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| The Godless world has gone mad! | |
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| Topic Started: Tuesday, 16. September 2008, 21:10 (145 Views) | |
| Rose of York | Tuesday, 16. September 2008, 21:10 Post #1 |
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Banks going under. Major companies ceasing trading. Conscientious workers thrown on the dole. Young couples unable to buy or rent a modest home. Middle income households keeping an eye on food prices. £1.45 for a cabbage! We could all see it coming. Our Government took away the little assistance for the low paid, by removing the 10% tax band. A two-day sale of art work by Damien Hirst (he who displayed a pickled sheep) has, this day, set a new record for an auction dedicated to a sole artist. The auction, at Sotheby's. raised £111 million. Money has been worshipped. The problem is, money is not divine, nor is it all powerful. |
  Catholic and proud of it! Talk to God before Mass. Talk to each other afterwards | |
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| Derekap | Tuesday, 16. September 2008, 22:04 Post #2 |
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It seems that financial institutions in the USA were so greedy to make money they tempted people who good ill afford to take out loans or mortgages and when the crunch came both the borrowers and institutions obviously faced serious problems. Banks in this country likewise got involved in probably an indirect way but are likewise suffering. It is interesting that large companies decide on a figure of reduncies to save money and then the CEO or chairman gets £1m or more bonus for being a good boy. Meanwhile the remaining staff are struggling to keep on top of their job whilst taking repeated calls (sometimes on expensive numbers and with long waits for answers) from customers wondering how their application for ISAS etc etc are progressing. We made an application in early May, they lost such, so we reapplied, the situation has become very complicated and is still not finalised. Electricity and Gas companies have raised their tariffs tremendously in this country but by no means so high in their native countries. Parishes in the Shrewsbury Dioceses must now pay £1. 2765 per therm after paying 70p per therm for three years. Their levy to the Dioscese has also increased. Petrol and diesel is always .9p Good Night before I contemplate suicide. [redit][/redit] Edited by Derekap, Tuesday, 16. September 2008, 22:05.
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| william of bow | Wednesday, 17. September 2008, 19:16 Post #3 |
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In the Hollywood movie "Wall Street" the character Gordon Gecko says to some colleagues: "Greed is good!". It was never a more real guiding philosophy of what has been happening in New York and London over the past twenty years or so. Greed, corrupt practices, devising new systems of accounting and trading that set out deliberately to leave the laws of accountancy behind and also to totally bend the guiding principles of economics. Lehman Brothers, as many another bank, has been buying bad debts. That is what the Home Loan trading has been all about. Buying debts. Now, tell me, how does that work? How can you buy debts and make a profit? I mean in terms of the laws of economics? Lehmann brothers have gone bottom up. Their debts are approximately 49 times larger than their Equity. They are among the first. They will not be alone. HBOS have just been bought by Lloyds TSB. Lloyds TSB is one of the very, very few banks that didn't get into the house debts market. That wasn't a planned avoidance by the way. They simply missed the boat and then couldn't break into the market. Lucky (as it now turns out) for them. This recession has a way to go yet, Some economists say we aren't even yet halway through. Remember; this all started last August 2007and Northern Rock was merely the first UK victim. Other High Street banks are now in serious meltdown. Most of us here can kiss our pensions, our insurance and whatever, goodbye. A million more unemployed by next August is what they are saying now. And do you know what. No one even saw this coming. So much for economics being a 'science'. And all those whizz kid mathematicians taken into city banks to become analysts and actuaries. Have any of them been worth the massive bonuses they were given? Clearly not. But does it touch the really rich? No, not at all. Just us poor saps in the street. Damien Hirst made £70 Million over two days for his art. Thats loose change for many of these same city whizz kids we saw collecting their boxes to clear their desks. Lets not weep too hard for them. They will get along just fine. The man in Batleyleft with negative equity and no job deserves our tears more. |
William of Bow[G.K.Chesterton] Check my Blog: http://www.williamonthehill.typepad.co.uk | |
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| MickCook | Wednesday, 17. September 2008, 20:33 Post #4 |
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Here in the USA Lehman Brothers has filed for Chapter 11 protection against bankrupcy sending Wall Street into a reet tizzy! On the bright side, some of you may be pleased to hear that Barclays (yep, the British Bank of that name) picked up part of Lehman for what is considered to be loose change! The mealt down continued with the sale of Merrill Lynch to the Bank of America. Merrill Lynch are the boys who lost my wife's money and no tears will be shed for them in the Cook household. I can't help thinking about the guy who built his house on sand and the guy who built his house on rock. The wind blew and the floods came and the house built on sand fell - but the house built on rock stood. Sand = Greed, corruption. Rock = Gospel values. |
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:) Mick The Cook Companies | |
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| Rose of York | Wednesday, 17. September 2008, 20:47 Post #5 |
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The ones who were wealth driven are rich in money but poor in spirit. Why does anybody want so much money they can have more planes than they can use, a yacht so big they will never have full use of all its facilities, a dozen cars (won't one off roader, one sports car, half a dozen saloon cars do them), hundreds of acres of back garden? Are they insecure? They might feel more content if they set their store on the real God, the living one with a Capital G. |
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Catholic and proud of it! Talk to God before Mass. Talk to each other afterwards | |
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| william of bow | Thursday, 18. September 2008, 07:43 Post #6 |
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Rose, you have put your thumb on the nub of this whole sorry, sad tale. To be as rich as Croesus (sp?). What for? You really can't take it with you when you die. So what is the point? Except that many of the super-rich seem to believe that they are never going to die. There are some honourable exceptions - some American, a few Brits -who want to use their wealth to benefit others but on the whole, in the world of the super rich the money is only for the benefit of themselves. Many indeed don't even want to pay tax on it and make the most extraordinary complicated arrangements to evade paying any tax. Damien Hurst makes £70 million over two days; to add to his reputed £150 million plus wealth. You just cannot spend that amount of money; the interest alone gives him a more than comfortable living. Mr Hurst claims that he likes to support up and coming young artists. So far he has done this by buying the odd piece of work from an individual. How good of him. He has the wealth to endow a scheme or a centre where many young artists could be nurtured. Come on Damien, do it now and demonstrate that your Catholic Christian upbringing was not entirely wasted. |
William of Bow[G.K.Chesterton] Check my Blog: http://www.williamonthehill.typepad.co.uk | |
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| Gerard | Thursday, 18. September 2008, 11:10 Post #7 |
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Now that IS a prophecy It is a prophecy for TODAY. Gerry |
| "The institutional and charismatic aspects are quasi coessential to the Church's constitution" (Pope John Paul II, 1998). | |
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| Rose of York | Thursday, 18. September 2008, 15:55 Post #8 |
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For some years I felt that everything was getting too big. Small building societies merged with what were, then, considered to be large ones, and the combined ones were eventually swallowed up by even larger ones. Then, building societies converted to banks, at first offering private loans, progressing to small business finance, and so on. In the retail sector supermarkets wiped out small grocers, then the hardware shops. When did you last see an independent shop, in the centre of a small town, where a man can buy a shirt? Supermarkets are involved in banking, estate agency, insurance, even providing doctors' surgeries. British utilities are owned by companies based overseas. Good job they were not owned by German companies in 1939. Today, governments world wide are making a concerted effort to save the banking system. Could this be the start of the New World Order? Looking on the bright side, Japan provides financial help to the West. It's better than what happened in the forties. They were shooting each other in those days. |
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Catholic and proud of it! Talk to God before Mass. Talk to each other afterwards | |
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| Derekap | Saturday, 20. September 2008, 11:15 Post #9 |
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Rose wrote: "British utilities are owned by companies based overseas. Good job they were not owned by German companies in 1939." In both World Wars provision was made by the UK Government where necessary or advisable to keep German owned companies going. In the second World War any company whose registered office was in German occupied countries had legally to be taken care of. I don't know the details. |
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| maklavan | Sunday, 21. September 2008, 17:43 Post #10 |
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Was that Northern Rock? |
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3:41 PM Nov 23