Bush goes a walking

Bush in his last year in office--2008--like his predecessors, is taking up the pilgrim's stick, and going on long junkets abroad. Unlike the Republican Eisenhower, he won't be acclaimed a 'prince of peace'. His first dipping of a toe in foreign travel is a visit to Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Egypt. The Palestinians have little to rejoice in his visit, the more especially since Bush has supported Israel's aggressive policy in salami slicing land which rightfully belongs to Palestinians for their own colonial annexation. Egypt will bow and scrape before him, but with mutterings of regret under its breath; Bush has been cutting back on military and economic aid to Cairo for not toe ing the Israeli line in Palestine. Bush will exchange kisses with the Saudi royals because there are long ties between the Bush family and the Saudi princes which override America's security and policy. It is rumoured in Washington and in Riyad that by withdrawing America troops from the sacred grounds of Islam, Bush agreed not to pursue the capture or murder of Osama ben Ladin. And as we know, Bush crows that his war on terror has effectively stopped terrorist activity in the US>

Pakistan--la reine est morte! vive le roi!

Has the assassination of Benezir Bhutto radically changed the political dynamics in Pakistan? Some may think so. The Bhutto dynasty continues as though it were a royal succession. He eldest son who now proudly calls himself Bilawal Bhutto Zadari now wears the crown. A lad of 19 he, so his father will act as regent until his son has finished his schooling at Oxford, and with some seasoning in the rough and touble school of politics, will assume his rightful title as chairman of the Pakistan People's Party and feudal landlord in Sind.
The PPP have decided to press on for elections on 8 January 2008, in the belief that Benezir Bhutto's murder has raised the temperature of the Pakistani masses, and that the moment is right to strike to win, thereby catapulting the party again into the cat bird's seat of power.
Which may very well come to pass, yet the PPP lacks a charismatic leader, on one hand, and any reform in the political lay of the land must needs the tacit conscent of the military. And that remains problemmatic.
Pakistan is a country cleared for civil and religious war similar in a way that makes one think of the Algeria of 1992. Religious extremism has reached a new height which the secular forces are not stronger enough to openly oppose, and what's more the religious fanatics have the backing of powerful forces within the military and the intelligence services which serve two objectives: the never ending guerrilla warfare against India for the control of Kashmir Jammu, and the preserve that they think is rightfully theirs in Afghanistan.

George Bush and North Korea Redux

George Bush is once again letting a deal with North Korea slip through his fingers. It is true, his foreign policy has sprung so many leaks [vide Pakistan], he hasn't enough fingers and toes to stanch the dyke. However, by not living up to his promises of aid and eventual cross recognition, he has once again come to a full stop at North Korea's stonewall of fulfilling fully its pledge to denuclearise completely.
You would think that his dealing with Pyongyang would have taught him something about dealing with the government of Kim Jong il. If it did, it has not sunk in that Mr. Kim deals on a quid pro quo basis. So trying to smooze North Korea with visions of sugar plums in the way of economic aid and diplomatic recognition are simply hot air.
The airs of the New York Philamonic when it comes to Pyongyang in February 2008 might soften hard feelings but it won't move Kim Jong il one bit.
Bush is looking for a victory on the cheap in foreign affairs, and when it is served to him in a celadon vase, he's letting it slip out of his hands.

Trade and the American flag

Generations of school children once learnt that during the heady days of European colonial expansion trade followed the flag. And this is certainly true of the United States, too. Globalisation has become a buzzword in the race for the American presidency in 2008. Suddenly, among, say, the candidates of both parties, globalised trade is hurting the American economy and by inference the pay packet of the American workingman and woman.
Let's look at this drum and bugle to the rescue of the American voter's household income! Paul Krugman in his New York Times op ed piece [28 December 2007], makes it eminently clear that the US is now importing from the third world 'manufactured goods'. Which means that the American economy is losing on the hardcore manufacturing front. Saying this, few remark that these manufactured goods are coming from American companies who for cheaper labour have over the years outsourced American jobs abroad.
The Bush administration is not alone in pushing for Free Trade Association [FTA] treaties with other countries and in the third world. Such manufactured imports are subject to taxes, and so with an FTA the tariffs are substantially reduced or done away with. Now, here's the secret, the goods imported are from American factories abroad. So with a sweep of pen and more blue smoke and mirrors, it is these very factories whose owners have cheated Americans out of decent living wages and fattened wallets of theirs with profits and clipped coupons who are the beneficeries of such liberal trade largesse.
Years ago a small tempest in a teapot raged about the replacement of the state by multi national or transnational corporations. That debate ended quietly and was simply a diversion. The parent company's domiciled country is the key. It follows the politics of the land and lobbies for more than fair treatment for its profits and for avoiding paying its fair share of taxes.
So the big hoopla about globalisation and how the poor American hard working slog is simply election hype, the more especially American election campaigns run into the millions and the very robbers of the American workingmen and women, are funding mightily the bill for the next president so that their filthy privileges continue unchecked.

Obama and Axelrod

David Axelrod, Barak Obama's advisor is trying to catch up with his man's losing ground in Iowa before the primary. Hillary Clinton did vote for the war in Iraq, but to say her one vote is causing the chaos and seemingly never ending war in Aghanistan, is not only stupid but it is meaningless.
Obama's recent statements on health care and unions makes 18Brumaire scratch its head for the vacuity and social conservatism of a man everyone's saying is a saviour.
More thought and logical and less glamour will make better choses for the Democratic candidate for presidency in 2008 than glitz and sleights of hand and blue smoke and mirrors. Axelrod is desperate, no doubt about it!

Afghanistan a regional solution is needed

The untimely murder of Benezir Bhutto leaves the smug Bush foreign policy hanging in the wind. Bush says, elections in Pakistan must go on. Let's talk sense, not out of ignorance and utter indifference which are the trademarks of Bush's foreign policy. Sherif's Islamic Party are not participating in the 8 January 2008 Pakistani elections; Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party is leaderless without any strong personality to take command. And besides what will the elections do to fight terrorism? Everyone knows the army is the key to any stability without widespread reform. Bush thinks, money will solve the problem, but look how the Mushareff regime has squandered the us$5bn in aid to fight terrorism. The monies went to buy sophisticated weaponry aimed at Islamabad's tradition rival and enemy, India, and not on fighting the metatasising terrorism which is spreading throughout Pakistan.
A quick look at Washington's policy towards Pakistan clearly shows, it prefers cultivating generals and supple politicians who will back the army.
Bush & co. know barely a whit about Pakistan and what the country really needs; it ignores the big stake Islamabad has in keeping Afghanistan under its cosy wing.
The easy war Bush won in Afghanistan has turned into one of his nightmares.
What's more his minions make no bones about talking in sotto voce with the Taliban. So to pull this rotten plum of a problem out of Bush stale pie, a regional solution is called for. One which will allow normalcy to gain hold. A conference of four at least: India, Pakistan, Iran, and the US. But saying this, raises a problem: Pakistan doesn't want India in what it considers its rightful preserve; the US would reject Iran's participation out of hand.
So terrorism will continue, Bush will dole out more money and soon troops to fight in Pakistan's northwest and east rebellious provinces. This will give more grist to religious and nationalist sentiments, and leave Bush's lordly stupidity with a legacy for anyone who succeeds him in the White House, and to put the cherry on the cake, further weaken America's power.

The historical fallacy of Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson is a good historian. Some may say a brilliant historian. Of late, he is playing with a computer programme which replicate historical battles and wars, and one which has proven his theory that had the UK, France, and the Soviet Union opposed Hitler's take over of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1938, fascist Germany would have been stopped and horror we know of world war 2 in Europe would have had a different outcome. Well he concludes after putting his theory to the computer game, it wouldn't have, and more likely than not, the Nazi troops would have landed on the shores of England's East Anglia and occupied parts of Great Britain!
Not only that, the Czech army would have collapsed like that of Poland's a year later when Germany's pre emptive attack of Poland ushered in the second world war in Europe, and France and the Soviet Union wouldn't have come to fight alongside the UK.
Well historian Ferguson is blindsided by his celebration of his home country as a defender of liberty. Had he scratched the surface of events, he would have discovered that France tried encircling Nazi Germany through an alliance consisting of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. It failed for many reasons, one of them being the reluctance of Ferguson's UK from soiling its hands on affairs on the contient. Britain's elite tilted towards supporting Hitler as a bulwark against Bolshevikism, lest we forget, and the members of the royal family, the nobility, the moneybags and coupon clippers clinked flutes of champagne with Herr Hitler.
Such is Ferguson's fallacy and fancy which like water in the desert sands disappears without a by your leave

Israel's tail wags the Bush dog

Israel is America's albatross. If anyone thought the dog and pony showw that Bush organised in Annapolis would lead to anything but the same old, same old furtherance of Israel's expansionist designs, he is naive to the extreme. Olmert will expand Israeli settlements in Arab Jerussalem and the conquered west bank, a violation of a basic conditions for resumption of the road map leading to a Palestinian state. Then, Washington is the only country in the UN to vote against that body's budget because it contained funding for a conference on racism to be held in South Africa where surely Israel will be condemned severely for its treatment of Palestians fand its occupaation of the occupiedd territories.
Chutzpah is a word in Yiddish [and Hebrew] for gall. The Israeli state has more than its fair share, it goes without saying. So does Bush when he steadfastly pursues a policy which goes against commonsense and the interests of his own country. The book 'Israel lobby & US foreign policy' kicked up a dust storm of invective against the two university authors. Anti-Semitism got bandied about quite a lot, to distract the public's attention from the book. That hasn't stopped the book's sales. Yet no one in the US has the collective power to tame the Israeli Amok who does what it pleases. Bush could simply issue an order suspending military and economic aid to Israel, a threat Eisenhower used to get Israel out of Suez a halfl century ago. But he won't since he is a blockhead enough to court disaster for his presidency and his people.
It is time for a new US approach to Israel. It is not like Caesar's wife...above suspicion. It's an expansionist state whose appetite won't be slakedl but for strong arm twisting by the US the country which supports its with its own people's taxes and doesn't wait to collect any outstanding debt Israel owes.

Saturday's New York Times and embedded scholars in America's wars

Anyone worth his inquisitive salt should read on line or in print the Saturday edition of the New York Times. In that weekend day's edition, surprisingly interesting articles appear which never would find their way in weekday and Sunday editions. Last week, it was the US Bureau of the Budget's findings that thanks to Bush & co's tax cuts to the wealthy that the top 1 per cent of household income increased in two years--2003 to 2005--46,1 percent whilst the other quartiles of the country's ratepayers did not advance but in the hundreds of dollars! Today in the Arts & Leisure pages in the Metro section we have a longish article of embedded social scientists [read anthropologists] who under the cover of Harvard are helping fight with tools of their trade the war in Afghanistan on our side. Precedent of the enrolment of social scientists in the good war meaning world war 2, is evoked to give the current enterprise a veneer of respectability, but nary a word on say the Johnson and Nixon administrations who through the CIA and other covert agencies used these very social scientists to wage America's disasterous war in Vietnam and covertly in Laos and Cambodia. There is nothing neutral about embedded social scientists; they are there to identify, uncover the enemy which the good side has to capture, torture, or kill on the battlefield.
In this age of Guantanamo and Abu Gharib, the American Psychological Association is in the throes of scandal since they see nothing wrong aiding and abetting in torture, although they are quick to say they are there neutrally to save prisoners from extreme forms of torture! Now the American Anthropologists Association's latest meeting had a polite discussion on the matter of its members embedded with American troops in Afghanistan. No conclusive results came of this sterile debate and the AAA sidestepped the issue. But Harvard has since it has at the head of its programme a former Pentagon official with a Ph.D., and oodles of money to run an institute which will honey coat the ugly fact that these civilian are in the business of torturing and killing people.
Had these social sciences associations of the chattering monkies had their druthers, they simply would encourage members who want to contribute to the 'war' effort to enlist in the military. In this way, the lines will would be drawn more finely. They wish to remain with soap clean soft hand whilst they engage in the swamp of reprehensible activities.
A last word today: Tom Hayden and Archibald Cox, you know those trouble makers of the Vietnam war and Watergate scandal have brought the issue to light. But for the flunkies of Bush & co such as the press and the universities with large government grants, these people are 'retro' and suspect and damaged goods. Well the good Germans will have a price to pay soon!

Sovereign Funds & the decline of American Finance Captilaism

No one would think it odd that Saudi Arabia with its vast oil wealth which it uses to fund everything from soup to nuts and fosters and encourages the spread of an extreme Islamic fundamentalism which has spawned Al Qaeda & its clones, is going to set up a sovereign fund. The oil kingdom's fund will dwarf Abu Dahbi's which floats in the financial stratosophere of some us$900bn, some of which has gone to help Citibank, the world's largest bank, weather the subprime mortgage swamp it gladly entered to bilk its wealthy investors and pray on the financially weak, for usurious rates of profit and fat bonuses. But the real surprise is the city state of Singapore's Temesak [its old Malay name for the land of the Merlion]. Singapore's mighty dollar brought about the fall of the Thai government, and sent its leader in permanent exile in London, on the heels of a military coup. Mighty Singapore is the mouse who roars and has the wherewithal to flex its financial muscles. It has infused the Swiss banking house, much to its bankers regret, with SF11bn to support the stress and strain of self inflicted greed in the subprime market. And now, Temesak is in close discussions to give a transfusion of funds to Merrill Lynch that old white shoe investment banking house who is suffering from subprime gout. 18Brumaire spoke of Nayan Chandra [formerly of the Far Eastern Economic Review and how associated with one of many think tanks of the chattering classes] who muses on the lack of Asia's and Middle East's coming to the fore to stake its claim in the world markets. Well Chandra they do not need to, they are doing it already 'sotto voce', walking softly and carry a fat wallet.
The 'impoverished' wink, wink, wink American investment banking houses are selling off non voting per centage of ownership, they think. But the weight of such billions means influence for these sovereign funds have sharp eyes and are watching and counting their investments, and they won't stand for slack, corrupt behaviour which would turn a pence. As such the mighty American houses who set up the ponzi scheme which we all now know as 'subprime instruments', aided and abetted by the toilet room attendant of theirs Alan Greenspan and the feckless American government are surrending step by step power of theirs, and thus the infusion of these wealthy sovereign funds spells the decline of America's financial capitalism

Corrupt Lee Myung bak speaks loudly

Now that Lee has won the race for the South Korean Blue House. He can talk tough through the fog of scandal which plague his name and reputation. He is a poor imitation of mini mouse Bush who is now going to talk truth to Kim Jong il. Well he's chosen a poor model to follow...blockhead Bush has had to tread much water with North Korea, and is now eating crow.
Lee has to try to cover his tracks, even though he has already owned up to the fact that he padded his company account with names of his 4 children to fatten his wallet. A committed Presbyterian he is certainly not one of the elect if we judge by his own corrupt ways. He has not the convictions of his religion to repent! So he swells up his breast to talk big to Pyongyang who is not impressed. They've dealt with 'demi sels' before and know how to handle 'toughs'.
Lee has promised a lot for the monies classes who more likely than not will not repatriate the funds they hid abroad during Kim Dae Jung's and Roh Moo hyun's presidencies. So a spike in wealth management but hardly will he be able to double household income or run up strong eocnomic growth as he promised. He's not magnus and his magician's wand, if he has one, is made of wet noodles!
Lee is born in Japan, so he will talk tough to push an agenda which will favor the wealthy, and he will talk in strident tones for his shame of not being born or real Korean soil...Someone should draw up a good psychological profile on this man who will turnout to be, more likely than not, a spoiler.

Dickens, Capra, Griffiths & Crisis in subprime mortgages

T'is the season to be jolly...ho, ho, ho...but there is little for those in debt or having no work or are in fear of being thrown out of home and hearth for being behind in mortgage payments. Dickens' Scrooge shed off the weights and chains of his hard heart and in the end became a charitable man. Not Mr. Potts in Capra's 'It's a wonderful life'...he smashed his fist on the table shouting 'foreclose!' Alas we have today no George Bailey nor his guardian angel Clarence to fight the rising tide of endebtedness and the loss of one's home...But we do have a rotten ruling class who would fit in well in D.W. Griffiths' 'Greed'.
Parts of America are already in recession, whose howling packs of wolves baying at the rest of the these mighty 50 states. Yet, the parasitic masters of the USA go on singing and dancing and laughing as though nothing is happening. Or if there are a few who do, they cannot stem the tides of indifference and the utter disregard of the wealthy whose household income have more than doubled since mini mouse Bush & co. took off, commanding an army of Republicans of lapdogs who snapped to the commands of their masters. These parasites are cut off from the everyday plight of the ordinary taxpayer; they think of nothing but privileges which they call 'rights' of the plutocracy to which they proudly belong. They will sell their dark souls to keep them, one way or the other. And this one can see in the mortgage mess that the toilet bowl attendant Alan Greenspan and his charwoman successor Bernanke tilt the country's monetary policy towards the rich. The mortgage and investment banking mafia are whithering a storm which is saping their strength and out of greed for a quick return on a dollar, they have preverted the dreams of the poor for a house by binding everyone to usurious terms which would bleed the hardworking poor whiter than a dead cod fish. And so to stay afloat America as a leader in financial markets are selling itself off at the auction block to foreigner capital. A weaker dollar and pressure from China, Singapore, Arab money will have its toll and turn these scum bags of capital into servants which they happily with bow and scrape to new masters as long as the jaded lifestyle they have remains...But as for the rest of us...tough nuggies as they say in American slang...fend for yourselves...the Titanic of the banking world has hit the iceberg, sauve qui peut! and let the cadavers of greed fill the lifeboats...A pox on their houses!

Decline of America's investment bankers

Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns have written off billions in bad subprime loans in the last quarterly earnings reports of their. A signal event, the more especially in the long history of these two houses, it is the first time the balance sheet is in bright Christmas colour red! Morgan Stanly lost us$9bn, but they found an China with a fat wallet of us$200bn over in sovergein funds to buy a 10 per cent share in this old white shoe house. Bear wrote off us1.3bn, and had arranged months before to enter in a mutual us$1bn mutual investment in funds--Bear in Citic and Citic in Bear, allow each to worm its way into each other's market. CitiGroup found a saviour in the oil wealth of Abu Dubai. And of course the greedy Blackstone Group sold off a 10 per cent share to the Chinese.
The outsiders have presently no voting rights but the weight of the investment will have an effect of the poor management of the Americans. Bear a fair haired boy in prime brokerage has been pushed out of the top 3 by the Swiss UBS. What is even more telling is that although Bear has kept its top customers [many of whom lost a bundle in Bear's two hedge funds which went belly up in which these fat cats--but not Bear--lost big money], these very good clients are shifting funds to other banks. So not only do we see a loss of big bucks but a serious crisis in trust which will take years to recover from.
Foreign monies to bail out weakened by greed in the subprime mess, means that the sun is setting on America as the cock of the walk in the world's financial empire.
Nayan Chanda had an op ed piece in 19 December Financial Times of London, in which he urged Asian and Arab leaders to speak up more boldly in financial markets since they have strong funds to back up their words, and as such, the power to do so and sway markets and use their influence. They no longer have to take second place!
The crisis in American banking houses should be a stern lesson and a warning to the world's capital markets. No one reads but should have in hindsight 'Finanaz Kapital' of the Austrian Rudolph Hilferdings. It is out of print more likely than not in translation, and although written more than a century ago, should serve as a warning as the quixotic nature of the banking industry!

Goldman Sachs' sad commentary on 2008

Goldmans' CEO will more likely than not get a bonus of us$70m this year for a job well done and for the subprime mess it did much to contribute to. Now prospects for 2008 look bleak, and the bank's salad days are coming to an end. There recession, the drying up of liquidity, and of course public trust in this house of ill repute...so earnings will dip and may run to the red. Who will suffer not the fat rotting fish at the head of this banking house but the employees of lesser worth who very well might find a pink slip in the pay envelope. 2008 looks as though it were going to be in the words of elizabeth ii queen of England an 'annus horribilis' for the financial community mafia.

Some thoughts on an Algerian grandfather's suicide bombing

Rabah Bechla a 63 year old grandfather rammed his explosive packed lorry into a UN's office in Algiers on 17 December 2007. Bechla was a firm supporter of the FIS [Front islamique du Salut]since it began a civil and now guerrilla warfare against the Algerian state, since the beginning. He went underground in 1995. Yet everyone is scratching his head as to why such a 'shibani', an old man, should sacrifice himself in a terrorist bombing. Even the 'New York Times' Katrin Bennhold who filed her story from Algiers. The key is found in her own article.
Algeria once a beacon of hope and change in post colonial Africa denegerated quickly into cliques, croneyism, mass corruption, and was run as though it were an East European dictatorship. With oil, it squandered its wealth for the benefit of a jaded ruling class. The cloak of socialism that they wore slipped badly. Any centre or centre left movement that challenged their power they supressed violently. Popular discontent boiled underneath, and the military and civilian mafia holding the supreme power of a one party state encouraged the rise of an Islamic party which eventually formed the FIS. The Islamist had won elections in 1992 but the army intervened and civil war broke out;carnage, brutality, murder, and the violence that Franz Fanon called for in his 'les damnes de la terre' raged. Eventually the army and the long years of exhaustion won out but they didn't still the hand of Islamic terrorism which now has allied itself with Al Queda. Yet the reasons for this terrorism is Algerian and the corruption, the poverty, the discontent remain and the state acts like Bourbon kings of yore who remembered nothing and learnt nothing, to solve deep social, economic, and political problems. For a quick primer on why Bechla saddled himself with explosives read Yasmina Khadra's 'de quoi revent les loups?' It doesn't take a rocket scientist to find the root cause of the matter, and yet for the chattering classes they discover something that was very visible but they chose not to see nor understand, and so like Columbus they discover the world anew when forced to. Bechla's death will not further a whit the Al Queda quest for power. Look at the Philippines there the Moros or Filipino Muslims have been fighting a rear guard action which goes back even to the early years of the American occuption of the islands during the Spanish American war. The problems are out there for everyone to see and to solve but force remains majeur and the la guerre d'usure goes on without end.

The subprime shoe pinches, the bankers cry!

The Fed has finally woken up to the seemingly never ending subprime mess. Bernanke the charwoman of the financial community is coming to the realisation that the investment bankers and mortgage lenders have committed fraud by bilking the people with extremely weak credit. Bernanke like the toilet bowl cleaner of the bankers Alan Greenspan was not overly concerned about the bursting of the housing bubble, nor about the scam the ponzi scheme of cdo's that the investment banking industry was hawking. Now as the Fed has to dig deeper and deeper into the public pockets to bail out these financial bloodsuckers, Bernanke is forced to see redress through regulating the bankers and mortgage lenders who have gotten away with murder. These robber barons of high finance fought against regulation, believing in that old saw that the market reigns supreme, that it can regulate itself, and old man trouble in the marketplace will go away. Bernanke and that criminal Greenspan who is a groupie for the snake oil Ayn Rand was selling thought the same. Now that it looks as though the country is on the cusp of recession, that multi million Americans are going to be thrown out of house and home, that the big cats of finance are bleeding badly, and in a word, that the pillars of the temple of capitalism are shaking, Bernanke is trying to do something, to restore trust in a system which has failed the American people who struggle daily to make ends meet. Again we see the wealthy mafia who run this country can not a whit about anything but the interests of their class. It is only when those very interests are threatened that their lackeys act to save them. Any benefits of the rescue of Moneybags & co. that helps the hard working Americans
are incidental. When will the poor and the disinherited wake up and demand what's do them. When will justice throw these bums of high finance and their charwomen and toilet cleaners be hauled before the bar, found guilty and throw in the slammer?

Edwards and Obama

Edwards is looking more and more presidential every day, whilst Obama is showing his deep conservative colours. Were Obama elected president, he would turn out to be a weak reed in the wind but on every issue but race.

Welfare for Investment Bankers and the excuses of their bathroom attendant Alan Greenspan

American and European central banks are dipping in to deep pockets for billions of Yankee dollars and Euros in the vain effort of stanching the leaky dykes of the subprime mortgages which leading American banking houses have fobbed off on greedy capitlists and the unsuspecting poor and pensioners.
Christmas is bonus time for these stinking, rotten big fish of Wall Street, who, in times of drying up of liquidity and public trust, act as though they were early 21 century Marie Antoinettes by paying themselves very fat, multi million dollar bonuses, at ratepayers expense. And as the subprime ball of string unravels more and more the truth is emerging about the prinicipal role of the former chairman of the US Fed, the toilet bowl cleaner for the Moneybags, Alan Greenspan has the balls to say, 'the Fed was poorlye equipped to investigate deceptive lending, and he was not to blame for the scandal'. Of course he is obfuscating as is his trade mark of blowing blue smoke and blinding the shakers and dealers and everyone else with mirrors. It turns out that he was the banking industry's night soil collector, and gofer for the banking industry; that when years before the housing bubble broke, other governors in the regional Feds had raised signs of warning, but servile Greenspan sided with the industry, ignoring warnings in the way Bush & co ignored Hurricaine Katrina! Greenspan is shedding mock turtle tears, pleading special excuses. He deserves to be investigated for malignant neglect of duties and for complicity with the banking lobby who fought tooth and nail against any regulation of the suspect subprime mortgages. What do he and they know about the little people, the more especially since they benefit from a feckless congress who does everything to cater to their class interests and big money instincts. 18Brumaire calls it greed and more...it is that these rotting parasites on the body public are so distant from the woes of everyday life they act as though they were forever to the manor born. Which they are not. It is time for the whole lot to be investigated for high crimes and misdemeanors against the American public if not the global community. And in the dock should stand shamed the washroom lackey of theirs Alan Greenspan!

Alan Greenspan gives his blessing

Alan Greenspan who is very much responsible for the subprime mortgage mess, has spoke like the grand pooh bah of finance he fancies himself to be. His encyclical: governments should help bail out the up to 20 million householders who are courting foreclosures. These people who had not a pot to piss in signed their livelihoods away with the mirage of low interest rates to have a piece of the American dream: a house of one's own...a dream house...well all this turned to sand when they woke up to discover that monthly mortgage payments went sky high and beyond their purse after two years, subprime scandal or not. Defaults are piling up. And the banks and central governments have to bailout the investment banks who sold suspect debt.
So in his papal largesse Greenspan who is a free marketeer par excellence wakes up to find that he is the frog of Keynesism. What a joke! He assumes no responsibility. Shame! Shame! Shame! If ever there's a way to prosecute Greenspan for his sins of omission and commision let the lawmakers find it! let the homeowners take out a class action suit against him!

CDO's, Lehman, and Australia

Lehman Brothers have weathered the subprime scandal better than many of its fellow investment banking houses. Yet the storm is near far away. It looks as though 3 state governments in Australia are prepared to take Lehman to court for damanges in palming off CDO's or collateralised debt obligations, those fancy financial instruments, which allowed the investment banks to salami slice mortgages and sell them off piecemeal to the willing and the unsuspected for a return of anywhere from 20 to 30 per cent. The housing bubble has burst and the chickens are coming home to roost, and the fallout is far from over. So Lehman & co. are wide open for law suits and possible criminal action for slick debt financing. Law suits will spread like oil on a fire and will catch other banking houses. As such the writing is on the wall the more especially since the world financial markets are not prepared for the shocks.
Christimas time is Santa's rewards for Lehman and the investment banking industry. Already Goldman's Blankfein is bruited to be getting us$70m as a bonus. Lehman's head honcho should get a healthy big multi million dollar bonus too, and this in times of looming recession and scandal and knowingly following a guillible public of the rich with debt obligations built on sand.
Let the fines mount, the Moneybags suffer social oppobrium if not time in the slammer.
The time for banking regulations...strict and stern...has come!

Lee Myung-bak, corruption, and 'Perfume of Korea'

The dark clouds of scandal are tracking the campaign trail of Lee Myung-bak, the Grand National Party's candidate for the Blue House in South Korea. The South Korean parlement have opened up again the investigation of Mr Lee for corruption, which he thought the courts had put behind him, washing him of his past sins.
Although the polls of the leading South Korean dailies put the ex mayor of Seoul and former CEO of the Hyundai Group well ahead of this rivals in the race for the presidency, Lee's handlers recognised that the odour of scandal stuck to him. They came up with a novel idea to mask the smell of corruption attached to his name by spraying what they call the 'Perfume of Korea', a pleasant scent which would remind voters of the good qualities of the man who may become the Republic of Korea's next president.
This self promotion shows that Lee, a practioneer of corporate patronage and croneyism, has trouble casting off his old persona. It also demonstrates the unreliability of polls, for it is one thing to say, 'yes, I'm going to cast my ballot for Mr. Lee on election day', and another to whisper low 'In the voting booth, I'm going to vote my conscience'. As election day comes near, the election race will tighten and polls numbers will soften.
Even if Lee is elected president, the hound of corruption and malfeasance will track his every steps. Which will make him a weak chief executive.
Lee is very pro business, which is not a problem in itself. His programme favours the construction industry which is something he knows very much about. He was after all president of Hyundai's construction arm which went belly up in 1998. He is less interested in reform than in promoting the chaebols and the government patronage and kick backs and shady deals to give the South Korean economy a shot of steroids to double GDP and household income. Whatever he does, he will have to fight tooth and nail to save his tarnished reputation and won't be able to reward his friends in high places.
His boasts of talking the talk, walking the walk with Pyongyang will not wash. Even North Korea knows that Lee's talk is worse than his bite, and that he will be a weak leaf in inter Korean relations.

May Ronald Reagan and the Republican plutocrats burn in hell! The rich are getting richer, faster, much faster

Hidden in the business pages of the Grey Old Lady of the American press, 'The New York Times [15 December 2007] is an article about the US Congressional Budget Office report on increases of income among Americans. And as if it didn't come as a suprise the more wealthy household income for the period 2003 to 2005 grew at the astronomical rate of 42,6 per cent, for the TOP ONE PER CENT, for the secondquintile 3, 9 per cent, for the middle quintile 4,3 per cent, for the fourth quintile 2,7 per cent, and for the bottom quintile 1,3 per cent. If you add up the per centages for the second to bottom quintile it comes only to 11,2 per cent which is not telling us much since the sleight of hand compilers of the report figure the average growth in household income is 10,1 per cent. Go tell that to the struggling working poor or even those with a low six figure income! Let's repeat again that the top one per cent owns in the usa as much wealth as 150.000 Americans excluding the very poor and children.
The bloodsuckers and their glad elves in the Congress have stacked the deck against the American people. The sainted [sic] Ronald Reagan a lacky of the Moneybags accelerated the trend which has led to this tilt to towards the rotton elite which controls this country. The Fat Cats are raking it in faster than their calculators can turn. And the investment bankers who have given us the subprime mortgage mess which we the poor are going to have to bail out for their greed, stupidity, inefficiency, and blindness to the health of the American commonweal could gave a tinker's damn.
Ask any ordinary guy or gal on the street, he or she knows the score but he or she will shrug shoulders as if to say 'what can be do? this is the way of the world, and it ain't fair'. No it ain't, but there's a long history of social protest which says that these bloodsuckers can always get away with it. Where is the muckraking press? Cowed to the chains of oligarchies. The unions? Weakened. And political parties? They are hand in glove with the greedy plunders of the poor.
Let's begin to organise, let's revive the social protest movements...where are the good Protestant social protesters of 125 years ago? where are the democratic Socialist movement? where are the popularists who would spit in the eye of Big Capital without shame? It is time the worthy descendants of these protest movements and oh even the much damned Communists come to the fore and organise and put these plutocrats feet to the fire.

Another comment on Hank Paulson

There is one of those photo ops in today's world press: Paulson and Hu surrounded by their henchmen and women sitting in deep, plush chairs in Beijing. Paulson has once again worked out some puny, weak tea deal with China, a country which has made him a wealthy man. As an investment banker and ceo of Goldman Sachs, he worked slavishly for China, but as US secretary of Treasury, he has not defended the American public against China's dirty pool in doing business.
Seated near Hu is Wu Yi the fiery goddess of China's national interests. She has never lost an opportunity to hector poor Hank Paulson, who continues pursuing a don't rock the boat with Beijing.
China has much to lose with strong American representation, but so do the financial snake oil salesmen from Wall Street. So here we have again high American officials defending Moneybags and coupon clippers whilst domestically they bleed Americans with high mortgage, questional financial instruments to pick the pockets of the poor, rally against universal medical assurance, aid to the poor, and a whole bevy of policies which have shifted the tax burden onto the shoulders of those who grunt under the burden of being able to pay. It is time to call for change; to march; to organise; to throw the rascals out, and put into Congress men and women of principle not so beholden to the lobbies and the cartels of power, who will regulate these believers of enriching themselves through an unfettered market and damn the American people. It is time to shame them, throw them in prison for questionable practices, put their feet to the fire of public wrath and knock them off their high hobby horses of power.

Bush liable for criminal pursuit

It is becoming almost a truism that the American people are getting over the culture of fear and panic which began on September 11, 2001. The 2008 elections will sweep out of office the noxious, deceitful, ultra partisan years of Bush junior. He stands a firm rock for his class, his croneys, for corruption, and incompetence, and for cheating and deceiving the American people.
He has misused power and twisted laws for his own partisan use. No wet saghetti spined law makers will move for impeachment, but with a new wind blowing across the land for change, it is worth thinking of pursuing this mini mouse without an ounce of courage for high crimes and misdemeanors. Look at Jacques Chirac he is under investigation for malfeasance after running France for 8 years and drinking too greedily at the public trough during his years as Mayor of Paris. This is how we should think of the dry drunk Bush...hold the rascals feet to the fires of the law for his misdeeds, malignant neglect in office. Pursue this rascal, never give him a moment of rest, let him feel the weight of his crimes when he was president.

America's National Pastime--Baseball a house of shame

The Mitchell enquiry has unfettered the truth which everyone has known but few have been willing to acknowledge. The widespread use of steroids in sports. And in this case baseball. Barry Bonds name comes to mine, but did the haloed Roger Clements who in his 40's had the power and grace of a player half his age? Hardly. Now voices are raised about racism, about the inability of those accused to confront their accusers, so on and on. This is eyewash! The Feds have got the goods on locker room attendants who supplied say the Steinbrenner troopers with steriods. They have followed the money, and cheques they have. So the large net of shame has caught some say 900 names big and small in baseball. The scandal is so widespread, it is going to be hard to sweep the dirt under the lumpy carpet. Many have lied under oath, so they are liable to criminal pursuit. The Yankees are hard hit, and the miracle team has not done so well in the last few seasons, so one has to wonder that the world series that they won had something to do with steroids and trickery. Will the feats of these atheletes be erased from the record books? Will the users of steroids--those unsightly giants of sagging flesh--be indicted and shamed and bear the brand of the mighty Casey who struck out at Mudville? That remains to be seen!
Will there be strick laws with strong sanctions for steroid use? We the fans have been robbed, and will be demand justice and reform?

The Greedy Goldman Sachs Octopus

As Europe's and America's central banks are pouring endless billions to staunch the bloody subprime mess, Goldman's CEO the 'Financial Times of London' reports today that Lloyd Blanfein will get as this year of crisis ends, a bonus of some us$70m. Last year he received a whooping us$54m. Goldman Sachs is a prime culprit in the subprime scandal. The clever heads of this investment house bet on the collapse of the mortgage market. Rather than ringing the tocsin of warning, they coolly and with delibrate calculation continued to repackage debt of theirs and farm it out to greedy competitors. As a result the firm's bottom line is in the black, whilst others have taken a big hit. A bonus of us$70m is a crime in a country where the mini mouse who is president vetoed coverage for uninsured children, burdened the country with a bad war which he lied the country into, thereby ballooning the country's debt, and has mortgaged the country's domestic economy to recession, which his US secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson a former CEO of this bloody sucking banking house of Goldman Sachs has proven an incapable practioneer of the public financial good. Greed, greed, and nothing but greed. Congress and the New York State attorney general's office should immediately open an investigation into Goldman's predatory practice, dun them heavily, and throw a good bunch of rascals into jail.

Lee Myung-bak's short vision

The big money is on Lee Myung-bak. He's the favourite to win the up coming South Korean elections to succeed president Roh Moo-hyun. Lee's a no nonsense businessman, he says. He has recently had any odour of scandal attached to his name washed away. He worked for Hyundae which has close ties to North Korea's Kim Jong-il. However, Lee takes a hard nosed approach to the North, boast he, and is now, if elected, going to put a fine tooth comb to the 47 accords signed by Roh and Kim at the second inter Korean summit in October 2007. Are they justified? is his rule of thumb. Of course they are, but the monies going to the North, however, challenge Lee's hobby horse project of digging a canal from west to east in South Korea, a short term goal which pales in comparison to the rapproachement between the North and the South of a divided Korean peninsula. It would make eminently good won and sense were it tied into the joint agreements. But Lee's vision is cloudy and clouded. It is useful to remember that he headed Hyundae's construction arm, so a canal will featherbed the construction industry and of course his old company. Lee will carry on business as usual through slushfunds, unmarked enveloped, and championing the old chaebol guard.
Will the dignity of the office the spindoctors say that he has already won confer wisdom on him, so that he reorientates his narrow ideas to embrace the wider vision of his two predecessors--Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo-hyum? That remains to be seen.

Foreign born CEO's of American corporation

Once again the public is being hoodwinked. The 'New York Times' published a longish articles with photos of foreign born ceo's of American corporation. The big story: look at what globalisation has wrought. Well, expanding capitalism commerical, industrial, or finance driven is and has always been global. Any good high school history text worth its salt would tell you that!
This myth is reheated from those days 30 years or so ago when the 'New York Times' and its sisters in the newspaper trade waxed elegaic about the multi or trans national corporation.
The point here is to what country do these foreign born CEO's owe allegiance? Simply put, the country of origin of the corporation he or she heads. And that's the answer to a simple question, no more, no less.
By saying the American big companies are now in foreign hands, arouses and nutures xenophobia and anger at the foreigner for taking away jobs, erasing pensions, diluting health assurance, and the rest. It is a mean and vicious tack to arouse public anger where it does not belong; it serves only the interest of the corporations or banks to get away with murder.

The Dow, the Fed, and Wall Street

Wall Street showed its anger yesterday [11 December 2007]at the Fed's shaving a quarter point off the discount rate. The Dow had a fit, falling over 230 points.
The big Wall Street houses had wanted and expected more that a quarter point. They are looking for the soft money which the Fed had generously given them in the early 1990's to climb out of a banking scandal. Then the Fed's largesse had allowed these profiteers with easy money to come up with schemes and financial instruments which became CDO's and the like to float and slice and dice and sell off piecemeal to float the subprime mortgage ponzi scheme. These very banks are now writing off billions but they salivate greedily for the government to bail them at with hardly a slap on the wrist. But soft money and a drop in the Fed rate will bring more trouble. What's needed is regulated, a tight rein to pull these feral money dogs into line.
The 12 December 2007 issue of 'The Financial Times of London' has a good article on the bank co-ops that keep the US afloat. Yes, government sponsored bank co-ops founded during the Great Depression, under the watch of the much despised FDR, the man who betrayed his class, but saved American capitalism. These co-ops are pouring billions in the subprime mess which the Free Marketeer, free loaders created; they arre the cushion for the mortgage industry. Again the hated government which these Satanic princes of Wall Street and big business want off their backs, are coming to the rescue. These blowhards deserve long prison terms, but the American political system being what it is, will excuse such malice of forethought behaviour, sadly.
The time is for reform, but with Mini Mouse in the White House the sore will fester and infect more the US banking system and the economy and the dollar and the American first power place in the sun. Already foreign sovereign funds are buying big chucks of the system, and will flex muscles so that their investments won't go the way of all flesh. Translation, the American Moneybags are going to dance to foreign investors' tunes.

China's illegal moves

China and Japan signed an economic accord. The Japanese published the full text but in the Chinese, the haughty Commies in Beijing excised certain clauses, dealing with currency reform and trading schedules. Tokyo has made a demarche demanding the Chinese publish the agreement in full. They haven't. China's arrogance knows no bounds. It is time to call China on its imperial ways. One way: Boycott the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Vanity Fair and the Alkie who lives in the White House

Carter Burdon the editor of Vanity Fair has little love for George W. Bush. And that is plain to see in his Editor's letter in the magazine's December 2007 issue. He does however cite an interesting fact from former British foreign minister Lord Owen's 'Intoxication of Power'. The world may laugh at Bush's malaprops, his twisted tongue in pronouncing the simplest of words, or his pratfalls or walking into closed doors. Lord Owen offers proof that Bush is a secret drinker who despite oaths to the contrary still tipples. Saying this, we cannot excuse Bush's lies, his heartlessness towards those not in the class of the silver spoon he is born into. Bush is a reactionary up and down the line. His policies might blow up in his face but no one dares to rise up and call him that and seriously challenge his failed policies.
Those running for his post in the White House are from the same class, in spite of background. They belong to the rich and the greedy and care hardly much about the hard working poor. All do not much deserve a speck of dust in the legacy of FDR.

Harvard's Welfare for the Rich

Harvard University has announced a 50 per cent increase in tuition for the 2009 school year. The bill for 4 years rings up to us$180.000 per annum. But to help defray the cost for students whose family yearly earnings register in the 6 figure category, Harvard will offer relief. Harvard has a multi billion dollar endowment fund, so the pittance doled out for the scions of the rich are but crumbs from its table. The plan to defray costs for the rich has a devil's logic to it: more likely than not the entering students are sons and daughters of the university's alumni. These rich kids come from families which are almost at the apex of America's narrowing class structure. Let's do some math here! Less than 1 per cent of America's wealthy own as much as 150.000 Americans!
By subsidising the students from a high income ceiling, Harvard will continue to train the canon fodder for America's ruling classes, in government, the professions, business, and in the field of high educations. It will continue producing the chattering classes which will serve the needs and interests of capital.
Harvard's good intentions simply strip naked to the public eye that the American dream as we know it is deader than a door nail. The shift in tax structure which accelerated during the reign of the sainted Ronald Reagan has hit the higher income earners, and they, too, are straining shouldering the burdens which the very rich and super rich refuse to bear.
In an age of crony capitalism, of the excesses of the glitterati, of the trash that greedily neglects this country's basic needs for an endless ego trip, the United States has entered into its own twilight. The puny measures that Harvard is offering as relief for turning out future generations of valets, maids, and the whole panoply of the downstairs servants for the very rich is preparing the way for great change. When? Where? And how? remains to be seen.
None of the candidates for 2008 have the backbone nor the gumption to meet the pressing needs of the working poor and underclasses head on. They've not plan but the same old, same old...and the world be damned!

New York Philharmonic is going to North Korea

Today it was announced that the New York Philharmic Orchestre is going to Pyongyang in February. The big thaw in freezing out North Korea is going full force. Diplomatic Atomic bomb global warming has begun, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that mini mouse aka George Bush ends up shaking Kim Jong-il's hand.

UBS writes off 10 billion SF

UBS has fessed up to a loss of 10 billion FF owing to the subprime mess. But the government of Singapore and an unnamed Arab have come to rescue with 11 billion SF to tide this bank over hard times. US investment houses will report year end earnings this week. 18Brumaire read that Bear Stearns is taking a write down of us1.2 billion, and that a friend of its CEO now owns 7 or 8 per cent of the firm, and his holding is larger that the CEO's [Is regime change in the wind?]. Lehman will write down even more...and that's only the beginning.
Sings of the impending recession are looming large on the horizon and the Wall Street wizards of finance are losing their grips on the world's purse strings...or if not completely but they will become the jumping beans for Asian and Arab and Petroleum interests.

Paulson the Schlemiel and Barney Frank the working class' hero

18Brumaire suggests reading Paul Krugman's 10 December 2007 op ed piece in the 'New York Times'.
It reveals man's complete identification with his monied class and the willingness to let the banks have a free ride of sorts and the poor homeowners with bad mortgages to suffer the pain whilst taxes of theirs pays his salary and lifestyle.
Krugman talks alas too briefly of Representative Barney Frank's bill to bring relief to victims of the subprime scam. Frank is a blue collar guy with a Harvard degree who is a champion of the ordinary Joe and Jane. He needs support and let the electorate bombard the White House, Paulson, and Congress demanding debt relief for the little men and women and not the MoneyBags who like Paulson devised schemes to bilk the public and live high on the hog

A sugar coated Israeli film' The Band's Visit' and its hidden meaning

The Band's Vist has opened in New York and Los Angeles, in order to qualify for the Oscar category for best foreign film. It will run a week. 18Brumaire saw this award winning film at a Lincoln Centre picture house. Pensioners flocked to see the film in numbers, but not the young. At best, the film is sappy. It's a 3 hankies film for the film maker Eran Koliran has not only directed but written a sappy film to tear at one's heartstrings. The story is simple: a mistake brings a visiting Egyptian classical Arabic orchestra, whom no one is there to greet at the aeroport, to the wrong town in Israel. The band has been invited to inaugurate an Israeli Arab Cultural Centre. Playing on the differences of alphabet, confusion reigns. Hebrew and Arabic, but Hebrew has the letter P, but Arabic doesn't. B is the closest to the P sound. So invited to play at Petah Tikvah, which to the Arab ear sounds similar to Beta Tikvah, it lands in Beit Tikvah, an arid, barren, forlorn settlement which looks abandoned and perhaps on the dark side of an Israeli nightmare. There the band spends the night thanks to hospitality of a grass widow Dinah who finds these Egyptians in strange looking blue uniforms a break in her day to day monotony. She arranges for them to stay at a friend's home, and at her restaurant. So we have a road film in the thick of a night which reveals the spiritual loneliness and desolation of Beit Tikvah which in translation means 'House of Temple of Hope', and hope there isn't by a far lot. The journey into the night to an almost empty restaurant or the oppresive atmosphere of a flat without love or a skating ring, is like a Virgil leading Dante through the portals to his Infereno where hope reigns not.
Arabic becomes the language of momentary relief of boredom...it's the language of love in song and in a shag with Dinah; it is the handsome young Egyptian violinist Harled or Khalid who initiates a timid, hang dog looking Israeli in the art of losing his virginity with a homely date. For Dinah Arabic recalls a golden age of family when she and her mum and sister would watch Arabic films on the telly...as she recalls with deep longing for the handsome Omar Shariff and his beautiful wife Fatem Hammamet, or for the crooning playboy matinee idol Farid Al Attrache or the great voice of Oum Kathloum. Arabic and the Egyptians become a talisman of sorts. Which brought 18 Brumaire back to the days of his boyhood when Muslims who thought a girlfriend had put a spell on his sexual prowress would call at night at the local rabbi for some verse from the Torah to cast out the demons haunting him. The magic worked at times, for it was the unknown Hebrew script which had the power to undo evil and had a restorative power.
But the brief stay of the bank doesn't restore anything. It exposes the vacuity and vapidness and the moral degenerecy of the state of Israel. Israel with its Arab citizens, you do not see; nor do you see the brutal seizure of Palestinian lands by rapid, rapcious Israeli settlers for land which is not theirs; nor do you see the brutal military occupation of everyday life among the Palestians on the west bank. It is an Israel eaten by the cancer of its own colonisation of land which is theirs, carrying out a policy of bantustans for dominance of a subject Palestine. This is the real message of the film which has won so many awards. This is the glaring message which is lost to those that see the film. And such is the pity!

Bush & Iran

Enough of Bush's preachments. He's the least-informed man on foreign affairs. He hamuddied the waters so that ultimately any sensible solution to dealing with Teheran means a complete overthrow of Bush's policy

Hank Paulson's Blind Spot

Hank Paulson knows how to make money. No doubt about that. Look at his record when he was at the helm of Goldman Sachs. As the US Secretary of the Treasury he has proven timorous at best. His solution to the subprime mortgage bloody mess is so weak tea, it should make anyone sit up in wonder.
Paulson may work hard to save endangered species, like the American Bald Eagle, but let him try saving the ordinary working Joe or Jane from foreclosure, he cannot fight his way out of a paperbag. It's not easy to explain.
Paulson is so rich, he doesn't know the everyday aches and pains of the working poor to get by. He glides in the stratosphere of the wheelers and dealers; he's a slave to the rich and the super rich, so how do you expect him to feel for the little guy or gal?
FDR could and did. As an arch capitalist, Paulson & his crowd firmly believe in the market which can do all and everything but for those frightful times when say the savings and loans threaten to go belly. At such dire moments, they go crying to the government to bail mismanagement, corruption, and bad business practices. And who pays, the ordinary burden taxpayer whose rate of taxes are heavier than Paulson & his class and caste.
What's his meat is his poison for the rest of us. Throw the bum out, he ain't work a tinker's pence, nor does the man in the White House who put him in his job!

War Drums Along the Potomac

US DOD Secretary Gates is pounding on the drums war about Iran. He is thumping out the messages to Arab states in the Middle East that Teheran is a danger. Well, has Gates been reading the newspapers of late? Has he no knowledge of nor feeling for recent history in that region in the world? Why does the Islamic Republic of Iran loom large on Bush's hysteria scale?
If Iran has assumed a larger than life presence in the Middle East, Bush has but himself to blame by initiating a war in Iraq. Out went Saddam Hussein who kept Teheran in check, thereby creating a vacuum for Iran to rush in. But had mini-mouse Bush learnt anything from his pappy's war against Saddam, the elder Bush kept the hanged Iraqi dictator in place in order that Iraq would not fracture into 3 warring factions--which the son Bush has managed to do, and so lead to destabilising the balance of power in that part of western Asia. Not only that, Bush & co. kicked the Sunni military elite out with a swift kick of his pro-counsul's Bremer's boot, and reaped a whirlwind of guerrilla and sectarian warfare. More, the incompetent Rumsfeld and the corrupt, naif Wolfowitz warmed up to the Shi'a forces which have close, cosy, and very chummy ties with Iran.
Teheran, on the other hand, has made overtures to the council of Arab states, notably Bush's pals in Saudi Arabia, to mend fences and allay fears of a non-Arab, Shia-dominated Iraq and a trouble sport for the Shi'a minority in the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf states.
18 Brumaire can go on with this 'cahier de doleances', but suffice it be to say, that the trouble in Iraq and the instability in the region bears the scarlet letter of culpability which is on Bush & co. military fatiques.
So Gates if Iran is mocking the small minds in Washington, it is simply tying the shoelaces of a bully so that he can trip on his war which he lied his was into, and the lack of any foresight in planning what would be the consequences of a post-Saddam Iraq. And t'wasn't songs and dances and let's go down to the beach and live happily everafter; it was one blunder after the other which has weakened the US at home and abroad, and set the region's teeth on edge that a tsunami of regime change will come for Washington's allies and that the dust won't settle for years to come.

Mr. Bush's Dear Chairman Kim letter

Today, on the 67 anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, we know more of the content of the letter the blowhard George W. Bush sent to Chairman Kim Jong-il of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. My how his rhetoric has changed in more than 5 years, and boy, has he swallowed his cardinal sin of pride.
Bush wants something to buoy up his sad and sorry record in the American presidency. He had hoped, the DPRK, to call North Korea by its rightful name, would have shut down its nuclear programme by December 2007. It won't...more probably it will be in the first months of 2008.
Bush is full of Christmas goodies to lay under Kim's tree: removal of the DPRK from his list of terrorists, diplomatic recognition, economic largesse, so on and on...
Bush's letter is a disaster for his neo-con band of thugs who have pinned on the DRPK all the sins of the world since the explusion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Bush has become what his disgraced Republican predecessor in the White House 'a pitiful giant'.
He needs something to put in the black in his ledger of governance which remains in deep dark red.
Had Bush what in Yiddish is 'sekkal', he would never have strayed from Clinton's readiness to deal with Pyongyang. But like the street-gang leader he is, he was so cocksure of himself, so sure that he lied his country into a failed and failing war in Iraq, and has to come hat in hand to Chairman Kim to help him out in extremis so that in the annals of his presidency he has one bright moment of glory.

Bush, MBIA, the Dow, & the Free Marketeers

Well what a difference a few words from George Bush can do for the Dow. His puny, weak-tea measures for dealing with the subprime mess can at best bring some relief to less than 8 per cent of the so-far 2 million homeowners who are on the verge of losing homes. The MBIA, the mortgage industry association and lobby, report that since September 2007 the number of defaults have risen dramatically. As for the big investment houses who in 2006, the 'New York Times' chart so kindly informs us, wrote almost a half-billion in the vegetable soup of subprime paper, and then farmed out in small parcels throughout the world to feed the greedy habit of banks for up to a 30 per cent return on investment, well they're in the soup for it is estimated a half-trillion in write downs. These pooh bahs of high finance who preach the virtues of the free market look for aid and succor to the government, the big bad wolf of regulation, for a bailout. Although Bush delivers his austere Protestant warning of the buyer beware, he has no choice but to help his class, for if they fail the world according to them will collapse. So like a little boy who cut his finger these free marketeers like Bush himself, run to Mother Government which according to the sainted Ronald Reagan, the annointed of the monied classes, who is the problem, for help. And help they will get whilst us poor ratepayers will pull our belts tighter to allow these vultures of money to go about by their leave.
Could the American public but awake up from the disspiritedness and hopelessness and the bread & circuses Bush & co. have bred, and stiffen the collective bankbone of their, that would set these bloodsuckers on their toes and they would rush to do something to placate it and bring them relief. For after all the government is us, and we've a right to say our piece and not leave it to the millionaires in Congress, the powerful lobbies of industries to bleed us whiter than whiter. Wake up America, put muscle into your wrath, organise, and flex your muscles and make the carrion of the money caste cringe and fork over your just rewards!

Bush sent a letter to Kim Jong-il

A brief mention announced on the BBC today 06 December 2007. The North Korean news agency reported that US president George Bush has sent a letter to chairman Kim Jong-il without further details.
My how the mighty Mini Mouse in the White House has been humbled! Is the Macho man in the White House soliciting an invitation to visit Pyongyang? Where have the thunderbolts and high from the pulpit condemnations of North Korea as an axis of evil state gone? In the dustbin, it goes without saying.
Bush is trying to salvage his reputation from the maws of history. He's desperate and will go to great lengths in the last year of his presidency to twist and turn and tie himself into knots...he's trying to snatch from the jaws of utter, complete defeat a tarnished reputation.
He can stamp his foot like Rumplestilskin but like that little villain he has already got it stuck in the floor and cannot do much about that. Bush is not a profile in courage!

Andrew Cuomo takes on Wall Street

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is riding his knight's charger. This time he's pointing his lance at the Wall Street investment houses who have given the world markets the mess of pottage we know as the subprime loan crisis. Crusader Cuomo is using his subpoena powers to force these Moneybags to tell the whole truth under law about their role in slicing and dicing and packaging and recyclying risky mortgage related securities to investors, the total amount of which some put well near a half-trillion American dollars. Already such houses as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, UBS, etc. are writing off billions, and year end balance sheets are looking anemic even though the first seven months of fiscal year 2007 are bright. The biggest culprit is Goldman Sachs which knew that the housing bubble would burst, began not putting its own monies into such financial interests, but out of utter lust for profit, continued salami slicing subprime instruments and farming them out to eager banks looking for 20 to 30 per cent returns. And now Goldman is under the baleful eye of scrutiny, and as a Wall Street hand put it, 'greedy, they violated a prime rule: you do shit in your own corner'. And they did and dumped a mountain of outstanding debt! Will Goldman's CEO pay himself a bonus even bigger than the us$54 million he pocketed last year? Probably he shall. The greed is beyond belief...will the business friendly, one is tempted to say the mistress of big business Bush White House and the growing number of millionaires in Congress bite the hand that feeds them by regulating strong the banking industry?
General Cuomo brought the student loan industry to heel, and forced Congress to rein in banks and universities who bilked students and families of students into paying exorbitant fees, which provided kickbacks, junkets for university muck a mucks and big bucks for banks. Will General Cuomo succeed in taking on Wall Street? The big banks will squander millions in lawyers who will fight tooth and nail to save damaged reputations, not pay huge fines, and seek either to quash subpoeanas or at the very least receive a slight tape on the wrist whilst pleading nolo contendere.
Saying this, the Bush White House is proposing a gimcrack measure of relief for defaulting homeowners. It is as bad as the fine print in the mortgage loans they signed, with so many restrictions, it will bring relief to the bare minimum of defaultees. And what about ex Goldman CEO Hank Paulson? He is berating the Chinese for not behaving responsibly in matters treasury, trade, currency and the like. And he's proposing bandaids in the subprime mess.
Already the tremours of recession are rumbling underfoot. OPEC keeps prices in the Yankee dollar so that the United States won't default...but the bill is coming due...
18Brumaire feels like those glazed over eyed preachers at Marble Arch calling for repentence for the day of reckoning is neigh!

Right on Chris Dodd

Senator Chris Dodd [D-Connecticut]keep Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's feet to the fire. Paulson--Mr. Moneybags from Goldman Sach--knows how to turn a buck for his bank, but he's proven a failure in tackling the suprime mortgage cancer which his investment bank, among many others, helped create. As a firm believer in laissez-fare, laissez-aller capitalism, he believes the market, read the private sector will sort out the mess itself. Eyewash!
Paulson has dealt with China for the last 17 years. He's earned Beijing much money and it has filled Goldman Sachs' coffers with hefty fees for a job well done. But at the helm of the Treasury, Paulson has shown himself a 'naif' in dealing with the China on re evalution of the reminbi yuan, or trade, or dumping, etc. The Chinese know how to turn him around their little finger, and the mighty financier spins like a top. Chris Dodd don't let the pressure off on this turkey...keep him squaking till he does something right for the American rate payers!

Bush the Blockhead

At his news conference on 4 December 2007, George W. Bush, sitting American president, turned in a performance that left much to be desired, to put it mildly. The big news of the day was the NIE report clearly stating that Iran had closed down it nuclear programme since 2003. Bush shucked and shuffled. No matter what the report said, he had his own ideas about a country that he dubbed 'an axis of evil'. Evil it was; evil it is, says he.
Bush has a long-established track record of distorting the truth, dissembling, and without a blink lying. The questions from the room full of journalist offered hardly hard queries. At one point, Mr. 43 admitted that he couldn't read the questionner's body language. We all know Bush's ability to read body language let alone the state of others' soul. Think of his remarks about Putin and Musharaff. And of course his judgment about the great job Brownie was doing in the wake of the Hurricaine Katrina debacle! At this press conference, the more Bush spoke you would've expected him to grow long donkey's ear and hee haw like the street tough in Disney's 'Pinnochio' as he kept telling falsehood after the other.
The day had other non-surprises. During the Democratic candidates debate everyone but Kucinich and the plain-spoken Mike Gravel side stepped questions on Iran. Lord love former Senator Gravel: he pinned the tail on the Democratic donkey by saying the awful truth: Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons programme 4 years ago. So why pussy foot around the matter?
And then there's the editorial in 05 December 2007 grey lady of journalism 'The New York Times', which offered a word of caution. Has no one the courage and the boldness save Gravel and Kucinich to say that 'the emperor has no clothes' and naked he is as a jay bird? Apparently not...no profiles in courage in this lot.
As for the war party: John Bolton fulminated; Cheney huffed and puffed; and the grand pooh bah Poderetz flatly contested the NIE reports finding without offering a shred of proof.
The grand American public shrugged off the report with its usual lethargy. Its truth might've registered but the public at large hasn't the will to shout loudly and act in protest.
America's political culture is poisoned by the waters of fear and retaliation, and the cloud of wanting to know nothing smothers minds. When will the winds of change clear out this pollution over the land, and the big broom sweep out of power these rascals?

Iran: the cat's out of the bag!

The entire US intelligence community of 16 agencies have come to a single consensus--an 'x'axis of evil state' Iran had halted its nucelar weapons programme in 2003, and indications, it seems, point to the a common feeling that Teheran has not again given the green light to resume it.
Vice-president Dick Cheney fought a rear-guard action to delay the intelligence agencies findings but to no avail. The report has had the effect of a bombshell at home and abroad. The false walls of neo-conservatives' Jericho are crumbling. Only Israeli intelligence challenge the report's conclusions. And for obvious reasons, if Iran is pursuing the path of peaceful use of nuclear energy, a laser beam of questions intensely focusses on the Israeli stockpile of nuclear weapons. Perceptive eyes on the world press last week would've noted that a recently declassified document from the Nixon archives talks of Israel's nuclear arsenal, Nixon's displeasure of Israel having the bomb, Kissenger's counselling him to turn a blind eye on the matter even though Tel Aviv may have illegally bought America's fissionable material, thereby not antagonising the wealthy American Jewish community which would cost Republicans votes and monies, and agree that Washington would say nothing on the condition that Israel keep its nuclear stockpiling a secret. Today, Iran has become a major challenger to Israeli hegemony in the Middle East and president Ahmednijad the personification of evil; this explains Israel's hostility towards Iran but that wasn't always so. Read Yale University Press' 2007 'Treacherous alliance: secret dealings of Israel, Iran, & the US' by Trita Passi for a good overview. But we digress.r
The US intelligence communities report again underscores the metaphysical foundations of George W. Bush's foreign policy, a policy based on Alice-in-Wonderland triumphalism, mendacity, distorsions of truth, hard-nosed nastiness. We all know about the lies which have landed in the quagmire which is Iraq, and now we learn about the deceitfulness in turning a docile American public to drink again from the trough of war and this time against Iran. Memories in America have a life of a half-second. Who remembers that infamous CIA report in the early Reagan years on how powerful the Soviet Union was becoming whilst the arms-starved United States was falling behind in the arms race? In the end the report was repudiated for trickery and today we see the same dynamics alive and breathing hotly in Bush Iran policy.
Since no one reads Shakespeare much today, at the end of Henry IV, part 2, Henry's father ssardonically advises his son that without war, there is no good governance: 'Be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels'. Translation, keep the American people's minds looking abroad so that they won't catch on as to the skulduggery you're doing at home. Seizing on the panic created by 11 September, Mr. Bush & his neo-conservative cohort have clared the playing field for war abroad and immiseration at home by cheating the American people out of social services and education and general good health and welfare for the military state. Today Mr. Bush & company have been caught in the 'big lie', but a feckless press and weak-kneed opposition in the houses of Congress, and a largely apathetic public bought off by bread and circuses, consumerism and the glitz of 'People magazine' have no spine to challenge boldly 7 years of lies, impoverishment but the wealthy class of the Bush clan's cronies, and the struggle for everyday existence.
Nonetheless, the cat's out of the bag, and the intelligence communities report has it is hoped, stayed the Dr. Strangelove's hand in the White House from attacking Iran.

God bless Paul Krugman!

Yes, God bless Paul Krugman. Read his twice-weekly op-ed pieces in 'The New York Times'. He won't snow with economists' cant nor blind you with the usual political spin verbiage. He tells it as it is. You may not always agree with him but you can never say that he didn't tell you so. His 03 December 2007 column summed up nicely the liquidity crunch in world markets. What's more the slick instruments of the subprime markets have gone haywire that not even the Bernaeke at the Federal can punch his way out of the crisis, let alone the grand pooh bah of Wall Street US Treasury Hank Paulson.
I do recommend seeing Walt Disney's 'Fantasia', especially the segment on the 'Sorcier's Apprentise'. That good reader says it all on the ball of string that is fast unwinding in the world markets that greedily packaged and bought and resold the subprime alphabet soup of financial wizardry.

Don't cry for Chavez

Venezuela's president Chavez is America's poster boy to hate. Voters rejected by a very narrow margin his referendum to change Venezuela's constitution. You could hear the sounds of glee and joy in the US press and 'he got his just deserts' in the corridors of power and the endless silliness babbled by spin doctors.
If you listened to NPR's gal in Caracas you would have heard weak-tea reporting on the referendum which had more than a clause for a no-term limit on running for the presidency. The referendum had some 40-odd items for the voters to consider, which would shake the pillars of the old society. A 6-hour work day, equal rights for blacks, Indians, and gays and lesbians and the transgendered, not to speak of full equality of women and provisions for subsidies for a better family life, health care, the care of children, so on and on and on. No such matters as these were deemed unimportant, for perish the thought such subversive planks like these would set the average American to think--'I'm living in a nation which God gave to the world as a beacon on hill, and we've nothing comparable as to what Chavez is proposing. And why is that?' Thinking is the last thing the powers that be and the feckless American media would want to talk about. Thinking is dangerous.
Another thing: Mr.Chavez is a pragmatist; he has accepted defeat this time, but will nevertheless press on his mission to transform Venezuela in a more equitable society, and what's more his petro dollars give him the power to do so. There's something else which America's corporate media has failed to point out. Mr. Chavez believes in democracy, and he has bowed to the popular will. Thus, there's no need for this sense of triumphalism at his set back at the referendum; no need to shed crocodile tears for him.
As he said, he's nerves of steel and will press on. He fears no one and certainly not the United States which is dependent on his oil.

Footnote to Annapolis

In an 'entrefilet' in the inner pages of 1 December 2007 edition of 'The New York Times', the roving eye of the weekend reader will find that the United States using its threat of a veto at the United Nations Security Council tabled a resolution of the Israeli-Palestine negotiations because Israel objected to the text that it didn't write.
If anyone nourished the illusions that the Annapolis meeting was anything but flimflam, he can no longer believe that the gathering of 40 countries at America's military academy was nothing but a big nod and wink and a not-so skilled sleight of hand.
So the Palestinians will continue the fight against the Goliath that is the colonising state of Israel. Israel's brutal occupation of the West Bank, its crisscrossing of the land with colonisers will not bring it a moment's peace nor will it slake the militarist taste of Mr. Bush who like his backers in Tel Aviv will reap the whirlwind.

What will Santa put under the corporate Christmas tree?

The Dow Jones Average is climbing again. Corporate mandarins take hope that the worst is behind them, and not more bad news to come. Tis December, the commerical holiday month, when joy and hope, a sense of renewal and rebirth abound. The Moneybags await with delight at the double-digit bonuses for a job that they think they've done well as the economy unravels in the light of the subprime mess and writedowns continue in the us$ billions. The corporate pooh bahs are breaking pearly teeth of theirs on reality. The steady decline in the almighty Yankee dollar and the massive subprime debacle, which some pundits say will present a bill of up to a half-trillion dollars or more, is coming due. [And we're not talking of the little people who are losing homes or are losing jobs, who are already feeling the heat of bad, unregulated, greeday corporate practices]. The economic authority of the United States is at stake. Who can it enlist in Washington to neutralise if not turn around a decline in fortune? The Bush administration is quietly putting pressure on investment banking houses and mortgage lenders to slow down foreclosures by giving the hoodwinked mortgage holders a reprieve of sorts. It won't work because these bankers and lenders need money to stem the haemorrhaging of bottomlines and bruised ego and bad management. Will they suffer? Hardly! Look at the two disgraced presidents of Merrill Lynch and Citigroup. They've walked off with millions in compensation and stock options for the mess that they are leaving others to clean up.
The American banking elite however are devising schemes to recycle the junk financial instruments which are broadly called 'subprime loans'. They know that there is money to be made one way or another. One man's junk is another man's fortune!
Like the Prince of Salinas in 'The Leopard', the corporate elite will sell minority shares to foreigners whom they despise but who have fat wallets, so that they will keep the lion's share of the pelf. They will in this holiday seasons pay themselves bonsuses which could feed many a population in the third world, let alone alleviate the plight of the growing impoverished legions of Americans. But the spirit of the season doesn't extend to the poor or the struggling, it is for the Moneybags who have proven time and again what blockheads they are. And the politicans who take their donations and who share as only the wealthy can the same humble feelings of privilege of those who are to the manor born.
So with a naif sense of turning the corner of a major economic crisis, tarted up with rouge and a false white beard and hollow ho ho ho's, this leprous fraternity of fat cats will dole out millions in bonsuses with the righteousness and calm consciousness of the heavenly choir of angels