Caesar was the name of Gaius Iulius, not his title. That came later. Pontifex maximus was an honorific title before Caesar's name became one.

I guess if Caesar was borrowing from the Pontifex Maximus, that title must pre-date those based on his name.

Technically, the current Pontifex Maximus is (or at least claims to be) the official inheritor of the original title (which is very likely to pre-date the creation of the surname Caesar in the Julia family).

That's not the case for "senator", which turned into a generic word and it's not directly connected to the Senate of the Roman Republic.

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There is no connection. Tsar and Kaiser are both derived from the name Caesar, which became a royal title (along with Augustus) in the 300s under Diocletian.

Doesn't seem related--looks like šar is Semitic in origin [0] while tsar comes to the language by way of Caesar [1].

0: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C5%A1arrum#Akkadian

1: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tsar#Etymology

Etymonline [0] says 'tsar' comes from Caesar, which comes from the name Caius Julius Caesar. “šar” would therefore be unrelated.

[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/Caesar

Isn't "tsar" derived from "Caesar" which was originally just someone's name?

I see people pointing out the "Caesar -> tsar" link (and I've heard that myself too), but I have to wonder if Akkadian "sar" somehow became "Caesar".

I thought tsar was derived from Caesar? (Or is that just a folk etymology?)

Where is that title still being used?

>It demonstrated that the US is capable of incomparable mobilization, growth of production and innovation, when properly motivated.

B.effing.S.

What hyperbole and hubris.

This is American exceptionalism at its "shining" worst. The incredible stupidity of that statement (to use superlatives like incomparable, as you did) would be hard to believe among rational people, if not already seen in writing, as above...

That capability you talk of, could apply to any country, when ”properly motivated".

Example: India. 1947.

Removed the British as the colonizer, non-violently, except for maybe sporadic incidents, and the 1857 rebellion.

Motivations and results in the same ball park as your example, as regards mobilization (of the population to drive out the British).

See:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_empire

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

Production and innovation not relevant in this case, except maybe innovation of overthrowing an oppressor non-violently.

That's because, in a blunt sense, no one cares about the Argentinian peso except for (some) Argentinians. Many more people (practically everyone) care about the USD. So long as the US commands dominant global influence (in many senses) then the USD retains a "standard" quality that can be very flexible. Sustained deflation and loss of purchase power is far more dangerous than inflation, so long as you don't slip into hyperinflation. Everyone in Argentina, for instance, just immediately converted their money to USD.

Except Argentine debt is largely in US dollars, so they didnt do that.

The US dollar bit is the problem.

From the perspective of anybody outside the US the US dollar is a bond - a zero percent bearer bond.

Therefore it is nothing more than a bond swap with a change in interest rate and term. The entity “owing” doesn’t change

The US can keep printing money, as soon long as the services is offers is purely in USD. The demand cancels out the inflation from printing money by a small margin.

Government bonds aren't buying influence with anyone though.

Campaign contributions, sure.

But the idea that there is any kind of compulsion for citizens to buy government bonds seems false. I don't know, maybe in some dictatorships or something, but certainly not in western democracies.

For my local European bank the barrier doesn't even seem to be that high only 150 k€ loans or 50 k€ investments. Then again we are not that rich country. Not that the services will be any different at that level, but hey you have named person!

Mmm, I don't think that would be a sufficiently personal contact for anybody to seriously refer to that person as "my banker".

Sure, there was this service to embellish the books provided by Goldman Sachs.

But moving on from moral arguments, the crux is that only some 5% of the bailout money actually stayed in Greece [1].

Furthermore, it takes two to tango: the banks did not diversify their debt portfolio [2], they lent because they wanted to, and, knew Greek debt implied higher risk. After all, that’s why these loans commanded a higher interest compared to other sovereign debt.

[1] https://amp.dw.com/en/most-of-greek-bailout-money-went-to-ba...

[2] https://econreview.studentorg.berkeley.edu/a-tale-of-two-cou...

"Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street", Neil Barofsky, page 157

Note though that he is only quoting "off the record" conversations with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner

That's the problem with these "citation needed" remarks, those who say it never come back after they received the high quality citations.

reality is stranger than fiction. yes citation needed. but this seems banal compared to what things go down.

You can google "Home Affordable Modification Program" and "foam the runway" [for the banks]. But here's one of many articles:

https://prospect.org/economy/needless-default/

"The cynical view is that HAMP worked exactly to the Treasury's liking. Both Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Special Inspector General for TARP Neil Barofsky revealed that then-Secretary Geithner told them HAMP's purpose was to "foam the runway" for the banks. In other words, it allowed banks to spread out eventual foreclosures and absorb them more slowly. Homeowners are the foam being steamrolled by a jumbo jet in that analogy, squeezed for as many payments as they can manage before losing their homes."

> 12 states are non-recourse, including CA and TX.

This wording makes it sound like mortgages are required to be non-recourse loans in the 12 states, but that's not the case. 12 states allow non-recourse loans, however they are not common for mortgages, with many lenders not even offering them.

Ha! That explains those weird videos of houses in neighbourhoods which looks like a neutron bomb or the Rapture. Cars left, coffe cups on the tables, sometimes facilities still working, TV on. Nobody there.

There's Fed Reserve research on this. The only thing recourse does is make borrowers a bit less sensitive to negative equity and only for high value homes:

"Importantly, recourse affects default only through lowering borrowers sensitivity to negative equity. Unconditionally, there is no difference between the default rates in recourse and non-recourse states."

"The effect of recourse is significant only for higher-appraised properties."

> Credit standards and interest rates will be different on non-recourse loans

"To the extent that borrowers in recourse states are less likely to default in response to negative equity, and are more likely to default in a lender-friendly way if they do default, lenders are likely to face smaller losses from default in recourse states. Thus, one might expect interest rates to be lower in recourse states. However, we find no evidence that they are; in fact, we find that loans are more expensive in recourse states."

You can read the paper for yourself: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1432437. Note that this paper (and many other sources) classify Texas as recourse but it is not. I'm not certain why that is.

Many recourse states require the bank to credit you the full appraised value, not the actual foreclosure sale value - because banks often bid against themselves at foreclosure auctions and control bid acceptance so they effectively set the foreclosure price. Various things (wages, personal property, retirement accounts) are often excluded from recourse for your primary home. In some states like Minnesota a jury must determine the fair market value of a foreclosed home. Other states have strict requirements (like short filing deadlines) or lengthy procedures (all attorney billable hours!).

This effectively makes non-foreclosure options way more popular - where a bank will ofter to take the deed and cancel the debt. In the end it is more cost-effective for the bank and better for the borrower.

Furthermore even if you get a deficiency judgement the old proverb "You can't squeeze blood from a stone" applies. Someone who can't pay their mortgage is unlikely to have significant assets to draw on. All you get for your trouble is a bankruptcy filing from the borrower. After all that time and trouble your deficiency judgement gets discharged anyway.

In the end recourse states mean more defaults happen through a voluntary non-foreclosure process but lending standards and interest rates are not that different and very few borrowers ever actually have a deficiency judgement let alone pay a dime toward one.

I think you would end up with a lot more institutions designed in the vein of Credit Unions rather than banks. The differences are subtle but noticeable. They still generate profit but they're non-profits, and so the profits they do generate are invested immediately back into the institution, by way of expanding their branch offices, providing lower rates or relief to members who are struggling, and other misc. community-focused projects.

The alternative would be the removal of the banking system, not to re-make it.

> treating a disfavored group

Hold on: in what possible way, by what conceivable metric, are the wealthy a disfavored group? Name for me any way a wealthy person struggles. It is some mad "leave the billionaire alone" cope to try and say the literally most privileged, by definition, class of folks on the planet are somehow oppressed.

> and being literally unable to comprehend that groups are made up of different people.

Of course they are, but as a group of people who share commonalities of experience, priorities, and oftentimes physical location and interaction, they necessarily also have more in common with one another than with people who are far disconnected from them. That is why people like Ellen Degeneres are taking pictures with George Bush: George Bush has far more in common with Ellen than Ellen does to the vast, vast, vast majority of her audience.

This goes double for economic interest. A world that no longer privileges wealth, even putting aside bogeymen like taxation or confiscation, will be unappealing to every wealthy person, because their wealth currently makes the world bend over backwards for them, and that's pretty sweet and nobody apart from the most principled people on the planet would willingly give that up.

> Under that logic you get howlers of counter-factuals like "Kings were rich and therefore there was never a war between kings." It is up there with the abject stupidity of System of a Down accidentally going pro-monarchist by asking why don't presidents fight the war.

I mean if you don't think it makes politicians of any stripe, kingly or otherwise, more ready to declare war if they know full well they themselves will not be expected to take up arms, then you have far more faith in people than I do.

Though I don't know where you got that quote from, if it is indeed a quote. I'm a much bigger fan of "when the rich wage war, it's the poor who die." And I think you'd be hard pressed to find a conflict where, outside some strange exceptional occurrence, that wasn't quite true.

> The job of a bank is to accumulate idle money to put to use in investment to generate returns. "Why does money accumulate in the money accumulator that generates more the more money is put inside of it?"

I don't object to the money accumulator accumulating money, I object to the money accumulator, when it malfunctions, having it's money replenished with tax dollars it did not earn by performing it's function, from which the guy who owns the accumulator draws a substantial salary afterwards, despite overseeing when the accumulator stopped working.

I saw at least once in 2008 that it was done right. I don't remember which institution, but it got taken over, the depositors were protected, the stockholders lost everything, and the management was replaced.

And that's just about what you want, right? You want the depositors protected, both because they didn't make the bad loans, and because wiping them out is going to cause ripple effects that spread the damage. But the stockholders, the ones that profited (temporarily) from the bad loans? Wipe them out. The management? Wipe them out.

In the US, small local banks are everywhere. There's an entire ecosystem that matches capital to start a bank with experienced management teams that run the bank (not just anyone can be an executive at an OCC chartered bank). There are SaaS providers that do the heavy IT lifting. And, of course, specialist lawyers. They open a local bank, build it to a certain size, and (usually) one of the regional or super regional banks comes and picks them up. Lather, rinse, repeat. Not unlike what you see in SV with startups.

Yes they do exists as you say. However in last 30 years or so 90% of small banks are merged into Too big to fail banks.

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