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Strategies & Market Trends : John Pitera's Market Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ajtj99 who wrote (11443)	1/21/2009 9:10:31 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 33421

It may be the only way to get that area moving forward would be for these systems to stop being suppressed and let them play out and fail so we can move forward with the next system. Hmmm.. That would be a dangerous game, IMO. Had the Nazi's been suppressed by the League of Nations, AND the needs of the people looked to, we might have avoided the deaths of millions (and maybe not). Secular totalitarian regimes are relatively easier to confront since their ideologies are often infantile, transient, and quickly swept away by the winds of time (and blood of many). However, religious totalitarianism is a different beast, IMO. Whenever you mix spiritual beliefs held by a large majority, and then fire it up with the militant rhetoric of fanatics promising to restore your previous historical glory, that's very heady stuff which is hard to ignore. It's how tens of thousands of Europeans were motivated to wage a crusade to liberate the holy land, as well as countless other wars waged in the name of God, Allah, Jehovah.. etc I just don't believe it's worth the potential consequences (given 1.4 Billion Muslims) for us to permit the spread of militant Islam without confronting it. But what we DO NEED to do is something Obama correctly stated.. When they "unclench their fist", stand ready to give them a hand. Additionally, tying them to our military equipment and support also ties them to our logistics and gives us a measure of influence and control. Unfortunately, were any of them to gain nuclear weapons, that influence would be dramatically altered. Btw.. to bring this back on topic (sorry John!), I'm curious how the Citigroup debacle is going to impact Arab investment in the US? The "dear Prince Walid" got his butt handed to him, so I wonder if he'll avoid US financials? And given the tremendous losses in their Sovereign funds ($2.5 trillion+), how do we all feel about how the current deflationary spiral is going to affect the Mid-East oil producers? We have a ton of oil building up on those VLCC's, and when capacity is filled, are we going to see OPEC forced to cut in order to draw down that capacity (since they can't transport it if it's all being stored)? Are they just in an endless cycle of trying to outpump their neighbors in order to capture market share and restore bank balances? Hawk