Germany and Iceland are next?

[Skybird]

Oh my god -

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...582466,00.html

Germany preparing guarantees worth 1 trillion? Das darf doch wohl nicht wahr sein. That is even more than the Americans' 700 billion.

Banking expert Hans-Peter Burghof told Bayerischer Rundfunk radio that the government's move amounted to "the biggest guarantee in world history."

No one had ever guranteed such a high sum of money in two simple sentences, the professor of banking and financial services at Germany's Hohenheim University said.

The idea behind giving the guarantee, he said, was to ensure that it would never be needed. Guaranteeing deposits would preclude a run on the banks, he said.

But when it is needed nevertheless...? Then it is a neck-breaker.

Have I just written that the german banking system is maybe the most stable in the world ? Well, I pray for it, else those who are currently still kids in this country will pay a dramatic price.

So far not a single german manager has been arrested. Strange. If I betray and do not pay my taxes, however small, for one or two months, I get sacked.

[Tchocky]

Unless legislators start getting retroactive, we're not going to see any arrests.

Who do we arrest, anyway? Lending money to someone who can't pay it back is a two-way street. No amount of suicidal bankers is going to change the gullibility of the consumer.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

Unless legislators start getting retroactive, we're not going to see any arrests.

Who do we arrest, anyway? Lending money to someone who can't pay it back is a two-way street. No amount of suicidal bankers is going to change the gullibility of the consumer.

Spreading the risk for foul credits away from one' bank/employer, and over all the world - that is the crime. If that would not have been done, bansk would suffer directly from the foul credit procedures - and then they would have started to adress that loooooong time ago.

[Happy Times]

I call this socialism of the rich like some economics Nobel winner said, i hate socialism.

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Spreading the risk for foul credits away from one' bank/employer, and over all the world - that is the crime.

THat is no crime under any law. It is certainly irresponsible, given the hindsight of a housing bubble, but it is not a crime.
As I've said before, unless we are to retroactively decide that making money is a crime, then nobody will go to jail.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

THat is no crime under any law. It is certainly irresponsible, given the hindsight of a housing bubble, but it is not a crime.
As I've said before, unless we are to retroactively decide that making money is a crime, then nobody will go to jail.

Then make it a law. A too far-leading lack of regulation obviously does not work, it has made possible and even encouraged the mess we have now.

Making your own profit at the cost of others, from a certain point on is a crime in my book. This kind of greed and brutal selfishness now millions of workers and families have to pay for, and threatens to declare whole states bancrupt (Iceland being the first), and tghrow whole national economies into the abyss. A system that allows that, is seriously flawed. Egoism of the individual needs limits, and if the invidual does not see that, then it must be forced to comply with that, no matter if it understands that or not. From some point on, it simply is enough.

As long as you do not live alone on this planet, there sijmply is no such thing like unlimited freedom. Unlimited egoism leads to unlimited greed and brutality, and a mximum of disinterest for others. I do not accept that, and I will never accept that. I wonder why we were born as human being with intelligence and the ability to be self-reflexive if we propagate a society in which everybody behaves like a T-Rex, all mankind is divided just into millionaires and waste-collectors and whoever cannot compete witz this murderous madness anymore is mercylessly left behind to die. Even in quite some mammal species, from dolphoins to big apes, you can see more caretaking and social empathy for for example a dying member of a group, or a wounded, than what is to be seen in this social-darwinistic ideology of total disregulation.

If anything, we humans have the potential and ability not to be left at the mercy of self-emerging dynamics of such systems anymore, but to influence them so that we can live a better life, and not just the millionaires living by the dish-washer's work. To reject this ability and go back to total dyregulation as if we were a band of ancient apes living in a desert 50000 yars before the homo sapiens showed up, is not a progress, but a step back into our dark history.

[August]

Not to interrupt Skybirds gleeful contemplation of the death and suffering of fellow human beings, but the urban legend of stock brokers jumping out of windows is just not true.

It comes from a Will Rogers quote: "When Wall Street took that tail spin, you had to stand in line to get a window to jump out of, and speculators were selling space for bodies in the East River."

That's called sarcastic wit, not historical fact.