Greenspan blames the Greeks for recession

If Greece defaults, it will create a recession in the US.
Otherwise, there's no possibility of a recession in the US.
says Alan Greenspan.
who missed the 2008 crash, because he ducked out the year before.

Where do the errors begin?
The US is not exposed to much Greece debt,
except the CDSs which could bite.

The US is in a recession already with stagflation,
or screwflation (see other article below).
The government hasn't admitted it, for obvious reasons
and the media is asleep as usual.

Trying to pin the whole problem on the Greeks
is like trying to blame the sinking of the Titanic on
the mouse in the captain's cabin.

The whole banking system, worldwide is maxed out on
credit and inflated with fiat money.
There's no room to maneouvre when the smallest of problems comes to pass.

However, you can blame a shit-box little country
like Greece for toppling a 600 trillion dollar business,
because you can use all your racist ideas in one place
and take out your economic frustrations,
and forget to blame the banks.
Can you say 'scapegoat'.
[Greek goat. good eye!]

Interpretation: if Greenspan says that Greece could kill banks, it means that the banks are basically telling him to give that excuse because they will implode, soon. Oh, and Greenspan will thus deflect again any blame from himself.

But, this is his baby.
It's got glasses and is hunched over, chanting "Ayn Ayn".

-Costick67 ~(8^P
checkitout:
Greenspan Says Greece Default ‘Almost Certain,’ May Trigger U.S. Recession
By Vivien Lou Chen - Jun 17, 2011 12:46 AM GMT
Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, said a default by Greece is “almost certain” and could help drive the U.S. economy into recession.

“The problem you have is that it’s extremely unlikely the political system will work” in a way that solves Greece’s crisis, Greenspan, 85, said in an interview today with Charlie Rose in New York. “The chances of Greece not defaulting are very small.”

Greek government bonds slumped, pushing the yield on the two-year note above 30 percent for the first time, as Prime Minister George Papandreou’s failure to win support for more austerity fueled speculation the European country will fail to meet its obligations. More than 20,000 people protested in Athens this week against wage reductions and tax increases, with police using tear gas on crowds and strikes paralyzing ports, banks, hospitals and state-run companies.

The chances of Greece defaulting are “so high that you almost have to say there’s no way out,” said Greenspan, who ran the central bank from 1987 to 2006. That may leave some U.S. banks “up against the wall.”

Greece’s debt crisis has the potential to push the U.S. into another recession, Greenspan said. Without the Greek issue, “the probability is quite low” of a U.S. recession, he said.

Remember, son, when the Turks or the IMF come to town...

Make no mistake, the IMF is that kind of an empire. They will strangle your economy,
until you stand up and revolt. If Argentina is a good example, you won't even need weapons.

Just guts!

For the time being, Greece, after one year of austerity, is in the

FULL FLIGHT MODE.

They're running for the hills and leaving everything in the big city behind,
like it's Sodom and Gammorah.

They'll live to fight another day.

[sorry for the advert]

You hear the voice of Dominique Strauss Kahn bellowing:
"The reality is that these people, they are in deep shit," [see the story below]
What he doesn't say is that the IMF, the ECB and the banks are in deeper shit.
[More on that later- people are starting to fight back, with lawyers!]
That's why the oligarchs have all ganged up on the already poor citizens of

Greece and Ireland and Portugal

So, for now, it's time for the Greeks to run to the hills and dust off the old family homestead. They can have a garden, raise animals, go fishing. Barter. Play banjoes, sing and dance.

You know, Iron Age stuff.

a happier time, when there wasn't even money,
let alone bankers.

-Costick67 ~(8^P

checkitout:
Greek crisis forces thousands of Athenians into rural migration
Debt, unemployment and poverty is causing mass unrest and thousands to seek a cheaper lifestyle outside the capital
o Helena Smith in Andritsaina, Arcadia
o guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 May 2011 18.48 BST

High in the hills of Arcadia, in a big stone house on the edge of this village overlooking verdant pastures and a valley beyond, a group of young Athenians are busy rebuilding their lives.

Until recently Andritsaina was not much of a prospect for urban Greeks. "But that," said Yiannis Dikiakos, "was before Athens turned into the explosive cauldron that it has become. We woke up one day and thought we've had enough. We want to live the real Greece and we want to live it somewhere else."

Piling his possessions into a Land Rover and trailer, the businessman made the 170-mile journey to Andritsaina last month. As he drove past villages full of derelict buildings and empty homes, along roads that wound their way around rivers and ravines, he did not look back.

"Athens has failed its young people. It has nothing to offer them any more. Our politicians are idiots … they have disappointed us greatly," said Dikiakos, who will soon be joined by 10 friends who have also decided to escape the capital.

They are part of an internal migration, thousands of Greeks seeking solace in rural areas as the debt-stricken country grapples with its gravest economic crisis since the second world war.

"It's a big decision but people are making it," said Giorgos Galos, a teacher in Proti Serron on the great plains of Macedonia, in northern Greece. "We've had two couples come here and I know lots in Thessaloniki [Greece's second biggest city] who want to go back to their villages. The crisis is eating away at them and they're finding it hard to cope. If they had just a little bit of support, a little bit of official encouragement, the stream would turn into a wave because everything is just so much cheaper here."

The trickle into Proti Serron might have gone unnoticed had the village not also been the birthplace of the late Konstantinos Karamanlis who oversaw the nation's entry into the then European Economic Community in 1981. An alabaster white statue of the statesman in the village square is adorned with the words: "I believe that Greece can change shape and its people their fate."

Nearly sixty years after they were uttered, a growing number of Greeks, at least, are beginning to wonder whether the old man was right. The drift towards the bright lights of the big cities were by Karamanlis' own admission one of the great barometers of the country's transition from a primarily agricultural society into an advanced western economy. This week, as the IMF and EU debated ways of trying to re-rescue Greece and observers openly wondered whether the country would have to leave the euro, Greece appeared more adrift than ever, tossed on a high sea of mounting anger and civil disobedience from people who have lost trust in their politicians, and at the mercy of markets that refuse to believe it can pull itself back from the brink of bankruptcy. "The reality is that these people, they are in deep shit," the managing director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn said recently. "If we had not come they would have fallen into the abyss. Two weeks later the government would not have been able to pay civil servants' wages."

Ironically, it is the medicine doled out under last year's draconian EU-IMF €110bn (£96bn) rescue programme, implemented to modernise a sclerotic economy, that has made their lot worse. Twelve months of sweeping public sector pay and pension cuts, massive job losses, tax increases and galloping inflation have begun to have a brutal effect. GDP is predicted to contract by 3% this year – making Greece's the deepest recession in Europe.

In Athens, home to almost half of Greece's 11 million-strong population, the signs of austerity – and poverty – are everywhere: in the homeless and hungry who forage through municipal rubbish bins late at night; in the cash-strapped pensioners who pick up rejects at the street markets that sell fruit and vegetables; in the shops now boarded and closed and in the thousands of ordinary Greeks who can no longer afford to take family outings or regularly eat meat.
"We've had to give up tavernas, give up buying new clothes and give up eating meat more than once a week," said Vasso Vitalis, a mother-of-two who struggles with her civil servant husband to make ends meet on a joint monthly income of €2,000.
"With all the cuts we estimate we've lost around €450 a month. We're down to the last cent and, still, we're lucky. We've both got jobs. I know people who are unemployed and are going hungry. They ask family and friends for food," she sighed. "What makes us mad is that everybody knew the state was a mess but none of our politicians had the guts to mend it. It was like a ship heading for the rocks and now the rocks are very near."
....
With unemployment officially nudging 790,000 – although believed to be far bigger with the closure of some 150,000 small and medium-sized businesses over the past year – there are fears that Greece, the country at the centre of Europe's worst financial debacle in decades, is slipping inexorably into political and social crisis, too. Rising racist tensions and lawlessness on the streets this week spurred the softly spoken mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis, to describe the city as "beginning to resemble Beirut".[I'd say Kabul- Costick67]
Yannis Caloghirou, an economics professor at the National Technical University of Athens, said: "Greece has become a battleground, at the EU level where policymakers have made the crisis worse with their lack of strategy and piecemeal approach, and among its own people who no longer have trust in institutions and the ability of the political system to solve the situation. My concern is that the country is slipping into ungovernability, that ultra-right groups and others will grab the moment."
A mass exodus of the nation's brightest and best has added to fears that in addition to failing one or perhaps two generations, near-bankrupt Greece stands as never before to lose its intellectual class. "Nobody is speaking openly about this but the prospects for the Greek economy are going to get much worse as the brain drain accelerates and the country loses its best minds," said Professor Lois Lambrianidis, who teaches regional economics at the University of Macedonia.
"Around 135,000, or 9% of tertiary-educated Greeks, were living abroad and that was before the crisis began. They simply cannot find jobs in a service-oriented economy that depends on low-paid cheap labour.".....end

Public services the first to go

What a surprise.
When the bankers create havoc, the public pays, and then loses services.
It's the perfect mercantilist equation:

BBF (Econ)+ S-OG=P~USC+PUBServ~Scrx

i.e. banks b*ttf**k the economy combined with
sold-out governments
equals
people are up sh*t creek
and public services are screwed

Of course, the US is a ridiculous example of pure survival of the fittest (found nowhere else outside of a war zone), but public services, what's left of them, are being trimmed again. This is about the Governator Schwarzeneger, in California (you know, the nasty robot from the movies) who doesn't want Obama's money.

"We're broke. I'll be back."

Public defenders (lawyers for the poor) are being cut back (just when hunger was starting to set in- good timing.) This has only "made" the blogs because one of the PDs is somewhat famous.

This will take you back to a time of peace, love and no derivatives. Here's the story:

Yolo County Public Defender Barry Melton recalls his younger days as a band member of Country Joe and the Fish, known for its anti-war anthem "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag." Melton is taking early retirement to save other jobs.
Our Region

Yolo County loses best-known employee among exodus of early retirees By Hudson Sangree
hsangree@sacbee.com
Published: Tuesday, May. 19, 2009 - 12:00 am Page 1B

Barry Melton knows his days as a young rock icon, when he took the stage at Woodstock with a tousle of blond curls, are long past.

When he played the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love in 2007, the sun in Golden Gate Park burned his scalp through his silver strands. "My hair is so thin on top," he laughed Monday.

But at 61, Melton – the Yolo County public defender who became famous as "The Fish" in the Vietnam-era band Country Joe and the Fish – leaves at the top of his game as a lawyer.

He said he decided to retire next month partly to save jobs in his office as Yolo County struggles with a historic budget crisis.

"It's either that," Melton said, "or put some young attorney in the unemployment line."

Melton is one of 93 county employees who have accepted retirement incentives as part of the county's efforts to reduce a $24 million budget gap in the 2009-10 fiscal year, which starts July 1.

Officials say the retirement incentives, which county supervisors are expected to approve today, will save $3.1 million and reduce the need for layoffs.

Other savings measures, including increased voluntary furloughs, also are expected to save jobs. Every employee in Melton's office, for instance, has agreed to take 208 hours of unpaid furlough next year, equal to a 10 percent pay cut.

"We're a family," Melton said. "Everybody in my office is sacrificing."

Assistant County Administrator Pat Leary called Melton's departure "bittersweet."

Losing the county's best-known employee, with his wealth of experience in the courts, is not ideal, she said.

Across departments – from the District Attorney's Office to county social services to the Assessor's Office – there will be an exodus of veteran employees whose expertise will be hard to replace, she said.

"You don't want to see the brain drain created with all that experience walking out the door," Leary said.

But employees who accept the early retirement package may allow younger workers to keep their jobs.

The incentive packages include two years of service credits, which increase pension payments as if the employee had worked for two more years, Leary said.

Because of the cost to the county of those packages, each retirement will save about three-quarters of another position, she said.

County officials hope the savings will reduce the number of layoffs, previously projected at 111, by at least half, she said.

In Melton's office, where two dozen lawyers work to protect the rights of indigent defendants, one or two young lawyers might be spared from layoffs by Melton's departure.

He will step down as the county's public defender but remain on staff for another year, working part time to help his office transition. County supervisors will select his replacement.

"This was the right thing to do, but I'm not a martyr," Melton said. He said he expects to have enough income to live comfortably.

Melton said he may continue to do death penalty work and to try cases in the area.

Meanwhile, he remains an active musician, playing local charity concerts and clubs and festivals in Europe during his summer vacations.

A blazing improvisational guitarist, he said he's looking forward to being able to play more gigs with his bandmates, including former members of the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Growing up in New York and California, Melton said his parents encouraged him to become a musician who championed social causes. In his early 20s, he was part of the Bay Area music scene, playing the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969 with Country Joe McDonald.

The Berkeley-based group's anti-war ditty "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" was a rallying cry for a generation.

Melton said he "rebelled" in his 30s by becoming a lawyer. He passed the bar without graduating from college or law school and worked in other public defender's offices before coming to Yolo County.

Today, album artwork, rock photos and a portrait of his "lawyer hero" Mahatma Gandhi adorn the walls of his Woodland office.

Melton has always taken pride in his two sides – music and law. He said the socially conscious music of the 1960s and the work of public defenders who represent indigent defendants have a lot in common.

"Working for poor people to make sure they get dealt with equally," Melton said. "Those are '60s values, man."
____the end


Ya, man!

Seriously though. I know you're all tired and overworked, or slowing starving to death, but we have to stand up for public services because today it's the PDs and tomorrow it'll be YOUR schools and hospitals (I'm talking to my non-US audience, here. Americanos have already lost any semblance of proper public services).

I know what you're thinking. The hippies weren't so stupid after all. I can't get a mortgage, but with Wifi, who needs a house? Live in the VW van....man!

-Costick67 ( 8^P
pics from fotosearch.com (free)

No stopping the Calamity express

The economy is starting to head right back towards calamity.

Speculating on oil and other stuff has taken off. Hedging is back on line. It's just like the '30s. After the crash, governments made sure that the paper-based crash went charging right through the real economy, like a bull. It's as if they won't stop until the common man has paid for every last mistake created by the financial system. Kinda like 'trickle-down economics'.

Here's a story on this from the Independent's (UK) Adrian Hamilton. He's done some good work, but I've got some problems with his arguments.

-Costick67 ( 8^P

[my comments- Costick67]

Here we go again, back to bank profits and big bonuses

Just as before, the returns are being made in the investment arms

Thursday, 14 May 2009
Oil prices are back up to $60 a barrel, bank profits are rising, share prices have surged, buyers are coming back to the housing market and retail sales are beginning to show signs of growth. Happy days are here again. Only the bit that everyone is missing in this outbreak of cheeriness (who said that the media was only interested in bad news) is that it all sounds suspiciously like the things that got us into this mess in the first place.

Take bank profits. Politicians, economists and commentators have all been loud in their condemnation of the banks for diving into the wholesale markets at the expense of good old-fashioned deposit-taking and lending against assets. And where are the profits now being made by the banks? Why, in the wholesale markets and in the investment-banking side of their business. Just look at the results of Barclays or the Royal Bank of Scotland.
---
And what is the result of this renaissance of investment banking? Why large bonuses again as share options rocket in value (RBS's head of global markets, John Hourican, stands to gain as much as £11m, thanks to the rise in the bank's shares). The US authorities move to force the banks to raise their capital base and who profits? The investment-banking divisions of the institutions charged with raising the money – all for fat fees and fatter bonuses.
[It's not the bonuses, per se, that are the problem. It's the risky instruments traded without oversight that made risk too easy, especially for the savings banks, who were also not properly supervised. Of course, all this was intentional, and it was allowed to happen.]
Turn to the rise in oil prices, alongside other commodities, and what do you find? The very same forces that were behind the catastrophic chasing of prices up to $140 per barrel last year and their even more precipitative decline to less than $30 per barrel. Just as they nearly quadrupled within the space of a couple of years, so they halved and halved again this year, only to double again during the past few weeks.
[the crowd/wave/lemming mentality. It’s been very extreme because investors are desperate, having no other income except from pushing paper . But, the source of the problem was the demand that this caused for fake documents (derivatives and hedging), with hot air for collateral, to be created [they're pure snake oil].
Also, speculating is the very essence of hedging. There's no stopping it, but why is this backroom gambling allowed to have an effect on the price of basic staples like wheat and corn, and oil, the motivation lubrication? Oil prices are no longer run by the supplier and the demand from the customer. I say, sell your own pinecones for $140/barrel if you think someone will buy them. Just don't let some white guy in a tower somewhere tell you the price of your pinecones.

How can somebody put a price on something they don't own?

I think we're getting in way over our heads

if this is what has become of the markets.

Poor people have already rioted around the world because they can't understand what hand of God just made their daily bread twice as expensive. They think it's a scam, and it is.
Also, the little guy is trying to plan his future and that of his little store/farm/office but cannot, because commodities are making Mount-Everest type peaks on the graph every so often. Fish, or cut bait? or go broke?]
You can take this as an indication of a reviving world economy. Recent statements from China indicate the Asian economies at least may be picking up speed, raising the demand for imported raw materials. But the more likely explanation, as for the rise in stock markets, is simply that the smart money is moving from boring but safe financial instruments to riskier but potentially much more profitable outlets [Got a line of credit, I see.]. In other words, we are back to where we were before the crisis burst.
[Back on track, heading right for the cliff again. Governments haven't changed the rules; they barely promised to, under their breath.]
This is not in itself a bad thing. [WHAT?] Part of the purpose of markets is to predict and pre-empt future trends. [That is, of course, as long as they're not creating panic FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN TO PROFIT FROM THE BONUSES GAINED BY TRADING. THAT kind of speculating should be illegal.] If markets are now indicating that world growth cannot resume without a strain on resources, we should be grateful to them. This is as much a structural crisis in Western economies as it is in over-stretched financial institutions.
[So, the little guy should try to withdraw from the global economy, I say.]
But, of course, markets – as presently constructed – are doing much more than presage the future. They are responding, in highly volatile ways, to the needs of a financial world, where there is a huge disparity between the volume of money building up in parts where savings exceed spending and the parts of the world – led by the US and Britain – where the opposite is true.
[We got none, so we have to ask brokers to get it for us. Fine, it's a service. Pick up a phone; borrow a billion. But, they then make up paper tricks so that they'll have food to eat and a penthouse suite. Can’t we give them paper food for the paper tricks they sell?]
The development of shadow banking, the creation of exotic instruments, the whole mad world of excessive risk of the past decade may have been driven by greed but it was also the response of a world where, with low interest rates, those with money were desperately seeking ways of getting a better rate than the traditional investment means provided. [i.e. greed and laziness. Nothing worse than lazy, greedy rich people. Take ‘em out back, I say. They’ve the time and money to force governments to look after them and not the rest of us, leading to disasters that have brought down every Western empire so far. Because these rich are more about Dynasty than Who’s Got Talent?]

We are now back in exactly the same situation, only the rates of return on savings and investment are no longer small, they are zero. The funds being built up in Asia and the Middle East, the savings being made in domestic pension funds and savings schemes, require an outlet. [build a factory then. Oh, sorry the Chinese have them all. The essential lie to the working people of the West was that they would have other types of jobs to go to in the future. (Now, it's 'uneconomical' to open a factory in the West.) It was necessary to say this repeatedly for globalisation to be sold to the people, peacefully. They're liable to use force the next time you protest, though.]

Just as in the past years of excess, they will try to find it in the more speculative areas. And they will tend to move as a herd. So an oil price that might reasonably be pushed up 10-20 per cent on future expectations, will be forced up 200-300 per cent as the investors, or speculators if you prefer, pile in to make a turn on the rise. So with stock and commodity exchanges.

It's no way to run a world economy. But then none of the measures being considered by politicians or regulators to curb the excessive gambling of the past are going to do much to solve it. If you want a better global system [How about Kissinger's New World Order? Go for it.], then you will have to face up to the problems of currencies and global financial flows. [i.e globalisation] And what's the advantage of that to politicians who see only the value in slamming closed the doors after the horses have bolted? [So, the whole liberalisation thing was a scam which, if perpetrated, could not be gathered up again (until the ultimate collapse, which is coming soon), and those rich who pushed for it also knew this.]

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk
____the end

The question for us worker ants is whether we need this financial system at all and whether we need to depend on sold-out politicians. You've gotta be thinking of solutions. You will make the difference. I'll writing up my thoughts on this later.

Labour's Mandelson vows to crush postal unions

Where does the oxymoron in the title begin and where does it end?

Mandelson is, if nothing, an opportunist and an equal opportunity harrasser. He doesn't care if it's unions, just so long as it's not his 'special friends' like Russian oligarchs and his pork-trough hangers-on.

I really enjoyed the tone: "I'll shove it down your throats, so you better open up."

I love democracy.

I really hope that people will enjoy weekly home mail delivery because that's what the market will deem fair. No sense in giving the poor and infirm daily delivery to their door. How uppity can those people get?
Daily home delivery!? HA!

Our business friends know how to do postal service. They will pocket some lucre by selling off Royal Mail's assets, and then lose money because the government will put them back in the black, with the public's money anyway. Some of that same money will find its way into Labour's coffers, as a pay-off, completing the cycle. Oh, except for the cash that Mandy gives to his friends, as above.

Dismissed!
that means you and most of RM's employees.

keystone cops and the right to leak

This is next in a series of lessons (for foreigners and video-gaming fans) on politics in the UK. Try to remember, this is essentially about the credit crunch and cover-ups:

the first cover up
This is a very deferent country. Most people know their place and behave accordingly, especially those in the media. Therefore, the only way for the public to learn about how the government is destroying the nation through incompetence is through leaks to opposition politicians. If the content of the leak

is not about issues of national security, it's fair game. Recently, this compact has broken down because of the general erosion of personal rights. Everything is illegal now, by the way. The police 'broke into' a politician's office and home, and cross-examined the politician himself for 9 hours, although he must have had a piss-break once in a while.

(first, they came for the politicians, and we laughed and said 'good!')

Big Brother..... I mean, the police, found the name of the leaker and paraded him in front of the media.

(then they came for the bureaucrats, and we laughed and said 'good!')

This was done for show, in order to scare other public servants from leaking other embarrassing info or leaving discs on trains. [in much the same way that Guantanamo is designed to keep middle class jihadis from getting off their couches]

The shell game and the second cover-up
The next bit is the interesting part. In order to cover up the abuse of politicians rights, of the rights of free speech and of habeus corpus, a farce has been spun which has ensnared a number of other people. You see, it's not the police's fault that they broke the law, it was the speaker of the House of Commons who was to blame. He let the police into the Commons, because they're not allowed to enter unwelcomed. So, blame the speaker. He had soiled his shorts so badly that he lied to parliament about his cock-up. Hang him high for losing the confidence of parliament! Not.
This gets better. Since Britain has, with great difficulty rid itself of most of its medeival laws, it still has to deal with behaviour which would not be allowed anywhere else, other than Chicago.


The mayor of London, Boris the-Spider Johnson, has taken the police commission under his wing, because the separation of the government and the police is something not widely accepted here. Caramba! So, Boris had a chat with the new police chief (having just fired the last one) on his first day on the job, for the chief to tell him about the raid on Parliament which victimised a colleague of Boris' in the Conservative Party. So, hang the mayor high for interfering with the police! not.

Who is the architect of all this keystone cop mayhem (the raid, speaker-gate, Boris-gate)? Who has been designing this conga-line of Punch and Judy scenes for our entertainment? In any serious country, the main issue would have been the abrogation of rights mentioned above which are worse than Watergate because the POLICE were made to do the dirty work. As it stands, the minister is still in place and the opposition is not complaining! It boggles the mind! That's because all of this story has been but theatre. If it weren't, heads would be rolling for any of the above injustices and yet all is calm. Strange, no?



working on a conspiracy theory
This grand scheme must have been orchestrated to keep the nation's hateful eyes off of Gordon Brown, author of the credit crunch. As a result, people will have nowhere to vent their anger at their financial ruin since they will not see GB's face on the nightly news. Before you know it, we'll have any number of other scandals to keep us busy and hating others, like jaywalking illegal immigrants. Keep tuned to The Sun. (just don't look directly at it, or it'll fl**k you up)
You doubt? Then why has the credit crunch left the front pages. Hundreds are still losing their jobs every week. Bankruptcies and foreclosures are up. Who would gain from keeping the public in the dark? We otherwise would be finding out how hopeless our politicians are.

Update: check Youtube for Peter Schiff, the prophet with the answers.

lions led by market-led policies

For 9 years I've watched the UK education system flail about on the ground after repeated abuse from the government. As always, the government is trying primarily to get something for nothing (see railways, hospitals). The second motive, thanks to New Labour of the Right Wing, is the desire to push people to spend the money they have and don't have, to send their kids to private schools. [Don't complain. It's good for the economy, stupid.]
The government does this by running the state school system into the ground, allowing kids to run amok and leaving staff with no options for obedience training. I've seen the inside of a classroom, and it's an ugly sight. Funding is continually cut. Box-ticking bureaucratic work is foisted upon staff who work 12-hour days [staff turnover is of the McDonald's kind; can you say 'revolving door'].
Schools in deprived areas are doubly penalised because their poor, poorly-fed desk monkeys are performing badly thanks also to a lack of funding. All the more reason to destroy a perfectly good building and community and send the kids to the shiny new Academies (privately-run schools taking government money) which preach the new business mantra all day, instead of the national curriculum [since the school bosses are friends of the government, the schools are essentially run by Labour dictat; bye-bye school board]. That's why the OECD finds the UK languishing near the bottom of educational-results surveys, with the US and its No Presidents Left Behind policy.
[Economist 8 Dec '07 pg71][Photo: Wang: Follow Me]
P.S. much the same is happening to the NHS health-care system.

Dinosaurs Roam the Earth, trampling livelihoods underfoot

This time in which we are living is an age of extremes. It calls to mind the rise and fall of the dinosaurs whose size and destructiveness led to their downfall, but not before they ran into humans (Hi, S.Palin fans!). Now, certain humans are taking the place of those massive, all-consuming dinosaurs, wandering the planet plundering all before them.
Stockasaurus Soros, Sharasaurus Buffetorus, Ragasaurus Murdochus, Retailasaurus Waltonus.
They rend asunder the livelihoods, savings, and lodgings of their defenseless victims. They add nothing to the world, except the golden shower which 'trickles down' on occasion. Meanwhile, their feces would require millennia to become oil and thus merely stink up the place, wherever it is that they don't reside, of course. You see, these beasts have developed to the level that they externalise all problems. Their victims pay for them. How is this done? These great shadowmakers believe that the corporation is an individual, yet, unlike people, it exists without the requirement for social cohesion or morals; in other words, it is also a monster. Oh, and they've blackmailed or bribed all the major governments of the world.
They will most certainly lead the Earth to cataclysm because they cannot be restrained by any law. Socrates said that the Law is like a spiderweb. The great and large walk right through it, and the small, like bugs, get stuck. I, Cos67, add that it is the larger-than-life monsters and their lesser scavenging dinosaur pals, the Politicus Spinicus Mendicans, who have set up these very webs in that specific way. In fact they do have eight limbs..... like Vishnu, but most of those appendages reside up their own poop-chutes and thus don't see the light of day.

lions led by donkeys

A dream sequence:

Tony Blair is just elected leader in 1997 and he gathers the members of his Labour cabinet for a photo behind the Parliament. He's setting up the camera and giving directions, "move to the right" he says, 5 or 6 times, and the cabinet goes so far that they all fall into the Thames. How were they supposed to know he was talking politics, not art?

How things change. Once, one Briton helped the Arabs rise up and fight for freedom, and another Briton carved up the map of the Middle East to suit petroleum politics, YES, including Iraq, an "unworkable country from the beginning." Now, the PM went to these princes (pic. below), cap in hand, to have them 'help the IMF', i.e. his country, with its financial problems. This is progress, for the Arab nation.
Salam, everyone.

Bom dia from Lula. Wake up and smell the Braz coffee

As per the CBC G20 summit report from Brazil, the local politicians have taken the rich world to task for the world-wide financial meltdown. Lula and FinMin Mantega, and the rest of the sane world, believe that new financial regs are required. I'm embarrassed to say that the Canuck FinMin was speaking out his backside when he rejected the idea, (he says) due to the difficulties we're having with the present crisis. To him: Nobody's talking about making this crisis worse, you pelt! (By the way, Canada has largely avoided the repurcusions DUE TO ITS CONSERVATIVE BANKING REGULATIONS.) We're talking about what to do if we survive this one. I foresee a samba protest, worldwide. Ole.
If they have the time, perhaps Brazil should take those communist G7 countries to the WTO for illegally subsidising their businesses and banks. No es monetarism, amigo, now is it?
G7 says: It's ah--ah--ah--ahypocrisy!
Response: Bless you! Thanks for truthing.
[G7 politicians are advised to heed message, below]