I seriously doubt the USA, or the Balkenized version that will likely exist in the future, will be able to afford any checkpoints. Somebody isn't paying attention to national and global finance......
Cut the crapola, already, you don't sound even moderately educated when you repeat the mindless corporate blather. The list of colossal financial fraud is most obvious: Commodity Futures Modernization Act, InterContinentalExchange (And Ice Futures, formerly International Petroleum Exchange), SwapsWire, Markit (which later purchased SwapsWire, renaming it MarkitWire, collusion of Standard and Poor with the Bush Administration's lackeys at the Office of the Comptroller for the Currency, etc., etc., etc.
Read the Air Transport Association's excellent report on the oil/energy speculation.
Study the uses of offshore finance centers in the area of "money laundering" and why fewer and fewer taxes paid by the corpations in America and Europe have corrosive effects everywhere. Read, study and learn. Ignorance can be cured, stupidity....doubtful.
Good central planning worked during WWII with FDR, and had he passed all his programs it would have worked even better. Had JFK not been assassinated by Dulles/Bush/Harriman gang, things would definitely be different today.
Anybody interested in the American news today can only find it in Mother Jones, Hustler and McClatchy-owned newspapers. What informed citizen bothers with the NY Times (New Whore Times), the Wash. Post, LA Times or other putrid rags???
I generally stick to foreign news and reliable blog websites. With only investigative reporters such as Larisa Alexandrovna, Rawstory, Greg Palast, gregpalast.com, and a few others out there, real news in Amerika has been "deep captured" by the corps.
Yup, good citizen ClintJCL, I remember the old days. Abe's father would come home after another hard day carving one of the 1,000 gods worshipped at the time, and bemoan:
"Abe, oh, Abe! If only there were one god. It would make the business of stone-cutting sooooo much easier!"
Well, I'm not a professional mathematician, but I received a 100% score on the Math Aptitude test on the college boards many years ago, as well as 4.0 in math up to Multivariate Calc and Linear Algebra.
That said, I know enough to recognize bullcrap when I see it, and the real prob today is the phony financial instrument market, namely, those derivatives (last count of 723 categories, probably more, though): CDOs, CBOs, CMOs, CLSs, Bistro SIVs, credit default swaps, all other "securitized" debt, ABS, MBS and the rest of the BS....
When there exists a tontine scheme, or reverse tontine scheme, whereby trillions can be collected by the bad guys with the end result being the ultra-concentration of wealth, the working guy and gal is royally screwed.
My utmost respect to Prof. Taleb, though, who is a brilliant thinker....
Dood, when there's been a recession for 7 years plus (examine latest census data for America particular and demographics globally) it's called a depression.
On a more serious note, I bet it is just one of those sphere like in that Keanu Reeves' movie, The Day The Earth Stood Still.....
Actually, that may have been me. Sorry. I was royally pissed off that I could no longer gain entry into those Pentagon systems because those clowns in Redmond changed the cache poisoning techniques I had been using forever.......
I don't think the problem is the lack of caring, but rather the lack of understanding.
Sad to say, I believe you and all those other clueless posters are correct - there is indeed a pathetic lack of understanding when so many are unaware of how all the voting in the US of A has been gamed.
To reiterate for th nth time, with the passage of HAVA, giving individual states' secretaries of state control over centralized voter registration databases - from whence they can unregister large quantities of dems; with the privatization of the election process in America, controlled now primarily by the Pentagon, via "defense" contractors, by way of the four voting machine (DRE-type) companies which account for over 80% of these machines (Premier Election Systems, formerly Diebold, Hart InterCivic, ES&S, and Sequoia) and with Accenture (the well-known election-rigging consultancy) controlling the votes from overseas Americans, military, etc. (through FVAP legislation), whomever wins is the designated winner.
"What's distressing is that it doesn't appear that there's been any real consideration of how this type of capability could be misused," said Marc Rotenberg
Thanks for your cogent comment on this Rotenberg's idiot comment, good citizen nathan.fulton.
Remarkably, Rotenberg must be ignorant that China now routinely sends their "Islamic" dissidents to the US facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be "questioned" by joint Sino-American torture teams.
More importantly, Rotenberg completely misses the purpose of this eneavor - indicating he is equally ignorant and stupid.
The Alaskan governor shot Bullwinkle, pass it on......
To add to your first comment, copponex, and when all oversight was removed the planet ended up with a $516 trillion credit derivatives market, with the US share at around $116 trillion, with $43 trillion in the credit swaps category.
Of course, you can always argue that the fact that there was regulation that was removed led to the crisis. But you'd be wrong.
Of course, if you'd check the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (thanks to Phil Gramm, Robert Rubin, Arthur Leavett and friends), especially sections 2(d), 2(e), 2(f), 2(g), 2(h), you find your were definitely incorrect. Just compare it to the Commodity Exchange Act created during Roosevelt's administration.
Next, you'd want to research the IntercontinentalExchange, specifically what principals were behind its financing (hint: the same ones who wrote up all those credit derivatives and swaps and those oil companies benfitting from the rise in oil stocks) and what transpired upon its creation, what securities were moved over it without being tracked, and what untracked commodity and energy futures - and their subflavors - are being acted upon over it today (hint: when you can do "wash sales" of kerosene, propane, benzene, petroleum, soy, rice, corn, etc., etc., etc., you got a whole bunch of control).....
Statements like this is why you're a commie stooge, Doc.
Doc...a commie stooge???? Hilarious???
Niggling points about Thomas are truly silly, as he is indeed a rightwing stooge, and the Justices, similarly to "our" senators and representatives, practice something known as "throwaway votes" (or decisions in this case), whereby the vote one way after ascertaining the way the majority is voting to appear to be politically rightwing, or leftwing or centrist. If your state has two senators of the same party - do a graph sometime to correlate their votes - and include all their votes - as the only votes they cast which truly count are those votes for leglislation which passes --- or those votes against legislation, which fails to pass.
Remember, America - as this is what we're discussing in this thread - is a socialist plutocracy which has given plenty of military tech to a "communist" country of China (really just a totalitarian capitalist state). No commie stoogies here.....
Holy cow, MaliciousSmurf, you mean it wasn't in actuality Ralph Nader that disrupted the vote re-count on the 19th floor of that Floridian building??
Noooo, now I remember, it was that Bush dirty trix specialist, Joe Allbough - yet another draft-dodging scumbag. Ho hum.....
Well, at least those mean old neocons didn't pass that HAVA legislation (Help America Vote Act) which gives centralized voter registration databases to individual Republican secretaries of state to play with...
My bad....it appears that did pass --- anyone who hasn't gotten the message yet...pssst. there's a crime syndicate running the US for the past 8 years.....
The reality of the existence of unions in the US - and perhaps elsewhere - was that the element of organized crime -- or very tough actions on the part of a number of workers - was most necessary given the thug tactics of the plutocrats.
Recall Rockefeller's chain gangs? The origin behind the national guard and the armory system in every state in America? (To be used to put down labor strikes, etc.)
Unionism has an excellent reputation among thinking people in the USA - only the mental lightweights accept the propaganda perpetrated by the National Association of Manufactures (crucial trivia fact: first present and one of its founding members - the great-grandfather of George Weasel Bush).
Also, as anyone knowledgeable about world economics realizes, those countries with the highest union participation also rank the highest in standard of living - just check into the Scandanavian countries. And after thirty years of the most background economics, i.e., the disassembling of the American economy, unionism is highly welcomed by the many in the US.
While I respect the Indian laws against retail chains and the like, they were under British dominion for over 400 years - something Americans find most appalling. I wouldn't bet the farm on the Indians, especiall not after having worked with Punjabi programmers who do the silliest things....
Having gone that entrepreneurial route from time to time, and having found moderate success to extreme disappointment, I concur; but mostly, this book represents more of the mindless -- and I emphasize MINDLESS, drivel which is foisted upon the masses.
It is along the same lines as all that other "human resources" garbage on how to score a job, or to put it more succinctly, along the lines of those two fellows who happen upon a man-eating grizzly bear, and one ties his running shoes to escape while his friend is eaten by the grizzly, etc. (You all know that anecdote I'm referring to.)
The point being, the corporates don't give a rat's ass about how valuable an employee you make yourself into, and anyone who falls for that tooth fairy fantasy crapola is a complete moron.
Labor arbitrage, as the plutocratic jackasses refer to it, will be with us as long as the sheeple allow it.
In times past in America, as in the present time in other countries and societies, the citizenry became fed up with the power elites, rebelled and righteously kicked ass.
Unless we do the same, unless one thousand Jimmy Hoffa's take to the streets and act against the corporate overlords, everything is just so much B.S.
The only thing the corporations know how to do is offshore workers' jobs, import foreign replacement workers, and issue junk bonds.
Hmmmmmm....so you are inferring that all those phony "think tanks" (Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, etc., etc., etc.) which are always cited in various "studies" by the Corporate McNews which are frequently owned by government/military contrators might actually be conduits of disinformation???
Gee...I guess this changes everything.....
So..if the McKinsey Global Institute creates a "study" whereby the assumption being that offshoring all jobs is profitable....and the "study's finding" is that offshoring all jobs is profitable....maybe that's really not a "study" at all????
Sorry, dood, but I call complete and utter BS on the FBI's fairy tale. Try perusing this outstanding site by a most knowledgeable individual and also read this excellent article.
Once upon a time, way back when I worked in Seattle, there was this clown of a police chief named Fitzsimons. Everytime someone was murdered, without any investigation whatsoever, Fitzsimons would proclaim the murder to be drug-related.
Of course, it turned out in 9 out of 10 times to be an unrelated homicide of some sort - but the damage had already been done to the hapless victim's reputation.
FYI: That sorry ass police chief left Seattle to join the faculty of the FBI Academy at Quantico.....wonder what lessons he taught the feebs (bet it had something to do with pinning unsolved murders on unfortunate suicides......)
Ignorance is certainly bliss with you, oh candy ass of bliss, and I suspect my background inlcudes both far more labor than yours, given your pathetic and ignorant assumptions, and equally far more education as is obvious from your chronic and militant ignorance of all matters.
The arugment about the presence of illegals here is nonsensical to anyone with even a smattering of critical thinking ability --- there are illegals on most countries on this planet, candy boyo!
methuselah, sonny, you are indeed hi-frigging-larious...and then some.
First, don't blame the encomic blowback of the Vietnam War on Carter. Second, don't blame the Arab oil boycott of 1973 on Carter.
As for "full employment" in the present --- just what flavor of crack are smoking, clown???
The difference between now and the Great Depression, is that people back then weren't militantly ignorant as they are today (yourself being an obvious example), and they realized they were suffering high unemployment and that the financial markets had collapsed.
FYI, clueless wonder, no matter how much job loss, job layoffs, the "official" unemployment stats will always hover around 5% - cath a clue, dood. Likewise, there is a definite reason Bush discontinued the publishing of that M3 economic measure. Do some reading on it...for a change.
Corporate Amerika has destroyed the jobs base in this country - which has a consumer-based economy, with corporate revenues accounting for 7.5 - or less - of the tax revenues. Again, do some reading, dood --- for a change!
I'm unclear as to the details, which are murky according to the source, but it does appear verifiable that this situation has something to do with competition in oil and gas/pipelines, etc.
Do you suppose the individual you quoted will ever realize that NAFTA killed that Mexican worker's job, so he went elsewhere looking for survival wages?
Do you think that poster will ever actually read NAFTA, check into the original financial backers (primarily five banks) and check to see what banks rushed in to buy up the Mexican banking system (same five banks) after the passage of NAFTA - in order to recover all that drug money laundering business they lost to those Mexican banks after the Bank Reporting Act was passed back in the '80s???
Slashdot Mirror
I seriously doubt the USA, or the Balkenized version that will likely exist in the future, will be able to afford any checkpoints. Somebody isn't paying attention to national and global finance......
Talking points, talking points, talking points. Blah...blah...blah...yada...yada...yada!!
Cut the crapola, already, you don't sound even moderately educated when you repeat the mindless corporate blather. The list of colossal financial fraud is most obvious: Commodity Futures Modernization Act, InterContinentalExchange (And Ice Futures, formerly International Petroleum Exchange), SwapsWire, Markit (which later purchased SwapsWire, renaming it MarkitWire, collusion of Standard and Poor with the Bush Administration's lackeys at the Office of the Comptroller for the Currency, etc., etc., etc.
Read the Air Transport Association's excellent report on the oil/energy speculation.
Study the uses of offshore finance centers in the area of "money laundering" and why fewer and fewer taxes paid by the corpations in America and Europe have corrosive effects everywhere. Read, study and learn. Ignorance can be cured, stupidity....doubtful.
Good central planning worked during WWII with FDR, and had he passed all his programs it would have worked even better. Had JFK not been assassinated by Dulles/Bush/Harriman gang, things would definitely be different today.
Good post, good citizen lysergic.acid.
Anybody interested in the American news today can only find it in Mother Jones, Hustler and McClatchy-owned newspapers. What informed citizen bothers with the NY Times (New Whore Times), the Wash. Post, LA Times or other putrid rags???
I generally stick to foreign news and reliable blog websites. With only investigative reporters such as Larisa Alexandrovna, Rawstory, Greg Palast, gregpalast.com, and a few others out there, real news in Amerika has been "deep captured" by the corps.
Yup, good citizen ClintJCL, I remember the old days. Abe's father would come home after another hard day carving one of the 1,000 gods worshipped at the time, and bemoan:
"Abe, oh, Abe! If only there were one god. It would make the business of stone-cutting sooooo much easier!"
Abraham....always the dutiful son.....
Well, I'm not a professional mathematician, but I received a 100% score on the Math Aptitude test on the college boards many years ago, as well as 4.0 in math up to Multivariate Calc and Linear Algebra.
That said, I know enough to recognize bullcrap when I see it, and the real prob today is the phony financial instrument market, namely, those derivatives (last count of 723 categories, probably more, though): CDOs, CBOs, CMOs, CLSs, Bistro SIVs, credit default swaps, all other "securitized" debt, ABS, MBS and the rest of the BS....
When there exists a tontine scheme, or reverse tontine scheme, whereby trillions can be collected by the bad guys with the end result being the ultra-concentration of wealth, the working guy and gal is royally screwed.
My utmost respect to Prof. Taleb, though, who is a brilliant thinker....
Dood, when there's been a recession for 7 years plus (examine latest census data for America particular and demographics globally) it's called a depression.
On a more serious note, I bet it is just one of those sphere like in that Keanu Reeves' movie, The Day The Earth Stood Still.....
Actually, that may have been me. Sorry. I was royally pissed off that I could no longer gain entry into those Pentagon systems because those clowns in Redmond changed the cache poisoning techniques I had been using forever.......
Sad to say, I believe you and all those other clueless posters are correct - there is indeed a pathetic lack of understanding when so many are unaware of how all the voting in the US of A has been gamed.
To reiterate for th nth time, with the passage of HAVA, giving individual states' secretaries of state control over centralized voter registration databases - from whence they can unregister large quantities of dems; with the privatization of the election process in America, controlled now primarily by the Pentagon, via "defense" contractors, by way of the four voting machine (DRE-type) companies which account for over 80% of these machines (Premier Election Systems, formerly Diebold, Hart InterCivic, ES&S, and Sequoia) and with Accenture (the well-known election-rigging consultancy) controlling the votes from overseas Americans, military, etc. (through FVAP legislation), whomever wins is the designated winner.
End of story, 'nuff said......
Thanks for your cogent comment on this Rotenberg's idiot comment, good citizen nathan.fulton.
Remarkably, Rotenberg must be ignorant that China now routinely sends their "Islamic" dissidents to the US facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be "questioned" by joint Sino-American torture teams.
More importantly, Rotenberg completely misses the purpose of this eneavor - indicating he is equally ignorant and stupid.
The Alaskan governor shot Bullwinkle, pass it on......
Of course, you can always argue that the fact that there was regulation that was removed led to the crisis. But you'd be wrong.
Of course, if you'd check the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (thanks to Phil Gramm, Robert Rubin, Arthur Leavett and friends), especially sections 2(d), 2(e), 2(f), 2(g), 2(h), you find your were definitely incorrect. Just compare it to the Commodity Exchange Act created during Roosevelt's administration.
Next, you'd want to research the IntercontinentalExchange, specifically what principals were behind its financing (hint: the same ones who wrote up all those credit derivatives and swaps and those oil companies benfitting from the rise in oil stocks) and what transpired upon its creation, what securities were moved over it without being tracked, and what untracked commodity and energy futures - and their subflavors - are being acted upon over it today (hint: when you can do "wash sales" of kerosene, propane, benzene, petroleum, soy, rice, corn, etc., etc., etc., you got a whole bunch of control).....
Doc...a commie stooge???? Hilarious???
Niggling points about Thomas are truly silly, as he is indeed a rightwing stooge, and the Justices, similarly to "our" senators and representatives, practice something known as "throwaway votes" (or decisions in this case), whereby the vote one way after ascertaining the way the majority is voting to appear to be politically rightwing, or leftwing or centrist. If your state has two senators of the same party - do a graph sometime to correlate their votes - and include all their votes - as the only votes they cast which truly count are those votes for leglislation which passes --- or those votes against legislation, which fails to pass.
Remember, America - as this is what we're discussing in this thread - is a socialist plutocracy which has given plenty of military tech to a "communist" country of China (really just a totalitarian capitalist state). No commie stoogies here.....
Noooo, now I remember, it was that Bush dirty trix specialist, Joe Allbough - yet another draft-dodging scumbag. Ho hum.....
Well, at least those mean old neocons didn't pass that HAVA legislation (Help America Vote Act) which gives centralized voter registration databases to individual Republican secretaries of state to play with...
My bad....it appears that did pass --- anyone who hasn't gotten the message yet...pssst. there's a crime syndicate running the US for the past 8 years.....
The reality of the existence of unions in the US - and perhaps elsewhere - was that the element of organized crime -- or very tough actions on the part of a number of workers - was most necessary given the thug tactics of the plutocrats.
Recall Rockefeller's chain gangs? The origin behind the national guard and the armory system in every state in America? (To be used to put down labor strikes, etc.)
Unionism has an excellent reputation among thinking people in the USA - only the mental lightweights accept the propaganda perpetrated by the National Association of Manufactures (crucial trivia fact: first present and one of its founding members - the great-grandfather of George Weasel Bush).
Also, as anyone knowledgeable about world economics realizes, those countries with the highest union participation also rank the highest in standard of living - just check into the Scandanavian countries. And after thirty years of the most background economics, i.e., the disassembling of the American economy, unionism is highly welcomed by the many in the US.
While I respect the Indian laws against retail chains and the like, they were under British dominion for over 400 years - something Americans find most appalling. I wouldn't bet the farm on the Indians, especiall not after having worked with Punjabi programmers who do the silliest things....
Well said, my good fellow Butisol, well said.
Having gone that entrepreneurial route from time to time, and having found moderate success to extreme disappointment, I concur; but mostly, this book represents more of the mindless -- and I emphasize MINDLESS, drivel which is foisted upon the masses.
It is along the same lines as all that other "human resources" garbage on how to score a job, or to put it more succinctly, along the lines of those two fellows who happen upon a man-eating grizzly bear, and one ties his running shoes to escape while his friend is eaten by the grizzly, etc. (You all know that anecdote I'm referring to.)
The point being, the corporates don't give a rat's ass about how valuable an employee you make yourself into, and anyone who falls for that tooth fairy fantasy crapola is a complete moron.
Labor arbitrage, as the plutocratic jackasses refer to it, will be with us as long as the sheeple allow it.
In times past in America, as in the present time in other countries and societies, the citizenry became fed up with the power elites, rebelled and righteously kicked ass.
Unless we do the same, unless one thousand Jimmy Hoffa's take to the streets and act against the corporate overlords, everything is just so much B.S.
The only thing the corporations know how to do is offshore workers' jobs, import foreign replacement workers, and issue junk bonds.
End of weekly rant.....
Pipelines do indeed run through the capital of Georgia - catch a clue, dood.....
Gee...I guess this changes everything.....
So..if the McKinsey Global Institute creates a "study" whereby the assumption being that offshoring all jobs is profitable....and the "study's finding" is that offshoring all jobs is profitable....maybe that's really not a "study" at all????
WOW!! Sort of like...instead of attacking or nuking nearby Canada....invade Iraq and maybe nuke Iran.......
Those darn serial killers!!!
Blessings onto you, oh thinking human. Should anyone ever discover Mueller ever telling the truth about ANYTHING, please be sure to wake me up.....
I've been following this on an excellent site of Dr. Meryl Nass - highly recommended. Also, might suggest anyone to read this article.
Thanks for your excellent post.
Sorry, dood, but I call complete and utter BS on the FBI's fairy tale. Try perusing this outstanding site by a most knowledgeable individual and also read this excellent article.
Once upon a time, way back when I worked in Seattle, there was this clown of a police chief named Fitzsimons. Everytime someone was murdered, without any investigation whatsoever, Fitzsimons would proclaim the murder to be drug-related.
Of course, it turned out in 9 out of 10 times to be an unrelated homicide of some sort - but the damage had already been done to the hapless victim's reputation.
FYI: That sorry ass police chief left Seattle to join the faculty of the FBI Academy at Quantico.....wonder what lessons he taught the feebs (bet it had something to do with pinning unsolved murders on unfortunate suicides......)
Yes, that's my point -- it's not supposed to be hit or targeted but kept in someone's possession....
Ignorance is certainly bliss with you, oh candy ass of bliss, and I suspect my background inlcudes both far more labor than yours, given your pathetic and ignorant assumptions, and equally far more education as is obvious from your chronic and militant ignorance of all matters.
The arugment about the presence of illegals here is nonsensical to anyone with even a smattering of critical thinking ability --- there are illegals on most countries on this planet, candy boyo!
methuselah, sonny, you are indeed hi-frigging-larious...and then some.
First, don't blame the encomic blowback of the Vietnam War on Carter. Second, don't blame the Arab oil boycott of 1973 on Carter.
As for "full employment" in the present --- just what flavor of crack are smoking, clown???
The difference between now and the Great Depression, is that people back then weren't militantly ignorant as they are today (yourself being an obvious example), and they realized they were suffering high unemployment and that the financial markets had collapsed.
FYI, clueless wonder, no matter how much job loss, job layoffs, the "official" unemployment stats will always hover around 5% - cath a clue, dood. Likewise, there is a definite reason Bush discontinued the publishing of that M3 economic measure. Do some reading on it...for a change.
Corporate Amerika has destroyed the jobs base in this country - which has a consumer-based economy, with corporate revenues accounting for 7.5 - or less - of the tax revenues. Again, do some reading, dood --- for a change!
I'm unclear as to the details, which are murky according to the source, but it does appear verifiable that this situation has something to do with competition in oil and gas/pipelines, etc.
Excellent post, FastThickPants, excellent post.
Do you suppose the individual you quoted will ever realize that NAFTA killed that Mexican worker's job, so he went elsewhere looking for survival wages?
Do you think that poster will ever actually read NAFTA, check into the original financial backers (primarily five banks) and check to see what banks rushed in to buy up the Mexican banking system (same five banks) after the passage of NAFTA - in order to recover all that drug money laundering business they lost to those Mexican banks after the Bank Reporting Act was passed back in the '80s???