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Logan

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Everything posted by Logan

  1. [quote user="Gluestick"] But you want regulation against SWFs, but not against what you describe as "Private Capital".[/quote] I did not say that! I am against any form of regulation which restricts free market capitalism. However I think corporate and political America ought to be made aware of the dangers of some SWF's and their potential for disaster. As far as I am aware the State Department have made no such demand for restrictions against the origin of foreign investments currently flooding into the country. They block and screen individuals but not money. That's a political leadership issue. At the moment that's missing in the USA. Money is far more corrosive than people. Gluey, I know it's possible to quote endless historical corporate disasters. The list is endless. They were wrong then and they are probably wrong now. However that's not a reason to legislate, legislate and build restrictive humps in the road for today and tomorrow. Your examples read like a New Labour political manifesto. Reacting and legislating every time the media highlights a problem. Laws should not be made in such a knee jerk fashion. Business is about risk. Risk is anticipating the pitfalls of what might go wrong and then trying to ameliorate it when it does. You either win and do well or it goes pear shaped and you move on. That's life in business and long may it continue. The alternative of feather bedding capitalist risk is in my opinion unthinkable. It simply won't work. France is a perfect example of that. There are always concequences when markets fail. I believe we as individuals learn a little each time it happens and try not to repeat the same mistakes. However subsequent generations always try to buck historical experience. That's their call. That is the challenge which motives most of us in our lifetime, time after time. Failure and success are twin bedfellows, two sides of the same coin. I personally cannot imagine a life living without risk. Fuzzy capitalism is not something I recognize. You write well as a socialist and yet protest your capitalist pretentions. I am confused where you really stand. Those two poles just will not marry. 
  2. No Gluey in my opinion it's not the same. SWF's are state assets mostly derived from oil revenues. It is not private capital. You may think that's splitting hairs. However who actually has power and control of those assets? The cabal of dictators and men dedicated to the downfall of western civilisation. Not accountable corporate management or share holders who's only motivation is weath creation. I think there is a difference there. I know you feel the corporate world is out of control but the Enrons of this world don't survive for long. I accept a lot of damage gets done in the meantime and it's regrettable but again that's capitalism. Regulation and excessive contols will not make for a more prosperous world. It would just employ a few more functionaires and send investment elsewhere. The negativity is far and away outweighed by the positive effects free market capitalism brings, warts and all.  Capitalism will always have negative and positive effects on us all. Markets rise and fall, most of us learn to live and plan for that. Prosperity helps the first world to help out the third. Regulate greed and you will remove the motivation, incentives and hope. The result of that is suffering everywhere.
  3. [quote user="breizh"] I understand B&B are making a separate cash call in order to repair their balance sheet, something in the region of GBP250M, which in relation to it's mortgage book of GBP40B, and a deliquencey rate of 2.1%, is not a lot. TGP provide a strong partner which will provide the interbank system with a degree of comfort, thereby allowing access to funds at less punitive rates than B&B would acheive as a stand alone entity. [/quote] I am in agreement with breizh and take the view that private equity where profit is the motive is gold standard investment. Yes they may break up the institution in the future and sell bits of it on. So what? That's free market capitalism. SWF's on the other hand are different and much more sinister in my view. Not only are they investing for 'ownership' but I believe some also have a hidden political dimension. It does not take a rocket scientists brain to work out what that could be. I know that money and politics are part of the same mix but SWF's worry me. They worry me because in the unique circumstances of the sub-prime crisis, it's the SWF's who have rushed quickly to bail out so many US institutions. The spectre of some oil rich Arab states with nuclear ambitions and public statements that the 'USA is the great satan', rushing to that should make us all feel uneasy. 
  4. See the thread Eurozone Economics for some interesting prospectives.
  5. [quote user="Gluestick"] SWFs are for me, Logan, a most worrying development of the gradual erosion of any state's sovereign assets and the hidden downside is how a nation state with possibly cultural and economic ethos which is in diametric opposite to the target state, can exert huge future influence on the target state's society, economy and stability. [/quote] My thoughts exactly. I appreciated very much your insight and have deleted your text for my quote here only to make things easier to read. However we part company on 'repatious capitalists.' The realities are in my opinion that investment is essential for growth. It has to come from somewhere. Better the devil you know....... Without growth you get economic stagnation. Here are some symptoms.http://www.ft.com/home/europe I actually have to resist believing the worrying conspiracy theory about SWF's. That theory goes that 'rogue' oil rich states such as Iran & Libya are trying to do for the USA what Regan did for Soviet Communism. ie: Destroy it's economic base through excessive military spending. However now I don't think that will be necessary. If these SWF's own most of the US banks and most of the industrial military complex. Job done. Thanks again for your imput Gluey.
  6. I would be interested Gluey in your opinion of Sovereign Wealth Funds. In recent months they seem to have been responsible for bailing out most of Wall Streets investment banks due to the subprime fiasco. That fact could of course account for the flight of capital from the eurozone. However I think it's more likely that they see the medium term prospects for the US are far brighter than Europes. Wiki has some interesting details:-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund  Perhaps SWF's in the minds of institutionals hierarcy bring an ethical dimension to foreign investment which in turn causes governments to worry less. I am not so sure. Give me a buccaneering venture capitalist anyday. His motives are always just profit. Some of these SWF's are owned by some of the most undemocratic states on the planet. I wonder what it is they find so attractive about our failing corporate giants. It could not happen in France. There is a law which prevents most French companies being owned by other states or foreign individuals. How that got passed the European Commission is anyones guess.  
  7. [quote user="Gluestick"] One simply cannot take a disparate bunch of states, with their economies at various levels of development and meld them into one harmonious whole: whilst it's a crazy concept to include places like Portugal, Spain and Greece it's becomes sheer fantasy to attempt the same with recently ex-collective economy states still mainly run by the Communist leaders and Mafiya of yesterday.[/quote] Thank you for that post Gluey, very well put and cut to the quick. I also thought that the Telegraph article illustrated the current problems of the 'PIGS' countries very well. I have some business interests in Spain so I'm particulary concern what's happening there at the moment. It is currently dire. These concequences have been well documented before and there is no pleasure to see the fruits of fear materialise. Of course the Spanish economy is not just in trouble because of the Euro. However if they had control and power over their interest rates and macro economic management at least they could stand or fall on their own elected singular petard. With the power do actually do something to prevent the economy falling off a cliff. I have said before that I think the Euro will be made to work because it was a political project not an economic one. That concept is in my view flawed and making (forcing) it to work will hurt us all. However the pain would have to be severe indeed if the idea were to be abandoned or even watered down. The current politico's sitting in Brussels have no intention of rocking the EU boat, at least not for the time being. Why? I would suggest that it's in their personal interests not to. Sarkozy and Belesconi do have some common ground in opposition and France soon will have the EU Presidency which may produce some political ripples.  However I think in the medium term the state of the world economy will prove more of a distraction. The price of oil, value of the Dollar and the lack of global investment is a triple wammy. Concerns with Euro realities will be put on the back burner and politicans will blame everything except the truth. The ECB and federalist politicans all have vested interests in talking up the current policies of EU monatory union and the Schengen accords. Trouble is they just don't work and it brings negative concequences. We Europeans all then have to pay a price and have little power in reality to influence anything. Despite the loud claims to democratic accountability. I take some comfort from history. All powerful monoliths eventually fall. Trouble is the mess they leave behind.
  8. I have long considered that the eurozone and in particular the Euro is living on borrowed time. It seems the chickens are now starting to roost. So those of us with a Sterling income may have some cause for optimisim. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/05/30/ccambrose130.xml
  9. The problem for me is that I buy my heating supplies from my agricultural neighbour. It arrives on a huge trailer every late autumn. Oak, sun dried for years and in perfect condition, cut to size. I hand him a rather large wedge of 'reddies'. Not exactly in a brown envelope, that's only for politicians in suits. It puts a smile on his weathered face, very briefly. I have known him for years. I only see him when it's 'wood time'. We have an apero and talk about the weather, his crops, his extended family and we both bemoan how the world is going to the dogs and how everything we hold dear is doomed. We have you see, a certain understanding. Fuel refunds do not have a place in this world. Thank goodness. 
  10. Logan

    Cdiscount.com

    [quote user="moonraker"]Workers were on strike for higher pay from the 13th to the 23rd! Things should soon be back to normal.[/quote] Thank you so much moonraker. That must be the cause of my problems. I still have not received my goods. So many people are messed with when the 'boys' decide to strike. I guess we have little choice but to accept the world as it is. The unions have us by the corjonies. It would have been quite simple for the company to explain the truth. Instead they issue a bland statement of delay.[:P]
  11. It seems the Cherbourg blocade has been lifted briefly. Much wailing and nashing of teeth. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4009892.ece
  12. Logan

    Cdiscount.com

    Must be where I live then in the wild, wild south west.[:)] Or is it all the strikes?
  13. [quote user="cooperlola"] Ah, Gore Vidal - on this Logan, we agree wholeheartedly - although I don't suppose you agree with him all the [/quote] No Coops I take issue with many of the things he has said. However the elequency of his words and use of language are the things I admire. His original ideas and opinions are always interesting. I doubt he would have ever 'sold out' had he been elected. He said something interesting the other day. It was that if any country maintains a large standing army together with the hardware necessary to operate it then eventually they are going to use it. He was referring to the USA of course who he believes is "finished as a world power and bankrupt to boot". I also liked his reference to Iraq. "Why should you be so suprised that if you send an invading army into another country the people there are going to fight back and keep fighting back until you are gone". Self evident surely to us all except George W and Tone.
  14. I have recently purchased two quite high value items from Cdiscount.com. Once I ordered the goods they published a notice in Cmonespaceclient that they were experiencing delivery delays, without excuses! So far I have not received anything in almost 3 weeks. My advice then is don't touch them with a barge pole. this is my first experience of this company and will be the last. You do receive the odd infuriating e mail saying the delivery retard but taking the money was not. Grrr....[:'(]
  15. I would like to give you an example of a man who uses words in their most exquisite form. Gore Vidal. Please read on:- http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/gore-vidal-literary-feuds-his-vicious-mother-and-rumours-of-a-secret-love-child-832525.html Reading or watching Gore Vidal is for me the experience of perfection. The gold standard of intelligent English prose. Words chosen so carefully and expressed with feather like finesse. Had I ambition left he would be the one I would attempt to reach. I was once a professional writer with a proof reader. Communication was possible since I had ideas and imagination then. I could ignore the finer senses of the English language. This before the wonders of a spell checker and word processor. Reading Vidal often made me despair of ever reaching a level where I was fit to lick his boots. When you realise you are so far away from the line you run out of puff. Like him, now in my twilight years, ambition, happily for almost everything has passed. There remains still a odd need for communication at whatever level with my fellows and friends. I bombard them often with letters about very little. Here on this forum I have to be precise or else brought to book. Elsewhere folks are not so demanding. The pleasure of receiving and sending letters is unique. The spelling and grammar really matters not. That is my point really. Communication is a postive human activity. Demanding precision frightens everyone away. I rather like this line in his interview - ""No," Vidal replies. "I wouldn't say: 'When you die, that's it.' I'd say: 'When you're born, that's it.'"[:D]  
  16. [quote user="Gluestick"] Yes: communication of concepts, philosophies and ideas are very important; much more powerful, though, when expressed cogently, carefully and with grammatical precision. [/quote] Of course that is true but in the real world in which most of us inhabit does that really matter so much? The rarefied corridors of the corporate world have surely no relevance in our simple need to communicate with each other. Perhaps is comes down to ambition and the desire to impress each other. Like most other things as time passes you find something better to do with your time. A less than perfect world Gluey is so much more comfortable to live in.
  17. I often say to my French friends that language is only a simple device for communication. Self evident of course but we all know that the French believe language is much more than that. I don't think that it's necessary to be fluent or word perfect. Communication is much more than that. So it is with spelling. Of course it's very desirable to have the ability to do both well. Perfection in these things is a positive asset but most of us fall short because we are human. I believe that communication and dialogue matter more. In a one to one situation the character and personality of the other shine through the poor pronuncation or understanding of words. So also in the written word the spelling matters less than the essence and purpose of the prose. Poor spelling is difficult to read but the aspirations of the writer often rise above that. Man has invented many methods of communicating. Spelling words correctly is just one of many tools. Like all tools there is usually many alternatives in the box to get the job done.
  18. [quote user="Russethouse"] The answer is simple Logan, if you would like something 'interesting, lively and informative' then YOU post it. (as I already said to Sweet 17) Not much good complaining unless you are prepared to do your bit too [:)][:)] [/quote] I was not complaining RH. I offered an opinion and my personal observation. If I made a complaint it would be in detail and have a particular purpose.
  19. In my personal opinion and it is just that, I find Living France Forums at the moment dull to the point of tedium. I have migrated elsewhere recently to another forum. I find the discussions are more interesting. lively and informative. Many posts are actually about France and it's problems, rather than how 'wonderful life is' or 'here we are at last' etc, etc. I think this forum has become a little like an elderly relative. Someone you hold in affection but don't really want to spend much time with because the conversation or subject matter is not sufficently challenging or relevant.
  20. Last year my wife had a major operation and was hospitalised for 3 weeks. Thankfully she made a complete recovery thanks to the skill and expertise of the hospital. I was expecting a big bill and spoke to the consultant about it. He said not to worry, the condition was life threatening and would be met by the state even though at that time I did have a mutuelle. Eventually a statement came from CPAM indicating the total cost was 15,000 euros and paid 100% by them. Now looking down the list that SD posted, my wife's circumstances did not fit into any of those catagories. So I guess like Donald Runsfeld we must assume "there are knowns and unknowns, as well as knowns where some are unknown and unknows where there are some known knowns and also unknown knowns!" In other words a complete Kafkaesque.
  21. My understanding is that the consultant in charge of a particular case of hospitalisation will certify the condition to be either life threatening or not. This then is related to the percentage the state will fund. It's hard to imagine a heart attack case not being regarded as life threatening. However when it comes down to a particular doctors opinion, differences are inevitable.
  22. [quote user="Keith CHANNING"] For some the former makes sense, for others the latter. [/quote] I agree Keith but for those on low incomes the state pays 100% of the costs not just the tarif de convention. If you pay a mutuelle why not set aside the premiums instead in a savings account on a monthly basis. Livret A is tax free up to a reasonable figure. Then you have the cash if it's needed. Example - Break a leg and require hospitalisation. Cost say 800 euros. State pays 70%, you pay 240 euros. That is on average 2-3 months premiums. Unless you are very unlucky I doubt you would need that more than once or twice in a lifetime. If you have a heart attack and require more hospitalisation it's life threatening therefore costs are paid by the state. I could give more examples but in essence the amounts paid out by a mutuelle contract are small.
  23. [quote user="sweet 17"] I don't think you realise that some of us don't "cost" out everything and want our money back just because we have paid. As with contributions to the NHS, I was happy to pay and not use the service.  Can you not see that, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you might know the cost of everything and the value of nothing? To me, there is an intrinsic value and justice in paying into a pot and then drawing out only the amounts that I need.  I'd rather pay, enjoy good health and let other poor souls benefit from the money that I have paid in and do not want or need.  [/quote] Well sweet 17 you are entitled to be generous to others with your resources if you wish. I support personal choice in all things. I also like the principal that France allows us to choose if we have a mutuelle or not. The country is a very high tax society and seeking value for the disposable part of our income is for me a priority. Contributing to the profits of assurance companies is not. The 'value of anything' is very much a subjective principle. I value self help and incentive and taking responsibility for our own lives. The government is responsible for the health of the nation through the large slice of taxation we already pay. A mutuelle is just in reality more taxation which you don't really need to pay. It is not the same as house insurance or any other risk cover.
  24. I hestiate to spoil the party but Mutuelles actually pay out very little in comparison to the amount they receive in premiums. I believe if you can afford to pay a full 300% tarif cover Mutuelle then you can afford to take the risk yourself. They may be called Mutuelles but profit is their motive otherwise they would fold. The current government are currently pushing more and more of medicare cost on individuals. In addition they are ring fencing Mutuelles from excessive costs. I believe this is to try and reduce the French dependence on the medical service. French hypocondria is legendary and costing the country a fortune. The fear factor is really the motivation for any assurance. The dark threat of the unknown. Assurance companies play on our human insecurities and sell us this odd modern concept named by the advertisers as 'peace of mind'. It's as if they offer you some fluffy place where you can inhabit, worry free from the woes of being alive.  Personally I prefer a large dose of common sense and control my own affairs. If I shell out 1500 -2000 Euros per annum to a Mutuelle company I want to see large slice of that cost returned in reimbursements. The truth is you will not. Yes, you may be unlucky and have a string of problems where the Mutuelle occasionally takes a hit. That is rare. Normally they pay out relatively small amounts of 20% to 30% for medication, visits to the Doc, lab tests etc. Small beer in the actuality. If you are hospitalised for a condition which is not life threatening you will have a cost bill of 30%. Ask yourself how often that's likely? This year it will be expensive, maybe next but you might well find for the following 5 years you are home free. Mutuelles premiums saved and in your bank account not theirs. Courage mon brave!
  25. Nicholas Sarkozy blames the 1968 generation for the ills of present day France. I think that says more about him than almost anything else I have read. Pathetic or what? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/04/30/do3006.xml
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