Pericles, perhaps you might offer your own opinion rather than simply pretending to superiority?

Or are you only up to baiting Arjay?

http://www.cecaust.com.au/ The Citizens Electoral Council has found the germination of a plan by the BIS ( Bank of International Settlements) and APRA to initiate bail in powers for our banks.ie Govts will not bail out banks but shareholders and depositors will be fleeced.

Our banks now have a total derivative exposure of $ 20 trillion or 6 times their assets. This is over 13 times our GDP. Banks view derivatives as a form of insurance. Who takes out an insurance policy that is 6 times your assets?

Derivatives are a form of gambling and banks are using our mortgages as assets to make huge profits. They bet on prices rising or falling or someone defaulting on a loan. On a world shrinking economy how do they make so much money? They are creating it with the click of a computer mouse propping, up their phoney derivatives, shares etc.
The next big collapse is coming.

http://rt.com/shows/breaking-set-summary/iraq-violence-corruption-protest-097/ Abby Martin interviews whistle blower Karen Hudes who worked for the World Bank. She reveals a few elites own 40% of our corporate world and earn 60% of the money. They control just about every politician ,media outlets and businesses of consequence. She also exposes the corruption rife within the World Bank.

Kellie

it is not only our banks which are exposed to the derivatives.

So are our governments, federal, state, council, many of our public institutions (Uni's, schools, hospitals etc)and corporations.

Most have not removed the derivatives, in which they invested when they were classed Prime, from their balance sheets.

The piper is indeed waiting, in the wings, to be paid ... she will come on stage just as soon as the US Federal Reserve Lolly Monster departs and stops dolling out the free candy to the US Banks. She will be ruthless and more relentless.

Thanks for your contribution to the discussion, Antiseptic.

>>Pericles, perhaps you might offer your own opinion rather than simply pretending to superiority? Or are you only up to baiting Arjay?<<

I referred to Arjay only to establish the reliability level of the information that the inestimable Ms Tranter had presented. This Forum is accustomed to enjoying the many views expressed by Arjay, and to accept that they are as valid as everyone else's - including mine. But is it not reasonable to expect at least a modicum of subject-matter expertise in the headline articles?

It is entirely appropriate for Peter Sellick, for example, to expound on religion, since this is his field. On the same basis, the contribution of a human rights lawyer will be more respected if it remains in its own field of knowledge and understanding, e.g. under "Law and Liberties".

The underlying problem with the article is that it misreads, totally, the reasons why this country has such high levels of private debt. Simply put - and avoiding the temptation to enlist either sideboard or fruit to assist with the understanding - we cannot support the level of investment required by our industries (i.e "economic growth") from domestic sources. We haven't earned/saved enough to do so. As a result, companies have chosen over the past twenty years or so to fund our economic growth in the private sector through overseas borrowing. Much of our current prosperity, and our ability to avoid the worst aspects of the GFC, has been made possible as a result of this investment strategy.

None of this explanation appears in the article. I believe that it should at least have deserved a passing reference.

Ok, I guess that might be a little too complicated. Try this:

We have used the sideboard as collateral for the money we borrowed to enable us to fill the fruit bowl.

Does that help?

Thank you Pericles. An interesting, but in my view inadequate exposition.

For example, you say that "we cannot support the level of investment required by our industries (i.e "economic growth") from domestic sources.", which is trivially true, but ignores the fact that the national priority since 1974 has been to subsidise women into work and education. A laudable social goal, to be sure, but expensive. Not only expensive because of the direct cost of subsidisies, but in a few other important ways.

First, money that was marked for such use was not available to invest in those industries that you mention above.

Second, as Goldman Sachs showed in their report for EOWA in 2009: "Male productivity has historically averaged over double that of female productivity
over the past 30 years." meaning that if we had spent the money on work and education for men instead of women, we would have got twice the return. According to the same report:" the rise
in the female employment rate since 1974 boosting economic activity by 22%", so we could have an economy which is 22% or thereabouts bigger if we had chosen a more sensible set of PMs than Whitlam and Hawke, all other things being equal.

Third, other things aren't equal. As a part of the drive to make women economic rather than social players, it was important to remove their connection with men as financial supporters. Therefore a subsidised legal mechanism had to be introduced, in the form of Family Law and child support, along with extensive expenditure on funding "women's legal services" and on providing high levels of financial support to separated women via welfare paymnents. These things also broke up the family asset base, with legal presumptions that women would be the primary beneficiary, while men (the sex that was twice as productive as the other one), were often left destitute and with little incentive to be productive and dropped out of the workforce or reduced their expectations and worked for cash if they could find such work.

[cont]

It also gave women lots of money to spend on consumerism and so imports rose rapidly, because our own manufacturing sector, with no investment funds to modernise and deliberately deprived of tariff protections, were left to die. Since it was obvious that if women are to be able to have things to buy there has to be someone making it, someone shipping it and someone selling it we helpfully deregulated the banking industry so it could give people who wanted to do those things the money they needed and when they told us they had given too much money away, we ensured that the flow of such goods wouldn't stop by guaranteeing to pay any inconsiderate overseas lenders who insisted on being paid.

Fourth, as the number of single mothers grew apace, a new subsidised industry was required, in the form of childcare, which employed women almost exclusively. Many of those women were "professionals" because they had received subsidised education and everyone knows professionals get lots of money, so we subsidised a massive raise of 30% in their income. It wouldn't be fair to subsidise one lot of "professionals" doing menial work without subsidising all of them, so we did the same for charity workers, social workers and other "caring professions" doing stuff that Mum used to do because she had no need to work.

Fifth, as the work that men used to do dried up, they found themselves out of work, so that we now have male (the sex that's twice as productive as the other one) higher than during the Great Depression. Fortunately for those men, women don't like seeing men starving in the street, so we subsidised them with welfare payments, but of course, they still had to pay for the children who they weren't allowed to see thanks to all that subsidised legal mechanism, so we took $10 back from them each week and gave it to the women they used to support much more generously by choice when they had one.
[cont]