The Evidence For Collapse
"The Prophets Of Doom" is on HBO tonight, check your local listings. I highly,highly,highly recommend you watch this. It is not your normal Nostradamus 2012 end of the world stuff. More of a hard nosed Civil-Engineering approach to our problems. But I admit, I am biased this was done by a former LAPD Detective:) He uses the Joe Friday method......"Just The Facts Mam."
If you caint watch it here is a link to lower quality version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gi53...eature=related
A view from 'over the ocean'
Slap,
I'm not convinced a Russian TV interview is the best barometer of opposition to cuts in UK state spending and borrowing - from November 2010.
Whether the policy of cuts is best for the economy is a moot point, slowly the UK public IMHO are realising we cannot borrow on the scale we have been doing. The cuts appears stark, but amount to 3% of all spending. Allocation of cuts has meant some sectors are required to cut by 20% over the next three years, including law enforcement and a few have grown, notably overseas aid.
The interview did touch on one aspect that resonated the deep hostility to elected politicians, notably the Liberal-Democrats, who are the junior coalition partners, who before the election opposed tuition fees being increased (fees for university-level education) and then changed their stance.
IMHO there is an increasing disconnect between the public and elected politicians in the UK. The credibility of politicians has declined for years, which accelerated after the scandal of parliamentary expenses and their determination to pursue policies at variance with the electorate's views (on immigration, Europe, public spending, justice and hanging). Participation in elections has steadily gone down, with the exception of the last General Election I concede and political party membership has waned.
The political decision to support a few banks, then more, was a mistake and how the taxpayer spent bewildering large sums to support them evades understanding. Not helped by the now state supported, if not part-owned banks insisting on paying competitive bonuses.
Looking across Europe and reflecting comments here - on the USA - I suspect this disconnect and dismay over banking is a shared experience.
A view from 'over the ocean' Part 2
As upon request, a BBC News story, with the headline 'Steep' drop in public confidence in MPs, says watchdog' and it opens with:
Quote:
The percentage of people in England who think MPs are dedicated to working well for the public dropped from 46% to 26%.
The Committee on Standards in Public Life said its survey indicated concerns "with self-serving behaviour" by MPs overshadowed other issues.
It does have this, odd finding:
Quote:
The young, people from ethnic minorities and those in higher paid jobs tended to have more trust in MPs in general.
And a 'Trusted to tell the Truth' list:
Quote:
Judges - 80%
Senior police - 73%
TV journalists - 58%
Top civil servants - 41%
Broadsheet journalists - 41%
Local MPs - 40%
Ministers - 26%
MPs in general - 26%
Tabloid journalists - 16%
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14924465
A view from over the ocean Part 3
I'm on a roll here. This is a comment by a senior Conservative minister reflecting on the recent English riots:
Quote:
Whether in the banking crisis, phone hacking or the MPs' expenses scandal, we have seen a failure of responsibility from the leaders of our society.
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14926322
Readers, especially Slap,
Are there similar public opinion findings regarding US institutions, as per my previous post?
Debt Loaded College Students
I am trying to find an article I saw on TV today that NYC Mayor Bloomberg is concerned over unemployed-debt laden college students. Thye have no job and no hope of a job but a lot of debt:eek: The restless youth in general is one of my main interest and it does not look good, but I don't generally at the same things most experts look at.
Link to one report.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/09/...-remains-high/
Governments and Nations are two very different things
Quote:
Originally Posted by
motorfirebox
Um... now, let me preface this by saying that I'm very much in favor of gun rights. But to say that an armed populace is not a threat to a nation doesn't really make sense. Of course it's a threat to a nation--that's the whole point, as you outlined yourself in the paragraphs following. An armed populace is an explicit threat that if the government of the nation fails to execute its duties properly, it will be removed.
The problem, such as it is, is that the entirety of the armed populace isn't in agreement about what proper execution of government duties consists of. In a less beneficial sense, a subsection of the armed populace can be just as much of a threat--as in, actual threat, not enforcer of the national will--to the nation as, say, nineteen guys and two airplanes can. It's as unwise to turn a blind eye to that sort of threat as it is to turn a blind eye towards union violence.
What concerns me on a personal level is who the most vociferous gun-holders are. If they had their druthers, people like me would be as unwelcome as if those nineteen guys had gotten theirs.
But you are right, we often confuse the two. An armed populace is no risk to a nation, but is indeed a tremendous risk to governments who lose their focus on what is truly important. Most of the most drawn out messes we have gotten ourselves into (Vietnam and now Afghanistan to name but two) are where we come to mistake the preservation of a government for the preservation of the Nation.
Often the government we are working with is the problem and must either evolve or be replaced by legal or illegal means by the populace of that land (the land and the people and the heritage being the greatest components of a "nation," with government being perhaps the least imporant component of any equation that adds up to equaling "nation.")
Trees are to Forest as Government is to Nation. Sometimes you have to burn some trees to make the forest healthy again.
Live Stream Of Global Revolution
Link to live stream of pending Wall Street Demonstration tomorrow.
http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution
A dataset of one - a US state bank
Bank of North Dakota (Wiki and webpage) founded in 1919. I supported this concept for Michigan back in the 1970s, as well as a state-owned and -run insurance company similar to Saskatchewan Government Insurance (Wiki). The ideas ran pretty well in Northern Michigan, but foundered in downstate party politics.
And, for motorfirebox (from a very vociferous gun-owner and 2nd Amendment person :)), I give thee from Mother Jones, How the Nation’s Only State-Owned Bank Became the Envy of Wall Street (Josh Harkinson, 27 Mar 2009).
Regards
Mike
Sustainable Economics with apologies to Tolstoy
Slapout, Mike, Dayuhan, Fuchs, Motorfirebox, Bill, et. al
"All happy (societies) resemble one another, each unhappy (society) is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy
One might argue that a sustainable economy is a key component of a society. Rule of Law, Safe & Secure Environment, Stable Governance, and Social Well-Being are other components worth considering when comparatively examining healthy (happy) and unhealthy (unhappy) societies.
Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction - USIP
Quote:
"A sustainable economy is one in which people can pursue opportunities for livelihoods within a predictable system of economic governance bound by law. Such an end state is characterized by market-based macroeconomic stability, control over the illicit economy and economic-based threats to peace, development of a market economy, and employment generation. Economic governance refers to the collection of policies, laws, regulations, institutions, practices, and individuals that shape the context in which a (society's) economic activity takes place."
Fiscal Management and Monetary Stability can be seen as subsets of Macroeconomic Stability - something of concern to all who partake of the global financial system - context is everything as they say...:wry:
Fighting for its life, The euro zone is in intensive care, The Economist: Sep 17th 2011
Quote:
WHAT’S the French for “this sucker could go down”? Echoes of 2008, when the global financial system wobbled and George Bush gave his pithy view of the American economy, now resound on the other side of the Atlantic. Credit-default-swap spreads for European banks, a measure of how costly it is to buy insurance against their default, are at record highs (see chart 1).
Quote:
The pressure on European banks will keep increasing unless something else is done. Rumours that China will ride to the rescue of struggling countries are fanciful. Again, the real last resort is the ECB, which could relieve the pressures on the system by being prepared to buy without limit the bonds of solvent euro-zone countries. But the ECB is itself riven by disagreement.
Quote:
The German government moved swiftly to fill the hole left by Mr Stark. Jörg Asmussen, chief secretary at the finance ministry, will move to the ECB, assuming the formalities go without a hitch. Both Mr Asmussen and Jens Weidmann, Mr Weber’s successor at the Bundesbank, appear more flexible personalities than their predecessors. But persuading them, and the German public, to sign up to what amounts to a policy of massive quantitative easing (creating money to buy bonds) will be extremely difficult. In 2008 free-market Americans swallowed their misgivings to rescue Wall Street. Inflation-phobic Germans now face a similar choice.
Lehman Brothers and the crisis, A year on, Two books make a case for looking back before forging ahead, The Economist, Sep 10th 2009
Quote:
Mrs Reinhart and Mr Rogoff do not expect a quick recovery this time. Nor do they expect their proposed reforms—which include creating a new global financial regulator and beefing up the IMF, where Mr Rogoff was once chief economist—to prevent future crises, though they could make them less frequent. As they say, “The persistent and recurrent nature of the ‘this-time-is-different’ syndrome is itself suggestive that we are not dealing with a challenge that can be overcome in a straightforward way.”
The problem lies in the human tendency to be optimistic and forget the lessons of the past. There will be other banking crises, so the world must learn what it can from this one. Lehman Brothers is dead; long live Lehman Brothers.
