Under George Bush, the SEC reduced the enforcement of regulations designed to make sure that publicly traded companies reveal their true financial condition and the strength of their assets to protect investors. When the government acts so cravenly, bad things are bound to happen and they did.

Under George Bush, the SEC reduced the enforcement of regulations designed to make sure that publicly traded companies reveal their true financial condition and the strength of their assets to protect investors. When the government acts so cravenly, bad things are bound to happen and they did.

When the government acts so cravenly, bad things are bound to happen and they did.

Your point is...?

When the American government saw that there was a problem, they took steps to fix things through their democratic system.

Pure, saintly socialist Iceland lived high on a "decade-long, debt-fueled binge by the country's banks, businesses and some private citizens". When everything went south, they whined, cried and begged the IMF to save them.

I guess the point is, socialist governments are just as dumb and greedy as everyone else. But when they get in trouble, they expect someone else to bail them out.

What about the craven actions of government, where institutions are forced to lend to people who cannot pay their debt, our of social consciousness?

That is the basis of companies "assets" being worthless.
They weren't worthless in the beginning, they became worthless after the borrowers' rates went up, and defaulted.

When regulations make everything from health care to home ownership a right, the free market no longer exists.

Crash. And no amount of bail out will help, until the inevitable adjustment takes place. It's going to hurt either way, but it will be much worse the more government intervenes.

hi,

i only pressed yes on that question to wind idiots like you up.

one other point love.
i cant believe you have the brazen cheek not only to spell my language wrong but to insult one of your shitpits greatest intellectuals with the term backward logic. perhaps you had best sort out your brainwashed spoon fed media drivel mouth before you utter such idiotic statements. seriously, if you displayed a millionth of the integrity, intelligence and sheer god dayum encyclopaedic knowledge of this man in your writings i could afford you a slight leeway, but listen to your ideological warfare chat. feminised feminists ? wtf is that ? socialism as a dirty word, socialism=communism -'progressives' you read like a manual of american brainwashing. go read understanding power by chomsky. might open your eyes a bit. wait a minute, wasnt it you american cunts that caused all this economic bullshit with your warmongering anyway? pretty rich of you to cause a country to be in trouble and then stand by and make fun of it like that.

no youre not right, and yes you are thick as pigshit. but youre probably american so everythings normal.

kris - a lot of Brits lost their life savings to Iceland's socialist/grifter scam. Given the brilliance you display here, I have to guess that you're one of them. So no, I can't blame you for your outpouring of emotion and the dingleberries of Chomskybot wisdom you've left on this site.

Your vengeful Master plan was to hit "yes" on the "Was Karl Marx Right" poll? Honestly, I can't compete with such intellectual wizardry.

hi mary you stupid american cum slut. nothing vengeful about winding up POS americans like you. again you lack the intelligence to understand a simple sentence but ill spell it out for you. winding someone up in england means to watch someone get all heated up about something you couldnt give a toss about. i think theres an element of pleasure implied n all. vengeance means harm or damage done to someone in retaliation for some other perceived harm. seeing as i hadnt read your awful bullshit before pressing the button that would not make it vengeance i believe. anyway enough of your problems with the OUR language. didnt webster study at oxford by the way ? seems like he forgot spelling on the boat.

would love to know what stupid people like you look like. post a picture ?! im doing a study on stupid cunts at the moment and i just cant help the wonder i feel when i engage them. they should be put in a lab or something.... and poked. is torture (thats enhanced interrogation in your doublethink language) too good for them?

honestly if one of your imaginary terrorists came along and nuked america tomorrow i would be dancing in the street. would love to hear you explain to chomsky how his logic is backward, or to anyone for that matter. in the words of the immortal bill hicks 'kill yourself'

Here's what concerns me. Biden's latest comments amount to a call to arms for something not unlike a new kind of brownshirts, and given the sort of manners and personalities one finds on the left, apparently in all countries, Obama will have mass intimidation on demand available to him. All he'll have to do is ask.

stupid yank cunt. the puppet on the left or the puppet on the right, cant you see? you are coming dangerously close to invoking godwins law there. i give it another two posts before anyone who doesnt like you or your views is a ****. (the n word. no not nigger)

yeah obama is preparing hoards of robot killers now im sure... by change and hope he means he will start killing his own people with a private army. yeah that makes complete sense. please lord let them kill you. please ?

you guys are SOoooooooo Stupid. gee wizz.
get a gun and kill yourselves. please?

given the sort of manners and personalities one finds on the left, apparently in all countries, Obama will have mass intimidation on demand available to him.

The British and Euro Left are the most gullible people you're ever likely to meet. For instance, Noam Chomsky has made himself rich selling books to children (and to the childlike) that are nothing but reconstituted communism, spiced up a little with bogus concepts like 'anarchism.' If people are willing to buy that tripe, they'll fall for any scam.

That's the only way the left can be dangerous - their gullibility. They believe that their government is looking out for their best interests when Labour lets crime run wild, when they lose billions in various banking scams, when the Russians take over BP..

And when all these scams go wrong, they blame the Americans. They don't understand why Britain is failing, so they're unable to stop that failure from happening. Blaming the Americans isn't producing anything of value, but they keep doing it anyway. The concept of pragmatism never made it back to England.

You'll note that in his long-potty mouthed rant, Kris hasn't indicated that he understands anything about Iceland, their socialist system, or their banking procedures. Chomsky/Marx's followers all share the inability to learn new ideas, or to learn from experience. That's why that branch of the Left is so gullible, and it's why (aside from their childlike rage and foul-mouthed rants) they're essentially harmless.

kris - given your support of Chomsky and the kind of language and arguments you're misusing here, I have to assume that you're too young to be commenting on this site.

kris - sorry, I wasn't being clear. I don't know your actual age, but your mental age is obvious. If we don't want this site to become a LOLcats hangout, we have to maintain certain standards.

Therefore, any further comment you make will be deleted. Please don't waste your time and mine.

kris is another example why the UK is finished.

brit twits like kris and his United Queendom are as consequential as a snapping, barking Chihuahua.

I do hope kris enjoys being a third class dhimmi to his muzlim masters.

Sod off kris, you toothless wanking Ahole.

just want to be clear on this. What Biden said was that Obama will be tested, that his administration would have to do things that most people will probably not agree with, and that he wants his supporters to support them anyway, and not only that but to also advocate for them and help generate support for them.

What it amounts to, Kris, is a request for people to suspend their own judgment, defer to Obama's judgment, and then blindly follow and advocate (where advocate coded language for agitate) for Obama.

So who's the fascist?

Minus the actual call to violence, and with people like you it doesn't seem much encouragement would be required, can you tell me how this differs from the dreaded n-word tactical mo?

Try to imagine if Bush, who gets compared to a N*** every day, had made such a statement. How would you have reacted? And yet he never said anything even remotely this dangerous or incendiary.

Mary,

gullible youth can be dangerous. today's gullible youth are utterly narcissistic, unaware of history, and capable of mass organized action. The only thing they need is a charismatic leader to give them direction, tell them who their enemies are, and set them loose. They're incredibly dangerous, nothing like the mild mannered and well meaning chompsky groupies of my youth.

And Obama understands them very well. The 'we are the change we've been waiting for' rhetoric, for example, is aimed directly at them and at cultivating a cultish mash movement among them. If he's allowed to pursue his ideas with regard to americorps, he'll have the tools to radicalize them without their parent's interference.

Think .. Kris, but with sanction of a powerful government and a mass movement. Do you really think the result will be harmless?

Under George Bush, the SEC reduced the enforcement of regulations designed to make sure that publicly traded companies reveal their true financial condition

and what's the excuse for Congress covering Fannie and Freddie's misdemeanors?

Mary,
Kris is an example of what is British today: ignorant, unintelligent and loutish.

Eddie - I had to put kris in 'time out' because his comments were abusive and content-free.

However, some of Chomsky's greatest and most accurate critics are from the sane branch of Britain's left. Oliver Kamm, Marko Attila Hoare of Cambridge University and the writers at Harry's place have some excellent posts/articles about Chomsky's revisionism.

Mary, you put kris back on his worn out naughty chair?

Good for you.

Think .. Kris, but with sanction of a powerful government and a mass movement. Do you really think the result will be harmless?

We see the result of that kind of thing in Europe and in Britain. Euro-socialism provides a decent standard of living, but only when their defense was provided by the American military and their dirty work was done by 'guest workers.' During the cold war, this system worked pretty well, but it's kind of falling apart now.

European and British leftists are completely different from most of their American counterparts. The most extreme American leftists would be 'moderate' over there.

Without a tradition of pragmatism or individualism, Europeans believe that the state has to solve everyone's problems. People are more likely to be politically active there. Most of the American twentysomethings who campaign for Obama are doing so to meet other twentysomethings. Most left-wing anti war rallies are filled with sixty year olds, reliving their youth. Real youth just doesn't care.

We and the Europeans both benefited for years from the enormous productivity gap between the west and the rest of the world. That's over. I think what we'll see now, especially in light of the collapse of the banking system, will be a new great ideological battle to determine the fundamental strategy for the west in this new age.

I think the spoiled brat Clinton style democrats, or Blair laborites, won't be a factor in this debate. They're viewed on the left as sellouts.

As I imagine it, some of the elements of the debate will be about currency, sovereignty and progressivism as such. So on the right, we'll argue for national sovereignty, national currency, and we'll resist the idea that change is an a priori good. On the left, they'll argue for internationalism, localism in terms of currency, and for a kind of humanist entelechy in which the future itself stands as a motivating force driving human progress. We already see many religious overtones in this campaign that will segue naturally into the kind of philosophy I'm describing.

It's fairly easy to imagine the sorts of things Obama can do, as president, to create the conditions for success for his side of this debate. I'm afraid the future democratic party or democratic movement I see is far more radicalized and mobilized than the one you see. I wish I could agree with the more benign view that you have, but I think we're about to have an activist president who won't let it go down that way.

I could agree with the more benign view that you have, but I think we're about to have an activist president who won't let it go down that way.

When I listen to Obama talk, I hear a bureaucrat and a wonk, spouting the Democrat party line. I just don't hear activism.

Although it is right to question his relationship with a terrorist like Bill Ayers, and to question Ayers' influence over early childhood education, it's also interesting to note that Obama wants to increase funding to Bush's 'no child left behind' program.

Ayers and his Weathermen/SDS buddies in academia do not support 'no child left behind', nor would they want to see the program funded. Their goal is to radicalize students, not teach them.

If Obama is elected, the Republicans would be wise to concentrate their efforts on destroying people like Ayers and his radical influential friends in academia. They're the ones who are genuinely dangerous.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. the niggy nog won! woooooooooooooooooo! stuff it to ya repugs !!!
you are the only danger i see here....

kill yourself!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

It is frightening reading the comments on this blog. Pseudo-intellectual nonsense and uninformed tripe.

For example - Mary said 'Chomsky/Marx's followers all share the inability to learn new ideas, or to learn from experience. That's why that branch of the Left is so gullible, and it's why (aside from their childlike rage and foul-mouthed rants) they're essentially harmless.'

If Mary knew the first thing about Marxism then she would understand the concept of Historical Materialism, which is essentially 'learning from the past'

You can't blame the financial crisis purely on the free-market and turn this in to a socialism/capitalism argument. You also can't start a Britain Vs USA thing over it. The uninformed views about Britain on this blog are also ridiculous.

The fact remains that the economic crisis happened, and it really came down to poor management of borrowing.

Yes, the free-market is to blame - but if these markets were better regulated everything would be fine.

Oh, and Marx was right. Just look at Cuba - whilst I agree, Cuba is not without problems. Most of those problems are caused by the USA and their trade blockades. For a country in relative poverty (when compared with Britain and the US) they have an incredibly low infant mortality rate, high life expectancy and possibly the best health and education system in the world.

Oh, and Marx was right. Just look at Cuba...

The US may have a trade blockade, but most other nations allow trade with Cuba and travels there. So why isn't Cuba a successful nation? Because it's communist, and communist economies always fail.

Marxists fail to understand what history teaches them - the 100 million people who died as a result of communist authoritarian brutality and failed communist economies are proof that communism doesn't work in theory or practice.

Yes, Cuhas "health system" is so good, Fidel left Cuba for health care in France. Why don't Frenchmen go to Cuba for healthcare?

The health care for real Cubans, not the elite, not the version filmed by dumb Che T-shirt wearing sycophants, is flies, patient beds without mattresses.

Cynic,
it is a little harsh to accuse all of us of being "ignorant, unintelligent and loutish". I fancy that the Majority of any otherwise civilised country leaves a lot to be desired.

Although admittedly we are all communists here. Well, except me.

I almost put my money into an Icelandic bank. Rather pleased I didn't now. :)