Month: October 2008

Deleveraging

You could read almost all of the voluminous coverage of the present crisis in the financial markets in the legacy media without ever encountering the essential term which describes what’s going on at the “big picture” level, understanding the underlying cause for the events in the news, or comprehending the magnitude of the problem and how protracted may be its consequences. The following chart encapsulates everything you need to know about the present situation. This is not a “mortgage crisis”, “derivatives crisis”, “credit crisis”, or any of the other terms bandied about describing aspects of the larger situation—it is a debt crisis and it always has been. The United States have experienced a multi-decade bubble market, rolling over from equities and real estate in the 1980s, to technology stocks in the 1990s, and back to residential real estate in the aughties, all driven by an unprecedented explosion of debt, as illustrated below.

“bailouts” as presently proposed and implemented make no difference whatsoever in this chart. They’re just a transfer of debt from the private account to the public account.

Hardest Vote

How can democracy work if everyone is so ignorant and stupid?

Obama couldn’t win.” Why not? “Race. I’ve talked to people—a woman who helped run county elections last year. She said she wouldn’t vote for a black man. There’s a lot of white people that just wouldn’t vote for a colored person. Especially older people.” Indeed, no one among the 24 people I talked to in Inez would even consider voting for Obama. His name often evoked a sharp racial hostility that was expressed without hesitation or apology.

China bailing out US

The Chinese government could offer to lend up to $500b (from its current stock of $1800b) to the US government for the rescue of its financial sector. Its previous assistance – buying US bonds – was indirect and unconditional. Not so in this case. China’s loan offer would be direct to the US government to be spent in the current financial crisis. More important, it would come with strings attached. Tied aid, the preferred mode of operation of western donors since the postwar period, would now be embraced by China. What would be the nature of the strings – or “conditionality” as the US Treasury, a longtime practitioner of this art, has called it? Conditionality as imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund was underpinned by an ideology that favored markets and globalisation. But there was also an assumption that either borrowing third world governments did not understand their benefits or the reformers there needed a “spoonful of sugar” to help overcome any internal opposition.

Of course the jingoism is such that the US would rather go down than accept this plan.

People Search

123people.com is a free real time people search tool that looks into nearly every corner of the web. Using our proprietary search algorithm, you can find comprehensive and centralized person related information consisting of public records, phone numbers, addresses, images, videos and email addresses. Search facebook and other social networking sites like mySpace, Linkedin, Xing, Wikipedia profiles and much more.

cute

Electoral Vote Predictor

Welcome to Electoral Vote Predictor, which tracks political polls for US federal elections. The site was immensely popular in 2004, ranking in the top 1000 Websites in the world and the top 10 blogs in the world, with 700k visitors a day. In some surveys, it was the most popular election site in the country. In 2006, it tracked the Senate and House elections. Now it is back tracking the presidential, Senate, and House elections for 2008. Unlike other sites, which track generic national polls, this site tracks the state-by-state polls. After all, the presidency is decided by 51 separate state elections, the Senate by 35 separate elections (in 2008) and the House by 435 separate elections.

tannenbaum is back