Perspectives on the global economic meltdown- (Nov 28 2010)

Hari Seldon · Post by **Hari Seldon** » 18 Oct 2012 19:14

^^ Is the Maino fmly not reason enough? \sarc off.

PIIGS stands for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain.

shyam · Post by **shyam** » 19 Oct 2012 11:42

UK: More than 30 chain stores closing a day

Extent of high street woe revealed as falling disposable incomes and online shopping take their toll on over-extended retailers
...
Figures show that across the UK embattled retailers closed 32 stores a day in July and August as Britain's high street continued to suffer from the consumer spending slump. That figure is up from 20 a day in the first six months of 2012.

High-profile administrations this year of major retailers including Game Group, Peacocks, Past Times and Clinton Cards helped push the number of closures of town centre chain store outlets to 953 in the first half on a net basis (meaning those closing minus those opening).

That compared with 174 in the whole of 2011, according to the study of 500 town centres by the retail data provider Local Data Company (LDC). for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

member_23677 · Post by **member_23677** » 19 Oct 2012 20:00

shyam wrote:UK: More than 30 chain stores closing a day
Extent of high street woe revealed as falling disposable incomes and online shopping take their toll on over-extended retailers
...
Figures show that across the UK embattled retailers closed 32 stores a day in July and August as Britain's high street continued to suffer from the consumer spending slump. That figure is up from 20 a day in the first six months of 2012.

High-profile administrations this year of major retailers including Game Group, Peacocks, Past Times and Clinton Cards helped push the number of closures of town centre chain store outlets to 953 in the first half on a net basis (meaning those closing minus those opening).

That compared with 174 in the whole of 2011, according to the study of 500 town centres by the retail data provider Local Data Company (LDC). for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

End of massive colonial loot== End of financial power in briturdistan

Arunkumar · Post by **Arunkumar** » 20 Oct 2012 12:54

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ds-newsxml

Rolls-Royce yesterday launched a blistering attack on the banks – revealing it has been forced to lend money to its own suppliers to keep them afloat.

More than 1,000 small firms with 50 or fewer employees have been going bust on average every month, according to credit reference agency Experian.

If this is the case with rolls royce which has a hugh order book, things might not be so pretty with other not so famous engineering firms.

Chinmayanand · Post by **Chinmayanand** » 20 Oct 2012 20:27

Foof for thought from the world wide web, says basically what Neshant has been saying all along

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Capitalism

The positive results of capitalism that surround us are evidenced in everything we own and use daily through the products brought into existence by successful business entrepreneurs. Modern life’s items including all the benefits bestowed upon us by the public sector including the highly touted roads that we depend on so much, the modern conveniences of modern life, are brought to us in one way or another by a base of people called capitalists. The money raisers and wealth creators, the builders of enterprise and industry, the successful business operators who bring people and resources together in the process of delivering products and services for society to consume.

We all know most business start-ups fail and in doing so many starry eyed entrepreneurs lose their life’s savings and years of their time trying to commercialize some idea or invention into a business success. Just watch Dragons Den to see a sample of the turds that get flushed away everyday and the odd few that have a small chance to succeed. Many more obscure businesses languish on the margins of viability indefinitely without failing. These enterprises are a lot of work. So considering this, one must appreciate the rarity of those highly successful and mighty business operations that do succeed, the ones that amass great wealth are truly exceptional to the rule and tremendously beneficial to society and greatly responsible for raising our standard of living. Think Microsoft, Potash, Exxon, RIM, 3M, Intel, Apple etc.

So a defender of capitalism is a small business owner and an entrepreneur who is often disgusted watching government constantly squander wealth day after day on the public sector and other incoherent statist pursuits.

Lately many people blame capitalism for the corruption and distress in our economy and business owners constantly argue that people’s anger is misplaced. The villain in our failing economy is not capitalism, its not entrepreneurship, its not rich business people, it’s our government, it’s our banks, and it’s our bloated public sector. These institutions are responsible for our crumbling economy, these institutions are not capitalist they are socialist parasites feeding on the host of an underlying real economy that is capitalism. We have a mixed capitalist/socialist economy with a growing portion of free loaders living off the real economy, hordes of looters feeding on the private sector successes, too many legalized thieves supporting their standard of living on the back of a slowly shrinking impoverished private sector working class poor who are struggling to support an ever expanding expanse of non-productive public sector upper-class socialites. The working private sector businesses and their employees are supporting an ever growing elitist public sector, narcissistic government and an ever growing unsound fraudulent banking system. These are the reasons why so many people have so much debt, these are the reasons why the poor are getting poorer, and this is why it takes two full time incomes to support the average household, soon to be three. Government spending and inflation are robbing us and our future generations blind.

Governments are complicit in contributing to our economic demise. Bailouts for banks and large financial institutions and numerous manufacturing corporations are used to keep the conduits and creators of wealth alive, keeping workers on life support so as not to lose any slaves, government must not allow their cronies to fail and disturb their system of theft that took so long to construct. Government will continue to guarantee bank deposits and loan books; they will continue to buy billions in bad mortgages and bad debts brought about by their own orchestrated credit expansions puffed up in the news as a strong economy and rising GDP during the boom phase, such popular fun and political exuberance until the bust lays waste but that’s always postponed until the next guy gets elected.

Everyday in the news it’s one waste fest after another, it’s this scandal here and that intervention there, botchery by bureaucrats. These jokers have turned politics into a reality TV soap opera for the ignorant masses to debate about how they best want to be oppressed. Proof of our taxpayer funded public education/daycare system’s curriculum of ignorance.

Our modern banks create money out of thin air in a fractional reserve banking system condoned and fostered by government for the benefit of government, a system of misallocation of funds and fraudulent activity. Historic jurisprudence clearly holds that only term deposits are legal tender for lending at a 100% reserve ratio with some agreed to rate of interest to be paid to the depositor for use of his funds, anything else is misallocation of funds and fraud. Long standing principles developed over centuries for sound banking have been discarded for the benefit of modern banks and governments around the world at the demise of society’s wealth through inflation and rescue packages to crooks. See the bank of Amsterdam as an example of the most successful and honest bank in world history when gold was money. Gold still is money and always will be. These are facts of reality and fundamental pillars of economics where erosion will lead to economic demise and social chaos.

And of course the public sector, what a tremendous waste of money and good people’s talents who unfortunately do not contribute nearly as much to society as they receive. If public sector workers had to put cash registers in their public sector offices they would soon realize that no one is actually willing to pay them the high prices needed to support the delivery of their crappy services. They are so frightened to death of this idea you’ll notice how indignant a public sector worker will get at the mere suggestion of converting them to the private sector, they know full well they could never honestly earn their standard of living by continuing doing what they are doing. They know full well how demanding a free market would be and the impossible task it would be for them to separate people from their money without the force of government extortion feeding their bloated budgets and lavish compensation.

All the fine people in government, banking and the public sector need to realize that they are in fact the source of much of the looming economic catastrophe we are facing. They are the beneficiaries of immorality, they are the beneficiaries of looting and government largess, they are the beneficiaries of wealth stripped from the real economy, the true tangible and underlying economy that actually exists built on savings, brains, brawn and risk called capitalism.

Our public sector lottery winners should feel ashamed of themselves and a tremendous sense of guilt and responsibility for the downfall of our economy and the suffering of the poor and working class serfs beneath them, but like a stampede of cows they unknowingly trample over their heads while protesting any cuts and demanding the party must go on.

Socialism destroys capital. This is why capital and jobs flee unfriendly jurisdictions. This is what helped keep the USA competitive domestically, it was competition amongst the states; it’s flee or die; survival of the fittest, efficiency does matter. As it gets worse with time more businesses in the socialist republic of Canada will leave. There will be less arguing from guys like me and fewer votes in the ballot box as more people vote with their feet and leave while bidding farewell to the blood sucking leeches until eventually the only people left in the country will be a bunch of useless twerps and lying politicians. The wealth will be gone and the cannibals will be left to dine upon one another like they did in Soviet Russia.

Socialism’s great until you run out of other people’s money.
It’s sad to watch economies implode globally due to all the damage done by unsound money, political corruption and ethical bankruptcy, so much time and energy being wasted trying to solve the problems of socialism with treatment by chemotherapy while the true problem is clearly heart attack. Let's hope society can identify the problems for what they are soon before working to diligently toward their solution.

The central pillar of any solution will be to rebuild our global economy on a foundation of sound money, which means we must return to commodity money and a gold standard as the universal global and domestic currency.

pentaiah · Post by **pentaiah** » 20 Oct 2012 20:33

I have always had respect for neshant ji
Hope he has secured his money wealth nd will come back here to lead us too to safety from pyramid schemesters

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 26 Oct 2012 01:01

Amid debt crisis, Greece faces new threat: Malaria, other mosquito diseases

Just when it seems things couldn't get any worse for Greece, the exhausted and indebted country has a new threat to deal with: mosquito-borne diseases.

Species of the blood-sucking insects that can carry exotic-sounding tropical infections like malaria, West Nile Virus, chikungunya and dengue fever are enjoying the extra bit of warmth climate change is bringing to parts of southern Europe.

And with austerity budgets, a collapsing health system, political infighting and rising xenophobia all conspiring to allow pest and disease control measures here to slip through the net, the mosquitoes are biting back.

While Greece has had no cases of chikungunya in the past three years, the disease is popping up elsewhere in Europe - as is dengue, which is causing a large outbreak on the Portuguese island of Madeira

RoyG · Post by **RoyG** » 26 Oct 2012 23:32

krisna wrote:Amid debt crisis, Greece faces new threat: Malaria, other mosquito diseases
Just when it seems things couldn't get any worse for Greece, the exhausted and indebted country has a new threat to deal with: mosquito-borne diseases.

Species of the blood-sucking insects that can carry exotic-sounding tropical infections like malaria, West Nile Virus, chikungunya and dengue fever are enjoying the extra bit of warmth climate change is bringing to parts of southern Europe.

And with austerity budgets, a collapsing health system, political infighting and rising xenophobia all conspiring to allow pest and disease control measures here to slip through the net, the mosquitoes are biting back.

While Greece has had no cases of chikungunya in the past three years, the disease is popping up elsewhere in Europe - as is dengue, which is causing a large outbreak on the Portuguese island of Madeira

Poor west and their stupid political isms rooted in abrahamic philosophical thought caused this financial mess. Greeks have no individual or family sovereignty which destroyed their social security net. They gave that to the gov which caused them to spend and live lavishly. They don't hold women sacred who are responsible for keeping the household together, manage savings, and keep precious metals like gold. Now they have mosquito problems

.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 27 Oct 2012 06:42

london economy has long been held up by making it a tax haven and preferred place of residence for high earning financial engineers, outright crooks, rich financial & political fugitives (like some of the Rus oligarchs) from around the world. legal and political cover from HMG, every vice and service known to man, good flight connections, english speaking......no other megacity in the world has been able to market itself with such aplomb or attract so many rich crooks.

on top of that criminals are also sheltered for 'strategic' reasons.

member_23677 · Post by **member_23677** » 27 Oct 2012 13:44

^^^ Most of europe is pretty much like that, held up borrowed money, once that goes, you would see these "supeliol" countries crumble and turn into an average african country.

johneeG · Post by **johneeG** » 27 Oct 2012 15:00

P.Bhagat wrote:^^^ Most of europe is pretty much like that, held up borrowed money, once that goes, you would see these "supeliol" countries crumble and turn into an average african country.

Actually, an average African country has better potential than most of Europe because African countries have their own abundant natural resources unlike Europe. Europe needs resources from Africa and Asia, even to feed itself. If Europe has to be on top, then someway or the other, it has to loot Africa and/or Asia of their resources(including human resource). Thats the way, Europe became "supeliol", and thats the only way they can stay "supeliol".

Abhijeet · Post by **Abhijeet** » 27 Oct 2012 17:06

Nonsense. A well educated population, strong institutions and the rule of law are the foundations of modern developed countries -- not natural resources.

People waiting for European countries to turn into Africa any day now have no idea what they are talking about, sorry.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 27 Oct 2012 19:57

>>People waiting for European countries to turn into Africa any day now have no idea what they are talking about, sorry.

Indeed. Guys, let's not get carried away by the doom and gloom reports and the relentless media focus. Things are not that great, but they are not as disastrous as they are made to seem. There will be a decline, but it will be slow and there's a long way to go, and they won't go easily. For now, I think we can safely say that percentage of Europeans wishing to move to Africa to improve their lives are probably lower than the percentage of Africans wishing to move to Europe to improve their lives...

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 27 Oct 2012 20:33

For Europe to become like Africa their Average years of education will have to drop from 15+ years to Africa's 4-5 years. It has happened in the past. But their is no sign of it happening right now. Their years of education and productivity continue to rise. The average European workers is still 30 times! more productive than the average African worker. The fall has been from per capita GDP of $65,000 during the bubble to about $35,000 today. They are unable to afford their debt at this level, esp. with rising interest. But if their productivity rises another 20% they can pay off most of this debt in 20 years.

Most of Africa can only dream of a $35,000 per capita income.

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 28 Oct 2012 02:27

Abhijeet wrote:Nonsense. A well educated population, strong institutions and the rule of law are the foundations of modern developed countries -- not natural resources.

People waiting for European countries to turn into Africa any day now have no idea what they are talking about, sorry.

Without natural resources where will the educated population show their productivity? In ***** industry?

johneeG · Post by **johneeG** » 28 Oct 2012 03:09

RamaY wrote:
Abhijeet wrote:Nonsense. A well educated population, strong institutions and the rule of law are the foundations of modern developed countries -- not natural resources.

People waiting for European countries to turn into Africa any day now have no idea what they are talking about, sorry.
Without natural resources where will the educated population show their productivity? In ***** industry?

Yep, how will "educated population, strong institutions and the rule of law" create wealth without natural resources? from thin air?! The only way is to loot those who have natural resources... directly or indirectly, brazenly or with sophistry, overtly or covertly.

---
>>People waiting for European countries to turn into Africa any day now have no idea what they are talking about, sorry.

Just to clarify: Speaking for myself, I never said that I am waiting for European countries to turn into Africa or African countries to turn into Europe. I just made an observation that African countries have greater potential than Europe due to their natural resources(including human resource which translates to labour force and markets). Most of the Europe, on the other hand, is utterly dependent on others for natural resources. So, for Europe to stay on top, they will have to loot those who have natural resources and get hold of those natural resources(including human resource which translates to labour force and markets).

member_23677 · Post by **member_23677** » 28 Oct 2012 03:40

Theo_Fidel wrote:For Europe to become like Africa their Average years of education will have to drop from 15+ years to Africa's 4-5 years. It has happened in the past. But their is no sign of it happening right now. Their years of education and productivity continue to rise. The average European workers is still 30 times! more productive than the average African worker. The fall has been from per capita GDP of $65,000 during the bubble to about $35,000 today. They are unable to afford their debt at this level, esp. with rising interest. But if their productivity rises another 20% they can pay off most of this debt in 20 years.

Most of Africa can only dream of a $35,000 per capita income.

Is Europe's education worthwhile only because students spend 15 years instead of 4-5 years like Africa? Seriously? What about quality, which is become worse and worse in some european countries?

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_ME ... ?locale=en

http://www.economist.com/node/4370590

The economist article is pretty interesting in explaining how European education went on a downward spiral from WW2. Even after being richest and arguably having a pleothra of researchers, teachers, scientists etc. after WW2...

Regarding Productivity, please see the following :

Please read this article to get a better grip on the situation : http://www.economist.com/node/15731230

Productivity is falling in Europe and is affecting it's GDP growth..

Most of Africa can only dream of a $35,000 per capita income

How much of it has more to do with previously earned wealth in europe and about negligible wealth earned in an average african country? If you go by PCI ; Luxembourgh comes first, followed by Qatar, Macau and then Norway. These countries are more developed and powerful than every other field than any other country.... how accurate would that be?.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... per_capita

But if you go by HDI indexes, most developed state is Norway, which one should be accurate depiction of development?

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

The fall has been from per capita GDP of $65,000 during the bubble to about $35,000 today. They are unable to afford their debt at this level, esp. with rising interest. But if their productivity rises another 20% they can pay off most of this debt in 20 years.

What makes you think this will happen? If we go by this methodology if Indians and Chinese work 365 days, 18 hours a day, they would be superpower by tomorrow...but we all know that is unrealistic and overoptimistic at best. Why do you think people of a welfare state, living in relative peace would suddenly work hard? EU is having problem increasing their productivity by 5% and you are talking about 20%.

No one will invest in a bankrupt country, logically speaking. Very less number of people will invest in greece or spain for atleast the next 5-7 years, that is, if things are resolved and they are not left to fend for themselves. Africa, on the other hand, is growing is pretty sharply, people are now interested in it, especially India and China, they are our next mining fields as well as our next big market. They need what we have, and they have what we need. Africa can grow, albeit slowly without western help, EU cannot.

Most of EU has been maintained as a heaven since 80s through borrowed money without paying them back. What I was saying is not a pure fantasy but something that you can foresee if you go by trends. Even Urinal Kingdom looked like unbreakable in the 40s, they are bankrupt within 60 years, so lets follow logical trends instead of hidden biases toward particular countries.

member_23677 · Post by **member_23677** » 28 Oct 2012 04:13

Abhijeet wrote:Nonsense. A well educated population, strong institutions and the rule of law are the foundations of modern developed countries -- not natural resources.

People waiting for European countries to turn into Africa any day now have no idea what they are talking about, sorry.

Nobody is "waiting" for EU to turn into Africa, please stop talking like an immature child and wake up to reality... it is a fact that many major countries have got their chaddies in a severe twist. Some of EU countries are indeed going bankrupt: http://www.cnbc.com/id/40545004/Some_Eu ... Jim_Rogers

Explain Saudi nations, Explain Canada, Explain Australia? Resources indeed form a big part of the economy. Most of the Saudi/ Arabian countries live off the money they earn on oil,gas fields and natural resources, we all know how well law and institutions work there.

In regards to Kaneda:

In 2010 alone, the sectors generated 11.5 percent, or $142.5 billion, of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) and directly employed close to 763 000 people.

http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/statistics-facts/home/887#fig1

shyam · Post by **shyam** » 28 Oct 2012 11:46

Here is an interesting quote from a person who was interviewed by Max Keiser.

Dominic Frisby, Author/Writer
(edited for clarity) “… I had dinner about a year or two ago with the head of Gold at HSBC and one of the things that he described — and most of the world’s gold goes through HSBC, at some stage — looking at the gold in his vault … despite the fact that China is the biggest producer – he never sees bars, with Chinese stamps on them …”

They did a follow up later and found that

In the database I found ZERO matches for Chinese-manufactured gold bars in the GLD records, and also extended the query to see if other vaults had any. I was mildly surprised to find NONE … surprising because our current gold sample size includes data from not just HSBC London vault, but also Royal Canadian Mint and Via Mat (London, Hong Kong and Zurich)....

Conclusion these people have made is that China keeps all the gold it produces.

However, I would like to ask a different question. Considering the lack of transparency on Chinese data, does China really produce as much as gold as they claim to produce?

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 28 Oct 2012 13:09

>>Without natural resources where will the educated population show their productivity? In ***** industry?

Those asterisks have hidden what industry you were referring to. Did you mean p0rn0 industry? Because if you did, then with not incomparably larger natural resources and about three times the population, we in India should be seriously considering that option as well. And well before getting to anything like €35K per capita.

Abhijeet · Post by **Abhijeet** » 28 Oct 2012 15:44

The comments above only indicate the lowering of the level of discourse on BR in the last few years. Please posters, do some reading before posting top-of-mind nonsense. Self-righteous, seemingly patriotic statements may earn you cheap points from other posters but they are only lowering the signal to noise ratio here.

Natural resources have never been a path to sustainable wealth for any country. Silly statements from people who think the p0rn industry is the only one available to people in countries that lack natural resources just show the poster's lack of understanding of the world. Countries like Japan and Singapore which lack significant natural resources have gotten rich on the back of the factors I mentioned. Studies have repeatedly shown that strong institutions are the single most important factor in allowing countries to become rich -- these subsume things like good education (which only means strong educational institutions) and the rule of law (which means strong judicial and police institutions).

Are there challenges to European institutions? Of course -- plenty. But there is no comparison between Europe and Africa, or for that matter India, when it comes to having the foundations of a civilized society in place.

Christopher Sidor · Post by **Christopher Sidor** » 28 Oct 2012 16:18

Recently I came back from UK. There I had a chance to interact with a few energy companies. It was amazing what these guys are doing in face of increasing hydrocarbon input prices. It is fair to say that by the end of this decade or so, they would have driven away massive inefficiencies into their energy grids, especially with the north sea oil and gas production in a decline. Some of the British energy companies, are transforming their energy sources so that more than 30% of energy comes from renewable energy sources. Though this push to renewable's will not start showing an effect till middle of next decade, i.e. 2025 at least, it is truly transformative. If the first oil shock of 1970s was a sufficient trigger to push for energy conservation and energy efficiency then today's high prices of oil and gas are more than enough to push for another round of driving up energy efficiency.

Now compare this with what India and China are doing. We are marking our energy grids more dependent on non-renewable energy sources, like coal/gas/nuclear. I know that we do not have the raw wind-power potential of UK or the solar-power capacity of the gulf states, but we still can do much more than what is being done.

member_23677 · Post by **member_23677** » 29 Oct 2012 00:05

Christopher Sidor wrote:Recently I came back from UK. There I had a chance to interact with a few energy companies. It was amazing what these guys are doing in face of increasing hydrocarbon input prices. It is fair to say that by the end of this decade or so, they would have driven away massive inefficiencies into their energy grids, especially with the north sea oil and gas production in a decline. Some of the British energy companies, are transforming their energy sources so that more than 30% of energy comes from renewable energy sources. Though this push to renewable's will not start showing an effect till middle of next decade, i.e. 2025 at least, it is truly transformative. If the first oil shock of 1970s was a sufficient trigger to push for energy conservation and energy efficiency then today's high prices of oil and gas are more than enough to push for another round of driving up energy efficiency.

Now compare this with what India and China are doing. We are marking our energy grids more dependent on non-renewable energy sources, like coal/gas/nuclear. I know that we do not have the raw wind-power potential of UK or the solar-power capacity of the gulf states, but we still can do much more than what is being done.

What about the recent surge in solar panels and wind turbines? Can't they be considered a move towards renewable energy?

member_23677 · Post by **member_23677** » 29 Oct 2012 00:42

Abhijeet wrote:The comments above only indicate the lowering of the level of discourse on BR in the last few years. Please posters, do some reading before posting top-of-mind nonsense. Self-righteous, seemingly patriotic statements may earn you cheap points from other posters but they are only lowering the signal to noise ratio here.

Natural resources have never been a path to sustainable wealth for any country. Silly statements from people who think the p0rn industry is the only one available to people in countries that lack natural resources just show the poster's lack of understanding of the world. Countries like Japan and Singapore which lack significant natural resources have gotten rich on the back of the factors I mentioned. Studies have repeatedly shown that strong institutions are the single most important factor in allowing countries to become rich -- these subsume things like good education (which only means strong educational institutions) and the rule of law (which means strong judicial and police institutions).

Are there challenges to European institutions? Of course -- plenty. But there is no comparison between Europe and Africa, or for that matter India, when it comes to having the foundations of a civilized society in place.

Again, a lot of words without any substance. I would just like to advice you that just because you think someone is wrong, you cannot label them as "top-of-the-mind nonsense" and "self-righteous, patriotic statements", by your logic, even your commentaries can be called "unpatriotic" and "illogical ,dhimmified arguments" which just wants to avoid the current events and wants to focus more on what used to happen 20 or 30 years ago.

Countries like Japan and Singapore which lack significant natural resources have gotten rich on the back of the factors I mentioned

But they are not Europe, moreover, they rose from poverty to richness, just like we are doing now. Japan was able to sustain it's heavy import from other countries as it exported similar or more amounts of materials (50s-80s), but we all know what the real condition in Japan is today don't we?

Non-Sustainable Resources
No industrialized country is self-sufficient in renewable natural resources, especially forest products and seafood. Some must be imported.
If the world’s forests and fisheries were well managed, forest products and seafood could be harvested sustainably in perpetuity. Unfortunately, most harvesting is destructive and non-sustainable. Most of the world’s major fisheries are declining or have already collapsed.
Hence many government agencies and nongovernmental organizations around the world are working toward sustainability. One might naively predict that Japan, a small country that is one of the most dependent on resource imports, would be the world’s leading promoter of sustainability. But the reverse is true: Japan may be the First World country most opposed to sustainable policies. Its imports of illegally sourced and unsustainably harvested forest products are much higher than those of the U.S. or European Union countries, whether calculated on a per-capita basis or as a percentage of total forest product imports.
And Japan is a world leader in opposing prudent regulation of fishing and whaling. Incredibly, in 2010, Japan saw it as a great diplomatic triumph that it blocked international protection for Atlantic/Mediterranean bluefin tuna -- even though the fish, whose stocks are declining, is especially prized and widely consumed in Japan.
Even my Japanese friends are puzzled by this stance. They suggest three explanations. First, Japanese people see themselves as living in harmony with nature, and until recently they did expertly manage their own forests -- though not the overseas forests and fisheries that they exploit. Second, national pride causes the Japanese to dislike bowing to international pressure. The country especially does not want to give in to the anti-whaling campaign of the Sea Shepherd conservation organization, even though few Japanese eat whale meat; the whaling industry operates at a big loss; and tsunami relief funds have had to be diverted to subsidize whaling escort ships.
Finally, because Japan is aware of its own limited home resources, it has for the past 140 years maintained at all costs, as the core of its national security, its right of unrestricted access to the world’s natural resources. In today’s times of declining availability, that insistence is no longer viable.
To an outside admirer of Japan like me, its opposition to sustainable resource use seems sad and self-destructive. Unrealistic quests for resources drove the country to self- destructive behavior once before, when it made war simultaneously on China, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. Defeat today is as inevitable as it was then -- this time, not by military conquest, but by exhaustion of both renewable and nonrenewable natural resources. If I were the evil dictator of another country who hated Japan and wanted to ruin it without resort to war, I would do exactly what Japan is now doing to itself: destroy the overseas resource bases on which it depends.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-2 ... worse.html

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexch ... st-decades

Europe is neither a manufacturing giant nor a giant in service industries. Their spoilt population will not work hard when push comes to shove as they have had a seemingly easy life compared to an Indian or Chinese graduates. It will be either a slow and long recession or just a complete failure of these countries.

PS: These institutions that you talk of need funding to work properly, once that goes,everything goes down the drain...

sugriva · Post by **sugriva** » 29 Oct 2012 11:13

^^^^
Dude,
What ever you're smoking seems to be very potent stuff. Europe is not a manufacturing powerhouse? Have you heard of a country called Germany? It is the second largest exporter of products in the world after China. Get real before you post trash.
Abhijeet is quite right. The SNR is pretty low nowadays on BR. It's only a matter of time before it resembles Deaf-n-Dumb Forum also. All we need is Zaid Hamid now.

Abhijeet · Post by **Abhijeet** » 29 Oct 2012 12:01

This is a meta-comment, but I'll post it here since it's relevant.

There are two factors causing the general quality level on BR to drop:

1. As BR becomes more well known, more people are joining and there is a "reversion to the mean" happening in terms of the general level of intelligence and articulation. When it was a smaller, less well known community, there were also fewer mental adolescents running wild on every thread.

2. Popular forums that have maintained quality levels have either aggressive moderation or voting powers given to the community. BR has neither. Community voting and threaded comments are a good way to maintain quality levels on a forum where the moderators cannot reasonably be expected to police things everywhere. Hacker News is a popular forum with a high quality level, and they do it through aggressive community voting and periodic soul-searching on how to maintain quality.

BR is an old-style PHPBB forum where there is no way to filter the noise (no upvotes/downvotes and no threading). I suppose ignoring posters is one way, but it places a heavy burden on the receiver of the noise, and there's no community support to suppress irrelevant comments.

There are still posters here I want to read. Unfortunately, they are increasingly being drowned out by the mob.

ldev · Post by **ldev** » 29 Oct 2012 17:41

Even for a country rich in natural resources, one needs technical skills and know how to extract them. Witness the recent TNK-BP joint venture buy out by Rosneft which will ultimately be a $56 billion transaction. The end result of the transaction will be that BP will own almost 20% of Rosneft which will now be the largest energy producer in Russia. Even Putin for all his nationalistic credentials recognizes that to prevent the kind of disastrous drop in oil output following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia will need continuing access to BP's technology to exploit its energy resources and hence allowing BP to own the stake that it will in Rosneft.

I think that says something for this resources vs education/skills argument.

Also speaking of Germany, I was recently talking to a German owner of one of their famed "small industrial companies" i.e. sales of less than 1 billion Euros producing high end machine tools. He was of the opinion that when it comes to customized high end manufacturing today, he would look at besides Germany itself, the northern part of Italy, around Milan, and when it came to high precision optical equipment, would look at Israel. He felt that that in his industry, the Chinese were totally out of their league.

pentaiah · Post by **pentaiah** » 29 Oct 2012 18:14

BR is a proud independent forum where there is no conditioning of thought is required, by policing.

Conformity and creativity are contradictory in nature.

If you want forum to have " this post removed by the author, when infact it was removed by the blogger or forum owners" there are plenty in cyber space available for hostile or friendly takeover.

BRF is a true free market where information is freely exchanged, created, traded sourced, as such we don't need any more thought conditioning and indoctrination.

One should use his her own intellect to separate chaff from substance, context form meta data, and data to form information to use it with intent to do good that is the wisdom.

If there are some jokers like me the market (of BRF) will decide to take it or leave it.

Standards are to be attained not imposed, when done its not a free forum.
The forum is in fine hands and doing fine as such.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 29 Oct 2012 19:18

For seriously good instruments, precision engineering, and fine attention to quality and detail, Germany has cornered the market. Their "mittlestand" wipes the floor with just about anyone. And yes, northern Italy is pretty good in some areas too. And don't think that France is hopeless either.

We need to be a little circumspect and not let hubris get the better of us.

pentaiah · Post by **pentaiah** » 29 Oct 2012 19:23

Agreed, one should never forget Goldsmith's essays Citizen of the world

Abhijeet · Post by **Abhijeet** » 29 Oct 2012 19:25

pentaiah, I agree at a high level. I'm certainly not advocating censorship. I'd respectfully suggest you look at some of the more popular tech-oriented Internet forums like Hacker News (http://news.ycombinator.com) or Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org). They have tools which make it more likely for high quality content to bubble up to the top, by putting tools in the hands of the community to decide what is good quality content or not. Without such tools, it's hard to wade through reams of poorly thought posts to get to a few good ones, as is increasingly happening here.

This has nothing to do with "policing" in the sense of "thought control", and everything to do with increasing the signal to noise ratio on a forum.

pentaiah · Post by **pentaiah** » 29 Oct 2012 19:35

JEM coffee is waiting in NJ , supposed to be in the neighborhood of the Brave from last I heard

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 29 Oct 2012 20:02

This is OT.

Abhijeet,

There is a way to filter the noise. The forum has such a tool.

That said I like BR particularly because all logical points of view are presented. I may not agree with some of these views but it keeps one mentally sharp to be challenged on your view points. Your arguments become clearer and more organized. I have seen this improvement in my communication in my professional life as well. I like that BR has a tendency to cut to the chase and tend to be reality based. So few forums out there are reality based. I guess it is boring. But this is the ONLY forum I visit.

member_23677 · Post by **member_23677** » 29 Oct 2012 22:49

If resorting to name-calling and bullying is called "debate" here, then I apologize for misunderstanding. I think what degrades BR more than newbies is the accumulation of old-time posters with over-inflated egos who get angry and feel insulted when someone tries to dis prove their points. After explaining why I think a certain way and providing existing patterns for the same, the most that I have got from other side are stupid statements and age-old rhetoric. Maybe a more wise discussion can take place if users keep their egos aside and prove their side of the debate,not by name calling and bullying but by proving points to prove me wrong. So far, nothing, so I guess, I am on a correct path to predict EU's slowdown and prolonged recession for the next 5-8 years.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 29 Oct 2012 23:18

Saar, anytime im in that part of the world, I shall not leave without a kaapi with the spin meister... Right now, unfortunately, couldn't be further - wandering around in the bloody heart of Africa.

SBajwa · Post by **SBajwa** » 29 Oct 2012 23:39

US expects to export Oil in near future

http://journalstar.com/ap/otherstate/ne ... f86d4.html

New technology (fracking, etc) is dropping the gas prices.

pentaiah · Post by **pentaiah** » 29 Oct 2012 23:46

Bhagat ji

Not to worry

Inflated egos and deflated knowledge go hand in hand.

You expose your(ideas)self with out any inhibitors that's all matters

member_23677 · Post by **member_23677** » 29 Oct 2012 23:54

pentaiah wrote:Bhagat ji

Not to worry

Inflated egos and deflated knowledge go hand in hand.

You expose your(ideas)self with out any inhibitors that's all matters

It doesn't really matter pentiahji, I have kept my views in the open and will happily take them back if proven wrong. So far, I have not recieved anything of value from my opposers. Atleast these discussions provide some insight unlike the "need for MBT in today's army" discussion going on in armour thread that is discussed almost every 2 weeks and goes on for a similar amount of time

.... apparently that doesn't degrade the quality of BR

Christopher Sidor · Post by **Christopher Sidor** » 30 Oct 2012 01:17

P.Bhagat wrote:
Christopher Sidor wrote:Recently I came back from UK. There I had a chance to interact with a few energy companies. It was amazing what these guys are doing in face of increasing hydrocarbon input prices. It is fair to say that by the end of this decade or so, they would have driven away massive inefficiencies into their energy grids, especially with the north sea oil and gas production in a decline. Some of the British energy companies, are transforming their energy sources so that more than 30% of energy comes from renewable energy sources. Though this push to renewable's will not start showing an effect till middle of next decade, i.e. 2025 at least, it is truly transformative. If the first oil shock of 1970s was a sufficient trigger to push for energy conservation and energy efficiency then today's high prices of oil and gas are more than enough to push for another round of driving up energy efficiency.

Now compare this with what India and China are doing. We are marking our energy grids more dependent on non-renewable energy sources, like coal/gas/nuclear. I know that we do not have the raw wind-power potential of UK or the solar-power capacity of the gulf states, but we still can do much more than what is being done.
What about the recent surge in solar panels and wind turbines? Can't they be considered a move towards renewable energy?

These would add up some 20% generation capacity in terms of current capacity. That is insane. We have one of the worlds largest coal reserves and one of the largest reserves of Thorium on this planet. That is true. But energy security is not made by replacing one predominant energy source (i.e. hydrocarbon based energy) by another (i.e. coal and/or nuclear). Let us not forget, Avatar may be a piece of fiction for many, but for many Indians it is a savage reality. We need to think radical.

I had visited Scotland's northern most island, Shetland. There I stayed in a guest house cum service apartment, consisting of 8 self-serviced apartments. This guest house produced practically all of its energy from a single wind turbine within its premise. In fact the owner of the guest house was so proud that he showed us around the premise and pointed out that in our 4 days of our stay he did not require even once to switch to grid electricity. And we had gone over the weekend, when the rush and load was maximum. This was not the exception, but was turning out to be more and more common.

We are still thinking of bringing electricity grids to our villages but we are not thinking of making our villages self sufficient in electricity generation. We are not focusing on energy conservation and worst of all we are not paying attention to energy efficiency. Right now everything is about shortfall in electricity generation and nothing about the so called transmission & distribution losses. We missed such a good chance, the 2008-10 economic crisis, to usher in changes which would have made a meaningful impact on the lives of the majority of Indians. Like I said we are not thinking radical enough.

Pratyush · Post by **Pratyush** » 30 Oct 2012 11:01

Christopher Sidor wrote:
SNIP.............

We are still thinking of bringing electricity grids to our villages but we are not thinking of making our villages self sufficient in electricity generation. We are not focusing on energy conservation and worst of all we are not paying attention to energy efficiency. Right now everything is about shortfall in electricity generation and nothing about the so called transmission & distribution losses. We missed such a good chance, the 2008-10 economic crisis, to usher in changes which would have made a meaningful impact on the lives of the majority of Indians. Like I said we are not thinking radical enough.

This will be highly OT.........

It is some thing that bothers me as well. Particularly when I look at the Indian rural population. Along with the raw numbers domesticated cattle. While Indian villages are open to the Idea of using cow-dung cakes for energy. They are not yet graduated to the Idea of using community level bio gas plants. The output of which can be used to generate electricity or provide clean fuel to the rural kitchens. Thereby removing the logistical need to move LPG cylinders from cities to villages.

When such plants are used in conjunction with solar farms mounted on roof tops of rural homes. We get into a situation where, we can provide sustainable energy to our villages.