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thinkahol *

Bernard Lietaer: Money diversity - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

Bernard Lietaer: Money diversity - YouTube

shared by thinkahol * on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 17 Nov 11
     
    Bernard Lietaer argues that the monoculture of money is what creates economic instability, leading to liquidity crises. He calls for a greater diversity of alternative currencies, citing innovative and enormously successful initiatives like the Lithuanian Doraland Economy, the Torekes in Belgium and Switzerland's famous alternative currency, the WIR.
Michael Haltman

The Hallmark Abstract Sentinel: What happens if your title insurance underwriter stops ... - 2 views

hallmarkabstractllc.blogspot.com/...s-if-your-title-insurance.html

title insurance house crisis real estate market financial crisis underwriter

shared by Michael Haltman on 11 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Michael Haltman on 11 Aug 11
     
    New Jersey Title, an underwriter of title insurance policies in the northeast, has become a casualty of a financial and real estate crisis that has taken many victims. Some of these casualties might never have occurred if the events of the past few years had not taken place, but because they did there are firms and individuals who now face the need to find alternatives at a time when those alternatives may be difficult to come by.
Ian Schlom

Obama nominates Jacob Lew, budget-cutter and ex-banker, to head Treasury - 0 views

www.wsws.org/...jlew-j11.html

capitalism news US Obama 2012

shared by Ian Schlom on 11 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Ian Schlom on 11 Jan 13
     
    in the article: US President Barack Obama announced the nomination of current White House chief of staff Jacob Lew as treasury secretary Thursday, underscoring the administration's commitment to slashing entitlements and its domination by Wall Street. Lew, a longtime Washington operative and former Wall Street executive, helped negotiate cuts to Social Security with the Reagan administration in 1983, worked to slash social spending in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and served as the Obama administration's point-man in budget-cutting negotiations with congressional Republicans. Prior to joining the Obama administration in 2009, he earned millions of dollars as the chief operating officer of Citigroup's Alternative Investments unit, which made bets against the housing market as it collapsed. Holy shit. That's maybe all one needs to read of this article. That's pretty ridiculous.
Joe La Fleur

CNN Loses Half Its Viewers: Corporate Media Downhill Plunge Continues As Alternative Me... - 0 views

globalresearch.ca/index.php

cnn half media plunge continues alternative

shared by Joe La Fleur on 02 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Joe La Fleur on 02 Apr 12
     
    Huh, I dont see Fox news here amoung the losers.
thinkahol *

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Political Consequences of Stagnation - 0 views

www.fpif.org/...cal_consequences_of_stagnation

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Political Consequences of Stagnation

shared by thinkahol * on 07 Sep 10 - Cached
  • thinkahol * on 07 Sep 10
     
    If the left doesn't come up with a credible and comprehensive alternative to a focus on reducing the deficit, argues FPIF columnist Walden Bello, the far right might eventually fill the policy vacuum.
thinkahol *

End Limited Liability (and Save the World) - Sign the Petition | Change.org - 0 views

www.change.org/...d_liability_and_save_the_world

end limited liability

shared by thinkahol * on 14 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 14 Sep 10
     
    Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Socialist, politically active and not we are reaping the bitter reward of a political and legal system designed to maximize corporate profits at the expense of our environment, our livelihood, and our very lives. Our society is unraveling. We all know this. This is not idle conspiracy theory. These are well established facts. We are ruled by a headless beast that is no longer accountable to us. That it is headless makes it no less beastly. But there is a silver bullet. It's within our power to restore a functioning free market; to take back our democracy. We must end limited liability for corporations. Only when wealthy investors are no longer shielded from the costs that we collectively bear in their stead, only when they can no longer hide from the burden they have placed on us, only then can we expect the end of corporate plunder.   We are running out of time. Millions of Germans lost faith in the free market and capitalism during the Great Depression, and "with the failure of the left to provide a viable alternative, they became vulnerable to the rhetoric of a party that, once it came to power, combined Keynesian pump-priming measures that brought unemployment down to 3 percent with a devastating counterrevolutionary social and cultural program."
thinkahol *

Elections and ideology: Liberals, planning and trains | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...elections_and_ideology

Elections and ideology: Liberals planning trains | The Economist

shared by thinkahol * on 01 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 01 Nov 10
     
    Fundamentally, without major government commitments to high-speed rail, America simply will not have a high-speed passenger rail network. This should probably be discomfiting, since every other economic superpower (the EU, Japan and China) does have a high-speed rail network. That makes America look a bit backward. The time horizon for building such a network is several decades, and it's interesting to think about what will happen in the middle decades of this century if air transport becomes unaffordable due to high fuel costs and America doesn't have an electric alternative for high-speed intercity transit.
Skeptical Debunker

Big Content condemns foreign governments that endorse FOSS - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...ernments-that-endorse-foss.ars

open source Special 301 USTR IIPA absurd recommendations self-serving

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • University of Edinburgh law lecturer Andres Guadamuz wrote a blog entry this week highlighting some particularly troubling aspects of the IIPA's 301 recommendations. The organization has condemned Indonesia and several other countries for encouraging government adoption of open source software. According to the IIPA, official government endorsements of open source software create "trade barriers" and restrict "equitable market access" for software companies. The profound absurdity of this accusation is exacerbated by the fact that Indonesia's move towards open source software was almost entirely motivated by a desire to eliminate the use of pirated software within the government IT infrastructure. It's important to understand that Indonesia has not mandated the adoption of open source software or barred government agencies from purchasing proprietary commercial software. The Indonesian government issued a statement in 2009 informing municipal governments that they had to stop using pirated software. The statement said that government agencies must either purchase legally licensed commercial software or switch to free and open source alternatives in order to comply with copyright law. This attempt by Indonesia to promote legal software procurement processes by endorsing the viability of open source software has apparently angered the IIPA. In its 301 recommendations for Indonesia, the IIPA demands that the government rescind its 2009 statement. According to the IIPA, Indonesia's policy "weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness" because open source software "encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations [and] fails to build respect for intellectual property rights." The number of ways in which the IIPA's statements regarding open source software are egregiously misleading and dishonest are too numerous to count. The IIPA seems to have completely missed the fact that there is a very robust ecosystem of commercial software vendors in the open source software market and that open source software is at the heart of some of the most popular consumer electronics products that are sold in the United States. It has clearly become an important part of the US software economy and increasingly serves as an enabler of innovation and technological progress. In light of the profitability of Red Hat and other open source leaders, it seems absurd to contend that open source software adoption will weaken the software industry or reduce its competitiveness. In fact, the emergence of open source software has contributed to creating a more competitive landscape in the software industry by offering alternative business models that enable smaller companies to gain traction against the dominant incumbent players. The IIPA's position is profoundly hypocritical, because many parts of the US government, including the Department of Defense, have issued their own memos endorsing open source software adoption. The IIPA's disingenuous move to equate open source software with piracy reeks of desperation. The BSA and other IIPA members are likely losing sleep over open source software because that development model and approach to licensing will empower developing countries to build their own domestic IT industries, eliminating the need for them to tithe to American software giants. It's another failing of the 301 review, which Big Content wants used to coerce other countries into adopting ever-more-stringent copyright laws.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10
     
    In accordance with US trade law, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) is required to conduct an annual review of the status of foreign intellectual property laws. This review, which is referred to as Special 301, is typically used to denounce countries that have less restrictive copyright policies than the United States. The review process is increasingly dominated by content industry lobbyists who want to subvert US trade policy and make it more favorable to their own interests. We have already noted the targeting of Canada for its supposedly lax copyright laws, but that is not the only nation drawing the ire of Big Content. One of the organizations that plays a key role in influencing the Special 301 review is the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a powerful coalition that includes the RIAA, the MPAA, and the Business Software Alliance (BSA). The IIPA, which recently published its official recommendations to the USTR for the 2010 edition of the 301 review, has managed to achieve a whole new level of absurdity.
Skeptical Debunker

Analysis: Republicans setting filibuster record - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/..._filibuster_gone_awry_analysis

Republican filibuster records

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 01 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Opposition Republicans are using the delaying tactic at a record-setting pace. "The numbers are astonishing in this Congress," says Jim Riddlesperger, political science professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. The filibuster, using seemingly endless debate to block legislative action, has become entrenched like a dandelion tap root in the midst of the shrill partisanship gripping Washington. But the filibuster is nothing new. Its use dates to the mists of Senate history, but until the civil rights era, it was rarely used.
  • As a matter of political philosophy, the concept of the filibuster arises from a deep-seated, historic concern among Americans that the minority not be steamrolled by the majority. It is a brake and protective device rooted in the same U.S. political sensibility that gave each state two senators regardless of population. The same impulse gave Americans the Electoral College in presidential contests — a structure from earliest U.S. history designed to give smaller population states greater influence in choosing the nation's leader. Given recent use of the filibuster by minority Republicans and the party's success in snarling the legislative process in this Congress, Democrats say the minority has gone way beyond just protecting its interests. The frequency of filibusters — plus threats to use them — are measured by the number of times the upper chamber votes on cloture. Such votes test the majority's ability to hold together 60 members to break a filibuster. In the 110th Congress of 2007-2008, with Republicans in the minority, there were a record 112 cloture votes. In the current session of Congress — the 111th — for all of 2009 and the first two months of 2010 the number already exceeds 40. The most the filibuster has been used when Democrats were in the minority was 58 times in the 106th Congress of 1999-2000.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 01 Mar 10
     
    Having railed against the Democratic minorities' use of ANY filibuster in the last several Congressional sessions when Republicans were in the majority, the Republicans now hypocritically are taking the use of the filibuster to new heights. Forgotten are their own strident and indignant demands that the "people" deserved the Senate allowing an "up or down vote". And that they would (and did) use a "nuclear option" or reconciliation if necessary to make that happen. The filibuster - tool of obstruction in the U.S. Senate - is alternately blamed and praised for wilting President Barack Obama's ambitious agenda. Some even say it's made the nation ungovernable.
thinkahol *

Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel - Children and Armed Conflict - 0 views

www.un.org/...palestine.html

Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel - Children Armed Conflict

shared by thinkahol * on 29 May 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 29 May 11
     
    The information below is based on the 2010 report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council (A/64/742-S/2010/181) issued on 13 April 2010. More information is available in the report. At the close of 2009, the effects of Israel's military operations in Gaza, codenamed "Operation Cast Lead", from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, were still being felt across the Gaza Strip. Thousands of Gaza residents, including children, are still living in alternative or temporary accommodation and many schools, health facilities and parts of vital water and sanitation infrastructure networks have not been rehabilitated or repaired. The ongoing blockade by Israel and the resulting lack of necessary materials in Gaza make such repairs and rehabilitation difficult. A total of 374 Palestinian children were killed and 2,086 were injured during the reporting period, including at least 350 killed and 1,815 injured in Gaza alone during "Operation Cast Lead" by Israeli forces. The Israel/occupied Palestinian territory working group on grave violations against children confirmed 12 cases of Palestinian children who were killed while bearing arms and acting as combatants during "Operation Cast Lead". The working group also confirmed one case of recruitment of a 16-year-old boy by the armed group Ezz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. The actual number of cases is believed to be higher and there had been other reported incidents of children being trained and/or used by Palestinian militant groups in Gaza. Community members are, however, reluctant to provide information on this practice.
thinkahol *

I am not a "global warming denialist" - War Room - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...index.html

I am not a global warming denialist - War Room Salon.com

shared by thinkahol * on 02 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 02 Jun 11
     
    In his thoughtful criticism of my essay on the future of fossil fuels and the poor prospects for renewable energy, Andrew Leonard characterizes my message as one that "we have nothing to worry about." This may be partly the fault of my presentation, because in the course of being provocative I did not make it sufficiently clear that I was engaged in analysis, not advocacy. I made the prediction that, even in the presence of global warming, the countries of the world are unlikely to allow the vast stores of fossil fuels in the earth's crust to lie there undisturbed, when technology is making many of them ever more accessible and cheaper than the renewable energy alternatives. For the record, I personally wish that greenhouse gas emissions would stop immediately, and I personally would prefer a world of harmonious international cooperation for all time. Neither of my personal preferences is going to be fulfilled and neither affects the accuracy of my analysis.
thinkahol *

Petition: End Limited Liability (and Save the World) | Change.org - 0 views

www.change.org/...d-liability-and-save-the-world

Petition: End Limited Liability (and Save the World) | Change.org

shared by thinkahol * on 22 May 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 22 May 11
     
    Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Socialist, politically active and not we are reaping the bitter reward of a political and legal system designed to maximize corporate profits at the expense of our environment, our livelihood, and our very lives. Our society is unraveling. We all know this. This is not idle conspiracy theory. These are well established facts. We are ruled by a headless beast that is no longer accountable to us. That it is headless makes it no less beastly. But there is a silver bullet. It's within our power to restore a functioning free market; to take back our democracy. We must end limited liability for corporations. Only when wealthy investors are no longer shielded from the costs that we collectively bear in their stead, only when they can no longer hide from the burden they have placed on us, only then can we expect the end of corporate plunder.   We are running out of time. Millions of Germans lost faith in the free market and capitalism during the Great Depression, and "with the failure of the left to provide a viable alternative, they became vulnerable to the rhetoric of a party that, once it came to power, combined Keynesian pump-priming measures that brought unemployment down to 3 percent with a devastating counterrevolutionary social and cultural program."
Chuck Bartok

Should We Retire the One Dollar Bill? - 0 views

thehill.com/...tle-dollar-bill-vs-dollar-coin

Dollar Coin Alliance GAO legislation Minting of US Mint

shared by Chuck Bartok on 05 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Chuck Bartok on 05 Oct 11
     
    Rep. David Schweikert (Ariz.) and two other House Republicans - including supercommittee co-chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas) - introduced legislation last week aimed at retiring the paper dollar.... According to the proponents the retirement of the US One Dollar Bill could save save billions of dollars over the next few decades by transitioning to a one dollar coin in four years, or as soon as $600 million worth of dollar coins are in circulation. Rep. Schweikert said, "Metal coins would last longer and therefore save money. But two Massachusetts Lawmakers, Scott Brown and John Kerry oppose the suggestion on ground it costs too much too produce the coins.... But it seem to me they would last longer...isn't that what smart business buy, products that are Value Purchased not cost purchased. It is also interesting also The Dollar Coin Alliance, which favors the House bill, said the two Massachusetts senators have a specific reason for wanting to protect the dollar bill, arguing that the Senate bill is aimed at protecting Massachusetts-based Crane & Co., the sole-source supplier of paper used to produce dollar bills. So what else is NEW! More cronyism? A poll conducted this year for the Dollar Coin Alliance showed 65 percent of Americans favored the move to a coin, and that more supported it once they realized the savings associated with the switch. And other countries who have done same have benefited overall in the Cost of Producing currency. "Other countries that have replaced a low-denomination note with a coin, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, stopped producing the note," the GAO said in March. "Officials from both countries told GAO that this step was essential to the success of their transition and that, with no alternative to the note, public resistance dissipated within a few years."
  • Chuck Bartok on 05 Oct 11
     
    Always appreciate comments on the blog posts
David Corking

You are being lied to about Pirates | w w w . P e t e r S a n t i l l i . c o m - 0 views

petersantilli.com/?p=173

Law Culture

shared by David Corking on 21 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The pirates showed “quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
  • Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories
  • European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia - and it’s not hard to see why.
  • this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters
  • 70 percent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.”
  • George Washington and America’s founding fathers paid pirates to protect America’s territorial waters, because they had no navy or coast guard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
  • David Corking on 21 Apr 09
     
    a column from the Independent - a fascinating alternative view of the Somali Pirates
peoples movement

YouTube - Prelude to Report Released by Picture The Homeless - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

prelude housing homeless mayorbloomberg bloomberg nyc

shared by peoples movement on 16 Jul 09 - Cached
  • peoples movement on 16 Jul 09
     
    Picture The Homeless announce findings of new report "Time's Up: NYC Homeless People Demand Alternatives to Bloomberg's Failed Five-Year Plan"On Tu...
thinkahol *

The Path Not Taken - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rugman-the-path-not-taken.html

The Path Not Taken - NYTimes.com

shared by thinkahol * on 29 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 29 Oct 11
     
    There were alternatives to the economic doctrine that championed bank bailouts and mass suffering from the public. Look at Iceland.
Arabica Robusta

Building a civil economy | openDemocracy - 6 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...building-civil-economy-0

economic theory gift society game

shared by Arabica Robusta on 07 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • my argument is that humans are more relational, ‘gift-exchanging animals’ who are naturally disposed to cooperate for mutual benefit. In the following I will attempt to show how such an alternative anthropology can translate into a ‘civil economy’ and transformative policy ideas: rebuilding our economy and embedding welfare in communities.
  • In the wake of Marcel Mauss’ work on the gift, this model emerged as a legitimate way of rethinking economics: humans are naturally social animals with dispositions to cooperate in the quest for the common good in which all can partake.
  • Building on Polanyi and G. D. H. Cole’s guild socialism, one can suggest that an embedded model means that elected governments have the duty to create the civic space in which workers, businesses and communities can regulate economic activity and direct the ‘free flow’ of globally mobile capital to productive activities that benefit the many, not the few.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • At national and supranational levels, caps on interest rates would help curb the predations of creditors upon debtors. Linked to such limits on financial domination are new incentives and rewards for channelling capital in productive, human and social activities.
  • f the declared aim is to preserve the dignity of natural and human life, then all participants in the public realm have a duty to promote human relationships and associations that nurture the social bonds of trust and reciprocal help upon which both democracy and the economy rely.
  • Thus, the link between different actors and levels is a series of abstract, formal rights and entitlements or monetised, market relations (or again both at once). As such, welfare beneficiaries are reduced to merely passive recipients of a ‘one-size-fits-all’, top-down service. State paternalism and private contract delivery cost more to deliver less, and they lock people either into demoralising dependency on the central state or financially unaffordable dependency on outsourced, private contractors.
Bakari Chavanu

Michael Moore Kills Capitalism with Kool-Aid - Michael W. Covel - Mises Institute - 0 views

mises.org/3751

capitalism micheal moore review

shared by Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Oh sure, in theory I would like to see everyone with their own homestead, money in their pocket for regular shopping frenzies, and no health worries despite eating at Burger King 24/7, but arriving at those goals is not exactly doable unless government robs Peter to pay Paul and/or starts up the printing press.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      This analysis totally overlooks where real wealth originates from: not from dollars printed by the government or even the redistribution of taxes. It originates from what working class people produce, and what capialist thugs mainly profit off of.
  • And that view of course puts me in opposition to Moore since he has no problem with government as his and our father figure. That is his utopia. He truly believes that warehouses of federal workers, in Washington, D.C., remotely running our lives is the optimal plan. He is an unapologetic socialist who really doesn't care why the poor are poor or the rich are rich, he just wants it fixed. So not surprisingly — and with some generalization as I proffer this — Democrats like Moore and Republicans don't.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      This is not the point he made in the movie. He makes the argument that workers should control and profite from what they produce.
  • I don't care one way or the other that he has that view and I am not knocking union workers, but Moore sees the world through a class-warfare lens resulting in a certain agenda: force wealth to be spread amongst everyone regardless of effort.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      So you think it's perfectly okay for individuals to have a net worth of millions and billions of dollars while the people who produce the wealth should not profit from their work?
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • We listen to heartbreaking stories of foreclosed families across America — but we don't learn why the foreclosures happened. Did these people treat their homes as piggy banks? Was there refinancing on top of refinancing just to keep buying mall trinkets and other goodies with no respect to risk or logic? We don't find out.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      Yes, we do learn the source of foreclosures. It's banks raising interest rates that people can't possibly pay. It's people making huge amounts of money off the misfortunes of others.
  • $1,000 for cleaning out the house that they were just evicted from. Was it sad? Yes. But should we end capitalism due to this one family in Peoria, IL?
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      He presents this as represenetive example.
  • There is a lengthy dissertation on the evils of Goldman Sachs. He rips Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson big time, and I agree with him. In fact, I said to myself, "Moore, you should have done your whole film on Goldman Sachs!"
  • As FDR concluded and the film ended, I was shocked at the reaction. The theater of 400-plus spectators stood and cheered wildly at FDR's 1944 proposal. The questions running through my head were immediate: how does one legislate words like useful, enough, recreation, adequate, decent, and good? Who decides all of this and to what degree?
  • So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.
  • Friedman's logic was what I was remembering as a theater full of people cheered wildly for a second Bill of Rights. How did this film crowd actually think FDR's 1944 vision could be executed? Frankly, it was clear to me at that moment that capitalism is on shaky ground. From Bush "abandoning" capitalism to bailouts for everyone, to Obama gifting away the future, we seriously might be past the point of no return toward a socialization of America.
  • This film did not make me angry, but it did punch me in the gut. The people in that theater with me, including Moore, were not bad people. They just seem to all have consumed a lethal dose of Kool-Aid.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      What Kool-aid are you talking about? What other system is really challenging capitalism? Not even the government is the real kool-aid when you've already noted that it works on behalf of the corporate class.
  • Moore sees Reagan entering the scene as a shill for corporate-banking interests.
  • Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
     
    I include my reacations to this review in which I think Covel misleads readers about Moore's movie.
Bakari Chavanu

Amazon.com: Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and H... - 0 views

www.amazon.com/...ref=kinw_dp_ke

shared by Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09 - No Cached
  • Two books have been recently published which attempt to present an alternative perspective on the Reagan presidency. One, William Kleinecht's The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America, is revisionist polemic and does more to enrage than enlighten. Will Bunch's Tear Down this Myth, however, is a fair and balanced (to borrow a phrase popular with right-wingers) look at the Reagan presidency. Far from polemic, and often complimentary to President Reagan, Bunch attempts to reveal the presidency of Ronald Reagan as it was experienced by those during the era. Many of the negative reviews appearing on Amazon are obviously written by those who didn't read the book. As I've said before, Amazon needs to look more carefully at reviews before publishing them. This is not a chat board.
  • But Reagan made mistakes which have been glossed over: including the stationing of Marines in Lebanon and providing aid to Saddam Hussein. The Iran-Contra scandal, which nearly sank his presidency, has been almost forgotten. And the spiraling deficits of the 1980s (repeated 20 years later) proved that the Laffer Curve, which was the cornerstone of Reaganomics, had no basis in actual fact.
  • Bunch reminds us that Reagan was not particularly popular during most of his presidency, and that many Americans had good reason to wonder whether the country was in competent hands. Bunch runs over the Iran-Contra scandal, which came close to ending up in Reagan's impeachment. Far from being a thrifty government downsizer, he added $2 trillion to the national debt and grew the government. Bunch also reminds us that Reagan was the original "cut and run" artist, pulling US troops out of a failed mission in Lebanon within weeks after 241 Marines were killed there in a terrorist attack. We are reminded that Reagan's overtures to Iran to free hostages only resulted in more Americans being taken, and that his economic plans sowed the seeds of deregulation and greed that we are still reaping.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • We also see Reagan, the man who hated committing troops to war, who was a pragmatist economist who raised taxes when his trickle down theories did not working and whose personal diplomacy with the Soviets came close to riding the world of nuclear weapons.
  • I personally have long thought that the invasion of tiny Grenada, coming close on the heels of the Marine barracks disaster, was meant to distract the public from Reagan's ineptitude.
David Corking

Media Release - NCUA Conserves U.S. Central and Western Corporate Credit Unions March... - 0 views

www.ncua.gov/...MR09-0320.htm

Culture Finance

shared by David Corking on 23 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The central short-term objective of NCUA’s Corporate Stabilization Program has been to increase liquidity in corporate credit unions. Since the NCUA Board first began taking stabilization actions, liquidity has demonstrated marked improvement. The reliance on external borrowing has declined from $11.8 billion to $2.1 billion. NCUA believes that the actions to conserve the two corporates, in tandem with established plans to enhance liquidity and generally stabilize the corporate network, represent the most cost effective and prudent alternative available to the credit union industry.
    • David Corking
      David Corking on 23 Mar 09
       
      Everyone seems to agree that the issue with the CU system is liquidity (being able to turn loans or bonds into cash). This is smaller, and much more easy to fix, than solvency problems that have damaged much of the rest of the financial system. (Solvency is having more assets - such as loans and bonds - than liabilities - such as customer deposits.)
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