Who said Economics had to be DULL? What’s going on with the world’s finances is more fun than watching “24″.
Far more entertaining too, since your balls are in the Obama Osterizer.

Nouriel Roubini said the bubble would burst and it did. So what next?

[snip]
Just three years earlier, Roubini had been the object of derision in the economics community as he prophesied a US housing market crash, financial crisis and partial collapse of the banking sector. Today, as an adviser to governments and central bankers and much feted in the media, he’s well aware of the power of being right.

“In my line of business your reputation is based on being right,” he says. “The publicity is just noise. Certainly with a global crisis, the dismal scientists are having some prominence, even if most of the economics profession actually failed to predict it.”

The 51-year-old, widely known as Dr Doom, is in town to publicise his new book Crisis Economics, a crash course in the financial crisis and what can be done to avoid another.

The book does little to suggest he is uncomfortable with his nickname. Where Roubini is concerned, the great recession has some way to run.

“The crisis is not over; we are just at the next stage. This is where we move from a private to a public debt problem,” he says, his speech the mongrel drawl of a man who was born in Turkey to Iranian parents, raised in Israel and Italy and lives in New York. “We socialised part of the private losses by bailing out financial institutions and providing fiscal stimulus to avoid the great recession from turning into a depression. But rising public debt is never a free lunch, eventually you have to pay for it.”[snip]

All that socialist crap chanted in college during those wonderful ’70’s are now here. Boomers, those idiots that YOU elected, to bring Peace, Light and Love instead delivered this vicious economic socialist mess that is biting you in the ass, right through your 101(k) and IRA, just in time for you to retire.
As a kiss off, they’re giving you a return of ½% to 1% return on short term deposits.

They collapsed you housing values, taxed your jobs overseas and then replaced you with illegal immigrants driving down wages on the rest of the employed. Oh yeah, the unions bought into it because they get sign-ups who won’t bitch, complain or strike over sweetheart contracts.

One false move in Europe could set off global chain reaction

[snip]
But the knife-edge psychology currently governing global markets has put the future of the U.S. economic recovery in the hands of politicians in an assortment of European capitals. If one or more fail to make the expected progress on cutting budgets, restructuring economies or boosting growth, it could drain confidence in a broad and unsettling way. Credit markets worldwide could lock up and throw the global economy back into recession.

For the average American, that seemingly distant sequence of events could translate into another hit on the 401(k) plan, a lost factory shift if exports to Europe decline and another shock to the banking system that might make it harder to borrow.

“If what happened in Greece were to happen in a large country, it could fundamentally mark our times,” Angelos Pangratis, head of the European Union delegation to the United States, said Friday after a panel discussion on the crisis in Greece sponsored by the Greater Washington Board of Trade.

The PIGS are the problem. Spending money they didn’t have, couldn’t raise through taxes, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy ran up unfunded pensions, public sector wages and early retirement.

Now they can’t pay for the excesses. Bailouts from the other EU countries are grudgingly forthcoming with stringent guides attached. Riots followed.

[snip]
The most vulnerable European countries — Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland — may represent only about 4 percent of world economic activity, but “the debt crisis and its ripple effects are bad news for all corners of the world,” said Cornell University economist Eswar Prasad. [snip]
But the fallout from Europe could still be widely felt. U.S. trade officials, hoping the country can dramatically boost its exports, are dismayed at the steep drop in the value of the euro — which is around $1.25, down from more than $1.50 in November. The decline makes American goods more expensive compared with those produced in Europe. The slide in the common European currency could also change the way China and a host of Asian countries approach their currency policies, possibly making them less likely to agree with U.S. demands to raise the value of their money. If they raised it, Asian goods would become more expensive in world markets, making it easier for U.S. products to compete. [snip]

So what, Corporations are bad, evil abusers of the poor, the downtrodden, the children and the third world emerging nations, right!

Get ready for higher unemployment numbers and another surge in foreclosures. 

To insure this happens, Congress put together a banking bill that does for credit cards, what Freddie and Fannie did for housing.
How did that work out for America.

If you are looking for reliability in a vehicle, don’t look for a
Union Label. Don’t forget, Obama cut a deal with China to have some GM product made there!

Worst-Made Cars on the Road

If you want to drive something dependable and long-lasting, steer clear of these vehicles. [snip]

Four of the seven vehicles on our list of the worst-made cars on the road come from GM brands. And all of the cars on the list — including Chrysler’s Dodge Nitro and Jeep Wrangler — are made by Detroit’s Big Three. Only one car on the list is made by Ford Motor (NYSE: F). [snip]

A list of the lemons is given in the article. ObamaMotors has all the luster of something out of East Germany, like the Trabant perhaps, bigger with shiny paint.

[snip]
Click here to see more of the Worst-Made Cars On The Road
Behind the Numbers

To determine our list of the worst-made cars on the road, we started with the lowest-rated vehicles from four reliability and performance studies conducted this year. Those studies are all from Consumer Reports: The Most Reliable Cars Report; Best and Worst Values Report; Best and Worst Safety Performance Survey; and the CR overall scores for 2010 vehicles. [snip]

Now you know why they’re after Toyota.

Is starting a trade war with your 2nd largest trading partner and largest financier a good idea?  Hold on to your hats because we’re about to find out:

A full-blown trade row erupted on Sunday night between the US and China after Beijing accused Washington of “rampant protectionism” for imposing heavy duties on imported Chinese tyres and threatened action against imports of US poultry and vehicles.

Didn’t anyone explain the effects of Smoot-Hawley on the depression to President Obama?  How foolish to think this president would learn from history when the unions own him lock, stock, and barrel.I was also amused to see the accouncement come out late Friday as if the Chinese wouldn’t notice it during the weekend news cycle.

Only if you attend his O’liness’ Church.All sermons are blessed with The Word Carnate. The Pontiff of the Potomac says it is so, let no man gainsay him, give me an AMEN!
Cast out the following vassals of the dark, Capitalists all, spreaders of calumny, tolerate them not. Please open your books to Psalm 666 and sing  Happy Days Are Here Again. While you’re doing so, Brother Rahm will pass the plate.

Credit tightening threatens China’s ‘giant Ponzi scheme’

The data raise fresh doubts about the strength of global trade and whether the world can rely on China’s growth miracle to power recovery.

Separately, the Baltic Dry Index – measuring freight rates for bulk goods – has tipped over, dropping 25pc since late July. The shipping figures buttress reports that China has stopped building up stocks of metals and other commodities after a spate of frantic buying over the early summer.  [snip]

Instead, the stimulus is feeding more industrial investment, leading to more excess capacity worldwide. While Chinese GDP continues to grow near 8pc, this is based on output. In the West, GDP growth is based on spending. These two definitions are chalk and cheese.

The underlying story has not changed. The East-West imbalances that lay behind the Great Recession of 2008-2009 are getting worse, not better.[snip]

RBS uber-bear issues fresh alert on global stock markets

Britain’s Uber-bear is growling again. After predicting a torrid “relief rally” over the early summer, Bob Janjuah at Royal Bank of Scotland is advising clients to take profits in global equity and commodity markets and prepare for another storm as winter nears.
“We are now in the middle of a parabolic spike up,” he said in his latest confidential note to clients. [snip]

Mr Janjuah, RBS’s chief credit strategist, has a loyal following in the City. He was one of the very few analysts to speak out early about the dangerous excesses of the credit bubble. He then made waves in the summer of 2008 by issuing a global crash alert, giving warning that a “very nasty period is soon to be upon us” as – indeed it was. Lehman Brothers and AIG imploded weeks later.
This time he expects the S&P 500 index of US equities to reach the “mid 500s”, almost halving from current levels near 1000. Such a fall would take London’s FTSE 100 to around 2,500. The iTraxx Crossover index measuring spreads on low-grade European debt will double to 1250[snip]
The elephant in the room is the spiralling public debt as private losses are shifted on to the taxpayer, especially in Britain and America. “Ask yourself this: who bails out Government after they have bailed out everyone?”
Mr Janjuah said governments might put off the day of reckoning into the middle of next year if they resort to another shot of stimulus, but that would store yet further problems. “If what I fear plays out then I will have to concede that the lunatics who ran the asylum pretty much into the ground last year are back in control.” [snip] (emphasis added)

Well, what’s a wee bit of Cap&Tax and some burdensome ObamaCare on top of the Government gorging on a $1.85 Trillion deficit that the Pope of the Potomac incurred.

Enter all Ye of little faith… some more Popery is on tour in your Congressperson’s town meeting.

If you haven’t been baptized a NAZI yet, now’s your chance!

The Obamas’ date nights are going to get a lot more expensive for us as Treasury spreads continue to rise.  The world is waking up to an America pushed to the brink of insolvency by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party:

I also believe that we are seeing a reversal of the flight to quality. Investors had piled into risk averse government bonds and they are now fleeing them for equities and investment grade corporate bonds. The change of heart could not come at a worse time as it collides with the massive financing  needs of the US Government.

So at the very moment  when supply is cresting, demand is slumping, and slumping badly.

The Chinese certainly have it figured out:

Referring to the Federal Reserve “as the world’s biggest junk investor,” and to Chairman Bernanke as “helicopter Ben,” Yu said the Fed has dropped “tons of money from the sky since the subprime crisis.”

“The balance sheet of the Federal Reserve not only has expanded like mad but is also ridden with ‘rubbish’ assets,” he said.

Talk about pulling no punches, but he also had some choice words for Secretary Tim Geithner:

The Obama administration aims to reduce the fiscal deficit to “roughly” 3 percent of gross domestic product from a projected 12.9 percent this year, Geithner reaffirmed today. The treasury secretary added that China’s investments in U.S. financial assets are very safe, and that the Obama administration is committed to a strong dollar.

It may be helpful if “Geithner can show us some arithmetic,” said Yu. “We need to know how the U.S. government can achieve this objective.”

But Tim’s excellent adventure to China gets even better:

“Chinese assets are very safe,” Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.

His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home.

Every rational person knows the Obama plan to run permanent trillion dollar deficits won’t work.  When is the administration going to wake up to his reality?  When are we going to wake up and throw these bums out?

The testing goes on and The ONE is found wanting! The suit is very empty!

The World Will Test Us, Part III

 Joe Biden tried to warn America; he really did. In October, while campaigning for his running mate, Biden predicted what would happen if America elected an untested, inexperienced, single-term Senator as President:

  “Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.”

[snip]
Earlier this month, the Chinese started harassing an unarmed Navy exploration vessel, requiring the US to send armed escorts into the international waters of the South China Sea. North Korea is about to launch an ICBM with a reported range that easily includes American territory. Moscow has flipped Kyrgyzstan and put our supply routes into Afghanistan in jeopardy.
Biden was right; they’re testing the mettle of the new President. Evidentally, they’re finding that he doesn’t have much, and they’re becoming more and more arrogant about their provocations.

We’re being bullied. How nasty of them to behave that way. Can  our esteemed Senatorial delegation to get our President to use our anti-bullying laws to make the Russians, Chinese and North Koreans stop.

You know the laws, the ones we teach our kids in school. The rules where you find someone to fight your battles for you. Yep, the ones that make things stop going bump in the night. Un huh, those rules are the ones the Admirals should be using.

All of the countries that the Messiah has offered the “new tone” in diplomacy have dissed the Teleprompter.

Even Obamassiah’s buds in Cuba and Venezuela tossed him under the short bus with his fave bowling team.

The Democrat Party, that is. But first, conservatives are deluded if they believe, as Sean Hannity claims, that domestic drilling and “energy independence” are the path to less expensive gasoline. Crude oil is a commodity, subject to commodities speculation. Engine fuel prices that are lower than world market prices result from government controls, such as in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, where you fill your tanks with a wink and smile.

Government control is the only conclusion one can draw from Hannity’s leap from domestic exploration to lower prices at the pump. Increased supply wouldn’t account for a large reduction in price with consumption growing in India, China and other developing countries. Government control is not a conservative viewpoint (If there’s something I’ve missed, I’d welcome a comment) There are other reasons to develop domestic energy sources.

It’s a complicated issue, nevertheless. THIS from Powerline illustrates the party divide on domestic energy development, but how much of the price increase is due to restrictions? I don’t know. Does anyone?

This isn’t unheard of in one country’s interest in another’s positions.

FBI: China may use counterfeit Cisco routers to penetrate U.S. networks

Federal authorities in February seized some 400 counterfeit Cisco Systems knockoffs worth $76 million. [snip]

Among the purchasers of the fake equipment were the U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center, U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center, U.S. Air Base at Spangdahelm, Germany, the Bonneville Power Administration, General Services Administration, and the defense contractor Raytheon, which makes key missile and weapons systems.

After the one ringy-dingy phone system changed with the intro of the Stepper and direct dialing, this government worked with AT&T to give away the protocols used in phone operating systems. This avuncular gift belied the trapdoors written in to allow the government to snoop where and when it wanted. In exchange AT&T got a monopoly that lasted for years.

We should expect every other power to do the same. It isn’t a question of are you paranoid, but are you paranoid enough.

An orgy of feel good activity here in Congress and among the garden variety eco-idiots produced the following:

Food price escalation transversing the globe

[snip]
From subsistence farmers eating rice in Ecuador to gourmets feasting on escargot in France, consumers worldwide face rising food prices in what analysts call a perfect storm of conditions. Freak weather is a factor. But so are dramatic changes in the global economy, including higher oil prices, lower food reserves and growing consumer demand in China and India.[snip]

Among the driving forces are petroleum prices, which increase the cost of everything from fertilizers to transport to food processing. Rising demand for meat and dairy in rapidly developing countries such as China and India is sending up the cost of grain, used for cattle feed, as is the demand for raw materials to make biofuels.[snip]

Meanwhile, record oil prices have boosted the cost of fertilizer and freight for bulk commodities — up 80 percent in 2007 over 2006. The oil spike has also turned up the pressure for countries to switch to biofuels, which the FAO says will drive up the cost of corn, sugar and soybeans “for many more years to come.”

In Japan, the ethanol boom is hitting the country in mayonnaise and miso, two important culinary ingredients, as biofuels production pushes up the price of cooking oil and soybeans. [snip]

In decades past, farm subsidies and support programs allowed major grain exporting countries to hold large surpluses, which could be tapped during food shortages to keep prices down. But new trade policies have made agricultural production much more responsive to market demands — putting global food reserves at their lowest in a quarter century.

Without reserves, bad weather and poor harvests have a bigger impact on prices.

“The market is extremely nervous. With the slightest news about bad weather, the market reacts,” said economist Abbassian. [snip]

But attempts to control prices in one country often have dire effects elsewhere. China’s restrictions on wheat flour exports resulted in a price spike in Indonesia this year, according to the FAO. Ukraine and Russia imposed export restrictions on wheat, causing tight supplies and higher prices for importing countries. Partly because of the cost of imported wheat, Peru’s military has begun eating bread made from potato flour, a native crop.(emphasis added)

“We need a response on a large scale, either the regional or international level,” said Brian Halweil of the environmental research organization Worldwatch Institute. “All countries are tied enough to the world food markets that this is a global crisis.”

Try a couple choruses of Kumbaya, which has more effect than giving the UN any food or money. Unless of course, the idea is to fatten up a collection of UN approved dictators.
Let us see the the idiot greenies undo this problem.

This post is for Vermont moonbats, our fount of all knowledge global warming. Can you spell Maunder Minimum?
For the Gorbots, dealing with facts is inconvenient; such is the difficulty of Godhood pretension. Global warming arm wavers had better save their carbon.

Forget global warming:
Welcome to the new Ice Age

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966. [snip]

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its “lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.

But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter’s weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.[snip]

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as “a drop in the bucket.” Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to “stock up on fur coats.”

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased. [snip]

Isn’t that ice age the one that interfered with the “hockey stick” favored by all greenies? Nah, can’t be, otherwise the Goracle would have used it in the “hockey stick” computations.

I suspect the carbon loathing greenies will be arm flapping trying to keep warm.

Dr. Lawrence Britt is a Secular Humanist which explains his reluctance to include any of the Marxist/Communist/Progressive governments engaged in heinous conventions. There cannot be any argument that all Islam incorporates this definition; they define the term. Additionally, he says nothing about Woodrow Wilson or the biggest fascist in this hemisphere, FDR.

Ah yes, he incarcerated (interned) about 120,000 Japanese, 62% (74,400) were American citizens. Furthermore, in the early ‘30’s FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court to overrun the Constitutional dictum on the Separation of Powers. All to get his socialist New Deal policies operating.

I ask that the reader look at the actions of the Soviet Union with the following in mind. Examine China too, along with Cuba, Venezuela.

The U.S. Congress of today regarding the disparagement of the wealthy and ideas about corporate “patriotism” a la Obama attain the true bill describing Fascism.

One finds that all countries may flirt with fascism at times. Those that have a strong constitution and follow that will step back. The shredding the document by redefining it as one “needs” removes the restraining chains, giving freedom to the slippage. Today’s Congress, particularly the House, exhibits many symptoms.

General characteristics of a Fascist Country

1. Fascism is commonly defined as an open terror-based dictatorship which is:

• Reactionary: makes policy based upon current circumstances rather than creating policies to prevent problems; piles lies and misnomers on top of more lies until the truth becomes indistinguishable, revised or forgotten.
• Chauvinistic: Two or more tiered legal systems, varying rights based upon superficial characteristics such as race, creed and origin.
• Imperialistelements of finance capital: Extending a nation’s authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political domination of one state over its allies.

Though a dictatorship is the most common association with fascism, a democracy or republic can also be fascist when it strays away from its Tenets of sovereignty. In the 20th Century, many Fascist countries started out as republics. Through the use of fear, societies gave up their rights under the guise of security. Ultimately these republics morphed into Fascist states.

2. Fascism is an extreme measure taken by the middle classes to forestall lower-working class revolution; it thrives on the weakness of the middle classes. It accomplishes this by embracing the middle-class’ love of the status-quo, its complacency and its fears of:

1. Generating a united struggle within the working class
2. Revolution
3. Losing its own power and position within society

In a more simplistic term the people currently in control fear that if they allow equal rights and equal consideration to those being oppressed, they will become oppressed and lose everything. Generally those in power are of a smaller segment of society, but they hold the wealth and control of key systems like manufacturing, law, finance and government position, [snip]

In reality it is the oppressors’ fear of retribution by the oppressed that perpetuates fascism; for justification they dehumanize, demonize, strip them of rights, add new laws, restrict movement and attempt to control them by whatever means possible to prevent an uprising. It is very common in a fascist system to have the oppressed referred to as sub-human, animals, terrorists, savages, barbarians, vermin or any other term designed to create justification for the acts of terror and fascism perpetrated on the oppressed. [snip]

Propaganda also empowers the oppressors with elitism racially, socially, intellectually and/or spiritually.

The 7 conditions (Warning signs)that foster & fuel fascism are:

Instability of capitalist relationships or markets
The existence of considerable declassed social elements
The stripping of rights and wealth focused upon a specific segment of the population, specifically the middle class and intellectuals within urban areas as this the group with the means, intelligence and ability to stop fascism if given the opportunity.
Discontent among the rural lower middle class (clerks, secretaries, white collar labor). Consistent discontent among the general middle and lower middle classes against the oppressing upper-classes (haves vs have-nots).
Hate: Pronounced, perpetuated and accepted public disdain of a specific group defined by race, origin, theology or association.
Greed: The motivator of fascism, which is generally associated with land, space or scarce resources in the possession of those being oppressed.
Organized Propaganda:

a) The creation of social mythology that venerates (creates saints of) one element of society while concurrently vilifying (dehumanizing) another element of the population through misinformation, misdirection and the obscuring of factual matter through removal, destruction or social humiliation, (name-calling, false accusations, belittling and threats).

b) The squelching of public debate not agreeing with the popular agenda via slander, libel, threats, theft, destruction, historical revisionism and social humiliation. Journalists in particular are terrorized if they attempt to publish stories contrary to the agenda.

3. Fascism dovetails business & government sectors into a single economic unit, while concurrently increasing in-fighting and distrust between the units fostering advancement towards war.

4.

• Fascism promotes chauvinist demagogy, (appealing to the prejudices and emotions of the populace) by fostering selective persecution and accepted public vilification of the target group. It then promotes this a “patriotic”, “supportive” or “the party line” and disagreement with such as “anti-government”, “anti-faith” or “anti-nation”.
• Fascismcreates confusion through “facts”. It relies on junk science, revisionism, the elimination of cultural records/treasures and obfuscations to create its case and gain acceptance. Fascism can also combine Marxist critiques of capitalism or faith based critics of the same to re-define middle class perceptions of democracy and to force its issues, confuse logic and create majority consensus between targeted groups. This is also referred to as creating a state of Cognitive Dissonance, the mental state human beings are most easily manipulated.

5. Both middle and upper-middle-class dictated democracy and fascism are class dictatorships that use organized violence (verbal or physical) to maintain the class rule of the oppressors over the oppressed.

The difference between the two is demonstrated by the policies towards non-lower-working class classes. Fascism attains power through the substitution of one state’s form of class domination with another form, generally a middle class based republic segues into an open terrorist dictatorship, run by a few elite.

The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism

by Dr. Lawrence Britt

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14-defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism -
   Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights -
   Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause -
   The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military -
   Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism -
   The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media -
   Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security -
   Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined -
   Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected -
   The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed -
    Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts -
    Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment -
    Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption -
    Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections -
    Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Massive unemployment looms

China watchers are predicting a drop in the GNP growth rate this year and for the foreseeable future. Most are attributing the expected fall off this year — from last year’s official 11.4 percent, the fifth year in a row of double digit expansion — to the expected downturn in the U.S. and the world economy in general.

Even the 2007 growth rate wasn’t that high when compared with the peaks of the 1980s and 1990s, when GDP growth in some years surpassed 15 percent, coming out of the stagnation and even losses at the end of the Maoist era.

The downturn is going to be welcomed in some Chinese leadership quarters because of the fear of runaway inflation from an overheated economy — now fed by food shortages and the impact of the worst winter in 50 years. [snip]

Hmmmm, I wonder if they’ll want to sell some of our bonds and dollars? What do you think that will do to our economy.

What is the difference between 1980
and 2008? There’s no Reagan up next.

 We’re getting a good dose of economic malaise, support for a gun ban in DC, Israel gets butt kicked again by us and the  Olympics in China not Russia.

Looks like that Seventies Show rerun.

Carter had the field to himself for worst President, pushing Harding back into the gloom. Bush certainly clawed his way down, crawling over Harding. The damn apple didn’t fall far from the tree, did it.

At the beginning of the week, Hotspur, in commentary, opined on the scrabbling in DC for protectionist legislation.
The government is the problem; nowhere in DC is the solution. Decibels of ululating amend not some very harsh facts. One may not eternally spend that which one does not have. Once more congress will violate that rule and hold a drowning economy’s head underwater. Shall we acquire the benefits of Carteresque economic policy once more?

When the Japanese acquired everything from Rockefeller Center to Movie studios, they over paid for businesses that they did not understand and for places that were mis en place. Today, the foreign buyers are procuring manufacturing, not moviemakers. While the physical plant may be immoveable, profits travel well. Globalization does quite well in textbooks; reality stains ones mellow like chaw drippings in a beard.

Overseas Investors Buy Aggressively in U.S.

Last May, a Saudi Arabian conglomerate bought a Massachusetts plastics maker. In November, a French company established a new factory in Adrian, Mich., adding 189 automotive jobs to an area accustomed to layoffs. In December, a British company bought a New Jersey maker of cough syrup.

For much of the world, the United States is now on sale at discount prices. With credit tight, unemployment growing and worries mounting about a potential recession, American business and government leaders are courting foreign money to keep the economy growing. Foreign investors are buying aggressively, taking advantage of American duress and a weak dollar to snap up what many see as bargains, while making inroads to the world’s largest market. [snip]

The surge of foreign money has injected fresh tension into a running debate about America’s place in the global economy. It has supplied state governors with a new development strategy — attracting foreign money. And it has reinvigorated sometimes jingoistic worries about foreigners securing control of America’s fortunes, a narrative last heard in the 1980s as Americans bought up Hondas and Rockefeller Center landed in Japanese hands.

With a growing share of investment coming from so-called sovereign wealth funds — vast pools of money controlled by governments from China to the Middle East — lawmakers and regulators are calling for greater scrutiny to ensure that foreign countries do not gain influence over the financial system or military-related technology. [snip]

Debate is swirling in Washington about the best way to stimulate a flagging economy. Despite divided opinion about the merits, foreign investment may be preventing deeper troubles by infusing hard-luck companies with cash and keeping some in business.

The most conspicuous beneficiaries are Wall Street banks like Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, which have sold stakes to government-controlled funds in Asia and the Middle East to compensate for calamitous losses on mortgage markets. Beneath the headlines, a more profound shift is under way: Foreign entities last year captured stakes in American companies in businesses as diverse as real estate, steel-making, energy and baby food. [snip]

As the German company ThyssenKrupp Stainless broke ground in November on what is to be a $3.7 billion stainless steel plant in Calvert, Ala., its executives spoke effusively about the low cost of production in the United States and the chance to reach many millions of customers — particularly because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which allows goods to flow into Mexico and Canada free of duty.

“The Nafta stainless steel market has great potential, and we’re committed to significantly expanding our business in this growth region,” said the company’s chairman, Jürgen H. Fechter, according to a statement.

Foreign giants like Toyota Motor and Sony have been sinking capital into American plants. Investment in the American subsidiaries of foreign companies grew to $43.3 billion last year from $39.2 billion the previous year, according to the research and consulting firm OCO Monitor.

“This is a vote of confidence in the American economy, the American marketplace and the American worker,” the deputy Treasury secretary, Robert M. Kimmitt, said. “These investments keep Americans employed and keep balance sheets strong.”

Five million Americans now work for foreign companies set up in the United States, Mr. Kimmitt said, and those jobs pay 30 percent more than similar work at domestic companies. Nearly a third of such jobs are in manufacturing, which explains why Rust Belt states have been wooing foreign investment. [snip]

“It’s the culmination of a series of fool’s errands,” said Leo W. Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers. “We’ve hollowed out our industrial base and run up this massive trade deficit, and now the countries that have built the deficits are coming back to buy up our assets. It’s like spitting in your face.”

Other labor groups take a more pragmatic view.

“We need investment and we need to create good jobs,” said Thea Lee, policy director for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in Washington. “We’re not in the position to be too choosy about where that investment comes from. But it does bring home the consequences of flawed trade policies over many, many years that we’re in this position of being dependent.” [snip]

Never mind that it is these very unions that put most manufacturing job overseas to start.

“This is a phenomenon that could be called the growth of state capitalism as opposed to market capitalism,” said Jeffrey E. Garten, a trade expert at the Yale School of Management. “The United States has not ever been on the receiving end of this before.” [snip]

If fear of foreign money now inspires Americans to erect new barriers, that would damage the economy, said Todd M. Malan, president of the Organization for International Investment, a Washington lobbying group financed by foreign companies.
[snip] (Emphasis mine)

No such outcry has greeted the purchase of stakes in major Wall Street banks by state investment funds in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, China, Singapore and South Korea. This is largely because the banks sold passive slices and ceded no formal control, which would have set off a federal review of the national security implications. But the silence also reflects the imperative that these enormous institutions swiftly secure cash.
[snip]

“They’re buying financial assets at well under book value,” said Gary C. Hufbauer, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
[snip]

“The forces sucking in this capital are much bigger than the political forces,” said Mr. Garten, the Yale trade expert. “If there is a big controversy, it will be between Washington on the one hand and corporate America on the other. In that contest, the financiers and the businessmen are going to win, as they always do.”

Maybe the Donkephants should raise taxes to confiscatory levels, suck the economic marrow right out of US fiscal growth. That will solve the protectionist problem; the companies’ values drop to zero.

Citigroup’s hopes for investment from Chinese bank hit a snag

NEW YORK: Citigroup’s talks with the China Development Bank to make a multibillion-dollar investment in the company have reached an impasse after the Chinese government spurned a possible deal, according to a person close to the situation.

While Chinese investment groups have bought big stakes in Wall Street firms like Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley, the scuttled deal suggests there may be limits on how much the Chinese government is willing to invest in the Western banking system. The exact reasons for the breakdown are unclear, and it is possible the two sides may return to the negotiating table.

Citigroup is turning to cash-rich investors, including foreign governments, for a second time as it confronts mounting losses on mortgage-related investments. It hopes to raise about $10 billion, people briefed on the plan said Friday. [snip]

In the prior post on this subject, I mentioned how the Chicoms have bought into the US banking industry, along with the Arabs. Well, I think the Chinks just choked. There are limits; someone in charge of the yuans, woke up saying this ain’t chop suey!

Where did the $24 billion go? It wasn’t and isn’t paper profits like a stock purchase. This money changed hands many times. The 24,000 individuals getting the free career makeover will have time to look for the loot.