US Conspiracy to Destablize Pakistan?

hamidm: Russell whom you quote was no doubt talking about the ancient Athenians who had a slave class to do the manual work. But "idle" they were not - unless you consider Plato's Republic or Euclid's geometry or Sophocles' theater to be the result of idleness.

Even the right wing Robert Samuelson has finally come out against the "idle rich" in todays WP:

Capitalism's Enemies Within
By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, January 23, 2008; Page A19

Excerpt:
Amid the mayhem on world financial markets, it is becoming clear that capitalism's most dangerous enemies are capitalists. No one can have watched the "subprime mortgage" debacle without noticing the absurd contrast between the magnitude of the failure and the lavish rewards heaped on those who presided over it. At Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, large losses on subprime securities cost chief executives their jobs -- and they left with multimillion-dollar pay packages. Stanley O'Neal, the ex-head of Merrill, received an estimated $161 million.
...Just why investment bankers and traders out-earn, say, doctors or computer engineers is a question I've never heard convincingly answered. Are they smarter? Unlikely. Do they contribute more to the economy? Questionable. True, Wall Street often performs a vital function. It channels savings into productive investments. It helps provide access to capital and credit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/22/AR2008012202 615.html

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HP: Knowledge without integrity is worthless.

tahmed,

.... so you don't buy my argument in favor of the idle rich ?..... think about it - do you think mo of mecca would have had the time to sit around in a cave and talk to a winged creature if he had to get up in the morning and go to work?.... if his old lady didn't have all that money to finance his nocturnal trips, he would have remained earthbound like the rest of us .....the man was able to accomplish more in his lifetime than a family of patels working twenty hours a day running six donut shops in jersey ........ on the other hand, look at poor jesus who made his own shoes and was so poor that he had to drink imaginary wine ....... the man was strung up in a loin cloth and it took other much wealthier people like pope peter to spread his word .......

..... and that is why masadi will never amount to anything - the poor man will spend all his pennies on 'publishing' his 'works' at lulu.com even if he is able to con ward churchill into write the foreword ....

Re: # 361

hp and tahmed,

.... i was merely echoing a higher power - bertrand russell :

"In the past, there was a small leisure class and a larger working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges. These facts greatly diminished its excellence, but in spite of this drawback it contributed nearly the whole of what we call civilization. It cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations. Even the liberation of the oppressed has usually been inaugurated from above. Without the leisure class, mankind would never have emerged from barbarism"

.......... now, as far as masadi is concerned, i think the man must be eliminated from cyberspace - he poses a grave threat to mankind ......

Re: # 401 that should be post #305, and here is what I said

#305 Posted by iron_mask on January 22, 2008 12:13:39 am
Re: # 257

sorry, Masadi - rather unfortunate that I cannot fathom your language and your logic is rather pedestrian. You need to delve a bit deeper - what you say has been said umpteen number of times and many are yet to see some ofthese claims validated.

Anyway thank you for your thoughts - which seem insightful to you.

BTW if you used less of the Moron, eff_you type of language you would come across as the thinking person you aim to be. The language you use is that of an uneducated, illiterate, uncomfortable little moron.

Anyway have a great day!

Re: # 400

I have, and as a result always take his statements with a pinch of salt! I am an equal opp. questioner :-)

I agree re: masadi - in fact said so earlier as well (see #232 or #255 - donot recall the number), but the man has a penchant for intense abuse - and in fact has been correct (not necessarily right) on a fair number of occasions. Its the language which makes him an unbearable boor

#399 Posted by iron_mask
"Please post verifiable information here - before we can believe you."

Never seen any post from you asking the same question from the other guy who on several occasions claimed to be a Harvard Business Graduate. Wonder why?

In reality and if you can parse Asadi's posts correctly, he shows greater knowledge and understanding of the issues than the so called Harvard Business school graduate who is unable to write two paragraphs on any subject with some coherency!

Asadi's problem is not that he does not know but he hits a snag when he wants to comment on every issue and every post.
still, he is certainly more knowledgeable on many issues than the Harvard Business school graduate, whose knowledge on every issues is pedestrian!

Re: # 340
#340 Posted by masadi on January 22, 2008 5:08:28 pm
Anil you need to shut up when you dont know something. I graduated summa cum laude, top of my class, beating out all chinese, Indians and US students in my university in economics. Now go ___ yourself

Please post verifiable information here - before we can believe you. This bit of information needs validation, a blanket statement like needs this - but then you are the biggest laude on Chowk!

Re: # 329
#329 Posted by bubba on January 22, 2008 1:00:27 pm
Re: # 323 Posted by chaltahai on January 22, 2008 11:31:01 am

[....with the widest of asset classes for the investor set.] ok, with $1.4 Trillion Chinese money back into the US economy, buying treasury bills. This is what we usually call "funny money". Now, once again, the US is heading for cheap money and worthless dollar, and once again, the "financial gurus" (those creative geniuses!) will once again trap millions of people in their "get rich schemes" and once again, another group of people will be wiped out in 5 years or so.

US is heading for a financial war with the rest of the world, and the weapon of choice is the dollar. You keep USD at your own risk. If China does not get away from pegging their curreny to the dollar, we will have dollar equal to the Chinese curreny to equal out the current account deficit. How about that?


Bubba, can you expand on this china angle for novices like me...also what if China is also participant in this game and could be playing a double bluff!

old foggies please be easy on masadi, the guy is spirited and shows lot of promise

masasdi:
modulate yourself. this is simply a forum an not all the guys are your enemies. learn from then; many of them are accomplished

and masadi you coward. i know you are sitting there staring at the screen. cant face being confronted? only capable of ridiculing people like me as being "peons" for daring to question your lies about the US as long as I didnt respond in your own language?

majumdar: what you are saying reminds me of Clinton saying that "he didnt inhale". Please stop bending over backward to be generous to this man - we are talking of real life where thousands of people have died in Pakistan, where millions are misled by scoundrels like him who paint the US as being their enemy.

what bigger enemy can Pakstanis have than someone who fools them into doing things that hurts no one other than themselves/? Just the fact that this scoundrel does not pout religious rubbish like mullahs makes him no less a liar.

Re: # 393

majumdar

Thou are right, he is no fundoo...but, did he leave the US on his own or was he escorted to the airport.

Tahmed sahib,

Masadi honestly considers USA to be shaitan and to give credit to him he has actually left the country to come back to Pakistan unlike munafiqs (hope got the word rite) who stay in US, enjoy its pleasures and call for a jihad.

Now you are right that demonising US and inciting Pakis to start a jihad against US is not in Pak's best interests. But to be fair to him, he has never recommended armed fighting against US nor support the Talibs/Havayoons at least on chowk. Now what he does beyond chowk I dont know.

Regards

majumdar #390 you are being too generous with this man. he even uses the same vocabulary (shaitan) as these scoundrels do to spread their lies about the US.

he is a liar who tells lies of the kind that have misled thousands of youth from poor families in Pakistan. I have seen those young men in madrassahs in islamabad - innocent young people, well meaning and friendly. Turned into cannon fodder by scoundrels like masadi, fighting a people who mean them no harm - and those scoundrels act as pious as masadi.