***BREAKING NEWS** The new Deutsche Mark banknotes are here**Picture will follow tomorrow***

[link to www.bullfax.com]

Red faces at S&P as agency strips Germany of 'AAA' rating - for a minute

Things have got bad but, really: that bad? For a moment on Friday, markets
were forced to think the unthinkable as an error briefly stripped one of the
world's most reliable sovereign nations of its triple-A credit rating.

An article recently was discussing just this.

Germany already has excessive debt of its own. If it starts throwing money into a bottomless pit, then its rating is at risk.

Well, they would want blood and confiscations of property from at least corrupted government officials and those businessmen who used to benefit from serving the regime. But what also - who knows. Probably they would want a centrally planned economy, strict laws, death penalty, limitation of rights of national minorities, autarky, transformation from the federation to a unitary state ruled exclusively by ethnic Russians, probably a conquest of the lost territories (first of all Belarus, Ukrain and Kazakhstan, maybe other former Soviet republics), an openly aggressive stance against the USA..

Aw... I thought they would want freedom to work, do business, live better, pay fewer taxes, dealing with less bureaucracy...

Not quite, it seems.

What you describe is pretty freightening.

They gibe not yet the OK!
But the Euro will end!! Soon!

Well, we do have freedom to work, but we have few well-paid jobs and those in the police and government anbd affiliated business structures earn dozens and hundrends times more than an average worker, and they disrespect an average worker, and there's no easy way to become one of them. Doing business is totally disrespected in Russia, bothe by the people and by the elites. Elites believe that only serving the state is worth being rewarded, and seeking revenues is shameful. The people dislike both social groups aqnd still believe that seeking revenues is shameful. Businessman have always been national and religious minorities and outcasts in Russia. Living better is what everybody wants; people belive one has to hang a feew thousand people tin order to live better, and in fact they are right: this would help for the first time. Taxes is something that nobody pays here. The goverment survives on revenues from selling oil and gas, and they control this business; revenues from the taxes paid by common people are tiny and nobody cares much whether an individual pays taxes or not; so taxes are not an issue here. Bureaucracy is indeed an issue, a very importaint one, but people blieve we need strict laws and terror in order to make bureacrats be afraid and do their job well.

Actually, I am not that frightened by what the people want. I myself am much more liberal and I believ we could borrow much from the west, but the western way of life has very few supporters here. To me it seems that all those national-socialist or socialist opposition groups are however better than what we have now, and I bet most of the nation thinks the same.

Ah... everything is always different in Russia :D

Unless people start thinking that doing business and getting rich honestly is a good thing, I´m afraid it´s going to be difficult to see improvements. Hanging people doesn´t do it. Bureaucracy is just a hindrance and it also gives people the wrong incentives. In such a context, corruption is very likely to prosper. If that happens, however oil and gas is sold, people will benefit only marginally.

I think the West is not a good example at all. Look at all that we´ve done wrong. China has learned what to take and what to avoid. Deng recognized that change was needed and he said that getting rich is glorious. They kept the facade of communism, but they really are capitalists. Much more than here in the West.

Btw, a video on a guy that went to Russia to do business and was successful... actually TOO successful. :) Quite interesting:

[link to www.youtube.com]

You can't imagine how much we all HATE HIM and people like him! He would be one of those hanged.

As for getting rich honestly, even I am not sure.. Most people in Russia would say it's abolutely unthinkable to justify getting rich, because gettiung rich can't be honest.

Merkels government is disassembling fast :

Koch, Köhler , now Guttenberg wants to step back :

[link to www.faz.net]

Haha... but why do you HATE HIM? :D Because what he says is not true? Or because it is true?

Whether getting rich honestly is possible or not depends mostly on the system.

The objective should be to create a system that rewards those who do something that helps society.

It´s falling apart.
Then what happens?

New Votings ;-)

FDP party wont be in next time. They are barely able to climb over the needed 5% to join the german parliament.

I guess the Left winged parties will jump for joy. More and more people are thinking left as Capitalism was a big fail as we all can see the effects under Merkels "bailout" politics that the average and especially the poor german has to pay .

The whole capitalism-system is a big epic fail!
This is what comes more and more out!

When they see that too, they probably argue and grumble but not call for elections they would certainly lose.

You´re right that people likely see this as a failure of capitalism.

In my opinion, there are many failures here. But I don´t see much capitalism here at all. Capitalism does not work this way.

Conjuring up a common currency that doesn´t make sense is politics, not capitalism.

Ignoring the Maastricht Treaty is politics, not capitalism.

Running up huge debts to maintain an unsustainable public sector is politics, not capitalism.

Banks making stupid investments in bonds issued by bankrupts is incompetence, not capitalism.

Bailouts are not capitalism: capitalism means that incompetents go bankrupt and competent people take over. The bailouts are just another failure of the politicians.

I agree that in the current situation, more extreme parties are likely to gain votes. That would/will only make things worse.

Left-wing parties will just make the country even less competitive. Capital and talent will leave. Companies that stay will be at a disadvantage. There will be no point in doing business here: the opportunities are already in other parts of the world. It´s better for capital and talent to go there. And if they do, what happens to the workers here?

What would benefit Germany and Europe is just the opposite: to create an environment that is favorable to capital and business, so that both come and create jobs here.

It's way too complicated.. What he says is 100% true, but I and the people hate HIM and only him not for saying, but for doing. It's a nice example to our duscussions on the system and getting rich honestly or dishonestly. In this short movie, he admits HIMSELF that he got rich by bying shares of Russian state-own companies at 1%-10% of what he expected them to cost. Well, I respect the fact that a business is done by buying low and selling high, and this can be justified in many cases - in the real economy, teh one who buys low and sells high smooths imbalances in most cases. Even in the financial sector one can imagine an honest and fair strategy like investing in some risky high-tech enterprise that suddenly becomes a great success. But was this the case with the Hermitage foundation? What was the source of his revenues? The source of the revenues was the desperate situation in Russia after the collapse of the USSR. After there was a political decision to swith to a market economy overnight, the state-run economy suddenly turned out unmanageble, and a decision was taken to rush selling off all the assets of the whole country that were the state property at that time. The process of privatization was also managed poorly, nobody knew how that would work out, but at the time there were no money in the country, the government was desperate to earn at least some money, an incredibly high amount of property was put on the market at a time, and everything was in a terrible mess, the assets were sold off at impossibly low prices. Was that legal? Yes, it was, but you should keep in mind that the laws were written by the same guys who did the political decision to do it that way. Was it fair? Obviously not. Some people got rich, they became billionairs in the matter of months, but the nation suffered. It was the public property that suddenly turned somebody's private property, without an adequate compensation. Previously, the Soviet governemnt had managed all those assets and used them for the good of the people (at least in the way the Soviet goverment imagined the good of the poeple), and after the privatization those assets have been serving somebody's private goals, without an adequate compensation to the society! The issue is of course complex, because in many cases it was obvious that the government was unable to manage most of that assets properly at that time, and the private owners turned out to be much more efficient. However, this was true only in some individual cases and mostly when the natural resources were overtaken; most of the industry was taken over at less then 1% of the value and immediately sold for scrap with the substantial profits. As for the natural resources, not all of the new ownerd did in fact manage the companies; most of them, including the guy in the video (as he himself admits) sold those assets off in a short while with the huge revenues. It was enough to pay an audit by a western audic agency to raise the market value of a company 10 times; the guy in the video admits that. It was not necessary to manage the company at all in ordert to get high profits; they did nothing for the public good. They were scavengers that torn appart the dead body of the Soviet state, at the cost of the public wellfare of the Russian people. It was how the enormous fortunes were "earned". A brilliant example of a way of becoming rich that the common people will never ever justify.

I believe that you have payed more attention toi the second part of his speach where he describes the way his property was taken from him. Yes, it was. Again, it is all very sad and very complex. On the one hand, I don't feel that this money was a fair money and I don't believe he had a right to keep it; most of the people here think the same. Most people supported the extraction of the property from such guys. But the problem is that it hasn't been done openly and publically, it hasn't been done universally, it hasn't been done through laws and courts. It has been done through crime and robbery, secretly, disgustingly, whith breaking all the laws, with convicting and later killing innocent people in prison (Magnitsky). The reason why it was done this way is also quite clear: if it had been declared openly that the results of the privatizations would revised, the governmentg would have got too many influential foes at a time. Oligarchs controlled the large portion of the national assets and inflyenced the politics at that time; the foreign governments wouldn't appreciate that also since the global financial elites had won a huge share of the Soviet heritage and they didn't want to give it up. Very rich and influential foes insode the country supported by the richest and the most powerful states of the world - that would have been the challange faced by Putin's governemnt if he had decided to do it openly at that time. That would have been a suicide. Besides that, he had strong supporters among oligarchs, and he himself got the dividends from all those assets, and he used those assets to win the support of his political allies. Certainly he didn't want to lose all of that, he didn't want to get back to a socialist reality where having a fir hat and a personal car was the best thing one could imagine. That's why he used his secret service tactics to knock away his foes one by one, adopting illega; practices, saying one things and doing other things. And he left naturally some loyal people with their fortunes, and the fortunes extracted from the unloyal people was shared among the loyal ones, the ones that were ready to subordinate to him and execute his orders, often far beyond their legal obligations. So the problem was solved in a tactical way, without a strategic soution - those bad guys did lose their dishonestly earned fortunes indeed, but this money didn't serve the public good but remained in private hands of loyal people. Those people of course do whatever they are told to, so the money actually serve the interests much broader than the private interests of the nominal holders, and for the first time there was a misconception that in this way the money will serve the public good without changing the system, but in fact all this works against the existing laws in a contradiction to the whole governemnt machine, so the government machine gets hopelessly corrupt and loses its meaning while the relations that really matter are neither regulated nor supervised. In the videom the guy talks about the raid against his fund as if some criminals took his property from him, bribing the corrupt government officials. That is incorrect. It was an illegal, but a very common and usual operation initiated and supervised by the state aimed at depriving him of his property. It's not so easy that any random raider can bribe offcials and take over what he wants; it only happens if the people on the very top want it to happen. In fact, Putin has solved many problems that previously seemed to be insolvable by using his tacticts of secret and often illegal operatons, by solving every particular case of the problem seperately by different instruments, by saying one thing and doing the opposite. It seems that it's not a proper way of doing things for a politican, but he was extremely successful with that and he managed to solve hopeless problems like crime (the one independent from the satte :-) ), separatism, permanently deadlocked parlament, dangerous radical opposition, and other problems that blocked Russia's development in the 90'ies. Everybody was amazed, people believed that there will be some further development after the problems are solved, but after solving the problems and getting the full control over the all the politics and economy of Russia, the leaders concentrated on keeping the power and the money and ignored everything else. There's no strategy, and there's even no legislation that would declare the current state of things legal; the official statments and the propaganda is still very far from the actual state of things, the governmrnt is totally corrupt because it doesn't actually matter at alll the country is managed by shadow groups of people with undisclosed rules and relations between them. It is very sad, because this technically can't last forever and the country is meanwhile deteriorating. However, the guys like the one in video are no better than those who sit on the money now, because the money was stolen, and it doesn't matter much how much they steal the money from each other after that.

EDIT "him and NOT only him"

From what I have read, the USSR collapsed and there was huge economic disarray. Then the IMF led the transition to capitalism and to privatization of the economy.

Most every time they step in, they make a mess. And so happened in Russia as well.

Didn´t they give away stocks of companies and people could buy them from workers for a bottle of vodka or two?

The transition and give away was a terrible way to go and I agree with you that State resources were given away. First they were given away to people and people then gave them away to whoever wanted them.

But if I sell my apartment in Moscow for a bottle of vodka, who´s making the mistake--me or the buyer? If I sell and get what I asked in exchange, why should the buyer be called dishonest?

So, I agree with you on the giveaway: it was a mistake. But once the shares are out in the market, it really makes no difference who holds them. Hermitage bought from people who were willing to sell. In fact, without Hermitage people who wanted to sell, would have had less opportunity to do so.

Besides, Hermitage was bringing new money into Russia.

The VALUE of a company, also, is not fixed. There is no absolute value and in any transaction, the buyer and seller might have a very different opinion of value. Value also changes as conditions change.

In fact, the reason Russian companies were trading so cheaply is that corruption and embezzlement reduced the value of the companies. So, when you argue against Hermitage, you are arguing in favor of people who were stealing from the companies. That means, they were stealing from Hermitage--but also from all the Russians the were holding the stocks.

Doing away with corruption actively increased the value of the companies. Hermitage made money, but so did the other Russian shareholders. So did the State, since it collected more tax revenues. And also society at large because companies that become more valuable can get funding cheaply, can invest and expand operations and can hire more people. Natural resource companies thrive on exports and these bring new money into Russia.

You see the treatment of Hermitage as a success. However, it only resulted in a damage to the Russian people. Only those who (illegally?) took control of the companies benefited, not the people in general. In fact, the State lost tax revenues and also foreign investments--and not just those from Hermitage: no one wants that experience.

A system based on clear rights and duties enforced by a predictable and reliable judiciary system is essential for economic development. Why should anyone, Russian or foreign, want to create something if it can be taken away?

The system needs to provide incentives and guarantees, so that people will use assets and their talent to develop wealth for themselves and for the country. It´s the same as with the companies: they could be worth 1% of their potential--or their potential can be developed.

Developing potential is a lot more important than grudging and thinking how take back from a few. What really matters is what you can build anew today or tomorrow. The more people participate, from Russia or abroad, the better.

But if there are no rights and no laws, neither Russians nor foreigners will want to participate. In the end, there would only be more to begrudge.

I told you it's complicated - it will take long to explain you all the difficulties.

First of all, the economy was in disarray and theyt were giving out stock for a bottle of vodka or two - in 1992. Technically, they were giving out "vouchers" that could be exchange for stocks, but it was really problematic to get stocks of potentially valuable companies since this exchange was tightly controlled by mafia and corrupted officials; most people were unable to make any use of their vouchers. Besides that, only foreigners and mafia had enough money to purchase enough shares to get control of a particular eterprise; before somebody got the control the property was extremely dispersed and the management and the workers used the chance to steal everything from the enterprise, so those who kept shares of companies that got no dominating shareholder soon found themselves with no value. In the companies that were overtaken by some individuals who were able to purchase 50% of companie's stocks or more; the minoritary shareholders were driven out of business by vvarious kinds of fraud or even by the force of mafia. So in fact only those people who were able to take the whole company over got their value for the vouchers. And those were only foreigners and mafia, because it was prohibited to be rich and hold assets in the USSR, so inside the country only those who particiapted in illegal and barely legal schemes of the late 80ies during the perestroika and economic disarray had money for investments. In the late 90ies, when there was a second wave of provatization and there were people with money, the model of the privatization was different - the government got credits from private banks using the shares of the state-run companies that had a much greater value as collateral. The credits were never meant to be repaid, so the banks that invested several million dollars got control over the multi-billion enterprises. Of course those credits were obtained from very specific banks, often for bribes and always in a very intransparent way. So again no hypothetical honest person, even with money, was able to benefit from the second wave of privatization. So both waves of it were unfair and implied selling off assets at prices many times below their value.

Here's the answer for you why the buyer should be called dishonest. First of all, let me stress that the "seller" was the government in both cases, not the people who sold off vouchers for a botle of vodka - they did it so because it was totally clear that an individual was unable to make any use of them. Thoose who hadn't sold them for vodka later burned them. It was a "musical chairs game", and only the strongest and the most influencial got their chairs. So the real question is whether it was fair or not for the governemnt to give away the public property in that way, and the answer is obviously not! So it was a deal between the short-sighted and corrupted officials and the opportunistic investors who resorted to mafia and bribes, with the common people completely left out of this scheme. Can those buyers cosidered honest? Using your analogy, if you are buying a flat for a bottle of vodka from a drug-addicted thief who had stollen it from his own family and sell it because he needs some food and another dose, are you doing a fair business? At least for the Russian mentality, you are not. A thief and the one who buys from the thief are both criminals, as well as the one who uses a desparate condition of another person to force him into an unfair deal; in the everyday life such deals are considered null and void here.

The VALUE of a company is indeed not fixed, but when you talk about the VALUE, you usually mean its market price, which depends on the demand and supply. But there's a Marxist VALUE of the assets, that is the amount of labor used to produce them. Of course there are many cases where the theory of Marx contradicts the common sense, but obtaining a working enterprose for the price lower than the cost of the metal the machines consist of is certainly unfair, as well as raising the value of a huge comany owning oilfields TEN TIMES by merely paying an audit doesn't look like a fair value-added. Most of those investors didn't care about the businesses, they didn't try to manage them or make them more efficient, they simply saught easy money and got it. The jobs were cut, the know-hows were lost, the taxes were lost. In was a huge damage to the public interests.

The reason Russian companies were trading so cheaply was NOT that corruption and embezzlement reduced the value of the companies. It was because the governemnt decided to sell off the entire economy that was all public while there was absolutely no demand since there were no people with money inside the country (becuase the economy had been all public and there were no people with savings to invest), and the foreigners were very reluctant to invest because of the political risks - it was like investing into North Korea now. So the supply was huge and the demand was low, the prices were also low. Also the whole process of the provatization was poorly managed and in many cases it was managed so deliberately in order to get kick-backs and bribes. Also, the goverment stopped managing the deteriorating state-owned economy that was already in a terrible dissaray after the changes of perestroika, so naturally if you stop managing an enterprise it loses its value quickly. It was a political decision not to try to rescue the economy from the terrible crisis, but to sell it off to whoever buys at whatever price and lift any responsibility for the future of all those businesses from the governemnt.

Also when you talk about "arguing in favor of people who were stealing from the companies", you seem to have listened to the video you showed inattentively. Mr. Browder didn't improve the situation with the embezzlement, he didn't even try, and he doesn't claim he did. He only says that he found a way TO ESTIMATE the amounts of money stollen from the companies, and FOUND THAT ONLY 10% of the value was stolen, while the market discount was 99% of the value - he published the information and that made the market value rise. That's all! He ddin't improve anything essentially. And nobody benefited from that except Browder himself and a few other crooks. The taxes are payed from the market value of the exported gas, not from the market value of the shares; the income tax is relativey unimportaint in Russia and most sane people evade it like crazy. Other Russain shareholders were a small group of crooks. Public IPOs happend later in Russia, in the 2000ies, and they were usually initiatated shortly before substantial value drops of those companies, and those drops were in most cases anticiapted by the investors. So those IPOs were yet another way of fooling people and stealing the money from the poor; it was a popular scheme a few years ago - all the huge Russian companies sold some stocks to the people and then the value dropped - it was the way the crooks saved their money from the crisis. Also, next to none of those huge companies used the raise in the market value for investing and creating new jobs - they all tried to use this money for their current operations while extracting the orginal capital for the benefit of the executives and affiliated officials. So when the company was stolen from Browder, nothiong changed for the common people - they only hoped that perhaps the new owners affiliated with the government would use at least a part of the revenues for the national security and public interests, while it was clear that the previous owners only extracted the value and sent it abroad, leaving Russia as soon as they felt they couldn't steal any more.

Everything you say about the "system based on clear rights and duties enforced by a predictable and reliable judiciary system", the "incentives and guarantees, so that people will use assets and their talent to develop wealth for themselves and for the country", and developing the potential, is 100% true. I agree with you. But I can't agree that we must give up the stollen property. We mustn't. You know, the system is corrupt; it is not just CORRUPT, it is all wrong, it is quite stable and wrong at the same time, it can't be fixed a little, it must be recounstructed. If the people who stole the money, whether in course of provatization or later in the 2000iies, are allowed to keep it, they will keep their power and prevent the system from changing. The money must be returned to the people, and after that a new system must be created, that would be as good as you describe.

People hoped that Putin would use his shadow tactics to do the dirty job and solve problems in a creative and a barely legal way, and then the system will start working properly. But he didn't fis the system, he did only change it for his own benefit.

We need a change, and nobody sympathizes with the thieves of the 90ies. It must be all new.

I see a couple of points as key:

- Responsibility;
- Focus on the future vs focus on the past.

Unless people, individually and collectively, take responsibility for their own decisions, there is no chance of having a thriving society and economy.

We have the same opinion on the privatizations. They were a terrible decision that damaged the people. Corruption and dishonesty are detrimental to the welfare of society.

Tolerating such conditions or demanding a change, in the end, is the responsibility of the people. Don´t get me wrong, I am not condemning people individually. I am originally from Italy and much of what you say still happens there. I know the implications. They are awful now and will be dreadful tomorrow. Individually, I cannot do anything--except leave. But I know that collectively this is a major problem of our own society. I see this as the main problem: the cause, not the consequences.

Like the drug addict selling the apartment. He will sell to anyone who gives him the bottle of vodka. The problem is that he got to that point. It makes no difference whether I buy or not, because he will keep looking until someone else will.

In the case of the IPOs. I´ve seen that happening too, in Italy and elsewhere. These swindles are typical. History is full of such things. People fall prey because they are gullible and greedy. They bought on vane promises and with high hopes things they did not know, nor understood.

In no way do I justify those who cheated and lied and scammed their way to riches. But it is necessary that we recognize that the schemes can happen only because there are parties willing to make "investments" that make no sense. Unless we take responsibility, the crooks will always prosper.

The other aspect is whether we should look back or look forward.

You argue that whatever was taken needs to be given back to the people. Since, as you point out, the companies are resource-related, they are tied to Russia. The resources are in Russia and they are not factories that can be easily moved to China or Vietnam. So, it is quite easy for the State to tinker with the tax system and ensure that more of the profits go to the people.

Of course, unless corruption is eradicated, this excercis will only deviate money from the pockets of a small group to the pockets of another small group.

But there needs to be an orderly and legal way. Otherwise the cost might easily be greater than the value of what is recovered. And activity could also be disrupted in the process.

I think it is absolutely in everyone´s best interest to focus on how to create value in the future. From what I have seen in Russia, I think there would be plenty of opportunity to do so.

Btw, it is essential to distinguish between "price" and "value". The two are not the same.

Market price only represents the price at which the last transaction was concluded. Those two parties agreed to transact on that price. It tells you nothing about value.

Besides, there are many differnt ways to look at value and there are many reasons for a transaction, many of which are completely unrelated to value. And the example of the IPOs clearly shows you that price and value are unrelated.

This, of course, is not what they teach in school. And you see that of all the rich investors no one is an academic... that´s telling. In fact, those who did get rich by investing explain this very clearly: price and value are not the same at all.

(There si a great book by Charles Mackay: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. It´s a collection of true stories of manias, many concerning investments--whereby the divergence between price and value can be seen very clearly.)

The Marxist concept of value, in my opinion, is incorrect.

More assets do not imply more value. More labor does not imply greater value. In fact, it is often the opposite.

Imagine two companies manufacturing and selling the exact same product. Company A needs more capital (machinery, facilities, etc.) than Company B.

According to the Marxist theory of value, Company A would be more valuable. But think of this: more machinery and facilities mean more maintenance costs, more depreciation costs... because there is more that will need to be replaced. So, the company employing more assets is actually less valuable: from the same price more costs will need to be subtracted.

Even labor has no relationship with value. A company employing 100 people to make wonderful typewriters that cost $1.000 each is totally worthless. It doesn´t matter how much they work. No one wants to buy any such thing when a computer costs a fraction of that.

I watched the video a long time ago. Sorry if my recollection is not accurate. I really like Russia, love the culture, the language and the people. I have had only very positive experiences in Russia and with Russians. I have seen nothing of what Browder says. Regardless of whether it is accurate or not, my point is that improving the system is the most important step to create prosperity and improve the lives of the people. This is very clear in Italy. Unfortunately, it is just as clear that it will not happen in Italy.

Foreign investors, in my view, should be welcome. I am speaking in general and assuming that there are fair conditions. But the reason they should be welcome is that they bring new capital, which can then be used for new projects, and most importantly they bring new practices. China has gained from managing FDI smartly.

Hi Russian Friend, thanks for the update! This case has finally been mentioned on some Western media.

But what would people want, concretely?



The declaration of Muromtsev gives big hints why he is a no person by now. He runs against the zio-globalist usurpers. Russian Friend can tell wether the text and translation are legit.
[link to www.eutimes.net]
We have had enough of enduring lawlessness of the global government, which terrorizes our land. We, the Airborne Special Forces, rise up against the occupants of our country. We are already conducting an armed struggle against them by KILLING THESE CORRUPT CREATURES.
(capital letters in original. i guess he wants to tell we have non-human entities sitting on our collective necks.)

Deutsche Mark Quotations Restored At German Financial Portal.

I think it is a matter of time.
Or else Swiss franc will be buy up by the german soon.

The translation is adequte, However the rethoritcs is quite typical for russian nationalists, and nobody is 100% if this was written by those people, because the text appeared in the internet after they hid in the forest already. So it is not known what their exact program is and if there is one at all; the ya re known to be members of natioalist organizations, and I have listed the typical goals of Russian nationalists earlier. Those guys are partly killed, partly captured, but there have just been another similar attack in a different region, Perm.


Also, another piece of the news: after the sanctions were adopted against Iran, our government refused to ship s-300 anti-aircraft systems to Iran; the weapons was paid for long ago, and Russian side has been delayting the dlivery. Now they won't be delivered at all, but it looks like no many will be paid back. So our beloved government has just stolen some money from Iran, The international relations are totally ruined, the Irani advanced a "Death to Russia" slogan. So a possobility of a war in Iran has increased.

My dear italian friend, it is even less likely that things will change magically here in Russia than they will change in Italy. You moved away from the country, but you don't know a solution for the country itself. Systems are broken by people that want to break the system, not magically because everybody started to be responsible one day.

Also you should keep in mind that people are not perfect. There have always been fools, greedy and silly investors, crooks and corrupted officials; a good system is the one that balances off the deviations from the desireble state of things and stabilizes itself, not the one that can only exist in an ideal society of perfect people. We can't let people suffer just because they are imperfect and make mistakes, especially if one group of people makes mistakes while others suffer. Of course people should take responcibility for their actions, but people are not wolves, we must help each other, and the society must help individuals, it can't work out another way. Similarly, there's no way we can accept a collective responsibility for the crimes of individuals; we should rather fix the things and punish the individuals.

The aspect of looking into the future is importaint, but this can;t be used to justify tolerance to thieves who had stolen the public property, even if they pay taxes. It's a very strange decision to accept the fact that your property was stolen and keep living side by side with the thief just because he gives you accidently a penny or two from his profits made with the assets stolen form you. Besides that, the people who control the money, control the system. The system is hopelessly corrupt, and they are a part of it, and they don't want to it change. Looking into the future also means fighting for the future. It's exactly what's going to happen.

It looks like you sympathize with Mr. Browder and you believe that his property should be returned to him. But for some reasons you don't sympathize with the nation that lost its property to Mr Browder earlier. Either you should suggest that Mr. Browder must be responsible for the political risks he assumed and that he must look into the future instead of looking into the past when he was rich and happy, or you must accept my point of view that there's no substantial diference between Mr. Browder and those people who now own his property, and that this property must be anyway returned to the people where it was origianly stollen from.

I agree that the system must be improved and that its should be oriented on created new value if possible, but I see no way of doing so peacefuly without attacking the interests of certain people who prosper from having the corrupt system.

As for foreign direct ionvestments, my point of view is that they are harmful in most cases. It's a very long discussion, but briefly, I believe that FDI is mostly trading glass for gold as they did it with the Indians in the past; even in a perfect situation FDI would result in slowering the long-term development of a country, squeezing their current competitve advantages instead. China is a remarkable exception form the rule; they managed to prosper because they followed their own policy and did lots of regulations and planning, using the FDI to devlop what they wanted to develop; if they tried to maximize profits and follow the western directives, they would be on their knees by now. Also, it was not the money hat brought them success, but western technologies that they sucked out of the West. Silly are those people who believe that all those exports are essential for China; with all the technologies and facilities they have now, they will easily break out of the world economy framework dictated by the west and will dictate the rules themselves.

As for the Marxist theory of value (which is I agree not perfect), in your example you miss something. If the two companies produce identical goods at identical prices, but the second company posesses less machinery and bares less maintainance costs while also HIRING FEWER PEOPLE, this means that the second company must have a more advanced machinery or better trained workers. In either case, you must account for the previously invested labor for the production of a more efficient machine, for the research needed to invent the more efficient machine, for training the workers to improve their skills. The typewriters example is a stronger agrument against the Marxist theory of value, but mcuh differs from your perception. Obviously the typewriter factory is worthless because nobody needs typewriters, but it's when you estimate how much profit you can make with the asset, it's a point of view of a capitalist. Of you look the other way, there was a lot of effort spent building teh factory, the machinery, training the workers. The labor was invested, the people got paid for and spent the money, gaing their share of the national consumption. But their labor doesn't give an adequate surplus to the public wealth. The labor was misallocated, and the society suffers losses from that - in the capitalist case, a particular person or a group of them suffers losses, these are the people who can't sell the asset and can't make profits with it. You say the asset has no value, but it HAS value; its PRICE is zero, but a portion of the national economic capacity was spent to create this asset, and this portion of the capacity is its value. You can't sell many things, they are hopelessly worthless - many of the railroads, fundamental research laboratories, churches, just look around you - there are a lot of things that are a part of our everyday life, but you can't make any money with them. With your monetaristic approach, they have no value if you can't make money with them. But they do. The value is the portion of the capacity of the society spend to create those assets.

News reported that Saudi Arabia cleared overflight of Israeli planes in case of attack on Iran...

[link to www.timesonline.co.uk]

Do you think anything important will come out of the EU Summit starting Thursday??? here is a few quotes out of a article I found:

Merkel and Sarkozy further emphasized their positions on reforming EU to promote stability and narrowed their differences on the issue of establishing a European "economic government".

Before the EU summit on Thursday, the two leaders will make a series of joint proposals aiming at "bringing about changes to the culture of stability," Merkel said.

Sarkozy also said he agreed on the necessity "to strengthen the economic regulations in Europe," will submit joint proposals with Merkel.

Media used to doubt large differences may exist between Merkel and Sarkozy on establishing a separate institution to govern European economy as they postponed their planned talks at the last minute last week.

France wanted to form a dedicated secretariat to harmonize economic, social and tax policies and rebalance the European economy between surplus and deficit countries, while Germany still insisted that key decisions should be made by all 27 EU leaders, such as the European Council.

[link to news.xinhuanet.com]

Found this on another forum....quote from article:

"A G-7 conference will take place in the afternoon," said Juncker's spokesman, Guy Schuller.

The confirmation came after organizers of a conference in Berlin said that German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, had canceled his appearance "due to a G-7 call of finance ministers".

Schaeuble's deputy, Hans Bernhard Beus, told the conference Monday that Schaeuble had cancelled a speech "due to this obligation that has been summoned at short notice."

[link to tickerforum.org]


OK Why the rush??? Wonder what was up?

Democracy could ‘collapse’ in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the debt crisis, the head of the European Commission has warned.


[link to www.dailymail.co.uk]

Well that's the plan, isn't it?

[link to blogs.alternet.org]

Last Edited by Jessica6 on 06/15/2010 02:08 PM