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.

The Morning After

Ed Note: These first reactions, pro and con, have been elaborated with photos, some ideas and supporting links. Perhaps worth a second look. 

Comments here below.

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.

Little Jimmy Grimaldi:
What the heck now?
Obama’s proposed Civilian National Security Force

Here’s someone worrying about the political consequences, perhaps unintended, of Obama’s three-million-person internet social network.

And, geez.  Webster Tarpley is not pleased.  Sees Obama as a “post modern” Mussolini, and his loyal legions as fascists (using the term as narrowly as possible, to indicate the bunches — “fascisti” — of zealous bumpkins that Musso rode to power).

As wild as Tarpley’s theses may seem, here’s another worry that lends them some support: Obama’s campaign pledge to create a massive Civilian Security Force:

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve gotta have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

A big national plainclothes police force, you mean?

Err … Wouldn’t that be the FBI?

So, err … you mean another FBI?  You mean two heads might be better than one?

Err … I thought that’s what went wrong on 9/11?

One might hope that the One has in mind a kind of public works project — an army of unarmed retired folk rolling through their local streets late at night in fuel-efficient “Community Observation Patrol” cars.

Recouping recent losses in their retirement accounts …

But that picture doesn’t fit the caption: a “national security force” as “powerful” as what the Pentagon presides over.  Some have glossed the notion by reference to Britain’s MI5.

Will cooler and more “conservative” heads in the Congress be stampeded into backing this wild notion by the shouts of MyObamists stomping thru the streets?

Charisma perhaps comes at a price.

Little Jimmy Grimaldi:
Palin & co. re “Real” America
is prep for martial law

Ed Note:  This was first posted on Halloween.  I bump it up because the Terror-watch drumbeat is getting so very loud.  (See comments below.)

—————
Little Jimmy Grimaldi is out with his Halloween Message.

Tonight’s topic:  Creeping Fascism.

.

Roe v Wade
and Christian thought

I posted a comment (the 9th) at my friend Peter Gilbert’s site, De Unione Ecclessiarum.

The discussion there had moved from Peter’s thoughts about the election to consternation among some readers about changes in abortion law perhaps forthcoming.

My comment is about three strata of legal principles underlying Roe v Wade — and about how the trimester scheme of Roe corresponds in a way to old Christian principles about how and when a fetus becomes “animated”  (by a soul).

Gitmo Gitmo Got to Go!
Prosecutions pending?

There is talk in the air (at least on MSNBC) of shutting down the Guantanamo prison ASAP.

But the NY Times came out against the idea with a page-one story the day before the election.  (And I note that, since, the Times has softened the story on its website.  The lead was much stronger — suggesting closing would be ill advised — on November 3.)

Obama of course is a lawyer and taught some constitutional law.  He may be concerned not only to set things aright, but to prevent his own administration from being tainted by the prison.

I’ve wondered elsewhere if Robert Gates may not be kept on at Defense — so goes the rumor  — to oversee the (glorious) dirty work of shutting the prison down and purging the Pentagon of those responsible for it.

I can’t think of anything Obama might do on Day One that would more effectively set the new tone and set the country back on its course.

Gitmo Gitmo Got to Go!

And then perhaps some sort of prosecution, preferably here but if not then abroad.

Re the latter:  It would signal a techtonic power shift — akin to the shift already underway in global finance in the wake of the still shocking demise of the big five Wall Street brokers –  were Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith or … whatsisname, Curious George, to be arrested, say, in Germany, to be tried for crimes against German citizens.

Will be curious to see if they dare travel abroad once out from behind the White House fence.

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.