Letters to the Editor
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Hey,
can I get a billio-dollar cash infusion?
All these banks getting an crap load of money - who's next?
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How World War III will start or Bush: The best thing to ever happen to Iran
"Dark times are ahead...as the major powers of the world struggle for control of the world's dwindling supplies of fossil fuels."
Dark times indeed. Iran is discovering new oil and gas reserves virtually every day and thanks to Bush, they've got their eye on Iraq's oil as well.
In an effort to "get it right" in Iraq, president McCain will be persuaded by corporate interests and the neocons to embroil Iran in the greater middle east struggle. China and Russia will come to Iran's defense in an effort to prevent US domination of middle eastern oil and/or to curry favor with Iran and gain special trading partner status (i.e. cheap oil). The Europeans will reluctantly join the Americans and thus the world will be inflamed in war.
Sound far fetched? It's already happening. Google it!
Thanks to Bush, Iran will be a major player in the future world economy (until the oil runs out). And thanks to US meddling in Iranian politics (i.e. the 'soft war,' overthrowing democratically elected Mosaddeq in the 50s and paving the way for the radical Islamists of the 80s) Iran justifiably hates the US and can't wait to crush its balls in the vise grip that is Iraq.
Sounds to me like it's time we made nice.
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Forensic And Counting
Tin cups and sunglasses for paper pimps.
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Deeply Imbedded agrees...to a point
I will need to read this. Thanks for alerting me.
Here is my daily post. It is relevent
In his opinion piece in this morning's New York Times.. Paul Krugman speaks of the University of Michigan's confidence rating at its lowest level in fifty years. Even the most foolish of economic students, even our Bush, must surely know when expectations become bad the self full filling prophecy ensues. What did the Doofus say last August, with his what me worry Alfred E Newman chuckle and blink? "There's Lot's of liquidity out there"...right! With jawboning like that how can you miss?
Dam I'm hearing that Ricky Nelson song again... "fire up that jet..Laura did you take your pills? There must be a few more countries we can go to. I'm a travlin"
In Northern Michigan we don't have a jet. It has been clear for over a year and longer that things are not good. People speak of well paying jobs with sad jokes, or looks that say "you must be crazy".
The roads were plowed infrequently last winter, and even the police are driving older automobiles. I sense concern and quiet, latent, fear in the flat hollow eyes of the people, the closed up shops, the empty parking spaces in the streets. The churches and the bars are active, but exuberance is not around this corner.
The 44th parallel, just south and down the road from here, is normally a line where the harsh winter's departure brings out people raking lawns and students wearing shorts when the temperatures climb to forty-five and fifty. It is a location where even the slightest expectation that summer is out there... somewhere... brings brighter eyes, and happy chatter. This year, I see little of this. The small towns nearby are ghostly in an eerie, quiet, half active fashion... Uncertainty is on the wind... and this cannot be good. Because I have been saying for some time now... look out America, see us here. We are the nation's "mine's canary".
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Internationalization of Capital
The thing that has kept the U.S. out of depressions or deep recessions more regularly is that it is able to exploit the rest of the world. For instance, after the dollar went off the gold standard, it was kept up because we arranged with the Saudi's et. al to price oil in dollars. That was our 'peg' and provided a price support for years.
Wall Street banks have been sucking debt payments out of the third world for decades now, and milking 3rd and 2nd world countries for vast projects designed to help U.S. corporations build and supply them in perpetuity - in agriculture, water and dams, buildings, military supplies, etc. The World Bank & IMF have actually demanded this from many countries, acting as the catspaw for Wall Street.
Recently, besides Bear Stearns, nearly all the major investment banks got immense cash infusions, not from the public exactly, but from sovereign wealth funds based in Switzerland, Dubai, Singapore, etc. This helped them from collapsing. Is the Wall Street now 'too big to fail'? The Saudi's have been weighing going off the 'dollar' peg, and have, so far, not done it. This is predicated on, besides their investments in the U.S., on U.S. military protection. It is a 'protection payment' in a way.
So it is a system of 'world' imperialism we are dealing with. While Phillips is mostly correct, we need to see how much a broader 'world' system dominiated by Wall Street can postpone the eventual day of reckoning by using all their 'imperial' props. The U.S. imperialist system is even more widespread than existed under the British empire. Of course, the world is a finite place, and expansion or exploitation can only go on for so long. And it seems that time is approaching more readily than we thought...
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I'm mostly on board with this but . .
It seems to me that manufacturing was bound to decline in the developed world one way or another. So I don't see how anyone can hold that up as the sober alternative. And it also seems clear that less tangible goods--intellectual property, entertainment, technological innovations--are the inevitable replacement. That is to say, the idea that it is a question of having a solid manufacturing economy vs. financial chicanery seems way too reductive to me.
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Not Just Factories
Sylvain, what concerns me is that it's not just manufacturing jobs that are going away. We're also sending research, intellectual property, and other jobs overseas. A lot of drug research is moving to China, for example, while American scientists are being laid off. It's only going to increase.
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Does he suggest what level of debt is sustainable?
Numbers are fine and noble things. What about suggested directions?