Letters to the Editor
logicalresponse
Published Letters: 168 Editor's Choice: 19
-
Thinking about the worst case
[Read the article: How Wall Street broke the free market]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The point of interest regarding sovereign fund investments should be focused on when those investments are made in US businesses which in tern have some potentially significant impact on the US economy. A major investment in Citigroup is obviously different in terms of how much we need to pay attention to it, than an investment in a local bank in Oklahoma (no offence to Oklahomans). But even within the point of interest investments there are differences in concern. For example, the form of investment may make a difference. An investment for equity that does not dilute current owners is less a concern than a loan, a preferential investment, or an investment that dilutes other owners.
Likewise, an investment that does not give any significant possibility of control is also less of concern than an investment (and in businesses that are broadly owned such an investment can be far less than a majority) that does give control.
Those are all concerns that arise out of questions about whether the foreign investment could result in actions intended to hurt the US: either our economy directly or other things such as the diminishing our ability to wage war indirectly through hurting the economy. However, to me by far the greatest problem with these investments, is their potential to generate global conflict. Even if a sovereign fund acts innocently in its own best interest, but it happens that its interests are contrary to our interests in a big way (something like this is most likely to happen as a result of some unforeseen economic or political occurrence – market crash, terrorist attack, etc.), then the US is going to be very tempted to expropriate the investment. When this happens to a private investor, the investor must either rely on some investment treaty between the investor’s state and the state that controls the investment or rely on the investor’s country’s diplomatic clout with the state that controls the investment. But sovereign funds are more than individual investors, they have armies. Even short of war, there would have to be some sort of retaliation and with whatever else in going on that precipitated the expropriation in the first place, the destabilizing effect only gets magnified. Certainly, when nothing unforeseen is happening, these very forces may have a stabilizing effect, such as when oil producing companies realized that hurting the US economy with too high prices actually cut demand. But when all hell is breaking loose, the prudence that these arrangements dictate can go right out the window.
-
Speaking a Brokaw
[Read the article: Who among us does not love Ronald Reagan?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The quote from Brokaw is not surrounded by any context in his book, so it is difficult to really know all of what Clinton said. From the context of what Brokaw was discussing when he inserted the quote it appears to me that he was asking Clinton about various conservatives. For example in the immediately preceding paragraph he refers to Clinton saying Rove is obsessed with defeating her. It appears to me that she is saying Reagan at least raised taxes and got arms control (as opposed to other conservative presidents).
However, that is not the important part, to me, of that section of Brokaw's book. That section, again to my lights, expresses the true difference between Clinton and Obama, and sums up why I support Clinton over Obama. (I don't dislike Obama, though.) Let me explain.
In the interview that Obama gave from which the Republicans-as-the-party-of-ideas quote came, Obama also went on about how he was better suited to be president because he is not part of the baby boomers. He does not define himself from the sixties. He claimed that baby boomers define themselves from the Viet Nam war and he does not.
In the Brokaw book Clinton, without knowing it of course, disputes Obama on the Viet Nam war as defining. She says that what happened in the sixties was already coming before the war became an issue.
Then the book quotes her saying something about the sixties that just nails it. When Brokaw was interviewing her for the book, he apparently told her that he was writing a book about the sixties. She asks him if he has broken the code of the sixties. He then asks her if she has. I don't have the quote verbatum but to paraphrase, "I have thought a great deal about that. It is remarkable that the greatest generation that this country has ever produced in turn produced the sixties generation. I have tried to figure out exactly what more was needed, what asperations were still unmet that brought about our rebelliousness and rejection of authority."
That is the difference between Obama and Clinton. Obama does not know what Clinton is even talking about, becasue he does not have that experience. Not only does Clinton have that experience, but she understands what it really meant; she does just ponitificate about it.
-
Correction
[Read the article: Who among us does not love Ronald Reagan?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The last few words from my comment about Brokaw "she does just pontificate about it" were left over from earlier wording and should have been deleted.
-
testy at what?
[Read the article: Is Obama getting "testy"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The whole exchange is difficult to hear, but Obama's body language would certainly support that he was irritated by the question. Testy is a little different than irritated, though. If he was irritated, I doubt it would be because Bill Clinton got in his head. He would be irritated by being asked such an idiodic and pointless non-issue question... sort of like this question, "Is Hillary Clinton's sudden slide getting to her husband?" That question, for those with short memories was asked in a post by Tim Grieve in the War Room blog here at Salon.