Friday, January 02, 2009

Deficits As Far As The Eyes Can See

Barack has come out saying he sees trillion dollar deficits for at least a few years. That worries me.

Possible Pitfalls In Barack's Way

I can see the rationale behind the trillion dollar stimulus package. If you don't do it, you risk a deep recession, a global recession. Better a trillion now than two trillion tomorrow.

But to rely totally on the stimulus package would be to miss the mark. White collar crime style irresponsible behavior brought this about. The number one would be the Iraq War. The Iraq War has been the biggest white collar crime in history. Hitler killed six million Jews, Bush killed a million and a half Iraqis. After a half century of further civilization, a million and a half today probably is equivalent to six million back then. The white collar crime of the Iraq War - a trillion or so dollars - got mirrored in bad Wall Street behavior.

But the number one lesson to be learnt is that global finance is just like global warming, just like global terrorism, there is no national solution, not even by the mighty power of America. So the number one solution can not be the trillion dollar stimulus package, necessary as it is. The real challenge is, so how do you create a new global financial architecture? Minor tinkering with the IMF and the World Bank will not do.

When the dust on this financial mess settles, more of the global power is expected to have shifted to China. There is no free lunch.






In The News

Dossier From India Gives New Details of Mumbai Attacks New York Times In the beginning, they were 32. A squad of suicide bombers raised in Pakistan, they were taught how to make bombs, withstand interrogation, and fight to their death. ....... they set sail from Karachi with coordinates plotted on a global positioning set ...... all the while receiving detailed instructions and pep talks from their handlers across the border ...... training the commando-style fighters ..... a steady exchange between the attackers in Mumbai and their counselors. ....... they are told how to damage India’s standing with a key ally, Israel. ..... “If the hostages are killed, it will spoil relations between India and Israel,” Wassi continues. ....... The leader of the crew, identified by Indian investigators as Ismail Khan, 25, from a town called Dera Ismail Khan in the Northwest Frontier Province, contacted their handlers and received instructions. ....... five teams of two ...... targets: the city’s busiest railway station known as Victoria Terminus, a tourist haunt called Café Leopold, the Jewish center in Nariman House, and two luxury hotels, the Taj and Oberoi. ........ they kept a safe distance of at least 60 kilometers from Indian shore until they got closer to Mumbai. ........ “Brother you have to fight,” says the caller. “This is a matter of the prestige of Islam.” ......... Ten were kept in isolation for more than three months, in a house near Karachi, until they were instructed to go to Mumbai.
Former eBay CEO preps for California power post? Register
Ex-EBay chief Meg Whitman quits board seats Los Angeles Times
Facing Losses, German Billionaire Commits Suicide
New York Times
Strike costing India Rs 10000 cr daily: Truckers Indian Express
Expo: Apple introduces iLife '09 Macworld
Expo: Apple adds productivity features to iWork
Clearwire Launches WiMAX in Portland GigaOm
Google Expands Lead in Search Race
Adweek
Pending home sales plunge to record low in Nov. BusinessWeek
Dell Hits the Sweet Spot of Form, Function and Affordability with ... WELT ONLINE
Anne Hathaway Just Wants a Good Husband People Magazine

The Irish Economy’s Rise Was Steep, and the Fall Was Fast New York Times
Automakers Fear a New Normal of Low Sales
Investors Strain to Sell Start-Up Companies
For the Blind, Technology Does What a Guide Dog Can’t
Credit Card Companies Willing to Deal Over Debt
Bid to Revoke Madoff’s Bail Cites His Gifts

In Sri Lanka, Victory Brings Reprisal Time
Sri Lanka's Civil War: Not Over Yet
Sri Lanka Kills Rebel Leader
The Tamil Tigers
Obama Gets Ready for His Washington Close-Up
Endless War

Is the Euro the New Dollar? Time
Nuclear's Comeback: Still No Energy Panacea
Israel Enters Gaza: Negotiating With Extreme Prejudice
Can the Jewish People Survive Without an Enemy?
Facebook's War on Nipples

Concerns of civilian deaths rise in Sri Lanka The Associated Press
Young pro-India leader sworn in as Kashmir chief
AFP
The Evil of Google is Steeped in Perception, Potential
eWeek

What is Apple Inc.'s plan if CEO Steve Jobs dies? Los Angeles Times No American CEO is more intimately identified with his company's success. Jobs is deeply involved in every facet of Apple development and design, and he's justly admired for his instinct for the human-factor engineering of Apple products. He is Apple's visionary and carnival barker. ..... The Jobs role that Apple may find hardest to fill is that of one-man Supreme Court, settling disputes between warring engineering camps by decree. There have been countless battles at Apple over such things as how many buttons a mouse should have and what keys should be on its keyboards. The ultimate authority belongs to Jobs. ..... Google and its Android mobile phone operating system. ......... a CEO whose talents and personality are so inextricably entwined with a signature American brand.
Writing the Web’s Future in Numerous Languages The next chapter of the World Wide Web will not be written in English alone. Asia already has twice as many Internet users as North America, and by 2012 it will have three times as many. Already, more than half of the search queries on Google come from outside the United States. ....... Quillpad, an online service for typing in 10 South Asian languages. Users spell out words of local languages phonetically in Roman letters, and Quillpad’s predictive engine converts them into local-language script. ...... India, whose online population Jupiter says is poised to become the third-largest in the world after China and the United States by 2012 ....... Wikipedia now has more entries in Indian local languages than in Korean. ...... Even among the largely English-speaking base of around 50 million Web users in India today, nearly three-quarters prefer to read in a local language ..... “Localization is the key to success in countries like India" ....... Google engineers are also plugging away on voice recognition, translation, transliteration and digital text reading that it plans to apply to other developing countries.

Obama says got "choked up" leaving Chicago
Reuters
Sprint WiMAX misses Chicago launch, now aiming for 2H 2009
Boy Genius Report
Think your WiFi is fast? WiMax is coming to Chicago
The Windy Citizen
Google Hopes to Open a Trove of Little-Seen Books
New York Times Revenue will be generated through advertising sales on pages where previews of scanned books appear, through subscriptions by libraries and others to a database of all the scanned books in Google’s collection, and through sales to consumers of digital access to copyrighted books. Google will take 37 percent of this revenue, leaving 63 percent for publishers and authors. ........ The settlement may give new life to copyrighted out-of-print books in a digital form and allow writers to make money from titles that had been out of commercial circulation for years. Of the seven million books Google has scanned so far, about five million are in this category. ........ Even if Google had gone to trial and won the suits, said Alexander Macgillivray, associate general counsel for products and intellectual property at the company, it would have won the right to show only previews of these books’ contents. “What people want to do is read the book” ......... When the agreement was announced in October, all sides hailed it as a landmark settlement .......... In May, Microsoft ended its book scanning project, effectively leaving Google as a monopoly corporate player....... Students and faculty at universities who subscribe to the database will be able to get the full contents of all the books free. ......... a lot of reading is going to happen on screens
Google Unlocks G1 Android Mobile Phone NewsOXY
Bachchan's aura built on sheer talent, performances: Amir
Press Trust of India
Russians Raise Ukraine Gas Bill
New York Times
How the SEC Can Prevent More Madoffs
Wall Street Journal
Dell Elevates Insiders in Strategy Change Wall Street Journal
'Marley & Me' stays No. 1 at box office
Los Angeles Times

Dow Climbs Above 9000 for Best Close in Two Months Washington Post
On the First Trading Day of the New Year, Markets Surge New York Times
Chicago to take over at the White House guardian.co.uk Obama brings with him the baggage of Chicago's political culture - the roughest in the US. ......... the sharp suits, naked ambition and political trading ..... 50 elected officials from Illinois jailed over the past 30 years. ...... It has been a long time since we have had an urban president. Kennedy would be the last. ...... It would have been hard for Obama to have risen without engaging in the city's rough-house politics. ....... Obama has managed to be above the fray on the local political scene. ...... Emanuel, in a tactic that Al Capone might have applauded, once sent a political opponent a rotting fish. ....... "DC has its own culture and absorbs other cultures. When people try to behave differently, it bounces off, like Teflon. The Clintons were outcasts for trying to bring their culture to DC."
With eye on polls, Nitish to pitch camp in Bihar villages The Statesman
What Microsoft Should Do in 2009 eWeek
Obama's Internet Allies Plan Continued Engagement eWeek
Getting Mrs. Clinton Wall Street Journal
The time has come: Can Barack Obama really make a difference? Independent Never, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, have so many invested so much hope in a single individual. ..... He has run nothing of note, except an admittedly brilliantly conducted campaign for the White House. ...... a federal budget of three trillion dollars ..... a moment when Americans look more intensely to government for solutions than at any time since the Great Depression. ...... the US remains the world's supplier of last resort of hope, the belief against the odds that the human condition can be improved. America's struggles, excesses, failures and triumphs are those of all of us. ......... the 95 per cent of human beings who are not American. ....... The US car industry remains on the brink of collapse. The interlocking crises of the Middle East, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan look, if anything, more intractable than they did 12 months ago. ...... he embodies the magic of America, its endless ability to reinvent itself ..... Barack Obama is but the latest proof that in America, everything is possible.
Bill Clinton For NY Senate? CBS News
Report: Paterson To Pick Kennedy For Senate New York State's most powerful legislative leader tells the New york post he'll support Kennedy. State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver
Bill Clinton rumored to be offered Hillary's Senate seat MSNBC
NY-Senate: Much Ado About Nothing (Yet) Washington Post Paterson is casting a very wide net in terms of potential appointees -- a move designed to show that he will not simply accede to the will of the party establishment and pick Kennedy.
Clinton, Familiar With Pitfalls of Mideast Politics, May Face ... New York Times
Barack Obama’s Election Voted Top News Story of 2008 Voice of America
Democrats say McCain almost left the GOP in 2001 You Decide
Rankings: Top 25 For GOP 2012 The Phoenix
Sri Lankan army captures Tamil Tigers' capital, Kilinochchi Times Online Civil rights activists believe that the Government’s military successes have come at an unacceptable human cost. An estimated 250,000 civilians were forced to flee their homes as the Army advanced. in the past the Tigers, who pioneered the use of suicide bombers, have been at their most dangerous after enduring some of the worst defeats. .... Velupillai Prabhakaran, who remains free, suggested that the rebels would revert to terrorism. “No sane voice is being raised to abandon war or to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict”
Cuba celebrates 50 years of revolution Christian Science Monitor
Fire dies under China’s once booming manufacturing industry Times Online China’s unexpectedly high vulnerability to the global financial crisis.
Google's Microsoft-esque landgrab for IE's market share CNET News
Google: A little more like Microsoft every day
Firefox, Chrome virtually tied for JavaScript speed
Google Chrome Web Browser Shines
You've got mail wars: Google making an inbox push Los Angeles Times
Google Spreads Cheer in The New Year With Bling, Android Market eWeek
Airspan Selected for WiMAX Network in Okinawa, Japan Your Communication News (press release)
Bollywood gears up for romance of the elderlies Indian Express
Chrysler Gets $4 Billion Infusion From US Treasury Bloomberg
Russia accuses Ukraine of siphoning gas to Balkans International Herald Tribune
Dell Elevates Insiders in Strategy Change Wall Street Journal
Will This Bold Shakeup Save Dell? BusinessWeek
HP Can Thank Dell for Its Good Fortunes TheStreet.com
Study: Religious Teens More Likely to Abstain from Sex FOXNews
Wikipedia meets $6 million fundraising goal The Associated Press
Diamonds suggest comets caused killer cold spell Reuters
IE falls below 69% market share, Firefox climbs above 21% TG Daily

As a Candidate, Kennedy Is Eloquent but Elusive New York Times After weeks of criticism that she had not opened up to the public or the press, Ms. Kennedy has embarked on a series of print and television interviews.
Kennedy Notes Being 'Unconventional Choice' Washington Post
Video: AP Exclusive: Kennedy Talks Senate
How normal will life be for Obama's famous tweens?
The Associated Press
Bihar sacks 15000 teachers for faking degrees
Sify
The Return of the Military Coup
AllAfrica.com
Pakistan: 'Does Not Want War' with India
Voice of America
WiMax to take country by storm
Taiwan Journal
Alvarion snags WiMAX contract in Italy
SmartBrief
Are Android, Chrome-flavored Netbooks On Tap For Google in 2009?
eWeek
Hollywood Stars, High-Tech Titans Pitch in for Obama Inauguration FOXNews
Amitabh Bachchan goes for total transformation
Real Bollywood
Amazon Claims ‘Best Ever’ Christmas (Whatever That Means) New York Times
California Surgeon Used Human Fat to Power Car
FOXNews
Why Wal-Mart is the key to the iPhone's domination CNET News
Aniston Tops the Box Office! Extra TV
Jennifer Aniston Defeats Brad Pitt At The Box Office Celebuzz








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