Tell that to the markets. They don’t seem terribly impressed.
The markets, especially the equities markets, are presently responding to the probability that interest rates will rise in the near future because of strong economic growth. Even companies with tremendous records and prospects are getting hammered.
While your point may have some diluted validity, it does not adequately explain what's going on in the markets.
I think strong economic growth and the consequent inflationary pressure caused by interest rates which have been historically low for a very long time, are probably 66% to 75% of the reasons for the market decline.
I prefer to look at the obvious causes.
If we don’t go into Pakistan, we can’t go after AQ; if we do, we may very well bring Musharraf down, or force him to back away from us. We all know where that could lead. Islamic bomb, anyone? How about 60 of them?
The reality of things is very different, I think, since we are seeing a large number of semi-autonomous groups who do not take direct guidance from AQ, and may have no connection at all to it other than parallel ideological goals, which are creating a lot of havoc. This is actually a worse situation than the one you posit, but facts are facts. The terror web is spreading, but that is not surprising after the war in Afghanistan lanced the boil, spreading the disease everywhere.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are bigger problems than Iraq, just as they were before the Iraq war. We chose not to deal with those problems, because we wanted to be seen using large-scale force and that tactic was not appropriate for dealing with Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.
We chose not to deal with SA and Pakistan because the options are severely limited. Got any that might work without impacting the West's oil supply and/or having a huge nation armed with nukes totally out of control? |
