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Syndicate
It was supposed to be capitalism's swan song, said one proponent of the new laissez-faire. Ya right. Capitalism is a monumental failure.
America (wait, sorry, you all hate America, let me rephrase that) Americans - people living in the United States are going to suffer - badly -if this keeps up. That country doesn't have a social safety net, that country's treasury is swimming in red ink at a time when it really, really can't be. Its credit rating is going to come into question.
The United States government has been weakened, and has lost credibility. 90% of the populace thinks the country is running in the wrong direction, 90% of the populace disapprove of congress. Americans are panicing.
You think pulverising a nation's economy is the right way to make a government less hawkish? You think total inconfidence in the institution of government is healthy for democracy? Yeah, that really worked great in Germany.
At least Obama's not Hitler. The problem is more than a few Americans think he is....
What are you socialists going to do? Start an armed revolution? No. Civil war won't work. Not in an age of nuclear weapons. We'd extinguish ourselves, very literally.
[ 06 October 2008: Message edited by: West Coast Greeny ]
Communism was a mass suc... oh wait.
The Germans didn't allow Hitler to take power because they had lost confidence in government. The main reason he was able to take power was because the left (which was huge and militant) was divided against itself and the German capitalist class took advantage of their confusion and weakness to crush them by installing a fascist regime.
Ooh, high praise, indeed! Translation: TINA[ 06 October 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]
Soviet communism never promised anyone higher pie in the sky dregalated kapitalism. Soviet communism lasted 70 years, and they went into deficit spending for a few measly billion dollars by 1989 after the Saudis began dumping oil on world markets in 1986. Then the U.S. interfered with democracy in the Soviet Union and propped up Boris Yeltsin's election campaign. Long-short, neoliberal capitalism failed in Russia as well as dozens of other countries where tried since 9-11-73 Chile.
And now the new laissez-faire is collapsing all around their ears on Wall Street. Shock and awe paving the way for extensive change again? We know what the results are already time and time again. Capitalism is a car constantly on blocks. It's broken again.
Most "ordinary" folk I know have lost about one-third of their portfolio.
Maybe you have a different definition of ordinary, and clear distinctions of holdings to distinguish the "greedy and stupid", who may have been sold a bill of goods, from the virtuous?
Most boomers aren't saving enough for retirement
Do not forget that that is savings that is lost. Money you COULD have spent over the years is suddenly gone. You get the misery twice over. The money is gone and you didnt get to spend it.
The lady in question had cancer and now has little to fall back on if it comes back.
You are told to save for a rainy day. Rainy day comes and POOF money gone!
Rich people have sold a very good con game here, and while they make off with the $700 billion the US government handed them, people like that lady you talked to will blame anybody but themselves for being conned by Raygun and his successors into thinking a measly few bucks on a tax cut was doing anybody a favor but people like Bill Gates.
Yes, that's very tragic, so let's not forget who's really responsible. All our lives we've been told to put our money into the casino called the stock market. But fear not, true believers! It's a special casino- a casino where everybody wins!
Sorry man, but there ain't no such animal. The truth was that we put the money in and the capital class took it out. Like any pyramid scheme, it all works fine as long as the money keeps coming in, but eventually you run up against a wall and those at the top grab what's left and run for cover while everyone realises that the money is all gone. There's no payoff.
This was easy to predict if you have the intellectual courage to accept that the norm of the historical blip that has been the last fifty years won't necessarily be the norm forever. And that's leaving aside equally obvious impending norm-shifts like the coming energy crisis and ecological upheaval. It was nothing but folly to assume that we had reached an "end to history", to borrow a phrase, and that if you'd invested in the current system it would always be there for you. Even when it's a matter of their own survival, most people can't take the trouble to question the assumptions of the world view they grew up with to see if they hold water.
But here I am blaming the victim. On the other hand, you seem to be shooting the messenger. Your friend has been robbed by the capital class, and they did it right in front of her by telling her to close her eyes and hold out her wallet and they'd show her a great trick. My advice to her is to radically downsize her expectations for retirement, cash in what she's got left and buy something tangible that the paper economy can't take away from her, because if she keeps that money in there she will lose a lot more of it. This isn't over by a long shot.
We knew there was a reason Steve Harper broke his own election rules and called an early vote.
After the first wobbles of late 2000 and early 2001 when the NASDAQ went sideways and the Dow began to fall, that should have been the first clue to anyone with a working brain that the paper economy cannot be relied upon for true prosperity.
First thing the NDP ought to do the day we take Parliament is pass a law nationalizing all the banks without compensation to anyone. The stock markets are already down the crapper so what's another few hundred points off the TSX between CEOs and their golden parachutes?
I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few CEOs are already shipping whatever they have that ain't nailed down into their private estates somewhere in Bermuda or San Marino or Monaco so they can skip town and stick the rest of us with the bill.
Stock Market chaplain - Gay men should be forced to have warning tattoos
This article certainly makes you want to do what the investment guy does in the video:
Worse before it gets better
Also, one bank executive got what's coming to him, amazingly enough.
Lehman Bros CEO decked at the gym
[ 07 October 2008: Message edited by: Doug ]
You'll find in Richard Parker's biography of John Kenneth Galbraith the gee whiz moment when U.S. conservatives came to the understanding that sucking the average American into the investment cycle also made them believers in the capitalist system. And Dubya almost made social security dependent on the investment acumen of the individual, just four years ago. Close call.
But I suppose you are simply saying, here, that the RRSP should always be put into GICs? In hindsight, clearly so...although ethical investments should make more sense in your super-rational world.
If only a majority of people read newspapers like the Globe (certainly not the Post or Sun).
If only. If only.
If only most New Democrats could get over that tendency to yearning, read the business pages, come to understand something of the workings of the market and the appeal of the Harpers of this world among the greedy and the great unread, we would in fact be able to bring about Tommy's "New Jerusalem" through the democratic process. Tomorrow, if not sooner.
If only cancer patients understood not only the machinations of the marketers but also how to hermetically seal themselves from the environmental conditions that caused their illness.
Actually, civil war in the US wouldn't necessarily increase the risk of a nuclear war. As long as they're fighting with each other, they don't have the time or resources to attack anyone else (and thus antagonize other nuclear powers). And nuclear weapons wouldn't be much use in a civil war, for obvious reasons.
Where the situation would get dangerous, of course, is if some Rapture nuts were actually win and seize control of the US government. Then the danger of nuclear war would be substantial, again for obvious reasons.
There was little mention of the civil unrest and ethnic conflicts which broke out across the former Soviet Union after Yeltsin and Kravchuk illegally dissolved the USSR. People in the west were led to believe that there were few social supports for millions of people under Soviet communism, and that people there longed for free markets and western style democracy. Hawks did mouth concerns that phony terrorists desired to gain possession of nuclear weapons strewn throughout the former USSR, and that Soviet scientists impoverished by capitalist reforms would sell nuclear secrets to rogue nations and Islamic Gladios created by the CIA, Brits, and Saudis since the 1980's-90's. One high-ranking U.S. official is rumored to have deliberately handed nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan, a country ruled by U.S.-backed military dictatorship in the 1980's and 90's.
the meltdown continues
There can't be a greater nation of suckers ever in recorded history.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=874100965
Stiglitz says this bailout isn't likely to work. It's "trickle down."
[ 07 October 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]
What a great roller-coaster! [img]tongue.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 07 October 2008: Message edited by: Doug ]
If you understand what I'm saying...that a rapid increase of capital in private/corporate hands ballooned the credit/money supply creating a economy-wide bubble. That's why we have the business cycle...because of Conservative ideology being effected into public policy.
Oh, is that the reason? Well, maybe not:
One of the comments to the story offers a bit more detail:
It has a certain ring of truth to it, but I don't know enough about the subject to judge this.
Easy cake.
It still looks politically bad when the Harpoids and their predecessors in spirit were the ones constantly banging on and on and on about the deficit to the point of no return. Now they shall reap the inability to borrow without looking bad.
I know one thing I'm going to do ASAP is pay off my credit cards and pray the NDP wins so they'll possibly be moved to cancel all outstanding student loan debt. [img]tongue.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 07 October 2008: Message edited by: DrConway ]
http://www.cnbc.com/id/27078725