They exported and funded their errant knights using those trillions. The main reason the Saudi government has been left alone by the more extreme elements in Saudi Arabia is that they are the main conduit for creating petrodollars, so if they were disrupted, the money hose might stop.
I was talking to a cab driver in Bristol about that and it is apparently because drivers were getting robbed by people strangling them with the seatbelt.
I had the same conversation with a private hire in Salford. He said that it's easy for someone to strangle you from behind with the seatbelt.
My dad never brought that curious aspect up (ex-taxi driver of ten years) but you can pick up dangerous people. I remember when I was younger, he had to take me to the police station as he identified someone in a photo book. He said at the time it was a 'runner' but I later found out it was because of a man who he had dropped off who went on to attack his ex-wife and ex-mother-in-law with an axe, which he had the whole time in my dad's car.
Knowing about these sorts of experiences, I can understand why they would forgo protection of a seatbelt when they potentially pick up these types of people.
It wasn't all bad though. He has fond memories of picking up famous Manchester Utd footballers, his favourite team, before they were famous, e.g David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, etc.
Austerity politics is bonkers. When there is a recession, the state is the entity that can still borrow and lend at reasonable rates. The money will still be borrowed, but with the state pulling back, it is borrowed at rates that would make a loan-shark blush.
The whole problem with Greece is that the state CAN'T borrow on the market at reasonable rates. That's why they asked (and received) over €200BN in credits from the other EU countries, plus I don't remember how much from the IMF.
If they cannot borrow Euros, they will have two options: default on promises to Greeks (pensions, etc.) or leave the Eurozone and return to their own currency which they can "borrow" from hypothetical wealthier future taxpayers.
The problem is that it the Troika plan half-defaulted Greece in 2010. That half-way policy made Greece lose credibility with private institutions without substantially decreasing its debt.
Whhy do you think it's a success in the UK? There are many that don't think it's working at all. I'm not criticising your position, I'm just intensely curious.
Because the UK went on heavy on cutting its budget, whereas the US went heavy on increasing expenditure (Fiscal keynesian style). The way the UK did it should have dragged them into recession but the UK employment rate improved to under 6% (in spite of the sensationalised immigration 'issue') and the economic growth rate is doing pretty good (on a relative basis to the other G* countries).
I don't want to get into the contentious political issues involved but I'll say this too: There may be some argument to the loss involved due the budget cuts but on the typical economic numbers its not too bad/quite good considering austerity was used.
Year GDP Pop Spending £ bln 2005
2008 MW gdp 61.548 582.23
2009 MW gdp 61.904 623.50
2010 1564.9 62.262 697.65
2011 1600.2 62.649 699.89
2012 1621.6 63.067 692.43
2013 1632 63.488 661.32
2014 1665.6 63.912 525.22
There's a huge drop 2013-2014, but before that the spend-up was pretty considerable, and economic growth has been solid since the start of 2013, so if this be "austerity", make the most of it!
EDIT: the drop in 2014 is due to local government not being added in. If I look at just "Central Government" from the same source:
Austerity can't be looked at only from the spending point of view, especially since it carries with it an element of affordability. Its also about looking at taxation receipts.
On overall the deficit between the two has been decreasing which is where the 'austerity' terminology is used. The comparison comes in handy where alot of Europe has been going through this (in spite of decreasing or low economic growth) whereas the US increased its deficits too.
What I mean to say is austerity is tied more to the affordability as opposed to the absolute dollar amounts.
Deficits
Year Amount
2009 156.3
2010 148.6
2011 120.6
2012 99.5
Indeed, the UK economy is turning around, but it's not clear that's the result of the austerity politics or just the underlying strength of the UK.
And net immigration is down, which is a sign that other countries are becoming comparatively more attractive.
Finally, George Osborne has discovered the same thing that dogged Gordon Brown: tax receipts are stubbornly failing to rise in line with economic growth.
Actually, today's report has not immigration up to within 2000 of the highest ever recorded. I guess those who vote with their feet disagrees with your assessment.
It's not. The government sharply cut when they got into power, then eased off a bit so that we got a tiny amount of growth to coincide with the election, now they're going to cut more again.
So success if you're a neo-con distaster capitalist, failure for everyone else.
Economic growth in the UK was about 0.5% quarterly for all of 2013 and 2014, and actually dropped to one of the lowest rates in the past two years in the quarter before the election. So unless you broaden "coincide" to mean "the two years preceding an election", or almost half the currently fixed term of Parliament it is not posisble to sustain the claim you make. And if governments can reliably provide economic expansion over two years it isn't clear why they wouldn't do so all the time.
The social construction of "neo-cons" and "distaster capitalists" as the hated Other by the Left cannot mask the underlying objective reality that austerity policies have not been anything like the disaster that was confidently predicted, and may have even done some good, although I'm sure the proper economic analysis of the effect of these policies is a good deal more nuanced than the simple post hoc ergo propter hoc claim that pundits will be making, although the pundits on the Right do have the slight advantage of not having to actually make up facts to support their view in this case.
EDIT: in an equally contrarian reply to another comment above I did some digging into government expenditures in the UK and your claim fails on that basis as well. Government expenditures are mostly up between 2008 and 2014 inclusive.
Your environment restricts your available choices and these things are tied back on themselves, so behaviour creates an environment that then influences behaviour. Looking for ultimate causes in current behaviours for social systems that have developed over evolutionary timescales is pretty pointless.
They are the only serious company in the home computing space that realised design and ergonomics was more important than processor frequency. Which is interesting given there are many industries, like audio equipment, where there have been many design-led companies, but it seems to be a rarity in computing.
Or they have the thing where high contrast makes the letters jiggle and therefore difficult to read. I get that when tired.
Maximum contrast does not make for good general usability, even if you happen to like it.