Engineers - the blu tac holding the world's sh*t together
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Do u think these group of unsung heroes. They are at the mercy of fianciers and bankers, politicians , the other fields who control much of the world.
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Originally posted by Worldlybusinessman:
Do u think these group of unsung heroes. They are at the mercy of fianciers and bankers, politicians , the other fields who control much of the world.
Sorry, you forgot to mention 1 group of engineers who ain't doing their fair share, the finiance engineers. -
if u had noticed, the 2001 Al Qaieda members who crashed the WTC towers, they were engineers with PHD.
This group of people are being stepped over, pissed on and sh*t on by others to do their dirty work
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ya ya ya
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screw the bankers.
farmers are the one that feed the world.
engineers, teachers, builders and other blue collar workers are supporters society and economy.
if there is a nuclear fallout and u have an undeground facility that can only house 50,000 for 20 years, what kind of profession will u take in to sustain the underground society for the next 20 years? scholars, engineers, farmers etc.. yes, but bankers?
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the finiance engineers.
They are not engineers and also not part of "real" economy.
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...In sum, specialization of economic activities, by breaking up the economic process, had made it possible for people to concentrate on one portion of the process and, by maximizing that portion, to jeopardize the rest.
The process was not only broken up into producers, exchangers, and consumers but there were also two kinds of exchangers (one concerned with goods, the other with money), with almost antithetical, short-term, aims.
The problems which inevitably arose could be solved and the system reformed only by reference to the system as a whole. Unfortunately, however, three parts of the system, concerned with the production, transfer, and consumption of goods, were concrete and clearly visible so that almost anyone could grasp them simply by examining them, while the operations of banking and finance were concealed, scattered, and abstract so that they appeared to many to be difficult.
To add to this, bankers themselves did everything they could to make their activities more secret and more esoteric. Their activities were reflected in mysterious marks in ledgers which were never opened to the curious outsider.
In the course of time the central fact of the developing economic system, the relationship between goods and money, became clear, at least to bankers.
This relationship, the price system, depended upon five things: the supply and the demand for goods, the supply and the demand for money, and the speed of exchange between money and goods.
An increase in three of these (demand for goods, supply of money, speed of circulation) would move the prices of goods up and the value of money down. This inflation was objectionable to bankers, although desirable to producers and merchants. On the other hand, a decrease in the same three items would be deflationary and would please bankers, worry producers and merchants, and delight consumers (who obtained more goods for less money).
The other factors worked in the opposite direction, so that an increase in them (supply of goods, demand for money, and slowness of circulation or exchange) would be deflationary.
Such changes of prices, either inflationary or deflationary, have been major forces in history for the last six centuries at least. Over that long period, their power to modify men's lives and human history has been increasing.
This has been reflected in two ways. On the one hand, rises in prices have generally encouraged increased economic activity, especially the production of goods, while, on the other hand, price changes have served to redistribute wealth within the economic system.
Inflation, especially a slow steady rise in prices, encourages producers, because it means that they can commit themselves to costs of production on one price level and then, later, offer the finished product for sale at a somewhat higher price level.
This situation encourages production because it gives confidence of an almost certain profit margin. On the other hand, production is discouraged in a period of falling prices, unless the producer is in the very unusual situation where his costs are falling more rapidly than the prices of his product.
The redistribution of wealth by changing prices is equally important but attracts much less attention. Rising prices benefit debtors and injure creditors, while falling prices do the opposite. A debtor called upon to pay a debt at a time when prices are higher than when he contracted the debt must yield up less goods and services than he obtained at the earlier date, on a lower price level when he borrowed the money.
A creditor, such as a bank, which has lent money—equivalent to a certain quantity of goods and services—on one price level, gets back the same amount of money—but a smaller quantity of goods and services—when repayment comes at a higher price level, because the money repaid is then less valuable.
This is why bankers, as creditors in money terms, have been obsessed with maintaining the value of money, although the reason they have traditionally given for this obsession—that "sound money" maintains "business confidence"—has been propagandist rather than accurate.
Hundreds of years ago, bankers began to specialize, with the richer and more influential ones associated increasingly with foreign trade and foreign-exchange transactions.
Since these were richer and more cosmopolitan and increasingly concerned with questions of political significance, such as stability and debasement of currencies, war and peace, dynastic marriages, and worldwide trading monopolies, they became the financiers and financial advisers of governments.
Moreover, since their relationships with governments were always in monetary terms and not real terms, and since they were always obsessed with the stability of monetary exchanges between one country's money and another, they used their power and influence to do two things: (1) to get all money and debts expressed in terms of a strictly limited commodity—ultimately gold; and (2) to get all monetary matters out of the control of governments and political authority, on the ground that they would be handled better by private banking interests in terms of such a stable value as gold...
In effect, this creation of paper claims greater than the reserves available means that bankers were creating money out of nothing.
The same thing could be done in another way, not by note-issuing banks but by deposit banks. Deposit bankers discovered that orders and checks drawn against deposits by depositors and given to third persons were often not cashed by the latter but were deposited to their own accounts. Thus there were no actual movements of funds, and payments were made simply by bookkeeping transactions on the accounts.
Accordingly, it was necessary for the banker to keep on hand in actual money (gold, certificates, and notes) no more than the fraction of deposits likely to be drawn upon and cashed; the rest could be used for loans, and if these loans were made by creating a deposit for the borrower, who in turn would draw checks upon it rather than withdraw it in money, such "created deposits" or loans could also be covered adequately by retaining reserves to only a fraction of their value.
Such created deposits also were a creation of money out of nothing, although bankers usually refused to express their actions, either note issuing or deposit lending, in these terms.
William Paterson, however, on obtaining the charter of the Bank of England in 1694, to use the moneys he had won in privateering, said, "The Bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing." This was repeated by Sir Edward Holden, founder of the Midland Bank, on December 18, 1907, and is, of course, generally admitted today...
http://real-world-news.org/bk-quigley/02.html#5
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In Britain, throughout the nineteenth century, the supply of capital was so plentiful from private savings that industry was able to finance itself with little recourse to the banking system.
The corporate form was adopted relatively slowly, and because of the benefits to be derived from limited liability rather than because it made it possible to appeal to a widespread public for equity capital.
Savings were so plentiful that the surplus had to be exported, and interest rates fell steadily. Promoters and investment bankers were not much interested in domestic industrial securities (except railroads), and for most of the century concentrated their attention on government bonds (both foreign and domestic) and on foreign economic enterprises.
Financial capitalism first appeared in foreign securities, and found a fruitful field of operations. The corporation law (as codified in 1862) was very lenient. There were few restrictions on formations of companies, and none on false prospectuses or false financial reports. Holding companies were not legally recognized until 1928, and no consolidated balance sheet was required then. As late as 1933, of 111 British investment trusts only 52 published a record of their holdings...
As part of this system and at the core of English financial life have been seventeen private firms of "merchant bankers" who find money for established and wealthy enterprises on either a long-term (investment) or a short-term ("acceptances") basis.
These merchant bankers, with a total of less than a hundred active partners, include the firms of Baring Brothers, N. M. Rothschild, J. Henry Schroder, Morgan Grenfell, Hambros, and Lazard Brothers. These merchant bankers in the period of financial capitalism had a dominant position with the Bank of England and, strangely enough, still have retained some of this, despite the nationalization of the Bank by the Labour government in 1946. As late as 1961 a Baring (Lord Cromer) was named governor of the bank, and his board of directors, called the "Court" of the bank, included representatives of Lazard, of Hambros, and of Morgan Grenfell, as well as of an industrial firm (English Electric) controlled by these...
Financial capitalism in Britain, as elsewhere, was marked not only by a growing financial control of industry but also by an increasing concentration of this control and by an increasing banking control of government.
As we have seen, this influence of the Bank of England over the government was an almost unmitigated disaster for Britain. The power of the bank in business circles was never as complete as it was in government, because British businesses remained self-financing to a greater extent than those of other countries.
This self-financing power of business in Britain depended on the advantage which it held because of the early arrival of industrialism in England. As other countries became industrialized, reducing Britain's advantage and her extraordinary profits, British business was forced to seek outside financial aid or reduce its creation of capital plant. Both methods were used, with the result that financial capitalism grew at the same time as considerable sections of Britain's capital plant became obsolete...
http://real-world-news.org/bk-quigley/11.html#33
While Britain passed through the stages of capitalism in this fashion, Germany was passing through the same stages in a different way.
In Germany, capital was scarce when industrialism arrived.
Because savings from commerce, overseas trade, or small artisan shops were much less than in Britain, the stage of owner-management was relatively short. Industry found itself dependent upon banks almost at once.
These banks were quite different from those in England, since they were "mixed" and not divided into separate establishments for different banking functions. The chief German credit banks, founded in the period 1848-1881, were at the same time savings banks, commercial banks, promotion and investment banks, stockbrokers, safety deposits, and so on. Their relationship to industry was close and intimate from the creation of the Darmstไdter Bank in 1853. These banks floated securities for industry by granting credit to the firm, taking securities in return. These securities were then slowly sold to the investing public as the opportunity offered, the bank retaining enough stock to give it control and appointing its men as directors of the enterprise to give that control final form...
The financial capitalism of Germany was at its peak in the years just before 1914. It was controlled by a highly centralized oligarchy.
At the center was the Reichsbank whose control over the other banks was relatively weak at all times. This was welcomed by the financial oligarchy, for the Reichsbank, although privately owned, was controlled by the government to a considerable degree. The weakness of the Reichsbank's influence over the banking system arose from the weakness of its influence over the two usual instruments of central-banking control—the re-discount rate and open-market operations. The weakness of the former was based on the fact that the other banks rarely came to the Reichsbank for re-discounts, and usually had a discount rate below that of the Reichsbank. A law of 1899 tried to overcome this weakness by forcing the other banks to adjust their discount rates to that of the Reichsbank, but it was never a very effective instrument of control. Open-market control was also weak because of an official German reluctance "to speculate" in government securities and because the other banks were more responsive to the condition of their portfolios of commercial paper and securities than they were to the size of their gold reserves. In this they were like French rather than British banks. Only in 1909 did the Reichsbank begin a deliberate policy of control through open-market operations, and it was never effective. It was ended completely from 1914 to 1929 by the war, the inflation, and the restrictions of the Dawes Plan...