Financial Regulation - Coming Soon

Obama to act fast on financial rules
The financial gurus have repented. Paul Volker and Tim Guitner and their teams are looking to begin actually regulating the financial instruments that led to the financial meltdown.

For example, credit raters are often paid by the inventors of tricky financial products to help construct products that the raters then rate. That is like being able to write your own performance review. Go figure?!?!

Robert Reich Open Letter for Truth- Conservative media figures falsely suggest that Reich proposed excluding white males from stimulus package

Conservative media figures falsely suggest that Reich proposed excluding white males from stimulus package.

This article and reich's blog post on the matter (Open Letter to Rush et al ) is a great read. If we think truth is important and slander and libel are immoral and unbecoming of Civil dialogue, then we will read and understand the real skewed perspective some of these partisans have.

Obama and Repulicans on Stimulus

Obama Fleshes Out Further Details of Stimulus Plan

I am getting rather frustrated with this stimulus package. There are far too many business tax cuts. Think about this. If I am a business and consumers have money to buy 100 widgets and I make 10 dollars profit on those widgets, if I am taxed less on profit will I now build 110 widgets. NO!! I still can only sell 100 widgets. Lower taxes on businesses do not lead to more production when we already have too much capacity. The problem is demand.

The stimulus package should have only items that create jobs and put dollars in the demand side, the consumer. I am absolutely convinced that republican dogma is clouding people's thinking and the president is not standing up to this muddled thinking.

War and non-remembrance - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

War and non-remembrance - Paul Krugman's Blog today is pretty hilarious. It shows me how ideologues get kinda slow when they try to defend..ahh... that the sky is not blue.

No Solution - The Obama Gap - December 2008 Unemployment

The Obama Gap - Paul Krugman
Unemployment Numbers Dec 2008
Even Paul Krugman, appears unwilling to say what the real problem is. The fact is the real problem is still not being solved.
The problem is wealth polarization and wage stagnation. This unwillingness to discuss the real problem makes the problem that much bigger.

The fact of the matter is that the only people who have the kind of money needed to jump start the economy is the rich.

I warned about this in September 2008 - The Solution is Wage Infalation via Tax Policy
and again in October 2008 - Stimulus and the Need for Wealth Distribution
The problem is simple. In order to compete on Wall Street companies need to make huge, huge profits. The result is even is a company makes huge profits their stock prices fall because someone else makes huge, huge profit. So to be competitve companies must lower wage.

The only way to solve this is for government to change the rules of the game. A good example would be to return to income tax levels on the rich that are pre-Reagan.

Ross, Holbrooke, Haass To Serve As Envoys

Ross, Holbrooke, Haass To Serve As Envoys

Huge news, Dennis Ross reported in as envoy/negotiator on everything Iran. All I can say is - OMG.

There is absolutely no doubt in Obama's very strong even hawkish pro-Israel position. This is fantastic news for Israel. I am reading Statecraft currently and, basically, Ross is a hero of mine.

Strategy for the Middle East, Barack Obama, and The Mideast’s Ground Zero

The Mid East’s Ground Zero - Thomas Friedman's piece this morning makes a few very important points on recent middle east historical events. I would like to expound a bit on how this relates to Christian support for president-elect Obama.

What we have currently in the Israel/Palestinian region is a shift in who the real power players are. Previously, the PLO/PA were the representatives of the Palestinian position. This made a two-state solution, given a few very difficult sticking points, a possibility. Today, we have a different scenario. With Hamas and Hezbollah in power on the borders of Israel the real power brokers are Israel and Iran. With the combination of a Shia state in Iraq and Iranian puppets in both South Lebanon and Gaza, a two-state solution no longer is practically on the table.

This scenario has occurred at least in part as a result of a few huge tactical and even strategic blunders. The USA supported elections in Gaza prior to the setting up of a state with any constitutional institutional structure. The result is that Hamas, an Islamist party, took power. This total rookie move was basically putting the wine of democracy in a vacuous political wineskin. The wineskin of democracy MUST BE A CONSTITUTION WHICH PROTECTS THE RIGHTS OF ALL CITIZENS and institutions which solidify the development of a sovereign state. The result has been that Iran is now bordering Israel through its proxy Hamas. This is a decidedly anti-two state solution and the state that is threatened is Israel.

So the strategy now has to be to undermine the Islamic narrative of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Nothing accomplishes this vital strategic necessity better than the support and success of Barack Hussein Obama and a changing of the face of America in the political mind of the Palestinians. America must convince the populations Gaza, the West Bank and Southern Lebanon that their prosperity is not linked to Hamas and Hezbollah but rather to relationship with the West. What is needed then is most likely a new political player other than the Palestinian Authority in the areas of the future Palestinian state.