greed

Over a quarter of the world’s tax havens are British property. More than half of Britain’s colonial territories and dependencies are tax havens. Strip out Antarctica, the military bases and the scarcely-habited rocks and atolls, and of the 11 remaining properties, only the Falkland Islands is not a recognised haven. The obvious conclusion is that Britain retains these colonies for one purpose: to help banks, corporations and the ultra-rich to avoid tax.

What's capitalism supposed to be? Yeah, it's crony capitalism. That's capitalism, you do things for your friends, your associates, they do things for you, you try to influence the political system, obviously. You can read about this in Adam Smith. If people read Adam Smith instead of just worshipping him, they could learn a lot about how economies work. So, for example, he's concerned mostly with England, and he pointed out that in England, and I'm virtually quoting, he said the merchants and manufacturers are the principal architects of government policy and they make sure their own interests are well cared for, however grievous the effects on others, including the people of England.

Yes, it's their business. What else should they do? It's like when people talk about greedy capitalists, that's redundant. You have to be a greedy capitalist or you're out of business. In fact, it's a legal requirement that you be a greedy capitalist and that you don't pay attention to what happens to anyone else.

1. Bank profits are highest since before the recession…: According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., bank profits in the first quarter of this year were “the best for the industry since the $36.8 billion earned in the second quarter of 2007.” JP Morgan Chase is currently pulling in record profits.

2. …even as the banks plan thousands of layoffs: Banks, including Bank of America, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse, are planning to lay off tens of thousands of workers.

3. Banks make nearly one-third of total corporate profits: The financial sector accounts for about 30 percent of total corporate profits, which is actually downfrom before the financial crisis, when they made closer to 40 percent.

4. Since 2008, the biggest banks have gotten bigger: ... the nation’s biggest banks — including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo — are now bigger than they were pre-recession. Pre-crisis, the four biggest banks held 32 percent of total deposits; now they hold nearly 40 percent.

5. The four biggest banks issue 50 percent of mortgages and 66 percent of credit cards: Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup issue one out of every two mortgages and nearly two out of every three credit cards in America.

According to the figures compiled by Defense Analysis editor Francis Tusa, the war has cost around £1.75 billion so far...

Based on publicly-released figures from the Royal Air Force (RAF) and numbers quoted during parliamentary questions, Tusa used two different methods to estimate the total costs of the war. His first calculation gave a total between £1.38 billion and £1.58 billion, and his second between £850 million and £1.75 billion.

The figures give the costs incurred due to military operations in Libya alone, ignoring routine training and maintenance costs. They do not include the cost of recent RAF sorties, involving flights from mainland Britain to the North African coast for bombing and reconnaissance missions. Some preparatory logistic operations, such as the transport of tonnes of military hardware to bases in Italy by a fleet of Eddie Stobart trucks, were also left out.

it costs £2.5 million per day to run a single Eurofighter Typhoon fighter-bomber. The UK is operating ten Typhoons from a base in southern Italy. Paveway IV bombs cost £50,000 per mission. These form part of the average £65 million weekly cost of British air operations in Libya.

"What notion of economics or ethics justifies the fact that it would take the average family more than 35,000 years to earn as much as the top hedge fund managers earn in one year?"