Yeah, one of my professors told me that to call a drug specific is basically a fancy way of calling it new. There will be non-specificity. It just hasn't been found out yet.

In that you choose your own political clowns - it is their fault. But I don't doubt your peoples capacity.


That your country is actually considering re-electing the closet Trotskyite in G. Brown - illustrates the depth of political denial your country is in.

By the way, I'm pleased that this thread has made it to three pages. Who knew it had so much potential??

The trial of EU being an elitarian fortress is to some extents right. The rest is a matter of political conception / culture (different between UK and France/Germany for example)

That said the habeas corpus or the Declaration of Human Rights were elitarian creations too.

But they are embedded in the real world.
They are reflections of reality.

In many respects historically ' Europe ' and the idea of Europeaness is artificial.

One can only hope that one day the Franco- German hegemony of Europe as it stands will fall into pieces.

A serviceable debt nonetheless. There's not many countries in the world without a mountain of debt during these times. The debt is only a massive worry if you can't service it. Do you really think there's even 1% chance we could default? There is exactly 0% chance of that. Also, most of this debt is due to the bank bailouts, these will be paid back with interest. I don't think it's something to panic about but to keep control of.

Cameron is an ass, so is Osborne. TBH, i don't like either of the options, Labour or Tory. One thing is for sure though, Tories are there to make the rich richer and the poorer, poorer. I believe in a society where the very wealthy invest in helping the poorest in society break out of poverty. That doesn't mean a benefit culture of spongers, but a system that encourages and enables people to achieve, not to be exploited.

What the UK needs is solid investment in innovation, science, R&D. This increases production/manufacturing and thus GDP. The more you produce, the wealthier you are. Reliance on service industry, including financial, is IMO artificial wealth. It can survive on it's own for only so long, it needs to be backed up by produce, manufacturing and science.

Why should average Joe Punter have spent his money on bailing the banks?
Absurd socialist tripe.

It's not in a deplorable state. It is a matter of perception. I believe it's one of the best countries in the world to be born, and i feel very lucky to be born here. London is a great city, i love it. The English countryside is also very beautiful. We have a diverse climate, diverse people and diverse economy.

Polanyi fan right here ?

I disagree a lot with you that any idea of Europeaness is artificial.
I understood this when I went to the States/Canada last summer. I happened to fly back through Germany. While having a coffee in Dusseldorf airport, it felt like home. This is reality.

On a more conceptual standpoint, political tenets, legal systems and a lot of other things have a lot in common in Europe. No one can deny this.
And yeah the rest, which is to know whether or not EU should become a federal country is a personal opinion, and everyone is entitlted to his.

All of what you said is true, yet it is still in a deplorable state.

No need to compare yourself to others.
Compare yourselves to where you have been in the past and where you could have been now.

And do not make it out that you were not under a mountain of debt prior to '08 - this is a fiction.

It might merely be that Germany is alot more similiar than Canada.
A matter of relativity I suspect.

Still 1 page for me

It's not we are considering re-electing Labour. It's that there is not much of a choice for the people. Which is why there's always such a low turnout. Labour are screwed up and don't know where they are going, Tories are all over the place and have no real policies and are etonian toffs, Lib Dems are namby pamby and couldn't run a bath. But much could be said for most countries with two main parties, you have the choice of two evils. What most countries need to become successful is strong leadership, someone, or a bunch of people who have strong beliefs and are radical enough to implement them. We don't have a party that is smack bang in the centre, which is where most people's beliefs are. Not to the left, not to the right. Just a common sense centre.

Even if what you have said is true - a needless, reckless debt.
You need to readjust to the reality that you do not have the Empire to subsidise your lifestyle.

sick post, hahaha

and digger, where are you from ?

And this is not a deplorable political state?

Because the loss of credit flow is damaging to an economy. I'm not sure how true it is or whether I agree with it, but that's the argument. I hate it when people try and frame it as a moral issue. It's not like these bailouts are being made because we love banks and want to keep our precious bankers in jobs. People who take the discussion in that direction are missing the point. As much as I would love to see these guys screwed, not if it means that thousands of people can't buy homes or cars or start businesses or hire workers.

Now if people want to make the argument that loss of credit isn't a bad thing or there are better ways of solving this problem, then fine, but I never hear this argument being made.

Prior to the current Australian governments self serving, politically driven spendathon.
Australia had no net public debt - we were running current account surpluses of the order of 1-2% for approximately a decade.
It was not without coincidence this occurred under conservative management of fiscal policy.

Joe Punter should not have, but Joe Punter wouldn't be able to get his money out of the hole-in-the-wall if they collapsed! Would you have let the banks collapse? We had to bail them out and they have to pay us back with interest, and a healthy one in my view. In the meantime, proper regulation of the banking system should be implemented along with an insurance tax on the banks in case this crap happens again in the future. Chop them up into sections so the investment banks can't screw around with the retail bank's money. Then when the investment banks fail, we can let them collapse. And if regulation makes sure the retail banks have a large enough reserve, there should be no real chance of them crashing in such a quick and drastic way.

The banks will go back to the private sector once we have our money back.

Deplorable state in who's eyes? Which part of it is deplorable?

"Mountain of debt" is am excessive term. It's a serviceable debt that's completely manageable. I don't see it being a crisis. It just needs to be kept under control. But debt is always measured against assets, and our assets far outweigh the debt.

It was the possiblity of bailouts that encourage reckless lending/gearing practises by financial institutions.

With no moral hazard for shareholders, no penalties for executives - you should not be suprised that you get what we got.

The 'market' is an aware being.

It did not ignore the '95 Mexican Bailout, the extraordinary monetary response to Asian financial crises, the "greenspan" put option, the 2001 emergency monetary response.

This was one in a long line of examples of no moral hazard - excessive ineterventionist monetary policy, extraordinary fiscal adventurism. Should we be suprised then that the creation of so much money through each crises forced the debt and excess money into larger and deeper markets each time precipitating larger crises each time.

Where now does the debt lie? Not much of it has disappeared but now is carried on the public balance sheet. There will be consequences to this policy response.

No, it's political reality and has been for hundreds of years around the world. We do not live in Utopia.

You have basically said each of the major political parties is not capable of running your country.
This is not a poor state of affairs?

Oh please, spare me.

You did more than just guarantee depositors.

Suprise suprise the social democrats believe the best way to solve the problem is to create another tax.