His country is going bankrupt because of borrowing too much money and a bunch of other factors - just like most of Europe.

an expert on European economics has spoken!

Yes going broke borrowing $$$ couldn't have anything to do with 700 million a day

(as of 2007) being spent on the Iraq, Afghanistan invasions

That of course did not contribute to the record deficits we’re facing now....Ok sweet dreams

i [not so] humbly beg to differ! if Obama had not invaded Iraq and Afghanistan total U.S. national debt would be much lower. to the best of my knowledge his predecessor G.W. left office, a balanced budget and a trade surplus with China. that's why the FED is now holding trillions worth of Chinese government bonds and cash CNY which Obama is now wasting on public health care and welfare.

right?

His country is going bankrupt because of borrowing too much money and a bunch of other factors - just like most of Europe.

an expert on European economics has spoken!

Sorry, you are right, Europe is having no financial difficulties at all. Those riots are just wealthy citizens celebrating football victories.

His country is going bankrupt because of borrowing too much money and a bunch of other factors - just like most of Europe.

So what...Naam's statement remains true: "it's not the illegals bankrupting your country. your country is going bankrupt because of its costly illegal military excursions to other countries."

Defense spending is not illegal and it is one of many factors (including illegal immigrants), so the statement is not correct (as per usual).

One flame and a reply have been deleted. Keep it civil!!!!!!!

Yes going broke borrowing $$$ couldn't have anything to do with 700 million a day

(as of 2007) being spent on the Iraq, Afghanistan invasions

That of course did not contribute to the record deficits we’re facing now....Ok sweet dreams

i [not so] humbly beg to differ! if Obama had not invaded Iraq and Afghanistan total U.S. national debt would be much lower. to the best of my knowledge his predecessor G.W. left office, a balanced budget and a trade surplus with China. that's why the FED is now holding trillions worth of Chinese government bonds and cash CNY which Obama is now wasting on public health care and welfare.

right?

Absolutely wrong!!

It was G Dubya who invaded both Eyerack and Afghanstan. The first with a whiff of legality (due to Tony Bliar providing false information), the second in a completely illegal war.

But although these two wars have virtually bankrupted the US, they have made a lot of money for the stockholders of companies engaged in arms manufacture, and the banks who financed this. Regrettably the banks were too greedy and tried to turn these bloody billions into trillions by lending money at high interest to people who had no chance to pay it back - i.e. poor householders (illegal immigrants, maybe?). They defaulted, the banks were left with unsaleable assets and wept on the government shoulders until the powers-that-be gave them back their money.

Which the banks then proceeded to pay out as bonuses to their incompetent administrators.

You will note that in Europe we learned by these mistakes. We also gave a lot of money to our banks, who promptly gave it out as bonuses to their management. But, not to be outdone by the Yanks, the European Central Bank and the Brussels Bureaucrats gave even more money to certain incompetent governments, such as Greece and Ireland, at exhorbitant rates of interest, so that they would default on the return of these loans and be even deeper in the mire, thus leading to more defaults, more bail-outs and the eventual collapse of the whole house of cards that we laughingly call our financial system.

The only system here is the systematic erosion of any country to act independently to look after it's citizenship because of the blind incompetence of the greedy liars, cheats and hypocrits who call themselves politicians in each and every country.

Au Bastille !!

Au Guillotine !!

right?

Absolutely wrong!!

It was witty sarcasm ( right? )

As for the cause & effect of mortgages lent to those who could not afford them with floating interest rates...yes a part of it.

But when the defaults occurred all the major players no longer even held these mortgages so what did they lose?

You left out other parts aka: derivatives, CDO's, bundles of mortgages electronically signed by MERS then sold to unsuspecting groups world wide with inflated values. These have never been addressed by any bail out dollars openly, although the people were told that was the exact reason the bail outs were needed. Not to mention dogs like Goldman Sachs who bet it both ways by selling them & then also betting they would fail while assuring through AAA ratings bought & paid for to those they sold them to.

So the nonpaying underwater mortgages are a small part of this collapsing system & have yet not been openly addressed. But they are not the sole cause by a long shot.

As for the money that Goldman S & banker crooks later stole from the tax payers via bail outs.....That did not go to recoup losses which never happened...Instead it props up the stock market we see today.

If you were given unlimited funds at 0-0.25% you too could be rich to play in the casino/stock markets & also to lend at 5+% to borrowers via fractional reserve banking 10x what deposits you have.

Defense spending is not illegal and it is one of many factors (including illegal immigrants), so the statement is not correct (as per usual).

Naam's point is not about the legality of Defense spending, it's about the legality of what Defense spends it on.

Yes going broke borrowing $$$ couldn't have anything to do with 700 million a day

(as of 2007) being spent on the Iraq, Afghanistan invasions

That of course did not contribute to the record deficits we’re facing now....Ok sweet dreams

i [not so] humbly beg to differ! if Obama had not invaded Iraq and Afghanistan total U.S. national debt would be much lower. to the best of my knowledge his predecessor G.W. left office, a balanced budget and a trade surplus with China. that's why the FED is now holding trillions worth of Chinese government bonds and cash CNY which Obama is now wasting on public health care and welfare.

right?

Absolutely wrong!!

It was G Dubya who invaded both Eyerack and Afghanstan. The first with a whiff of legality (due to Tony Bliar providing false information), the second in a completely illegal war.

you don't say! do you claim my american redneck buddies did not tell me the truth?

Defense spending is not illegal and it is one of many factors (including illegal immigrants), so the statement is not correct (as per usual).

there is no need to ridicule you as you are doing an excellent job yourself

you don't say! do you claim my american redneck buddies did not tell me the truth?

Do you support Arizonan cession from the Union?

Do you own more than three semi-automatic weapons?

Are your hand-guns kept in a lock-box by the door, with the ammunition hand made in the out-house?

If you have replied anything but an unequivocal 'YES' to any of the above, then I'm afraid they may have fibbed (just a little).

Defense spending is not illegal and it is one of many factors (including illegal immigrants), so the statement is not correct (as per usual).

there is no need to ridicule you as you are doing an excellent job yourself

Those shrewd debating tactics that you studied at Mel Gibson University serve you well.

You might try the "I am rubber you are glue" strategy next.

It was witty sarcasm ( right? )

As for the cause & effect of mortgages lent to those who could not afford them with floating interest rates...yes a part of it.

But when the defaults occurred all the major players no longer even held these mortgages so what did they lose?

You left out other parts aka: derivatives, CDO's, bundles of mortgages electronically signed by MERS then sold to unsuspecting groups world wide with inflated values. These have never been addressed by any bail out dollars openly, although the people were told that was the exact reason the bail outs were needed. Not to mention dogs like Goldman Sachs who bet it both ways by selling them & then also betting they would fail while assuring through AAA ratings bought & paid for to those they sold them to.

So the nonpaying underwater mortgages are a small part of this collapsing system & have yet not been openly addressed. But they are not the sole cause by a long shot.

As for the money that Goldman S & banker crooks later stole from the tax payers via bail outs.....That did not go to recoup losses which never happened...Instead it props up the stock market we see today.

If you were given unlimited funds at 0-0.25% you too could be rich to play in the casino/stock markets & also to lend at 5+% to borrowers via fractional reserve banking 10x what deposits you have.

I was trying to keep it to a simple explanation.

Derivatives and the other financial instruments that have been marketed over the past twenty years by big-bonus-earning financial wizards (polite name for crooks) are beyond the understanding of most of the people who protect the public interest.

If some guy comes up to you in the street and says "You can make millions out of this. I'll sell it to you for ten thousand." You would either tell him 'NO', hit him, call the police or any combination thereof.

But when it's done in the exclusive gentlemen's club, and the selling price is ten million, with the promise of billions in profit, then the mug / punter / banker falls over himself to say 'YES' and put up his depositors' money to buy it. (or many of 'it').

And then run crying to mummy when the brown stuff hits the rotating blades. And mummy says 'There, there, dear, here's your money back. It's taken from your depositors, so they'll be happy again.' And Mr Banker thinks to himself 'well, I haven't lost any money after all, so I'll keep this to pay for my new yacht.' And life goes on.

I would like to congratulate you all. Turning “Foreign squatters given legal aid to fight eviction from £1million house... as its British owner has to represent himself in court” into a US bashing thread is quite an accomplishment.

Credo started it by relating it to Texas.

But it was Naam who turned the tide when he said,”t's not the illegals bankrupting your country. your country is going bankrupt because of its costly illegal military excursions to other countries.

please tell us some more good jokes like the one about 15-20 million illegals on welfare.”

So in honor of his accomplishment I salute him.

Frankly in the beginning of this thread I didn't see how it would turn into an anti US thread.

Good on you Naam you didn't let us down.

I would like to congratulate you all. Turning "Foreign squatters given legal aid to fight eviction from £1million house... as its British owner has to represent himself in court" into a US bashing thread is quite an accomplishment.

Credo started it by relating it to Texas.

But it was Naam who turned the tide when he said,"t's not the illegals bankrupting your country. your country is going bankrupt because of its costly illegal military excursions to other countries.

please tell us some more good jokes like the one about 15-20 million illegals on welfare."

So in honor of his accomplishment I salute him.

Frankly in the beginning of this thread I didn't see how it would turn into an anti US thread.

Good on you Naam you didn't let us down.

It was Mogoso that brought up the 20 million illegals in his response to koheesti's post "Only in America". 2 Americans started talking about America. Get your facts straight.....or are you trying to divert the thread into a completely different discussion altogether?

I would like to congratulate you all. Turning "Foreign squatters given legal aid to fight eviction from £1million house... as its British owner has to represent himself in court" into a US bashing thread is quite an accomplishment.

Credo started it by relating it to Texas.

But it was Naam who turned the tide when he said,"t's not the illegals bankrupting your country. your country is going bankrupt because of its costly illegal military excursions to other countries.

please tell us some more good jokes like the one about 15-20 million illegals on welfare."

So in honor of his accomplishment I salute him.

Frankly in the beginning of this thread I didn't see how it would turn into an anti US thread.

Good on you Naam you didn't let us down.

It was Mogoso that brought up the 20 million illegals in his response to koheesti's post "Only in America". 2 Americans started talking about America. Get your facts straight.....or are you trying to divert the thread into a completely different discussion altogether?

More PC:

March 12, 2011

How the Internet Tried to Kill Me

By ZICK RUBIN

Boston

WHEN I Googled myself last month, I was alarmed to find the following item, from a Wikia.com site on psychology, ranked fourth among the results:

“Zick Rubin (1944-1997) was an American social psychologist.”

This was a little disconcerting. I really was born in 1944 and I really was an American social psychologist. Before I entered law school in midlife, I was a professor of psychology at Harvard and Brandeis and had written books in the field. But, to the very best of my knowledge, I wasn’t dead.

I knew that the report of my death could be bad for business, so I logged into Wikia.com and removed the “1997.” But when I checked a while later, I found the post had reverted to its prior form. I changed it again; again someone changed it back. Apparently the site had its doubts about some lawyer in Boston tinkering with the facts about American psychologists.

When I complained to Wikia.com, I got a prompt and friendly reply from its co-founder, Angela Beesley, sending me her “kind regards” and telling me that she had corrected the article. But when I checked a week later, the “1944-1997” had returned. So I e-mailed her again (subject line: “inaccurate report that I am dead”), and got the following explanation:

“My change to the page was reverted on the grounds that the info included in this article was sourced from Reber and Reber’s the Dictionary of Psychology, third edition, 2001. Is it possible the page is talking about a different Zick Rubin? The article is about a social psychologist.”

more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13rubin.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=print

Frankly in the beginning of this thread I didn't see how it would turn into an anti US thread.

Good on you Naam you didn't let us down.

He never will on that score.

I would like to congratulate you all. Turning "Foreign squatters given legal aid to fight eviction from £1million house... as its British owner has to represent himself in court" into a US bashing thread is quite an accomplishment.

Credo started it by relating it to Texas.

But it was Naam who turned the tide when he said,"t's not the illegals bankrupting your country. your country is going bankrupt because of its costly illegal military excursions to other countries.

please tell us some more good jokes like the one about 15-20 million illegals on welfare."

So in honor of his accomplishment I salute him.

Frankly in the beginning of this thread I didn't see how it would turn into an anti US thread.

Good on you Naam you didn't let us down.

It was Mogoso that brought up the 20 million illegals in his response to koheesti's post "Only in America". 2 Americans started talking about America. Get your facts straight.....or are you trying to divert the thread into a completely different discussion altogether?

I looked at Mogoso's post but it had something to do with the topic but Naam's zoomed into a completely different (if well worn) area. Actually the only thing missing is to somehow work Israel and Palestine into the discussion and that GW Bush is somehow responsible for homeless people in Britain.

I would like to congratulate you all. Turning “Foreign squatters given legal aid to fight eviction from £1million house... as its British owner has to represent himself in court” into a US bashing thread is quite an accomplishment.

Credo started it by relating it to Texas.

But it was Naam who turned the tide when he said,”t's not the illegals bankrupting your country. your country is going bankrupt because of its costly illegal military excursions to other countries.

please tell us some more good jokes like the one about 15-20 million illegals on welfare.”

So in honor of his accomplishment I salute him.

Frankly in the beginning of this thread I didn't see how it would turn into an anti US thread.

Good on you Naam you didn't let us down.

there is nothing anti-american in my posting. that there are 15-20 million illegals on welfare in the U.S. is an utmost ridiculous statement which i contradicted and that U.S. national debt is skyhigh mainly because of illegal military excursions into foreign countries is an undeniable fact.

now please add to your ridiculous statement the accusation that i am anti-american because i don't have any daughters which i could have sent to Boise, Idaho or Duluth, Minnesota that they learn the local language and familiarise them with the local culture... if any. another interesting addition would be mentioning that the Swedish Queen had a Nazi father for which i bear responsibility because i possess German citizenship and you could top up the rant by interspersing the words "Oswiecim, Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen" without going into details.

and now for the umpteenth time: i am not anti-american. it is a great country. my wife and me have spent fifteen beautiful years of our lives there. out of the nearly dozen countries where we have lived there's only one who's inhabitants are as helpful and nice as the people we met or had to deal with in America.

but i admit i am anti-White House policies where one puppet after the other, appointed by "certain interests", dances according to the strings being pulled by said "certain interests".

Chuck! UG! where are you hiding? it's time for you to join the party.

Not anti-American at all. How could we have got you so wrong?

It must have been your bilingual, gardener who snuck into your computer and wrote all those hostile posts.

When I was posting on this page a day or so ago, I did not realise that this was my thread on illegal squatters getting government funding to contest an eviction notice in the UK.

My complaint there had nothing to do with the fact that these squatters were reported to be immigrants. I don't care who they were, it is immoral of the UK social services to fund them in breaking the law. If the social services are concerned about the health and welfare of these people, let the social services house them.

I picked up on Naam's post, which was apparently an exercise in sarcasm (although not clear that this was so) and corrected some of the points he made - not in septic-bashing, but in banker-bashing. The downturn started in America, yes, but was a world-wide phenominum and many Americans suffered as well as the rest of the world. America is not the exclusive home of white-collar crime on a massive scale.

But let's face it, America is it's own worst enemy at times, with the ignorance shown by it's spokesmen on the rest of the world's affairs, the fanatical adherence to gun possesion that is only otherwise exercised by drug gangs in banana republics and a constant fear that their way of life will be reduced to that of said banana republics by the immigration of so many poor ansd dispossessed.

What made America great in the first place - the acceptance of the poor and dispossessed. The only difference - no social welfare in the old days. You shat or got off the pot. Bring back those conditions and you will not have the immigration problem you have today.

Same applies to Britain - cut benefits for anyone who has not worked and paid taxes in the past six months. Lots would then go home. And lots more would take the rather unpleasant jobs that are available - bin-man, abattoir worker, builder's labourer and the like.

Chuck! UG! where are you hiding? it's time for you to join the party.

Here I am.

I won't join you in the US bashing as it would be considered off-topic. You may continue with the support of your friends, subject as always, to Forum Rules.

I would like to congratulate you all. Turning "Foreign squatters given legal aid to fight eviction from £1million house... as its British owner has to represent himself in court" into a US bashing thread is quite an accomplishment.

Credo started it by relating it to Texas.

But it was Naam who turned the tide when he said,"t's not the illegals bankrupting your country. your country is going bankrupt because of its costly illegal military excursions to other countries.

please tell us some more good jokes like the one about 15-20 million illegals on welfare."

So in honor of his accomplishment I salute him.

Frankly in the beginning of this thread I didn't see how it would turn into an anti US thread.

Good on you Naam you didn't let us down.

It was Mogoso that brought up the 20 million illegals in his response to koheesti's post "Only in America". 2 Americans started talking about America. Get your facts straight.....or are you trying to divert the thread into a completely different discussion altogether?

I looked at Mogoso's post but it had something to do with the topic but Naam's zoomed into a completely different (if well worn) area. Actually the only thing missing is to somehow work Israel and Palestine into the discussion and that GW Bush is somehow responsible for homeless people in Britain.

Well...now that you have introduced those topics...... It is indeed appropriate and on topic.....at least about Israeli squatters and Palestinian owners being powerless to evict them from their land.....

Don't get me wrong. I really like Naam. He even gave me some very sound financial advice when I needed it. I was only pointing out the vast swings in reasoning trying to respond to the original post in this topic.

I would even respond to the guns and butter argument in a neo Keynesian/Lerner way but that would require some forum members take some remedial econ courses.

Currently I am overwhelmed by the destruction in Japan and what effect that will have on that country and the world in general. It seems to make the small things I write about here seem so trivial.

The number of dead and homeless is so staggering.

It makes me appreciate my quiet little existence here and wonder why I would write things that would cause any controversy at all.

Don't get me wrong. I really like Naam. He even gave me some very sound financial advice when I needed it.

Money really does buy you love.

Don't get me wrong. I really like Naam. He even gave me some very sound financial advice when I needed it.

Money really does buy you love.

Renters like those who go to swimming pools to buy love would know.

As opposed to those like Naam who have been happily married for many decades & not in need of love buying services.

PC madness indeed. Right on topic.

Don't get me wrong. I really like Naam. He even gave me some very sound financial advice when I needed it.

Money really does buy you love.

Renters like those who go to swimming pools to buy love would know.

As opposed to those like Naam who have been happily married for many decades & not in need of love buying services.