Obama's plans to extend the Afghanistan War with a big surge, and to leisurely end the Iraq occupation while maintaining US hegemony over the rest of the world using military power are ridiculous.
We are nearing national bankruptcy and every 100 billion wasted abroad means that the day Americans are storming the barricades behind which politicians are cowering is just that much closer...
Iceland is burning, and it could happen in America
by Hazel Burke, Unknown News Jan. 22, 2009
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It is not a given, nor even unlikely that the ascension
of Barack Obama to the throne of the American Empire
will prevent events like these in Iceland from occurring in America.
Nouriel Roubini said that several trillion more dollars
will be needed for the US banking system because it is
insolvent. Assuming home prices continue falling and decline
by another 15% or so, the implosion of the financial system
can only get worse.
Unfortunately, the hyper-secrecy of
the Bush Regime and the Federal Reserve means that no-one
really knows for sure which financial companies are hiding
time bombs, such as mega-billion credit default swaps.
And the financial industry failed to set up a marketplace
with central clearinghouse for their derivatives and
mortgage securities, so it is virtually impossible for
the private sector to ride to the rescue with new capital. So you get the situation where entities like the FDIC
take over failed banks, eat the losses, and then sell
the remaining assets to incur a second loss! The Bush Regime
therefore resorted to issuing guarantees, and the losses
are potentially unlimited, or at least unknown and perhaps
unknowable...
I would hope that the new Obama Regime is aware of these
issues and has a plan to set up a new Resolution Trust
Corporation to deal with the losses swiftly, while the
US can still borrow abroad and print money with impunity.
But I fear that they will just continue to dump money
into the black hole of financial corporations, most of
which are still run by the executives who screwed us in
the first place.
By the time Obama figures out that
Bernanke and Geithner don't have a clue -- the situation
is out of control and too big to admit to anyway -- we'll
be faced with a collapsing currency and massive debt
defaults at every level of society, from the feds, states,
counties, cities, corporations and individuals.
That may sound extreme, but it seems quite possible
unless Obama takes extreme action now -- and he cannot
do these things until the level breaks and the
catastrophe is upon us.
Already the Republicans are
planning to prevent the Obama "stimulus plan" from
being enacted; they may be right but for the wrong
reasons and with the wrong intent. We don't need a
stimulus plan, we need the banks to get thoroughly
reamed out and their executives behind prison bars,
along with many federal regulators... Bernanke should
be asked to resign and someone competent must be
put in charge.
That's my take on the situation. We're headed over
Niagara Falls in a barrel and Super Man was not
sworn in on January 20th.
Hazel Burke
P.S. Obama's plans to extend the Afghanistan War with a big surge, and to leisurely end the Iraq occupation while maintaining US hegemony over the rest of the world using military power are ridiculous. We are nearing national bankruptcy and every 100 billion wasted abroad means that the day Americans are storming the barricades behind which politicians are cowering is just that much closer...
#1/23/2009:
Obama is so damn calm it's hard to tell whether that's his poker face or whether he really grasps the enormity of the sh*tstorm he's stepping into. I really don't think he understands, because his response to the sh*tstorm seems to be more sh*t at a higher velocity. He needs to wake the hell up and in a hurry because the sh*tstorm is going to hit us all like Hurricane Katrina, and Obama seems just as clueless to the coming catastrophe as Bush was to that one ...
Excerpt: While Americans were watching the historic inauguration of Barack Obama as successor to the deeply unpopular conservative George W. Bush, thousands of Iceland's citizens were fighting riot police around the Icelandic parliament building Althingi to try to prevent the world's oldest parliament from meeting.
"We are calling on the world to help us get rid of this corrupt government," Sturla Jonsson, one of protesters said in a midnight phone call from downtown Reykjavik where a crowd of about 2,000 still surrounded the Althingi House, in front of which a bonfire continued to burn. The protesters pounded drums and other instruments, shouted slogans against the government and parliament and threw eggs and food items, even old shoes at the house of parliament. The protest was nowhere close to slowing down despite it being close to midnight. The parliament postponed meeting until tomorrow afternoon, but protesters, whom police fought all day with teargas, pepperspray, and clubs, vowed to stay downtown all night, "and as long as we have to" Jonsson said. "And I want to tell you that the people gathered here are not "activists" or "militants," he added, "they are just ordinary adults of all ages."
One year ago, Iceland was named the most desirable country in the world. Today, its economy has been devastated by the catastrophic collapse of its three largest banks. Unemployment rose 45% between November and December, and a recent survey indicated that 40% of households and 70% of businesses were technically bankrupt. Since the fall of the banks in October, there have been no resignations from the government, the boards of the now nationalized banks have remained substantially the same, and weekly gatherings calling for new elections have been ignored.
Americans will certainly recognize strong parallels between Iceland's current situation and their own. After years of tight state regulation, the conservative government of David Oddsson privatized Iceland's banks, and in exchange the newly-rich owners of these banks ensured that Oddson's party remained in power. Even after he stepped down, he had himself appointed as head of Iceland's Central Bank and continued to ensure that regulatory oversight was kept to a minimum.
The Icelandic government appears to be completely oblivious to Reykjavik burning around them, fiddling with vital legislative affairs, such as the item on today's parliamentary agenda, the Conservative party's bill to allow supermarkets to sell booze. Members of the government, who themselves have been busy burning - most recently the country's socialized medical system - remain convinced of the correctness of their current misguided course of action. "We need to keep this system of ours running. We need to try to improve it," Education Minister Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir, (whose own personal finances are linked to a shady scheme cooked up in one of the Icelandic banks) said this evening. The incremental changes proposed by the government stand in stark contrast to the egregious abuses of the financial system for the benefit of a select few over the past few years. ...
from occurring in America.