Ros,m I thought from internal evidence (he was not at all funny) that Oliver talked crap. I am glad to see you confirm this is so. We have someone a bit like that called Russell Brand, kicks the weak, kow-tows ot the strong, arse-creeps ignorant, pretty youth. Has a horrid beard but perhaps Oliver doesn't have one of those.

My apologies William. Probably too judgmental on my part. It just struck me as a rather flippant remark considering what happened there and all over Asia. But I shouldn't have posted that (the potential for crazy in this thread is already high enough). Bowing out.

Gratefully accepted, James.

But you're right, my remarks were flippant, too much so for so grave a period in history, and for so terrible a calamity in that city.

My odd spelling of the F-bomb is a habit I've gotten into, no doubt a silly one since I just spell fuck in other threads.

I'd like to bow out as well. We'll see.

(Don't give it a second thought, William. My knee just jerked.)

Abbot's leading the global tax on money. For my money, that makes him a fasco-Marxist-conservative whatever that is.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/30158

This is obviously way above my pay grade,Norman. I thought my money was already taxed. Perhaps it is different in the US of A. I have savings, They are invested. These investments are taxed. So my money is taxed. Say that isn't so, that I don't understand high finance. And that it is different in the US. Perhaps over there they ONLY tax what you spend. Is that the way of it. Puzzled, Canterbury.

But in the US you believe Obama is a Marxist, do you not, because of his free medical aid? Ah well.

It's worse than that, John. Obama is both a Marxist and a Fascist. He's a Marxist because he wants to help the poor. He's a Fascist because he makes it compulsory for the rich to contribute.

It seems that in the US today there are people who watch Fox News and believe that everyone other than the Koch brothers and their selected political servants are Marxist and Fascist.

Poring over ideological exactitudes misses the transcendent trend that will grip all governments.

We're moving into the era of wealth taxes, bails-ins, taxes and fees on deposits, negative interest rates on passbook savings, bans on cash (to control the barter/underground economy), Larry Summers' secular stagnation, etc.. Greece and Cyprus are the mineshaft canaries. The government and banking sector will increasingly rifle the sofa cushions in a attempt to forestall debt collapse and sustain themselves. In the process they will strangle the productive economy which will deepen the crisis and intensify the rifling. It doesn't take a careful student of history to know that governments can go to any lengths they choose. Such are the prerogatives of police power.