It breaks my heart to see protesters wrecking cars and screaming "NO G-20!!!" in massive capital letters
when they should be promoting what they DO want: which is power to the people!!!

I however am for the G-20 as I beleive world leaders will bring us into times of greater peace and prosperity.
I liked clinton, I like obama, but beware of anyone who makes you feel like your friend: charisma can be
very misleading.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10429446.stm

Yep, protest is an important means of expression but trashing cars etc usually achieves very little.

As a layperson, Ive always found economics to be a boring inscrutable discipline until a friend suggested I read a book called 'The Grip of Death- A study of modern money, debt slavery and destructive economics' by a chap called Michael Rowbotham.An absolutely amazing book about which I have no hesitations when it comes to recommending this to others.

It explains many things Im sure we have asked ourselves but have struggled to answer, eg. how is money created,why we are always in need of 'economic growth', where does the money come from we borrow when we take out a mortgage etc.

I think his conclusions reveal a remarkable insight and understanding of these matters and nicely elucidates why it is inevitable that we will have periodic economic crises such as we are suffering now.I cannot recommend this book highly enough.Anyone else out there read it?If not, do so!!!

I think the G20 summit is a farce. They seek for ways to express themselves to make it seem as if they agree on deficit cut's, but i don't buy it. It would mean that either the germans or the americans would have made a 180 degree turn.

I think western civillisation is at the moment where it can choose for a cultural and economical renaisance or irreparable decline. The crisis forces us to make choices. We can either choose make choices that serve our long-term interest or we can let our leaders make the choices that will make us feel comfortable by temporarilly hiding the way the world is changing from our view.
I think our leaders will choose the second option since they rightfully, don't believe that we can handle the truth.

A good example of why i think this is, is that the european leaders for instance, seem to be totally unable to come to an agreemant on a joint economic policy. They do not succeed in making europe more democratic and more united, because of the unjustified euroscepsis based on silly outdated provincial sentiments.

Europeans have the choice: they can either choose to live on a continent that is an economically healthy, prosperous, strong and booming zone with a high standard of living, that enjoys a great deal of security and where there is much cultural activity, but where the individual memberstates have given up some of their soevereignty. Or they can choos to live in country's that are completely soevereign, located on a continent that is poor, that has tumbled into a permanent economical and cultural crisis, that is permanently in decline, isolated from the rest of the world and totally irrelevant to it.

It is a choice like living for instance in a not totally soevereign british columbia wich is a memberstate of canada, a prosperous nation, or living in a completely soevereign mozambique, wich is a nation on a continent that is totally impoverished, full of conflict and wich is being exploited by the rest of the world.

Provincial short-sighted sentiments make europeans tend towards the second option. It is sick and saddening. We are willing to give up our civilisation for nationalistic pride.

If you liked that book, I would recommend: Confessions of an Economic Hitman, by John Perkins. In it he explains how he and others manipulated third world countries through the World Bank and IMF to gain control of the resources for corporations. Wars, assisinations, bribes, you name it, they did it. Quite an eye opener about the building of an empire with very little money down.

@Corpus: I'm currently reading "The warren buffet way" which is regarded as the definitive manual on investment and economics. I recommend you check it out

@Polytrip:
I don't think the G-20 is a farce, man. Nations need leaders, and leaders need summits. the more discussion can happen, the more united the people, the more peace and prosperity will reign. that is what we need.

@Saidin: Yeah! I heard about that guy. They had enough money in the stock market allready that they could basically invest, and then subsequently withdraw enough money that the value of interconnected companies would fluxuate. Then, using these fluxuations they would gain majority control of those companies! It's brutal!

The real cost of capitalism and investment strategy, as I learned, Is when an investor like warren buffet comes along, gains control over say, a 100 year old textile company (making beautiful persian rugs for example) and then liquidates the company, selling off its assets, land, buildings, machinery, etc. gaining profit, the money moves on, but the value of that company, the real immesurable value is lost. you can't build a 100 year old company inside a year, and you can't really replace them once lost. All we'll have in the future is an ocean of liquid finance - insurance companies and information.

i agree we need things like the G20 and i'm all for it. It's just that we cannot do much more then believing these world leaders when they say that they're gonna do this or that. There are no ways to enforce anything agreed upon.

Define "enforce". You can't enforce anything agreed upon by anyone - except by force, 2/3 of the word enforce. Not leaders or presidents or summit agreements. Our entire world order is based on strong encouragement, economic persuasion and trust, not enforcement. I kinda like it that way.

JBArk

I mean like mild sanctions in the sense of "if you don't keep your promises, next time we won't invite you to talk with the rest of us who did keep their promise". So i meant the same as you: strong persuasion.

I don't see it. Most countries did not keep many of the promisses they made at the last G20 summit, but it's like "well, let's not mention that and put the past behind us". So every G20 summit, the leaders of the world are 'putting the past behind them' and 'focus on the future'.

China maybe kept one of it's promisses sort of, though, in the sense that they ANNOUNCED to uprate the yuan. They made this announcement less than a week ago.
I find that telling.

Its much more insidious than that. Corporations, using economic "hit men" will go into a country and offer to build out their infrastructure...say Dams, or Electrical grids, etc. The country borrows enormous sums of money from the World Bank and the IMF, and American or Eurpean contractors get the contracts to build it out. So, the countries are indebted to the world bank, and the money has gone to the corporations. When they cannot pay the money back (they rarely can, this is one of the purposes of this) they are then required to sell off their resources (to western countries at a discount), services (rail systems, hospitals, telephone systems, prisons to western corporations), or required to vote in a certain way at the UN.

This is why 3rd world debt forgiveness is such a huge issue. Corrupt officials indebten countries for thier own personal and western corporations benefit and the people of the country suffer. If officals won't "play ball" they and their families are threatened and if they still don't comply they are assasinated. If they cannot be assinated due to a tight circle of protection around them (ie Saddam Hussein) then the military is brought in to take them out and replace the government with one that is more compliant to the needs of the masters. This has happened numerous times, in many different places in the world.

It truly is a facinating read for anyone interested in economics...makes you realize how fubared the world really is.

Uhh... Voting them out of office?

BTW, that was me who wrote that.

Uhhh, how does that enforce "anything agreed upon"? That was my assertion. You are assuming the guy you vote in will honour the agreement...(But don't work dat away!) and since you are not assured of that, there IS no way to enforce it, short of force.



JBArk

Uhh... Voting them out of office?