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

To: i-node who wrote (491473)	6/29/2009 11:53:42 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574005

The hypocrisy the world and I see that you have managed to ignore. It isn't personal, governor By CYNTHIA TUCKER First published in print: Monday, June 29, 2009 South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and his family are in the midst of an emotionally wrenching and deeply personal crisis. I feel sorry for them. I especially pity Sanford's four sons, caught up in a scandal they did nothing to create. I'm willing to grant elected officials -- including those who hold the highest office in the land, the presidency -- a zone of privacy, as long as their personal peccadilloes don't interfere with the public's business. (Sanford seems to have violated that standard when he flew off to Argentina, secretly, without formally turning the state's business over to the lieutenant governor.) I don't expect politicians to be priests. Among some constituencies, there is the naive view that a person's fitness for public office can be ascertained in his or her marital fidelity. But that simply isn't so. Life is too difficult and complex for such judgments. Franklin Roosevelt, deemed one of the nation's best presidents, carried on a years-long affair with Lucy Mercer. By contrast, Richard Nixon is believed to have been the very soul of marital propriety, but he raped the Constitution. Still, if politicians are going to get a zone of privacy and the respect accorded to full-grown adults, then they must be willing to offer that to others. Those who live in glass houses, etc., etc. Unfortunately, Sanford belongs to that cadre of politicians, mostly hard-core Republicans, who have been unwilling to stay out of other folks' personal business. That group includes Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who admitted adultery earlier this month. Like Ensign, Sanford opposes same-sex marriage, which opponents claim would undermine heterosexual marriage. (It's not at all clear how that's supposed to work. Did gay couples have something to do with Sanford's infidelity?) Like Ensign, Sanford was a harsh critic of former President Bill Clinton. Then a congressman, Sanford called Clinton's conduct with Monica Lewinsky "reprehensible" and insisted that Clinton resign. He voted for impeachment, citing the need for "moral legitimacy." Actually, I agree that Clinton's conduct was reprehensible. But Sanford joined his GOP colleagues in making Clinton's reckless behavior a national crisis by pushing impeachment, which distracted from far more important matters. While the president's personal behavior was appalling, it didn't affect the public's business. And that's where the line should be drawn: Does the private behavior impinge on public performance? Does it jeopardize state affairs? Jim McGreevey, former Democratic governor of New Jersey, was right to resign because his behavior was well over the line. McGreevey's public sin lay not in his same-sex love affair -- that's a personal matter -- but in putting his spectacularly unqualified lover on the public payroll. He gave a top state job in homeland security to a foreign national who couldn't even get a security clearance. Eliot Spitzer, former Democratic governor of New York, needed to go because he not only hired a prostitute, an illegal act, but he had also prosecuted prostitution as the state's attorney general. That level of hypocrisy could hardly be tolerated. 1 \| 2 NEXT PAGE timesunion.com

To: i-node who wrote (491473)	6/29/2009 1:12:19 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1574005

Soros Goes Long as World Bank Shorts Recovery: William Pesek Commentary by William Pesek June 26 (Bloomberg) -- People don’t tend to make lots of money betting against George Soros. The hedge-fund manager has made billions speculating on markets. And so it came as a relief to many when on June 20, Soros told Polish television that the worst of the global financial crisis “is behind us.” To many, it was a sign the famed market-timer is going long on a global recovery. My money is on the World Bank. By contrast, the lending institution appears to be shorting the “green shoots” that optimists see sprouting around the globe. The World Bank on June 22 said recessions will be deeper than it estimated in March. It now expects the world economy to contract 2.9 percent this year, compared with a previous forecast of a 1.7 percent decline. Things may get worse than the numbers suggest. That’s because the developing world, the one part that’s still growing at the moment, is experiencing a capital flight that will swell the ranks of the poor and the unemployed. The least-appreciated side effect of this crisis is how living standards of poorer nations will be set back. Huge economies such as the U.S., Europe and Japan were hit hard and fast by the credit crisis that began on Wall Street. The effects on less affluent nations haven’t been given enough attention. For the developing world, this crisis is unfolding in slow motion. Wrong Direction Money is moving in the wrong direction, a dynamic that risks holding back the parts of the world on which investors and executives are depending for growth. Even if a global recovery begins this year, poorer economies will lag behind rich nations. Developing economies that need rapid growth may experience weak growth for years to come. The World Bank warns of “increasingly grave economic prospects” for developing nations amid reduced capital inflows from exports, remittances and foreign direct investment. After peaking at $1.2 trillion in 2007, inflows this year may fall to $363 billion. The upshot is that investors abandoning developing economies may be sowing the seeds of a renewed slump. And governments in Asia, by neglecting the importance of domestic growth, are paving the way for a rough several years ahead. Asia’s 1997 crisis was a fast, furious and deep one. Yet the region was able to recover rapidly because the U.S. was booming at the time. Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan referred to the U.S. as an “oasis of prosperity,” and it was the engine that powered Asia’s impressive snapback. No Oasis No such oasis exists today. China isn’t there yet in terms of size or influence, and neither is India or Brazil. Developing nations are on their own to produce growth at home as opposed to exporting their way to recovery. It will require some serious policy changes from Seoul to Hanoi. The good news is that many Asian governments have latitude to boost public spending, while central banks have scope to cut interest rates. The bad news is that the absence of large domestic consumer markets will make those efforts less potent. Nothing would restore Asia to health faster than an export recovery. One is unlikely to happen anytime soon. A “crowding-out” dynamic of historic proportions won’t help. The crisis is devastating public finances and the U.S., Japan and Europe are issuing mountains of debt. Debt Explosion “Even on optimistic assumptions, in a number of industrial economies, debt burdens stand to rise by anything from a third to almost 100 percent over the next five years,” Russell Jones, London-based head of fixed-income and currency research at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a June 22 report. “On less optimistic assumptions, the prospective debt dynamics are truly explosive.” If you are a Group of Seven economy, selling debt shouldn’t be much of a problem. If you are Indonesia or the Philippines, the boom in global issuance will complicate efforts to attract bids at bond auctions. Soros, in his June 20 interview, called the crisis the most serious in his 78 years. “This is the end of an era,” he said. “The question is what’s going to come out of it in the future.” The answer may be found in the details of recent World Bank reports. One new element will be reduced aid from advanced economies because the crisis is weighing on their finances. Another is the need for international coordination to revive domestic demand through stimulus spending. The G-7 is a pretty useless entity these days. That’s why meetings of the Group of 20 nations now get more attention. Even as stock markets calm down a bit, the effects of the credit crisis continue to flow into the economy. As nations experience more of the fallout, their challenges are likely to boomerang back into markets. As this vicious cycle plays out, better insights may be coming from Washington lenders than investors in the trenches. (William Pesek is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.) To contact the writer of this column: William Pesek in Tokyo at wpesek@bloomberg.net bloomberg.com

To: i-node who wrote (491473)	6/29/2009 4:07:26 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574005

Kass: Many Challenges Still Ahead 06/29/09 - 12:02 PM EDT This blog post originally appeared on RealMoney Silver on June 29 at 8:02 a.m. EDT. There is now an almost universal acceptance that last fall we were on the eve of financial destruction, and both the Federal Reserve Chairman and Bank of America (BAC Quote) CEO confirmed as much in last week's Congressional testimony. By virtue of massive monetary and fiscal stimulus, Armageddon was avoided and the world's stock markets have launched a spirited second derivative rally that has contributed to a collective sigh of relief. The surfeit of consumption and the overindulgence in the credit and debt markets, however, are residues that argue in favor of a long-lived transformation in consumer behavior, much like our parents and grandparents endured after The Great Depression. This time it is truly different: Most notably, the personal savings rate will remain elevated, and personal consumption expenditures will be deflated for an extended period of problem. For the first time in over 50 years, wage deflation is spreading, which will further inhibit retail spending as individuals continue to unwind balance sheet leverage. Business fixed investment will be constrained in an environment of low capacity utilization rates. Corporate pricing power will be limited, and a mean regression of profit margins will follow in the years ahead. The construction industry (residential and nonresidential), which provided as much as 40% of the job growth in the early 2000s, will not provide the historic role in expansion of employment, and there is little to replace real estate as a catalyst to growth. The securitization market, which was the straw that fueled growth over the last decade, will be limited in its capacity and ongoing role as an engine to growth. Besides the consumer, the banking industry will adopt a more conservative approach to lending as the pendulum of credit moves in the opposite direction of 2000-2006. An intrusive public sector means more pervasive (and more costly) regulatory burdens. Corporate and individual tax rates will rise and provide a further headwind to growth. Despite substandard economic growth, costs may remain elevated (especially of a materials kind), reflecting population growth and the emergence and growth of the middle class in emerging markets. That is not to say the equity markets around the world can't rally; they can, and over time, they will. As well, the domestic economy will, in the fullness of time, rebound, but the above traditional and nontraditional headwinds do not favor an expansion in P/E multiples. My variant view is that I am not convinced that the consensus outlook of a sustainable recovery/steady state in the economy (or in corporate profits) will occur after the restocking of inventory and the production boom associated with that replenishment. Rather, I see an inconsistent and uneven period of growth (not just subpar growth and a shallow recovery) that will be difficult for investment managers and corporate managers to navigate. The odds of economic/profit disappointments and an eventual double-dip in 2010 will be magnified as it's very different this time, owing to the prevalence of so many unconventional headwinds. And the very size of the policy efforts needed to address the complexity of the world's problems is testimony to the upcoming challenges to growth. Things are still bad and will remain that way. At the time of publication, Kass and/or his funds were long Bank of America, although holdings can change at any time. thestreet.com