Great clip from the Daily Show ridiculing Timothy Geithner.
Archive for July, 2009
30
Jul
09
Home Crisis Investigation
By Heath Druzin, Stars and Stripes
Online edition, Tuesday, July 28, 2009
SURAGLA, Iraq – In this rough-hewn border hamlet in the jagged Qandil Mountains, where armed guerrillas are the law and the whistle of artillery is the soundtrack, most villagers no longer bother to seek shelter when the bombs start falling.
A ceaseless, nearly invisible war criss-crossing the borders between Turkey, Iran and Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Iraq has left thousands of impoverished Kurdish farmers resigned to their grim fate.
“Our lives are worthless because today we build up our house, tomorrow it will be destroyed by shelling – that’s our life,” said farmer Ahmed Abdullah. “Now, every day we wish for death.”
The undeclared war, pitting Turkish and Iranian armed forces against Kurdish separatist fighters based in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, has been waged for years with tacit approval from the U.S., which supplies the Turkish military with intelligence on the guerrillas. And when the Turkish military plans an artillery barrage in the area, officers give American troops advance notice, according to U.S. soldiers working in the region.
Local villagers are not so lucky and, while no solid numbers are available, there have been many reports of civilian deaths and injuries. In March, a 2-year-old boy was killed near the Iranian border, and earlier this month, a farmer was badly injured by shrapnel.
More often, the attacks kill livestock, set pastures and farms ablaze and flatten homes. In between shelling, shepherds who graze their sheep along the poorly-marked border must worry about being captured by Iranian troops, a fate that has befallen at least nine Iraqi Kurds in the past month, according to local officials.
Juan Cole, author of Engaging the Muslim World, discusses the origin and meaning of the Taliban, the conflicting messages Obama and the U.S. military give on why staying in Afghanistan is a good idea, the benefits of an “Egypt solution” billion dollar yearly payoff to stabilize and allow withdraw from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s low popular support and territorial control.
30
Jul
09
75% Favor Auditing The Fed
From Rasmussen Reports
So much for the ongoing secrecy of the nation’s independent central bankingsystem. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Americans favor auditing the Federal Reserve and making the results available to the public.
Just nine percent (9%) of adults think that’s a bad idea and oppose it. Fifteen percent (15%) aren’t sure.
Over half the members of the House now support a bill giving the Government Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative agency, the authorization to audit the books of the Federal Reserve Board.
By RYAN KOST
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – How much are politicians straining to convince people that the government is stimulating the economy? In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program’s first three months.
But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state’s accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a lifetime.
“Sometimes some work for an individual is better than no work,” said Oregon’s Senate president, Peter Courtney.
With the economy in tatters and unemployment rising, Oregon’s inventive math underscores the urgency for politicians across the country to show that spending programs designed to stimulate the economy are working—even if that means stretching the facts.
26
Jul
09
Iraqi Kurds vote count begins
From Al Jazerra
Vote counting has begun in presidential and legislative elections in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, despite the opposition claims of widespread fraud.
Final results are not expected for several days as ballots must be collected in Irbil, the regional capital, before being flown to Baghdad to be counted.
The polls closed at 7pm (16:00GMT) on Saturday, after electoral officials extended voting by an hour to accomodate residents that had flocked to cast their ballots in the local presidential and parliamentary elections.
About 2.5 million Kurds were eligible to vote in the dual elections, a full six months after the rest of the country held provincial elections.
Voter turnout was high, at 78.5 per cent across Kurdistan, the Electoral Commission said.
Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel Hamid, reporting from Irbil, said observers at polling stations across the region maintained that voting took place smoothly for the most part.
26
Jul
09
Negative 11
by Jason Ditz, July 24, 2009
For those hoping that promises by the Obama Administration of an eventual Iraq drawdown and this week’s announcement that active duty personnel in the Army would increase by 22,000 would improve the deployment schedule of reservists, Army Reserve Commander Lieutenant General Jack Stultz has a message: don’t get your hopes up.
“I want to be more realistic with them. I don’t predict a drop in our op-tempo,” Lt. Gen. Stultz said in an interview published today in Stars and Stripes. He said the goal was for the average reservist to spend four years home for each year deployed overseas, but reaching that goal “could take five years.”
Kelley B. Vlahos, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, discusses how the CIA successfully undermined Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union and created something much worse, the paltry U.S. troop contingent in Afghanistan compared to the 600,000 troops needed to pacify the country, the generally counterproductive Global War on Terror and how military failures become justifications for expanded and prolonged occupations.
25
Jul
09
No Exit for Ben
by Peter Schiff
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday, and in congressional testimony later in the week, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke reassured all that thanks to his accurate foresight and deft use of the Fed’s policy toolkit, he could maintain near zero percent interest rates for an extended period without creating inflation. With supernatural powers such as these, one wonders if Ben would be better employed by the Justice League rather than the Federal Reserve.
Ben’s game plan is apparently simple: once he determines that the economy is on solid ground, he will use the monetary equivalent of Superman’s laser vision to strategically evaporate all the excess liquidity that he has recently created without endangering the recovery. Don’t try this at home, kids.
In other words, as he did just a few years ago when the subprime fiasco began to emerge, Bernanke is assuring us that inflation is contained. He is just as wrong now as he was then.
The idea that the inflation genie can be painlessly rebottled has no historic precedent. Even mainstream economists, who’ve never met a fiscal stimulus they didn’t like, agree that central banks must act preemptively with regard to inflation. Bernanke is making the case that the new set of liquidity tools, hastily developed in the panic of late 2008, will act just as well in reverse. But liquidity is a lot like liquid, it’s a lot easier to spill than to un-spill. The Chairman believes that his new gadgetry will allow him to perform a feat of monetary magic no other central banker has managed to pull off. But given his history of getting it wrong, why should we assume that this time he will get it right?
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