Cat and mouse game

Steve Bell's take on U.S. President Barack Obama's strategy to deal with Iran. Ba-rat Obama looks funny enough but the old bag-puss Hillary Clinton's just awesome =)

Citibank of China, anyone?

Amid all the ongoing discussions on the credit meltdown and deep economic recession we are all currently finding ourselves in, one idea has been conspicuously absent from the political debates raging in America at the moment: instead of having the U.S. Treasury borrow a few more trillion dollars from the Chinese and then dump the cash straight into the financial black hole that is Citibank and GM, why not invite Chinese investors to directly buy a stake in and recapitalize these failing U.S. businesses?

In practice allowing Chinese managers to take over Citibank would not make much of a difference for the average U.S. consumer-except they would no longer incur the cost of paying interest over trillions of dollars more in public debt. And presumably they would also avoid suffering the consequences of a plunge in the dollar's value with respect to the yuan, which will soon make all these cheap Chinese goods look not-so-cheap anymore.

Just why is it this option is not being put on the table by the U.S. government? this is a good question, which ought to be asked from them by their citizens. Most importantly, I feel being bought by China would be an excellent punishment for all these greedy Wall Street executives at Citibank and elsewhere...

Global Worries Over U.S. Stimulus Spending

With the Davos World Economic Forum taking place this week, economists from around the world are starting to ask tough questions from the U.S. government about its plans to finance the Obama administration's trillion-dollar stimulus package, according to this article in the NYT.

Indeed, leaders from developing countries such as Mr Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico, are becoming concerned that their own borrowing needs may soon be drowned in the coming flood of new U.S. Treasury bonds to be emitted by the Obama administration to pay for its stimulus package.

Moreover, there is concern around the world that the value of the dollar might collapse against other currencies, driving both interest rates and inflation up in other countries. And foreign leaders are questioning exactly how Mr Obama intends to pay for all this debt in the long term. To quote the article,

The stimulus was approved Wednesday by the House without Republican support, and could grow larger — mostly likely with additional tax cuts — to attract a bipartisan coalition.

American officials maintain they are aware of the challenge. A top White House adviser, Valerie Jarrett, promised in Davos on Thursday that once the stimulus plan achieved its intended affect, the United States would “restore fiscal responsibility and return to a sustainable economic path.”

Ms. Jarrett, a confidante of both President Obama and his wife, Michelle, is the highest-ranking administration official at Davos.

To be sure, Congress and the White House will ultimately need to refill the government’s coffers, but how they might do that is barely on the radar screen in Washington at this point.

For all the funny caricatures of George Bush I've been posting on this blog, I'm actually starting to miss Mr Bush... always the skeptic, I've long stopped believing Mr Obama will do any better at this point. And at least George Bush was a great subject for caricaturists such as Steve Bell and KAL. Whereas Mr Obama's inauguration party may be shortly followed by a serious economic hangover that may not inspire many a good laugh-even from cartoonists.

KAL's cartoon

hoo hoo hoo ha ha ha wha ha ha!!! Like, so totally funny!! KAL's genius, man!

25 years of Mac

To those of use who are just old enough to remember Apple's original 1984 ad.

Steve Bell's farewell

Steve Bell's farewell to George Bush and Dick Cheney... as an eco-conscious citizen I ask the question: how do you dispose of such toxic political legacy? underground repository in a stable layer of salt that won't move for 100,000 years is a possibility, they would fit right in with plutonium waste. Or dumping them in an active volcano sounds more like it: send them back to where they come from...

Look Around You!

Did you know that germs come from Germany? or that mathematicians have yet to come up with a number bigger than 45 billion? well if you don't you better watch Peter Serafinowicz's spoof 70's educational video Look Around You!

KAL's cartoon

=)

Steve Bell on George Bush

See this very funny interactive slideshow on The Guardian's website, in which cartoonist Steve Bell describes the evolution of his depictions of U.S. President George W. Bush. 'Not a complete idiot, you don't get to that position by being a complete idiot but the values he seems to enshrine are values of ignorance and stupidity and arrogance.' A bit harsh maybe, although most of my American friends would tend to agree... Mr Bell concludes with his picture of George Bush and Tony Blair as two lame ducks walking into the sunset...

In fact I am finding it quite difficult to imagine how a rather personable man like Mr Bush has managed to attract so much negative publicity onto himself and taken so many poor decisions. For the most part I would blame it on really, really bad advice and also perhaps on Mr Bush's contention to do what he believes is 'right.' In politics there is no such thing as being 'right,' and being too sure of oneself is bound to offend people who disagree and live according to different moral values. As it turned out, even the CIA is often patently wrong in its conclusions. Government is not an exact science!

I'm not generally a huge fan of the Guardian, as I find their articles more often then not exhibit a strong leftist bias that's not always of the most reasonable kind. But-I shall miss Steve Bell's caricatures of George Bush, I must say =)

Kim Jong-Il nominates successor

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il has apparently nominated his third son Kim Jong-Un, 24, as his successor. Read news report here.

Pets and prizes

The latest cartoon from The Guardian's Steve Bell =)

The case for bigger government

Aside from the article on ewaste, last week's Time magazine also had a featured article by economist Jeffrey Sachs, of Columbia University. I'm generally most interested in Mr Sachs' ideas, as they tend to be quite creative and often provocative. Most of all, I always find I learn interesting new facts and perspectives when I read his essays. In his latest piece, he is arguing, much as I did, that Mr Obama's planned deficit spending 'in the trillions for years to come' is completely unreasonable, as foreign nations like China are rapidly losing confidence in America's public finance system. And Mr Sachs, also as I argued in my own essay, advocates suppressing George Bush's tax cuts for the rich and cutting America's losses in Iraq and Afghanistan immediately.

Mr Sachs then goes on to draw an interesting comparison with Europe when it comes to services that the government can often do better than private business, such as health care and education, and arrives at the conclusion that increasing government investment into such services would in the end save Americans a lot of dollars. Most importantly, Mr Sachs explains how such investment in goverment services ought to be financed through tax increases, as opposed to deficit spending, as President-elect Barack Obama is planning to do. Yet Mr Sachs ultimately refrains from advocating to completely nationalize all education and health care in America as in the EU, as he observes, 'The U.S. will not mimic Europe for many reasons — size, diversity, tradition and, of course, vested interests — but we can learn from Europe.' I couldn't agree more and I would add-Europe can learn from the U.S. in other areas such as encouraging business creation.

On the whole I would say I agree with Mr Sachs' main argument, that in the long run the U.S. will probably have to rely on the federal government more in several areas such as health care and education. Where I respectfully disagree, however, is when he contends that 'deficit spending is needed to help revive the economy from recession'. In fact I completely disagree with the whole idea that, at this point, there is anything at all that the U.S. federal government can effectively do to 'jump-start' the U.S. economy. This is mainly because the economic crisis is now global in scale and other countries' difficulties are already weighing down heavily on the American economy. The whole problem has grown out of its initial national proportions, it is now essentially out of the U.S. government's control and spending a few hundred billion dollars more will not make much of a difference. On top of that, the crisis is being continuously fueled from within the U.S. by all the personal and business bankruptcies that are bound to increase both in numbers and severity this coming year. In that sense, resolving this crisis is really about changing American people's spending habits and this won't happen in a day. And again, as I have been arguing repeatedly, the U.S. Treasury simply has no money left to spend in its coffers and rapidly dwindling credibility with foreign investors to borrow money from abroad, China in particular.

George Bush's farewell conference

Will Ferrell's own version of U.S. President George W. Bush's farewell press conference-now the Tiger Woods guy is taking over =)

101 posts already!

I've just realized I've just passed the 100-post mark, with the Garry Trudeau cartoon. Champagne!

Belief tank

The latest strip from Garry B. Trudeau. I oftentimes find his over-liberal humor a bit wishy-washy but this particular one made me want to roll myself on the floor in laughter =)

The new Lexus HS250h

They may be suffering from the recession but Toyota are showing no sign of slowing down on the R&D front. They have just presented their new Lexus HS250h hybrid car at the Detroit Auto Show and it just looks gorgeous. This looks to me like a fabulous car that is fuel-efficient without sacrificing what a great car is all about: it looks good, it's got all the performance and features you'd want to drive comfortably and safely to work or whatever it is you're doing everyday. And all GM have to respond to that is this little piece of crap they call 'Volt'. The whole range-extended EV concept is total nonsense, and clearly is only there to mitigate the shortcomings of pure EV's. Mr Volta must be spinning in his grave...

Sabotage

My favorite music video of all time: The Beastie Boys' Sabotage. 'Cause it takes place on da streets of LA, dude!

Reuse me long time

This week Time magazine is running an article on this village in China named Guiyu where they recycle tons of ewaste imported from America and Europe. Each year 5,500 local businesses, usually home-run workshops, dismantle 1.5 million tons of discarded computers, cell phones and other electronic gadgets.

They also have the highest levels of carcinogenic dioxins in the world and the children there suffer from widespread lead poisoning. Besides the print article, Time also have an online photo album, from which the above picture (credit: Chien-min Chung) is taken. The sight of all these children running among mountain of ewaste and this old grandma picking out electronic components totally breaks my heart.

I would urge the reader to follow Time's excellent advice and to recycle your electronic gadgets, TV's and computers through responsible businesses who do not export the toxic waste to third-world countries like China. In particular Time mention Sony, Samsung and LG among the brands who accept to recycle old products for free. For cell phones there is greenphone.com and Dell also recycle old PC's if you ship it back to them-it's free.

Cat presents weather

Macht mir spaß!

Resuscitating disintegrating squeletons

You may remember this cartoon by Martin Rowson. Here's the sequel. What's more dead than a regular squeleton? a squeleton that's coming apart, apparently... (copyright Martin Rowson 2009).

China losing taste for U.S. Treasuries

The NYT just published this most interesting article, which details a recent shift in the Chinese government's monetary strategy. With the current economic crisis and the $600 billion stimulus package that they recently announced, it seems China is now intent on spending its enormous cash reserves internally as opposed to buying U.S. Treasury bonds. This could be a serious problem for the U.S. economy-and consequentially for the EU's own economy-since it means borrowing money will become much more expensive for the U.S. government and everybody else, all the more problematically at a time when credit is particularly scarce.

This is definitely another good reason why I think Barack Obama's $800bn 'stimulus' package is really crackpot economics and may very well lead to a catastrophic run from the U.S. debt market in the coming year, especially if people suddenly stop believing in the U.S. Treasury's ability to repay its debt. Indeed, a glut of bonds for sale at unattractive yields and a sliding dollar will only encourage foreign investors to rethink their positions in dollar-denominated bonds generally and U.S. Treasuries in particular. And driving the U.S. national debt ratio closer to 100% of GDP certainly will not help. Mr Obama may claim that not pumping the $800bn into the economy immediately would have dire consequences and keep the recession going for years but it seems to me that adding an extra $800bn to the U.S. national debt may very well do worse-it would literally turn the U.S. debt market into something of a Ponzi scheme, with the U.S. Treasury at the top of the pyramid. Its collapse would be extremely painful and it would be felt far beyond the U.S. of A.

Ponzi vs. Fonzi

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Hiding Gold - David Leonhardt

Colbert at Christmas

Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen

Bill O'Reilly Interview

In which Stephen and NYT reporter David Leonhardt explain the subtle difference between a Ponzi scheme and regular free-markets capitalism.

The MacBook Wheel

Apple's revolutionary new laptop does away with the keyboard, so your typing has never been sloppier!
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Is the € the new $?

This article in Time Magazine is asking the provocative question in this time of economic and financial crisis: is the euro progressively replacing the U.S. dollar as the world's leading currency? generally I would think it's still far from being the case but with Barack Obama's bent on printing a lot of greenbacks to finance his rescue package for the U.S. economy, the question will probably become more and more pertinent.

Unquestionably the swelling U.S. budget deficit will bring a lot of foreign investors to question the soundness of U.S. public finance and to reconsider their investing money into U.S. Treasuries for fear of seeing their value founder with the dollar and perhaps even the U.S. Treasury credit ratings loosing their rock-solid AAA status. As the recent credit crisis has just spectacularly demonstrated, this could very well happen suddendly and catastrophically in the next two years... and what Barack Obama giveth to the middle classes, inflation shall taketh away.

Passing the torch

KAL's latest cartoon-I totally thought I should share this =)

Now-wait a second!

So you thought you'd be able to uncork the Champagne at 12:00:00 yesterday night? wrong! This year a so-called leap-second was added to the last minute of 2008, in order for the time kept with great accuracy by the UK's National Physical Laboratory's atomic clock to stay in sync with our more intuitive notion of time: namely it's noon when the sun's at its highest point in the sky.

If we didn't add this extra second every now and then, in a few thousand years noon might end up at 1pm instead of 12pm! this is due to the fact that the rotation of the Earth around its axis is perturbed randomly by the atmosphere slowing it down, its molten core flowing chaotically, etc...

As a result, this year the timekeepers who are in charge of Big Ben had to adjust its clock to slow it by one second =)

Largest dinosaur find in China

Scientists in China claim to have discovered the largest field of fossilized dinosaur bones ever, in the north-eastern province of Shandong. The researchers, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have so far recovered more than 7,600 dinosaur bones from the trench, most of which date back to the Cretaceous. According to this article on the BBC's website,

The full details of the findings have not yet been published. But they are reported to include tyrannosaurus and ankylosaurus bones, as well as what could be the largest duck-billed dinosaur ever excavated.

The discoveries are expected to shed light on how the dinosaurs became extinct around the same geological period and the first details are to be published later in the year.

Mr Cyclopède et Superman

Hilarious video segment of French comedian Pierre Desproges, in which he questions whether Superman really is a frenchman. He then proceeds to interview Superman's grandpa and grandma. Must understand French to follow so brush up your français!