David Seaton's Blog | Talking Points Memo | November 23, 2008

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Week of November 23, 2008 - November 29, 2008

Mumbai changes the playing field

November 29, 2008, 4:19PM

As we wait to finally discover who actually organized this bloodbath in Mumbai, I would like to point out something obvious: the Indian economic "miracle" has been more than tempting fate to have created such a growing number of exuberant and ostentatious nouveau riche in a country where hundreds of millions of people are as scandalously poor... Islamist, Maoist or things as yet undreamed of are bound to grow in the gigantic, bubbling petri dish. globalization has created in India.

So if all we had to go on was potential rage and resentment themselves, we would be looking for a needle in a haystack. It would probably be more profitable to look at the wide effects of this attack as a way of narrowing down the list of possible culprits.

Next stop: Weimar America?

November 27, 2008, 2:23AM

"That's how we got here -- a near total breakdown of responsibility at every link in our financial chain, and now we either bail out the people who brought us here or risk a total systemic crash." Thomas Friedman - NYT
"Excessively cheap money in the US was a driver of today's crisis," (Angela Merkel, the German chancellor) told the German parliament. "I am deeply concerned about whether we are now reinforcing this trend through measures being adopted in the US and elsewhere and whether we could find ourselves in five years facing the exact same crisis." - Financial Times

A link at Doonesbury led me to this fascinating information.

Big Bailouts, Bigger Bucks - The Big Picture
(...)If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let's give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history. Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures - combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

IIf a currency is supposed to have any relation to actual value, when I see these numbers it seems obvious to me that the dollar is entering the territory of the Wiemar Republic Deutsch mark: meaningless paper.

The fear, of course is deflation, but a dollar that once bought victory in WWII and trips to the Moon, but today cannot save a few banks, must be a ticket to coming hyperinflation.

It is impossible to escape certain unpleasant realities of world power

No matter how seductive the figure of Barack Obama might be, glamor cannot offset the drag of worthless money combined with military impotence.

Joseph Nye's "soft power" is just that "soft". The brutal truth is that candy and flowers, a thoughtful word are important rites of seduction, but after these rites are performed, something hard is expected. If the USA cannot "cut the mustard", other, perhaps ruder suitors will be sought and found.

To me these numbers mean that we are living suspended over an abyss, held only in the slippery hands of a fraudulent system.

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

Who really understands the USA?

November 26, 2008, 1:58PM

"Poor Mexico, so far from God and so near to the United States!"
Porfirio Díaz

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
To a Louse - Robert Burns

Every so often some irate reader who lives in the states asks me how I can know anything about the USA if I no longer live there.

To this I reply that the USA is everywhere, all the time, intruding into people's lives in endless ways all over the world: it is outside the United States where people really understand the USA. It is the Americans who have a totally fictionalized view of themselves.

Don't you think by now that any inhabitant of Baghdad is an expert on Americans, their foibles and their reality, the space between their words and their actions?

But of course this deep and intimate knowledge of the USA is new to Iraqis and most Middle Easterners. Where Americans are really known, where the USA has bent everything and everyone out of shape for nearly 200 years, is south of the border, in Latin America in general and in Mexico, most blatantly, in particular.

Clarifying epiphanies

November 26, 2008, 2:08AM

Barack Obama is extraordinarily intelligent and yes he probably is the best man to be president right now... but that probably wont make a bit of difference. It is the system and the ideology on which it rests that are in a blind alley. When the people of a huge and powerful country think that the solution to their problems is a leader, that makes me very nervous.

The United States is in a systemic breakdown and people think that Obama is going to fix it. It reminds me about how people in the West viewed Gorbachev before the USSR collapsed. Not Lincoln, not Gandhi, not FDR: Gorbachev.

Gorbachev was and is a very decent and intelligent man who just happened to be standing on the bridge when the Titanic went down.

http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

My mini epiphany

November 25, 2008, 4:09PM

As anyone who has read my posts over the last few months can testify, I have been notably unenthusiastic and irritated by Obama worship. I have been called "Mr. Wet Blanket", the "glass half empty" guy, and decorated with other much less flattering labels that have been pinned on me as I tried to point out how precarious were the foundations upon which this new church was built. But today reading the news I had a little epiphany and suddenly my heart melted and I was filled with warm compassion for the Obamite devotees as they adored at The One's Lotus Feet.

China/USA: those in the red must read the little red book

November 24, 2008, 3:33PM

Fareed Zakaria has written a very interesting article that tells us more about what is really happening to the USA and the rest of the world, than anything that I have read in the MSM in quite a while:

For weeks the world has eagerly awaited word from the Obama transition team about the people who will head up the next administration -- the new secretaries of state and treasury, the attorney general. But one of the more crucial positions in the Obama administration probably isn't going to be filled for months and is likely to get little attention when it is -- the post of U.S. ambassador to China.

China has become the key to America getting through the worsening economic crisis. The American ambassador in Beijing (okay, this is a metaphor for all those officials who will be managing this relationship) will need to make sure that China sees its interests as aligned with America's. Or else things could get very, very ugly.

Then it gets really interesting, but before reading more Zakaria, let us read a little Chinese: