why did we bother fighting? the Germans have won

We capitulate. Germany finally took over Euroland, as of last week.

One by one, all the peripheral Euro countries will default and get bailed out by Germany.

So, why did our ancestors fight the Germans? They've ended up with most of the Eurozone under their control, anyway. and without firing a single bullet.
You know I'm not serious, but look at the number of lives lost in WW2.
Look at the fact that most wars are of an economic nature. The leaders can't sort out their economic differences and then they send people like us into war.
What we are going through now is an economic war between currency blocks,

and between the plutocrats and the rest of us.
It's bloodless,
unless you starve to death
from a lack of food due to unemployment and a lack of benefits.

flash forward to today:

Merkel told Greece that it's doing well, so they got a break, both in interest rate and in a time extension for the payoff. This was also done to stave off the collapse of the Greek economy, which is near anyway. There wasn't even the pretense that the ECB was in charge.
BUTT, Greece will have to sell off everything that it owns in common, in order to keep in Germany's good books. Power company, water companies, buildings, land, all of it. Greeks won't stand for it.

Ireland was supposed to give up its 12.5% corporation tax (higher than France's)
in order to get a break on its payments. "No dice" said Ireland. So, Germany cancelled their gift.

Portugal is next. However, I'll be surprised if Germany can handle bailing out Spain and Italy,
because they'll come begging soon.

One last solution could be found by Germans voters. If they don't want to bail out the rest of the Euro countries, they'll turf out Merkel. The next PM might take Germany out of the Euro and
let those broke countries starve for a couple of years. It might even hasten the end of fiat money.
Lately, Merkel's party has lost two regional elections. Was this caused by the Euro crisis? This German prof I know says it isn't. He says it was local politics, but I doubt it.

[German Triumphalism, as she is spoke]

-Cos67 ¬(%^D>

IAEA -EIEIO F. U.

If it wasn’t for the International Atomic Energy Association

playing around with Iraq and Iran, on behalf of the US,
they would have been a body more concerned about a country
planting a nukeshop near a fault line.

At least now it will cause countries to stop for a second, as Germany has done, and reconsider their use of nukes.
Financial catastrophe will then give them the excuse to cut electricity provision, so that plants can be shut down forever.

If we don’t, we won’t last long.
The half-life of plutonium is 24 000 years.
A half a life is about as much as many northern Japanese will get.

why leave Japan? at least they have public health care

As I mentioned in the message below, American soldiers are already likely sick
with glow-worm disease.

Also, their government told Yanks, 5 days after France told their kind,
to get out of Tokyo, vite, vite.

Too late. The vapour cloud's already in town.
UPDATE: It also passed over the UK recently, as per a physicist I know.

There's already been radiation detected in Chicago and other airports.
"no need to fear. All is well", they tell us.
[if a soldier says so]

So, if you were an American working in Japan, and might be sick from radiation exposure,
why would you return to the US?
If you get sick, you'll lose everything. Even if you could get insurance, question 1 will be

"been to Japan lately", and the rate will be 2000 bucks a month.

We all know how well the US treat their army veterans, after their loyal service to the country.
Vietnam vets as psychos or bums are cultural norms. Look at any movie.

Iraq veterans are coming home legless, but still alive, and ending up
on the street with no health care.
So, why would people go back home. They probably had jobs in Japan.
If they're jobless in the US, the have no healthcare coverage at all.
It's really expensive, so they'll need to raid their savings, or end up on the street.

Perhaps the irradiated American returnees can be
used as street lights,
now that many US cities are bankrupt.

-Costick67 ~(8^P

How to make the Yank invaders leave your country

a Letter sent to Zerohedge from
bob_dabolina
on Thu, 03/17/2011 - 20:14
#1069195
I have a friend in the military who just tweeted:
"Captain of the USS Reagan [aircraft carrier] told the crew to make video conferences home cause they dont know how sick they might get."
Have not confirmed yet but he's an honest guy so take it for what it is...
---------

towards the end of WW2

despite Japanese willingness to surrender

the Americans flattened two cities with the A-Bomb,
rode in triumphantly and set up shop.
Their army base has drunk Okinawa dry,
and committed no shortage of moral outrage.

Everybody in Japan wants them to leave, but there's no way they're going.

Or, so I thought.

Japan essentially became, and to some extent still is, a colony of the US.

So the smelly Americans tell the Japs what to do, regularly.

I'll bet the Americans forced Japan to buy American GE nuclear cookers,
and the US didn't understand the Japanese when they expressed their opposition

oh, so politely.
So, the Japanese raised the stakes by putting
some of the reactors near a faultline, by the sea, in Fukushima,
and then giving the management to TEPCO.

They certainly are brave, willing to take a nuke cloud, just to get rid of the
Yanksters. And they had to wait 40 years for the right conditions:

technical incompetence, nukes, earthquake, tsunami, incompetence
for the plan to come to fruition.

I suppose the emperor Akihito had been waiting in his palace thinking:

"when is that bitch in Fukushima gonna blow?"

Priceless! The plan is working like a charm.
The Yank army and navy are leaving!

How many of you guys would be willing to nuke your own country to get invaders to leave?

Costick67 ~(8^P
checkitout:

U.S. Aircraft Carrier Leaves Japan Port of Yokosuka as Precautionary Step
By John Brinsley - Mar 22, 2011 4:33 AM GMT+0000
The aircraft carrier USS George Washington yesterday left the Japanese port of Yokosuka, about 175 miles (280 kilometers) south of a crippled nuclear plant, as a precautionary measure.

“Moving the USS George Washington is a precaution given the capabilities of the vessel and the complex nature of the disaster,” the 7th Fleet said in a press release. “The forward deployed carrier is scheduled to remain in the local waters off Japan.”

U.S. Navy ships and helicopters have been involved in rescue efforts following the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan’s Tohoku region on March 11. Radiation detected on U.S. aircrews operating near Fukushima prompted the relocation of some ships on March 14.

“We’ve seen nothing that rises to the level that would be harmful to human health,” Commander Jeff Davis, a Seventh Fleet spokesman, said in a phone interview from Yokosuka, about 30 miles south of Tokyo.

The battle to prevent a meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station entered its 12th day as reports increased of radiation contamination at sea and on land. Radiation levels found so far in food aren’t harmful, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said at a press conference yesterday.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said fuel rods at the plant have been damaged, releasing five kinds of radioactive material and contaminating seawater for the first time.

read 'em their rights

[people can't live in a park]

Who needs an underwater house mortgage. There's some perfectly good nature going unused.

-Costick67 ~(8^P

checkitout:
Bob Chapman
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHA20110312&articleId=23666
The personal question we are asked is when will the Fed find out it cannot continue to create money and credit? Whether most of you realize it or not present monetary policy has been in action for 11 years, so this is nothing new. That is how long inflation has been created over those years. It shows you that central banks have major leeway and a long time line to do their dastardly deeds. The problem for these bankers is that in the end they lose every time. Historically they have extracted themselves by buying everyone in sight. When the Lombard League collapsed in 1348 they were exiled and in 1789 in France their heads were removed.

What is interesting is that in each case and there were many, the bankers knew exactly what the outcome would be, but they proceeded in spite of that. Today, the Fed is trying to stabilize inflation at about 2%.

Official figures are 1.5% when in reality the figures are between 7% and 9%.
What the Fed has given Wall Street and banking, which owns the Fed, is an economy on steroids, which is not a cure but a continuing palliative. Debt and unfunded liabilities spread worldwide will end up dishonored. The Fed’s idea is to inflate the problems away, but that can only work in general terms. How do you really inflate debt away without default? Perhaps the market is beginning to realize no matter how much money and credit is injected into the system that is not going to ultimately work. The elitists are at a dead end and they are well aware of it because they deliberately created this monstrosity. Everything is in place for economic, financial, social and political failure not only in the US, but in many other countries as well. The result will negatively impact the world for sometime to come. Materialism is coming to an end. You have been warned.

I got my orange crush and my gas chamber

I'm sure you've heard the story of how fascists and business
are singing off the same song sheet.

Just for your info, IBM helped the Nazis keep track of the Jews in camps,
with their computers.

Orange Crush was created for the German market, pre-1939.

So, is it any surprise that American companies are helping screw the very
people who would buy their products? They're fascists colluding with the
government.

a chance to put on a great song: Orange Crush
It's actually about the Agent Orange bombing in Vietnam,
but artistic license is mine.
Sorry for the karaoke version with lyrics (call out to Japan),
but the standard video is far too gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

buy buy buy bye bye bye Euro

I'm going to combine two stories:

One, an insider trading job and the next plan to kill off the Euro.
Same planners, the US oligarchy.

PIMCO just put most of its stock money into the dollar, which is falling precipitously. Cries of Insider trading are coming from MaxKeiser.com. Why would they do it unless the US was planning its next attack on the Euro.

Portugal

Us dollar at 76.71. Testing a theory. If the US dollar is ready to crash, Portugal will be fed to the sharks. This is if the international western economies are a conspiracy. It has been shown that western economics is colluding to keep the price of gold low. So, why not kick Portugal and Spain in the teeth.
The EU will support those countries.
But if the US goes, the whole world will go into a tailspin.
Of course, they will be exposed this time because the US problem is all too visible to everyone.

put me out of my misery

Hillary Clinton. Not the loveliest woman. Never was.
However,
Hillary has aged 5 years in the last 2 months.

I'm a good judge of faces. She hasn't slept more than a couple of hours in about a month.
That can only mean one thing. The US is trying to dream its way out of the impending dollar/debt disaster which is coming. They may be bringing forward a few war plans.

You'll laugh, but they'll try to say that the bank crisis was caused by foreign cyber-terrorists.
Enemy of choice will depend on the risk-benefit analysis.

Iran? China? Venezuela? Cuba?

This is a Pentagon talking point.
Max Keiser was laughing about this, but I have one question for him:

What did Sadam Husein have to do with 911?

We all know he was not involved.

Did it stop the US?

His country was stilled bombed into the Middle Ages.

What difference does the truth make?

No worries, y'all, it will just hasten the US's fall.

Nero also debased the currency of Ancient Rome and kept on spending and fighting foreign wars.
Then Rome fell.

Costick67 ~(8^P
Catherine Fitts says "If liquidity fails, then the US will go to war, covert or overt [On the edge-Max Keiser]. That includes currency war

Pentagon Tries to Blame Financial Crisis on Foreign Financial TerroristsSubmitted by George Washington on 03/01/2011 14:08 -0400
→ Washington’s Blog
The Pentagon is paying contractors to claim that it was foreign financial terrorists - instead of fraud by American financial executives - which caused the 2008 financial crisis.

While a Pentagon contractor said, “This is the equivalent of box cutters on an airplane,” Paul Backen - a Yale University professor who has studied economic warfare, said he saw “no convincing evidence that ‘outside forces’ colluded to bring about the 2008 crisis.”

Indeed, the claim that terrorism caused the financial crisis is about as believable as Gaddafi trying to blame the Libyan protests on Osama Bin Laden, or al-Maliki blaming Al Qaeda for the Iraqi protests.

But it's not an isolated incident. In fact, the government is trying in many ways to convince us that financial fraud is isolated, not systemic, and - most of all - not important to rein in.

For example, the U.S State Department's website says (click on link entitled "economic")"

Economic conspiracy theories are often based on the false, but popular, idea that powerful individuals are motivated overwhelmingly by their desire for wealth, rather than the wide variety of human motivations we all experience.

This one-dimensional, cartoonish view of human nature is at the heart of Marxist ideology, which once held hundreds of millions under its sway.)

If I didn't know better, I would say that the State Department is implying that anyone that questions the intent behind even a particular powerful individual's actions is a conspiracy theorist or a Marxist.

More importantly, Obama's current head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs - and a favored pick for the Supreme Court (Cass Sunstein) - previously:

Defined a conspiracy theory as "an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role."
____________
I wanted to get a later part of this video, where he says the "Pentagon is an anus", but enjoy anyway.

The Fonzie Ponzi

How's the leveraged cash-flow outlook for next year, Fonzie? AAAAAaaayyyyy. Cooool!

2009. A bad year to be a banker

Bankers had to hang their heads in shame for what they did.
1 year for $1 trillion.
Not a bad deal.

This guy, a 'Labour' lord, Jones, couldn't bow his head if he tried
with those butt chins of his. More chins than Chinese phonebook.

He also said that bankers should not be ashamed any more, because bankers were sheepish, in public (hookers and coke, behind closed doors) and nobody thanked them.
AAAAaaawwwwwww! So, sorry.

before you start laughing, this is how bad 2009 was for bankers/stockbrokers.

They thought, "we gotta improve our image by putting famous actors
on our boards."

Funny thing is, this actually failed. The SEC (stockmarket police, US) actually stopped this.

They couldn't find anyone guilty of the crash of '08, but they could stop an actor from being on the board of a corporation.
I can just see the explanation: "UUhhhhm, we're running a serious business, here"

They did try to put Henry Winkler on the board of some or other bank.

Costick67 ~(8^P

checkitout:
* 30 Jun 2009 at 5:10 PM
SEC Throwing Wrench In Citi’s Plan To Name The Fonz A DirectorBy Bess Levin
This– the Securities and Exchange Commission’s plan to show us it means business by robbing our nation’s banks of the right to appoint actors and sports stars to their boards–is a bunch of bull shit. And I’ll have you know The Juice has more business acumen in his pinkie than every Bank of America director combined. Also, do not discount the value of having some with the sort of initiative, drive and loose interpretation of the law that’ll allow him to say “I’m gonna break in there and get my shit,” which you don’t often find in the boardroom.
U.S. companies’ celebrity directors include Armstrong, 37, who quit last year after being paid $71,644 by Morgans; National Football League running back O.J. Simpson, 61, a member of four boards and the audit committee at Infinity Broadcasting Corp. before prosecutors charged him in the 1994 murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend; and National Basketball Association hall-of-fame guard Oscar Robertson, 70, a Countrywide director for eight years until the lender, at risk of collapse, was bought by Bank of America in 2008.
“What the SEC wants to do is prompt companies to make sure they’re appointing directors who can do the job and not just look pretty on a roster,” said Stephen Davis, a senior fellow at the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at the Yale School of Management.

[the end]

YA, THAT'S WHAT'S IMPORTANT. THE LOOK OF THE THING!

FUKushima YOU

Unlike the Fukushima disaster, this one, a financial meltdown, is intentional.
It's designed to rob and kill people.

Below a leaked letter from one banker to another:


Let's build a financialised economy based on the hard work of Chinese slaves.

Then, well make money by shifting pieces of paper back and forth.

While the public starves to death.
They want to work. There are no jobs. They'll have to dance or hook for their food.
Charlie Sheen and bankers are causing great demand for hookers.

When it crashes, every 10 years, or less, just shrug and take our money offshore.

Signed- Atilla the Stockbroker

Tent City, Cleveland, I believe

FUKushima ME!

[tempest in a tsunami]

Why not build a Nuke-shop on a jello island?

Fuk me, indeed.

How could a country that was A-bombed twice in WW2 turn around
and do it to themselves?

They have 54 Nuke plants. Hair of the dog what bit ya!

Japanese-style nihilism after that created the marketable Godzilla.

Godzilla rises out of the sea, just like a tsunami.

Actually, Godzilla's story was that a nuclear leak 

into the ocean

 [just like at FUKushima]

gave birth to this most Japanese of monsters.

Then they cashed in on their resulting fearlessness, by creating a real Godzilla
in the form of a Tsunami/nuke monster that will 'eat' their country.

Scary! The island is so animist and animated,

I just Shintoed my pants!

[d'you kiss your mother with that tongue?]

'where did I park that car?' Sendai airport. 'Oh, there it goes...Hey!'


APPARENTLY, the Japanese government was warned about building a nuclear plant
on their shaky island. Pay no mind![at least we now know that we haven't cornered the market on stupid politicians]

checkitout: guardian.co.uk,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/12/japan-ministers-ignored-warnings-nuclear
Japan ministers ignored safety warnings over nuclear reactors
Seismologist Ishibashi Katsuhiko claimed that an accident was likely and that plants have 'fundamental vulnerability'

* Robin McKie, science editor
 Saturday 12 March 2011 18.51 GMT
The timing of the near nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi could not have been more appropriate. In only a few weeks the world will mark the 25th anniversary of the worst nuclear plant disaster ever to affect our planet – at Chernobyl in Ukraine. A major core meltdown released a deadly cloud of radioactive material over Europe and gave the name Chernobyl a terrible resonance.

This weekend it is clear that the name Fukushima came perilously close to achieving a similar notoriety. However, the real embarrassment for the Japanese government is not so much the nature of the accident but the fact it was warned long ago about the risks it faced in building nuclear plants in areas of intense seismic activity. Several years ago, the seismologist Ishibashi Katsuhiko stated, specifically, that such an accident was highly likely to occur. Nuclear power plants in Japan have a "fundamental vulnerability" to major earthquakes, Katsuhiko said in 2007. The government, the power industry and the academic community had seriously underestimated the potential risks posed by major quakes.....

2 the story of Godzilla from Wikipedia, the other Wiki
Wiki When a Japanese fishing boat is attacked by a flash of light near Odo Island, two rescue boats are sent, but they too are destroyed. Few survive. On Odo Island, a village elder blames their poor fishing on Godzilla and recalls that in earlier times native girls were sacrificed to appease the giant sea monster. Survivors from the boats wash ashore. Word gets out and a helicopter arrives on the island with curious, but skeptical, reporters. Frightened natives per-form a ceremony to keep the monster away, but it doesn't work. That night, while the natives sleep, a storm arrives and Godzilla comes with it. Death and destruction ensue.
The next day witnesses arrive in Tokyo. Dr. Kyohei Yamane suggests that investigators be sent to the island. On arrival, Yamane finds giant radioactive footprints. When an alarm sounds, the villagers run to the hills, only to find Godzilla is more than they can fight. After a quick skirmish, the villagers run for safety and Godzilla heads to the ocean.
Dr. Yamane returns to Tokyo to present his findings. He concludes that Godzilla was created by a nuclear explosion. Some want to conceal that fact [that's so nuclear of them- Costick67], fearing international repercussions. Others say the truth must be revealed. They prevail and Godzilla's origins are announced to the public.

would you rather be led by Mongols or patricians?

[Genghis, Jr.]
Everybody in the US media, Beck included, has realised the the US is screwed and is raising the alarm warning about the CHinese threat, most obviously found in the McDonald's kid toys.
OOOHhhhh! Velly Scary.

However, it will be a different world when people like him will have to bow, like Obama does, to the new world leaders.
I think, if you read the text below, you'll prefer the 'Mongols' to the wealthy, with their feeling of entitlement and their class war. I'd rather be led by enlightened warriors.
This particularly key in the UK when it seems that Oxford produces no shortage of
useless, entitlement jockeys leading the country deeper into oblivion, at an every-increasing rate.
They're handing off from one bunch to the next in a morbid tag-team sport known as politics.
[hairy whoremonger]
Maybe we'll end up relying on our neighbours , whose names we don't even know now. See my Orlov story.
Eventually we'll need a neighbourhood army in order to keep the order, after all the police are fired, to pay off the debt.

Costick67 ~(8^P

checkitout:
Gary Brecher exiled online:

See, that’s what’s sad about all this: the post-disaster world will be just like this one,
only worse.
All the lousy coworkers and squabbles and crap, but none of the luxuries.
The winners won’t be the zombies,
just another set of bosses.
The end of the world is what you call it when your tribe loses.
It may be the end of the world for them, like it was for hundreds of native tribes all over the world, but when your world ends like that, you don’t get to play out the game in some cool ruins out of a video game. Some other tribe takes over, that’s all. And when they do, there’s no way on earth you can hole up in your townhouse with a semi-automatic weapon and hold out. Because it’s organization that wins, not lone gunmen. If you want to survive, join a club. It only looks like chaos to the losers.
The Mongols are my classic example here. They were a “horde” to the people whose asses they kicked, but if those losers had had the sense to accept Mongol vassalage (which the Mongols usually offered before they started leveling everything to the horizon) they’d have found out that the Mongols were actually better organized than their opposition.
Most of the time the Mongol armies

faced armies made up of a few professional soldiers
and huge peasant levies,
led by guys who were born into the job.
Half of them were opium addicts, retards, lazy whoremongers, or macho idiots.
That’s what you get when you trust a family tree.

Anyway, just saying: DC. Target-rich environment.
That’s why the most annoying waste of killing power was that
DC Sniper and his little boyfriend.
The guy had a good setup, that false-backed car, a spotter,
good Army training, he’s right there,
could’ve picked off two dozen lobbyists and been a national hero—and instead he shoots random civilians filling their gas tanks.
Wasted potential, as my guidance counselor used to say.
[AHAHHAHahahahAHAhahhh -LOL]

Death of a thousand cuts

[used by OJ for cutting....oranges?]
[that's the attitude]
Obama should do the only brave thing and let the litigious American public get their money back

by letting them sue and otherwise destroy Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, bit by bit.

He'll even get tax money on the lawyer fees.


they should let Judge Wapner preside over it, express-style,

in the People's Court.

Right out in public, on tv.

Obama should do the sneaky thing

Let the courts clear out their coffers.

Let regulation and spot taxes take the rest away.

It’ll be like it happened by accident.

Nobody will be the wiser, even the guys who pay Obama

to lead the country. JPMorgan, that is.

Do it, Mr Prez or I’ll sick the birthers on you. The birthers might become deathers.
Know what I'm saying?

Costick67 ~(8^P

China GOT GOLD GAME, Long time

Max Keiser:
"The game theory article is great because it points out that China does not need to amass a gold stock similar to the US, it can simply go to a gold standard now and effect a simultaneous devaluation against the dollar (as game theory dictates that the US and all other CB’s would be forced to follow China’s lead, or risk losing all their capital as investors buy the only gold backed currency in the world)."

I'll get the link soon

Big games are afoot in international finance.

why not SET UP A globalised WHORE FACTORY?

Now that winning has been re-defined:
Winning : Spending $500k in a few months on coke and whores, blowing your incredibly generous TV gig, endangering yourself and family, being a source of amusement and ridicule, destroying your family name [zerohedge]

I think this was their take on Charlie Sheen's definition, but it could apply to any stock-broker here in London.
more examples coming soon

So, the world of the bankers and othe super-rich is awash with coke and whores, I thought that somebody should start a service company to provide these services.
Since bankers can break the law at will, then I thought, if I get in good with them,
I can do whatever I want as well.

BUSINESS PLAN:

STEP 1
Start the service in the UK. But, true to the business model you can learn in any of the univesities here in town, I can then run the shop with an iron fist.
If the girls threaten to unionise, I will threaten to move the shop overseas.

I will take on board illegal immigrants, just like any number of factories in the UK.

STEP 2 move overseas

STEP 3 keep wages low. Use strict local managers who will be allowed to beat the staff.

STEP 4 get to know politicians so that I can bribe them to look the other way

STEP 5 if staff threaten to unionise, I'll close up shop and break a few limbs.

STEP 6 Become a vertically integrated company by starting a personnel office
Start a coke and heroin supply business, for the same reason.

STEP 7 Become a horizontally-integrated company by buying off, bribing or killing the competition

more later


At least a whorehouse provides a wider public service, beyond the benefit to employees and ‘management’. Therefore, it's better than the banks. If you've seen my other story (Mr Obama tear down that Wall Street) you know that for every dollar they make, bankers sacifice 8 dollars of real growth.

SHE’S THE BAUM

Just as I noted in the spring, the wisdom of a Bath prof about Economists stands. It was expressly by following the dictates of Nobel-prize winning economists that we ended up in this mess.
Caroline Baum is not standing for it, and it got printed in Bloomberg of all places. The underground has come above ground, because everybody knows we're heading for another crash.

Oh, by the way, others are saying it more clearly. Economists were at the cannibalism dinner table. See below.

Costick67 ~(8^P
checkitout: 2 things


1
Goldman's Model Evokes Blood-Sucking Leeches

By Caroline Baum - Mar 3, 2011 12:00 AM GMT
Bloomberg

Economists have been debating the pros and cons of fiscal stimulus since the 1930s, when John Maynard Keynes diagnosed the problem as one of inadequate private investment and prescribed public spending, financed by borrowing, as the cure.
...
In the 1980s, inflation came down, the Berlin Wall came down, economists thought the volatility of the business cycle had come down, and the notion of government as the solution went out of vogue.
...
All it took was a good financial crisis for the Keynesians to come out of the woodwork.
This fundamental disagreement among professional economists about whether government spending helps or hurts represents the state of the art, or science, today. In what other science do practitioners design a treatment plan based on inconclusive proof that the medicine does any good?
There are no control studies in economics, no way to hold everything else constant to determine the impact of one variable, no way to falsify conclusions that models spit out. Financial Times columnist John Kay, writing yesterday about risk modelers, referred to them as “alchemists and quacks.”
As I said before, we entered the 21st century with macroeconomics still looking for an Age of Enlightenment.
Five thousand years ago in ancient Egypt, medics used leeches to suck the blood of ill patients, believing the practice could cure everything from fevers to food poisoning.
Today’s physicians have largely forsaken bloodsuckers for modern medicine. It’s about time macroeconomics emerged from the Dark Ages as well.
2
http://chronicle.com/article/Larry-Summersthe/124790/
October 3, 2010

Larry Summers and the Subversion of EconomicsBy Charles Ferguson

The Obama administration recently announced that Larry Summers is resigning as director of the National Economic Council and will return to Harvard early next year. His imminent departure raises several questions: Who will replace him? What will he do next? But more important, it's a chance to consider the hugely damaging conflicts of interest of the senior academic economists who move among universities, government, and banking.

Summers is unquestionably brilliant, as all who have dealt with him, including myself, quickly realize. And yet rarely has one individual embodied so much of what is wrong with economics, with academe, and indeed with the American economy. For the past two years, I have immersed myself in those worlds in order to make a film, Inside Job, that takes a sweeping look at the financial crisis. And I found Summers everywhere I turned.

Consider: As a rising economist at Harvard and at the World Bank, Summers argued for privatization and deregulation in many domains, including finance. Later, as deputy secretary of the treasury and then treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, he implemented those policies. Summers oversaw passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Steagall, permitted the previously illegal merger that created Citigroup, and allowed further consolidation in the financial sector. He also successfully fought attempts by Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Clinton administration, to regulate the financial derivatives that would cause so much damage in the housing bubble and the 2008 economic crisis. He then oversaw passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of derivatives, including exempting them from state antigambling laws.

After Summers left the Clinton administration, his candidacy for president of Harvard was championed by his mentor Robert Rubin, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who was his boss and predecessor as treasury secretary. Rubin, after leaving the Treasury Department—where he championed the law that made Citigroup's creation legal—became both vice chairman of Citigroup and a powerful member of Harvard's governing board.
Related Content

Over the past decade, Summers continued to advocate financial deregulation, both as president of Harvard and as a University Professor after being forced out of the presidency. During this time, Summers became wealthy through consulting and speaking engagements with financial firms. Between 2001 and his entry into the Obama administration, he made more than $20-million from the financial-services industry. (His 2009 federal financial-disclosure form listed his net worth as $17-million to $39-million.)

Summers remained close to Rubin and to Alan Greenspan, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve. When other economists began warning of abuses and systemic risk in the financial system deriving from the environment that Summers, Greenspan, and Rubin had created, Summers mocked and dismissed those warnings. In 2005, at the annual Jackson Hole, Wyo., conference of the world's leading central bankers, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Raghuram Rajan, presented a brilliant paper that constituted the first prominent warning of the coming crisis. Rajan pointed out that the structure of financial-sector compensation, in combination with complex financial products, gave bankers huge cash incentives to take risks with other people's money, while imposing no penalties for any subsequent losses. Rajan warned that this bonus culture rewarded bankers for actions that could destroy their own institutions, or even the entire system, and that this could generate a "full-blown financial crisis" and a "catastrophic meltdown."

When Rajan finished speaking, Summers rose up from the audience and attacked him, calling him a "Luddite," dismissing his concerns, and warning that increased regulation would reduce the productivity of the financial sector. (Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Alan Greenspan were also in the audience.).....

Don't hate foreigners, hate the non-domiciled

Problem: the Oligarchy in our countries
GoverBusineMedia are all in support
of globalisation because it kills off good unionised jobs.
They export our jobs, make billions, hide the money
in tax havens, and we sit around wondering whom to blame.
Then, in come the foreign workers dropping your wages even further.
They give you an extreme Right-Wing party,

(the BNP in the UK)
so that you can focus your rage on the foreigners.
The real culprits are the oligarchy and their hangers-on.

like the so-called non-domiciled
They aren't many, but they're rich and pay no taxes.

[the real Fascist leader is revealed]
"government + business= fascism" Mussolini

[Wikipedia]
Someone with non-domiciled status, sometimes called a 'non-dom', is a person living in the United Kingdom yet registered as a foreign national, who doesn't pay income tax or capital gains tax on earnings abroad. It is a form of tax avoidance. Prominent examples include:

* Lord Paul
* Lord Ashcroft
* Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere
* Alistair McAlpine, Baron McAlpine of West Green[1]
* Irvine Laidlaw, Baron Laidlaw[2]
* Sir Ronald Cohen
* Sir Christopher Ondaatje[3]
* Lakshmi Mittal[4]
* David Potter[5]
* Doug Richard[6]
* James Cann[7]
* Raj Bagri, Baron Bagri[8]
* Lydia Dunn[9]

Costick67 ~(8^P

checkitout: 2 things
from taxresearch.org.uk

Non doms and tax
February 15th, 2011

The following is a parliamentary answer on tax paid in the UK by non-doms.

Of course what it does not say is what tax was not paid in the UK by non-doms, but the sums involved (£48,000 of tax a head on average in 2008/09) suggest some must be doing very well out of the new arrangement, and that not surprisingly others are simply now paying their taxes in full and giving up the arrangement.

Nothing suggests that I’m wrong to believe that billions might be a lost a year to H M Revenue & Customs as a result of the domicile rule - not least because I have estimated that up to 7 million people qualify to claim each year - and only a tiny proportion put it on a tax return. The rest, I suspect, simply don’t declare their earnings or status on the basis of the fact they’re outside the UK tax system, in their opinion.

Harriett Baldwin: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) how many non-domiciled UK taxpayers filed tax returns with HM Revenue and Customs in each of the last five tax years; [39455]

(2) how many non-domiciled taxpayers have paid the flat annual charge to the Exchequer since its introduction; [39456]

(3) how much tax non-domiciled taxpayers paid to the Exchequer in each of the last five tax years. [39457]

Mr Gauke: The number of individuals who filed a self-assessment (SA) tax return and indicated that they were non-domiciled was as follows:
Number
2004-05 110,000
2005-06 111,000
2006-07 117,000
2007-08 140,000
2008-09 123,000

2008-09 is the most recent tax year for which data are available.

The figures above include both individuals who were UK resident and individuals who were not UK resident.

Individuals who complete a SA return are only required to indicate that they are non-domiciled if this affects their tax liability. Therefore the actual number of non-domiciled individuals who complete a return will be greater than the number who indicate their non-domicile status on their SA return.

The annual £30,000 remittance basis charge was introduced with effect from the 2008-09 tax year. The number of non-domiciled individuals who paid the charge in 2008-09 was 5,400. This is a provisional figure rounded to the nearest hundred and may be updated once all returns for the tax year have been received and analysed.

Figures are not available for the total amount of UK tax paid by non domiciled individuals. However, it is possible to calculate the total amount of UK income tax and capital gains tax (CGT) paid by individuals who completed an SA return and indicated that they were non-domiciled. These amounts for the past five tax years were as follows:
£ billion
2004-05 3.3
2005-06 4.0
2006-07 5.0
2007-08 6.9
2008-09 5.9

2

Letter on ZeroHedge
by rich_wicks
on Wed, 03/09/2011 - 23:47
The government - such as it is - carries out of the orders given by the Capitalists who own it.
Capitalists don't own the government.
Fascists do. That's the economic system of fascism - it's when corporations own the government. They aren't capitalists anymore - they don't compete on an even playing field. They are fascists now, because they can't compete one on one, they get the Federal government to pass regulations to protect them from competition, to give them money to help them when they screw up so that the competition that didn't screw up doesn't take over their market share.
They aren't capitalists.
Understand the difference. Capitalists will never control the government, but it's the fault of people like you that has allowed this government to go fascist. You gave it too much power.
Take away the power of the government to regulate and bail out private corporations, and there won't be any point for companies to control the government, because all the FEDERAL government will be able to do then is protect the nation, enforce the constitution, and aribtrate disputes between the states. They won't be able to bail out GM or Goldman Sachs, and they won't be able to keep a natural gas powered cars off the road, like they do now.
You think regulations are there to protect you, they are there to protect corporations and if it has the side effect of protecting you, well, that's just an accident.