There Is a Silver Lining

This is the most clear, concise, and hopeful article that I have read since this debate has started. The American public has tightened their belt and put their heads down for the troubled times and it is our competitive, innovative, and winning spirit that will light the way for humanity in the future. Business ethics was taught in schools but not enforced to those that capitalized on the greatest extortion of our society in all of its 300 years of existence. If the movie "Wall Street" taught us anything the "greed is good" mantra preached by Micheal Douglas on the big screen completely foreshadowed this particular moment. We were lied to and blindly signed our lives away to salesmen who's idea of the "greater good" was getting a "greater paycheck" no matter what the cost to others in terms of human suffering. Goodbye extravagance. Goodbye trips to the mall for $400 designer sunglasses. This wake up call was way overdue. Your life doesn't have to be fabulous or resemble anything like the superstars on t.v. to be great. Its time to search within for happiness instead of through this illusion that it is attainable through unsustainable wealth.

How is American going to change the bad habbits? Will America put down the empire and give the world peace and change a consumer based economy financed by borrowing money from other countries?

Baby I'll be there to take your hand,
Baby I'll be there to share the land
That they'll be giving away, when we all live together.

So, in the exchange with Joe the plumber we find out that Obama really is as radical as his early political acquaintances, and is into the failed economic policy of wealth redistribution. Yahoo, back to the 70's we go! So now we know that an Obama presidency really would be as if it were Carter's lost second term after all.

I normally find disagreement with Fareed Zakaria but he is "right on the money" in this article.

I also really appreciated Fareed's analysis of the situation. My husband and I were just talking about the weird feeling we've had about being somewhat insulated or removed from the current financial panic. But then, we don't live on credit cards. We didn't buy more house than we could afford and we make improvements only when we've saved up money. We don't have to have the newest thing or gadget.
I guess there are some real benefits from being raised by children of the (first) Great Depression.

Good article Fareed, about time that Americans have to face reality. We used to be a nation that took pride in being frugal, now we're just a bunch of spendthrifts. Time to get back to living within our means and to stop borrowing from the future.

Best of all is that this global financial meltdown has happened on "MBA Dunce" Bush's watch. It is a complete repudiation of Ronny Raygunz's Voo Doo Tinkle Down economics that have left the whole world wet from the wrong kind of Golden Shower. We need to pay off that huge national debt and stop stealing from Social Security so that the rich and greedy can have tax cuts they don't deserve or need.

Fareed - I've truly enjoyed your writing over the years. Common sense is not all that common, and it is refreshing to see it as straightforward and honest as you present it. Wish you were running for something - you'd have my vote.

Obama's view of the future of America - Socialism which is the next step to Communism!!


Under socialism a ruling class of intellectuals, bureaucrats and social planners decide what people want or what is good for society and then use the coercive power of the State to regulate, tax, and redistribute the wealth of those who work for a living. In other words, socialism is a form of legalized theft.

The morality of socialism can be summed-up in two words: envy and self-sacrifice. Envy is the desire to not only possess another's wealth but also the desire to see another's wealth lowered to the level of one's own. Socialism's teaching on self-sacrifice was nicely summarized by two of its greatest defenders, Hermann Goering and Bennito Mussolini. The highest principle of Nazism (National Socialism), said Goering, is: "Common good comes before private good." Fascism, said
Mussolini, is "a life in which the individual, through the sacrifice of his own private interests??realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies."

Socialism is the social system which institutionalizes envy and self-sacrifice: It is the social system which uses compulsion and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from the producer class for its redistribution to the parasitical class.

Despite the intellectuals' psychotic hatred of capitalism, it is the only moral and just social system.

Capitalism is the only moral system because it requires human beings to deal with one another as traders--that is, as free moral agents trading and selling goods and services on the basis of mutual consent.

Capitalism is the only just system because the sole criterion that determines the value of thing exchanged is the free, voluntary, universal judgement of the consumer. Coercion and fraud are anathema to the free-market system.

It is both moral and just because the degree to which man rises or falls in society is determined by the degree to which he uses his mind. Capitalism is the only social system that rewards merit, ability and achievement, regardless of one's birth or station in life.

Yes, there are winners and losers in capitalism. The winners are those who are honest, industrious, thoughtful, prudent, frugal, responsible, disciplined, and efficient. The losers are those who are shiftless, lazy, imprudent, extravagant, negligent, impractical, and inefficient. [What about the role of luck­being in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time? R. R. Pope}

Capitalism is the only social system that rewards virtue and punishes vice. This applies to both the business executive and the carpenter, the lawyer and the factory worker.

public memory is so short. The moment some improvements in economy is seen, all talk of austerity will sound like so much rubbish. Anyway if the past insanity is condoned by bailout by the govern ment, it could be business as usual again. How can we guard against this mindset?

So Obama is giving a tax cut to approximately 40 percent of Americans who don't pay taxes. He wants us to give him the money so he can hand it over to them. If it weren't for the fact that this is going to make Obama look good, he could save a boatload of stamps and just send we citizens who actually pay taxes a list of names of people who don't pay taxes and we can directly send them a thousand dollars each!

This would greatly simplify what he told Joe the Plumber.... spread the wealth around! For all of us that work and pay taxes, break out your checkbook and get ready to fork it over to those who don't!

LMAO!!! The joke is on us!

Perhaps you should mention the fleecing of America during the last 20 years. Important to figure in the factor that most Americans were forced to re-fi and take money out due to un or underemployment.
Don't forget that over 20 million jobs (most paying 70K plus) have been offshored.

Whether McCain won or lost tonight is not relevant. He succeeded in the first half hour to plant the seeds of a Reagan style wipeout. Reputable historians and economists overwhelmingly agree that the taxation imposed by and the ???stimulus??? spending and public works programs of FDR actually deepened and prolonged the Great Depression. It was the production demands of WWII that got the economy going again. And when the war was over, the economy promptly went into recession.

Point is, Obama's programs are tax and spend, and it does not really matter who he taxes, those taxes are going to be passed through the economy. Any first year economics student knows that taxation is a tool used to contract an economy experiencing inflation, because it reduces demand by reducing the amount of money individuals and businesses have to spend. It is contractionary, which is exactly what you do not want to do when the problem is that the economy is contracting already into recession. Like FDR, Obama's plans will only make it worse for longer.

Obama's tax and spending plans alone would be bad enough, but add Wright and Pelosi to the mix, with the three of them controlling both houses of Congress and the executive without and effective restraint, and you have something that should be something that causes concern even among moderate Democrats. Don't think so? Watch and listen to a C-SPAN video clip of the Congressional hearings at roughly the time McCain's attempt at S.190. to fix fannie and freddie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

Bill Clinton points to liberal Congressional Democrats' protection of Fannie and Freddie from scrutiny as a primary cause of the current economic meltdown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsynspIqAoE

To prove Bill Clinton's point, this is a link to a C-SPAN video clip of the Congressional hearings at roughly the time McCains attempt at S.190. to fix fannie and freddie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

"Video Unearthed Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis"

The link below describes how some of those Democrats in Congress tried to use the original version of the bailout bill to divert money eventually recovered to groups like ACORN. See: Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122247015469280723.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

And here is Lou Dobbs reporting on ACORN corruption and ties to Obama, including Obama Campaign paying ACORN $800,000 for voter registration activities, and Obama representing them when he was a practicing attorney.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2008/10/09/ldt.tucker.acorn.under.fire.cnn

Phiomalibumalibu:
You for got a ery important part of the loss of programing, analysi and related IT jobs. That is that not all of these jobs are going off shore; many are being filled onshore, here in the US, by tIndian consulting companies such as Infosys, Cognizance and Tata.. American companies are forming "partenerships" with these consulting companies and thus get around the visa limitations to bring in foreign workers who are NOT immigrants and have no plans/desires to become US citizens. They are here because American companies see their employment as a way to cut costs. The end result is that trained, highly qualified american IT workers are piushed out of their jobs.
Has anyone asked the government how these folks should be retrained???

5 million computer programmers and systems analysts are out of work in the US. They are NOT help desk jobs. These programmers and analysts were paying taxes and making their mortgage payments, buying cars and keeping the economy running. The main problem in this country is job loss. Let me repeat the main problem in this country is job loss. Don't think it won't happen to you. It will. East Indians can take all the journalism jobs. They are already beefing their staffs up by the millions to do this. Don't be so smug, it will happen with every industry in america, Because the Congress has been bought off with 'greasy palm' tactics.

You're forgetting one thing... jobs. Had there not been massive runaway manufacturing to China and India and other countries and the sending of nearly all customer service phone jobs to India and other countries, home starts would not have suffered nearly as much, nor auto sales. People who lost their jobs and who needed to get jobs accepted jobs that paid them as much as 60% less than the jobs they lost. And, the
thought that Americans consume a good deal more than they produce became more true as a result of all of this. Yes... we are self-indulgent when it comes to things we want... but, when we bought things... on credit cards or not... they were things that were manufactured in American and employed millions of Americans. And all the scare tactics and buzz words, like "isolationism" used by some members of Congress who did not want to make the Chinese pay for their unfair trade practices... caused the debt to China to grown even more. If you"re going to write about this crisis that we're experiencing... at least tell it like it is. Basic economy tells us that when millions of jobs are lost... that is the first domino that causes most of the problems... down goes the new housing start domino... then the new car purchased domino... then the we can no longer make the house payment that we agreed to when we were making more money domino... and so on. And then there's the Enron types who invented all the trick money-making schemes that caused that domino to fall. The commodities games... and all those "derivatives." Shell games. My first suggestions... start charging China to import all goods shipped here that represent more than they import from us. But, for the market... REMOVE ENERGY FROM THE COMMODITIES MARKET. Prices of Oil, gas, coal, etc. should NOT be effected by speculation... only supply and demand!

"Press Releases

AJC Strongly Condemns Rev. Jesse Jackson's Comment on American Jews
October 14, 2008 - New York - The American Jewish Committee (AJC) has condemned the Rev. Jesse Jackson's statement about 'Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades.'
"Rev. Jackson's remarks, which appeared in an interview with the journalist Amir Taheri in today's New York Post, echo classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish power," said AJC Executive Director David A. Harris. 'This statement, regrettably, is not the first troubling comment by Rev. Jackson regarding Israel, Zionism and the Jewish people.'

Arguing as a private citizen that an Obama administration could bring significant change to U.S. foreign policy, Jackson was quoted as saying that "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" would lose much of their influence should Senator Obama be elected president."


http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=849241&ct=6107743

And people are upset about raciest comments some in the crowd are allegedly saying at Palin events? Isn't this the same Democrat leader who once called New York "Hymietown"?