Today an article on the Guardian says thet UK Credit card industry suffers as consumers shop around. Although credit card companies still predict huge profits ahead (but hey optimism must stay afloat) , they are being threatened with clients who apply 2 or 3 times per year for a new credit card, so they can benefit from the 0% interest rate offered as a marketing campain. Of course it is competition that drives card firms to do this. You can be sure that the buzz (between clients) is spreading at the speed of light. It is obvious that if credit cards companies didn't make those enticing offers, the market would be stagnant and that their shareholders would vanish slowly on. I dont know whether this phenomenon is occuring in the US, but since I valuate human creativity, I bet it does!
America the Broke : How the Reckless Spending of The White House and Congress are Bankrupting OurCountry and Destroying Our Children's Future
by GERALD J. SWANSON
From the Inside Flap
“One day soon, our government will suddenly run out of cash, unable to meet its payments, leaving the United States as bankrupt as any banana republic. We are far more vulnerable than most Americans realize. . . With a debt of $7.3 trillion, if interest rates were to hit the levels we saw 20 years ago, it would take every nickel collected in income taxes just to pay the interest on our existing debt. There would be no money left for defense, or homeland security, or education, or Social Security. This scenario is hardly fiction. That the United States of America can literally go broke is no longer a fantasy but likelihood—unless we stop the train now speeding us to Armageddon. If we do not get our financial house in order, and soon, our great nation will collapse under the weight of its financial obligations. I believe we can prevent the catastrophe. But time is short. In the final reckoning, it’s up to us to do what’s needed to save America’s future.”—from America the Broke The dirty little secret that neither George W. Bush nor Congress are willing to confront—that America’s reckless spending, disastrous deficits, and exploding debt are speeding our great nation to financial ruin. Imagine a world in which you lose your job because your company goes under, your retirement money disappears, the value of your home tumbles overnight, your bank stops allowing cash withdrawals, and your ATM card is canceled. The price of groceries has risen so fast that you don’t have the money to pay for them at the check-out counter . . . and the country is bankrupt. ..... Reviewer: He explains specifically the accounting scams that have been used to intentionally hide the truth from us and how seriously we have already been harmed...... MORE (see link bottom page)
AND:
It Doesn't Matter Who Wins, As Long as He Kicks the Debt Addiction
By Allan Sloan | Tuesday, November 2, 2004
The endless months of spinning and rhetoric are finally over. No more appealing to your fears about how your finances and prospects will suffer if the other guy's elected. No more tortured "explanations" about why stocks or bonds went up or down on any given day because Sen. John F. Kerry or President Bush came out ahead or behind in some poll..... The winner will have to confront the government's addiction to borrowed money. Even as the baby boomers' retirement draws perilously near, our interest payments are mounting, restricting our freedom of action. We've gotten lucky because foreign investors and Social Security tax receipts have helped pay the bills. But we won't stay lucky forever. What matters now is whether we own up to the problem right away, or whether we wait for some horrible shock -- such as foreigners' closing the lending spigot -- to make us act...... Unless you expect the rest of the world to lend us cheap money forever, which I don't, we'd better clamp down on our borrowing addiction. Social Security's problems draw ever closer, Medicare's a horror I don't even want to think about. .......
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17319-2004Nov1.html
AND
Nothing Happens by Accident: Transgenerational Financial Terrorism
"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
This is a version of the POSIWID principle. For an example of its use, look at the way Jeff Gates uses it to explain some dysfunctional behaviour of the American economic system, and also to explain how few Americans are worried by this. He writes: "one must wonder if this lack of concern is by design". "Given the model's foreseeable results, any objective observer must conclude that present-day results are intentional. If so, policy-makers are complicit. Either that or the results are unintended, suggesting that policy-makers are incompetent. Take your pick: clueless or corrupt." ....... Transgenerational Financial Terrorism: The nation's fast-weakening financial condition isn't Bush's or Clinton's fault -- it's embedded in a flawed economic model embraced by neoliberals in both parties.... (LONG)
http://www.goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=14494
AND (a few days ago, I posted the amazon link of Maren's book, but yesterday as I was investigating the field, I bumped into his interview)
Michael Maren: Humanitarian Aid Is A Business That Primarily Keeps Westerners Employed
March/April 1997
"With a camera in a refugee situation, you can compress the hunger. You can package it, frame it, and it always looks worse than it is. It looks like you're taking part in the liberation of Buchenwald, when in fact it's a lot more complicated. The starving baby picture is a lie."....... You move [humanitarian aid] into a poor country, and it represents a lot: money, power and control. You've gotta go through the local leaders; you gotta deal with them, you gotta let them take their cut. Somebody always gets rich off a famine....... Ads that we see for these organizations tend to give the impression that all these Africans are a bunch of infants. That they're going to starve to death if we don't send a bunch of 25-year-old volunteers over there to take care of them........
Are sponsorship organizations by definition a fraud?
Any sponsorship is completely bogus. I just saw an ad for Christian Children's Fund on TV a while ago, and it says, "Little Imelda would've starved to death if not for a lady in Seattle who pledged 65 or 70 cents a day" or whatever the ##### it is. And I looked at that and said, "That's a lie." Because it's not like a child is waiting to get into a program, a child is sponsored, a child moves into the program. That's not how it works. There's a whole chapter in the book on STC as a sponsorship organization that shows that there were villages where they raised $10,000 in sponsorship money and spent only $400, on nothing of any consequence, and that's pretty much how sponsorship works. If they can't get grant money to do a project, they're not really gonna accomplish anything...... MORE
http://www.netnomad.com/might.html
AND MANY MORE HEADLINES ON:
http://www.moneyfiles.org/
