History made, the Sandworms have spoken...
- Thread starter crobato
- Start date
I am not a american, if I were I would have voted for Macain not because I like him personally but cuz he has more political exp. and know what he's talking about, and that i tend to be political conservative, but Obama is by no mean a bad choice.
Obama has less experience, yes, but he's a good image and PR for USA world wide, for african's and for Europeans, where he's extremely popular, that got count for something, beside, vice president Biden is a real veteran and can compensate somewhat for exp lack imo. And a black president in USA is indeed history making and a good thing.
Obama has less experience, yes, but he's a good image and PR for USA world wide, for african's and for Europeans, where he's extremely popular, that got count for something, beside, vice president Biden is a real veteran and can compensate somewhat for exp lack imo. And a black president in USA is indeed history making and a good thing.
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:roll:
The US uses electoral college system, so unless if you live in a "swing state", your vote has very little impact. I live in California and the entire west coast is basically a democrat stronghold. The only candidate that I liked was Ron Paul.
McCain pulled a Mondale with his VP selection, but it was the wrong women for the job. Palin caused so many controversies that it hurt McCain's campaign. In comparison, Joe Biden's worst was probably plagiarizing UK Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock's speech in 1988 and some minor gaffs.
Through all the political mud slinging and controversies, I find myself giving the highest respect to John McCain's ex-wife, Carol Shepp McCain. When her husband was held POW in Vietnam, she raised 3 children and endured a crippling accident. Even after McCain dumped her in his mid-life crisis (to marry a 26 year old blond & heir to Anheuser-Busch), Carol McCain remained supportive of her ex-husband's political career and refused to speak ill of him.
Here's a salute to Carol Shepp McCain. It's said that a man's character is shown not by winning, but by how he accepts his looses. If the same is true for ladies, then Carol Shepp McCain is a lady of highest character.
Mr T
Senior Member
I would have welcomed either candidate because they both had good ideas and bad ones.
I think Obama's approval ratings will start high but drop eventually. Some people have unreasonable expectations of him, and it's too late to get people to realise he can't waive a magic wand. There's going to be sacrifices to be made (the rich can't pay for everything he needs/has pledged to do).
For example, will he keep his pledge to get rid of the gas tax holiday? It costs a lot but many Americans benefit.
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Popeye, hopefully Obama will be remembered for being a good President rather than just the first ethnic minority President.
I think Obama's approval ratings will start high but drop eventually. Some people have unreasonable expectations of him, and it's too late to get people to realise he can't waive a magic wand. There's going to be sacrifices to be made (the rich can't pay for everything he needs/has pledged to do).
For example, will he keep his pledge to get rid of the gas tax holiday? It costs a lot but many Americans benefit.
----
Popeye, hopefully Obama will be remembered for being a good President rather than just the first ethnic minority President.
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bladerunner
Banned Idiot
heres an interesting take on Obama from atimes.
In it the author looks at Obama's options, and I reckon if he does decide toreduce Americas debt level by the 25 trillion mentioned, I think Uncle Sam would adopt restrictive import measures which could severly restrict China. EArly some commentators have suggested that of all the candidates running for presidency, he was the most likely to cut back funding on Bush's return to the moon project, which could disappoint the Space enthusiasts.
Mission accomplished - Part 1
By Julian Delasantellis
Even with the polls relatively close until the end, I could see the results of the American presidential election in a walk I took in early October at a swap meet - for non-US folk, an unofficial bring-and-buy street market - in downtown Los Angeles. There, amid all the clunky gold chains, bling medallions and pink taffeta party gowns, I was amazed to see large numbers of Barack Obama T-shirts.
The flimsy materials and cheap silk-screening made it obvious that these were not official products of the Obama campaign, like the designs, which seemed to imply that Obama's running mate in the campaign was not Joe Biden of Delaware but the late Bob Marley of Jamaica.
I tried to think of a previous Democratic Party nominee who had ngendered such excitement. Who else would have spurred the micro-capitalists who sell their wares at swap meets to such endeavors? It certainly would not have been Michael Dukakis, the intelligent but crushingly, deathly dull Massachusetts governor who was the party's choice in 1988. Perhaps the only people who might have admired his style in charisma and excitement sufficiently to put his face on a T-shirt would be the likes of the Middle Atlantic Express Train Schedulers Association. So Obamamania, the nationwide phenomenon that manifested itself everywhere - from the rallies where just the candidate's presence caused young people to faint away to the adult toy stores where the senator's image was drawn on the most unlikely of devices - carries the day. The question now becomes, can he even come close to meeting the ferocious expectations for a better life, in a better country, that were raised by him during the campaign? For most of the time since Obama clinched the nomination from Senator Hillary Clinton in June, he carried roughly a 3-5% lead in the polls; this briefly flipped to a similar lead for John McCain after the choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee. That effect faded as soon as Palin opened her mouth. Still, the McCain/Palin campaign was doing a serviceable job of maintaining contact with Obama-Biden until it hit the iceberg - the month-long financial and stock market collapse that started with the failure of investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 22.
When the Titanic's lookouts cried out "iceberg, right ahead", it was obvious that the ship was doomed. Likewise for the McCain campaign on the breaking dawn of the September financial crisis.
Most Americans supplant the relatively paltry returns of the government's old-age social security pension support plan with stock investments in tax-advantaged holding accounts called 401-Ks. When stocks fell to six-year lows in early October a lot of dreams of early retirements on sun-splashed Florida fairways had to be supplanted by nightmare images of dragging tired, arthritic bones every morning until death to their station at the fast food french-fry cooker.
Indeed, the financial crisis probably has gone a long way towards solving the long-term funding crisis of social security, in that now millions of Americans won't be able to retire and draw on the system, given that the stock portion of their retirement package is now worth so much less.
McCain/Palin tried everything, throwing the kitchen sink, indeed, the entirety of the house's plumbing, at their opponent - calling him a terrorist sympathizer, a socialist, even a communist. All for naught. Americans listened to the Republican charges, weighed them against the prospect of ending their lives as galley slaves rowing away their last days for the McDonald's empire, and decided that giving the terrorist/socialist/communist a chance wasn't such a bad idea.
Last December, with the economy not nearly in as dire straits as it is now, McCain pooh-poohed the idea that he should even be all that concerned with matters economic by telling The Boston Globe, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should, I've got [ex Federal Reserve head Alan] Greenspan's book."
Surprisingly, sounding like a stubborn schoolboy being forced to look at an economics textbook when he'd rather be out playing war with his toy soldiers did not hurt McCain all that much in the Republican nominating contests of last winter, when all the candidates were competing to see who could proclaim their intentions to bomb the most countries the hardest.
But as spring turned to summer and then to autumn, and slow growth turned to deep recession, McCain's cavalier attitude towards economics-related issues turned voters off. Nor was his cause helped by his series of highly gymnastic, focus-group generated, policy undulations during the September crisis.
Besides, getting advice from Greenspan about the current world financial crisis is a lot like the Chicago Fire Department taking advice on how not to start fires from Mrs O'Leary's cow.
So, Americans are trusting Obama for a return to prosperity. Can he deliver? If you read Henry Blodget, you'd have to have your doubts.
Blodget proves the adage that, in contemporary America, celebrity trumps morality every time. In the 1990s, as an Internet stock analyst for CIBC Oppenheimer and Merrill Lynch, he was renowned for publicly singing the accolades of dot-com stocks he privately ridiculed and which eventually disappeared. He was particularly famous for privately calling a stock he publicly lauded a "p.o.s." - and no, that does not mean "particle of sunshine".
Eventually, the Feds caught up with him, charging him with securities fraud. Blodget never admitted guilt, but he agreed to a big fine and permanent banishment from the securities industry.
In his shame, did Blodget, like Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, throw himself under a locomotive? No way. He is now a prominent writer and blogger on economics and investing, frequently advising small investors on how to spot shady brokerage practices - who would know better?
But it was one of his recent postings, on the "Clusterstock" web site, that caught my eye, and made me wonder if Obama has raised hopes impossible to fulfill.
In an October 29 post, entitled "What Does 'Deleveraging' Really Mean? Cutting $25 Trillion Of Debt", Blodget looked at the American economic history of the past 75 years from a whole new perspective, graphing changes in the ratio of total credit market debt to gross domestic product (GDP) over this period.
Around 1920, this number stood at 170% - that is, $1.70 of debt for every $1.00 of GDP. The ratio soared to about 260 during the Great Depression, as GDP shrunk the ratio's denominator, then, following World War ll, was essentially stable around 140 for almost 40 years, to 1986. It was then that the ratio began its stratospheric climb, topping out at 356 earlier this year.
From this perspective, the economic history of the past quarter century looks much different, and is much easier to understand. It was not Reaganomics, nor even Clintonics, that was responsible for all the prosperity since the 1980s; it was just Americans borrowing, being allowed to borrow, more than they ever had before, and then spending away the proceeds.
But now, the debt engine has stalled and is going into reverse. Blodget notes that about $700 billion of bank debt has been "written down", has evaporated these past months. But that's just the proverbial drop in the bucket compared with the amount he says debt must shrink for the ratio to return to the normal post-war levels in the mid-100s.
How much does Blodget say debt levels must shrink? $25 trillion - 35 times more than what has already been written down. Think of the current difficulties, multiply by 35, just imagine what that would look like.
It is obvious what is happening here - it's a lender's strike. For years, lenders have been giving away mortgage
money cheaply, say at 5%, but after a year of the real estate inflation typical of this decade it would take $1.30, not the $1.05 the lender would get back, to buy as much house as the $1.00 bought the previous year. It was a losing game. Finally, the lenders walked away from the table, and the deleveraging plague commenced.
What can Obama do to get lenders to lend, to re-leverage? Maybe he can spur some growth with a fiscal stimulus, such as infrastructure spending, but that won't necessarily get lenders to start lending again. He can put people to work pushing brooms or leaning on shovels and keep them from starving, but neither of these government-funded avocations will satisfy the real Joe-the-Plumber American definition and vision of prosperity - multiple big houses with big boats side by side with fast cars and/or monster SUVs in all their driveways; big, flat TVs and anything but flat expensive second- or third-trophy wives.
Maybe all that Obama can really do is to counteract the contemporaneous incredibly toxic and polarized American political and social culture - President George W Bush and his former advisor Karl Rove's attempt to ensure a permanent Republican future by making 51% of the population always want to draw a knife across the carotid artery of the other 49%.
Recently, there were reports that a Midwestern American woman made trick-or-treating children affirm that their parents were not going to be Obama voters before giving them their Halloween treats.
If Americans really are tired of this, if they really do value most the blissful comradeship of trusted neighbors all living in modest houses in happy, contented communities, then Obama's route into the history books may be an easy one.
If not, if what Americans really want is to once again be able to buy the big plasma TV and sit in front of it in the plush media room of their big house, isolated from the rest of the world by their big honkin' security system, well, then it's all uphill from here.
Julian Delasantellis is a management consultant, private investor and educator in international business in the US state of Washington. He can be reached at [email protected].
In it the author looks at Obama's options, and I reckon if he does decide toreduce Americas debt level by the 25 trillion mentioned, I think Uncle Sam would adopt restrictive import measures which could severly restrict China. EArly some commentators have suggested that of all the candidates running for presidency, he was the most likely to cut back funding on Bush's return to the moon project, which could disappoint the Space enthusiasts.
Mission accomplished - Part 1
By Julian Delasantellis
Even with the polls relatively close until the end, I could see the results of the American presidential election in a walk I took in early October at a swap meet - for non-US folk, an unofficial bring-and-buy street market - in downtown Los Angeles. There, amid all the clunky gold chains, bling medallions and pink taffeta party gowns, I was amazed to see large numbers of Barack Obama T-shirts.
The flimsy materials and cheap silk-screening made it obvious that these were not official products of the Obama campaign, like the designs, which seemed to imply that Obama's running mate in the campaign was not Joe Biden of Delaware but the late Bob Marley of Jamaica.
I tried to think of a previous Democratic Party nominee who had ngendered such excitement. Who else would have spurred the micro-capitalists who sell their wares at swap meets to such endeavors? It certainly would not have been Michael Dukakis, the intelligent but crushingly, deathly dull Massachusetts governor who was the party's choice in 1988. Perhaps the only people who might have admired his style in charisma and excitement sufficiently to put his face on a T-shirt would be the likes of the Middle Atlantic Express Train Schedulers Association. So Obamamania, the nationwide phenomenon that manifested itself everywhere - from the rallies where just the candidate's presence caused young people to faint away to the adult toy stores where the senator's image was drawn on the most unlikely of devices - carries the day. The question now becomes, can he even come close to meeting the ferocious expectations for a better life, in a better country, that were raised by him during the campaign? For most of the time since Obama clinched the nomination from Senator Hillary Clinton in June, he carried roughly a 3-5% lead in the polls; this briefly flipped to a similar lead for John McCain after the choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee. That effect faded as soon as Palin opened her mouth. Still, the McCain/Palin campaign was doing a serviceable job of maintaining contact with Obama-Biden until it hit the iceberg - the month-long financial and stock market collapse that started with the failure of investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 22.
When the Titanic's lookouts cried out "iceberg, right ahead", it was obvious that the ship was doomed. Likewise for the McCain campaign on the breaking dawn of the September financial crisis.
Most Americans supplant the relatively paltry returns of the government's old-age social security pension support plan with stock investments in tax-advantaged holding accounts called 401-Ks. When stocks fell to six-year lows in early October a lot of dreams of early retirements on sun-splashed Florida fairways had to be supplanted by nightmare images of dragging tired, arthritic bones every morning until death to their station at the fast food french-fry cooker.
Indeed, the financial crisis probably has gone a long way towards solving the long-term funding crisis of social security, in that now millions of Americans won't be able to retire and draw on the system, given that the stock portion of their retirement package is now worth so much less.
McCain/Palin tried everything, throwing the kitchen sink, indeed, the entirety of the house's plumbing, at their opponent - calling him a terrorist sympathizer, a socialist, even a communist. All for naught. Americans listened to the Republican charges, weighed them against the prospect of ending their lives as galley slaves rowing away their last days for the McDonald's empire, and decided that giving the terrorist/socialist/communist a chance wasn't such a bad idea.
Last December, with the economy not nearly in as dire straits as it is now, McCain pooh-poohed the idea that he should even be all that concerned with matters economic by telling The Boston Globe, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should, I've got [ex Federal Reserve head Alan] Greenspan's book."
Surprisingly, sounding like a stubborn schoolboy being forced to look at an economics textbook when he'd rather be out playing war with his toy soldiers did not hurt McCain all that much in the Republican nominating contests of last winter, when all the candidates were competing to see who could proclaim their intentions to bomb the most countries the hardest.
But as spring turned to summer and then to autumn, and slow growth turned to deep recession, McCain's cavalier attitude towards economics-related issues turned voters off. Nor was his cause helped by his series of highly gymnastic, focus-group generated, policy undulations during the September crisis.
Besides, getting advice from Greenspan about the current world financial crisis is a lot like the Chicago Fire Department taking advice on how not to start fires from Mrs O'Leary's cow.
So, Americans are trusting Obama for a return to prosperity. Can he deliver? If you read Henry Blodget, you'd have to have your doubts.
Blodget proves the adage that, in contemporary America, celebrity trumps morality every time. In the 1990s, as an Internet stock analyst for CIBC Oppenheimer and Merrill Lynch, he was renowned for publicly singing the accolades of dot-com stocks he privately ridiculed and which eventually disappeared. He was particularly famous for privately calling a stock he publicly lauded a "p.o.s." - and no, that does not mean "particle of sunshine".
Eventually, the Feds caught up with him, charging him with securities fraud. Blodget never admitted guilt, but he agreed to a big fine and permanent banishment from the securities industry.
In his shame, did Blodget, like Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, throw himself under a locomotive? No way. He is now a prominent writer and blogger on economics and investing, frequently advising small investors on how to spot shady brokerage practices - who would know better?
But it was one of his recent postings, on the "Clusterstock" web site, that caught my eye, and made me wonder if Obama has raised hopes impossible to fulfill.
In an October 29 post, entitled "What Does 'Deleveraging' Really Mean? Cutting $25 Trillion Of Debt", Blodget looked at the American economic history of the past 75 years from a whole new perspective, graphing changes in the ratio of total credit market debt to gross domestic product (GDP) over this period.
Around 1920, this number stood at 170% - that is, $1.70 of debt for every $1.00 of GDP. The ratio soared to about 260 during the Great Depression, as GDP shrunk the ratio's denominator, then, following World War ll, was essentially stable around 140 for almost 40 years, to 1986. It was then that the ratio began its stratospheric climb, topping out at 356 earlier this year.
From this perspective, the economic history of the past quarter century looks much different, and is much easier to understand. It was not Reaganomics, nor even Clintonics, that was responsible for all the prosperity since the 1980s; it was just Americans borrowing, being allowed to borrow, more than they ever had before, and then spending away the proceeds.
But now, the debt engine has stalled and is going into reverse. Blodget notes that about $700 billion of bank debt has been "written down", has evaporated these past months. But that's just the proverbial drop in the bucket compared with the amount he says debt must shrink for the ratio to return to the normal post-war levels in the mid-100s.
How much does Blodget say debt levels must shrink? $25 trillion - 35 times more than what has already been written down. Think of the current difficulties, multiply by 35, just imagine what that would look like.
It is obvious what is happening here - it's a lender's strike. For years, lenders have been giving away mortgage
money cheaply, say at 5%, but after a year of the real estate inflation typical of this decade it would take $1.30, not the $1.05 the lender would get back, to buy as much house as the $1.00 bought the previous year. It was a losing game. Finally, the lenders walked away from the table, and the deleveraging plague commenced.
What can Obama do to get lenders to lend, to re-leverage? Maybe he can spur some growth with a fiscal stimulus, such as infrastructure spending, but that won't necessarily get lenders to start lending again. He can put people to work pushing brooms or leaning on shovels and keep them from starving, but neither of these government-funded avocations will satisfy the real Joe-the-Plumber American definition and vision of prosperity - multiple big houses with big boats side by side with fast cars and/or monster SUVs in all their driveways; big, flat TVs and anything but flat expensive second- or third-trophy wives.
Maybe all that Obama can really do is to counteract the contemporaneous incredibly toxic and polarized American political and social culture - President George W Bush and his former advisor Karl Rove's attempt to ensure a permanent Republican future by making 51% of the population always want to draw a knife across the carotid artery of the other 49%.
Recently, there were reports that a Midwestern American woman made trick-or-treating children affirm that their parents were not going to be Obama voters before giving them their Halloween treats.
If Americans really are tired of this, if they really do value most the blissful comradeship of trusted neighbors all living in modest houses in happy, contented communities, then Obama's route into the history books may be an easy one.
If not, if what Americans really want is to once again be able to buy the big plasma TV and sit in front of it in the plush media room of their big house, isolated from the rest of the world by their big honkin' security system, well, then it's all uphill from here.
Julian Delasantellis is a management consultant, private investor and educator in international business in the US state of Washington. He can be reached at [email protected].
RedMercury
Junior Member
American protectionism might be harmful in the short run for China's economy, but like quitting an addiction, it will help in the long run. It will help Chinese manufacturers move up the value chain and force distributors to cultivate new markets. This will all speed up the decoupling between the Chinese and US economies, which will save a lot of hurt when the US national debt reaches the breaking point.
Here's Peter Schiff saying it better than me:
fast forward to 6:00. The talk is also great (if long), Schiff predicted the subprime meltdown, nailed the details in 2006.
Here's Peter Schiff saying it better than me:
fast forward to 6:00. The talk is also great (if long), Schiff predicted the subprime meltdown, nailed the details in 2006.
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I'd like to thank you gents for keeping this discussion civil. Unlike another military forum(MP.net) I was a member of until this morning...The bigots came out of the woodwork once Mr Obama was elected. Bigotry is something I cannot tolerate in any form.
Oh yes I forgive Sen McCain for using racial slurs about Asians. But I do fully understand and sympthize with AssassinsMace position on Mr McCain.
Oh yes I forgive Sen McCain for using racial slurs about Asians. But I do fully understand and sympthize with AssassinsMace position on Mr McCain.
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TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
I worry for the next four years..... speaking comparatively the only other Democratic who came too Office under such a situation was Carter and Militarily he bleed the US military like the Fall of the USSR did to the Red Army. Taking into account the Released Values of The new President Elect I am very concerned also factoring in the Statements of Mr. Obama concerning negotiation and some dangerous nations Iran, North Korea both nations that have a history of breaking promises and reneging on oaths
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AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
I love Americans who spout out these doom and gloom scenarios like Obama is going to turn the US into a Muslim country and women will have to be covered from head to toe. What? No faith in democracy? Really, if democracy is so fragile in the most powerful country in the world that people have these fantasy biblical armageddon predictions of the United States of America, then don't preach this weak little system to countries like China when ye have little faith in it thy selves.
I never heard that he's anti-Chinese. In fact, Obama appears less pro-Taiwan than McCain. Furthermore, his own sister is married to a Chinese.
The PRC traditionally favored Republican because one, it was a Republican that opened US relations with China, and second, Republicans tend to be more free trade. The PRC is more willing to overlook the pro-Taiwan bent of Republicans for the pro-free trade. For that reason, despite the neocons, the PRC appeared to favor Bush more than Kerry back in 2004. Bush is probably liked more in China than he is now in the US. But you know, Clinton is popular in China despite sending carriers towards the Chinese coast back in 1996 when the PRC rattled some sabers to Taiwan.
As a note, Asian Americans favored Obama except for the Vietnamese Americans who favored McCain. McCain is quite popular among the Vietnamese, and we all know McCain is kept as a prisoner in Vietnam. In Vietnam, Hanoi Hilton is now a museum and there is special mention where McCain stayed. Even a special monument where McCain was shot down and captured. When McCain visited Vietnam when relations normalized, he was treated like a celebrity, and kids were like google eyed seeing the man that is so mentioned in their books.