So nobody's happy
Published:
October 17, 2011 at 8:33am
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Read Helena Dalli in The Times today – she knows that nobody’s happy.
The bottom line seems to be, therefore, that because we can get on the internet on a plane we have to just be thankful and get on our knees before the Supreme Technological Being. Dont you see a connection here? Until recently, people were told that their troubles in this world will be compensated in the next one, and that the Almighty will look after them, and that they should take their troubles “from the hand of God”. And now, because people are out on the streets, in the USA no less, showing they are unhappy with how the markets behave, here come the new High Priests, using contemporary language, telling us how lucky we are that we can get on the internet and that we are so spoilt that we complain about life! Welcome to the Internet Supreme Being religion!
Albert, why should those poeple out on the streets, who probably never contributed anything themselves to the State, tell us how State money should be used?
He’s very good. Obviously he has not heard about Malta and its whiners.
This kind of hyperbolic language is ultimately self-defeating. We have a prisoner in Brussels and now a whole village has apparently been turned into a prison.
Time to get a grip, really.
timesofmalta.com, today:
“Backbencher Michael Gonzi, the Prime Minister’s brother, says the new bus service has not been an improvement over the old one. On the contrary, St Paul’s Bay has become a prison in itself. We need the previous 49,” he said, in an uncharacteristically direct comment, declining to elaborate further.”
Uncharacteristically direct? The man voted FOR divorce, for crying out loud, and look at the circumstances in which he did so.
I have not seen anyone taking to the streets here in Malta. Watching Rome, Paris, Madrid, Newe York, I feel I am in a fairly stable country. Tonio Borg’s remark to the visiting British counterpart is really very good – “we are so small that we can always find an exit”
Not that long ago, either: when my children were little it was just like this – gangs of women with pushchairs and prams, not that it had anything to do with community or solidarity, I can tell you. It was mainly about malicious gossip, whispering campaigns and backbiting, just like being still in the schoolyard we had only just left. But that striped Maclaren double-buggy, what memories. I had one just like it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8829120/Being-slightly-poorer-might-actually-enrich-our-lives.html
Fortunately I used to travel to London regularly in ’86-’87, so I managed to buy a pram/pushcair from Mothercare there (and wriggle through the customs clearance nightmare) because in Malta the only prams available then were locally-assembled by Oxford House; one model, two colours, if I remember correctly. I wonder where you got yours from?
[Daphne – There was a pram shop next to what is now HSBC in High Street (near what used to be Joinwell). He was allowed a very small import quota every year and he had a waiting-list. I was one of the early birds. Fortunately, the human pregnancy is nine months, because that is roughly as long as I had to wait until his ship came in. The ruddy thing cost a month’s earnings. That was my proper Maclaren buggy, the one with the reclining seat. The striped twin buggy was bought secondhand via a newspaper advert and when I saw it I pounced, because you couldn’t get one for love or money otherwise. It was from the 1970s – all the striped ones were – and worn out, but what was the alternative. What a nightmare life was. And all for nothing when you think about it. Human beings sacrificed to the great socialist experiment. Finding clothes for babies and small children: let’s not even GO there.]
Nothing has changed trust me, only the Maclaren buggies have turned into a Bugaboo.
Daphne – the bottom line is that billions of taxpayers money was poured into banks which were bankrupt , because they were too big to let them fail – and because they were banks . All this happened under the noses , or should I say with the acquiesence of regulators .
And now what ? These same banks are still dishing out millions to individuals , and totalling billions , yes billions in bonusses .
As an examlpe Barclays last year made GBP 6 billion profit , but also gave out 6 billion in bonusses . Which other industry gives away 50 % of its profits in bonusses.
The latest UBS saga , a black hole of USD 2.3 billion . Do you know why the trader was caught out ? Because the Swiss Franc was appreciating very rapidly versus the Euro , so the Swiss authorities decided to peg the Swiss Franc to the Euro , and voila this rogue trade was caught out .
Where were the internal controls of this mighty institution ? where is the regulator in all this ? – and this after the same bank had to be rescued by the Swiss government.
This is the ugly face of unregulated capitalism.
David, the argument about banks is a cheap argument used by the anarchists and all those who are critical of the capitalist model. The matter is far more complex than it is often presented.
Take Barclays, for instance. It has an investment banking division which competes with the main Wall Street investment banks which until recently were just investment banks.
Barclays has to pay the same level of bonuses that investment banks pay.
The profits made by investment banks are based on very specialised structured transactions which are usually designed and marketed by specialist staff.
They also make profits from trading. If Barclays does not pay out those bonuses, Goldman and JP Morgan would just grow bigger and bigger, and even more unsustainable should they ever fail.
Banks are being used as scapegoats by politicians who would like to dig into the coffers of those banks by taxing them the moment they are elected, so that they can distribute that cash to make government bigger.
Ok, so who suffers when banks go down? Is it the managers who would have already pocketed their bonuses, or is it those who hold deposits with those banks? Northern Rock comes to mind.
So, will it benefit average Americans if Bank of America and CitiBank were to collapse?
Defenders of the status quo in Malta are reminding me of my younger days, when we used to hear from our grandparents, day in day out, how lucky we were that we were not around during the war, how we have everything we need, how we should be thankful for what we have now. It’s the same old song returning, it seems.
[Daphne – Maybe you had dull grandparents, Albert. My maternal grandfather, born in 1900, never lost his sense of wonder at how the 20th century changed the world and all gadgets and new technology were endlessly fascinating to him. He was one of the first people in Malta to buy a television set and later, a dishwasher (a machine to wash your dishes! he couldn’t get over it, and made sure we had one too). He somehow managed to communicate that sense of wonder. This is what’s missing, and this is what the comedy sketch is about. It’s got nothing to do with the absence of gratitude, and everything to do with the loss of wonder and engagement.]
How curious. My maternal grandfather was born in 1900 too. My mother says that he had bought one of the first five television sets to be imported. Scores of people used to pack outside their door and windows to take a peek at the wondrous machine which spoke Italian.
I never got to meet him. He passed away on my mother’s birthday, ten years before I was born. It would have been interesting. .
Just imagine! And perhaps your grandfather did not even have to pay a ‘bribe’ to some political club, in order to be put on a ‘TV list’ or even a ‘dishwasher list’.
The anticipation and joy he must have missed.
[Daphne – He wouldn’t have, anyway.]
Apparently, he was also one of the first people to buy a car after World War II … after years of walking and cycling everywhere.
And, after years of developing his own black-and-white photos in the garage, he couldn’t resist buying a Polaroid instant camera. I remember the great excitement when he took the first photo and the colour photo printed immediately! It was probably in the very early 1970s.
Kramer is an idiotic shill. He tells you everything but the truth you need.
The world already has the one and only Kevin Ellul Bonici. Why would we need another one?
He hit the nail right on the head.
I’m confused about how people go on about “the end of capitalism”.
I disagree. I think it’s more like the end of the false value system people have adopted over the years.
Yes, banks were very irresponsible. But so were the individuals who took out loans they knew they would never be able to pay back.
A friend of mine was shocked when last year she went to the bank and asked to take out a £10,000 loan (in the UK). Not only did they give it all to her within an hour, but they hardly even checked her credit rating.
They just checked any direct debits she had and left it at that. What’s more, she used the money to go on a 6-month shopping spree. Yes, in the end she was shocked by her own actions too.
It is the end of irresponsibility. The end of acting like the world owes you one even though you’ve done little for it.
The banks should be made to pay for their mistakes, and I hope that when all this comes to an end, measures will be taken to make sure that happens.
In the meantime, the world should just stop, slow down, and be thankful their life expectancy has doubled, that their children will live even longer, that they have free education, healthcare and rights and that their life is ten times easier than what it used to be.
What’s missing is a dose of individual responsibility to go with those individual rights everyone exploits.