The aim of Globalization is to kill capitalism. Here is an article from the NY Times 2/26/10
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, suggested Friday the organization might one day be called on to provide countries with a global reserve currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar.
''That day has not yet come, but I think it is intellectually healthy to explore these kinds of ideas now,'' he said in a speech on the future mandate of the 186-nation Washington-based lending organization.
Strauss-Kahn said such an asset could be similar to but distinctly different from the IMF's special drawing rights, or SDRs, the accounting unit that countries use to hold funds within the IMF. It is based on a basket of major currencies.
He said having other alternatives to the dollar ''would limit the extent to which the international monetary system as a whole depends on the policies and conditions of a single, albeit dominant, country.''
Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister of France, said that during the recent global financial crisis, the dollar ''played its role as a safe haven'' asset, and the current international monetary system demonstrated resilience.
''The challenge ahead is to find ways to limit the tension arising from the high demand for precautionary reserves on the one hand and the narrow supply of reserves on the other,'' he said.
Several countries, including China and Russia, have called for an alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency and have suggested using the IMF's internal accounting unit.
Strauss-Kahn said the IMF also needs to do a better job of tracing how risk percolates through the global economy.
''Here it will be essential to improve our ability to monitor several dozen large complex financial institutions that make up the `plumbing' through which global capital flows,'' he said, while leaving national regulators the job of monitoring the solvency of individual institutions.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Monday, August 31, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
How socialism.....eh, works
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.
That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.
The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
Could not be any simpler than that. ANON.
That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.
The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
Could not be any simpler than that. ANON.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
I proved 1 man protesting can make a difference today.
Don't let me EVER hear anyone say our protesting is not working! Today my own efforts were certainly vindicated. After what happened today, I am more convinced we are making a difference.
I forgot my directions at home so around 10 am I finally arrived from Wilmington where I fianally wandered into the protesters in Raleigh awaiting the President. Luckily, there were police everywhere lined on the streets for miles making it pretty easy to find the protest. Once there, I parked and walked the 1/2 mile where I met up with about 40 others. Soon we were informed the main group was down the block.
Thats where the action was. Moveon.org, women's health, and global warming people (50-60 maximum for the day) were on one side and we were on the other. It was a beautiful sidewalk backed by a 5 foot stone wall encompassed by the branches of some tall oaks. This is one truly beautiful school. Our numbers grew to close to 1000 ( I always underestimate) lining both sides of the corner stretching for blocks each way.
I must say that I scoped out the premier protest spot. It was on the stone wall under a few majstic shade trees. My sign that read " Politicians + Healthcare = Disaster" sat in my lap, yet was over 5 foot in the air and directly facing the Moveon crowd. Honestly, I was in a quiet mood and was content to observe from my excellent vantage point.
An hour later sirens blared, fire trucks and State Troopers on motorcycles came next, and black SUVs then go racing by. Then....nothing. I guess they were an advance team since the President wouldn't show for another 15-20 minutes.
This is about the time my heart is now crushed because the organizer from FreedomWorks told everyone to move around the block to both sides of the road. "What, leave this wonderful seat? Noooooo! I tell you what, what a great call. Kudos to whomever made this decision. They enabled MANY more of us to be in sight of the presidential motorcade.
Lamenting the loss of the best protest spot I've ever had, we were told to shuffle down even more...all the way to the school entrance and out of sight of the Moveon people. I was getting worried. Were we taking ourselves out of eyeshot? Why did we keep moving? Should I go back, I got a great spot?
Instead, I climbed a small hill at the very entrance of the school. Secret service moved us back , but just as the motorcade finally came within sight, I shuffled a little ways down. I now had THE best protest site I could hope for (what a day!). He looked at my sign and I at him. I would've thought the windows on the Presidential limo would be more tinted, but there he was looking very interested in our signs. I swear I had the feeling he was looking for signs of support, but how much can I read into the President's eyes in a passing car?!
Nonetheless, for more than a full second he was looking at my sign. I was on a hill with no one very near to me. I could be wrong, but I feel fairly certain of it. I could see him clear as day and he was looking straight at my sign.
I came home and googled news and found the Wall Street Journal quoted my sign in the following.....
........."RALEIGH, N.C. -- President Barack Obama, acknowledging the rising protests against his health-care efforts, took some of the sharpest jabs yet at his opponents, accusing them of rallying opposition with scare tactics and hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman conceded the House wouldn't vote on a health-care plan before its August recess. But Mr. Waxman said that his committee will resume meetings on health-care legislation Wednesday after reaching an agreement with conservative Democrats on the committee that included a delayed vote.
The president acknowledged opposition is growing. A large and boisterous clutch of protesters greeted him at Raleigh's Needham B. Broughton High School with signs reading, "Obamacare is Socialism," "Stop Lying," and [u][b]"Politicians + Health Care = Disaster."[/b][/u]
"As I was driving in, there were some folks cheering, and there were some folks with signs," he chuckled to knowing laughter in a largely friendly audience."...................
full article at;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124887385627890129.html
I will post a picture of my sign ASAP. Don't ever tell me protesting is a waste of time again. Never, ever again. Never, ever.
Tom Naramore
Raleigh Health Care Town Hall July 29 protest
I forgot my directions at home so around 10 am I finally arrived from Wilmington where I fianally wandered into the protesters in Raleigh awaiting the President. Luckily, there were police everywhere lined on the streets for miles making it pretty easy to find the protest. Once there, I parked and walked the 1/2 mile where I met up with about 40 others. Soon we were informed the main group was down the block.
Thats where the action was. Moveon.org, women's health, and global warming people (50-60 maximum for the day) were on one side and we were on the other. It was a beautiful sidewalk backed by a 5 foot stone wall encompassed by the branches of some tall oaks. This is one truly beautiful school. Our numbers grew to close to 1000 ( I always underestimate) lining both sides of the corner stretching for blocks each way.
I must say that I scoped out the premier protest spot. It was on the stone wall under a few majstic shade trees. My sign that read " Politicians + Healthcare = Disaster" sat in my lap, yet was over 5 foot in the air and directly facing the Moveon crowd. Honestly, I was in a quiet mood and was content to observe from my excellent vantage point.
An hour later sirens blared, fire trucks and State Troopers on motorcycles came next, and black SUVs then go racing by. Then....nothing. I guess they were an advance team since the President wouldn't show for another 15-20 minutes.
This is about the time my heart is now crushed because the organizer from FreedomWorks told everyone to move around the block to both sides of the road. "What, leave this wonderful seat? Noooooo! I tell you what, what a great call. Kudos to whomever made this decision. They enabled MANY more of us to be in sight of the presidential motorcade.
Lamenting the loss of the best protest spot I've ever had, we were told to shuffle down even more...all the way to the school entrance and out of sight of the Moveon people. I was getting worried. Were we taking ourselves out of eyeshot? Why did we keep moving? Should I go back, I got a great spot?
Instead, I climbed a small hill at the very entrance of the school. Secret service moved us back , but just as the motorcade finally came within sight, I shuffled a little ways down. I now had THE best protest site I could hope for (what a day!). He looked at my sign and I at him. I would've thought the windows on the Presidential limo would be more tinted, but there he was looking very interested in our signs. I swear I had the feeling he was looking for signs of support, but how much can I read into the President's eyes in a passing car?!
Nonetheless, for more than a full second he was looking at my sign. I was on a hill with no one very near to me. I could be wrong, but I feel fairly certain of it. I could see him clear as day and he was looking straight at my sign.
I came home and googled news and found the Wall Street Journal quoted my sign in the following.....
........."RALEIGH, N.C. -- President Barack Obama, acknowledging the rising protests against his health-care efforts, took some of the sharpest jabs yet at his opponents, accusing them of rallying opposition with scare tactics and hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman conceded the House wouldn't vote on a health-care plan before its August recess. But Mr. Waxman said that his committee will resume meetings on health-care legislation Wednesday after reaching an agreement with conservative Democrats on the committee that included a delayed vote.
The president acknowledged opposition is growing. A large and boisterous clutch of protesters greeted him at Raleigh's Needham B. Broughton High School with signs reading, "Obamacare is Socialism," "Stop Lying," and [u][b]"Politicians + Health Care = Disaster."[/b][/u]
"As I was driving in, there were some folks cheering, and there were some folks with signs," he chuckled to knowing laughter in a largely friendly audience."...................
full article at;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124887385627890129.html
I will post a picture of my sign ASAP. Don't ever tell me protesting is a waste of time again. Never, ever again. Never, ever.
Tom Naramore
Raleigh Health Care Town Hall July 29 protest
Sunday, July 19, 2009
The vast, deep-seated global economic imbalances that were the fundamental cause of the present crisis.
from TheTimesOnline 7/20/09
It is to these “imbalances” that we can trace back the dynamic that spawned the calamitous economic fate now being endured by the United States and the world.
On one side of a relationship that we now know was a Faustian bargain, America spent most of the past decade or more on a runaway consumer binge — fuelled by an unsustainable boom in house prices and a headlong accumulation of debt that was made attractive and accessible by a flood of cheap money.
On the other side of the equation sat China, where vast savings — as excessive in many ways as heedless US consumption — provided the ultimate source of the easy money blown by Americans on cheap Chinese imports.
As Chinese exports to US consumers boomed, Beijing happily recycled the massive proceeds on buying up seemingly limitless quantities of US Treasury bonds. In turn, this drove down China’s exchange rate and kept its products cheap and US citizens eager to buy to buy them. Americans’ access to ever greater borrowing was subsidised as China’s T-bond buying strategy forced down US market interest rates.
This seemingly perfect symbiotic relationship was unsustainable, however. It collapsed as soon as American house prices crashed and unravelled its twisted economic logic.
Yet while this “great game” ought now to be decisively over, both Washington and Beijing still seem intent on simply pressing “restart”. All of US policy to fight the slump is presently geared to shoring up and reviving consumption. At the same time, many market players are being deluded into thinking that the fundamental corrections needed to restore balance to the global economy are already under way. They are not.
To achieve this vital rebalancing, what is required is for the United States to spend less and save more, while China must move, albeit gradually, to an economy driven far more by domestic demand and consumption and become much less dependent on exports.
Some economic observers have come to believe that this is already under way. The key reason for this mistaken belief is that the US household savings ratio, the headline gauge of how much once-spendthrift Americans are saving, has soared during the crisis, from a meagre 0.4 per cent in 2005 to a startling 6.9 per cent this May.
But, as Mark Cliffe, chief economist of ING, the Dutch-owned bank, exposes in new research, this trend is very far from being all that it appears. Mr Cliffe shows that because the savings ratio is, in reality, a net measure that tots up changes in what most would regard as savings — the squirrelling away of money in shares, deposits or other assets — with changes in borrowing, it shows just the opposite of what the headline numbers have seemed to indicate.
The reason that the savings gauge has leapt is not that Americans are saving more, but only that they are paying off their past, huge borrowings because of financial distress. Americans actually cut savings in the form of financial assets held by 0.5 per cent of their incomes in the first quarter, while cutting borrowing even more aggressively, by 5 per cent of income. This telling data leads to two important conclusions.
First, it suggests that immediate US recovery prospects may be even more frail than supposed, and than Mr Bernanke is liable to admit. With Americans now battling to pay down debt against a backdrop of still-plunging house prices and soaring unemployment, while shoring up spending power with cuts in their savings, the resurgence of consumer demand on which recovery hopes are pinned may well prove elusive. The position could grow worse still once the boost to US personal incomes from the Obama Administration’s fiscal giveaway also fades, as it soon will.
Second, and critically, it is clear that America has yet to begin to address the real roots of this crisis and embark on the long road to a more sustainable economic future. Until it does so, the future will remain a hostage to fortune.
It is to these “imbalances” that we can trace back the dynamic that spawned the calamitous economic fate now being endured by the United States and the world.
On one side of a relationship that we now know was a Faustian bargain, America spent most of the past decade or more on a runaway consumer binge — fuelled by an unsustainable boom in house prices and a headlong accumulation of debt that was made attractive and accessible by a flood of cheap money.
On the other side of the equation sat China, where vast savings — as excessive in many ways as heedless US consumption — provided the ultimate source of the easy money blown by Americans on cheap Chinese imports.
As Chinese exports to US consumers boomed, Beijing happily recycled the massive proceeds on buying up seemingly limitless quantities of US Treasury bonds. In turn, this drove down China’s exchange rate and kept its products cheap and US citizens eager to buy to buy them. Americans’ access to ever greater borrowing was subsidised as China’s T-bond buying strategy forced down US market interest rates.
This seemingly perfect symbiotic relationship was unsustainable, however. It collapsed as soon as American house prices crashed and unravelled its twisted economic logic.
Yet while this “great game” ought now to be decisively over, both Washington and Beijing still seem intent on simply pressing “restart”. All of US policy to fight the slump is presently geared to shoring up and reviving consumption. At the same time, many market players are being deluded into thinking that the fundamental corrections needed to restore balance to the global economy are already under way. They are not.
To achieve this vital rebalancing, what is required is for the United States to spend less and save more, while China must move, albeit gradually, to an economy driven far more by domestic demand and consumption and become much less dependent on exports.
Some economic observers have come to believe that this is already under way. The key reason for this mistaken belief is that the US household savings ratio, the headline gauge of how much once-spendthrift Americans are saving, has soared during the crisis, from a meagre 0.4 per cent in 2005 to a startling 6.9 per cent this May.
But, as Mark Cliffe, chief economist of ING, the Dutch-owned bank, exposes in new research, this trend is very far from being all that it appears. Mr Cliffe shows that because the savings ratio is, in reality, a net measure that tots up changes in what most would regard as savings — the squirrelling away of money in shares, deposits or other assets — with changes in borrowing, it shows just the opposite of what the headline numbers have seemed to indicate.
The reason that the savings gauge has leapt is not that Americans are saving more, but only that they are paying off their past, huge borrowings because of financial distress. Americans actually cut savings in the form of financial assets held by 0.5 per cent of their incomes in the first quarter, while cutting borrowing even more aggressively, by 5 per cent of income. This telling data leads to two important conclusions.
First, it suggests that immediate US recovery prospects may be even more frail than supposed, and than Mr Bernanke is liable to admit. With Americans now battling to pay down debt against a backdrop of still-plunging house prices and soaring unemployment, while shoring up spending power with cuts in their savings, the resurgence of consumer demand on which recovery hopes are pinned may well prove elusive. The position could grow worse still once the boost to US personal incomes from the Obama Administration’s fiscal giveaway also fades, as it soon will.
Second, and critically, it is clear that America has yet to begin to address the real roots of this crisis and embark on the long road to a more sustainable economic future. Until it does so, the future will remain a hostage to fortune.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Defining journalism down
Media Mangle
Defining journalism down
Outright advocacy by reporters is undermining journalism's credibility
By Jon Ham
April 17, 2009
Any editor, news producer, journalism professor or J-school dean should be appalled at the now-infamous performance of CNN reporter Susan Roesgen “interviewing” a participant at the Chicago Tea Party event on Wednesday. Sadly, that’s not the case.
The level of blatant bias and contempt for the people she was covering would have gotten any reporter fired a generation ago, but not today. I’ve seen not a word of condemnation from CNN in reaction to her outrageous performance earlier this week, but that’s not surprising. They’ll probably reward her with a prime time show for abandoning her journalist’s role for the role of public-relations shill for the Obama administration.
In the YouTube clip of her report she asks a man holding his two-year-old son why he’s there at the Tea Party event.
He begins to talk about liberty when she cuts him off and asks, “What does this have to do with taxes?” He tries to explain to her that keeping the fruits of one’s labor is the essence of liberty when she interrupts again: “Don’t you realize you’re eligible for a $400 credit?” And later she shouts at him: “Did you know that the State of Lincoln gets $50 billion out of the stimulus? That’s $50 billion for this state, sir.”
By this time other Tea Party participants are yelling at her to let the man finish what he wanted to say. As the participants tell her to let the man have his say, she announces to the in-studio CNN anchor: “I think you get the tenor of this. It’s anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and since this is not family viewing, toss it back to you.”
This is straight out of the street activist’s handbook. Make yourself as obnoxious as possible to provoke a reaction, and then play the victim when your obnoxious behavior is challenged. This is what passes for journalism these days.
I remember a time when a lack of journalistic professionalism was a serious thing. Many years ago a good friend of mine was sent, along with a reporter from our sister paper, to cover a national politician’s appearance at a local university. The two accounts of the speech were so different that our managing editor, executive editor and publisher investigated. It turned out that my friend was the one who let his personal biases get in the way of his news writing. For his transgression he was put on probation and his pay was docked.
I don’t have his story in front of me, but I would bet there is nothing in it that would raise an editor’s eyebrows in this era of no-standards journalism.
In another instance, this one while I was press secretary to a governor at the time of an impending execution, a reporter came to me and said she wanted to make a statement against the death penalty by holding the hand of the convicted murderer as the current was sent through his body. She then gave interviews to that effect to the national media that had gathered for the event.
She was immediately fired, but today her action would probably be seen as a noble statement of principle, leading to an appearance on “Oprah!”
My first city editor demanded that his reporters lapse into referee mode when interviewing sources. He was fond of saying that a reporter should act no different whether interviewing a member of the Black Panthers or the Ku Klux Klan, a neo-Nazi or a Symbionese Liberation Army member. No arched eyebrow, smirk, giggle or guffaw should alert the interviewee as to the feelings of the reporter, he instructed.
But most of all, that impartiality should characterize any story written by one of his reporters, which explains why my friend was put on probation for what today would probably be seen as colorful reporting.
It was a huge deal back then to break these rules. But not any more.
Jon Ham is vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of its newspaper, Carolina Journal.
Defining journalism down
Outright advocacy by reporters is undermining journalism's credibility
By Jon Ham
April 17, 2009
Any editor, news producer, journalism professor or J-school dean should be appalled at the now-infamous performance of CNN reporter Susan Roesgen “interviewing” a participant at the Chicago Tea Party event on Wednesday. Sadly, that’s not the case.
The level of blatant bias and contempt for the people she was covering would have gotten any reporter fired a generation ago, but not today. I’ve seen not a word of condemnation from CNN in reaction to her outrageous performance earlier this week, but that’s not surprising. They’ll probably reward her with a prime time show for abandoning her journalist’s role for the role of public-relations shill for the Obama administration.
In the YouTube clip of her report she asks a man holding his two-year-old son why he’s there at the Tea Party event.
He begins to talk about liberty when she cuts him off and asks, “What does this have to do with taxes?” He tries to explain to her that keeping the fruits of one’s labor is the essence of liberty when she interrupts again: “Don’t you realize you’re eligible for a $400 credit?” And later she shouts at him: “Did you know that the State of Lincoln gets $50 billion out of the stimulus? That’s $50 billion for this state, sir.”
By this time other Tea Party participants are yelling at her to let the man finish what he wanted to say. As the participants tell her to let the man have his say, she announces to the in-studio CNN anchor: “I think you get the tenor of this. It’s anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and since this is not family viewing, toss it back to you.”
This is straight out of the street activist’s handbook. Make yourself as obnoxious as possible to provoke a reaction, and then play the victim when your obnoxious behavior is challenged. This is what passes for journalism these days.
I remember a time when a lack of journalistic professionalism was a serious thing. Many years ago a good friend of mine was sent, along with a reporter from our sister paper, to cover a national politician’s appearance at a local university. The two accounts of the speech were so different that our managing editor, executive editor and publisher investigated. It turned out that my friend was the one who let his personal biases get in the way of his news writing. For his transgression he was put on probation and his pay was docked.
I don’t have his story in front of me, but I would bet there is nothing in it that would raise an editor’s eyebrows in this era of no-standards journalism.
In another instance, this one while I was press secretary to a governor at the time of an impending execution, a reporter came to me and said she wanted to make a statement against the death penalty by holding the hand of the convicted murderer as the current was sent through his body. She then gave interviews to that effect to the national media that had gathered for the event.
She was immediately fired, but today her action would probably be seen as a noble statement of principle, leading to an appearance on “Oprah!”
My first city editor demanded that his reporters lapse into referee mode when interviewing sources. He was fond of saying that a reporter should act no different whether interviewing a member of the Black Panthers or the Ku Klux Klan, a neo-Nazi or a Symbionese Liberation Army member. No arched eyebrow, smirk, giggle or guffaw should alert the interviewee as to the feelings of the reporter, he instructed.
But most of all, that impartiality should characterize any story written by one of his reporters, which explains why my friend was put on probation for what today would probably be seen as colorful reporting.
It was a huge deal back then to break these rules. But not any more.
Jon Ham is vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of its newspaper, Carolina Journal.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
