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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Hey Sigs....

This is getting too funny.

I've been mislabled as a snowflake by the right and left fringes now, twice in one week.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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6ix, you've told stories about yourself melting down under adversity. I'd believe you are not a frail snowflake if you hadn't told them. You need to build a false internet facade for yourself, making you look braver, tougher, smarter, less beaten down by life than you really are. You can start building the strength illusion by ignoring accusations of being a snowflake. For example, every time Trump says "No Collusion!" I know he knows he colluded. When he says "Believe Me" I know he knows he told a lie.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Hey Sigs....

This is getting too funny.

I've been mislabled as a snowflake by the right and left fringes now, twice in one week.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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6ix, you've told stories about yourself melting down under adversity. I'd believe you are not a frail snowflake if you hadn't told them. You need to build a false internet facade for yourself, making you look braver, tougher, smarter, less beaten down by life than you really are. You can start building the strength illusion by ignoring accusations of being a snowflake. For example, every time Trump says "No Collusion!" I know he knows he colluded. When he says "Believe Me" I know he knows he told a lie.

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lol

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

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White trash think that dividing money equally with people they despise will mean far less money for white trash. But the white trash of America will never get the money they think they deserve unless Mexicans, niggers, queers and women also get a much bigger share of the wealth.

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It's not true that one group will prosper only if other groups prosper, which is the only argument in favor of identity politics.

That argument is the fallacy of identity politics. Through it we are being played by identity politics into an unstated zero-sum game. The notion is that it's OK to be pitted against each other for survival, as long as the fight is FAIR. But it doesn't matter how FAIRLY we are judged in the arena. There will be the winners at the expense of the losers. If some groups rise it will be because other groups fall. It's still the same zero-sum game.

Democrats - or some new party that rises up out of the ashes - need to specifically reject the notion that people being FAIRLY pitted against each other for survival is the end goal.

The end goal should be to raise us all up. Together.

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The zero-sum game that should be played is the one where the wealthy lose to everyone poorer.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
This continues to resonate as the most brainless concept possible.

Remove the resources and effectiveness of the most successful, so that the least successful will get a few more dollars to spend on lottery. Genius.

Essentially, replace any CEO with the average McDonald's or Walmart employee. Then wonder why the previously successful company falls to pieces and insolvency. Best. Idea. Ever.

Of course, anybody with a brain understands second is, yet again, pushing Communism/Socialism as the Ultimate Utopia we all know it is.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Hey Sigs....

This is getting too funny.

I've been mislabled as a snowflake by the right and left fringes now, twice in one week.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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6ix, you've told stories about yourself melting down under adversity. I'd believe you are not a frail snowflake if you hadn't told them. You need to build a false internet facade for yourself, making you look braver, tougher, smarter, less beaten down by life than you really are. You can start building the strength illusion by ignoring accusations of being a snowflake. For example, every time Trump says "No Collusion!" I know he knows he colluded. When he says "Believe Me" I know he knows he told a lie.

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lol

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Is this like, whenever second posts something, we all know it is pure lies?

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You need to build a false internet facade for yourself, making you look braver, tougher, smarter, less beaten down by life than you really are.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:...Instead, they need to be made SUFFICIENT and SECURE, as does everyone else. And their living needs to come from their work - their productive input to society; and not from family, or from control over the levers of power.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
You both assume that to lift everyone up, the wealthy must be made POOR.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
"Remove the resources and effectiveness of the most successful" (who you mistakenly assume are the 'most capable') and, as you imagine, replace them "with the average McDonald's or Walmart employee".

In other words, make the formerly rich into the poor.

BTW, you aren't rich. The REALLY rich, the people Janet Yellen and Hillary Clinton care about, don't ever worry about it all being taken away or lost.

So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?

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Originally posted by JO753:

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Originally posted by 1kiki:...Instead, they need to be made SUFFICIENT and SECURE, as does everyone else. And their living needs to come from their work - their productive input to society; and not from family, or from control over the levers of power.

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Good post.

I mostly agree. The only differens being that earning money by working iz a consept that's dayz are numbered.

Assuming the current mess eventually gets scrapped, I think the only peepl who will be paid in the future beyond the normal standard credit will be athletes and artists.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
It's the assumptions you two make I have a problem with. Whether you agree it'll work or not, both you SECOND assume that to make poor people better off, rich people need to be made poor. You claim SECOND sees it as a viable solution while you think it'll fail.

Neither of you seem to understand that there's a different way to get there, that doesn't involve anyone being poor.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I can't imagine we're going to be seeing an America where I'm getting paid to stock product overnight the same amount that a brain surgeon gets paid.

I do, however, believe that there could be a ton of benefits to a Basic Universal Income. That's $12,000 per year to everyone, regardless of race, sex, and class. You get it. I get it. Even Trump and Clinton get it.

For somebody like me, I could actually live off of that alone. All of the money that I made would then be able to be spent on things that I'd never buy for myself, thus stimulating the local economy . . .

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
"And once you point us to this third way, we will certainly believe you."

I already did, more than once. And 6-string found at least one of them, though you're too stupid to.

When you do, perhaps you could respond to what I posted, rather than 6-string's interpretation.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
I see that - with prompting - you were able to find at least one post. So it's not that I didn't post something - as you claimed - "And once you point us to this third way, we will certainly believe you." ie You lied. AGAIN.

And your refusal to discuss tells me - you've got nothing. So once again, you resort to insult, setting after-the-fact preconditions, and changing the topic.

You've amply displayed that you're too stupid to participate in an actual conversation.

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It's the assumptions you two make I have a problem with. Whether you agree it'll work or not, both you SECOND assume that to make poor people better off, rich people need to be made poor. You claim SECOND sees it as a viable solution while you think it'll fail.

Neither of you seem to understand that there's a different way to get there, that doesn't involve anyone being poor.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

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Originally posted by second:
The zero-sum game that should be played is the one where the wealthy lose to everyone poorer.

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Originally posted by second:
1kiki, the rich will fight with all their might the Democrats because the Dem's agenda will be paid by the taxes of the rich. The rich don't want to pay

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
It's the assumptions you two make I have a problem with. Whether you agree it'll work or not, both you SECOND assume that to make poor people better off, rich people need to be made poor. You claim SECOND sees it as a viable solution while you think it'll fail.

Neither of you seem to understand that there's a different way to get there, that doesn't involve anyone being poor.

So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by JO753:

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Originally posted by 1kiki:...Instead, they need to be made SUFFICIENT and SECURE, as does everyone else. And their living needs to come from their work - their productive input to society; and not from family, or from control over the levers of power.

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Good post.

I mostly agree. The only differens being that earning money by working iz a consept that's dayz are numbered.

Assuming the current mess eventually gets scrapped, I think the only peepl who will be paid in the future beyond the normal standard credit will be athletes and artists.

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Well that kind of sounds like communism to me.

I can't imagine we're going to be seeing an America where I'm getting paid to stock product overnight the same amount that a brain surgeon gets paid.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
"And once you point us to this third way, we will certainly believe you."

I already did, more than once. And 6-string found at least one of them, though you're too stupid to.

When you do, perhaps you could respond to what I posted, rather than 6-string's interpretation.

So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

So ... what do I propose?
. . .
So, SECOND - here are the questions you need to address to respond to my post: what do you think of re-purposing the military to 1) provide valuable skills to the members, 2) provide jobs, and 3) perform important unaddressed tasks to society and the nation?
. . .
And not only have I NOT proposed a workers utopia, I haven't called for a redistribution of wealth. All I've proposed so far is a re-purposing of tax dollars already collected.

Since, AS ALWAYS, your post neither accurately portrays mine nor responds to it, I will assume that you're strawmanning (lying) and/ or changing the subject. AS ALWAYS.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

We already tried that here, as the Original Colonies. The disastrous consequences of that experiment were the widespread starvation and destitution, requiring the Pilgrims get bailed out by the Indians: the First Thanksgiving. Too bad this excellent example of communism isn't more widely taught, when our children can still learn.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

So ... what do I propose?
. . .
So, SECOND - here are the questions you need to address to respond to my post: what do you think of re-purposing the military to 1) provide valuable skills to the members, 2) provide jobs, and 3) perform important unaddressed tasks to society and the nation?
. . .
And not only have I NOT proposed a workers utopia, I haven't called for a redistribution of wealth. All I've proposed so far is a re-purposing of tax dollars already collected.

Since, AS ALWAYS, your post neither accurately portrays mine nor responds to it, I will assume that you're strawmanning (lying) and/ or changing the subject. AS ALWAYS.

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There is so much wrong with how you write, 1kiki. It is a great, if you were running for political office or for a CEO’s job. You are letting the ‘Verse know what you will do with the power. You show that you are touchy, bossy, and obnoxious. So much wrong. Now I will show you what I want to write about. It is not about you, 1kiki:

A Nobel laureate explains why we get the bad economic policies we deserve
https://qz.com/1140481

“People who voted for Trump, or Brexit, or Le Pen and Mélenchon in France are by and large very concerned about their future with robots, with rising debts, with inequality and unemployment. We have neglected some people, the losers of globalization, and we have a society that’s more and more unequal. It might get worse, unfortunately, with new technology.

When people are afraid or upset, they also tend to dismiss their current governments and the experts. They want a big change, which is often supplied by populists who offer fairytales and the wrong policies. People are trying to grab something that will give them hope.

We get the economic policies we deserve. And as long as a lack of economic understanding prevails among the general public, making good policy choices will take a lot of political courage.”


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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You show that you are touchy, bossy, and obnoxious.- SECOND

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Over the past decade, reams of research by economists has been devoted to investigating why they failed to foresee the financial crisis, among other things economics has recently gotten wrong. This soul-searching has produced new theories, models, and policies, but it hasn’t fully repaired the reputation of the field. As time passes and the effects of the crisis fade, people still find it hard to trust economists.

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The latest effort to improve public opinion

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of economics comes from Jean Tirole, winner of the Nobel prize in economics in 2014. The Frenchman’s latest book, Economics for the Common Good (Princeton University Press), is a 560-page manifesto on how the profession can get back on track.
Tirole_EconomicsForTheCommonGood

The timing of the book—published in English this month after its original release in French last year—is pertinent. The relationship between economics and politics is starting to unravel. Over the past year, many have sought to explain Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the rise of far-right and far-left politics in Europe using economic arguments. But it’s becoming clear that economics alone does not explain the situation. If the questions at the root of public life are no longer answered by the famous political dictum, “It’s the economy, stupid,” where does that leave economists?

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Amid a general backlash against “elites,” economists must prove their worth. Tirole starts by trying to demystify what they actually do.

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He then addresses the challenges the field should be tackling, from inequality and climate change to labor market policies and the future of Europe.

He also isn’t afraid to turn the tables. “We get the economic policies we deserve,” he writes. “And as long as a lack of economic understanding prevails among the general public, making good policy choices will take a lot of political courage.” This concern shared by the Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, who recently said the UK suffers from “twin deficits” in public understanding and trust in economics.

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Tirole’s book is ultimately a defense of economics, although it acknowledges that it needs to reconnect with other social sciences like psychology, anthropology, history, and political science. This is something Tirole encourages as chairman of the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, where experts from a wide range of disciplines work together.

Quartz spoke with Tirole in London about what goes wrong when we believe what we want to believe at the expense of good economics. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

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Quartz: This book is a big departure from your previous work on industrial organization, regulation, and finance. Why write it?

Tirole: I’ve been involved in public policy for a long time but I’d never engaged directly with the public. The tipping point was the Nobel prize. You become a public intellectual whether you want to or not.

An ex-post rationalization is also populism. It’s useful to communicate with experts and governments, but if the wider audience don’t get it because they don’t have enough of an academic education, it’s very hard for politicians to get the right policies through.

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And politicians are like everybody else, they react to their own incentives, such as an election.

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Q:Do you think enough economists do enough to make their work more accessible to the public?

A: There are economists who do that, but economists also react to their incentives. The main things for them are the judgment of peers, quality of research, and quality of teaching. Doing wider audience work is like a distraction. That doesn’t mean that we can’t do better.

Q: The Nobel prize meant you reached the pinnacle of peer recognition, so that must free you up to write about other things.

A: Getting the Nobel prize is wonderful, but at the same time it’s a bit dangerous. I talk about the Nobel syndrome and I feel that myself.

Q: What is “Nobel syndrome”?

A: The Nobel syndrome is when you are being asked about many things you have no expertise in. You have your common sense and what you learn from colleagues but there’s always a gray zone where you don’t know if you should answer or not. People expect because you won the Nobel prize that you know everything, but the truth is we don’t.

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The relationship between economics and politics has been particularly messy lately. Economic arguments don’t seem to be informing better policies.

Well, first we have to make sure people respect intellectuals. For that, the intellectuals have to do the right thing. Then, you have to limit frustrations. People who voted for Trump, or Brexit, or Le Pen and Mélenchon in France are by and large very concerned about their future with robots, with rising debts, with inequality and unemployment. We have neglected some MOST people, the losers of globalization, and we have a society that’s more and more unequal. It might get worse, unfortunately, with new technology.

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When people are afraid or upset, they also tend to [RIGHTLY] dismiss their current governments and the experts. They want a big change, which is often supplied by populists who offer fairytales and the wrong policies. People are trying to grab something that will give them hope.

Q: Is it getting any better?

A: No, we are not moving in the right direction.

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Q: You argue that the state has changed from a provider to more of a regulator. But as politics becomes more polarized, support has risen for heavier state intervention by the likes of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Bernie Sanders in the US, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France.

A: It also applies to the National Front in France [a far-right party], which has a similar economic program. People see the market as this anonymous entity that is running ruining their life. Governments have a role to play, but not what they think. They want someone to rescue them and they think the government is going to protect their job. I am for a welfare state but

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for example, not the way it works now in France. You want to protect workers; you don’t want to protect jobs.

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Q: So how can inequality be tackled more effectively?

A: There is the issue of inequality within a country but there’s the issue of inequality across countries. We need incentives to innovate and we need entrepreneurs. The five largest market caps in the world are two-sided market platforms created by just a few people. If in continental Europe we don’t succeed in keeping our talent, then the jobs won’t be created here and that’s going to increase inequality. It’s a nice thing to redistribute, but there needs to be something to redistribute.

Inequality is also linked to climate change. Is there enough thinking about how we can address this?

No, there are not enough resources devoted both in terms of pollution and R&D. It’s not going to be a solution either to exonerate developing countries from a carbon price because most of the pollution will come from China, Brazil, India and so on… and maybe the US if Trump continues as he is. The only solution, and it’s not an easy solution, is to transfer money to change the rules of the game for those countries and then they have to be accountable for their pollution. don't have to compete on our playing field Collective promises, like the ones made in Copenhagen and Paris, never happen.

Q: Are people ready to admit that solutions will be hard?

A: The phrase you always hear is green growth. Green growth is about believing what we want to believe. I would love to have green growth but if we could have higher rates of growth, more purchasing power and be greener at the same time, we would be doing it already or we are completely stupid. No, we have to accept that we have to incur costs to be clean.

Q: Lastly, let’s talk about Europe. A lot of Europeans seem to want more integration

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and more sovereignty at the same time.

A: Again, that’s about people believing what they want to believe.

Q: What can Europe do to get out of its current situation, caught between two ideals?

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A: Europe is not a federation, in the way the US can be or many countries can be, because we don’t have a shared budget, a common debt, common unemployment insurance, or common deposit insurance. Europe would need systematic transfers and currently it’d be from the north to the south.

You also need to have some common laws. In Europe we have centralized banking supervision,

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so in principle we could have common deposit insurance because we have the same rules of the game for banks in Spain, Italy, Germany, etc.

But for unemployment insurance we don’t have the same rules. We have labor market policies and education, but the unemployment rate varies from below 5% to 15-20%. A common unemployment insurance would make that more in sync. I’m not saying we should make people unemployed just for fun, but still we have lobbies that resist change. Whether you resist the lobbies depends on whether you will pay yourself or whether it will be shared with the others. In order to move towards a common budget

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and debt, we need to have common rules of the game.

Q: Is this likely?

A: I’m pessimistic. If you look at the populist movement—but not just populists— they always offer more sovereignty. If you look at the broader scale, it’s ridiculous. The French are going to defend against Germans and vice versa. But as a narrative it works, and the trend is towards more sovereignty and less federalism.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

SIX was right, this was an INCREDIBLY stupid article, it's really just a rehash of Yanis Varoufakis, and I gave up listening to HIM after one or two readings. There are a lot better better books out there on the failures of modern economics. I'll see if I can find those titles and post them; it's a lot better than reading this drivel.

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SIX was right, this was an INCREDIBLY stupid article, it's really just a rehash of Yanis Varoufakis, and I gave up listening to HIM after one or two readings. There are a lot better better books out there on the failures of modern economics. I'll see if I can find those titles and post them; it's a lot better than reading this drivel. - SIGNY

I am eager to know what authors on economics you recommend. Why did you not immediately give your authors rather than spread contempt?- SECOND

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Once you get around to it, you ought to stand behind your recommendations, not just throw some names out there that you haven't read. I want to know who you get your ideas from about how economics work.- SECOND

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Academic economics is the problem. What this man is saying that if people aren't sufficiently propagandized, it's hard to jam the stick up their ass.

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So, what is his solution to the problem? "Educate" people more, so that they accept their insecure station in life with more meekness?

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The reality is the roboticization/ unemployment doesn't HAVE to be the policy, but it WILL be if the main driver of economics is PROFIT and "efficiency" is the excuse. As long as PROFIT is the main goal and people continue to believe in the fairy tale of "efficiency", people will continue to be screwed. So far, he hasn't addressed that.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

A book that I have recommended many times on this website already is "The Worldly Philosophers" by Heilbroner. . . . I read it when I was 12 (in the early 60's) and there have been many editions since then. I can't speak to later editions, but the one I read was profoundly interesting. I recommend it highly.

There's another book that I liked really well; unfortunately I can't remember the title or the author . . . So overall, academic modern economics is pretty pointless.

That second book was also a great book, I just wish I could find it.

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As an old man, Heilbroner's preferred capitalist model was the highly redistributionist welfare states of Scandinavia; he stated that his model society was "a slightly idealized Sweden."-

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Then Signym read another book, that can’t be found at the moment.

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Now Signym rejects most economics theories as unrealistic and replaced them with what? With nothing!

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I am sure that Scandinavia, especially Heilbroner’s slightly idealized Sweden, did not achieve prosperity by rejected [sic] the same economic explanations rejected by Signym. Scandinavians are not tweeting "NO EVIDENCE", which is very dissimilar [???] to Signym, Trump, and the Republican voters.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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As an old man, Heilbroner's preferred capitalist model was the highly redistributionist welfare states of Scandinavia; he stated that his model society was "a slightly idealized Sweden."-

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It doesn't matter what Heilbroner likes, or doesn't like. As HISTORY book and an explanation of what various economic theorists were trying to solve, it was very informative. you wanted to know what I recommended. I STILL recommend the book. Pick any edition you like: you'll know infinitely more than you do now.

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Then Signym read another book, that can’t be found at the moment.

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But I recapped some of the arguments in the book for you, and if you were interested in actually being informed instead of bitching endlessly, you would have learned something from that too.

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Now Signym rejects most economics theories as unrealistic and replaced them with what? With nothing!

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Not true. I've posted extensively about what I think America needs to do. Apparently, you "forgot" it.

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I am sure that Scandinavia, especially Heilbroner’s slightly idealized Sweden, did not achieve prosperity by rejected [sic] the same economic explanations rejected by Signym. Scandinavians are not tweeting "NO EVIDENCE", which is very dissimilar [???] to Signym, Trump, and the Republican voters.

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Norway is making a lot of money from North Sea oil. Sweden exports arms, machinery, motor vehicles, paper products, pulp and wood, iron, steel products, chemicals. Denmark is self-sufficient in energy producing oil, natural gas, wind and bio energy. Its principal exports are machinery, chemicals and food products. Iceland went thru its own financial crisis and is busy digging out of its previous debt by exporting fish.

ALL of the nations are exporting nations, with a positive or neutral balance of trade,
NONE of the nations adopted the Euro, which says something about sovereignty.

You can't have a "redistributive" economy if you don't have any production to redistribute.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

. . .
ALL of the nations are exporting nations, with a positive or neutral balance of trade,
NONE of the nations adopted the Euro, which says something about sovereignty.

You can't have a "redistributive" economy if you don't have any production to redistribute.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

A book that I have recommended many times on this website already is "The Worldly Philosophers" by Heilbroner. It's a classic about the history of economic theories which not only presents the theories but also the issues of the day and the social and political problems that the theories were trying to address. From Adam Smith thru Karl Marx and Keynes. I read it when I was 12 (in the early 60's) and there have been many editions since then. I can't speak to later editions, but the one I read was profoundly interesting. I recommend it highly.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I see this thread has devolved into pure philosophical bullshit territory now.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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A book that I have recommended many times on this website already is "The Worldly Philosophers" by Heilbroner. It's a classic about the history of economic theories which not only presents the theories but also the issues of the day and the social and political problems that the theories were trying to address. From Adam Smith thru Karl Marx and Keynes. I read it when I was 12 (in the early 60's) and there have been many editions since then. I can't speak to later editions, but the one I read was profoundly interesting. I recommend it highly.- SIGNYM

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Chapter VIII - "The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen" has much to teach Signym about Trump as the saboteur of capitalism.

The new book The Theory of Business Enterprise came out in 1904. It was even more coruscating and still more curious than his first. For the point of view that it advocated seemed to fly in the face of common sense itself. Every economist from the days of Adam Smith had made of the capitalist the driving figure in the economic tableau; whether for better or worse, he was generally assumed to be the central generator of economic progress. But with Veblen all this was turned topsy-turvy. The businessman was still the central figure, but no longer the motor force. Now he was portrayed as the saboteur of the system! ...

So the businessman achieved his end, not by working within the framework of the social machine, but by conspiring against it! His function was not to help make goods, but to cause breakdowns in the regular flow of output so that values would fluctuate and he could capitalize on the confusion to reap a profit. And so, on top of the machinelike dependability of the actual production apparatus in the world, the businessman built a superstructure of credit, loans, and make-believe capitalizations. Below, society turned over in its mechanical routine; above, the structure of finance swayed and shifted. And as the financial counterpart to the real world teetered, opportunities for profit constantly appeared, disappeared, and reappeared. But the price of this profit seeking was high; it was the constant disturbing, undoing, even conscious misdirecting of the efforts of society to provision itself...

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-SECOND

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I look forward to when you find your 2nd book title.
Perhaps you could start a thread on Economic Theories or Practices, Policies. To make a repository of reference material to be found?

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Originally posted by second:Signym's usual descriptions of America and economics are ignorant fantasies from my view of America, unlike Heilbroner's. I believe Heilbroner knows what he writes about while at the same time everything Signym writes smells unreal.

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Signym's usual descriptions of America and economics are ignorant fantasies from my view of America, unlike Heilbroner's. I believe Heilbroner knows what he writes about while at the same time everything Signym writes smells unreal. - SECOND

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I also note for the record that Consumers are rarely, A) mentioned as being an involved party, or B) held responsible for their actions in the Kiki/Signym anti-corporate, anti-bank, anti-younameit fantasy world they talk about.- GSTRING

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