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Spengler on why Asian capital markets send their money to the U. S.
Why do Asian investors depend on American capital markets? Given the near breakdown of key sectors of the American market, one might expect Asians to bring their money home. Quite the opposite has happened: Asian currencies have fallen sharply against the American dollar.
On my desk is a draft paper by a prominent Asian politician, sent to me privately for comment. It calls on Asians to take charge of their own financial destiny and invest their money in Asian markets rather than into the maelstrom of American markets. Privately, I advised the leader in question not to publish it. It will do no good. Asian capital markets cannot absorb Asia’s savings.
What does America have that Asia doesn’t have? The answer is, Sarah Palin – not Sarah Palin the vice presidential candidate, but Sarah Palin the “hockey mom” turned small-town mayor and reforming Alaska governor. All the PhDs and MBAs in the world can’t make a capital market work, but ordinary people like Sarah Palin can. Laws depend on the will of the people to enforce them. It is the initiative of ordinary people that makes America’s political system the world’s most reliable.
America is the heir to a long tradition of Anglo-Saxon law that began with jury trial and the Magna Carta and continued through the English Revolution of the 17th century and the American Revolution of the 18th. Ordinary people like Palin are the bearers of this tradition.
Outside of the United States, the young governor of Alaska has become a figure of ridicule – someone who did not own a passport until last year and who quaintly believes that her state’s proximity to Russia gives her insights on foreign policy. How, my European friends ask, was it possible for such an an ignorant bumpkin to become a candidate for America’s second-highest office? They don’t understand America.
Provincial America depends on the initiative of ordinary people to get through the day. America has something like an Education Ministry, but it has little money to dispense. Americans pay for most of their school costs out of local taxes, and levy those taxes on themselves. In small towns, many public agencies, including fire protection and emergency medical assistance, depend almost entirely on volunteers. People who tax themselves, and give their own time and money for services on which communities depend, are not easily cowed by the federal government or by large corporations. …
Bill Kristol had a chance to ask Sarah Palin if she would challenge Biden to another debate. Pickerhead has a better idea; instead of the cranky GOP socialist debating Obama, let Sarah do the job. She’d be better at it.
I spoke on the phone Sunday with Sarah Palin, who was in Long Beach, Calif., preparing to take off on her next campaign trip. It was the first time I’d talked with her since I met her in far more relaxed circumstances in Alaska over a year ago. But even though she’s presumably now under some strain and stress, she seemed, as far as I could tell, confident and upbeat.
In terms of substance, some of what she had to say was unsurprising: She doesn’t have a very high opinion of the mainstream media, and she believes an Obama administration would kill jobs by raising taxes. But she said a couple of things that were, I thought, either personally touching or politically provocative.
At one point, noting that Palin had remarked ruefully almost a week ago that her son Track had been, since his recent deployment to Iraq, in touch with his girlfriend but not his mother, I asked whether she had subsequently heard from him.
Palin told me she had. “He called the day of the debate, and it was so wonderful because it was the first call since they were deployed over there, and it was like a burden lifted even when I heard his voice.” Palin said that she told him that she had a debate that night. “And he says, ‘Yeah, I heard, Mom,’ and he says, ‘Have you been studying?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I have,’ and he goes, ‘O.K., well I’ll be praying.’ I’m like — total role reversal here, that’s what I’ve been telling him for 19 years.” …
In the current issue of Newsweek, Jon Meacham says Palin’s words are mindless populism. Karl Rove, in the same issue, differs.
With respect, Jon misses the principal arguments for Sarah Palin. She is the governor of a state with an $11 billion operating budget, a $1.7 billion capital budget and nearly 29,000 employees; she’s got more executive experience than any candidate for president or vice president this year. In Alaska she took on the state political establishment, the incumbent Republican governor and the oil companies. She’s a rising star who accentuates John McCain’s maverick strengths and a “hockey mom” who has developed a powerful tie to ordinary voters.
That link isn’t itself an argument for Palin. But being able to connect with, and inspire, the public is an asset —not a liability. As for Jon’s argument against “everyday Americans” as political leaders, many great presidents have been more average than elitist. Ronald Reagan, from Eureka College, was a far better leader than Woodrow Wilson, a former president of Princeton. Wilson would have given you 100 Supreme Court opinions he disagreed with, whether you wanted to listen or not. …
Looking over Barack’s record, Thomas Sowell wonders if facts matter.
Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”
Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election day, just a few weeks from now.
Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time.
The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain– which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.
It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama’s rhetoric and the media’s spin enough to make facts irrelevant?
Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years– including the present year– denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.
It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. …
David Harsanyi wrote some on the bail-out.
… “We need 100 Republican votes to pass this,” Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters after the Senate vote. So to assist these hardheaded Republicans in making up their minds on the Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the bill is also now loaded with tax cuts and other conservative goodies.
For instance, it will keep around 20 million Americans from paying the alternative minimum tax while offering $8 billion in tax relief to victims of natural disasters in Texas, Louisiana and other areas.
Those worthwhile issues should be taken up separately. This was about a Treasury bailout of the mortgage industry that will have lasting consequences.
The argument will be made that these goodies are only scraps, considering the big picture.
Perhaps. But then the vote also tells us that the Senate can be bought for scraps.
John Fund was in the NY Post writing on voter fraud.
“If you think of election problems as akin to forest fires, the woods are no drier than they were in 2000, but many more people have matches,” says Doug Chapin, editor of the nonpartisan Electionline.org.
The real battle that could decide this election may be fought by the squadrons of lawyers both sides have hired to prepare Florida-style challenges to the results in any close state. Once again, America’s sloppy, fraud-prone voting system could turn Election Day into an Election Month of court challenges. …
Swedish libertarian blooger, Johann Norberg, asks some good questions about the credit crisis in three different posts; IF REGULATION IS THE ANSWER, WHY DIDN´T IT HELP?, HOW TO CREATE A CRISIS and WHY THE BAILOUT IS BAD
… Now most commentators demand more regulation. Before we accept that, let´s look at what the old regulations did. Why did independent investment banks evolve in the first place? Because American politicians outlawed universal banks as part of the New Deal, a ban that was in place for 66 years.
And why did the value of their assets collapse? Because American politicians responded to accounting fraud by implementing “fair value accounting”, which means that financial instruments must be evaluated at the price that they would get if they were sold right now. And in a market without liquidity, mortgage loans are not worth anything, even though they will be in the future. So suddenly banks and thrifts look insolvent and have to sell assets, which pushes the price further down, so that others have to mark down their assets even more, and so on. …
Borowitz reports O. J. Simpson requests bail-out since his incarceration will tank earnings for the cable networks.