Look at what is currently happening on the islands… Iceland, Japan, Australia (drought)… I think they will give us a clue of what to expect within the next decade.

The ROW is the Western world’s dump but with globalization, the earth is an island.

OTOH, we’d be doing much better right now if the government would simply enforce the laws already on the books.

Expect Wall St. to oppose all regulation change, then abruptly concede “defeat” with the passage of regulation that ultimately will allow Wall St. to control the regulators.

Nothing new, just the sadness of watching our democracy wither.

Is a spine transplant for Obama covered under the proposed health care plan?

http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=Problem+Reaction+Solution

The Problem Reaction Solution Paradigm (The Hegelian Dialectic)
1) The government creates or exploits a problem blaming it on others
2) The people react by asking the government for help willing to give up their rights
3) The government offers the solution that was planned long before the crisis

This is the thanks we taxpayers get for rescuing them (and us supposedly) from the end. We cover their backs while they continually work to exploit our backsides. I wished they would have just allowed them to blow up in the beginning like the majority of the population wanted.

Oh please lets get real here. GS made money on every trade last q except 1 day. GS has been selling a “product” to customers while knowing that it was a defective product that was going to blow up in the near future.

Now on the first point it is next to impossible to get that kind of success without gaming the system. A government that is not own by these firms would be investigating them – Do you see any AG doing that?

On the second point the equivalent would be a pharmaceutical company selling a drug knowing that it has a %100 chance of destroying a patients liver because they also sell livers on the side. This is enough to land the execs. at that company in jail. Do you see that happening in any of the big financial firms?

So to summarize they can pass as many laws and regulations as they want because they will not be enforced just like the old ones were not enforced.

The Finance Industry has put financial engineering and loading up everybody with debt and the resultant profits and bonuses ahead of the welfare of society. The correctives on the table wouldn’t be as good as socially responsible self-governance but are sure better than social collapse, which is what we almost had. And the last two quarters where bank profits are entirely based on trading profits using our money pretty prove the case that scorpions don’t change their nature, even if they’re going to drown.

For the backup business case behind that assessment you might want to take a look at this:
http://llinlithgow.com/PtW/2009/10/the_chinese_goldsmith_finance.html or this:
http://llinlithgow.com/PtW/2009/10/banks_hate_banks_voters_hate_b.html