i am somewhat more interested in how do countries manage to accrue huge levels of debt of their own free enough will, rather than whether it is morally reprehensible to let them do so.

financial sector lobbies are muscular, but assuming their omnipotence is giving them too much credit.

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Kā tas notiek? Jā ļoti interesants jautājums par the State and the Banks. Tagad es teiktu, ka mēs esam tajā posmē, kurā mums nav varianta - mums vajag turpināt aizņemties, lai atmaksātu parādus - vienalga, ka tagad (cik es saprotu) mums ir budžeta pārpalikums, tāpēc ka, šis pārpalikums ir cik niecīgs kad salīdzinām ar kopēju valsts parādu.

Mums nav variantu, tāpēc kā mes nevaram drukāt savu naudu - mums vienmēr ir jāaizņemas ši nauda (into existence). Tad, kad bija 'vietas augt' valstīm varēja atdot šo naudu ar procentu - tas vairs nav īsti iespējams, un šis aizdevums (kas lielākoties iet uz privātu banku kreditoriem vai valstu bondholders) ir kļuvis par usurous tribute.

Financial sector lobbies are more muscular than I fear you can imagine. I would say they are more or less in complete control - through independent central bank support of commercial bank activity, and their monopoly on currency creation. To think otherwise after what we have seen in the last five years is ... strange.

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Well, maybe I put it incorrectly.

What I mean, essentially, is that ratio of power to control (over events) is a diminishing returns game.

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OK, unless the aim of the game is control, and the control ensured through debt relationships is just a means to this end.

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What I meant was, that with power and money your influence grows, but it does not grow directly 1:1, but rather at a diminishing rate, simply because of the complexity of events.

Even if you are the richest and most powerful man (or group of men) on Earth, there is only so much you can possibly control, simply due to the irreducable complexity of the universe, life and everything.

I suppose it could look somewhat like some kind of a square root function, with y-axis being amount of power available to subject and x-axis -- amount of control he is able to exert:



For the purposes of our discussion it means to me that even any financial lobby in a given country has limited resources and limited weight, which is not insurmountable, provided there is actual opposition, which deems it neccessary.

The problem and issue with bringing financial lobby to heel at least here in Latvia, in my opinion, is not so much the amount of power they have, but the apathy of any kind of opposition.

In the end, some people may grumble, but they apparently don't agree overcoming lobby is worth fighting for (and we are not even talking about actual violent resistence here, maybe some NGO or something would be quite enough).

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Aha, I get it, and I would especially agree with your penultimate para, ....only, what if they aren't actually a lobby anymore. I mean what if they ARE the power - would that change things?

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Please define then. :)

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es Dosshu vaardu Beppem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOfzLxm1Mvo

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