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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (423638)	10/8/2008 6:19:53 AM
From: Road Walker	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572094

Palin’s Kind of Patriotism By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.” What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic. I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first. Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.” I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic. How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now? We are in the middle of an economic perfect storm, and we don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. People all over the world are hoarding cash, and no bank feels that it can fully trust anyone it is doing business with anywhere in the world. Did you notice that the government of Iceland just seized the country’s second-largest bank and today is begging Russia for a $5 billion loan to stave off “national bankruptcy.” What does that say? It tells you that financial globalization has gone so much farther and faster than regulatory institutions could govern it. Our crisis could bankrupt Iceland! Who knew? And we have not yet even felt the full economic brunt here. I fear we may be at that moment just before the tsunami hits — when the birds take flight and the insects stop chirping because their acute senses can feel what is coming before humans can. At this moment, only good governance can save us. I am not sure that this crisis will end without every government in every major economy guaranteeing the creditworthiness of every financial institution it regulates. That may be the only way to get lending going again. Organizing something that big and complex will take some really smart governance and seasoned leadership. Whether or not I agree with John McCain, he is of presidential timber. But putting the country in the position where a total novice like Sarah Palin could be asked to steer us through possibly the most serious economic crisis of our lives is flat out reckless. It is the opposite of conservative. And please don’t tell me she will hire smart advisers. What happens when her two smartest advisers disagree? And please also don’t tell me she is an “energy expert.” She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert — by accident of residence. Palin happens to be governor of the Saudi Arabia of America — Alaska — and the only energy expertise she has is the same as the king of Saudi Arabia’s. It’s about how the windfall profits from the oil in their respective kingdoms should be divided between the oil companies and the people. At least the king of Saudi Arabia, in advocating “drill baby drill,” is serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. My problem with Palin is that she is also serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. That’s not patriotic. Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy — not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs. If Palin has that kind of a plan, I haven’t heard it.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (423638)	10/8/2008 6:26:03 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572094

... and the artie went on to say: Frank, in August, told CNN that a new guiding principle for the housing market should be "we basically have to tell people who want to make mortgage loans something terribly radical: Do not lend money to people who can't pay it back." Asked how the U.S. mortgage market got to this horrible place, Frank said, "We had too little regulation at a point of great financial innovation. Twenty years ago, most loans were made by someone who expected to be paid back by the borrower. And lenders who want to be paid back by the borrower are careful about who they lend to. Then came this great innovation called securitization. Securitization means that I lend you money and quickly sell the right to be paid back by you to other people. Well, when the lender ceased to have an ongoing relationship with the borrower, a tremendous amount of banking discipline was lost. And it was much harder to replace than we thought." Why didn’t regulators step in? "Back in 1994, Congress gave the Federal Reserve the authority to ban irresponsible mortgages," Frank said. "Alan Greenspan, as a very committed anti-regulation conservative, refused -- literally refused -- to use that authority. Congress can give people authority; we can't compel them to use it. Ben Bernanke, to his credit, realized that it was time to use that authority. So he promulgated a set of rules on July 14 of this year to prohibit a lot of the mortgages of the type that got us in trouble. If Alan Greenspan had done 10 years ago what Ben Bernanke did this past July, we would have much less of a problem in subprime mortgages... "We have made a mistake in this society. The assumption that everybody can be a homeowner is wrong. We pushed and encouraged people into home ownership -- people who, in some cases, weren't ready for it. You can't act on wishes that are unrealistic without having negative consequences."

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (423638)	10/8/2008 7:14:23 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572094

Investors dump stocks despite government moves Wed Oct 8, 2008 6:58am EDT By Jeremy Gaunt, European Investment Correspondent LONDON (Reuters) - Stock markets across the world slumped on Wednesday as concerns about the worst financial crisis in nearly 80 years and fears of a global recession gripped investors despite government efforts to intervene. Many investors were looking to central banks to come up with concerted cuts in interest rates. MSCI's main benchmark index of world stocks was at around 4-year lows, down 2.7 percent, and its emerging market stock counterpart fell 7 percent. Wall Street looked set for sharp losses at the open. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index tumbled 3.7 percent, off earlier lows, and Tokyo's Nikkei share average plummeted 9.4 percent, the largest single-day percentage decline since October 1987. Government debt prices jumped as the equity selloff reached fever pitch and investors snatched anything resembling stability, such as gold which rose more than 2.5 percent and the Japanese yen. "There is somehow a disbelief in the ability of the system to repair itself," said Mike Lenhoff, chief strategist at Brewin Dolphin. "Certainly it's a very distressing situation we have got into." The sharp market moves came despite efforts by various authorities to inject calm and money into the battered financial system. Britain unveiled a multibillion pound rescue package for British banks that included plans to inject up to 50 billion pounds ($87.84 billion) of government money into the country's biggest operators. It was designed to offer banks short-term liquidity, make new capital available and give the banking system enough funds to maintain lending in the medium-term. RATE CUTS NEEDED? U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, meanwhile, warned on Tuesday that turmoil in markets could cause U.S. economic activity to be subdued into 2009 and signaled a readiness to cut interest rates. Bernanke's sobering tone about the likelihood of rate cuts came days after European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet suggested last week the euro zone too could cut rates. The Bank of England delivers its latest rate decision on Thursday and is expected to ease. However, with the upcoming Group of Seven rich nations meeting on Friday, investors have begun to look for coordinated action to snuff out what has become a severe global threat. "Bernanke and Trichet have clearly opened the door to rate cuts at any point via their recent speeches," Paul Mortimer-Lee, economist at BNP Paribas, said in a note. "What we'd like to ask central banks is: If not now, guys, then when?" HISTORIC LOSSES The losses on stock markets this week have been huge. MSCI's world index, a gauge which many investors use to judge their performance has already lost 11.6 percent since Friday's close and is on track for its worse week in the 20 years it has been in its current form. The emerging market benchmark is in the same boat, losing 17.6 percent for the week to date. The FTSEurofirst, meanwhile, was touched 5 year lows on Wednesday before recovering slightly. "Obviously equities are not the flavor of the month to put it mildly," said Peter Dixon, UK economist at Commerzbank. In credit markets -- at the heart of the crisis because of a freezing up of lending -- UK banks were standing out, with the cost of insuring their debt against default falling sharply after the government bail out. But the Markit iTraxx Crossover index, made up of 50 mostly "junk"-rated European credits, was at 634 basis points, according to data from Markit, 19 basis points wider than late on Tuesday. Money markets also showed no sign of thawing with the cost of interbank borrowing staying way above official rates. Three-month dollar interbank rates were quoted as high as 6.00 percent on Reuters system. This compares with market expectations that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates to at least 1.25 percent by January. Euro rates for the same period stood at 5.35 percent on Reuters system, compared with the benchmark ECB rate of 4.25 percent. YEN JUMPS, YIELDS FALL The low-yielding yen surged across the board as investors rushed to unwind riskier positions. The yen hit a 6-month high against the dollar and a 3-year high against the euro, while higher-yielding currencies such as the Australian dollar fell sharply against the yen. The dollar was down 1.6 percent at 99.65 yen, after hitting a low of 98.62 yen, according to Reuters data. The euro was down 1.4 percent at 135.78 yen. Interest rate-sensitive two-year Schatz yield was down 22 basis points at 2.954 percent. (Editing by Victoria Main) © Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved.