I like the book "Empire of Debt." Describes what is going on much better than what is being reported by the media. I think the book is a must read.
Posted by Sarah at June 14, 2009 12:11 PM"The crisis can be boiled down to too much debt, the liquidity trap and no foreseeable way out of the hole we are in."
Didn't our dear leader see the way out and require our Congress to pass that "stimulus" bill a few months ago? "Saving or creating" jobs was it's mission. Where, in government service? Four out of five jobs has been a government job. Every "green" job cost over $700K and takes away 2.2 regular paying jobs. It's been six months this week since the swearing in. Where's the beef? How long until he takes responsibility over that which he oversees?
Posted by peter at June 14, 2009 01:58 PMMaybe we'll be seeing a lot more of this as reported by CBS Chanel 3.
"Montcalm County converted nearly 10 miles of primary road to gravel this spring.
The county estimates it takes about $10,000 to grind up a mile of pavement and put down gravel. It takes more than $100,000 to repave a mile of road.
Reverting to gravel has happened in a few other states but it is most typical in Michigan. At least 50 miles have been reverted in the state in the past three years."
There's the progress President Obama is leading us to. He's just following Democratic Governor Granholm's examples.
Posted by peter at June 14, 2009 02:36 PMshit brains pete, I remind you again, you lying sack of shit...
Obama inherited this economic mess from your hero's, chimp and dead eye dick head...
your dishonesty spews like sewage and stinks like it too...
Posted by headxray at June 14, 2009 06:23 PMFor Sarah: please read this before commenting on JGoldberg again. It will help make your contributions more effective.
Posted by Mary at June 14, 2009 08:22 PMMary, Goldberg did not write Empire of Debt. But you should read both books.
Empire of Debt was written by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin. From the review at Amazon.com
Many Americans have resisted the notion that their country is an imperial power. The idea seems to contradict the values of the Republic and its Founding Fathers. But in Empire of Debt, prominent financial analysts Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin argue passionately that not only is the United States an empire, but it is also one whose end is coming soon. Bonner and Wiggin are the brains behind www.dailyreckoning.com, an iconoclastic and irreverent market advisory service that has long raised concerns about American indebtedness and warned of a looming dollar crisis. In Empire of Debt, a sequel to their earlier doom-and-gloom book Financial Reckoning Day, they elaborate on their argument that the U.S. economy is about to implode.Bonner and Wiggin enumerate a long list of chronic ailments that imperil the American financial system--a massive trade deficit, soaring personal and government debt, a housing bubble, runaway military expenditures. These problems "hardly disturb the sleep of the imperial race," the authors write. "[But] all empires must pass away.
As for your link to a blog, it was worth a chuckle. One of the founding fathers of the Progressives was HG Wells, who coined the term "liberal fascism." Goldberg wrote an interesting commentary at his blog Friday:
Posted by Sarah at June 14, 2009 08:58 PMReihan Salam: Another movement that emerged from the intellectual ferment of revisionism is, of course, fascism, and Jonah Golderg has vividly described the awkward relationship between these traditions at great length. Though it should go without saying that egalitarian social democracy and racial fascism are deeply different, both see the creation and cultivation of social solidarity as vitally important.
Jonah Golderg: He (Salam) goes on to make many fine points. I just want to offer a slight — really slight — dissent. I agree that social democracy and racial fascism are deeply different (a point I make several times in my book). And I'm grateful that Reihan actually recognizes a distinction between fascism and "racial fascism." In the 1920s, Mussolini's fascism was not racial (it became racial in the late 30s when Mussolini wanted to justify his North African adventures and, later, when he fully became Hitler's stooge). The question is, how different are social democracy and non-racial fascism? The problem for many people is that they cannot imagine the possibility that fascism isn't shorthand for racial fascism, never mind get their heads around the idea that Nazism was — and was understood at the time as — racial socialism. The word "fascist" appears twice in Mein Kampf and neither time as a meaningful label for National Socialist ideology. Meanwhile the word socialist appears nearly 200 times, if memory serves, and it is often used as an accurate description of Hitler's preferred policies.
Regardless, I will concede that non-racial fascism and social democracy are still different, just as social democracy and, say, Leninism are different. But few eyebrows would be raised were one to note that Leninism and social democracy share common roots and more than a few common aspirations. But when one says similar stuff about fascism and social democracy, teeth are gnashed and cloth rent.
Sarah can't figure out if America is a conservative free market empire crushed by debt or a democracy run by liberal fascism, but books arguing both are "must reads"!
How about some more original content and a lot less cut n' pasting, sarah?
What do you think about Bush and his Repub Congress detroying the 2000 budget surplus, piling up $5 trillion in debt (for nothing) and invading Iraq to liberate its oil from Saddam---pretty "imperial" wouldn't ya say? How do those fit into the analysis?
Posted by euzoius at June 15, 2009 05:48 AM