- (september 2008)
Sarah Palin, the typical bad choice.
A neighbor summarized the family of
Sarah Palin, McCain's choice for vicepresident (and therefore potential
USA president if McCain dies before ending his term) as
"a normal American family".
Sarah Palin is proud of having been hunting moose since a child. She kills
living beings that have done nothing wrong to her, just for fun. She is a
member of the NRA, whose sponsored gun laws kill more USA citizens than all
the world's terrorist organizations combined. She is a staunch anti-abortionist,
which means that she, a former beauty queen, got married very young with her
high-school sweetheart and has five children, including one that was diagnosed
with a serious disease even before being born (and that society will have
to support for the rest of his life) and
a pregnant unmarried teenage daughter.
Her husband was arrested for drinking and driving, a popular sport in the
USA heartland that kills hundreds of people every year.
Her son was a hockey player who got in trouble for his violent manners and
eventually joined the army.
Last but not least, she has virtually never traveled abroad: she got her
first passport in her fourties. She presumably knows absolutely zero of how
the rest of the world looks like.
It is indeed a typical American family: the kind that the world despises
and fears.
It is hard to judge her as a politician and an administrator because
literally tens of millions of USA citizens have more experience than her.
However, it is telling what she did as governor with the windfall from
her state's oil revenues: she distributed the surplus to Alaskans.
That's what sheiks do in the Middle East: rather than investing in
research, education, infrastructure and so forth, the sheiks give each
citizen a bit of the surplus and hope none of them will become the next
Osama bin Laden. Palin used the same logic: instead of investing in the
future of the state, she gave every voter a bone to chew.
She is a bad American stereotype with the bad mindset of a typical sheik.
Shame on McCain, who used to be a honest, competent and corageous politician.
He is now showing that he would be as incompetent as George W Bush.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (august 2008)
Health care kills.
The USA is one of the few developed countries that does not provide for
universal health care to its citizens. Doctors, hospitals and insurance
companies make money if you get sick. No wonder that a lot of USA citizens
are not insured. No wonder that those who are insured often end up being
chronically ill: the health care system has a vested economic interest in
making them sick for the rest of their lives. This is what the USA's health
care system achieves: USA citizens rank last in life expectancy among developed
countries
(See this article).
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (july 2008)
Karl Rove, crook.
A darling of the right-wing media (Fox News and the likes), Karl Rove
is one of the most disturbing figures in recent USA history. To his credit
(although he may not be remembered kindly for it), Rove architected
the two victories by a dumb and incompetent president, an amazing feat.
The damage caused to the USA, though, was colossal. It will take a generation
or more for the USA to recover from eight years of devastating decisions.
Rove worked for the shadowy "vast right-wing conspiracy" that wanted to
influence government to pass pro-gun, anti-abortion and pro-oil legislation
while cutting taxes for the extremely wealthy. It worked. Rove can be proud
of having succeeded in helping the rich get richer, demolishing the middle
class, killing thousands of innocents in the streets of USA cities, causing the
oil crisis that is greatly reducing the world power of the USA, and
turning the clock back on human rights.
Rove used methods that clearly violate the spirit (if not the letter) of
the USA constitution. The most offensive tactic that he used was to persecute
anyone (notably judges) who displayed even the slightest sympathy for liberal
ideas. People were hired and fired from their jobs based only on their
ideological sympathies. People were sent to jail based on how dangerous they
were for the supremacy of the Republican Party.
Basically, Rove applied the logic of fascist dictators.
In the country that fought and defeated fascism, this amounts to treason.
His refusal to testify in public about his role in destabilizing the USA
democracy is tantamount to admitting his guilt. Neither he nor his boss
should be forgiven. Politicians who tamper with democracy should be stripped
of their USA citizenship and expelled to countries that practice the same
abuses, such as their friends in Saudi Arabia, China and Egypt.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (june 2008)
Amend the amendment.
No terrorist organization kills more USA citizens than the NRA (National
Rifle Association).
The second amendment of the USA constitution recites "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".
This has been the justification for a civil war that has lasted since that
day to this day and killed more than one million USA citizens.
Not only do criminals kill at a rate ten times higher than in any other Western
society (where guns are banned), but ordinary USA citizens often grab a gun
and shoot people at random, whether in schools or offices or stores.
Whenever someone goes mad, five or ten or twenty people pay with their lives.
The USA constitution was far from a perfect object. It kept women and blacks
from voting, for example. It was a flawed document written by imperfect
people. That's why it has already been amended so many times. Besides, the
framers of that constitution wrote about the weapons that were available in
their time. They did not know what "arms" would be available in the 21st
century. Technically speaking, the USA constitution allows any ordinary citizen
of the USA to "bear" a nuclear weapon: an arm is an arm is an arm, right?
No, of course. Ordinary citizens cannot bear a nuclear weapon because there
has always been something that prevailed: common sense. Unfortunately,
common sense failed to prevent evil corporations, evil stores and evil
organizations such as the NRA from spreading deadly arms in the country,
turning it into the most armed country in the world, much worse than Iraq.
The second amendment talks about the "arms" that were available at the end
of the 18th century. If you don't want to scratch that amendment, well, at
least stick to it: USA citizens are free to bear any arm built before the
year in which that amendment was enacted, i.e. any 18th century gun.
In a sense, the second amendment should be amended precisely because in
reality it forbids the use of a gun even in circumstances in which it should
be allowed.
If you live in a remote, isolated area, maybe a (modern) gun is a necessity.
Otherwise, the only people with a gun should be
the police officers, the national guard and the military. Anybody else who
even thinks of owning a gun is, by definition, a potential murderer and
therefore belongs to a state prison.
(See The USA Supreme Court forbids individual states to ban guns)
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (june 2008)
A coalition for the 21st century.
Ronald Reagan is famously credited for forging the "Republican coalition":
social conservatives (i.e., Christian fundamentalists), business world,
and foreign-policy hawks. They apparently have nothing in common, but Reagan
somehow managed to create a majority by catering to these three groups.
There were voters who voted Republican even if they disagreed with one or more of the three issues: Republicans who favored abortion, Republicans who favored a redistribution of wealth, Republicans who did not want to get involved in wars abroad. But they were convinced by Reagan to vote for the common cause of not
letting the opposite side win.
George W Bush simply took advantage of the mathematics and won twice against
all odds. The results of his government, founded on that coalition, have been
catastrophic. Each of the three groups of the "Reagan coalition" have suddenly
realized how counterproductive the alliance with the other two groups can be.
Business-minded people found themselves sharing a president with anti-abortion
fanatics, and Christian fundamentalists founded themselves sharing a president
with foreign-intervention fanatics, and so on.
The fact that senator John McCain, hardly a social conservative, a friend of
the financial lobbies or a military hawk, is the Republica candidate of 2008
may signal the end of the Reagan coalition: the USA has had enough of the
disasters that this incoherent group of religious, financial and military
fanatics can cause. He certainly signals the ascent of the "independents",
an increasingly large group of voters who are fed up with the corruption and
incompetence of both parties.
Barack Obama may represent the rise of a new coalition that unites three new
groups: the social liberals (who defend abortion, gay rights and the separation
of state and church), the welfare liberals (who favor government-run programs
such as universal health care and taming corporate greed),
the foreign-policy isolationists (who want to greatly reduce the scope of USA
military involvement abroad).
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (june 2008)
Yankees go home.
A poll by the Pew Center
shows that
the vast majority of the world has a negative opinion of the USA and blames
the USA for its own economic problems
(See this table).
In the meantime, USA politicians (of both parties) claim that the USA has had
a benign influence on world affairs and that globalization has created
economic opportunities for the entire planet. Economists tend the agree that
without the USA's colossal import and outsourcing machine many countries
would not have had the kind of boom they have had.
In fact, there is evidence that the one country that is paying a price for
globalization is... the USA. When the capitalist world was a minority, the
USA enjoyed their biggest economic boom. Now that the capitalist world covers
almost the entire planet (de facto, even China), the USA is mired into one
of its worst economic stagnations.
There is a very simple way to solve this paradox: the USA may eventually
simply listen to world's public opinion and return to a policy of isolationism.
And the developing world will have to find a new market for its cheap products,
and a new employer for its cheap labor.
The USA should not engage in trade with any country whose public has
an unfavorable opinion of the USA. It makes literally no sense.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (june 2008)
The weak dollar and the trade deficit.
From the moment Bush II became president (or king?) of the USA, the USA adopted
a "weak dollar" policy because it would benefit exports. Given that the USA
had a colossal trade deficit (the largest in the history of the world), Bush II's
advisors reasoned that a lower dollar would make USA goods cheaper and therefore
help USA manufacturers export more goods abroad.
Seven years later the dollar has collapsed below the level of a third-world
currency (losing half of its value to the euro) but the USA is still waiting
to see any difference. In fact, USA citizens are beginning to appreciate a
very different kind of effect caused by the collapsing dollar: skyrocketing
oil prices.
The trade deficit keeps reaching one record level after the record, and it got
seriously worse in mid 2008.
(See this New York Times article).
The weak dollar does not help sell anywhere:
the deficit with China increased by 25.9% in april to $20 billion;
the deficit with Canada by 18.6% to $7.6 billion;
the deficit with Mexico by 14.2% to $6.8 billion;
the deficit with the European Union by 14% to $8.5 billion.
The USA does not want to look into the mirror and admit what everybody else
knows: foreigners just don't want USA products (with the obvious exceptions
in computers, music and movies). The dollar can go as low as zero, but
foreigners will still refuse to buy terrible cars that suck a lot of gasoline
and (this is not a joke) measure it in "gallons" and display the speed in
"miles" per hour. This is 2008, not 1908. The world has moved on. The USA
has lost its ability to compete in too many sectors. Lowering the dollar will
not help make a USA car appealing if the car fundamentally sucks.
On the other hand, the weak dollar is now becoming a massive boomerang because
USA citizens are still importing a lot of goods from abroad (they are wise
enough to realize that foreign cars tend to be a lot better than USA-made
cars and so forth). Because of the weak dollar, those foreign-made goods are
now getting more and more expensive. This is causing inflation, a general
rise in prices that is beginning to seriously hurt the average USA family.
It was nice to live in the age of cheap Chinese goods that were helping USA
families save on all sorts of expenses. Now the USA family might have to learn
to live in a world in which the choice is between a bad and expensive
USA-made product and a good but also expensive foreign-made product.
(In the meantime the one thing at which the USA was a lot better than China
has been all but destroyed: customer service).
The spike in inflation is particularly driven by oil prices. The price of oil
moves in the opposite direction of the dollar, so it should be no surprise that
the collapsing dollar has caused skyrocketing gasoline prices.
The USA public needs to be educated on the colossal blunders of its government
and on the fundamental weakness of its economy. When a presidential candidate
(John McCain) declares that "The fundamentals of our economy are very strong",
there is no hope in sight: just more decline and more suffering.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (june 2008)
Why gasoline hurts so much.
In recent times the USA has had major problems, from causing the death of
40,000 Iraqi civilians to creating the largest trade deficit in history, but
nothing has outraged the average USA citizen as much as the increase in the
price of gasoline. Europeans and Japanese smile because USA gasoline is still
ridiculously cheap by their international standards. But people in the USA
are not used to pay more than one dollar per liter ($4 per gallon), and they
don't know that Europeans pay twice that much (1.5 euros per liter, i.e.
$2.3 per liter, i.e. $7.80 per gallon, the awful measurement system that the USA
is still using). In fact economists point out that the price of gasoline has
not increased as much as many other things over the last three decades.
So one wonders what is the reason that it hurts so much.
It hurts so much because the USA (and particularly the central, southern
and western states) has never invested in public transportation. Europeans
and Japanese can travel long distances in a few hours on bullet trains.
USA citizens have a choice: drive or fly. Both are deadly choices (sometimes
literally so, since they are the most dangerous forms of travel).
Many USA cities (think of Los Angeles) have a very poor bus network, and
an even poorer subway system. Gasoline prices hurt because people don't have
a choice. They don't have a choice because they never wanted to invest in
public transportation that today would offer them a cheaper alternative.
California is an excellent example of USA madness when it comes to traveling.
The governor of California (a Hollywood star) decided to spend billions on
improving the roads, thus sending the state on the verge of bankruptcy.
Californians will soon have extra lanes to drive on their celebrated freeways,
but they may not be able to afford the gasoline to drive at all. Had California
invested in buses, trains, subways, today millions of Californians would simply
drive less and still travel the same distances. Instead, the state is broke
and Californians are hostages to gasoline prices.
You do pay a price for stupid decisions.
The second reason that gasoline prices hurt so much is that the USA automobile
industry invested mostly in producing bigger and bigger cars. Even poor
neighborhoods are overflowing with SUVs and trucks. The USA car industry has
been specializing in bad decisions for at least 40 years, and did not miss
this opportunity to make another colossal (possibly fatal) blunder: they
designed worse and worse cars (as far as gasoline mileage goes) without
foreseeing a near future in which drivers would demand better and better
cars. Japanese car manufacturers gladly obliged by producing the same kind
of monsters, but they also invested in good cars for their domestic market.
Today millions of USA citizens are stuck with gas-sucking monsters that
are rapidly becoming a form of financial suicide. You can sell that monster
for half of what you paid (thereby losing tens of thousands of dollars in one
day) or you can keep paying whatever price the gas companies ask you (thereby
losing thousands of dollars a year): choose which death you prefer to die of.
Thirdly, the middle class was already being squeezed by inflation. Inflation
has always been underestimated by official figures. If one considers housing,
health care and education (the three main items for almost every household),
inflation has been galloping for decades. Now food is also getting more
expensive (courtesy in part of misguided investments in ethanol as an
alternative to gasoline). At the same time the "cheap" goods imported from
the Far East are no longer that cheap, because the dollar keeps collapsing:
when the dollar goes down, prices of foreign goods go up. The USA has been
bashing cheap Chinese goods for a long time, but now its middle class has to
learn to live without those cheap goods.
People are paying more for just about everything.
None of this came as a surprise. It was widely predicted that oil would
skyrocket due to the growing demand of the developing world. It was visible
that the USA had not invested in any alternative to cars. It was obvious
that a declining dollar (like any declining currency) would cause inflation.
Since nothing has been done to rectify this situation,
it will keep hurting for a long time.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (june 2008)
They sure miss the American Dream.
Millions of USA citizens are complaining that the combination of the
mortgage crisis (they cannot afford to pay the mortgage on their houses)
and the gasoline crisis (they cannot afford to pay the gasoline for their
cars) is killing the American Dream. But not quite: it is them who are
killing the American Dream. They demand that the politicians do something
to save their homes and their cars, as if it were the politicians who signed
up for those killer mortgages and as if it were the politicians who bought
those ridiculous cars that consume so much gasoline.
The American Dream was never about rewarding the idiots. The American Dream
was about rewarding the geniuses. Darwin at work, literally. If the USA
politicians do anything to save the one million homes that are on foreclosure
and to reduce the price of gasoline, they will reward the millions of USA
citizens who, let's face it, are a burden, not an asset, for this country.
The USA is limiting immigration when it should be encouraging emigration.
The mortgage crisis is due to millions of USA citizens who bought homes that
they could not afford using loans that any schoolchild would know were not
safe. The gasoline crisis is due to millions of USA citizens who bought cars
that they could not afford and that consume gasoline at a rate two or three
times higher than the cars of other countries. Basically, these USA citizens
were betting that banks would lower interest rates and that oil producers would
lower oil prices. Who can be so naive?
Both crises had been widely predicted, because they were easy to predict.
The real scandal would be if anyone in Washington used the taxes of the USA
citizens who acted wisely and responsible to save the USA citizens who acted
stupidly and recklessly.
The damage caused by the irresponsible ones is much bigger than losing their
own homes. They indirectly fostered industries that should not have existed
in the first place: the ricky lenders and the huge-car manufacturers.
Take the latter. The USA car industry is now collapsing. The USA itself
buys more foreign cars than USA-made cars. Abroad hardly a single USA-made
car is sold anywhere in the world. The USA is manufacturing the worst cars
on the planet. This is the damage caused by the millions of USA citizens
who kept buying those terrible cars. They not only destroyed their household:
they destroyed a once vibrant sector of the USA economy.
Helping the bankrupt home owners or helping the huge-car owners would only
compound the problems.
Let us, instead, reward the wise and responsible USA citizens, by using their
money not to save the unwise and reckless citizens but to improve the system
for those who will now prosper in it: for example, build more public
transportation, develop alternative energy sources, offer free health care,
provide better education. The last thing their tax money should be used for
is to alleviate the trouble of those who spent recklessly.
No wonder that the dollar keeps collapsing. This is not a country that
anyone would believe in. It resembles the old Soviet Union, not the vibrant
USA of the Cold War.
(See also Learn from European discipline)
The presidential campaign of 2008 is very much about "change". But the real
change that has to come is not from the Washington politicians: it is from
the ordinary USA citizens. They have to change the way they think and the way
they behave. Stop driving gas-sucking monsters and stop spending over your
means (and, while we are at it, stop doing drugs, as the USA is still the
number-one consumer of illicit drugs in the world while it complains about
gasoline prices).
That's the "change" that the USA needs the most.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (may 2008)
Change?
If there are two recent bills that define everything that is wrong with
Washington politics, they are the 2005 energy bill (that the Washington Post called "a broad collection of subsidies for energy companies", and David Brooks in the New York Times summarized as a "Christmas tree for the oil industry") and the $307 billion dollar farm bill that just passed this month, a wonderful example
of subsidies for just about anybody who can afford to buy a vote in Washington.
Barack Obama voted in favor of both bills.
The despised president, George W Bush, had pledged to veto this last pork-barrel
bill. Barack Obama, probably eager to win the votes of agricultural states,
voted in favor of it. Bush did what Obama promised: fight lobbies, special
interests, corruption. Obama (not famous for throwing too many votes in his
career) stood on the other side, next to the lobbies, the special interests,
the corrupt politicians. Change?
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (april 2008)
The thirty-year recession.
Two presidents stand out as having crippled the USA economy for generations to
come: Ronald Reagan and George W Bush.
The median household income in the USA more than doubled between the end of
World War II and the end of the Jimmy Carter presidency. Since then it has
risen mainly on paper. It did increase under Clinton, but it has slightly
declined during the Bush era. In world currencies, the median household income
in the USA has actually declined, because the dollar is worth a lot less than
it used to. The rest of the world has been getting richer while the USA has
been getting poorer.
Reagan had two bright idea that screwed the USA economy. The first one was to
make government smaller, which translated into reversing a trend started at
the end of World War II if not during the Great Depression. For many decades
the USA government had invested in infrastructures (from the freeway system to
the space race). Those massive government projects mainly helped the middle
class. Reagan reversed that trend when he decided that the government should
stay out of people's businesses. Government still helped big corporations (that
always manage to influence Washington through their lobbies) but stopped helping
the middle class for real (because the middle class has precious few lobbies
fighting for it in Washington). Reagan de facto invented the lobby-driven
economy, in which the government spends even more than before but not on
stragetic large-scale projects: it spends on local pork-barrel projects.
Indirectly, Reagan caused a colossal increase in corruption (because that's
ultimately what pork-barrel projects are).
The second demented invention of the Reagan years was a tax code that greatly
favored the rich. Bush continued that work by making the tax code even more
favorable to the wealthy ones (whom, by the way, were also the main recipients
of his trillion-dollar tax cut).
Reagan's idea was that the wealth of the successful capitalists would eventually
"trickle down" to the middle class. It never did. It has trickled down to
countless villas on the French riviera, but not to the average Joe in the USA.
Clinton didn't undo Reagan. Bush topped Reagan in terms of unfair legislation.
It is up to the next president to salvage what can be salvaged: increase
taxes, balance the budget, launch some grand government projeects and shut
down pork-barrel
projects and, last but not least, teach the effects of the Reagan and Bush
presidencies in every school of Economics.
(See Record unemployment in the USA)
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (march 2008)
The specter of a new Reagan.
John McCain wants to appeal to a broad segment of the USA electorate by
presenting himself as the heir to former president and Republican icon
Ronald Reagan. Reagan is still widely respected in the USA even by enemies
of the Republican Party.
Nonetheless, it was under Reagan's watch that the USA supported a mad Arab
dictator, Saddam Hussein, when the said madman ventured in his first invasion
of a neighboring country (the invasion of Iran in 1980). Nonetheless, it was
under Reagan's watch that the USA supported international Islamic fighters in
Afghanistan (apparently fighting the Soviet invasion of the country
but in reality, as we learned later, fighting a global jihad against the "infidels"), namely a young Osama bin Laden. It was under Reagan's watch that the
USA granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, with the promise that
this would put an end to illegal immigration (it actually encouraged more of
it). It was under Reagan's watch that the USA became the world's bigger debtor,
igniting a spiral of both trade and budget deficits. Last but not least, Reagan
signed the largest tax increase in the history of the USA.
So the question for senator McCain is simple: as president of the USA, will you
support a dictator whom 20 years later the USA will have to remove at the
cost of thousands of lives? Will you help train and arm terrorists that, 20
years later, will attack the USA?
Will you grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants to that even more
illegal immigrants will be encouraged to enter the USA?
Will you further increase the budget deficit? And will you sign the largest
tax increase in history?
When you compare yourself to Reagan, are these your campaign promises?
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (march 2008)
How Bush engineered the worst recession in modern times.
In june 2001 i predicted that George W Bush's economic policies will cause
the worst recession in modern
times. It is sad to be proven true.
The USA is now for the first time in modern times facing the reality of
collapsing stock markets, collapsing real estate, collapsing dollar, rising
inflation, rising unemployment, record oil prices, record gold prices, etc.
The price of dold hit $1,000 for the first time ever, oil passed $110 a barrel, the dollar set another all-time low against the euro (1.56) and dipped below 100 yen (a drop of 6.5% in less than three months), home prices plunged 9.1%.
With the latest rise in the value of the euro, the Eurozone has overtaken the
USA as the world's largest economy (measured by market exchange rates).
The Federal Reserve can keep cutting interest rates as much as it likes.
It will not undo the damage that George W Bush caused when he cut taxes.
That trillion dollars does make a difference. It all started with a
ballooning USA budget deficit. As a comparison, the worst critics of the
Iraqi invasion estimate that it costs 12 billion dollars a month. That's
144 billion a years. That's still a drop in the bucket compared with Bush's
tax cut.
All the USA citizens who rejoiced in 2001 when they received a $300 cheque
have only themselves to blame for what is going to happen to them.
(See Record unemployment in the USA)
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (march 2008)
Learn from European discipline.
The USA Federal Bank has aggressively cut interest rates to cope with an
emergency of sorts: millions of USA citizens who borrowed beyond their means.
This has not prevented stock markets from falling back to the levels of five
years ago, but has prevented housing from collapsing. It has had an indirect
effect on currencies, pushing the dollar to all-time lows (the lower the
interest rates, the less appealing the currency for investors). The low
dollar has in turn made imported goods more expensive (the protectionists
finally have it their ways, as imports are decreasing because domestic goods
are becoming competitive). In simple words, the lower interest rates cause
a weak dollar that causes inflation.
The European Federal Bank has taken a completely different approach. They
have repeated that their job is to prevent inflation, not to rescue people who
made bad decisions. Thus the European Union has not cut interest rates at all.
The euro has reached an all-time high, ridiculing the USA dollar. That is
a ironic reverse of fortunes, because many in the USA were making fun of the
euro when it was first introduced. (They obviously rank among the great idiots
of the new century).
The problem with the actions of the USA Federal Bank is not only that they are
slowly turning the USA currency into a joke. The problem is also moral: this
policy of lowering interest rates is hurting the very USA citizens that should
be rewarded for doing the right thing: saving money when others were buying
homes that they cannot afford. These wise citizens are punished three times
by the Federal Reserve: 1. The nation is de facto using their tax money to
help the people who made bad decisions; 2. The nation is using their tax money
to keep house prices unaffordable for them; 3. The nation is using their tax
money to cause inflation that hurts their finances.
Europe is rewarding the wise people who made the right decisions. The USA
is punishing the wise people who made the right decisions.
One place is rewarding smart people, the other place is rewarding idiots.
It doesn't take an economic genius to figure out where these policies will
lead to in the long term.
(In fact, the European bank increased interest rates in July instead of decreasing them).
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (february 2008)
What the Democrats don't say.
The presidential candidate of the Democratic Parts (whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton) will have a hard time against John McCain because of the incredible number of hidden issues and fictional notions that the Party is indulging in:
- The surge worked. Had John McCain been president, maybe the war in Iraq would have lasted only a couple of years. Had a Democrat been president, Saddam Hussein would still be in power and in these seven years he may have killed more people and started another war somewhere else, and possibly acquired the very weapons of mass destruction that were not there in 2003.
- If the USA withdraws from Iraq before order is restored, the USA will have lost yet another war, after Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia. Each loss emboldened the enemy and brought about another war. I doubt that all the Muslim extremists in the world will see a USA withdrawal from Iraq as a sign of USA strength. They will see it as a sign of Allah's strength.
- Harry Truman attacked Korea without approval from Congress. Bill Clinton attacked Serbia without approval from Congress. It is not even clear which president started the Vietnam war. The Democratic candidates pledge that they would not start a war without Congress approval. Nobody in his own mind believes it. It takes a few minutes to manufacture a story that will justify and emergency.
- Social Security as it is will be bankrupt within six years. No Democratic candidate has explained what s/he will do: increase taxes, reduce benefits, abolish Social Security. There is no other way to fix Social Security.
- Guns kill a lot more USA citizens than any terrorist organization in the world. No candidate of the Democratic Party has spoken out on how to stop the carnage that kills a lot more USA citizens than the Iraqi war.
- Every economist in the USA thinks that global trade is good for the USA economy, and in fact accounts for the unprecedented era of economic growth since the end of World War II. The Democratic Party is growing increasingly protectionistic, despite the mountains of evidence that protectionism has caused great depressions in the past.
- Russia is growing more and more totalitarian. Neither candidate of the Democratic party has explained how they will cope with an increasingly aggressive and totalitarian Russia that still has the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
- The totalitarian regime of mainland China is rapidly improving its army, navy and air force, and even experimenting with "star wars". Neither candidate of the Democratic party has explained how they will cope with the arms race started by China in the Pacific region.
- Most of USA trade partners in the world, notably mainland China and the Arab countries, severely limit what part of the World-wide Web can be viewed by their citizens, thereby distorting their view of the world and typically brainwashing them against USA principles and interests. Neither candidate of the Democratic Party has a said a word against this behavior.
- A recent study published in Science shows that ethanol (once you consider the whole process) would produce more greenhouse gases than gasoline. Nonetheless both Democratic Candidates support ethanol as an alternative to gasoline.
- The studies on Climate Change are far from having reached any consensus on what is happened to the weather's climate and what is causing it. The Democratic candidates promise to pass laws to prevent a human-made "climate change" whose existence is dubious and whose effects are dubious.
Whoever wins the nomination for the Democratic Party will have a hard time to
stand up against John McCain, who has simple and plausible answers to all of these issues (you may not agree with them, but at least he has told you what he thinks about them).
John McCain is also the one candidate who has a record of fighting against corruption (voting on thorny issues instead of abstaining like Barack Obama consistently did and instead of getting involved in all sorts of corruption scandals like the Clintons did).
He is the only one who can show real actions (not just words)
to curb the influence of special-interest groups in Washington and pork-barrel bills. In a debate between the Democratic candidate and John McCain it will take more than empty rhetoric.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (february 2008)
The Cuba embargo.
As Fidel Castro announced that he was resigning, the Bush administration
responded by saying that it will keep the trade embargo in place because his
brother and successor Raul Castro is a "dictator lite" (meaning that he is
a little better but still a dictator).
Why in heaven a "dictator lite" deserves a trade embargo whereas the brutal
dictators of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and so forth enjoy full USA
cooperation and friendship, is beyond anyone's moral understanding.
The USA is a country whose trade with mainland China (a country that holds
several records in human-rights abuses) is booming.
The USA is a country that just restored diplomatic ties with Libya, despite
the fact that Libya's Qaddafi is now the new longest-lasting dictator
in the world (Castro was the previous one).
The only reason to single out cuba among all countries in the world is to
please the obsessed right-wing Cubans in Florida, an important "swing" state
for the next elections. The Cuban people may one day remember that the USA
ruling class was more interested in winning a few votes in Florida than in
helping millions of Cubans live a decent life.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (february 2008)
USA medicine kills.
Suicides are increasing in the USA, killing 32,000 people a year.
Almost half of them are middle-aged people (40-64 years old).
Suicide used to be associated with elderly people (75 and over).
Now the highest rate is among people aged 45-54.
The increase seems to have started around 1999.
The increase among women aged 50-54 is particularly staggering: almost 30%.
(See this CDC's article).
There is no economic factor to justify this sudden rise in suicides among
adults. The prime suspects are illicit drugs (that increase the chances of
a suicide by up to 2500%) and... legal drugs. USA doctors are fond of
prescribing all sorts of medicines for their patients, a fact that keeps
a multi-billion dollar biomedical economy going. Many of those medicines have
been proven to be useless or even dangerous. USA citizens routinely learn
that medicines prescribed in a previous decade were actually a bad idea and
now explain some other disease (for which new improved drugs are prescribed
that may cause new improved diseases!)
Beware of your doctor.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (february 2008)
Western vs Islamic terrorism.
Throughout the Islamic world the view that the world should unite to fight
Al Qaeda's terrorism is ridiculed because the USA and Israel are blamed for
worse terrorist acts than Al Qaeda's.
The single weakest argument by the West is the one that should be the
foundation for the whole strategy: that the civilized world does not practice
terrorism.
The Islamic world is right, though: the USA and Israel do practice terrorism.
It is a different kind of terrorism, but it is difficult (a semantic nonsense)
to claim that the missile shot into a crowded Palestinian street or the carpet
bombing from the sky of a city like Baghdad do not constitute terrorism.
Any act that terrorize ordinary people is an act of terrorism. When the USA
drop powerful bombs on a neighborhood, children are traumatized for years to
come. Every time a child hears the roaring of a jet, she panics, knowing that
within a few seconds an entire building will be annihilated and
families exterminated, and it could be her house and her family.
Modern high-tech warfare is not humane. Ancient warfare at least gave the victim
some warning and a chance to escape. Modern high-tech warfare does not.
It is claimed that high-tech warfare reduces civilian casualties. There is
evidence that this is indeed the case: the number of civilians killed by the USA
in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq is much lower than the number of civilians
killed in previous wars. The fact is even more obvious for Israel: while
routinely accused of atrocities by Palestinians, Israel kills fewer Palestinians
in a year than Jordan or Syria killed in weeks when they did it with traditional
warfare. Nonetheless innocents are still getting killed .
Even when it does not kill innocents, a powerful bomb or missile does
terrorize them.
The point that the West has not been able to make convincingly is that there
is killing and killing. One thing is to kill a criminal, one thing is to
kill a honest person by accident, and one thing is to kill a honest person
on purpose. All three are killings. But the semantics is very different.
Any society punishes them in different ways.
Israel and the USA have consistently failed to prove to the Islamic world (and
often to their own public opinion) that Western terrorism is of the first and
second kind only, whereas Al Qaeda's terrorism and Palestinian terrorism are
of the third kind.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (february 2008)
The Great American Fascist Alliance.
At the beginning of the 21st century the USA, a country of great intellectual
traditions that has inspired intellectuals all over the world, enjoys the
dubious record of having some of the most biased, unfair and demagogic
commentators in the world.
Former drug addict Rush Limbaugh, possibly the most barbaric of them all,
draws a daily audience of 13 million people.
He ranks with the worst propagandists of Hitler's Germany.
Former alcoholic Glenn Beck, compulsive liar Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly all published books that became best-sellers.
Their tv shows and/or books make Al Jazeera look fair and unbalanced.
They form what i labeled the "Great American Fascist Alliance".
They routinely attack any politician who dares attack their right-wing
sponsors. They steadfastedly (and comically) supported every lie and every
blunder than came out of the Bush/Rumsfeld government. They literally rallied
a skeptic USA public opinion to the rescue of Bush's failed policies (until
it became a bit too obvious that they were wrong on every single issue).
It is a good sign that in 2008 they are attacking in concert the Republican
candidate for president (they who were the cheerleaders of George W Bush):
John McCain is guilty of having drafted a campaign-finance law that has
limited the political influence of the lobbies. John McCain involuntarily
crippled the financial foundations of the Great American Fascist Alliance.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (february 2008)
Demonizing Iran.
Bill O'Reilly, one of the cheerleaders of the Bush administration, whose daily tv show draws millions of viewers in the USA, once
discussed a (terrible) Hollywood movie and defended its anti-Persian bias by
claiming that the Persians were not a great civilization but barbarians who
tried to invade the civilized world of Greece, forgetting that the one who
invaded the whole world (razing Persepolis to the ground) was Alexander the
Great, later followed by the likes of Caesar, Napoleon and Hitler
(Tip for tv show hosts: some things are best left to historians).
In february 2008 John McCain referred to Iran as a country that has historically
tried to dominate its region. McCain clearly does not know that Iran/Persia
was invaded by Alexander and his Greek-speaking successors, the Arabs and the
Mongols, then coveted by Britain and Russia, then controlled by the USA that
engineered a coup to install a puppet dictator.
(Tip for politicians: some things are best left to historians).
The truth is that Iran is one of the ancient civilizations of the world. It
probably invented monotheism (the Jews became monotheistic after being saved
by the Persians from the Babylonians). It rivaled Greece for centuries.
it then rivaled Rome for centuries. It then rivaled the Arabs for centuries
(the majority of Islamic intellectuals were Persian).
While other empires kept coming and going, Iran transformed itself and remained
a center of political, economic, scientific and artistic power.
But it rarely aimed at conquering its neighbors. It was conquered, repeatedly.
What O'Reilly and McCain prove is that the USA is still practicing the old
European tactic of demonizing the enemy.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (february 2008)
Texas makes Arabian human rights look good.
In surveying the abysmal human-rights record of the Arabian peninsula, one finds
that there is a piece of the West that almost competes with them.
Last year Texas, already not the most popular of places in the world, carried
out its 400th death penalty. It was a great day for terrorists
all over the world, that rejoyced seeing their methods applied which such
diligence and competence by a vastly more powerful country.
It was a sad day for the civilized world.
Texas is part of the USA, the country that preaches human rights and democracy
around the world at the tune of thousands of bombs and hundreds of thousands
of invading troops.
All in the name of "liberating" people from barbaric regimes.
Perhaps the USA should first bomb, invade and liberate Texas.
The governor of Texas made it clear that he doesn't have the slightest interest
in finding out if a conviction was right or wrong. He just wants to kill them
as fast as possible.
The world should not tolerate states like Texas in any world organization.
Let Texas join the likes of Saudi Arabia, mainland China, Iran and North Korea
(the only major countries that execute more people than Texas) in a
"League of State Terrorists".
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (february 2008)
Destroying more evidence.
The USA has announced that six Arab prisoners of the Guantanamo Bay
concentration camp will be brought to justice for their alleged involvement
in the 2001 terrorist attacks that killed about 3,000 people. Notably on trial
will be the mastermind of those attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
As customary in Saudi Arabia, communist China, North Korea, Iran and the USA,
the defendants will be killed if found guilty.
Since we already know that they will be found guilty, this means that another
important witness will soon be unable to grant interviews to the media.
Just like Saddam Hussein was killed before he could give his version of the
facts to any media, so Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will soon follow him among the
many famous names whose voice we never heard.
The zealousness with which the USA keeps the "suspects" away from the media
does not escape the Arab public opinion. USA citizens might be willing to
believe that people like Saddam Hussein and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed have
nothing to tell, but the Arab world believes otherwise: these are people who
have a lot of stories to tell. And, de facto, the USA is keeping the world
from hearing what they have to tell.
Let journalists from all over the world interview them before they get
sentenced to death.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (february 2008)
The USA is no longer the right pulpit to preach democracy.
The USA preaches democracy, freedom and the likes to the Arab world.
Most USA citizens sincerely believe in the message. Unfortunately most USA
citizens are only superficially aware of how much their government is controlled
by "special interests", by the powerful "lobbies" based in Washington.
The rest of the world, on the contrary, is painfully aware that the USA government stands for
neither free market nor clean government.
For example, a 2005 Washington Post editorial unveiled how the USA government
sets quotas for sugar and restricts imports. This policy drives prices much higher
than what would be the price in a free market.
"Sugar producers, notably in Florida, a battleground electoral state, pocket $1 billion a year in excess profits". This is the net effect of subsidies that
are paid by USA taxpayers. The same taxpayers is de-facto taxed a second time
when s/he buys sugar at a much higher price than it should be.
Sugar producers use their colossal profits to contribute to the political
campaign of corrupt politicians who help keep this system in place.
While the USA promotes free trade and free markets outside its borders, it has
a system of subsidies and laws in effect that keeps poor countries from selling
their products at competitive prices in the USA.
As Firas Ahmad wrote in the Islamica magazine:
"The ability of lobbies to circumvent national interests to secure political and economic gains for the few is a form of institutionalized and systematic corruption. It represents a fundamental challenge to American democracy. It also has grave consequences for America's relationship with the rest of the world, especially developing countries" ("America" means USA in the Arab world).
While the USA promotes its political system in the Arab world,
the political process of the USA is perceived by just every person in the world
as very flawed. In order to get elected, candidates need to spend money.
They raise that money from lobbies. The candidates that win the election has
to return the favor by passing the laws that the lobbies demand.
This is the definition of "USA-style democracy" in the world.
It will take more than words to change this perception.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (february 2008)
Comical Ali, Powell, Rumsfeld, Bush.
A fellow passenger on a flight from Kuwait to Dubai reminded me of "Comical
Ali". That was the Iraqi spokesman who kept pretending that Saddam Hussein's
Iraq was winning against the USA during the 2003 invasion. This man was widely
quoted throughout the Arab world and derided in the West.
He famously denied the presence of USA troops in Baghdad while USA troops were
entering the center of the city.
The Arab world, though, has other and more important "comical" figures
to deride. First is Colin Powell, USA secretary of state who in february 2003
gave a spectacular presentation at the United Nations (spectacularly flawed)
in which he described in detail Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
that (it turned out) did not exist. Second is Donald Rumsfeld, USA secretary
of defense who consistently denied the obvious. He famously scorned the rise in
USA casualties in Iraq as a "spike" that would soon die out. He infamously
disguised every massacre of innocent Iraqi civilians by USA troops as a killing
of ferocious terrorists. The third "comical" USA figure is George W Bush, the
man who declared "mission accomplished" while the insurgents were just beginning
to slaughter his soldiers in Iraq.
(One can go further back in time, to the day when George Bush I sent a tearful 15-year old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah to tell Congress and the whole USA how she had been raped by the invading troops of Saddam Hussein, see this article, except that it turned out she wasn't even in Kuwait at the time... "comical" indeed).
The USA public opinion does not make fun of these episodes because, alas,
the Iraqi war is far from being a light matter now that 4,000 USA soldiers have
died and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been slaughtered.
But the Arab world has not forgetten (and will not easily forget) the most
"comical" figures of this whole botched affair. Their comedians have enough
material to make several generations of Arabs laugh.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (january 2008)
The ideal president
The next president of the USA is usually chosen by the large sector of
independents (whom, alas, do not get to choose the party candidates that
they will have to vote for). Independents are not interested in rhetoric
or demagogy. They do not take sides based on labels such as "liberal" or
"conservative". They are not easily convinced by comparisons with Bill Clinton
or Ronald Reagan. They care, first and foremost, about difficult issues that
will not be solved with just words. The conundrum is that each party
is a solution for some of them but a problem for others. Neither party
reassures on all the issues.
Here is a list of which of the major (major) candidates is best for you,
based on their statements and (more importantly) their record:
- Uniting the country. After eight diviside years under Bush the country
is eager to regain a sense of unity.
Vote for: John McCain.
- Fighting special interests. The country feels that their politicians
constitute a form of organized crime that passes laws based on how much
money they receive from lobbies.
Vote for: John Edwards, John McCain.
- Reducing the influence of religious groups. The USA is one of the few
countries in the world that welcomes people of any religion. It is against
the very nature of the USA that any religion (for example the ones that
believe in the Bible as a divine book) should influence politics.
Vote for: John Edwards, Hillary Clinton.
- Reviving the economy. The USA has the largest trade deficit in history.
The USA dollar is one of the weakest currencies in the world. The USA
government is running a deficit that makes most European "social welfare"
governments look frugal. Individuals and companies are no less indebted.
All these forms of debt combine to threaten the USA economy.
It is beginning to look like an impossible job.
While several of the candidates have experience dealing with the economy
"in normal times", there is nobody on the face of the Earth who has ever
dealt with this kind of crisis. It probably takes a major flight of imagination
to fix the USA economy devastated by eight years of Bush economics.
Vote for: a miracle.
- Energy independence. The USA became a world's superpower when it was
self-sufficient in energy, which is the key ingredient of any industrial
society. The USA cannot be self-sufficient anymore if it does not change
model, investing in new forms of energy and reviving the nuclear sector.
Vote for: John McCain, Mike Huckabee.
- Winning the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The USA has already lost too
many wars (Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia). It cannot afford to keep
losing, especially in the Islamic world. Its enemies (notably the Islamic
terrorists) are just waiting for Iraq to cause the collapse of the USA
the way Afghanistan caused the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Vote for: John McCain.
- Securing the borders. The USA is the only country in the world whose
borders are broken.
Vote for: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani
- Protecting the USA from terrorists.
Vote for: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain
- Rationalizing immigration. The USA was built on immigration. It became
the world's superpower thanks to immigration. The problem is not that
current laws are not enforced. The problem is that the current laws are
ridiculous. Legalize illegal immigrants who deserve to be citizens.
Speed up the process for legal immigrants.
Distribute immigration fairly among all nationalities.
Vote for: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama
- Universal health care. The USA is the only Western country that does
not protect its citizens against the most common of tragedies: illness.
Vote for: John Edwards, Hillary Clinton.
- Balancing the budget. Increase taxes if necessary, but, just like in
any families, the USA should never spend above its means. If it needs to
spend more, it should tax more. If it doesn't want to tax more, then it
should spend less.
Vote for: John McCain, Hillary Clinton.
- Reducing the wealth gap. Increasing taxes on the rich and subsidizing
health care, education and the likes would help reducing one of the highest
wealth gaps in the world.
Vote for: John Edwards.
- Gun control. The USA has more guns per capita than any country in the
world. USA citizens are killed by guns at a rate that compares with death
rates in countries torn by civil wars.
Vote for: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards.
- Abolition of the death penalty. The USA is the only democracy that
still enjoys killing its own citizens by the dozens. It ranks with China,
Saudi Arabia and Iran among the countries that execute the most people.
All the people executed are poor: they could not afford a good attorney.
Vote for: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards.
- Funding research and innovation. The USA has lost its edge against
the Far East and sometimes even Europe in several technological areas.
Vote for: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, John McCain.
- Improving education. USA children consistently rank low in international
tests of education.
Vote for: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, John McCain.
- Stemming the bearkdown of the family. History teaches that the breakdown
of the family always brings the decline of a civilization (from ancient
Rome to modern Western Europe).
Vote for: Mike Huckabee.
- Rationalizing the laws on drugs. Either they are illegal and users should go to jail, or it is ok to use them and then we should just legalize them.
Vote for: John McCain.
- Investing in public transportation. The USA cannot the network of
bullet trains and local buses that make transportation invulnerable to
terrorist attacks on planes.
Vote for: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards.
- Maintaining military supremacy over emerging and old powers. More and more countries are achieving nuclear status. Countries such as China are developing
the technology to shoot down USA satellites. There is a serious chance that,
sooner or later, the USA will be hit with a dirty nuclear attack.
The USA needs to develop new forms of protection and aggression that will
make current warfare negligible.
Vote for: John McCain, Hillary Clinton.
- Reviving the space race. It is a matter of prestige and of legacy
to future generations that the USA should lead an aggressive space race
to explore other planets.
Vote for: nobody.
- Reducing pollution. The USA is the world's largest polluter.
Vote for: John Edwards, John McCain.
- Improving the image of the USA around the world. The USA has never been
hated so much by so many people in so many countries.
Vote for: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (january 2008)
Bloomberg for president.
As the longest presidential campaign in USA history drags on, voters have
plenty of time to decide which candidate they dislike the most.
At the end of the day, they all project a negative image.
Most of them are obviously paid by powerful lobbies. Many of them have always
been and still are incompetent. Those who have been or are members of
Congress have lower approval ratings than George W Bush. Each and every one
of them has flip-flopped at least once on major issues, and the flip-flop
has never (never) gone against the polls. USA voters are entertained by
debates in which the candidates argue about comic issues such as gay marriage,
flag burning or whether the Bible (a holy book for Christians) has to be
believed literally, in which they
boast of how many guns they have (one even boasting that he learned to shoot
at ten, which probably made him a much desired recruit by Iraqi insurgents
and Al Qaeda terrorists) and of how proud they are of being members of the largest terrorist organization in the world (see The largest terrorist organization in the world kills 32 USA citizens).
The leading Republican candidate is even a Christian preacher: imagine how
the USA would react if an Islamic country chose an Islamic cleric for
president...
Not one of them has articulated a credible energy policy (that would liberate
the USA from the dependency on foreign oil), a credible foreign
policy (other than "let's surrender in Iraq and anywhere else"), a credible
economic policy (how do we rescue a superpower whose currency is worth nothing
and whose trade deficit is the largest in world history?), a credible
social policy (how do we make sure that this superpower give their citizens
the basic benefits that most Western countries, some of them much poorer,
have been giving for decades to their citizens?), a credible security policy
(for a superpower whose border can be violated by just about any enemy who
has the money to pay for a trip to Mexico).
How much respect they would get from the rest of the world? None: not one of
them opposes guns and not one of them opposes the death penalty. They would
simply reinforce the image that USA citizens are barbarians with nuclear
weapons.
USA voters are faced with a bunch of cowards who bend to whoever shouts
louder, whether Lou Dobbs (whose witch-hunt against immigrants are scaring
away scores of bright scientists and engineers and whose communist ideology
against free trade will devastate the USA middle class just like it did
under Stalin and Mao) or the Republican anti-tax fanatics
(who are responsible for gasoline being so cheap that USA consumers keep
buying too much of it and for the death of thousands of citizens who cannot
afford health insurance) or Christian fundamentalists who are no better
than their Islamic counterparts.
After eight years of Bush rule, presidential candidates like these will finish
the job of destroying the USA.
Both parties have shown time and again that cannot be trusted.
It is time for an independent to stand up and get rid of all this religious,
anti-immigration, anti-trade, anti-tax, pro-gun nonsense. The USA was not
founded on stupidity.
The USA needs a president Who can:
- restore public confidence in the political system
- unite the country instead of dividing it
- restore USA prestige around the world
New York mayor and philanthopist Michael Bloomberg is widely seen as the only
person who could successfully run for president as an independent.
He has distanced himself from both Democrats and Republicans.
He is not associated to any lobby of Washington corruption. He is competent at
least in Economics, if not on foreign policy. He has never joined the hysterial
crusades against free trade and open immigration.
Since he is a Jew, maybe they will stop asking candidates silly questions about
the Christian faith.
Believe it or not, he's even opposed to the death penalty. Wow: a USA politician
who actually looks civilized.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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