Sunday, April 6, 2008
APOLOGY
We apologize to readers for technical and editing teething problems which are currently being corrected. .
WHAT MAKES BARACK TICK
Last week former US Attorney General John Ashcroft confused Osama and
Obama and was mocked by the left for his mistakes. Last week, after
writing a lot about the Middle East I did exactly the same in a hurried
article on the way to the doctor which unfortunately escaped the subs
notice. The fact is it is a mistake that any can make. I am a great
admirer of Barack, as I will now call him but I think in terms of
defining the man Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist has, at the weekend
done perhaps the best job I have seen in analyzing the wonder that is
fast becoming a black messiah.
I have selected some key paragraphs from this article as I think they go
closer to explaining what is happening than anything I have read.
The best thing about Barack Obama has almost nothing to do with him as a
person or as a leader .... It's not even the wondrous oratory power or
the charisma or the sweet sense of deeper change overlaid with all kinds
of sparkly utopian futuriffic goodness.
There is, I think, something more. Something richer. And it's rather
startling.
See, I've read the profiles and the liberal fawnings and the intelligent
analysis, the attempted takedowns and the right-wing smears, all the
valiant attempts to dig up something dirty or problematic or frightening
about Obama and his family... attempts that, rather amusingly, have all
failed.
I've read, too, the glut of wonderment, how Obama is this generation's
MLK, how he makes Hillary Clinton's brand of retro cronyist politics
feel like the equivalent of rubbing salt on a paper cut. He is, they
say, that once-in-a-lifetime candidate, a fantastically rare mix of
intelligence, consistency, inspiration, hope, charisma, humanity,
articulation, and an almost shocking lack of manipulation and sheen
(well, relatively speaking), all packaged in a strikingly handsome unit
in whose closet apparently live almost no skeletons at all.
I also nodded in agreement when snark-master Jon Stewart appeared
slightly stunned and taken aback and very nearly jokeless as he pointed
out, following Obama's remarkable speech on race in America, that at
long last, here was a top-tier politician who dared to speak to us like
we were adults. It wasn't just refreshing; after seven-plus years of
humiliating, monosyllabic dumb-guy Bushisms, it was downright jarring.
Initially I thought the most impressive aspect of Obama's run was, well,
how the guy made it this far at all. That someone of his caliber and
obvious intelligence could survive what has become a truly caustic,
brutal political system and still emerge into the international
spotlight as, well, not deeply f-ed-up and insane, not possessing that
creepy demonic gleam shared by so many politicos (hi, Sen. McCain!) that
suggests they've had souls eaten whole by the same scabrous trolls of
greed and war and corruption that birthed two Bushes and gave Bill
Clinton that nearly intolerable aura of ego and slickness.
See, I've long believed that, if nearly eight years of the World's Worst
President has taught us anything, it's that the American political
system has moved well beyond merely deeply flawed and broken and sad,
and is now wholly rotted, ruined from the inside out, a true moral
wasteland barely suitable even for cockroaches and leeches and Rick
Santorum. I thought George W. Bush had actually managed to do the
impossible: make an already defective system truly unbearable, turning
something already gray and murky to turgid and pathetic, toxic to all
decent human life.
And I'm happy to report that the fact that Obama exists at this stage of
the game is proving me very wrong indeed.
But I'll even take it a step further. Because the greatest thing about
Obama isn't really about Obama at all, per se. It's actually about,
well, us.
This is the great revelation: We still got it. The collective
unconscious, the deep sense of inner wisdom, that intuitive knowing that
borders on a kind of mystical proficiency, where millions of people can
actually look beyond rhetoric and media spin and merely feel the
presence of something great in the room? Yep, still there. Who knew?
There's a lot more in this view at the Gate but you get the idea. There
is something very different, different to JFK, different to RFK.
Different to anything we have seen. Perhaps the time produces the man.
Obama and was mocked by the left for his mistakes. Last week, after
writing a lot about the Middle East I did exactly the same in a hurried
article on the way to the doctor which unfortunately escaped the subs
notice. The fact is it is a mistake that any can make. I am a great
admirer of Barack, as I will now call him but I think in terms of
defining the man Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist has, at the weekend
done perhaps the best job I have seen in analyzing the wonder that is
fast becoming a black messiah.
I have selected some key paragraphs from this article as I think they go
closer to explaining what is happening than anything I have read.
The best thing about Barack Obama has almost nothing to do with him as a
person or as a leader .... It's not even the wondrous oratory power or
the charisma or the sweet sense of deeper change overlaid with all kinds
of sparkly utopian futuriffic goodness.
There is, I think, something more. Something richer. And it's rather
startling.
See, I've read the profiles and the liberal fawnings and the intelligent
analysis, the attempted takedowns and the right-wing smears, all the
valiant attempts to dig up something dirty or problematic or frightening
about Obama and his family... attempts that, rather amusingly, have all
failed.
I've read, too, the glut of wonderment, how Obama is this generation's
MLK, how he makes Hillary Clinton's brand of retro cronyist politics
feel like the equivalent of rubbing salt on a paper cut. He is, they
say, that once-in-a-lifetime candidate, a fantastically rare mix of
intelligence, consistency, inspiration, hope, charisma, humanity,
articulation, and an almost shocking lack of manipulation and sheen
(well, relatively speaking), all packaged in a strikingly handsome unit
in whose closet apparently live almost no skeletons at all.
I also nodded in agreement when snark-master Jon Stewart appeared
slightly stunned and taken aback and very nearly jokeless as he pointed
out, following Obama's remarkable speech on race in America, that at
long last, here was a top-tier politician who dared to speak to us like
we were adults. It wasn't just refreshing; after seven-plus years of
humiliating, monosyllabic dumb-guy Bushisms, it was downright jarring.
Initially I thought the most impressive aspect of Obama's run was, well,
how the guy made it this far at all. That someone of his caliber and
obvious intelligence could survive what has become a truly caustic,
brutal political system and still emerge into the international
spotlight as, well, not deeply f-ed-up and insane, not possessing that
creepy demonic gleam shared by so many politicos (hi, Sen. McCain!) that
suggests they've had souls eaten whole by the same scabrous trolls of
greed and war and corruption that birthed two Bushes and gave Bill
Clinton that nearly intolerable aura of ego and slickness.
See, I've long believed that, if nearly eight years of the World's Worst
President has taught us anything, it's that the American political
system has moved well beyond merely deeply flawed and broken and sad,
and is now wholly rotted, ruined from the inside out, a true moral
wasteland barely suitable even for cockroaches and leeches and Rick
Santorum. I thought George W. Bush had actually managed to do the
impossible: make an already defective system truly unbearable, turning
something already gray and murky to turgid and pathetic, toxic to all
decent human life.
And I'm happy to report that the fact that Obama exists at this stage of
the game is proving me very wrong indeed.
But I'll even take it a step further. Because the greatest thing about
Obama isn't really about Obama at all, per se. It's actually about,
well, us.
This is the great revelation: We still got it. The collective
unconscious, the deep sense of inner wisdom, that intuitive knowing that
borders on a kind of mystical proficiency, where millions of people can
actually look beyond rhetoric and media spin and merely feel the
presence of something great in the room? Yep, still there. Who knew?
There's a lot more in this view at the Gate but you get the idea. There
is something very different, different to JFK, different to RFK.
Different to anything we have seen. Perhaps the time produces the man.
BEATING THE BANKS
Now the greater party of Wall Street and Big US banks have been
underwritten, more or less formally, by the Fed the shine is back and
people are clearly recalling those days, a mere year ago when the banks
where pushing one other out of the way to declare greater profits. Banks
as a sector have lost 22 per cent in share value and apparently
investors think that's about as far as they will fall now the
underwriters have been summoned the form of the US taxpayer. Some of
course have lost in excess of $40% but, if one was to look at last
week's bank rally it might be imagined that the worst is over. Banks are
cheap, we hear. This is another reason why gold is struggling, with the
Fed guaranteeing all things, who needs gold. But one year doth not a
cycle make. Just a few weeks ago Lehman brothers, basking in the
security of Federal salvation (after rumors that it was almost exactly
equally exposed to mortgage losses as Bear) were comfortably over
subscribed in a public share offer. Perhaps one should think as follows.
A brown recluse spider bite can cause a nasty early sore then go away.
It may also cause a nasty early sore that grows until it seems to have
eaten half the extremity and created a puss filled yellow, black and red
sore with a attendant hole one could place a golf ball in. And then
worsen.
Bear Sterns might just be a nasty sore that is, as I write being swabbed
the area around it effectively sterilized and the moral medicine is
already coursing through the veins bringing a spring back to the step
and a healthy countenance to the US financial sector.
As reviewed in the pages last week the esteemed Charles Morris has just
published a book that call for a "Trillion Dollar Meltdown" assuming the
"orderly unraveling" of the credit-debt-asset market, a possibility that
few hold hope for. A trillion seems now to be a reasonable figure, the
Savings and Loans payout being somewhere in the $300 billion range.
Following hard on the release of this book came news that Fitch has
downgraded MBIA insurance arm. The future of that orderly unwinding is
tied up with the soundness of monoliners like MBIA, whose insurance arm
is the world's largest insurer of bonds. The downgrade was from AAA to
AA that's three levels. While the banks stock rose MBIA fell $.5%.
That the monoliners have been misbehaving and not attending their duties
has been well chronicled and this is a very large boot yet to drop.
Perhaps it's firmly on the foot and does not conceal a brown recluse
spider. I think it's the brown we should most be wary of but any recluse
spider might be avoided. And so for the moment might the banks. There is
little chance of them making anything like the money there were through
the glory days of this century and the damage done cannot be dispersed
by the magic wave of the Feds wand.
For the Fed is hardly a paradigm of virtue. The bank of last resort,
that it now is, or the taxpayer is, hardly inspires one to consider our
troubles have passed and a new dawn has begun. Morris's book leaves no
doubt. Sub-prime was just the first boulder in an avalanche that will
roil through 2008.
>>
underwritten, more or less formally, by the Fed the shine is back and
people are clearly recalling those days, a mere year ago when the banks
where pushing one other out of the way to declare greater profits. Banks
as a sector have lost 22 per cent in share value and apparently
investors think that's about as far as they will fall now the
underwriters have been summoned the form of the US taxpayer. Some of
course have lost in excess of $40% but, if one was to look at last
week's bank rally it might be imagined that the worst is over. Banks are
cheap, we hear. This is another reason why gold is struggling, with the
Fed guaranteeing all things, who needs gold. But one year doth not a
cycle make. Just a few weeks ago Lehman brothers, basking in the
security of Federal salvation (after rumors that it was almost exactly
equally exposed to mortgage losses as Bear) were comfortably over
subscribed in a public share offer. Perhaps one should think as follows.
A brown recluse spider bite can cause a nasty early sore then go away.
It may also cause a nasty early sore that grows until it seems to have
eaten half the extremity and created a puss filled yellow, black and red
sore with a attendant hole one could place a golf ball in. And then
worsen.
Bear Sterns might just be a nasty sore that is, as I write being swabbed
the area around it effectively sterilized and the moral medicine is
already coursing through the veins bringing a spring back to the step
and a healthy countenance to the US financial sector.
As reviewed in the pages last week the esteemed Charles Morris has just
published a book that call for a "Trillion Dollar Meltdown" assuming the
"orderly unraveling" of the credit-debt-asset market, a possibility that
few hold hope for. A trillion seems now to be a reasonable figure, the
Savings and Loans payout being somewhere in the $300 billion range.
Following hard on the release of this book came news that Fitch has
downgraded MBIA insurance arm. The future of that orderly unwinding is
tied up with the soundness of monoliners like MBIA, whose insurance arm
is the world's largest insurer of bonds. The downgrade was from AAA to
AA that's three levels. While the banks stock rose MBIA fell $.5%.
That the monoliners have been misbehaving and not attending their duties
has been well chronicled and this is a very large boot yet to drop.
Perhaps it's firmly on the foot and does not conceal a brown recluse
spider. I think it's the brown we should most be wary of but any recluse
spider might be avoided. And so for the moment might the banks. There is
little chance of them making anything like the money there were through
the glory days of this century and the damage done cannot be dispersed
by the magic wave of the Feds wand.
For the Fed is hardly a paradigm of virtue. The bank of last resort,
that it now is, or the taxpayer is, hardly inspires one to consider our
troubles have passed and a new dawn has begun. Morris's book leaves no
doubt. Sub-prime was just the first boulder in an avalanche that will
roil through 2008.
>>
BILLION DOLLAR BILL
Let's see, the former first family made a shade under $110 million since
they ceased being the first family. Although the Democratic party might
be showing some Clinton fatigue the speaking circuit, from which
President Clinton made $82 million during the Bush year (yes, they have
been kind) still laps him up and, if his wife was to take the White
House what could William Jefferson Clinton demand for after dinner and
before, for that matter entertainment. The Clinton phenomena is so
unprecedented, outside of Shakespeare, that it's impossible to even
speculate. Well maybe. The speaking circuit was a different business in
the other William's day otherwise Mark Anthony might never have gone to
Egypt. But Shakespeare never dreamt of a king being deposed, not quite
the word, at the high of his popularity by a man who proceeded to ruin
his nation while the former King went around the world collecting vast
sums telling people ... what has Bill told people in the seven long
years. Not a lot. The Prince, Al Gore, has made a lot less but I seem to
remember he has spoken out from time to time and brought matters of
import to the world's attention. Bill knows the money is in
entertainment and being a celebrity. With his wife in the White House,
perhaps only as VP, though I can't see her doing that job again, Bill
can surely double his er ... bill. Let's say $150 million in 8 years in
speeches alone. Book deal another $80 million and we have $110 mil, $150
mil, $80 mil that gets us to somewhere near $330 million if one throws in her salary
and his. The there are "odd" sums of money that find there way into the
Clinton pockets from various interests. Come 2016, as Chelsea prepares
for her first term, Hillary who is emerging as a polished speaker, the
drop the tone to tell a terrible anecdote (often invented) is one of
her great dramatic skills and becoming a land mark part of her
presentation. By the time she's out of office she'll no doubt command
enough to put her in the top, 5% on the speaker's circuit. And so it
goes. This humble man from Arkansas whose wife struggled with grubby
land deals and matters so small even the far right finally tired of
their investigations and moved on to more profound matters, like Monica,
have potential, if they went public, to beat the bank. MAte check yout
maths on this one. It's hard to understand your figures.
they ceased being the first family. Although the Democratic party might
be showing some Clinton fatigue the speaking circuit, from which
President Clinton made $82 million during the Bush year (yes, they have
been kind) still laps him up and, if his wife was to take the White
House what could William Jefferson Clinton demand for after dinner and
before, for that matter entertainment. The Clinton phenomena is so
unprecedented, outside of Shakespeare, that it's impossible to even
speculate. Well maybe. The speaking circuit was a different business in
the other William's day otherwise Mark Anthony might never have gone to
Egypt. But Shakespeare never dreamt of a king being deposed, not quite
the word, at the high of his popularity by a man who proceeded to ruin
his nation while the former King went around the world collecting vast
sums telling people ... what has Bill told people in the seven long
years. Not a lot. The Prince, Al Gore, has made a lot less but I seem to
remember he has spoken out from time to time and brought matters of
import to the world's attention. Bill knows the money is in
entertainment and being a celebrity. With his wife in the White House,
perhaps only as VP, though I can't see her doing that job again, Bill
can surely double his er ... bill. Let's say $150 million in 8 years in
speeches alone. Book deal another $80 million and we have $110 mil, $150
mil, $80 mil that gets us to somewhere near $330 million if one throws in her salary
and his. The there are "odd" sums of money that find there way into the
Clinton pockets from various interests. Come 2016, as Chelsea prepares
for her first term, Hillary who is emerging as a polished speaker, the
drop the tone to tell a terrible anecdote (often invented) is one of
her great dramatic skills and becoming a land mark part of her
presentation. By the time she's out of office she'll no doubt command
enough to put her in the top, 5% on the speaker's circuit. And so it
goes. This humble man from Arkansas whose wife struggled with grubby
land deals and matters so small even the far right finally tired of
their investigations and moved on to more profound matters, like Monica,
have potential, if they went public, to beat the bank. MAte check yout
maths on this one. It's hard to understand your figures.
Friday, April 4, 2008
WHERE TO GO
One of the best sites on the web is Cursor. Fine selection of articles, easy access to the major papers and magazines of the world and the top blogs. In fact if I had to do the stranded on a desert island gig I think I’d go for Cursor as it accesses about 80 per cent of my reading. It is however a mite naïve, suffering I suspect from the Daily Kos syndrome. In 2004, such a long time ago, in fact in 2003, Daily Kos got behind Dean and learned the hard ways of politics when Dean fell, or was pushed, at the post. Then when Dean accepted the post as Party boss the wind seemed to come out of Daily Kos’s sails. Kossack’s could make or break a candidate back then and their endorsement carried big votes and big money.
Cursor never had the political or financial clout, though I note they are raising money at a goodly rate and pray they continue to expand, but they seem to be hitching their wagon overmuch to Obama and are bound to be disappointed. Fact is, even if Obama gets the pre-selection and prevails, which he should given his opponent, McCain, knows nothing of economics, is happy for the war in Iraq to go 100 years and recently said “Basra doesn’t count”, he will disappoint. Or be killed. In fact given the 25% of Americans who must be stark staring mad, they still support Bush, Obama would be best appointing Hillary as VP in the hope the lunatics will have second thoughts about doing him in. Rather like old man Bush going for Dan Quayle, figuring the Dems. would not dare impeach him over Iranamuck and have the nation face the ignominy of a President Quayle. People actually believed that at the time.
But that McCain must know something I’m in the dark over. Basra don’t count. Why, in Gods name, did we go to war.
McCAIN NOR ABLE
But McCain gets away with it. He’s Teflon coated. Like all the Republicans the White House Press Corp. Inc. just can’t love him enough. It got sickening the other day when they went after poor Chelsea over, of all things, Monica’s dress. I mean. What about McCain leaving his first wife dying to head off with a blond streak of misery with a few million bucks in her sky rocket? No attention to his admitted economic illiteracy, his personal life is sacrosanct and he doesn’t give a flying fuck about what should be one of the most important oil centers of the world. It is also a place where US troops might well be dying very soon. Blood and oil, you’d think he'd move there. But the press has dropped Iraq almost completely. Even the serious news reports barely mentioned the battle of Basra so, I guess, McCain is taking his prompts from corporate America. Basra doesn’t matter. If there is no reporting there is no accountability. The Democrats seem to be allowing Iraq to slip from the electoral map as well. I don’t get it. This is a sure fire winner especially in red states where the boys who are dying come from. They should be out in Kansas pounding the pulpits and demanding the boys and girls come home. Trees are falling in the forest and no-one hears.
MOVEMENTS
AP reports Clinton with 250 superdelegates, Obama 218. Overall, Obama has 1,634 delegates to Clinton's 1,500. With Hillary leading with the superdelegates 250 to 218.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar announced her support for Obama on Monday. That followed endorsements by Pennsylvania Sen. Robert Casey and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Also yesterday former Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, the top Democrat on the 9/11 Commission, and all round well known and liked Democrat, endorsed him. This is panning out opposite to how one would have thought at Christmas. Then, if the race got close, one might have expected the old hands to gather around William Jefferson Clinton’s wife. Richardson clearly anguished over the choice but the party heavyweights have thought long and hard and Hillary has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
The whole dog and pony show is made for political junkies with states that have never had any say in political anointment - North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota, plus Puerto Rico and Guam — being wooed, or about to be subject to love-ins, a process which will not harm the party one bit but adds to the attraction.
Cursor never had the political or financial clout, though I note they are raising money at a goodly rate and pray they continue to expand, but they seem to be hitching their wagon overmuch to Obama and are bound to be disappointed. Fact is, even if Obama gets the pre-selection and prevails, which he should given his opponent, McCain, knows nothing of economics, is happy for the war in Iraq to go 100 years and recently said “Basra doesn’t count”, he will disappoint. Or be killed. In fact given the 25% of Americans who must be stark staring mad, they still support Bush, Obama would be best appointing Hillary as VP in the hope the lunatics will have second thoughts about doing him in. Rather like old man Bush going for Dan Quayle, figuring the Dems. would not dare impeach him over Iranamuck and have the nation face the ignominy of a President Quayle. People actually believed that at the time.
But that McCain must know something I’m in the dark over. Basra don’t count. Why, in Gods name, did we go to war.
McCAIN NOR ABLE
But McCain gets away with it. He’s Teflon coated. Like all the Republicans the White House Press Corp. Inc. just can’t love him enough. It got sickening the other day when they went after poor Chelsea over, of all things, Monica’s dress. I mean. What about McCain leaving his first wife dying to head off with a blond streak of misery with a few million bucks in her sky rocket? No attention to his admitted economic illiteracy, his personal life is sacrosanct and he doesn’t give a flying fuck about what should be one of the most important oil centers of the world. It is also a place where US troops might well be dying very soon. Blood and oil, you’d think he'd move there. But the press has dropped Iraq almost completely. Even the serious news reports barely mentioned the battle of Basra so, I guess, McCain is taking his prompts from corporate America. Basra doesn’t matter. If there is no reporting there is no accountability. The Democrats seem to be allowing Iraq to slip from the electoral map as well. I don’t get it. This is a sure fire winner especially in red states where the boys who are dying come from. They should be out in Kansas pounding the pulpits and demanding the boys and girls come home. Trees are falling in the forest and no-one hears.
MOVEMENTS
AP reports Clinton with 250 superdelegates, Obama 218. Overall, Obama has 1,634 delegates to Clinton's 1,500. With Hillary leading with the superdelegates 250 to 218.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar announced her support for Obama on Monday. That followed endorsements by Pennsylvania Sen. Robert Casey and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Also yesterday former Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, the top Democrat on the 9/11 Commission, and all round well known and liked Democrat, endorsed him. This is panning out opposite to how one would have thought at Christmas. Then, if the race got close, one might have expected the old hands to gather around William Jefferson Clinton’s wife. Richardson clearly anguished over the choice but the party heavyweights have thought long and hard and Hillary has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
The whole dog and pony show is made for political junkies with states that have never had any say in political anointment - North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota, plus Puerto Rico and Guam — being wooed, or about to be subject to love-ins, a process which will not harm the party one bit but adds to the attraction.
IT’S A FIGHT
That’s what the kids at school would gleefully cry if something erupted into a show of knuckles (we were very old fashioned). How we’d (if not actually partipants) would run to watch and cheer those eruptions that never, I am glad to say, amounted to more than a bloody nose. The teachers inflicted the real pain with the canes of which they had fine collections. One, Dogface, the history master's collection ranged from four to six feet long. He’d have you stand before him as he tested each perhaps for the right air or atmosphere, bending the cane, selecting one then returning it to the cane case and then studying thoughtfully as though remembering when Constantinople fell. The whole idea was to increase the tourure, for he figured that his contemplations were more punishment than the blows delivered, ideally and usually to the very finger tips. It was an art, but waiting was not as painful as being caned and there was always the chance Dogface would have a stroke. From memory the masters had another collective case they could select from before, if one was especially honored by the fates, being dragged by the ear, to give the impression of cowardice in front of the other kids and in the hope the tiny victim would burst into tears, preferably before the first strike of the rod. I guess they put away the canes in the late sixties. Dogface, he really looked like a particularly unpleasant bulldog, and in adulthood I could never properly love that breed, would enjoy the coming battle for North Carolina on May 6 as would the school kids. All bar the victim. Barack or Hillary. Joe Trippi figures the primaries will be decided there. Joe has been wrong in the past and Hillary is a strange bird but he makes a convincing argument. The polls are contradictory. Obama mania seems to be waning yet 2,500 tickets to see him in North Carolina disappeared in a few hours when he confirmed his appearance last week. Hillary is still strong in Pennsylvania and it’s hard to see Steelers changing their minds in sufficient numbers at this stage to deliver for Obama on March 28. Indiana, which votes the same day, is a toss up. By May 6 Hillary may be within “coooeee”. Joe says the following; “I really believe May 6 has the potential to be everything." Joe was, amongst many other things, strategist for the presidential bids of former North Carolina senator John Edwards this year and Howard Dean in 2004. "Every day you see increased pressure on Hillary Clinton about why she's staying in, and if she could win in North Carolina it would shut down that kind of talk and open up the possibility she could get there" to the nomination.
"But if he wins in North Carolina," Trippi says of Obama, "I think you're going to see things close up very quickly. You'll see a lot of superdelegates line up behind him." Popular leftist blog 0legend has it that the race is won and Hillary is merely damaging the party by hanging on but the count is close, and the superdelegates may fall her way if, and it’s a pretty big if, she can pull off a win in Sth. Carolina. I wonder if another, white male candidate, would meet the demands of Hillary, that she stand down, or even face them with the delegate count being a mere 100 or so votes. I stole those Tippi quotes from an otherwise indifferent article in USA Today. What was remarkable about it was a few hours after the article appeared more than 2000 readers had written to comment. It’s a fight!
"But if he wins in North Carolina," Trippi says of Obama, "I think you're going to see things close up very quickly. You'll see a lot of superdelegates line up behind him." Popular leftist blog 0legend has it that the race is won and Hillary is merely damaging the party by hanging on but the count is close, and the superdelegates may fall her way if, and it’s a pretty big if, she can pull off a win in Sth. Carolina. I wonder if another, white male candidate, would meet the demands of Hillary, that she stand down, or even face them with the delegate count being a mere 100 or so votes. I stole those Tippi quotes from an otherwise indifferent article in USA Today. What was remarkable about it was a few hours after the article appeared more than 2000 readers had written to comment. It’s a fight!
MORE TOXIC SHOCK
Professor Nouriel Roubini of New York University is often cited in these pages as being the foremost critic of US economic policy – if one could use that word to describe the absolute and total mess the clowns and crooks in charge in New York and Washington are inflicting on the nation and perhaps the world. Those that have watched as his terrifying economic predictions fall into place will be thoroughly distressed to discover his colleague and friend Charles Morris – author of several books on financial history and other topics – has just published “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash” – that confirms all our worst fears. We watch hopelessly and helplessly as the entire leveraged system falls apart, proving you cannot manufacture economies from phony house prices and get away with it for long. Charles Morris estimates that the losses from this financial crisis may be as high as $1 trillion:
“$1 trillion is the amount of defaults and writedowns Americans will likely witness before they emerge at the far side of the bursting credit bubble,” estimates Charles R. Morris and that calculation assumes an orderly unwinding of the US credit market.
Either way Morris had finally put subprime in its rightful place as just one boulder “in an avalanche of asset writedowns that will rattle on through much of 2008.''
Roubini estimated and I reported $1 trillion of losses in February. He points out that this has now become conventional wisdom as George Magnus, Martin Wolf, Goldman Sachs and now Charles Morris are all coming up with a similar estimate.
A trillion dollars is the combined wealth of Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates multiplied by nine. The assets involved include all the suspects this column has noted in the past, subprime and higher graded mortgages, high yield bonds, commercial real estate, credit card debt, leveraged loans the entire family we have come to know so well. The Daddy of the family, credit default swaps is the great unknown. This is the insurance on bond holders and covers, or should cover some $45 trillion against default. That’s where the “orderly” aspect of the unwinding or the melting party of the meltdown may happen. It is the clear and present danger. Morris is considered an authority (by Bloomberg amongst others) on the subject of the complex inter action of the credit system that threatens to send the US economy into deeper toxic shock. For we have long road to how. Morris predicts we will spend 2008 watching this meltdown and therefore I suggest those returning to the market, especially the US market given it PE ratios, do so with extreme caution.
Like this columnist Morris apparently looks to Paul Volker, the man Democratic Presidential candidate Obama Barack has been talking to whose recommendations include forcing loan originators to retain first losses, requiring prime brokers to stop lending to hedge funds that don’t disclose their balance sheets and trading of credit derivatives onto exchanges. In fact shine the ever loving light on the entire game and then when the problem is known face it and begin the vast task of correction.
That this cannot be done under the current administration is now self evident. One searches in vain through Treasury Secretary Paulson’s proposed overhaul l of the regulatory system for references to the public spotlight or and other spotlight save that of Big Brother. Perhaps I missed it. It’s a huge report.
“$1 trillion is the amount of defaults and writedowns Americans will likely witness before they emerge at the far side of the bursting credit bubble,” estimates Charles R. Morris and that calculation assumes an orderly unwinding of the US credit market.
Either way Morris had finally put subprime in its rightful place as just one boulder “in an avalanche of asset writedowns that will rattle on through much of 2008.''
Roubini estimated and I reported $1 trillion of losses in February. He points out that this has now become conventional wisdom as George Magnus, Martin Wolf, Goldman Sachs and now Charles Morris are all coming up with a similar estimate.
A trillion dollars is the combined wealth of Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates multiplied by nine. The assets involved include all the suspects this column has noted in the past, subprime and higher graded mortgages, high yield bonds, commercial real estate, credit card debt, leveraged loans the entire family we have come to know so well. The Daddy of the family, credit default swaps is the great unknown. This is the insurance on bond holders and covers, or should cover some $45 trillion against default. That’s where the “orderly” aspect of the unwinding or the melting party of the meltdown may happen. It is the clear and present danger. Morris is considered an authority (by Bloomberg amongst others) on the subject of the complex inter action of the credit system that threatens to send the US economy into deeper toxic shock. For we have long road to how. Morris predicts we will spend 2008 watching this meltdown and therefore I suggest those returning to the market, especially the US market given it PE ratios, do so with extreme caution.
Like this columnist Morris apparently looks to Paul Volker, the man Democratic Presidential candidate Obama Barack has been talking to whose recommendations include forcing loan originators to retain first losses, requiring prime brokers to stop lending to hedge funds that don’t disclose their balance sheets and trading of credit derivatives onto exchanges. In fact shine the ever loving light on the entire game and then when the problem is known face it and begin the vast task of correction.
That this cannot be done under the current administration is now self evident. One searches in vain through Treasury Secretary Paulson’s proposed overhaul l of the regulatory system for references to the public spotlight or and other spotlight save that of Big Brother. Perhaps I missed it. It’s a huge report.
Luck of the Draw
Patience is not my strongest point and blog or web sites and the like allow for one to come out, guns blazing, without always thinking things through. When dealing with economics and advice this is a fatal flaw and the mind must shut impatience out and sometimes wait. At the same time one can do the otherwise unacceptable like review a book not seen.
In my salad days I shared a house with an almost impecunious rock critic and, at one stage we were both without a record player. My mate, who I will refrain from naming, took to writing superb reviews for a major daily without actually listening to the music. I can see him now in the house in North Fitzroy, Melbourne, cheerfully staring at the pile of new releases that landed regularly and, as he stared at a Jethro Tull cover muttering something like “they are due for a good one” and writing accordingly. Most of his reviews were harsh but usually, I discovered, when someone gave us a player, pretty fair and accurate. Like a mate in the High Desert of California, actually he’s not in the higher part of the desert but in jail, but only for 18 months, who had the disconcerting habit of playing cards without looking at any or one particular card. “I know it’s a good one,” he’d say and more often than not he won. He lost when he discharged a fire arm in a public place, a bar in Idaho, went on the run, was inevitably captured and is doing it fine. The music critic blew it when he reviewed a rock concert which he failed to attend and therefore failed to learn the concert had been cancelled. Needless to say he was reprimanded.
In my salad days I shared a house with an almost impecunious rock critic and, at one stage we were both without a record player. My mate, who I will refrain from naming, took to writing superb reviews for a major daily without actually listening to the music. I can see him now in the house in North Fitzroy, Melbourne, cheerfully staring at the pile of new releases that landed regularly and, as he stared at a Jethro Tull cover muttering something like “they are due for a good one” and writing accordingly. Most of his reviews were harsh but usually, I discovered, when someone gave us a player, pretty fair and accurate. Like a mate in the High Desert of California, actually he’s not in the higher part of the desert but in jail, but only for 18 months, who had the disconcerting habit of playing cards without looking at any or one particular card. “I know it’s a good one,” he’d say and more often than not he won. He lost when he discharged a fire arm in a public place, a bar in Idaho, went on the run, was inevitably captured and is doing it fine. The music critic blew it when he reviewed a rock concert which he failed to attend and therefore failed to learn the concert had been cancelled. Needless to say he was reprimanded.
Theft as Policy
Another factor arguing for a slower pace of rate cuts is inflation: Bernanke said that rising prices remain a concern. You bet. Inflation, and a few other things. Well get to them but First Mr. P and Mr. B and all the king’s horses and men women and children and frogs should do their part and engage in some soul searching.
Many of the world’s economies are booming or growing rapidly and inflationary fears are driven by old fashioned problems like wage demands and too much money chasing to few good and services. Not so the US. Although the Fed is pumping money at a rate that has frightened the horses, the cows and the frogs none of it seems to getting to the er… people. This seems to be the point that sundry Senators were making to Mr B when he gave evidence before them yesterday. But even such obvious questions he must have expected of him “you are doing all this for Wall Street but the guys on Main Street are dying” was met with that goggle eyes wonder at it – Bernanke’s blank, out of my depth, bamboozled stare. Clearly he is the academic front for a grand theft, and having done his doctorate in, or on, The Depression, Bernanke has been wheeled in to give some respectability to the wholesale fraud being pulled by the Fed and the Merchant Banks on the US public. He may work it all out one day and retire into the well deserved obscurity from which he was raised to do exactly what he is doing now. Nothing. And God Save Ronnie Biggs.
Many of the world’s economies are booming or growing rapidly and inflationary fears are driven by old fashioned problems like wage demands and too much money chasing to few good and services. Not so the US. Although the Fed is pumping money at a rate that has frightened the horses, the cows and the frogs none of it seems to getting to the er… people. This seems to be the point that sundry Senators were making to Mr B when he gave evidence before them yesterday. But even such obvious questions he must have expected of him “you are doing all this for Wall Street but the guys on Main Street are dying” was met with that goggle eyes wonder at it – Bernanke’s blank, out of my depth, bamboozled stare. Clearly he is the academic front for a grand theft, and having done his doctorate in, or on, The Depression, Bernanke has been wheeled in to give some respectability to the wholesale fraud being pulled by the Fed and the Merchant Banks on the US public. He may work it all out one day and retire into the well deserved obscurity from which he was raised to do exactly what he is doing now. Nothing. And God Save Ronnie Biggs.
Yes there was an Amercian Century
Tim Rutten is a “Times Staff Writer” the Times in question being the LA Times, a once excellent paper. Vestiges of its former glory which officially passed when it was bought by the Chicago Tribune group, remain in the form of writers like Tim Rutten, as you will soon see. I intend to write a review of his review of “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.”
The US press is full of reports of the book but Rutten’s review is outstanding and much more interesting than the interview with the author in the Washington Post. The Post has made the mistake of opening up the paper to readers far and wide and the result is not edifying.
If this book is as good as Tim says or as good as the review itself it will be a pleasure to read and eventually review but that could be weeks or months off and I don’t see any harm in turning this turtle over. “Life, as Kierkegaard pointed out, “can only be understood retrospectively, but we must live it prospectively,” Rutten reminds as by way of opening his account of Steve Coll’s book.
And soon this:
“In essence, it (the book) proposes not so much an alternate history of the 20th century but an account of one that occurred simultaneous to our usual collective recollection of the last 100 years. While the great struggles of the American Century - world wars, depression, imperialism, the fights with right-and left-wing totalitarianisms - were preoccupying us, out of sight and beyond our Western and essentially secular understanding, men, ideas and appetites born of a desert waste were conjoining in ways that created the first great challenge of this new era, the confrontation with Islamic jihadism.”
A perfect set up for this century. It’s a joy to see a reviewer go about his work with such style. Last night I sat up reading Edna O’Brien’s “Jame’s Joyce” a reminder in the year 2008 (can it really be this late) that people once wrote and read reviews like their life depended on it – which it literally, ah, did. Imagine being Joyce and being forced to play up to lesser lights, mere mortals like George Bernard Shaw, because of his dependence on literary acceptance for, in the end, money.
The US press is full of reports of the book but Rutten’s review is outstanding and much more interesting than the interview with the author in the Washington Post. The Post has made the mistake of opening up the paper to readers far and wide and the result is not edifying.
If this book is as good as Tim says or as good as the review itself it will be a pleasure to read and eventually review but that could be weeks or months off and I don’t see any harm in turning this turtle over. “Life, as Kierkegaard pointed out, “can only be understood retrospectively, but we must live it prospectively,” Rutten reminds as by way of opening his account of Steve Coll’s book.
And soon this:
“In essence, it (the book) proposes not so much an alternate history of the 20th century but an account of one that occurred simultaneous to our usual collective recollection of the last 100 years. While the great struggles of the American Century - world wars, depression, imperialism, the fights with right-and left-wing totalitarianisms - were preoccupying us, out of sight and beyond our Western and essentially secular understanding, men, ideas and appetites born of a desert waste were conjoining in ways that created the first great challenge of this new era, the confrontation with Islamic jihadism.”
A perfect set up for this century. It’s a joy to see a reviewer go about his work with such style. Last night I sat up reading Edna O’Brien’s “Jame’s Joyce” a reminder in the year 2008 (can it really be this late) that people once wrote and read reviews like their life depended on it – which it literally, ah, did. Imagine being Joyce and being forced to play up to lesser lights, mere mortals like George Bernard Shaw, because of his dependence on literary acceptance for, in the end, money.
The Selling of America
Mr Bernanke is a good man. A little pessimistic but that’s for the best. His instincts are wrong as a rule but I suspect he’s so far out of the loop, in the sense that the real players are part of a loop, or a ring as it was called in the twenties before the cartel busters did their great work, it’s hard to take any notice of him at all.
The whip hand, perhaps it’s a lasso, is held and cracked by Paulson who seems ideally suited for the super cop, role. Hair cropped to its roots, or bald, ferocious, barking mad, towering and demented-one can almost see him pounding away at Rodney King, thinking poor old Rodney was gold, or a contrarian, or a GATA member.
But Mr Bernanke is Fed Chairman and is of the opinion, three days after the Wall Street Journal said we are in recession, the possibility of a recession couldn’t be ruled out.
"It now appears likely that real gross domestic product will not grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly," Bernanke said in testimony prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.
Bernanke clung to the distinction that the "contraction" may not turn into a "recession." But added economists say this was exceedingly rare.
People pay good money not to have to listen to, let alone read such blather so I won’t trouble you with any more, for the moment, but return for a to Hank Paulson – super cop.
The whip hand, perhaps it’s a lasso, is held and cracked by Paulson who seems ideally suited for the super cop, role. Hair cropped to its roots, or bald, ferocious, barking mad, towering and demented-one can almost see him pounding away at Rodney King, thinking poor old Rodney was gold, or a contrarian, or a GATA member.
But Mr Bernanke is Fed Chairman and is of the opinion, three days after the Wall Street Journal said we are in recession, the possibility of a recession couldn’t be ruled out.
"It now appears likely that real gross domestic product will not grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly," Bernanke said in testimony prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.
Bernanke clung to the distinction that the "contraction" may not turn into a "recession." But added economists say this was exceedingly rare.
People pay good money not to have to listen to, let alone read such blather so I won’t trouble you with any more, for the moment, but return for a to Hank Paulson – super cop.
BLOWBACK!
Blowback!
“Could this have been foreseen?” Rutten asks. “Could something different have been done? It's possible, though not likely. One can't realistically imagine the degree of disinterested foresight and wisdom that would have made the difference. History as good as the sort Coll has written here sobers as well as enlightens.
Immediately Afghanistan and “blowback” leap to mind. And then it clicks. Steve Coll, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret operations in Afghanistan - "Ghost Wars" – add to that another Pulitzer for explanatory journalism while a reporter for the Washington Post, where he later served as a foreign correspondent and managing editor.
Rutten tells us that this book is really the story of two families - the Bin-Ladens and the family we all knew of before Sept 11, the Al-Saud whose patriarch Abdulaziz Ibn Saud "walked out of Kuwait in 1902 with a sword, some camels and a small band of followers to reclaim, in his family's name, the mud-walled town of Riyadh in the central Arabian plateau, and the paltry realm it oversaw." Thirty blood-soaked years later, he "announced at last the formation of the new Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
A few years after Abdulaziz stormed out of Kuwait, an impoverished, one-eyed teenage boy named Mohammed Bin Laden walked north out of his native Yemen to the Arabian port city of Jeddah in search of work. Eventually, he would found a construction and trading company that would become Saudi Arabia's largest, with holdings that, today, extend around the globe - including the United States.
What's most striking about Coll's book is its undidactic but unflinching account of just how rancidly dysfunctional the Saudi royals' governance has been and of how the Bin Ladens - canny, but in so many essential ways incompetent - have benefited from their patrons' venality through a breathtakingly supine sycophancy and simply bribery.
Corrupt, hypocritical, frightened and inept at everything but self-preservation, the Sauds have essentially looted their country's foreign-developed oil riches, using the Bin Ladens to dole out development only when it was absolutely necessary to placate a restive populace.
The results have been particularly appalling in the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, where Saudi-financed construction projects undertaken by the Bin Ladens essentially have eradicated the historic pilgrimage sites. Not too many years ago, the remains of the Prophet Mohammed's house in Mecca were bulldozed to construct a public toilet. These projects not only allow the Saudis to profit more from the hajj, which religious Muslims are obliged to make at least once, but also have imposed a Wahabi straitjacket on the pilgrimage. Formerly, Shia and sufic pilgrims observed the hajj with all sorts of individual rituals and visits to shrines and tombs they referred. Now, thanks to the Bin Ladens' demolition and construction projects only a Wahabi version of the pilgrimage is possible.
Osama was taught by an ingrate to the Saudi royal family, the Middle East seems to brim with people taken in from the vast sea of disposed only to turn violently on their benefactors, and Coll apparently explains how Osama's teacher was one of a large number of Egyptian and Syrian exiles (but in this case Egyptian) to whom the Saudi royal family had given shelter, believing that their religious ideology might be used as a counterweight to the secularism of Nasser and the Baathists. (Thus, the Saudis have suffered from "blowback" no less than the Americans did in Afghanistan or as did those elements of the Israeli Likud who thought Hamas could be encouraged as a counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. Radical Islam turns out to be a tiger nobody can safely ride.)
We read of centuries old tribal and religious schisms in the Middle East but young cultures and countries especially ones like the US and Australia cannot comprehend the depth of hatred and layers of sectarian animosity. Even close families have divisions that make the Irish appear a happy band of brothers. “Osama bin Laden… a shy and deeply religious boy who moved somewhat on the fringes of his family because his mother - whom his father quickly divorced - was herself a Syrian, whose family may have had ties to that country's heterodox Alawite sect. (Osama was but one of seven sons born to Mohammed and his various wives in one year.) The very orthodox Bin Ladens looked down on Alawites, just as the Sauds - natives of the geneology-obsessed Nejaz region - always have looked down on the Bin Ladens, as Yemenites.
“Still, the families were bound together by a mutual belief in the strict Wahabi brand of Salafist - which is to say, ultra-puritanical - Islam and mutually beneficial financial ties. Coll's exhaustive, but cautious reconstruction of the Bin Ladens' finances also clears up one of the enduring myths about Osama. He never was particularly wealthy by international standards and, when his family cut him off from their business under pressure from the Sauds, he essentially lost everything. Coll carefully recounts the FBI's and CIA's attempts to figure out what sort of financing he still receives from various Islamic charities, and there's suspicion that some of his sisters still may be passing him money. The aura of great wealth was one of the many myths the very public relations-conscious Osama carefully cultivated. (Some of the best estimates of Bin Laden family finances actually come from court files in the United States, where several family members wound up in divorce proceedings.)
“Finally,” Tim Rutten tells us. “Coll's book makes an important contribution to the contemporary debate by putting to rest the myth that Jihadism is fuelled by a passion to see justice for the Palestinians. In fact, garden-variety anti-Semitism of the most repellant kind has been part of the Saud/Bin Laden axis from the start. Abdulaziz was a rabid anti-Semite, though he'd never met a Jew nor heard of Zionism. Faisel, apparently the best of the Saudi kings because he stole the least, nonetheless peddled every sort of outlandish anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, along with copies of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Today, the son of one of Osama's half-brothers runs a group called the World Assembly of Muslim Youth out of Falls Church, Va. He has a Saudi diplomatic passport and the special mission of reaching out to American Muslims with Wahabi religious materials, including one that says:
"The Jews are enemies of the faithful, God and the angels; the Jews are humanity's enemies; they foment immorality in this world."
Where does the Bush family come in I hear you wonder. Surely there is a third family?
For that we must await the arrival of “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family"
Steve Coll. The Penguin Press: 672 pp., $35
“Could this have been foreseen?” Rutten asks. “Could something different have been done? It's possible, though not likely. One can't realistically imagine the degree of disinterested foresight and wisdom that would have made the difference. History as good as the sort Coll has written here sobers as well as enlightens.
Immediately Afghanistan and “blowback” leap to mind. And then it clicks. Steve Coll, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret operations in Afghanistan - "Ghost Wars" – add to that another Pulitzer for explanatory journalism while a reporter for the Washington Post, where he later served as a foreign correspondent and managing editor.
Rutten tells us that this book is really the story of two families - the Bin-Ladens and the family we all knew of before Sept 11, the Al-Saud whose patriarch Abdulaziz Ibn Saud "walked out of Kuwait in 1902 with a sword, some camels and a small band of followers to reclaim, in his family's name, the mud-walled town of Riyadh in the central Arabian plateau, and the paltry realm it oversaw." Thirty blood-soaked years later, he "announced at last the formation of the new Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
A few years after Abdulaziz stormed out of Kuwait, an impoverished, one-eyed teenage boy named Mohammed Bin Laden walked north out of his native Yemen to the Arabian port city of Jeddah in search of work. Eventually, he would found a construction and trading company that would become Saudi Arabia's largest, with holdings that, today, extend around the globe - including the United States.
What's most striking about Coll's book is its undidactic but unflinching account of just how rancidly dysfunctional the Saudi royals' governance has been and of how the Bin Ladens - canny, but in so many essential ways incompetent - have benefited from their patrons' venality through a breathtakingly supine sycophancy and simply bribery.
Corrupt, hypocritical, frightened and inept at everything but self-preservation, the Sauds have essentially looted their country's foreign-developed oil riches, using the Bin Ladens to dole out development only when it was absolutely necessary to placate a restive populace.
The results have been particularly appalling in the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, where Saudi-financed construction projects undertaken by the Bin Ladens essentially have eradicated the historic pilgrimage sites. Not too many years ago, the remains of the Prophet Mohammed's house in Mecca were bulldozed to construct a public toilet. These projects not only allow the Saudis to profit more from the hajj, which religious Muslims are obliged to make at least once, but also have imposed a Wahabi straitjacket on the pilgrimage. Formerly, Shia and sufic pilgrims observed the hajj with all sorts of individual rituals and visits to shrines and tombs they referred. Now, thanks to the Bin Ladens' demolition and construction projects only a Wahabi version of the pilgrimage is possible.
Osama was taught by an ingrate to the Saudi royal family, the Middle East seems to brim with people taken in from the vast sea of disposed only to turn violently on their benefactors, and Coll apparently explains how Osama's teacher was one of a large number of Egyptian and Syrian exiles (but in this case Egyptian) to whom the Saudi royal family had given shelter, believing that their religious ideology might be used as a counterweight to the secularism of Nasser and the Baathists. (Thus, the Saudis have suffered from "blowback" no less than the Americans did in Afghanistan or as did those elements of the Israeli Likud who thought Hamas could be encouraged as a counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. Radical Islam turns out to be a tiger nobody can safely ride.)
We read of centuries old tribal and religious schisms in the Middle East but young cultures and countries especially ones like the US and Australia cannot comprehend the depth of hatred and layers of sectarian animosity. Even close families have divisions that make the Irish appear a happy band of brothers. “Osama bin Laden… a shy and deeply religious boy who moved somewhat on the fringes of his family because his mother - whom his father quickly divorced - was herself a Syrian, whose family may have had ties to that country's heterodox Alawite sect. (Osama was but one of seven sons born to Mohammed and his various wives in one year.) The very orthodox Bin Ladens looked down on Alawites, just as the Sauds - natives of the geneology-obsessed Nejaz region - always have looked down on the Bin Ladens, as Yemenites.
“Still, the families were bound together by a mutual belief in the strict Wahabi brand of Salafist - which is to say, ultra-puritanical - Islam and mutually beneficial financial ties. Coll's exhaustive, but cautious reconstruction of the Bin Ladens' finances also clears up one of the enduring myths about Osama. He never was particularly wealthy by international standards and, when his family cut him off from their business under pressure from the Sauds, he essentially lost everything. Coll carefully recounts the FBI's and CIA's attempts to figure out what sort of financing he still receives from various Islamic charities, and there's suspicion that some of his sisters still may be passing him money. The aura of great wealth was one of the many myths the very public relations-conscious Osama carefully cultivated. (Some of the best estimates of Bin Laden family finances actually come from court files in the United States, where several family members wound up in divorce proceedings.)
“Finally,” Tim Rutten tells us. “Coll's book makes an important contribution to the contemporary debate by putting to rest the myth that Jihadism is fuelled by a passion to see justice for the Palestinians. In fact, garden-variety anti-Semitism of the most repellant kind has been part of the Saud/Bin Laden axis from the start. Abdulaziz was a rabid anti-Semite, though he'd never met a Jew nor heard of Zionism. Faisel, apparently the best of the Saudi kings because he stole the least, nonetheless peddled every sort of outlandish anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, along with copies of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Today, the son of one of Osama's half-brothers runs a group called the World Assembly of Muslim Youth out of Falls Church, Va. He has a Saudi diplomatic passport and the special mission of reaching out to American Muslims with Wahabi religious materials, including one that says:
"The Jews are enemies of the faithful, God and the angels; the Jews are humanity's enemies; they foment immorality in this world."
Where does the Bush family come in I hear you wonder. Surely there is a third family?
For that we must await the arrival of “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family"
Steve Coll. The Penguin Press: 672 pp., $35
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
A Five Year Plan, Why Not?
A five year plan, why not? Socialisation in one nation - the US
David Hirst
I have been loath to say much about Paulson’s great leap forward – we might as well give it an appropriate Soviet-style title but I suppose it could have been worse. For instance they could have confiscated gold, FDR finest moment, as gold is a principal target amidst these machinations but they have, till now, refrained.
Nevertheless, as I have pointed out three times of late they have given gold a very heavy cross to bear and gold has suffered mightily. As I wrote last week gold will have to claw its way back to $1,000 and it is not going to be easy as yesterday’s carnage showed. And with friends like Barrick Gold who needs enemies.
Barrick is the largest gold producer in the world yet the company's top honcho Jo Kalsky warned yesterday the European Central Banks might sell the extra amount allotted to them and pump more gold onto the market. And well they might but what had that got to do with Barrick, is he reminding them to do just that? I don’t think they need to be told. And what’s at stake here? 25 tons. It sounds like a lot if you don’t have it but Russia could buy that amount without blinking.
Kalsky then damned gold with faint praise by saying he though it would go up but it could go down. Gold’s supporters are hardly heartened by the boss of the largest gold company sounding pessimistic about their, if not his, precious metal. Are the rumours that Barrick has not de hedged the bulk of its gold true? Why is the company always talking the commodity down? What is going on here?
David Hirst
I have been loath to say much about Paulson’s great leap forward – we might as well give it an appropriate Soviet-style title but I suppose it could have been worse. For instance they could have confiscated gold, FDR finest moment, as gold is a principal target amidst these machinations but they have, till now, refrained.
Nevertheless, as I have pointed out three times of late they have given gold a very heavy cross to bear and gold has suffered mightily. As I wrote last week gold will have to claw its way back to $1,000 and it is not going to be easy as yesterday’s carnage showed. And with friends like Barrick Gold who needs enemies.
Barrick is the largest gold producer in the world yet the company's top honcho Jo Kalsky warned yesterday the European Central Banks might sell the extra amount allotted to them and pump more gold onto the market. And well they might but what had that got to do with Barrick, is he reminding them to do just that? I don’t think they need to be told. And what’s at stake here? 25 tons. It sounds like a lot if you don’t have it but Russia could buy that amount without blinking.
Kalsky then damned gold with faint praise by saying he though it would go up but it could go down. Gold’s supporters are hardly heartened by the boss of the largest gold company sounding pessimistic about their, if not his, precious metal. Are the rumours that Barrick has not de hedged the bulk of its gold true? Why is the company always talking the commodity down? What is going on here?
Out Now
Out Now
That President al-Maliki, known for his timidity, would attempt to go where angels, such as the British army, fears to tread, is an unnecessary pointer to who was really calling the shots. The Brits, not prepared to lose another soul in Iraq, stayed at the Basra airport watching, listening and waiting until they can exit. They might go to Afghanistan where they will fight a “better" war but one where the outcome, defeat, seems apparent. Here the great tragedy is again, Bush. Had he…well let's not go there. However such is the nature of invasion and such were the tactics of the predominately American forces in the NATO army that the citizenry prefers the appalling murderous thugs, the Taliban to us.
The problem is that with war comes chaos, especially the way the US conducts its affrays and inevitably that creates fear and hostility which is directed at the invader. No matter how much the people dislike the Taliban they associate the terrors of war with the invading force. You and I, dear reader, would do the same. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The weight of history leans heavily across the shoulders of our armies as well. The British cemeteries in Kabul and Herat constant reminders of wars long lost.
But with war comes lawlessness and the inability of common folks to go about their business – unless it is the business of opium which by nature thrives in such circumstances. Otherwise the average Afghani, no slouch as a businessman, is liable to theft and murder at any moment and while the women may walk the streets in Burkas only under the Taliban, and in the company of a husband or close male relative, at least they can walk the street. It is an entirely unsatisfactory situation by we cannot impose the solution. In fact we have made the Taliban possible then failed to clean up the mess when Bush raced off to attack Iraq. The people of Afghanistan are left in this terrible impasse but our occupation just lengthens and deepens their distress.
That President al-Maliki, known for his timidity, would attempt to go where angels, such as the British army, fears to tread, is an unnecessary pointer to who was really calling the shots. The Brits, not prepared to lose another soul in Iraq, stayed at the Basra airport watching, listening and waiting until they can exit. They might go to Afghanistan where they will fight a “better" war but one where the outcome, defeat, seems apparent. Here the great tragedy is again, Bush. Had he…well let's not go there. However such is the nature of invasion and such were the tactics of the predominately American forces in the NATO army that the citizenry prefers the appalling murderous thugs, the Taliban to us.
The problem is that with war comes chaos, especially the way the US conducts its affrays and inevitably that creates fear and hostility which is directed at the invader. No matter how much the people dislike the Taliban they associate the terrors of war with the invading force. You and I, dear reader, would do the same. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The weight of history leans heavily across the shoulders of our armies as well. The British cemeteries in Kabul and Herat constant reminders of wars long lost.
But with war comes lawlessness and the inability of common folks to go about their business – unless it is the business of opium which by nature thrives in such circumstances. Otherwise the average Afghani, no slouch as a businessman, is liable to theft and murder at any moment and while the women may walk the streets in Burkas only under the Taliban, and in the company of a husband or close male relative, at least they can walk the street. It is an entirely unsatisfactory situation by we cannot impose the solution. In fact we have made the Taliban possible then failed to clean up the mess when Bush raced off to attack Iraq. The people of Afghanistan are left in this terrible impasse but our occupation just lengthens and deepens their distress.
Getting out of the Black Gold
Getting out of the black gold
It was this very fear of stability in Basra that prompted al-Maliki’s US conceived assault. With elections mandated for October 1 now seemed as good a time as any to kick Sadr’s forces severely and prove to the people of Basra Sadr is a false god. His removal is also required by those who wish for a rich Shiite southern state or national entity, one that provides immense revenue though oil and can be easily exploited by big oil. Sadr won’t have partitioning as he wants all Shiites and perhaps even Sunnis to participate in a single Federation. A blow to him now and his hopes for legitimate political power in October would have been ruined.
Thus thought the US in their never-ending displays of wisdom. Instead the opposite happened and Sadr now grows in power and prestige and has become a truly national figure, perhaps leader, I don’t pretend to know his ambitions and he is particularly reluctant to divulge them. If he were to win the coming elections, and here we get to the hopeful bit, he would have political legitimacy and an army that has shown great mettle over which he seems to have adequate control. Unfortunately for the Americans he wants them out but if elected he could offer the oil companies oil. That was the plan, was it not, five terrible years ago. Basra could return to its rightful position of one of the great hubs of world commerce, the people of Iraq would be enriched and the world would get a desperately needed million or two barrels of oil a day we are not currently getting.
Of course this would be unacceptable to the Bush-Cheney crowd. It makes sense, and, given Bill Clinton’s bloody handed approach to Iraq during 8 years of economic sanctions and bombings might not be Hillary’s cup of tea. But Obama, he who talks to Paul Volker, might just see it as a possible beginning. In fact Basra, kept intact through the British occupation, and perfectly positioned for oil export, would be at the economic heart of a new Iraq and its revival might herald a reborn nation. These people desperately need some solution to their travails and Basra is as good a place to start as any. Iraq has been at war now for some 30 years and vast amounts of oil and gas will be found when exploration begins again and new technology is applied. All we are saying is, give peace a chance.
It was this very fear of stability in Basra that prompted al-Maliki’s US conceived assault. With elections mandated for October 1 now seemed as good a time as any to kick Sadr’s forces severely and prove to the people of Basra Sadr is a false god. His removal is also required by those who wish for a rich Shiite southern state or national entity, one that provides immense revenue though oil and can be easily exploited by big oil. Sadr won’t have partitioning as he wants all Shiites and perhaps even Sunnis to participate in a single Federation. A blow to him now and his hopes for legitimate political power in October would have been ruined.
Thus thought the US in their never-ending displays of wisdom. Instead the opposite happened and Sadr now grows in power and prestige and has become a truly national figure, perhaps leader, I don’t pretend to know his ambitions and he is particularly reluctant to divulge them. If he were to win the coming elections, and here we get to the hopeful bit, he would have political legitimacy and an army that has shown great mettle over which he seems to have adequate control. Unfortunately for the Americans he wants them out but if elected he could offer the oil companies oil. That was the plan, was it not, five terrible years ago. Basra could return to its rightful position of one of the great hubs of world commerce, the people of Iraq would be enriched and the world would get a desperately needed million or two barrels of oil a day we are not currently getting.
Of course this would be unacceptable to the Bush-Cheney crowd. It makes sense, and, given Bill Clinton’s bloody handed approach to Iraq during 8 years of economic sanctions and bombings might not be Hillary’s cup of tea. But Obama, he who talks to Paul Volker, might just see it as a possible beginning. In fact Basra, kept intact through the British occupation, and perfectly positioned for oil export, would be at the economic heart of a new Iraq and its revival might herald a reborn nation. These people desperately need some solution to their travails and Basra is as good a place to start as any. Iraq has been at war now for some 30 years and vast amounts of oil and gas will be found when exploration begins again and new technology is applied. All we are saying is, give peace a chance.
Bad Moon falling
Bad moon falling
Gold is falling for a few reasons but a major one is the simple reason that some of the big boys are in worse trouble than we have yet learnt. Wall Street firms with gold reserves got out big time when gold hit $US1000. They had to. They had made 30 per cent in no time while their other portfolios had lost that amount. Calls were coming in. They were desperate and they jumped. Just like the punter who sells his bet before the fight or the game is over for the certainty of the cash some big Wall Street firms are so deeply in they have to get out with whatever profits they can to satisfy or prevent margin calls.
Then, gold staged a recovery and those who had not jumped ship at $1000 fled at $930 happy to take their profit. So the weak are being cut out, the chaff is blowing in the wind. Now the serious guys can get down to the serious business of seeing who has got the biggest and who knows what to do with it. Gold is better of for their absence. But who is next to go? Don’t miss the next exciting episode when…
Gold is falling for a few reasons but a major one is the simple reason that some of the big boys are in worse trouble than we have yet learnt. Wall Street firms with gold reserves got out big time when gold hit $US1000. They had to. They had made 30 per cent in no time while their other portfolios had lost that amount. Calls were coming in. They were desperate and they jumped. Just like the punter who sells his bet before the fight or the game is over for the certainty of the cash some big Wall Street firms are so deeply in they have to get out with whatever profits they can to satisfy or prevent margin calls.
Then, gold staged a recovery and those who had not jumped ship at $1000 fled at $930 happy to take their profit. So the weak are being cut out, the chaff is blowing in the wind. Now the serious guys can get down to the serious business of seeing who has got the biggest and who knows what to do with it. Gold is better of for their absence. But who is next to go? Don’t miss the next exciting episode when…
In darkness, hope
In darkness, hope
The latest stage of the Iraq war, the battle of Basra, has passed. A few things have emerged which might, later in the year, be good for the Iraqi people and for oil prices. There’s an awful lot of might’s involved and the later will be much later but anything, anytime that will alleviate the plight of the Iraqis and bring down oil prices is long overdue.
On the oil front, though the hopes will not gush forth like some Oaky wildcatter they will be welcome especially when the recession really starts to bite. It’s impossible to expect any cause for hope while Bush is in power as his determination to ensure that all goes wrong is Churchillian in magnitude. But there’s a glimmer of hope in, pray god, the Paul Volker fan, Obama. I never thought I’d say I liked Volker but with McCain professing and showing total ignorance of economics and HRC speaking well of Greenspan, Volker looks like the man for these terrible coming seasons. With the Clintons talking about getting Rubin back in the saddle why not hand the US Government over to Goldman Sachs in its entirety? Because Goldman doesn’t do armies. That’s Halliburton’s job. Government exists to make sure the checks clear.
But we were contemplating Iraq’s future. The US military is furiously back-peddling on its support for the attack on Moqtada al-Sadr’s forces and the US press is, as always, swallowing bitterly and repeating their nonsense, hook, line and both smoking sinkers. When will they choke on the lies? The attack was demonstrably launched with US support and planning. The US military said so at the time and only when it all went wrong did they try and wash their hands of the bloody mess. 350 dead. Check, if you must Juan Cole, who has long been far ahead in this subject than the US or international press and he has it in black smoking barrels. In fact if Cole had been a policy maker rather than an eminent academic this whole bloody affair would be behind us and the Iraqi people would be a lot better off. But the Boy President (motto a little ignorance is a good thing) cannot be criticized nor can words of criticism (especially the word of someone like Cole who tells truth to power with aforesaid barrels) pass his eyes. Imagine FDR or even Nixon or Clinton passing through two Presidencies without being subjected to daily thrashing by elements in the White House Press Corp Inc.
The latest stage of the Iraq war, the battle of Basra, has passed. A few things have emerged which might, later in the year, be good for the Iraqi people and for oil prices. There’s an awful lot of might’s involved and the later will be much later but anything, anytime that will alleviate the plight of the Iraqis and bring down oil prices is long overdue.
On the oil front, though the hopes will not gush forth like some Oaky wildcatter they will be welcome especially when the recession really starts to bite. It’s impossible to expect any cause for hope while Bush is in power as his determination to ensure that all goes wrong is Churchillian in magnitude. But there’s a glimmer of hope in, pray god, the Paul Volker fan, Obama. I never thought I’d say I liked Volker but with McCain professing and showing total ignorance of economics and HRC speaking well of Greenspan, Volker looks like the man for these terrible coming seasons. With the Clintons talking about getting Rubin back in the saddle why not hand the US Government over to Goldman Sachs in its entirety? Because Goldman doesn’t do armies. That’s Halliburton’s job. Government exists to make sure the checks clear.
But we were contemplating Iraq’s future. The US military is furiously back-peddling on its support for the attack on Moqtada al-Sadr’s forces and the US press is, as always, swallowing bitterly and repeating their nonsense, hook, line and both smoking sinkers. When will they choke on the lies? The attack was demonstrably launched with US support and planning. The US military said so at the time and only when it all went wrong did they try and wash their hands of the bloody mess. 350 dead. Check, if you must Juan Cole, who has long been far ahead in this subject than the US or international press and he has it in black smoking barrels. In fact if Cole had been a policy maker rather than an eminent academic this whole bloody affair would be behind us and the Iraqi people would be a lot better off. But the Boy President (motto a little ignorance is a good thing) cannot be criticized nor can words of criticism (especially the word of someone like Cole who tells truth to power with aforesaid barrels) pass his eyes. Imagine FDR or even Nixon or Clinton passing through two Presidencies without being subjected to daily thrashing by elements in the White House Press Corp Inc.
The bear trap
The bear trap
David Hirst
For years a few of us yelled “go to gold” and were laughed at even while gold went on it momentous drive to $1000. At about $900 the pundits jumped on the ship and gold’s prospects where going to the moon. Gold mania was catching as gold swept past $1,000 and I, in Planet Wall Street, almost alone warned of a bear trap.
Sure enough the next day gold damn near collapsed. I warned it would be a hard road back but, for a moment gold shrugged of the set back and started to climb again. It started to look like gold having tried $1,000 would try it again and eventually take it out permanently. Then came Paulson’s move to socialise the market through the establishment of a fiscal police state and, under the cover of greater freedoms, further extending the national security state to the markets. For those who understand the working of the Fed this was a most unfriendly act for gold.
But gold is big enough to stand on its own two feet and if gold has another foot it is silver, which to the alarm of the Fed, has not crumpled under this attack. As a columnists put it the other day Yo Ho Silver..and away! Gold has suffered perpetual attacks from the cartel that wants it relegated it to the dustbin of history for over a decade and is still a damn sight stronger that the Fed’s flagship, the US dollar. If you want evidence ask yourself this. If, in a year I am going to give you $US1,000 or its equivalent in gold what would you take? I rest my case.
David Hirst
For years a few of us yelled “go to gold” and were laughed at even while gold went on it momentous drive to $1000. At about $900 the pundits jumped on the ship and gold’s prospects where going to the moon. Gold mania was catching as gold swept past $1,000 and I, in Planet Wall Street, almost alone warned of a bear trap.
Sure enough the next day gold damn near collapsed. I warned it would be a hard road back but, for a moment gold shrugged of the set back and started to climb again. It started to look like gold having tried $1,000 would try it again and eventually take it out permanently. Then came Paulson’s move to socialise the market through the establishment of a fiscal police state and, under the cover of greater freedoms, further extending the national security state to the markets. For those who understand the working of the Fed this was a most unfriendly act for gold.
But gold is big enough to stand on its own two feet and if gold has another foot it is silver, which to the alarm of the Fed, has not crumpled under this attack. As a columnists put it the other day Yo Ho Silver..and away! Gold has suffered perpetual attacks from the cartel that wants it relegated it to the dustbin of history for over a decade and is still a damn sight stronger that the Fed’s flagship, the US dollar. If you want evidence ask yourself this. If, in a year I am going to give you $US1,000 or its equivalent in gold what would you take? I rest my case.
Sadr - the alternative
Sadr - the alternative
Sadr is fast becoming an alternative, nationalist Government somewhat along the Hezbollah lines in that his army provides security and, through the illicit sale of billions in oil, petrol and kerosene, social support during disasters – like the US airstrike at the weekend.
The US brings chaos, religious, tribal sectarian fighting and eventual drives the people towards ethnic cleansing. Sometimes a morally and personally superior individual will rise above this and sometimes that person is blessed with a dedicated army and a sound military and political mind. This seems to be the case with al-Sadr and his defeat of the Iraq army, if it can be called an army, illustrates his power and will further it immensely. Al-Sadr is no longer a strongman but a legitimate political figure with support right across the country, particularly in the south and he maintains deep roots in Baghdad.
Sadr is fast becoming an alternative, nationalist Government somewhat along the Hezbollah lines in that his army provides security and, through the illicit sale of billions in oil, petrol and kerosene, social support during disasters – like the US airstrike at the weekend.
The US brings chaos, religious, tribal sectarian fighting and eventual drives the people towards ethnic cleansing. Sometimes a morally and personally superior individual will rise above this and sometimes that person is blessed with a dedicated army and a sound military and political mind. This seems to be the case with al-Sadr and his defeat of the Iraq army, if it can be called an army, illustrates his power and will further it immensely. Al-Sadr is no longer a strongman but a legitimate political figure with support right across the country, particularly in the south and he maintains deep roots in Baghdad.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
WHERE'S CHENEY'S MONEY? DAVID HIRST WRITES
WHERE’S CHENEY’S MONEY?
Where is the most powerful man in the world, with the possible exceptions of Rupert Murdoch and Vladimir Putin, putting his money? Vice President Cheney might have blundered on all counts international, but when I last looked his investment in Halliburton had reaped 8 times what he sowed. He is reputedly tight with his dosh and Planet Wall Street figures that whatever he has chosen it is based on more information than I, you, or the entire apparatus of Goldman Sachs could muster. Given, as we learnt from his constant and unprecedented interference occasioned by the CIA’s failures to initially find evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in that doomed search, it is reasonable to assume he has pursued all avenues to glean what he can from the secret treasury documents before making his investment. Now, as this information is public he can hardly buy gold. Not in his own name anyway. That would really scare the horses. So where has it gone? How does the man at the helm see things unwinding and what’s he doing with his readies?
Kiplinger Magazine has run an article on just this, and the incomparable Mike Whitney has got his teeth into it in an account that looks under the covers of the current Information Clearing House. The title “Cheney’s Betting on Bad News” gives the game away but you’ll be wanting the details. They are simple enough. The man who has been, and will be for another 10 months, king has some $25 million that specializes in short term municipal funds, a tax exempt moneymarket fund, and an inflation protected securities fund. All three are geared to inflation. Protection for the ravages to come when bread prices, those with wheat in them, double by next year. The rest he has rested in good “old Europe”. That’s what we used to call Europe until the aforementioned turned it into a term of derision. The amount is somewhere between $10 and $15 mill. And it is again in bonds that are comparatively inflation proof. The only thing the Veep can see on the horizon with surety is inflation. As Mike Whitney comments’ “This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the “Bush Economic Plan” is anything but a scam aimed at looting the public till." This is exactly what I said in Planet Wall Street last week. Whitney adds “It is also apparent that Bush-Cheney couldn’t have carried this out without the approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets.” You can bet your remaining worthless bucks these moves are based on information the major trading housing would kill for and those guys kill for practice. Cheney is betting on Stagflation. Obama is talking to Paul Volker.
AT LAST A REAL ECONOMIC DEBATE - a great debate is beginning in the US. It is far too late and is almost of academic interest but also far too important to ignore for if anything is to be learnt and truly absorbed the citizenry may be in a position to mitigate the consequences of past action and avoid some of the ruin that lies ahead. The debate concerns the almost absolute failure of the financial press to challenge Greenspan’s free money policies while they were being enacted (2002-3) and why the press ignored the sub-prime danger signs even when the debacle was upon us. If, as Editor and Publisher asked this week, the US is on the edge of a “disaster” with a “financial Nuclear winter” waiting in the wings , “why were American news consumers among the last to know?” Funnily enough, and there is nothing funny about it, this “great debate” begins as the wars in the Middle East, while entering an extremely dangerous phase, are being consigned to page eight of the newspapers, given scant attention on TV and are hardly dominating the Presidential playground where the low and the mean (ingless) continue to dominate. In a way the two unmitigated disasters are flip sides of the same coin. But the “who lost the Middle East” question will not arise until we have a Democratic President, which I assume to be next year.In the meantime, as The New York Times commented his week, “the public have lost interest.”
BEWARE OF GLASS HOUSES Because while it is easy to see the mistakes other nations are making it is near impossible to see the ones at hand. The British press, as good as it gets, is a case in point. They were quick to see the folly of the war against Iraq and the economic crisis the US faces. Other papers did not join the scramble for war, and once it was launched took, like their readers, the politically unpopular position of opposition. The Guardian was joined by the Independent and even Murdoch’s London Times published some of the most important of the stories to challenge its base. In France and Germany opposition was rife and the Fairfax group in Australia published compelling truly anti-war stories that attained a suggestion of All’s Quiet on The Western Front.” But, returning to England it seems odd that the British press is revelling in the failures of the US media today while the members of a real estate conflagration that might eclipse that of the US glow brighter - yet the mood of merryEngland is…merry.
STREET FIGHTING PEOPLE Danny Schechter, quotes Larry Elliot, economic editor of The Guardian in London saying; "It is somewhat surprising, that there is not already rioting in the streets, given the gigantic fraud perpetrated by the financial elite at the expense of ordinary Americans.” He must have missed the anti-globalization efforts in Seatlle although I remember The Guardian printing the route plans prior to a nasty anti glob. riot when I was in London in 1998. And the Economist buys into the question from another angle, If such a fraud was taking place, and if Wall Street’s financial crisis was on the edge of “disaster” with a “financial nuclear winter” waiting in the wings, why were American news consumers among the last to know? The US coverage of the war with Iraq has been almost as haphazard and triumphalist as the conduct of the war. The New York Times' Judith Miller, acting as stenographer for the spurious claims of the military, of the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfield element (the latter of whom was treated with something approaching idolatry by even the media elite)lead the march of folly. With the blessing of the NYT, and here Michael Gordon their military correspondent is as much to blame although he escaped unscathed, not having been part of the Wilson-Palme affair, the remaining Liberal media and Liberal elements in Congress, and even members of the United Nations fell into line. The challenge was never to get Murdoch or Rush Limbaugh on side but with the Times support came a validity for the war to destroy Saddam that the administration craved. When Cheney appeared selling the war he did so repeatedly in the days following a Judith Miller or Miller-Gordon exclusive.The whole-hearted backing of the Times laid the ground for a whole-scale application of the iron law that in war the first casualty is the truth. Amazingly, on the fifth anniversary the Times deemed that the reason for the increasingly sparse coverage of the war was a “decline in public interest.” This was the sort of reasoning I encountered when asking LA journalists why they took such little interest in the gang wars of downtown LA in and around 1990. Ten dead in one night yet no reports in the journal of reference. No-one, I was told was interested any more. They were weary of the war in their own city. Without media attention there was no political pressure on the major’s office and therefore no demands on the police. After all,the major was black. Senile but black. I once has a friend breathlessly confide to me that he had killed an African American while being robbed late at night a few nights before outside a well known Hollywood restaurant. Knowing I had some pretty good sources he wondered if I might see if he was being sought. The Times had not covered the story and there was no way I was going to call my contacts so I later told him there was no serious inquiry, knowing there would not be one. The public had long lost interest. But had 10 mothers who lost their kids lost interest? Had their brothers? Obviously not, but the African American community scarcely reads the LA Times. Alternatively,they might if someone was writing about the nightly street battles.
THE DEAD ARE NOT AS MANY?
If we look back almost a year and read the coverage of the 3,000 US personel or further to the 2,000th death in Iraq the coverage was, by comparison huge. Why is it no longer a big story? Americans have again grown weary, victory is not imminent and no-one likes to read of repeated defeat. And most of the dead are black, Hispanic and or white poor kids from small towns where the army is the major employer. Few people I know in LA knows anyone with family in Iraq. Go to rural America and almost every town has their dead heroes or brain dead equivalents and the Times, be it LA Washington or New York, have lost interest. Have the publishers, recognizing the enormity of what has occurred, that in 7 years the greatest super power has been reduced to beggary,that solutions associated once with nations like Argentina are in the offing, that US military, economic and technical might has been stolen or squandered – both infact - declined their duties? They have presided over a “lost decade” which while not yet a decade old is lost in a more profound way than the seventies - a terrible economic yardstick - and that although they were at the helm at the time, they failed to call in their editors and suggest all was not well, and that history is, at this very moment, looking at a veritable host of people to blame? Surely they, and their editors know that they will be found wanting, their utterances examined and, if the best they can come up with is “the public have lost interest” the future will not be kind to them. As President Bush prepares the censors for his presidential library and compiles the list of pardons while the lawyers contemplate if people can be pardoned for crimes we have yet to learn of, if blanket pardons are constitutional – they are not - the US corporate-media-publishing elite are contemplating their place in history.It is not a debate they will be anxious to see bloom but it has begun.
In the meantime, my dear associate Media Blab, mentioned recently the Guardian is again contemplating opening a US based edition which will no doubt peruse these matters with alacrity and discover things the US press may not wish to ardently er press.
Where is the most powerful man in the world, with the possible exceptions of Rupert Murdoch and Vladimir Putin, putting his money? Vice President Cheney might have blundered on all counts international, but when I last looked his investment in Halliburton had reaped 8 times what he sowed. He is reputedly tight with his dosh and Planet Wall Street figures that whatever he has chosen it is based on more information than I, you, or the entire apparatus of Goldman Sachs could muster. Given, as we learnt from his constant and unprecedented interference occasioned by the CIA’s failures to initially find evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in that doomed search, it is reasonable to assume he has pursued all avenues to glean what he can from the secret treasury documents before making his investment. Now, as this information is public he can hardly buy gold. Not in his own name anyway. That would really scare the horses. So where has it gone? How does the man at the helm see things unwinding and what’s he doing with his readies?
Kiplinger Magazine has run an article on just this, and the incomparable Mike Whitney has got his teeth into it in an account that looks under the covers of the current Information Clearing House. The title “Cheney’s Betting on Bad News” gives the game away but you’ll be wanting the details. They are simple enough. The man who has been, and will be for another 10 months, king has some $25 million that specializes in short term municipal funds, a tax exempt moneymarket fund, and an inflation protected securities fund. All three are geared to inflation. Protection for the ravages to come when bread prices, those with wheat in them, double by next year. The rest he has rested in good “old Europe”. That’s what we used to call Europe until the aforementioned turned it into a term of derision. The amount is somewhere between $10 and $15 mill. And it is again in bonds that are comparatively inflation proof. The only thing the Veep can see on the horizon with surety is inflation. As Mike Whitney comments’ “This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the “Bush Economic Plan” is anything but a scam aimed at looting the public till." This is exactly what I said in Planet Wall Street last week. Whitney adds “It is also apparent that Bush-Cheney couldn’t have carried this out without the approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets.” You can bet your remaining worthless bucks these moves are based on information the major trading housing would kill for and those guys kill for practice. Cheney is betting on Stagflation. Obama is talking to Paul Volker.
AT LAST A REAL ECONOMIC DEBATE - a great debate is beginning in the US. It is far too late and is almost of academic interest but also far too important to ignore for if anything is to be learnt and truly absorbed the citizenry may be in a position to mitigate the consequences of past action and avoid some of the ruin that lies ahead. The debate concerns the almost absolute failure of the financial press to challenge Greenspan’s free money policies while they were being enacted (2002-3) and why the press ignored the sub-prime danger signs even when the debacle was upon us. If, as Editor and Publisher asked this week, the US is on the edge of a “disaster” with a “financial Nuclear winter” waiting in the wings , “why were American news consumers among the last to know?” Funnily enough, and there is nothing funny about it, this “great debate” begins as the wars in the Middle East, while entering an extremely dangerous phase, are being consigned to page eight of the newspapers, given scant attention on TV and are hardly dominating the Presidential playground where the low and the mean (ingless) continue to dominate. In a way the two unmitigated disasters are flip sides of the same coin. But the “who lost the Middle East” question will not arise until we have a Democratic President, which I assume to be next year.In the meantime, as The New York Times commented his week, “the public have lost interest.”
BEWARE OF GLASS HOUSES Because while it is easy to see the mistakes other nations are making it is near impossible to see the ones at hand. The British press, as good as it gets, is a case in point. They were quick to see the folly of the war against Iraq and the economic crisis the US faces. Other papers did not join the scramble for war, and once it was launched took, like their readers, the politically unpopular position of opposition. The Guardian was joined by the Independent and even Murdoch’s London Times published some of the most important of the stories to challenge its base. In France and Germany opposition was rife and the Fairfax group in Australia published compelling truly anti-war stories that attained a suggestion of All’s Quiet on The Western Front.” But, returning to England it seems odd that the British press is revelling in the failures of the US media today while the members of a real estate conflagration that might eclipse that of the US glow brighter - yet the mood of merryEngland is…merry.
STREET FIGHTING PEOPLE Danny Schechter, quotes Larry Elliot, economic editor of The Guardian in London saying; "It is somewhat surprising, that there is not already rioting in the streets, given the gigantic fraud perpetrated by the financial elite at the expense of ordinary Americans.” He must have missed the anti-globalization efforts in Seatlle although I remember The Guardian printing the route plans prior to a nasty anti glob. riot when I was in London in 1998. And the Economist buys into the question from another angle, If such a fraud was taking place, and if Wall Street’s financial crisis was on the edge of “disaster” with a “financial nuclear winter” waiting in the wings, why were American news consumers among the last to know? The US coverage of the war with Iraq has been almost as haphazard and triumphalist as the conduct of the war. The New York Times' Judith Miller, acting as stenographer for the spurious claims of the military, of the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfield element (the latter of whom was treated with something approaching idolatry by even the media elite)lead the march of folly. With the blessing of the NYT, and here Michael Gordon their military correspondent is as much to blame although he escaped unscathed, not having been part of the Wilson-Palme affair, the remaining Liberal media and Liberal elements in Congress, and even members of the United Nations fell into line. The challenge was never to get Murdoch or Rush Limbaugh on side but with the Times support came a validity for the war to destroy Saddam that the administration craved. When Cheney appeared selling the war he did so repeatedly in the days following a Judith Miller or Miller-Gordon exclusive.The whole-hearted backing of the Times laid the ground for a whole-scale application of the iron law that in war the first casualty is the truth. Amazingly, on the fifth anniversary the Times deemed that the reason for the increasingly sparse coverage of the war was a “decline in public interest.” This was the sort of reasoning I encountered when asking LA journalists why they took such little interest in the gang wars of downtown LA in and around 1990. Ten dead in one night yet no reports in the journal of reference. No-one, I was told was interested any more. They were weary of the war in their own city. Without media attention there was no political pressure on the major’s office and therefore no demands on the police. After all,the major was black. Senile but black. I once has a friend breathlessly confide to me that he had killed an African American while being robbed late at night a few nights before outside a well known Hollywood restaurant. Knowing I had some pretty good sources he wondered if I might see if he was being sought. The Times had not covered the story and there was no way I was going to call my contacts so I later told him there was no serious inquiry, knowing there would not be one. The public had long lost interest. But had 10 mothers who lost their kids lost interest? Had their brothers? Obviously not, but the African American community scarcely reads the LA Times. Alternatively,they might if someone was writing about the nightly street battles.
THE DEAD ARE NOT AS MANY?
If we look back almost a year and read the coverage of the 3,000 US personel or further to the 2,000th death in Iraq the coverage was, by comparison huge. Why is it no longer a big story? Americans have again grown weary, victory is not imminent and no-one likes to read of repeated defeat. And most of the dead are black, Hispanic and or white poor kids from small towns where the army is the major employer. Few people I know in LA knows anyone with family in Iraq. Go to rural America and almost every town has their dead heroes or brain dead equivalents and the Times, be it LA Washington or New York, have lost interest. Have the publishers, recognizing the enormity of what has occurred, that in 7 years the greatest super power has been reduced to beggary,that solutions associated once with nations like Argentina are in the offing, that US military, economic and technical might has been stolen or squandered – both infact - declined their duties? They have presided over a “lost decade” which while not yet a decade old is lost in a more profound way than the seventies - a terrible economic yardstick - and that although they were at the helm at the time, they failed to call in their editors and suggest all was not well, and that history is, at this very moment, looking at a veritable host of people to blame? Surely they, and their editors know that they will be found wanting, their utterances examined and, if the best they can come up with is “the public have lost interest” the future will not be kind to them. As President Bush prepares the censors for his presidential library and compiles the list of pardons while the lawyers contemplate if people can be pardoned for crimes we have yet to learn of, if blanket pardons are constitutional – they are not - the US corporate-media-publishing elite are contemplating their place in history.It is not a debate they will be anxious to see bloom but it has begun.
In the meantime, my dear associate Media Blab, mentioned recently the Guardian is again contemplating opening a US based edition which will no doubt peruse these matters with alacrity and discover things the US press may not wish to ardently er press.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)