Comments on: Trouble in Banktopia

By: cg

cg — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:56:30 +0000

Talk about sleazy conniving weasels.
Did you see what the title of the bailout bill is?
Here it is.

BILL TITLE: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes

By: Michael Kenny

Michael Kenny — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:18:44 +0000

After Fortis, now Dexia, another Belgian bank. This time, the French and Belgian governments have pumped money in through a share issue, with the Luxembourg government getting bonds, which may or may not be worth something.

There seem to be three phases to all this. The first is to ensure that depositors do not lose their money. That seems, inevitably, to involve an injection of public money is some form or another. The second phase is how the taxpayer is going to get back the money he has had to stump up. That debate hasn’t even started yet. The third phase is to change the regulatory environment so as to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. That debate, too, has not yet started but the idea of self-regulating markets seems dead as a dodo.

By: Steve Sewall

Steve Sewall — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:21:33 +0000

Heckuva column, Mike.

By: Peinhard

Peinhard — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:01:52 +0000

Re-reading the words of Albert Einstein I once more recall the famous words of an optical delusion of consciousness named Margaret Thatcher which claimed that ‘there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals’. Not to speak of larger entities. That’s the mess we’re in, especially in the so called ‘western world’. If we don’t learn it by ourselves then nature and society probably will teach us the hard way. If we don’t blow ourselves up first, that is.

By: Poilu

Poilu — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:17:06 +0000

[OT]: Well, well. It now emerges that ALL of the Bush Regime’s proclaimed “justifications” for war have been nothing but bald-faced lies. (Why am I not surprised?) It’s well past time these despicable war criminals were dragged kicking and screaming to the gallows, along with their quisling enablers!:

“Bush Had No Plan to Catch Bin Laden after 9/11″
Gareth Porter [IPS]
http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=44054

‘ New evidence from former U.S. officials reveals that the George W. Bush administration failed to adopt any plan to block the retreat of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the first weeks after 9/11. …’

By: Donald Hawkins

Donald Hawkins — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:04:40 +0000

Albert Einstein in 1954 saw clearly the World then needed a new way of thinking. If Einstein could see the World today and that prison we have only made stronger and the optical delusion of consciousness what then would he write? Kind of easy to see now. We are destroying the Earth well we are destroying ourselves the Earth will come back and human’s probably not. What amazes me is it is so easy to see yet that delusion of consciousness somehow hides the truth and of course a few people who use that delusion of delusion of consciousness to keep people in that prison. There is still time if we start now.

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

By: Michael Kenny

Michael Kenny — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:46:42 +0000

Fortis has gone belly up! That may mean nothing to Americans but it is big news here! Fortis is the largest bank in Belgium, second largest in the Netherlands and a major player in Luxembourg. It fell apart suddenly last wekend and after a frenzied attempt to find a buyer failed (the prefered candidate, the French bank BNP Paribas, wouldn’t stump up enough), the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg governments have each taken a 49% stake in their part of the bank’s operations. At the same time, Fortis sold its stake in the Dutch ABN Amro bank for a fraction of what they paid for it. “Quasi-nationalisation”, it is being called.

At the same time, the British Government nationalised (yes, the n-word is respectable again in Europe!) a second building society, Bradford and Bingley (over 2 million depositors), transferred its debts to the public accounts and quickly re-sold it to the Spanish Banco Santander, which already owns two other building societies in the UK.

The point of all this is to protect depositors’ savings (in Europe, government is always about protecting the population). I doubt if neo-liberalism (US = conservatism) will survive this disaster, so we have probably seen the last of deregulation, privatisation, globalisation, financialisation and dollar hegemony. What we move on to is, of course, another debate.

By: Donald Hawkins

Donald Hawkins — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:36:21 +0000

The bill didn’t pass today. 700 billion dollars to bail out the rich, the well-connected and Wall Street didn’t happen today. 700 billion dollars would go along way’s to build a new World. It’s that new way of thinking we need and need now.