It used to be that blame for things was proportional. For instance if a boy and a girl dating stay out past hours and have sex in the back seat of the car, the girl is traditionally held the more responsible because teenage boys are deemed a slave to their hormones and can’t control themselves. In the same way only a tea bagger would blame the poor Latinos courted by George W to purchase a new home- - are not deemed nearly as responsible for the subsequent loan foreclosure as the corrupt banking system with all of their investment swaps and derivitives. Likewise- - and try to follow the logic- - if you get in an accident your own auto insurance rates will go up, but why should auto insurance rates in general have to rise punishing the innocent with the guilty? Now we come to mal practice medical insurance, and you see where I’m headed with this. If a doctor should fowl up and give a patient too much anesthesia during an operation and it kills the patient or a patient is permanently blinded by a botched cateract surgery- - I can see why that doctor’s own mal practice rates should go up- - but why should everybody’s? And let’s suppose for a moment there is a LOT of malpractice out there and “everybody is being sued” still the question is posed- - why should the PATIENT be the one punished by raising the rates. Why not just say to those doctors that “You just have to deduct the settlement from the income of fees you normally get. If you break something in a store the proprietor will make the offending party pay for the broken merchandise- - rather than raises prices on everybody going into that antique shop. Now we move on to the situation with Greece. We are always told by Dr Phil and others on the political right that “Actions have consequences” and “You made your decision and now have to live with it”. This USED to be the way people dealt with each other in business but not since the fall of 2008. Suddenly Bush and Obama rewrote the rule book with these massive bail-outs. If a bunch of European banks lend money to the Greek government and they default then normally the bank would stand the loss. In business accounting it’s written off as a bad debt expense- - and the accountants are happy. But that’s not what happened. You have the Judy doctrine and those on the right who say “Well the Greek people are shiftless and lazy and don’t know how to cut back in hard economic times.” The trouble is- - the way loan sharks work- - debts never go down but always go up no matter how hard you try to pay off these loan shark. Even the Bible made provisions for bankruptsy when one faced an impossible situation. It was deemed more important to have “redemption” at some point along the way. Since the Banks made the decisions to loan out all this money and not the Greek people then they are the ones who are deemed responsible. It’s like this pool drowning situation. Unjust as it seems the owner of the swimming pool under California law is deemed responsible for any deaths or law suits. In this case the Banks are the OWNERS of that money and it’s their responsibility whatever happens to it. You don’t stick it to the Greek taxpayers. In other words you don’t rob Peter to pay Paul. Because as I’ve said before- - these powder-kegs are the sort of things from which upheavels and revolutions are made- - and you might have a French Revolutionscenario on your hands or worse. Like I said previously- - Greece as a nation could swerve right into the Russian orbit. After all Greece would be the sort of ideal Medeterainian port that Russia has been looking for for years, and Russia just could cause a whole lot of trouble down the line if its Navy were allowed to build military bases in Greece in exchange for being out of their debts, which in the grand scheme of things are pretty small to begin with and could be easily forgiven.
The
Cuban flag was once again hoisted over the Cuban embassy in Washington DC this
morning. No doubt those on the right
will contrast it like this. They’ll say “What
a sad day it is that the beloved Confederate flag is forced to be taken down
(somehow that will get blamed on Hillary) and at the same time the flag of
communist Cuba is hoisted over our own capital.
Both in the cases of Cubs and in Iran, this new “accord” with both
nations will afford our peoples to get to know each other better and it will be
a boost to business and cultural exchange as tourism is stimulated on both
ends. I see only good things coming
from restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Only time will tell.
The
swift boast people seemed to be telling the truth about John Kerry. I fail to find any bias in the reporting of
this - - and the way Kerry has falsified his record. They appear to be ex comrads who figured that
John Kerry was a liar and a flake. Jeb
Bush praised the swift boat people in helping get his brother reelected in
2004. Yet Thom Hartman blindly defends him
without any evidence not saying where the swift boat people were in error. Over the weekend Donald Trump attacked John
Mc Cain and his statements were universally condemned by all the other
republicans. One wonders whether Donald
Trump is looking for an excuse not to participate in the debates but is some
kind of a stalking horse to make Walker look good by comparison. The Koch Brothers can point and say, “Look,
Scott Walker is the sane one” even though Walker is a first rate liar. Attacking someone because they get captured
is the ultimate “blame the victim” mentality.
Why Trump said the things about John Mc Cain he did is beyond the
pale. It’s beyond explanation. But maybe it keeps the media entertained and
Trump never has to say what he thinks on the serious issues. When it comes to trashing veterans, the
Republicans are expert at that. Max
Clealand and Tammy Duckworth were both disabled veterans missing limbs. Both of them ran in contests for the US
Senate. Tammy made it into office and Max didn’t. I’m still feeling tired and lethargic and
probably in a rut. Scott Walker is leading the pack in Iowa right
now and Donald Trump is in second place.
It’s still holding true that Trump refuses to attack Scott Walker though
he attacks just about every other candidate.
[later] Hawking claims that he
doesn’t want anyone from NASA sending out messages into space because they’ll
reach a hostile alien space culture who might take “Hello, we’re here!” to be
an act of war. This was in the Brigitte
Jones interview. Then there was a
caller who stated that chlorinated and fluoridated water causing Iodine and
hence thyroid deficiency. You learn
something new every day. If you’re like
me you’re thinking “But higher intelligences are already AWARE of mankind’s existence
on planet earth and have been for millennia.
So to me Hawking’s attitude comes off as rather paranoid.
Washingtonsblog’s anonymous founder and principal commentator is one of the most deeply knowledgeable writers on current events, and on July 19th he headlined “Governments Worldwide Will Crash the First Week of October … According to 2 Financial Forecasters.” He noted that both Martin Armstrong and Larry Edelson, two of the most respected stock-market predictors, are independently of each other predicting that “virtually all governments worldwide will be hit with a gigantic economic crisis in the first week of October 2015,” due to “a collapse of government solvency” as ricocheting government defaults spiral each other downward; and, because the U.S. won’t be forced to crash as quickly as Europe and Japan, there will then be a temporary worldwide rush into U.S. corporate stocks and bonds, especially stocks, as the short-term safe haven for investors fleeing from sovereign (government) bonds. The next day, July 20th, Michael Meier’s German Economic News bannered “Clear Signs of Relaxation Between Obama and Putin,” and reported: “The nuclear deal with Iran and the withdrawal of heavy weapons by the rebels in the eastern Ukraine are clear signs of a détente between Russia and the US. The EU now needs to quickly develop their own strategy. Otherwise, the Europeans will have to pay for the chaos in Ukraine.” The article continues, addressing Europeans. . . The reckless Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine took the European taxpayer immediately into the obligation: As in Greece, the Americans will insist that Europeans must keep Ukraine financially afloat. [Whereas the U.S. has few financial obligations there, the EU now is committed to Ukraine via its post-February-2014 Association Agreement. And Russia has already lost what it had risked in Ukraine, and now is relatively immune to Ukraine’s continuing collapse.] The Russians can always carry out their threat, and stop the gas deliveries through Ukraine [if the EU does not pay Ukraine, and Ukraine not pay Russia]. …
The costs of the “rescue” of Ukraine will exceed those for Greece many times. So, with Japan’s having postponed its crash as long as possible, and the EU’s crash being now imminent, a flood of foreign billionaires’ cash into U.S. equities seems assured. The article explains: “So, basically, another Great Depression seems to be predicted here. According to their model, it will probably happen after the interest-rate on 10-year Treasuries rises above 5.2%, when the unrealism of current official projections has become sufficiently clear to the world so that the federal debt resumes soaring and the interest-portion of federal expenditures rises similarly. That would be some time after 2018.” However: What would happen if, in, say, October 2015, all the rest of the industrialized world crashes and their investors are pouring into U.S. equities? In that case, the Federal Reserve will be able to end their QE and raise U.S. interest rates beyond the magical 5.2% with impunity. Has Obama’s strategy been to weaken all other major economies so that the U.S. will still be able to avoid a collapse even while the wealth-disparity between America’s rich and poor continues getting ever-wider (largely via the Fed’s monetary policies reinforcing the fiscal policies from a heavily Republican pro-austerity Congress)? For example, is this part of the reason for what Obama has been doing to Ukraine, and to Russia, and soon stopping doing to Iran? Has he been preparing to get foreign aristocrats to pour their money into Wall Street?
No comments:
Post a Comment