if only Runt
gettting bloody difficult to not invoke Godwin’s Law with these Germans running the show.
luckily the cheese-eating surrender monkeys have never won anything, or we’d have two laws to break.
An eminent panel on BBC Newsnight concurred that a Greek default is inevitable. The shit will hit the fan - it’s only a question of when and how.
Greek Finance Minister has been quoted as mentioning a “orderly default” involving 50% haircuts on the Greek debt as one of three options on the table. Tick tock, tick tock…
Shamrock Rovers were in a similar position to Greece once, now look at them. The world should write off their debts and refurbish their acropolis.
The greeks should be expelled from Europe and their land given to the Palestinians
That seems fair, use it or lose it.
you mean build them a new acropolis gratis which is coveted by other countries?
[quote=“Thrawneen, post: 519778”]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpg76VjTa58
mp;feature=player_embedded[/quote]
What a horrible cunt.
This fucking flute has probably bet the farm on the consequences of a depression and will be hosed if it doesn’t happen so he’s trying to panic people into taking the course of action that will make that happen. Why he is being given airtime on the BBC is anyones guess.
I should also add that the Goldman Sachs rules the world line has echoes of the global Jewish banking conspiracy line that took hold in the 30s
Yeah, I would say Goldman Sachs has little or no influence over global finances. He must be an anti-semite.
It could have been a cunning ploy by the BBC to show the kind of cunts that are operating in the markets but I doubt it. They have been cheerleading enough through the crises especially that Robert Peston guy who seems to thrive on it.
From the Sun…
TV viewers were left stunned last night after a self-styled trader claimed bankers were “dreaming of another recession” so they can make more money.
BBC 24 newsreaders sat “open-mouthed” in amazement at Alessio Rastani’s outburst — but today there were claims the outrageous interviewee was a hoaxer who managed to dupe the news channel.
Rastani said traders “don’t really care that much” about the prospect of an economic collapse and told of his hopes of profiting from the recession, adding: “The governments don’t rule the world - Goldman Sachs rules the world.”
During the shocking interview, he said: "The market is toast. For most traders, we don’t really care that much how they’re going to fix the economy, how they’re going to fix the whole situation.
"Our job is to make money from it.
“I have a confession - I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession, I dream of another moment like this.”
But Rastani’s credibility came under question today as bloggers claimed he is a member of a group called the Yes Men, who pose as fake interviewees for the media.
Doubts about his alleged success as a trader were also raised as it was pointed out on Twitter that he is not currently employed by a bank or fund manager.
Rastani described himself as an “experienced stock market and forex trader and professional speaker”. His website is dedicated to his public speaking.
Rastani appeared on the channel as stock markets worldwide were hit by another day of turmoil.
A shocked BBC presenter told him “jaws have just collectively dropped” after his scandalous words.
She added: “We appreciate your candour, however, it doesn’t help the rest of us, does it?”
Rastani replied that “anybody” can profit from a recession if they use the correct strategies.
At the end of his rant he concluded: "The economic crisis is like a cancer.
“If you just wait and wait, thinking this is going to go away, just like a cancer it’s going to grow and it’s going to be too late.”
He didn’t really say anything out of the way other than he’s quite bearish about the future. I have a cousin who works on the floor* at the Chicago Board of Trade gave me the same spiel about 15 years ago, says he loves big volatility in the market as that’s when he can trade in and out and make a few bob. The guy above was a bit brash and obviously needs a hiding but other than that it’s hard to see what the fuss is about.
*the floor is now gone, they’re all geeking away on computers now
It was surprising to see it said on a live news interview, but I know a few of these lads both in London and New York and they’d have no bones about thinking like this. Generally they tend to get depressed and leave it in their early 30s but the culture while they’re in it is full of that Gordon Gecko fantasy stuff.
I don’t see it as any different to lads on betting exchanges who lay a horse at 1000.0 once it’s fallen. It’s just business.
:lol:
BBC financial expert Alessio Rastani: ‘I’m an attention seeker not a trader’
The soundbites won Mr Rastani instant fame. He became a viral hit and was trending on Twitter. BBC business editor Robert Peston was among the fans. “A must watch if you want to understand the euro crisis and how markets work,” he told his army of 82,000 followers on Twitter on Tuesday.
The interview contained such gems as “Governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world [and] Goldman Sachs does not care about the rescue package.”
But on Tuesday night the BBC was left facing questions about just how qualified Mr Rastani is to speak about the markets.
In the interview Mr Rastani described himself as an independent trader. Elsewhere he claims he’s an “investment speaker”. Instead of operating from a plush office in Canary Wharf Mr Rastani works and lives with his partner Anita Eader in a £200,000 semi in Bexleyheath, south London. The house, complete with a mortgage from Royal Bank of Scotland, belongs to her not him.
He is a business owner, a 99pc shareholder in public speaking venture Santoro Projects. Its most recent accounts show cash in the bank of £985. After four years trading net assets are £10,048 - in the red.
How a man who has never been authorised by the Financial Services Authority and has no discernible history working for a City institution ended up being interviewed by the BBC remains a mystery.
The incongruity led to some commentators speculating Mr Rastani was a professional hoaxer. The BBC denied the allegation: “We’ve carried out detailed investigations and can’t find any evidence to suggest that the interview with Alessio Rastani was a hoax.”
However, the BBC declined to comment on what checks, if any, it had done prior to the interview.
Mr Rastani was a little more forthcoming.
“They approached me,” he told The Telegraph. “I’m an attention seeker. That is the main reason I speak. That is the reason I agreed to go on the BBC. Trading is a like a hobby. It is not a business. I am a talker. I talk a lot. I love the whole idea of public speaking.”
So he’s more of a talker than a trader. A man who doesn’t own the house he lives in, but can sum up the financial crisis in just three minutes – a knack that escapes many financial commentators.
“I agreed to go on because I’m attention seeker,” he said on Tuesday. “But I meant every word I said.”
Now it’s time for our regular Monday morning slot: “The Greeks Are On The Brink of Default”
Great article from Fintan O’Toole today.
No brakes on runaway train of capitalism
Political leaders need to realise that you can’t save an economy by destroying a society, writes FINTAN O’TOOLE
WHY, IN the midst of the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s, is European governance so puny and ineffectual? The answer does not lie in the absence of visionary, charismatic leaders: Helmut Kohl cut a figure no more dazzling than Angela Merkel, but he was able to respond boldly to a major historic challenge. It lies, rather in one of the great paradoxes of modern history.
The paradox is this: only the social democratic left can save capitalism from itself. Finance capitalism is inherently unstable and self-destructive. It creates circumstances in which vast amounts of money can be made from gambling, from pyramid schemes and from socially toxic behaviour that corrodes the very societies on which it depends. Left to its own devices, it will implode.
This is what happened in the 1920s, when the “irrational exuberance” of gung-ho unregulated finance capitalism created the Great Depression. The system that westerners had assumed to be permanent and universal – liberal democracy and a market economy – came very close to extinction. Capitalism was saved, ironically, by the left. Social democrats of various shades in the US and in post-war Europe created a radically altered version of capitalism. There were four basic modifications to the system. Governments intervened in the economy on Keynesian lines, seeking actively to manage demand. The freedom of the so-called “free market” was limited by tough regulation, especially of the finance industry. International institutions and agreements (the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, Bretton Woods) sought to control fluctuations in exchange rates and foster long-term investment. And governments, especially in the aftermath of fascism, sought to redistribute enough wealth to ensure at least basic levels of decency for all citizens.
All of this energy – both intellectual and political – came from left of centre. Social democrats were strengthened, not just by the near-collapse of capitalism, but by the threat of communism. It was better for economic elites to compromise with the soft left rather than to risk the rise of the hard left. And, in spite of itself, capitalism was saved. The checks and balances – political, institutional and social – curbed its inherently reckless and anarchic tendencies.
We now have a generation of political leaders in Europe and the US raised on the dismantling of this compromise. Those now in power – and perhaps more importantly, those who advise them – are the children of the rebirth of militant, unfettered finance capitalism. This is a process which began in 1971, when Richard Nixon dissolved the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, was turbo-charged in 1979 and 1980 with the elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and, by the 1990s had become the new “common sense”.
This counter-revolution was so successful that most of western social democracy eventually capitulated and decided to join in. With the zeal of converts, old social democratic parties became cheerleaders for a renewed hyper-capitalism. It was Bill Clinton, heir to the New Deal, who signed off on the dismantling of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial from investment banks. It was New Labour, under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, that declared the end of boom and bust, formally ditching the belief that uncontrolled finance capitalism would lead inevitably to another crisis.
So here is one of the great differences between what flowed from the Great Depression and the current crisis: back then, there was a powerful and eventually successful social democratic alternative. That alternative was capable of generating large-scale, bold initiatives, both within western countries and between them. Crucially, it focused very heavily on the human and social consequences of the crisis. Its primary insight was that you can’t save an economy by destroying a society.
Jobs, housing, pensions, health care and education were at the very heart of the response to the crisis – not as the areas to be attacked but as the springboards for recovery. The big problem for capitalism now is that it has been far too successful in eliminating its left-of-centre critics. There is a generation of economists that has never even read Keynes, a generation of right-wing politicians whose mentality has been formed solely by the belief that the more “free” the market and the less interventionist the state, the better. And a generation of social democrats who’ve more or less given up.
And here’s the other paradox: neo-liberal ideology is both in utter disarray and completely dominant. The basic proposition of capitalism – I take the risks, get the rewards if I’m right and take the pain if I’m wrong – has melted like a snowman in Hell. Key parts of the militantly right-wing ideology that became the orthodoxy are mired in almost comic contradiction. Take privatisation, for example. We in Ireland are being told we must swallow a brilliant new version – massive nationalisation of toxic financial sludge (Anglo Irish) but privatisation of real assets (the ESB). Someone, to recall Richard Harris’s infamous lines, left this ideological cake out in the rain.
Yet, the runaway train ploughs on, scarcely aware that it ran over the people who make the brakes.