A message from Argentina

A Message from Argentina:
Our Sympathies to the People of Greece!
by Adrian Salbuchi*

Every once in awhile I run across an article that gives me some understanding of the bigger picture and I learn something. Why exactly IS there a crisis in global finances? And why do the PEOPLE always have to pay for it? The above article was very helpful to me and I present it here for those who want to know more......but don't have alot of time to study global finance.

I found both the article and the videos easily digestible and thought provoking. I am not sure it is possible for enough people to wake up to this information to stop the global financiers from completing their cycle. But I don't think it very dignified to play my part as an ostrich with my head in the sand bending over.

I hate dealing with economic global collapse because it is so messy and requires so much specialised knowledge to analyse it; more often than not I throw up my hands and move along to another issue.

But I am wrong to do this. Those who run the global finance know I probably won't study economics to understand today's mess; and probably will prefer to digest simplified media headlines. Average people who work and raise families barely have enough hours in the day to attend to their lives without devoting time to studying complex economic banking theories. Isn't that what politicians are elected to do?

One thing is clear to me though: democracy is dead. It is dead because the people are hoodwinked and too busy (and have little inclination) to learn more about the bigger picture of finance: people are content to play the part assigned to their little pixel in the picture painted by 'invisible hands'. Democracy requires enlightened citizens and most of us are still consumer zombies.


Related: Naomi Klein (search this blog)

It ain't over til it's over: and it ain't over.

For more than a year, many critics following the dollar have been warning of an eventual meltdown of the currency. Mostly, these predictions have been ignored and labelled as doomsday conspiratorial mumbo jumbo.

Most people in the US are still yapping about health care and Obama's birth certificate while the rest of the world tries to cope with austere fiscal constraints and unemployment. Yet there is a bigger picture which dampens the hope of all for a near recovery, more than most people want to be aware of.

I have posted numerous articles on this blog following the impending decline of the dollar as world reserve currency.

In the article below, this fear is expressed from a highly credible source. I would say the time is right to batten down the hatches for a currency storm that will rock the world.

‘The World Is in Trouble’:
Deutsche Bank Chief Economist

12 Aug 2009
By: CNBC.com
Source
The global economy still faces turmoil as governments try to figure out how to move out of fiscal rescue packages, which could lead to another two downturns, Deutsche Bank Chief Economist Norbert Walter said Thursday.

In addition, nervousness on the part of major dollar holders could pressure the greenback and lead to a very worrying 2010, Walter said.

Norbert said recently in research notes “the world is in trouble.”

“I believe that the rescue packages brought on have been so costly for so many governments that the exit from this fiscal policy will be very painful, very painful indeed,” he said. “Some of us are already talking about a W-shaped recovery. I’d probably talk about a triple-U-shaped recovery because there are so many stumbling blocks here to get out of this.”

“There are a few countries that have not dismissed people, they had a dramatic drop in their sales but they kept on people because they believed the recession would be very shallow,” Walter said. “They now have to fire people. That will increase unemployment and they therefore, of course, may be endangering retail sales in some countries.”

If Australia hikes rates in September or October, markets “will certainly shiver” and cause zig-zagging at the bottom of the recession, Walter said.

And while the White House struggles with issues like health care and puts a fiscal policy exit strategy on the back burner, there are big concerns of about the direction of the U.S. dollar.

“I’m deeply worried about the worries of those investors who have invested a lot, really a lot into the dollar” like the Chinese, Japanese, Arabs and Russians, he said.

“If they have second thoughts about the quality of this currency then the dollar is bound to weaken” which means higher long-term interest rates for a country where government debt is approaching 100 percent of gross domestic product, he said.

If that happens, “2010 could be a worrisome year for all of us,” he said.

Related

Ultimate Crisis Is Still Coming: Marc Faber

Roubini: Risk of Double-Dip Recession Not Quite Past Yet

Jobless spike compounds foreclosure crisis

More articles here.

News you WANT to read - Bankers beware!

Hooray for the British, the French, the Irish and every country in which the citizens now rise up against the greed of the capitalist gluttons. Best news I have read in weeks. Much success to all who put their lives on the line to change the world. Put people first.

Bankers told keep low profile as public anger rises

Fri Mar 27, 2009
By Olesya Dmitracova
Source
LONDON (Reuters) - Leave the flash car at home, spend the night in a hotel, hire a bodyguard. This is the kind of advice security experts are giving bank executives who fear attacks from people angered by the financial crisis.

In London, where leaders of the world's largest economies will gather for a G20 summit next Thursday, the discontent may spill out into protests starting with a rally on Saturday that police expect will draw 40,000 demonstrators.

In France there have been cases of workers holding bosses hostage over layoffs and shut downs, while in Scotland a prominent banker's home was attacked. With these incidents in mind, police and security providers are getting ready for busy times.

One company, Control Risks, has seen its workload in Europe rise by 20 to 25 percent since November, director Sebastian Willis Fleming said, including more work with financial institutions.

Control Risks, like its competitor Kroll, helps companies plan security measures, including when they have to announce unpopular decisions, such as mass layoffs or office closures.

"Usually companies come to us in crisis," said Eden Mendel at Kroll. "The type of work that we are getting is much more geared as a response to the financial crisis."

Beyond advice, Kroll can provide bodyguards with background in specialist police forces.

"It will be interesting to see if, following the G20 and following the Fred Goodwin attack, we start seeing more and more financial services calling us," she added.

On Wednesday vandals smashed windows and damaged a car at the Edinburgh home of the 50-year-old former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland who refused to give up an estimated annual pension of about 700,000 pounds ($1 million) after the government rescued his bank.

Bankers in the United States also have reasons to take extra care after death threats were sent to some executives of American International Group, which paid out $220 million in bonuses despite being kept afloat by taxpayers' money.

British police say they are likely to deploy about 2,500 officers on London's streets during the G20 summit in reaction to intelligence suggesting the City of London financial district is one of the areas targeted by protesters.

Businesses have been advised to cancel non-essential meetings, stagger staff arrivals and departures and to warn staff "not to antagonize protestors."

The Times newspaper also reported police were suggesting bank employees not wear suits or carry bags with company logos. Both the City of London police and London's Metropolitan Police declined to comment.

Videos

London echoes of 1933 in G20 summit

Spoof FT hits London ahead of G20
Mar 27 - A group of anti-capitalism protesters have distributed a mock copy of London's famous Financial Times newspaper. This is hilarious....don't miss it.

The truth about central bankers and the Feds

It has taken me years to figure out exactly what a central bank is. And it hasn't been easy to understand. As a matter of fact, it tooks years just to figure out that I that I didn't understand the entire concept of the Feds, and how this establishment was actually detrimental to the people it claims to 'serve'.

Probably the best examination of central banking I have seen lately was presented in the movie Zeitgeist - the Addendum. I highly recommend viewing at least the first half of this movie for those who wish a crystal clear idea of what the Feds (and other central banks) do in plain no-nonsense language. The dangers of the concept of the Feds are expressed very well in the article below - exactly how do the people lose?

Truth, By George

By Rand Clifford
2/14/09
Source
Truth in our time has become so muddied, the first thing we need in any search for fundamental, unambiguous truth is a good working definition. Something to clutch as a certain cruciform against vampires…a touchstone to help us better navigate lies.

truth \’trüth\ n. : That which is true

Hhmmm….so precisely what is “true”?

Truth. Truth is true.
That Möbius strip leads nowhere. Could a better understanding of truth as an aide to our search for it be found by examining the opposite of truth—by examining untruth?

American life floods us with one particular very tried and true untruth: Everything our federal government tells us, either officially, or through mainstream corporate media. So, a reliable working definition of truth here could be: “Exactly what government does not tell”. Certainly they tell occasional superficial truths, but those always have tendrils merging into the massive and nearby body of deceit.

Let’s test drive the definition—not conventionally as one would with perhaps a list of lies, specific lies, that’d set us on another Möbius strip since ultimately it’s all the same, or has only one side, lies. No, let’s take a spin through authority, some entrenched establishment symbolism.

The Fed
What might evoke more bedrock images of federal government than the Federal Reserve (Fed), our central bank (which is not actually a bank, and has no reserves)? Simmering in its deep heritage of untruth…the Fed is in no way a part of the federal government, but is instead a private corporation. The Fed’s ultimate agenda orbits profit for a mostly foreign banking cartel. It is a private money making machine disguised as a part of “Government of the People, by the People and for the People”, creating “money” by simple data entry, then bleeding the people by loaning it to the government at interest. How in the name of government, in disgusting violation of the Constitution, did this happen? Rep. Ron Paul tells us. He introduced the Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act (HR 2755), in June 2007.

The Great Depression is a sinister example of the Fed’s untruth. One of their “duties” is to stabilize the money supply, but Sirens of personal accumulation dictate their “mission”. Leaked documents and defector testimony reveals their zeal over how many thousands of banks and farms they hoped to acquire for pennies on the dollar…. The Great Depression was a coup by the financial elite to seize more wealth for themselves at the expense of the working class—one of history’s more hideous refrains. Please note that before their coup of ‘29, these elite controlled only a majority of banks in the Northeast; afterward they dominated American capital from coast to coast. Ben Bernanke, the Fed’s current head, even admitted when squeezed: “Regarding the Great Depression. We did it. We’re sorry. We won’t do it again.”

Considering the Fed’s seamless legacy of untruth…one might suspect that they actually are doing it again—note how much of the current “bailout” money is being used for acquisition…banks swallowing other banks, trillions in debt passed to future taxpayers. Try explaining something like this to your child.

The Bushes
Shaking the Bushes is an unlikely way to flush out truth, but it seems a blue moon can make both Georges spontaneously stray into actual truth.. Is it a ploy to further confuse us, or merely a wrinkle in perception management?

One of George II’s most germane chucking of beans: “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

George I once told reporter Sarah McClendon that, “If the American people really knew what we had done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched.”

Then in 1992, when asked what Iran-Contra was really all about, George I replied that it was done for “…the continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.”

Talk about hitting pay dirt! In that simple nonchalance of George I, the fundamental truth underlying the foundational untruth of not only the Fed, but the federal government, corporate mainstream media—and owners of all of the above—the financial elite, is revealed.

Yes, the government is owned by our nemesis, the financial elite. They own our free press, they own you…they own the world. The common good is as irrelevant to our owners as the future of humanity, and what they want is all they’ve ever wanted: more. Will we simply keep swallowing their effluent until the Republic is dead?

All we really need to know, something we’ve had our noses rubbed in a very long time, is that the government deals exclusively in untruth. If it ever mattered even a little, truth has been absolutely and permanently supplanted by perception management, which, when it comes to the people, is the government’s only genuine concern (in Bush jargon, one American = OFU, or “one fodder unit”). The people have been so incredibly dumbed-down chemically and socially and every possible way in between that in the breadlines and soup kitchens, major-league baseball will probably be the hottest topic…or the Superbowl, or Brittney and Brad and Jen or the latest Superhero movie….

Perpetual Sheep, Perpetual Slaughter
A very wise woman said, “You can lead sheep to enlightenment, but you can’t make them think.”

Evolution has given women special insight to survive in a world where men dominate physically, do most of the slaughtering, and blaze where humanity would be better off not going. So what has a majority of the slaughter throughout history been motivated by? “…the continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.” If George I spoke only two truths in his whole wretched infliction upon us, that one rules.

“…the continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands” drove the fraudulent presidential installation of George II, twice. Same thing for 9/11…for the absolutely mind-defying War on Terror! Oil wars, shock-and-awe, wanton slaughter of millions. War on the Biosphere, Great Depression redux, American concentration camps for Americans, American troops deployed against Americans on American streets, false flag terror, martial law. Suspension of the Constitution, death of the Republic…. Inhumanity American “leadership” has inflicted on the rest of the world for over half a century is now coming home.

Why?
“…the continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.”

That’s the foundational truth everything can be distilled down to, the bottom-line truth we’ve been looking for—and what an unlikely place to find it…what eerie irony. From the forked tongue of George I.

“…the continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.”

It’s the driving force behind everything in Planning Central, the only thing that matters. And with the face of the beast exposed…if we still have time, will we ever muster the will—and especially find the leadership—to turn back toward the humane?

Rand Clifford is a writer living in Spokane, Washington, with his wife Mary Ann, and their Chesapeake Bay retriever, Mink.. Rand’s novels CASTLING, TIMING, VOICES OF VIRES, and PRIEST LAKE CATHEDRAL are published by StarChief Press: http://www.starchiefpress.com

Posted by thomaspainescorner on February 15, 2009

For the opposing point of view click here.

California pension funds close to bankruptcy

01-30-2009
Source
The two largest pension funds in California, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), have lost billions of dollars in value. Hundreds of thousands of retiring state employees and teachers now face the stark choice of accepting much reduced pension checks or working past their retirement age.

CalPERS is the largest pension fund in the US and the fourth largest in the world. At its height in October 2007 it had $260 billion in assets, comparable to the GDP of Poland, Indonesia or Denmark. At the end of 2008 CalPERS was worth $186 billion, one of its worst annual declines since the fund’s inception in 1932. It is one of the latest casualties of the financial collapse on Wall Street.

After years of gambling in real estate investments, the state workers pension fund has lost more than 41 percent of its value, after peaking last fall. Its real estate holdings have dropped from $9 billion to $5.8 billion, according to the Sacramento Bee.

CalPERS manages pension and health benefits for more than 1.6 million retirees and their families. The pensions are guaranteed by law, but given the current economic malaise employers may be asked to contribute more from their payrolls. The average employer, a taxpayer-funded government agency, contributes 12.7 percent of their payroll to CalPERS, while workers must contribute 5 to 7 percent of their salaries.

For now, a “rainy day fund” is being used to offset the worst in losses. It is likely, however, that CalPERS will ask for additional funds starting in July 2010 from state employers and July 2011 from local employers. The increases could be from 2 to 5 percent. Since the employers are public entities, the money will have to come from taxpayers or from budget cuts to other social programs.

CalPERS’s losses are intimately tied with the collapse of the housing bubble and the economic downturn in general. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped 39.8 percent during the same period that CalPERS fell 31 percent. Because of the fund’s aggressive purchasing of real estate during the property bubble, CalPERS is now the largest owner of undeveloped residential land in America, much of it purchased in Arizona, California and Florida, some of the states hardest hit by the real estate crash. Many of these properties were purchased when their prices were at their peak.

The pension fund is expected to report paper losses of 103 percent on its residential investments in the fiscal year that ended June 30. It is estimated 80 percent of these investments were paid with borrowed money, which means that CalPERS will eventually be obligated to pay them back at the original market price.

The second largest pension fund in the US, CalSTRS, covers 794,812 teachers. Its value has fallen from $162.2 billion to $129.3 billion. CalSTRS’s pension funds are guaranteed just like CalPERS, but unlike CalPERS, it does not have the authority to ask for increased contributions from employers. CalSTRS is funded by school districts contributing 8.25 percent of its payroll. The state general fund pays 2 percent and a further 8 percent comes from the members’ salaries. Any contribution changes would have to be added by the state legislature and approved by the governor.

While CalPERS’ losses are currently being defrayed by the rainy-day fund, state administrators are hoping that the economic situation will improve, otherwise CalPERS and other pension funds will have to ask for further contributions. California Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who sits on the CalPERS board, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the current crisis means “both state and local government employers would be spending more on retirement than on some immediate program needs. Paying the commitments to pension obligation is a high priority, and it would take precedence over many other spendings.”

He added, “You either cut some other program expenditures or you tax something.” In other words, the pension deficit will be placed on the backs of working people who had no control over the investment decisions made by the government, let alone the recklessness and avarice of the banking executives and Wall Street speculators who are responsible for the crisis.

In the midst of a severe recession, this will only add to social anxiety and financial insecurity, particularly since hundreds of thousands of public school teachers and state employees covered by these massive pension funds have seen the value of their personal retirement savings, including 401(k)s and IRAs, reduced by 25 percent or more.

Pacific Grove, a coastal town north of San Francisco, highlights what cities and towns are being forced to do. In fiscal 2002, Pacific Grove paid less than $100,000 to CalPERS, only 1 percent of the town’s general fund revenue. By 2006, this cost shot up to more than $2.2 million, or 15 percent of its revenue.

The city of 15,000 would have to spend $10 million or more to pay its pension obligations if it were to pull out of CalPERS. The recreation department staff has already been reduced from seven to one and budgets for the library and Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, a 125-year-old institution, were cut in half.

Joanne Nolan Stewart, a 48-year-old with two children, told the Wall Street Journal, “The people who used to run the recreation programs grew up here and sheltered the kids like they were their own.” Joanne is also an account manager for AT&T and said, “If I were to retire, my retirement would be one-quarter of what I make today for the rest of my life.”

California’s pension and budget defaults are not isolated phenomena. All across the US state pension funds have been collapsing due to the broader economic crisis. According to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, state governments have run up pension fund losses totaling $865.1 billion. Assets for 109 pension funds dropped 37 percent to $1.46 trillion in the 14-month period ending December 16. By comparison, the S&P 500 fell 41 percent in the same period.

To return to 2007 funding levels by 2010, the 109 funds would need annual returns of 52 percent, the center found. Alicia Munnell, the center’s director, told Bloomberg.com, “Even if markets recover, this will be a one-time loss that will have to be made up in the future by taxpayers.”

State and local governments contributed more than $64.5 billion to pension plans in fiscal 2005-2006, according to the US Census Bureau, which is about 57 percent of the $113.2 billion spent on police and firefighters. A report by the Pew Center on the States did a survey in December 2007 that found that states owed $2.35 trillion in pension payments over 30 years.

Unsurprisingly, state authorities are attempting to cut benefits for new state hires in order to ameliorate the crisis. In Kentucky, lawmakers set the minimum age of retirement at 57 for employees hired after September 1, and required 30 years of service, up from 27, to receive full benefits. They also capped cost-of-living adjustments, tied to the Consumer Price Index, at 1.5 percent. Democratic Governor of New York David Paterson, trying to close a $15.4 billion gap over 15 months, also wants to reduce new workers’ benefits while raising the retirement age from 55 to 62.

Rhode Island state and local governments were scheduled to make contributions to their pension funds equaling 25 percent of their payroll expenses in 2010, and the contributions may increase up to 30 percent in 2011 with a deepening recession. With increasing membership growth in state pension plans, these defaults will be even more exacerbated. State funds have been experiencing 12 percent growth since 2002, with 23.1 million now participating.

Company pension funds, or so-called defined benefit plans, have also been starved by the economic crash, falling to $1.2 trillion as of December 31 compared to $1.6 trillion a year earlier.

Related
Giant Calif. Land Partnership Files for Chapter 11

California - 1 week to IOUs

California One Week Away from Issuing IOUs…
Which May Not Be Accepted by Many Banks

January 26th, 2009
Source
The controller says California is down to Plan D on its checklist of paying bills. Its cash reserves are piddling; the special funds it borrows from are tapped out, and no one in the private sector is going to lend it any cash at a reasonable interest rate.

That leaves what in state government circles are called “payment deferrals” and what in real life is called “stiffing your creditors.”

In this case the creditors include income taxpayers expecting refunds, college students waiting on state aid, counties that operate public assistance programs, and companies that sell goods and services to state agencies.

Chiang has said he won’t write $3.7 billion worth of checks for those and other state programs if legislators and the governor haven’t reached a deal by next Sunday to close the budget gap.

The controller said he must conserve what little cash the state has to be able to make constitutionally required payments to schools and interest payments to state bondholders.

“This is a very painful decision,” Chiang said. “It pains me to pull this trigger, but it is an action that is critically necessary.”

The state’s cash situation is somewhat analogous to your family emptying its checking account, drawing down the savings account to cover checks, and only having enough left to pay either the mortgage or the utility bill.

Of course you could then file for bankruptcy protection. Under federal law, the state can’t do that, but it can do something you can’t: Issue IOUs.

Known formally as “registered warrants,” the state’s IOUs are just that. Someone – a vendor, a landlord, the water company – who is owed money by a California government agency gets a piece of paper that says the state owes them money, and will pay them the amount plus interest at some point in the future.

The only time since the Great Depression that the state has issued IOUs was in 1992, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. About 1.6 million of them, worth a total of $3.8 billion, were issued during a two-month budget tiff between then-Gov. Pete Wilson and legislators.

Instead of paychecks, about 100,000 state workers got IOUs, which proved somewhat harder to cash. After the first month, many of the state’s major banks quit accepting the warrants, saying the 5 percent interest they were paid wasn’t worth the arduous processing needed to redeem them.

And after state employees sued, a federal judge ruled that paying workers with IOUs violated federal labor law. The state agreed in 1996 to give the affected workers extra paid vacation to compensate.

If IOUs are issued this year, they won’t go to state workers. They also might not be accepted by many banks.

I love the Irish 'Left'

How I love Irish politics. We definitely have our problems here, but all in all, the country is quite humane and compassionate. I think we will be very lucky in the coming financial downturn.

Fat cats are solely to blame for financial crisis

Sunday, October 12, 2008
By Vincent Browne
These are bewildering times. Nobody has any idea whether the world economy will collapse in a few days, weeks or months.

Nobody seems to have a plan to save the world from the looming disaster - and nothing tried so far has worked.

The debate between the US presidential candidates last Tuesday night seemed abstracted from the potential catastrophe.

John McCain and Barack Obama addressed the issue as though it were merely another campaign debating point, rather than the survival of the social and political system to which both are committed.

The scale of the possible disaster is terrifying. The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, said last Thursday that, ‘‘while people in the developed world are focused on the financial crisis, many forget that a human crisis is rapidly unfolding in developing countries. It is pushing poor people to the brink of survival.”

The number of malnourished people globally will grow by 44million - to 967million - this year, according to the World Bank.

The crisis will also have devastating effects on people elsewhere in the world. In America, the richest country in the world, the poverty level, as measured by the US Census Bureau, will rise appreciably from its current level of 35 million.

The proportion of the black population in poverty will rise from the 25 per cent mark to around one-third.

Incidentally, wasn’t it extraordinary that Obama - the first black presidential nominee of either major party, and the candidate more likely to succeed - has not mentioned the impoverishment of the black population in either of the debates so far?

How could a black nominee contribute to the invisibility of the phenomenon? If that is what it takes to become president, is it worth it? Likewise in Europe and elsewhere in the ‘developed’ world.

The financial billionaires have taken a hit from the financial crisis - and, very likely, there are more hits to come.

But do you remember the night that Lehman Brothers was going to the wall? Limousines were lined up outside the bank’s Wall Street headquarters to ferry the directors home - the same directors who had personally made billions of dollars out of the reckless, financial scavenging in which they had engaged for more than a decade.

Did you see Richard Fuld, the chairman and chief executive of Lehman Brothers, acknowledge to a congressional committee how he had taken millions from the company he had wrecked? Last year, this gent earned $45 million. From 1993 to 2007, he received nearly half a billion dollars in total compensation.

Fuld may have to sacrifice an executive jet or two, but he is unlikely to share the fate of tens of millions around the world whose lives have been devastated by his greed and recklessness.

Of course, the financial crisis in Ireland is not the sole creation of the Fianna Fáil-PD governments of the last 11 years. The worldwide financial crisis has played a major part in precipitating the crisis here. But Fianna Fáil and the PDs have contributed to it massively.

They fuelled the property boom, which they must have known would end in tears - not for them, but for hundreds of thousands of others.

They courted - or at least held hands with - the property developers, many of whom became billionaires. They spent, spent and spent, while cutting taxes - particularly taxes that affected the rich: income tax and capital gains tax.

Now, having devastated the tax base, they will ravage the lives of hundreds of thousands by committing them to poverty, misery, poor health and early deaths, for these are the direct results of the inequality that they created and will now deepen.

Mary Harney’s initiative last Thursday, even by the standards of this deplorable government and of the despicable PDs, was breathtaking. Just when the government was risking the economic lifeblood of this society in order to rescue the powerful and wealthy financial institutions, she was proposing to take life savings and homes from the poorest and most helpless old people to finance residential care.

As Eamon Timmons of Age Action asked: ‘‘Does it mean that an older person who is medically assessed as being in need of full-time medical and nursing care, but who refuses to sign up to the new charging arrangement whereby he would pay 80 per cent of his income and up to 15 per cent of the value of his estate, would be refused essential care by the state?

‘‘In effect, it means that people who have been paralysed by stroke or who are suffering from dementia will be charged in a completely different way to people who, for example, have a heart attack or are being treated for cancer.”

In spite of this crisis, we still have a hugely wealthy society. The average income for every man, woman and child is around €36,000. Nobody would be in want or have their life chances compromised if everyone had such wealth. The problem is how it is distributed.

The ‘Masters of the Universe’ in the banks, for instance, think they are individually worth in excess of €2 million.

The government believes that the balance of the economy would be disturbed if this were to be pared back - hence the massive bailout now under way for the institutions, so brilliantly managed by these Masters of the Universe.

Brendan Drumm, whose performance has been questionable since he took over the management of the Health Service Executive (HSE) - aided and abetted by Harney - thinks it is okay for him and a few of his colleagues to share a bonus in excess of €1 million.

Is this justified on the basis that he would be earning far more than €450,000 had he remained a hospital consultant?

Obviously, it did not occur to him that this is very much part of the problem and that his mentality - which, one assumes, is widely shared in the medical profession - is a major part of the problem.

The Irish solution to the financial crisis seems increasingly a piece of madness that could impoverish this country for generations. If any one of the financial institutions now guaranteed goes under - and the likelihood of that happening seems to be increasing by the day - then this society could be saddled with a debt of something like €20 billion to €150 billion.

This would cripple the economy here for decades. Would it not have been preferable to commit to the survival of, say, AIB and the Bank of Ireland by a state takeover, and let the others go to the wall if necessary?

Isn’t it extraordinary that we have allowed our societies to become vulnerable to the vagaries of the mere facilitators of its functioning, the financial institutions?

How did we ever allow them to become so much a central part of our societies? How ever did we justify giving these penny-pushers such vast wealth and power, so much so that their greed and recklessness now threaten the economic future of our societies?

Source