Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: Nickbat on 30 May 2012, 20:24:14
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In Number 1 spot, it's Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF.
A few days ago, she offended many Greeks....
Lagarde, predicting that the debt crisis has yet to run its course, adds: "Do you know what? As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax."
She says she thinks "equally" about Greeks deprived of public services and Greek citizens not paying their tax."I think they should also help themselves collectively." Asked how, she replies: "By all paying their tax.
"Asked if she is essentially saying to the Greeks and others in Europe that they have had a nice time and it is now payback time, she responds: "That's right."
But, guess what?
Christine Lagarde, the IMF boss who caused international outrage after she suggested in an interview with the Guardian on Friday that beleaguered Greeks might do well to pay their taxes, pays no taxes, it has emerged.
As an official of an international institution, her salary of $467,940 (£298,675) a year plus $83,760 additional allowance a year is not subject to any taxes.
Lagarde, 56, receives a pay and benefits package worth more than American president Barack Obama earns from the United States government, and he pays taxes on it.
:o :o :o >:( >:(
and I find her a tad ugly as well. ;)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/lagarde-taxes-and-diplomacy-its-all-turbotax-me (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/lagarde-taxes-and-diplomacy-its-all-turbotax-me)
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::) good one Nickbat.. :y
but to me its no surprise, just a reckless rich class identity that land down there with a parachute ..
I bet she spends our monthly salary just in a lunch time..
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I would definitely tax her, Nick - without hesitation. :-* :-* :-* :y
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must add its really a good example of what quality of organisation is that she is leading.. :-X
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I would definitely tax her, Nick - without hesitation. :-* :-* :-* :y
Bloody hell Den, you're like a dog on permanent heat! ;D ;D ;)
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I would definitely tax her, Nick - without hesitation. :-* :-* :-* :y
Bloody hell Den, you're like a dog on permanent heat! ;D ;D ;)
;D ;D ;D Yup, I'm rabid me - and need to be put down (on something of the female type) ;D ;D ;D
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Nickbat I would have to agree with you on taxing bit, but I would also have to say that Greeks are guilty as hell for their problems.
Remeber when I read one statement from their transportation minister on Greek railways.
He said that it would be cheaper to pay a taxy to every train passenger than to fund the railways, cause ordinary conducters salary was around 4-5 thousand euros.
Also regarding taxing, in Greece if you have a swiming poll you pay some kind of luxury tax.
In Athens there were around 120 houses who payed that tax.
When they took a look at the sattelite images there were around 12 000 houses with pools in Athens alone if I remember correctly.
Alos remember a friend who went there on bussines trip first time and immediately wanted to relocate there.
When asked why he simply said, they don't get up early, work easy if at all, party every night and have great salaries so something is definitely wrong there
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blaming the Greece public for taxes is just a shallow idea comment.. if we look the problem like that
where we will put the other countries in that picture, spain, italy, portugal etc etc..
and its easy to make the list longer.. question is who gave those credits to those countries, who made those people to believe
that dream can go on..
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cem I'm not saying greeks are the only one to blame, but hey you cannot spend more than you have.
If you do it you'll end up in big problems.
They are used to spending more than they have and they don't want to give it up
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It is a problem all Western countries have. The big challenge and problem for democracies is that there are far more people ready to vote in politicians when they are being bribed with what they hope is other peoples money, through the tax system.
Unfortunately, they have reached the point where they can't tax people much further, as productive people then start finding more imaginative ways of avoiding paying it (Laffer curve). Somebody with an average lifestyle on an average wage at the moment is taxed just under 50% of their income, if they drive high mileages, smoke or drink a lot it is over 50%. Remember 38% of GDP is tax taken from the economy and their are an awful lot of people that pay no tax, so the rest that work are paying much more than this.
Then when they can't tax anymore they borrow.
So keeping the bribe going by borrowing lots of money, unfortunately once borrowing exceeds 100% of GDP it is not sustainable, with most Western economies approaching this level and some exceeding it. And you have to start to making savings just to pay the increasing interest as the loans grow (UK £8bn pre-2008 crash now £50bn, by 2015 it will be at least £60bn (2x the defense budget)).
So, they then plan growth strategies.
But, unfortunately economies aren't growing, most Western economies are currently in recession / depression contracting. So they lie to us by saying every year: This year will be tough with no growth, but next year will be better, and the year after that brilliant, #2008, #2009, #2010, #2011, #2012, #2013???.....
So they try to re-balance the economy through austerity.
About the maximum contraction you can have is about 1% per year, beyond that you have taken all of the growth out of the economy and you start a Greek, Portuguese, Spanish style economic death spiral. With the percentage of money spent in the public sector and all of the red tape spewing from Brussels, guarantees there will be none of that.
So they then use funny money tactics like having the printing presses running flat out and QE and other liquidity wheezes.
Which causes stagflation, which is where the UK currently is and will continue to be for along time. You can't solve a debt crisis with liquidity.
So by 2015 we will have had years of falling wages, high inflation and increasing public sector costs (public spending is set to rise every year to 2015, just a bit less quickly every year than under McRuin, with non-existent growth is meant to cover), Once is all comes to ahead, pulling more and more levers, will not stop us copying Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, France, Belgium, Austria and the USA with our own economic death spiral.
Leaving the EU and dramatic cost cutting (like overseas aid, windmills etc) and massive supply side reforms to free business of unnecessary overheads, we might have just about been able to avoid the coming storm created by Gordon McRuin. But the two water melons (very wet with green politics on the outside and red within) in CamMoron and Clegg and an anti-business secretary in Wince Cable, there is no chance.
The IMF has never lost money until now as it role and remit was to bail out countries with negative balance of payment problems. The French have now changed that remit as Ireland has always and currently has a balance of payment surplus. So under Lagarde (Dens hairy arsed lover with her even hairier armpits and 'la amour' of this French elder lady aroma of stale garlic, urine and BO) expect to see some spectacular losses, that's why the American and Canadian will not put any further funds into the IMF to bailout the suicide currency zone Eurozone.
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Well said Rods.
I bet Lagarde gives herself a pay rise too like the rest do. Do as I say not do as I do.
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blaming the Greece public for taxes is just a shallow idea comment.. if we look the problem like that
where we will put the other countries in that picture, spain, italy, portugal etc etc..
and its easy to make the list longer.. question is who gave those credits to those countries, who made those people to believe
that dream can go on..
It's all about personal responsibility and being held accountable for your own actions, a concept which is alien to socialism; and bloody socialism got the world in this mess.
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I would definitely tax her, Nick - without hesitation. :-* :-* :-* :y
These pills you're on Den ,................................. have you got a link for them...........? ;)
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I would definitely tax her, Nick - without hesitation. :-* :-* :-* :y
These pills you're on Den ,................................. have you got a link for them...........? ;)
You wouldn't want then Don, they're beginning to take a terrible toll. :-X ;D ;D ;D
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Leaving the EU and dramatic cost cutting (like overseas aid, windmills etc) and massive supply side reforms to free business of unnecessary overheads, we might have just about been able to avoid the coming storm created by Gordon McRuin. But the two water melons (very wet with green politics on the outside and red within) in CamMoron and Clegg and an anti-business secretary in Wince Cable, there is no chance.
<snipped merely for server consideration>
I'm beginning to doubt that will ever be possible given the intrinsic link that has been carefully built between almost every aspect of the Establishment of this country and that of the EU.
We would at the very least require a fundamental clear-out of those within Westminster who are barricaded against reality and the plight of our people.
A radical bitch-slapping is urgently needed for those purporting to represent a free MSM supposedly in business, inter alia, to bring injustice, incompetence and sheer criminality – practiced with ever increasing regularity by those who would consider themselves to be our betters – to the attention of the public at large, rather than dwell on inconsequential matters such as the trials and tribulations of those unfortunates stricken by ‘celebrity’ and so on.
Finally, for the moment at least, we would need the legions of brain-dead presently moving around in a zombie-like trance across this entire country to snap the opps out of it and start asking questions, demanding answers and putting those who would seek to represent us within parliament and in council chambers placed on notice and left in no doubt that we are sick and tired of their performance up to date.
We must guard against one thing however, and that is to ensure we do not end up with more of the same.
Ignoring the blood and guts top and tail piece so typical of the US media, the following is interesting in general terms;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gujscUpONpA&feature=related
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cem I'm not saying greeks are the only one to blame, but hey you cannot spend more than you have.
If you do it you'll end up in big problems.
They are used to spending more than they have and they don't want to give it up
starting with USA, many western countries (with few exceptions) are in this situation (and my country also) .. and I'm afraid it will get worse..
cheap labour , and cost effective high production in east hits the markets and high sum owning groups are changing positions and trade
accordingly.. and there are also lots of other factors (some historical) bring countries to that point.. and its inevitable unless.. :-X
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No Western Government have risen to the challenge of globalization with the exception of possibly Germany, but I even doubt this long term.
Personally I don't believe in protectionism policies as they just prolong the life on overpriced, inefficient industries, where the management are not up to the task. In proper capitalism, if you are not up to the task of providing desirable products or services, at the right time, at the right place and at the right price you get found out, by people going elsewhere. This applies to all businesses big and small as Tesco are finding to their cost at the moment. As the founder of Walmart, Sam Walton said: "Who can sack everybody from the Chairman to the cleaners in a company? Their customers. Woolworths is a classic example of this where they lost their way. Now is they had copied Wilkinsons they would probably still be in business.
Protectionism is like having an Olympic games, where certain countries because they are better at producing winning athletes in a particular event to be made to carry a weight penalty to give the rest a chance.
This country is in a particularly bad position where our highly politicized education system is rapidly slipping down the world rankings because of the socialist political meddling, where we need more scientists, engineers and mathematicians the number of UK graduates is going down. Everybody has a Mk 1 pair of arms and can do unskilled jobs, these are the ones increasingly going abroad, where labour costs are much cheaper.
The challenge is to increase skills so that we can produce products and services that people are prepared to pay a premium for. We have got world class industries like Rolls Royce, JCB, BA, Virgin, BP, Lever Brothers, F1, Premiership Football, Tesco, Vodafone and ARM to name but a few. But we need more and we also need more visionaries to create completely new industries. I can only think of one UK product in that class at the moment and that is Richard Branson's space tourism project.
A good start would be to get rid of our current socialist high taxes, and all of the unnecessary raft of red-tape micro management regulations including the minimum wage. The reason youth unemployment is at an all time high in the UK is that the minimum wage does not reflect the cost of taking on youth compared to more experienced workers. If you insist on keeping some sort of minimum wage then the youth rates should be based NOT on age bands, but employment experience, so the first three years are graded at say a minimum of £3, £4 and £5/ph. Even at £3 that is £120 per week almost double the dole money of £67.
Without meeting these challenges, which none of the ConDemLab do in any shape or form, then it is only a matter of time before we join Greece and Spain.
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I do not believe we will solve our problems in this country as long as we allow ourselves to be governed by the types such as we have at present, of all political colour, and who happily renege on any electoral promises they make. (e.g. Cameron and the referendum)
Since WW11 we have gradually allowed a political class to develop who have very little idea of what life is really about, as they are, for want of a better term, professional politicians. A typical route to becoming an MP is, after A levels, a PPE degree, possibly a short time in the law, a period as an intern at Westminster doing 'research', and thence to a parliamentary career. Very rarely have they ever achieved anything by hard work in industry or the armed forces, and in many cases are propelled into positions of great power and responsibility by the time they are 30. It is time that a realistic standard of age and experience was demanded of those who would wish to tell us what to do. >:( >:( >:(
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yesterday night there was a film about W.Bush.. unfortunately capitalism needs those types to command easily.. and even the next was not very different as time proved..desperate imo..