*Yabby unfettered capitalism just doesn't work*

Who talked of unfettered capitalism? There always need to be
checks and balances. But blaming capitalism for what are essentially
failures in politics, is not seeing the issue for what it is.

It was the public who elected George Bush. It was George
Bush who turned the SEC into a toothless tiger, etc. If you
cancel the police, believe me, crime will happen.

The Greek situation is not about capitalism. If you run a railway
as the Greek Govt did for instance, where ticket sales are a
quarter of its running cost, where unions force ever higher and
cushier conditions, earlier retirement ages, where doctors and
dentists can pay off tax dept officials and pay no tax, then
Govts just borrow the money to solve it all, you will have disaster.

The real mistake was taking Greece into the EU in the first place,
given that they fudged the figures. Again, a political decision,
nothing to do with capitalism, which you want to blame for everything.

The markets have been saying for ages that Greece will eventually
crash. I think they are correct. Merkel and Sarkosy will now use
taxpayers funds to save their own political skins and delay the
inevitable. Again political failure.

Due to the now blatant incompetence of bureaucracy the toothless tiger (normal working people) is growing back its wisdom fangs.

Yes indeed, it was the public sector with under worked, over payed, with youthful retired "workers", on great pensions that has killed Greece. That & excessively generous welfare payments & conditions.

Can you imagine how difficult it would be, & how much pain would be involved in cutting government expenditure 20%, & that really isn't enough for Greece.

Unfortunately Greece doesn't have much reason to exist. There's not much that they can offer the rest of Europe, & the world, except some pretty scenery.

But watch out folks, all of the above applies to Oz too, apart from our mining. We do demand people work more years than does Greece, but for much of the public sector, we don't demand anything more useful from them. Our private sector, lead by the productive mining community have reached a thoroughly unjustified wage rate.

That this wage rate is still too low for a reasonable lifestyle, unless 2 wages support each home shows just how badly we have been governed. That we expect the "government" to hold our hand, & pay our way shows just how close we are to being another Greece.

Howard saw this, & started to try to wind back our excesses with work choices. We did not burn cars in the street, but we chucked him out "real quick", when he tried.

From the riots we see in Greece, & the strike in the UK we can see that it is unlikely that the population will see & accept the loss of government handouts, of that which which the country has not earned. I doubt that telling us we must take a huge pay cut, even when it is true, will gain any traction.

So hang on folks, Greece here we come, sometime soon. Best hope we get rid of Brown & company damn quick, or they will get us there much sooner than necessary with their damn fool policies, & a desire to destroy that mining sector, which is all that now supports us.

Global warming is a very minor problem, compared to what we have coming.

Once upon a time, there were two fishing villages, each one having a particularly skilled fisherman who caught more fish than he could eat. In the first village, the very skilled fisherman had the idea that he could give the other villagers his un-needed fish in return for them building him a bigger boat. Since he now caught much more fish, he traded with the other fishermen to build him something he had invented, called a "net."

Now that he had a bigger boat and a net, he caught more fish than his entire village could eat, so he sailed along the coast and sold his extra fish to another village for something called "money." He saved his money and used it used to build more boats and hire more fisherman, and his village grew prosperous and was soon a city.

The other village had a clever fisherman too. But a central committee decided that he was greedy for catching more fish than everybody else. So they created a bureacracy to take most of his fish off him, and to distribute his fish to the other fishermen who voted to elect the central committee. After a while, the other fishermen wondered why they even needed to fish at all, when they could make the clever man do all the work and give them all his fish.

Other people in other villages heard about what was happening and they started arriving in boats claiming "refugee" status wanting free fish too. The central committee wanted to get re-elected, and they knew that all they had to do was to give everybody free fish. They then called the clever fisherman an evil, grasping capitalist bastard who had no social conscience, and they ordered him to give everybody more fish.

The first fishing village is now called "Germany" while the other is called "Greece."

Lego,
and if we're not careful Australia will be the recreational fishing village where all the used fishing gear is up for sale.

No we won't, Mr Individual.

My own fishing gear has lain dormant for ten years because Bob Brown and his Poofta Party has made my favourite fishing spot a "marine national park".

This spot was the seaward side of the Jervis Bay peninsular, one of the best land based game rock fishing spots in the world. I never caught much, and almost everything I did I tossed back. But it was one of the few places on planet earth where a land based angler could catch a small marlin or a yellowfin tuna. I only hooked one marlin in the 15 years I fished there, and he got away after a great fight.

Most anglers caught nothing there most of the time, but the place really could turn on an occasional good day. Best of all, it was a magnificent piece of unspoiled coastline and a great place to get away from it all.

To land based game men, Jervis Bay was like Mecca. Anglers from all over Australia made the "hajj" at least once in their life, bringing wealth and jobs to the nearby towns of Currarong and Nowra. The place could not be fished out because all of the fish that the anglers chased were migratory pelagic species. The Kingies were so big that the only thing that could stop them was a tow truck. I hooked 10 on one day, lost seven, and tossed the other three back.

That is why I hate greenies and love AIDS.