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The Good News/The Bad News

Doug Brents said:
Wow. The naivete in that is too extraordinary to accurately express.

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I am not naive. I have spent my life working with insurance companies who set up pension schemes which invest in the stock market. The biggest investors in the market are these pension funds which hold the liquidity of all the major global companies in the world.

The naive are those who do not understand the cycling of debt and money through various instruments which make the system work. It is something of the modern era, which international trading markets and global shipping through containers. As someone pointed out 90% of everything we buy comes through shipping, and in the uk almost everything not directly made in the UK which currently is very little.

If you want an example of how fractional reserve lending fails, Northern rock and its cause of a run on the market.
In the UK it was HBOS taking out a 180 billion pound short term load from the credit markets which would have bankcrupted Halifax building society, the biggest mortage lender in the country. The reality of these systems was thought so secure, AAA rated capital was thought to only have a 2% annual fluctuation in value so covering at 5% was adequate. The fact the capital was based on mortgages from insecure payers (sub prime), with a falling house price market meant a liability of 10% or 15% became real, which was impossible short term to meet, causing a fire sale, which in the market terms would cause contagion leading to market melt down, which governments had to stop.

So I know why this market works and its vulnerability. The modern question is it cannot continually increasing the debt beyond repayment terms, but given Covid, that is where we are going. Some suggest it does not matter, because given our buy in to the system, the system will just carry on. They maybe right, because the system is just a measure of potential work value, and illusory wealth is only wealth when realised.

Certainly what works today may not work tomorrow, but then again with shifting social pressures and resource needs, maybe given time, we will all just adjust.

God bless you
 
Insurance markets

Lloyds insurance markets allowed syndicates to take on unlimited risk contracts for a defined capital outcome. The idea was these risks where rare but dangerous, so you could make a lot, or lose everything. It was so profitable for a time, they thought they could not be touched. They foolishly across 20 or so syndicates took on failure risk of each other in a spiral of insurance, so if one failed another would step in. No one bothered to check they had not created a spiral that would bankcrupt them all. But when the crisis came, thats what happened, which destroyed the market, because of greed.

Unfortunately like driving faster and faster on empty roads, you go beyond safety because things have not gone bad for too long. When they do, you are so far over safety there is no way back. I know this because I have done it and only survived because my car did fit through a very tight gap.

It is why all countries need regulators to define the limit of danger, and stop excess. But we know equally that is always window dressing, because no politician can stop their sponsors because they are their sponsors. It is ironic people think this is a conspiracy etc. or banks getting off free etc. but it is the nature of the system we have let build.

God bless you
 
Rollo Tamasi said:
Who is God?
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Strictly speaking, God cannot be defined, for he is unique. He does not fit into a class with others, nor can he be compared with others. Isaiah 40:25 "To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One." Job 11:7-9. Any definition or description of God that fails to take into account this incomparability of God would thereby destroy the very idea of God. But what cannot be compared cannot be defined. Nor is it possible to find the genus of such a definition in God himself. As Hoeksema comments: ”But all these attempts, in as far as they purpose to offer a definition of the Most High, suffer shipwreck on the rock of God's simplicity.” To conclude that we cannot define God is not to say that we are unable to say anything about him. Attributes are merely the different ways in which we think about God. God’s essence is pure perfection, simple goodness, and the implications of all possible perfections and virtues."
“Though we cannot conceive of God, but some corporeal representations or images in our minds will be conversant with us, as motes in the air when we look upon the heavens, yet our conceptions may and must rise higher. As when we see the draught of the heavens and earth in a globe, or a kingdom in a map, it helps our conceptions, but doth not terminate them: we conceive them to be of a vast extent, far beyond that short description of them. So we should endeavor to refine every representation of God, to rise higher and higher, and have our apprehensions still more purified; separating the perfect from the imperfect, casting away the one, and greatening the other; conceive him to be a Spirit diffused through all, containing all, perceiving all. All the perfections of God are infinitely elevated above the excellencies of the creatures; above whatsoever can be conceived by the clearest and most piercing understanding. The nature of God as a Spirit is infinitely superior to whatsoever we can conceive perfect in the notion of a created spirit. Whatsoever God is, he is infinitely so:
 
Fastfredy0 said:
Strictly speaking, God cannot be defined, for he is unique. He does not fit into a class with others, nor can he be compared with others. Isaiah 40:25 "To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One." Job 11:7-9. Any definition or description of God that fails to take into account this incomparability of God would thereby destroy the very idea of God. But what cannot be compared cannot be defined. Nor is it possible to find the genus of such a definition in God himself. As Hoeksema comments: ”But all these attempts, in as far as they purpose to offer a definition of the Most High, suffer shipwreck on the rock of God's simplicity.” To conclude that we cannot define God is not to say that we are unable to say anything about him. Attributes are merely the different ways in which we think about God. God’s essence is pure perfection, simple goodness, and the implications of all possible perfections and virtues."
“Though we cannot conceive of God, but some corporeal representations or images in our minds will be conversant with us, as motes in the air when we look upon the heavens, yet our conceptions may and must rise higher. As when we see the draught of the heavens and earth in a globe, or a kingdom in a map, it helps our conceptions, but doth not terminate them: we conceive them to be of a vast extent, far beyond that short description of them. So we should endeavor to refine every representation of God, to rise higher and higher, and have our apprehensions still more purified; separating the perfect from the imperfect, casting away the one, and greatening the other; conceive him to be a Spirit diffused through all, containing all, perceiving all. All the perfections of God are infinitely elevated above the excellencies of the creatures; above whatsoever can be conceived by the clearest and most piercing understanding. The nature of God as a Spirit is infinitely superior to whatsoever we can conceive perfect in the notion of a created spirit. Whatsoever God is, he is infinitely so:
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You like to write long posts.
I find the answer to be quite simple.
God is the supreme being.
 
Rollo Tamasi said:
You like to write long posts.
I find the answer to be quite simple.
God is the supreme being.
Click to expand...
God thought that same way. He said, "I AM who I AM."

The simple statement "I AM." personifies God perfectly, because He is the only being that exists and is complete in and of Himself. He needs no qualifiers, or descriptives to "complete" the sentence, as all other things do.
 
Rollo Tamasi said:
Who is God?
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Made me think, about what this question means.
Who - point me to the individual who has the label God.
Who - tell me the definition of this individual as separate from any other individual, ones essence.
God - a being which transcends ourselves, which is the origin of our existence or reference to our behaviour.

A simple answer which unlocks the rest, Jesus.
One could infinitely answer the question, but we do not have the space here to get close to such a thing.
God the creator, is the source and definer of all that is, or was or is to come.

To the atheist materialist, the 4 dimensional world is God, which defines their reality.
They would not use the word God, but their faith is everything comes from this existence.

To the buddihist, God is the essence of existence from which we are separated and our goal to escape this eternal rebirth and death so to disappear in oneness with the existence. To me this is escapism declaring life is just suffering.

God in another reference is the driving force which governs all our activity, which could be wealth, hobbies, work, fear, anger, inspiration, addiction etc.

So the question has many dimensions, objective and subjective.

God bless you
 
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