12-01-2008, 12:12 AM
ALL NEGOTIATIONS PERTAINING TO THE CURRENT WORLD FINANCIAL-ECONOMIC EMERGENCY ARE A DISGUSTING WASTE OF TIME UNLESS THEY ARE PREMISED ON REPLACING THE PRESENT WORLD MONETARY SYSTEM, THROUGH A PROCESS IN REORGANIZATION IN BANKRUPTCY, TO A CREDIT-SYSTEM MODELED ON THAT PROVISION WITHIN THE U.S. FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. ANY PROPOSED REFORM WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF EXISTING MONETARY SYSTEMS IS, IN EFFECT, AN ACT OF INSANITY.
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...ncial.html
If your proposed expert does not agree, it is urgent that he, or she, be prepared to improve their understanding during the interval between the special meeting with some circles on November 11 and the webcast on November 18. Any contrary approach would be the equivalent, in global economic terms, of administering aspirins as a suggested cure for a the global-economic equivalent of a new pandemic of bubonic plague.
BRAZIL GROUP OF 20 MEETING
"A BUNCH OF COWARDS"
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...ouche.html
After meeting Saturday and Sunday in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Group of 20 Finance Ministers and central bank heads produced a communique which was supposed to prepare for the Washington meeting of the Group of 20 heads of state November 15 on reversing the global collapse.
American economist Lyndon LaRouche, who was the first to call for a "New Bretton Woods," characterized the various aspects of their communique as follows.
Where the communique praised such "bold and decisive measures" as the trillions of dollars in giveaways by Paulson and Bernanke to their friends, LaRouche responded: "Doubletalk! It's plain doubletalk in avoiding the whole issue. They're refusing to face the reality. They're just plain refusing to face any reality. This is pipe-dream stuff! You've got to get off the pipe dream."
Where the communique called for strengthening the IMF's role, LaRouche objected: "The IMF is what's destroyed this thing! Don't they understand that? That's the whole point. They're whores, that's all. When people start talking like that, you write them off!"
Where the communique called for "voluntary efforts" at reregulating the financial system, LaRouche summed everything up by saying, "Forget it, it's babbling! Nothing to it; it's a waste of time."
The communique said, "We welcome the progress made this year in reforming the IMF." LaRouche replied: "We welcome the progress made this year! Give me some figures about the progress made this year! Give me some data about what was accomplished this year, by whom. Give me the figures! Tell me about this great progress! Where did you find it? Were you masturbating or something?"
"The IMF has an important role to play," continues the G-20 communique. "Oh, come on, this is crap!" said LaRouche. "They have NO role to play, and we should say so! These institutions have at this point, NO ROLE TO PLAY. Because their mandate prevents them from doing anything that would be useful!"
On the communique's call to "strengthen IMF surveillance and policy advice," LaRouche responded, "They're impotent! They're babbling! This is pure babbling, by people who are either afraid to say anything, or are in on Soros's drug-trafficking. Don't kid yourself,-- every South American country except Colombia, of any importance, is making deals with the drug traffickers. Only Colombia is opposing the drug trafficking.
"Don't waste your time on these countries at this time," he went on. "They're not serious yet. Some of them are valuable people, but the countries themselves do not have a serious outlook on any of the crucial questions of this crisis.
"They're a bunch of cowards," he added. "They're kissing the ass of the problem. Anything they adopt, working from this kind of policy thinking, will make things worse. It will come to the wrong conclusion and produce a worse result than the enemy's already creating.
"The minute you hear the word `interim solution,' it's `which mistress shall I go to see in the evening?' It's like the guy who gets his paycheck, and he doesn't have enough to pay for his family's food, and so he says, `as an interim solution, I'll stop by the gambling joint, and get some money,'" LaRouche concluded.
BUSH IS AN IDIOT!
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...idiot.html
In a speech today at the Manhattan Institute in New York, George W. Bush made clear his intention to sabotage discussion of a New Bretton Woods at the Nov. 15 G-20 summit. The man who has presided over the biggest government bailout in human history and who has never been accused of being intelligent argued: "History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, but too much. Our aim should not be more government, it should be smarter government. The answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems we face, make the reforms we need, and move forward with the free market system."
Lyndon LaRouche's response to Bush was immediate: "Bush is an idiot! We all know it. Being an idiot is the highest rank he has been able to achieve. He has done more to destroy the U.S. than any recent avowed enemy. We're getting rid of him as President, so why doesn't he just shut up? People voted for Obama to get rid of him. If he had any brains he would shut up. The fact that he does not shut up, proves that he has no brains."
THE G-20 SUMMIT IS A FARCE
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...farce.html
"None of the participants are really facing up to the immediate, crucial issues, which are coming down rapidly on the world," Lyndon LaRouche stated today in a discussion about the Nov. 15 summit of the G-20 in Washington, D.C. "What French President Nicolas Sarkozy is saying in terms of restraint, and so forth, is relevant, but all the other stuff we're hearing is complete bullshit. This is nonsense.
"This is a farce, and it's intended to be a farce," LaRouche continued. "Nothing significant is going to be decided. There will be innuendo and attempts to corrupt the situation as much as possible, especially by the British side. And the British side, as usual, is looking for handouts from everybody else. They want a bail-out.
"The British always set these things up: `You've got to debate this; you've got to debate that.' It's all bullshit. The British deployment policy is: make sure that nothing works.
"I think we ought to express {unbridled contempt} for such a farce. I mean, after all: a whore is a whore, isn't she? And the British are one big old whore," LaRouche said.
Over recent weeks, LaRouche has emphasized that any serious intention of solving the global financial breakdown crisis has to emphatically {exclude} the British from any policy participation. If you don't exclude them, they will sabotage any attempt at serious change. If you try to reach a consensus with them, LaRouche has insisted, the result will be less than worthless.
That is precisely what is occuring in the run-up to the Nov. 15 summit of the G-20 in Washington, D.C.
* British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told journalists on his flight from London to the U.S., that he expects the summit to support a sharply increased role for the IMF in global surveillance, a return to the long-stalled Doha round of world free trade talks, and the establishment of a supranational "college of supervisors" to oversee all banks internationally. Brown is scurrying around to impose this agenda, meeting before the summit with Russian President Medvedev, Japanese Prime Minister Aso, and Brazilian President Lula, as well as with Nobel economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman. Most significantly, Brown's financial and foreign policy advisers will hold talks with Obama's envoys to the conference, Madeleine Albright and Jim Leach.
* Japanese Prime Minister Aso will call for doubling the current $340 billion in IMF funds, and will offer $100 billion from Japan. The Saudis may also offer to pony up funds for the IMF.
* German Chancellor Angela Merkel will propose increased transparency and controls "for all kinds of financial products," including derivatives, to be managed through an upgraded IMF.
* Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for "greater inclusivity in the international financial system [and] the need to ensure that the growth prospects of the developing countries do not suffer," but he stressed "the need to avoid protectionist tendencies." His Finance Minister P. Chidambaram likewise warned that "the crisis should not be an excuse to go into a protectionist cocoon."
* French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on Thursday that "I am leaving for Washington to explain that the dollar... can no longer claim to be the only currency in the world," while the daily {Le Figaro} warned that "Sarkozy has already planned to create some incidents during the sessions if the U.S. comes out being completely closed off from the European proposals." Sarkozy has also used his position as rotating president of the EU, to get seats at the summit for Spain and Holland.
* Russian President Dmitri Medvedev stated that tomorrow's summit will be inconclusive, but that he supports holding "without any extra red tape, and fairly soon," a follow-on summit on the financial system. "We need a full-scale, adequate response to the problems, not simply a collection of declarations, handshakes and photo ops, but rather an action plan." After talking about categories like "transparency," "early-warning procedures," and lowering trade barriers, he included something with more potential: "Elimination the imbalance between the volume of the mass of all kinds of various financial instruments that are issued, and the real returns on investment on the programs they are related to." If that point were truthfully pursued, it would lead to the guts of the crisis: the derivatives bubble.
RUNAWAY CRASH AFTER ABORTIVE G20 SUMMIT?
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...ummit.html
Aspic used to be a popular dish at parties: pieces of meat, poultry or eggs and vegetables, or fruits, suspended in a jello-like gelatin. This was the Group of 20's final communique today. Many of the government leaders had come to Washington with individual "issues" or slogans. Britain's Gordon Brown sought to bail out London, and screw everyone else, under the slogans of "coordinated fiscal stimulus" and international "colleges of regulators." France's Sarkozy, with much better intentions, sought the closing of offshore unregulated financial centers, and international regulation of derivatives and rating agencies.
What the communique did, after only a five-hour meeting of about thirty delegations, was embed each little, separate slogan or issue in the jello, but only as "words, slogans and issues, without commitment or expectation," as Lyndon LaRouche noted today. For example, the communique promises that "we will use fiscal measures to stimulate domestic demand," and then adds "as appropriate." It doesn't say what "colleges of regulators" are, or what powers they will have, if any, but calls on major global banks to meet them for "comprehensive discussions."
Typical are such ringing, inspirational declarations as this one: "Authorities should insure that financial institutions maintain adequate capital in amounts necessary to sustain confidence."
"This is all bullshit," said LaRouche. "There's no seriousness in this piece of disgusting incompetence. They're going to have a great deal of trouble trying to prevent a runaway crash Monday and Tuesday. Because, this bullshit can go on, but it's not something you can sell. They probably will pump up the greatest bloating of the market they ever did. Expect that from them."
The one thing the statement did that was useful, was to pin the crisis on George W. Bush, saying that its "root causes" occurred "earlier this decade," that is, under his Administration "Yes," said LaRouche, "the greatest collapse in history has occurred under George Bush's Administration. This event is the George Bush burial society. It nominates George Bush as the worst President in history, excepting the outright traitors. The collapse is the fruit of a Bush-league President. The idea of this son-of-a-bitch getting encomiums and going out, is disgusting."
BUSH's WEEKEND FARCE BRINGS US CLOSER TO HELL
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...-hell.html
Llyndon LaRouche declared today that Saturday's G-20 farce brings us that much closer to Hell. "The fact that the meeting was held was bad. Everything around it was bad,'' LaRouche stated bluntly. "The system is disintegrating now. It is gone, and unless there is a change in direction, we face Hell on earth for generations to come. And so far, everyone is saying, 'We are not going to do anything about it.' If they play by those rules, it means Doomsday,'' LaRouche concluded. "If someone awakens to the fact that he or she has been behaving like a fool, and changes, and does what I have consistently said must be done, we can change things,'' LaRouche continued. LaRouche declared, "The world system is in the process of collapse. Unless you take certain prescribed actions, the world goes to Hell, by virtue of a failure to act.'' On Saturday, the so-called leadership of the planet "failed to act,'' in "just such a fashion as I have warned about, repeatedly.''
"You have got to face up to the fact that the British oligarchy is viciously insane. Britain's Ancien Regime is going down. It has happened before in history. Looking closely at yesterday's farce in Washington, you clearly see the implications. The fact that the system is going down, is widely recognized, yet there was a decision made, a determination, to do nothing to prevent the presently onrushing collapse from happening. It must therefore appear, that these governments would rather die, and allow billions to die a horrible death along with them, rather than change the system.''
LaRouche pointed to a second grave and imminent danger, "If you follow the British propaganda machine closely, and you see how much effort is devoted to British sources' forecasting the coming assassination of the President-elect of the United States.'' LaRouche explained: "I know the character of the British empire. I have studied its character from its beginning, as I have studied ancient empires as well. I know that the British will not just propagandize about the so-called danger of an assassination of the President-elect. They will do it! They are using their propaganda machinery to build up an expectation of such an assassination. We must, therefore, stop that British-planned assassination--now, or the consequences of such an assassination will wipe everything else off the agenda, and throw the United States and, by extension, the rest of the world, into a state of absolute chaos.''
LaRouche warned: "Everything I hear goes in that direction."
LaRouche, then, returned to the Bush farce that occurred on Saturday. "This Bush farce achieved nothing. The most likely outcome is that the farce will now trigger, in the immediate hours ahead, the next explosive phase of the already-pending general collapse of the entire global system. There are indications, already, that such a crash has begun, in early reports from the Persian Gulf. The risk of a major collapse of as many as 25 percent of all the existing hedge funds is also very real, and imminent, as the deadline passes for investors to withdraw their funds. The G-20 performance, which some saw as the Swan Song for George W. Bush, actually was tantamount to collectively kissing civilization goodbye.''
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...ncial.html
If your proposed expert does not agree, it is urgent that he, or she, be prepared to improve their understanding during the interval between the special meeting with some circles on November 11 and the webcast on November 18. Any contrary approach would be the equivalent, in global economic terms, of administering aspirins as a suggested cure for a the global-economic equivalent of a new pandemic of bubonic plague.
BRAZIL GROUP OF 20 MEETING
"A BUNCH OF COWARDS"
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...ouche.html
After meeting Saturday and Sunday in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Group of 20 Finance Ministers and central bank heads produced a communique which was supposed to prepare for the Washington meeting of the Group of 20 heads of state November 15 on reversing the global collapse.
American economist Lyndon LaRouche, who was the first to call for a "New Bretton Woods," characterized the various aspects of their communique as follows.
Where the communique praised such "bold and decisive measures" as the trillions of dollars in giveaways by Paulson and Bernanke to their friends, LaRouche responded: "Doubletalk! It's plain doubletalk in avoiding the whole issue. They're refusing to face the reality. They're just plain refusing to face any reality. This is pipe-dream stuff! You've got to get off the pipe dream."
Where the communique called for strengthening the IMF's role, LaRouche objected: "The IMF is what's destroyed this thing! Don't they understand that? That's the whole point. They're whores, that's all. When people start talking like that, you write them off!"
Where the communique called for "voluntary efforts" at reregulating the financial system, LaRouche summed everything up by saying, "Forget it, it's babbling! Nothing to it; it's a waste of time."
The communique said, "We welcome the progress made this year in reforming the IMF." LaRouche replied: "We welcome the progress made this year! Give me some figures about the progress made this year! Give me some data about what was accomplished this year, by whom. Give me the figures! Tell me about this great progress! Where did you find it? Were you masturbating or something?"
"The IMF has an important role to play," continues the G-20 communique. "Oh, come on, this is crap!" said LaRouche. "They have NO role to play, and we should say so! These institutions have at this point, NO ROLE TO PLAY. Because their mandate prevents them from doing anything that would be useful!"
On the communique's call to "strengthen IMF surveillance and policy advice," LaRouche responded, "They're impotent! They're babbling! This is pure babbling, by people who are either afraid to say anything, or are in on Soros's drug-trafficking. Don't kid yourself,-- every South American country except Colombia, of any importance, is making deals with the drug traffickers. Only Colombia is opposing the drug trafficking.
"Don't waste your time on these countries at this time," he went on. "They're not serious yet. Some of them are valuable people, but the countries themselves do not have a serious outlook on any of the crucial questions of this crisis.
"They're a bunch of cowards," he added. "They're kissing the ass of the problem. Anything they adopt, working from this kind of policy thinking, will make things worse. It will come to the wrong conclusion and produce a worse result than the enemy's already creating.
"The minute you hear the word `interim solution,' it's `which mistress shall I go to see in the evening?' It's like the guy who gets his paycheck, and he doesn't have enough to pay for his family's food, and so he says, `as an interim solution, I'll stop by the gambling joint, and get some money,'" LaRouche concluded.
BUSH IS AN IDIOT!
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...idiot.html
In a speech today at the Manhattan Institute in New York, George W. Bush made clear his intention to sabotage discussion of a New Bretton Woods at the Nov. 15 G-20 summit. The man who has presided over the biggest government bailout in human history and who has never been accused of being intelligent argued: "History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, but too much. Our aim should not be more government, it should be smarter government. The answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems we face, make the reforms we need, and move forward with the free market system."
Lyndon LaRouche's response to Bush was immediate: "Bush is an idiot! We all know it. Being an idiot is the highest rank he has been able to achieve. He has done more to destroy the U.S. than any recent avowed enemy. We're getting rid of him as President, so why doesn't he just shut up? People voted for Obama to get rid of him. If he had any brains he would shut up. The fact that he does not shut up, proves that he has no brains."
THE G-20 SUMMIT IS A FARCE
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...farce.html
"None of the participants are really facing up to the immediate, crucial issues, which are coming down rapidly on the world," Lyndon LaRouche stated today in a discussion about the Nov. 15 summit of the G-20 in Washington, D.C. "What French President Nicolas Sarkozy is saying in terms of restraint, and so forth, is relevant, but all the other stuff we're hearing is complete bullshit. This is nonsense.
"This is a farce, and it's intended to be a farce," LaRouche continued. "Nothing significant is going to be decided. There will be innuendo and attempts to corrupt the situation as much as possible, especially by the British side. And the British side, as usual, is looking for handouts from everybody else. They want a bail-out.
"The British always set these things up: `You've got to debate this; you've got to debate that.' It's all bullshit. The British deployment policy is: make sure that nothing works.
"I think we ought to express {unbridled contempt} for such a farce. I mean, after all: a whore is a whore, isn't she? And the British are one big old whore," LaRouche said.
Over recent weeks, LaRouche has emphasized that any serious intention of solving the global financial breakdown crisis has to emphatically {exclude} the British from any policy participation. If you don't exclude them, they will sabotage any attempt at serious change. If you try to reach a consensus with them, LaRouche has insisted, the result will be less than worthless.
That is precisely what is occuring in the run-up to the Nov. 15 summit of the G-20 in Washington, D.C.
* British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told journalists on his flight from London to the U.S., that he expects the summit to support a sharply increased role for the IMF in global surveillance, a return to the long-stalled Doha round of world free trade talks, and the establishment of a supranational "college of supervisors" to oversee all banks internationally. Brown is scurrying around to impose this agenda, meeting before the summit with Russian President Medvedev, Japanese Prime Minister Aso, and Brazilian President Lula, as well as with Nobel economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman. Most significantly, Brown's financial and foreign policy advisers will hold talks with Obama's envoys to the conference, Madeleine Albright and Jim Leach.
* Japanese Prime Minister Aso will call for doubling the current $340 billion in IMF funds, and will offer $100 billion from Japan. The Saudis may also offer to pony up funds for the IMF.
* German Chancellor Angela Merkel will propose increased transparency and controls "for all kinds of financial products," including derivatives, to be managed through an upgraded IMF.
* Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for "greater inclusivity in the international financial system [and] the need to ensure that the growth prospects of the developing countries do not suffer," but he stressed "the need to avoid protectionist tendencies." His Finance Minister P. Chidambaram likewise warned that "the crisis should not be an excuse to go into a protectionist cocoon."
* French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on Thursday that "I am leaving for Washington to explain that the dollar... can no longer claim to be the only currency in the world," while the daily {Le Figaro} warned that "Sarkozy has already planned to create some incidents during the sessions if the U.S. comes out being completely closed off from the European proposals." Sarkozy has also used his position as rotating president of the EU, to get seats at the summit for Spain and Holland.
* Russian President Dmitri Medvedev stated that tomorrow's summit will be inconclusive, but that he supports holding "without any extra red tape, and fairly soon," a follow-on summit on the financial system. "We need a full-scale, adequate response to the problems, not simply a collection of declarations, handshakes and photo ops, but rather an action plan." After talking about categories like "transparency," "early-warning procedures," and lowering trade barriers, he included something with more potential: "Elimination the imbalance between the volume of the mass of all kinds of various financial instruments that are issued, and the real returns on investment on the programs they are related to." If that point were truthfully pursued, it would lead to the guts of the crisis: the derivatives bubble.
RUNAWAY CRASH AFTER ABORTIVE G20 SUMMIT?
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...ummit.html
Aspic used to be a popular dish at parties: pieces of meat, poultry or eggs and vegetables, or fruits, suspended in a jello-like gelatin. This was the Group of 20's final communique today. Many of the government leaders had come to Washington with individual "issues" or slogans. Britain's Gordon Brown sought to bail out London, and screw everyone else, under the slogans of "coordinated fiscal stimulus" and international "colleges of regulators." France's Sarkozy, with much better intentions, sought the closing of offshore unregulated financial centers, and international regulation of derivatives and rating agencies.
What the communique did, after only a five-hour meeting of about thirty delegations, was embed each little, separate slogan or issue in the jello, but only as "words, slogans and issues, without commitment or expectation," as Lyndon LaRouche noted today. For example, the communique promises that "we will use fiscal measures to stimulate domestic demand," and then adds "as appropriate." It doesn't say what "colleges of regulators" are, or what powers they will have, if any, but calls on major global banks to meet them for "comprehensive discussions."
Typical are such ringing, inspirational declarations as this one: "Authorities should insure that financial institutions maintain adequate capital in amounts necessary to sustain confidence."
"This is all bullshit," said LaRouche. "There's no seriousness in this piece of disgusting incompetence. They're going to have a great deal of trouble trying to prevent a runaway crash Monday and Tuesday. Because, this bullshit can go on, but it's not something you can sell. They probably will pump up the greatest bloating of the market they ever did. Expect that from them."
The one thing the statement did that was useful, was to pin the crisis on George W. Bush, saying that its "root causes" occurred "earlier this decade," that is, under his Administration "Yes," said LaRouche, "the greatest collapse in history has occurred under George Bush's Administration. This event is the George Bush burial society. It nominates George Bush as the worst President in history, excepting the outright traitors. The collapse is the fruit of a Bush-league President. The idea of this son-of-a-bitch getting encomiums and going out, is disgusting."
BUSH's WEEKEND FARCE BRINGS US CLOSER TO HELL
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/11/...-hell.html
Llyndon LaRouche declared today that Saturday's G-20 farce brings us that much closer to Hell. "The fact that the meeting was held was bad. Everything around it was bad,'' LaRouche stated bluntly. "The system is disintegrating now. It is gone, and unless there is a change in direction, we face Hell on earth for generations to come. And so far, everyone is saying, 'We are not going to do anything about it.' If they play by those rules, it means Doomsday,'' LaRouche concluded. "If someone awakens to the fact that he or she has been behaving like a fool, and changes, and does what I have consistently said must be done, we can change things,'' LaRouche continued. LaRouche declared, "The world system is in the process of collapse. Unless you take certain prescribed actions, the world goes to Hell, by virtue of a failure to act.'' On Saturday, the so-called leadership of the planet "failed to act,'' in "just such a fashion as I have warned about, repeatedly.''
"You have got to face up to the fact that the British oligarchy is viciously insane. Britain's Ancien Regime is going down. It has happened before in history. Looking closely at yesterday's farce in Washington, you clearly see the implications. The fact that the system is going down, is widely recognized, yet there was a decision made, a determination, to do nothing to prevent the presently onrushing collapse from happening. It must therefore appear, that these governments would rather die, and allow billions to die a horrible death along with them, rather than change the system.''
LaRouche pointed to a second grave and imminent danger, "If you follow the British propaganda machine closely, and you see how much effort is devoted to British sources' forecasting the coming assassination of the President-elect of the United States.'' LaRouche explained: "I know the character of the British empire. I have studied its character from its beginning, as I have studied ancient empires as well. I know that the British will not just propagandize about the so-called danger of an assassination of the President-elect. They will do it! They are using their propaganda machinery to build up an expectation of such an assassination. We must, therefore, stop that British-planned assassination--now, or the consequences of such an assassination will wipe everything else off the agenda, and throw the United States and, by extension, the rest of the world, into a state of absolute chaos.''
LaRouche warned: "Everything I hear goes in that direction."
LaRouche, then, returned to the Bush farce that occurred on Saturday. "This Bush farce achieved nothing. The most likely outcome is that the farce will now trigger, in the immediate hours ahead, the next explosive phase of the already-pending general collapse of the entire global system. There are indications, already, that such a crash has begun, in early reports from the Persian Gulf. The risk of a major collapse of as many as 25 percent of all the existing hedge funds is also very real, and imminent, as the deadline passes for investors to withdraw their funds. The G-20 performance, which some saw as the Swan Song for George W. Bush, actually was tantamount to collectively kissing civilization goodbye.''