Viva El Salvador! A century of solitude no more

Post author By Enemy Combatant
Post date 17 March, 2009
765 Comments on Viva El Salvador! A century of solitude no more

Casas de carton proudly brought to you by United Fruit Company.

Leftist candidate Mauricio Funes has claimed victory in El Salvador’s presidential election, in a historic vote that ends the 20-year rule of right-wing party ARENA.

Holy Toledo, Batman! How is Uncle Sammy and his CIA gonna get all those Central and South American snakes back into the box and deal with the rest of the planet simultaneously!? The U.S. economy is singularly inclement with bailouts galore and China holding the purse strings. The Middle Eastern countries are hair-trigger toey and appear unreceptive to “God’s gift of Democracy”. The Ugly American empire is turning to caga before the eyes of the world and it’s not a good look.

Rome on the skids was never like this; hegemonic hiccoughs never so dyspeptic.

Remember, remember the eleventh of September
The CIA’s murderous plot
For families and friends of The Disappeared,
It will never be forgot.

The Good Shepherd Trailer

Footage of the US fighter/bombers destroying the presidential palace in Santiago, September 11, 1973.

CIA Chile 1973

Democratically elected Salvador Allende and hundreds of his supporters were murdered on that day, thousands who resisted were later tortured and “disappeared”. Pinochet’s fascist regime could not have maintained power after the coup without the the full co-operation of Holy Mother Church and her Secret Police, Opus Dei.

Michelle_Bachelet supported Allende in his rise to the Presidency. She is a medical doctor, and a divorced mother of three.

The Kangaroo Connection …

On January 10, 1975, Michelle Bachelet and her mother were detained at their apartment by two DINA agents, who blindfolded them and drove them to Villa Grimaldi, a notorious secret detention center in Santiago, where they were separated and submitted to interrogation and torture. Some days later they were transferred to Cuatro Álamos (“Four Poplars”) detention centre, where they were held until the end of January. Later in 1975, due to sympathetic connections in the military, both were exiled to Australia, where Bachelet’s older brother Alberto had moved in 1969.

Meanwhile, Latin America swerves towards the left …

Latin America is swerving to the left, (former conquistadors Portugal and Spain have already done so) and a distinct backlash is already under way against the predominant trends of the last fifteen years: free market reforms, agreement with the U.S. on a number of issues and the consolidation of representative democracy. (movement of jah people).

Venezuela (Chavez)
Bolivia (Morales)
Cuba (Castro)
Brazil (Lula)
Argentina (Kirchner)
Uruguay (Vasquez)
Chile (Bachelet)

Abstract

The multinational United Fruit Company has been considered the quintessential representative of American imperialism in Central America. Not only did the company enjoy enormous privileges in that region, but also counted on authoritarian governments in dealing with labor unrest. The literature assumes that United Fruit and the dictators were natural allies due to their opposition to organized unionism. This paper shows that this alliance could only survive as long as the multinational provided the dictators with economic stability for the country. However, when the multinational proved to be incapable of doing that, the dictators allied with the working class to confront the multinational and extract higher rents (or as in El Savador’s case, democratically elect a president, not necessarily a dictator who can tell the corporate exploiters to pay their fair share or vamoose).

http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/eclillbus/06-0115.htm

(thanks for your fire dog lake link at 925, ChrisB, after reading it, this thread self-collated)

Tags Argentina, Bachelet, Bolivia, Brazil, Castro, Chavez, Chile, Cuba, Kirchner, Lula, Morales, Uruguay, Vasquez, Venezuela

765 replies on “Viva El Salvador! A century of solitude no more”

Daily Reckoning put it in easy to read form:

But while all this wind was passing through the press, the important story was highlighted at Salon.com: “Economists agree: Print. Money. Now.”

What worries us is that this is all too obvious and too predictable. The economists agree, because they see no alternative. The real problem is not a lack of money for the banks to lend – they can borrow all they want from the Fed at near-zero interest. The real problem is too much debt. And printing money will help ease the debt burden. On paper, people will owe as much as ever, but it will be a whole lot easier to pay with the dollar going down by 10% …or 20%…per year.

So, print…money…now…is just what the Fed is doing. Bernanke said so. And he says he’ll keep doing it as long as necessary.

This unsettles the Chinese, of course. They’ve got $1.4 trillion in dollar assets. They told the United States that they expected it to protect the value of the Chinese holdings.

But how can the feds do that? Quantitative easing is an increase in the QUANTITY of money. Generally, an increase in the quantity means a decrease in the QUALITY of it. That’s how it works. And that’s exactly what the feds want.

So, the poor feds! Out of one side of their mouths, they had to reassure their biggest creditor that they’d protect the value of the dollar…while out of the other, they have to reassure the markets that they will create enough inflation to get the economy moving.

They are caught between Scylla…and Charybdis…on the one hand the rock of deflation…on the other, the Chinese. What can they do?

Our guess it that they are aiming to muddle through…with just a little bit of QUALITATIVE decline in the dollar – not enough to cause the Chinese to panic – but enough to get U.S. consumers, investors and businessmen to loosen up.

Good luck to them.

But there’s no such thing as a controlled “run on the dollar.” Once investors start running for cover, it’s every man for himself. And who knows where it will end up? Foreigners are already exiting U.S. agency debt. It wouldn’t be very surprising that they suddenly rush for cover from all U.S. dollar debt.

Was “Gus” on duty on the wharves a little while ago? Is this an international conspiracy to save the mongrels that Reith and co. let loose on the Australian worker?
Send Gus and his bitch to Nauru I say.

502
😆
Bloody hell Flaneur, what have the poor Naruans ever done to us to deserve that?
It’s bad enough that we sent that “weapon of mass delusion” Lord Downer of Baghdad to torment the Cyptiots.
Let’s not trash our reputation any further in the Pacific, by foisting the galloping Gourmand on them. 👿

paddy you are correct. Obviously I hadn’t thought it through. I unreservedly withdraw and sincerely apologise to any Naruan that may have been offended by my comments.
😉

I bet Amanda bit her and it’s diplomatic cover up.

Ferny -I’ll wear the T while I drink the wine- perfect win/win 😉

505
Jen Says
I bet Amanda bit her and it’s diplomatic cover up.

Damn you Jen. That’s half a glass of red sprayed over my new T-shirt.

ask Ferny for a new one paddy.
(cant believe you didn’t see that one coming)

How delicious to see the Weimaramer in the land of the Rottweiler!
Now, if Amanda would only just take her dog for a walk and slip the lead at St Peters…..

505.
Much more plausible,Jen!! 😆

Megan – hopefully they keep Amanda muzzled.
Should have happened years ago. 😈

and just for old times sake-

Fuck the Former Liberal Politicians Who Did Us Like Doggie DooDoos.

I dunno, Jen,….
Millions of woman may quietly cheer if she went all canine! 🙂

Problem is she’d probably lick the bastard!

megan – you don’t think she achieved that years ago??

eeeyew!
515 was in response to 513
NOT 514.

megan – i seriously think you should consider upper-casing with a comment like that :wicked:

What would we be saying about President McCain if he was at this time maintaining Bush’s torture and rendition policies and was giving away trillions of dollars of free money to the financial system which has raped the world economy?

If it walks like a corpo-fascist and talks like a corpo-fascist then whatcha gonna do?

Yep -HusseinWorm.
Obama is just like McCain.
Actually he is more like Sarah Palin – good looking. 🙄

Not just like McCain, Jen. I dare say McCain would at least be more liberal on the torture issue.

518

Geez a post like that is frustrating for so many different reasons.

Kirri,
Am I missing something? The various governments around the world trying to solve a CREDIT crisis when they are facing a DEBT crisis. Look how well this approach has worked in Japan over the last 20 years.

FFS
The “Sub-prime Crisis” was and remains a DEBT crisis.

The current “Prime Crisis” is a DEBT crisis.

The coming “Credit Card Crisis” is a looming a DEBT crisis.

Solving them in the way currently being tried is like trying to solve some advanced mathematical problems in non-commutative Ring Theory by using only on the tools from Analytic Number Theory. While you might luck out the chance of success is the same as that there is a god – zero.

Cardster, I’m as perplexed as the next guy! LOL

Whilst drowning in debt, the pollies and their spruikers are offering drinks all round!

I’d say they’ve concluded the ship is sunk so let’s all have another drink, forget we’re already drowning in debt, and hope maybe we hit an iceberg or something we can all climb on when we finally sink!

Or, let’s just try and inflate our way out by getting the bubble growing just one more time…that ought to work.

Cardster, I love it when you deal from the bottom of the debt. 🙂
————–
Note on usage….
kazoo: a musical instrument favoured by jug bands and street performers.

wazoo: capable of producing a note; not a musical instrument as such.

WARNING: nutcase philologists graze here.
————————————————-
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2009/03/24/tomo/index.html

‘Twas on the Good Ship Bonus
By Christ it was an onus
The figurehead, was a banker in bed
Scheming how he was gonna own us.
Mar 24:
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/jeffdanziger;_ylt=AkV.20cPmCOW0Hl9jfuRGB4l6ysC

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68449

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68453

Mar 25:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/mattbors;_ylt=AiAANvo41je4A6jy0lwfCF4l6ysC

Mar 25:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/nonsequitur;_ylt=A0WTUcPd.8lJuBQAQgEDwLAF

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68451

Mar 25:
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/tonyauth;_ylt=AhjKXUDELtiUH6iKsWg2rxYl6ysC

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68420
————————————————————
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/patoliphant;_ylt=Au.YqfWAWcSYa2IWb6r7edvd.sgF

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Oliphant
————————————————————-

I’ll claim either:

a) a typo
b) a Freudian slip (which people say I look quite good in! LOL)

Very fetching, indeed.

Eccy,

🙂 🙂 A truly lovely pun 🙂

Kirri
As you may have guessed I have some mathematical background. I worked in the Actuarial field for 25-30 years In my day, we only ever used simplistic models for valuation of liabilities – FFS the insurance industry was only dealing with dumb punters (though reading the Nugan-Hand insurance file was an eye-opener 🙂 :))

After I retired I did some 2nd and 3rd year honours maths courses and it struck me that like the Economists, as Steve Keen contends, the actuaries were akin trying to solve the answer to “life the universe and everything” using maths from before 1850 and a pocket calculator with no memory for storing any intermediate results.

My end line in 523
While you might luck out the chance of success is the same as that there is a god – its probability has MEASURE ZERO!!! 🙂 🙂 :).

Sorry for not being technically correct – it’s the red cordial, I swear.

BTW where are the hints for putting some text in bold and italics 🙂

Cardster, try the right hand column, cf. “Playground” under Pages. For fancy stuff, Flaneur and Cat have finesse.

Who do you reckon whacked Frankie boy and left the stiff in a car near Lithgow?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nugan_Hand_Bank

520-
HusseinWorm –
I think that is the most singularly ridiculous thing I have read to date. Suggesting that McCain is somehow more liberal than Obama is IMO simply provocative.
Which is fine.
But you cannot be serious.

Obama News Conference: Budget & Bailout

Obama News Conference 1 of 5 Budget & Bailout BBC 03.24.2009

Obama News Conference 2 of 5 Budget & Bailout BBC 03.24.2009

Obama News Conference 3 of 5 Budget & Bailout BBC 03.24.2009

Obama News Conference 4 of 5 Budget & Bailout BBC 03.24.2009

Obama News Conference 5 of 5 Budget & Bailout BBC 03.24.2009

Quite serious, Jen. I will always be vehemently opposed to any politician who uses torture. The Pinochet defence doesn’t wash with me.

531
Cat
Elegant links as always. Thanks.
Plus the rude one covers the same press conference in his own inimitable style. 🙂

Gringo Casas de cartons plastico; how the American Dream works for all Americans.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/slideshow/ALeqM5jfdUjgQlF9EylQA0IXkiLMA6EUVg?index=1

Mar 25:
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/jeffdanziger;_ylt=A0WTUddopspJMzoAlgcDwLAF

But whoa! Hold on……. help is on the way because as the first three minutes of this clip of Barry’s recent presser shows, he’s really cuttin’ up bad about it. People gon get back their McJobs in a jiffy. Then they can proudly hunt deer with Jesus all over again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD8PnbcDJGU

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68460

http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/comedy/2009/03/25/bateman_usingthebank/

Like most Americans, I am eager for Barack Obama to succeed, but I see this appointment as further evidence that the president has entrusted his economic policy to the wrong people.

Gensler helped create this financial crisis when he was in the Treasury Department back in the Clinton era, when bipartisan cooperation with Wall Street lobbyists was all the rage. Sanders gets right to the point: “Mr. Gensler worked with Sen. Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of AIG and has resulted in the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090325_obamas_toxic_advisers/

The Kid has hitched his, and Seppo City Central’s future to the perpetrators of America’s financial fall. Big mistake. Riding bareback with fiscal whores acquires far more than just a poxic debt; it’s a rodeo to ruin.

And for a while there during the campaign I allowed myself to believe that Obama was going to exercise leadership by harvesting global goodwill and doing what needs to be done about global heating. Fat chance of that now he’s tipped his hand about whose interests he is prepared to protect.

Mar 25:
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/tomtoles;_ylt=A0WTUddopspJMzoAowcDwLAF

Henry tells it like is: I fear we are substituting a public debt crisis for a private debt crisis and we’ll face the consequences down the road.

(interviewed at Gordon Brown’s dinner in NY)

When Henry Kissinger gives you the simple facts, look out! LOL

Stiglitz on the Geithner plan: “Quite frankly, this amounts to robbery of the American people”

Desperate times make people do desperate things but to watch this catastrophe develop I just wonder how much worse things could have been if the Fed and Treasury just let these companies go bust, wiping out the shareholders and the bondholders and letting the capital markets seize up for a while until the smoke cleared.

But this way they’ve hocked the taxpayers for a few generations, bailed out the stockholders, let the bondholders hold on to some hope, paid out on some colossal bets by companies like AIG to other financial cowboys, but still the system is broken.

It’s gut churning to watch. Imagine what it’s like to be living through it, watching your country descend into a hell of its own making.

Bad shit.

Money markets are looking so euphoric about a blip in durable goods or whatever the hype du jour happens to be. They are however concerned at the endless need for capital:

“There are some interesting developments on the bond front. The UK tried to offer £1.75 billion of gilts overnight – the problem is punters only lifted £1.6bn which is the first time since 2002 that an auction has failed.” (business spectator)

And the latest US auction wasn’t quite spectacular either.

If, or should I say when, the buyers have decided that they’ve gorged on way too much of Uncle Sam’s and UK debt, look out. There’s trillions to raise but there’s NOT an infinite supply.

The Great Recession will be the great rationing.

And what do you think Bank of America and Citi are doing with all those billions handed over from the taxpayer?

If you thought lending it to credit worthy companies and individuals, go to the back of the class.

If you thought they’d be buying up dodgy paper in the secondary market, in other words, betting it all on black, give yourself a prize.

Yep folks, they are scooping up lots of dodgy paper and hoping like hell it doesn’t go even further south.

It’s the taxpayer who will wear it if it does, of course.

Proving, if it was ever in doubt, that you can no more trust these people than put toothpaste back in the tube.

Bill Bonner at the Daily Reckoning marks this historic day thus:

Write in your diary…save today’s newspapers…remember what you did today. Most historians won’t even notice, but today is a big, big day.

Today is the day the Fed begins buying U.S. Treasuries. Britain is doing it already. So is Japan. Why shouldn’t we? What’s a few trillion extra…just between friends?

The scope of the project is immense.

Do you remember how it works, dear reader? When you buy a U.S. Treasury bond, you pay for it with real money – or, at least as real as dollars get. Money changes hands. No net increase in the money supply. But when the Fed buys a Treasury bond it creates the money to buy it…and thus the money supply increases. It’s called “monetizing the debt” – or converting debt into currency. Given the size of upcoming Treasury purchases, the total size of the U.S. monetary base is expected to increase 500% in the months ahead.

How bad can it get? Ask Californians:

March 25 (Bloomberg) — California home prices dropped 41 percent last month from a year earlier, more than double the U.S. decline, as surging foreclosures drove down values, the state Association of Realtors said today.

The median price for an existing, single-family detached home in California sank to $247,590 in February from $418,260 a year earlier, the Los Angeles-based group said in a statement. The U.S. median price fell 16 percent during the same period, the second-biggest drop on record, according to the National Association of Realtors.

————————————

In one freakin’ year!

Obama, DNC backers say best is yet to come.
Tony Bennett lit up the Warner Theater on Wednesday night for a Democratic National Committee fundraiser, at one point literally singing first lady Michelle Obama’s praises.

“I’d like to say something about our wonderful first lady,” Bennett said after singing three songs. The crooner explained Michelle Obama had fed the homeless and asked for it not to be made public. “She insisted, ‘Please, don’t put this in the paper.'”

more in Politico

Note the Europeans have an opposing view to Washington’s remedy.
Do they have a point and do they have a better solution?
When they refer to looking at historical precedents, they certainly have a longer history than the US to draw conclusions from.

‘QandA’- re Internet censorship…
– wonder how Labor is going to live with the fact that Andrew Bolt is now their greatest champion?!
Geezuz – the world has gone fcking mad.

Harry H, we appear to be in agreement exept over Krugman. The Nobel Laureate for economics wants to “nationalise” the banks ie. make them subject to 24/7 govt. oversight.
Now, in late breaking WaPo news from Chris B at 553, TresSec TFG (Timmeh) seems to be proposing something along those lines without using the dreaded N-word. Clayton’s economics, as it were. Will have to see how TFG’s proposal fleshes out. Is it just another snow-job, or is The Kid gonna take on the establishments of K St. and Wall St. simultaneously?

I’m with Kruggy 100% on the absolute need for regulated fiscal control at the top so the monster rorts can’t be perpetuated. Unless, as jen points out, it’s not too late already and as Big Johnny Galbraith said…..in the long run, we are all cactus 🙂

Way I see it, if The Kid can’t make a decent fist of EFFECTIVE leadership on the economy, he’s got Buckley’s of doing what needs to be done to prevent biospheric devastation.

What sort of footy does one watch on Thursday nights, replays or was it just a turn of exasperated phrase?

Mar 26:
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/patoliphant;_ylt=A0WTUcu0PctJiSUAayIDwLAF

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68444

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68461

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68484

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68502

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68473

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68481

Mar26:
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/tomtoles;_ylt=AtSCvLMA7y9qt_Nu.9zHnwNT_b4F

http://anarchymag.org/blogs/media/3/20070305-ron%20cobb%20pavement.jpg

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68463

http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/files/29447/10788511223Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill_frame.jpg/Exxon%2BValdez%2Boil%2Bspill%2Bframe.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz3pwegV1nE
—————————
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68488

Needed some good news and have found some….

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/24/AR2009032402657.html

559
Thank you Megan. That’s the nicest thing I’ve read all day.
Let’s hope Obi follows through on that and gives big coal a well deserved kick in the tender bits.

Ecky, I think you’ll find that it was Maynard’s quip (that’s Keynes, not the other famous one: Maynard G Krebbs! LOL) that in the long term we’re all dead.

But if I can get wazoo/kazoo confounded, you can have this one!

He also said:

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

…can’t disagree with that except for the conclusion! LOL

Square, then. But you had to look it up to be sure, n’est-ce pas? 🙂

D’accord, great news for them thar Appalachian hills, megan.

nah, I knew it was Maynard’s as it is VERY famous, but I couldn’t quite recall the capitalism quote, so looked it up.

Toast You Can Believe In

Electoral-vote.com:Toomey Leads Specter by Double Digits

A new Quinnipiac University poll shows former representative Pat Toomey (R) leading Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) 41% to 27% in a potential primary matchup. Specter beat Toomey by just 2 points in their 2004 primary. This new poll is clearly worrying Specter a lot. On Tuesday, Specter announced that he would not vote for cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act, the unions top priority for this session on Congress. Employers are strongly against this bill, which in practice would make it easier for employees at a company to form a union. Specter is in a bind because while announcing his opposition will deny Toomey a cudgel to bash him over the head with in the primary, it will provide the unions with one to bash him over the head with in the general election. But apparently Specter is more worried about losing the primary than losing the general election. If Toomey continues to gain strength, expect a free for all on the Democratic side because everyone will expect the Democratic nominee to have a huge edge over either a badly bloodied Specter or a newbie candidate far too much to the right to have much chance in a state Obama won by 11 points.

As mentioned by The Votemaster, a Toomey victory in the primary would all but hand the Democrats their 60th Senate seat on a silver platter in 2010.

558 Enemy Combatant Great Video on the Exxon Valdez. Everyone here should send it on to their friends. As a viral email it could have an effect on the case, a long shot. But still worth a try.

“VERY famous”. Ouch!
But it was a good kinda hurt. 🙂

Chris, it was a great clip, yes, with an Aussie narrator too. Can’t get my new E-V runabout too soon. Every time I squeeze benzene into the dinosaur it sicks in my craw that I’m giving the swine even the few lousy bucks they siphon from me each week.

Gaffy, are you still lurking? Been missing your two bob’s worth.

“Money like a drug to the brain”….
Wall St denizens a bunch of junkies? 🙂 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10563594

567
megan

Thanks Megan, you’ve finally solved the puzzle for me! I’ve always wondered what those city guys were doing with the rolled up hundred dollar bills stuck up their noses!

Getting high on cash!

That explains everything.

I read somewhere that the US sold over $400 billion worth of bonds in the last month.

In a month!

Friggin’ sweet jesuz.

566 Enemy Combatant It was made by the ABC. I suggest it was Jana Wendt.

Kristol Launches Project For A New American Century 2.0: ‘The Foreign Policy Initiative’

The blandly-named Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) – the brainchild of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, neo-conservative foreign policy guru Robert Kagan, and former Bush administration official Dan Senor – has thus far kept a low profile; its only activity to this point has been to sponsor a conference pushing for a U.S. “surge” in Afghanistan.

Now……how many thousands more US Forces is Obama sending to Afghanistan?

And is Rudd going to crawl up Obi’s bum the same way The Rodent did with The Imbecile in Iraq by sending more Australian military to be inevitably killed and maimed for fuck all a la Vietnam?
Reckon chasing abstract nouns across porous borders is about as strategically smart as wanting to control the flow of oil, gas and heroin from the region, although the makers and suppliers of military hardware are doing very nicely from it thank you very much.

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/20090326_tree_dreams/

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/68553

megan, freedom-lovers everywhere will be compelled to launch a “War On Money” like the “War on Drugs” in order to stamp this menace out. People could get seriously addicted to the stuff. The very fabric of our society is threatened as a result of these findings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woIkIph5xcU&feature=PlayList&p=974734BD050615E0&index=0

EC If they just go in there as an occupying force it will fail. If they puts lots of money and infrastructure, it has a chance of working. I was watching a security expert last night on the 7.30 Report. When the security forces went into a valley in the south to attack the Taliban. All the locals raced home and got their weapons and joined in on the side of the Taliban who they hate. When interviewed afterward as to why they did this. They said they didn’t want to miss an opportunity like this, and someone was coming into out valley. They may not like the Taliban. But they do provide certainty. For instance they are sorting out legal disputes in the south, which the central government does not. At least not at the moment. This guy was very good. The USA needs a lot more of these type of guys, and they need to listen to them.
They expert believes about 2-3 years to settle it down and another 4 years before the Afghans can run their own country.

Typo out = our.

Ecky, the War On Momey (WOM) has already begun in the US and so far it’s a raging success. They’ve already eradicated trillions in housing prices and stock market investments are in the process of using the old weapon, the printing press, to devalue what they’ve got left.

If only their other wars were even a fraction this successful! LOL

That security guy is an Australian. George Bush would have had him eliminated as a commie. 😈

I think some people are being a tad harsh on Obama.

Obama is a practical, hardnosed politician. He deals in the doable.

He is facing the worse economic crisis in decades. The nation is involved in two wars. Climate change is looming. And he has a big agenda to push through if he can.

For him to restructure the American financial system, let alone the global one, is just not in the list of things that are doable.

There are some who do not agree that what he is doing will fix the problem; some argue that it will make things worse. But there are others who believe that he is doing, generally speaking, the right thing.

I do not know enough about economics to know. But just because one nobel prize winning economist is on a particular side in the debate does not mean that that side has the correct viewpoint. (Indeed, given the track record of economists in general, being considered one of the best would seem to be like winning a gold at the – to copy the President in horrible political non-correctness 😉 – Special Olympics.

In any case, two months into his presidency, it is a bit early to whack the poor guy too hard on this one.

Goodness me. What wouldn’t the Oz Liberal/National party rabble give for a spokesman this articulate?

A speech by a politician with 850,000 or so hits on YouTube must be almost a record. That’s what the British Conservative Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan has achieved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs

Another important issue for Obama is this: does he expend all of his political capital – which is what it would take if it were in the least bit possible – to push radical changes, which would effectively mean that he would have none to spend on anything else (such as health care, climate change, social security, immigration …)?

And he would have to expend this political capital with no guarantee that the end result would be better for the US economy than another strategy, such as the one that he is pursuing.

As to different reactions when Bush does something and then Obama does the same thing, for me it comes down to motives. I trust Obama’s motives, even if he does the wrong thing. For Bush, I did not trust his motives, even if he did the right thing.

(That is not to say that I trust Obama’s motives absolutely or distrust Bush’s motives absolutely, by the way. Obama is a politician, not a saint; Bush is a human being, not a demon.)

(And I know that last bit might cause some people here to, ah, react. Hi, Jen. ;))

580

Bush is a human being.

Nonsense David. He is (and always has been) always been, a smirking chimpanzee. 🙂

Duh!! I now type like GWB speaks. 😳

577 paddy Just says conservative crap in a nice way.

576 David Gould Well said. Couldn’t agree more.

I know, I know. I’ve figured it out. KR and David Gould have swapped places.

I’m not sure who sent the memo out to all the neo-liberals, telling them to just keep repeating that reform is impossible and you’re stupid to even consider it. If we can’t reform the economy now then when can we reform the economy? Do we introduce reform after we’ve reinflated the bubble and got the banks back to selling monster levels of debt, and everyone’s feeling rich again?

Geithner’s plan, with some laudable add-ons to regulate the festering mess, is not questioning the underlying tenets. As Krugman concludes in today’s NY Times:

But the underlying vision remains that of a financial system more or less the same as it was two years ago, albeit somewhat tamed by new rules.

As you can guess, I don’t share that vision. I don’t think this is just a financial panic; I believe that it represents the failure of a whole model of banking, of an overgrown financial sector that did more harm than good. I don’t think the Obama administration can bring securitization back to life, and I don’t believe it should try.

…and along with Stiglitz, Willam Buiter and a host of other fine economists shares the view that the system is fundamentally flawed, and that the huge expansion of ‘securitisation’ was left to turn into a monster that is now dead.

Geithner does not address this, but rather attempts to breathe life back into it.

Wrong idea.

Last week, I raised the question about the chance of good music making a come back. Well Fire Dog Lake is doing its best to help out.
http://firedoglake.com

If its gone by the time you look at Fire Dog Lake, then here is a direct link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8eVAU82K94&feature=player_embedded

Does that mean that only left wingers appreciate good rock music? Right wingers like Country and Western?

Oh my god! They got one bigger than mine!
The worlds largest miniature railway.

• 800 trains.
• Over 10,000 train cars in total, running several hundred kilometers every day.
• One train is 47.5 feet long.
• Over 170 computer controlled cars.
• More than 200,000 people (there’s all kinds of things here, even a crime scene).
• Controlled by 40 computers.
• 200 cameras control the premises.
• Day and night lighting simulator.
• 300,000 computer-controlled LEDs
http://i.gizmodo.com/5178944/worlds-largest-model-covers-11840-square-feet-uses-300000-leds

I want one!

Sarah Palin “No One To Pray With In The McCain Campaign”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oXhrsLdpZg

The Christian Science Monitor prints its final edition on Friday, bringing a 100-year run as a daily newspaper to an end but beginning a new era as an online publication.

. . .

He said the Monitor had cut its editorial staff from 97 employees at the end of last year to around 80 but was maintaining eight foreign bureaus, a network of stringers and six domestic US bureaus outside of Boston and Washington.