Nowhere is it asserted in the text that Lot is a great biblical hero. Like most people in extreme circumstances, his actions range from good and faithful to completely despicable. The original readers would have found that encouraging - and obvious.

I'm sure you in your air-conditioned office unschooled in Hebrew narrative techniques, not surrounded by rioting people and completely unthreatened by an incoming missile would be able to sympathise completely.

The Abit BP6 kicked butt for the time - 1999 or so. It was an SMP board that used Celerons on top of a 440BX Intel chipset and you could overclock them from here to next week. It was the first time I saw an overclocking menu built in to a BIOS. I'm sure I got a dual-500Mhz configuration after enough fiddling and pointing fans at the case.

Windows 98 only saw the one CPU of course but LFS saw both and was responsive in a way I haven't really experienced since.

Sad news.

He wasn't to know that. It was dark, he was alone and also suffered from a particularly nasty form of paranoia. The brat who got a full load in the back? Good riddance.

That's arguable. Since 2003:

• Large companies have created an open patent portfolio
• The community has realised that certain elements of law can be worked on just as effectively as code using FLOSS principles
• IBM's counterclaims put paid to any ideas that people may have had that this was a frivolous lawsuit
• The openness and honesty of the kernel development and review process has been subject to the most rigorous public scrutiny
• Linus has been able to say things like "SCO are smoking crack" - and been vindicated
• The GPL has been held up in court numerous times
• Caldera were shown to be lying douchbags
• So were Sun

I'd say it was $86m well spent :)

BOP measures the imbalance between imports and exports. You're using a metric that doesn't even measure manufacturing yet you keep lying about it's applicability?

OK, what does the US manufacture? What are the US made goods that everyone around the world laps up? I can think of only one major US export: debt.

So moron, if the US manufactures 100 trillion of goods, sells 80 trillion in the US and exports 20 trillion, while importing another 60 trillion, then it has a negative trade balance.

Wow, I didn't know US domestic demand was so high. In fact I thought US GDP was only about $12 trillion.

BUT THE 80 TRILLION IN MANUFACTURING SOLD LOCALLY IS NOT PART OF THE BOP NUMBERS.

Well, yeah because it doesn't exist. The US borrows to consume, it doesn't save to produce. It used to: at the end of World War II the US made the world's best cars, plans, fridges, you name it. Now you've outsourced it all to Asia.

I asked for numbers showing China had more manufacturing capacity, you gave nothing.

China's main industries are: mining and ore processing, iron, steel, aluminum, and other metals, coal; machine building; armaments; textiles and apparel; petroleum; cement; chemicals; fertilizers; consumer products, including footwear, toys, and electronics; food processing; transportation equipment, including automobiles, rail cars and locomotives, ships, and aircraft; telecommunications equipment, commercial space launch vehicles, satellites

It is the largest producer in the world of most of those products.

Or you could just turn over any one of the gadgets you have there and look for the "Made in China" sticker.

I asked for proof of your lie regarding Taiwan rating US debt "junk" and you gave nothing.

It's now archived I'm afraid - it was on asianinvestor.net. Here's the relevant quote:

        "The FSC has not only limited insurance company exposure to Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie bonds and mortgage-backed securities, but has decided that existing credit ratings are meaningless.

        The Insurance Bureau at the Financial Supervisory Commission in Taipei announced revised rules on how insurance companies can treat investments in mortgage-backed securities (MBS). The FSC says it cannot see how the United States will develop a valid mechanism to assess the credit quality of MBS issued by US federal housing loan agencies, namely Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae."

That's right folks. Taiwan's primary regulator for insurance companies has ruled that:

      1. Ratings issued by our so-called "agencies" are worthless.
      2. Agency securities can no longer be considered sovereign, "money good" debt.

You have nothing. Every single time you post, you lie more while giving no evidence that anything you've said is more than the wishful thinking of a loser who is so jealous of Americans that he'll make an ass of himself publicly in a sad attempt to to drag us down to your level.

On the contrary, I love America and have travelled in it, widely and often - unlike you whose probably never left his trailer. As a nation, you will recover eventually by learning to go back and do the things that made you great: hard work, making things the rest of the world wants, and saving your income. But it will be really painful until that happens.

I stopped giving a fuck about your trolling two posts ago, I just want to keep reinforcing that you're a liar who'll say anything to avoid admitting you're wrong.

Tsk tsk - never feed trolls. They love it. In fact, the best ones always have a good laugh when they watch the increasingly apoplectic reactions.

...a bad X-mas season does not add up to the fall of Western Finance and the capitalistic model (which is what you were originally suggesting).

I don't know what universe you're living in but Western Finance has already effectively collapsed. When governments around the world have to inject trillions of taxpayers' money into the system to try and get the engine working, then there's something desperately wrong.

A bad X-mas season is just a symptom of one of the major problems: US consumers are bankrupt.

One difference between you and I is that I read a book like The Black Swan and I have the advantage of having studied past history and putting the book into context. Like other fields, there are a million books on "what might happen if...". Taleb's book is interesting but like peak oil theories, it is impossible to say if he is right/wrong. But I do know this: everyone just like him who have predicted "the fall" have been wrong. All of them.

With amusing irony, you have completely missed the central point of The Black Swan, one with which Taleb beats the reader over the head on practically every page: one single highly improbable event can invalidate thousands of past observations.

If you want to go against that backdrop, please, be my guest. But remember, pioneers almost always get shot in the back by the settlers.

Being a pioneer in this field is about being self-sustainable, invisible and prepared to shoot - literally - settlers who aren't when the wheels come off.

I get the impression that you are having a hard time figuring out what is a "blip" and what is a "disaster".

Well gosh, let's see what's happened this year.

• Housing prices continue to plumment so that one in five US homeowners are underwater
• There are only a couple of giant investment banks left - the rest have gone under
• The largest insurer in the world would have also gone under if it hadn't been bailed out by the Feds with taxpayers' money
• The Dow is off nearly 20%
• Entire countries - such as Iceland - are either bankrupt or have seen their currencies halved in value

Are you seriously suggesting these are just blips?

The size of our economy and the management of our economy make it MUCH more difficult to have a disaster than it used to be.

I think it's the other way around. The size and interconnectedness of your economy with the global one means that it's much easier for a nasty problem somewhere to cause huge knock-on effects. Look what's happened already: SIVs based on US housing debt have caused financial institutions to fail all over the world. Governments have stepped in by lowering interest rates, printing money and bailing them out.

And the US is certainly no longer a capitalist society any more: you were socialist the moment you started bailing out banks who made bad choices, if not before.

Nobody can get credit, the asset-backed commercial paper market is dead, jobs are being shed by the tens of thousands in the SME market and the majority of consumers are up to their eyeballs in debt. Your infrastructure is shot to hell and local government is rapidly running out of money.

You're just getting started with this Depression and it will be the longest and hardest you've seen. You have no savings, no manufacturing base and your richest companies are struggling. In your obviously comprehensive studies of the past, have you ever taken a look at what happens when bubbles pop? They contract to _below_ what the levels were before. Bear in mind that this was the largest credit bubble in history. It will therefore be the largest contraction in history and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Again, there is evidence for this because ppl are still buying US bonds. It's that simple. If the US was at risk, you'd see an entirely different price for those bonds -- much much lower.

As far as I can tell the yields for US bonds are sharply dropping at the moment, which is a prelude to what I claim. Roubini says the same but I can't find his link now - sorry.

Are you kidding? Is this really a serious question? Re-read that WSJ link I gave you. Then go over to the WorldBank and read up on the stats and numbers. You are, simply wrong.

Yes - a deadly serious question. Without exception, all the charts and measures I see of US wealth make grim reading. Consumers have no money left - hell, I saw this for myself last week when I was in a Vegas Wal-Mart. US consumers have no savings to fall back on either. The Government has no investments. The commercial banking system is being trashed because banks just aren't geared up to deal with 50-60% foreclosure rates. The nation has no exports worth speaking of. As a whole, you are utterly bankrupt. And some unrealistic measures of GDP won't change the fact that the real engine of US economic growth - consumer spending - is finished for a long time.

Preposterous. Again, the US has never defaulted on it's debt.

False. It has defaulted twice - once in 1933 when FDR stopped paying bearers in gold and again in 1971 when Nixon effectively defaulted by taking the dollar off gold.

Never. I have no idea how you can claim they have no way of paying it back. Again, this statement shows a lack of understanding of the basics. Go read up on some productivity numbers. Go read up on US GDP and it's components.

OK. Gosh, let's see. Hmmm - US GDP is driven by consumer spending to the tune of 75%. Unfortunately, since 2002, consumer spending has been driven by borrowing on the back of the biggest housing bubble in history. Ever. And now that bubble has popped. I wonder what happens next?

But we have MORE than enough ability to pay that debt back. We just have to shift a few resources, which is what you see playing out on the front pages and within the halls of our govt....

If you think borrowing against future taxes or running the printing presses is "shifting resources" then I think you need to do some reading of the basics.

Look, I am not saying everything is rosy. I am simply saying your predictions of the collapse of Western Finance have been heard before. Lots of times throughout history, in fact. And every single time - they have been 100% wrong. Not a little wrong....a whole lot of wrong.

For hundreds of years, people thought that swans were white. And every single time they saw a white swan it just confirmed that swans were white. The theory that swans were white was 100% correct.

Until someone saw a black swan. That single observation invalidated hundreds of years of empirical evidence. All that you've done is blathered about the bond market and pointed me at some meaningless measurements of GDP. But the truth is that within a couple of years, the US will be a Third World country with a worthless currency, trillions in debt, a collapsed infrastructure and unable to even pay for the basics in energy. It will be your Black Swan.

I will not enjoy watching this happen at all. But you have been warned.

Methinks you need to quit while you are still whole. You have a serious misunderstanding here. It' so far offbase it's like you are sitting there telling me the sky is red. This is finance 101 stuff.

Here's why: Yields fall because the price paid for the bonds goes up (which drives down the yield because the coupon amount is fixed). Which is actually what *I* saying and the opposite of what you were saying. I have been sitting here telling you that US bonds are being bought for safety (thus the price goes up) and you reply to tell me yields have gone down. Yep, you're exactly right. If the US was going to junk, or even AA, you would see the yield go up and the price being paid for the bonds going down. Unfortunately for you, the charts are evidence for my position, not yours.

Whoops, you're quite right. Mea culpa.

I won't reply to the rest as I've read Taleb's "The Black Swan" too. Like peak oil, it's interesting to think about.

You need to act on it, not just think about it. And you _still_ haven't answered any of my questions.

BTW, are you really suggesting the bond markets and GDP are meaningless? If you think that, there is nothing more to talk about here. It's like a Java programmer telling me he doesn't know what an operating system is. No, thanks. I'll pass. Ask someone else because I can't help...

Where did I say they were meaningless? For a start I pointed out that the source of US GDP - consumer spending - has been trashed. That's going to add up to a pretty horrible Christmas season for you guys.

A quick Google shows that a) the US's balance of payments are horribly negative and b) BoP is an excellent indicator of manufacturing capacity going back to at least WWII. It makes intuitive sense too - when you manufacture goods and export them to countries who want them, you get money for your efforts. When you borrow money to consume - a la the US - you end up with a negative BoP, tons of debt and a whole bunch of industries that die on the vine.

The US used to make the world's best cars, computers, fridges, everything. Now its manufacturing base is all bankrupt and running to Uncle Henry for taxpayers' money. That doesn't sound much like a healthy manufacturing capacity to me.

There's a simple test about who's right and wrong here. When the US enjoys a long and sustained depression, I will regularly ask you how it's going.

One day, you'll learn to be a bit more suspicious of figures like this. Most of those numbers are meaningless - and they're dated 2004 (things have changed a bit since then).

I prefer to check with the latest balance of payments figures in the back of The Economist. It is and always has been the one true measure of whether a country exports more than it imports. Perhaps your mum can explain when you get to high school. And don't press too hard when you learn to shave.

Thanks for those links. I see Iceland is ahead of the US in GDP. I wonder how that's working out for it now?

BTW, you haven't answered any of my questions.

First, the US HAS MORE MANUFACTURING CAPABILITY THAN CHINA.

so why make such a ridiculous factually inaccurate claim.

Because it's true: China has waaaay more manufacturing capability than the US. This is easy to tell: compare China's balance of trade with the US's. China has a $1 trillion positive balance, the US has negative $800bn. That means that China makes stuff and exports it, the US borrows money to import. Case closed.

Perhaps you'd like to give some examples of US manufacturing strength? GM? Ford? Chrysler? Boeing? Hahahahahahah.

Second, which countries consider "US Treasuries" (which I'm assuming you are using in place of some form of currency) junk?

Taiwan does and China has strongly hinted that it is considering doing so.

It's funnyy to me that people like you are so invested in your distorted world view that you'd openly lie to protect it, rather than actually educate yourself.

No lies, just the facts. If you don't like it, well, the coming Depression will be giving you a long and horrible lesson.

America is wayyyyyyy ahead, in terms of wealth. Yes, we have debts. But we also have - by far - the largest percentage of wealth in the world. By a whole lot.

And here is the US attitude in a nutshell. We have debts but we don't think about the implications of paying them back so therefore we must be rich.

If it's true that your nation is wealthy then why have you been forced to bail out Wall Street? Why has the Fed been forced to print money to bail out most of the commercial banking system? Why are hundreds of financial institutions going under? Why are all your heavy industries bankrupt? Why are you shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs? Why are consumers not spending?

Surely with all that wealth you'd be fine?

The truth is you don't have any wealth. No manufacturing capability, no savings, no investments, no hundreds of billions in exports.

Only debt. Tens of trillions of dollars of debt. And no way of paying it back.

The best part is: if you don't agree, you can do a trade and retire for life if you are right.
Just go short some US Treasuries.

Some nations have already said they consider US Treasuries to be junk. That's not surprising when you consider that all that's backing US Treasuries right now is toxic debt.

I'll be on the other side of the trade.

Like 1929 - when for every sell there was a buy. Keep dreaming. Your economy is headed for a swift and horrible collapse. And what will you do then?

A first person non-shooter, huh? You know, at first I didn't think something like this would work, but the more I think about it, the more I like this idea. I think it could really work well, and be a refreshing change from the all those tiresome shooters.

It was. It was called Thief: The Dark Project and turned out to be one of the greatest games of all time.