foreign sector. What's left? There is nothing left. In such a system, where all parties desire to hold a surplus, the economy collapses because there is no money to conduct exchange.

No need to be so sensitive, or try to draw people into political circles that may not be relevant. If I ask it isn't obvious to me. What are the policies you don't like (that AOC supports) and which policies do you want instead? (1) and, Do you consider US democrats 'protesting' at times to be equivalent to 'Alex' shouting "U mah fav big booty latina!". It's tit-for-tat? (2)

Just what a bot would say..

I can break it into two parts to help you read it. Neoclassical econ asserts that money is exogenous, like a lump of gold that produces X coins (we won't get into medieval coinage), or the gov creating Y bank notes (we won't get into the creation of the BoE). Given some constant exogenous lump of money, the set of available projects at a given time determines where that money will flow as investment. The individuals who hold it (savers) always want to maximize their return (individuals are utility maximizers with insatiable wants, and have all available info on all projects at any moment all the time). There is a natural rate of interest, like a natural law, according to the available technology (which defines labour productivity). So, in this fantasy world money flows towards projects according to these natural features, the money can't go anywhere else. Its powerless. Exogenous money is critical to this vision. People save money (collect it) then invest it, investment determines capital, which determines total amount produced. In this interpretation, there is one good (like corn), which is consumed, invested, and used as money. The problem is if money isn't exogenous, what changes?

Thanks for sharing. If you have more to add, please do. I see 3 distinct groupings of information you shared, the first is clear policies you are against, the second is not exactly policy (maybe you can clarify here?), and the third is an expression of anger. My question to you would be, how do the policies you listed (#1) negatively affect you personally? And, what policies do you support instead of each of the points you listed in section #1?

I'd like to break this out into its own thread on money, finance, and government spending, and so it's being placed here in the bar. Before any discussion, here are some sources to share, for folks who want to do start their own research and verify claims. If we want to understand money, what it is and always has been, a good place to start is coinage (silver, gold and other commodity money): https://www.amazon.com/Making-Money-Currency-Coming-Capitalism/dp/0198709579 Desan shares great examples from the origin of market capitalism (the UK), for example how the end of the Roman empire lead the inhabitants of the British Isles to abandon coinage in 400AD for nearly 800 years, and why those coins ended up buried in the ground during that time. Next is the modern financial system. The best and fastest way to get an intro to this topic is from a guy named Perry Mehrling and his open course, self-paced and free, located here (and also on youtube): https://www.coursera.org/learn/money-banking Mehrling's lectures don't require any background in math or economics, and are all geared towards how money markets actually work. The best source for amending your current knowledge of economics, assuming you completed an Econ 101 course in college and that is your basis for understanding the economy, is a guy named Steve Keen, who is most famous for his '95 Phd thesis which included a model that mathematically described the '08 global financial crisis. In his first book he gets at all the issues with the models you were taught and why they are wrong, with a focus on money and banking: https://www.amazon.com/Debunking-Economics-Digital-Integrated-Dethroned-ebook/dp/B09LQ9JJYP/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=debunking+economics&qid=1652869744&sprefix=debunking+ec%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-2 Here is an animated powerpoint presentation someone on Twitter made that covers money creation and basic operations of the US financial system, for folks who want quick and dirty gouge without reading hundreds of pages on banking & finance. Download as powerpoint (.ppt), but please check the file for viruses before running (as with any download off the internet!). https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gJX9qx-g7VMdn-rG3fNHsavGmBrfTQmd/edit#slide=id.p24 And here is an even shorter intro to money creation from the Bank of England about how money is created (by banks when they issue a loan, and no deposits are required for the bank to issue loans). This was the first admission by a central bank that the theory taught in Economics courses was false, made in 2014. After the admission by the Bank of England, the US Federal Reserve has begun releasing its own documentation detailing how the theory taught by mainstream economics in false, such as: https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2021/09/17/teaching-the-linkage-between-banks-and-the-fed-r-i-p-money-multiplier?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=SM&utm_content=stlouisfed&utm_campaign=7a051d1e-5d0b-4e98-ac43-8f8de89ffb2d