Article about our current world wide financial crisis.

It is titled "A Structural Change in the Global Debt Based Financial and Economic System"

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=11107

I see a lot of people speeding through work zones in and around the city, aren't they concerned about the cost of a ticket?
I assume that these drivers would not intentionally harm anyone, but by speeding past people who are working on the road, they are putting lives at risk.
HEY! let's all go home healthy today eh?
metalman.

For some reason the sunshine seems to bring out the Mr. Wheeler syndrome in everyone, whether its work zones, school zones, or just residential areas.

I read the article, Charles. No solutions to anything there, IMHO. Same old, same old.

The world would be in a far worse financial mess if it ever reverted to the so-called "gold standard".

Why don't any of these financial analysts ever ask the very simple question "why" EVERY industrialised country has to import some other country's 'money' to live?

Could China, for instance, which now makes so many things formerly made in the USA and here, ever sustain its economy solely on sales of the things it sells to us by selling the same, or more, (likely, because there are way more Chinese than North Americans)to its own citizens?

Why not? They don't have enough 'money', you say? Then how, in the name of sane reasoning, are they going to sell their goods over here when the only current source of 'our' money is OUR 'employment' and their importation is 'unemploying' us?

Why did the British Empire of the late 19th and early 20th Century, and the USA of that same era, and later, two political entities that were entirely economically "self-sufficient" in virtually ALL the 'physical' resources needed by their peoples, have to both resort to finding further "external" markets for their manufactures?

Why couldn't they just 'live', and live increasingly well, on what they had? There was more than enough resources, manufacturing plant, and people, etc., under both jurisdictions to 'physically' MORE than do that. Just as there is in large measure in Canada alone today.

Why did Commodore Perry of the USA have to 'open' feudal Japan to American 'trade' in the mid-1800's? Didn't the expansion of America internally in that era provide enough 'market' for American manufactures?

Surely it should be apparent to them that if this is so, and it is so, then the whole financial system is not self-liquidating in ANY national economy. And if this is so, neither can it be in the overall world economy.

In other words, financial "debt" incurred as COSTS in the course of Production can NEVER, in its totality, be liquidated at present through PRICE on final Consumption. And that EACH overall production/consumption cycle in the economy brings an exponential 'growth' in that "debt". Or what's been 'made', in its totality, can't be all 'sold' for the costs of its making.

And that's true whether your money is 'backed' by, or made out of, 'gold' or anything else. That's the PROBLEM that demands our attention. Not re-visiting failed policies of the past, like reverting to 'gold' as the basis of 'money'.

Saw a woman getting wrote up just outside of Fraser Lake the other day.
She did not look impressed and it looked like the cop was really reading her the riot act!
There was plenty of warning signs so she had no one to blame but herself!
There goes several new pairs of shoes!
;-(

Metalman: "I see a lot of people speeding through work zones in and around the city, aren't they concerned about the cost of a ticket?"

Good point! But I also see work zones which have insufficient signage! After, for instance, posting a sign which says 50km/h there should be a sign that states for how many kilometers the work zone extends! Then there should be a sign which terminates the work zone limit.

I totally ignore tailgaters and will NOT speed up unless there is a sign which says *End of Project - Resume Speed* or something to that effect.

If there isn't one, I will assume that it is still 50km/h. If they forgot to put up proper signs...tough luck.

300 dollars is a lot of money and the safety of the workers is priceless!

How about all of the workzone signage they put up and then there is noone working. They've all gone home for the day.

Yes, I agree $.03... some of the flag people do pick up their signs when the work is finished for the day... but others do not.

I also notice some considerable incompetence with flag people who are too busy talking on the phone to pay attention to the traffic flow... and they are not talking to the guy at the other end of the zone... I've been close enough to listen to the "great plans for the weekend".

The one I liked especially much was the accident scene being controlled by two hi-viz morons who had traffic backed up for two miles each way while they covorted with each other, slapping themselves and each other with their stop/go paddles... I could only imagine how entertaining that was for the non-resident traffic !!

V.

from the Canadian Press...

OTTAWA - Car makers and dealers are urging the federal government to spend $350 million to get people to scrap old clunkers and buy new vehicles.

They say the government should offer people $3,500 when they trade in a car that's at least 10 years old and buy a new one. It's an expansion of the existing retire-your-ride program, which pays $300 for each scrapped car.

...Let me see if I have this correct. They are suggesting the tax payer (the Gov't) pay $3500 so that people can buy a new car, in turn putting the buyer into debt as even a bare bones Hyundai will cast $12,000.

Didn't unnecessary debt loads get us into this fiscal mess in the first place?

I'm quite sure a properly tuned and cared for older car with a modern exhaust system would work just fine in reducing emissions.

With the scrap-it program, the vehicle also needs to have been insured for the last year. So that old clunker sitting in the back forty does not qualify.

Also, the old four cylinder vehicle I own get about 10/100 km. So I am asking how much of a difference that would really make?
After over 100 years of developing the internal combustion engine, why has the power and efficiencies not improved significantly since the 1950's. Our vehicles are only modestly more powerful per displacement and fuel economy is about the same. Why?

I am thinking that with the auto industry so tied to the oil industry, that it would not be in the auto makers interest to openly and vigorously pursue extreme efficiencies as the oil industry would reduce their support.

My car makes over 300hp out of about 3.5 litres, weighs over 4000lbs & gets 30mpg+ on the highway. I'd call that an improvement.

socredible

You make some good points but the bottom line is they build something that costs $50 CDN. Any working Canadian and many unemployed Canadians can still afford $50 if they make it a priority. This is just a stat out of my rear end but I bet that the average Chinese worker makes $50 a week (on a good week). Not much chance of them buying the product.

Open borders do increase the standard of living for most people over long periods of time. We are just dealing with a time in North America where unskilled labor has overpriced itself, partially due to union greed and partially due to Canada's high standard of living.

This is especially true in the smaller manufacturing centers where a man with a $65k union job and his wife making $35k could afford a house, a couple cars and maybe a camper and a boat. This isnt happening in major centers. In Van a husband making $90 and a wife making $50 have huge morgage payments and share one car while the other takes transit. They have a $500k morgage but they dont have the 2000 square feet we are all used to up here. They survive with less and they expect less. The harsh reality for the people of the northern interior is that our model is completely unsustainable.

The 65+ crowd up here enjoyed good times where there was surplus income. Those less than 20 never knew easy income and lots of jobs so they will adapt. Its the 40 year old with no skills and 2 kids and a morgage and a couple car payments and a boat payment and a snowmobile payment that are SCREWED.

The days of getting some union job that will support a good lifestyle for the rest of your life are gone. And they arent coming back. I am jealous of those that did well in the good times, I feel for the kids that are going to have it tough, and I feel really bad for those caught in the middle, with families and lifestyles and no way to support either.

marginal improvement.

What I am suggesting is that same vehicle should be making over 300 hp out of 1.75 litres @ 60 mpg.

Right now that would be called a fantasy.
I just think that with over 100 years of development, that is where we should be.
Instead we are slaves to petro companies.

The off shore manufacturers are approaching those specs by intensive R&D and cooperation with after market developers.
Our NA automakers are sticking to the fuel hogs with very little progress except when they need to compete with the offshore manufacturers. It's very hard to win anything when you are always playing catch up. It's no wonder that two out of three are in fiscal dire straights.

I agree Loki. 110 years ago we were on horses and now trips to space are routine but the internal combustion engine has not really changed? Still the same basic principle!?

The consipiracy theorists say the oil companies have bought up the patents on motors that would have really changed things. For the most part I think conspiracy theorists are nuts, but this one time I think they must have something! How else can you explain it?

All conspiracy theorists are nuts, until they are proven correct, then they are intelligent observers. Anyone that does not follow the generally accepted doctrine (propaganda) is considered to be a conspiracy theorists.

Google Alex Jones for a prime example. When you first see and listen to him, he is a total nut job. Then he is able to present some basic public knowledge background facts and link it all together in an astonishing conclusion.

See also zeitgeist.

As to the "myth" of superior patents being acquired and then buried. It is fact and t is not just Petro companies engaged in the practice. Supposedly GM acquired the right to the Ballard power cell just as they were making huge progress, and now we have not heard much from Ballard. The is also the guy the showed how to use plain old H2O for a metal cutting torch and also an internal combustion engine with H2O as a fuel source.
In Australia and I thing Sweden, some guys independently developed a compressed air driven vehicle.

Then we have the company in Victoria that are building and selling completely electric trucks. Yet they are not allowed to sell them in Canada due to stringent safety requirements that shut them out of the market and road regulations that prohibit non-human powered vehicles that cannot exceed 50 KM/h from being licensed for the road.

I hope that at least a few of the contributors to opinion250 do some solid research and publicize some real good facts about these and other alternatives to petroleum driven vehicles.

Can someone tell me why they are painting road lines when they plan on paving? Seems like a waste to me.

Compressed air driven vehicle, eh? Does one carry a bicycle pump to filler up if ya run out of air? As an aside, I don't like my Stanley Cup wandering around the land of the Great Satan. Hockey team owners and their greed let it go down there. And most likely stay there. Grrrrrr.

Born in BC, I think that your post about the differences in standard of living and whatnot between places like PG and Vancouver is very accurate.

Another possible challenge for resource based communities in B.C. The following is from an article in today's Vancouver Sun. The article is titled "Catalyst Paper petitions court for relief over "unreasonable" property taxes"

The often-bitten hand that feeds four of B.C.'s resource-dependent coastal communities is swatting back at those who've been chewing it up. And the consequences could be dire.

Catalyst Paper — by far the most important employer and the biggest civic taxpayer in the mill towns of Campbell River, North Cowichan, Port Alberni and Powell River — is petitioning B.C. Supreme Court for relief from what it says are 'unreasonable' property tax rates.

Whether Catalyst wins or loses, the four communities aren't likely to see several million dollars in claimed revenue any time soon, and maybe not ever. Not only does this case have the potential to be strung out by years of appeals, but Catalyst also has announced it's planning, in effect, civil disobedience — refusing to pay almost 75 per cent of the $22.4 million in 2009 taxes claimed by the four towns.

"They don't have to hit us over the head for us to know their taxes are too high," said Mayor Ken McRae of Port Alberni in a phone interview as he took a break from a Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Whistler that all four mayors are attending. "We know they're in survival mode.

"But so are we."

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Catalyst+Paper+petitions+court+relief+over+unreasonable+property+taxes/1667822/story.html

Interesting story charles. Perhaps Catalyst should shut down their mills, move to a barren location in the middle of nowhere, secure their own water and power sources, pay for their own fire protection and build and pave their own roads to get to their operations. Until then, maybe they should suck it up and pay what they owe the city like every other taxpayer in that area would be expected to do.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if they don't pay. Could the city seize the assets and sell them off?

Born in BC,

So to live "sustainably" we're going to have to crowd more and more people into ever smaller dwellings, in ever larger cities, pack 'em in like sardines, and deny them most of the things our parents and grandparents took for granted?

Like affordable, plentiful 'water', and good 'food', and decent quality housing that outlasts the mortgage before having to be rebuilt, and cotton underwear that isn't thinner than the paper thin it currently is, and having a car we actually "own", etc., etc.?

Or we won't be able to "live sustainably" and be "globally competitive"? "Competitive" for WHAT? To see who reaches rock bottom first trying to capture some other country's 'credit'? 'Credit' for WHAT? And just what's wrong with OUR OWN 'CREDIT'?

Well, "Let me tell you...", as the Premier of Vancouver might say, using his now toned-down favourite sentence opener. There's a "flaw" in the way cost accountancy works when it's applied macro-economically. The "figures" don't accurately REFLECT the "facts". Debt grows exponentially, and servicing it becomes ever harder.

We have a choice as to how that could be corrected. We can set about to make necessary "adjustments" to those "figures", same as any business would do 'micro-economically'.

Like when they have 'stale' inventory at a cost that'll never be realized in price, for instance. It's 'written down' on their books to "reflect" what it might actually be worth. Which is the only sane thing to do if you want accurate accounts that reflect reality.

Or we can contine with the current insanity, and try to change the "facts" to fit the "figures". Which, and remember, you heard it here first, WILL NEVER WORK.

Now maybe I'm mistaken, but I always thought the whole idea of "free enterprise" was to bring EVERYONE ahead.

Not take a page out of the handbook of "socialism", and knock those who've just managed to get a leg up on the old prosperity ladder back down to the bottom rung again.

For where really is the difference between the guy on the 'left' who'd dispossess somebody like Jimmy Pattison of most of what he's managed to acquire, and the one on the 'right' whose out to make all those Unionized workers he just knows are so grossly overpaid sweat it out for what used to be called "Chinaman's wages" back before we all became so 'politically correct'?


We "live sustainably" now through the advancements of science. And we have for generation after generation. What is so vital to our very existence that we're actually ever short of? Physically, nothing. Or we'd all have died off long ago. But if the "figures" don't accurately REFLECT the "facts"? Well, that my friend, is a whole different story.

So i take it anyone who disagrees with your whole internal combustion engine conspiracy theory will be branded as 'non solid' or 'unsolid'? I agree with eats leaves on this one. To sugeest that the internal combustion engine has not come a long way is rediculous, period.
As for all the big auto company conspiracy cabbage, well i have to take my hat off to them if it is actually true. They have managed to keep the lid firmly on an international scale, across so many nations. What tripe. At the risk of course of being seen to lack solidity i prefer to use my own common sense and a little logic rather than 'research' BS sites on the internet.
Oh yeah Ballard??? Did you buy stock or something? THey have been on the verge of a breakthrough for soooo long.

"To sugeest that the internal combustion engine has not come a long way is rediculous, period"

Sure it has come a long way, but compared to the pace of the other technological advancements we live with on a daily basis, the internal combustion engine (and even the automobile itself) is behind. Heck, even my TV has seen a fundamental change in regards to the way it works as compared to a TV from 10 years ago. A car? Not so much, LOL. I love cars as much as the next guy, but technological showpieces they are not.

Have any of you clicked on the takla lake ad on 250. Interesting story of abuse of powere there. By the way, i can testify that there ARE people living on that road and that there have been for at least 10 years. I strongly doubt there is no link between the ministry's actions and the blockade on the road....Maybe try that conspiracy on for size....

The IC engine is clean and very efficient, it is the weight of the vehicles that matters. Its called THE LAW OF CONSERVATION OF ENERGY. GOOGLE it. Our cheap gas, yes I said cheap gas, and mammoth vehicles cost money to run. Get over it or buy a moped. If you can find a way to get rid of the friction, then go make yourself a perpetual motion machine and travel the world. Bon Voyage!

P.S.
WHY ARE ALL THE OTHER OIL PRODUCING NATIONS SO STINKIN RICH