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I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

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Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#181

Post by roenxi »

chii wrote: post #83
roenxi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that he's lending money to the people who write & interpret the rules, and those people do not intend to pay their creditors back in real terms. Indeed, they have probably crossed a practical threshold where they cannot pay back the real amount. It doesn't matter what the rules say right now, his wealth is at risk. They can and do change the rules sometimes. They can change what the word "inflation" means.…

The US gov't so far has enough credibility that they won't manipulate the inflation figures or change the law under you to cheat you of your money. Of course it _could_ happen - nothing prevents it. And if they did, they'd have destroyed the credibility that took over a hundred years to create, and it would remove any future possibility of people lending money to the US gov't. A rational actor would not undertake thi…

> The US gov't so far has enough credibility that they won't manipulate the inflation figures or change the law under you to cheat you of your money.

It isn't a matter of credibility at this point, it is one of political realities. There hasn't been a plausible outcome where the debt principle gets paid back since the 1970s, but that turned out to be OK because they can keep rolling that over with new debt. Alright. Well now we're approaching debt levels where even paying back market interest rates is coming under pressure and probably going to give.

The risks here, much like the debt to GDP ratio, are starting to move off the charts. Lending the US government money can't possible be safe under these conditions. Someone here is obviously going to get screwed, some of these promises have to be broken. It could just as easily be these bonds as anything else.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#182

Post by smachiz »

delecti wrote: post #180
jfk13 wrote: post #6

I wonder: when they say "A refund of the excess purchase will be made...", does that mean they'll refund the entire $10,000 transaction, or will they keep $9,975 of it (so that you do have a $10K i-bond investment) and only refund the excess $25?

Incidentally, that exact confusion is why he made the third transaction for $9,975. The refund on his second transaction will either be for $25 or $10,000, so his third transaction will either be refunded in full or not at all.

If they refund the entirety of the second transaction, logic follows a third transaction of $9,975 would be correct if you actually wanted to buy $10k.

I suspect that's not what's going to happen though. OP will get a refund of $25 + $9,975.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#183

Post by Someone1234 »

jefftk wrote: post #62

> They require you to enter your password by clicking on a virtual keyboard. This pseudo-security measure actually only slows down humans, not bots, because you can still edit the value of the text field using Javascript. I don't think this is generally worth it as a security measure, but the goal is not to protect against automation. Instead, custom on-screen keyboards are attempts to thwart keyloggers.

> Instead, custom on-screen keyboards are attempts to thwart keyloggers.

Commercial malware doesn't work this way. The term "keylogger" is a misnomer.

"Keylogging" without context provides an unintelligible stream of garbage that might have well be from a random number generator. Most malware that I've seen either directly target the browser or the operating system, but in both cases they're looking for an unencrypted HTTPS stream, that they can re-package, upload, and store. With the goal to sell batches of credentials for specific websites.

Many people have this unusual belief that a user's stream of keys would look like e.g. www.example.com(13)username(9)password(13). But that isn't how users typically interact with their browsers, MOST websites are accessed via a search engine or favorites/bookmarks, and users often won't use the keystrokes to navigate between input elements.

Again, CONTEXT is everything with "keylogging," since most of the value is generated from WHERE not just WHAT. "Targeted credential theft" is a better way to describe it since they're stealing structured HTTP form data, not raw keyboard input (and even if they were steaming keycode inputs, they'd likely still be using the browser's context to do so).

So, in my opinion, most malware wouldn't even be aware or need specific support to bypass this virtual keyboard "security" because by the very nature of them they aren't operating at this layer anyway.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#184

Post by Redoubts »

lvl102 wrote: post #103

That’s why you buy through a bank. Edit: I am wrong. You can only buy it two ways which is ridiculous in my view. More to the point of the website that belongs in a museum, why can’t they update this consumer facing portal? What happened to all the people from “digitization” govt organizations? Such as 18F and usds. Oh. You mean all they do is replace the front end? Got it.

This is honestly one of the better interfaces for financial instruments and services.

:(

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#185

Post by fortran77 »

vasco wrote: post #32

The venn diagram of internet users that read about super specific financial products, decide to buy them, while not even understanding the need to keep an emergency fund such that a move like this leaves them with under $200 in their account seems to be growing. It seems to be a weird mix of wall street cosplay and financial ineptitude.

You can take the money out of an ibond with a small penalty after a relatively short time. So it's not a huge risk if you have enough short-term credit, etc, for an emergency before the time comes when you can cash the iBond.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#186

Post by hedora »

viraptor wrote: post #26
eterm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an odd interpretation of the refund. The email clearly states, > "A refund of the excess purchase..." So they'd be refunded the excess, i.e. $25. Putting another $9,975 through just feels like being "too smart".

You could interpret the "excess purchase" as the excess amount (so $25 refund) or as the excess purchase transaction (so $10000 refund).

A purchase is a well defined noun, and this thing's UI was written by a lawyer that's paid to interpret US tax code.

I'm 90% sure the author will end up with a $25 bond. There's a 10% chance it won't actually cancel the $9975 purchase, due to races between the probably bolted on email part and the thing that reconciles all the transactions by scanning their (emulated?) tape drive at night.

Either way, it's pretty clearly a bug in the server implementation (unless this behavior is accidentally required by law, which wouldn't surprise me either...)

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#187

Post by bzxcvbn »

archhn wrote: post #100
baal80spam wrote: post #7

8-10 _weeks_ for a refund?! Jesus Christ. I know that US banking system is something else but this is preposterous.

That money must go somewhere in the meantime and is probably earning interest.

Earning interest from whom? It's the US treasury, in the end they are the one that create money out of thin air. They don't need to swindle a few bucks here and there to invest in short term schemes.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#188

Post by Ekaros »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #175
JusticeJuice wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found there is really good advice out there, it's just in places most people won't look. The first one is books. Go to a book shop, and find a book on personal finances, written by a registered financial advisor in your country, for your country. It'll be long, stuffy, boring as fuck, but you'll likely come away well informed. I think if you're reading HN this would suit. Second one is personal financial advis…

> Except it'll cost like $200 I don't know where you could possibly get high-quality, personalized financial advice (with fiduciary standard) for 200. From my experience it's more likely it's on the order of thousands of dollars.

Question is do you need personalized financial advice? Or would covering the basics be enough? And here I'm talking about average people with somewhat middle or upper-middle class income.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#190

Post by bzxcvbn »

prepend wrote: post #122
pid-1 wrote: post #98

> They're zero-risk bonds with an interest rate that always matches or exceeds inflation The caveat is that you must agree with how your govt. calculates inflation. Also, your personal expenses might not be well represented by official inflation. Finally, like any bond, if you sell them before they mature you might get smaller (or higher) returns. Not saying this is a bad investment though, I just rarely see those ri…

> The caveat is that you must agree with how your govt. calculates inflation. This is an easy caveat to make as there are many other parts depending on how the US government calculates inflation. And there aren’t alternate inflation calculations out there, and certainly no consumer financial instruments pegged to them. For all its flaws, it’s the best we have. I think it’s not discussed because it’s such a sunk risk…

> there aren’t alternate inflation calculations

But there are. Institutions such as the IMF also have their own economic measurements.

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