Democracy in the country that gave birth to democracy

[gregkavarnos]

It's the worst possible environment for Buddhists trying to practice nonattachment.

Actually, I would say that its the best. If (generally) there was no attachment how would we practice non-attachment?

[Sönam]

It is time for the Euro to go.

N

It's time for Euro to go federalism ... altogether, European countries have no problem and are strong. When one step is made to go "One World", also when at first it's made for business purpose, it's a positive step ...

Sönam

[Malcolm]

It is time for the Euro to go.

N

It's time for Euro to go federalism ... altogether, European countries have no problem and are strong. When one step is made to go "One World", also when at first it's made for business purpose, it's a positive step ...

Sönam

You will regret -- it would be better for European countries to return to their own currencies and dismantle the EU. The EU is actually a policy agenda of neo-liberalism.

[Sönam]

It is time for the Euro to go.

N

It's time for Euro to go federalism ... altogether, European countries have no problem and are strong. When one step is made to go "One World", also when at first it's made for business purpose, it's a positive step ...

Sönam

You will regret -- it would be better for European countries to return to their own currencies and dismantle the EU. The EU is actually a policy agenda of neo-liberalism.

Back from Euro won't happen, it's just a theoritical idea, it's now too much anchored. So now the agenda is néo-liberalsim but it has not been always so, and exactely with the crises (agencies just announced they will degrade France ... and Germany) it could be the beginning of a great shake-up, in fact it is in European cultures, I am even estonished that peoples have not started it yet.

[Karma Dondrup Tashi]

Speaking of Italy did you know that:

The birth rate of Italy, at a rate of 1.23 children per woman is the second lowest in the Western world. Women rarely have more than one child. The government and the Catholic Church in this staunchly Catholic nation are perplexed and concerned by this phenomenon ...
http://www.doki.net/tarsasag/novedelem/upload/novedelem/document/birth_rate_in_Italy.htm

If the Italians keep this up that means in 4 generations the population of Italy will be roughly 15% of what it is today! Sheesh Italy start makin babies!

[Thug4lyfe]

Yawn, the world repeats it'self. It's not as if this "Kill the rich when things are bad" haven't happened again and again in the past.
Over throw the goverment and see who rules. I'd wager it's people with more raw charisma, brute force and fire power.
It's also sad that when a Buddhist like Steve Jobs finally becomes a "made man", he behaves less like a Buddhist than Bill Gates.

[alwayson]

The Greek debt Crisis was caused by running large deficits

N

You say large deficits.

I say socialism.

We are saying the same thing.

[Thug4lyfe]

Speaking of Italy did you know that:

[i]The birth rate of Italy, at a rate of 1.23 children per woman is the second lowest in the Western world. Women rarely have more than one child.

Yeah well, kids are annoying and takes away time and $ that can be put to more fun things!!!

[Sönam]

The Greek debt Crisis was caused by running large deficits

N

You say large deficits.

I say socialism.

We are saying the same thing.

what do you really know about socialism ... what tells CBS news. From my point you seem very ignorant ... sorry I have to tell it. Even HHDL does not agree with you.

Sönam

[catmoon]

It's the worst possible environment for Buddhists trying to practice nonattachment.

Actually, I would say that its the best. If (generally) there was no attachment how would we practice non-attachment?

lol touche'

[gregkavarnos]

You say large deficits.

I say socialism.

We are saying the same thing.

Socialist economic policy does not necessarily lead to a large deficit. Take Denmark, Sweden, Norway as examples. Large deficits only occur when spending is higher than income. Look at the American deficit, is that due to the socialist agendas of Americas political parties? NO!!!

[kirtu]

American banks are not overexposed on European debt.

American banks are failing to lend because they became overly cautious after the 2007-2008 crash.

Kirt

I just saw it on CBS news tonight, which is why I mentioned it.

You can see lots of things in the media that are untrue. On CBS, ABC or NBC this is usually because the facts are oversimplified.

American firms (JP Morgan Chase, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, B of A) apparenly have a lot of European debt.

And now there is an Italian debt crisis.

Citi has 14.5 billion dollars of outstanding Italian debt alone

That's not a great deal of debt for a bank of it's size. The numbers are hard to find but Citibank has assets exceeding $1.2T and liabilities of about $1.1T. In the worst case this gives them only $100B to play with, probably a good deal more. However they already brought the worst case (or one of the worst cases) on all of us and we survived. Their Italian debt exposure is a hit but not a severe one overall.

Finance like many phenomena follow power laws. Zipf's Law is a good example of a power law found in nature, in this case in word usage. This says that there is a power distribution to many phenomena. Zipf's Law itself was focused on the frequency distribution of words in text . So the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to it's ranking in a frequency table. The most frequent word will occur twice as often as the next most frequent word, 3x's as often as the third most frequent word, and so forth.

There are many power laws in finance. But my point is that phenomena like GDP and debt almost certainly follow power laws. Italy is the world's 8th wealthiest country in terms of annual GDP. Their debt is not all concentrated in the hands of one bank and not all concentrated in the hands of US banks either. Their debt is likely to be distributed in a log proportional manner primarily amongst the richer countries of the world and within those countries that debt is likely to be distributed in a log proportional manner amoungst the banks in terms of the size of their assets.

Now the thing that could make this irrelevant is if their debt is concentrated in many multiples of their GDP in derivatives or other instruments. I have not heard this mentioned on CNBC.

US sovereign debt also cannot destroy the world but it can and did create a real economic depression (so the US destroyed the world in those terms). However there are bets in terms of derivatives held by financial institutions that are supposed to exceed my many multiples the size of the combined world GDP. If true that is simply beyond stupid or even criminal negligence. And if true that could really destroy the world's economy.

Kirt

[Dechen Norbu]

We're screwed Greg, that's what it is.
I can only imagine what will happen to us. We're the next in line...

[Malcolm]

The Greek debt Crisis was caused by running large deficits

N

You say large deficits.

I say socialism.

We are saying the same thing.

Deficits are a perfectly capitalist way of doing business. All governments run on debt. They always have.

N

[Malcolm]

Look at the American deficit, is that due to the socialist agendas of Americas political parties? NO!!!

According to Faux news, yes.

[Karma Dondrup Tashi]

You say large deficits.

I say socialism.

We are saying the same thing.

Socialist economic policy does not necessarily lead to a large deficit. Take Denmark, Sweden, Norway as examples. Large deficits only occur when spending is higher than income. Look at the American deficit, is that due to the socialist agendas of Americas political parties? NO!!!

Absolutely right - there is socialist statism and mercantilist statism. BOTH SUCK!

Democracy is bribery, bribery is debt, debt always collapses.

Wherever you have the state you will have someone trying to suck its teats.

[kirtu]

Governments around the world have discovered that by borrowing money they can artificially increase their living standards and gain votes, thereby remaining in power, where they can borrow more money to raise living standards further in a vicious cycle. Unfortunately, debt has risen to such astronomical levels that there is no hope of repayment ever occurring, and as this awareness spreads, the willingness to lend falters.

We have to be careful and look at the data to support conclusions.

Many people in the English speaking world in particular like to throw statements out to drive people to support a predetermined conclusion.

Please look at this map.

According to this data, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Slovenia, all forms of social democracy, has debt as a percentage of their GDP <= 50%. The other nations of Western Europe generally have debt as a percentage of GDP at around 70%. Italy and Greece at something close to 100% and perhaps exceeding it. The US is about 60% and Canada is at something like 70%.

Now speaking as a good Socialist, I myself hate debt. But I want to see equity and fairness and compassion in society. So we can tolerate some debt to make sure Grandma (meaning everyone's Grandma and Grandpa) don't die from the cold, don't starve to death, etc. This BTW is just straight from FDR and he was no socialist. In the US we could lower the debt to GDP ratio by 1. proportionally raising taxes on the superwealthy 2. creating more jobs, and esp. high paying jobs 3. fostering the expansion of more small business . Everyone agrees on at least these points. Small businesses should be taxed less (I have heard this argument repeatedly in English and German and have to agree with it). But business today in the US is not pulling it's weight in job creation. Collectively they are sitting on $T's (many $T) while people are literally thrown into the street. The paltry incentives to hire people by the Obama Administration have not spurred business to behave like good citizens. Why? Big Business is generally focused on the strategy of lower costs in order to create higher profits in the short term. On of the ways to god this is to outsource work from expensive people (people in the US and 1st world) to people in the 2nd and esp. 3rd world.

As for people "demanding" services, etc. The US is a nation essentially without services: no health care, no social safety net (until Obama extended unemployment insurance to 2 yrs and in this crisis that's not enough because business isn't hiring). It's hard for people who haven't lived outside the US to understand what a social safety net is. Please look to Holland and Germany for two excellent examples (esp. Holland).

Kirt

[kirtu]

If the EU goes down, they go down with it. Heck, if Greece goes down they'll find themselves in a sh*t hole.

Probably not exactly. But look - they and the French wanted to take over Europe under Napoleon and then under the Austrian. In the end they got what they wanted, just non-militarially. Beware of what you wish for ....


Kirt

[kirtu]

Speaking of Italy did you know that:

The birth rate of Italy, at a rate of 1.23 children per woman is the second lowest in the Western world. Women rarely have more than one child. The government and the Catholic Church in this staunchly Catholic nation are perplexed and concerned by this phenomenon ...
http://www.doki.net/tarsasag/novedelem/upload/novedelem/document/birth_rate_in_Italy.htm

If the Italians keep this up that means in 4 generations the population of Italy will be roughly 15% of what it is today! Sheesh Italy start makin babies!

There have been articles in German and Italian news magazines for a generation (yes, 30 yrs) talking about the lowering birth rates in Europe and esp. in Germany and Italy.

Kirt

[kirtu]

Yawn, the world repeats it'self. It's not as if this "Kill the rich when things are bad" haven't happened again and again in the past.
Over throw the goverment and see who rules. I'd wager it's people with more raw charisma, brute force and fire power.

No one is saying that at all.

Kirt