Letters to the Editor
aveutter
Published Letters: 434 Editor's Choice: 48
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Maybe its not our problem
[Read the article: The peak oil culture wars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]America's infrastructure is already in place, what about China and India, Brazil? These countries have to grow or die, and they are competing for a shrinking supply of commodities. We have everything we need to be self sufficent, with a more prudent use of our resources.
China built a new stadium for the Olympic games, but no earthquake proof schools, safe drinking water, or untainted food supplies. To do all these things requires expensive and scarce energy. An economist could make the point that Conservation would allow this symbiotic relationship between China and US consumers, to continue, and further postpone their real economic development. One should assume that if oil became truly scarce, it will be used more wisely than is currently the case.
Energy conservation is never going to work, as long as the Chinese have their Walmart priorities confused, and as long as there is plenty of oil in the markets that is likely to continue.
It's possible America may have negative population growth as some point in the future, while the developing countries are going to have population waves, as improved economics increases the size of families, not the other way around. They are stuck in a vicious cycle of development, which includes population growth, and greater demand for energy. Demand simply isn't tight enough to warrant Conservation, and the environmental issues could be remedied with greater regulation, especially in places like China, where there is almost no environmental regulation. Until China and the other developing countries come up to speed, there is no purpose in the US creating even more stringent pollution regulation.
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Potato Famine Redux
[Read the article: More rice than ever before]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The socalled Irish Potato Famine really wasn't a blight, or a famine at all, but an economic disaster, in which farmers sold all their potatoes, and the Irish were too poor to afford them. Sound familar?
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bullshit
[Read the article: Ben "Iron Man" Bernanke]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bush spent a week annointing the Fed chief. his plan like everything else he has done, is to politicize the bureaucracy. like his old man, bush sr, he has tried to use the Fed to manipulate interest rates. (according to Greenspan)
Iron Man Bernanke like Iron Man RObert Downing....
bullshit....
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dear dr. mo
[Read the article: Ben "Iron Man" Bernanke]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]the fed has nothing to do with fiscal policy, did you go to school with Bush?
bernanke is powerful in the same sense that chertoff is powerful, the most powerful homeland security czar in the history of the nation!
bush has given bernanke one helluva lot of power, not surreptiously, he merely added to what several presidents and congressional leaders have given the fed chief, by abdicating their CONSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES.
the federal reserve represents a banking committee owned by the British as I understand it.
it was formed in the first place because JP Morgan was setting interest rates, and the government thought that wasn't good policy.
hmmm.
they were founded in 1913 and the great depression arrived a few years later. since then the expansion of credit and the devaluation of the currency have been steady symptoms of their largesse.
Obama has taken hundreds of millions of dollars from Goldman Sachs, three times what McCain has taken (any bets on who wins the election?)
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Credit Michael Moore
[Read the article: The president's great sacrifice]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]His shot of Bush playing golf in Moore's documentary, was memorable.
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Aw shucks
[Read the article: Ben "Iron Man" Bernanke]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I learned the fine art of bullying from some French intellectuals, but your trite little rejoinder wouldn't keep a classroom full of middle schoolers in line.
Everything I said is accurate. The Fed does not set fiscal policy.
Like every groundswell change in American politics, the new powerhouse Fed is done without debate or discussion.
How Obama handles it remains to be seen. Some suggest he has Paul Volcker waiting to take over. Being a good public servant, which is the role Bernanke has assumed, travelling around the world, at the side of Paulson, and Bush, he will probably do whatever his political connections demand of him.
Yes Greenspan did claim that Bush Sr. put the most pressure on him concerning interest rates. It was Bush Sr, by the way, who walked down to the floor of the NYSE and offered the stock market cash reserves from the Treasury, at the behest of then President Reagan, who established the first President's Working Group, aka Plunge Protection Team.
Now I haven't read the book but I read this today.
Kevin Phillips has a great article reprinted at www. mindfully.org/Reform/2008/Pollyanna-Creep-Economy1may08.htm
The names of all the recent US Presidents are mentioned with no apparent distortion of their records.
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Political ideas being floated?
[Read the article: A new, improved bubble-popping Fed]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The scarcity of details suggests this is a trial balloon. You have to expect the Fed to use its authority to control interest rates, keep the bond market liquid, and the cost to service the debt low, by placing low yielding Treasury Bonds into the portfolios of banks who don't want their books scutinized, or their reserve requirements jacked up, or what sort of public official would he be? They called it Crony Capitalism in Japan.
Wasn't it Greenspan raising interest rates that popped the dot.com bubble. What a hypocrite he is. Bottom line the Fed can't manage the economy if Congress and the President don't sign off on the idea, but this shadowgovernment business gives everyone the bends. It's like Fannie and Freddie, the GSE's, which our elected officials insist do not have their funds backed by the US government, or well sort of. Now we have this sort of Under Secretary of the Treasury who travels around with them, and does their bidding.
If they would just bring him into the cabinet we call could feel a little better about it, but being fundamenatlly opposed to creating a Socialist Politburo Economic Bureacracy they can't do that, can they?