Day: October 16, 2008

“Rich” World Blamed For Crisis

Blasting rich countries for turning the world into “a gigantic casino,” Brazil’s president joined with leaders from India and South Africa in urging that emerging economies’ voices be heard as the world grapples with the unfolding financial crisis.

Across the developing world, there is a growing resentment that a crisis hatched by the rich is coming home, to be borne by the poor.

“We are the victims of a crisis generated by the rich countries,” said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the third summit of leaders of the three major emerging-market countries.

“It is unacceptable that a group of speculators would turn the world into a gigantic casino and tell us how we should run governments,” he added.

India, Brazil and Africa have little to no direct exposure to the toxic mortgage-backed securities that spawned the current crisis, but they are suffering collateral damage in the form of tight credit, plunging currencies, tanking equity markets, slowing growth and falling commodities prices.

Across Africa, the turmoil has provoked fears of declining investment, aid, tourism, exports, and remittances. Among those hardest hit are Zimbabweans caught up in an economic and political crisis that has forced a third of the population to flee the country and left many of those remaining dependent on remittances from abroad.

And now the fingers starting pointing in all directions trying to find the culprit or at least someone to take the rap for an approaching world recession.

Presidential Debate–Round 3

Who the hell is “Joe the Plumber”?  The candidates have tried to put a personal face on the election and that face belongs to Joe.

Mercifully tonite debate is the last one.  As usuual it was about as exciting as watching flies mate.  This debate was watched because everyone was waiting to see if McCain took the bait and touched on Ayers.  He did.  He bombed.  Obama handled the question with calmness and put it to bed, probably not for Palin, but rather for anyone with half a brain.

Obama was calm, as I have said and very collected.  He did not hit the ball out of the park, but he did not strike out.  He was on track with his policies and he stated them very openly and calmly.  He never stumnbled that I saw.  He did let McCain get a zinger in when he said that if Obama wanted to run against Bush he should have run 4 years ago.  Not bad.  And will make it to ALL the MSM for the day, it will be the line.

Now on to McCain, he took on Obama’s policies at every turn, which you would expect, but I did not hear a whole lot of talk about his policies, at least which would be clear to good ole Joe.  At times he looked frustrated and angry. At least he actuaslly looked at Obama this time.  Also, McCain never mentioned the middle class by name for the third debate.

As I suspected the debate was McCain being more lively and Obama being more cautious.  Since he leads in the polls, he did not want to jeopardize that lead.  Alrighty then, you want the winner and the loser.  McCain tried, but he could not rattle Obama.  Obama just did the old “bob and weave”.  McCain gets some points for his engagement of Obama, but in the end Obama was the winner by a slim margin.  Why?  He did not make a mistake.

AIG Warned

– New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating “unwarranted and outrageous expenditures” at American International Group Inc., which received an $85 billion federal bailout last month.

In a letter to AIG’s board of directors, Cuomo demanded the company stop “extravagant” expenditures and recover millions of dollars in unreasonable payments, or face legal action.

Cuomo cited a $5 million bonus and a $15 million “golden parachute” AIG awarded its chief executive officer in March. Martin Sullivan was AIG’s CEO at the time. Cuomo said the company also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on “luxurious retreats” for executives, including an overseas hunting party and a golf outing.

“The party is over,” Cuomo said today at a press conference on Wall Street in lower Manhattan. “No more hunting trips. No more luxury resorts. They are not going to have the party and leave the hangover for the taxpayers.”

Cuomo claimed in his letter that the expenditures violated the state’s debtor-creditor law and demanded an accounting of AIG’s executive compensation and benefits since January 2007. He said the government’s financial rescue of AIG made the expenditures “even more irresponsible and damaging.”

The U.S. government offered AIG an $85 billion loan last month as the company slipped toward insolvency. The company may access an additional $37.8 billion from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to replenish liquidity.

At least someone, somewhere is going after these guys.

The Crisis, Whose Fault Is It?

I have been mulling over this subject for a couple of weeks.  Reading as much as I could to see just what went wrong.  May I see a show of hands of those who still do not know what the whole thing is about?

The question has been asked, whose fault is the crisis?  And the fingers began pointing as soon as the problem was known.  And no one was safe for the accusations Some blame Clinton as his policies, others blame all Dems, some say it was the policies of the conservatives and then there are those that lay the problem at the feet of old GW.

So who or what is to blame?

Let me try and explain it as best I can as as best as I understand it.  How about fiscal policy?  Expansionary fiscal policy to be exact.  This is when the Federal government decreases taxes and increases spending.  The purpose is to stimulate the economy and push it in the direction of growth.  Deficits occur during a recession because of the use of expansionary fiscal policy.  Now, does any of this sound a bit familiar?

When a government is in deficit it will borrow (remember that word) money from loanable fund markets (credit).  When it does that increases the demand for money in the economy.  When the government does borrow money it crowds out or takes funds from the private sector.  Thus the private sector must compete for fewer and fewer funds.

The credit markets have tanked.  Could the deficit have helped cause our current prioblem?  If there is less money available would the market not constrict?  Does that sound familiar?

Now to help this situation the president needs to ask Paulson and Bernanke for their resignations.  Why?  They were stomping out individual fires while the market was blazing out of control.  They threw money at the markets that should have been ignored and focused on the commerical paper market.  Instead they let Paulson convince everyone that the banks and the hedge funds were the problem and the solution.  All talk about saving Main Street, but they offered the bailout to Wall Street.  They should have attacked the commercial paper market, that is where Main Street is, not on Wall Street or in the board rooms of banks.

This crisis is far from over and as long as Paulson is in place to help his brothers on Wall Street it will last longer than most anticipate.

I realize that I will never be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Economics, but hopefully my readers will have a better grasp on the crisis and what is happening..

Finally, They Got Around To Saul

Saul Alinsky that is…..who is he, you will ask?  If you listen to McCain and the conservatives he was a Marxist writer that set down some rules for a Marxist take over of society.  Well that is a pipedream and an outright lie.  Yes he was a writer, but he was also the father of modern community organizing.  And we know what the McCain group thinks of community organizers, right?  By labeling Alinsky a Marxist makes all Organizers look like Marxists.  The Republican demonizing machine at its best.

With all the talk about this person or that I was afraid that McPalin would miss Alinsky.  I am so glad to see that I was mistaken.  In the last couple of days his name has made an appearance even on Monday Morning in an interview on MSNBC, Jon Voight, a McCain supporter made reference to Alinsky as a Marxist.

Alinsky is considered the father of community organizing, that is to get communities to act in organized self-interests.  He was a critic of mainstream liberalism, but that does not make one a Marxist.  In his book, the Rules For Radicals, Alinsky wrote:

“There’s another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families – more than seventy million people – whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don’t encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let’s not let it happen by default.”

The very first sentence is non-Marxist, for a Marxist would not work within the system, but rather by a working class revolution.  Ayers may have been a “terrorist” back in the 60’s, but Saul Alinsky was no Marxist and should not be held in disdain because he showed the way for community organizing.  Many, many organizers are from the Alinsky school, such as, Caesar Chavez, even the great Hillary Clinton was an admirer and we all know by now that Obama was also from the school.

To call Alinsky a Marxist is just the typical conservative ploy to lessen the individual of whom they talk.  Once again the McCain camp is using tactics from the past.  After all, it is the 21st century and time for the US to look to the future.  It seems that Repubs are afraid of the future, they prefer to fall back on the tired policies of the past.

Saul Alinsky had a profound influence of the fight for social justice in the US.  He should be remembered for that and not some made crap used to influence voters and win elections.  Alinsky may have been a radical, but that does not make him a Marxist.

The Palin Page #2

These are notes on the saga that is Palin that never made it to post….just wanted to share with my readers and get their thoughts.

1–Palin said in an interview, “it is not negative, the American people need to know the truth”.  I ask does that also include the truth on:

a–Vogler of the AIP b) Keating, c) Singlaub, d) Lobbyist Rick Davis, e) trooper-gate, f) the Wasilla sports-plex, just o mention a few.

2–At a rally Palin chastised a protester with, “thank the vets for giving you the right to protest”.  First that is not a right to be given by the military, it is to be protected by the military.  Second, those protesters were fans that were asking hewr to speak up, they could not hear her.

3–Palin told Rush in an interview on his show, “she has nothing to lose by attacking Obama”.  Did she just concede defeat in November?

4–trooper-gate, she has said that she was cleared of wrong doing…now I read the report and I missed that part…they found her breaking a state statute.  She cannot be that ignorant.

5–Again she and her running mate do not hear the threats of violence against Obama, but they sure hear any protesters and set about chastising them openly.

6–Her campaign is pushing the baby’s daddy hard, is that something the people need to know.  Plus he has said that the myspace page was not his but a few friends did it as a joke.  If so, why not bring that out in the beginning?