When one reads the Economist’s Special Report on The Collapse of Manufacturing, Tom Friedman’s book Hot Flat and Crowded, the Booz and Hamilton book on Manufacturing – Make or Break, or the Obama Administration’s Agenda Paper – it becomes obvious that US industry is going to need an extra heavy dose of innovation and entrepreneurship […]
Trying To Stimulate Innovation with Tax Cuts Read More »
Settlers against a settlement is the title of the article in the Economist October 18th 2008 issue page 56. Here is a map of those settlements: Here is the population trends: Jewish population 1948 1966 1972 1983 1993 2004 2006 West Bank (excluding Jerusalem) 480 0 1,182 22,800 111,600 234,487 282,400 Gaza Strip 30 0
Steady, reasonably-paid jobs for your populace is the new Gold Standard valued by governments and politicians of every persuasion.What proof do we have for this notion. No less than Barack Obama has pledged no Hoot Smalley-like protectionist tariff measures will get signed into law by his administration. But the same Barack obama has said there
The New Gold Standard: Jobs Read More »
The comment here is that recent presidents are crying wolf over “Emergency situations” in order to accrue power and support for near unilateral policy making. The two debaters are saying that both Barack Obama and George Bush have been engaging in a Ponzi scheme for power instead of money based on National Emergency Cry Wolf.
Emergency, Emergency Read More »
George Will is chief political columnist at Newsweek, ABC TV’s This Week commentator, and a deeply convinced and convicted conservative. It was at George Will’s place in Washington, that newly inagurated President Barack Obama came for dinner and a frank conversation among the elite conservative thinkers in the US. I share George Will’s love of
George Will: The Markets Aint Misbehavin’ Read More »
Barack Obama is miles ahead of his previous two predecessors, George W Bush and Bill Clinton in being frank and candid with the American people about the nature of the problems they face. For example, Barack Obama has been bluntly honest about the nature and depth of the economic problems caused by the Credit Crisis
Barack Obama: the Unspoken Truths Read More »
The Financial Times has some great video interviews on the Financial Credit Crunch. The Future of Capitalism UK Lending – Draconian View The European view is more prescient and challenging of the mechanisms of the banks. The recommendations of George Soros on derivatives are echoed in the second video.
The Financial Times Interviews Read More »
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner speaks to Wall Street about the fact that financial reforms are needed because countries like China, Russia and the European Union are demanding changes. He outlines their nature and timing in a series of talks here at the Wall Street Journal.
Geithner Speaks to Wall Street via WSJ on Financial Reform Read More »
Last week there was the Brawl Street confrontation between Daily Show’s John Stewart and CNBC’s Jim Cramer. It was interesting to see a review of the Brawl on the NYTimes Web Front Page. But even more distressive was the fact that the big Sunday Morning news shows like NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week,
Firefly Financial Parable Read More »
In mathematics QED Quod Est Demonstrandum is used at the end of a proof. It means that which was required to be proved has now been provided for all to see. I have been arguing for the past two years that the US Financial System has gone off the rails because unmitigated greed (I have
This last weekend, SNL-Saturday Night Live had a great skit lampooning US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his largely futile efforts to get the US Banking crisis stabilized let alone under control. The skit started with one of those press conference settings, “Geithner” at the podium under the seal of the US Treasury Department. First,
Some Modest Financial Proposals Read More »
One of the arguments on how society got itself into the Boom-bust Business of blowing highly disruptive Financial and Economic Bubbles every 10-15 years is because our collective societal view is far too short. “Next quarters financial results” driven stock markets. Or advertising fashion changing every ratings blitz. Or political stature being poll driven. This
Slashdot has a great posting which acts as an antidote to the domestic “Gosh iPhone is Wonderful” worship from many US Gadjeteers and IT pundits. I repeat the essence here: “With a high level of technical sophistication, critical customers, and high innovation rate, Japan is the toughest cell phone market in the world. So it’s
The movies Taken and International hint at raw and unchecked violence spinning out of control and like Friday the 13th, one says “it is only a movie”, “its only a movie”. Well, the real thing is happening in Mexico along the border – and the murders and violence in the drug wars is starting to suggest that
Mexican Drugs Wars: A Failed State? Read More »
The New York Times is sponsoring on its website a very interesting, challenging and hoefully helpful blog, Room for Debate.The idea is to have 4 experts in the field address a serious contemporary issue/question and use that base to constitute the forum for debate by readers and commentators. Yes it is risky business because online
Future Job Markets in the Good Old USA Read More »
Daunting task.That is the consensus on what faces Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mideast Envoy George Mitchell. And this report from the Wall Stree Journal confirms it. The Israeli people, already moving to the right, now appear poised to go all in on inflicting a Diasporac expelling of Palestinian citizens of Israel – there are
Portfolio Magazine has been following the financial swanfall with some salient reporting. One of the best is the blog of Felix Salmon. He has at least 3-4 very interesting posts per day. Take this one on how the Hedge Fund Model has broken down: It’s becoming increasingly clear that the standard hedge fund incentive model
Felix Salmon : Prolific at Portfolio Read More »
No time is a good time for incompetence but it appears even under Obama incompetence in the position of US Treasury Secretary has won out again. For Tim Geithner appears to be Henry Paulson II. Now I should immediately qualify the word “incompetence” and replace it with deliberate deviance. This deliberate deviance is sort of like Mr.Geithner’s
Many a friend has expressed the sentiment that now that Bush is gone things can finally be made better and whole again. Its Pipe Dreams. Its taking much more than a fifth of Jim Beam. Its poppycock. The problem is that the Republicans and their benefactors who aided and abated and profited mightily from the
Now that Bush Is Gone … Read More »
Because Obama’s Inaugural Speech didn’t have the uplifting rhetoric of his 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Speech, many have said it was a klunker. Some say the real Inauguration Speech of Grandeur was delivered at the Lincoln Memorial on Martin Luther King Day – just 24 hours earlier. But on second view people are finding more
Obama’s Inaugural Speech II Read More »
Israel is not the only one into an end game of Appartheid. I have heard bandied words of not a two state solution between Israel and Palestine, but a single state solution. Here is the proposal from no less than Libya’s Muommar Ghaddafi for Isratine. Like Ghaddafi, Israel would say to the World – enough of
Israeli Appartheid Read More »
I have been arguing here that Israel, in its Election-Eve War against Hamas, has abandoned the very group that could bring about a lasting peace and reconciliation – the Palestinian people. The Israeli population and leaders have allowed Hamas and their Iranian sponsors to snooker them into a another Pyrrhic Battle while planting more than
Gaza Casualty: Goodwill for Israel Read More »
As a “foreign” observer I was struck by two things in the inaugural address: First, the direct repudiation of the former President and VicePresident to their faces on the shortfall of “ends justifies the means” arguments regarding dispensing with rule of law in wartime(read “torture” in Iraq, Quantanamo Bay, Iraq’a Abu Ghraib, Rendition flights, etc)
Observations on Obama’s Inaugural Address Read More »
Gail Collins in the NYTimes says it succinctly – He’s Leaving. Really. But the problem is that President Bush and the GOP have done as yet immeasurable damage to the the US and the World economicall, politically and socially. What is most troubling is what George Bush has left behind. Not only a Washington whose
“Farewell to the Chief” Is Only Half The Problem Read More »
This image by Barry Blitt tells the story of Frank Rich’s latest column in haunting elegance. The Bush Administration and the fully complicitous Republican party are doing more than Madoff – they are getting off Scott Free for major travesties to the laws and stature of the US Government. Yet the Obama team is reluctant
8 Years of Bush+GOP Madoffs Read More »
There appears to be a Rubicon on Regime Change that has been made by not only the governement of Israel but also the general populace – Hamas and its supporters are condemned as being so unreconciliably toxic and bent on the destruction of Israel that their defeat and elimination from Gaza and its politics justifies
Regime Change Rubicon Read More »
China has a number of deals going on with its people, the US and the rest of the World – and those deals are being severely tested in the latest economic downturn. First, domestically the deal is that the people tolerate a one-party systems with most of the decisions made at the top for 10%++
Here is the must read on the Israel and Palestine Hundred Years Conflict . Remarkably it comes from the British who with the Balfour document and its post-haste retreat/deserting the scene in 1947-48 under the duress of Israeli terrorist assasinations, sniper shootings and carnage bombings – left Palestine as a steaming cauldron of mutually unsatisfied
Israel – Palestines Hundred Years War Read More »
Tom Friedman has written 3 good books on the MidEast and has a command of whats happening in socio-economic trends throughout the Worldas evidenced in his 2 books the World is Flat and Hot, Crowded and Flat. So his commentary on the Gaza incursion is required reading. Unfortunately it must be takien against a backdrop
Mideast Ground Zero – Tom Friedman’s Look at Gaza Read More »
The Bush Administration seems bound and determined to prove its incompetence right to the very end of its term. Every commentator says that President-Elect Obama has huge problems on his plate, and the Bush Team in its waning days is just adding to the shipload. Take Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson(soon please, rather than later). Here is some commentary
Israel’s Government is currently using the argument that Hamas in Gaza are entrenched and unrelenting terrorists while their government has been the “good” players in Gaza surrendering the Gaza Strip territory in 2005 including the forced removal of nearly 8,000 illegal Jewish settlers in 2005. “Our reward for this good deed” – constant suicide bombers
Israeli Credibility Read More »
I hate to pat myself on the back … but 5 days after I called the shot, the NYTimes is naming the “Gaza Action” for what it really is – Regime Change on the order of magnitude and risk of George W. Bush’s Iraq Regime Change. So this means that Israel can have deaths and
Israeli Regime Change Read More »
