evanmorris.com
From the monthly archives: September 2008
By Steve Maich
I’ll be writing a lot more about this in the upcoming issue, but at the risk of getting ahead of myself, I have to express my sadness at the goings on south of the border right now. The U.S. government is in the process of negotiating a bailout plan which will likely come in at close to double the cost of the Iraq war so far. We are told that this is regrettable but necessary in order to prevent worldwide financial Armageddon.
I’m not buying it. I think we have all been traumatized by ghost stories about financial calamities, and we are so frightened by them, that we will accept just about any lunatic policy proposal that promises to keep the boogey man at bay. Congress is debating a US$700 billion proposal to buy virtually worthless assets from hundreds of financial institutions that made out like bandits while the market was rising. The package will almost surely exceed a trillion dollars before it’s all settled. Nobody is even bothering to try to argue that this is right. Only that it is unavoidable. But is it?
We’ve had market crashes before. We’ve had bad recessions before. They’re not nice, but we survive them. Part of what has helped us survive is the distinction between private enterprise and public finance. Public finance should be used to address the damage from market crashes. If you had a trillion dollars to spend, you could do an enormous amount to help people hurt by a market crash. With a trillion dollars, you could create a public program to halt home forecloures, for example. You could go on a massive public infrastructure spending program to employ all the tradespeople hurt by the housing collapse (and address a huge and simmering long–term threat to the economy at the same time). That’s just two examples.
They have managed to terrify people, in order to convince them that this is the only way they could prevent a return to the Great Depression. I think they’re saddling our generation, and our kids generation with a greatly diminished future, for the sake of temporarily bolstering the status quo, and bailing out a handful of incredibly irresponsible institutions that ought to be allowed to fail.
Instead they’re blowing up another bubble…the tech bubble burst and flowed into the housing bubble. now the housing bubble has burst and is inflating a U.S. national debt bubble financed overwhelmingly by foreign capital. When it goes, there’ll be nowhere to turn for help.
Paulson’s folly : All Business : Blog Central : Business : Macleans.ca Blog Central.
In what respect, Katie?
“All of them”? What is she, 14?
Thank you, Richard Stallman. I cannot believe how many otherwise rational people trust Google with their mail and documents. No wonder you can’t work up a critical mass of resistance to government surveillance in the US and UK. These idiots want their mail filtered through an advertising engine and stored on a private corporation’s servers because it’s … cool? Convenient? What? And the corporation has promised to “not be evil”? Oh, OK then. My bad. But none for me, thanks. Those people have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize profits, and I find that a teeny bit incompatible with my idea of security.
The concept of using web-based programs like Google’s Gmail is “worse than stupidity”, according to a leading advocate of free software.
Cloud computing – where IT power is delivered over the internet as you need it, rather than drawn from a desktop computer – has gained currency in recent years. Large internet and technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Amazon are pushing forward their plans to deliver information and software over the net.
But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said that cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.
“It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign,” he told The Guardian.
“Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.”
The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third party.
His comments echo those made last week by Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who criticised the rash of cloud computing announcements as “fashion-driven” and “complete gibberish”.
Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder | Technology | guardian.co.uk.
Howard Kurtz sez there are shoes left to drop:
Palin was halting, repetitive and occasionally stumped on basic questions. And the worst moments — boasting again, Tina Fey-like, of Alaska’s proximity to Russia — have been endlessly replayed on other networks and the Web.
It may have been a turning point for Couric, who was persistent without being overbearing, in shedding early doubts about her ability to be a commanding presence in the CBS anchor chair. And the worst may be yet to come for Palin; sources say CBS has two more responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing.
Howard Kurtz – ‘Substantive’ Press Is Taken for a Spin – washingtonpost.com.
Gosh, given the fact that all the networks ran Howard Dean’s “scream” every 19 seconds, 24/7, for weeks in 2004, I can’t imagine what’s preventing CBS from doing their duty to the voting public.
FREE SARAH PALIN!
today’s moodcat
