Greece: the international finance system versus us all

Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 30 June 2011 00:31.

The BBC News website features a graphic article posted yesterday (Wednesday) from the streets of Athens by Paul Mason titled Greece: What’s burning is consent. It doesn’t leave a lot for me to say. The press is generally doing a pretty good job of revealing motive on the part of the Greek political class, the German and French political leadership, the European Central Bank and the IMF. The bottom line motive-wise appears to be the serpentine, high-risk derivative products to which Wall Street is known to be horribly exposed, and I’ve even seen attempts on the financial pages to explicate these.

Mason, although he is an economics journalist, eschews all that. He is with the forces of light.

They came on, still, in the same old way: rigid, determined, clutching heavy sticks and crash helmets. They passed the riot police, the parliament, the indignados and their squatter camp - and marched away.

Now Syntagma Square filled with other protesters: the middle class, the salariat, the youth, people with tattoos up their legs, bare midriffs; a man in a tight Armani shirt and a white gas mask on his elbow.

Earth mothers, grandmothers - if the image of Glastonbury keeps occurring to me it’s for a reason - by now this protest is no longer the preserve of one segment of the demographic, or of politics. It is a cross section: right and left, young and old.

The nationalists, who’ve claimed the ledge above the square as their territory, are the toughest bunch.

The “indignados” - anarchist youth and just generally youth who’ve camped out there in the square for 35 days, their territory is below. The black bloc anarchists? Where do they come from - it is never clear but they always somehow do.

The violence begins, as it must. The state monopolises the technology of it.

Bottles and stones are thrown. The police - who’ve spent the night before clashing violently amid teargas so voluminous it still stings today before the trouble’s even started - fire the first of Wednesday’s gas, and a volley of stun grenades.

The crowd - not geared up at all for this - runs down the slope. Within seconds our eyes are streaming. A man, white faced with the alkaline cream they use to stem the burning - screams at me: “This is Greek democracy. We stand here peacefully and they fire gas at us. I’m a businessman - my turnover is 80% down, what am I supposed to do!”

... If you wanted to give a demonstration of how to alienate people from politics this is it - but the police, after nights of violence and abuse from the crowd, are alienated enough themselves.

We move into the square. Most people are trying to flee the fighting but some move towards it, up the famous steps of Syntagma. We move with them, filming with hand-sized stills cameras to avoid getting hit by the hardline protesters who insist the media is part of the state.

As we advance, teargas canisters spiral down and land at our feet: the protesters pick them up and throw them back, kick them around like an extreme sports version of five-a-side.

At the top of the steps is deadly space - we’re slipping on something and it is blood. The cops snatch somebody and beat them. All around young men are now smashing the marble stones of the square for projectiles: big, lethal projectiles.

... We reach a side street. People clap their hands in the air and do the Greek “cursing” gesture with open hands, which simulates throwing dirt at somebody, and is millennia old.

One guy is a classical pianist who has studied at the Royal Academy: “They’ve lost the people completely. There’s no way we can accept the austerity plan. People are broke already. You’ve seen this - they can only speak to us with riot police and gas.”

A woman, bank worker, early 20s, outraged: “They do this every time. We will stop them.” How, I ask: “We will just keep going on strike.”

As we speak the crowd surges down the narrow street. A man, in the familiar white-face alkali slick and a mask, shouts at me: “I’m an interior designer; I’ve worked in England for 10 years. This is not democracy - they never let us vote for this.”

Mason winds on towards what will be an anti-Nazi conclusion of the “warning from history” kind. It doesn’t matter, though. The faintest scent of revolution in the air makes the path necessary for all to tread.

It’s weird to be an economics journalist reporting this: because I am coming to the conclusion that this is the next phase of the economic story - penury at the edge of Europe eating away at both social cohesion and the resilience of the financial system.

In my profession we always keep telling ourselves we’ve got to do more stories on small businesses, but I’ve just had five or six small businessmen, self employed, entrepreneurs etc yelling at me an agenda you don’t usually associate with such people: outright rejection of the political system and politicians in general.

This, in clear red letters, is what happens when economics go wrong.

Antonis Papayiannidis, a lawyer and political columnist I meet by dodging through the smoky streets to his office, believes Prime Minister Papandreou has been “heroic” but can do no more.

The execution law to be passed tomorrow, he says, will simply fail in practice - running into the old obstacles to change here. Greece will leave the euro and everybody will become poor together - “at least it’s equal” he says.

“The political class was never accountable - it floated above the people, separate from them. But we got rich - under the euro - so we accepted it; and they got rich; and all sides love the public sector. They love doling out jobs to people. But now the political class is still floating, detached, but it has nothing to deliver.”

This story has a long way to run. No one seems to believe that the Greek people will pay what is demanded of them by their notional political representatives, or that, in the longer term, Greece will remain in the Euro. A default is inevitable, but the search appears to be for a default that does not hurt the banking system - a default which is not a default. I wish a Real Default Party would rise up from the swirling tear gas to test electorally the thesis that hurting the system will be so much worse for Greeks than the Establishment’s austerity. One suspects that the emperor has no clothes, and what he is really afraid of is the rest of Europe’s people and even those horribly independent-minded Americans discovering that junking the system, actually, works.

Tags: World Affairs

Comments:

Posted by Graham_Lister on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:28 | #

GW - we live in interesting times. Let’s hope the Greek people win over their venal banking and political elites.

BTW that Frenchie’s ideas/hypotheses are looking ever more relevant/accurate. Have you had a chance to look at that article in depth GW?

Posted by Leon Haller on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 07:45 | #

What fucking austerity are you referring to? They have barely paid a damn thing so far, these fucking little brats! Do you understand that over a third of Greeks parasitically work for government, which allows many of them to retire with full pensions at age forty fucking five? It’s worse than Britain! It’s even worse than California! Do you have any understanding of how these ASSHOLES have ripped off hundreds of billions of dollars of shareholder wealth from around the world - that is, forcing private austerity on hundreds of millions of honorable, working, saving investors?

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH.

Do you have any understanding of the issues here?

Of course, the euro is evil, and must be destroyed (so are all modern, fiat currencies, though the further removed from a commodity like gold, the worse). No capitalist or libertarian would disagree. Of course, the EU is an enemy of a Europe of national fatherlands, and must be disbanded.

But this is about the Greek public sector fraudulently hiding its real economic condition from foreign investors; doling out huge amounts of foreign money in petty patronage and corruption (not to mention “make work” in their bloated public sector, similar to all public sectors); and now whining about having to meet their financial terms, and either expecting to get away with their theft (“default” - isn’t that what most bankruptcies really are?), or expecting the sober and productive Germans to have to bail them out - and of course, anarchist hooligans who are always lurking ready to take advantage of the suffering of good bourgeois folk, the backbone of any society.

Confront these thugs. Crush them, beat them, gas them, burn them, break them. The best outcome on the streets would be for the American air force to napalm these fucks once and for all (my general recommendation for how to deal with any violent leftist protests). That won’t happen, but another civil war might be good for Greece - with let us hope, Western powers militarily aiding the forces of order and sobriety.

Greece needs a Pinochet.

Come to think of it, every Western nation needs a Pinochet ....

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:44 | #

Leon,

Greek people are not middle-class, commercial-minded Americans. They have their own modus vivendi which is what it is, and does not admit of the purpose of existence as making a buck. Neither are they disciplined, work-obsessed Germans. They don’t live to work, they work to live.

The problem for all peoples, not just the Greeks, is that, driven by the banks, the neoliberal model and its values of materialism and consumerism has become hegemonic. The underlying reality is debt slavery in perpetuity, as the Greeks have now understood. Debt has two inevitable consequences. The first is the transfer of the assets of nations to the banks who own the debt. The second is this impoverishment of the people - you could say, the goyim - and their service in perpetuity as low-wage slaves.

Do you understand? The neoliberal model is not your friend. There is no freedom in it. The gewgaws you can buy for a time do not shine so bright when their true cost is your enslavement.

The enslavement of the Greek people is happening now. They don’t deserve it in some way because they failed to control their politicians’ profligacy.

Posted by Silver on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:52 | #

Leon,

5. Note, also, that America in the 19thC (and Britain) had one of history’s greatest economic development trajectories under conditions of laissez-faire. Compare this to the anemic growth and dismal fate of modern Keynesian/interventionist and welfare states (look at the economic decline of Britain pre-Thatcher!), not all (or even very much) of whose economic sclerosis can be blamed on racial minorities before very recently, especially outside the US.

The evidence doesn’t bear you out.

Figures taken from Angus Maddison.

United Kingdom GDP/per capita 1900 International dollar:

1820 - $1700
1900 - $4500

Average annual growth rate: 1.012%

United States:

1820 - $1250
1900 - $4100

Average annual growth rate: 1.015%

United Kingdom

1960 - $8600
1980 - $13100

Growth rate: 1.021%

United States

1960 - $11300
1980 - $18500

Growth rate: 1.025%

Seems it was the dismal fate of the Keynesian interventionist welfare state to grow at almost twice the clip of the laissez-faire wonder land, all the while avoiding the agonizing busts (1890s, 1930s) and hair-raising socio-economic disparities.

Seriously, don’t you ever stop wonder why if economic freedom mattered as much as you think it does that the difference in actual economic performance is so negligible (or often in interventionism’s favor)?

Posted by Silver on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:54 | #

That should be 1990 International dollars.

Posted by Graham_Lister on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:20 | #

@Silver

Mr. Haller is an economically illiterate market ideologue, smug and self satisfied in his banal certitudes. What about this? How about hanging the speculators of Wall Street et al., that ‘demanded’ these massive bail-outs on the public purse? Speculators used to be hung.

Also given the massive military budget of the USA (far more than any potential ‘peer-rival’) is not Uncle Sam really pursuing a policy of military Keynesianism?

The ‘conservative historian’ Robert Kagan certainly thinks so - not in those explicit terms but effectively has stated that such spending (which from the point of view of maintaining a military advantage is way over the top and quite irrational) is central to supporting domestic US manufacturing jobs and massive numbers of ‘public sector’ make-work jobs. Or is the military and associated staff not part of government these days?

Posted by Desmond Jones on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:45 | #

Greek people are not middle-class, commercial-minded Americans. They have their own modus vivendi which is what it is, and does not admit of the purpose of existence as making a buck. Neither are they disciplined, work-obsessed Germans. They don’t live to work, they work to live.

This sounds like a very neo-liberal analysis. It appears that those countries that are in crisis, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, have a mean IQ ranging between 93 and 95 compared to Germany’s 102. Surely this is the main component of the Greek financial failure and also the modus vivendi.

Posted by Silver on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:48 | #

Bloody hell. The percentages are all out of whack. Should be: 1.12%, 1.15%, 2.1%, 2.5%, respectively.

I wouldn’t call him an economic illiterate; just a very biased ideologue.

Still, he’s on your side, isn’t he? So go easy.

Posted by Desmond Jones on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:52 | #

Not to forget Germany’s massive advantage in smart fraction.

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft2.htm

Posted by CS on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:03 | #

Economics is sometimes a very complicated subject. There are a myriad of variables in the real world so it is often hard ot make an apples to apples comparison. Welfare states like Greece and America are basically ponzi schemes where people enjoy higher standards of living today at the expense of lower living standards in the future. This is one reasoon democracy is problematic. It encourages politicians to spend, borrow and cut taxes today to win elections and most people will vote for that. Neither group cares that much what happens twenty years down the road.

The current crisis in Greece and many other countries is simply the bills coming due for all the spending of the last twenty, thirty, forty years.

Another thing is that the current monetary system is a giant Jewish scam. Probably the biggest scam in history. If you don’t understand how and why, you need to look into it.

Posted by Silver on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:16 | #

You could be forgiven for thinking so, but it seems very doubtful to me. You’re applying a very general analysis to what is a very specific problem.

Regarding finances, Bulgarian IQ and modus vivendi are about the same yet Bulgaria’s finances are in tip-top shape (net creditor, according to IMF statistics).

The other PIIGS’ crises aren’t nearly as debt-linked as Greece’s. If IQ is the central factor in their economic troubles then why isn’t it for Iceland? Or why wasn’t IQ the central factor in Australia’s depression of the 1890s, whose severity and endurance vastly exceed anything the PIIGS confront.

And then there’s the question of ‘why now?’ How where they ever able to grow to the point they grew to if IQ was necessarily the central factor of importance at all times? There simply doesn’t seem to be any room for ‘learning’ in your IQ-based model of economic performance. For example, I’m sure you would have attributed Brazil’s financial woes of the 80s and early 90s to IQ, yet Brazil not only weathered the recent financial crisis essentially unscathed, but reduced government debt all throughout the reign of the avowedly leftwing Lula presidency. I find it very difficult to accept that IQ was a factor of central importance then but is not now.

I’m pretty sure IQ is a factor in economic performance in some way, shape or form (mostly technological advancement, I would say), but the picture is much more complex than a straight line link.

Posted by CS on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:27 | #

Silver,

Check out Wealth and the IQ of nations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations

And yes IQ isn’t the only factor.

Posted by Leon Haller on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:49 | #

Drat, I simply won;t have time until much later to respond to the characteristically irrelevant and ignorant attacks.

But Graham, why don’t you flesh this out a bit?

Mr. Haller is an economically illiterate market ideologue(GL)

Please illustrate my economic illiteracy, if you can.

Posted by Dirty Bull on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:38 | #

The good news is that the tide is beginning to turn against the EU - the unanimty of ‘liberal’ opinion that the EU’s essentially good, (but as we on the right have said for decades it is a totalitarian, undemocratic, elitist dictatorship - Powell got it right back in ‘74), is starting to crack, and the scales are falling from their eyes - suddenly it looks like jackbooted Eu ‘fascism’ against the people ‘let them eat cake’ and all that, not what the EU is supposed to be all about.
The EU and uncontrolled immigration are just two cheeks of the same arse - promoted by the same anti-human global elitists.It’s a pity that ublic hav wised up about the former and not the latter.
Enoch foresaw all this back in 1974 when he urged Tories to vote Labour.The man was a prophet.

Posted by Leon Haller on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:38 | #

Here is an example of what the economically literate here at MR should find a productive (and ethical) use of tax money:

http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/article/113040/more-money-for-struggling-homeowners-smartmoney?mod=loans-home#mwpphu-post-form

After all, we’re all a “community”, right, so let’s spread the wealth of others who earned it (oops! worrying about earning your own money and paying your debts is so, why, ‘neoliberal’ ...).

Fucking retards.

MRers are to economics as liberals are to sociobiology.

Posted by Leon Haller on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:48 | #

Enoch Powell was the greatest British political leader of the 20th century. He was possibly the truest conservative in the Western world as well.

I hope Dirty Bull recognizes that Powell was also a staunch defender of free markets, sound money and strong private property rights.

I have a collection of his writings in which he opined that he should have liked to have been killed in the war. Who could blame him?

[Graham, when proving my economic illiteracy, you might want to refer to some of what I have written on the matter over the past month or two here at MR (esp where directed to you), and this time actually respond to me, and not straw men from your fertile imagination.]

[GW, I will respond to your comment over at the Papa Luigi thread, with which I substantially disagree.]

Posted by Dirty Bull on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:52 | #

Leon Haller,
The point isn’t if the Greeks are morally reprehensible or about socialism or about blah, blah, blah, fulminate and rant.
It’s much, much more important and fundamental than that.It’s about the right for Greece to be Greek and Germany to be German.If the Greeks are profligate wasters (as you put it), well that’s their problem and their’s alone - a Greek solution for a Greek problem is called for, if they are untrustworthy, don’t lend to them.
The point is that the politically driven and undemocratic, elitist Euro has yoked independent and blameless European staes to the same rotting corpse.
The system is fucked.Fucked, fucked, fucked, and yet the Eurocrats keep blithely along with their madness.
One of the greatest of Greeks (amongst an illustrious race) who ever lived was AEsop.
AEsop wrote, millenia ago, allsorts of moral fables (eg fox and grapes, stork and pitcher), to highlight pigheaded human vanity and folly committed in the name of vanity and folly, by using animals as his actors.
His fables have never been more relevant and morally instructive.
The Euro is fucked and irremedially fucked, but acknowledging this truth acknowledges that big-wig politicians fucked up bigtime for no result - now that IS unacceptable - and so the deceit, the denial, th jackboots, the teargas continues.

Sadly, third world immigration is the bigger folly, but that bag of bollocks hasn’t been pricked yet in a climactic way, and by its insiduous naure never will.And so the madness contniues and the bigwigs sit smug and self-satisfied.

Posted by Leon Haller on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:29 | #

Dirty Bull,

I basically agree with you.

But it’s the Greek politicians, who blew through so much money instead of at least using it to build infrastructure and industry, that the masses should be angry at, not foreign creditors who want some of their damn money back (rather indirectly and perhaps remotely, I’m one of them!).

I hope the euro collapses and takes the EU with it (don’t count on the latter, though I may be wrong, and hope so). Then I hope the Muslims start terrorizing Europeans; that nationalists start a campaign of counter-terror; that militaries are mobilized; that they get drawn as participants into the conflict; and that the end result is the collapse of nations, and their replacement by neofascists, who embark upon campaigns of national cleansing and immigrant repatriation.

At the end I’d like to see Europe free, white and sovereign.

None of this changes the fact that what you are seeing in Greece is no different from the overpaid public unions marching in the US (eg, Wisconsin), or the socialist Brits marching and not wanting necessary cuts in their own bloated public sector.

This is a war by the state-cushioned classes against the private sector tax-slaves who pay their bills, and are getting sick of it.

Perhaps a war between public and private sectors throughout the West? Boy would I enjoy participating in that one!

Posted by Silver on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:40 | #

CS, come on, obviously I’m going to be very well aware of Lynn and Vanhahen. Their main value is in demonstrating the existence of the correlation between intelligence and economic performance that anyone who is willing to use his brain for two seconds is going to assume is there—ie, force the reality-denying bed-wetters to acknowledge the existence of what they already know is true. The really penetrating questions, however, have to do with how intelligence leads to growth, not whether it does. And in that respect, I can see no good reason why the points I’ve raised don’t merit consideration.

Until 1500, there really wasn’t very much in it, in terms of economic disparities across Europe. Italy at the time was the economic standout. It was only in the subsequent three hundred years that the knowledge that had been accumulated during the previous two to three hundred (or so) began to be applied to technology and commerce in a more systematic fashion. Nevertheless, while substantial gains had been made by western Europe by 1800, the disparities were still fairly slight. It took the massive industrialization that progressively occurred over the course of the 19th century to set (north) western countries definitively apart from the rest.

What was the role played by intelligence? I see it mainly in the realm of technological advancement, with the process looking something like: firstly, scientific concepts; then applied to the realization of practical ideas; combined with a likely innate industrious and frugality; bolstered by a compatible and adaptive legal framework. The intelligence and imagination to create new products and services, as well as the drive to see the plan through to fruition, seem the most important traits; all else flows from that. (That sounds eerily like “progress,” which might frighten off GW, so let’s say no more.)

Posted by CS on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:30 | #

Silver,

I always try to post for the benefit of lurkers as well.

And yes you are right about the Greeks and Americans living beyond their means with borrowed money just like idiots who make good money and yet still max out their credit cards and go bankrupt.

Posted by Jimmy Marr on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:25 | #

I really like this paragraph:

“This story has a long way to run. No one seems to believe that the Greek people will pay what is demanded of them by their notional political representatives, or that, in the longer term, Greece will remain in the Euro. A default is inevitable, but the search appears to be for a default that does not hurt the banking system - a default which is not a default. I wish a Real Default Party would rise up from the swirling tear gas to test electorally the thesis that hurting the system will be so much worse for Greeks than the Establishment’s austerity. One suspects that the emperor has no clothes, and what he is really afraid of is the rest of Europe’s people and even those horribly independent-minded Americans discovering that junking the system, actually, works.”

Posted by Graham_Lister on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:50 | #

Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century

Posted by Graham_Lister on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 20:21 | #

Decent-ish show about human evolution on BBC1 right now.

Posted by Grimoire on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:17 | #

Leon, This is the inevitable outcome the globalist agenda we dealing with. The fault lies with the venality of a political system that allows speculators to game national financial systems for political goals, specifically those funds which are traditionally designed to be secured; pension and insurance pools. Ethnicity and wealth share similar trajectories.

The EU itself, advising Germany, uses the financial system of nations as part of it’s strategic arsenal. Modus operendi - 21st century. Give massive amounts of money to politicians in expectation they will vote EU….don’t expect regular repayments on interest - no big surprise - not to the people who took the money anyway, perhaps to the people whose money was wasted however.
I place investor’s millions in your new ‘air bicycle’, turns out it cannot fly, I can not put you into slavery, I must bear the cost of my own stupidity, as well as the investors who were stupid enough to trust my judgement.
Therefore no one is innocent, not investors, not Greeks. There is no way out of this. As free markets are known to punish the unwise, and through punishment inform - there is a lot of pain due, plenty to spread around…and information revealed, as many here comment.
Germany will bear the cost of this, no way around that. And Germany is responsible for assuming the risk of this ‘air bicycle’, more so than Greeks who, where given the choice ‘take this gold and vote EU’ which they did, a drug dealers bargain, and have their economy inflated by a torrent of unearned money, and must now face massive deflation.
If Germans are going to engage in monetary imperialism, they cannot be surprised by losses. Let them be informed. Let all know who advised this policy before we are all bankrupted.

Posted by TabuLa Raza on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:40 | #

>>>Decent-ish show about human devolution on MR1 right now<<<

Posted by TabuLa Raza on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:44 | #

The problem in one word is STATISM.

Who wants to abolish all statism?

Posted by Leon Haller on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 23:20 | #

PARASITES ALL!

http://news.yahoo.com/mass-public-sector-walkout-begins-040031375.html

Three cheers for PM Cameron, who is turning out to be better than expected, though not remotely as conservative as he needs to be to save Britain.

This is really the long-predicted crisis of Big (social democratic) Government, interestingly happening everywhere in the West, and even in some non-Western places. Shows the inexorableness both of economic law, as well human nature, which is simply incapable (as the old conservatives always predicted) of producing restrained, responsible, one man/ one vote democracy.

Too many people want something for nothing. And the number of tax slaves is constantly dwindling ...

Here the libertarians are utterly right (and you are so wrong, Silver, et al - will respond tonight), just as WNs are right about racial integration.

Both sides need each other, and if the West is to survive, it needs both nationalism and capitalism (a heavy dose of eugenics, and widespread criminal hangings, would help, too).

Posted by Leon Haller on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 23:56 | #

This

Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century

looks rather interesting, though of course it must be read and interpreted in light of correct, capitalist economics. Arrighi is writing from a quasi-Marxist perspective.

Of course America is declining, and when it falls, the world will be a much uglier place, and the condition of all the Western peoples will be far more perilous. Euro-Disneyland can’t even maintain itself now, under American protection. What will the pansy-parasites do when, for brute financial reasons, that protection is withdrawn?

America is economically declining, not because of world-historical shifts in power or productive capacity or whatnot, but because of abandonment of the racial principle, first in theory, then for decades in practice, in terms of integration of blacks, and mass immigration, with all the problems that such a genetic lowering of the population brings in its wake; a century or more of white dysgenics; the collapse of future-oriented communal ethics coincident with the decline of ‘old-school’ Christianity (even in America, a far more Christian place than Europe); and the collapse of constitutional limited government, and private property rights, and their replacement by ‘rent-seeking’ social(ist) democratism (ie, wherein the system structurally encourages political activism as a method of wealth acquisition, instead of buttressing business enterprise as the legitimate means of ‘getting ahead’).

America is doomed; Europe is doomed; the future belongs to the Far East; and the only ultimate issue for patriots is whether, in a few centuries, there will even be Europeans anywhere on Earth.

Posted by anon on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:24 | #

America is doomed; Europe is doomed; the future belongs to the Far East; and the only ultimate issue for patriots is whether, in a few centuries, there will even be Europeans anywhere on Earth.

Watch it, comrade. That tone has gotten others hounded out of court here. Though at least you are so highly cogent that no one can accuse you of being a Jew. Anyway, I am with you on this. Check out China’s somewhat choppy TV documentary The Rise of The Great Powers, mostly in Mandarin clips on YouTube, with untranslated clips of European scholars — my Mandarin is fledgling but the grand concept, as much as I can grasp of the last installment, is basically: “Military powers inevitably fall. Militarism is therefore unsustainable and foolish. Economic expansion is the way to lasting greatness.”

And that’s that. While we struggle with blacks, Arabs, Turks, leftists and Jews, this calm, patient, industrious race of atheists grows and grows and grows, demonstrating that priceless quote from Edward Abbey: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Barring agricultural collapse — the ONLY thing that might reduce their population by the millions — in the end Peking Man from Sichuan shall consume us all.

Posted by Grimoire on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 01:40 | #

sniveling nonsense…

Posted by Silver on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 03:56 | #

Here the libertarians are utterly right (and you are so wrong, Silver, et al - will respond tonight), just as WNs are right about racial integration.

Look forward to it. Specifically, I’d like you to know just how much worse America’s racial situation was in 2008 under Bush—financial chaos, spiraling debt—than in 2000 under Clinton—federal debt reduction, budget surplus—and how financial troubles and alleged economic decline can be attributed to that demographic difference rather than the more obvious causes of pointless wars and irresponsible tax cuts.

Posted by Desmond Jones on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 04:01 | #

How where they ever able to grow to the point they grew to if IQ was necessarily the central factor of importance at all times?

Continual bankruptcy is nothing new for the Greeks.

Kolokotronis, Ioannis Makriyiannis and other fighters of 1821 would have recognized a country that is continually bankrupt or on the verge of default (it defaulted in 1826, 1843, 1860 and 1893), in which institutions are weak and citizens depend on the will of the mighty, laws are applied selectively, and selfishness and lawlessness reign. Here, reformers are either murdered (as was independent Greece’s first governor, Ioannis Capodistrias) or pushed aside, and the education system is in a perpetual state of collapse. We are in constant need of foreign loans and intervention and yet at the same time we believe that we are unique in our virtues and the victims of those who envy us.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite3_11833_27/03/2011_384716

Wasn’t it about a year ago that Greek government officials where calling Germans racist and alleging Germany owed Greece reparations for the plight of Greeks under the Nazis? Is there a Greek Al Sharpton?

Posted by Grimoire on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 05:22 | #

how are your sockpuppets today Desmond?

Posted by Anti-WOG Alliance on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 05:45 | #

Greece is a wasteland where once a great pure Nordic empire stood, after it was mongrelized it crumbled on itself and slowly started siking, after two millennia of procrastination by the mongrel herd the ruins of a long gone Nordic empire are finally at last going to sink at the bottom of the ocean. The lazy and useless mongrel herd running around, yelling, gesticulating, attacking their own in anger, vociferating orders at Nordic countries to give them money, all of it for naught as this won’t stop from sinking a once Nordic land from the worthlessness of the mongrel herd.

Posted by Silver on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 05:58 | #

Desmond,

So what? We’re talking about long-run development, not the fact that problems have cropped up at points along that trajectory. So your comment does nothing whatsoever to establish that IQ is the central factor of importance at all times. As for the writer you quote, times of trouble are always cause for soul-searching, but the writer’s real intent is to shill for the EU; his comments are not the least bit illuminating.

Aryanism,

after two millennia of procrastination by the mongrel herd the ruins of a long gone Nordic empire are finally at last going to sink at the bottom of the ocean.

Lol, yeah, any day now, pal. These predictions could just as easily have been made one hundred years ago, yet the fact is that the precise opposite occurred. Of course, acknowledging that would mean reality intruding on your fantasies, so carry on.

Posted by Desmond Jones on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 07:42 | #

It does of course beget the question, how a race like the ancient Greeks bare any relationship to the modern Greeks considering their paucity of IQ. Continual bankruptcies, weak institutions, a contempt for rule of law, are all indicative of a society starved of even an average intellectual capacity. Anyone with a modicum of curiosity must ask who are the modern day Greeks. Certainly a group foreign to their ancient founders.

Posted by Desmond Jones on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 07:46 | #

I did not know you care for sock puppets. I thought your fancy only ran to young boys.

Posted by Leon Haller on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:05 | #

IN THE OH-HELL DEPT:

http://news.yahoo.com/case-against-strauss-kahn-near-collapse-report-013823812.html

shiite!

Screams of “anti-semitism” are coming ... I hear them faintly, already ...

Posted by Graham_Lister on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:17 | #

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

well that is just bunk…because the ‘free-market’ is perfect right? Free-market fundamentalism is another species of liberal utopianism.

As a scientifically trained person I respect the scientific method enormously. There are no such things as ‘hate facts’. Really one must respect data. Ideologues come at a subject from the other way. They have a world-view which they will try to defend by any means possible. A scientific mindset is relatively happy to let a hypothesis be dropped or modified according to the quantity and quality of the available evidence.

Dogmatic ideological thinkers of all schools will frequently ignore substantive evidence which contradicts their central claims. Sometimes in extraordinarily mendacious ways.

However I find economics is not truly scientific. And it is run through with ideology and normative assumptions/claims. Wealth maximization – OK but for whom and at what cost? To assume that maximizing of individual private wealth is the primary goal of your ‘objective’ study is precisely to make an normative assumption. It very much goes from what is, to what ought to be, the state of affairs.

What I tend to see in economics is a conceptual model that is tested against the real world and hard data – and if the real-world phenomena is different to that which the model predicts then there is nothing but an ever expanding sea of post-hoc secondary ‘saving’ qualifications and clauses. When is the model ever falsified? Dogmatic ideologues say the world isn’t like my model so reality must be wrong – not my model. Scientists generally do the opposite.

Another problem with theoretical economic thought is that it is grounded in methodological individualism (which is a normative as well as methodological assumption), and it also prizes formal precision of its mathematical models. Too bad if ideas like the common-good or community or rare and difficult real-world events (like say ecosystem failures) cannot be included into it the models – they become ‘excluded’ and ignored. A model is always a simplified version of a very complex and messy real world. Yes they can capture parts of reality but not it’s totality - indeed they probably cannot for quite deep reasons. (Roy Bhaskar is very good on the background to models in science.)

No-one says that markets don’t have benefits what I object to is the willful refusal to acknowledge the downsides. Not all goals in a complex phenomenon such as a society can be simultaneously optimized. The likes of Mr. Haller want people to be ultra-collectivist with regard to one issue yet maximally individualistic in everything else – strikes me as a very incoherent model of political psychology.

If maximally ‘free-markets’ and the Catholic Church are the answer what on Earth was the question?

Posted by Leon Haller on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:17 | #

Graham,

Where is that quote from? It rings bloody familiar, but I can’t place it ...

Posted by Leon Haller on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:49 | #

I promise to respond to people over this Independence Day weekend, when I’ll be at a friend’s vinyard. Very relaxing, will bring macbook. Probably Saturday or Sunday I’ll respond here. I do hope this thread continues until then (although, excepting Silver’s confusion of basic correlation/causation, I’ve responded to and repeatedly disavowed Lister’s straw man critique of my alleged “free-market fundamentalism”, and am rather tired of it).

Tomorrow evening I really want to finish The Serpent and the Rainbow. I’m about 40% in, and wish I didn’t have work tomorrow, so I could just spend the morning reading it. Anyone read it? Thoughts?

Posted by Graham_Lister on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:07 | #

Mr Haller

Let us argee to disagree on your interpretation of the effects, importance, and value of market mechanisms. I feel we are, at best, to be talking past each other.

The quote in my post is of course from Adam Smith.

I’m interested in your thoughts on methodological individualism (does it miss anything about social reality?, Does it have implicit normative assumptions? etc.) and on the sociology of religion.

Is God dead sociologically in these post-modern times? How do you imagine you could enforce such a organising narrative? Crude mythologies don’t stand up well in the bracing cold winds of science, and any sophisticated defence of theism is well about the heads of the average Christian.

On the Christianity point – yes some Christians have been traditionalist or conservative in viewpoint but equally there is the tradition of those facing towards the left as witnessed in the Civil Rights era and the Catholic social gospel (which I would guess you totally dislike). So Christianity can be ‘read’ in many different ways and I am skeptical at a societal level it will every be read in an exclusive ‘catch-all’ way again.

In post-Christian England many people will, on being asked their religion, answer Anglican (‘we’re Church of England’) but it means practically nothing other than wanting a nice old Church to have a wedding in, and for the middle classes getting one’s children into a half-decent school. Even for the 5-10% of the population in the pews in England their worldview is little more than ‘motherhood and apple pie-ism’ and ‘being nice to people’. There was a documentary series a while ago on the BBC about a year in the life of a regular Anglican parish in England, and at one point the filmmakers asked the vicar if they could ask the worshipers about what they believed. He vicar’s brilliantly and unintentionally funny remarks were along the lines of: ‘please don’t as you will only confuse them’.

What I think you don’t appreciate is that most well-educated people of all outlooks, and especially those in the strata called the intelligentsia, in the West at least, are not generally religious. In the modern academy atheism, methodological naturalism or whatever label you wish to use is the default background assumption for anyone seriously engaging in the natural sciences and the social sciences along with most of the humanities. Now I’m not saying that one cannot be a well-educated, intelligent and articulate theist but it is a minority pursuit.

Posted by Silver on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:32 | #

All too true. If the above irks you about economics you’ll really benefit from and enjoy reading Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric Beinhocker. (Decent synopsis) For instance, you’ll find the strong but well-supported claim that economists adopted certain core assumptions not because they accurately reflected the way humans behave but because they made the mathematical models work; there was never any other good reason to adhere to them. (I recall being tremendously frustrated by the assumption of “equilibrium” as an undergraduate. If demand and supply are always in flux how could it ever exist, I wondered? I grudgingly swallowed it (because what else can you do?) but I was convinced it was no aid to understanding the world.) Much more exciting than merely exploding baseless assumptions (well, they’re not that baseless), however, is the overview of research into how economies evolve and grow. This, I thought when I read it, is what I always wanted to know; and if the study of economics had been presented to me in this fashion I never would have dropped out.

I did not know you care for sock puppets. I thought your fancy only ran to young boys.

Lol, so which one’s the real Desmond here? Whichever it is, nothing in my response to you “begets” the question you raise.

Posted by South on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:06 | #

Desmond loves to speak in strawman-isms. IQ, while important, does not explain away the collapse of Iceland and Spain. Both nations with collective IQs greater than Greece and equal or greater than GB. Of course virulent, out of control socialism has nothing to do with contributing to any of it. Must be the IQ and only that, but ignore the other IQs etc. Speaking of Al Sharpton, why does Desmond sound more and more like him?

When the elite are corrupt and the system is corrupt, all under the umbrella of a totalitarian nanny state, people lose hope and the will to overcome enormous obstacles in order to create a business or earn a living. When the entire neighborhood is on the dole, the one man wanting to earn a respectable living is not viewed as honorable, but more as a sucker.

Posted by Grimoire on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:18 | #

Posted by Desmond Jones on July 01, 2011, 06:42 AM | #

It does of course beget the question, how a race like the ancient Greeks bare any relationship to the modern Greeks considering their paucity of IQ. Continual bankruptcies, weak institutions, a contempt for rule of law, are all indicative of a society starved of even an average intellectual capacity. Anyone with a modicum of curiosity must ask who are the modern day Greeks. Certainly a group foreign to their ancient founders.

Perhaps you should be asking how the ancient Anglo-Saxons ‘bear’ resemblance to the modern sockpuppet Anglo-Saxon, considering paucity of IQ, much less integrity.
Perhaps they would think that a flapping tongue clucking judgements at others dissolution when their own house is near complete collapse is indicative of a society starved of even average intellectual capacity. Anyone with a modicum of curiosity must ask who are the modern day Anglo-Saxons - sockpuppets? Certainly a group foreign to the ancient founders.

Posted by Desmond Jones on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 05:46 | #

Iceland, unlike Greece, has no history of continual bankruptcy, weak institutions, and a contempt for rule of law. Nor does Iceland have a history of accomplished intellectuals. Where did all the smart Greeks go. Who were they. From whence did they come. What is the common national characteristic that will determine the fate of the Greeks. In two hundred years what will the Greeks share with the erstwhile bankrupt ancestors of 1821. Undoubtedly it will be a low IQ and approaching insolvency.

Posted by Eugenics on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 07:52 | #

Where did all the smart Greeks go.

The smarter Greeks may have tended to have less children over the years.

Even if such a process only caused a 0.2 point decline in IQ over the last thousand years, this still would’ve of itself caused the Greek IQ to go down 16 points over the last 2,000.

So let’s say the Greeks are 94 IQ now, they would’ve been 110 IQ 2,000 years ago assuming a dysgenic decline of a mere 0.2 IQ points a generation.

A 110 IQ is 8 points higher than the Germans of today.

a contempt for rule of law

There was a contempt for the rule of law in England until recently. Read ‘Farewell to Arms’ for more details.

There’s reason to think there was a contempt for the rule of law in Ancient Greece as well, a lot of the time at least.

Blood feuds and the like don’t usually happen in places where the people lack a certain contempt for the rule of law.

What is the common national characteristic that will determine the fate of the Greeks.

Probably the degree to which they’re willing to choose self-determination over materialistic pomp and such frivolities.

Probably they’re too corrupted at this point to show the courage their ancestors did in fighting the far more numerous Turks, and will instead choose slavery like typical modern western weaklings, but we shall see.

and approaching insolvency

Give the profligate Greeks some credit, Desmond, they’ve managed to avoid default over the last 118 years.

Posted by Eugenic on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 07:55 | #

I should say: “Even if such a process only caused a 0.2 point decline in IQ per generation over the last two thousand years, this still would’ve of itself caused the Greek IQ to go down 16 points over the last 2,000.”

Posted by Desmond Jones on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 09:47 | #

The smarter Greeks may have tended to have less children over the years.

Good point, but why the shift? No industrial revolution, no vaccination program, no great advances in medicine, so why the deline in birth rates? Presumably the high IQ Greeks initially had a significant reproductive differential for a significant time to raise their IQ above surrounding groups to a mean of 110. Another explanation is that they were a different people who brought their superior intellect to the region and saw it decline through miscegenation.

There was a contempt for the rule of law in England until recently. Read ‘Farewell to Arms’ for more details.

Good point, but there was an ascendancy in England that provided a reproductive differential for the higher IQ. Yet in Greece, we see the exact opposite. According to your theory the high IQ Greeks had fewer children that survived to have children. Yet according to Clark the effect in England was the opposite.

Give the profligate Greeks some credit, Desmond, they’ve managed to avoid default over the last 118 years.

118? They defaulted in 1932. Greece has a legacy of default and near insolvency for the past two centuries, but we’re are asked to ignore this history in the best traditions of political correctness. How about Iceland they cry as if that single incident of near insolvency is somehow absolution for the painfully profligate Greeks. Phenotypical egalitarianism. Somehow two centuries of Greek turpitude is to be dismissed as modus vivendi; the Greeks are heroes of the coming Eurolution, throwing off the yoke of the money grubbing banksters and breaking the bond of “service in perpetuity as low-wage slaves”. How lovely. How quaint. LOL.

Posted by South on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 11:00 | #

Iceland, unlike Greece, has no history of continual bankruptcy, weak institutions, and a contempt for rule of law. Nor does Iceland have a history of accomplished intellectuals. Where did all the smart Greeks go. Who were they. From whence did they come. What is the common national characteristic that will determine the fate of the Greeks. In two hundred years what will the Greeks share with the erstwhile bankrupt ancestors of 1821. Undoubtedly it will be a low IQ and approaching insolvency.

Errr…I did say Iceland and Spain. Spain didn’t fit into your agenda this time? Lol Iceland did not have to live under 400 years of Ottoman rule either. Considering we don’t know when this IQ drop occurred, it could easily have been at some point during that time. Genghis Khan decimated the intellectuals of Persia during his invasions that they have yet to recover from to this day. To name only one incident in history and there are more. You really are ignorant, jones.

Posted by Anti-WOG Alliance on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 11:25 | #

The smarter Greeks may have tended to have less children over the years.

Even if such a process only caused a 0.2 point decline in IQ over the last thousand years, this still would’ve of itself caused the Greek IQ to go down 16 points over the last 2,000.

So let’s say the Greeks are 94 IQ now, they would’ve been 110 IQ 2,000 years ago assuming a dysgenic decline of a mere 0.2 IQ points a generation.

A 110 IQ is 8 points higher than the Germans of today.

“Eugenic”,

This theory of yours is as believable as this one:

(During the twenties, Armenians were not allowed to own property in the State of Washington because they were thought to be Orientals, not Caucasians. The racial classification was based on their “rounded”, “brachycephalic” heads, a proof of their Mongoloid racial characteristics. Boas (Franz Boas) was asked by Armenians to testify in court that they were Caucasians and therefore should be permitted to own property.)

(Boas attributed the change in the shape of the skull to the different way babies were cared for. In Armenia, as in Eastern Europe, babies used to be put on their backs on a cradle board, unable to move. The weight of the head pressing against the board supressed the development of the occiput and produced a high ratio of breadth to lenght. In the United States, with changing habits this racial characteristic disappeared. Not-withstanding later scientific reservations about the validity of the argument, the Armenians were allowed to own property.)

Boas theory and yours are the work of crooks, Armenians have different physical characteristics from Anglo-Americans because they are of a different race, Modern Greeks stagnation compared to the Ancient Greeks achievements can be explained easily by the fact that each party belong to a different race, one Nordish (Ancient Greeks) and one Oriental-Mespotamian (Modern Greeks).

Ancient Greeks IQ was lowered when their racial change occured which also altered their physical characteristics. When Ancient Greeks started absorbing Oriental and Mesopotamian blood unto their gene pool, it ultimately gave birth to the Modern Greeks who like the Oriental and Mesopotamian races pocess an average double digit IQ between 84 to 94 and who also much like Modern Greeks pocess hideous physical characteristics.

Posted by South on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:40 | #

What a surpise…

My quote:

Iceland did not have to live under 400 years of Ottoman rule either. Considering we don’t know when this IQ drop occurred, it could easily have been at some point during that time.

We find this with only a cursory bit of research:

The Byzantine Age (330-1204) was a period of cultural and political hegemony for the Greeks in the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean. After the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, the Balkan Greeks fell prey to the ambitions of the Venetians and Franks, and finally to the Turks who occupied Greece from 1460 to 1830. Becoming free from Ottoman rule after the Greek War of Independence (1821-8) against the Turks, the Kingdom of Greece was finally joined by Crete in 1913.

The Greek Republic was established in 1924 and the monarchy restored in 1935. During World War II, Greece and Crete were occupied by the Germans, and Greece was afterwards ravaged by the bloody Greek Civil War (1944-9). A military coup in 1967 led to the right-wing dictatorship of the Greek Colonels, but democracy was restored in 1974, and the monarchy was formally abolished. Greece joined the European Community in 1981. The drachma was replaced by the Euro in Jan 2002.

When the Ottomans arrived, two Greek migrations occurred. The first migration entailed the Greek intelligentsia migrating to Western Europe and influencing the advent of the Renaissance. The second migration entailed Greeks leaving the plains of the Greek peninsula and resettling in the mountains. Greece being mostly mountainous, the Ottomans could not conquer the entire Greek peninsula since they created neither a military nor an administrative presence in the mountains. There existed many Greek mountain clans all across the peninsula and islands. The Sfakiots of Crete, the Souliots of Epirus, and the Maniots of the Peloponnese were the most resilient mountain clans throughout the Ottoman Empire. By the end of the 16th century up until the 17th century, many Greeks began to migrate from

Need I say more to refute ignorance such as this?

It appears that those countries that are in crisis, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, have a mean IQ ranging between 93 and 95 compared to Germany’s 102. Surely this is the main component of the Greek financial failure and also the modus vivendi. - jones

Continual bankruptcy is nothing new for the Greeks. - jones

Kolokotronis, Ioannis Makriyiannis and other fighters of 1821 would have recognized a country that is continually bankrupt or on the verge of default (it defaulted in 1826, 1843, 1860 and 1893), in which institutions are weak and citizens depend on the will of the mighty, laws are applied selectively, and selfishness and lawlessness reign.

Greece is a wasteland where once a great pure Nordic empire stood, after it was mongrelized it crumbled on itself and slowly started siking, after two millennia of procrastination by the mongrel herd the ruins of a long gone Nordic empire are finally at last going to sink at the bottom of the ocean. - idiot

It does of course beget the question, how a race like the ancient Greeks bare any relationship to the modern Greeks considering their paucity of IQ. Continual bankruptcies, weak institutions, a contempt for rule of law, are all indicative of a society starved of even an average intellectual capacity. Anyone with a modicum of curiosity must ask who are the modern day Greeks. Certainly a group foreign to their ancient founders. - jones

Iceland, unlike Greece, has no history of continual bankruptcy, weak institutions, and a contempt for rule of law. Nor does Iceland have a history of accomplished intellectuals. Where did all the smart Greeks go. Who were they. From whence did they come. What is the common national characteristic that will determine the fate of the Greeks. In two hundred years what will the Greeks share with the erstwhile bankrupt ancestors of 1821. Undoubtedly it will be a low IQ and approaching insolvency. - jones

Greece has a legacy of default and near insolvency for the past two centuries, but we’re are asked to ignore this history in the best traditions of political correctness. How about Iceland they cry as if that single incident of near insolvency is somehow absolution for the painfully profligate Greeks. Phenotypical egalitarianism. Somehow two centuries of Greek turpitude is to be dismissed as modus vivendi; the Greeks are heroes of the coming Eurolution, throwing off the yoke of the money grubbing banksters and breaking the bond of “service in perpetuity as low-wage slaves”. How lovely. How quaint. - jones

Ancient Greeks IQ was lowered when their racial change occured which also altered their physical characteristics. When Ancient Greeks started absorbing Oriental and Mesopotamian blood unto their gene pool, it ultimately gave birth to the Modern Greeks who like the Oriental and Mesopotamian races pocess an average double digit IQ between 84 to 94 and who also much like Modern Greeks pocess hideous physical characteristics. - idiot

It is so easy to wallow in ignorance instead of attempting to understand the complexity of the situation. Jones, with his hobby horse agenda, is a joke. Ignoring blatant contradictory evidence right in front of him in order to push that agenda. What a shock it is to see Greece default during and immediately after 400 years of Ottoman rule and in the midst of power struggles after liberation. LOL Many Greeks left the country over the last 500 years, including pre and post both World Wars as well as the Greek Civil War. That usually has a negative impact on a nation because it is not the complacent, indolent, and ignorant that are doing the leaving.

The other idiot is simply thrown in for entertainment purposes only.

Posted by Silver on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 21:14 | #

You don’t understand the concept of “bankruptcy” as it relates to a country. Argentina was “bankrupt” ten years ago; look where it is today.

The question, for the umpteenth time, is why is IQ the central factor of importance now, such that present troubles can be attributed solely or overwhelmingly to it alone. You clearly don’t have any answer to that so you keep tap-dancing. No matter, it’s what I’ve come to expect from you (and your ilk).

Finally, you haven’t addressed the point that the same argument (so to speak) contained in your last sentence could have been advanced a hundred years ago (and probably was) and yet the precise opposite occurred. Considering that your competence in formulating an IQ assessment of economic performance lies solely in generalizations this is a stunning omission.

Posted by Silver on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 21:19 | #

There was a contempt for the rule of law in England until recently.

Huge swaths of Anglo-Saxon America were marked by wanton contempt for the rule of law during the 19th century.

You won’t find homicide rates of 150 per 100k in Greece. (Hell, you won’t even find recent Scottish homicide rates in Sicily. Lol.)

Posted by PF on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 22:14 | #

haha, this really must be the end days because I think Silver is the coolest cat on here. I went from secretly liking SKULLFACE to liking Silver and uh better than anyone.

He cuts like a knife, giving us our antithesis, our antipodes. Its a cool antidote to what we self-obsessed nords sometimes come up with.

Different races and nations (not speaking disrespectfully of Silver or any other of Southern euro stock on here) have always provided this great benefit to each other: that they act as contrasts, as teachers of what could not be learnt on one’s own. Whether we are wise enough to value this knowledge is our own predicament. We could do nothing without The Other, nothing big anyway. That isnt to elide away the problematic of human territorialism and tribalism, such as Our Sworn Enemies were trying to do. Except of course, where it does elide away, in the experience of someone who doesnt tell boo-hoo stories and piss and moan about life’s unfairnesses. Thats the pill we cant swallow because that is the place we are sure where Reality is Wrong. I dont mean to be provocative, but I do mean to say thank you to Silver and others who patiently tell us things that we actually need to learn.

What the hell else is on here without them? Leon Haller’s reiterated call for an ethics of white survival? Grimoire’s reiterated demand for a wider appeal based on his own foggy-minded boosterisms? Wandrin and Lister’s ever-more-finely-honed reassessments of ‘The Situation’ and their teasing out the different threads of causality? How could a mind with any degree of generalizing power not gradually become bored with all of you?

Haha, what a pompous thing to say. Its just there is no way that a person could see clearly what is going on and remain fascinated by it. To be enlisted in the service of these powers is to know one is also subject to the rules that govern them - live by the sword, die by the sword. Live by making clever conceptual artistry critiques and observations of reality, die by the invalidation of such. And they do invalidate themselves, if anyone has the integrity to look long enough at the picture.

Anyway, yeah, just another breeze blowing through…

Posted by Desmond Jones on Sun, 03 Jul 2011 03:08 | #

What a shock it is to see Greece default during and immediately after 400 years of Ottoman rule and in the midst of power struggles after liberation.

And here I thought it was rampant socialism. LOL. Blame the Turks, blame the Germans, blame anybody but the Greeks. LOL. The joys of the white multiculti…victims all. LOL. Wallowing in self-pitying ignorance the modus vivendi of the white multiculti…

The question, for the umpteenth time, is why is IQ the central factor of importance now, such that present troubles can be attributed solely or overwhelmingly to it alone.

You lie like a rug.

You could be forgiven for thinking so…Their main value is in demonstrating the existence of the correlation between intelligence and economic performance that anyone who is willing to use his brain for two seconds is going to assume is there..

Obviously two seconds of brain power is not available in your case. LOL.

And then there’s the question of ‘why now?’ How were they ever able to grow to the point they grew to if IQ was necessarily the central factor of importance at all times?

And for the umpteenth the answer is they never did!!!! They’ve been at the point of insolvency/insolvent for two fucking centuries, under the Turks, the Communies, the King and Queen yadayadayada and it did not change one fucking thing.

Where’s the Twin when you need him:

You don’t understand the concept of “bankruptcy” as it relates to a country. Argentina was “bankrupt” ten years ago; look where it is today

You don’t understand the concept of “bankruptcy” as it relates to a country. Greece was “bankrupt” two hundred years ago; look where it is today…bankrupt. Too funny.

Huge swaths of Anglo-Saxon America were marked by wanton contempt for the rule of law during the 19th century.

Liar.

Posted by South on Sun, 03 Jul 2011 03:27 | #

You are joking, right? This is the answer we’ve been waiting for from the great Jones? Nothing but frivolity and mendacity? Give it another kick at the can…this time maybe when you aren’t drunk or whatever. Let’s hear some real thought this time.

And here I thought it was rampant socialism. LOL. Blame the Turks, blame the Germans, blame anybody but the Greeks. LOL. The joys of the white multiculti…victims all. LOL. Wallowing in self-pitying ignorance the modus vivendi of the white multiculti…

Sorry, but that is not what was said. Greeks certainly have their fair share of blame for the predicament they find themselves in, however, their insolvency is multifactorial and CANNOT be blamed solely on IQ. Try again, big guy. We know you can do better. LOL!

Posted by Desmond Jones on Sun, 03 Jul 2011 03:36 | #

Greeks certainly have their fair share of blame for the predicament they find themselves in..

Yea, they have a mean IQ of 92 and in two hundred years they still will have a mean IQ of 92 and they will be facing insolvency. It does not get any simpler.

Posted by South on Sun, 03 Jul 2011 04:05 | #

Wow, you showed us. LOL! Say, did you ever rationalize Spain’s 99 IQ? Let’s just drop that since it makes your (lack of) argument sound more legit. This is the supremacy we should be bowing down to?

Pathetic does not even begin to describe you, Hobby. Keep riding!

Posted by Anti-WOG Alliance on Sun, 03 Jul 2011 05:35 | #

Average IQ of Spain is thanks to the infusion of Nordish blood in the North and the preservation of said blood from Oriental, Mesopotamian taint, a similar trend is notable in Italy whom average IQ in the South is in the 80’s (84, 85, 86) and in the North where it is in the 90’s (96, 97, 98).

Northern Spaniards and Northern Italians (such as the Lombards in Italy and the Aragonians in Spain) received the less amount of Oriental and Mesopotamian blood, while the Southerners (such as the Sicilians in Italy and Andalusians in Spain) received the most. In each case the Northerners of each of these two countries preserved most of the Nordish blood that grants the Northern European countries their high average IQ in the 100’s, while protecting themselves from most (but not all) Oriental and Mesopotamian blood intrusions, in the South it is the complete opposite.

The average IQ of Andalusians is of 92, while the average IQ of Aragonians is of 100 (8 points of difference), their physical characteristics is also quite notably different such as the color of the skin, being quite fair in Aragon while being quite dark in Andalusia, Andalusia is right next door to Morocco so no surprises there.

Posted by Silver on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 03:41 | #

“The question, for the umpteenth time, is why is IQ the central factor of importance now, such that present troubles can be attributed solely or overwhelmingly to it alone.”

You lie like a rug.

I’m asking you a question, the same question I’ve asked you from the start. How can a question be a “lie”?

It’s obvious a goon like you doesn’t even know where to begin answering it or you would have begun by now.

“Their main value is in demonstrating the existence of the correlation between intelligence and economic performance that anyone who is willing to use his brain for two seconds is going to assume is there..”

Obviously two seconds of brain power is not available in your case. LOL.

Maybe or maybe not, but nowhere have I denied the correlation. Nice try.

“And then there’s the question of ‘why now?’ How were they ever able to grow to the point they grew to if IQ was necessarily the central factor of importance at all times?”

Lol. That isn’t merely wrong (though it assuredly is), it’s virtually nonsensical.

“You don’t understand the concept of “bankruptcy” as it relates to a country. Argentina was “bankrupt” ten years ago; look where it is today.”

You don’t understand the concept of “bankruptcy” as it relates to a country. Greece was “bankrupt” two hundred years ago; look where it is today…bankrupt. Too funny.

What is really funny is the extent to which the joke is on you, lol. For one thing, it’s painfully obvious that you have no idea of what you’re talking about when you refer to “bankruptcy” here. (A hint for you: “finances” isn’t synonymous with “the economy.”) Secondly, let’s turn to what economic history has to say. Again, I refer to Maddison:

Greece:France/Germany GDP per capita (1990 international dollar)
in 1910

~$1500:~$3200 = ~47%

2010

~$16,000:~$22,000 = ~72%

So not only did Greek production increase tenfold (in real terms) during the past one hundred years, the difference between Greek production and that of western European economies was narrowed by some fifty percent.

“Huge swaths of Anglo-Saxon America were marked by wanton contempt for the rule of law during the 19th century. “

Liar.

Okay, then how would you characterize homicide rates of over 100 per 100k people (which is worse than many of the worst parts of today’s Brazil).

Posted by You Can't Borrow Away Debt on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 03:58 | #

Here’s a good article on the insanity of the Greek government and its EU backers:

It was not just sceptics of the idea of a single currency like me who warned that the currency could be damaged or even destroyed if each euro member country could borrow as much as it liked in the common currency. The founders seemed to know this.

When they set it up they said a country could not join if it had already borrowed too much, or if its running deficit was too high. Unfortunately, they shelved this wisdom, allowing the politicians to put economies into the scheme that were nowhere near meeting the requirements. They then allowed them to go on borrowing too much after entry.

History tells us that successful currency unions require political unions to back them up. The German currency union worked because it went hand in hand with building a united Germany. The French led Latin currency union and the Scandinavian currency union of the nineteenth century did not. They were broken apart by too much state borrowing at the time of the First World War.

The reason a currency union needs a political union is simple. The centre has to have some way of stopping parts of the union from borrowing too much in the common currency at the common interest rate. If some borrow too much they are free riders on the backs of the more prudent areas.

If they go on borrowing too much they undermine the credit rating of the whole area, and force up the cost of borrowing for the prudent parts. To achieve discipline, the centre also needs to send subsidies and payments to the poorer parts, to compensate them for their inability to devalue to price themselves back into a competitive position.

Today the single currency system is suffering from the double stresses of too much borrowing by countries such as Greece and Portugal, who have spent too much and raised too little in tax, and from the need of countries like Ireland to bail out their overstretched banking systems. The low interest rate in the single currency prior to the credit crunch allowed Irish, Spanish and other banks to over-extend credit leaving a difficult case of over-indebtedness by banks within the euro area.

So what should be done? Lending these countries more is not the answer. You do not get out of a debt crisis by borrowing more. You get out of a debt crisis by spending less, or by raising more revenue, or by selling assets to cut the amount you need to borrow. The EU and IMF (Berlin: MXG1.BE - news) seems to think if they lend countries such as Greece and Portugal more money, it will buy them time to make the changes they need to make. Instead, it has delayed effective action and put more money at risk. The Greek first package of Spring 2010 had to be renegotiated in the autumn. Less than a year after the first loan the talk is of much larger sums being lent to Greece to keep her going.

Greece is now in a nasty downward spiral. Its economy is declining, so tax revenues are not improving as needed, whilst social expenditures are going up to pay for all the unemployment.

Meanwhile, the market says Greece needs to pay 15-25pc interest to borrow money, depending on the length of the loan. These rates are penal and mean Greece is, to all intent, no longer able to borrow any more, other than through a special subsidised deal from the EU or IMF. Some say Greece needs to spend more public money all borrowed to act as a stimulus. This is absurd. Greece has enjoyed endless public sector stimuli, so called, ending in this debt disaster. You can hardly say spending more has boosted the economy when it has led to such an international collapse of confidence and the end to market borrowing.

Extra public spending paid for by taxes is not stimulatory, as for every amount the state spends the private sector is unable to spend as they have to pay the tax. If the money is borrowed, for every sum the state spends, the private sector can spend less as it has to lend the money.

Research shows that successful recoveries usually come from private sector led growth which requires monetary stimulus, with access to sensible amounts of borrowing by the private sector. Often tax cuts are needed to boost enterprise. Spending more money in the state sector is often accompanied by poor economic performance. Greece and Portugal would recover more quickly if they left the euro, devalued, and then made credit available for private sector led growth. If they stay in the euro, they will have to cut and cut again, to reduce their deficits to an acceptable level. Recovery is made more difficult because the monetary policy of the union and the value of the currency will be set for stronger areas, leaving them squeezed.

If, like Greece, you transfer too many resources from the private sector into a low productivity public sector you get a worse performing economy. Greece either has to earn more or spend less.

John Redwood is a former Conservative cabinet minister and now chairs the investment committee of Evercore Pan-Asset Capital Management

Posted by You Can't Borrow Away Debt on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 04:07 | #

The hilarious thing is that the EU half-wits think a problem caused by loaning the Greek government too much money relative to the size of its population and economy is going to be solved by loaning the Greek government even more money.

This will only end in tears.

Posted by Silver on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 04:45 | #

haha, this really must be the end days because I think Silver is the coolest cat on here.

Don’t tell him that; that’ll just encourage him.

I went from secretly liking SKULLFACE to liking Silver and uh better than anyone.

Watch it. Sounds like you’re almost embracing the cult of white suicide.

Its a cool antidote to what we self-obsessed nords sometimes come up with.

Your problem isn’t so much self-obsession as it is ruining a perfectly good case by trying to turn it into a perfect case.

I dont mean to be provocative, but I do mean to say thank you to Silver and others who patiently tell us things that we actually need to learn.

Don’t mention it. It’s been an eye-opening experience for me, too.

Posted by Silver on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 05:12 | #

Research shows that successful recoveries usually come from private sector led growth which requires monetary stimulus, with access to sensible amounts of borrowing by the private sector. Often tax cuts are needed to boost enterprise. Spending more money in the state sector is often accompanied by poor economic performance.

John Redwood is a former Conservative cabinet minister and now chairs the investment committee of Evercore Pan-Asset Capital Management

Tells you everything you need to know about the value of this chap’s opinion.

Posted by You Can't Borrow Away Debt on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 07:08 | #

Tells you everything you need to know about the value of this chap’s opinion.

You don’t think too much public sector glut is hurting the Greek economy?

Give me a break…

Posted by You Can't Borrow Away Debt on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 07:10 | #

You shouldn’t just catcall John Redwood’s ideas, Socialsilverist.

I’m curious exactly what you think the Greeks should do.

Posted by Anti-WOG Alliance on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:05 | #

I’m curious exactly what you think the Greeks should do.

http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/????????

Posted by Desmond Jones on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:21 | #

Figure it out, numb nuts. When is a homicide not a wanton contempt for the rule of law?

Posted by GT on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:57 | #

Off topic. An interesting movie that may be of interest to one or two of you: The One That Got Away (1957).

Made in UK and starring German actor Hardy Kruger as WWII fighter pilot and ace, Oberleutnant Franz von Werra.

From Wikipedia: “The film chronicles the true exploits of Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, a Luftwaffe pilot shot down over England in 1940. He initially tries to escape from England, but is more successful when being transferred to a Canadian POW camp.”

Has you rooting for the “bad guy” not long into the movie. Franz von Werra had brass balls.

Could not be made in the UK today, much less the U.S.

Currently on Netflix.

Posted by Silver on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:51 | #

You shouldn’t just catcall John Redwood’s ideas, Socialsilverist.

I’m curious exactly what you think the Greeks should do.

With all due respect, I think I should. His analysis and prescriptions have nothing to specifically do with the Greek situation. It’s the same “conservative” solution they prescribe any time they open their mouths; good times, bad times, their solution is always to gut the public sector and cut taxes. Conservative economics is all about protecting the interests of the wealthy, not about the general well-being or even the general economy (look at Pinochet’s pathetic record, and then consider how many conservatives praise him). If you’ve gone the rounds with these people, you’ll appreciate what I mean.

That said, sure, events in Greece have reached a crisis level. Some people are going to suffer a temporary decline in living standards. Whether that impacts the wealthy to a greater extent than the poor or vice versa remains to be seen and depends on which remedies are applied. The point from a macro perspective, however, is that it really doesn’t matter all that much. That may sound shocking, but it’s how economics works. Some people will suffer a little, some a lot, some will remain unscathed; in due course, people will dust themselves off and life will go on. Obviously the idea is to avoid getting oneself in such a situation in the first place; but if you do, everything in economic history tells us it is not the end of the world.

Jones,

Figure it out, numb nuts. When is a homicide not a wanton contempt for the rule of law?

They were shooting each other as well as Indians.

What does it matter, anyway? You’re the clown claiming that only your kind have ever and can ever and only ever do behave in a civilized fashion; but your beliefs have nothing to do with any evidence and everything to do with your deep-seated racial revulsion. That’s up to you, but by now you’d have to be a damned fool to assume those feelings are widely shared, or will ever be widely shared, so your choice to mindlessly rubbish other races (facts be damned) in the expectation that it will rally your people to your cause (rather than further marginalize you) seems a pretty poor one.

Posted by South on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 23:16 | #

You’re the clown

I think that is all that needed to be said. Jones has behaved more than clownish in this thread and has damaged what little respect he may have had. It takes a man, honorable or otherwise, to admit the truth, no matter how unpleasant it may be to his beliefs. Jones is far from being an honorable man. In good company with all the other rag tag losers that frequent certain sites. Funny how Jewey the superior race behaves when cornered with unpleasant facts.

Posted by Anti-WOG Alliance on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 07:53 | #

Figure it out, numb nuts. When is a homicide not a wanton contempt for the rule of law?

http://scrapetv.com/News/News Pages/Everyone Else/pages-6/China-in-early-negotiations-to-buy-Greece-Scrape-TV-The-World-on-your-side.html

http://www.peopleforum.cn/viewthread.php?tid=101306&extra=page=1

http://www.debtkilling.com/deaddebt/china-does-greece-buys-gvmt-debt-gets-imfs-blessing-in-english-chinese/

One can only hope that China will slowly be buying away Greece and replacing the low IQ lazy procrastinators of the mongrel herd with their population as they are doing in Tibet. Unlike what White Nationalists may claim Greece is a land lost to us Aryans, by having Chinese take it from there we will have it removed from the European Union and that will help clear out some of the Oriental-Mesopotamian burden off of our shoulders.

Posted by Lurker on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:11 | #

A-W A - I was just looking at your site.

I cant quite work out whether you are stupid, mad or some sort of false flag operation. Care to enlighten us?
I cite the following:

You’ve got a real hard on for muslims and Palestinians yet you crap on the Greeks?

The MSM are really trying to get the BNP elected?

The SNP represent the stirrings of anti-zionism.

Posted by Anti-WOG Alliance on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:59 | #

I cite the following:

Yet there is no citation to be seen.

Posted by Lurker on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:46 | #

All from your site and your comments here.

Posted by Anti-WOG Alliance on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:16 | #

All from your site and your comments here.

There are no citations, all you did was post “I cite the following:” and then whitout posting any citations you jumped on to the questions, I would answer the questions but whitout the citations it would be hard to be sure in what specific context those questions come from, anyways…

You’ve got a real hard on for muslims and Palestinians yet you crap on the Greeks?

1. Palestine is not in Europe.

2. Palestine is not a member of the European Union.

3. Palestinians do not try to suck the wealth of Aryan nations to make up for their own laziness and low IQ.

4. Palestinians are not forcing us nor pleading us to aknowledge them as “whites” or “Aryans”.

5. Palestinians do not order us to give them all of our money to “make up for our nazism”.

The list goes on and on.

I am anti-WOG and pro-ARYAN, wogs are westernised orientals, while Palestinians are not wogs they are simply Orientals who try to live their lives in their own oriental country (unlike wogs) but they have been thrown unto a genocidal war of oppression waged upon them by the WOGS (much like us, except that the methods used against them are shall we say much less subtile). Greeks like jews are also westernised orientals whose origins can be traced back mostly to Mesopotamia but also to the Orient, Greece is a black hole that will suck up dry the entire wealth of Nordic nations to sustain itself until there will be no money left to suck, when our Nordic nations will become impoverished due to the insatiable lazy leech that Greece is, the time would have come when Greece will simply crumble on itself and the mongrel herd will disembark this sinking ship and disperse itself on to the westward, during the same time Aryan countries will attempt to restructurate their economies and regain composure it will be at this moment that the mongrel herd will take advantage of our weakned state to invade us and genocide us unto oblivion. Greece and the rest of the Oriental and Mesopotamian countries which are part of the European Union are the weakest link in the EU and the zionists take advantage of this to destroy us by using them.

The MSM are really trying to get the BNP elected?

Yes, think about it what is “The Left” what is “The Right”? Was there such a thing as “the left” or “the right” before in Aryan countries? No, the left and the right are both proxies created by the zionists and other wogs to give us the illusion that we have a choice in the matter and that we have control over what is being done in our countries, but we don’t. The BNP of John Tyndall was the party of an Aryan, the BNP of Griffin is a proxy party of rats and usefull idiots, the zionists and other wogs recycle nationalist parties to turn them unto proxies and from there help in the growth of said proxy parties, the BNP of Griffin, the PVV of Geert Wilders, the FN of Marine LePen all zionist proxies to pit the jewish “right” againt the jewish “left” in times of elections.

1. Give the illusion that “nationalists” (racists) have political power (which they don’t).

2. Keep the illusion that voting for one or another party makes any difference (which it doesn’t).

Posted by You Can't Borrow Debt Away on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 03:52 | #

What “remedies” are applied will have an effect on more than just the question of whether the rich or poor Greeks suffer more.

A lot of the remedies that have been applied by Greece’s moronic Socialist leader aren’t remedies at all, but instead recipes for disaster and far greater misery than was needful.

That retard George Papandreou just raised taxes in the midst of an extreme financial crises, and the money from the taxes isn’t even going to government programs which might (inefficiently) stimulate the Greek economy, but instead to debt servicing.

What’s the point of this debt servicing?

If the point was to pay off Greece’s debt to a managable level it would be one thing, but nothing could be clearer from Papandreou’s acceptance of EVEN MORE loans from the EU than that the debt is never going to be paid off to a managable level.

Therefore the increase in Greek taxation is a pure loss to the Greek economy, and increases the chances of a bloody revolution or civil war tearing the country apart.

Posted by You Can't Borrow Debt Away on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 03:58 | #

That may sound shocking, but it’s how economics works. Some people will suffer a little, some a lot, some will remain unscathed; in due course, people will dust themselves off and life will go on.

What if Greece becomes a total vassal of the EU, which seems to be Papandreou’s endgame?

Then life may go on for the Greeks in much worse conditions than even what they suffer now.

Posted by Lurker on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 05:05 | #

That may sound shocking, but it’s how economics works. Some people will suffer a little, some a lot, some will remain unscathed; in due course, people will dust themselves off and life will go on.

Would be true if Greece was a more-or-less sovereign state but it isnt. Its shackled to the EU and thus its economy cant adjust easily. Which is kind of the whole problem in the first place.

Posted by Gavrilo Princip on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 14:19 | #

The Greeks are not responsible; the Greek political class is. Leftist, marxists, ossified socialist from bottom to to top permeate the rotten wrecked Greek political class. The political class is a caravanseri of parasitic stooges of Brussels. Not a decent anthropormorfos exists within them. Greece is a resource poor country. It can not be expected to attain a standard of living similar to richer and resource endowed countries.. The Political class conned and exploited the Greek people, in turn the Brusselian monsters conned the Greek political mannequins with the euro and untold largesses. Take a tour of the Greek mainland, and what do you see, wonderful roads and bridges and landscape upgrades, the eye sore is the billboards littered along the roads declaring that 80% of funds have come from the EU ( not one cent has been paid yet). Who own Greece ? The Greeks ?, not in your lifetime. Who built Venizelos airport ? The Greeks , no . The EU Germans, to the las cent; why did they do that ? did they not know that they would never recover the loan?. Why does a small country like Greece need a mammoth airport like Venizelos ? To serve as an operational platform for re routing and distributing the masses of illegal invaders streaming into the country. Greece is a colony of the EU, a province, a hamlet. Get the sclerotic EU out of Greece and Greece out of the EU. Let the EU stew in their own juice with their market forces economics.

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