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Older Talkback
page: 1
I thought the sky was falling?
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here ya go, SP4.
www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml;jsessionid=4CF121I5XCLLVQFIQMGCFGG AVCBQUIV0?xml=/money/2008/01/23/bcndollar123.xml
Remember what this jerk did to the pound?
bush is wagging the dog again. What a dunmb-ass he is, just like his supporters.
Here's a couple of more:
business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/article3239801.ece
Snippet:'His bleak prognosis was echoed by Stephen Roach, the former chief economist at Morgan Stanley and now the investment bank’s chairman in Asia.
He agreed that with American households under financial pressure from debt burdens that were at record highs and the housing market slump, the US economy faced a sharp retreat by shoppers from the country’s Main Street shops and malls.
Mr Roach highlighted how Americans have been spending the equivalent each year of 72 per cent of US national income, far above the 67 per cent average over recent decades.
He gave warning that if spending patterns now fell back to historic levels in a year “it would be the mother of all recessions”. '
=====================
Another snippet:'“Europe is not going to get a special dispensation from the global slowdown,” Mr Roach told delegates.
He added that India and China were “not yet at the stage where they can fill the void that is going to be left by the American consumer”.
He said: “I think it is going to be a close call but think we will not actually move into global recession.”'
===================
Personally, I'm guessing that India will be less hurt than China. Most of India's pain will come from delayed or lost programming contracts. India is otherwise well-insulated from everything but major oil shocks and if a US recession does occur, easing oil prices will likely help them more than hurt them.
China will get hit hard as American consumers stop buying. The Chinese have, however, been planning for this day. They've been talking about turning Europe into their next big market. There is talk that they may well start dumping dollars on the market as they do so, converting over to the Euro as their currency of choice.
Now, what happens if the Saudis and the rest of OPEC follow suit? Oh, and there is talk of allowing Russia to join OPEC.
' The Chinese have, however, been planning for this day. They've been talking about turning Europe into their next big market. There is talk that they may well start dumping dollars on the market as they do so, converting over to the Euro as their currency of choice.'
If our dollar tanks the depression will be world wide. Additionally, the portion of our debt that China is holding is not that large. (Most of our debt is actually entitlements)
Here's another wonderful little bomb hidden in all the smoke--mutual funds. Take a hard look at how they work. That business is almost as goofy as the Savings and Loan business. I suspect, but can't prove, that this recent rate cut by the Fed was intended to save the mutual funds as much as it was to help the banks keep limping along until they can recover from their 'liquidity' problems.
Our tax systems punish savers and reward spendthrifts. You have to give Earnest Hollings half a point, 'Thay's too much cunsoomin' goin' on out theyah!' The trouble with Earnest is that he never met a tax cut that he didn't hate. Does punitive taxation of any kind make sense? No. Does taxing capital gains make since? No, not even the Swedes do that. Estate taxes make no sense because they are simply an act of unrestrained envy and therefore punitive, but the very worst thing Unka Sam does is to punish you for saving any money unless you save it HIS way--keeping you bound to your employer as much as possible. So now nearly everyone has a 401K and nearly all of that money is in a mutual fund of one kind or another.
Here's the typical savings plan for most Americans. First go out and borrow enough money to buy a house. The smart ones buy the cheapest house in the best neighborhood that they can afford. Next, cooperate with your employer and go along with the 401K deal. While doing that, hope against hope that your employer doesn't match your funds with its stock. You hope your employer has sense enough to spread your risks for you. If they do, they usually try to do that by putting everyone's money in a mutual fund.
On the face of it, 401K's and IRA's look like untaxed savings and income. They aren't. Sooner or later they get taxed and are taxed at a horrendous rate if you don't play your cards right. They all but disappear if you die before taking care of some of the details. Oh, and a really hard down turn on Wall Street really could put most of the mutual funds out of business--and take your savings with them.
Then you go out and buy an automobile, possibly the largest waste of money Americans indulge themselves in, but then none of us can get by without one of the damned things unless we live in New York City. Then there are the credit cards! Oh, yes! Lots and lots of lovely credit cards. Oh, then you can borrow against the equity you built up in your house. Right! What was that savings plan again?
A passbook savings account? Don't let's be silly! Inflation eats up the interest and the principle in one of those anymore. Oh, and you'll pay taxes on the accrued interest, even though inflation is wiping it out about as fast as you can put money into it. Yea!
Whole life insurance? Here, take this pill. Suicide is painless and a lot cheaper.
Stash cash in your mattress? Ah-ah-ah! Inflation, remember? Gold? Where ya gonna keep it? You gonna tell Unka Sam about it? You'll pay capital gains on it if you do.
This is not to say that you cannot save any money in these United States. Nearly everyone tries to four or five times during their careers. Nearly no one ever makes a real go at it. If we could get the government off our backs and out of our pockets, the Americans two generations in the future could start off as millionaires.
Every time I see Nancy Pelosi pouting and stamping her foot I want to slape her. I got reason. The worst form of demagoguery is the politics of envy and Ms. Pelosi is one of the masters of it.
Gee PBJan 23rd, 2008 - 23:37:09
I thought the sky was falling?
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
===========
The same schmucky mistake, over and over and over. One day's trading does not make a market. This will take months to unwind. Trading is in large part program-driven, for quick profits. The investing public is frightened, for good reason, because THEY are long-term investors watching their home prices collapse.
You do the same with Iraq, mistaking the surge for 'victory', and paying no attention to the daily attacks, which are now Sunni on Sunni, and Shia upon Shia. There's no real improvement, and the Iraqi government is as incompetent as ever.
(Excerpt from a detailed analysis; and I agree with the vast majority of it as to cause and effect. Read the entire article.)
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1a7af090-c956-11dc-9807-000077b07658.html
The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years.
However, there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years.
Globalisation allowed the US to suck up the savings of the rest of the world and consume more than it produced. The US current account deficit reached 6.2 per cent of gross national product in 2006. The financial markets encouraged consumers to borrow by introducing ever more sophisticated instruments and more generous terms. The authorities aided and abetted the process by intervening whenever the global financial system was at risk. Since 1980, regulations have been progressively relaxed until they have practically disappeared.
The super-boom got out of hand when the new products became so complicated that the authorities could no longer calculate the risks and started relying on the risk management methods of the banks themselves. Similarly, the rating agencies relied on the information provided by the originators of synthetic products. It was a shocking abdication of responsibility.
Everything that could go wrong did. What started with subprime mortgages spread to all collateralised debt obligations, endangered municipal and mortgage insurance and reinsurance companies and threatened to unravel the multi-trillion-dollar credit default swap market. Investment banks' commitments to leveraged buyouts became liabilities. Market-neutral hedge funds turned out not to be market-neutral and had to be unwound. The asset-backed commercial paper market came to a standstill and the special investment vehicles set up by banks to get mortgages off their balance sheets could no longer get outside financing. The final blow came when interbank lending, which is at the heart of the financial system, was disrupted because banks had to husband their resources and could not trust their counterparties. The central banks had to inject an unprecedented amount of money and extend credit on an unprecedented range of securities to a broader range of institutions than ever before. That made the crisis more severe than any since the second world war.
Credit expansion must now be followed by a period of contraction, because some of the new credit instruments and practices are unsound and unsustainable.
Hormats of Goldman Sachs said he agrees with the report's finding that the United States is dangerously increasing its reliance on foreign debt and that Americans will be paying the price for generations. Hormats, author of 'The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars,' said that in every other major war, the United States has financed the conflict.
www.mclaughlin.com/library/transcript.asp?id=623
'MR. ZUCKERMAN: No, I think there is reason for some optimism. But I have to tell you, I think we're facing the worst financial crisis in the last 40 or 50 years, maybe since the Great Depression. You have a situation where we have two and a half trillion dollars of paper, of which the estimate is that 25 percent of it is going to be wiped out in value. That's $600 billion. And that's just the estimates today. Those estimates get worse and worse as this paper gets to be worth less and less. And nobody knows what the consequences of that is. We've never been in that kind of situation.
Amongst other things, nobody knows who owns the paper. I mean, nobody -- Merrill Lynch announced that they were losing roughly $5 billion. It then went to $8 billion within a matter of three weeks, which they are the biggest seller of this kind of paper. They're off by 60 percent. I mean, if they're off by 60 percent, who knows what the real value is?'
(Merrill actually wrote off $25 billion in the second half, more than their entire earnings from 2002 through 2006)
www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20080117-000989-1313
Yet the cleanup has come at a high price. Merrill's $25 billion in write-downs in the second half exceeded all of the bank's earnings from 2002 through 2006. And while analysts said Merrill probably has put the bulk of its subprime-related trouble behind it and credited the firm's strong performance in wealth and asset management, they cautioned that troubled capital markets will continue to hurt the bank and pointed to new areas of concern like commercial real estate.
Zuckerman - The Credit Crisis Grows
www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/mzuckerman/2007/12/13/the-credit-crisis -gro ws.html
A whole galaxy of credit instruments has now been downgraded to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars of paper losses. If those losses were incurred by individuals it would be bad enough. But leveraged lenders have a different problem. Many of them, such as commercial banks, have to maintain capital in reserve to protect against unexpected losses. If banks wish to maintain reserves equal to 10 percent of their assets, they either have to bring in new capital or shrink their balance sheets and reduce their lending accordingly. A dollar of real losses would mean scaling back lending by $10. Translate that to the whole financial sector, where the aggregate credit losses are estimated at $200 billion as of now. Ten times those losses could result in lending cutbacks of as much as $2 trillion. Such a huge hit to the credit supply will have a dramatic macroeconomic effect and could well produce a severe recession. Some major banks have literally shut their lending windows until they can repair their balance sheets.
Vicious cycle. The repair effort is further complicated because even the most sophisticated financial institutions do not know how to price many of the securities they hold and therefore cannot predict how much they will have to cut back on their loans, as the giant bank UBS said last week. This uncertainty compounds the credit crunch. So, too, does the decline in net worth of many borrowers due to a drop in house prices. In some markets, prices are down 20 percent from their mid-2006 highs. The average 10 percent drop in home values already incurred is tantamount to a $2.1 trillion loss in home equities. This threatens a vicious cycle with falling homeownership lowering house prices and forcing more defaults, causing ownership and prices to decline even more. Research suggests that for every dollar decline in home equity, spending will go down by about 9 cents, so this could lead to a $200 billion hit to consumer spending.
Another immediate effect has been a collapse in cash-out borrowing from home equity from about $700 billion in 2005 to $100 billion to date. At the same time, tighter lending and mortgage standards have contributed to a dramatic decline in residential construction from a high of over 2 million units to about 800,000 predicted for next year, with a concomitant decline in employment. A slowdown in consumer spending seems inescapable.
(The fundamentals are as poor as ever. There are bailout talks to rescue the companies who insure muni bonds, to prevent the rating downgrades of the munis, which would raise interest rates on those bonds. Bear in mind that Dumbya's first reaction was to do NOTHING until the State of the Union speech, and it took the Fed to rouse him. This bailout of $15 billion would presumably come from banks who are already taking massive writeoffs on their own holdings.)
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aVPlJ2WgCKyw&refer=home
Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- New York regulators are pushing the nation's biggest financial institutions to rescue bond insurers including MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc. and stave off writedowns that would roil financial markets.
New capital may prop up credit ratings for MBIA and Ambac, the industry's two largest companies, and stem erosion of investor confidence in the $2.4 trillion of assets they guarantee. The infusion may be as much as $15 billion, the Financial Times reported on its Web site. The total may be smaller, said a person familiar with the talks, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly because the meeting was private.
``The bond insurers scare people to death,'' said Harry Clark, who oversees about $1.3 billion as chief executive officer of Clark Capital Management in Philadelphia. ``It's big sighs of relief around Wall Street.''
News of a meeting between regulators and bankers helped spur stock market rallies in the U.S. and Asia. If the bonds are downgraded, investors who are required to hold only the highest-rated securities may be forced to sell. The lower rating may also reduce the value of the holdings, forcing more writedowns at banks and securities firms.
Ambac and MBIA have suffered losses because of guarantees they sold for structured investments such as collateralized debt obligations backed by mortgages. The industry collectively guaranteed $127 billion of CDOs linked to mortgages that were given to borrowers with poor credit.
The securities have plunged in value as defaults by borrowers soared to a record in the third quarter of last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
We will survive any downturn, face any challenge, endure any crises.
We have not yet begun to rise from the ashes. Let them who wish us defeat, know that we will surely overcome.
Do your part as Americans, not divided, but united in the causes that make us a great nation; a nation which embraces the world with hope and a future long sustained in friendship and mutual respect. For there will come a day when various entities will strike at the heart of our prosperity, and vie for the spoils. There will come a day when they demand us to bow before them. There will be a time when our enemies posture at our doorstep, but we shall not relent. We shall not sell-out our freedom, or our principles to the highest bidder. Therein lays our comeback.
Empty vessels ......
I believe the present rate slash by the feds was intended to bring some relief to the subprime woes. It’s a short-term answer and will help in the short-term, but I don’t think they can scare that problem away by throwing money at it. However the subprime aspect is only a part of the overall market, not the whole of it. There are still a lot of good investments out there, especially in the area of natural resources and on the legitimate side of real estate.
As per usual the doom & gloom crowd is predicting a market in dire straights and recession around the next corner. But they been doing that song and dance for about the last ten years. And the mainstream media is always too quick to pick up on it and broadcast it to the world. After all, fear sells news and they’re in the news-selling business, so why not? But I’ve learned over the years not to listen to them.
The market has always gone in cycles. It rises on speculation and then requires a downturn in order to correct itself. If it speculates too much, it requires a period of recession. So if you want to follow the doom & gloom crowd’s nonstop prediction of a recession eventually you’ll be right. But then again, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
I suspect that the DJIA will find solid footing somewhere around the 11,500 mark and then begin to build itself back up again – but that’s just my opinion.
The two most reliable sources I’ve found in market predictions are Bank Credit Analysis and Stratfor.com but it’ll cost you some money to get access to those. BCA predicts a slowed growth but stable economy for 2008 with no sight of any recession until at least 2010 or even 2011. Stratfor.com is actually predicting a healthy economic growth for the year. I’ve been following these two sources for seven years now and they haven’t missed yet.
It’s a global market out there. Although the US is by far the biggest, strongest and best for investing market on the scene but you may want to consider going outside of it for some investments. Canadian natural resources is red hot right now. And if you’re willing to gamble on the exchange rates, Bank of New Zealand offers 8.7% interest on cash in the bank.
It’s not near as gloomy out there as the press would like you to think.
I think you had better read M&C (Jan 14th) Business Features
'Records falling ahead of gold's onslaught' to get a better overall picture.
We are in some uncharted territory, and that frightens even the pros.
The banks have no idea of the underlying value of their mortgages or other investments. Things like CDO's and credit swaps did not exist in the last down cycle. People don't even know who holds their mortgages; never mind what their home is worth.
The market today is NOT about investing; it's about quick turns for a profit, and computers doing the trading. Whether moving up or down, moves are accentuated. The public's money goes into IRA's and 401K's, and those investments KEEP coming on a regular basis, whether the market is up, down, or sideways. It's not as though the public ever 'stops buying', and that supports the stock market long-term.
Right now there's a rescue attempt to bail out Ambac and a few others who insure municipal debt, since a need to raise interest rates on that debt would be a calamity right now.
Congress also is moving VERY quickly to get rebates out, in part because it's an election year, and Congress has a reputation for foot-dragging.
NONE of this solves the fundamental problems; just as the surge in Iraq resolves none of the fundamental problems either.
www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/washington/24cnd-econ.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slog in
WASHINGTON — House leaders and the White House on Thursday reached a tentative agreement on an economic stimulus package of roughly $150 billion that would pay stipends of $300 to $1,200 per family and provide tax incentives for businesses to encourage spending.
(The important part of that is what business would get out of it, to keep them from firing people)
'One day's trading does not make a market.'
Well, considering what I made yesterday and today, Ill take it. :-D Regardless, one days drop doesn't make a recession either.
'. Trading is in large part program-driven, for quick profits.
Not if you don't want to lose your shirt.
'The investing public is frightened, for good reason,'
Not according to the past few days rebound.
'because THEY are long-term investors watching their home prices collapse.'
Remember the internet stock bubble? (probably not considering you have the emotional age of someone about 8 years old) This isn't a collapse it is a correction.
'You do the same with Iraq, mistaking the surge for 'victory','
LOL! In a thousand years something is going to happen to prove you right, eh? You have been WRONG consistently. WRONG. Why? You make a habit of betting against the USA. No wonder you are such a miserable loser.
'and paying no attention to the daily attacks, which are now Sunni on Sunni'
Attacks are down between 60 and 70%, idiot. Say it out loud. Most people understand that by now. You will always be bringing up the rear.
'and Shia upon Shia.'
Considering that Saddam put hundreds of thousands of them in mass graves and considering that it is now statistically safer to live in Iraq then it is to live in Detroit and considering that the right ones are killing each other off I fiind it hard to give a cr*p if the Mahdi army is getting killed off by the Badr brigade or vice versa. In fact, I love it that they are getting rid of each other. Almost like the Crypts killing the Bloods.
'There's no real improvement'
Keep jamming your fingers in your ears and repeating that over and over. Even Murtha, Pelosi and Reid, not to mention Bin Laden have acknowledged otherwise. LOL!
'Remarkable new article by Soros'
When I read this the other day I wondered if there was ANYONE on this earth STUPID enough to give this the slightest bit of credence. I now have my answer.
'Excerpt from a detailed analysis; and I agree with the vast majority of it as to cause and effect.'
If brains were dynamite you wouldn't have enough to blow the fuzz off a ripe peach.
George Soros hates the United States with a passion. He hates the traditions, the White Anglo Saxon Protestant history and ethics (he really hates WASPs.) He hates individualism. He hates the fact that we are in a position to guard our sovereign abilities and Constitution against internationalism. He hates that we will not allow ourselves to be dragged down like Gulliver with the lilliputians with Kyoto protacols and International courts and land mine treaties designed to do one thing and one thing only: Diminish the sovereignty and independence of the USA. He is inherently anti-democratic. Indeed, his philosophy and world view combine the worst aspects of socialism and fascism and a megalomaniac's personality that truly makes him spooky.
He has lavishly funded institutions in the USA that he knows will help to diminish our national sovereignty and identity and make us subservient to a world government. The groups that give you your programming and do your thinking for you are funded by this creep.
'In the United States, he is known for having donated large sums of money in a failed effort to defeat President George W. Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. On BookTV, November 12, 2007, he said that he supports Barack Obama for the Democratic candidate in the 2008 election, but says that John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, or Joe Biden are all fine candidates, as well.'
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros
So, why would Soros write the above? Well, he makes his money in Currency speculation and he has been shorting the dollar. If he can drive it down against the Euro he makes more money and it will have the other happy effect of pushing America into more discomfort so they will be more apt to 'embrace change'. (The buzz word fro the moveon.org crowd.) What kind of change? Well the kind he is trying to sell but thankfully hasn't been bought by the majority of Americans. Diminished sovereignty, more UN, More ICC, More Kyoto, more immigration, more collectivism, more Geroge Soros...
My guess? You are one of only a few dozen morons who are so thick they can not see this...
'The banks have no idea of the underlying value of their mortgages or other investments.'
Gee, you would think they would have people to keep track of such things.
'Things like CDO's and credit swaps did not exist in the last down cycle.'
Lol! Which 'down cycle' was that? 1929?
'People don't even know who holds their mortgages; never mind what their home is worth.'
Good lord... Anyone who owns a house just rolled their eyes when they read that.
'The market today is NOT about investing'
LOL! God you are an idiot!
'it's about quick turns for a profit'
Only if you want to get fleeced.
'The public's money goes into IRA's and 401K's, and those investments KEEP coming on a regular basis, whether the market is up, down, or sideways. '
So you invest in a plunging market.. Yeah, YOU probably do.
'It's not as though the public ever 'stops buying','
YES, THAT HAPPENS. Everything that you have posted so far in this diatribe is hogwash. Congratulations.
'Congress also is moving VERY quickly to get rebates out, in part because it's an election year, and Congress has a reputation for foot-dragging.'
Personally I think the congress AND the president should leave it to the fed. I also believe that a a contraction or even a mild recession would be good for the long term economy. (It would get rid of the waste and fat) What disgusts me are the partisan hacks like you rooting for the absolute worst to happen (exactly like Iraq) so they can make political hay out of it. You are clearly begging for panic so you can pin it on Bush and ONCE AGAIN, to hell with the consequences for the country. Thankfully, You are WRONG again PB.Thankfully, much like Iraq, you do not have the slightest idea what you are talking about. Also, thankfully, it hasn't taken as long to show what an idiot you are.
It's not even worth reading his drivel, as the fertilizer smell is a giveaway. He would find a way to excuse anything, since he has zero concept of what's actually going on. SP4 is probably more out of touch, but right now it's a race to the bottom.
-----------------------------
(This excerpt starts with Monica Crowley, a GOP talking head, explaining why a rebate won't work. Ironic, eh?)
www.mclaughlin.com/library/transcript.asp?id=636
MS. CROWLEY: Right. Last time this was tried, it was the summer of 2001. And what has been shown is that people took those rebates and they actually saved them. They didn't spend them. So it didn't have the effect of inserting and injecting consumer spending to actually fix the problem.
I think, this time around, it may have some marginal effect. But you've got to take on solutions that are going to take on the longer- term problems in this economy. It's not just about a quick fix. It's not just Whack-a-Mole and try to fix. There are some huge problems, as Eleanor points out, dealing with the banks and lenders, a stalled housing market, credit crisis. It goes on and on.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Was that an exaggeration, what Monica is saying?
MR. ZUCKERMAN: I don't think it's an exaggeration. I think it's an understatement. You've heard me say here, I think we are facing the worst financial crunch and crisis since the Great Depression. You have the entire banking system now that is virtually frozen, and not just the subprime mortgage thing.
There are other things called credit default swaps where they're going to lose as much money, $250 billion. The banks are frozen. They're not making loans because they have such huge debts that they have to take onto their balance sheets.
And nobody knows how to deal with that, because you had a dramatic -- you have two bubbles that have burst at the same time -- the housing bubble, which has collapsed in this country, the first time since the Great Depression that housing values have gone down for a year since the Depression. And it's going to go down even more next year.
The credit crunch -- you've just exploded the whole credit system in this country. We were way overleveraged. The banking system was overleveraged. People didn't even know about it. The bankers didn't know about it. They didn't assess the risk. Now that risk is piling in, and everybody's going to pay the price.
It's going to stimulate nothing other than -- I mean it's going to destimulate the economy. Nobody has money to lend. They're saving all their money to pay off their debts. They're borrowing money or looking at the rest of the world to enhance their capital. And it's still not going to solve their problem.
news.monstersandcritics.com/business/features/article_1387904.php
The story is headlined 'the lollipop economy', because suckers like dum-dum eat this garbage for lunch. In basic training there was an expression 'WETSU' - look it up, and you'll see dum-dum's picture.
(Hint 'We eat this s..t up')
Washington - Global stock markets have passed judgement on US President George W Bush's 145-billion-dollar economic stimulus package, and the verdict couldn't be clearer. Far from soothed by his proposal, which raises the prospect of tax relief totalling about 1 per cent of the US gross domestic product, investors worldwide have continued to flee stocks.
(Things looked better after the Fed acted, because until that point foreign markets saw nothing happening. Even more appealing was the proposed $15 billion bailout of Ambac, which insures Muni bonds - that could have created a chink in all of our credit ratings, forcing interest rates to remain up to attract investment.)
The January panic is the culmination of months of uncertainty arising from the deflating US housing market and rising subprime mortgage defaults, which have disrupted the banking industry and credit markets in a widening contagion of fear. Lingering high energy costs and a December spike in the US unemployment rate have further unnerved financial markets.
(There's that long-term stuff again that dummies don't understand)
While global investors voted with their wallets, critics in the United States were vocal in their verdicts against the Bush proposal.
The Wall Street Journal, usually supportive of the conservative Bush, wrote that tax reimbursements have been tried in the past and failed to stimulate the economy.
Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson said the Bush plan was intended only to distract US consumers from their pain, like giving sweets to a crying child.
'It's an election year. Voters feel anxious about a weakening economy,' Samuelson wrote. 'Send them economic lollipops - say, a 500-dollar tax rebate for most families. Make them feel better. Show them you're concerned. Prove that you're trying to improve the economy.'
Even amid the subprime mortgage crisis, experts are asking themselves what has actually happened to push the US economy to the brink of recession. Samuelson pointed out a 'touch of hysteria' that is as yet unjustified by the actual state of the economy.
'It's not even worth reading his drivel, '
Pathetic. I guess that is the only thing you can do. Ignore the argument that beats yours. Why don't you post something else from mort zuckerman or George Soros? Idiot...
', since he has zero concept of what's actually going on.'
I would bet that you weren't able to cash in on the past 2 days rally..
'MR. ZUCKERMAN'
You can shove your mort zuckerman spam in to your rectum along with your skull. He has an agenda that is closely aligned with soros. He has said himself that he doesn't owe any allegiance to the USA. I guess that is why you repost his effluence over and over.
'Bush package leaves market, experts cold'
Good, government shouldn't be propping up the market. Note though, when it is viewed as a positive move, this moron that I am wasting my time with blabbers on with: 'Now, credit is shared'but when this IDIOT can find some shread of someone else's ideas (he has none of his own) it's the 'Bush package'. You are pathetic.
'In basic training there was an expression 'WETSU'
Gee, it is fun playing pretend, isn't it? You are waaay too much of a traitor and coward to have ever served anything other then yourself.
I'd tell you to stick your head up your ass, but I'll bet SP4 beat you to it. Just who the hell DO you listen to? Rush Limburger? Farce News?
The Wall Street Journal even criticized Bush's rebates.
www.thestreet.com/s/bush-congress-agree-on-tax-rebates-to-stimulate-eco nomy/markets/marketfeatures/10400255.html?puc=googlefi
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that many of the tax rebates in 2003 went towards savings, not spending.
A significant problem with the plan would be timing. Checks would not be mailed out to taxpayers until the earliest as of June of this year -- that's almost six months from now. It's not even clear what effect this would have on individuals who are self-employed.
What the Congress should do is authorize an immediate rebate to ensure that checks go out as soon as the bill passes Congress. The economy needs the stimulus now -- not six months from now. If the economy had time to wait, then the government could just wait for the Federal Reserve rate cuts to take effect.
==================
NYARNG 1963-1969 Rank E5
Unlike Bush, I showed up.
Unlike Cheney, I got no deferments.
Unlike you, I passed intelligence tests.
www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080122/BUSINESS07/80122032/0/BUS INESS06
Tax rebates may not be quick enough, budget office head warns
WASHINGTON -- The head of the Congressional Budget Office this morning warned that the economic effects of tax rebates to Americans could take as long as six months to be felt and that lawmakers and the White House may want to consider quicker measures such as pumping up unemployment benefits or food stamps.
Peter Orszag, the director of the CBO, testified before the Senate Finance Committee on a morning that saw a precipitous drop in the Dow industrial average and the Federal Reserve Bank cut a key interest rate by three-quarters of a point in hopes of stimulating the nation's troubled economy.
With the Bush administration and legislative leaders focused on priming the economy to keep it from slipping into recession, discussions on Capitol Hill are focusing on how best to do that. Orszag said rebates are an effective way of stimulating spending -- particularly if they go to lower-income families. However, he said, the real impact of those checks might not be felt until next Christmas. And if the danger has passed by then, it could actually serve to push up inflation.
money.cnn.com/2008/01/22/magazines/fortune/sloan_irrational.fortune/index.h tm?postversion=2008012219
By Allan Sloan, senior editor at large
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Forget all those rational explanations about why foreign stocks markets, especially in Asia, have been melting down for two days. Despite what you've read, seen and heard, those declines weren't caused by fears of what a recession in the U.S. would do to the profits of companies whose stocks trade in places like India, China and Russia.
Rather, the meltdowns were flat-out market panics, where rationality gets tossed out the window as everyone tries to head for the door at once and gets trampled. Go-go markets, especially in Asia, had risen to ridiculous heights - they were going up because they were going up, and momentum fed on itself. Now, they're going down because they're going down, and momentum is feeding on itself again.
Announcing an out-of-schedule cut today before the stock market opened shows that its motivation is to calm the markets rather than to reinvigorate the U.S. economy. Here's why.
First, it won't be clear until the summer whether a recession is in fact underway in the U.S. Even though the nation's economy seems likely to have shrunk in December, there's no such thing as a one-month recession. 'A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months,' according to the definitive authorities on such things, the business cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Second, even if you believe that the Fed's cut in short-term rates will stimulate the economy, that won't happen overnight. If you took a Fed economist out for a few drinks and promised not to quote him, he'd tell you that the benefits of a cut take at least six months to percolate through the economy. There have been market panics and freeze-ups all over the world since last summer, when the junk mortgage meltdown in the U.S. started gathering speed. These have been confined mostly to the debt markets, which - unlike the Dow Industrials - don't resonate with most people and can't be summed up neatly in one familiar number, as the Dow is.
The problem is that the Fed has only a limited amount of rate-cut ammunition, and expended a lot of it today. It's expected by the markets to cut rates again next week, and will have used up most of its bullets.
I'm growing increasingly uneasy watching short-term rates in the U.S. fall when we're so dependent on foreign money to cover our trade deficit and the U.S. budget deficit.
'Just who the hell DO you listen to? Rush Limburger? Farce News?'
NPR, I just think for myself. Remember that when you are taking dictation from Air America.
'The Wall Street Journal even criticized Bush's rebates.'
I don't blame them the whole point is, you loathsome douche bag, is that you are rooting for an economic collapse so you can pin it on Bush. (Just as you have rooted for a terrorist victory in Iraq so you could pin it on Bush) YOU HAVE A MENTAL PROBLEM. You do not seem to care if the country is destroyed as long as you can point to your scapegoat and say 'bad'.
Fine, CONGRESS, WHO WILL HAVE TO APPROVE SUCH A PLAN SHOULD STAY OUT OF IT AND LEAVE STIMULUS TO THE FED. I have mentioned that once or twice. This is just going to add to the defect.
'What the Congress should do is authorize an immediate rebate to ensure that checks go out as soon as the bill passes Congress. '
Congress should do STOP WASTING MONEY.
'The economy needs the stimulus now -- not six months from now. '
It got it when interest rates got cut. Government meddling tends to make the situation worse. (Ask Nixon, Johnson and Carter.)
'NYARNG 1963-1969 Rank E5'
LOL! Even if that is true, Ephialtes, Marshal Petain and Benedict Arnold all ranked you. (Then again, so did I.) Once again, you have repeatedly wished the worst on this country, our troops and now our economy just to have the momentary satisfaction of vilifying the man you love to hate. Even if you served with honor 40 years ago you still have disgraced yourself.
YOU IDIOT!
Noting an existing underlying problem, and 'rooting' for one, are two different things entirely. I cannot make something occur by writing about it. I don't live in a fantasy world - that's YOUR preoccupation.
Today al-Maliki is making some very bold statements about controlling al Qaeda, and the Iraqi troops are moving to the north. He has also identified Kirkuk as a problem - as though he just discovered what's gone on for the past two years or more.
I've noted before that al Qaeda, in sheer numbers, is a small problem as compared to the native militias and religious fanatics. Our generals have noted the same thing. I would expect, with all of the money sunk in and American lives lost, that by THIS time the Iraqi army SHOULD be able to handle al Qaeda. Wasn't that the point of the exercise? What is Petraeus paying them $300 a month each for?
Yet ... the Iraqi army is nowhere as efficient or well-trained or well-equipped as U.S. forces, and we're not about to supply our best technology to a country made up of opposing militias. WITH our help, the Iraqis are perhaps finally reaching a point where they can stand and fight in a unified way against foreign invaders, at least for the moment. In this miserable situation, that's 'progress'. Kind of like training a dog to lick itself.
But ... the country is more divided along sectarian lines than ever, and the Shia and Sunni cannot even run a government together. al Sadr is combatting his own fringe criminal elements, and the Shia are split into MANY militias - somewhat the equivalent of the U.S. street gangs that DOJ is asking for $200 million today to combat right at home. The Sunni are taking severe losses amongst the CLC's, and some of that is coming from other Sunni militias and fanatics, as well as al Qaeda.
There's an expression ... 'There's no there, there'. Along those lines, 'There's no Iraq, there'. There's a large country once run by a dictator, with U.S. support, that was capable of preventing internal bombings and outside influences such as al Qaeda. That very government could not provide a stable power supply, or an oil industry capable of functioning efficiently. That's what the American contractors discovered - a decayed infrastructure. Attempts to rebuild that have been hampered by graft, corruption, al Qaeda bombings, militia bombings, and funds stolen.
Out of this - we are supposed to generate a stable and Democratic Iraq?
Wake the hell up, and stop making blue-sky predictions and feeble excuses for the leadership whose wrong-headed policies have left us in this position. Stop blaming everyone else for THEIR problems.
All I'm cheerleading for, at this point, is that you and the other rockheads suddenly grow a brain, and that the American people toss the bums out who caused this. Asking Bush to actually do something useful is a delusion. He'll screw up, as he always does, without any help from me. Egomaniacs like you, on the other hand, see someone without any native qualifications actually running a country, and find that cause for celebration, as it somehow justifies your own brainless existence.
RE: THANKS FOR TURNING ON THE BOLD AGAIN!!!!
==========
Looks like it was a problem overall that M&C learned to deal with. No one 'turns it on' - it comes from hidden characters within links pasted in directly from news sources. On this one, you can relax, and move on to something important - like finding Bush's brain.
Bush...oh god...how f--king funny is this???
The dems crap at a recession and dum ol Bush bends them over and inserts tax relief!
Then, the markets rebound!
hahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
'Noting an existing underlying problem, and 'rooting' for one, are two different things entirely.'
You spent countless of hours here celebrating the setbacks the coalition faced in Iraq, denigrating our troops, comparing the terrorists to our minutemen, peddling defeatism in order to try to score some kind of political point. (Newsflash, by the time someone reads your drivel they have already made up their mind one way or another. Considering that you couldn't persuade a burning man to take a glass of water your defeatist attention whoring is doubly annoying.)
' I cannot make something occur by writing about it. '
Once again you have gotten it backwards, you usually make it up THEN write about it.
' I don't live in a fantasy world'
YES, yes you do. I sincerely believe that you have a personality disorder. Regardless, you have a pathological need to blame one person for every malady that has ever occurred. Whether or not it is crazy to do so makes no difference.
'He has also identified Kirkuk as a problem - as though he just discovered what's gone on for the past two years or more.'
No, not for the past 2 years. Since the surge.
'I've noted before that al Qaeda, in sheer numbers, is a small problem as compared to the native militias and religious fanatics.'
I have noted before that you are full of crap. If attacks are down by about 70% and al Qaeda is the only 'organization' being targeted by all sides then what does that tell you? They had a very effective terrorist organization in Iraq.
'Our generals have noted the same thing.'
Our generals have pointed out that al Qaeda was responsible for most of the deadly attacks.
'I would expect, with all of the money sunk in and American lives lost, that by THIS time the Iraqi army SHOULD be able to handle al Qaeda'
There has been progress:
'Then General Odierno highlights what he considers to be a major Iraqi success early in the operation, something he says he would not have thought possible one year ago, when the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Iraqi Army Division was deployed from Anbar province to Diyala province to support combat operations in the Diyala River Valley.
An Iraqi decision, implemented solely by the Iraqi's and within 36 hours 'uncovered two sizable caches, gathered significant intelligence and aggressively hunted down al Qaeda in tough terrain and demanding climatic conditions.'
'Yet ... the Iraqi army is nowhere as efficient or well-trained or well-equipped as U.S. forces, '
So that is your benchmark? As good as the most efficient, best trained and most lavishly equipped forces in the world? It only took us 231+ years.
' and we're not about to supply our best technology to a country made up of opposing militias.'
We are not about to suply our best technology to Canada.. What's your point?
'WITH our help, the Iraqis are perhaps finally reaching a point where they can stand and fight in a unified way against foreign invaders, at least for the moment.'
Something that you, with your infinite wisdom and ability to continually get the situation WRONG said was imposable.
'In this miserable situation, that's 'progress''
IN ANY SITUATION THAT WOULD BE CALLED PROGRESS. ADMIT IT, THERE HAS BEEN PROGRESS IN IRAQ. SOMETHING THAT YOU HAVE DECLARED IMPOSABLE OVER AND OVER.
'But ... the country is more divided along sectarian lines than ever'
I do not buy that but whether it is or it isn't it is outside of our mission parameters to make them 'like' each other.
'and the Shia and Sunni cannot even run a government together''
Neither can Democrat and Republican.
They are not living up to the responsibilities not because they are shiia or sunni but because they come from a long legacy of corruption and feudal/tribal/clan organization. That is an impediment to effective government in the western style but it can be made to work. It will not work over night though.
'al Sadr is combatting his own fringe criminal elements'
He IS a fringe criminal element.
'and the Shia are split into MANY militias'
Good. Easier to control that way.
'The Sunni are taking severe losses amongst the CLC's,'
Not as bad as they were fighting the US military.
'There's an expression ... 'There's no there, there'. '
Yeah, it makes no sense.
Out of this - we are supposed to generate a stable and Democratic Iraq?
As democratic as it gets in the middle east. Yes. We did it in Germany and Japan. Iraq was more of a democracy then Japan was prior to invasion.
'Wake the hell up, and stop making blue-sky predictions and feeble excuses for the leadership whose wrong-headed policies have left us in this position.'
LOL! You are one of the last people on earth that steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that thee has been progress toward meeting our goals in Iraq and you are delusional enough to advise ME to wake up. You have been consistently WRONG throughout the time you have posted here, yet you believe that someone else is 'asleep'...
To remind you once again, I was against going to war in Iraq, but once we started this we had/have to do whatever it takes to achieve our objectves. Within the past year we have FINALLY gotten a general in that has recognized this for what it is and has fought an effective counterinsurgency. That is not blue sky anything... that is the demonstrable fact. The USA can and should and IS salvaging this. Like it or not.
'
All I'm cheerleading for, at this point, is that you and the other rockheads suddenly grow a brain,'
Seriously; I believe that you are not in full control of yourself. Your reasoning is clouded, your mental state is skewed. I can post thousands of quotes of yours that go from just unfair to thoroughly crazy. You have been all over the board with your opinions, often contradicting yourself within the same paragraph. You have advocated a position when it vilified your bogeyman and then advocated the opposite position when it allowed you to vilify your bogeyman. You have taken it to the extreme where you have advocated for the terrorists, played apologist for their tactics and leaders, compared them to legitimate heroes, denigrated the people serving the country in order to guarantee your right to make an ass out of yourself, posted over and over about the inevitability of their victory over us, posted over and over that we should just give in to the terrorists and posted things that would have had you buying dental adhesive for the rest of your life had you had the courage (heh) to do it in public. Grow a brain? You need to be medicated. I am NOT being cute there.
'and that the American people toss the bums out who caused this.'
Well guess what, they will be leaving the White House at the completion of their second term of office as per the 20th amendment. No impeachment, no drama, just the peaceful transition of power. In terms of 'the bums' who 'caused this' with 'this' being Iraq you are going to have a choice between 2 senators who BOTH voted to go to war in Iraq.
'Asking Bush to actually do something useful is a delusion. He'll screw up, as he always does,'
I wonder why you don't feel more empathy for him then? Perhaps you hate him because he reminds you of you...
' Egomaniacs like you, on the other hand, see someone without any native qualifications actually running a country,'
Like Obama? Or Hillary?
'No one 'turns it on' - it comes from hidden characters within links pasted in directly from news sources. '
It comes from the formatting in your MS word program screwing up the formatting on M&C. If you would learn to spell like the rest of us who made it past the 3rd grade you wouldn't be needing spell check and turning on the bold all the time.
' On this one, you can relax, and move on to something important - like finding Bush's brain.'
Infantile. That's all. You are just infantile.
ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gHs5OM3gFG_DytQQZFbWfgPT08MAD8UD69FG0
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street ended a tumultuous week with a sharp decline Friday, backtracking following two days of stunning gains as investors turned cautious and cashed in some of their winnings. The Dow Jones industrial average still managed to record its first weekly advance of 2008, even as it fell more than 170 points on the day.
(Corporate profits are up for companies doing a large overseas business who bring the profits back to the U.S., thanks to the low value of the dollar. If you sell a product in Euros, and the Euros exchange for more dollars, the currency swap increases profits. American retail sales are down, so companies cut inventory, which cuts orders to suppliers).
Greenspan says recession chance 50-50
www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8UCI5U00.htm
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week, Greenspan suggested the U.S. may already be in a downturn. 'The symptoms are clearly there,' Greenspan told the newspaper. 'Recessions don't happen smoothly. They are usually signaled by a discontinuity in the market place and the data of recent weeks could very well be characterized in that manner.'
(I think some people have their heads in the sand on this one - what turns it around? A drop in gas prices? What positive factors offset the valuation problems at the banks and brokerages? The fundamental problems are unchanged - hopefully the Fed's actions will actually influence the banks to lend. The banks are already also taking LARGE writeoffs on credit card debt, which is separate from the mortgage problem).
RE: If attacks are down by about 70% and al Qaeda is the only 'organization' being targeted by all sides then what does that tell you? They had a very effective terrorist organization in Iraq.
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Attacks are down between Shia and Sunni because the same walled enclaves are protecting the Sunni from the Shia. We have COMPARTMENTALIZED the country, and fewer interactions mean fewer attacks. The Shia have taken over a great deal of (formerly) Sunni property, since the Sunni are now refugees; some in other countries, and some displaced and still in Iraq. There are MILLIONS of Sunni in this position. Many of the attacks in the north are SUNNI-related, and NOT al Qaeda's doing.
The Shia fight amongst themselves in the south, since the British are effectively out. We are counting on al-Sadr to control this, and recently some of the same violent militia that were supposed to be disarmed under Iraq's own benchmarks are being worked into the Iraqi Army and police - as though Hell's Angels became auxiliary cops.
al Maliki is under considerable pressure to DO SOMETHING, and having learned from Bush first-hand, we now get the Iraqi version of the photo-op. al Maliki is referring to a non-existent police presence as though it's there and operating. Maliki gave no details of the number of Iraqi troops involved or the scale of the operation. Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari did not have details but said it had been launched at Maliki's request.
This has been the game for years - Iraq claims nonexistent troops, or training for troops who have never been trained.
www.iwpr.net/?p=icr&s=f&o=342253&apc_state=henh
Tensions are building between Kurdish leaders and Arab prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government in Bagahdad, threatening to divide two of Iraq’s strongest political allies.
Kurdish leaders accuse Maliki’s government of not acting on issues most important to the Kurds, such as resolving a dispute over ownership of Kirkuk province and the funding of Kurdish forces known as the Peshmerga.
At the same time, the Iraqi Kurdish government has forged ahead with signing private oil contracts without the approval of the central government, irking Baghdad and reigniting debates about how much power Iraq’s regional governments should hold.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/17/AR2008011701406.ht ml?hpid=moreheadlines
Friday, January 18, 2008; Page A15
Senior U.S. military officials projected yesterday that the Iraqi army and police will grow to an estimated 580,000 members by the end of the year but that shortages of key personnel, equipment, weaponry and logistical capabilities mean that Iraq's security forces will probably require U.S. military support for as long as a decade.
'The truth is that they simply cannot fix, supply, arm or fuel themselves completely enough at this point,' said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, head of the Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq.
The Iraqi government has been increasing its forces 'much more aggressively' in response to the high violence levels witnessed in 2006 and early 2007, Dubik said in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.
Iraqi security forces now consist of nearly 500,000 personnel, after a 55 percent increase in the size of the Iraqi army over the past year, Dubik said. The Iraqi government envisions increasing that number to 580,000 by the end of 2008, with an ultimate goal of building a force of as many as 640,000, he said.
--- note the caveat below ---
Part of the rapid growth, however, has resulted not from additional recruits but because the Iraqi government has placed other existing security forces under the oversight of the ministries of defense and interior, Dubik said. In addition, the latest count is based on Iraqi government data rather than on U.S. military data, a change detailed in a Pentagon report released last month.
Dubik described Iraqi security forces as 'bigger and better' than ever before, but he said significant problems are keeping them dependent on U.S. military support.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802873.ht ml
Sunday, January 20, 2008; Page B01
In short, the surge has done nothing to overturn former secretary of state Colin Powell's now-famous 'Pottery Barn' rule: Iraq is irretrievably broken, and we own it. To say that any amount of 'kicking ass' will make Iraq whole once again is pure fantasy. The U.S. dilemma remains unchanged: continue to pour lives and money into Iraq with no end in sight, or cut our losses and deal with the consequences of failure.
As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent. The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstand ing, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant. The United States has acquired a ramshackle, ungovernable and unresponsive dependency that is incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than three years after then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a note announcing that 'Iraq is sovereign,' that sovereignty remains a fiction.
A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that the United States would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina. Even today, Iraqi electrical generation meets barely half the daily national requirements. Baghdad households now receive power an average of 12 hours each day -- six hours fewer than when Saddam Hussein ruled. Oil production still has not returned to pre-invasion levels. Reports of widespread fraud, waste and sheer ineptitude in the administration of U.S. aid have become so commonplace that they barely last a news cycle. (Recall, for example, the 110,000 AK-47s, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets intended for Iraqi security forces that, according to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon cannot account for.) U.S. officials repeatedly complain, to little avail, about the paralyzing squabbling inside the Iraqi parliament and the rampant corruption within Iraqi ministries. If a primary function of government is to provide services, then the government of Iraq can hardly be said to exist.
Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the United States is tacitly abandoning its efforts to create a truly functional government in Baghdad. By offering arms and bribes to Sunni insurgents -- an initiative that has been far more important to the temporary reduction in the level of violence than the influx of additional American troops -- U.S. forces have affirmed the fundamental irrelevance of the political apparatus bunkered inside the Green Zone.
Rather than fostering political reconciliation, accommodating Sunni tribal leaders ratifies the ethnic cleansing that resulted from the civil war touched off by the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a Shiite shrine. That conflict has shredded the fragile connective tissue linking the various elements of Iraqi society; the deals being cut with insurgent factions serve only to ratify that dismal outcome. First Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division got it exactly right: 'We're paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?'
www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman in Baghdad, told The Associated Press that 3,000 police officers were being dispatched to reinforce Mosul, but he did not say when they would arrive.
Brig. Karim Khalaf al-Jabouri, a commander of police operations in Mosul, said the additional forces had yet to arrive.
“Until this moment, no military trucks have entered Mosul and not even a single policeman or soldier from outside the province,” he said in a telephone interview. “We are fighting with our own forces and we didn’t get any kind of support at all. Nothing has changed at all except for the curfew.”
The recent surge of violence spiked on Wednesday when a huge blast killed more than 30 people as Iraqi soldiers entered a building packed with explosives by insurgents. The next day the provincial police chief was killed by a suicide bomber while visiting the site. After the second attack, the provincial governor, Duraid Kashmola, declared an emergency curfew in the city.
“We have defeated Al Qaeda, and there is only Nineveh and Kirkuk left where the terrorists have fled to,” Mr. Maliki said in the southern city of Karbala. “Today the forces started to move to Mosul, and the battle will be final.”
By most accounts, the struggle is likely to be challenging and unlikely to be final. Sunni insurgents have long been active in Nineveh. The province borders Syria, which has been a conduit for foreign fighters, and is a region marked by tensions between Sunni Arabs and Kurds.
------
The official, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak on the record, said that Iraqi and American soldiers had tried to set up two towers nearby from which snipers could shoot those responsible for the killings, but that the insurgents destroyed the towers with rocket-propelled grenades.
“The Iraqi Army then chose this three-story building to put snipers on the roof,” he said. “The gunmen took advantage of the fact that the ground floor includes shops that sell grains, sugar and flour to smuggle in their bombs and improvised explosive devices.” He said the building, originally thought to be a bomb factory, was blown up as Iraqi soldiers went in to defuse the bombs.
You are the last hold out, you idiot. Even Hillary is taking credit for Iraq now:
Hillary Takes Credit For “So-Called” Surge Success
By Bob Parks Friday, January 25, 2008
During Thursday night’s Republican debate, presidential candidate Mitt Romney said something that angered me a bit…
“And one more thing. What — what an audacious and arrogant thing for the Democrats to say, as Hillary Clinton did, that they are responsible for the progress that the surge has seen, by virtue of their trying to pull out so quickly.
“Look, the success over there is due to the — the blood and the courage of our servicemen and women, and to General Petraeus and to President Bush, not to General Hillary Clinton.”
To think that Hillary Clinton would, on behalf of Senator Harry Reid and the anti-war movement, attempt to take credit for the “so-called surge” success because of opposition to the war, would be brazen at best, and opportunism at worst.
So I employed my perilous routine of skimming and found, within the January 21 Congressional Black Caucus Democrat debate, the following quote from Mrs. Clinton…
“I believe what you’re seeing happen is twofold. Of course the surge, the so-called surge, was able to pacify certain parts of Iraq. If we put enough of our men and women and equipment in, we’re going to be able to have some tactical military success. But the whole purpose of the surge was to force the Iraqi government to move quickly towards the kind of resolution that only it can bring about.
“I think what is motivating the Iraqi government is the debate in the political campaign here. They know they will no longer have a blank check from George Bush, that I will withdraw troops from Iraq. And I believe that will put even more pressure on the Iraqis to finally make the decisions that they have to make.”
I may be an insignificant veteran here, but I thought the purpose of the “so-called surge” was to eradicate al Qaeda from Iraq, stop the violence by them targeting our military and Iraqi civilians, and thus create a climate for all the different factions to come together and form a stable government.
I had no idea that the current Democrat presidential campaigns were inspiring, and/or coercing, the Iraqis to get their political house in order before Hillary assumes the office and pulls the plug on our military operations.
To think that the Democrat anti-war strategy has now evolved into one that moved from “The war is lost” to “I think what is motivating the Iraqi government is the debate in the political campaign here” is a glaring example of Clinton (and liberal) narcissism.
The mainstream media may give her a pass because they are like-minded, but that game will not be played here.
The Democrat Party, through their anti-war, defeatist rhetoric, emboldened the enemy, thus costing many of our soldiers and Iraqi civilians their lives. Hillary Clinton will not be allowed to re-write history.
The Surge is not “so-called” except in the minds of the anti-war left, and now officially in the mind of the woman who would be Commander in Chief. Remember that on Election Day
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