sundance_kid
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Posts posted by sundance_kid
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talk about twist my words.
I have nowhere defended the Japanese for their attrocities...although its a bit rich citing a 1937 incident for a war starting in 1941.
I completely fail to understand what you are arguing!
Can you state specifically how you envisage events should have unfolded then, that would have brought about this uber-happy ending you seem to think was denied to everyone?
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The question isn't whether they were defeated or not. There isn't even an argument to suggest 'some' wanted peace but to suggest unconditional surrender was imminent is ridiculous.
There is nothing to corroborate that past opinion. Who knows how long the military would have allowed the situation to drag on for?
Come on, there was an attempted coup the night before the Emperor was to address the people and even an attempt to bomb the Missouri.
I'm not going to pass judgement for a president who used every tool available to him to bring the war to a swift end on their terms.
At that point they had no patience to continue pandering to a pack of delusional generals with no cards left to play.
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we will never know about that.
What we do know is that those bombs did not need to be dropped and worse than that we know that it was known at the time.
I don't see how you can say that with any certainly at all.
Any peace feelers the Japanese were sending out at the time were mixed, half measures and were not from a unified Japanese authority.
Only those with access to ULTRA knew the full picture, which even Nimitz and MacArthur didn't have full access to. The diplomatic feelers in many cases were clearly attempts to buy time, such as trying to use the Soviet Union as an intermediate.
I'm afraid to say it wasn't until both the intervention of the Soviet Union and the dropping of the bombs that finally forced the intervention of of the Emperor himself to force the final decision to unconditional surrender.
Those are the facts, anything else is mere conjecture.
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All I can see is a foreseeable stalemate. It's not even about a populace unaware of reality, it's a state of complete denial. They're quite happy to sit it out and so am I.
The change will come when events overtake us as the stalemate is not one that is economically viable. Frankly we've reached a phase where they'd rather sink the economy than willingly accept a loss.
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It matters little.
The only joy I'll find will be watching the hopes dashed of an 'electorate in complete denial' of the hole we are in.
How many messengers will they shoot before reality kicks in.
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Forty per cent of people aged between 45 and 54 are unable to save anything due to the financial burdens.
Ding, Ding, Ding
The spanner in the works.
This is a middle class that the current Government is reliant upon to create jobs but it's a middle class that's already squeezed. Burdened with boom year hangovers. I won't go into it in depth but I work for a small company and I can see the writing on the wall now.
The company is frankly sinking from the weight of a fattened management that's used to high salaries. They've already cut cloth where they can but it's not enough. Margins have been squeezed and I can see the next Tsunami approaching. The company (like many others) are losing their competitive edge because they're's hardly any fat left, we're no down to the bone. it's a middles class in denial trying to squeeze out what just isn't there.
This is where printing money is falling down. What we need is a default, until then it's going to gradual grind downwards.
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I presume reading the above then, that only Britain experienced an enormous credit expansion and a mere jump across the channel will result in smooth saga holiday sailing.
Sorry boys and history bares me out on this, when depressions/contractions hit the world becomes a far more unfriendlier place. We're only in the beginning stages still and the sh*ts yet to hit the fan.
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that is one of the most categorically untrue statements I have ever read
In comparison to later generations I'm referring to. Walk into any Job Centre/ council office and the expectation of state money of some quarters in my age bracket is in a word, frightening.
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It's all about perception.
A retired 60 year old who worked from 16 to 60 naturally thinks they earned their wealth.
A 20 year old facing a national debt of £1 trillion might think the 60yo stole it (from the future).
Surely the problem though is even if the Government takes back the a boomers wealth/house in their old age, that debt still remains for the 20 year old.
Something this Lord fails to answer. Nothing has been solved.
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No, for three reasons.
One, it's not that simple to give money/assets away in advance.
Two, a lot of people will never do it anyway because they like to think they'll never need care. And by the time it begins to be obvious that they are going to need it, they won't do it because they're either demented or have become exceedingly tight/suspicous/paranoid in old age, particularly where money's concerned.
Three, plenty of people will reason that if they are going to need care, they'd rather choose it themselves than be at the mercy of Social Services, who will just bung them in the first gruesome, wee-smelling home that happens to have a room available.
Aren't you forgetting that the glut of the baby boom generation has yet to pass. In a few years time, a gruesome wee-smelling home with a spare room will most likely be the very best the state has to offer you and younger generations will fast recognise that's it's hardly worthy of a life time of working, when you can get the same for nothing.
The harder they make it to pass on money/assets, the less the Government will ultimately find there is to take.
Your also forgetting the other enormous bulge yet to come of younger people who have no shame to live off the state with not a penny to their name. At least the older generations at present held a greater notion of at least of saving for retirement and to not live off the state. God help us when the welfare dependent bulge retires.
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Isn't all that will happen is whatever arbitrary level of 'assets' the Government sets at the time are, people will simply ensure they will be below that level when the times approaches.
This will save nothing, and most likely burden the state further as it will most likely ensure further aspiration to live off the state.
You can't just completely remove the supposed benefits of saving and working, if in the end, you're no better off for it. It's just a continuous of the worst type of welfare there is.
What needs to end is the idea of a free lunch but no one has the balls to say it.
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I agree with all of the above. The part I find crazy is that everybody seems to think the key to growth is mortgage lending. As if houses weren't over valued in the first place. How about letting the bubble pop and investing/lending to infrastructure projects and businesses? It's as if housing "growth" is the only form of growth we know. Very sad.
Agreed. They know the country relies on a buoyant housing market but won't/can't take the measures needed to get one.
It's the same strategy of counter flooding a sinking ship. It initially stops the ship being swamped but the sucker is still going down. My relatives place of work is laying off more lawyers shortly solely from the reason of a lack of conveyancing. This economy will not recover until we swallow the pill. Allowing rampant inflation off the leash is not fixing anything as far as I can see.
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Time will tell, the trouble is that it would appear all the nations of the world are creating a new economic paradigm where a debt crisis is solved with more debt.
They can't stimulate the demand without a reset now. That is the bottom line. They can print money, fiddle with the rules but what they can't do is create wealth from thin air. It's that sheer inability that will result in it's ultimate demise.
The pie everyone needs piece of is now shrinking. The consumerism model based on mortgaging the future has peaked. A lesson even China has found out to it's own detriment when it now finds itself floating two currencies (Euro and Yuan) to keep it's own game going.
We're still in the tale end of the old system, seeing ever more desperate measures to keep it going and it will end when there are no more pips left to squeeze.
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I fear that much of this speculative money may never be seen again if China goes sour. Instead it will wind up in money heaven
Agreed 100%. Forget about the other BRIC's. It's China that has become the last sanctuary of the hot money. It's this speculative money that's one of the reasons Chinas overheating. When it goes it'll wipe out a lot of investors and they'll be no safe heaven when it does.
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buying debt doesnt make a state solvent.
It makes it less so as interest and inflation will eat into its spending power, which means more debt and more tax on the wealth creators.
No argument here. It's merely China trying to buy time.
Inevitably demand is drying up. As far as China goes the end comes when demand fails to keep enough of their enormous population in a job.
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Exactly, they need solvent states to keep buying their tat. They're finished otherwise.
They realise that if Spain sinks it drags down Europe with it. That would bring a swift end to their consumerism from the east.
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They don't have a plan or policy. All they have is hope.
They're only hope is for a 'lost decade' Japanese style.
If that's the pinnacle to what even they can hope to achieve then you already know they've lost. He was never going to come onto the radio and say what the real deal is. His role as minister is to publicly lie about the truth.
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The hard reality is that the elites _DON'T NEED_ 'worker slaves'.
The average unskilled Briton has no value to the EVIL ELITES, not even as a slave. I guess you could throw a few into gladiator matches or something, but no-one is going to be chaining them to a loom in a cloth factory.
It's pretty damn hard to hold a strike to demand better pay when you don't have a job and never will.
They still require their obedience though. The trick to keep us all busy is via debt servitude but the illusion was that you got something back. The illusions failing though.
Take the university bubble. I'll happily argue now that it's dawning on the majority of students the risk of taking on university debt is too great for the minimal reward it's likely to bring. It was only the Government taking on that debt for them that ticked things over. Now the government are unwilling to do this any longer it triggered the demos in London. The very real risk now is these people will call it a day on university and outright refuse to take this debt on.
The rich desperately need to load us up with debt, it's the only control they have. What kept us from revolting till now was that we had enough reason to accept it.
It's far more dangerous to them to have an idle population.
'Idle hands make the devil's work'.
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Look at Ireland - too many houses, but that still doesn't help people who can't get jobs.
Yes but it's houses that are standing empty and yet are still denied to people who could use them. I really used the land gentry example to draw on the example of the past. When the French revolution was in full swing, it was the rich throughout the UK whom felt threatened from the worry that it could ignite something here.
I see the exact same possibility now. Should the youth of Europe start refusing to play ball and not accept the debt obligations of others, that is when things become interesting. It'l take one tinder box state to ignite it of which Europe historically has many.
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Well Europe is certainly my lab rat with regards to civil strife. As far as the UK goes we just don't do it as well as our European cousins. It's only when things there start to really erupt do our land gentry here start sweating.
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I suspect it's useless looking for answers from a Government that doesn't know what to do. They're attempting to appeal to all in a useless gesture.
It has it all. A nod to those young and priced out, appeasements to land lords about greater acceptability to renting and relaxes existing home owners about price stability.
The reality is any movement in the housing market is detrimental to the Government now. Down and the banks collapse, up and the mortgage market slows even more. Any additional support becomes a greater burden to the country's finances.
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Going to a house party with mates which I find far better. Problem I also find with many clubs these days is from the owners. So many now are just drug dealers using the clubs to hide their ill gotten gains. I can barely stand spending in them on a normal night, much less paying the New Years eve rip off prices to the scum associated with these places
I'll say one thing for the millennium, it killed off the atmosphere of New years eve ever since. .
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Problem being well over 50% of Chinas GDP is based on construction.
They can build all the roads and railways they want but it's what they give back is the main question mark. Frankly I doubt the long term strategy if their best plan is to smash the productivity of their most accessible cities and move it to more and more inaccessible areas in order to control inflation.
Then the argument is if all this can pick up the slack from an over heating construction sector. I don't think it can. China cannot do this on their own, they need an expanding world economy to pick up their slack which just isn't there.
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Negatively, because the rising middle class who are the ones who hold all this property about 200 million of them are wiped out. The 1.1bn factory workers don't bat an eyelid. Except that there are 200 million more cheap workers since they were wiped out. This means imports get even cheaper meaning the UK trade deficit becomes a chasm
Except where are all the extra 200 million going to work? It screams overcapacity. From what I've read when China started spending their stimulus money, internally it resulted in them bringing forward the next 20 years worth of construction plans. They're coming up with more grand construction schemes (the London to Beijing rail line) to keep their GDP going but to what end.
If China has to build cities that are going to be empty for twenty years to keep their GDP growth going now, then when that's finished, what's next? Build cities that will be needed in forty years. You can't keep stealing growth from the future.
An export market won't save them, not with the west in decline. China needed a roaring world economy to do it which isn't there.
Chances are when the facade fails and I can't see it being too far away, China will fragment.
FUKUSHIMA earthquake and tsunami thread and aftermath
in Current affairs
Posted
Erm no, you have been slinging lots of mud actually.
You've clearly demonstrated your keen ability of hindsight so as an armchair general , the least you could do is lay down what you'd have done instead?