Worldwide poll: Vast majority say capitalism not working

Gorbachev, unlike his demeanor regarding Germany at Malta (see reference in Document No. 4), does go "ballistic" in this conversation. This is perhaps because he is receiving the German foreign minister, Hans Dietrich Genscher, who heads a separate political party from Kohl but participates in the coalition government, but more likely it is because Bush has apparently weighed in on Kohl's side, despite the cautious talk at Malta, and the government in East Germany has collapsed. ...."

It occurs to me that with this thread Walter may really be trying to distract himself from the truly dismal showing of his beloved SPD in the recent elections in Germany.

It occurs to me that with this thread Walter may really be trying to distract himself from the truly dismal showing of his beloved SPD in the recent elections in Germany.

georgeob1 wrote:

It occurs to me that with this thread Walter may really be trying to distract himself from the truly dismal showing of his beloved SPD in the recent elections in Germany.

Also, why do people give credence to polls, that are not political polls in voting democracies (where everyone gets one vote), since the bellcurve really shows that the many people in polls might not be qualified to give a meaningful response?

....(And re SPD-result: I'd thought, they even would get less.)....

If the United States doesn't come up soon with a credible plan to restore the federal budget to balance over the next five to 10 years, the danger is very real that a debt crisis could lead to a major weakening of American power.......The precedents are certainly there. Habsburg Spain defaulted on all or part of its debt 14 times between 1557 and 1696 and also succumbed to inflation due to a surfeit of New World silver. Prerevolutionary France was spending 62 percent of royal revenue on debt service by 1788. The Ottoman Empire went the same way: interest payments and amortization rose from 15 percent of the budget in 1860 to 50 percent in 1875. And don't forget the last great English-speaking empire. By the interwar years, interest payments were consuming 44 percent of the British budget, making it intensely difficult to rearm in the face of a new German threat.

Call it the fatal arithmetic of imperial decline. Without radical fiscal reform, it could apply to America next.....