Screw the Penguins, let's talk about vaginas

[JohnSkelton]

So a Greek default wouldn't affect the banks in France who hold Greek debt and wouldn't affect the already vulnerable French economy because in reality French banks aren't French banks? And if only it wasn't for Wall Street and the Chinese European banks would have engaged in benevolent 'socialist' funding of cooperative projects untouched by the evils of global capitalism?

The idea is that stuff just happens to everyone else and the Icelandic banking crisis happened without anyone in the banking sector in Iceland / in Europe having anything to do with it?

If Greece defaults that will be greeted with satisfaction by other EU leaders and regarded as a good thing by EU leaders and EU bankers (not that there are any European bankers as such?)

Meanwhile http://www.leninology.com/2012/06/greek-election.html

[Lateralthinking1]

Centre right coalition likely. The Asians responded by going up three quarters of one per cent and then going back down again.

Tonight's clip from ITV about living in Athens on the edge of oblivion featured a charity worker. He was (a) extremely concerned about school children who are "currently starving" and (b) one of hundreds of people dining al fresco at a decent restaurant.

Will Greece now please decide to have something more modest than the world's biggest navy? Will it also move from the 1st biggest purchaser of military hardware in the EU to 10th or 12th, if not 26th or 27th?

And would the Americans withdraw from supporting the expansion of its air force?

Many of us would be ever so grateful as, following gullibility and some basic fact finding, belief and patience have both run out.

[Budapest]

So a Greek default wouldn't affect the banks in France who hold Greek debt and wouldn't affect the already vulnerable French economy because in reality French banks aren't French banks? And if only it wasn't for Wall Street and the Chinese European banks would have engaged in benevolent 'socialist' funding of cooperative projects untouched by the evils of global capitalism?

The idea is that stuff just happens to everyone else and the Icelandic banking crisis happened without anyone in the banking sector in Iceland / in Europe having anything to do with it?

If Greece defaults that will be greeted with satisfaction by other EU leaders and regarded as a good thing by EU leaders and EU bankers (not that there are any European bankers as such?)

Meanwhile http://www.leninology.com/2012/06/greek-election.html

You perhaps misunderstand me. What I was trying to get at is that what banks do has no relevence whatsoever (it's just greed and stupidity). Who owes what to whom is not relevent, because what we're mostly talking about is interest rates, which is la la land. They could write off all this debt tomorrow and apart from a few bruised billionaires no one would notice the difference.

So why go along with these red snappers?

[Budapest]

Here's a piece from the Daily Mail this week (original here)...

With an economic tsunami heading our way from the eurozone, is it too much to hope that, rather than dwell for too long on banking regulation, he will seize the moment to unveil the vital Plan B?

This will mean substantial cuts in payroll taxes and VAT, with real cuts in public spending (including overseas aid) to pay for them. It will mean slashing red tape, ditching green levies and offering imaginative incentives to start firms.

Er, the 'economic tsunami' came from Wall Street, and anyone who doubts the facts should go look them up.

Then we get: is it too much to hope that, rather than dwell for too long on banking regulation, he will seize the moment to unveil the vital Plan B?

So, let's not dwell too long on banking regulation, or indeed the extremely rich people who own the Daily Mail.

How anyone falls for this stuff is beyond me.

[JohnSkelton]

Hmm. Lat has worked out it's all a con trick and the Greeks are wallowing in luxury while people in the UK are eating their babies and Budapest has simply decided that knowing something is the equivalent of removing it from reality and that nothing is really happening anyway because it all happens in Wall Street where it wouldn't happen if only people would wake up and smell the red snappers (what is a red snapper?) so it isn't happening or if people would only stop falling for stuff then it wouldn't have happened anyway.

Here's a nice picture of the Acropolis. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qU4p6Hg_DF...ce+%283%29.JPG You can see how ridiculous talk of austerity in Greece is. Admittedly it's not finished, but look at the size of it. Every Greek lives in one of those.

Since I've no idea what Budapest thinks just 'knowing' that everything emanates from Wall Street and China sort of is supposed to magically effect, or that realising that interest rates are la-la land will make interest rates go away, or what the EU as an apparently Utopian Socialist collective is doing imitating the IMF ... I can only suggest reading a good book. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Or a good website http://davidharvey.org/

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6983

[Flosshilde]

& having put that discussion firmly to bed (thanks John), can we get back to discussing how wierd the USA is? (except for the contributors here, of course )

http://www.gramercypet.com/DogKimono-Hakama.html

[scottycelt]

& having put that discussion firmly to bed (thanks John), can we get back to discussing how wierd the USA is? (except for the contributors here, of course )

http://www.gramercypet.com/DogKimono-Hakama.html

What discussion 'firmly to bed' ... ?

We're not all 20th Century Marxist-Leninists, you know ....

[Budapest]

& having put that discussion firmly to bed (thanks John), can we get back to discussing how wierd the USA is? (except for the contributors here, of course )

http://www.gramercypet.com/DogKimono-Hakama.html

If you want to know how weird the USA is you could do no worse than take a look at Jamie Dimon's testimony to a Senate hearing this week. Jamie Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan, which has just lost $2 billion of its investor's money. Dimon sat there like a choir boy whilst most of the Congressmen were fawning over him, and even asking Dimon how the banking industry should be regulated. Needless to say, most of the Senators have had heavy campaign donations from JP Morgan. Only two members of that Congressional hearing were not in hock to JP Morgan, one of which, Bob Menendez (Democrat), is featured in the following news clip:

President of JPMorgan Chase testifies before US senate

We also had David Cameron today, at the Mexico G20, give a longwinded speech, some of which touched upon how urgent it is to regulate the banking industry. I will remind folks that Cameron refused to sign an EU treaty last December that was designed to regulate the banks. Cameron was largely championed in England at the time for standing up to the 'EUSSR'. Here's an amusing example...

Never, in the history of this island, has the fact that Belgium is 30 miles away mattered less

Four years into this financial crisis, as far as I'm aware, Westminster has not passed a single law to regulate the banking industry, yet Cameron always talks about the 'urgency' of regulation. Germany, the most successful economy in Europe, has always had very strict banking regulations, which is probably why the Germans don't have to suffer 'austerity' (which is just another word for the poor being screwed over by the rich).

[Budapest]

Hmm. Lat has worked out it's all a con trick and the Greeks are wallowing in luxury while people in the UK are eating their babies and Budapest has simply decided that knowing something is the equivalent of removing it from reality and that nothing is really happening anyway because it all happens in Wall Street where it wouldn't happen if only people would wake up and smell the red snappers (what is a red snapper?) so it isn't happening or if people would only stop falling for stuff then it wouldn't have happened anyway.

Here's a nice picture of the Acropolis. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qU4p6Hg_DF...ce+%283%29.JPG You can see how ridiculous talk of austerity in Greece is. Admittedly it's not finished, but look at the size of it. Every Greek lives in one of those.

Since I've no idea what Budapest thinks just 'knowing' that everything emanates from Wall Street and China sort of is supposed to magically effect, or that realising that interest rates are la-la land will make interest rates go away, or what the EU as an apparently Utopian Socialist collective is doing imitating the IMF ... I can only suggest reading a good book. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Or a good website http://davidharvey.org/

John, the present crisis in the Eurozone is all about the cost (interest rates) of borrowing money on the open markets, which are akin to a shark tank. I keep going on about Wall Street because in the west that's where just about all the loan money comes from. The Chinese are increasing players when it comes to big money loans (the USA owes most of its debt to China; but never mind, let's just keep printing money, just as the UK does, ostrich-like).

All it really comes down to is interest rates on money loaned, and when the people who loan this money hike up the interest rates some countries can no longer pay.

If you want an example of just how greedy/stupid the financial system is, a good example is the recent intitial public offering of Facebook shares. Facebook was floated at a ridiculously high price (I believe it was a record price for an IPO). Within a week, people who bought those shares were suing Facebook.

You couldn't make it up.

[ahinton]

Whilst it's common knowledge that forum threads often depart somewhat from their original topic, the wholesale distancing from penguins and vaginas in this one is perhaps especially notable...

[JohnSkelton]

Budapest - you seem to think you are revealing something hidden, telling me something I don't know. You aren't. Your initial characterisation of the EU as "Socialist" was hopelessly wrong-headed, and your apparent idea that by 'uncovering' something you can expose it and make it go away is entirely false. Just saying that interest rates or 'market forces' aren't somehow natural phenomena is of course important. But they are still part of reality however chimerical they can be shown to be (like Marx's analysis of the autonomous commodity floating free from human labour and relations of production: it's a chimera, a fantasy, but it's also real. Commodities exist).

You don't need to be a Marxist (though IMV it helps ) to understand that denunciations of rogue activities or actors is all very emotionally satisfying, perhaps, but the only useful way to look at things is to look at capitalism, how it works, whether it could work better (IMV a strange idea, since I'm convinced this is how capitalism works and isn't some isolated monstrosity; isn't a case of 'speculators' taking over), and if that is seen as a strange idea how to (a) get an analysis of the current crisis as typical of capitalism across (b) how to oppose capitalism - immediately, how to oppose austerity (c) what to replace it with. None of which is, of course, simple!

Again IMV the whole 1% business is a distraction. It might make people feel good, it might give them convenient grotesques to hate, but it just holds out the bizarre idea that get rid of the bad guys (i.e. Wall Street) and the thing will change. It won't. It's a system, and your 'Socialist' EU is part of it.

Undoubtedly this is outrageously off-topic and I apologise for further off-topic-ing the topic. So here's someone blowing into a vuvuzela http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpXN8BvGp_o.

[Serial_Apologist]

Budapest - you seem to think you are revealing something hidden, telling me something I don't know. You aren't. Your initial characterisation of the EU as "Socialist" was hopelessly wrong-headed, and your apparent idea that by 'uncovering' something you can expose it and make it go away is entirely false. Just saying that interest rates or 'market forces' aren't somehow natural phenomena is of course important. But they are still part of reality however chimerical they can be shown to be (like Marx's analysis of the autonomous commodity floating free from human labour and relations of production: it's a chimera, a fantasy, but it's also real. Commodities exist).

You don't need to be a Marxist (though IMV it helps ) to understand that denunciations of rogue activities or actors is all very emotionally satisfying, perhaps, but the only useful way to look at things is to look at capitalism, how it works, whether it could work better (IMV a strange idea, since I'm convinced this is how capitalism works and isn't some isolated monstrosity; isn't a case of 'speculators' taking over), and if that is seen as a strange idea how to (a) get an analysis of the current crisis as typical of capitalism across (b) how to oppose capitalism - immediately, how to oppose austerity (c) what to replace it with. None of which is, of course, simple!

Again IMV the whole 1% business is a distraction. It might make people feel good, it might give them convenient grotesques to hate, but it just holds out the bizarre idea that get rid of the bad guys (i.e. Wall Street) and the thing will change. It won't. It's a system, and your 'Socialist' EU is part of it.

Undoubtedly this is outrageously off-topic and I apologise for further off-topic-ing the topic. So here's someone blowing into a vuvuzela http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpXN8BvGp_o.

Brilliant summation of the systemic nature of capitalism's inherent contradictions iimss, John.

And this very morning we have Niall Ferguson delivering the latest irrelevant Reith Lecture, claiming it was institutions that historically advantaged "the west", and now institutions in decline are behind all our problems? - a kind of reductionism parallelling the vulgar marxism that I believe bedevilled the left in the 1970s and '80s, and still appears to in some quarters - so we're fortunate to have here as one place we can discuss these matters through.

[aeolium]

I think this proposal for dealing with the Eurozone crisis is worth considering, and certainly has better prospects of success than the wretched policy currently being pursued. Some allowances have to be made for the fact that the paper could have been better proof-read!

Here, also, is an interview (in 4 Youtube parts) with one of the authors of that proposal, Yanis Varoufakis, in which he discusses the origins of the crisis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpiE8zh3l9Q&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=SPCD07B6D74C75127A

Whatever the inherent contradictions of capitalism, the present situation does need a set of practical proposals which offer some prospect of alleviating the desperate circumstances of those suffering under 'austerity' regimes.

[JohnSkelton]

Thanks, aeolium; that's interesting.

Whatever the inherent contradictions of capitalism, the present situation does need a set of practical proposals which offer some prospect of alleviating the desperate circumstances of those suffering under 'austerity' regimes.

Completely agree - to add to S_A's remark about reductionist Marxism I've absolutely no time for the kind of solipsistic theoretical Marxism which insists that any response other than a 'pure' Marxist response is inadmissible and which regards human misery as useful grist to the revolutionary mill.

[vinteuil]

... back on topic

not just penguins and mallards. Whales too. Looks interesting...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01k1mwp