I am not a supporter of Gordon Brown, but I agree with him that a British solution is probably not going to be a solution to a global problem. Is £50bn sufficient for a market that talks in trillions?

My view: I have not yet heard a compelling reason to give the affected banks up to £50bn. However, myself and my fellow tax-payers now find ourselves owners of a significant share of three big banks.

"The Financial Crisis Is Also an Opportunity To Create New Rules for Our Global Economy

This is a defining moment for the world economy

The old postwar international financial institutions are out of date. They have to be rebuilt for a wholly new era in which there is global, not national, competition and open, not closed, economies. International flows of capital are so big they can overwhelm individual governments.

We need cross-border supervision of financial institutions; shared global standards for accounting and regulation;

It is important, that in the international leaders' meeting that has been proposed we seek a world trade agreement

There are no Britain-only or Europe-only or America-only solutions to today's problems. We are all in this together, and we can only resolve this crisis together. Over the past week, we have shown that with political will it is possible to agree on a global multibillion-dollar package to recapitalize our banks across many continents. In the next few weeks, we need to show the same resolve and spirit of cooperation to create the rules for our new global economy. If we do this, 2008 will be remembered not just as a year of financial crisis but as the year we started to build the world anew.”

Full article written by Gordon Brown and published in The Washington Post

++++++

British readers, there they are, words from your dear (un-elected) leader. "There are no British solutions to today's problems" A leader that has ZERO value of his country and a leader whose party offers ZERO hope to the future. A political leader who only looks outside of his own country for solutions. That about sums up what the Labour party has done to Britain over the last decade or so. Namely destroyed it. The next question is, are these the words of a defeated man or the words of a leader willing to sacrifice his country to a political agenda OUTSIDE of Britain. Of course this comes with the endorsement of his politics with the voter-enablers who ALLOW him to do it.

Brit's welcome to your New World. "All and all you're just another brick in the wall"

...under President Obama.

My God! It gets worse by the day!

Glenn Beck (excuse the matrix end signature, nothing to do with me.)

Joe, it's started already, with people claiming that early retirement is unpatriotic.

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 Well, well... the banks are being told that it's "not voluntary" to accept the bailout, and are being forced to loosen credit...isn't being forced to lend what set off Midas Mulligan? But anyway, credit is opening up, but so far, people aren't borrowing...how long before the consumers are "forced" to borrow and spend, at the level that they did the year before? Hrm.....

 Oh, I'm sorry...Bernanke says that the crisis will end when trust is restored. Wow, I shouldn't be saying these things...and he's from the government, so you know he's only here to help...I just need to trust that the government is doing what's best for the greater good...I feel so ashamed.  

....A SHOW OF HANDS: A Cautionary Tale of Heroes in Exile....

...when Commie French philosophers and intellectuals are now standing up in defence of the US.

'Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism' by Bernard-Henri Lévy was published just last month.

Here is the description on Amazon and a reader's comment:

"In this unprecedented critique, Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of the world’s leading intellectuals revisits his political roots, scrutinizes the totalitarianisms of the past as well as those on the horizon, and argues powerfully for a new political and moral vision for our times. Are human rights Western or universal? Does anti-Semitism have a future, and, if so, what will it look like? And how is it that progressives themselves–those who in the past defended individual rights and fought fascism–have now become the breeding ground for new kinds of dangerous attitudes: an unthinking loathing of Israel; an obsessive anti-Americanism; an idea of “tolerance” that, in its justification of Islamic fanaticism, for example, could become the “cemetery of democracies”; and an indifference, masked by relativism, to the greatest human tragedies facing the world today?..."

"BHL does make some outstanding points and occasionally states them quite lucidly, for example his characterization of the general "world view" of The Left: "We are in a world in which, on the one hand, we have the United States, its English poodle, its Israeli lackey -- a three-headed gorgon that commits all the sins in the world -- and, on the other side, all those who, no matter what their crimes, their ideology, their treatment of their own minorities, their internal policies, their anti-Semitism and their racism, their disdain for women and homosexuals, their lack of press freedom and of any freedom whatsoever, are challenging the former."

http://www.amazon.com/Left-Dark-Times-Against-Barbarism/dp/140006435X

 Wow...I'm sitting here, thumbing through ATLAS, the part where a woman says right and wrong is all good, but what kind of man takes his ideas seriously enough to destroy a fortune when people need it. And I suddenly jolted up when I heard someone on CNBC say, and I caught this in mid-sentence, but something like this: "the entrepreneur will find a way to produce, as long as we don't tax him out of business...people want to make money."

Well, a few parapraphs later, of course, is the famous phrase "brother, you asked for it!".

 And now, CNBC talking heads are talking about copper production dropping off... and to top it off, the next page, "THEIR BROTHER's KEEPER," starts of: ""On the morning of September 2, a copper wire broke in California..."

Wow. Simply, wow. 

................A SHOW OF HANDS: A Cautionary Tale of Heroes in Exile.........................

Not off the top of my head, but I'll go trawling through my bookmarks & history & put together a list of articles I've found informative.

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Would that such treachery was limited solely to the mainstream media. But even supposedly Libertarian groups such as the Cato Institutte are calling for greater Government inolvement in banking:

But Treasury's new tack may well do the trick, said Mr. Poole, now a senior fellow at the free-market-oriented Cato Institute.

"Investors need to be confident that the banks they're dealing with
are unquestionably solvent, and it's in the interest of banks to assure
investors that that's the case," he said. "One way banks can provide
that assurance is to raise additional capital, in some combination of
private and government capital."

 With friends like these, etc.

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Capitalism has been written off in the media as a failed system, not least because of what's happening in the US.

The question is - how to survive the coming shit-storm with my life, principles, family and loved ones intact? I've been doing some reading on the matter...

I've been thinking about this too. Can you recommend any relevant resources/reading materials? Thanks.

Suma

Ron, hundreds of millions of people lost their lives last century to these kinds of ideologies.  How much more pain and death will it take for the survivors and their progeny to learn?

There comes a point at which one has to conclude that the majority of the people have rendered themselves incapable of learning these things, by deliberately blinding themselves to the truth.  At that point, every moment spent trying to convince them - as opposed to preparing for the inevitable collapse - is a complete waste of time.

Personally, I have reached the point of saying "fuck the lot of you" and just giving up, leaving them to communism, fascism or Islamism (whichever particular horror claims them first).

The question is - how to survive the coming shit-storm with my life, principles, family and loved ones intact? I've been doing some reading on the matter, & it seems that the 'survival factors' include:

• liquid wealth (not shiraz but tangible wealth in such forms as gold and silver - and tangible too, not certificates that can be confiscated in 'exchange' for fiat currency)
• picking the warning signs early, and departing post-haste (witness the fate of European Jews who emigrated to the USA in the early - mid 1930s, vs. that of those who waited)
• having a variety of marketable skills and a good work ethic

Of course the scale of the forthcoming troubles may be global, in which case ... what if there isn't anywhere better to go?  Imagine a situation like the Spanish Civil War, with the fascists fighting the communists ... but worldwide, with the war being fought between communists, fascists, and Islamists (although as in WW2, it's likely the fascists & Islamists will join sides).

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Marcus: "At times like this I would normally shrug my shoulders and look to the US to show the world once again that freedom and capitalism are necessary for prosperity...I despair that American voters have finally succumbed to the ‘brain-dead culture’ they were always accused of having..."

Hey Marcus,

It is all a little saddening. 

Michael

www.michaelnewberry.com

I googled for Galt's Gulch over the weekend.

FYI google does not get capitalised by me until it reinstates a moderate video from Pat Condell, regarding an on-line petition.

"Who is John Galt?" -er er Where is JG"?

Well, if people won't learn about reality through the application of reason and theory, thereby avoiding foreseeable hardships, then perhaps the only other way is by seeing the results of bad theory and bad practice up close and personal.

Too bad, but sometimes the only way out is through.