Let GM go Bankrupt

Your "finite supply of crude in the ground" doesn't worry me one iota. Guess why?

Some governments may restrict the export/import of rice (or any other product for that matter), but in the long term, it hurts more than helps those countries with higher prices. Supply and demand at work.

You keep missing the forests for the trees...long term the best interest of the government is to pacify the masses, nurture relationships with friendly nations, and to participate in alliances. The interest of the private sector to maximize financial profit might mean nothing to the government. National self interest is not always in line with the interest of the merchant class. The businessmen of America have been in charge for so long that you can't conceive of any other way to operate. Even in the face of modern Russia, North Korea, Israel, Lebanon, assorted African nations and Iran you can't open your eyes.

Easy- because it will last you out.

Have you no thought for the ones to come. Your own genes.

But, of course, you wouldn't have. You're a Darwinian. There is no thought in evolution. It's its BIG gap. It is a blind process. It is the unthinkingness of it that has caused it to prosper and blossom enough to make us gasp at it and besides which our efforts are puny and all this thinking bullshit that came in with the ancient Greeks might do it in. You are proud of it. You're more Darwinian than Darwin himself. That's why he had the collywobbles about publishing before his vanity finally got the better of him. He had softened them up too. Got all his boxes ticked. After a while anyway. He made sure no heresy charge was in the offing. Who wouldn't?

He fussed about his progeny and had been generously fussed over himself in his formatives. The strength of the survivors was due to the young not being cossetted. He was a walking, talking, living contradiction.

Congrats ci. I take back my half-baked jibes of old. Just for you. You're the real deal.

My pal Vic is the same. He hopes to cark it with his last penny in his pocket.

With 2 daughters and five grandkids. He is on the point of making out his fifth will.

That has to be your reason because if you were going to live 200 years it would worry you. Let's see. 3 flights a year to foreign climes for another 130 years and everybody else doing the same due to the wealth having been spread properly by Wonder Boy that would be about--eerr . Enough to have you worrying. And, if all goes well, your genes will be there and they are selfish, don't you know. as some idiot once tried to prove using an elaborate circularity.

Well-hawk. Spengler predicts that the final battle will be between the money and the blood. You point to it there.

You can line a lot of stuff up on either side and get your bearings. And it is a mistake to underestimate the attractions of the side you decide not to be on. It didn't get where it is as a ball of shite. People don't buy them. ci. will explain about that--he knows about markets. Exotic markets are tourist attractions. Some are so exotic they charge to get in. To the locals they are no different to the ones at home are to ci. They probably stink worse. There's a market for psychologies but ci. darent recognise them.

Those Darwinists on other threads won't go anywhere near the psychosomatic realm. Nor why evolution has no record or explanation for lingerie shops and other emporia of glamour.

I think the the leteralists and rationalists are so used to winning that they don't know anything else. What are they going to do now that it has been proven again that markets don't behave rationally, I wonder. What are the sexual moralists going to do when it is proven that their rational rights based sex laws promote great injustice because humans are not fully, or maybe even primarily, rational creatures? What are the merchant class going to do when the masses realize that possessing more crap will not generally make them more happy, thus ending the great experiment in rigging economies to peddle increasing quantities of unneeded crap (and in the process killing off our planet and everything on it)??

Our laws and systems need to reflect what and who humans are....in every way we have gone far astray. The **** will hit the fan eventually. We are now seeing more and more warnings that we need to have a smell the coffee in the morning moment.

spendi, In the "real world" where most of us reside, the majority will be cutting back on so-called luxuries including world travel. The oil supply has never worried me in all of my 73 years of life; it ain't any worry for me for any remaining years that is "gifted" to me. For one, I put only about 5,000 miles a year on my car; nothing to get excited about whether it's about the price of gas or repairs/maintenace; they're already figured into my "budget."

That being said, we're still in relative good shape financial-wise. Our YTD loss on our retirement funds is around 15% (even Warren Buffett's funds are doing a bit worse).

Since I purchased an Acura TL last year, I'm not in a market for a new car - every again. No mortgage or any fixed payments on huge purchases.

What, me worry?

Yes. Okay. What actions are you proposing hawk when we have had this moment? Bearing in mind that irrational beings are averse to rationality and they have most votes. On your argument nearly all.

There's direct action or there's laughing the unneeded crap to scorn. The first is out because the politician becomes trapped by events. Unless power alone is the motive.

The latter involves not being caught with any unneeded crap oneself. So you have to justify going to the pub on health grounds as I can easily do. It can get very tricky though. Perfection is hermit stuff. But an ideal to aim at maybe. It's not as silly as the aimed at perfections at the other end of the spectrum of which there are a vast number.

Being able to laugh at yourself, especially your past self, helps. I removed all the mirrors after I read Veblen.

Is my nightly bath unneeded crap. I try my best though but I'm weak on all the same things sloths are weak on.

I have no prescriptions. I think that once we value self awareness again and do a good deal of self examination and soul searching that the way forward will be made clear. I think that all signs are that our current systems and way of life do not work, and that we must change what we do as individuals and as collectives. Knowledge of what the nature of the change should look like comes after collaboration has taken place.

I consider that a form of squirming ci. Unless you failed to comprehend my post.

Are you not entirely happy about being congratulated for being a proper Darwinian? Really having a selfish gene. And that being something to be proud of.

You talk as if the 250 gallons of gas you use is the only energy input involved in you driving 5,000 miles. Where on earth do you go to clock that up as a retired person.

The reason the oil supply has never worried you is that the government worried about it on your behalf. It has worried governments as long as I can remember. It was a constant concern at $15. Hitler sent half his force to get the oilfields at Baku. Some say that it was when he failed that the war was lost.

We all have a "selfish" gene, but it only matters to what degree - not that we are selfish. You wouldn't understand these niceties, because your world is con-Darwinism. Our government doesn't control the price of oil; only the added tax. How that affects consumers is as varied as the price of bread and eggs. What Hitler did almost a century ago has no relationship to what Bush has done. The US didn't kill over four million Jews - or Iraqis as a form of racial cleansing. Hitler wasn't interested in "oil" when he ran over Europe. Baku was a footnote that many are not aware - even today.

You are demonstrating your profound ignorance with this statement.

First of all, the majority of insurance companies do not have "banking operations."

What are the Hartford, Travellers, Chubb, Progressive, Nationwide et al banks?

Citibank used to own Travellers but spun them off.

Secondly, insurance companies don't rely upon investment income for profit, and haven't for at least the last 15 years.

Finally, investments can't possibly be expected to "get their income stream going."

The only problem AIG's insurance operations have is the negative association with the AIG brand (thanks to their financial operations).



Like General Electric is a light bulb and appliance company.



Again ignorance mixed with making the point for why an AIG bailout was required.

Their insurance customers would not have been left holding an empty bag. Virtually every state in the union has a fund (paid for by other insurance companies) which pays those with claims against a defunct insurance company.

The commercial (not personal) customers of their financial operations would have been left holding the empty bag, and yes billions if not trillions of wealth would have been lost.

And so the reluctance of Americans to drive a manual shift car rather than the marrow sucking of Unions is the reason why GM is not profitable in the US, but is outside America?

CI

You are the classic Liberal:

You love the masses in the abstract, but never miss a chance to rag them in the moment.

Mostly getting back and forth from the airport.

Not really; I take the airport shuttle.

finn wrotte :



you didn't really bother reading my posts , did you ?
"don't confuse me with the facts , i've got my mind already made up ! " - is that your slogan of the day ?
hbg

(That should conserve!)

"Pacify the masses?" Show me?

Insurance companies invest in many fields and they offer loans to other companies by buying their corporate paper and more direct loans to finance projects and real estate and on and on.

That is indeed banking operations if not the kind of banking that most people think of when they had a checking account or a CD or a credit card.

So you don’t know what the term investment banking mean my friend how sad for you.

As a matter of fact GM had banking operations when they were the one carrying a large percent of the paper for their car buying and leasing customers.

As a large insurance company you need to place trillions of dollars to work for you and that is a banking operation.