Comments on: Susan Watkins’ econ summary (NLR)

By: m.c.

m.c. — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:26:30 +0000

A girl that worked the desk of a London hostel told me last year; me on my 5th or 6th trip to England. I thought of trying to bring global finance down to the level of a single average-joe consumer.

By: Curt

Curt — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:12:42 +0000

MC, that is very interesting. I have never seen a service like that anywhere else. Of course I never thought to look. But you would think that if there were a service like that anywhere else you would be able to read about it somewhere. Also that if it had existed very long that knowledge of it would spread by word of mouth.

By: m.c.

m.c. — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:25:21 +0000

I recently found out that in the U.K. you can exchange money at any regular post office without a commission fee. They are a E.U. member but not on the Euro. They usually have one line designated. Wouldn’t it be nice if US post offices did the same thing.

By: Curt

Curt — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:02:54 +0000

The situation in Greece and other countries in the EU may cause some people to reconsider whehter or not the Euro should continue to be a European currency.
Do not forget if the Euro is gone it means everytime a Dutch person wants to come to Germany or a Belgian to France or a Swede to Spain money will have to be exchanged. That again means profits for the banks. Just as bad is profit for the banks whenever paper from Finland is sold outside of Finland and profits for the banks whenever cars from Germany are sold outside of Germany, and profits for the banks whenever shoes from Italy are sold outside of Italy. I see that as an unacceptable disadvantage that banks should be allowed to take a cut of every intra state transaction in Europe. Can rules be written so that if each country had there own currency there would be no transaction costs for cross border trade?

By: Curt

Curt — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:04:39 +0000

I wonder if, perhaps it is more than wonder, perhaps it is suspect, the fact that the Greeks now have a suppossedly left of center party in power is the reason for the timing of this “crisis”. Well there could be multiple reasons. What I found most interesting in the article by Diane Johnstone was that Greece cheated to get in to the Euro zone in the first place. How many other countries cheated and by how much?
Is money not at minimum a claim on resources? The EU tries to put a few basic rules in place to prevent cheating so that one country in the EU can not get more than their “fair share” of resources by having a bigger “credit card limit” so to say. 3% a year and 60% of GDP, supposedly.
What stops states in the US from having vastly different debt levels? What stops counties and cities from having vastly different debt levels? If Oregon ran up a debt 125% of GDP would California and New York and Texas complain? Now what if there are written rules against Oregon going above 125% of GDP-debt ratio would it be hard for them to make it appear as if they were in compliance. Could they not take a bunch of programs that have been a state budget responsiblility and make them a county responsibility? That would transfer debts to the county level off the states books. Likewise counties could transfer programs to the cities. Can Oregon go bankrupt? I would be willing to bet that any finacial institution would loan money to Oregon no matter what Oregons debt level was because they would figure that in the end the federal government will bale them out.
If that happened would people in the other states be pissed? I would think so. I would be as if collectively speaking the people of Oregon were working as truck drivers and living like they were doctors. But if every state government is cheating then not to cheat yourselves would be irresponsible. Cheating becomes a legitimate act of self defense. Is it possible to get to a point in which 50 Governors or 25 heads of state think that all of the other Governors are not cheating, or that even if they thought that the others were not cheating would not be tempted to cheat themselves because they had some desperate need that was not being met in their area of responsibility? Can this problem be overcome with centralized control? Yugoslavia was once centralized but some of its parts thought that they were getting a raw deal.
Right wing Republicans and Libertarians say that laws against Cartels can be gutted because they will be broken up by a temptation to cheat.
Am I going anywhere with this? Looks to me like I am lost in the forest going in circles.
Save me before I drown in the swamp.

By: Stan

Stan — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:57:52 +0000

Diane Johnstone on Greece.

By: Curt

Curt — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:51:06 +0000

Does anyone have any thoughts why the powers that be have decided to make an issue about Greek debt in the first place. I know that the EU rules say that a country can not run a deficit of more than 3% of GDP in one year but that is kind of stupid if the country does has an over all lower debt to GDP ratio than other countries in the EU.
Furthermore I suspect that some countries have brought themselves in to line with this requirement in the past through smoke and mirrors. I do not have any examples may be some one can help me out.
Curt

By: Curt

Curt — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:38:09 +0000

Tom,
Another way to understand my comments about losing and winning is, learn to enjoy the journey not just the desitination.

“It takes a sympathetic understanding of an opponet to undermine that opponent effectively.”

That is an interesting point. If it is true I have certainly been guilty of routinely breaking it. I have no doubt that it is true as an interogation technique. I read the book about this one famous German interegator, who lived in South Africa for many years before the Second World War, who managed to always get the correct answers from the allied soldiers that he interrogated without ever using torture.

By: (Boer) Tom

(Boer) Tom — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:38:39 +0000

@Curt
Is it a question of ‘your team winning’? Or do you learn and teach skills, build, renew and occasionally terminate friendships, and create an economy of resistance? To give you an idea of life in resistance, take the anti-apartheid struggles – there is a black town on the east rand (eastern Johannesburg metropolitan area) called Mamelodi. Between fighting between factions of the various resistance movements (between a faction that wanted to simply make the area ungovernable through their own violence, and a faction that was more bent on recruiting to MK and other bodies and achieving a more popular resistance) and violence from the apartheid security forces (they’d come in with tanks and APCs, torture children as elsewhere in the back of APCs etc.), the resistance groups were largely dispersed. The apartheid government was able to declare ‘victory against the terrorists’ and set up some ‘model projects’ that were ‘developing’ the area (this was around 84-87). Within four years, the apartheid forces were outclassed in Angola/Namibia, and the regime requested negotiations, resistance members were freed, restrictions including national segregation were weakened and/or dropped. New movements arose to deal with problems that the old order had prevented from being addressed (e.g. HIV, rape). If you are too focused on the TV and whether your side is winning or losing, you have no social connections of resistance, and achieve nothing. The state and other forces must declare victory or being-on-the-road-to-victory as a matter of course (if you want some amusement, go read up on the blogs of veterans of the border war/grens oorlog, many of whom still insist that the National Party of apartheid had committed treason by sacrificing the victory that was at hand, where they cite a battle at Cuito Cuanavale – these guys seem to have control of the wikipedia page on the battle – where they claim they roundly defeated the Cuban forces – a few weeks later, Cuba was controlling the skies over Namibia, thus leading to the negotiations). As such, claims of victory or defeat should be understood as propaganda to make you feel lost up front. And another hint: Remember that your opponents are human – be sympathetic to them (including the police! Many in the resistance knew how to handle police – condemnation with sympathy without revealing information – and occasionally even recruit them away or for specific goals – I call police forces and armies terrorist, but I do the same to the faces of off-duty cops and on-duty soldiers, and I try to do so sympathetically, i.e. by explaining their moral duty wrt the actions of their organizations as I see it. Certain apartheid police did on occasion do favours, though most were brutal and some e.g. ‘Spyker’ van Wyk would sexually torture political detainees, thus his nickname) – Steve Biko was actually very sympathetic to us Afrikaners and RSA English – which is likely why he was tortured to death – it takes a sympathetic understanding of an opponent to undermine that opponent effectively.

By: Curt

Curt — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:51:48 +0000

It has recently been reported that the countries of the EU will give about 30 billion (give or take 30 billion?) in “bailouts”. But since all of the other countries of the EU are more or less as indebted as Greeece does this really make any logical sense. Furthermore by sending the 30 billion all of these countries must increase thier own debt levels and become even more like Greece.
I had made some comments earlier about this crisises “clearly being caused by the fact that the Greek Government was trying to please everyone”, or something to that effect. I must have made those on another thread.
Of course I take those words back but I do not appologize for making them in the first place. When reports start appearing in the media that there is a Greek financal crisis any normal person, of which I am one, would believe that there really is a Greek financial crisis.
I am in a fowl mood this morning not because I have to eat crow but because of how the crow ended up on my plate for breakfast. I was wrong. I was wrong becasue I did not check on facts. But most imporantly I did not check on facts because I did not know that this was a story that needed the facts to be checked. That puts me in a fowl mood because it means that there is nothing that one can take for granted when it comes from the MSM.
That puts me in a really fowl mood because it points out how fowl human nature generally is. Did you know that the German word fowl (spelled faul) means lazy? I did not know, or had temporarily forgot some basic facts, at least facts (debt levels) as far as they are broadly reported. Was I lazy for not checking on them before I open my mouth so to speak? I do not work with these concepts on a daily basis. Yet there are many people including reporters in the MSM who do. You would think that at least one of them would sound an alarm.
So this goes back to a couple of comments on human nature I have made in the past days or weeks. First why it is hard to be opptomistic. When one sees a whole industry completely betray their their public trust it is rather hard to maintain any optomism about the capabilities of the human race resist illegitimate authority. Second it reinforces my thinking that even if the means of production were owned publically the all of the different departments would be fighting each other over their share of the procceeds of the corporation. Third this reporting on the Greek debt and Stans comments on another thread about a rise in reporting about Eco-terrorism imply a type of advanced planning and coordination that can only come about as the result of a centrally controlled conspiracy.
If doing the right thing, acting for the general welfare, was easy for humans to do, the human race would not be in the place that it is now. That puts me in a fowl mood because it is pretty strong evidence that I am fighting a loosing battle. Just like the Minnesota Vikings my political team is cursed never to win the Super Bowl. But did you see that one play before time ran out in the NFC championship game where after making a good run Adrian Peterson fumbled the ball and yet managed to recover his own fumble just milliseconds before 3 Saints fell on the ball? Damn, that was exciting. I almost had a heart attack.
So as our planet collapses I can look forward to a lot more tradgedy and perhaps a little drama. It seems the Gods know almost nothing about comedy though.
I think that even if they came to me for advise on comedy they could do better that what they are doing now.
Curt