I have enjoyed Collective Sigh for a long time now, and as usual, cannot help but give a big "Hell Yeah" to this fellow's rants. Of course, he spends a lot of time on American Politics, a failing of so many bloggers, but for once, here is a blog that makes sense. Not that I agree with a single word of it you understand, just that it is so well written that I am in awe of the talent.
Here is a sample. From.....http://collectivesigh.blogspot.com/2005_09_18_collectivesigh_archive.html#112741414561783791
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
CheerleadingIf you look inside the 9/26/2005 print edition of TIME magazine, you'll find a selection letters from readers.Responding to TIME's coverage of the Katrina catastrope, Suzann Soliday of Fresno, California writes:
How dare anyone blame the president for this disaster. The left-wingers have criticized the Bush Administration constantly. How can anyone - politician or member of the news media - not support our government? The critics have gone too far. We must work together, and those who can't must stay out of the way. I am tired of the divide in this country.You see, Ms. Soliday, it's not JUST the Katrina disaster, but a whole trail of destruction all over the world. And it's not JUST St. George, but the whole host of incompetent, deluded advisors who give the poor boy incredibly bad advice.We left-wingers are simply following the stellar example set by the right-wingers during the Clinton administration; strike early and often. And we actually have reality-based, valid reasons.As Bill Maher said of our Fearless Leader, "On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans".Opposing the Bush administration isn't hard at all, Ms. Soliday. In fact, we left-wingers are quite pleased to be divided from you and the rest of the sheep cheerleading for President Catastrophe.
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// posted by andante @ 8:58 AM
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Crimes and victims
Here we have the ultimate Orwellian fantasy...when is a victim not a victim? Case in point...a lot of folks, bloggers and writers of letters to the editors of many newspapers are going on and on about how the victims of Hurricane Katrina are actually not victims at all, but rather stiff necked head-in-the-sand folks who shoulda got out when they got the chance. Well, I dunno...I have a lot of sympathy for most of those people....I would probably have stayed right here in my home too....especially since it would have withstood dozens of hurricanes over the years, and who would have thought it would have got as bad as it did! But I am happy I did not have to make that decision.
Be that as it may...clearly some folks made an error in judgement, and that puts them at risk. I think that makes them a victim, if only a victim of their own mis-judgement. There is a real person here...who is hungry, de-hydrated, and falling ill from Hepatitus A and B, and maybe a dozen other diseases.
Now contrast that to this article I got from the CyberLaw blog. http://hdc-cyberlaw.blogspot.com/
Here is the cut and paste of the summary.... of the Washington Post article...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702067.html
The increasingly common law enforcement tactic of having adult officers pose as children in Internet chat rooms to arrest potential sex offenders came under legal attack on September 7 when Maryland's highest court ruled that the law does not allow the prosecution of people who merely believed they were dealing with children. The Maryland Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the Frederick County Circuit Court conviction of Richard J. Moore, saying he could not be found guilty of committing a crime with a nonexistent victim."Court Overturns Child Porn Conviction
This really makes you think now don't it! The police officers who are protecting our most vulnerable have been told that their "sting" operations are not valid! This will make ANYBODY sit up and say WHAT the HELL?
Originally I could not believe it, then I got thinking about it. Here is a perp who is trolling for underage nookie. He finds a cop pretending to vulnerable and underage. The perp falls for it and ends up in court. However, there never WAS a real live victim. So therefore, no victim...no crime. Ahh, (you say) but there was "intent". Well trouble with "intent" is that "intent" is a "Thought Crime". Remember the term "thought crime"? It came out of George Orwell's book 1984. I can walk down the street and "think" about robbing the store with all the jewelry in the window, but until I pick up the coping stone and actually THROW it...it is not a crime.
My head just hurts from this line of thinking. Here we have live victims in a flooded city who are not really victims, and "virtual" victims who never existed at all but are real enough to put a guy in jail! No wonder the court in Fredricksburg overturned the conviction!
So, by extension, how many other "crimes" are there which don't have a victim? Dr. Keon who picked up an undercover cop in the market thinking she was a hooker...shall we overturn this conviction?
I invite others to comment on this....
Be that as it may...clearly some folks made an error in judgement, and that puts them at risk. I think that makes them a victim, if only a victim of their own mis-judgement. There is a real person here...who is hungry, de-hydrated, and falling ill from Hepatitus A and B, and maybe a dozen other diseases.
Now contrast that to this article I got from the CyberLaw blog. http://hdc-cyberlaw.blogspot.com/
Here is the cut and paste of the summary.... of the Washington Post article...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702067.html
The increasingly common law enforcement tactic of having adult officers pose as children in Internet chat rooms to arrest potential sex offenders came under legal attack on September 7 when Maryland's highest court ruled that the law does not allow the prosecution of people who merely believed they were dealing with children. The Maryland Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the Frederick County Circuit Court conviction of Richard J. Moore, saying he could not be found guilty of committing a crime with a nonexistent victim."Court Overturns Child Porn Conviction
This really makes you think now don't it! The police officers who are protecting our most vulnerable have been told that their "sting" operations are not valid! This will make ANYBODY sit up and say WHAT the HELL?
Originally I could not believe it, then I got thinking about it. Here is a perp who is trolling for underage nookie. He finds a cop pretending to vulnerable and underage. The perp falls for it and ends up in court. However, there never WAS a real live victim. So therefore, no victim...no crime. Ahh, (you say) but there was "intent". Well trouble with "intent" is that "intent" is a "Thought Crime". Remember the term "thought crime"? It came out of George Orwell's book 1984. I can walk down the street and "think" about robbing the store with all the jewelry in the window, but until I pick up the coping stone and actually THROW it...it is not a crime.
My head just hurts from this line of thinking. Here we have live victims in a flooded city who are not really victims, and "virtual" victims who never existed at all but are real enough to put a guy in jail! No wonder the court in Fredricksburg overturned the conviction!
So, by extension, how many other "crimes" are there which don't have a victim? Dr. Keon who picked up an undercover cop in the market thinking she was a hooker...shall we overturn this conviction?
I invite others to comment on this....
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Economic Meltdown!
Economic meltdown....
A casual walk through the hardware store showed me yet again that we are heading for a serious disaster. Everything for sale is made in China. So what does China DO with all that money? They buy treasury bonds, of course. I am honestly not looking forward to the back lash....and just because I predict it, doesn't mean I can do a damned thing about it! However, I am trying to become a little more self sufficient. Hard to do without electricity, but a machine shop in my back yard is a start. Fencing to hold in a flock of chickens or pigs might come in handy as well. Sealer rings and sealer jars came in handy according to my grandmother, who lived through the great depression. Tool, tools and more tools. Hard to say...Here is an article in "The Australian" that says it better than I can. Dumping of US dollar could trigger 'economic September 11'There is a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of the global economy: the strong possibility of financial meltdown following a collapse of confidence in the greenback, Clyde Prestowitz tells Bruce StannardAugust 29, 2005THE nightmare scenario that haunts global strategist Clyde Prestowitz is an economic September 11 -- a worldwide financial panic triggered by a sudden massive sell-off of US dollars that would lead inexorably to the collapse of economies around the world.If that happens, Prestowitz predicts: "It would make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a walk in the park."Australia would be sucked into the vortex of such a recession, which would cause great hardship throughout the world, he warns.Prestowitz is not a doomsayer, neither is he alone in his views. As president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a Washington think tank, he is in regular contact with the most influential US business leaders, several of whom -- Warren Buffet and George Soros included -- have taken steps to hedge their currency positions against the possibility of a cataclysmic plunge in the greenback."Right now," he says, "we have a situation in which the US is running huge trade deficits -- about $US650 billion ($766 billion) in 2004 -- which are financed by borrowings from the central banks of Asia -- mainly the Chinese and the Japanese. All the world's central banks are chock-full of US dollars -- they're holding many more dollars than they really want. They're holding those dollars because at the moment there's no great alternative and also because the global economy depends on US consumption. If they dump the dollar and the dollar collapses, then the whole global economy is in trouble."However, some countries have a bigger stake than others in maintaining the status quo. China and Japan have a big stake in maintaining the flow of their exports to the US and keeping the US economy humming. Russia, on the other hand, does not export much to the US. India doesn't export much to the US. Yet Russia and India are also big dollar-holders. They hold many more dollars than they really want or need."It doesn't take any great stretch of the imagination to see what could happen if one of these central bank managers decides to dump dollars. We had a situation recently when a mid-level official at the Central Bank of Korea used the word 'diversification'. It was a throwaway remark at some obscure lunch, but there was instantaneous overreaction. The US stock market fell by 100 points in 15 minutes because the implication was that South Korea might be shifting out of US dollars."So picture this: you have a quiet day in the market and maybe some smart MBA at the Central Bank of Chile or someplace looks at his portfolio and says, 'I got too many dollars here. I'm gonna dump $10 billion'. So he dumps his dollars and suddenly the market thinks, 'My god, this is it!' Of course, the first guy out is OK, but you sure as hell can't afford to be the last guy out."You would then see an immediate cascade effect -- a world financial panic on a scale that would dwarf the Great Depression of the 1930s."Prestowitz says the panic could be started by something as simple as a hedge-fund miscalculation."We had exactly that scenario in the US recently," he points out, "when a big hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management went belly-up. These guys were pros. They had two Nobel prize-winning economists writing their trading algorithms, and their traders were the creme de la creme among New York bond traders."They made a big bet -- a trillion dollars leveraged 20 to one, and they blew it. They went belly-up. That threatened to bring down the whole system so US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan had to organise a bail-out through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York."Now consider this: there are currently 8000 hedge funds in the US alone. Every day $6 trillion of derivative instruments trade on international markets. If there are four people in the world who understand those trades, I'd be surprised. So the potential for another disaster is not insignificant. This is why Warren Buffet, chairman of investment giant Berkshire Hathaway, is betting $US21 billion against the dollar. This is why currency speculator and hedge fund manager George Soros has also made a big bet against the dollar."Soros is one of the greatest currency speculators of all time. He was the guy who broke the British pound in the early 1990s by betting $US10 billion it would fall. He made a quick billion when it did. In 2002, he warned that the greenback was in danger of losing a third of its value. Of course, it could be argued that Soros is a professional hedge fund manager whose job is to play the ups and downs of currencies and his remarks could be seen more as manipulation than prophecy. And yet, in conversations with me, Soros has expressed concern about the market fundamentalist view that prevails in Washington and parts of Wall Street."This is the belief that markets are self-correcting and best left alone. Soros calls this a dangerous siren song. Far from being self-correcting, he emphasises, markets tend to excess. They over-shoot. Anyone with any experience of markets knows this."When markets are going down, all the weaknesses get concentrated, and you need intervention at the right time to stop things from getting out of control. If the dollar started to melt down, the results could be really nasty. A 1930s-style global depression is not out of the question."To underscore the point that he is not alone in this, Prestowitz cites Paul Volcker, head of the Federal Reserve before Greenspan, who has said publicly there is a 75 per cent chance of a dollar crash in the next five years."No wonder people look at this and say, 'Holy cow!'," he says. "No one knows for sure what will happen, but clearly the global markets could implode very quickly. The lack of an alternative to the dollar is the only reason it hasn't taken a big fall already."Prestowitz, formerly a trade adviser and negotiator for former US president Ronald Reagan, believes the US will continue to be the world's most powerful economy for the foreseeable future. But he foreshadows an inexorable decline, a trend that is likely to continue "depending on the way we play our cards"."Right now, we're playing them just about as badly as it's possible to play them, and that has geo-political implications." he says. "We've outsourced trying to deal with North Korea to China, we really can't deal with Iran, so we've outsourced that to the EU, which is struggling, and Iran is cozying up to China. Other bad actors like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Sudan are cozying up to China."America's global hegemony is already under challenge, and that challenge is going to become more and more evident as the extent of the relative US economic decline becomes evident. Right now, the US dollar is probably 40 per cent overvalued versus the Japanese yen or the Chinese renminbi. How's the US going to look as a global power when the dollar is at 50 per cent of its current value?"Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz is published by Basic Books at $US39.95
A casual walk through the hardware store showed me yet again that we are heading for a serious disaster. Everything for sale is made in China. So what does China DO with all that money? They buy treasury bonds, of course. I am honestly not looking forward to the back lash....and just because I predict it, doesn't mean I can do a damned thing about it! However, I am trying to become a little more self sufficient. Hard to do without electricity, but a machine shop in my back yard is a start. Fencing to hold in a flock of chickens or pigs might come in handy as well. Sealer rings and sealer jars came in handy according to my grandmother, who lived through the great depression. Tool, tools and more tools. Hard to say...Here is an article in "The Australian" that says it better than I can. Dumping of US dollar could trigger 'economic September 11'There is a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of the global economy: the strong possibility of financial meltdown following a collapse of confidence in the greenback, Clyde Prestowitz tells Bruce StannardAugust 29, 2005THE nightmare scenario that haunts global strategist Clyde Prestowitz is an economic September 11 -- a worldwide financial panic triggered by a sudden massive sell-off of US dollars that would lead inexorably to the collapse of economies around the world.If that happens, Prestowitz predicts: "It would make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a walk in the park."Australia would be sucked into the vortex of such a recession, which would cause great hardship throughout the world, he warns.Prestowitz is not a doomsayer, neither is he alone in his views. As president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a Washington think tank, he is in regular contact with the most influential US business leaders, several of whom -- Warren Buffet and George Soros included -- have taken steps to hedge their currency positions against the possibility of a cataclysmic plunge in the greenback."Right now," he says, "we have a situation in which the US is running huge trade deficits -- about $US650 billion ($766 billion) in 2004 -- which are financed by borrowings from the central banks of Asia -- mainly the Chinese and the Japanese. All the world's central banks are chock-full of US dollars -- they're holding many more dollars than they really want. They're holding those dollars because at the moment there's no great alternative and also because the global economy depends on US consumption. If they dump the dollar and the dollar collapses, then the whole global economy is in trouble."However, some countries have a bigger stake than others in maintaining the status quo. China and Japan have a big stake in maintaining the flow of their exports to the US and keeping the US economy humming. Russia, on the other hand, does not export much to the US. India doesn't export much to the US. Yet Russia and India are also big dollar-holders. They hold many more dollars than they really want or need."It doesn't take any great stretch of the imagination to see what could happen if one of these central bank managers decides to dump dollars. We had a situation recently when a mid-level official at the Central Bank of Korea used the word 'diversification'. It was a throwaway remark at some obscure lunch, but there was instantaneous overreaction. The US stock market fell by 100 points in 15 minutes because the implication was that South Korea might be shifting out of US dollars."So picture this: you have a quiet day in the market and maybe some smart MBA at the Central Bank of Chile or someplace looks at his portfolio and says, 'I got too many dollars here. I'm gonna dump $10 billion'. So he dumps his dollars and suddenly the market thinks, 'My god, this is it!' Of course, the first guy out is OK, but you sure as hell can't afford to be the last guy out."You would then see an immediate cascade effect -- a world financial panic on a scale that would dwarf the Great Depression of the 1930s."Prestowitz says the panic could be started by something as simple as a hedge-fund miscalculation."We had exactly that scenario in the US recently," he points out, "when a big hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management went belly-up. These guys were pros. They had two Nobel prize-winning economists writing their trading algorithms, and their traders were the creme de la creme among New York bond traders."They made a big bet -- a trillion dollars leveraged 20 to one, and they blew it. They went belly-up. That threatened to bring down the whole system so US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan had to organise a bail-out through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York."Now consider this: there are currently 8000 hedge funds in the US alone. Every day $6 trillion of derivative instruments trade on international markets. If there are four people in the world who understand those trades, I'd be surprised. So the potential for another disaster is not insignificant. This is why Warren Buffet, chairman of investment giant Berkshire Hathaway, is betting $US21 billion against the dollar. This is why currency speculator and hedge fund manager George Soros has also made a big bet against the dollar."Soros is one of the greatest currency speculators of all time. He was the guy who broke the British pound in the early 1990s by betting $US10 billion it would fall. He made a quick billion when it did. In 2002, he warned that the greenback was in danger of losing a third of its value. Of course, it could be argued that Soros is a professional hedge fund manager whose job is to play the ups and downs of currencies and his remarks could be seen more as manipulation than prophecy. And yet, in conversations with me, Soros has expressed concern about the market fundamentalist view that prevails in Washington and parts of Wall Street."This is the belief that markets are self-correcting and best left alone. Soros calls this a dangerous siren song. Far from being self-correcting, he emphasises, markets tend to excess. They over-shoot. Anyone with any experience of markets knows this."When markets are going down, all the weaknesses get concentrated, and you need intervention at the right time to stop things from getting out of control. If the dollar started to melt down, the results could be really nasty. A 1930s-style global depression is not out of the question."To underscore the point that he is not alone in this, Prestowitz cites Paul Volcker, head of the Federal Reserve before Greenspan, who has said publicly there is a 75 per cent chance of a dollar crash in the next five years."No wonder people look at this and say, 'Holy cow!'," he says. "No one knows for sure what will happen, but clearly the global markets could implode very quickly. The lack of an alternative to the dollar is the only reason it hasn't taken a big fall already."Prestowitz, formerly a trade adviser and negotiator for former US president Ronald Reagan, believes the US will continue to be the world's most powerful economy for the foreseeable future. But he foreshadows an inexorable decline, a trend that is likely to continue "depending on the way we play our cards"."Right now, we're playing them just about as badly as it's possible to play them, and that has geo-political implications." he says. "We've outsourced trying to deal with North Korea to China, we really can't deal with Iran, so we've outsourced that to the EU, which is struggling, and Iran is cozying up to China. Other bad actors like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Sudan are cozying up to China."America's global hegemony is already under challenge, and that challenge is going to become more and more evident as the extent of the relative US economic decline becomes evident. Right now, the US dollar is probably 40 per cent overvalued versus the Japanese yen or the Chinese renminbi. How's the US going to look as a global power when the dollar is at 50 per cent of its current value?"Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz is published by Basic Books at $US39.95
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