Jump to content
  • Sign up for free and receive a month's subscription

    You are viewing this page as a guest. That means you are either a member who has not logged in, or you have not yet registered with us. Signing up for an account only takes a minute and it means you will no longer see this annoying box! It will also allow you to get involved with our friendly(ish!) community and take part in the discussions on our forums. And because we're feeling generous, if you sign up for a free account we will give you a month's free trial access to our subscriber only content with no obligation to commit. Register an account and then send a private message to @dave u and he'll hook you up with a subscription.

Venezuela


moof
 Share

Recommended Posts

24 minutes ago, polymerpunkah said:

What would have happened to your economy if those banks were allowed to fail?

 

Would that crisis have been blamed on capitalism?

 

 

 

Yes, because it was the fault of capitalism. The bailout saved it. Socialism for the rich. The biggest transfer of funds from the poor to the rich that I’ve seen in some time. 

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

 

He didn't say "more" strikes. You said that. Difficult to say that stronger unions make them less secure in any event.

 

He obviously meant "more" strikes.

 

Try it:

"Stronger unions make (a) more (b) the same number of (c) fewer strikes inevitable."

 

What do you think he meant?

 

The point is that the idea inevitability is wrong. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, polymerpunkah said:

What would have happened to your economy if those banks were allowed to fail?

 

Would that crisis have been blamed on capitalism?

 

 

 

Some of the advocates of the bailouts inferred a bigger financial armageddon than the Great Depression if didn't happen. 

 

The Great Depression had a 50% reduction in output and 25% unemployment and mass soup kitchens, and food rationing. Slightly off-topic but I read somewhere Al Capone ran one of the first soup kitchens.

 

Ben Bernanke.

 

“September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression,” Mr. Bernanke is quoted as saying in the document filed with the court. Of the 13 “most important financial institutions in the United States, 12 were at risk of failure within a period of a week or two.”

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, polymerpunkah said:

Speaking of private-sector efficiency, where was this criticism of socialism when the banks were being bailed out?

 

How many billions was it that they walked away with?

 

Well, none, because the UK broke even on its bank bailouts.

 

The US government made a profit on its bailouts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

And they don't have to pay any shareholder dividends; any surplus gets reinvested. Also, if you consider the UK's private rail network and our increasingly fragmented and privatised NHS, nationalisation means you cut out loads of wasteful competition, transfer payments, legal fees, consultant's fees, duplication, etc. Our privatised rail services actually cost the taxpayers  - let alone the passengers - far more per passenger mile than nationalised rail would.  Similarly, the "internal market" in the NHS has wasted billions in public money. 

 

Don't forget what happened with Railtrack in the early days of privatisation before it had to be taken back into state hands and is now run as National Rail. 

 

  1. HOME»
  2. NEWS»
  3. UK NEWS
 

Railtrack and contractors had one safety warning a week

 

By Paul Marston Transport Correspondent

12:01AM BST 14 May 2002

 

POOR railway maintenance led to a record number of statutory warning notices being served on Railtrack, its contractors and train operators last year.

The Health and Safety Executive issued 51 notices in all, almost one a week and more than double the total in 1996-97, the last year before the industry was fully privatised.

As the executive's rail inspectors continued their investigation of Friday's crash at Potters Bar, thought to have been caused by defective repairs to a set of points, officials said that monitoring of maintenance practices was becoming increasingly intense.

Once served with a formal notice, a company must take remedial action by a specific date or face prosecution. Although firms regularly prolong the process by lodging appeals, about half the cases result in safety charges being brought. In the year to last April, 12 prosecutions were brought, leading to 11 convictions and fines totalling £1.2 million.

Jarvis Fastline, part of the rail group that holds the maintenance contract for the Potters Bar line, was fined £500,000 for two incidents that led to freight train derailments. It was found guilty of failing to check new track properly after re-laying work.

A related company, Jarvis Facilities, was also fined after a collision at a work site on the West Coast main line. An engineering train driven with the locomotive at the back and no one in front guiding the driver ran into a trolley loaded with welding equipment, forcing several track workers to jump clear.

In another case, an unnamed maintenance contractor was ordered by the HSE to stop using staff from a sub-contracting agency after they were found to have competence levels "below the required standards".

Other incidents included:

Inadequate track repairs that led to the low-speed derailment of a Glasgow-bound passenger train in North Lanarks;

A commuter train in Birmingham hit by a tree trunk that contractors had failed to secure after felling;

Since privatisation, Railtrack has awarded the maintenance work previously carried out by British Rail's labour force to a small group of principal contractors, who in turn employ hundreds of subcontractors to work on specific projects. It is estimated that more than 110,000 people, working for about 1,500 different companies, are currently employed.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1394130/Railtrack-and-contractors-had-one-safety-warning-a-week.html

 

 

 

 

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Denny Crane said:

Some of the advocates of the bailouts inferred a bigger financial armageddon than the Great Depression if didn't happen. 

 

The Great Depression had a 50% reduction in output and 25% unemployment and mass soup kitchens, and food rationing. Slightly off-topic but I read somewhere Al Capone ran one of the first soup kitchens.

 

Ben Bernanke.

 

“September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression,” Mr. Bernanke is quoted as saying in the document filed with the court. Of the 13 “most important financial institutions in the United States, 12 were at risk of failure within a period of a week or two.”

 

 

And yet some people seem to have this blind, almost religious, faith in capitalism.

 

(With it's concommitant equally-blind hatred of any competing ideology.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

53 minutes ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

Yes, because it was the fault of capitalism. The bailout saved it. Socialism for the rich. The biggest transfer of funds from the poor to the rich that I’ve seen in some time. 

Transfer of funds -- seriously?? From poor to rich?

Could you at least agree that the job of caudillo is a sweet gig.

Like what other possibility does a fella have to change his and his families/cronies wealth in that way?

Dwarfs anything we can even imagine, or could be achieved in a free market/democratic system.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Jairzinho said:

Then what and by whom?

 

By yoom... But seriously, going back to the railways and public sector, type of ownership is not a guarantee of efficiency in itself. Also, if you operate within a strong statist capitalism, or crony capitalism, strong public sector is great for siphoning off money into private hands of the well connected, rather than profit going back to the tax payer.

 

I think nationalizing franchises after they run out may not be a bad idea, it will apparently allow the government to take over a third of the railways and see if it can run it more efficiently than the German owners.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, TheHowieLama said:

Transfer of funds -- seriously?? From poor to rich?

Could you at least agree that the job of caudillo is a sweet gig.

Like what other possibility does a fella have to change his and his families/cronies wealth in that way?

Dwarfs anything we can even imagine, or could be achieved in a free market/democratic system.

You might want to consider the context of my post. Which, to save you reading, was about the bank bail out

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share


×
×
  • Create New...