sad. sucks. no money for space, no money for health of the people. Only money for banks and defense. Now they got a banker running for president.

Yossarian i couldn't agree more.

Very british ceremony, and probably very much FOR the british people. I don't doubt that many of the reasons i enjoyed it will not be relevant to others. To take the stadium from fields of green to industrial towers was great, especially showing all of the people who were there (willing or not) to help the transition - boats arriving from the west indies and such, the suffragettes. To see the growth of britain and eventually the forging of the rings. I think the ring forging was one of the coolest things i've seen.

It was different, and at times anti-political, anti british. Because being anti british is a british trait. Thank you boyle for showing what pride in our country looks like. The NHS and great ormond street, these are things to be proud of. Our humour, our invention, our quirkyness, our gifts to the arts. If only this would inspire more pride in our health sector. We used to lead the world with our NHS till the tories got their hands on it, maybe we can once again if we take PRIDE in its quality; show the world what a free health system can be. Come on, britain. Where's all the pride gone?

Even though i wasn't such a fan of the singing and dancing and texting, i understand why it was there (a tribute to what we've given the world in the technology and arts departments) and i think choosing Danny Boyle was a masterstroke. I haven't seen anything like it in my life before, and thank god it was finally something to come out of britain to be proud of. At least the british public knows how to represent britain on the world stage. If you want to know how great "great britain" really is, watch our HUMBLE ceremony.

We could lead the world again by showing them what humility, cooperation and pride can do; no more money in politics, no corrupt bankers. Civilised society and fair play were once our specialities.

Btw interrupting a tribute to one of the major bombings of the "anti terrism era" led by bush no less is if you ask me outright insulting to the memory of the dead. To cut to a worthless talking head like ryan seacrest as well? I'm sorry that britain couldn't hold people's attention for longer than 3 minutes whilst we mourn the loss of our loved ones. I hope the silence for the wars didn't bore anyone either. We all payed dearly to defend this island, this link to the theatre of war that eventually inspired the world to fight with us against wrongdoing and against the odds; the least we might expect from the rest of the world is their attention span for a bit.

It was deemed good enough that china commissioned a stage version to be shown in beijing. I bet seacrest won't be getting a call up. Anyone who didn't like it - switch over to Big Brother, Celebrity Love Island, X's Got Talent, Geordie/Jersey Shore or E! now. I'm sure you'll be mesmerised. You might even find ryan seacrest presenting one of them!!

When I first heard this, I cringed. It sounds like he's sort of improvising and the line they pulled out was indelicately delivered. However, anyone who actually thinks that their success is completely independent of the rest of us is a classic ingrate. One person's success depends on interaction with others. If you have a product, you need people to buy it. That means you need people to have access to money and to the product, which means you need banks and bankers, roads and truckers, rails and train operators, boats and boat crews. In order to convince people to buy it, you need advertising space - billboards, newspapers, websites, television programs and all of them are staffed by still more people. Without security, your success is meaningless, so that's police and firefighters, the entire judicial branch of government. A lot of this infrastructure is subsidized by the public.

No one does it alone. You have to be a special kind of disconnected to convince yourself that's not true. If we govern with the attitude that successful people should not be expected to give back, it will cripple those who are emerging successes. We need to create an environment where people can buy things, and super rich people can afford to pitch in to keep that happening even if they refuse to see that they're included in the list of people who benefit.

holyshitrant

I agree with everything he says, but blaming (a non-existant) economic freedom for abuses in the banking sector is like blaming freedom of religion for islamic fundamentalists.

The "unregulated free market" is the usual scapegoat, when it's neither unregulated nor a free market. The banking industry is poorly but still highly regulated, which is why banking crooks so easily abuse their monopolies because regulation is what keeps competition out, and they use their political connections with said regulators to get away with their fraud. The excessive regulation is what denies us any alternative to crooked bankers and manipulated currencies.

The government shouldn't be involved in banking at all, let people regulate banks.

A wall st banker?

well after the US bankers left the banks the US government hired them...

>> ^Xaielao:
Sounds awfully familiar and similar to what happened here in the US. But then I realize.. these are virtually the 'people' who did the same thing a few years ago here. Maybe the EU leaders will have the balls to teach some of them a lesson instead of bowing and prostrating like our leaders did.


What happened back in 2008 happened pretty much throughout the world, it wasn't confined to the US. EU banks were bailed out by the bucketload!

What's happened this time round is that Barclays Bank has been caught up in 3 major scandals all in relatively quick succession, and politicians are finally having to make noises and pretend that they're doing something about it. We'll see if it's more than just noise in the coming months, but somehow I doubt we're going to see any heavy-handed approach from the UK's current ConDem political alliance.

Edit: Tony Robinson isn't a politician, he's just an intelligent guy who's able to say what he really feels, unlike politicians who can't say anything without pissing off someone!

>> ^renatojj:

Bankers were given powers they shouldn't have and they abused them. They were given money they shouldn't have access to and they squandered it and rewarded themselves. Central banks were established with monopolistic power over the monetary system, and they're destroying the money supply and enabling massive debts with impossibly low interest rates.
When are we going to blame the bastards who gave them these powers in the first place?
Corporations = capitalism/evil
Government = the tool liberals need to accomplish socialism
It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to find the real culprit, but liberals will go as far as blaming corporations and not look an inch further, because that would mean blaming government... no, that's not allowed.


that's a weird new username you got there, qm.

Jello Biafra once said that politicians should all wear clown suits.
Bankers should all have to wear one of those latex masks with a dildo instead of a mouth-hole~

@ReverendTed bankers work in an industry like any other, there's nothing characteristically evil about their job or their role in society. If government, however, gave [insert random group here] the same powers it hands over to bankers these days, the corruption and damage to society would likely happen on the same scale.

TL;DR: Doesn't matter if you put Mother Teresa as chairman of the Fed.

Btw, I know you're not trying to make any sense of what I'm saying, you're just being a dick. Kudos for being so spectacular at it.

I believe he is talking about international bankers. He probably didn't know it at the time though.

>> ^renatojj:

@vaire2ube tell you what, hand over the overwhelming power government gave to bankers to someone else, say farmers, workers, teachers, nuns, it doesn't matter, it will be abused eventually and social injustice will happen in a large scale. Will you be hating on nuns too for screwing up the country's finances?
Bravo, sir. I don't think I've seen a trainwreck that went off the rails as spectacularly as this little bit of (il)logical gymnastics.

@vaire2ube tell you what, hand over the overwhelming power government gave to bankers to someone else, say farmers, workers, teachers, nuns, it doesn't matter, it will be abused eventually and social injustice will happen in a large scale. Will you be hating on nuns too for screwing up the country's finances?

You don't resent corporations or the power they earned. Like you said, they're not inherently evil. You resent the power corporations don't deserve that they can only get from government.

Why are bankers greedy? Because greed and fear of loss balance each other out, it's like that for every human being. Bankers don't fear loss because they know they can always get bailed out, so their greed goes rampant.

If a government agency gave you a "license to kill" with no repercussions whatsoever, pretty soon you'd be offing people left and right like a sociopath too (mostly bankers and CEOs, right? ).

Regulations are crafted by big corporations that lobby government. So why would you resort to the problem to supply the solution?

I agree that government is the solution, the solution being "protect our freedoms". Because the minute they do things like give a central bank monopoly over the money supply, that's taking away our freedoms and handing it over in the form of unjust power to some institution.

BTW, I'm sure GlaxoSmithKline isn't going for the "badass" reputation of killing people. Three billion seems like a pretty steep fine, no matter how much money they're making.

bankers are supremely human ... fearful of not having enough, but knowledgeable about what really happens in the world of finance to know they MUST get theirs. Survival.

Knowing now how manipulative they were with math and insider knowledge, doesnt help... since almost no one getting "screwed" has the math skills to comprehend, let alone change, their non-insider position in life at this point. A little nepotism, naivety, ignorance, and greed obviously have gone a looooong way to produce this end.

GlaxoSmithKline pharma was just fined 3 BILLION dollars... but dont worry, they only probably killed people. Its just a misdemeanor, and since Corporations are People, there is no one to put in jail. Win Win.

Great work, Big Money Interests. Thanks for your help in politics.

Government is the SOLUTION here, not the problem. Letting corporations have less regulation is NOT the way to go. Corporations are not inherently evil, they are sociopaths with profit being the only goal, true, but they can be controlled with a firm hand and transparency... because PEOPLE will do whatever it takes to survive.