President Obama is being touted for a)eliciting opinions from all players in the policy room and b)allowing (if not encouraging) contrarian opinions in policy debates. This is what the Obama Contrarian series of postings will be about. This first posting is about the kid glove treatment the Financial Community appears to be getting from the […]
Obama Contrarian: Financial Kid Glove Treatment Read More »
You gotta read this story about PennyMac from the people who brought you the Mortgage meltdown – the graduates of CountryWide Financial. The business model is quite simple – “goes to a demolished bank or the FDIC and buys up delinquent mortgages at, say, 20 cents on the dollar. Kurland’s people then call the delinquent
Only in America: Mortgage Machinations Read More »
The Crisis of Islam by Bernard Lewis – This book written back in 2003 has stood the test of news time – which is to say it is still relevant and telling 5 years after its publication. This is the definitive analysis of the religious background that distinguishes Islam from most of the other major
The Crisis of Islam Read More »
Currently Washington is being consumed and tortured by the controversy over President George Bush and his adminstration’s many declarations that “We don’t torture” and the revelation that indeed the US did. And such torture occurred before, during and after the infamy of “We don’t torture”. The Obama administration appears to agree with Republican pundit Peggy
Consumed and Tortured Read More »
One of the reasons that the current Financial Implosion was not bigger and more horrific than it could have been, can be credited to the much maligned SOX. No, not the Baseball’s Red Sox or White Sox but rather the Sarbanes Oxley law. This fairly simple legislation cuts off plausible deniability and other financial accounting
Some people ask why has free Open Source software got such a broad foothold in so many markets? Because at the price of free its protected against “cut off the oxygen” zero pricing tactics by Microsoft, Oracle and other major software players while providing the decided competitive advantage of allowing customers to see and fix
Rest of the Story 3: Somali Pirates and The Economist Read More »
I could not believe Jon Stewart’s the Daily Show last night – Jon was engaging in major faux-pas US Jingoism which normally he reserves huge scorn for. In fact The Daily Show matched its great Mocking Nemesis, the Fox network for missing the rest of the story 2. Now give measly credit marks to the
The Rest of the Story 2:Somali Pirates Read More »
Paul Harvey just passed away earlier this year, and that is a pity because he was famous for supplying “the rest of the story” for a lot of hyper-infotainment highlighted news stories. For example, the headline at the venerable NYTimes is “In Drug War, Mexico Fights Cartel and Itself”. Now the Times is doing a
Mexico’s Drug Wars : The Rest of the Story Read More »
During the past 5 days in Toronto I have been working in the big beautiful Metro library on a special web study. And I have seen a whole slew of people pounding the EliteBooks for the upcoming CFA 2009 exams in June. CFA is the Certified Financial Analyst designation that is vital to getting a
A Financial Parable Read More »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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
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 »
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 »
I have friends both very pro and con Obama who have expressed tinges of buyers regret. It goes something like this. PRO Obama : I am beginning to worry about Obama – look he is having a Gay-bashing Preacher give the blessing at the Inauguration. Or look he is wavering on removing the Bush tax
According to a Jerusalem Post Survey the mission of the Israelis in its Gaza air strikes and coming ground operations is no less than toppling Hamas and routing them out of the Gaza strip. Now Hamas as the Israelis and others will quickly point out can be just as thuggish as their opposition in achieving their
Israeli BlunderPlus Read More »
