Is Greece going to set off the long feared next wave of the Great Recession?

I doubt they did. It wasn't their own money, you see.

the people who worked for Lehman took their skim in the years before and there was no getting it back. I am sure for them they only cried because the gravy train was at least temporarily suspended (until they could get into another firm). However, the trading partners expected that they would be paid in full no matter what, just like the AIG partners were. These are the cats who were squealing.

The Sunday Times Rich List shows that the top 1,000 are 30% richer than they were last year.

Yeah I read that too....take form the poor, give to the rich...so much for hard times...lucky we struggling low lifes helped out all those bankers, God blees 'em. Luvly people, Bankers !

When the Roman State was strapped for cash they declared the rich "enemies of the state", tortured their slaves to get evidence, convicted them, executed or banished them and confiscated their estates. The "Proscriptions" it was called.

£335.5 billion is not to be sneezed at.

Kings and Emperors have done that throughout history. We need a dictatorship for a year.

EACH Euro MP from Great Britain will cost taxpayers a massive £2.1 million next year, ­figures from Brussels revealed last night.

And the overall cost of the bloated Euro Parliament will rocket by 6.5 per cent to £2.6 billion, according to a draft budget for 2010.
It means Euro MPs are costing more than four times their counterparts at Westminster. And the inflation-­busting budget rise comes despite continuing allegations of widespread fraud and waste in Brussels and Strasbourg. for flying or other things. They can fly RyanAir and get paid for first class flights.

Greece has debts of 124.9%
Luxemburg 16.4%
Sweden has the lowest only 0.5% .
Just above are Finland, Denmark and believe or not Estonia.
So we hardworking honest people from Scandinavia have to pay for Greece.
So far it is only Finland as that has Euro.
Sweden, Denmark and Estonia don´t have to at the moment.

It's the nature of the game saab. They are behaving predictably. You or I would be just the same if we got elected or appointed. I think I might be much worse actually.

I don't know of any useful suggestions to improve things. I take it on the chin or swallow it whole. Things are not so bad compared to the old days.

It must create jobs in the various industries that cater for the sort of things they will likely spend their money on.

Speak for yourself.....
One Swedish politician in Bruxelles got 2009 20.000 crowns for every trip to Stockholm. He and his wife saved the money between the price and what they actually paid and gave away that money.
Between 2006 and 2009 he got about 188 000 Euro for travelling and has given away most of it.
The Scandinavians are as a rule much more honest than the southern European countries

And much less interesting.

I hardly think one politician, who might be a multi-millionaire, is enough evidence to draw any firm conclusions. Giving money away can be very exciting.

It is not exiting in a country where you cannot deduct it from your taxes.

I said "can be". The dispenser of patronage has the upper hand. And people eating out of it.

The fact that it distorts the proper route money is made to go around by our far-sighted leaders is a minor irritation. If one wants to give money away one should give it to the government. If the government doesn't use it to the best advantage another government should be put in its place. Individuals are not smart enough to acheive that. They can only indulge themselves and their sense of self-esteem by choosing where to place it. And the last thing they should do is publicise their good works.

Individuals are not smart enough to acheive that
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That is for sure. All the money which have been given to governments in poor countries by our government has usually ended up in the pockets of some dictator or politicans.
Groups do a much better job right on the spot helping people to selfhelp.

It's a bit more complicated than that saab.

But in an ideal world you are right. We should only give them brains and hands and kit. We often do actually.

I am ******* STUNNED !!! You can buy really clever people who know what they are doing for a fraction of that .....

Yeah--but they don't know how to get elected Io.

The clever people you are talking about are setting their own peer-reviewed exams and passing each other and often with honours and ****. They would have rings run round them up against dudes from countries were you have to get elected. They are clever only with things or animals or stereotyped humans.


Try getting elected if you think it's easy.

Your experts might only have studied Galileo or Torricellius, wherein, by certain Geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the precise path to be a Parabola"or else an Hyperbola,"and that the parameter, or latus rectum, of the conic section of the said path, was to the quantity and amplitude in a direct ratio, as the whole line to the sine of double the angle of incidence, formed by the breech upon an horizontal plane;"and that the semiparameter...........

"stop! my dear expert"stop!"go not one foot farther into this thorny and bewildered track,"intricate are the steps! intricate are the mazes of this labyrinth! intricate are the troubles which the pursuit of this bewitching phantom Knowledge will bring upon thee."O my dear expert;"fly"fly,"fly from it as from a serpent."Is it fit"goodnatured man! thou should'st sit up, with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights baking thy blood with hectic watchings?"Alas! 'twill exasperate thy symptoms,"check thy perspirations"evaporate thy spirits"waste thy animal strength, dry up thy radical moisture, bring thee into a costive habit of body,"impair thy health,"and hasten all the infirmities of thy old age."O my expert! my lovely darling expert son of a doting Mother.

(With the kind permission of Laurence Stern's ghost in the full confidence that it won't mind in the least.)

Sometimes things are overprized - like uncompetent politicians

GM's "loans" were but a small fraction of the government cash that was poured into the company. The rest is in the form of GM stock now held by the governments of the US and Canada, the UAW and the bondholders (who generally got screwed). It will take a new public offering of stock to raise the money to buy government out (and repay them). Indeed the relatively small "debt" portion of the bailout appears to have been designed to make an early "payback" likely and create easy conditions for illusory "political success" in the program. It will likely be several more years at best before GM undertakes the new stock offering that will be required to truly "pay back" the government cash.

Those are book value manoeuvres George. The thing was not to let GM go under.

"What's good for General Motors in good for America."

Could you think of another way? One has to trust that the best brains addressed the problem. If not then that is a serious structural problem and one that might have no remedy apart from waiting for the wheels to fall off and burn.

Yes. Our bankrupcy laws provide a very quick and efficient means of accomplishing what was done with the government, but in a much more convoluted way. The real aim of the government was to ensure the United Auto Workers Union pension fund was given priority over other bondholders in the restructuring (that in defiance of existing law). Thus the parasite that was, along with the former management, one of the principal factors in the companies failure was made immune fron the consequences of its misdeeds. The former management is gone, but the union remains.