BRIC+ News & comments

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by Billy T, Aug 10, 2008.

  1. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,391
    That is also clearly off-topic.

    You should do so in a way that doesn't drag threads off topic. This is not your personal blog, it's supposed to be a thread about a particular topic. You can always answer via PM, or split off a new thread if you want to pursue a tangent. Keeping threads on-topic is part of your duty as moderator, and you're failing at it really badly.

    This is the second time TODAY that you have helped drive a thread off-topic - and onto your pet, fixed talking points. Stop doing it, and you'll stop hearing complaints about it. I complain because you are really bad about this, and it greatly damages the quality of the forum - not to mention the fact that you have an explicit responsibility to keep threads on-topic.

    It is not on-topic.

    Quit acting like a baby. You've spent years ignoring your mod duties here and turning this forum into your personal blog, and it sucks. Expect to continue hearing complaints about that for as long as you continue to misbehave. Do not expect to get rid of me with catty dismissals - that's just more conduct unbecoming, as far as I'm concerned. If I'm going to be subject to your moderation, I expect you to behave like an honorable adult and competent moderator.
     
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  3. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    That is a dishonest editing of my post to make it seem like I, instead of kmguru, had posted what you consider to be off thread. I.e. here is what I posted in post 620:
    As rest of your post is based on your dishonest claim I had made a post that lead thread off topic (instead of just replied to kmguru, who perhaps did so) there is no need for more reply from me.

    Admitting your dishonesty is the correct thing for you to do OR claim it was an accident and apologize.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 11, 2012
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  5. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    I did not intend to misattribute any quotes - my point was exactly that kmguru went off-topic, and you were happy to follow him there. You'll notice that I left the quotation marks in the material I quoted, which explicitly indicates I was quoting you quoting someone else. Further, I went on to deal explicitly with the question of how you can respond to off-topic questions without yourself dragging the thread off-topic, so I thought that the context was clear enough (especially considering that your original material remains right above that post, for all to see).

    But, if you're still really that bothered by it, I'm happy enough to edit my post to make it explicit that the quote there is of kmguru. But doing so will not affect my point in the slightest - as I've told you elsewhere, two wrongs don't make a right, and the fact that somebody else goes off-topic does not justify you doubling down on the discursion. You're simply siezing onto a minor question of typesetting as an excuse to avoid the issue and pretend to be in the right - which is really cheap, childish behavior, by the way.

    No, it is emphatically not based on any such claim. I was explicit about that. You don't seem to have read my post seriously, just looked for the first cheap pretext you could find to dismiss it out of hand.

    I have been explicit - here and elsewhere - that replying to off-topic posts is no excuse for going off-topic. You can reply via PM, or split off a different thread, if you feel that you owe the person a response, without thereby driving the thread off topic.

    Do not attempt to excuse your eagerness to drive threads off topic - and onto your pet prophesy - by invoking such pretexts to me again. I will simply continue to remind you that two wrongs do not make a right, and that as a moderator you have a positive responsibility to keep threads on topic in the first place.

    That much is true: what is needed from you is an improvement in your behavior, and not any further cheap attempts to silence my observations of the problems you are creating.

    There was no dishonesty, and nor do I think that any reasonable person would read my post as implying what you claim it did (considering, again, that I was explicitly dealing with the quesiton of how to respond to off-topic questions from others without yourself driving the thread off-topic in the process, right there in the post your quoted). That said, I've offered to edit my post to make said attribution perfectly clear if you still feel that it is important after having a chance to see my response here and, hopefully, reevaluate my previous post in light of such.

    I think that is more than fair - and certainly, a lot more fair than you are being to me, what with your cheap pretexts to avoid dealing honestly with what I did actually say.
     
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  7. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    If kmguru had asked me a question via, PM then I would have replied by PM, but he posted his questions.

    First reason why then replying by PM is not appropriate is it leaves all who read his post think either I am unresponsive to direct questions or have no ability to reply.

    Second reason why then replying by PM is not appropriate is that with a posted reply, others who are reading can to see my reply, especially in the other case you jumped on me for being off thread that same day when I replied to Jeeves. In that case my reply corrected his false assertion (and he first admitted his error and later thank me - quite proper behavior.)

    Third reason I do not do as you say I should is no one has made you god so I need not do as you say. I recall, and will probably dig up for you your post telling that I could not tell you what to do, when my "telling" was just to ask you to support your claim with some reference! That was such a lame excuse for avoiding strying to support your false claim that I called it "ducking and weaving."

    With regard to my moderation of B&E I moderate with a light hand (read the B&E rules post where this is stated). For example in this B&E post
    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2949965&postcount=67
    I took no action on your name calling and only asked you to support your false assertion after giving you US government data showing it was very false. You of course could not support your claim and did not, as Jeeves did, admit your error nor retract your claim - You just ceased posting there. I guess you were too busy pointing out that my replies to others were off thread.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 11, 2012
  8. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    So you think kmguru´s question is about "typesetting" and that I can not read well?

    Originally Posted in 612 by kmguru :
    "... Should not higher exports provide jobs to the masses in the USA? That can stabilize the debt issue for a while? ...”

    As I had forecast US exports would rise and even that the US would have a positive balance of trade while in deep depression in post 611, it is quite a good question requiring considerable reply, that I publicly gave in a post.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 11, 2012
  9. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    9,391
    What I said was that your claim of malicious editing was an overblown response to a minor question of typesetting - exactly how material should be indicated as a quote (or, quote-of-a-quote in this instance). I left quotations marks around the material and thought that would be sufficient, given the context - you, apparently, disagreed.

    Again, I'm happy to add a more explicit attribution there, if you still feel it is warranted. This is the third time now that I have offered to do such at your request, and you have not responded. All of which makes it look very much like you're making a determined, bad-faith effort to blow this issue out of proportion.

    I can perfectly well see that you do not read well, given by how far your misreadings of my output here are missing the mark - even in the face of repeated, explicit correction.

    This remains off-topic.
     
  10. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    By all means, then, pursue the alternative remedy I've already (repeatedly) suggested: split off a separate thread. That's the normal, routine, expected thing that mods do when a given thread generates a discussion that doesn't fit into the extant topic. Other mods here do it all the time, with no controversy and to good effect. You should do the same.

    Likewise, if you want to have a thread that is about nothing more or less than "China/BRIC+ eats USA's lunch", then make a thread with that title. In fact, I'd prefer you did this, so that you could put all of your blog posts there and stop trying to make every other thread on the forum about that. Then we could have things like discussions of the BRIC countries, or development in China, or exports or whatever, without you always having to make it all about your crank prophesies.

    I have not issued any commands from any post of godliness. I've simply made straightforward, obvious observations about what a shit job you are doing, and how you seem to be in the business of abusing your position to advance your personal soap-box rhetoric. The fact that you respond hyperbolically to that, and are unable to deal honestly and directly with simple, factual criticism, seems to me a strong confirmation that I am correct, and so a clear indictment of your modship.

    At this point, I'm going to go flat-out demand that you either provide a citation for that accusation (so that I can demonstrate that you are maliciously misrepresenting me), or retract that accusation and apologize.

    Either way, though, that's still conduct unbecoming a mod.

    The level of (a)topicality that you tolerate here might well be a non-issue if you yourself didn't dedicate so much energy to driving all threads off-topic and onto your fixed rhetorical line of crank fantasies. But, you have created a problem by doing that over and over and over for years now, and the fact that you are the moderator who should be responsible for addressing that problem greatly compounds it.

    In the first place, "name calling" is a separate issue - I am not here complaining that you don't moderate name-calling strongly enough.

    In the second place, pointing out that you are lieing through your teeth is just that. It isn't any kind of objectionable or actionable "name-calling," and I'd very much like to see the response you'd get from your superiors if you tried to use your mod powers to sanction me for calling you on your lies.

    Meanwhile, if one follows your link there, one discovers that it is a cross-post - you quoted something I said in a different thread (about food stamp costs) and cross-posted it into a thread on unemployment trends, apparently as a personal attack on myself. The conversation you quoted does not occur in that thread, and one has no way of finding the original source posts from your quotations. That is very bad form - I would say, malicious editing and stalking, by all appearances - because it deprives me of adequate references to refute your charge. So, I demand that you go and find the actual thread where my post came from and refer to that - and also remove the cross-post linked above.

    Again, you are engaged in characterizing a cross-posting in order to defame me. That is offensive and unacceptable. You need to delete the cross-post, which seems malicious on its face, and refer to the actual thread if we're to regard this as anything other than the most dishonorable, dishonest trolling.

    Moreover, the fact is that I am not required to respond to everything you post, and especially not to malicious cross-posts that you use in attempts to slander and browbeat. I expect you to delete the cross-post in question, and then either substantiate your accusations against me or retract them and apologize.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2012
  11. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
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    OK. In answer to your demand, here is sequence of your posts and my repeated requests for you to support your claims. – Which are just as I recalled your “ducking and weaving” refusals to do so:

    First two blue text inserts were made now to drive home the point that three times Quadraphonics was nicely asked to support his claim that RoccoR´s post was just propaganda with errors of fact. Quad did not (and never will as Quad can not point to even one error of fact in Roccor´s post - he can only claim it is false and propaganda.) but Quad can (as noted in my post 67 above) disagree with what these facts imply for the future.)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 13, 2012
  12. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,391
    Wow. I ask you for a citation - i.e., a link - and you come back with a transparent exercise in malicious re-editing, which also happens to be a cross-post intended to further drive this thread off topic by hectoring me. I am not going to take the bait and engage in such a nasty, dishonorable tactic. All I'll say to the substance is that I already responded to that stuff in the thread in question, and I think that any reasonable, unbiased observer who reads the thread will see that you are maliciously representing both my position and the larger context and flow of the interaction there. Just as they will recognize your evasion and abuse right here in that post.

    Which is to say, this all goes to exactly my point. You only care about advancing your pet crackpot prophesy, and will resort to any tactic, no matter how low, to try to exaggerate your own credentials and righteousness, and impugn those of anyone who gets in your way. You should be forced to choose between misbehaving in this way, and continuing to serve as a moderator. The fact that you are not forced to so choose - the fact that an obvious crank like yourself was ever made a moderator in the first place - is a continuing embrassment to SciForums as a whole, and fatal to the usefulness of the Business and Economics subforum in particular.
     
  13. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    There is no editing in my post 628. Every quote there is as in the original and a link or reference is given to every original quoted.

    With a single link, I could not show that three times (then, but now four times) you had been asked to support your false claim that RoccoR´s post was not 100% factual, so I gave the entire exchange between us - my requests and your excuses for not supporting your claim.

    Calling me a "crank," "a continuing embrassment to SciForums as a whole", with "crack pot theories" maker of "malicious re-editing" etc. is not a substitute for supporting your claims. A personal attack is what that is.
     
  14. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    "... On July 12, the Web site of China's State Council reported that China will increase spending on construction of airports and other air-travel infrastructure. The statement was the second recent official notice of the government's intention to increase spending on air-travel infrastructure.

    On June 11, the head of China's Civil Aviation Administration, Li Jiaxiang, told the online version of the People's Daily that China's major airports are now running at full capacity, and that China will build 70 new airports and renovate or expand 100 existing airports. That's a big increase from the plans for 45 new airports within five years announced in 2011. ..." From: http://www.moneyshow.com/investing/...na-28620/Is-Chinas-Economy-About-to-Heat-Up?/ {a post by very respected Jim Jubak)

    Billy T comment: China stimulates when needed by building long lasting infrastructure, not hand outs to bankers and others who get million dollar plus bonuses even when their bank or firm is sinking deeper into troubles. China´s GDP, growing at five times the US´s rate, has relatively little of no lasting value (unlike the US´s GDP, which includes expenditures on stock car and other racing, NFL, Basketball, Baseball games and the associated travel and hotel spending for travel to their play offs games etc.) If things of zero value two years later were stripped out of the GDP calculations, probably China´s "lasting value GDP" is already greater than that of the US.
     
  15. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    So, then, you apparently don't know the definition of "editing." Awesome.

    You did not quote the entire exchange. You selectively edited it down in order to misrepresent me, and then cross-posted it to hector me. In particular, you excluded entirely the response I gave you, in-thread, at the time. And you are now making a point, many days later, of harassing me in multiple threads about it. You should stop doing this.

    For the n-th time, I have said all I have to say about this topic in the thread in question. I have been clear about that. If you don't like it, well, tough. That isn't a license to follow me from thread to thread with your hit-job re-edits, or attempts to badger me into accepting you as the arbiter of "fact" and "truth."

    Moreover, personal attack or otherwise, what I have said about you is both completely accurate and germaine to your negative effects on most discussions here. You make the sort of evidentiary analysis you claim to want to have impossible, with your constant attempts to make every thread about your own personal, fixed agenda. If you don't want to hear complaints about that, then stop doing it. I've repeatedly suggested several reasonable things you could do to ameliorate the problems you cause, but you are clearly not interested. You want this to be your personal sandbox where you can proseletyze your pet fantasies and indulge your self-serving delusions. That sucks, and you should grow up and stop doing it.
     
  16. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    So you are totally unaware that all this infrastructure spending is financed through sweetheart loans to government-run banks, which run terrible balance sheets and require constant bail-outs. And that the previous round of infrastructure stimulus was a boondoggle, with most of the loans non-performing and the infrastructure sitting idle.

    Maybe if you believe the bullshit official propaganda statistics. Which there is no good reason to. More reliable indicators like electricity consumption indicate that China is stagnating right now.

    Again, you evidently know very little about China. They also have pro sports there. This is the country that recently became famous for putting on the most lavish Olympic ceremonies ever, that you are talking about.


    The fact that a developing country spends more of its GDP on infrastructure is just that - it's a reflection of the fact that they have much less infrastructure stock already built up. To ignore that, and then claim that the higher rate of infrastructure investment implies that the developing economy is more developed than the developed one is either breathtakingly stupid or blatantly dishonest. Which one is it?
     
  17. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    That must be why they are bringing a new power plant on line every 10 days! Have and are expanding the world´s largest Photovoltaic generation etc.
    Yes that was a once in a life time, big cost but much less than US spends EVERY YEAR on professional sports (not even including what is spent in US on car and horse racing, which is also far greater than the Chinese Olympic games cost China)
     
  18. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Are you denying that electricity consumption in China has slumped this year?

    Or that Chinese development is characterized by overinvestment - building infrastructure that far outpaces the demand for such - especially in recent years?

    Or that China is also busily decomissioning old coal plants?

    If so, then you are pushing bullshit. If not, then you are trying to change the subject instead of deal with the topic honestly. Either way, I'm non-plussed.

    China has professional sports teams, with arenas and spectators and sponsors and television and everything. Again, you appear to be blithely ignorant of Chinese society, and to misrepresent them as some kind of hive of worker drones who do no leisure activities and consume no entertainment.

    I note that you have never once posted any piece of data that would support any substantive analysis of relative spending on entertainment, leisure and sports between the USA and China. You operate entirely on bigoted cultural stereotypes. You should get serious and stop misbehaving in this way.
     
  19. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    OK here is some data showing how correct I was:

    Estimated Size of the Entire Sports Industry, U.S. 435 Bil. US$ in 2012 - Source: Plunkett Research,® Ltd.
    Read average attendance, cost etc. broken down by sports at: http://www.plunkettresearch.com/sports-recreation-leisure-market-research/industry-statistics

    “… China's record spending on the Olympics, estimated to total $42 billion, is a big sum for a developing country to put into a two-week sports show. While much of the money is going into infrastructure projects with long-term value, at least some of the spending is drawing criticism for wastefulness. The tab for China's massive Olympic projects -- ranging from a $3 billion airport terminal to the $500 million "Bird's Nest" National Stadium …”
    From: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121614671139755287.html



    Billy T comment: Thus the US GDP grows every 40 days every year more than the once in a life time Chinese spending on the Olympics!
    Also note than most of the Chinese Olympic spending included in its GDP has lasting value while only a tiny fraction of US spending on sports does.

    Now who is operating on "bigoted cultural stereotypes and should get serious and stop misbehaving in this way. " Urban China, where more than half the population lives, is very modern as China´s "lasting GDP" is greater than that of the US. Many more people are connected to the internet, have cells phones, etc. than Americans do.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 21, 2012
  20. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Well, no: you're comparing apples and oranges there. The data you provide doesn't allow one to do a meaningful comparison - the only conclusion it supports is that you will resort to blatant dishonesty.

    Okay. Now let's compare that the the estimated total value of the Chinese sports industry:

    http://bleacherreport.com/articles/773438-in-depth-tapping-the-goldmine-of-chinas-sports-industry

    According to statistics of the General Administration of Sport, given the weak situation of China's sports industry, it accounts for only 0.52 percent of China's GDP in 2008, while in some developed countries, the number often exceeds one percent.

    [...]

    In the light of industry experts, by 2020, the market size of China's sports industry is more than likely to exceed 2 trillion RMB should the Guiding Opinion come to fruition.

    Over the last five years, China's sports industry has ridden on a high-speed train and is emerging as a new bright spot in national economy. The growth rate of the industry has kept up a pace of above 16% in recent years, surpassing that of the national economy, and China has become the world's largest sports goods manufacturer, according to the statistics of the General Administration of Sport.​

    So while it does appear that the USA currently spends considerably more on sports (although, not that much more as a percentage of GDP), Chinese sports spending has been growing by leaps and bounds in recent years, and is expected to become very large in short order.

    All of which begs the question of why high spending on sports is supposed to be a bad thing. You present it as some kind of sign of national weakness or self-indulgence, contrasted with some kind of racist view of China as work- and production-oriented. But the reality is that sports spending is a sign of development and wealth, and China is in a headlong rush to boost its sports spending. China clearly does not agree with your view that high sports spending is a sign of weakness or decline - they are in a hurry to emulate such practices.

    That is an entire order of mangitude greater than the sum of money the USA spent the last time we had a summer Olympics here. It's probably more than we've ever spent on hosting Olympic games, total.

    You are still kind of doing it, what with your implications that China isn't spending a bunch on sports (and growing that spending much faster than even official GDP). But, to the extent that you've obviated that criticism with data here, the intellectually dishonest way you tried to go about it - by comparing apples to oranges, blatantly - just empowers the criticism that you're making invalid comparisons between cherry-picked data, and in the process misrepresenting the basic situation, Chinese views and goals as regards it, etc.
     
  21. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    The data I provided does not include the manufacturing of sports equipment like baseball gloves, bats, and balls etc. which in China´s case is mostly a part of their exports, not for domestic sports. Comparing export boosted numbers to ticket sales, beer drunk at games, travel to major sports events, cost of staging the events, advertising at the events, player salaries, etc. is really a case of "apples to oranges"

    No that is not my POV or my point. Sports is a good thing. It has greatly helped the US over come some of it racial problems. My point was that simple comparison of GDPs is a case of "apples to oranges" as very little of the US GDP has any lasting value, while building lasting infrastructure is a large part of Chinese GDP. I.e. I said: China´s "lasting GDP" is probably already greater than the US´s "lasting GDP." I don´t like the typical comparison made showing Chinese GDP is less than half the size of the US´s GDP. That is a false apples to oranges comparison.

    Yes that guiding sport promotion group does have high hopes for increasing Chinese sports but here, from your link, is what they say about the status today:
    "... Despite the fact that China's sports industry has grown by leaps and bounds, it is, comparing with those of the developed countries, still in its infancy and requires nutrients from the "adults". "Sports industry in the western world is far more established than that of ours. We should keep an open mind and learn from their experiences and expertise," Liu proposed. ..."
     
  22. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    "... China's Shanghai Gold Exchange has released draft rules for such interbank trading, which will include spot, forward and swap contracts for precious metals.
    China has introduce a "market maker" system for precious metals trading with transactions done on an over-the-counter basis compared with the exchange-based pricing mechanism .

    The move by China will make gold the first commodity to trade on the interbank market.Chinese regulators have said they would gradually open up the country's commodity exchanges to allow foreign investors to trade on gold, copper, aluminum contracts. ..." From: http://www.examiner.com/article/gold-prices-to-increase-as-china-launch-gold-trading-on-local-market

    Billy T comment: As is typical, the CCP takes many small steps all of which eventually lead to the gold backed RMB (Yuan) and help to make the dollar lose its unique status. This is just one more small move towards that goal. Buying the London metals exchange a few months ago was more important - kill or own the well established competitor before you open your own shop (where the money is) was a smart move.

    "... China is stocking up on gold as it divests itself of its dollar and euro holdings but also is encouraging its increasingly affluent citizens to buy gold. Albanian Minerals expect China to buying more gold in the future as it attempts to divest $3.2 trillion in reserves and become the global reserve currency in the long term. ..."
    {this quote from same source}
    All exactly as I predicted years ago, foretelling this and some things yet to happen - most importantly the gold backed bonds for central banks only to hold in reserves.

    Sometimes a picture is worth 10,000 words:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    For more and what China still needs to do to equal dollar as international reserve currency, see: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2012-07/20/content_15605603.htm if you can.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 25, 2012
  23. kmguru Staff Member

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    I am too busy in designing projects for our Government and doing some large scale export to the least developed continent....to understand the arguments between BillyT and quadraphonics. It looks to me that the Topic is about BRIC and not necessarily about USA down grade...that is what I think quadraphonics is saying....and hence these arguments goes on so much that we do not know what is in the posts on the topic anymore....I could be wrong...

    May be time to readjust those items could be helpful...
     

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