World's Assets Hit Record Value Of $140 Trillion

Wall Street Journal ^ | January 10, 2007 | JOANNA SLATER

[wideawake]

There's three times as much "money" (financial assets) as there is "goods and services" to be purchased...

That's on a per-year basis.

It is to be assumed that you will not consume everything you own every single year.

[wideawake]

The interesting thing is that israel tops that list, even though its population is almost 40% Muslim.

I wonder what number a survey of the Jewish population alone would yield?

If we assume that Israeli Arabs are parity with Egyptians, that implies about 102.

[BubbaHeel]

I wonder what number a survey of the Jewish population alone would yield?

The Ashkenazim [essentially northern european Jews] have astronomically high IQ's - their average might be as high as 110.

But there are many, many Jews in Israel who are not Ashkenazim [Sephardim, Arabic Jews, Ethiopian Jews, etc etc etc].

[BubbaHeel]

Supposing a reasonably executed education, I think they'd climb quickly out of the deep hole in which they find themselves... If perchance all of these sorts of civilizing precepts were in place, then an educational system could take root, and these horrific IQ results would be greatly moderated.

If you ever find yourself with a few hours on your hands, I highly recommend spending an afternoon reading all the stories at

The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit

It's essentially the coffee-table picture book version of what La Griffe du Lion is trying [futilely? hopelessly?] - via mere words, graphs, and mathematical formulae - to warn people about.

But of course no one listens...