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Re: Financial disaster?
A bunch of American jobs sent to other countries. It is utterly absurd to think that high up execs did not have the foresite to see this coming. The corporation model gives these people free reign.
They did see it coming. They just didn't care. Why should they care? The US enacted policies(I said US, not Bush) that practically begged them to send their industries overseas. They did, reaped massive profits due to cheap labor, extremely liberal import/export standards, and were actually given tax breaks to send those jobs overseas!
So we got cheaply made products for a higher price, high unemployment, a dead US manufacturing base, a massive trade deficit, and hundreds of billions added to our national debt.
I actually applaud them for using their brains and taking advantage of US government policies. They might have actually went bankrupt even earlier had they not taken advantage of these anti- US business policies.
The american people wanted to save a dime at Walmart. You did, and now that dime is worth a nickel.
Happy now? Run to Walmart and save another dime. It'll be worth two cents this time next year.
We are now being held hostage by foreign economies and policies not in our best interests.
Hasn't this post Reagan era been GREAT?? 
Here's the american dream in a nutshell....
You buy a Dell computer with your meaningless tax rebate. It gets shipped to your door literally from China(and that massive shipping fee adds to our trade deficit). It breaks, and for some reason you're surprised it broke because it was assembled by a Chinese kid making 15 cents an hour. You then call "customer service", and you are directed to a woman in India advising you and she knows as much about the inner workings of the Andromeda Galaxy as she does computers. You are then forced to ship it back, thus continuing this absurd cycle.
My country tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing
Land where my fathers died
Land of the pilgrims' pride
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring!
Re: Financial disaster?
The Crash of Western Capitalist Civilization?
'Train-wreck' doesn't even begin to describe what is starting to happen to the U.S. today with the financial crisis, an onrushing depression, and the failure of George W. Bush's war policy as he is faced down by Iran and the Russian bear.
But in an even broader sense, the West, as a civilization, after a century of world war and the utter failure of global finance capitalism, may have reached its limits.
Those with a vested interest in the status quo dismiss any suggestion that something is wrong. This includes Donald Luskin, author of an article in the Washington Post on Sunday, September 14, titled: 'A Nation of Exaggerators: Quit Doling Out That Bad Economy Line.'
Luskin writes, 'The relentless drumbeat of pessimism in the media and on the campaign trail' is 'a virus.'
He continues: 'Sure, there are trouble spots in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression -- or exaggerated Depression comparisons.'
Continue reading, and you find out who Luskin is: a campaign adviser to John McCain.
We know that 'where you stand depends on where you sit''”and who pays you for advice. So is a catastrophic meltdown coming?
If so, probably a majority of the people in the world are thinking: 'Serves them right.' For the last 500 years, the West has been striding across the globe, armed to the teeth with firearms, warships, bombers, and'”more recently'”depleted uranium, enforcing the 'white man's burden' by enslaving nations and peoples and confiscating everything of value'”ranging from art objects to gold to oil'”that can be carried away.
The financiers behind it all have also used the diabolically clever practice of creating money 'out of thin air' to put the natives everywhere into debt, and, when that has proven insufficient, of doing the same to their own populations.
All this is rationalized by various brands of racism, cultural superiority, social Darwinism, historical determinism, 'dominion of the Elect,' 'God's chosen people,' etc. Or, simply, 'might makes right.'
Some call it 'The New World Order.'
So today, we Americans, denizens of the 'land of the free and the home of the brave,' victors in two world wars, bearers of 'democracy' to Afghanistan and Iraq, allies of the brave Israelis who hold high the banner of Judeo-Christian values among the ungrateful Palestinians'”well, we Americans owe our own bankers almost $70 trillion at most recent count. With the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we owe holders of bad housing loans, including the governments of China, Korea, and Japan, another few trillion.
The bluster of Kissinger, Brzezinski, the Kristols, the Christian fundamentalists, and their paid-off politicians and media millionaires notwithstanding, America'”indeed, the entire West'”has been found out, perhaps even checkmated on the world stage.
The Bush/Cheney wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have blackened America's name forever. Iran has called our bluff. In Israel the gap between rich and poor is increasing as much as in the U.S. According to an article by Ian S. Lustick, the Palestinians have stood up to the Israelis to the point where more Jews are emigrating from that country than are moving in, and where those who remain are increasingly huddling around Tel Aviv as a safe haven. (Ian S. Lustick, 'Abandoning the Iron Wall: '˜Israel and the Middle Eastern Muck',' Middle East Policy , Vo. XV, No. 3, Fall 2008.)
In the 1990s, the European bankers used U.S. and NATO forces to dismember Yugoslavia so George Soros and the Rothschilds could gobble up Balkan resources. But that strategy is failing in the Caucasus, where the Russians fought back against the genocidal attack by Dick Cheney's poodle, Mikheil Saakashvili, the New York-trained attorney the CIA got elected as the president of Georgia.
And now the people of Ukraine, the 'Little Russians,' realizing what the West has in store for them, are rushing back into the Slavic fold and may be only a year or so away from reuniting with their 'Great Russian' cousins across the border.
What is telling is to watch the Western financier press, chiefly the Washington Post and the New York Times , fume about Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin and his 'authoritarian' manner. An example is the article by Times correspondent Ellen Barry on Putin's September 11 press conference in Moscow. She wrote, 'In three-and-a-half hours, in tones that were alternatively pugilistic and needy, Vladimir V. Putin tried to explain himself.'
I'm sorry, Ms. Barry. You and your editors may think your writing is cute, but Vladimir Putin is the foremost figure on the world stage today. He will remain so after George W. Bush leaves the White House disgraced.
Putin is heir to an epochal movement of patriots who began in the 1970s to take back Russia from within. It started with a base of operations within the KGB and the Orthodox Church, led to Gorbachev's glasnost in the 1980s, and culminated in the Second Russian Revolution of 1991. At that point, the Western financiers gleefully rushed in to support an assault from the Russian 'oligarchs' who were looting Russia of everything it owned.
The oligarchs were the shock troops of a financier assault that had already begun to overlap in the West with the Russian Mafia. Cheered on by the Washington Post and aided by academic advisors from places like Harvard, this international syndicate nearly destroyed Russia during the 1990s. But when Putin was appointed interim president by Boris Yelstin in 1999, and after winning the presidential election of 2000 in his own right, he began to fight back.
From the mid-1970s to today, thousands of Russian gangsters, along with many hard-line Bolsheviks/Stalinists, were allowed to emigrate. Many settled in the U.S. and are here today, and many more settled in Israel. In fact, one reason the price of condos in New York, Miami, Tel Aviv, and elsewhere has inflated so much reportedly is the flood of cash from racketeering.
The crooks have allied themselves with the Colombian drug cartels and have heavily infiltrated the world's financial systems, even setting up their own banks for laundering money and speculating in the commodities markets.
Today, Putin is cleaning out the remaining gangster class. His efforts reached a milestone in January with the arrest in Moscow of Semion Mogilevich, called 'the world's most dangerous man.'
Putin has declared that the world will not be governed in a 'unipolar' manner; i.e. by the U.S. military as the police force for the global financiers. This does not mean Russia has to be our enemy. In fact the world would be much better off, and much safer, if we joined with Russia as allies in keeping the peace.
But to do that our system would have to change, because finance capitalism is far too unstable to coexist with other nations as equals. It must either grow or die, because it always needs new victims to pay the interest on its usury practices and to finance its speculative balloons. As a last resort, it needs the kind of financial institution bailouts being engineered by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, where the only remaining stopgap is borrowing from public funds and adding to the national debt.
Once economic growth stops, as has now happened, and all the bubbles to restart it have blown up, as has also happened, the end really is nigh. Especially if the host'”the U.S.'”is bankrupt.
What is coming at us today isn't just another downturn. If people like McCain adviser Donald Luskin doubt it, maybe, instead of writing campaign propaganda, they should ask the fired CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the stockholders of Lehman Brothers, whose shares have dropped ninety percent in less than a year, and the millions who are losing their homes.
Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are calling for 'change.' Well, if I were standing on a beach with a 100-foot tsunami roaring in my direction, I would call for change too. Except I would not be standing around arguing about the meaning of the words 'lipstick on a pig.'
By Richard C. Cook
http:// www.richardccook.com
Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared on numerous websites. His book on monetary reform entitled We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform will be published soon by Tendril Press. He is also the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age , called by one reviewer, 'the most important spaceflight book of the last twenty years . ' His Challenger website is at www.richardccook.com . A new economics website at www.RealSustainableLiving.com is upcoming with partner/author Susan Boskey. To get on his mailing list, for questions and comments, or to pre-purchase copies of his new book, please write EconomicSanity@gmail.com .
Re: Financial disaster?
Bank customers urged not to panic
Bank customers in the UK were today urged not to panic about the safety of their savings as bank shares took a hammering in the wake of the collapse of American firm Lehman Brothers.
The investment bank was forced into bankruptcy after rescue talks failed, sparking fears that the credit crunch may claim more victims before it ends.
The news is likely to concern savers, and comes almost exactly a year since news of the Bank of England's emergency funding led to a run on Northern Rock.
However, Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers' Association, moved to reassure UK savers their money is safe.
"Undoubtedly this is a momentous day, but it's important to note that Lehman's was an investment bank, and as such it's impact will not be felt directly by bank customers over here.
"Over the last year, the UK's banks have been recapitalised and are now on a sound footing. These events are once again closely allied to the US housing market - there is no need for anyone to start withdrawing their money, and we are not expecting anyone to do so," she said.
Despite her comments, market traders continued to offload banking shares, with HBOS - which owns Halifax and the Bank of Scotland - taking the biggest hit.
By mid-morning its shares were down 36% as traders speculated who would follow Lehman, Merrill Lynch and the insurance giant AIG into serious financial difficulties. Royal Bank of Scotland shares were down 14%.
A spokesman for HBOS said: "Like all the other banks we've been caught up in the fallout from Lehman's collapse. We are a very strong financial institution and one of the country's largest savings providers with a very strong capital position, something that was borne out last week when Goldman Sachs said we had the highest core equity tier ratio of any UK bank. There is no need for savers to panic."
Last week, Nationwide building society stepped in to save both the Cheshire and Derbyshire building societies after it emerged they didn't have sufficient funds to carry on trading. Other societies are though to be similarly at risk and could also seek help over the coming months.
The Building Societies Association declined to comment this morning.
Since the Northern Rock crisis the government has sought to shore up the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), offering protection to 100% of the first £35,000 held by customers in savings accounts, and consulting on increasing the level to £50,000.
Consumer confidence in big companies has been severely tested in recent weeks. While many consumers have grown inured to the post-credit crunch banking crisis, the collapse of the holiday firm XL group has added to growing concerns about the state of the economy.
- tejastech08
- Rep: 194
Re: Financial disaster?
James, your portrait of the American Dream (Dell, China, India, etc.) was hilarious! Karma for you.
Re: Financial disaster?
So Obama wants to increase spending- which obviously is not doing anything but increasing the damage to the already wounded economy...
And McCain wants to cut taxes- something we also can't afford because the government doesn't have enough money as it is to pay off any debt or decrease any foreign dependency.
So what do we do? To be honest, i think cutting taxes is the lesser of the two evils. Obama wants to take on MASSIVE spending programs (healthcare), which would be the end of our country, because i don't think the American public would be content with half of their paycheck going for taxes.
I for one, am in favor of taxes being increased. Things may be hard on us in the shortrun, but it's the longrun we really have to worry about, and i don't think the longrun is even being thought of right now. All the government and all these corporations are doing is worrying about the shortrun, but if they had been taking into account longrun effects of what they've been doing, we wouldn't be in this mess right now.
I wouldn't even know where to begin with fixing this damage. Kudos to anyone who can start fixing it.
Re: Financial disaster?
Here's the first thing that has to be done, and done IMMEDIATELY....
MASSIVE spending cuts. I don't care if its spending cuts across the board and every single american is affected by it. It has to happen. Our country's survival is literally at stake here, and liberal dreams of blank check spending programs aren't the answer. I saw a headline titled "Financial disaster benefits Obama" at a political site I go to. I almost fell out of my chair when reading that. Yeah, adding a couple hundred billion a year to an already enormous budget deficit would really save us from this financial disaster.
Out of the four candidates in the race, can you guess which two actually have a RECORD at cutting spending?
I hope you guessed McCain and Palin. If there's a liberal here who will dispute this fact, PLEASE post a link for us showing just ONE bill that Obama and/or Biden voted yes on that involved a spending cut. You wont find one because one doesn't exist. All they like to do is spend spend spend. I'll even make the task easier and you can go back to Biden's record which dates back to the 70s. You still wont find one. He wasn't even for the Reagan cuts, which helped get us out of the Carter clusterfuck.
When the nation's debt just went up around a third, last thing we need are compulsive spenders who'll flush money down the toilet.
Re: Financial disaster?
McCain/Palin is starting to look better the more i research both sides of this election.
McCain just might be the better of the two options when it comes to the long term future of this country. To me, and this is just my impression, Obama and pretty much all liberals are just looking for easy ways out now, and not worrying about what effect it will have on the future. Now, you can say the same thing about the other side, but it's to a much lesser extent. The whole Obama campaign just looks like it's based off of making people happy in the shortrun.
We've got huge longterm issues to worry about though. Social Security, the value of the dollar, foreign relations, global warming, our dependence on foreign countries etc. Who seems to know more and have a better track record on these issues? McCain/Palin.
- tejastech08
- Rep: 194
Re: Financial disaster?
Actually Obama is better on foreign relations. You know, he actually knows the difference between the Shi'ites and Sunnis in the Middle East, rather than just popping off and constantly making belligerent, dangerous threats against one group or the other (which is what Bush and McCain have both done repeatedly). On energy, Obama is a complete moron as are all of the Democrats (well, most of them). I think it's a complete toss-up on Social Security. I don't think either party has a decent solution to that problem. On global warming, I think the Democrats are full of shit and a bunch of hypocrites.
Re: Financial disaster?
Actually Obama is better on foreign relations. You know, he actually knows the difference between the Shi'ites and Sunnis in the Middle East
Yeah he knows alright. Thats why he bitched about the translators in Iraq and that they should be sent to Afghanistan instead.
The same language isn't spoken in those two countries.
Faulting McCain for gaffes doesn't work in this election, because Obama is a gaffe machine.
I agree on your other points though.
