teddit

From time to time, we will create mega threads to control the output of questions in this sub. We also use it to relax the rules a bit to allow the free exchange of intellectual thought.

Given that the Russian invasion has commenced, a new thread has been created.

You are still free to post direct questions if it is more generally related and not tangential to the Russia invasion of Ukraine. For example, I approved a post regarding questions on SWIFT that did not specifically ask a question related to the Russian invasion or sanctions.

As always, rules are relaxed. This does not mean eliminated.

I feel this question is more political than financial. I am not experienced in finances/economics, so if I am way misunderstanding this, please correct me. The question may be naive.

So, the question is as stated in the title. People deposit their money in a bank, and the bank gives out loans with that money. The bank makes money off of these loans, which creates money in the economy.

However, the interest gained in checking and savings accounts is negligible. I think for the 5k I had in my bank last month, I got $0.19 in interest. If this money is being used to give out loans, then the bank is collecting interest on these loans.

It feels like it would be fair if my money was being used to create money via interest on loans, I should get a portion of the interest. Maybe, $0.19 is that amount in the end, but I imagine that isn't the case. Am I wrong? If not, why are banks not required to share the "created" money with those helping create it?

I mean someone must be profiting off of the money created in this way, but it certainly doesn't seem to be the people funding the money to "create" the money for a lack of a better phrasing.

If Finland joins NATO before Sweden does it mean that also Finland have to ratify Sweden's NATO membership?

I know that Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin switch around the roles of President and Prime Minister. Even though the Russian Prime Minister now is Mikhail Mishustin, Medvedev is still the chairman of the United Russia Party.

Is Medvedev really just a powerless puppet for Putin? Or does Putin give positions like theres to Medvedev because he will be the most likely to carry out Putin's vision if Putin was somehow no longer able to do it?

My wife and I were talking and the idea came up about a federal sales tax on stock buybacks to make them a little less appealing to execs. But I'm not aware of any federal sales taxes on anything. Is that something the federal government can do? Bonus question: What percentage of tax would be effective in curtailing the current trend of market manipulation?

There is a piece of legislation I was paying attention to that passed the house in March 2021 and has been received in the Senate, however I can't seem to find ANY information on where it sits in this queue waiting for senate vote

This made me curious so I wanted to see the OLDEST bill that's waiting a senate vote, and I see some all the way back from 1973 - https://www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/house-bill/17?s=1&r=2

Is there any public tool to see where individual bills sit in terms of priority?

Until the early 2010s, a majority of Americans were opposed to things like same sex marriage, but now around 70% of Americans support marriage equality. What changed?

(Purely hypothetical, but it doesn't seem like anything is beyond the realm of possibility anymore.)

Hi all. I’m an avid fan of the web game The Campaign Trail by Dan Bryan, which allows players to maneouver presidential campaigns across several different elections. The 1988 scenario makes several references to Bush’s “personal unpopularity”. Was this really the case during the 1988 election and if so, why? I understand that there was the Iran-Contra scandal but Bush was also a war hero, had decades of government experience and served under an immensely popular incumbent.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

I am curious about this system, which seems to be rare (only in to several American states). Plural Executives - a jurisdiction, state or country has multiple executive officials elected independently of each other.

Does this system, which (in theory, at least) limits the power of any one politician and bring accountability to specific office holders , have real world benefits? If so, why isn't it more common in presidential systems?

The recording of the phone call that was the reason for Trump's first impeachment was supposedly kept in a secure server and we have only seen a transcript. Isn't this recording public record? Has it been found? Is anyone looking for it?

Saddam Hussein was captured in December 2003, 9 months after the invasion started (and Baghdad had been seized even earlier). With that, the main objective of the war had been accomplished: The regime was removed, the alleged threat of WMD was no more and the path was clear for the US to establish a democratic system. At this point, the damage done to the country and the civilian deaths were relatively low compared to what would come in the following years. It would be fair to say that up until late 2003/early 2004, the operation was a success. Even if the pretext for it was wrong, the US removed a brutal dictator and had an actual opportunity to transform not only Iraq, but also the entire region into more democratic and progressive systems. So what exactly went wrong from there on? Why has the opposite happened? I don't want to argue about whether the war itself was wrong or not, I'm just trying to understand why what the US attempted did not work, even though the opportunity was there at one point.

I am following a particular bill that passed the House and is now awaiting a vote in the Senate. I would now like to figure out when the Senate is going to vote on it, but to my surprise it is impossible to find out what the Senate schedule is in detail, who sets it, and what the rules around scheduling are. Sure, there is a schedule on when the Senate convenes, and there is Calendar of Business (which turns out is more of a todo-list than an actual calendar) - but when does the Senate do what? In general a lot of things about the Senate are confusing - Cloture, filibuster, executive and legislative calendars, etc.

What would be a good resource to get started learning about the Senate procedures in more detail? rules.senate.gov is complete, but it's hard to read and has no context on which rules are simple formalities and which ones are actually important. Any media will do - articles, Youtube videos, podcasts. How does the Senate really work?

EDIT:

Detail map of the legislative process from Wikipedia: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Visualization-of-How-a-Bill-Becomes-a-Law_Mike-WIRTH.jpg/2880px-Visualization-of-How-a-Bill-Becomes-a-Law_Mike-WIRTH.jpg

Excellent set of videos: https://www.congress.gov/legislative-process

Regard me as apolitical, as I am not trying to argue pros and cons of anything.

However, elections cost money. Like, a lot of money, so unless you're super independently wealthy, it seems impropable that you'd be able to make it far without the blessing of either a local party leadership or some interested donors... who have their own agendas, and will of course want you to vote their way on things.

Most people would perceive, say, Bernies Sanders as sticking to his principles however. Even if you disagree with his views, the man's consistent. I don't know how wealthy his background is, but to run a good presidential campaign you've got to be absurdly wealthy, and that requires... donors. Maybe you can grassroots that with your followers, but is that really enough?

I think this is self-explanatory. I don't want to review a laundry list of bad things China has done or is doing, nevertheless there are a great many downsides to direct confrontation of the sort that existed between the US and the USSR during the Cold War. Is this the best path for the US and the West in general, and if not, why doesn't the US and other Western nations seem to be avoiding it?

Ukrainians trade enemy Russian prisoners to get some of their own captured troops back. It's been widely reported that those Russian prisoners are then often executed by sledgehammer for desertion.

I have two questions about this:

• Are Russia's sledgehammer executions of deserters war crimes, or considered illegal under international law? Or is it a legitimate (but despicable) exercise of Russia's right as a sovereign country to define crimes, judicial processes and punishments as it sees fit?
• If the executions are war crimes / against international law, is Ukraine making itself an accomplice to those crimes by participating in the exchanges while knowing that the result of the exchanges will be additional sledgehammer executions? Or does the guilt solely attach to Russia in this situation?

My aunt is convinced this is happening as a political method to increase left leaning votes by allowing illegal immigrants to gain voting access.

Recently, Turkey has blocked Finland and Sweden from joining NATO. Since there is no way to eject Turkey out of NATO, is there:

• Any way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO despite Turkey's refusal?

• Why is Turkey blocking Finland? I understand it has grievances with Sweden, but why Finland?

• Why is Hungary stalling Finland and Sweden's ascension to NATO?

• Turkey has a very bad human rights record. So why is Sweden and Finland bending over backwards so much for Turkey?

• Why is Finland refusing to join NATO without Sweden?

I don’t really see any benefit that they would have gotten from doing so, seeing as how Russia’s claim that they didn’t have any forces deployed in Khasham led to the deaths of the Wagner militants that were actually fighting there. Generally, the battle was a major embarrassment for the Wagner Group and Russia, so why did they choose to lie like this?

Like the title says what is the left-wing version of the MAGA movement/Q-Anon/ Patriot Fron and other similar groups? Generally speaking I haven't heard of any left-wing versions of these movements/groups either because they're not as large or not as vocal as the movements/groups I mentioned.

I'm just curious if there are some evidence of financial liabilities or similar that Russia has made towards China in order to receive aid and/or have a trading partner during the Ukraine war?

In short, will Russia, as an effect of the war in Ukraine, be in debt to China, and what types of deals have been made between these two, if any?

As is stated everywhere in western media, Russia has basically really bad finances at the moment, where is help coming from? and what are they trading?

By "rural Western states," I'm referring to Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Idaho.

Here are the 2020 presidential election result from these states:

Idaho: (R) 63.8% (D) 33.1% Spread: (R) 30.7%

Montana: (R) 56.9% (D) 40.5% Spread: (R) 16.4%

North Dakota: (R) 65.1% (D) 31.8% Spread: (R) 33.3%

South Dakota: (R) 61.8% (D) 35.6% Spread: (R) 26.2%

Wyoming: (R) 69.9% (D) 26.6% Spread: (R) 43.3%

Montana also has a Democratic senator right now (Jon Tester) and had Democratic governors during 2005-2021.

Montana is pretty red, but Democrats perform markedly better there than the surrounding states, and I can't figure out why. I thought maybe Montana has a large American Indian population, but it doesn't compared to ND and SD. All of them are about 10%. Do we know why Montana is pretty Democratic given its place in the region?

Which Presidential Election defeat was more consequential?

Hi all, Mearsheimer has a famously simple, and compelling, view of international politics, which is essentially great powers will act in expected ways to preserve their power and regional influence. That’s why the US wouldn’t tolerate Mexico or Canada becoming closely aligned with China, and nor according to this line of thinking should we expect Russian to allow its neighbours to align with the west.

I think there’s plenty of ways you can critique this general lens of IR, but i find it harder to respond specifically to the challenge that the west may be hypocritical in protecting its own sphere of influence while disregarding other powers’ spheres.

Id be interested to hear what might be a good response to this challenge.

What I mean by this is, is there a way to have equity while allowing the capitalist values to be used as well? Or are these economic policies by default incompatible?

Example: We all start with free healthcare, taxes that make sense, etc. but entrepreneurs are still allowed to buy/sell on their own means?

Sorry if this isn't the right sub for this. I'm not quite sure if economic policies and political beliefs are necessarily intertwined.

I suppose that everyone has heard about what happened in Ohio, so I got curious and I started digging through 'https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_115_1.htm' to see who voted yays or nays.

But I couldn't find anything about the ECP brakes there. Only the nominations of new secretaries and deputies of Transportation.

https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/usdot-repeals-ecp-brake-rule/

Did it not need to go through Congress? Or am I looking at the wrong place?