China syndrome

Here’s a good if convoluted chat about the current macro picture as the various economic powers twist in the breeze and try to protect themselves.

China in late October increased by several orders of magnitude its verbal attacks on the dollar. But in the wake of the G20 meeting it seems to have softened its own currency (by buying dollars) in an attempt to prop up its domestic industrial enterprises (which are suffering for lack of consumers in, to begin, the U.S.).

The dollar has been going up  for a month or so, generally speaking.  A good deal of this is flight from minor currencies (like Argentina’s, alas) based on fear that the local banks will collapse.

This component of the dollar’s recent surge won’t last.  Best guess is that soon enough the dollar will continue its plummet, and that long-term the chinese currency will rise.

The current dollar boost, then, might be imagined as the point in the sinking of the Titantic where the bow suddenly goes under the waves and the stern ascends to bring the ship nearly vertical — until it shaps amidships — upon which the stern falls like a brick into the sea.

And, as the dollar turns and sinks, the cost of oil (denominated in dollars) will go back up.

A debased dollar is good for people who make things with dollars and sell them in other currencies.  And for debtors, in general (assuming they can make their payments).  Otherwise it’s rather bad.

Afghanization or Escalation?
Escalation => War in Pakistan?

These reputable talking heads neatly outline the Afghan question:  Princeton, escalation.  Harvard, Afghanization.

I vote Hahvard.

But it seems the owner-operators are Black and Orange — real Tigers — and that Obama is in their stands.

See the 2nd comment below re CIA director Hayden’s shocking speech yesterday.  It clarifies things.  (Unless, err … it muddies the waters.)

In particular:  The reality of the coming “Afghan Surge” — which both Obama and McCain sold throughout the campaign — seems a big western ground war in the Tribal Areas of northwest Pakistan early next year.

This will be the most distracting and dangerous thing on BHO’s plate.

The JFK precedent in wild, blasted bloom?  See the 3rd comment below.

Kemal Bakarsic:
The Libraries of Sarajevo …

There has never been a place on TNC to post comments about “The Libraries of Sarajevo and the Book that Saved Our Lives” by Kemal Bakarsic.

Now, thoughts may be posted here below.

Journalist Gary Webb speaks
Tell YourObama to purge the CIA

  It’s almost four years since journalist Gary Webb was suicided.

Here he speaks.

Webb in the mid 90s had re-broken in a big way the big story of the CIA’s involvement in the international drug trade — updating old tales from Vietnam by documenting CIA-NSC responsibility for the Crack explosion in American cities during the Reagan years.

Webb’s serial newspaper reportage in 1996 bore the name Dark Alliance, and was republished in a book of the same name.

Those were the Clinton years; the stories not only got published, but drew widespread attention from the major media.

But Webb himself was soon and suddenly fired by his San Jose newspaper — which also destroyed its web archive of the Dark Alliance story.  Soon it was clear that the author had been blacklisted out of the business.

A month after Bush-Cheney were re-installed in 2004, Webb was shot twice in the head and died.  Suicide, the coroner reported.  Neither Little Jimmy Grimaldi nor Webb’s friends believe that.

Read his book.

And think about Daniel Moynihan in 1991 …

“The time has come to ask, with the Cold War over, can we purge the vestiges of this struggle from our laws, our bureaucracy, and most importantly from our way of thinking,” Moynihan said. “Can we muster the will to redefine ourselves?”

And then tell YourObama to purge and reform the National Security Apparat.

The Wall cracked
Nineteen years ago

I’ve revamped my little memoir of that happy week or so, with a lot more photos and a bit more scrip.

NYROB High Five:
Cheney, Soros, Olmert

Recent MUST READS in the NY Review of Books:

On Cheney.

On the financial crisis — by George Soros.

And the full interview that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave before resigning — in which he renounces militarism as a possible basis of Israeli security.

Britain pressing Police State
measures like nobody’s business

Ed Note:  This was first posted October 19.  I’m bumping it up because twice since — see comments below — news has leaked of OTHER major police-state measures that somebody in Whitehall is apparently trying to ram through. 

What the heck is going on?

———

October 19. Times of London calling.

Britain will require passports to buy cell phones — to allow their version of the NSA to identify all callers instantly.

The plan’s champions are explicit about the aim: to improve surveillance of the general populace.

Washington will not be far behind.

Or … Piece says the plan has been tabled until next year in London due to some resistance within Whitehall.

I had come to think of jolly old Britain as the last refuge of the old English liberties.  Perhaps the more deceived …

Iranian leader finds Obama “more rational”

The comment may work against Obama to some degree.  Something of a kiss of death.

But the story seems otherwise promising.

Perhaps Larijani — the current Speaker of the Iranian parliament, with “close ties” to the supreme ayatollah — would be shuffled to the Iranian presidency if Obama were to win?

Bosnia: Things falling apart in the ill-conceived federal state

A bad moon rising again.  Everyone who knew much at the time of the Dayton Accord said it wouldn’t work.  Holbroke (the chief architect) now seems to agree.

Brit Commander in Afghanistan:
“We’re not going to win this war.”

Brigadier General Mark Carleton-Smith says it’s time to talk turkey with the Taliban.

Yet, one of McCain’s big talking points in last week’s debate was the need to do a Surge over there.